The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC, SOIIPZTALS,

The Times finds reason for satisfaction in the action of
the Canadian Parliament at a moment when our relations
with the United States are clouded with doubt and
uncertainty. We do not know whether Mr. Motley will
be instructed to present a claim in accordance with the
senator's harangue ; we cannot tell what may be the
course he will be directed to pursue when the British
Government shall have declined to entertain the conside-
ration of such a claim should it be presented.
Under such circumstances ive receive with satisfaction
intelligence of the attitude spontaneously assumed
by the popular chamber of the Canadian Domi-
nion. The House of Commons of the Confederated
Provinces reflects, in vigour, in independence, in
self-reliant courage, the best characteristics of the House
of Commons of England. At a crisis upon the result of
which the material interests of its constituents depend to
a degree sufficient, as all will confess, to check any sug-
gestion of boastfulness, one of its members has come for-
ward to vindicate the position of the Dominion and to
assert, amid the cheers of his colleagues, their resolution
to share with the mother country the fortunes, the trial!,
and the chances of the future. The Dominion is, in truth,
no dependency of England. It occupies the position of
an elder son emancipated from parental control, and
swayed only by the ties of family feeling. Mr. Motley
may gather from the spontaneous action of Canada the
judgment of England. If he comes on an errand of con-
ciliation and peace he will be received in a like spirit. If
his message be a repetition of Mr. Sumner's extravagances
he must expect that it will be firmly rejected.
The Telegraph deelares that the case of the Canadians,
and our own case, are substantially the same ; and on the
same principles must they be judged. Are the Americans
willing that our claims against them should be submitted
to arbitration? Are the English willing that the American
claims against them, although heavier in amount, should
be submitted to the same tribunal? In both cases the
answer is heartily " Yes." But here begins the difficulty.
Suppose Great Britain to say, "We shall not be satisfied
with mere payment of damages. We affirm that the
tolerance which you shewed to the Fenian conspirators
was an offence against international comity. You say that
you acted in good faith. Are you prepared
to submit that point to the judgment of a
third Power ?" Why, from one end of the
Union to the other, .the answer would be an
indignant "No ; not that point ; our good faith and
honour are matters which we absolutely refuse to refer to
arbitration." Even so. Nor can we in England go one
step further. For no other nation in the world would we
have gone so far. Be the consequences what they may,
,England must say, in the grand old words of Luther,
" Here stand I ; I can no otherwise ; God be my help
The sooner this is universally undeistood the better ; for
the only real danger is that the demands may be pu2hed
so far, and in such a fashion, as to render America unable
to recede with dignity. The result is not entirely in the
hands of either country ; but now, if ever, is the time
when the honest men of both nations should unite in the
endeavour to bring the question to a peaceful issue.
The Star is indignant with the Americans for the tone
which they are adopting towards this country, and asks if
the preponderance of what is called educated opinion here
was in favour of the slave power, was it not the same
in the United States for years and years before
the war? It was the Northern States them-
selves which produced the assassin that smote the
noble Lincoln in the midst of his usefulness. The very
last political contest fought with great desperation
before this lamentable event was to determine whether the
North should not themselves recognise the Confederacy
and give up the struggle. With all these things hap-
pening in their own midst, it is absurd that foreign
nations—and especially England and her colonies—should
be expected to have had nothing but one opinion upon
a war, capable of being so variously regarded even
by loyal subjects of the Republic. Mr. Galt
has done well to bring before the people of the
United States, in a temperate and conciliatory manner,
the other side of the picture, just to remind our neigh-
bours that they are not so perfect in the matter of inter-
national duties as they would have us believe, that their
citizens are not all so completely law-abiding and docile,
and that the Government has even less command over a
portion of its subjects than the English Ministry had
over the shipbuilders and sympathisers who have caused
so much mischief and embittered feeling in both
countries.

The Standard says that the House of Commons has
been engaged upon a subject -which has for years past
been forcing itself into exceptional prominence. Recently
it has grown into a question of the first magnitude. It
is the aspect and treatment of our pauper classes in all
their varieties—the infant, the aged, sick, and infirm, the ,
able-bodied, and that dangerous multitude of tramps
which combines the pursuits of professional mendicancy
with those of habitual crime. Pauperism gravitates out
of the country into the towns—not driven thither by land-
pressure, but attracted by the hope of chalice relief and
the loose administration of public charity. While agri-
cultural employment has steadily fallen off during ten
years having remained stationary only in six, risen only
in six, and fallen off in thirty—casual opportunities
for the poor are very rare in the rural districts, and
the consequence is a congestion in the towns. Monday's
discussion, although it was never expected to result in
more than an elucidation of opinions, pointed towards a
view which, though vague as yet, may be nearer to our
minds than we imagine ; that relief should be granted to
evident destitution when and wherever it appears ; that
all charity should be public and systematic; that the law
of settlement must be restricted within the narrowest
limits; that open and professed vagrancy is criminal;
that a workhouse full of children is a scandal and a shame
in a civilised community ; that we are wasting millions
upon a benevolence, or, if so w e choose to call it, an
economy productive of nothing except an inheritance of
beggary ; and that while the poor do not benefit as they
might, by our laws, we endure their burden without any
benefit whatever, unless we deem it a benefit to have
thirty thousand tramps perpetually terrorising on the
Queen's highway.
The Post refers to the great underlying question of
Pauperism, and thinks it is highly desirablethat by lookine
at this, our great national difficulty, boldly, we should
gain some idea of its extent and meaning. More than
this it seems at present almost hopeless to expect, for,
with all the remedies that have been applied or proposed,
the canker still spreads, and eats more deeply into the
healthy productive powers of the country ; and the further
we go the more helpless do we seem to become in the matter.
There have been suggested over and over again some
heroic remedies for pauperism, which might possibly be
effectual, but which are all accompanied by difficulties
hitherto found to be insuperable. The scheme of a
vast system of public works is false in principle, and
unnecessary besides, for there are private works, and to
spare, which would easily absorb all the labour-power the
paupers have to give. The same may be said of the
waste-lands reclamation scheme. The plan of emigration
is the best of all, but there are two difficulties in the way
of its realisation—the first, that the paupers will not emi-
grate ; the second, that the colonies will not have them if
they would. It is to be feared that we shall at last be
left to our own resources, and in using these the first prin-
ciple to be observed is this, that we should seek to dis-
tinguish strictly between those who can and those who
cannot work. To the latter a generous aid should be
given ; to the former a choice between work for aid and no
aid at all.

The recent judgment of Sir Travers Twiss in the case
of the rector of St. Mary-le-Strand and his parishioners,
suggests to the Times a practical inquiry. When we see
an opinionated clergyman thus restrained by law from
overriding his parishioners we are inclined to ask why such
a power of restraint cannot be further extended? Why
should it not be a rule that no clergyman should introduce
changes in the mode of conducting Divine service in his
church without the express assent of his parishioners
both parties having the right to appeal to the diocesan in
the event of a dispute ? People have a right to expect
that their customary habits of worship shall not be
altered without their consent, and we do not see why the
clergy should not be restrained in respect to the cere-
monial of their church as well as to its stricture and
fittings. Such a suggestion may appear the more reason-
able at the present moment, when some recent cases have
sliewn with what jealousy the law protects the rights of
the clergyman in matters of doctrine, which arc his
peculiar province. Putting apart the aliases of the courts,
we do not grudge the clergy this protection. But we
should like to see a corresponding protection given to tl.e
laity. To combine these two securities should be the
great aim of Church discipline. In the Roman Catholic
Church the priesthood exercises an ur controlled tyranny.
In the voluntary communions the power of the laity is
often still more tyrannical. The Church of England,
amid many shortcomings, has contrived in a great degree
to secure the liberties alike of clergy and of laity. Mr.
Bennett, for instance, on the one side, and the parishioners
of St. Mary-le-Strand on the other, are protected by the
law of the English Establishment. But the protection
afforded to the laity might with .advantage be extended,
and we think this case indicates that the method of such
an extension is already provided.

COSTLY FOIL—The .7',lontvose Standard gives a
carious calculation of the weight in gold which each of the
liberated Abyssinian captives has cost the country. Ten
millions sterling, reduced to weight in sovereigns, repre-
sents- 78 tons 12cwts. lqr. 141 b. Boz, or for each of the 60
m n, women, and children released from the clutches of
1(-1 Ig Theodore an expenditure in solid gold of 1 ton tQ cwts.
211)r and loz.