The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-22 00:00:00

EPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times remarks that the sole complaint against Dr.
Temple is that he was a contributor to the obnoxious work
called " Essays and Reviews." He has been prominently
before the world for some twenty years, as a writer, speaker,
and preacher; he has been a most active promoter of the
great educational movement, and since 1858 has been at
the head of one of our loading public schools. None of
lis opponents have adduced a single passage from his
sermons or writings, other than his paper in "Essays and
Reviews," nor has a single act of his life been cited,
to justify their action. Not only so, but the
very publication upon which the whole charge
depends is mainly impugned because it is bound up
with others. Dr. Temple's orthodoxy must stand or fall
by his own paper, and in this paper the most cen-
sorious research has failed to discover a vulnerable point,
though its general tendency has been disapproved by
some as latitudinarian. The Dean end Chapter of Exeter,
ther,:for, en invited, or rather conjured, to resist the
mandate of the Crown, incur tho penalties of a premunire,
an l risk the union cf Church and State in the exercise of
a purely inquisitorial jurisdiction. They are called upon
to set aside the cone d'il;re, not because there is any legal
or canonical obstacles to Dr. Temple's election, still less
because then is the slightest reflection upon his character
or general qualifications, but merely because, in their view,
his elevation would advance the cause of Rationalism. Of
course, a Dean and Chapter may immolate themselves
safely in these days, but nothing would come of it, for the
Bishop could, and undoubtedly would, be installed with-
out their concurrence. But there is another consideration
of still greater weight from an Anglican point of view.
The scandal and mischief—if it be so—of having Dr.
Temple on the bench are surelj, as nothing compared with
the ruin which must befall the Church if all its contend-
ing sections 'were free to persecute and expel each other.
Had the extreme High Churchmen had their way, no
clergydran doubting Baptismal Regeneration could have
remained within the ntablishment ; had the extreme Low
Churchmen had their way, there would have been a seces-
sion of clergymen holding Consubstantiation; had the
extreme men of both parties had their way, some of the
ablest and not the least pious of English Churchmen
would have been driven into some other Communion.
After the elitiiination of these elements, a vapid and
colourless orthodoxy might remain, but all that constitutes
spiritual life and energy would have been lost to our
Church.

There is a special fitness, says the Standard, hi the time
selected by the two senior prelates of the Irish Church in
visiting their clergy and putting forth their charges. The
Church has gathered itself up to meet the shock of dis-
establishment and disendowment. The clergy and laity
have met and taken counsel together. The constitution
of the new governing body has been decided upon, and,,, in
short, the Church is prepared to enter upon its new life as
an independent, disestablished, self-supporting branch of
the Anglican communion. At such a moment the
warnings and provisions of its spiritual chiefs, their
estimate of the prospect which lies before it, and their
forecast of the dangers which threaten it, possess an inte-
rest which certainly will not be confined to those to whom
they specially address themselves. It is satisfactory to find
that the two archbishops look forward to the future with
hope and cheerfulness. They do not seek to minimise the
force of the blow which has fallen upon the Iriih Church,
but they rely upori,the zeal and devotion of the clergy and
laity to repair the breaches and make the injury it has
sustained as little harmful as possible. " Great, mani-
fold, and in part unknown," says Archbishop Trench,
"as are the dangers and difficulties before us, crushing
as is the burden of anxiety upon some of us, let no wordot
despondency escape our lips, so far as may be, let no
thoughts of despondency find a place in our hearts." "
The
past," says the Archbishop of Armagh, "is irrevocable, but
the present is ours, and wg may look with hope and .confi••
dente to the future if we use that present well. We gladly
recognise,ln expressions like these, the true temper in
which the friends of the Irish Church would see it rising
to the occasion and encountering the embarrassment which
besets Its new career.

The Daily News declares that the Fenians have their
answer; and it-is that for which Mr. George Henry Moore
has been labouring. Tu Pas mulu, Georges Dandin. Mx"
Gladstone declines to advise the release of the prisoners,
and he does so on grounds which arc absolutely conclusive.
There is no reason to think that the convicts have
abandoned their designs against the public peace ; the
Fenian conspiracy is not extinct either in the Unittd.King-
dom or in the United States ; and Irish journals, widely
circulated, make it their business to keep alive the
disaffection on which Fenianism operates, and which is the
atmosphere in which it lives. Mr. Gladstone might have
added to these reasons others of no less force. The expe-
riment of mercy was tried shortly after the accession of
:the present Government to office, and it failed. The duty
af the Government in any case is clear. If the great mea
sure of ecclesiastical justice which was passed last session,
and if the equitable adjustment of the relations of
ant:lord and tenant which is looked for in the
next, are to bear their legitimate fruit, they must
be shown to have been inspired by a sense of duty,
and not by fear. Previous Administrations have
erred in mak:ug it their sole mission to preserve
oriler in Irelnnd, without caring very much to establish
In order worth preserving. The present Government
having undertaken to make the laws and the social
condition of Ireland what they should be, is all the
more bound, in fulfilment of that very aim, to see that
those laws are obeyed, and that that social condition
is undisturbed. In the course which they have taken,
they are acting towards Irishmen precisely as they would
act, in similar circumstances, towards Englishmen and
Scotchmen.
At last, says the Herald, Mr. Gladstone has spoken on:
—very late, but yet in time to be useful. In reply to the
Limerick Amnesty Committee, he has declared most em-
phatically that he cannot advise the Queen to release the
prisoners, and has given very conclusive reasons for his
determination. We give him all the credit such an out-
spoken declaration deserves. We do not, of course, con-
sider it any great merit in a Minister charged with the
conduct of the affairs of the empire that he declines to h
bullied or bamboozled into an act of outrageous folly.
But Mr. Gladstone has done the right thing, and
by doing it has, we may hope, put practically an
end to a mischievous agitation. If the agitation continues, it
will be an agitation of men who avowedly desire the de
struction of the connection with England, and such an
agitation has no more danger, and will produce no more
difficulty, than the Fenian conspiracy itself. The Glad-
stonian Irish Radicals can have nothing more to do with it.
Mr. Gladstone has, therefore, done a great public service
by his letter to the Limerick Committee ; and, albeit it was
a service due from him—albeit his own reputation and his
own chances of power and popularity required from him
this definite expression of his views—we have no hesita-
tion about cordially thanking him for this, which, judging
it by the telegraphic summary, appears the most dignified
and statesmanlike letter he has penned for many years.
The Post observes that the United Kingdom Alliance
has issued its annual manifesto, and congratulated its
members on the "increased and increasing support given
by the public to the movement for the suppression of the
liquor traffic." We desire to speak of this Association with
the utmost respect, because of the two things necessary
to any great movement—an object, and the means of
attaining it —it is manifestly in possession of
one. We think, with the utmost respect fox
the motives of the Alliance, that the object they airy
at is impossible. Temperate men will not be cut off
from a wholesome enjoyment because there are others who
have not the moral courage to drink without drinking to
excess, and who must either find refuge from themselves
in total abstinenoe or must rush into the abyss of utter
degradation. By all means diminish the temptation.
There is much room for improvement in this respect.
Beershops and public-houses are far too numerous, and
drink is sometimes supplied by them to persons who have
obviously had more than they can bear. It may,
then, be worth considering whether power should
not be given to the police to check this abuse.
They have power to visit public-houses and ascer-
tain whether they are vending beer or spirits or wine
during prohibited hours. Surely this is a minor offence
compared to the supply of intoxicating liquor to men who
are half intoxicated already. If the right of surveillance
is justifiable in ono case, it is, a fortiori, justifiable in the
other, and if the police had this power, and it was entrusted
to a body of carefully-selected officers, who would be
unlikely to abuse it, an important advance might be made
towards the diminution of drunkenness.

The Telegraph considers that duellists, travellers, ana
the rowdy bullies of the New World, enjoy the doubtful
honour of having brought the pistol to its present sangui-
nary perfection. It is the weapon of the self-dependent
man; and those who can find a "final cause" of good in
rattlesnakes and poisonous drugs might cite a great many
instances to prove that the pistol has furthered civilisation,
and has been especially the arm of progress. Unhappily, the
drunken bully and gambler of America and Mexico has
found the six-shooter convenient, and carries it more
regularly than his toothpick. Some day, we hope, the
Government of the United States, remembering what
Thucydides says about the barbarity of a people who
" wear iron," will make it a punishable offence to carry a
" Derringer " or a " Colt." But good travellers and
hunters at present prefer the heavy double-barrelled pistol
to the repeating arm ; and the destructive organ in the
human brain still demands from the inventors an
improved piece, which will stop a bear or a buffalo like a
spherical rifle bullet, and stretch a robber or assassir
" dead in his tracks." Another and perhaps a fortu,
drawback from this wasp-like accessory of warfare
is, that it makes wild shooting in unpractised
hands: in the recent trials the best hands available were
on the average six inches away from the centre at thirty
yards; and the great maxim of pistol-play is, "Don't try
any long shots." On the whole, it is perhaps as well that
such fatal refinements in the science of slaughter should
have these slight disadvantages in use—else the humar
race, like the Kilkenny Ws, might~ycn qty m ]end
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