The Sun.
London, England, 1867-05-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TimEs.—Mr. Mill last night proposed that the
House of Commons should legislate on a subject of
great importance. The metropolis of England pre-
sents, perhaps, the greatest anomaly in this country
of anomalies. It is the hugest assemblage of houses
on earth, a region covered with buildings, the limits
of which no one can define. It is made up of many
towns ; it has a great commercial emporium, a port
reaching far down the river, several manufacturing
suburbs, while the western district of it is the seat

of GovCrnment, and the residence of the wealthiest

aristocracy and middle class in the world. By

means of vat ions Acts of Parliament this wonderful

collection of neighbourhoods has been united for
certain purposes, such as public works, police, and

Poor-lmv administration. But it is not the less an

-arranged, incongruous mass, and a fortuitous

concourse of tenements, without plan or unity in its
creation, and without any due superintendence after
it has come into existence. Nobody, as far as we

have ever been able to ascertain, knows much about
the government of London, and we doubt whether
there are ten men in the House of Commons who
can tell what are its component parts, how they are
administered, what are their resources, and what
are the requirements of their inhabitants. Yet in
the midst of this vast shapeless mass there is a mu-
nicipality of great antiquity and authority, vast
wealth, and a reputation reaching to the ends of the
earth. The Prefect of the Seine, who administers
the whole of Paris and its suburbs, is hardly a

greater man in the eyes of his countrymen than our
Lord Mayor, the civic potentate who can close a
gate in the face of the Sovereign of England, and
at whose banquets princes are entertained as
guests. The City Corporation and the City Com-
panies are bodies which in position and in wealth are
worth the capital of a great kingdom. They exer-
cise, too, a certain influence, and amid all the changes
of politics and commerce they maintain, chiefly by
their traditional relations with the State, a position
which no one can despise. But when we are asked
concerning their usefulness it is difficult to reply.
To a stranger it must be explained that the scarlet-
cloaked Lord Mayor of London and these violet-
gowned Aldermen do not represent London at all,
in the sense in which he understands it. The tena-

city of English people in clinging to the material
forms of things after the life has passed out of them
is almost ludicrously exhibited in the maintenance
of the Corporation of the City of London. This
city, the stranger will have to be informed, is the
city of the Middle Ages, and consists of a little dis-
trict in the neighbourhood of the old fortress and
the old cathedral, with sundry outlying pieces of
ground that were dependent on it. For generations
it has not been extended, though the great capital
which takes its popular name from this ancient
nucleus has been growing with the rapidity of a
Transatlantic settlement. Thus, the City of Lon-

don, with its imposing corporation and its abundant
possessions, contains but a thirtieth part of the
whole population of the metropolis, and an area
which is even less in proportion. The rest of the
capital has no share in the advantages which this
time-honoured organisation could confer. West-
minster and Southwark have some faint traces of

corporate life ; but the rest of London, containing
some of its richest and most splendid districts,

is simply left to the old parochial system,
which grew up when they were meadows
and gardens. The Vestry is the representative
of the householders in the wealthiest and best-
built districts of London. The rector takes the
chair, churchwardens attend, and the business of
what is really " no mean city" is transacted pre-
cisely as if it were a rural parish in Dorsetshire.
The consequence is that London is, beyond dis
pute, worse administered than the capitals of far
less wealthy and enterprising States. There is a
general indifference about its affairs, an indifference
the result of which is seen in hideous public build-
ings, in a prevailing slovenliness and want of taste,
and sometimes in real neglect of cleanliness. Had it
not been for recent legislation, which has given some
general power to various officers and boards, the
evils of such a civic anarchy would be intolerable.
Mr. Mill now comes forward and proposes to legis-
late in a comprehensive manner on the subject. As
we are not yet aware of the details of his plan, we
are unable to pronounce a definite opinion on it ;
but certainly the objects he has in view are most
desirable, and the general tenour of his proposal is
reasonable. He proposes, so far as we understand,
to establish a central Federal Municipality for
the whole metropolis. This, without destroying
the traditional City, would, we presume, extend
the Corporation to the whole metropolis, so that
there might be one person chosen by the inhabi-
tants of London who should be its real chief and
representative, and others who might speak for the
various districts in any question of general in-
terest. The only objection to such a scheme
that we have ever heard is that such a Cor-
poration would be too powerful ; that a Lord
Mayor who ruled three millions of citizens would
be too independent a potentate to be dealt with by
the Home Secretary, and that his Common Council,
or whatever his civic Parliament might be called,
would in London matters trench on the authority of
the House of Commons. Even if we were to admit
any force in this argument, yet it should not
suffice to deter Parliament from endowing the
metropolis with so powerful an instrument for
energetic and combined action; since if the func-
tions of any such federation were strictly defined
it might safely receive power to do many things to
which Parliament has not time to attend, and
which official boards and local vestries do very in-
efficiently. The second proposal of Mr. Mill, to
which he asked the assent of the House of Com-
mons yesterday evening, is the establishment of
Alunicipal Corporations conterminous with the me-
tropolitan boroughs. There are many things which
these communities, equal to the populations of large
continental cities, can do better by local action than
in concert with the rest of the metropolis. But on
the relations between this scheme and that of a fede-
ral municipality we need say nothing until Mr. Mill
produces his bill. No doubt Mr. Ayrton and his
committee will be able to give the country much in-
formation on this subject, and anything that may be
unsound in the projected measures will be keenly
criticised. But there will be a general satisfaction
that the subject has been taken up by one compe-
tent to treat it, and we hope the session will not
poss away without a real effort to adapt the insti-
tutions of this neglected capital to the requirements
of the time. The task is, no doubt, difficult, for
there are vested rights and inveterate prejudices
against the Reformers ; but the necessity is urgent,
and with energy they may be overcome.
THE " WESTMINSTER GAZETTE" ON CHURCH OF
ENGLAND AND COLONIAL PROTESTANT CHURCHES.
—Unity and Universality are the essential charac-
teristics of the Catholic Church. Spread over the
various parts of the globe, among the most re-
mote nations and tribes, speaking various tongues,
it yet retains its perfect corporate unity under
one common head and under one supreme juris-
diction. If, in the most distant diocese, a suffra-
gan bishop were to teach false doctrine, a
complaint :would lie against him at Rome, and,
on the sentence being published by Rome, the
dispute would be ended, the suffragan bishop
would have to submit, or else would be con-
demned as a schismatic. In striking contrast to
this corporate unity of the Catholic Church, and
to this supreme jurisdiction of the Pope, is the
local character of the Protestant Churches, and
the utter absence, as a necessary consequence, of
a supreme, universal authority. No such autho-
rity exists ; each Church is isolated. The Royal
Supremacy does not extend beyond the realm ; it
is limited to the United Churches of England and
Ireland. The Anglican Church is independent
of
.any control outside its own local limits. The
same isolation and independence exists in the Pro-
testant Churches in the Colonies ; they are not
members of the Church of England, they are not
of the same body, not under the same supremacy.
The highest ecclesiastical tribunal of this country
has decided that they are voluntary associations on
the same footing as the Dissenting bodies around
them. The corporate unity of the Anglican
Church, even such as it is, does not exist outside
the narrow boundaries of England and Ireland.
The principle of Protestantism, even under its
least repulsive form, is isolation, as that of Catho-
licism is universality. Hence the spasmodic
struggles—how vain we all know—of the advanced
sections of the Anglican Establishment towards
unity, if not with Rome, at least with the Greek
Church. This organic disunion of Protestant
Episcopalian Churches has been brought once more
before public notice, by the speeches made at the
meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts, held last week, at St.
James's Hall, under the presidency of the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. Mr. Gladstone took a pro-
minent part at this meeting, and in alluding to
the position of the Colonial Churches since the de-
cision of the Privy Council—that they were not ;t
part of the Church of England, but mere voluntary
associations— he confessed, " with some degree of
' pain, that there was some want of faith in those
fears, which we might have been apt more or less
to harbour, that when once the assistance and con-
trol of the State was in some degree withdrawn
from the Colonial Churches, the effect would be a
tendency to diverge from one another, and from
the Church of England." However, Mr. Glad-
stone was hopeful and confident that such diver-
gences would not take place. He put the best
face on the matter; and, since there could not be
organic union, he was fain to content himself with
full and complete communion. But how long is
1 this full and complete communion likely to last,

on which such stress is now laid, since it has been
discovered that there is no corporate unity, no
identity, between the Church of England and the
Colonial Churches ? What kind of unity is there
in the Church of England itself, rent in twain as
it is by so many sections holding, and allowed
by the Church itself to hold, doctrines diame- •
trically opposed ; to believe or not to believe in
Infant Baptism, in the Eternity of Punishments, in
the Inspiration of Scripture ; not to speak of the
widely diverging opinions as to the character and
office of the Priesthood, the Sacrifice of the Dlass,
the Eucharist, the power of Absolution, and Sac-
ramental Grace? How is even such unity preserved,
but by the supremacy of the Crown, and the control
of the State ? But in the Colonial Churches,
created by, and composed of, Englishmen, with
like principles and prejudices to those in the Angli-
can Church at home, where there is no Royal
Supremacy, no union with the State, is it likely
that they will long keep up " full and complete
communion " among themselves, or with other
independent Colonial Churches, or far less with
the English Establishment? Independent, as theyhe
now are of the Anglican Establishment and of
State, what bond of union exists in these Colonial
Churches, between the Armenian and the Calvinist,
the Ritualist and the Rationalist, of sufficient force
to resist the diverging and isolating tendencies
common to all Protestant sects ? In spite of the
Bishop of Oxford's solemn self-assurance, and Mr-
Gladstone's fervid congratulations on the " sign;
of life " exhibited in the Colonial Churches, and
on their attachment to—he does not, however, saY
which section of—the Anglican Establishment, it
is evident that the isolating liberty practically
bestowed upon them by the recent decision of the
Privy Council, is the seed-time of dissension.
When opinions develope as time runs on, 'when
the radical differences which are now agitating so
violently the various sections of the Anglican
Church, when the principles of pure Rationalism
which are penetrating so deeply the educated society
of England, shall be transported—not
penally,
but triumphantly—to our colonies, what will the
result be in Colonial society, what the effect on
the Colonial Churches ? If the Anglican Church,
with all its historic associations, its elastic for-
mularies, its wealth, its union with the State, has
already no small difficulty in holding together its
various conflicting sections with their antagonistic
beliefs, how shall the mushroom churches of the,
Colonies, isolated and unestablished, unrecogni?Fa
by law and unendowed, be able to resist the dis-
solving action of that principle which is at work
in the Anglican Establishment? We might sooney
expect that the lion would lie down with the lawn,
than that the Rationalist in the days to come wonln
quietly consort with the Ritualst, or the disbeliever
in Sacramental efficacy with the Sacramentalist in
unestablished and unendowed Colonial Churches.
Already the seed of disunion has shot above the
Colonial soil ; the plant cannot be sounder ti
the germ. Protestantism, under whatever forin'
contains in itself the principle of its own destrn,be;
tion. If the meeting for the Propagation ef 0
Gospel congratulated itself on " the signs of life _
in the Colonial Churches, the Earl of Carnarvon_
reminded his hearers that there was anotheor
picture besides the one which they had been so
fervently contemplating in Canada. " That is °II,O
picture said the Earl of Carnarvon ; 44 on. t.'"'
other hand, you have in Southern Africa the Plcci
ture, I grieve to say, of discord, and strife, an
infidelity." But is Bishop Colenso an exceptions'
man ? When those who share views in the Plre
lish Establishment multiply as fast as they II
doing now, when Rationalism increases and
tensifies at home, will the Colonial Churches b°
free from the plague? If "the discord, strife'
and infidelity" invade the Colonial Churches sfi
they have done that of Natal or the Anglicabe
Church, our hope and trust is that, free from
trammels, interests, and associations which en"
cumber the Established Church of England, 0%
will sooner and more freely take refuge from heir
own doctrinal dissensions in that Church
universality is always beside them, and to Wll°
unity they must ever bear witness. whoso