The Sun.
London, England, 1869-03-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Saturday _Review, in criticising the Ministerial plan
just unfolded to Parliament, speaks of it in high terms of
praise, and says that the eager expectation with which the
introduction of the Irish Church Bill by Mr. Gladstone was
awaited was amply rewarded. As a mere piece of orato-
rical composition, his speech was universally acknow-
ledged to have been one of the greatest triumphs which
this generation has witnessed in the House of Commons.
Nothing could have been more clear, more aptly arranged,
more comprehensive, or with a better distribution of
materials, than his statement. He was thoroughly in his
element, and he has been so long out of his element while
baited and vexed in the Reform debates, and while car-
ried away by his own volubility in his career of stumping,
that it almost comes as a novelty to find once more that,
when in his element, he is among the very first speakers
that have ever addressed an English Parliament. When
he has to deal with an enormous array of figures, to
address a vast variety of interests, to introduce ingenious
novelties, and to weave in bits of not inappropriate senti-
ment, he shews himself a real master of parliamentary
oratory. His speech on Monday was like a Budget speech
on a grander scale, and with a much wider interest. The
effect of the speech, apart from the scheme it introduced,
sby no means unimportant. It stamps upon the memory
of a public which in recent years has had to listen to
much criticism on Mr. Gladstone—which, if often exagge-
rated, has yet in the main been just criticism—why it is
that, in spite of everything that can be said against him,
he holds so commanding a place in general estimation.
The two great succeses of the scheme, each of which shews
great felicity of contrivance, great originality, and great
political tact, are the creation of the Church Representa-
tive Body and the destination of the surplus. That there
must be some body created to represent the Church was
obvious ; but it was by no means obvious to hit upon the
three peculiarities of this part of the Government plan—
that the nature of this body should be wholly unknown
now, so that the time of Parliament shall not be wasted
in settling the squabbles of clerical parties, that the mem-
bers of the Irish Church shall find themselves irresistibly
impelled to create such a body within a given number of
months after the passing of the Act, and that the Govern-
ment, while having none of the trouble of creating it,
retains a control over its formation by reserving the right
to decide whether it is truly representative. The destina-
tion of the surplus, which was always said to constitute
the main -e the .eheme. is so adroitly managed
that there is probably no part of the scheme that will
meet with less opposition. The expenditure of the money
on works of mercy has a sort of semi-religious sound
about it which may comfort those who object to the utter
secularisation of Church property ; it will benefit the poor
only, Irish people only, and the only class of poor who
would not be demoralised by having money laid out in
large sums for their benefit. Fond as they are of jobbery,
not even Irishmen will turn blind or mad to profit by the
spoils of the Irish Church. And then even those who
most dislike it must own that the scheme is a very clever
scheme in the subtle and delicate way in which it tempts
—or, as Sir Stafford Northcote said at the Middlesex ban-
quet on Wednesday, bribes—people of all kinds to agree
with it.

The Spectator says that it is well not to holloa till you
are out of the wood, and it would be folly to begin that
never very remunerative process on the very morrow of
entering it ; but, to assert no more than bare fact, no one
can doubt that Mr. Gladstone's bill, and the marvellous
effort of exposition and oratory by which it was accom-
panied, have made such a beginning of a very difficult
enterprise that all who are concerned in it are sanguine of
success, and all who are anxious to defeat it are beginning
to tremble or despair. Mr. Gladstone has begun his Irish
campaign as Lord Napier of Magdala began his Abys-
sinian campaign, with an administrative breadth and
minuteness, a largeness of view as to the end, and a per-
fection of detail in the arrangement of the means, which
is full of something much less vague than hope—of assu-
rance for the future. The Church will have quite new
opportunities of reorganising itself after the disestablish-
rnent by freely rearranging the duties and localities of the
clergy. We think it is quite reasonable to suppose that,
within the ten years allowed for the work, almost all the
clergy of the Church will have willingly transferred their
services to the new corporation. It is scarcely possible to
doubt that the set of clerical opinion will run very strongly
in favour of such a step—that hesitation in taking it will
be looked upon as a sign of a grudging and selfish—of an
unclerical—spirit. Thus, without either the heartburnings
of a harsh and peremptory measure, or the evils of a pro-
tracted death-bed for the present system, we may, in all
probability, see disendowment finally completed before
the end of 1880, and disestablishment completed
at once—or, at least, by the first year of that decade.
There is nothing Ireland needs more than those more
refined charities which are supplied by the overflowing
wealth of private revenues in England, but which, in a
very poor land, are not provided at all. Infirmaries for
the body and the mind are institutions as distinctively
Christian as churches themselves, and indeed the bard
misery which springs out of the want of them not uLfre-
quently drives men into an irreligious attitude of heart.
There seems to us a fine moral, as well as political tact in
appropriating the surplus revenues in this way. If the
Prot.stants are apt to say that this proposal promises to
be a rather special fulfilment of the prophesy, " The poor
ye have always with you, but Me ye have not always,"
they should be reminded that, inasmuch as we are only
about to divert the trust-money of the nation to "some of
the least of these " Christ's " brethren," we are not in any
true sense diverting it from Him. On the whole, the
Ministry have made a great strength out of their great
difficulty, and are probably ten times as strong as when
they first took office.

The John Bull asserts that Mr. Gladstone has intro
duced a bill for undermining the Constitution of the coun-
try, and blames the apathy cf Conservatives. The jubila-
tions are, however, premature, since in spite of all that
has been said on the subject few really understand the
question at issue. Sir Stafford Northcote is most
cautious in the use of language. When he calls Mr.
Gladstone's bill "a scheme of robbery combined with a
still more gigantic system of bribery," we may be confi-
dent that the country will at last be roused from its fatal
apathy. While High Churchmen are busying themselves
with Lent services, as if the circumstances of the Church
were in no way unusual, and looking forward to the day
when the Church shall be free (though the Saurin case
may teach them a useful lesson as to the fallacy of the
State not interfering with religion); while the astute
clerical supporters of Mr. Gladstone are congratulating
themselves on the success of their schemes, we yet have
faith in the common sense and religious feeling of our
fellow countrymen. They must and will assert themselves.
We bear willing testimony not only to the eloquence and
lucidity of Mr. Gladstone's great speech, but we cordially
thank him for the thorough character of his bill. The
country now sees what is proposed, and we look forward
with confidence to the people supporting the House of
Lords in again remitting the subject to them. When they
thoroughly grasp the scheme shadowed forth in the bill,
they cannot endorse a policy which can have but one
legitimate conclusion—viz., the abolition of the English
Church, the Aristocracy, and the Throne.
The Saturday Review puts little faith in Mr. Cardwell's
ingenious definition of the administration of the army. If
the Commander-in-Chief's office is strictly subordinate
to that of the Minister, as that of any Under-Secretary
is, what is the meaning of a succession of solemn docu-
ments, defining the relations between the one office and
the other ? The hare existence of such documents is an
authoritative assertion of duality "in theory." We know
well how Mr. Cardwell will excuse his statement. He
may say that though the Commander-in-Chief is not by
any document or by practice made in terms subordinate,
still he does, as a matter of fact, yield in the last resort
whenever the Minister chooses to intervene. This is true
in exactly the same sense in which it may be said that in
the last resort the House of Lords always yields to the
House of Commons. But who would say on this ground
that the Peers are not "in theory " independent of the
Commons, or that there is no duality between the two
Houses? It is exactly the same with the Commander-in-
Chief and the Secretary of State. Now as to the practice.
You cannot prove practice from written patents, but we
can fortunately prove out of Mr. Cardwell's own mouth
that, as to one part of the " excepted powers," the inde-
pendence of the Horse Guards is an actual fact. The
Minister was compelled to admit, in answer to Sir Patrick
O'Brien, that there is no appeal from a decision of the
Commander-in-Chief to the Secretary of State for War.
Mr. Cardwell says this is as it should be, and that is a
position which anyone has a right to argue, and which we
are ready to discuss when once we get the facts honestly
admitted ; but to say that certain powers are vested in the
person holding the office of Commander-in-Chief, without
appeal, and in the same breath to say that he is a mere
subordinate under a letter of service, and that there is no
independence and no duality, is one of those contradictions
that only a Cabinet Minister can he expected to compre-
hend. In theory, therefore, and in practice, in any but a
non-natural sense of the words, the dual government
exists. How pernicious it is, we are not discussing today;
and if the Government approve of it, with all of its
anomalies and all its extravagant cost, it would be fair and
manly to challenge public opinion upon it. But to evade
the issue by denying the existence, patent to all the
world, of that which they would like to defend but dare
not, is a device which does credit neither to the candour
nor to the courage of a Cabinet which includes among its
members some of the most resolute opponents of military
domination. We have only to add that if, instead of
putting sarcastic questions which are easily evaded, Sir
P. O'Brien and Mr. White had asked for the documents
we have referred to, they would have compelled an admis-
sion of the truth., and sooner or later the whole truth must
Mae• -