The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-02 00:00:00

of, we are persuaded, the majority of Englishmen.
We can, it is true, for ourselves, have no particular
object in concealing our religious profession. The
same may be said, probably, by every nine English-
men out of ten, yet, if we mistake not, these same
nine would with different degrees of repugnance
resent an official question on the subject; especially
one proposed under the only condition which could
make the return of any service—under a penalty
on refusal to answer and to answer correctly.
To the tenth man, however, it might be of vital im-
portance not to write down his profession. Intoler-
ance is not quite dead yet ; and it may well be that
thousands in the country have the most impera-
tive reasons for not disclosing to what religious
sect they belong.
Lord PALMERSTON now sees what is the general
feeling. Even Lord SIIAFTESBURY has by a pub-
lished letter felt it due to himself to deny a rumour
which had gained circulation, that he was the
prompter of the scheme, and distinctly to avow his
objection to it. This may be taken as an indication
that the large body of Evangelical Churchmen and
social reformers, with whom he is in such close con-
nection, dislike any such bone of contention being
thrown among them. But, following on that, we
have the memorial signed by ONE HUNDRED AND
SIXTY- SEVEN of the Premier's supporters in the House
of Commons, respectfully informing him that the
provision for obtaining every person's " religious
profession"-Ist. Appears to themselves very ob-
jectionable. 2dly. Is highly offensive to many of
their constituents. 3dly. Will produce no infor-
mation deserving of reliance. 4thly. Will, if per-
sisted in, seriously injure the Liberal party. And,
therefore, the memorialists " earnestly recommend
, that it be withdrawn from the bill."

Lord PALMERSTON, we understand, intimated
that his personal opinion was still in favour of the
proposed clause ; but acknowledged that a memorial
with so large a number of signatures deserved his
serious consideration. That is beyond question.
No doubt, with the aid of the Tories, he could
easily carry his proposal. But it is for him to
consider whether he will alienate 167 friends, and
probably another hundred, who would vote with
them, for the sake of pleasing an Opposition which
is aiming to supplant him, and whom no bribes can
purchase, He has not yet quite cut himself off from
retreat. The memorial is one which, from its in-
fluential character and numerous signatures, affords
a Minister abundant reason for withdrawing what
ho finds will only irritate his friends; but, if he
should persist, in the face of it, in what is so ob-
noxious to them, he will assuredly cause a split in
his camp, and that in the face of an ever-watchful
and able antagonist, which he may never remedy.
We agree with the memorialists that the return
would be perfectly valueless. That great Dissenting
body, the Conference Methodists, have avowed their
determined hostility to the proposed question. The
other very numerous Methodist bodies have followed.
The more educated denominations of Dissenters are
to a man hostile to the proposed inquisition, and
Churchmen, for whose glorification a small party
amongst them design it, show in large numbers their
characteristically English dislike to such questions.
In what good society, we may ask, would not the
question proposed not be considered a breach of
that reserve and decorum which marks an English-
man ? DILLIVYN—We think it was—expressed
the opinion of us all when he observed that he would
ten times over rather pay the £5O penalty than
ask his guests at the breakfast-table after having
slept in his house on the Census night, what was
the religious profession of each of them.
And why must this annoying question be put ?
If there be an Income-tax, we must of course tell
what our incomes are, though our questioners are
pledged to secresy ; while, however, the French will
outbuild us in ships of war, money must be had.
But no one will contend that the State must know
what is every man's religious profession. 'We do
not indeed think it worth knowing. 'What the dif-
ferent religious bodies are actually doing
towards the national object of religious
instruction and worship, [it may be at least
interesting to know, especially when it in-
dicates what yet wants to be done, as it did last
time. But under what head the masses who wor-
ship nowhere would register themselves, and what
all the timid would profess in fear of superiors, and
what the enumerators would put down for the great
numbers who would give no account of themselves,
we do not care to know. Practically the attempt
will certainly fail. We see that the Dissenters are
determined, if Lord PALMERSTON forces it through
Parliament, to spare no pains to make it fail. They
are discussing two courses. The first is that of
entire abstention from giving their profes-
sion. The second, that of all signing
themselves " Churchmen !" This seems at first
sight an ab4rdity—but the fact is, that any Eng-
lishman is, legally, a member of the Established
Church. He may be a very bad—a schismatical
one—but till by some legal process he has been
deprived of his interest in the National Church,
he as a part of tke nation has equal rights with his
neighbour in the Church he never attends. "I am
asked—the Dissenter says—by the law what is
"my religious profession"—l give as my answer, I
give a legal answer and, the law makes me—a
Churchman.

The disappearance from among us of the last sur-
viving brother of the Great NAPOLEON, is an event
which cannot be regarded with other than profound
emotions by the present age, the age, as it may be
called, of his later contemporaries. It is an inci•
dent which more vividly than any other casualty
now possible recalls to mind, with startling effect,
the whole series of extraordinary occurrences con-
necting the reign of the present EMPEROR with
that of his wonderful predecessor, the founder of
the Imperial dynasty—events dating back even still
further, to that seed-plot of glory, the great French
Revolution. H. I. H. the Prince JEROME—last
relic of the immediate family of the Gallic C:ESAR,
until Sunday the 24th instant, sole remaining
member of the home-group gathered about the later
ALEXANDER, the greater JUSTINIAN, the modern
CEIARLEMAGNE—was the youngest of the five sons,
the youngest of the eight children of CHARLES
BONAPARTE and LETITIA NEE RANOLINI. He
was born on the 14th of November, 1784, at Ajaccio
and little more than a quarter of a year afterwards
the " Mother of the GRACCIII" was prematurely
widowed. The noble Corsican Advocate—father
of that race of Kings—expiring on the 24th of
February, 1785, in the bloom of his manhood, at
Montpellier ; during the delirium of his last mo-
moments, mysteriously and incessantly calling
NAPOLEON (then a mere boy) to come to his aid
with his great sword! Nurtured in the midst of
the turmoil of the most astonishing revolution this
world has ever witnessed, JEROME was still no
more than a nursling when his wonderful brother,
(himself then little else than a strlpling) fi st rose into
notice by the sheer mastery of his genius "riding the
whirlwind and directing the storm" in the midst of
what Sir Altentr,ALD ALTSON has magnificently
expressed in a single word as that grand political
" mindquake." The history of this rise is the most
familiar,abl hatthe while it is the most romantic and remark-
pen of annalist, perhaps, ever recorded.
It is the narrative of the career of one whom the
most gifted of all our military annalists has em"

phatically designated in the peroration of his
famous history of the War in the Peninsula—
"NAPOLEON, the greatest man of whom history
makes mention !" It is a narrative, the marvels of
which were aptly epitomised in a few syllables at
the commencement of the imaginary conversation
written by the late Viscount STRANGFORD, as a dia-
logue between " Fifteen and Twenty-five" :

25.—Little School Boy, come here. What are

you reading ?

" 15.—The Life of NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

" 25.—D0 you like it ; are you amused ?

" 15.—Amused--what a word ! to ask if I am
amused. lam dazzled, fascinated, and bewildered,
if you will. lam awed and astonished."

It is the marvellous narrative we have all of us
devoured again and again, at some time of our lives,
with similar feelings of delight and amazement.
As a participator ia the incidents recounted in it,
his Imperial Highness the Prince JEROME was the
last surviving personage, commanding on all hands
in a peculiar manner the personal sympathies of
this younger generation. It is remembered, in re-
gard to his early boyhood, that JEROME, together
with his sister CAROLlNE—afterwards the beautiful
wife of the handsome MURAT, Sovereign of Naples
—was placed at Madame CAMPAN'S educational
establishment, in Paris, at the very time
when Italy was being conquered and carved
into republics by the sword of the
young General BONAPARTE, preparatory to his
consolidating it into the semblance of the ancient
kingdom, and placing upon his own brow the iron
crown of CHARLEMAGNE. From Madame CAM-
PAN'S elementary academy, JEROME was subse-

quently removed to the College of Juilly, where he

was still engaged in his studies when NAPOLEON,
returning from the conquest of Egypt, and boldly
crossing the broad Rubicon of the Mediterranean,
destroyed at St. Cloud, on the 18th Brumaire, the
effete Directory, building up at once among its
ruins the majestic fabric of the Consular Govern-
ment. It was then, while he was yet scarcely
fifteen, that the youngest of the brothers of the
First Consul was permanently removed by him
from the meditative seclusion of college-life, and
placed at once in the navy as an enseigne de
vaisseau, or midshipman. At seventeen, namely
in 1801, the young sea-captain was appointed to
the command of the corvette l'Epervier, taking his
departure, in that capacity, from the shores of
France, as one of the associated Capitaines scot
out in the renowned expedition to the Island of St.
Domingo—tho expedition conducted by the

brother-in-law of the BONAPARTES, General LE
CLERC, the ill-fated spouse of the lovely PAULINE,
afterwards Princess of BORGHESE. In the March
of the following year (1802) Captain JEROME
BONAPARTE returned to France, the bearer of de-
spatches, recounting the successful landing of the
forces and the capture of Cape Francois. The in-
telligence was received with transports at home,
the bearer of the news being everywhere greeted
with acclamations. It was shortly afterwards,
while stationed at Brest that JEROME received
from the First Consul the well-known letter in
which NAPOLEON upbraided his youthful brother
with certain frivolities and indiscretions. " Die
young," wrote the inexorable Chief of the State,
" if you ever intend to disgrace your name ; for if
you live to sixty without having served your
country, you had better not have been born."
JEROME has lived beyond sixty by upwards of
fifteen years additional ; but JEROME has also, at
times in a very signal manner, served his country,
and has certainly done anything rather than dis-
grace the glorious historic name of BONAPARTE.
At eighteen he was, according to the whimsical
idiom, "sowing his wild oats." But the stern repre-
hension of his great brother damped, in some
measure, the ardour of, if it did not in point of
time considerably abbreviate, those strange

experimental pursuits of his in the science of
social agriculture. Almost upon the morrow of this
rebuke from the First Consul, JEROME (still in
command of the corvette TEpervier) sailed for
Martinique ; during his stay there residing at the
house of Madame de la PAGERIE, the mother of the
charming and admirable JOSEPHINE.

Immediately after the rupture of the Peace of
Amiens, JEROME cruised in his vessel during several
months along the southern coast of England, at the
end of this long cruise crossing the Atlantic, and
putting in at the port of New York. There it was,
that is to say, in the United States, that occurred
the famous episode in his personal history—his
marriage at Baltimore, on the 24th of December,
1803, with Miss ELIZABETH PATTERSON. The
fame of his extraordinary brother invested JEROME
himself with a halo of popularity in America. He
was an object of universal interest and curiosity.
He was gayest of the gay in the society of Balti-
more, New York, .and Philadelphia. In the for-
mer city, as we have seen, he consummated
his gaieties by espousing upon Christmas-eve the
daughter of one of its richest merchants—the
celebrant of the nuptials being SOHN CAE,ROLL,
Bishop of Baltimore, brother of the last signer of the
Declaration of Independence. Although the cere-
mony was performed agreeably to the rites of the
Roman Catholic Religion, and in obedience to the
laws of the United States, its sanctity and its lega-
lity, it will be remembered, were neither of them
ever recognised by NAPOLEON, either as Head of
his house, or as Chief of the French Government.
Having remained with his young American bride
for more than a year as a sojourner in the United
States, Monsieur and Madame JEROME BONAPARTE
embarked in the spring of 1805, on board the Erin
for Europe. Upon their arrival at Lisbon in May,
they separated—JEßOME going to Paris overland,
his wife proceeding on board the Erin to Amster-
dam. Scarcely, however, had she reached the Texel
when she found herself prohibited from landing by
a positive order to that effect transmitted from Paris
by the Imperial Government. Her destiny and her
destination were alike thereupon similarly changed
altogether. In consequence of the arbitrary man-
date of NAPOLEON she sailed for England, arriving
there in June, and upon the 7th of July gave birth
at Camberwell, to her only son JEROME NAPOLEON
BONAPARTE, now a citizen_of Baltimore, and father
of the Prince JEROME'S grandson, now a young
officer in the Imperial army of NAPOLEON 111, By a
special decreed
yopdeeePlaiur
informalth emarriage esdvtlol. h(
;an
to comply with the v.
of
although
hv ruthal
PI NAPOLEON'S
daevcelibn ierci gli
—MPEROR'S request) absolutely
refused to annul the marriage—
the will of the
Lord of Europe in this, as in so man oth
er
matters, o ler
matters, prevailed. ELIZABETH, wife of JEROME
BONAPARTE was, from that time forth, to all in-
tent. 4 and purposes no longer a wife—occupying a
sort of midway neutral position between a widow
and one divorced. Her husband himself, as an
evidence of his submission, undertook shortly after
this an extraordinary mission from the EurEttou
'o the Dey of ALGIERS—a diplomatic mission in

akin
fact to that which more than ten years after

wards preceded our own glorbus and triumphal
bombardment by the British fleet under Admiral
the Lord Viscount EXMOUTH. Ambassador
BoNAPARTE, in fact, was instructed to demand
the immediate release of certain Genoese sailors
and citizens captured and carried into slavery by
the buccaneering Aigcrines; In this difficult