The Sun.
London, England, 1867-05-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.-Mr. Mill has redeemed his pledge to his
male admirers and his female clients by the speech
he made last night on his motion for substituting
the word '• person" for the word " man" in the Re-
form Bill. The question has been so eminently
associated with him that we are naturally led to

suppose he gave it the full powers of his mind and
the advantages of his clearest exposition. lie has
said little this session, and, amid the surprises and
conflicts of a stormy period which have tempted so
many to volubility, people have explained his silence
by saying that he reserved himself to assert the
rights of half the human race. Yet perhaps Mr.
Mill has sat long enough in the House. of Commons
to have become conscious of its practical spirit, and
11., was secretly weighed down by the knowledge
that the majority would not consider his motion a
serious part of the reform debate. From some
cause, at any rate, his speech, though elaborate,
was not effective, and though it may have startled
those ignorant of the controversy, it will gain
few fresh converts, among those who have con-
sidered the arguments in favour of the political
rights of women, and have thought them
unconvincing. We did, indeed, look for some-
thing more than those obvious reflections which
must have occurred to most intelligent men who

have sought a principle for the franchise, or for any
other political right. " Why, if a man has a claim
to the franchise, has not a woman also ?" has been

the argument against the supporters of the abstract
rights of man ever since we can remember anything
of debating societies; and though the force of the
argument has been generally denied by the oppo-
site party, there never has been wanting some ad-
vanced thinker to declare that between men and
women there is no difference at all, and that he ac-
. _ _

cepts the principle that both sexes should be on
terms of political equality. Mr. Mill's reasoning
is in substance to this effect, although, in deference

to the House of Commons, he sought to strengthen
his proposition by showing that women laboured
under practical injustice which the possession of a
vote would tend to remove. The object of legisla-
tion should undoubtedly be the well-being of all.
If it can be proved that the female sex will be able
to gain a greater share of public consideration,
will extort better laws than those which men are

now willing to make for them, and will be raised
intellectually and morally by the franchise
being extended to a certain number of them,
there is nothing in reason or the British Consti-
tution against this right being allowed them. No
one has ever pretended that women cannot form an
opinion of their own, or that they ought to be en-
tirely shut out from the management of affairs.
There are even certain public functions which they
may discharge, and in right of their property they
every day vote in the affairs of commercial corn-
panics. In their capacity of stockholders of the
East India Company they exercised till a few years
since a direct influence on the government of a fifth
of the human race, and as to capability it may be
taken for granted that there will be few women
likely to vote under such a system as Mr. Mill pro-
poses who will be less fitted for discriminating
judgment than the lowest class of householders who
will be enfranchised by Mr. Disraeli's Bill. No
man of sense has any blind prejudice against female
voting in the abstract, nor is there about it that
" strangeness " which Mr. Mill speaks of ; indeed,
there is hardly any subject which has been so long
before all political speculators, and which is, for
obvious reasons, so familiar to any one who inquires
at all. Educated men generally have thought on
this subject, and we believe their conclusion to be
that the existing relations of the sexes as to political
life are satisfactory, and that though there be nothing
absurd or revolutionary in conferring a vote on
women, yet it will be a questionable boon• to the
sex to bring them into the arena of political dispu-
tation.

THE " WESTMINSTER GAZETTE" ON THE DANGERS
OF MODERN SOClETY.—Politics and Religion—the
two most active agents in English public life—seem
casting about in anxious search for a new footing,
and for new guides. But guides, able to lead mis-
trustful men out of the confused chaos of dis-
credited principles and hollow half-creeds, into
which our times have fallen, are easier sought
than found. In this transition state, Politics and
Religion arc somewhat in danger of being pushed
aside by two potent rivals for the hearts and
minds of men—the love of money and the love
of pleasure. To what dire calamities this insa-
tiable thirst for sudden wealth led, and how numer-
ous its victims were, was shown but too plainly in
the financial panic of last year, brought about by
the too great eagerness of men to grow rich, not
so much without labour as without patience. What
are Politics to such men, except in so far as they
affect the bourses of Europe? Unmindful of the
proverbial fate of gamblers, the victims of this
wide-spread moral disease play at a game where
to win is simply a curse, and to lose—destruction.
After the excitement of loss or gain, inordinate
dissipation but too often completes the victory of
evil. In Paris, which claims the honour of found-
ing modern society—in Paris, where the Govern-
ment is in the hands of gamblers and profligates
—howgreat is the luxury, the dissipation, the im-
morality !—what a degraded literature !—how cor-
rupt is the stage ! But the distance, not only
material but moral, between Paris and England
is rapidly lessening. The two great evils which
have come to such a head under the profligate in-
fluences or political necessities of the Second Em-
pire, where Politics have no life, and religion but
a scanty footing, are also in England struggling
for predominance. Since doubts as to the truths of
religion have arisen in the educated classes, no
slight inclination is perceptible to secure, at all
events, a substantial guarantee for happiness in the
means of material enjoyment. Never was the
struggle for wealth so keen,—not the patient in-
dustry which constitutes a nation's. greatness, but
the mad frenzy of the gambler,—never were luxury
and self-indulgence so wide-spread as now in Eng-
land. The hearts and minds of men must needs be
set on some object. If Religion has lost its influence,
and political principles sit loosely on a nation, men,
after the disenchantment of youth's pleasant
dreams, fall, for the most part, into the prevail-
ing passion of their time and country. They folloW
what the Germans call the " Zeit-Geist." They
are not higher than the mind of their time, nor
purer than its spirit. If the age, or the fragment
of time, in which men's ideas are formed, is dull
to the idea of the supernatural, we shall not have
works conceived in the spirit of St. Thomas
Aquinas. A time of political. Atheism begets no
hot politicians. Lord Palmerston, during his last
years of power, was the master, because he was
the type, of his times. The " Zeit-Geist " is seen
still more in our literature ; its handwriting is
on the broad shelves which will afford to the
future historian such curious evidence of our un-
certain mind. Uncertain, contradictory, passionate,
touching, occasionally, on depths and struggling
for light, our literature indicates the advent of a
struggle, when the. national mind will be forced
to choose between principles which it professes but
does not believe in, and the unavowed principles
on which it more or less openly acts. But the time
of compro-mise, of hesitancy—not in our litera-
ture only, but in Religion and Politics—seems
passing away. We are standing on the threshold
of new times. We have come—rather suddenly,
perhaps—to the eve of a new day or a new night.
Our age, or what we call such, our quarter of a
century, is over. New times are coming, and new
men—or old men with new principles ; things
will be called by the same names but will mean
something quite different from what they do now ;
the masses, perhaps, in their ignorance will hardly
know the difference, but will quietly drift with the
current, which takes its source in the high
lands of intelligence, from their fragmentary
Christianity into an avowed scepticism, from
their political demonstrations and trades' unions
into a levelling or revolutionary democracy. Old
institutions, political as well as religious, will have
to be remodelled to suit the new ideas. But un-
changing, amidst all the changes, the Catholic
Church will be seen standing out in bold contrast.
Liberalism, which can endure all religious opinions,
will not be able in its triumph to tolerate the pre-
sence and the protest of the Catholic Church ; and,
in the days that are to come, Catholicism will
have to stand against a controversy of a far different
character than that which it now sustains. What
is so bitter as the hatred of the confirmed unbe-
liever against dogmatic truth? and when all half-
beliefs have fallenaway, and all that is positive and
dogmatic in religion in England is centred alone in
the Catholic Church, then will have come the time
of her trial, and that day will be the test of her
strength. All those amongst ourselves who, from
want of grasp of Catholic principles, or from some
moral defect, are but loosely attached to the outer
edges of Catholicism, will be struck off and
pounded into dust in the inevitable collision.
Whatever view may be formed of the immediate
future, none deny that we are in the presence of a
visible change in the English mind. Opinions not
lightly taken up, often held with sorrow, forced not
infrequently on reluctant minds by the inconclusive-
ness of false systems of religion, are now openly
held, subversive as they are of the very essence of
the Christian religioa, It is never tong, espe-

man iny England, before the opinions of the ruling
classes penetrate in some shape or other into the
body of the people. The growing, speculative
unbelief of the intellectual classes, and the practi-
cal heathenism of the lower orders in every city
and town of the country, are driving the mass
of the people, which lies between these two ex-
tremes, in the same fatal direction. Catholics have
a deeply-responsible part to take in such a national
emergency. They alone will have to hold the
standard of the Christian faith before the eyes of
the e nation. They must be true to their trust.
ow is the time of preparation for the contest
and the inevitable divisions. Let, at least, all
Catholics be united in mind and heart in obedience
to the voice of authority, which is ever speaking,
and to the infallible guiding hand of the Vicar of
Christ. Let us firmly put aside all such as seek
to sow divisions for divisions' sake, to create parties,
to compromise truth, to play the enemy's game—
mere party-men who take up grave questions with
unmeaning hands, and drop them again, as soon as
the purpose of the moment is served. When-
ever the contest really comes, such men, of waver-
ing minds and uncertain principles, will be bloNvn
like chaff before the storm, and their dispersion
will leave the Catholics of these kingdoms, wha.t
they now in reality are, strong in the unity of their
faith, loyal to their bishops, not in profession oply,
but in deed, and joyfully obedient to the infallible
authority of the Pope, howsoever or wheresoever
expressed.