The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-16 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON', WEDNESDAY _EVENING, JUN 16, 1869.

pulchral voice, his inarticulate expostulations, or sup-
lications, or whatever else they were, to the half
amusement, half indignation of the crowded assem-
bly. One muttered comment floated to us—that
he bad mistaken his platform ! Another—that be
was in himself a conclusive argument in favour of
the immediate abolition of th 3 Irish Episcopacy !
After him—and any one would have been welcomed
as a relief—came the Bishop of St. David's, whose
best bit, perhaps, was his deprecation of the conduct
of some people in continually holding up the POPE as
a scarecrow. " A scarecrow, my lords," said the right
reverend prelate serio-comically, "is most effective
at first., but in course of time, I believe, it is often
found, if it holds its place too long, the birds it was
wont to frighten learn to perch on its shoulder and
even to build their nests upon it"—at the which the
House, as a matter of course, laughed. But even the
Bishop of St. David's failed to rouse the house from
the languor of depression into which it had been
drowsed, not unnaturally, by the half cantankerous,
half 1 Idegmatic dogmatism of Earl GREY, and the
distressing and all but tearful monotone in which
Archbishop TRENCH had bewailed the doom impend-
ing over himself and his Episcopal brethren
in Ireland. Thoughtful though Bishop num.-
w.ku-'s speech was, and striking though it was in its
final announcement of his deliberate intention to vote
for the second reading, it fell upon the saddened
hearing of the House in no respect whatever as an
adequate compensation for preceding inflictions.
Lord CHELMSFORD, who rose next, was chiefly re-
markable for saying ditto—not to Mr. BURKE, but—
to Lord PLUNKETT. Reasoning very logically against
the specious but really shallow argument advanced,
in furtheranceof their views, by some defenders of the
Irish Church, to the effect that its removal would
necessarily weaken the English Establishment—the
next speaker in last night's discussion, Lord
PENZANCE., at once, as it seemed to us,
swept aside that argument by the following
series of apt and almost witty illustrations--" If''
said he, " the strong and the weak stand side by
side, the•weaker leans upon the strong, it does not
support it. If the healthy and the morbid are
brought into contact, the healthy suffer without the
morbid gaining strength. My lords, in my opinion
the Irish Church is the weak point of the English
Establishment. What General would hesitate to
surrender an indefensible fortress, or, to adopt the
illustration of the noble and learned lord, what
architect would desire to preserve a tottering
tower to the jeopardy of the rest of the build-
ing, or what surgenn would he;itate to sacri-
fice a morbid limb to preserie the rest of the
body ?" Barring this one passage, however, the speech
delivered last night by Lord PENZANCE was —(though,
to our thinking, of course, it was on the right side)—
as a speech a dead failure—certainly falling dead and
flat upon the exhausted patience of his hearers; being,
in point of fact, dull, with the dullness of PETER
BELL, that is to say, " dull, beyond all expression
dull." It was as if the noble and learned lord were
summing up, by the force of habit, in favour of the
proposed divorce of Church and State. After the
Duke of IllottstoND had with a certain manly frank-
ness explained the realms, the thoroughly conscien-
tious reasons which had prompted him to break with
his party, with his former colleagues and with his
personal friends, on this question of the Irish Church
Bill, and to side for once, in spite of all those ties of
party and of all those bonds of friendship, with her
MAJESTY'S present Government—came, at last, the
one great and signal triumph of the night—the
maiden speech of the Bishop of PETERBOROUGH. A
more brilliant and a more effective maiden speech
we never listened to. It fairly captivated
the admiration of both sides, last night, in
the House of Lords. It roused the noble
lords, for once in their lifetime, from their constitu-
tional imperturbability. It roused them, in fact, again
and again, to unmistakeable enthus'asth. According
to our view, of course, the singularly able speech we
are here referring to was, from first to last, en-
tirely on the wrong side. Bat, not a soul who heard
Bishop MAGEE last night listened to him otherwise
than with delight. Irony delicate but incisive, wit
bright and sparkling, humour genial and most racy,
unaffected earnestnesz, the whimsicallest phrases, the
drollest conceits, the most covertsare isms—"going off"
almost with the softness of a discharge from au air.;
gun, but hitting their intended mark wi h an aplomb
like that of a cannon ball from an Armstrong—those
were among the distinguishing peculiarities of a speech
as remarkable as any we have heard for years in the
Upper house of Parliament. As an oratorical triumph
it was a brilliant success, and redeemed the night's
debate from the dead level of dullness, by which
it must otherwise alone have been remembered as
having been most consistently but most wearyingly
characterized.

THE Lords have risen fully to a great occasion.
The speeches which they have made thus far are for
the most part worthy of the speakers and of the
theme. Lord GRANVILLE'S speech, which opened
the first night's debate, was the model of gracious
and graceful oratory, the Bishop of DERRY'S which
closed it was the type of earnest eloquence. Few
more conciliatory speeches have been ever heard than
the first, few more heart-moving than the second.
The speech of the Archbishop of CANTERBURY
was, without being eloquent, practical. The speech
of Lord CARNARVON was philosophical and states-
rpanlike in the highest degree. Lord HARROWBY is
always a gentleman, and he did not forget his man-
ners in speaking on a subject which has deeply
moved him and induced him to separate himself
from his former friends. Throughout the debate
there was a tone of moderation which contrasted
remarkably with some of the speeches delivered in
the Lower House. The "We can and we will "of
Mr. LowE, the garrulous indignation of Colonel
KNOX and Sir GEORGE JENKINSON, the inarticulate
clamour of Mr. SYNAN, found no echo in the
dignified assembly which is now the stage of
so brilliant a scene. The address of the
Peers all through were -worthy of that splendid
oration with which Mr. GLADSTONE introduced the
measure now under discussion to the Lower House.
There was none of that exaggerated, inflated, angry
rhetoric afterwards so abundant in the Commons,
and which is now to be heard at the various hostile
" demonstrations "in the provinces. There was not
on the first night, at all events, any parallel to the
denunciations with which Mr. MURPHY, Mr.MASSING-
IIAM, and sundry other excited spouters have made us
familiar. It is, perhaps, to much to expect that the
same high tone will be maintained throughout. An
assembly which contains a WESTMEATH and a
REDESDALE cannot expect .to escape altogether from
inflated rhetoric. But what Lord GRANVILLE well
House
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econsrfowLdooefrdds
saidSc
itul
ohn: fanwthitessah true
or thri: enough. r
Hc House,
tu,sne
with the representatives oftwhiisethcrowned heads
and great republics, with galleries adorned by the
fairest and most illustrious of that sex which, though
nominally without influence in the political world,
really has vast influence—such an assembly as that
is not destined to speedy extinction—unless, we may
add, it is guilty of some stupendous act of
which we do not now anticipate.
As the debate goes on it becomes less and less
likely that the bill will be rejected. It is no secret
that Lord DERBY has been greatly impressed by the
large number of men among his own party who
have refused to follow him in the course which he has
so unwisely taken. lie cannot but feel that the judg-
ment of these men, who must hereafter 'be the
leaders of the party, when his end has come, is worthy
of deference and consideration, and he cannot but
have doubts as to the fairness of exposing them to a
rupture with their future followers, - The die i5-not

yet cast, and there is reason to hope that it will not
be at all. We should greatly prefer to see this stage of
the bill settled without giving a victory to either
party. We do not despair of seeing this happen.
We shall not be surprised if, at the last moment,
Lord DERBY yields to the representations of his less
impetuous aud more prudent friends, and allows the
bill to pass into committee without a division.

THE Captive Balloon has got loose again. The
member for Birmingham has escaped from the
official ropes which held him down, and has
soared aloft into the Radical empyrean, to the amaze-
ment of the spectators and the alarm of his friends.
In all seriousness, this last escapade of the PRESIDENT
of the BOARD of TRADE i 5 no laughing matter, and
it will tax all Lord GRANVILLE'S exquisite courtesy
and consummate savoir faire to explain it away.
We have reached the most critical week that we have
had for many a year. No prudent prophet will venture
to affirm positively that the two Houses of the Legis-
lature will not be brought into perilous collision, or
that in another week the wire-pullers who move the
mob will not have given the word for an agitation
throughout the kingdom, not merely against the
Irish Church, but against the House of Lords.
Yet at this crisis Mr. BRIGHT addresses
a letter to his constituents so stimulating
that it would have exposed him to grave censure if
he had been simply member for Birmingham, and is
doubly censurable now that he is President of the
Board of Trade. In about two dozen lines he says
that the Lords, if they throw out the bill, will be
infatuated ; which may be true, but is scarcely a
seemly statement in the mouth of a Cabinet Minister :
that a good many people will ask what is the value
of a Constitution which gives a majority of
100 in one House for a given policy, and
a majority of 100 in the other House against
it, which may also come to pass, though it is
not for him to accelerate it : he is, satirical about the
" childish tinkering " of the Life Peerage Bill, which
satire is not altogether undeserved, though, consi-
dering that the original tinker is no less a person
than Earl RUSSELL, prudence should have suggested
the erasure of that sarcasm : and, worse than all, he
insinuates that the " accidents not pleasant for them
to think of" which will befall the Lords if they reject
the bill will happen also if they do not reject it, but
will be delayed, perhaps, for many years.
Now, there are proper ways of saying a thing, and
proper persons to say it. It is fitting enough for
Lord SALISBURY and Lord CARNARVON to warn
their peers that they incur great danger by opposing
the popular will. It is fitting enough for indepen-
dent journalists to utter the same warning, in the
hope of preventing a result which they would lament.
It is not fitting for a Minister of the Crown to hold
up a great body of the State even to hypothetical
contempt, nor to inflame the popular excitement
by pungent epigrams. Heaven knows, Mr. BRIGHT'S
constituents needed no such stimulus as this letter
of his. Monday night saw such a scene of turmoil
at the Birmingham Town Hall as has been rarely
witnessed; turmoil, however, that would be stillness
itself compared with the uproar that will arise if the
contingency which Mr. Bus GHT contemplates should
actually happen. Those of us who do not want a
revolution every other year have a fair right to com-
plain of such incentives as this. We want to see
the great question now before the country settled
peaceably. We fully admit the right of those
who oppose it to make their voices heard. We
think them wrong, we sear that they will suffer
damage if they go beyond a certain point, but we are
not going to stigmatise them as fools because they do
not all at once look with favour upon a measure
that necessarily does violence to some of their
most cherished traditions. The duty of the states-
man at this moment is to warn, no doubt, but also to
moderate ; to tell the crew of the State ship that
they will find breakers ahead if they pursue a certain
course, but not to sneer at the officers or bully the
men. There is need of suavity as well as of forti-
tude, of sweetness as well as of light.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.-7his Day.
4. -
MARLBOROUGH-STREET.

A RIOTOUS CASUAL.—Robert Watson, a rough-looking
felinw, was charged before Mr. Tytwhitt with committing
wilful damage at St. James's Workhouse.
From the evidence of Henry Cobbett, porter at the
workhouse, it appeared that the prisoner went to the work-
house the previous evening in a state of intox:cation, and
making use of very bad language, demanded admission;
and as ha was not admitted ho broke ten panes of glass
and damaged two Venetian blinds. He was then given
into custody.
In answer to Mr. Tyrwhitt, the witness said the pri-
soner had several times been relieved at the workhouse.

-
31r. Tyrwhitt ordered the prisoner to pay 205., tho
amount of the damage, and a fine of 205., or to bo com-
mitted for a month. . _

UNPROVOKED ASSALILT.—Richard Eplett, a SIRUP of No.
5, South Wharf-road, Paddington, was charged before
Police-constable Smith,
Mnr.ETßy.rwhitt, with assaulting
The prisoner, while in Grafton-street, Fitzroy-square,
pushed against the constable, who, not wishing to have
an alto= ition with him, walked away, but prisoner then
kicked him in the shins and struck him, and it was only
through the adroitness of the constable that he was not
injured for life.
The prisoner said he was sorry.
Mr. Tyrwhitt committed the prisoner for trial.