The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE. PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Saturday Review remarks that Archdeacon Denison
is reported to have said the other day, in a charge deli.
vexed to his clergy, that he wished newspapers were
written without leading articles, as they only saved people
the trouble of thinking. The Saturday Review feels sure
that the overwhelming majority of mankind, even in this
enlightened age—say, ninety out of every hundred to keep
within moderate limits— do not dream of really thinking
for themselves at all, and would not do so any the more
if they never saw a leading article from one year's end to
the other. Every man in the upper or middle classes is
expected to have some opinion on the leading questions of
the day—social, political, or religious—and to be ready on
occasion to express it. And consequently most men do,
with more or less ardour and consistency, profess some
opinion on these topics, but it would be a great mistake to
suppose that these opinions are, in nine cases out of ten.
their own in any other sense than that its which their coats
and boots are their own. They have procured and put them
on, and perhaps learnt to wear them gracefully, but they
no more made them for themselves than they made the arti-
cles their tailor and bootmaker have supplied them with.
Is it desirable, as the Archdeacon seems to imply, that
every one should be left to his own unassisted thinking?
There are of course many matters of personal conduct on
which a man ought to form the best judgment he can for
his own guidance, but these are not points on which news-
papers are likely to obtrude their advice. Few men com-
paratively, even among the educated classes, have leisure
to give more than a passing notice to questions, however
interesting and important, that have no direct bearing on
their ordinary vocations ; and many of those who have
leisure are wholly destitute of the judicial faculty-requi-
site for pronouncing a really impartial judgment on the
evidence when it is before them. Doubt, which paralyses
action, is of the essence of thought. The rough work,
whether of the world or the Church, has to be done by
men of strong convictions, and strong conviction are much
oftener accepted than reasoned out. At all events the
reasoning must be over before the conclusion can be acted
upon. And it is more important that the conclusion
should be right than that the agent should have dis-
covered it for himself.

The Spectator says that some one should ask a question
in Parliament about the war which has evidently been
declared against the betting men. A contemporary attri-
butes the new zeal of the police to the new Chief Com-
missioner, but Colonel Henderson does not reign in Man-
chester, and the crusade is being waged there even more
vigorously than in London. The police, too, are striking
higher and higher till they may reach Tattersall's at last ;
and it is difficult to doubt that they have received orders,
and that Mr. Austin Bruce has seriously set himself to
put down a great and growing social evil. There is no
doubt whatever of its magnitude. As we pointed out
months ago, clever "bcok - makers," confident in the
thirst of mankind for gambling, and the national desire to
take interest in horses, have combined both pleasures in a
new kind of lottery which has rapidly increased in popu-
larity till Englishmen are becoming gamblers en masse.
But, nevertheless, we should have greatly preferred a
preliminary discussion in Parliament, based, if necessary,
upon a proposal for a yet stronger law. A social reform
to be useful should have the approval at least of the best
among those whom it affects ; and it is by no means clear
that the public is as yet certain that betting-offices ought
to be put down. If it were, we should not see advertise-
ments
of agencies in half the papers in the kingdom, or
magistrates so reluctant, as some of them clearly are, to
carry out the law effectually ; or hear so much of the
injustice of reviving a half-obsolete law without warning,
or find every case contested as men only contest when they
think they are suffering wrong. A good many causes con-
tribute, it must be remembered, to make the less reflective
section of the public very doubtful of the fairness of the
crusade. The bias of public opinion, weighted by various
influences, is still uncertain, and to make the crusade
effective, the uncertainty should be removed. If Mr.
Austin Bruce is in earnest, he will, we are convinced, do
better to consult Parliament, bring in a short bill enabling
the public, as well as the police, to indict the agents, and
prohibiting the circulation of their advertisements ; and
then put the law in force without fear or favour, with the
support of a people at length convinced that their repre-
sentatives intend betting lotteries to be put down. At
present, the popular notion seems to be that the police are
interfering with public amusements on the strength of a
nearly obsolete law, never applied to restrain similar
amusements among their betters.
The John Bull declares that the question now arises—
What course shall we Conservative Churchmen, looked
askance at alike by High Church Radicals and mere Protes-
tant members of our own party, pursue? We answer unhesi-
tatingly, such a course as will if possible defeat the Lill
when it returns from the Commons ; or, if that is im-
possible, such a course as will secure the best terms for
the Church of Ireland. Attaching the importance we do
to the question of establishment, we may yet with perfect
consistency, now that we have fought for that, make the
best practicable terms for a free Church. To allow money
considerations the first pla.ce is detestal,le. To give the
free Church, under fearful local disadvantages, every pos-
sible pecuniary assistance, is the bounden duty of all who
believe that the Church of Ireland has, for the gratifica-
tion of personal ambition and party ends, been shame-
fully deserted and despoiled. Under these circumstances,
we learn w ith pleasure that a scheme is under consideration
for avoiding the evils of concurrent endowment, while set-
ting aside of the surplus, as a religious fund, which might
be made generally useful to the Irish people. The greatest
moral evil of the bill, next to disowning the Divine
authority of the sovereign's rule, is the secularisation of
ecclesiastical revenues. To meet this objection, and at the
same time to deal fairly with all religions, it has been sug-
gested that the surplus funds of the Irish Church should
be paid into the hands of commissioners, who might, on
the principle of Queen Anne's Bounty, lend money for the
building and repairing of churches, for glebes, schools,
Ise. To Roman Catholics and Presbyterians these com-
missioners might, of course, apply ; but it would be a very
different thing to handing money to the control of the
Roman Catholic communion. At the present crisis it
world be unwise to say more, but our readers may he
satisfied that the Conservative party are acting thoroughly

in unison.

The Saturday Review says that readers of the debates in the
House of Lords last week were not more astonished at the
eloquence of the speeches than at the uproariousness of the
demonstrations of the audience. We are surprised and
shocked at this disturbance of the gravity, and we had
almost said the dulness, which the House habitually main-
tains, and we cannot express the amazement with which
we learn that " a very distinguished and eminent member
of the Church of England," who was apparently not a
member of the House, placed himself on the steps of the
Throne, and cheered or groaned as he liked or disliked the
speeches. There surely must be something contagious in
the subject under discussion which seems to 'possess sober
Englishmen with more than Irish excitability. It is to be
hoped that there will not be many more debates upon this
question, either in Parliament or elsewhere ; for, if there
are, it will be necessary to provide funds for the enlarge-
ment of lunatic asylums, not only in Ireland, but in
England. The House of Lords during the debate on the
Irish Church appears to have resembled a bear.garden
rather than a deliberative assembly, and one cannot
help wondering that a body which is supposed to be
aristocratic and exclusive should be more tolerant of
popular effervescence than another body which directly
represents the people. We should like to see a "very
distinguished and eminent member of the Church of
England" being permitted to be present at a debate in
the House of Commons, and taking upon himself to cheer
and groan at passages in the speeches. Talking in courts
of law is a great nuisance, but the growing custom of
applauding verdicts will become, if it is not checked, an
intolerable abuse. Yet there have been judges who
seemed to play to the galleries in their summing-up, and
whose threat of committing the first person who was
caught in the act of cheering did not sound very for-
midable. These demonstrations ought to be firmly
restrained alike in Parliament and the courts. It is
doubtless pleasant to be cheered, but those who cheer one
speaker will hoot another, and thus the beginning would
be made in England of a practice which in France was
carried so far that at last the galleries became more potent
than the body of the House. It is true that
.our House of
Peers is inaccessible to those classes whom Lord Taunton
describes as " fishwomen and others," and "a very dis-
tinguished and eminent member of the Church," who is
frantic with horror at disestablishme,nt, can hardly be
designatel as a revolutionist. But nevertheless we can-
not help expressing Danton's wish for decency. There is
always likely in our Parliament to be a sufficient quantity
of prose.

The Spectator asks whether a movement which brings
the whole population within the influence of journalism
is in itself desirable, so desirable that members may, for
example, with safe consciences, worry Lord Efartington
about parcel postage? Up,m the whole, and sub-
ject to some doubts which we entertain as to
toe
general influence of newspaper reading, we think it is.
There is no reason whatever to believe that halfpenny
pap,rs, if they succeed, will be bad papers. The per-
ii4an,nt ten,lency of a very c!,eap pre,33, a tendern.y
hy its oil OrpollvtaS, is to become Rood. The cost
the literary work oo such papers is, as.-compared with
the cost of printin'_l, and, above all, of paper, so intini•
gain at that it is the proprietor's interest to buy able
writing, and able writers are nearly sure to " range them-
selves," to keep within tne limits the cultivated classes
consider right. The only really bad result we expect from
halfpenny newspapers is a decrease in the diffusion of par-
liamentary speeches, which instruct the country more than
newspapers, but for which these little sheets have no room.
Parliament will have to look to that for itself by and by,
and would be wise to look to it at once, issuing a full daily
report of its own proceedings in the shape of a penny
paper, exempt, like official letters, from postage. The
Gurneys could find an editor, we do not doubt, and the
gain to the political information of the country would be
enormous. For the rest, the halfpenny papers may heS2Pit
Yr kta thtLfiuCCOA e2GSI m austhen.

THE ACTION FOR LIBEL BY THE HON.
F. TV. CADOGAN, M.P.

The case of "Cadogan v. Piper " in the Bail Court,
drew to its close on Thursday. Mr. Justice Hannen, how-
ever, declined to sum up until Friday. He now gave two
hours to a consideration of the evidence. In the course of
his remarks he referred to the evidence of Evans. He
reviewed the circumstances under which the witness had
written a letter to the Times, which contained
in substance the libel under consideration. The
jury were not (said the learned judge) to be influenced
by the trial at the Central Criminal Court. He thought
they might rely upon Evans's evidence, in which, admit-
ting that he wrote the letter to the leading journal, he
declared that he did not authorise its being sent to Mr.
Cadogan, either for the purpose of extorting money, or
for any other purpose. Thorne, it was evident, carried the
letter on his own responsibility to the plaintiff in
this action. The charges against Evans made by
Mr. Cadogan fell to the ground. But, on the other hand,
it did not appear at all clear to him that the other
matters referred to in that letter at all proved that Mr.
Cadogan had been acting in his position of director of the
telegraph company for his own personal advantages. It
was true that there was a telegram from the Anstrian
Lloyds which Mr. Cadogan took up and read, and that
telegram went astray afterwards, and a remonstrance
was sent from the Times, for whom the telegram was
hitended. As to the charge against Mr. Cadogan of
having given precedence to a telegraphic message to
Baron Rothschild, the important point wra what the
character of the information in that telegram was. Unfor-
tunately that was the very point which they had been
unable to get conclusively or satisfactorily made
out. Evans had said at his trial that he wrote a note in
red ink upon the message, but Mr. Cadogan said there
was no message with such a note upon it among those
produced in court, and which he believed to be the
whole of the messages of Baron Rothschild. It would
be a subject for the jury to well consider as to what
amount of credence should be given to Mr. Cadogan's
evidence on this point, as it bore upon the implication
against him of having abstracted the message in question.
Mr. Cadogan, it must be remembered, went to the office
on a Sunday to look for the message. The nextimporta.nt
point was that relating to the telegram from Lord Strat-
ford de Redcliffe to Lord Clarendon on the 13th o!
December, in consequence of which, it was stated, there
was a fall of one-half per cent., but the evidence was by
no means conclusive that Mr. Cadogan had on that day
sold out £40,000 immediately after having seen
that telegram on its arrival. It was, neverthe-
less, a circumstance to be borne in mind. Th'
next point, in the alleged libel was that relating to
Mr. Cadogan's position as in office under the Commis-
sioners of the Great Exhibition, through which he used
his influence in obtaining the contract for M. Veillard.
Now it was not true that Mr. Cadogan held an
office in connection with the Exhibition Commissioners.
The evidence given by Earl Granville had conclusively
proved that Mr. Cadogan held no such office. The
other words in the article which proved the libel
asserting that Mr. Cadogan was not deserving of the
trust of commercial men, and should shut him out from
the society of all gentlemen or honourable men, and that
the presence of such a man in Parliament would be a
degradation and disgrace to that honourable assembly,
was the part of the case ti which the jury would have to
devote their most serious attention.
The jury then retired to consider their verdict. They
returned into court with a verdict for the plaintiff,
damages £2O. The judge then asked whether the justifi-
cation of the libel was proved wholly or in part. The
jury had not agreed. His lordship sent them back to con-
sider. They returned into court with a verdict that the
justification was not proved in any part. Their verdict
was for the plaintiff on all counts.