The Sun.
London, England, 1860-08-09 00:00:00

us, he said, the fifty SPURGEONS ? Another
zealous Churchman offered to find 500 us popular,
if they were but placed in the churches. But to
that offer the immoveable Home Secretary had the

immoveable objection—who eould compel the
patrons to put them in ?
Sir MORTON PETO troubled the hyper-churchmen
as much as any one. The honourable member, it is
well known, has provided, nearly at his own cost,
two first class places of worship in London, and

furnished bot'a with very popular preachers, besides.
almost rebuilding the parish church at his own
country seat of Lowistoft. He could not therefore
well be sneered down as a mere destructive. Now
the Bill cautiously provides that the churches shall

be pulled down, the materials stacked, and the site
and materials offered for sale. Why pull
down—says M. PETO, who knows so well the
cost of building. To prevent the old empty
churches from being turned into ball-rooms or gin-
shops, or to other unholy purposes was the reply.
Well, says M. PETO, not wasting time in discuss-
ing the consecration theory of holy stones and
mortar,—why pull them down, if any congregation
of dissenters would give as good, or a better price
for them as they stand, for the purposes of dissent-
ing worship ? I wish to move a clause to give full
powers to that effect

What was to be done ? There were members
there who would rather an empty church of the
Establishment were turned into a gin-shop, or into
a stable, than into a place of worship for a dissent-
ing congregation. It would not do, however, to
have such a statement reported all over the King-
dom in the next day's papers. With the excep-
tion of a very small clique indeed, the whole
country would resent such bigoted ideas at the
present day. The objection, therefore, was raised
that some time hence these dissenters, if they could
not succeed, might sell the old church for
profane purposes. But it seemed dissenting
chapels were put in trust for purposes of worship, and
so come under the direct guardianship of the Lord
Chancellor Then, Sir M. PETO was perfectly
willing to draw the clause in a way to suit all par-
ties ; and Mr. BoUVERIE, who had charge of the
bill, and Mr. HENLEY himself having acknow-
ledged the reasonableness of the proposal—the latter
shrewdly observing that the material might be
re-erected under the present bill in its old form—
the inexorable clock put an end to this episode by
pointing to a quarter to six. We presume Mr.
HENLEY, Mr. BOUVERIE, and Sir M. PETO will
prepare a clause to which none will dare to object,
however much they might wish to do it.
Mr. C. BENTINCK distinguished himself by deter-
mining to have legal protection for the beauties of
city ecclesiastical architecture: Under the bill it
was possible that St. Stephen, Walbrook ; St.
Martin, Ludgate; St. Peter, Cornhill ; and St.
S within, Cannon-street, might all be pulled down.
It was replied in vain that the numerous parties
who must give their consent could never be got to
agree to it. But the member for taste was resolute,
and to please him a special schedule was provided for
the four churches ; not, however, till Lord JOHN
MANNERS had politely informed Mr. BENTINCK
that in all matters relating to Gothic architec-
ture he was "nothing but a Vandal." We ought
also to notice the strong plea for the bill of the
member for the Tower ',Hamlets. The removal
of the bones had been objected to; whereupon
the member for one of the largest borough con-
stituencies in the kingdom appropriately ex-
claimed, that" he hoped the house would prefer the
the souls of the living to the bones of the dead ;"
referring to which Mr. 13. OSBORNE observed that
Mr. AYRTON'S remark had been objected to, but
was it not an old proverb—De mortuis nil nisi—
BONUM. As there is some apprehension that the
bill, if not actually dead, is in the article of death
—suffocated by the business of the session—we
may as well, perhaps, act on the old proverb, and
say no more on it least we should injure its
meaning.

Under the somewhat unattractive and recondite
title of Government upon First Principles,* a
philosophic writer has recently given to the world
a volume so original in its manner, so daring in its
speculations, so comprehensive in its argument, so
varied in its research, and so replete from first to
last with valuable information, that we rest satisfied
it can hardly fail to attract very speedily a consi-
derable portion at least of the general attention its
author has doubtless ambitioned for it. The purport
of the bold thesis here maintained by the adven-
turous inquirer (Mr. JOHN GROSSMITII), to
whose acumen we are indebted for this almost
audacious treatise, has been distinctly enough fore-
shadowed by him in the two little mottoes
inscribed upon his title-page. One is the senten-
tious dictum (which we may presume to be his
own)—" Crime and injustice among Rulers of
Nations beget crime and injustice everywhere."
The other is a wise and aphoristic saying of MARCUS
AURELIUS, to the effect—" If I have done anything
for society, I have done it really for my own advan-
tage." The former utterance implying significantly
enough the magnitude of the responsibilities de-
volving upon all administrators. The latter suffi-
ciently expressive, in an equally well-balanced sen-
tence, of the inextricable intimacy of our mutual
relations and dependence upon each other.
The courage with which Mr. GROSSMITH has here
undertaken to unfold this treatise of his in regard
to " Government on First Principles" is manifested
moreover quite plainly in the announcement made
upon that same significant title-page, that the
thesis maintained in it is not so much argued as
absolutely " PROVED, and illustrated analogically."
How successfully the reader can alone duly appre-
ciate after scrutinizing the majority, at any rate,
of the 131 chapters into which the treatise
of Mr. GROSSMITH has been subdivided-113
chapters comprised within the compass of
these 1460 pages. In a kindred spirit of adven-
turous speculation a philosophic contributor to the
current number of Mr. THACKERAY'S Cornhill
Magazine—[J. B..—Can it be JOHN RUSKIN ? Read-
ing the partially symbolic title of this initial in-
stalment of the series, " The Roots of Honour," we
might rather say, can it be any other than JOHN
RUSKIN ?]—in a kindred spirit of adventurous spe-
culation, we say, a writer in the Cornhill has bat
just now thrown forth the plummet of inquiry—in,
we believe, a reverent and conscientious effort to
sound the abysses of our social system. Turning
over this ponderous volume of Mr. GROSSMITH in
reference to the vast and vitally important
subject of which it treats we cannot but fear
at times that his investigations here and
there have been conducted somewhat too
discursively. Nevertheless even this is so far
accounted for, that at the very outset of the work
he has forewarned his reader frankly that the
theme he is about to discuss, he is bent upon dis-
cussing only as it deserves to be discussed—viz.,
most comprehensively. The reader is still further
prepared for this; remembering, as he can hardly
fail to do, that upon page one the author inti-
mates almost in so many words that they will have
to begin together, „ dpxij, in principio, from
the very foundations. " The very basis of
governments, as now constituted," he writes, at
the opening of the second paragraph of that first

* Government upon First Principles : Proved and
Illustrated Analogically. By John Grossmith. One vol.
Pp. 460. Piper and Company, 1860.