The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TIIE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Saturday Review observes that what the Irish Pro-
testants are to do must depend on what is to be done in
the Lords, and it will be the principal business of the Con-
servative party during what remains of the Whitsuntide
recess to settle what it will be wise and possible for the
majority of the Lords to attempt. This is a period of
repose, during which the general political situation may
be surveyed ; but everything regarding the Commons is
so simple that there really is nothing so far to discuss or
debate. The Ministry has the unshaken confidence of the
country and of the House ; its majorities are overwhelm-
ing ; the discipline of its party is complete. There is not
iu any section of the Liberal party, nor in any Liberal
constituency, the slightest sign of wavering, much less of
reaction. The very greatest amount of pressure, there-
fore, that could be put on the Lords to pass the Irish
Church Bill will be put. If a collision between the
two Houses is to be averted, the bill must be passed ; and
if it is passed, it must be passed almost without altera-
tion. It is almost exactly the old story of Free Trade
and Protection over again. The House of Lords, being
Protectionist, might have rejected a bill for Free Trade
in corn ; but if it is to allow of Free Trade, it cannot
make a Free Trade measure Protectionist. A bill for the
total disendowment of the Irish Church is a bill that the
Lords cannot like, hut, if they accept it, they cannot
change it into a bill for the partial disendowment of the
Irish Church. Exactly the same pressure would be put
on the Peers to make them withdraw any amendments
extending to the principle of the bill as to make them pass
the second reading. This is the great difficulty which
embarrasses the Conservative leaders at the present time.
What can Lord Cairns say to the Irish Protestants who
ask him for advice ? He cannot encourage them with any
hope of an advantageous compromise ; he cannot point
out a plan of battle in which, if they will but help him, he
may hope to be successful on their behalf ; he cannot
promise them that, if things are adroitly managed, they
will not, after all, be so very much hurt. The alternative
stares him in the face. He must either recommend Chem
to petition the Lords to adopt amendments inconsistent
with total disendowment, and therefore certain to be
rejected by the Commons, or consistent with total disen-
dowment, and then so insignificant that the most zealous
Irish Protestant would not walk a hundred yards to
secure them. Even in the recent discussions on Irish land
there was enough to shew that the point of view from
which the Peers regard political life is quite alien to that
from which the bulk of Englishmen outside the House of
Peers regard it. An assembly discussing Ireland, in which
the feelings of the Irish were no more represented than
the feelings of the people of Timbuctoo—this was the
attitude of the Peers. Compare with this what such a
debate would have been in the Commons. There at least
there would have been a play of feeling andopinion, a power
of viewing a difficult subject from different sides, a sense
of the immense difficulties that the subject presents.
The whole cast of mind of the ordinary peer makes him
unfit to judge or to determine the class of questions which
Ireland is now evoking ; but when the audience he
addresses and the political s'pliere in which he moves is
entirely composed of people exactly like himself, his in-
capacity to deal with such question is necessarily intensi-
fied. That the country should be governed by the Lords,
or under the influence or dictation of the Lords, seems,
therefore, at the present time quite out of the question;
and the considerations that lead us to this general result
are far too wide to allow of their bearing being limited to
the mere carrying of the Irish Church Bill. They shew
that the bill must be carried ; but they also shew more :
they shew that the representative body in England must
more and more throw the hereditary body into the shade.
The Spectator says that the effect of Mr. Sumner's
speech is dying away both in this country and in America,
after costing the two countries, it is believed, some thirty
millions sterling, but the "improved" phase of affairs is
anything but satisfactory. It is impossible to read
any communication from the United States without
perceiving that Mr. Sumner expressed with precise
accuracy the feeling of his people, without seeing that the
real grievance, the " wrong " about which they care, the
injury they hope yet to avenge, is one for which there cam
be no reparation, which is beyond the pale, not only of
ordinary diplomacy, but of any negotiation, however
informal or however elastic. It is not an act, but an atti-
tude of mind, not the release of the Alabama, but the
" unfriendliness " of the British people, for which the
Americans desire and will, they threaten, one dayclemand
satisfaction. One of the strangest things about the whole
of this controversy is the incessantly-expressed idea that
waiting with the dispute unsettled will do no harm. Is it
no harm to paralyse the influence of the two freest coun-
tries in the world by keeping up the impression that civil
war is always latent in their midst?—that if either were
attacked by any Power the other would be immediately
at her throat?—to cripple the progress of Canada, to keep
up civil war in Ireland, to increase American taxation
by upwards of sixty millions of dollars, twelve mil-
lions sterling a year? That is the sum the Union is
now paying for the delight of thinking that it will pay off
England come day for contumelious newspaper articles.
Taking the price of English and American Consols to be
equal, America is just paying twice as much for her debt
as we are, and the main reason is the belief that she will
whenever convenient pltnge into a war which, whatever
its' result, must render the payment of interest all but
impossible. What sense or manliness is there in a policy
like this, or what reparation? It is a policy, as it seems
to us, of silent war, leading to pure less, a policy which
terminates nothing, which amends nothing, which can
but deepen mutual hostility, and must to all human
seeming end in war at last, war which, let it result as it
will, can in no degree affect the alleged cause of war,
namely, that the English aristocracy were insolent to the
North during the civil struggle. If all the English dukes
appeared in chains at the bar of the Senate to beg peace,
that would nut affect the past transaction, would leave it
still true that a section of English society was hostile to
the North, still the fact that the recognition of belliger-
ency was prompted by the few influential Northerners in
England in the interest of the North, to enable Washing.
ton to seize blockade-runners'without an instant declara-
tion of war.

The Examiner and London Review says : Without
endorsing the doubt expressed by Mr. Dension, in his
otherwise suggestive and practical speech, whether it
might not be as well to sweep away the Poor Law alto-
gether, we are driven to admit that nothing can be more
deplorable than its present inefficiency, or more pitiful
than the apologies made for it. The recent motion of Mr.
Corrance, for a committee to inquire into the increase of
the burthen of pauperism, tantalised many with a vague
hope of remedy for the future, if not of redress for the
past. But, long before the member for Suffolk sat down,
he and his hearers must have been equally aware that
nothing definite or immediate was likely to come of his
motion. Amid general inattention and profound incre-
dulity, proposals the most definite, and reasonings the
most clear, can accomplish little. The public were angry
and disgusted some years since at the manner in which all
sorts of persons, when in need, were, by the orders of
Gwydyr House, huddled together in workhouses insufficient
for their accommodation. 'I he public exclaimed "This must
not be; we pay for relieving our poor, and we will have
them relieved more humanely.'' Gwydyr House took the
public at its word, and set about gigantic schemes of build-
ing and rebuilding of district schools, and district asylums,
infirmaries as big as hospitals, and hospitals as costly as
palaces ; and now when the public, finding themselves
taken in and done for, complain of the frightful cost of
this gross misinterpretation of their wishes, and misappli-
cation of their money, Gwydyr House has nothing better
to offer than hints and proposals, that if they are allowed
to keep up their newfangled system of caging all the poor
within stone walls they will try to cut down the total cost
in some other way. Yes, but in what other way? At
whose expense is this new lease of centralising authority
to be taken nut? If not at that of the ratepayers, is it to
be at that of the paupers? Are we to have no choice but
the hateful one between economy which is cruel, and
humanity that is wasteful ? An intelligent community
will not thus be baffled or befooled. We are not a stupider
or more selfish people than cur neighbours ; and we know
to our shame that there is no country in Christendom
where there is so much squandered every year in
the reis•relief and nn-relief of the poor. We want, as waii
well pointed out by Mr. Mundella and Mr. W. IL Smith,
a thorough and complete change of system ; and
struggling ratepayers and snubbed guardians may
make up their minds that, until tAis is insisted on,
pauperism and poor rates will both go on continuing to
increase.

The John Bull asks if there is any alternative scheme
which could at once increase the efficiencyofF our Episcopal
rule, and of our Cathedral system', we maintain that
the interests of the canons and of cathedrals are not to be
over-looked in order to effect even so
the increase of the Episcopate. The aute an object as
schemew which i 4
supposed to find most favour with those desire at
once to increase the Episcopate and the efficiencyioo of our
chapters, has for its keystone the enforcinc,
residence on the canons—a point which was mnclicntsitaotenudt
on by.the Bishop of Salisbury years ago. If, without
decreasing the efficiency of our chapters, a scheme can be
carried out for having in constant residence. in every
cathedral, a clean and two canons, and the funds of the
remaining canonnes are applied to increasing the
Episcopate, we see no objection to it,But why should
not a modified adoption of Lord Arthur ifervey's
plan of making the archdeacons hishops (in certain
case?) be woven into th's scheme ? The cathe-
drals were first robbed of thew reye!wes, and
then abased for not tarrying into practice the
theory of their foundation. They had, in fact,
to make bricks without strar, and nobly they have
done so. We deny emphatically that they are unpopular.
Wherever, as at York, Ely. :Norwich' Hereford, and
Chester, they are confided to the care of deans with their
heart in the system, the people flock to hearty services
within them. The money that has been raised to restore
them has been very large. Only this week a meeting has
been held at Wells to take steps for a further restoration,
and even the Welsh cathedrals, with their poor funds, are
being magnificently adorned. Every day we hear of
additional services in the naves of our mother churches.
Winchester is the latest example. Against cathedral
spoliation, therefore, we lift up our voice. We know
well the value of stalls as homes for learned divines, who
by their wisdom instruct the Church. Tint in these days
the scholar canon, like the Bishop of Lincoln, who was
so active in practical work at Westminster, must combine
the work of an evangelist with that of a divine; and
much as we should regret to see the number of canons
diminished, we confess that, failing any other scheme for
increasing the Episcopate, we shonld reluctantly agree to
to it, "provided residence was enforced on the remaining
rdembers of the chapter."_