The Sun.
London, England, 1858-08-23 00:00:00

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sunk under the effects of his potations. The
moment the idea was conceived, he lost no time
in acting on it. There was no hesitation —no
reticence. He communicated at once with
Sir RICIIARD I\IAvNE, the bead of the police depart-
ment, and told his story fairly and above board, with
sailorlike candour, thus rendering himself liable to all
the unpleasant consequences that must attend even
the most innocent person who has committed a homi-
cide by misadventure, or a justifiable homicide.

He did not wait to consult with his friend Captain
MILLER, who had just gone to the country. It
would have been desirable in such a case to
have compared notes with the only living wit-
ness to the affair, to have ensured full and
complete corroboration. Any man who entertained
the slightest doubt as to his own conduct would have
done so, and it is the strongest confirmation of Lieu-
tenant CLAVERING'S being perfectly unconscious of
anything that could cast reproach on his name, that
he did not delay a single hour, although his candour
might have subjected him to imprisonment, before he
could obtain the exonerating testimony of Captain
MILLER, who had gone to Devonshire.
The narrative thus given was perfect in all its
details. It was sustained even in the most minute
particulars, not only by the direct testimony of
Captain MILLER, but by every fact and circumstance
that came to light during the investigation. The
officers had been inquiring their way at a respectable
house a short time previously. They were perfectly
sober. Not the slightest appearance of drink was
perceptible, a•• ! erefore the statement of Lieut.
CLAVERING bad only taken two glasses
of wine at ,:nd that he had a glass of
whisky, an • in MILLER a glass of
ale, at the 0 ' -horse, Turnham-green, was
fully sustained. ;re can, therefore, not be the
slightest pretext for the charge of inebriety that has
been rather insinuated than directly charged.
It is also manifest that Mr. GATES was not equally
temperate. He was proved to have been in a highly
excited state a short time previously, and this might
have occurred although he was not in the habit of
frequently transgressing the rules of sobriety. In
that state of drunken mania, he assails with abuse,
and something more than abuse, two gentlemen
quietly passing along the highway. Lieu-
tenant CLAVERING points the sword-cane, which,
having purchased for use in another country,
he unfortunately took out for the first time. The
drunken man seizes the sheath, draws it off, and
strikes the man who warns him. He suddenly
falls, and Lieutenant CLAVERING, who feels no
collision, :supposes that it is the natural
result of intoxication. He picks up the scabbard and
examines the blade to see whether there is any mark
of blood thereon. On finding none, for it had pro-
bably been wiped off in the passage through the
clothes, he is satisfied that he has inflicted no injury ;
and we venture to say few would have gone quietly
away after receiving several severe blows about the
head. On going away, Lieutenant CLAVERING
called to a waggoner to mind not to run over
a drunken man on the road. The statement
is thus consistent in every respect. It carries
with it a vraisemblance that must satisfy
every disinterested and unprejudiced inquirer;
and notwithstanding the jaundiced views of
habitual detractors, we are bound to say that
the gallant gentlemen for both have been
assailed—have got clear of the melancholy transac-
tion without the slightest stain remaining on their
characters either for courage or humanity.

We have no kind of sympathy with Orange
Lodges and Protestant Institutions, and all the various
exhibitions of theological rancour against our Catho-
lic fellow-citizens. We fear that all this hostile zeal
is partly intolerance and partly the clamour of un-
easy consciences. The noisy opponents of Popery
are aware that the popery within their own church is
the real danger ; but, half-fearful of the result of
demonstrations against a large section of the Church
to whose Popery as well as to whose Protestantism
they have sworn allegiance, they are comparatively
quiet about Church of England Popery, and loud
enough against Roman Catholic Popery. When we
look at Dissenters, though nearly all of them are at
a much further remove frem Popery than the Church
of England, we do not see them combining to assail
Cardinal WISEMAN and the POPE. The reason cer-
tainly is not their want of deep aversion to Popery—
it lies rather in their conscitus freedom from it. The
really well-bred man is at no pains to prove himself
a gentleman, the parvenu only betrays an apprehen-
,ion that his birth or early education may
be betrayed by one unlucky word or act.
So it is, we believe, with Dissenters and
Churchmen ; there would be no Orange Lodges,
no Protestant Institutes were there not in our Liturgy
Popish rubrics, and in our Church Romanising
clergymen. It is these traces of Popish origin, and
these hardly-disguised Papists in the Church, which
compel uneasy clergymen to exclaim, " I am a Pro-
testant." The members of thoroughly Protestant
churches, when they see and hear such things, are
tempted to exclaim, " Then get rid of all the Popery
that still lurks about your venerable establishment."
We confess to much of this feeling ourselves. A
Church, licked into its present shape by Popish-
:minded kings and queens, must need a little right-
siding after a couple of hundred years dragging on
amidst increasing light of every kind, and the honest
course would be to confess its errors, and to have a
good clearing off of all the moss and ivy, and a turn-
ing out of the owls and bats.
Our Protestantism, as our readers see, bids us
rather to look at hotne and put our own Church to
rights and not before she needs it than to
attack Popery. We would show our zeal against

the latter by eliminating all traces of it from
amongst ourselves. We would first get rid of
the beam from our own eye. Hence our
course with regard t 6 the confessional, and all
the other Puseyistic abuses of the day, would be to
demand such an alteration in the Prayer-book of the
Church of England as should compel all Papists in
disguise (men, morally, infinitely below Roman Ca-
tholics), to throw up their preferments or to throw
off their Popery. A pretty hubbub, no doubt, we
should have. Well, and why not ? Better fight the
thing out once for all, than have hundreds of
parishes squabbling with sleek incumbents, and
sleeker palefaced curates prancing about of a morn-
ing in white neckcloths and long coats and close-
buttoned black waistcoats, and, for what we know
with phylacteries on their fingers and on their gar-
ments. The row must come some time or other—
why put it off ? We can't be always nibbling at
theological quarrels and ceremonial misbehaviours.
We bate to mix ourselves up with every paltry affair
of this sort, however provoking ; what we should
like is a good downright open battle between the
Romanizers and the Protestants—one which, by its

magnitude, would require us of the secular press to

take a side, on ad and intelligible and national
principles, just e find the American journals
now discussing t Great Revival." This would
be a battle worttlighting—the battle as to what
sort ofa church we should pay for with the national
endowments, and allow to use the national fabrics.
These remarks have, of course, been suggested to
us by the outrageous attempts of "Anglican parish
priests" to introduce the confessional into the Church
of England. We need not say that we detest the
whole thing. The confessional in Popery is the ob-
ject of our unmitigated loathing. We have looked
into works sanctioned by the POPE himself, on con-
fession, and though we are no Spoonerites assu-
redly, yet most certainly no wife or daughter of
ours, even were we Catholics, should go near a con •
fessor. We will not even quote the original, much
less offer a translation ; we will only hope that pious
father confessors shrink from insulting the purity
and modesty of the female mind, or from suggestint,
thoughts which should never be there. If such be
the case with better Catholics, it is obviously not the
case with their mimics in our own Church. The
nuisance is, that it is almost womenalwayustlameounfhetarof
that we hear of these
whichgeemwould
choke
an
their asking questions