The Sun.
London, England, 1856-02-21 00:00:00

LINDON, THURS kV, FEBRUARY 21, 1856

If there be any thing dear to English hearts it
is the privilege of self-government, which they
have so long enjoyed that it is now regarded as
an inalienable birthright. Anything that inter-
feres with that time-honoured principle is regarded
with jealousy and distrust—however plausible the
pretexts on which it may be brought forward and
sustained. The very name of " centralisation" is
distasteful to every Briton, as tending to the re-
moval of some of the ancient lmdmarks of their
highly-prized Constitution, and substituting a
semi-despotic authority, for that of persons chosen
by themselves, inhabitants of the same districts ;
and therefore amenable to the public opinion of
their friends and neighbours. We cannot feel
then surprised at the excitement occasioned by
the new " Counties and Boroughs," or, as it
might more correctly be termed " Trinity House''
Police Bill. We call it " Trinity House" Bill,
inasmuc'a as it is palpably in accordance with the
line of policy laid down in a certain speech
delivered at a Trinity House banquet, in
which it was- gravely asserted that
" Our Constitutional Government was under-
going a heavy trial." And why ? Because,
forsooth, the acts of Ministers were canvassed and
inquired into, by the Parliament, the Press, and
the People of the Creaited Kingdom ?
The lecture has not yet been forgotten by those
to wbom it was addressed, nor, we venture to
add, the almost unanimous comments of the public
journalists thereon by the illustrious lecturer
The former discern in " the Trinity House"
Police Bill one of the first fruits of -the seed pro-
fusely scattered on that occasion. They therefore
heartily oppose it, and denounce it as a dangerous
and unconstitutional measure—an insidious
attempt to wrest out of the people's hands
the management of their own concerns. Nor
are they tempted to its acceptance by the
liberal offer to pay, under certain conditions,
one quarter of the expense out of the Consoli-
dated Fund ; that is to say, with money to which
every ratepayer is charged in another form. It is,
therefore, not merely "robbing PETER to pay'
PAUL," but satisfying Palm with money extracted
from his own pocket. It requires no very great
exertion to reject the plausible gift of the modern
Greek. A very superficial examination will
satisfy the parties interested that when the
allowance is made in every district the result will
h
the same, no matter what proportion be
charged on the local rates, or on the Consolidated
Fund.

When the provisions of the Act, the Government
inspection, and the necessity for Government
approval before their contribution, such as it is,
can be paid, it will bo obvious that the intention
is to place the entire police force of the country
under the control and management of the Home-
office, or, in other words, at the beck and call of
the Ministers of the day. It is needless to say
what would be the effect of a well-organised
body distributed throughout the length and
breadth of the land, and able to report en
the political opinions of every individual in
the kingdom. The objections to a standing
army, which were SO strongly entertained by
our forefathers would be aggravated tenfold in
the present instance, for, as the Lord Mayor of
York justly declared, " a Police force so organised
and paid would inevitably become the tool of the

Government of the day." The demand was iu
the first instance apparently simple, but it was
analogous to the grant of " the handle of the
axe " to the woodcutter in the fable, by which
the remainder of the liberties would speedily fall.
It was arranged that a deputation was to wait
on Sir GEORGE GREY this day. We trust that
the Right Hon. Baronet may yield to the argu-
ments adduced by those intelligent and influential
persons, and withdraw the obnoxious measure,
which no modification can render innocuous. If
not, it will be the duty of every English.
man to oppose it zealously and energetically,
and of every constituency to instruct its represen-
tative or representatives, as to the course they
are required to take in reference to the bill. The
battle, as Mr. ROEBUCK justly declared, is to be
fought in the House of Commons. The second
leading will afford a suitable occasion. There
should be no compromise, no surrender of a single
position. Any promises of referring to a Select
Committee, or of alterations in Committee, should
be disregarded. The measure is essentially dis-
tasteful to Englishmen, and should therefore re-
ceive unequivocal condemnation.
It may be constructed on approved
German models, but we are satisfied
with English principles, and cannot be
coaxed into the surrender of the privileges en-
joyed by our ancestors through a long succession
of ages. Princely orators may harangue on the.
superior advantages of despotism, and the
great convenience of a Government being
enabled to act as it thinks proper, without
being responsible or required to render any ac-
count whatsoever of its proceedings. But the
people will not barter their liberties for such
doubtful benefits. The Coburg-German constitu-
tion is not suited to the meridian of the British
Isles ; and now that their eyes have been opened
they will resist everything tending in that direc-
tion, and, as a matter of course, will totis viribus
oppose the " Trinity House" Police Bill recently
introduced by the Home Secretary, and now
awaiting a second reading, or rather, we hope, a
decided rejection, in the House of Commons.

The recently-established Order of Merit—ex-
cellent in itself as a reward of valour—is but a
poor corollary after all to the argument long agi-
tated in this country, convincing every rational
man in the three kingdoms that England, too,
should have her Legion of Honour ! Again the
opportunity has been missed. 'Between the cup
and the lip there has come that everlasting slip of
the tantalising draught, never, it seems, to be
drained, or even sipped, with any degree of equa-
nimity. Animal courage is to have a bran new
medal dangling by a bit of gay ribbon at its but-
ton-hole—but modest worth, doing its deeds of
heroism neither to tuck of drum nor to flourish
of trumpets, must look for no recognition whatever
from the magnates of the realm, the leaders of
the powers that be ! Stay—yes ! there is one
comfort for the scholar, we must admit, still left
him as a solace in his grey hairs and his destitu-
tion. He may hope to have his name 'blazoned
in the newspapers as the recipient of a beggarly
pension of ls. and .qi. a day—as poor Mr.
JOSEPH HAYDN had only the other week, just
before he sickened and died, aged, infirm, and
paralysed. Gon knows, indeed, that honest
YORICK had reasons enow for exclaiming, on the
very eve of his Continental travels, " They order,
said I, this matter better in France I" Better ?
Well, yes—slightly ! To say nothing of even
that sham-TB. A J AN, and huckstering-A.IIGUSTUS,
and Brummagem CHAILLBA.GNE, who shaved off
his whiskeri in the February of 1848 and escaped
iu an old pea-coat across the Channel—to say
nothing at all of even his creating VICTOR HUGO
a Peer, or again of that famous exclamation of
the Great NAPOLEON, to wit, that had CORNEILLE
lived in his age he would have made him a Prince
—to say nothing of all this—there is the grandest
order of merit in the whole world as proof positive
that, in this matter, France may reasonably
enough be expected to shame us at last into
something like emulation.
Established by a soldier it embraces within
its sheltering shade all classes of civilians.
NAPOLEON the Great reasoned thus when ho
founded it: "France," he said, "con-
sists of thirty millions of men united by intelli-
gence, property, and commerce. Three or four
hundred thousand soldiery are nothing in such a
mass "—adding—" The soldiers themselves are
the children of civilians "—and observing conchs-
sively—" If you divide society into soldiers and
citizens, you establish two orders in what should
be one nation. If you confine honours to military
men, you do what is still worse, for you sink the
people into nothing." Now, this is what we have
actually been doing in England all along. Nay,
this is positively the very mistake which has so
recently been more than ever signalised and ren-
dered glaringly obvious to the meanest capacity
by the establishment of the New Order of Merit
lately announced in the London, Gazette. A
reward not for all kinds of merit indiscriminately,
but for one description alone, that of mere brute
courage. A recompense to be awarded to a com-
paratively small and exclusive division of the
community—and not, as it should be, surely, if
our rulers had any reasoning faculties left them
upon the question, to all orders, and grades, and
classes of Englishmen. How different from
NAPOLEON'S Legion of Honour—the insignia of
which might be aspired to alike by the wearer of
' the embroidered uniform and the wearer of the
homely blouse, by the peasant and the artisan, by
the man of letters and the ecclesiastic. Everybody,
in fact, great and small, rich and poor, learned
and unlearned—who, by bravery, by virtue, by
genius, or by any other means whatever might be
conceived to have done good service to his fellows,
and so to have, in some measure, deserved the
grateful recognition of those services by a discern-
ing, a sagacious, and a munificent Government.

To select ono class of men for reward is simply
absurd. And still more absurd, if possible, is it
to decide that this doubly exclusive reward shall
be awarded to one merit alone, as a means of
public recompence. Aro forty or fifty thousand
men in blue coats and red coati alone to be cared
for, and dingily dressed millions and millions of
their fellow-countrymen to be altogether over-
looked? Are genius, and virtue, and industry,
and self-sacrificing philanthropy, and the like,
really all as absolutely nothing when weighed in
the balance a
gainst—pluek ? Take industry alone
( of all these, by way of example, and answer if
that deserves nothing whatever (supposing it to
have been laudably directed to the achievement
of any considerable success) : answer, we say, if
that deserves nothing whatever in the way either
of recompence or encouragement ! It was only
the other day, for that matter, that the laborious
and enterprising burghers of Hull enjoyed the
privilege of listening to an impressive argument
addressed to them upon this very subject by one of
the eminent men of our generation—Tve allude to
the remarkable Lector© delivered upon the 3d
ultimo,
by the learned Recorder of Hull, now
M.P. for the borough of Midhurst,
upon the sub-
ject of " Labour : its Rights, Difficulties, Dignity,
and Consolations." An eloquent and earnest dis.
coursea the very naeri i of the elaboration of which,

'to our regret, precluded us from transfering it '
entire to our own columns from those of cur
Yorkshire contemporaries. Since then, however,
Mr. WARREN'S masterly prelection upon Labour
has been reprinted as a separate and substantive
publication, from a portion of which we are
tempted to excerpt one brief but suggestive pas-
sage, as singularly apposite to the theme now
under our exAmination, and one, moreover, strik-
ingly illustrative of the particular branch of the
argument just referred to by ourselves. The
Lecturer is talking of Intellectual Labour as not,
surely, altogether unworthy of that designation,
and thereupon exclaims—" The working Classes !
Are those not worthy of the name, and
in its very highest sense, few in number,
comparatively, though they be, who, by their
prodigious powers of thought, make those
discoveries in science which have given tenfold
efficacy and value to labour—turned it suddenly
into a thousand new channels, and conferred on
all classes of society new conveniences and enjoy-
ments 7 Are we to overlook those great intellects
which have devoted themselves to statesmanship,
to jurisprudence, to morals, to the science of me-
dicine—securing and advancing the best interests
of mankind, and relieving them from physical
anguish and misery ; the noble genius devoted to
literature, refining, expanding, and elevating the
minds of all capable of it, and whose immortal
works are glittering like stars of the first magni-
tude in the hemisphere of thought and imagina-
tion ? No, my friends ; let us not be so unjust,
ungrateful, or unthinking ; let us rather be
thankful to GOD for giving us men of such powers,
and opportunity and inclination to use them, not
for their own reputation's sake alone, but for our
advantage ; and let us not enhance the claims of
manual, by forgetting or depreciating intellectual
labour." Mr. WARREN adding to all this, imme-
diately afterwards—" I could, at this mo-
ment give you a dozen instances within my
personal knowledge, of men whom GOD
has given very little physical strength, but
great mental endowments, and who cheer-
fully undergo an amount of exhausting labour of
which you have no idea, in conducting public
laffairs, political and legal, and prosecuting scien-
tific researches, immortalising the age in which
they live. These, they, men of letters, of science
—authors, philosophers, divines, statesmen, law-
yers, physicians—;ve not only admit among us
into the ranks of the working classes, recognising
their power and grateful for its exercise—but we
welcome them with pride, and grudge them no
1 honour and distinctions which society can confer
upon them, and which genius commands, in all
ages, as the spontaneous homage of mankind!
Surely—surely. It is their due. But do they
receive their due in this country, these distin-
guished, and unostentatious labourers—the la-
bourers of the closet as contradistinguished from
those of the mart and of the factory, the heroes of
the study and the laboratory, and not of the battle-
field or the deck of the man-o'-war---are their
services rightly appreciated and honoured, their
1 great services to their fellow-citizens and their
fatherland? Instead of this, are we not constantly
observing certain invidious distinctions marked
out by which the symbols of honour are exclusively
awarded for animal courage, and squandered for
that right and left indiscriminately upon our brave
national defenders. Again we say what we set
out with observing, virtually in so many words :
the new Order of Merit is but a sorry set-off for
—what is still wanting in this country—a Legion
of Honour for the deserving among all grades, and
ranks, and classes of Englishmen.

We have said before, and we say again, no man
living can adduce valid Scriptural authority for
a " Sabbatarian" observance of the weekly National
Day of Rag. The more closely, in point of fact,
the texts on which the Sabbatariau party rely
are examined, the more surprised will the thought-
ful reader become at their extreme folly and
audacity in claiming such an authorisation in order
to the maintenance of a yoke which presses so
heavily on a class sufficiently overburdened with-
out it to challenge the kindlier sympathies of all
Christian men. What is likely to be thought of
such teachers in regard to other matters when
the sort of observance on which they insist is
given up as lacking,lthe very authority they claim
for it by such men as the Bishop of LONDON
and the Archbishop of DUBLIN, the learned
Doctors BLOOMFIELD and WHATELY ? For
our part, we can hardly reflect without a
shudder on the mischief now being sown by these
hot-headed Sabbatarian bigots. It is positively
shocking to witness men, claiming tae character
of Christian guides, going so far and so flagrantly
astray, and to misrepresentaticn, ungodly rancour,
and all uncharitableness, adding a by no means
scrupulous regard for 4,:ne truth. Are they aware
that what they sa;l and do in the matter is said
and done in tae hearing or sight, as it were, of
the entire population r

The tyranny of these men has really become
insupportable, and ought not to be submitted to
one moment longer than can be helped. The
question of Sundry observance is one in which
the masses have a special interest, and it is really
time they should bestir themselves. The table
of the House of Commons is being inundated with
petitions, and the more weak-minded of
our legislators aro being led to believe that
the population in the main sympathise with the
ravings of the Sabbatarian party. A few fanatics
in the most out-of-the-way districts persuade
after a fashion their dependents, tradespeople,
and workpeople, to sign a Sabbatarian peti-
tion, and it passes off with many as the volun-
tary outpouring of a district. A number of the
frequenters of chapels in towns where there is
not spiritual accommodation for one-half the po-
pulation, get up a dozen or more petitions among
themselves, and these are being suffered to pass
muster as representing the views of the majority.
All sorts of arts are • being employed to get up
petitions in such numbers as to create a false im-
pression of the views and feelings of the country
on the subject, and. still little or nothing is
done by the masses by way of counteraction,
and in vindication of their views and interests.
It is really high time they should bestir them-
selves. On our iconscience, we believe if the
country were polled to-morrow, and polled by
ballot, the Sabbatarians would be found in a
miserable minority. Let the working men of
England, who know that in the opening of our
national institutions nothing but the intellectual
and moral elev,ation of their order is sought for,
bestir thems,tives. Let them everywhere be in
attendance at public meetings on the subject, and
give at once expression and effect to their opinions.
Let them got up meetings and petitions, and do
all in their power to show that without the pre-
tensions of the Pharisee, the English workman
cherishes in. his heart a generous sympathy for his
brethren throughout the length and breadth of
the land, and that, leaving cruelty and
On the workmen of the =-
into-
lerance to 'bigots, he delights in practising the
most salient but most neglected teachings
of Christianity.tropolis, ,the
.duty of giving expression to
their deJtestatioll of Sabbatarian tyranny and