The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE ITIthIC JOURNALS,

That Sir Edward Watkin has been defeated in East
Cheshire, says the Times, will surprise no one but himself.
Bat Cheshire Conservatives can have little inclination for
exultation at the result. The election, in fact, offers alto-
gether a metiiipholy spectacle of county degeneracy. The
county palatine has been hitherto in the habit of managing
its electioneering -affairs on principles above or beyond
those which goiern ordinary constituencies. It might, for
all that was knov;n, be a condition of the tenure of certain
estates that the members for Cheshire should be of this or
that Cheshire stock. But, those days are past for
Cheshire, and a contest between Mr. Cunliffe Brooks
and Sir Edward Watkin is about as much the con-
cern of any other district-in the United ICingdem as of
Cheshire itself. The real claim of both candidates
was that they are capitalists—the one a Conservative capi-
talist, and the other a Liberal capitalist, but there is pro-
bably truth in Sir Edward Watkin's taunt that members
of the real Cheshire governing families did not feel
enough Conservative ardour to fight the battle at their
own cost. They voted for Mr. Brooks ; but they seem
rather to have accepted, as it were, a tender from him to
take the charge of representing them off their hands than
to have chosen him. But if it is not very easy to see why
Mr. Brooks is either a Conservative or now member for
East Cheshire, it is unintelligible how Sir Edward Watkin
ever persuaded himself or was persuaded of his fitness to
represent that from among all constituencies. Some sort
of affinity between a constituency and the candidate
is reasonably to bo expected; but we fail to
discern any whatever between the constituency of East
Cheshire and a gentleman whose title to fame is that he
was knighted by Mr. Disraeli as a railway chairman and
defeated at the last general election for Stockport. It was
especially unfortunate that so eccentric a choice should
have been made of a candidate for the Liberal party at
this juncture. The Conservative interest in East Cheshire
seemed waning under the discouraging experiences of the
last two years. By a happier selection the Liberal minority
Might have been nursed into a. majority. As it is, the
issue was reduced to a personal one between East Cheshire
agriculture and East • Cheshire manufactures—between
Mr. Cunliffe Brooks and Sir Edward Watkin. We cannot
pretend to be astonislied•that East Cheshire has failed to
perceive the superior merits, at any rate, of Sir Edward
Watkin.

The Standard says that if Mr. Gladstone's secret ait
were to sap the foundations of the Established Church lei
England as ho has destroyed the Established Church in
Ireland, he could not go about it more adroitly than to
make political fidelity to himself the surest title to epiz-
copal preferment. Yet if we take each of his recent
appointments to the bench we shall be puzzled to
discover any other prominent merit in the men
who have been made bishops except that they
are politically of Mr. Gladstone's party, and helped
him on the Irish Church question—in other words
that they helped to weaken and dismember the Church of
which they are now appointed overseers. Dr. Temple is,
undoubtedly, a man of great accomplishments, and as a
schoolmaster, of acknowledged eminence; but as successor
to Dr. Phillpotts, his appointment could have been intended
as nothing less than an insult to the memory of, his
famous predecessor. Such an appointment is hardly
reconcileable with Mr. Gladstone's own reputation
for religious orthodoxy. Wrong though he might
have been en tho Irish Church, and generally of a
loose, and, so to speak, flabby religious texture, it has heen
always supposed that . Mr. Gladstone was orthodox in
regard to the first principles of Church belief. But how
can this theory be maintained when he makes a bishop of
Dr. Temple—a gentleman who, in the eyes of nine out of
ten Churchmen at least, is regarded as a secret enemy not
only of the Church, but of Christianity—who was one cf
the famous Septent antra Christum—who took a principal
share in a publication Which was solemnly denounced
by Convocation as something worse than hcretical—
who, in addition to these demerits, is never
known to have done a single day's parish
duty in his life, but who is noted for the extreme
breadth of his political principles, and who took an active
and scarcely becoming part in the last general election, in
favour of the Gladstonian candidates ? Such an appoint-
ment as this last is either made on religious or on political
grounds. Which alternative do Mr. Gladstone's friends
prefer ? Whichever view we take,.it is impossible for us
to protest too strongly against Dr. Temple's preferment, as
calculated not only to bring scandal on the profession cf
politics, but to inflict serious damage and to be the cause
of endless disorder to the Church of England.

The Daily News remarks with satisfaction that in quarters
where Dr. Temple's elevation is most strongly objected to
cn theological grounds, justice is done to his fine personal
qualities. But,- in truth, the worthiest cf his opponents
did not conceal their admiration of his character at the
heiLlt of the panic of 1860-Gl. We may confidently
predict that the attempt to revive that panic will fail.
The mateiials for it do not e.ist. Every one who should
now I.c disrozed to object to Dr-Temple as
.theckgica:ly
unsound, must Lo prepared to state sr,ec:fically en what
Passage or passages of his writings the allegation was
grounded, and this is notoriuusly impossible. Even in the
midst of the creitcmnt cf which we have spoken, the meat
learned of Dr. Temple's opponents were constrained
to admit that in his essay cn the Education of the
World—whether his arguments were or were not
sustainable—he infringed no doctrine of the Church,
and the only means of damaging his fame was
found to be the violent connection of his . name
with writings for which he had antecedently di
claimed any responsibility. We trust, therefore, that
we shall hear no more of attempts to disturb the peace
of a diocese and create a scandal for the Church. The new
Bishop of Exeter will have enough to do to bring that
unwieldy diocese into order, and to overtake the arrears
which have accumulated under his predecessor. He is a
man to welcome cordially the co-operation of all the clergy
and laity, of whatever shade of opinion, who desire to
labour for the best interests of the people, and a heavy
responsibility will rest on those who may disturb the good
work by strife and contention.

The Post observes that if the clergy can once succeed in
getting the working classes to accept the Archbishop's
invitation, they will have established a link of 'commuion
which must be productive of good; and they will be likely
to do this not only by inviting the confidence of the work-
ing classes in the way we have indicated, but by entering
into the social questions of the day with the earnestness
of men who feel sincerely and deeply that there is
work to be done for the benefit of their fellow-
creatures, and that they, as the appointed pastors of
the people, are bound to afford all the help in their
power. The Archbishop of York doubts whether they
have fulfilled their obligations in this respect. "I
have heard lately a question put to me like
this—' Why is it that the clergy of the Church of England
stand aloof from a movement in favour of temperance and
other like movements ? '—and I am unable altogether to
deny the justice of this charge." So it is, and as long as
the clergy refrain from entering into the movement upon
which the people set their hearts, they must expect that
the community of feeling between them will suffer.
When, however, the Ardhbishop reminds his hearers
that the " drink " annually consumed in this country
costs eighty millions sterling,- we do not obtain a
distinct idea as to the extent to .;which these figures
denote a tendency to inebriety. If the stimulants
represented by that sum of,money were fairly distributed
they might not be a cause Of alarm. But unfortunately
there are those who consume much more than their share
Without any question drunkenness is the great sin of the
age, and the parent of other sins and miseries. In thip
one field of reformation there is, then, work for
the clergy of all denominations ; but to sot about
it with any hope of success they must first convince the
people that their anxiety grows out of a sympathy rooted
in the humanity and the hopes which clergy and laity share
in common.

The Telegraph considers that the slightest tingo of red
tape marks the details of the scheme recommended by the
Duke of Cambridge. The soldiers employed in industrial
occupations must have had two years' service, and bo of
good character. Now, a recruit in the line is generally
understood to have thoroughly learnt his drill in six
months. Why is poor private Jones to bo condemned to
wait eighteen months before he is allowed to work at the
trade in which, perhaps, ho may have been pro
ficient when he took the Queen's shilling, but in
the practice of which ho might grow rusty after
two years' soldiering, and nothing but soldieringl
Tho vast majority, however, of young men who enlist arc
of no mechanical trade at all. They are either the rawest
of clodhoppers, or they are drawn from those ambiguous
classes so graphically described by Sir John Falstaff, in his
notes on the regiment with which he declined to march
through Coventry. Might not such novices Le taught a
trade as well as their drill ; and might they not be fit tc
exercise that trade long before twenty-four months sheltie
be out ? Again while the soldier may be permitted to worts
at his trade as a reward, and prohibited from doing so as
a punishment, might it not be possible, to draw the line
respecting "character" somewhat too tightly? Pri
vate Jones, for instance, might have acquires'
certain deplorable habits of idleness while roaming about
the streets of Chatham, Rochester, and Strood in the
intervals of drill; and Private Brown, in consequence of
the multiplicity of low public-houses in garrison towns
might be in the habit of taking a great deal more beer thar
was good for him; but a liberal construction of the
" character " clause, and the concession of indus.tri4l
employment to Brown and Jones. might save the one froi:
becoming a hopeless "loafer " and the other from bccomir