The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TEE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Saturday Review thinks there is reason to hope that
the risk of a collision between the two Houses may still be
averted. The time which has been afforded for reflection
has certainly not in all instances been wasted, and it is
believed that some eminent prelates are disposed to restrain
the ardour of impetuous laymen. If the majority, under
the rash guidance of Lord Derby, persists in its intention
of throwing out the Irish Church Bill, the general duty of
the Government will be clear, although there may be some
difference of opinion as to the course which ought to be
immediately adopted. Some of the volunteer advisers
who disguise their counsels to Mr. Gladstone in the
form of imaginary rumours of his intentions, suggest
the extravagant course of a fresh appeal to the
country, not on the abolition of the Irish Establishment,
but on the existence or constitution of the House of Lords.
It is difficult to say whether the dissolution of a devoted
House of Commons on a revolutionary issue would be
more criminal or imbecile. The figment of a reaction
woald be for the first time accredited ley a wanton repeti-
tion of the qm:stion which was so distinctly answered at
the last election. Violent language in the House, or out-
of-doors disturbances, would enlist the sympathies of the
great body of Conservatives on the side of Lord Derby
and his adherents, although their policy has hitherto been
almost universally condemned. When the party which
has right on its side happens also to be the stronger, it
would commit a great mistake it it were deliberately to
put itself in the wrong. An extraordinary session held
fur the peremptory adoption of the Irish Church Bill
would provide a pretext to hesitating members of the party
for refusing to follow Lord Derby a second time to the
breach. As the Ministers are not exposed to the
temptation of shewing deficient firmness, they can
well afford to be temperate and courteotis, and not even
to bare too ostentatiously the steel gauntlet which their
adversaries well know to underlie the velvet glove. It has
probably not occurred to any politician that the doomed
Establishment of Ireland is in the smallest degree inte-
rested in the efforts of the House of Lords to prevent or
delay its extinction.

In the event of an autumn session taking place
through the rejection of the Irish Church Bill, the
Spectator believes that the true course would be to summon
Parliament to meet for that extra session not in London,
but in Dublin. Mr. John Bright long ago suggested that
some one session of Parliament nt outd 1 a.,yeLeu cnieny
to Irish affairs, and that it might be desirable to call
together such a session, by way of special exception, and
in order to assist the Legislature in forming a more accu-
rate conception of the condition, character, and wishes of
Ireland, in Dublin. To this, however, there are, of
course, almost insurmountable objections. But the grave
objections which would render it simply impossible to
carry out Mr. Bright's idea, would none of them apply to
holding an extra long vacation session in Dublin simply for a
single legislative object, and that object an Irish one. It
would be only due to the enthusiastic old gentlemen
who have convinced themselves by a sort of intel-
lectual coup d'etat, that a majority of near 120
in a Household• Suffrage Parliament, for an opinion,
means that the nation has suddenly decided
against it, to give them the amplest means of
studying the question on its merits, since they seem so
entirely unable to judge of the wish for it by the second.
hand testimony of representatives. Ireland would gain a
slight pecuniary advantage by the inundation—just
enough to put it in good humour. The Irish politicians
would gain more, for they would have proved to their
constituents the full strength of their influence, without
doing anything injurious to the permanent progress of
Ireland. And English politicians would gain most of all,
for they could not meet in Dublin, even for the few weeks
necessary for such a purpose, without realising far more
vividly than they had ever done before the difference
between the genius of the English and Irish peoples, and
understanding the hopelessness of making both peoples
happy by identical processes either of administration or
legislation.

The John Bull asks whether the Conservative peers
could with any sense of self-respect adopt at this early
period of the struggle any other course than that of sober,
deliberate, and unflinching opposition to the Irish Church
Bill. " But the Lords will yield after all, and they know
they must." But is this either clear or even probable?
It is always unwise, either in war or in politics, to assume
anything but the highest intelligence and most clever
strategies on the part of the enemy. Are we lo suppose
that the leader of the Government is ever likely to fullow
such childish tactics as some of our contemporaries sug.
gest? To try and swamp the House with new peers, or,
even worse, with mere irritated pugnacity, to send up the
bill again after a fortnight's prorogation, and so to call
out that very sympathy for the bayed lords which would
nerve them again to reject the measure, are courses which
no leader who had not lost either Lead or temper would
e ver dream of. What we must consider as before us is an
autumn sess'on. If the country during the vacation
plainly makes it manifest that it adopts this bill and
nothing hut this bill—that it is for spoliation and
secularisation of religions funds, why then, as
regards this measure, the great Conservative host
must resolve itself into its individual elements, each
member must adopt his own conscientious convictions
independently of party ; it must in the end be a soldier's
battle, and, like many a soldier's battle, not without many
a probability of ultimate victory. If however, on the
other hand, the country shows itself languid, as is not
improbable, or, as we rather think, increasingly averse to
many provisions of the bill, why then the future is easily
forseen. The autumnal legislators in the Commons will be
much more reasonable than the vernal legislators ; impor-
tant concessions will be made ; the Lords will be able to
tolerate, and then to do that which is now, as the Times
honestly warns them they cannot do—amend the measure.
The Economist considers that the present crisis in the
House of Lords is in one respect without a precedent,
because the influence of no single peer now predominates,
and many of the lords will have thus to act on their own
judgment who have before deferred to their leader. It
reminds the moderate peers that the rejection of the bill
will throw the present power and the management of this
controversy into the very last hands in which the rejectors
could wish to see it. There are "no moderate people," it
is said, " in a revolution," and though the rejection will
not bring on a revolution, it will cause a great crisis in
which loud voices only can be heard, and where all half-
and-half opinions will come to an end. In a. word, if the
quiet peers, with whom the power is, want to help Mr.
Bright, they will reject the bill, for then his words will
again move multitudes and his genius be supreme, for it
is a genius that suits a storm, and he will have the power
to settle what shall happen. But now the quiet peers have
much power themselves, and we cannot think they will
be so infatuated as to transfer it to their oldest, their
strongest, and most dangest opponents.

The Saturday Review, in discussing the strength-and
unreasonableness of national antipathies, observes that no
one can say that the difference between civilised nations
is so marked as to justify one in regarding another with
simple contempt, If civilised nations are on the whole
approximately at the same level, we feel it to be as foolish
to bate savages cr the semi-civilised races as to dislike
animals or children. They are at an imperfect stage of
development, and, in fact, excite no antipathy, unless in
some few unexceptional cases. And this suggests what
is the real cause of such national antipathies. It is not
that we seriously believe another race to be less moral or
less intelligent than ourselves ; for in that case we should
bate the Chinese or the negroes more than Frenchmen or
Americans. We really bate nations because they are so
nearly our equals. It is felt to be intolerable that people
who do not enjoy the blessings of the British Constitution,
and who cannot even talk intelligibly, should be in many
ways as good as ourselves. A wretched being who,
with unaccountable perversity, says oui when he
means yes, !thews himself to be capable of building
towns and making railways, and even fighting battles, as
well as we could do it ourselves. This is the inexpressibly
provoking thing about foreigners ; and it is to relieve our-
selves from the uncomfortable seesations which the
circumstance produces, that we brag so loudly about our
supposed points of superiority. Our ostensible reason for
the antipathies we cherish is the belief that our neigh-
bours are really degraded beings ; but the real cause of
the antipathies is the uncomfortable sensation that, how-
ever superior we may be in some points, they manage to
keep tolerably abreast of us in the race for national excel.
lence. Englishmen were bated on the Continent so long as
they presumed to interfere in continental matters, and
were hated by their allies at least as much as by their
enemies. if we consent to reduce ourselves to insular
insignificance, and allow cur commercial supremacy to be
entirely upset, we may take such comfort as may be in the
thouht that people will begin to do U 3 justice, as they
would to specimens in a museum, or monkeys in a zoolo.
gical
_garden. Even the Americans, when they have
taken Canada, exacted four hundred millions of compen-
sationi
from us, and set np an independent Republic n
Ireland, will begin to be a little sentimental about the old
country, or such fraction of it C. 3 may still be left on its

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