The Sun.
London, England, 1869-02-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURZTALS.

The Saturday Review, in surveying the prospects of the
coming session, observes that there never was an opportunity
when a Prime Minister had it more in his power, by
rising to the height of the occasion, to give meaning and
consistency to the action of his supporters, and to place the
policy of his party on a serious and solid basis. On a
number of great questions—on retrenchment, armyreform,
education, the treatment of the poor, the treatment of
criminals, law reform, the relations of capital to labour;
the relations of the mother-country to the colonies, and
many other subjects of scarcely less moment, the Liberal
party, and the country which the Liberal party may be
fairly taken to represent, are waiting to be guided. They
long for a policy to be indicated on points like these,
which shall be bold and decisive without being revolu-
tionary. Unless the Ministry skews itself equal to the
task of indicating the general grooves in which on the
great questions of the day its party should move, it wil:
only hold a second-rate position, and will soon pay the
penalty exacted from all Ministries that are inferior tc
what is expected from them. It will be supported, but
it will be supported without confidence and without
enthusiasm. To be really powerful, it must shew itself
capable, not of decent administration and of carrying
out in a bungling way the suggestions of random
thinkers, but of itself forming the ideas of the public.
Retrenchment is popular, but no one knows what retrench-
ment means. Army refoim is popular, but a subordinate
member of the Ministry has already been made to eat
humble-pie, because he indiscreetly expressed an opinion
about the chief command of the army. The London
public is in a panic at the thought of the legion of expe-
rienced criminals whom it generously shelters in its bosom
but no one has any notion how to reconcile the surveillance
of the police with the traditional liberty of the subject.
Every one wants education to be much more diffused than
it is at present, but no one knows how to diffuse it with-
out offending the clergy, or how to replace the clergy if
they are offended. In all directions men are looking fog
guidance, and are waiting to see whether the present
. Ministry can guide them. Beyond even the Irish Church
in importance, the Saturday Review ranks the question of
the position to be held by the House of Lords. The
Archbishop of York has proclaimed the theory that the
Commons are to initiate and the Lords to scrutinise. If
this doctrine were accepted, it would involve important
consequences. No one can doubt that the Peers would be
specially fitted for such an office, but the question is
whether they will recognise it as their function. The truth
is that the House of Lords is rapidly tending in the
direction indicated by the Archbishop, though whethez
they will accept their new position without further struggle
is a doubtful question.
The Speeator says that the approaching session will be
an anxious one in many respects, and that there is enough
to do to keep Parliament in good health, even without
recording dreams, and we have more than usual confidence
that Parliament will do it. It is a ner Parliament; It
should be a fearless one, and its action will be very little
hampered by the " interests," which have never recovered
the collapse of the paper fortunes caused by tlie failure of
0 vereud, Gurney, and Co. The grand danger of the
session is that all its great measures, and more particle
larly the measure the House was elected to carry, involvi
details so minute, and, to certain persons, so interesting,
that action may be lost sight of in unintermittent discus-
sion ; that night after night will he wasted about clauses
which follow of necessity from principles already accepted.
Great tact and great firmness will be required to keep the
House to its task, and great forbearance and energy
within the House itself. Of the tact and the firmness we
are nearly secure, and the forbearance and the energy may
also be displayed if the House will but remember that the
one doubt in the public mind as to parliamentary govern.
ment, the one cause which is so visibly alarming the
" philosophers " who influence the masses, is the excessive,
sometimes the intolerable, lumberingness of its action.
That doubt signified nothing while the evil could be
explained to be a result of a restricted suffrage, but it
may matter much now that the nation, for the first time
in its history, directly legislates for itself.
The London Review observes that a recess unprecedented
in our Parliamentary history is about to close, and that
the House of Commons which Mr. Gladstone will meet
next Tuesday is an anomalous product of an anomalous
election, and it is summoned expressly to perform an
anomalous act of State. We in this country have no
written constitution to alter, but the business of the coming
session nearly corresponds to one of those constitutional
amendments with which the late troubles of the United
States have familiarised us. The separation of the Church
from the State in Ireland is a chancre as fundamental,
politically, if not socially, as the abolition of slavery in the
South. Its proposal raised constitutional questions of the
gravest character about royal oaths and obligations.
In commenting upon the members of the new
House of Commons, it declares that the great
interests committed to the charge of the new Parlia-
ment are not likely to suffer in the hands to which
they have been entrusted. The Parliament has not
deteriorated, and the great leaders who, in over-zeal, if
not otherwise, might have interfered with the prosperity
of Mr. Gladstone's Administration, are happily included
harmoniously within it. Nor is anything to be feared
from little foes. Mr. Bouverie will be powerless,
oven if he wished to make mischief. Lord Elcho is
now simply a Tory who has beaten a Liberal in a
Scotch county ; a tenfold pressure of his imperti-
nence and arrogance is not likely even to attract
the attention of the strong Government now in
power. In the Cabinet there are no known elements of
discord on the great question of the day, and even on the
vexed question of foreign affairs there is concurrence ac
far as the necessity of peace is concerned. With a House
of Commons at once of average abilities and not likely tc
be troubled by crotcheteers, and with a Ministry reso-
lutely and unitedly bent on a settled and uncompromising
policy, the country may hope to see Mr. Gladstone's great
"Constitutional Amendment " prosperously carried by
the " House of Representatives," however it may fare in
the " Senate." The Senate must pass it sooner or later,
and we are so much more republican-than the Republicans,
that a " Presidential veto" is a thing unknown amongst
us and impossible.

The Saturday Review considers that due deference should
should be paid to the decision of the Chief Justice respect.
ing the press and the courts of law, and declares that it is
better to err on the side, were it necessary, of unreasoning
deference to one who holds Sir Alexander Cockburn'e
place than to canvass minutely or strictly even his ()biter
dicta. A judge conducting a great trial in the Queen's
Bench may be excused for an excess of scrupulousness,
especially while presiding over such a case as that of Saurin
v. Starr. Whatever safeguards he can secure both for his
own and the jury's impartiality during the trial, however
wearisome and needlessly protracted, the presiding judge
is bound to secure. As it is not now in England, as was
the case in Coke's time, and as it is still in France, the
judge's business to help either one side or the other, and
as it is contrary to our sense of justice that the judge
should exhibit any bias either way, especially in cases in
which disputed points in religion are involved, and as we
ask that he should not permit his own convictions to
be unmistakeably plain before a case is concluded, we
have reason to be thankful that the highest judge on the
bench imposes on us all that severe impartiality and
rigid abstinence from all comments, or the expression of
any opinion on pending trials, which in common, of
course, with all his brethren, he is bound to shew. The
Chief Justice has certainly laid down a very broad rule ;
and the circumstances under which it fell, or perhaps
rather was elicited, from him are curious. However,
perhaps it is as well to have got this authoritative judg-
ment, though somewhat broadly expressed. The silence
thus summarily enforced on the press is, it may be, for
the best. At any rate we bow to the Chief Justice's
decision, and accept his principle, as in entire accord-
ance with justice, fair judgment, and right dealing
between man and man. Its incidence is wide, and it
applies to other things than newspaper articles, and was
perhaps intended to do so. Parties to a suit may find their
feelings hurt, and juries certainly may be biassed, or even
intimidated or coerced, not only by the public press, but
by other influences on which it is not so easy to lay a finger,
still less to denounce.

The John Bull thinks that Mr. Gladstone's speech to
the Fishmongers was lugubrious to a degree. If the
Government carried their measure, great would be the
triumph, but failure was clearly felt to be on the cards.
Mr. Gladstone felt, no doubt, that notwithstanding his
splendid following, and the majority of the organs of
public opinion in his favour (notably that with the largest
circulation in the world), his task was a herculean one.
It was his policy, having regard to the rumours as to Whig
defections, to deny that the Ministry had any intention
of giving up their policy, which still would be pursued
with prudence and consideration. The Prime Minister
was quite right not to disclose that policy, but be would
have shewn more confidence in his cause if he had not pro-
tested over much. Mr. Gladstone has staked everything
on one card. It has just begun to strike him that he may
lose. If Conservatives will only have courage, faith in
their own principles, and not despair when things look
blackest, they may yet turn the tide. Mr. Buxton may
afford to treat the idea of the House of Lords interfering

as ridiculous, but he will find out his mistake. As Mr.

Bell, the late Conservative member for the City (the pre-

filature close of whose promising career we are all de-
ploring) well said, there is behind the House of Lords the
power of the people of England.

The Weekly Register announces that the Rev. W.
Ltartin Hunnybun, vicar of Bichnolles, Soniersetahire, and
late curate of All Saints', Margaret-street, was received into
he Church pf ;Rome last week, by Father Maude, of the