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

THE WEATHER.—SUN OFFICE, Nov. 6.

THERMOMETER, TN THE SHADE.
53—highest since noon yesterday.
43—lowest this morning and during the night,
49—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-30'33.
WIND, North-Easterly ; fresh, with bitter cold sunshiny
weather.

THE SUN.

SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 6, 1858.

The PRINCE REGENT of Prussia has fully satisfied
the sanguine expectations that were indulged in
by the Liberal party in Europe respecting his con-
duct when he had the control of public affairs in
the important kingdom committed to his charge.
He has dismissed the reactionary Cabinet and ap-
pointed a liberal and enlightened Administration,
that will be accepted with joy by the people.
Herr VON MANTEUFFEL had perversely and obsti-
nately opposed the Regency. He played the
Russian 'game, and stubbornly refused conceding
the powers to the heir-presumptive to the Crown,
which were so urgently required for the welfare
and prosperity of the country, and proper conduct
of public affairs. At length he was conquered.
Even at the eleventh hour the necessary-powers were
conferred on the Prince Regent. The new leader
could not approve the proceedings of Herr VON
MANTEUFFEL and his colleagues. He gently hinted
that their resignation would be accepted ; but al-
though it was " a tender case," the hint was not
be accepted. They had braved the Prussian
Chambers—continued in office, despite of over-
whelming majorities, and they thought that they
could also brave the REGENT, and cling to place
and power, despite the obstacles that would have
deterred any high-minded or honourable man.

The REGENT was not, however, to be bearded
with impunity. He had tried the efficacy of kind
advice :and gentle pressure, but their influences
proving ineffectual, he had no alternative but to
try what virtue there might be in stones. He was
therefore driven to dismiss them summarily from
office, and to appoint others in the place from
which they were summarily ejected.

The constitution of the new Administration
has occeasioned unalloyed satisfaction in Prussia.
It is decidecly liberal and constitutional, and in
those important respects offers a very decided con-
trast to the previous Administration. The Prince
of HOIIENZOLLERN, the chief of the Administra-

tion, is a man against whose opinions no question
can be raised. He is the father of the Queen of
PORTUGAL, whose mild and gentle beauty won
golden opinions from all classes while she was en
route to Lisbon. But it is not as a Sovereign or
mediatised Prince that the Prussian Premier can
claim our sympathies. It is because he has always
supported the Liberal cause, that he has acted with
ability, fidelity, and zeal on the side of the consti-
tution, and that he has the all but universal sup-
port of the community at large, who regard his
appointment as a new charter of liberty—one that
will ensure the rights and privileges for which they
have naturally been solicitous.
He has associated with himself men whose
antecedents prove that he is thoroughly in. earnest
in the course on which he has entered. The Baron
SCIILEINITZ, who now holds the Foreign portfolio,
bad occupied the same position in 1849, when FRE-
DERICK WILLIAM took his oath to the constitution.
It was convinlent to foiiet that solemn obligation,
to ignore and set aside every pledge given to the
people. Baron SCIILEINITZ had not that very
convenient conscience, and therefore he was set aside
byAheLvery pliable Herr VON MANTEUFFEL at the
first opportunity. It is an auspicious omen for the
new Government that Prince HOHENZOLLERN has
availed himself of the great experience and judgment
of the honourable baron. Another of the new
comers---- 1. VON AUERSWALD had been President
of the Berlin Cabinet in 1818. This was the
revolutionary period, when kings and kaisers were
on their good behaviour, and when any opposition
to the popular wishes might have been fraught
with very dangerous consequences. The mere fact
that he was selected as Prime Minister at that
time speaks trumpet-tongued in his favour, and of
that of the chief by whom he, has now been selected
for so arduous and important an office.
The most satisfactory, however, of the minis-
terial arrangements is that of General VON BONIN
as Minister of War. He is a thorough Constitu-
tionalist in heart and soul, friendly to England,
and to the true interests of Prussia. His appoint-
ment is regarded as a direct blow to the interests
of the Autocrat, to which he has been invariably
opposed, since the commencement of his political
career. Indeed, he was dismissed during the
Crimean war 13om the very post he now occupies
with so-much-credit to himself and advantage to

the public, simply because he was not sufficiently
pliable. •

The Chevalier BUNSEN, now Baron BUNSEN—
who has so long been the respected representatis e
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 ("hat 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 up roar,
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 electors
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 INlinister 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." Alike 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- 1
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 i milions of minor sects—to
531 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 -AID. 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 a fair field
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-
tianity. . .

When our citizens assemble at large public meet-
ings, and lords, and generals, and magistrates and
clergymen take part in them, and other lords and
other generals, and even ex-premiers send letters
expressing regret at their inability to attend, it
should seem that a fair-minded journalist must
notice the circumstance. It should concern him, as
the exponent and guide .of public opinion, if it
concern so many of his fellow-citizens. Yet we
must own that the subject of the great public meet-
ing at Southampton, reported in our columns on
Thursday, is one of doubtful propriety for a public
meeting. The doubtful point to us is, whether
such meetings do not give too much importance to
a set of the most contemptible mortals on earth.
noticelere of them are certain
men whom nothing but your
SACIIEVEREL let alone might from obscurity.
his
ig
read his foul but harmless
be known beyond the free
seats of his own church,
i h
if you let him alone, but attack
of legislative or of social censu
it thump oiits yd.
dunce is elevated at once to the thr
and the rank of a. martyr. libels for ever, and not
eskA,
aDnrd.
m with the arms
re, and the hotheaded
one of a party

It really needs. caution not to confer these rwards of weak-headed ambition on the new brood
of Anglican Father Confessors. The citizens and
military men, and lords who took part directly or
indirectly, in condemning the confessional at South-

ampton, had a full right to adopt the course of con-
venigg lr-P}ll/1-ic rfleeting, and we admit that much
mayit, yet, as we conceive, many of the
b
knavese or silt forsincipleti ms whom they meant to expose
will consider it a e ort of terrestrial beatification to
be made notoi iou s in any way. By their brains
they could not have secured a moment's attention,
and they may 1 ')e but too happy if they can do it
-3 clerical Merry-Andrew or some-
by enacting the
thing worse. " We are the men who made all the
stir the other at, and we are the men who don't
care either for al.l your Lords, and Generals, and
Colonels !" May not such be the feeling of a few
insignificant fift3 '-pound a-year curates in or about
Southampton—n zany who, if they had been or-
dained by the sus vessors of ST. CRISPIN, and not
by those of ST. I ?ETER, would never have raised
themselves beyon 11 the cobler's stall, perhaps not
even have attains ;d that dignity.
For ourselves 'we confess that if wo are tempted
to the ungentlemanl, y act of laughing at a fellow-
creature whom we n wet in the streets, it is by the
sight of the white ne •ckcloth, close buttoned vest,
long Noah's-ark coat t tnd face which appears unto
men to fast, of the \mglican Young Parson who
every now and then co nfronts us. Unwillingness
to send him on glorying in persecution, as much
as anything, preserves us from ill-bred risibility,
at least from showing it,. We cannot stay to argue
whether such feelings are right, but such
are our feelings, and: we pass on muttering
to ourselves epithets di atwn from the natural pro-
perties of certain innocen .t animals, whom we need
not just now summon from the Zoological Gardens,
or the common. To us i t will appear so ineffably
ludicrous that our University weanlings should
exhibit themselves with such solemn folly, that we
must give free play to our mirthful impulses before
we could admit, or yield to, others of a graver
kind. If we had to sit in judgment on Punch we
must be permitted to have our laugh out first, and
then inquire into malicious 3 intentions, damages, and
all that.

But the noble chairman, Lord H. CHOLMON-
DELEY, will assure us that the business is a very
grave one, and Lord SIIAFTESBUBY and the clergy-
men will back his representatives, and the Evan-
gelical Generals will tell us that it is the most dan-
gerous of all errors to despise an enemy. For their
consolation we may assure them that they cannot
detest more cordially than we do, all the genuine
superstitions and mummeries of Rome, and all the
Brummagem imitations of them manufactured by
our Anglican forgers and coiners. The whole
scheme of Apostolical succession, baptismal regene-
ration by a 'priestly act of transubstantion by a
priestly fiat, of confession and absolution by priestly
authority, and all the rest of it, is to us so much
unmitigated imposture upon our understanding
or upon our senses. We should, therefore,
think it a grave matter indeed, could we believe
that there was any more danger of the reviviscence
of such superstitions among the mass of the people,
than there is of restoring the reign of sorcery and
witchcraft. With all the parade of Cardinal WisE-
MAN, and all the fooleries of Puseyism, we are con-
fident that never was the soil of England less
genial than now for Popery. The very character
of all modern science, based as it now is, not on
human fancies, but on Divine facts, as established
in the order of creation, is as deadly a foe to Popery
as it is to Hindooism, and it pervades all minds.
The Church has decreed that GALILEO is a heretic,
and his doctrine a lie—every educated man be-
lieves, therefore, that the Church is the liar, and
the Pope the heretic. And this tone of thinking
runs through the science of the day, though another
case so strong it might be difficult to find.

Where are the converts to Puseyism and Popery
found ? Have any of our sound-minded men and
women. believed in them ? Does any of our readers
know a single convert in whose mind he could not
have pointed out, previously to his conversion,
some peculiar twist—some want of even balance
of faculties—or in whose circumstances he can-
not trace the misleading cause ? With many
Puseyites most persons well know that all
may be easily accounted for. As to our single
ladies, especially those of mature years, we need
not particularise. Caprice, fancy, fashion, ennui,
tendency to confide in the lords of creation, and
even fashion itself, in certain little circles, are causes
enough of all the perversions we occasionally wit-
ness. It remains to be seen whether we can guard
our young ladies and our poor women against
father confessors, by holding public meetings and
petitioning the QUEEN. She is head of the Church,
and we suppose head of English fashion too; two
important points for the aristocracy at least. But
these ecclesiastical young damsels are told that the
Head of the Church resides at Rome, and that the
QUEEN is a heretic. We hope the whole thing
will not be made too much of. If the ptomoters of
such meetings were hearty in the matter, would
they not first try to purify what Lord CHATHAM
designated our Popish liturgy of all in it that leads
to Rome?

COURT CIRCULAR.

WINDSOR, Nov. 5.

The Royal dinner party yesterday included the Plince
and Princess of Leiningen, the Earl and Countess of Derby
and Lady Emma Stanley, the Rev. Lord and Lady
Wriothesley Russell, and Colonel the Hon. R. Bruce.
The band of the 2d Life Guards was in attendance
in the Castle, and played during dinner the following
pieces :
March, " Tannha.user" Waer.
Selection " Massaniello"
Waltz, " Romanoff" Laurent.
Selection, " Les Huguenots"
Galop
Her Hajesty's private band afterwards performed in the
Drawing-room the—
Overture, " Le Siege de Corinthe" Rossini.
Chorus and Fugue Mozart.
March, "Die Ruinen von Athen" Beethoven.
Selection, " Preciosa"

The Queen, accompanied by the Princess Alice and the
Princess of Leiningen, drovo out in an open carriage this
morning, attended by Lord Charles Fitz Roy.
His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, with the Prince
of Leiningen, went out shooting.

The Earl and Countess of Derby and Lady Emma Stan-
ley have left the Castle.
In the afternoon her Majesty gave audience to the Right
Hon. Sir E. Buiwer Lytton and the Right Hon. W. E.
Gladstone.

The following gentlemen were presented to her Majesty
by Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Secretary of State for the
Colonies :
Mr. Ross, President of the Executive Council of Canada.
Mr. Galt, Inspector-General of Canada.
Mr, Cartier, Attorney-General for Lower Canada.
After the presentations,
Mr. Smith, Mayor of Melbourne, had an audience of her
Majesty, to which he was introduced by Sir E. Bulwer
Lytton.
Lord Raglan and Mr. J. Ormsby Gore were Lord and
Groom in Waiting.

The Mayor of Melbourne was accompanied by his chap-
lain, the Rev. Charles Thomas Perks, incumbont of Rich-
mond, Victoria; and his private secretary, Mr. James Hora.

The Prince and Princess of Leiningen have arrived from
Frogmore, on a visit to the Queen.

The Earl of Derby returned to tondon yesterday
from a visit to the Queen at Windsor Castle. His lordship
received Mr. Stuart Wortley and a deputation in the after-
noon, at his official residence in Downing-street.

Sir E. Buiwer Lytton and the Right Hon. W.
E. Gladstone left town yesterday morning for Windsor
Castle.

Despatches were sent yesterday from the Colo-
nial-office to the Governors of the North American Pro-
vinces, the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, and St. Helena.

"The Countess of Mount-Edgcumbe and Lady
Ernestine Edgcumbe have left the Albemarle Hotel, for
Mount Edgcumbe, Devon. •
Lord Wrottesley has left the Albemarle Hotel,
for Wrottesley Hall.

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