The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, _LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, JUNE 11, LEM

ME7 ROPOLITAN GOSSIP-7hursday.

When some weeks ago I mentioned that the House of
Lords contemplated the rejection of the Irish Church .
Bill, I expressed my incredulity ; that incredulity I still
feel, though that rejection is actually threatened.
The course now proposed is fraught with such
serious consequences to the Lords, at the same
time that it must fail of its purpose—the salvation
of the Irish Church Establishment—that I cannot
conceive how any body of rational men can take it.
Let it he granted, for the sake of argument, that the Irish
Church ought to be saved if possible, that Mr. Gladstone's
measure is sacrilegious, and all the rest of it; still that does
not alter the position, nor render possible the impossible.
hhe nation, by the mouth of its Constitutional assembly,
as pronounced the doom of that Church ; the Queen has
already given her consent to the measure by
accepting as her chief adviser the Minister who
came into office expressly to carry it out ;
it is the Lords alone who resist it. Does anyone, does
the most fervid Orangeman believe that they can defeat
it? No doubt it is necessary to do something, or rather
to make a show of doing something, in order not to lose
the support of the Irish Conservatives; and this is the
real explanation of Lord Harrowby's notice of motion.
There is no longer any talk of Lord Westbury and Lord
Russell opening fire upon the flank. They are wise enough
to see that the Liberal party are in earnest, and that any
defection will be considered au unpardonable offence.
In the improbable event of the Peers proceeding to an
extremity and throwing the bill out, there will be two
courses open to Mr. Gladstone—an immediate prorogation,
followed by a new session during the present summer, or
his resignation. The latter alternative is not inconsis•
tent with the former. He may resign, advise the Queen
to send for Mr. Disraeli, who will, of course, be unable
to form a Government, and will advise that Mr. Gladstone
be recalled. In that case the Liberal leader will be
able to make his own terms, such as a prorogation and
subsequent session, and the making of a number of new
peers. It is to be hoped that the Sovereign will by that time
have returned to her capital, instead of being 600 miles
away from it, as she was during the crises of 1866 and
1868.

I do not think that provincial politicians have any
idea of the rapid progress which Republicanism is
making among the most highly cultivated men
of the metropolis. They rejoice with exceeding joy
at the threatened action of the Peers. They had not
ventured to hope that their lordships would be seized with
the madness which precedes destruction, and even now
they fear that the news is too good to be true. They
rejoice no less at the virtual abdication of the Queen, and
think that her Majesty is one of the best of sovereigns
because she is teaching her people to do without any.
They tell you that no one is more firmly persuaded of the
approaching downfall of monarchy than the Queen herself
—that it has been openly discussed at royal tables whether
she or her son will be the last to wear the Crown of Eng-
land. Some of them are writers in able and well-known
journals, where, however, they do not say all they-think,
because the time is not yet come. But be assured that
they are watching events with the utmost keenness, and
are skilfully turning to account any event that tends to
weaken the popular faith in the old constitutional tradi-
tions.

Mr. Candlish is considered to have made a good hit by
calling attention to the extravagant expenditure on the
Abyssinian expedition. Clearly something or somebody
must be grievously wrong, when an estimated expenditure
of £3,500,000 turns out to be nearly £9,000,000. Mr.
Munciella (who was to have seconded the motion, but who
was forestalled by Sir S. Northcote) threw some light upon
the matter, and Colonel Sykes threw more. It turns out that
a large number of vessels were engaged to carry out hay at
so much for the voyage, and so much for every day's
demurrage. They waited about for several months until
the charge for demurrage had reached a frightful total.
By.that time their cargoes were not wanted ; and, in
one instance, at least, they were told to throw the cargoes
overboard. Another instance of shameful carelessness
was the purchase of mules in Syria, where
they cost £4O, and in Spain, where they cost £BO,
a head, when they might have been bought in
Syria for £4 a head, these same mules being afterwards
resold. for an old song. A third illustration was the impor-
tation-of a large number of women from India to grind
corn, the said women after their arrival doing
nothing. I mentioned several months ago that certain
gentlemen were sent out to purchase mules who knew
nothing of the language of the countries to which they
went, and were thus entirely at the mercy of interpreters,
and that these gentlemen were preferred, because of poli-
tical reasons, to agents well, accustomed to this kind of
business. Here is a hint for Mr. Candlish.
I was at Oxford a few days ago, and found, among
other novelties, the Keble College in a very advanced
state so far as the buildings are concerned. I confess that
Ido not greatly admire them. They are too flat, and
contrast very unfavourably with the new buildings at
Balliol. These, it may not be known to your
readers, owe their existerwe h the family pride of a lady
who believes that she is descended from Sir John Balliol,
the founder, and who having no descendants, wished to do
something for the institution originated by her illustrious
predecessor. The Dons of Ealliol were not at all disposed
to scrutinise too nicely a lineage which was likely to lead
to such satisfactory results, and they suggested to their
intending benefactress the erection of new buildings. One
of the oldest of the inns in Oxford has lately disappearekand
is giving place to the new " schools," in the Oxford sense
of the word.

The Commemoration this year has been shorn of it
mist notable incident, the conferring of honorary degrees.
This is due, I believe, to two causes: the fact that the
two great parties—the Broad and the High—could not
agree upon the men to be selected, and to the increasing
uproariousness of the undergraduates during the ceremony.
The omission had small effect in checking their manifesta-
tions. The " men" were more obstreperous and boyish
than ever. At last the Vice-Chancellor, Canon Leighton,
left the-theatre in disgust. It was not expected that the
disturbance would have been so serious ; for, owing to a
recent change of arrangements, a large number of " men"
go down before Commemoration begins. It is not unlikely
that this will be the last scene of the kind.
There is to be another Ritual prosecution. It has been
comm3nced under the most extraordinary circumstances.
As the papers have already announced, a deputation
from the Church Association waited upon the Archbishop
of Canterbury, at Lambeth, on Tuesday, to request his
aid in putting down Ritualism. It was stated that the
association had determined to prosecute Mr. Pureha,s of
Brighton, and a London clergyman. Who the second
was was not stated, and the intended victim was reading
the account and wondering to himself who the unfortunate
man could be, when a friend, who was present at the
Lambeth meeting, called and told him, " thou
are the man." Now the clergyrnan fixed upon
happens to be, like Mr. Mackonochie, one of
the most devoted and hardworking parish priests
in London. He has, I have reason to know, sacrificed an
inheritance to a large fortune that he would have enjoyed
had he but abandoned his peculiar views, and he has
settled down amidst the most degraded class that all
London can produce in order to do among them a work
as arduous as any that missionary ever undertook among a
heathen people. In the course of his teaching he has

found it absolutely necessary to appeal to them through
visible representations of religion. He feels that while
an. intellectual West•end congregation may be taught
best through a sermon, the teaching of the poor and the
unintellectual is undoubtedly greatly helped by ritual.
Ritual is, in his opinion, the picture alphabet of the lower
classes so far as religion is concerned. Whether he is right
ornot is little to thepoiit The main fact is that Mr. Lowder,
who is simply one of fife' most devoted clergymen that
. . .

ever gave himself up to the work of a Christian minister,
is to be put to the worry and the expense of a prosecution
by this irrepressible association of easygoing Churchmen,
who, above all things, hate zeal. Nor is this all ; they
have not even bad the grace to tell Mr. Lowder of their
intention, but have left him to learn it unofficially. In
other words, not content with stirfn; up ire*
litigation, and squandering in law the rponey
that they might so well spend in Treading the G )spel;they
seek to take advantage of a hard-working cle an by
giving him no opportunity of preparing deence, or
of obtaining legal advice. Meanwhile the admirers of a

leading LOW Church clergyman in the West-end, a popular
preacher in a chapel which has no Wish attached
to it, and which involves no parochial trork, have pre-
sented to this overworked gentleman, himself, I believe, a
member of the Association, a carriage and pair. One
would like to know what the Apostles would have said to
the two clergymen, the one renouncing society and wealth
in order to teach the sinners and harlots of Ratcliffe High-,
way, the other preaching twice cn Sunday in a West-end;
chapel, and on the weekdays driving hi:carriage and pair
in Totten-row. I fancy that they would have forgiven
the sin of Ritualism for the sake of the earnestness.

I went yesterday to the private view of the " rejected "
pictures, or, as it is called, " The Select Supplementary
Exhibition of Pictures." There are six rooms in the
building (which, by the way, is in Old Bond-street). In
three of these, lighted from the top, but inconveniently
small, are exclusively pictures rejected by the
Academy. The other rooms are lighted by ordi-
nary windows, and the pictures are imperfectly seen.
Mr. Moy Thomas, who has had the chief work in getting
up the Exhibitiop, has had many difficulties to encounter.
In the first place,' large number of the "rejected" did
Lot, like to bc.proclaimed a 3 such to all the world ; in the
next place, there were some who 1 ad had one or tw,
pictures a:cepted and the rest rejected, and who thought
that they had no great cause of cotnpla'nt. Last y, there

were artists who thought that by sending their works
to the "Supplementary Exhibition" they were declaring
war against the Academy, and that this would be remem-
bered to their disadvantage hereafter. The result is that
the present collection by no means represents the whole
of the rejected works, and probably not the best of them.
And it must be confessed that a general survey of
those which are shewn leads to the conviction
that no very great injustice has been done by
the Academy. Undoubtedly there are a few works
whose exclusion would be a matter of surprise under any
circumstances, and especially when we remember the
yards upon yards occupied by the R.A. portrait painters ;
but on the whole it cannot be said that the
standard of the works in Bond-street is so high
as to sustain the charge of gross favouritism
against the artists who excluded those pictures. There
are, however, a few works whose exclusion will cause
some surprise. Mr. Cuthbert's " Maske of Cupid," Mr.
Anderson's " A Fond Delusion," Mr. Beavis's " A Tough
Bit of Road" (perhaps the best work in the Exhibition),
Mr. Brett's "Evening off the Menai Straits," Mr. F. S.
Smith's " Pipe of Freedom," Mr. Mawley's " Glade by a
River," Mr. Anderson's "A Letter," Mr. Naish's
"Stand By, Ready About," Mr. Desanges's "Spring
Flowers," and Mr. Gullick's "Portrait of a Lady," are
certainly up to the general level of the Academy.
Mr. Sydney Hodge's portrait of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, painted for the laymen of the City of London
as a remembrance of his Grace's late episcopate, was pre-
sented to the Archbishop this afternoon at Graves's, Pall-
Mall

MISCELLANEOUS NETVS.

AGITATION.

Mr. Thomas Charley, the member for Salford,
believes in the platform. During the electoral
campaign it was the fashion of the Conservatives to
sneer at Mr. Gladstone for going on the stump. But
Mr. Charley thinks that the Premier was right, and
he attributes the success of the Liberal party at the
elections, and since, to the brilliant speeches of the
right honourable gentlemen in Lancashire last
autumn. The Conservative leaders, the member for
Salford complains, did not appear upon the platform
at the general election. The platform being,
in his opinion, " the mainspring of political, as the
pulpit is of religious, life and action," no party
leader can afford to despise it. Mr. Charley, there-
fore, in a letter to the Telegraph, appeals to the
Conservative leaders to foilow. Mr. Gladstone's
example, and to stir up the country by harangues
to support the peers in the struggle which must
necessarily issue on the rejection of the Irish Church
Bill by the Upper House.

Two political meetings worth notice were held on
Wednesday. The first and most important was held.
at Leamington. A banquet was given by the Con-
servatives of South Warwickshire to Messrs. Wise
and Hardy, to celebrate their return at the last elec-
tion. The brother of the latter gentleman, Mr.
Gathorne Hardy, was present, and made the
speech of the evening. Both he and Mr.
John Hardy said they did not know what
the House of Lords would do with the Irish
Church Bill, but Mr. Gathorne Hardy vindicated
its constitutional right to throw out the bill, and de-
clared that, whatever it did, it would command the
respect and deference of the country. In the course
of his speech the right hon. gentleman, referring to
the statement that the Conservative party had been
educated by its leader,said that in the case of the other
party the position was reversed—the leader had been,
and was being, edu .ated by the tail. After some de-
nunciation of Mr. Bright, who, he said, was leading the
Liberal party where he would, and whither they
knew not, Mr. Hardy concluded by recommending
Conservatives not to resist the changes that might
be necessary in these changing
times, not to give
people reason to say that Conservatism was obstruc-
tion, not to oppose the correction of abuses in the Irish
Church, but to remember Vie blessings they had
enjoyed under the union of Church and State in a
country which had ever respected the rights of
property.

Another meeting,, this one also Conservative, was
being held at Liverpool while Mr. Hardy was
addressing the meeting in Warwickshire. The
Liverpudlians turned into the open air in front of
St. George's Hall to listen to speeches against the
" Church Plunder Bill," " the traitor Gladstone"
and " the revolutionary Bright." The crowd, esti-
mated at from 15,000 to 50,000—set down as
20,000 by the local Conservative journal, and
30,000 by the Liberal paper—was addressed
by the well-known Mr. Harper, the Grand
Master of the Orange Association, and by several
local clergymen. A resolution was passed, setting
forth that any intimidation of the house of Lords
to induce it to pass the Irish Church Bill would be
received with scorn and indignation, declaring that
the people of England were prepared to lay down
their lives in defence of the independence of the
House. There was much confusion, and some little
fighting, but, on the whole, the monster meeting
passed off very quietly.
But two can play at the game of agitation, and
the supporters of tlic bill are bestirring themselves.
The Reform League already threatens to revive, and
its members do not announce their contentment with
the mere disestablishrnent and disendowmeht of the
Irish Church. They demand the abolition of the
House of Lords. We are told that those who formed
the branch leagues in the metropolis have been
brought together again within the last few days, and
have formed the determination to reorganise their
respective bodies, and to call on Mr. Edmund Beales
to be their common president as before. Of course
the first thing that will be done is to hold a
grand demonstration in Hyde Park or in Trafalgar-
square, so that the end of the session is not unlikely
to witness another time of excitement much like that
which accompanied the discussion of the Reform Bill
in Parliament.

The leading Liberals of the Northern towns are
also taking steps to support Mr. Gladstone. In
Leeds and in several other towns of Yorkshire it
has been determined to hold great meetings, should
the bill be rejected; and at Newcastle, on Wednes-
day night, a meeting of the party was held, and
arrangements were made for holding a gre Lt mass
meeting on the-Town Moor, should the Peers pass
Lord Harrowby's motion.

remark as to the " harmlessness " of the late meeTlng,
" Ancona " wishes to know what its object was, and
adds, " A friend of mine who has been A good deal
in the East (Dean Stanley ?) suggests an explana-
tion from a practice which he tells me pre'.-ails in the
Indian bazaars. The stores-of the dealers in rice
and vegetables are very apt to be plundered by stray
cattle, which roam through the market and
help themselves in a most lawless manner
whenever anything particularly tempting strikes
their eye. As the animals are sacred to
Brahma, forcible resistance is, of course, as much out
of the question as it would be to a house of Com-
mons elected by household suffrage. It is, however,
as consistent with the principles of th' Hindoo reli-
gion as with the interest of the Hindoo greengrocer
to distract the attention of the sacred bulls from one's
own stall, by skilfully directing it to the booth of a
neighbour, and this' harmless step' is very generally
resorted to by natives no less in repute for orthodoxy
than for skill in business." Clearly the bishops
with their strong opposition to Lord Lyttelton's pro-
posal for bishops of less than £5,000 a year, and with
their askance looks towards the deaneries, are ex-
citing a good deal of suspicion just now.
" Common Sense" discusses, in the Morning Post,
the proposed cathedral reform. Ile believes that
a reform is inevitable; he believes also that to
stop short at the reduction of canons from four to two
will be impossible, and that the same argument
which applies to the abolition of one moiety will
soon to be applied to the abolition of the other.
These sinecures and the deaneries were originally
intended as the rewards of learning, but now there
is nothing to prevent the least learned of the clergy
from being appointed to them by the Prime Minister
of the day in consideration of political support. If
the present system is to be preserved—

" The dean should be the real and constant leader of the
perpetual worship of the cathedral, with a properly paid
precentor to assist him. The canons should all, as a rule,
reside, and join in common devotions. They should never
be appointed except in full chapter. They should have
defined duties, and their past literary, or parochial, or
scholastic, or missionary toils, recorded. The cathedral
should be a school of piety and a library of wisdom, sur-
rounding itself with the needful institutions of a Christian
diocese. The old canonries should be restored and the
stalls re-endowed. Finally, the bishop should be ordinary
in every cathedral and abbey, and his rightful place
upheld once more, as presiding amidst his chapter as his
council."

If sinecures are to be abolished altogether we shall
deal a fatal blow at the social hold of the Church on
the people ; for none but inferior men will enter a
profession in which all the rewards of skill and
industry are suppressed. If deans are not wanted
let us say so plainly, and convert them into suffragan
bishops. But let us have a real cathedral reform,
not " cutting down" canonries, but converting them
into living realities.

" The noblest intellect of the Church should find its
haven in our cloisters, and the very poorest of the half-
paid parochial clergy would then feel raised by the dignity
of their cathedral ; nct with the ignoble feeling of hoping
(as is coarsely said) for ' the prizes of the Church,' but
with the holy esprit de corps which recognises the glory of
the one body throughout all its remotest parts."