The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-23 00:00:00

(Signed)

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVLNING, APRIL, 23, 1869.

JOINT-STOCK BANKS.

Closing Business
Share NAME. Paid. Price. done
10 Agra Limited, A all 11 12 11 101
AO Du B lO 21 31
50 Albion
00 Alliance, Limited
20 Anglo-Austrian
20 Anglo-Egyptian, lim all 20 21
20 Anglo-Hungarian 8 2 24
20 Anglo-Italian 1866, limited 10 51 41
40 Australasian
20 Bank of British Columbia.. all 11 13
20 Do issued at 2pm ~.. 5 5 4
25 Bank of Egypt
20 Bank of Otago, lim.
25 Bank of South Australia all 30 32
50 Bank of Victoria, Australia 2.5 37 30
10 Bank of New Zealand all 17 18
50 British North American
20 Chartered of India, Austra-
lia, r ud China all
25 Chartered Mere. of India.
• London; and China all
20 City
100 Colonial 25
10 Consolidated, Jim.
50 Delhi and London, lint
59 East London, lim 5
20 English and American, lint 19
20 English Bank of Rio de Ja-
neiro. lint lO
20 English, :coltish, and Aus -
traliau Chartered
281 Hong Kong and Shanghai
Bank Corporation all
281 Do new a.- '
10u Imperial, lim
20 Imperial Ottoman lO
s 5 lonian all
25 Do new 5
20 Lnd Mortgage of India, lint 4
too D 4, sp. e. Debs.lB6 I, 30 all 76
30 London Batik; of Mexico
and South America, lim. 20
100 Loudon and Brazilian, Jim. 45
20 Do new 71
Do London &River Plate, lim. 40
23 Do new 10
20 Loudon Chart. of Australia all
20 London and County 2O
50 Do new, iss at 20 p.m, 16 pd ll
Loudon Joint Stock 1
London and South African al
00 London & S.-Western, lim, 20
150 London & Venezuela, lim l2l
100 London and Westminster 2O
100 Do Scrip, iss at 10 pm 2O
100 Merchant, lint 25
10 Metropolitan, lim all
100 Midland, lim 2O
5 National of Australia
25 National of Liverpool, lim. 15
100 National Provinc. of Eng'd 42
10 Do . 42
50 National. 2O
20 New South Wales all
20 North-Western 7l
25 Oriental Bank Corporation all
50 I'rovinc. Bank. Corpo., lint lO
00 Provincial of Ireland 25
10 Do new. ' -all
100 Stand. of Brit. S. Africa, lint 25
100 Do issued at 6 pm, 10
25 Union of Australia all
100 Union of Ireland, lim
50 Union of London l5

20 21

`.91 301 27f
12 121
39 40
I 1

pr 1p

161 17

36 38
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16 17
2 zi 121
21 26
14 ip
n 34
75 73

61 51
30 27
51 44
0 11
21 Zip
244 25
60 61

.:t.21.:3.31 321
81 9i
lt 12

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63 61 63.1 I

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41 43

421 4s}
6 6
88 90

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8 6
47 48

iii 3t 34

TELEGRAP II COMPANI ES.

CO Anglo-American Tel., lien all 22; 22; 22;
10 Anglo Mediter Tel., 1im.... 10 11; 12;
at Atlantic Telegraph lO 2 k 26 24
st Do. 8 per cent. lOO 71 74 72
at B. and I. Magnetic Tel., lira. 100 160 165
at Electric & Inter. Telegraph 100 2,0 245
10 Do. New ... .
25 Indo-European Tel., lira lO .
...
3 Loud. Provincial Tel. lira all a gi
1 Do. Prefer. 10 per cent. all
10 Mediterra. Eaten. Tel., lira. all $ 41r•
23 Reuter's Telegram all 50 54
20 Societe Transatlant., lira... 14 4 3 15
at Submarine Telegraph
1 Do. Scrip all 1 If
20 Telegraph Con. & Main.,lirri all lii; 171 17; *
SU. Kingdom Tel. Co., lira all 61 6
4 Do. 10 per cent. Pref all 31 4 p

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times thinks that the House of Commons is to be
congratulated on having gone through another section of
the Ministerial Bill on Thursday night, and on having
entirely disposed of the clauses granting compensation to
persons deprived of income by the measure. The divi-
sions in the course of the evening were marked by the
usual majorities of 100 to 115 on the side of the Govern-
ment, and we believe that if any supporter of the Minis-
try felt any compunction in supporting the terms of com-
pensation proposed by the bill it would be more than
dispelled upon due consideration of the facts of the case.
Irish rectors and Irish curates will be secured in the
enjoyment of such incomes as they have hitherto received,
and this is no slight matter ; but it is scarcely necessary
to add that the Free Irish Episcopal Church of the future
will be neither poor in wealth nor weak in spirit.
The landowners of Ireland are Protestant, and it
cannot be supposed that the Irish gentry will be
slack to support the ministers of the communion to which
they belong. The Church body will be endowed with
churches, with ecclesiastical residences, and with commu-
tations, and the reconstruction of the Irish Church will
enable its governing committee or trustees to promote the
claims of merit and of zeal in a degree little inferior to
that hitherto impossible under the organisation of the
Irish Establishment. Some economy in administration
will, of course, be effected, tut it will be economy of a
character the propriety of which co one will deny. It will
be an incident of reorganisation that unnecessary offices
will be suppressed and over-paid duties reduced ; but
whatever charge may be inflicted, and justly inflicted, on
the Protestant laity of Ireland in requiring them to pay
in the future for privileges hitherto enjoyed at the public
expense, the clergy of the Episcopal Church will have
cause to acknowledge that no revolution of similar moment
has ever been effected with such an absence of trial and
suffering to the clergy themselves.
The Telegraph observes that Englishmen are pro-
verbially jealous of the slightest interference with what
they call vested interests ; and hence not the least ticklish
part of the Irish Church Bill is that which falls under the
head of " compensation to persons deprived of income."
However, the Commons have cut off the heads of the
principal difficulties. Mr. Gladstone asserts that, on an
average, each of the permanent curates will receive as
compensation a sum of £1,300 or £1,400 ; and if they can
get permission from the incumbent of the parish—which
many will do by " compounding " with him for the loss of
their services, or in other words, by giving a con-
siderable share of the prize—they are free to roam
the wide world over in search of curacies, with
perhaps £7OO or £BOO in their pockets to pay the
expenses. As for the non-permanent brethren, they may
go where they like without asking leave from anybody,
and take their whole prize-money in their pockets. If
not wanted in Ireland, they can go to England, Scotland,
the United States, Canada, India, Australia, or any other
country which possesses a branch of the Protestant Epis-
copal Church. But Conservative members are too prone
to fancy that a crowd of curates will be cast adrift from
their Irish moorings. The idea, we repeat, is a libel on
the generosity of the Irish Protestants—a libelwhich finds
its best refutation in the vast wealth that has been poured
into the ecclesiastical treasury of Scotland by the Pro-
testant Free Churchmen in that country. The Irish
curates have no reason to despair. They are to be left in
clover. May we add the fervent hope that, since the
recital of their woes is singularly dry, and since their fate
has now been settled, the House of Commons has heard
the last of their troubles !
The Daily News foresees that the permanent curate of
Ireland will succeed the compound householder of England
as the great parliamentary bore. He is the text and
subject of lay sermons in St. Stephen's as fearful in them-
selveland in their probable consequences as any that the
imagination of Sidney Smith could conceive as proceeding
from the wildest of his order. The House of Commons
is not yet preached dead ; but the long continuance of the
two nights' discussion, of which the permanent curate has
been the principal theme, would be execution by process
of slow torture. The dropping of water upon the exposed
head of the victim is described as, in its cumulative
effect, the most terrible infliction which inquisitorial
cruelty devised. The dropping of words is almost as bad.
The dreary theme is not sensibly relieved by the laboured
jocularity of Mr. Vernon Harcourt, nor the apt grace of
classical allusion which enables Mr. Beresford Hope to
find in Mr. Synan, the member for Limerick, the counter-
part of the Sinon, whose treacherous wiles brought the
fatal horse within the walls of sacred Troy. The per-
manent curate is an entity whom it seems as difficult to
apprehend as the abstract idea of a Lord Mayor. He
evades definition and arrest with Protean versatility. He
is carcely to be caught by gold ; and the promise of some-
thing to his advantage hardly succeeds in making him
enter an appearance. But though he will not come
in his proper time and place, he is always intruding
where he has no business to be. If Mr. Gladstone's
calculations be correct, Mr. Vernon Harcourt's complaints
that the curates arc scurvily treated seem without ground.
His protestation that they were as well entitled to the
consideration of Government as Irish lunatics and idiots
gives up the whole principle of the bill, and asserts the
claims of a sectarian minority to a portion, at least, of the
funds intended for the whole Irish nation, without distinc-
tion of sect. He did not succeed in modifying the clause,
which passed without opposition, as did the sections
defining the compensation due to diocesan schoolmasters,
rectors, vergers, organists, and others.
The Standard says the Home Secretary has explained
the grounds upon.which he reprieved Wiltshire, and has
vindicated generally the recommendations by which he
has guided the exercise of the royal prerogative of pardon.
We cannot say that Mr. Bruce's statement, for eliciting
which the country is indebted to Sir George Jenkinson,
is at all satisfactory. If we regard it as justifying Mr.
Bruce's own proceedings, we can only do so by allowing
that a failure of justice may be expected to occur in one
at least of every two trials for murder. Talk about legal
reforms, indeed. Here is one to which Parliament should
give its immediate attention. Human life is, it seems,
according to the Home Secretary, the sport of our present
tribunals ; and for every murderer convicted and sen-
tenced an innocent man is put in danger of his life.
But the real question as to Mr. Bruce's exercise of the
power which his office gives him was not raised.
Grant that it was right to reprieve the brute Wiltshire,
and the injustice of executing Sheward becomes all the
more apparent. The execution of the latter was not
needed to impress upon the people a respect for the sanc-
tity of human life. The verdict which found him guilty
of the crime for which he was sentenced rested entirely,
upon his own confession, and not even sir. Bruce could
have felt any confidence in the justice of that verdict
unless it had, subsequent to the trial, been supplemented
by another confession. Certainly, if there was any justi-
fication for the exercise of the prerogative of mercy in the
cases in which Mr. Bruce has exercised it, there was a far
stronger justification in the case of Sheward, and although
there can be no doubt, and we allow it most unhesita-
tingly, that Mr. Bruce has anxiously weighed every one
of those cases, and decided according to his sense of puulic
duty, the public will, we fear, be inclined to suspect that
Sheward was really hung in order to make the account
between execiftions and reprieves look a little better.
The Herald considers that the Liberal party has been
reduced to absolute subjection, and that none of its
members dare express an independent opinion on the
clauses of the Irish Church Bill. No one could have
believed that the bonds of party discipline would be so
tightly strained, and the obligations of hustings pledges so
lightly regarded, that every Liberal should be held bound
to vote for every detail of a measure which violated one
entire moiety, and that not the least important, of the
promises given during the session and the canvass of 1808.
I3ut it has proved that the system of terrorism instituted
by Mr. Gladstone, the rejection of so many of the more
independent membersof the party, and the signal examples
of such men as Mr. Laing, Mr. Roebuck, and Arr.
Horsman, have done' their work only too Nvell. The
Liberals are as thoroughly cowed as the .subjects
of Robespierre —as mere machines as a Russian
soldiery. They must come down when they are
bid ; hold their tongues at the word of command, and vote
for every word in the bill, and against every proposal
that emanates from an independent or Conservative
member. They dare not fancy for a moment that their
seats, their votes, or their souls are their own. They.
must give the lie to their clearest convictions and the
F
most definite promises. The only liberty left to them is
that of shouting ; and deprived of all freedom of inaction.
every other direction, they vent their feelings in hooting
and laughing to an extent as unusual as the pressure to
which they are subjected. Under such circumstances it
is simply useless to persevere in any amendment that is
Government, -
not at once accepted by the and impossible
to carry the slightest alteration that would do more than
correct their many
.oversights ; while it requires all the
authority of the chair to secure a patient hearing for any
Opposition speaker who ventures to occupy more than
five minutes in the discussion of the most important
matters, whether of principle or of practice.
The Star remarks that the vexed question of primary
education in Ireland must, sooner or later. come to be
reconsidered by Parliament. The general resu.t, however,
of Mr. Foster's inquiries must be regarded as eminently
satisfactory. It is agreed, in the first place, that there
is no lack of machinery for public instruction in
Ireland, although in some parts of the country a redistri-
bution of schools is desiderated. Again, it is acknowledged
that the atlendance of children is not practically checked
by any of those causes the commanding influence of which
we have unhappily to deplore in this country. The
opinion of the monsters, however, appears to incline in
favour of an educational poll-tax, with compulsory instruc-
• tion as a condition of it. But the real gist of the educa-
tion difficulty in Ireland is the question of religion. Is
the national system of non-sectarian teaching approved by
the people or not? Among the ecclesiastics on Loth
sides there are some excellent men, but the
sacerdotal temper is the same all over the world.
and the opposition of clerical fanaticism to every
measure tending to break down the partition walls
between sects was a consequence which must always be
taken into account by statesmen. For all that, the Irish
national system of education, displaying such healthy pro-
gress as is evident from the testimonies put forward by
Mr. Foster, ought not to be rashly abandoned in deference
to clerical clamour. To establish denominational instruc-
tion in Ireland would be a work of much difficulty, incon-
sistent in many respects with what has been achieved by
the disestablishment of the Irish Church ; it would arouse
much discontent and create some hardship ; it would only
• satisfy the clergy at the expense of inconvenience_ to
.the peoples and and ittf resin u vi,944). be, 4204\4. RI, at
-sat,