The Sun.
London, England, 1869-07-31 00:00:00

,BER.

:11BER.

Eglinton Mint 6 7
Liverpool
Shrewsbury ..... l5, 16

STEEPLECHASE FIXTURES,
OCTOBER.
Bromley 7 I West Drayton 2l, 42
NOVEMBER.
Worcester 2,3, 4 Shrewsbury 15,
I Harrow 2, 3 Leamington Hunt ....23 be
Lverpool J 10, 11, 12

COURSING FIXTURES.

AUGUST.

St. Albans
17
OCTOBER.

Ancaster and Willoughby, Lincolnshire 5, 6.
Ormesby
ILantingdon Club.. 26, 27

REGATTAS AND MATCHES TO COME.

'IRIT Of THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Saturcluy Review, in discussing Mr. Bruce's version
of his interference with Murphy's lectures, observes that
the great majority of the House agreed in substance with
Mr. Henley, that the first duty of the Government is to
keep the peace, and that, if that object is attained, the
means employed ought not to be too severely criticised.
When a Secretary of State, or even a mayor of a large
town, knows that a riot is likely to take place, he probably
will care ulna more about removing the cause of dis
turhance than about constitutional freedom of speech. It
the rioters are too strong for the police, he may think that
the simplest method of preserving order is to remove the
cause of offence ; and it must he confessed that, if strict
justice is to be disregarded, it is as well that any unavoid-
able hardship should fall upon Murphy. A bull in a
pasture through which a footpath runs furnishes reason-
able cause of alarm ; and if a drunken man insists on
waving a red flag in the field, it may be easier to take him
to the lock-up house than to pacify the bull. The hints
and suggestions of immorality by which the young and the
vulgar may be attracted to a lecture form a separate ground
of censure ; and, ae far as immediate expediency is concerned,
it is convenient to frighten away by menace of penalties au
audience which hopes to be gratified by initiation into the
fabulous secrets of the confessional. The House of Com-
mons chewed no disposition to demand the establishmeiit
and application of an impartial rule. There is a supersti-
tion or cant about freedom of speech which sometimes
invites the disturbance of sDcial order ; and it may be
doubted whether the ancient traditions of law may not
require modification in a country studded with enormous
towns. It is notorious that, at a public meeting held for
the nominal consideration of a eisputed question, the
weaker party is never allowed a hearing. The great meet-
ings which were held to promote Parliamentary Reform
were not intended for discussion, but for intimidation by
the display of numbers. Since the last general elect ion
all parties agree that public nominations might be sup-
pressed with advantage, and open-air assemblages in great
towns are only not dangerous to public peace because the
majority is unopposed. In London, where there is a risk
that attempts may he made to coerce the Government or
Parliament, a Hyde Park mob is a dangerous instrument
of sedition. If Murphy is silenced because his follies tend
to provoke riots on the part of his adversaries, it is only
through timidity that demagogues are allowed openly to
urge their followers to violence.

The Spectator says that an opinion is abroad, more
especially among those Conservatives who still believe in
Mr. Disraeli's strategy, that the Irish Church Bill was
the withe which bound the Liberals together, and that
now the withe is cut the sticks will fall apart. The work
the constituencies ordered has been done, and done com-
pletely; personal idiosyncracies will now again have free
play, and the violent differences which must always exist
in any Liberal party—Liberalism involving of necessity
concessions to individualism—will reappear, and gradually
reduce that army to a mob. We doubt the accuracy of
that view very greatly, for two reasons, the first and least
answerable of them being the national confidence
in Mr. Gladstone. He is the cement of the
party, and not the Irish Church Bill. It was
not the bill which carried him into power, but he who
carried the bill by his much ridiculed fullness of speech
into the convictions of average electors. So far from his
"cry " having assisted Yr. Gladstone, as all Conserva-
tives and many Liberals are still inclined to think, we
believe that it was a serious obstacle in his way ; that the
English and Scotch people would scarcely have accepted
the cry so heartily from any -other lips ; that it was the
profound confidence felt in Yr. Gladstone himself which,
more than any argument, extinguished anti-Catholic feel-
ing ; that had the dissolution been upon any great secular
question, say, for instance, the Reform of the House of
Lords, the Premier would have carried all the seats he did
carry and Lancashire besides. We said there was a second
reason for believing that the party would hold together
and it is this—every measure of any importance will have
to be carried by a struggle between the constituencies and
the Lords, which will be severe enough, and interesting
enough, to attract popular attention, and make desertions
dangerous or impossible. It will not be a question of mea-
sures to be carried by a greater or less majority—a matter
of figures, about which constituencies rarely get savage—
but of the measures themselves, and of the continued
Premiership of the leader who proposes them. On that
point the Liberal party is sure to be united, probably
united in principle, certainly united by that dread of the
constituencies, that extreme dread, let us even say,
which was inspired by the incidents of the last election,
and which always follows any great democratic
change. The constituencies may reject proposals for
themselves, but if they accept them, they certainly will
not, with the struggle actually on, let their representatives
flinch. That may be delegation instead of representation;
but then,if the session teaches anything, it is that under
Mr. Disraeli's bill the tendency towards delegation has
enormously increased ; that the new electors, unwilling
or unable to study the details of politics, are disposed to
content themselves with, and to enforce, a few very simple
and very broad orders, one of which is that, "till counter.
mended," Mr. Gladstone is to Le followed. He, we
repeat, is the cement of the Liberal party—a cement
which, as the Carlton will find to its great disappoint-
ment, is stronger than any of the materials it binds.

The John Bull declares that the first step the Irish
Church should take is to call together, as speedily as
possible, her own Convocation. The House of Lords and
the Canterbury Convocation alike agreed that great wrong
had been done to her, by the repeated refusal of the
English Government to concede to her this simple sod
needful step. She need not now wait for the consent of
Government. There is no Act of Submission for Ireland,
and no fear of prcentunire for her clergy, if they do meet
in Convocation ; and if there were, public opinion would
not for a moment allow any such tyrannical statutes to
come into operation in her case. Let the Irish Primates
ascertain exactly how Convocation was constituted, when
it was consigned to inaction in the reign of George 1., and
summon it to meet again in that very same form. The
present is a crisis in their Church's history ; and if
people consider it a strong measure to take, we can assure
them that the time requires strong measures. We want
our Episcopate to be convinced that £5,000 per annum is
not absolutely necessary before a new bishopric can be had ;
and if the Church of Ireland will give evidence of that truth
by restoring as soon as possible her ancient bishoprics, in
which the labours of the clergy shall be paid in "double
honour," according to scriptural precept, rather that in
money, she will both confound her foes who had thought
they had stricken her to the ground, and will aid and en-
courage her friends. Let, then, the Church of Ireland at
once, and without hesitation, restore her Convocation as
it existed in 1714 ; and then as soon as it conveniently can
be done, let her restore her full number of dioceses, to the
reduction of which her Convocation never consented, to
what it was in 1830. These steps will reassure her friends,
and will confuse her enemies, the 'united forces of Rome
and revolution. The tale of revolutionary triumph at the
Pan-Roman Synod will be told with less than anticipated
glee ; and Churchmen in England will rejoice to find that
the State alone did not give life and organisation to the
Church of Ireland, and that the loss of worldly goods has
not brought with it a loss of heart or hope, but rather de-
termination and new energy.

The Economist thinks that the Conservatives have reason
to feel some anxiety about the general drift of their
present policy. It is for them almost a pure mis-
fortune, though we are by no means sure that they realise
it, that they command a decisive majority in the House of
Lords, while being in so small a minority in the House of
Commons—and in this way. Their natural, and we may
say legitimate, policy is to ally themselves with the
Moderates in the Liberal party, so as tocheck anything
like rash innovation, and to gain time for the country in
snaking up its mind on changes of great moment. While
the Liberal party is as strong as it is at present in the
country, the Conservatives ought to be powerless when
the Liberals are united ; but, on the other hand, they
ought to regain their power whenever and wherever the
Liberals begin to differ among themselves, and the
Moderates are more or less inclined to part company with
the advanced Liberals. Mr. Disraeli evidently sees, and
by helping through the Irish Church Bill, on which the
constituencies had virtually decided their action, he has
opened the way for a policy of divide ct impera in future
sessions—hoping, doubtleee, to make a very substantial
beginning on the Irish Land Tenure Bill, on which
no one can say that the constituencies have decided,
and which . must come on for discussion next
session. But, unfortunately—owing to the very dif-
ferent balance of parties in the two llouses---Mr. Disraeli
is not, able to pursue, without many interferences with its
natural drift, the legitimate policy of the Conservative party.
It is, we believe, the true interest of Conservatives never
to he obstructive—by which of course we mean obstinate
when the opinion of the country is a;.;ainst them—but
always steadily to retard and even resist changes on which
the mind of the country is still undecided. Now in place
of this steady and uniform.purpose against innovation, so
long as innovation is merely experimental and tentative,
the Conservative system now involves a series of obstrise-
tive vetos on petty matters, awl rare unconditional sur-
renders on treat matters. Can anything be better
calculated to diminish their real influence with the collie-
.

try? In great matte's on which the country's spirit is
roused, it sees the Conservatives yielding, but yielding, as
Lord Cairns very candidly sail, to a mere terse nuyeure
on measures, every line of •which tl.ey " detest."
In small matters, on which time spirit of the
country is not inflamed. hut on which its
intellect is no less convinced, it sees the Conservatives
idly thwarting its convictions merely because they have
the power ant must sometimes use it. Hence it is periodi-
cally irritated into r eal disgust v,ith Conservatism;
whereas if t ;.; Conservatives never resisted a clearly-
expressed conviction, but only united with wavering
Liberals to check the progress of measures on which no
clear conviction has yet been really formed, they might
Hie a very powerful po-ition in this country, which has
in it a far greater mams of latent Conservatism and
timidity than we ever give it credit for. We maintain
that the present unfortunate superiority of the Conserva-
tives in the House of Lords does more than anything else
to keep down the Conservatism of the country. It makes
the Conservatives appear alternately timid and rash,
yielding and obstinate, irresolute and captious, when
their true attitude should be one of steady but never
obstructive rcstraiut on hazardous or seemingly ill-digested
chauge. -