The Sun.
London, England, 1869-12-03 00:00:00

Bnityr nP THE PUBLIn loninTAT,R,

The Times considers that Mr. Goschen, in his recent
minute, recognised the principle that, with certain excep-
tions, none but the actually destitute are entitled to poor-
law relief. This principle naturally suggested what ought
to .be the cardinal point of distinction between official and
private agencies for the relief of the poor—the particular
ground which each may take as peculiarly its own, so as to
avoid, as far as possible, trespassing upon that of the
other. The official agent was to take in hand all cases of
persons actually destitute; the private agent all cases
of persons requiring only partial help to supplement
their own exertions. The scheme proposed for inter-
communication and exchange of lists would, it is
obvious, greatly facilitate this division of charitable labour.
If an applicant for relief, able to earn a little, but not
enough to live on, came to the Poor-law authorities, they
could at once send him on to the private agencies. On the
other hand, an applicant absolutely helpless could be sent on
from the private agencies to the Poor-law authorities. Mr.
Goschen was, of course, not so sanguine as to imagine that
this broad line of demarcation, so simple in theory, could
be strictly observed in practice. But if the present state
of pauperism is to ccntinue until a scheme is suggested for
its suppression which °fliers no difficulties, the country is
indeed in a bad way. But still the difficulties in the way
of Mr. Goschen's plan—and it is most important to note
this—are not new difficulties, called into existence by
the plan itself, and to be avoided by its rejection. They
are already familiar and well understood as inseparable
from the present theory of Poor Law administration.
Granted that it is, as the Holborn Guardians declare, im-
possible to adhere rigidly to this theory ; Mr. Gcschen's
scheme may not remove the impossibility, but it certainly
does not increase it. On the contrary, it tends to diminish
it. Granted that the guardians are now compelled by the
logic of facts to give relief where the letter of the law
does not entitle them to give it ; the compulsion may
still exist even when they have a private agency, without
the restrictions which bind themselves, co-operating with
them by means of published lists, but surely it is in no
wise increased. Yet such co-operation is essentially the
one novel, practical feature in Mr. Goschen's scheme.
The Telegraph remarks that the question which must be
decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,
is not whether Mr. Voysey's teaching is true, but whether
he has broken the law—whether he has violated the con-
ditions under which he was appointed to an incumbency
in the Church of England. It is a plain, business-like
inquiry, which must be conducted with judicial impar-
tiality. On becoming a clergyman of that Church, Mr.
Voysey solemnly promised that he would conform to
certain doctrines and usages. He made as distinct as
engagement with the State as the manager of a bank
makes with its proprietors or directors. He
solemnly declared that he would do certain things,
and not do certain others. Has he kept his
word ? Has he, or has he not, broken the law ?
That question, and that alone, the Judicial Committee
must answer. No one expects that the clergy of the Esta-
blished Church will absolutely agree with each other on
every point; and, indeed, the Church gains from that
catholicity which permits theologians of so different shades
as Dr. Tait and Dr. Wilberforce, Dr. Temple and Dr. Pusey,
to be fellow workers. But in Mr. Voysey's case, the ques-
tion is, whether he has denied vital doctrines, and thus
has committed a breach of trust. The reverend gentle-
man is fully aware of that fact, and, in his singularly able
defence, he repeatedly declares that he has no wish to
remain in the English Church fora single day if the autho-
”ised tribunal pronounces him to be,guilty of teaching incon-
sistent with the Articles. Such is the issue, and the
-lecision will be for ever memorable in the history of the
English Church.
The Standard thinks that by slow and painful degrees
the Ministerial organs have brought themselves to accept
as inevitable that last confession of Mr. Gladstone's failure,
the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. They have
struggled long and earnestly to reconcile the increasing
growth of treason and disloyalty in Ireland with the
assurance that "the act of justice" was accomplishing its
mission of peace and conciliation. They have been con-
'.onted day by day with the evidence which shews that
sedition and disaffection have become more audacious and
wide-spread from the date of Mr. Gladstone's accession to
sffice. It must be admitted of Liberal journalists
that, like the conspirators in The Critic, when once they
are agreed their unanimity is wonderful. Having been
heartily of opinion for months past that the state of Ire-
'and is tolerably satisfactory, and certainly offers no ground
`or alarm, they all begin with one accord to protest that
the present condition of things is no longer endurable, and
that the safety of the island will be imperilled unless the
+-lee r=omnt and severe measures for the re-
pression of disloyalty. Mr. Gladstone has had his way. The
Legislature has given to his policy the force of law, and
what is the result? Exactly what the Conservative
?arty predicted. It has not pacified the country, but has
brought about a state of things infinitely worse than that
so which it was applied as an infallible remedy. The
' act of justice " has been followed by new and more vio-
tent demonstrations of disloyalty; "the message of peace"
has aroused a louder shout of treasonous defiance, and if
we are to believe Mr. Gladstone's organs, the crowning
evidence of his disastrous failure is to be witnessed in a
anal resort to the suspensicn cf the Habeas Corpus Act!
Surely this desperate resort to a measure which he himself
has described as only less deplorable than civil war, is the
very catastrophe of Liberal statesmanship.
The Daily Yews observes that the earnest men who have
been conducting the late twelve (lays' Mission are not the
snly persons who believe that for the Church of England
the question of the ministry is the great question of the
time. At the other pole of its theological and ecclesias-
tical unity Evangelical earnestness is theoretically arriving
at exactly the conclusion which has been practically sot
forth by Ritualistic zeal. The Rev. J. C. Ryle, in a letter
to the Record on the ministerial office in the English
Church, expresses just the same mistrust of the dull routine
of the parochial system which has been practically exhi-
bited by Mr. Benson and Mr. Body in their Mission.
Mr. Ryle, like all earnest men, believes in preaching,
There never was a time," he says, and says with as much
truth as force, " since the beginning of the world when
powerful speaking of any kind had more influence than it
has now." Mr. Ryle's advice to the Church consequently
's
—Reform your preaching, and modernise all the arrange-
ments which belong to it. Woe is the Church which
preaches not. In imitation, aerhaps, of the preaching
srders by which the Roman Church so successfully
utilises the zeal and the eloquence of her clergy, Mr.
Ryle suggests the establishment of an order of
Evangelists, " selected on account of their possessing
peculiar powers of preaching." Mr. Ryle thinks that such
preachers would not only rouse the people, but rouse the
priests. They would make the clergy more zealous, and
would elevate the whole preaching tone of the Church.
Here again Mr. Ryle and Mr. Body are one, for Mr. Ryle
urges all the clergy to do somewhat as the preachers in
the twelve days Mission have done—" give attention to
exhortation," What is wanted is, in fact, not fewer
sermons, but more sermons and better sermons—the orator
instead of the essayist, the preacher instead of the reader,
fiery Boanerges and eloquent Apollos instead of the mere
scholar and gentleman.
Doubling our pauperism, says the Herald—within about
the same time that we have, perhaps, nearly doubled our
material wealth—statesmanship is puzzled by a paradox
that has no parallel in any precedent history; and the
wonder is not the less humiliating because found to be the
concurrent paradox of nearly every great European State.
We are all found at fault. We have been missing the chief
of our improvements. Our civilisation is asked for a secret
it has not yet given us. The greatest of our social reforms
has yet to be waited for. We have the key to wealth, but
not to its use, We can pronounce no " Open, Sesame," to

so great a cavern containing so many resources.

have not only no power of keeping down the growth of
pauperism, but seem to be losing the art of managing
whatever we have of it. Like a fevered patient in despair
we turn in all forms, and towards all quarters, in vain
search of relief. The great administrative innovation—
centralisation—which helped to stave off the misfortune
for a time, appears now to be succumbing to the influences
it once dominated, and to be every year more leaving us
where it found us. Do we need a better proof than the
St. Pancras institution living for months under the eyes
of Mr. Goschen, and apparently of all his staff, and being
—not the less, but all the more—what we hear of it?
We are not obliged to suppose that we owe this last
and most humbling of our exemplifications of a great
social anomaly to any corresponding pauperism
or intellect. In all things medical, rarticularly,
there is everywhere, we are told, a superabundance of skill
under easy terms of ra3-ment. What we cannot command
's
the attendAnce. We cannot shut out negligence and
- We c:lnivit

ty when it is a questicn of the sick
sccuze dili,'ence and fair ilealin7 when it a question c
i nts :era daily le wining in the
paul.cr infirmarLs what must of US, perhaps, have been
learning everywhere else fur some time past—that the
nippiest means perish in our hands unless made twice
b:ess e d under the influences cf a heaven-taught mercy.
tz is the pauperism of principle that really makes our
(IV:lenity, and we have not yet reached the secret 1 y
which its influence on a nation's greancs::, much less ( n
the happiness of our indigent sick, can be substituted I,v

inhun!

.:dig;

t. 0 lir

awithin,r; else,

A POLICEMAN NOTION OF RESPECTABILITY.—
In a case heard at the Liverpool Police-court last week,
Mr. Sharpies, the magistrate, asked : What is the defen-
dant—a respectable man ? Officer : No, sir; he is a
labourim: man.

POACHING AFFRAY IN WINDSOR PARA'.

•rwo of her Majesty's keepers, Foy and Higgs, who had
been on duty during Sunday night, heard the report of a
gun about five o'clock on Monday morning in one of the
Royal preserves at Virginia Water. On cautiously pro-
ceeding to the spot, they saw four men, two of them
with guns, one of whom had just shot a pheasant. On
seeing the keepers the poachers ran away ; but Higgs
soon overtook one, and knocked him down ; the poacher
got up, and a desperate fight ensued, and he was knocked
down again, but whilst the keeper was searching him he
heard the cry of " Murder " from Foy, his fellow keeper,
and ran to his assistance, leaving the captured man on the
ground, when, just as he arrived, he saw one of the poachers
deliberately shoot at Foy, but fortunately missing him, a
desperate fight followed between three of the poachers
and the two keepers, which resulted in the keepers being
overpowered, and left on the ground for dead, After some
time they partially recovered their senses, and managed to
get home. Dr. Brown, from Egham, on attending them,
found they were suffering from dangerous wounds they
had sustained in the conflict, on the head, body, and arms.
Intelligence of the affray was conveyed to the Berks police,
who lost no time in making it known to the police at
Egham, and they soon got on the track of three of the
poachers, whom they afterwards captured. One of them was
identified by Foy as the man who shot at him. Super-
intendent Davis, of the Windsor borough police with the
county Inspector Mansell, and the Egham inspector, on
searching the place of encounter,found a gun, a gun-barrel,
a stock of a gun, and four caps. All the poachers are resi-
dents of Egham, and they will be brought before the
Surrey magistrates as soon as the injured keepers are suffi-
ciently recovered to attend. The keeper Foy is lying in a
very dangerous state. The other poacher who got away is
well known to the police, and can be identified by the
keeper who left him on the ground.