The Sun.
London, England, 1869-01-14 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times, in looking at the effect of the late Ritualist
meeting, finds it difficult to see why a meeting should have
been convened with so negative a result in view. The
meeting advises neither submission nor resistance ; it will
excuse the former, and be glad to see the latter. If any
clergy anywhere find themselves able to conduct the service
in what they conceive to be a Primitive and Catholic style,
without fear of the Judicial Committee, they are encou-
raged to persevere. Should their circumstances or their
courage not be equal to the act of lighting two candles
at the Celebration, then they are exhorted to do every-
thing whatever that may otherwise convey the same
significance. Such advice we could understand were it
found to emanate from some private conclave or infiuen' ial
person. When it is proclaimed at a public meeting, it is
a challenge to the antagonists. We could
fancy that a good many quiet clergy, doing
things much as they please in their own quiet nooks
or their own circles of attached friends, would be
rather frightened to find their tactics recognised and
publicly recommended. Foiled at law, unable to win a
judgment or even procure a court, and driven to contem-
plate across seas and centuries the sweet visions of a
perfect ritual, the chiefs advise everybody to light his own
battle, with the implied hope that in this way England
may still be conquered in detail. And the cause of
all this costly litigation, and sore disappointment, and
vain consultation, and dangerous advice is simply
and solely the lighting of the two candles on the altar.
We may be excused if we venture to question its impor-
tance. The chances of litigation have landed the Church
of England at an issue for which few are prepared. The
drums are now beaten, and the trumpet is sounded,
directing all the clergy who have courage, or means, or
credit, or hope of support, to light their two candles,
and so teach a doctrine of inestimable value
that cannot otherwise be explained. We are disposed
to think such an appeal will reduce the religious
war to a very small area. When the conscientious and
painstaking pastor of a rural parish has taken spiritual
stock of his parish wits and parish attainments, all that
his poor folk can learn and all that they do know, he will
seldom find it answer his purpose to add to his lessons a
mysterious doctrine of which the lighting of two candles
is the only possible explanation. If he wishes to
teach awe and a becoming reverence, he can do it
by setting the example of a devout and reverent
manner and tone. Example is most catching with the
simplest minds. The gravest manner and the most
solemn tones are those best remembered and easiest caraied
away by the beholders and hearers into their own private
life. It is not so with the splendour of a ceremonial. Its sig-
nificance is local. It is tied to matter. It is apt to rest
where it is. Even when remembered it is the outside that
haunts the memory, not the secret power. It is like the
orator or the performer who astonishes, dazzles,
and confounds, but who out of sight and hearing is also
out of mind.

The Standard says that society is demanding fresh
guarantees for its safety, that we have been too tender
with the liberty of the subject, and, therefore, some
maurais sujet have taken advantage of the error. Society
suffers because we treat these fellows as honest until we
can prove them to be rogues. After dwelling upon the
present state of crime, as shewn by the statistics, it is said
that these returns cannot be considered altogether unsatis-
factory. The conclusion seems to be that while the
members of the criminal class are less numerous they are
more daring. Can we suppose than the police are 1355
efficient than formerly? We should scarcely be justified in
that conclusion by these figures alone ; and yet probably
there is more truth in such an inference, if it be only to this
extent—that the police are not armed with proper power.
Why should "known thieves and depredators" be allowed
to play at hide-and-seek with oar police force? We do
not allow an escaped lion from a menagerie to roam about
the streets until he has actually made a dash at some
body. We should never think of permitting twenty
thousand "known lunatics" to range at large, carefully
abstaining from capturing one of them until he or she had
seized somebody by the throat. In regard to the brute
creation, we have lately seen dugs compulsorily muzzled
under the terms of an Act of Parliament, not because the
said dogs were " known," or even " suspected," to be
mad, but on the bare chance that they " might " be so.
There is no saying how far we may have to go if we mean
to lock up everybody who may possibly steal ; but it seems
only fair that these 22,889 " known thieves and depre-
dators " should be placed under some ttricter surveillance,
so that they may be effectually hindered in their unlawful
pursuits.

The Post declares that the judgment of the Privy
Council was pronounced with clearness and simplicity.
The grievance of the Ritualists is that they cannot under
the law worship God in their own way. This is putting
the case as they put it, and in their own words.
But it is only half the case. The Ritualists are mem-
bers of the Church of England, and they are there-

fore bound to conform to the worship, the doctrine, and
the ritual of the Church of England as by law
established. Whether the ritual of the Church he, in
the abstract, right or wrong, is not the question at
issue. What that ritual legally and actually is will be
found very clearly defined in the judgment pronounced by
Lord Cairns, and the Prayer-book and rubrics alluded to
therein. The Ritualists, somewhat illogically, take excep-
tion to this, and virtually and in substance declare that
the law—which, however, they admit is accurately inter-
preted in the Privy Council judgment—is unscriptural,
and contrary to what they conceive to be the true
principle of the Christian religion and doctrine. The
Ritualists, so far as we understand what they want,
desire to enjoy all the advantages of being clergy.
men of the Church of England, all the emoluments belong.
ing to that sacred function, without conforming to the
laws and regulations of the Church, and, because this is
impracticable and contrary to law, they complain that
they are not permitted to worship God in their own way.
What church, or sect, or denomination is there in the
world the ministers of which are allowed to be the reci-
pients of the funds set apart for the maintenance of its
religious preachers and teachers, and at the same time
allowed to set all its laws and ordinances aside for the
purpose of doing what they are pleased to call worshipping
God in their own way?
The Herald remarks that Tuesday, the 12th January,
will be a day much noted by the Hallams and Mays of
future generations. Writers on constitutional law and
parliamentary practice alike will tell how on that date the
royal borough of Windsor witnessed the commencement
of an inquiry which marked the transference of an
important jurisdiction from the House of Commons to
the judges of the land, and so involved the surrender
by the representatives of the people of their long-
cherished and highly-prized right of deciding all matters
concerning their own elections. It is somewhat sin-
gular that this surrender should have been made just as
the passing of a Conservative Reform Bill had rendered
the Lower Chamber of the Legislature more potent than
ever in the State, and that the Parliament of Queen Vic-
toria should have voluntarily given up a right which their
predecessors had won so hardly and guarded so jealously.
For good or for evil, however, the change has been made,
and the public is naturally anxious to see how it is likely
to work. If we may thus early hazard an opinion we
should say that these inquiries, when prosecuted before
her Majesty's judges, will be quite as long and much less
lively than they used to be when they were disposed of
within the walls of the Parliament House.

The Star observes that it would be a strange and weird
experience to pass through a city of paupers, and yet the
idea is not a wild imagination. In London alone, in the
third week of December, 144,663 13ersons were fed by
public charity. If these were collected tc-gether they
would people a city of the size of Bristol or
Edinburgh. These figures plead with an elo-
quence which no tongue of man can surpass.
They tarnish all the glory of our country, they make
our boasts of extended commerce and vast power falter on
the lip, they are the accumulated losses in our book of
account, which if not courageously faced and wiped out
must grow and grow until the nation becomes as bankrupt
and broken as these children of want and despair. After
examining the various schemes proposed for meeting the
growing evil, the Star is forced to confess that
most of them are very partial. What the able-bodied
pauper needs is employment, and what the class who feed
the ranks of the recipients of charity need to prevent
them gliding downwards is employment. Yesterday large
bodies of men, many of them even skilled artisans who
had recently been paid off from building yards, paraded
the streets to call attention to their destitute condition,
and in all parts of the City very great distress prevails
during the winter months amongst all classes
of labourers. We cannot create labour by any
State action which could be permanently useful.
This question has been recently very ably dis-
cussed by Mr. Thomas Beggs. But might not the Poor-
law authorities, with their multitude of organised officials,
receive reports from the various towns and districts where
labour is wanted, and make public in some way the
localities, and kinds of skill which are in demand.
There is an adult ignorance to be overcome as
well as a want of education among the young—
an ignorance which cannot be overcome without
the assistance of the national staff. It is at least as
important for the people to know where labour is wanted
in their own country as it is to learn by consular reports
and the labour of secretaries of embassies where new
markets may be advantageously opened up for cotton or
woollen manufactures. We look forward, moreover, with
the greatest hope to the result of a large reduction in the
public expenditure. It is our excesive public burdens
more than any other removeable cause that have
pauperised the poor, and caused to grow np in the
metropolis alohe a horde of paupers large enoggh to popg.
late a 2ityt