The Sun.
London, England, 1869-03-25 00:00:00

THE STRIKE AT PRESTON.

Twenty thousand men out of work is an alarming,
state of things. And this is what Preston, the " town
of jubilee," is likely to witness within a few days.
That there should be a strike at all is most lamen-
table, but that it should take place while trade is
depressed to ruination, and manufacturers and public
are suffering from dearness of material, is most dis-
astrous. -Whose fault is it ? Masters and men are
recriminating on one another. The manufacturers
say they are doing their business at a loss, and
their position is that they only share the loss
with labour ' • that capital cannot afford to pay
full wages to labour when it gets nothing or less
than nothing for itself; and that the workmen
must take the wages the state of trade enables the
master to pay them. To this the workmen reply
that as wages do not rise when capital is making
large profits, they must not sink when it is making
no profit, and that a standard price for
labour is practically a. bargain made on the
basis of an average, the workmen agreeing to
ask no more in times of exceptional prosperity,
and the master agreeing to give no less in periods
of exceptional depression. The workmen have
this claim for sympathy, that they agreed to accept a
reduction of five per cent., or to submit the matter
to arbitration, both of which offers were refused.
Altogether the disagreement is most deplorable. The
Standard very strongly urges the men to give in,
reminding them of 1854. "Eighteen thousand
operatives then struck; seventeen thousand are
preparing to strike now. The streets were full of
starved children, wandering about in search of.food ;
men and women with hungry eyes standing idle
on the pavements ; soldiers and police in readiness
to quell violence and protect property ; and after vast
sums had been spent, when positive destitution was
at hand, when thousands of homes had been broken
up, when the furniture of the poor had been pledged
to the last stick, and when women had sold their
marriage rings to buy a meal for their little ones—
all that fancied heroism was found to have been
fruitless ; work was resumed without the slightest
advance of wages ; the place was physically and
morally desolate, and the battle had been fought in
vain.

ST. PANCRAS, CANTERBURY.
A correspondent of the Times calls attention to
the disgraceful state of St. Pancras, of Canterbury.
" On the occasion of a short visit to Canterbury,' he
writes, " I had been reading Stanley's Memorials
of the City.' Fresh from his glowing pages, I bent
my steps to the venerable ruin of St. Pancras,
expecting with eager eyes the traditional scene of the
first celebration of Christian worship in England. I
fonid the interior of the church, garrisoned by swine,
a mass of reeking filth. Such was the revulsion of
my feelings that it has induced me to trouble you
with this letter, in the hope of constraining the
authorities to rid the town of an unworthy stain
upon its religion, and the country of the disgrace of
so indecent a desecration of the earliest memento of
its conversion." Mr. Gladstone makes provision in
his bill for Ireland for the maintenance of national
memorials. Can no such provision be made for

AMERICAN VOLIJ

The question of Am erica.nVoluntaryism is exciting
some interest just now. On the one hand we are
told of complete success, of good congregations and
good ministers, stimulated to good work by each
having to bear part of the burden, identifying them-
selves most thoroughly with a cause because each has
something to do. On the other hand, we hear of poor
ministers preaching fanatical sermons to narrow-
minded people, and are informed of the total failure
of the system to sustain anything like a popular
kind of worship. The higher classes sneeringly hold
aloof, the lower are not touched. The Rev. F. T.
Hill, vicar of Terling, in a letter to the
Times, supports in some measure the latter view.
He quotes Dr. Dwight in favour of his theory. The
eminent United States theologian long ago called
attention to the fact that in those States in which
the ministers were endowed the proportion was one
minister to every 1,361 inhabitants, but in those
States where the voluntary system prevailed there
was only one to every 19,300 persons. Mr. Hill
declares that things have not improved since.
The report of the American Tract Society
for the year 1860 states that at least "one-
third of the entire population are unreached by
the ordinary means of grace." It goes on to say,
" Wherever we look, whichever way we turn, we are
met by the fact that multitudes of ourpeople—perhaps
the bulk of our whole population—are not brought
directlyunder the influence of the sanctuary and public)
worship." What does this prove on behalf of a
State Church ? Are things better in this country?
Is it not the universal complaint that do what you will
there is a certain class which is not, and apparently
cannot be, reached ? Mr. Hill's second point is more
to the purpose.. He calls attention to the recent
complaint of the Bishop of Pennsylvania. "Itis a
melancholy fact," said he, " that some of the most
useful clergymen who have left us during the past
year have been constrained to do so by the entire
inadequacy of their means of subsistence.