The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-06 00:00:00

the public, simply because he was not sufficiently

pliable.
The Chevalier BUNSEN, now Bnron BUNSEN—
who has so long been the respected representative
of the House of Hohenzollern in the metropolis of
the United Kingdom—was also applied to. He was
offered a portfolio, and his disinterested advice was
earnestly sought. We regret, however, to say,
that the man whose mere name would have given
confidence to every true-hearted Englishman, and
satisfied him that he would never assist any cause
not calculated to promote constitutional liberty
has not as yet joined the Administration.
MM. PATOW and VON BETIIMAN-HOLLWEG are
decidedly good appointments. They prove that the
Regent is determined to act fairly towards the
people, in the confident expectation that when con-
vinced of that great fact, they also will reciprocate
the obligation, and act fairly and justly towards
him.

The representatives of Edinburgh and their con-
stituents have been having it out together com-
fortably in a brace of speeches and a series of
rounds—of applause, not altogether unmitigated.
The meeting took place on Wednesday' afternoon,
in the Queen-street Hall of Auld Reekie. Mr.
COWAN and Mr. BLACK were there to give an ac-
, count of their stewardship. And certainly, judg-

ing from the applause and hisses, the uproar,

cheers, and laughter with which the speakers were

greeted at almost every sentence, they can hardly
be regarded as having given an entirely satisfac-
tory account of that same stewardship. Never,
certainly, were opinions more divided than those
entertained by the two members for Edinburgh,
and by the six thousand independent electgrs
making up the aggregate of the constituency. Mr.
BRIGHT and Lord PALMERSTON—Count WALEW-

SKI and the Earl of CLARENDON—Hungary and
Portugal—the Reform Bill that is to be, and the
India Bill that has been—everything and every-
body, furnish a bone of contention to the hot-
blooded politicians of the modern Athens. The
speeches recently delivered to his constituents by
the hon. member for Birmingham were pronounced
by Mr. COWAN to have a tendency to incite the
humbler against the upper classes of society—
whereat a stentorian voice cried "No !" The
mention of the late Government by his colleague,
Mr. BLACK, was greeted with mingled hisses and
applause. Hisses and applause, too, followed the
reference to Lord CLARENDON having sent an oral
instead of a written reply to the despatch penned
by the French Minister for Foreign Affairs. When
it was rather loosely asserted by Mr. BLACK that
had Lord PALMERSTON been at the head of the
English Government our ally would have thought
twice before adventuring upon his recent outrage
on Portugal in the case of the Charles et Georges—
an assertion coming rather oddly from the lips of
an admirer of Lord PALMERSTON, at the very time
when the noble Viscount is on the eve of a visit to
Compeigne there were audible rather perti-
nent exclamations of " Hungary, Hungary." As to
Reform and its fair prospects—" We have now
installed in the place of a Whig a Tory Govern-
ment," observed Mr. BLACK—whereto a sententious
auditor called out facetiously, "Six and Half-a-
dozen ." A like mocking dissentient hailed by similar
ejaculations the allusions made subsequently by
the hon. gentleman to our late Indian legislation.
We could not say much, by the way, for the
fervour of the hon. member's piety, if we were to
judge of its fervour or of the confidence of his
faith by that most extraordinary close to his
remarks in reference to what is termed the evange-
lisation of Hindostan, -where—as if the mission
before us were the diffusion of some political doc-
trine or the teaching of one of the departments of
natural philosophy—Mr BLACK observed, " I
believe that Christianity with a fair field and no
favour will triumph over every obstacle." As though
the dissemination of the divine truths of Christianity
was in any imaginable way dependent upon "a
fair field and no favour !" Did the hon. gentleman
never see an engraving from that beautiful and
impressive picture " The Dispersion of the Apostles,"
—in which the twelve illiterate Champions of the
Church, ex-tax gatherers, ex-fishermen, and so forth,
are scattered to the four quarters of the earth upon
the summit of Mount Olivet ? Not any necessity,
there for—" a clear stage and no favour !" Surely
these are not now the conditions for the diffusion of
Christianity. That is a work to be forwarded, not
by human wisdom, but by Divine grace—it is a
triumph dependant in not the smallest particular
upon the aid, countenance, or co-operation of the
most powerful of earthly governments. It advanced
at its very commencement with miraculous
rapidity in defiance of the pitiless antago-
nism of the then Imperial rulers of the
world. After the lapse of nearly two thousand
years it is none the less vital with this preterna-
tural and supernal independence. Now, when the
belief in the Author of Christianity is common not
to twelve apostles and 70 disciples, but to nearly
300,000,000 of the human race!! "To 68 millions of
Protestant sects--to 14* milions of minor sects—to
53-1 millions of Catholics of the Greek Church—
to 150,000,000 of Roman Catholics"—in all, to 296
millions of Christians of all denominations, accord-
ing to the moral and statistical chart drawn up
in his great Physical Atlas, by Mr. A. K.
JOHNSTON. What was true of Christianity
in the year A.D. 33—when there were in
all about one hundred Christians—is certainly
true in the year A.D. 1859, when there are
296,000,000. It appears to us, therefore, little less
than impiety for Mr. BLACK, or any one else, to
assert " I believe that Christianity, with afairfeld
and no favour, will triumph over every obstacle."
Those may be, and doubtless are, reasonable condi-
tions enough in the way of Reforms—Parliamentary
or others—but they are absolutely no essentials in
regard to the supreme and divine cause of Chris-
nity.