The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-08 00:00:00

aviarr5...........1t1i
ous other respects, the immeasurable superiority of
Paris over London—we have still reason to exult
in other respects in our own regard in the matter
of divers positions and substantial advantages quite
as indisputable and invaluable. If Paris has Notre
Dame—London has Westminster Abbey. If Paris
possesses St. Sulspice or St. Genevieve (the latter
formerly the heathenish Pantheon of the Re-
volution)—has not London St. Paul's Cathe-
dral ? The Bastile and the Temple of the
Bourbon ages both of them swept away from Paris;
London has still the Towers of Julius as among the
curious and memorable of her historical monuments.
But beyond all this, for the material comfort of her
inhabitants, who shall say that London is not better
paved throughout than Paris—better gas-lit—nay
already, we believe, better veined or nerved with
the magic wires of the electric telegraph ?
Added to which, we have the satisfaction
of knowing that we are already entering
upon a more effectual and comprehensive
system of drainage, by which the health
of three millions of people Will be more reliably
secured, and the natural advantages accruing from
the bisecting of the capital by the river Thames
restored; and, when restored, perfected for the
enjoyment of it by the inhabitants of the metro-
polis upon both sides, by the erection upon its
margin of a double line of embankments. Slowly
and surely, then, we are advancing here in London
with our metropolitan improvements—our neigh-
bours, the Parisians, speeding a-head of us the
while, it is true, with marvellous rapidity. The
race between us seems to have been hitherto as
unequal as the race between the hare and the
tortoise—but let not our Paris friends be caught
a-napping, or we may, one of these fine days, be
" forging" a-head of them as surprisingly as LESOP'S
hare-conquering, slow-footed tortoise !

We gave insertion on Thursday, and willingly, to
an extract forwarded to us from a Welsh paper,

headed, " Intolerance in Cardiganshire," and con-
taining facts which might well, in the year of our
Lord 1860, have been taken for fictitious. It is, we
conceive, the duty of the Press to publish such facts
throughout the kingdom, since they are deeds of the
gravest moral and social delinquency, and yet
wholly beyond the reach of law. The sufferers from
religious bigotry have rarely indeed any court of
appeal, but that of public opinion expressed

_ . .
through the journals of the day; and, though the

- :
case of the victims who may claim our advocacy

can rarely be bettered by it, for bigotry is gene-
rally too proud as well as too bitter to retrace its
steps, we may yet do something to prevent the evil
spreading. We may check incipient bigotry, if we
cannot in every instance destroy the full-blown
evil. No social evil, therefore, ought the enlight-
ened press of the country to be more prompt to ex-
pose than that of persecution for religion.
But what do we mean by persecution ? Fire and
sword, fines and imprisonment, coercion to attend
one form of worship, penalties for attending ano-
ther—all such things, happily, have nearly
vanished from both statute and common law.

Very few civil disabilities, in a direct form at
least, lie against any creed or worship. The
precise religion of the QUEEN and the Lord Chan-
cellor, we forget at the moment whether that
of any other persons, is alone fixed by law, and as
they are generally brought up to the creed they
must hold they practically suffer nothing. The
only persecution inflicted by the state now is purely
constructive ; the bestowment of certain property
on two or three creeds, and the conferring of State
rack and position on the persons who hold the most
favoured one of all. Even this Lord STANLEY

tells us is to pass away in another generation, and,
when we see the Head of Catholic Christendom
losing secular dignities by the hands of Catholic
sovereigns, it may well be that another generation
will recognise in bishops and archbishops only
spiritual persons. And, happily too, persecution 1
for creed or worship has become growingly revolt-
ing
to the feelings of the great majority
of the nation. The change in the laws has
been a thawing of the rigid ice-crust of
persecuting legislation, by the genial warmth of
bettered social feeling rising to the surface, and
softening the soil for the cultivation of genuine
religious liberty.
If in such a state of social advancement, and
Christian advancement too,—for if hatred of per-
secution be not Christian, we know not what is—
we ask now what is persecution, thank Heaven we
have light enough to answer—" Every thing by
which I place my fellow-man at a disadvantage on
account of his Religion." When we were youths
almost half England believed it was right that law
should do this. Now, so changed is the feeling,
that—we say, no Commoner, whose election
might be perilled by it, but not even any old Tory
lord, hardly we believe any bishop, dares venture
to assert that an Englishman ought to sustain at
law civil damage for his creed. But surely indivi-
duals, in society, are bound to be far better to each
other
_than law compels them to be. If the law
will not injure a man for his creed, the man in
society who would do it must take his place with
those detested beings who practice that summa
injuria the summum jus ; and wrong their fellow •
men to the uttermost,while just keeping themselves
clear of penal servitude. As the law treats equally
all good subjects, irrespective of creed, so the man
in society should know no difference between
those who all treat him alike in their dealings with
him. If I remove my custom from a shopkeeper,
not because another will serve me better, but be-
cause I have discovered him to be of a different re-
ligious creed to myself, I may argue how I will—l
am a persecutor. I cannot burn or imprison the
man, but I can punish him with loss of the fair
profits he might obtain from my custom, and see-
ing the law has repealed its penalties, I take the
law into my own hands and inflict the penalty.
If this ought not to brand a man as a social perse-
cutor, we know not what ought. What business
have I with my butcher, my grocer, or my draper's
creed ? They do not injure me by it. They serve
me none the worse—it may even be that they serve
me the better for it. They have a moral title to be
treated as good and fair tradesmen, while they act
as such, and it must be of the worst religious as
well as social consequences, if creeds and religious
profession are openly or tacitly purchased with
meat, tea, and calico. The former do not
admit of measurement by the yard or the
pound; and woe to the persecutor who tempts
the tradesman to sell his religious convictions with
his goods. The Evil One has not a better servant
than he.

And wherein, we should like to know, is it
better when a land-lady mixes up considerations
of religion with the letting of her farms, and when
her amanuensis, for such we take him to be—
CLERICUS, exhorts all the land- lords of England to
follow the pious example of Miss MORICE. We
have all heard enough of Jesuitry, but if the letter
of Miss MORICE, and that of CLERICTJS, both
from internal evidence almost certainly the work of
the same hand, be not as thorough sophistry as
anything exposed by PASCAL, we know not what
is sophistry, Miss MORICE sends her tenants a
notice couchedhi
eihn lionntg d e
rapnre
tpeido y
into
simply unctuous phrase-
English,
but w
ology,