The Sun.
London, England, 1869-07-20 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 20, 1869.

It is surely deplorable that, upon the very day
when the Upper House of Parliament is asked to pro-
nounce finally in favour of the noblest act of Justice
England has ever volunteered to perform towards
Ireland, there should come to us, flashed through the
telegraphic cable connecting the two islands, the tid-
ings of another of those dastardly attempts at
agrarian assassination. Daring the last few mouths,
it must IQ acknowledged, that the news brought
to us from Ireland has b e_a full of d:sappoint-
nient. Bloodshed has still blurred and blotted
the page of Irish history during the very inter-
val within wliieh the Imp-Irial Logislatu-e c,f
the United Kingdom has beau for the most
part engaged in the effort to deal at last fairly
and generously, open-handedly and open-heartediy,
towards the people of Ireland in the matter of that
State Church which has, far three centuries, been
C. In-t;ntaia3 there 4 them ; that
)s Mr. I)isnam.l hims.3lf caqed it, years
upon years ago ; a politico-religious insti:ution which
has :served no other reNa4nizible purpos?, during the
protracted period of its existence, than that of being
all the while a most galling badge or brand of c)n-
quest. Grant, for the sake of argument, that that

alien Chum°,

larger amount of redress demanded for Ireland,
that which is involved in the settlement of
the Land Question, ought, perhaps, to have had
precedence over the Church Question, as a matter,
at once, to be taken into consideration by the Im-
perial Legislature, as affording the most effectual of
all means that could be devised for the tranquiliza-
tion of Ireland. Nevertheless it should in reason be
borne in mind that the determination announced by
the Liberal Chiefs to deal first of all with the Irish
Church Question, was coupled always with the in-
timation that the Irish Land Question was to be dealt
with, in its turn, immediately afterwards. The ex-
travagant suggestion has been thrown out, it
is true, that those two great problems might have
been solved simultaneously by Parliament. But
one moment's reflection was sufficient to demon-
strste that any idea of the kind was simply
preposterous. If only upon the common-sense prin-
ciple of doing one thing at a time, it was manifest,
one might almost say to the meanest capacity, that
the two most urgently required changes or transfor-
mations in England's mode of administering or
regulating the affairs of Ireland, could alone be wisely
adventured upon turn by turn—that one of those two
grand difficulties should be overcome before the other
was taken in hand in any way seriously. And, of
the two, while, no doubt, the boon involved in
the settlement of the Land Question is indubit-
ably the larger, and the more earnestly demand-
ed by the Irish people themselves from the Imperial
Government—that other question, the question of
the Irish Church, is by far the more flagrant anomaly
in the eyes of all Christendom. Everything consi-
dered, the. present seems to us to have been
all along the wisest course that could have
been pursued under the circumstances—the very
coarse England has now for so many months
benn strenuously and earnestly pursuing, that
of striving to do a most signal act of justice towards
Ireland, in the face of the whole world, by abolishing,
first of all, the Irish State Church by means of its
utter disestablishment and its absolute disendow-
ment. The Government which had the courage and the
magnanimity to adventure upon this course, indicated
very plainly indeed, at the same time, its determination,
as soon as the Irish Church Question had been swept
out of view by a bold and comprehensive act of legis-
lation, to take in hand, at the very next opportunity,
the Irish Land Question with a view to its immediate
and satisfactory settlement. Who can doubt that—
settle this session the Irish Church Question, and
the Irish Land Question must next session, by a
sort of inevitable sequence, come on, in its pro-
per turn, for settlement, completely and perma-
nently ? Tne Liberal Party are pledged to it. Mr.
GLADSTONE. is virtually pledged to it. Mr. BRIGHT
has a carefully-considered scheme of his own ready
at the first opportunity to submit to the judgment of
the Legislature. Postpone the settlement of the Irish
Church Question until next session, and the settlement
of the Irish Land Question is, thereby, at once
thrown over for another twelvemonth. Anything
whatever that is, even in the least appreciable degree,
calculated to retard the agreement of the Lords
and Commons, in the matter of the till which has
been during these last four or five months under the
consideration of Parliament, now in the one house,
now in the other, now back again in the Com-
mons, no•w back again in the Lords, we
for one cannot but regard as doubly reprehensible, by
reason of its delaying the two largest and most be-
nignant reforms that could be applied to the
grievances of Ireland by the legislative wisdom of
the Imperial Government. Here, amongst our-
selves, upon the very eve of the Irish Church Bill
coming for the first time under the consideration of
the House of Lards, everything was jeopardized by the
arrogant impertinence with which an eminent mem-
ber of the C tbiuet went oat of hii way wantonly to
fl ng iwtults at the Hereditary Branch of the
Legisla'ure, as if with the perverse intention
of goading the Peers into throwing the
Bill out on the second reading by an act of passionate
indignation. If anything could have afforded the
Lords an excuse for so doing, if anything could have
yielded them a shadowy semblance of justification
for u..doing all that had been done in the matter by
the House of Commons, that excuse, that shadowy
semblance of justification they would have had in Mr.
BRIGHT'S notorious letter, in which he spoke of their
unwisdoni and of their childish tinkering. The Lords
were wiser, however, than the Enfant terrible of the
Cabinet supposed. The Second Reading was carried
in the Upper House by a majority of thirty-three.
Then followed the introduction into the Bill, as it
originally stood, of a series of elaborate amendments.
Those amendments being directly afterwards swept
aside enmasse, and iu a manner the most unconciliatory
that could possibly be, the Lords are again, as we con-
ceive, wantonly and perversely afforded the excuse, or
eshadowin g semblance of justification, for throwing
aside the Bill altogether by an act in itself insensate
no doubt, but springing from a perfectly comprehen-
sible impulse of passionate indignation. Everything
depends, in effect, once more, upon the wisdom or
unwisdom of the Lords. They disdained;to be irri-
tated by the insults of Mr. BRIGHT. Let us hope
that they will no less unhesitatingly disdain to be
irritated by the arrogance of Mr. GLADSTONE. A
compromise is even yet happily possible. Con-
ceding to de Lords the postponement of the
appropriation of the surplus, her MAJESTY'S
Ministers may, even now, at the eleventh hour,
reconcile the Lords, it matters little how reluctantly,
to the necessity of legislating this year practically
upon the great question of the Irish Church--
the " terrible Marquis" having an eye probably to
something like compensation next year, namely,
through the discomfiture upon the Irish Land Ques-
tion of the great and strong Liberal Government.

MR. BRIGHT has profited by the criticisms upon
his first letter, and has written a second, in which
the most susceptible Conservative cannot find a word
to condemn. Not that the two letters differ as to
substance ; so far as that is concerned they are
identical. The difference consists in the style in
which, and the circumstances under which, these
letters were written. In the first Mr.
BRIGHT spoke of " childish tinkering," of men
not " over wise," and of accidents which
might happen that would not be pleasing to the
Peers. These remarks were made when it was still
uncertain if the Lords would read the Irish Church
Bill, but when it was generally hoped and believed
that they would do so. The letter, therefore, was
ill-timed, needlessly offensive, and calculated to
irritate a " high-spirited " assembly into doing out
of sheer anger the very thing which it ought not to
do. That danger was avoided ; the bill was read a
second time, in obedience to the declared wishes
of the nation, and everyone rejoiced that a
conflict between the two Houses had been avoided.
But it was too early for whistling. We were not
yet out of the wood. The Lords affirmed the prin-
ciple of the bill, and then proceeded to stultify it by
mangling its clauses. It was sent back to the Lower
House in such a shape that even Conservative M.P.'s
did not venture to divide upon the chief alteration
effected by their friends in the Upper House.
Utterly befooled and misled by the " leading" jour-
nal, these had inserted a provision which scarcely a
single member of the House of Commons could be got
to uphold. At the same time it was given out on all
hands by their own organs that even if the Lords
gave way on this point of concurrent endowment,
they would insist upon others, of which one, at all
events, was wholly inadmissible. It was under these
circumstances that Mr. BRIGHT wrote his second letter.
The situation had become very much worse; the Lords
had shown themselves utterly unable to comprehend
the position, had proved that they lived in a different