The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-02 00:00:00

Or THE PUBLIC' JOURNALS.

The Times thinks that the House of Commons on
Thursday night established an extremely valuable pre-
cedent with regard to the Norwich Commission. Two of
the representatives of the county declared the corruption
at Norwich to be trivial. Fortunately for the reputation
4:4 the Lower House, Mr. Hardy intervened in the discus•
eion and set the matter at rest. He pointed out a truth
which became self-evident as soon as it was indicated,
that when a judge reported his belief in the prevalence
of extensive corruption, the House of Commons could
not question the report, or affect to diminish
its weight and disregard it as unimportant, with
out entering upon a task fatal to its character.
There can be no question that the principle
enunciated by Mr. Hardy is that to which the House of
Commons ought rigidly to adhere. If the judge reports
that corruption has prevailed in a constituency, it will be
the duty of the Attorney-General to take up the report
and move the House to address the Crown to act upon it,
and the House upon such motion must as a rule assent to
the address without opposition. Mr. Howes declared that
the results of the Norwich inquiry would prove so trivia!
as to make the House ridiculous, but it is not the House
of Commons which would appear ridiculous ; the fault—
if there was any fault, and we shall not believe
in its possibility until it is established—would
be with the judge, who misapprehended the
amount of the corruption that prevailed. Another
argument, which seemed to have more weight with the
House of Commons, was founded on the supposed hard-
ship to Norwich of having to bear the expense of a com-
mission of inquiry, but we think it will be seen, on a little
consideration, that the direct punishment of a constituency
for corruption practised within it is one of the most pro-
mising means of repressing corruption.
The Standard declares that the House of Commons has
been wont to vote a commission when one of its own cap.
mittees has reported that there is reason to believe tat
corrupt practices extensively prevailed at the late election.
How much the more is it bound to accept the report of. a
judge, who must be assumed to be impartial, especiaily
when the Attorney-General undertakes the responsibility
of endorsing it? Indeed, as the right hon. gentleman
said, the statement of ..,he judge should be conclusive in
favour of thetcommission without its endorsement by the
Attorney-General. If the result of accepting these state-
ments of the judges should prove mischievous it will be
for Parliament to provide a remedy. So a com-
mission will inquire into corrupt practices at Norwich.
We believe that Mr. Read that it will do no practical
good, and that its principal result will be‘to rake up a lot
of old and wretched scandals. Sir Henry Stracey and
the Conservative leaders in Norwich, however, have reason
to be thankful, so far as they are personally concerned.
that the House of Commons has asked the Queen to grant
it. The very short debate was a complete admission on
the part of their political opponents that Sir Henry
Stracey and his committee did their utmost to prevent
any corrupt proceedings, and that if the hon. baronet has
been held legally responsible for the acts of a few of his
supporters, he is morally innocent of all complicity in the
paltry transactions which unseated him, and will deprive
the capital of East Anglia for some months of its due
share of representation in Parliament.
The Times in discussing the clerical agitation which hat
t'ow begun in Ireland, says that in Parliament the course
of the Irish Churchmen and their English allies is clear.
On the principle of the bill there can be no compromise
whatever. The Church must be disestablished, and it.
must lose the endowments which adhere to disestablish.
meat. But in the details of so important a measure there
must be many things open to criticism, and long debates
will give opportunities for successful interposition. To
speak in plain terms, the Irish Church must be content to
direct its efforts to keeping as much of its property as pos-
sible, and to this the action of the Opposition must
come at last, whatever protestations and denunciations
may be indulged in at present. The Government would
probably be willing to conciliate the Irish Churchmen.
and would yield more, perhaps, than strict justice sanc-
tions. The Catholics will get their Maynooth money,
their right to which is very doubtful, simply because there
is a disposition to content everybody in such cases as this.
So the Protestants may even better the very liberal terms
which the Government has offered them. On the other
hand, " No Surrender " will be utterly ruinous in com-
mittee. We may as well inform our Irish friends that the
dresent'House of Commons will not tolerate for a single
evening amendments the object of which is plainly to
defeat or delay the bill. If the House be provoked by any
such tactics, it is quite capable of rejecting the amend-
ments of the Opposition in mass, and Irish Churchmen
'will have only their own mistaken zeal to thank if they
receive but bare justice.

The Post refers to the successful start of the Suburban
Village and General Dwellings Company, under the
countenance and support of Lord Shaftesbury and other
gentlemen who have so steadily co-operated with him in
labours of a similar nature. The company have, it appears,
succeeded in obtaining an excellent site for their first
experiment, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners having
granted them a ninety-nine years' lease of a
plot of ground of twenty-four acres at Loughborough
Park, Brixton. The project appears to have been
well-conceived and considered, and the directors have un-
questionably clone wisely in selecting a site which is wide
of the crowded districts of London, and is as much rura;
in its characteristics as the necessity of giving the work-
men easy and cheap access to their work will permit.
Fresh air and gardens are capable of exercising far more
influence upon the morale and habits of people than is
generally imagined, and we think there is considerable
importance to be attached to this feature in the under-
taking. Lord Shaftesbury's inaugural speech contains
ranch that is worthy of consideration by the artisan class,
but we would especially direct the close attention of those
'who have of late had their ears filled with declamation
about the degradation of hard labour to the following
passage :—" I know nothing," said Lord Shaftesbury
"more dignified—even the Queen upon the throne is not
more dignified—than the hcnest man bringing up his
family in the fear of God, practising economy, and pro-
viding things decently in the sight of all men."
The Herald thinks that Father Lavelle must be a very
bold and imprudent man to have carried such a case into
a public court of justice as the action for libel in which
he figured as plaintiff at Galway. 'We profess ourselves
sit a loss to conceive how Father Lavelle, who asserts with
such confidence that men seeking revolution, accompanied
as it must be by the horrors of civil war, are still entitled
to be enrolled in the ranks of the faithful, can maintain
that simple, hardworking peasants are canonically cut off
from their church as rotten branches, and denied the con-
solations of their religion, merely for sending their children
to be taught in national schools in which doctrinal instruc-
tionis prohibited—and the teachers profess their own
faith. The rev. gentleman's motives for excluding one of
his parishioners from his chapel, mainly because he
travelled on the same car with Proudfoot, gives us a fair
indication of the unchristian lengths to which men such
as he will go to prevent any reconciliation between Irish-
men divided by sectarian prejudices—and furnishes ue
with the real reason why the national system of education is
so unceasingly—although, we are happy to say, so ineffec;
tually—assailed by those who desire the perpetuation of
party feuds for the unholy purpose of maintaining their
own influence over an uninstructed and, from their teaching,
bigoted peasantry. It may be impossible for any law
enacted to deal with a system of persecution which
seriously impedes the public welfare, but the knowledge
that it exists, which we obtain from such trials as that of
" Lavelle v. Proudfoot," enables us to expose it to public
indignation, with, we should hope, not an unreasonable
expectation of its ultimate suppression.
The Telegraph considers Miss Rye's scheme for the
emigration of " gutter children," and questions its pro-
priety. In the first case, it reminds Miss Rye that the
cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston are already
inconveniently crowded with " gutter children ; " that
similar little ragamuffins may be found, only too plenti-
fully, in Montreal and Quebec ; and that the American
Commissioners of Charities and Correction, and the admi-
rable Orphanages and Sisterhoods of Mercyin Canada, have
• quite enough to do in attempting to cope with the juvenile
destitution which has been bred on their own soil, and
lies at their own doors. In the second case, if the pro-
pounder of this kindly but ill-considered scheme reckons
on the support of private individuals in America who will
offer to receive her young charges, and " settle them
permanently in comfortable homes," the result of a large
emigration of female gutter children to America, we
. apprehend, would be most disastrous—the door would
simply be opened for a neat little system of white
slavery. How dare we shift our responsibilities upon
the shoulders of foreigners? These wretched urchins are
our children? Oar pride, our scepticism, our careless-
ness, our wickedness, have made them what they are.
We are bound by the most solemn obligations of human
polity to reap where we have sown. For what end have
WS reformatories, refuges, asylums, orphanages, a Poor
Law, an Industrial School Act? If we had discovered
that all these institutions are mere shadows and impos-
tures—that we are impotent to deal with the evils which
our owrn blunders have created—then we might be tempted
to hail Miss Rye's new scheme as a desperate resort but
if we have anything like a national conscience or a national
sense of duty, let us ourselves try to master that misery
which grows rank amid our own splendid prosperity,
through our own culpable neglect.
The Star says that a deal set is to be made at the
Government A,-;;;essment Bill by the metropolitan mem-
bers ; and they will Le assisted by all the old-fashioned,
men. in the flog-;e and by ninny others who value local
institutions, and are' jealous of the central absorption of
authority in local affairs. The peculiarity of the case is,
tiles, there is general and earliest agreement about the
object in view, and great disagreement as to the n,eans to
ho used. The present bill proposes a method, and the
question was raised on Thursday night whether that
method did not constitute the principle of the
bill. This point was overruled, however. The
mode of assessing was treated as a detail ; the debate On
the general scope and theory of the measure was left foi
the committee, and the House only stands committed to
the merest commonplace of assessment discussions, the
desirableness of a common basis of value. Of course it is
quite necessary that all precautions should be taken against
over-centralisation, and against the arbitrary dislocation
of convenient existing arrangements ; but it is a real boon
that the bill of the Government proposes to confer, anctm
the present state of things is much more closely bound in:
with petty jobbery and the felonious enrichment of small
landlords than with the interests of the poor ratepayers. I

Nor can it be denied that the ex-Chancellors did right in
dreading the new terror which Campbell had added to
death by his " Lives." The author of the article ou
St. Paul's compares the metropolitan cathedral with
Westminster Abbey, and finds the second building, with
its slow growth and historical associations, symbolical of
the Constitution of England, and the former, with its
rapid erection and intimate connection with the life
of the City, symbolical of the character of Englishmen.
An article on the Bodleian Library contains some very
interesting information. Sir Thomas Bodley, the founder
of the library, was born at Exeter in 1545 ; he came into
a handsome fortune by his wife, and at first entered upon
a diplomatic career, where he achieved some success, but,
through the jealousy of Burleigh and Essex, failed to get
promotion, and turned his mind to literature. When at
Oxford his spirit had been stirred within him by the traces
of the reckless devastation which had been wrought
among the literary treasures of the university by King
Edward's commissioners, who burnt or destroyed every-
thing which savoured to them of Popery. He therefore
determined, for want of another career, to betake
himself to Oxford, in order to restore the
ancient library. He ransacked the stores of
the English booksellers, he sent experienced agents
to the Continent who were charged to scour the chief book
markets of Europe, and having collected about 2,000
volumes, the library was solemnly opened in 1602. Bodley
appointed a'librarian, and made a special order that he
should always be a celibate. This rule remained in force
until 1813, when it was so far modified that the librarian
was obliged to be unmarried at the time of his election.
This last fetter was removed in 1856. It was scarcely fair
of Bodley to make any such rule, considering that the
revenues out of which he founded this library were derived
from his wife. Her children were not a little angered
when they found that all their mother's money had been
left to the library. The Bodleian is the richest library,
except the Imperial Library at Paris, so far as rare
manuscripts are concerned; in the numberof books it falls
far short of both that library, which has nearly 900,000
volumes, and the British Museum, which has nearly
800,000 volumes, whereas the Bodleian has under 400,000.
Among the curiosities at the last-mentioned library is the
only extant copy of that edition of the Bible which has the
"not" omitted from the Seventh Commandment. This
blunder cost the printer a severe punishment, and the
edition was rigidly suppressed. This single copy cost the
library £4O. The abbreviated list of treasures given
by the reviewer is enough to make the biblio-
phile's mouth water. The article on Leopold,
King of the Belgians, is interesting, but might
with advantage have been fuller. The life of
such a king, the Nestor of European sovereigns, can hardly
be compressed into twenty-two pages. The writer does
not seem to be aware that the immediate cause of the
rupture between the Prince of Orange and the Princess
Charlotte (an event shorly followed by her betrothal to
Prince Leopold) was that the Prince of Orange appeared
one evening in public drunk, having, it is supposed, been
purposely made so by the Russian Grand Duchess, who
came over to frustrate the intended match. The writer
also omits to mention that at the commencement of the
revolutionary epidemic of 1848, Leopold told his people
that if they wished him to abdicate, he was quite prepared
to do so, and did not want an aneate to compel him ; and
that this sang froid quite disarmed the revolutionists in
Belgium. Another incident might be added, viz., that
when Leopold received the al.—r of tile Belgian Crown, ho
said he had been called upon to reign over a million restive
asses. this uncomplimentary speech does not seem to have
reached the ears of his subjects. The reviewer mentions
that Leopold foresaw the disastrous end of the Mexican
expedition, which cost his son-in-law his life, and his
daughter her reason. Himself the son-in-law of an English
king and of a French king, lie would always have been a
person of considerable influence, but there is no doubt that
he owed his high position in the estimation of Europe to
his great prudence and good sense. We Englishmen owe
him a special debt of gratitude, since he set the example
of abstinence from party politics, which has been followed
by Lis niece, Queen Victoria, to the great advantage of
this nation, as we shall admit when we remember the
personal interference of George IV. and William IV.
and their father. I have space only to refer to the very
able criticism on Dr. Davidson's Introduction to the New
Testament. The uncritical absurdities of that book are
well exposed, no doubt, by the same critic as six years
ago reviewed the doctor's work on the Old Testament,

LITERARY EXTR LiCTS.

MIDNIGHT EASTER SERVICE IN ST.
PETERSBURGIL
Slowly boom out the strokes of midnight, and on a
sudden the door of the sanctuary falls back, and forth
march the assistant priests in their silver-spangled robes and
quainthelmet-shaped caps, and sweep down the line between
the dense masses of beholders to the central platform;
while at the same time the choir peals forth the beautiful
anthem, " Lord, have mercy upon us" (Gospodi
which dies away among the mighty arches in a cadence
inexpressibly sweet and plaintive—the characteristic fea-
ture of all Russian music. On the high platform we can
see the glittering robes of the priests, grouped around
the coffin which typifies the Great Sacrifice ; and in
another moment it is raised by four tall deacons richly
attired, who glide up the long vista and vanish into the
Sanctuary, preceded and followed by the priests with
bowed heads and folded hands, marching in time to a
mournful chant from the choir. As they sweep to-
ward the outer gate, whence they must make the circuit
of the entire building, a solemn silence falls on the
great assemblage ; all stand mutely expectant,
as though awaiting some great event. Suddenly arises a
distant sound of chanting, coming gradually nearer and
nearer ; and at last from the opposite door re-enters the
procession, but this time in triumph. Sacred banners
follow the march now—faces are uplifted instead of droop-
ing ; and, mounting the platform, they wave their tapers,
while the chief priest lifts his hands on high, and cries
in a loud voice, " Christ is risen !" Then hurts from the
choir the grand "Resurrection Anthem," while at once a
sea of bright points surges up through the whole multitude,
as almost at the same moment thousands of tapers are
lighted ; and on every side is heard the greetings which
will run today throughout the length and breadth of the
land—" Christ is risen! He is risen indeed."—From
" Easter Day in Russia," in the Churchman's Shilling
Magazine for April.