The Sun.
London, England, 1858-03-25 00:00:00

mere pageant, and one by no means creditable to
Ireland, on which it stamps a character of Pro-
vincialism, preventing it from being regarded as
an integral part of the United Kingdom.
We confess that we should wish to see every
distinction abolished; to behold England, Ireland,
and Scotland one and the same, governed by the
same laws and principles. Why should not an Eng-
lish barrister be entitled to practice in Ireland, or
an Irish one in England, or either in Scotland ?
Why should not a duly qualified physician of
Edinburgh be justified in prescribing for one of
his compatriots at this side of the Tweed, or an
M.R.C.S. perform a surgical operation in Lothian?
These are absurdities that should be got rid of,
and the first step is the annihilation of the Brum-
magem Court—the pinchbeck imitation of the
sterling local m3tal. With gentlemen wishing
to trot out their daughters, and placehunters gene-
rally we have but little sympathy with. Shop-
keepers "of credit and renown," wishing to
extend their business have better claims. But
there are other towns in Ireland besides Dublin;
and what goes into the pocket of the inhabitant of
Dame Street or Grafton Street, is generally pre-
vented from finding its way to that of his pro-
vincial brother ; and surely Cork, or Limerick,
Belfast, or Waterford are entitled to equal
consideration with Dublin. There is, thank
GOD, no longer a question of loyalty, for her
Mansry has no more devoted or loving subjects
than the natives of the Emerald Isle. We should
wish to sea "the legal fiction," discarded for the
sake of the community at large, but more especi-
ally from considering the effect it must have on
the honour, dignity, and welfare of the Sister
Kingdom.

diate. An, anti-Christian priesthood assuming to
be holier than GOD himself, invented innumerable
prohibitions of this kind for the poor ignorant
laity, and then fathered the illegitimate offspring
of their own corrupt fancies on the word of GOD
itself. In attacking the ecclesiastical superstition
in question, we are dragged into an attack on their
corrupt theology also ; and, until the Houses of
Parliament will boldly liberate laymen from the
yoke imposed on them by ecclesiastical bigotry,
they must be pestered with theological discus-
cussions. The worthy county member, Mr.
PULLER, actually was so far ignorant of the pre-
sent state of Oriental studies as to affirm that the
Reformers understood Hebrew better than we do I
What will Prince ALBERT and his learned Ger-
mans say to this
A contemporary, we see, tells us that the relief
proposed by Lord BURY can by no ingenuity be
" twisted and tortured into any connection with
civil and religious liberty !"—Hem !—A. B. The
Dissenter believes that GOD permits him to marry
his deceased wife's sister ;—C. D. the Romanising
Churchman believes that he may not do the
same thing. C. D., by the aid of the mitres and
lawn sleeves in the House of Lords, has got a
law made prohibiting A. B. from marrying accord-
ing to his own views of religion, and compels him
to an abstinence which A. B. thinks sheer super-
stition, or rather impious interference between
him and his GOD. And then it is no question of
religious liberty when A. B. demands of the Le-
gislature that C. D.'s heavy penalties may be
removed from the statute-book ! The question is
essentially and inevitably a question of religious
liberty. The restriction was imposed by monkish
superstition in the name of religion ; and Protes-
tant Christian liberty demands that the man
of crosses, bowingq, genuflexions, fastings, altar
candles, and the whole host of mediesvalities,
shall no longer tyrannise over his fellow-citizen,
who prefers his Bible to liturgies and canons, and
the laws of GOD to musty old canons.

majority of instance-A, to the county gaol "and the
convict prison, if not to the gallows, cer-
tainly to long years of penal servitude. Honour,
then, to the originators and promoters of the
industrial brigades our boy-shoeblacks and our
boy-crossing-sweeper 4. Success to the benevolent
enterprise. GOD speed them in these their labours
of Christian charity— in themselves labours of
love—in their results labours of genuine and prac-
tical philanthropy.

" We have no case ; abuse the plaintiff's coun•
sel." Never was the reason more sound, and the
advice better acted on, than in the opposition to
the Bill just introduced by Lord BURY. There is
literally "no case" for prohibiting marriage with
the sister of a deceased wife ; and accordingly
DIVETT, and one or two journals, have duly
abused the plaintiff's counsel. An association,
confessed to be composed of respectable indivi-
duals, of the very class of persons who enjoy es-
pecial confidence in England—the upper section
of the middle classes—endeavours by means of
pamphlets, of the daily and weekly press, of intel-
ligent agents throughout the country, and by
every means so familiar to us in this land of free-
dom, but so dreaded by despots abroad—this asso-
ciation endeavours, by these means, to bring
public opinion to bear on the Legislature. Of all
courses which could be taken, this would seem to
be the most legitimate. If a law be a bad one,
who in England would not thank the men who
gave their time, their labour, and their money to
procure its repeal, and who sought the repeal, not
by any underhand means, but by opening an office,
inviting communications, publishing information,
and watching legal proceedings in connection with
the objectionable law ? Of course, the association
may be wrong in its opinion, but their ;node of
endeavouring to give effect to it cannot be con-
demned, unless we with to exchange our whole
system for the imperial one of our neighbours, and
to place the initiative of reforms in the hands, net
of the people, but of the Senate's Master. As
England is not prepared for this just yet, the
tirades of Mr. DIVRTT, and of one or two jour-
nalists, against an association of gentlemen as re-
spectable at least as their angry denouncers, are
something worse than unfair--they are the spite
of vanquished bigotry.
We may truly say now that there is no case
for the prohibition. We insist ou that. No one
demands a law parallel to that of the Jews, which
requires a brother to marry the widow of his de-
ceased brother. No one asks that any one in
the event of his wife's death shall be reouired to
mils) aava Bibuer, ir sue nave one surviving and
unmarried. It is simply insisted on that there is
no case whatever for interfering in this respect
with a widower's liberty. We challenge our oppo-
nents to produce an argument, religious or moral,
which can stand a moment's investigation. What
to us are the musty old catalogues of degrees in-
vented by the Chancery of Route, first to bring
money, for dispensations, into its coffers ? What
oars we for the Popish lists transferred by half
nomish ecclesiastics into the ecclesiastical cede of
lobe Church of England ? More than half of the
worshippers of this nation are not worshippers at
Church of England altars, and are they to be
bound by the list of degrees of matrimony any
more than by her articles and her Liturgy ?
By the sigettie law of the land as it stands at
this moment, the degrees of matrimony are dis-
tinctly stated to be those ordained by God's law ;
it is explicitly affirmed by the only act in force
on the subject, that "BY THIS ACT WE DECILAZE
ALL PERZONS TO BB LAWSUL THAT BE NOT PROHI-
BITED BY GOD'S LAW TO MARRY," 32 HEN. VIII.,
c. 38. This fact cannot be too strongly insisted
on. It establishes the legal validity of the mar-
riages in question at the present moment. It
enables a man to make a solemn declaration that
he knows of no just cause or impediment to mar-
riage with his deceased wife's sister, even in the
legal sense of the words ; for he may appeal
to the only statute which legislates on pro.
hibited degrees, and with a clear conscience
affirm that his intended marriage is not forbid-
den by God' s word. And, even if the present bill
should fail to triumph over Episcopal bigotry, a
decision of the Law Lords will ere long override
the misinterpretations on the subject of narrow
minded ecclesiastics.

As to the debate, it was, of course, a triumph.
All were ready to commend the noble young
member for Norwich, for the ability with which
he opened it. Mr. Fox placed the matter on its
true ground in repudiating Leviticus for Chris-
tians, and altogether the argument was assuredly
wholly on one sick.. Pretended social mischiefs
were met by evidence of far greater mischiefs from
prohibition ; but the absurd nonsense of social
evils could never hive been even dreamed of,
except in defence of a superstition in possession of
power. Ths comparison with Mormonism and
polygamy is simple rant, unworthy of serious
answer. The marriages in question are clearly
approved by the most moral and best portion of
society, while they are so in accordance with
nature and the dictates of conscience and can be so
easily celebrated without the knowledge of the
official who marries, that nothing can prevent
them, and, the only question is whether priest-
craft shall continue to ride roughshod over us by
legal penalties ; and, if we refuse obedience to its
impious assumptions, shall deliver over us and
our children, as of old, " to the secular arm."

It is very encouraging and very consolatory to
know for certain that the Ragged School System
--a system of such recent origin—is, in two
senses of the phrase, Fast Flourishing. It appears,
in other words, to be both securely established
amongst us, and to be at the same time in process
of rapid development. The daydream of honest
Cobbler POUNDS is already in a great measure
realised. The little urchins far and wide through-
out England, but especially in this swarming
Metropolis of ours, are being gathered together,
here and there, in clusters, and drilled int.) habits
of thrift and industry. They are taken out of
„sr
...v, zu waey
the kennel, and educated. They are taken out
instances, stripped of their rags, and clothed,
Mr. CAPSTICK'S humane but preposterous notion
has been carried into operation rationally. Instead
of catching St. Giles and putting into one of his
dirty hands a basket lined with flannel, and into
the other a little tinkling bell, and saying to him
curtly, as we thrust him over the doorstep,
"There, go and cry muffins, and be happy 1"---
we have collected little groups of these poor chil-
dren about us, and taught them simultaneously how
to pick up knowledge and halfpence. A sentiment
of self-respect has been 'wakened in them, and
with that also a moderate and reasonable feeling
of self dependence. In delightful evidence of all
this, do we not meet them now-a-days at every
turn—these little reclaimed spawn of the very
poorest, and hitherto the most neglected, classes
of the population ? Several years ago CHARLES
KNIGHT, in one of his pleasant, gossipping publi-
cations, a certain archaeological, topographical,
anecdotal book about London, described the once
familiar cry of " Clean your honour's shoes" to
be among the obsolete street-cries of the metro-
polis. And certainly, until very recently, it was
without question one of the many social peculiari-
ties living only iu the whimsical couplets of the
manner-painters of the past--couplets such as
those making up the delightful total of GAY'S
Trivia. Latterly, however, the streets of London
have resounded continually with the call of the
Shoeblack Redivivus. "Clean your boots, Sir,"
is the petition now proffered, brush in hand, by
healthy little urchins, clad in tunics of orange or
scarlet. The occupation gone from the great-
great-great-grandfather's—has returned to their

remote descendants in a later and a more econo-

mic generation. It has returned under happier
auspices, and with a prospect before it now of far
happier consequences. The shoeblack brigades,
indeed, are thriving so well under their new
organisation that they are even now adventu-

IBut, further, so far as the interpretation of cer-
tain verses in the Bible is a theological matter,
the Houses of Parliament and the Courts of Law
racist, if they wish to notice ezisting statute law
at all, give themselves to a theological discussion.

rously Wring in a wider range of business--the
broom is being added to the brush--the ragged
schoolboys, ragged now no longer, are entrusted
with the care not only of boots but crossings. Here,
again, is a twofold improvement—every money-
box into which a humane wayfarer drops his
halfpenny at a street corner not only goes to the
encouragement of the industrious little shoeblack
who has charge of it, but tends, also, directly to
the suppression of the wretched social gangrene
of mendicancy. Heretofore the crossing-sweeper
has bee❑ some sturdy squilid pauper extcting

[t is, in truth, a question of what was GOD'S law
'or the Jews. On that the Act of lIK.N.RY VIII.

builds. It declares that law the law of England

It does not rehearse the details of the Jewish law
in the matter, but refers to it as a whole. some
repealed Acts did, it is true, decide some of the

details, but even these acts always adverted to
the law of GOD as their basis. They are, however,

repealed. The Act we have referred to now
stands, and for 300 years has stood alone, as the
law on the subject. And it refers us, not to

blackmail by importunities addressed to the foot

ancient limo, not to the Articles of the Church of

passengers in our public thoroughfares. The

England, not to the degrees as laid down by civil

or ecclesiastical law, but to the law of God. This,
at such a time, was very remarkable, and it is
clear evidence that the Legislature intended that
no Xaglistiman should lie under any disability in
rcgard to matrimony not imposed on him by the
SuritEam RULER. With this liberty Churchmen
have long unjustly interfared, but Englishmen

copper doles hitherto yielded to these city free-
booters have gone, we all know that well enough,

either to the pewter counter of the gin-palace, or

to aid the revels at some beggar,' feast in a back
-lum fatn.liar t) the patterer and the
gaberlunzie. Now the case is, indeed, in

every respect very different. The halfpenny
liven at a street crossing swells a fund
dev,,t,:d to the moral and social advance-

._,
live not under the Popish Canons of the Church,
hut under the st..tuto law of the laud, and th:iy
iuteud now to claim their rights. Lord BURY'S
declaratory Act would be the shortest course, but
it is not the only one.
1 u.lt..,:.s.yarn wishedueiill t 0
00 sae ,
ihao:fatletltlhe speakeorfs
theon
(111e4ti°n ,us well they might. But how can
'et away from it, when a corrupt theology way;
the root of the whole mischief? The law% of
the instinct 3 of conscience, have no share
i
of the prohibition we repla-
nature,the fatherhood

rnent of a new generation. After nightfall the
.tile fellows are gathered together, and taught
*or an hour or two 'the rudiments of education.

All this appears to 'oil very admirable and very

deserving of encouragement. It is beginning
wisely at the beginning. By so tutoring these
otherwise abandoned and neglected children we
ttraining up to honesty and industry a race
(fa.. ',foul. d otherwise be doomed, like their fore-
til"N t° actuator an d
and, as an _ penury, and ignorance—
ble - consequence, in the vast

TEII SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING; - M-ARCIT 25, 1

lATEST NEWS.

[BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.]

PARIS, THURSDAY MORNING.
The M'oniteur of this morning contains the fol-

lowing paragraph :

" It is endeavoured by the evil disposed to excite
misgivings with respect to the application of the
law of public safety, by misrepresenting the inten-
tions of the Government. The culpableexpectations
which followed the attempt of the 14th Jamury,
imposed on the Government the duty of protecting
the public security, and for this has sufficed the
arrest of a few men notoriously dangerous. As
for those who remain within the limits of the law,
if they do not render them selves guilty by fresh
misdeeds, they have nothing to fear from the effects
of the law."

By the arrival of the Levant mail, at Mar-
seilles yesterday, we have received news from
Constantinople to the 14th.
Eight hundred Montenegrins have violated the
Austrian territory and penetrated the Herz-go-
vine. Forty of them entered Sutorina and have
burnt everything.

The lonian Press is again becoming insolent,
and encouraging the lonians to resistance. It
enumerates a catalogue of grievances against Eng-
land. The lonians, it sap, demand a national
Parliament, and will not permit themselves to be
merged in the English Parliament ! The relations
of society, they say, secure the domination of
England in Corfu, which should be declared a
colony.

In Malta the Press is engaged i❑ fierce disputes
respecting the religion and nationality of the
employes of the British Government.

BERNE, MARCH 24.

The Governmei t of Neufchatel has replied to
the Federal Council that it would rather there
should have been no French Consul at Ctraux•de
Fonds, but that nevertheless it defers on this
point to the decision of the Federal Council.

HAMBURG, MARCH 24.

The Danish Ministerial journal, the Dagbiad,
announces that the propositions which M. de
Bulow is commissioned to make at Frankfort con-
sist in submitting the first six paragraphs of the
Constitution to the States of Holstein, and to
secure a decision of the German difficulty by means
of a mixed ccmmission.

FRAN CE.
PARIS, WEDNESDAY.
Preparations are being made at the Palace of
St. Cloud for the reception of the Emperor and
Empress.
M. Boittelle, the new Prefect of Police, yester-
day received the commissaries of police and peace
officers. He afterwards visited M. Hebert, the
peace officer who wai wounded on the 14th Jan.,
and expressed a hope to witne,s a speedy recovery.
It appears that the announcement of Count Per-
signy's arrival in Paris was premature, as the count
intends remaining in London until his successor
shall have entered on his duties.

The Patrie, in commenting on the sentence pro-
nounced by default on the leaders of the conspiracy
at Genoa, exclaims :

" Does not the security afforded by England to
Alazzini, under cover of which he org inises his
plots, deserve to arouse the serious attention of
the English people ? Is it not this security which
gives strength to him, as well as to other dema-
gogues of his stamp ? Would they bring the same
perseverance to bear on their revolutionary at-
tempts, were the latter not surrounded with appa-
rent impunity ?'
The Union, contains the following reflections on
India❑ affairs :

" An insurrectien which has lasted nearly a year,
which has given way neither to tha prestige of
bravery, nor to the superiority of tactics, nor
before the presence of heroism, bears a strict re-
--4}l?Tien n ,„), ,f ;‘,
racterised by acts of atrocity, and by repris ,ls
savourfng of barbarism, and is consequently the
more implacable. If the rebels have been van-
quished in certain places, in others they remain
unsubdued. Tha populations is everywhere excited,
and it is with a feeling of alarm that the sua,dl
European armies march through districts which
are in appearance most submissive. The al& st
commanders hesitate, demand reinforcements, and
temporise. Every day brings fresh trials aiid
perils. The climate is a terrible ally of the revolt
and conspires against the troops of Queen Vic
toria. We are now approaching the murderou
heats which devour Europeans. That England,s
from a sentiment of nadonal pride, which we
appreciate and even covet, should carefully
conceal her sores, that she should bring the energy
of her unconquerable wdl and the vast resources of
her devotion to lead on the struggle, encourrers
our approval, for we are not of those who affect dis-
dain or anger towards these great efforts of a nazi
battling with adversity. But we place ab,)ve the
sentiments of impartiality, which command even
the esteem of rivals, a firm belief in the designs of
Providence and a respectful attention to the lessons
it affords. The events in India figure amongst
those warnings given by the Most High for the
benefit of nations."

Our contemporary then dwells on the iniquities
committed by the East India Company, and
grounds its remarks on a work on India published
by one William Bolts in 1772.
BOURSE, March 24.—The appointment of the
Duke of Malakoff as ambassador at the Court of
St. James's took speculators by surprise, and there
was at first some hesitation in the market ; prices,
however, afterwards rallied, and are now firm.
Large purchases have been effected in the Rente
and the principal secur.ties. The following were
the closing quotations :

4 per Cents
Do. end month

3 per Cent. ..... 69 65
Do. end month 69 75
Bank Shares

Credit Mobilier r 805
Do. Account BO7 50

Credit Foncier
Bolgian 41
Piedmontese (5)
Roman B9
Austrian
Spanish Threes
Home Debt 37i
SWAYS.

RAIL'
Orleans
Norther❑

Midi
Western 660
Strasburg
Grand Central
Sardinian
Austrian

New Ditto

Lyon and Alediterau. 832,
New Ditto 790
Geneva

MONTENEGRO.

The Agram. Gazette gives the following details of
the capture by the Montenegrins of two Turkish
boats, containing arms and ammunition, ou the
lake of Scutari, already mentioned :
" The Montenegrins having learnt on the 2d
March that Turkish barques containing ammuni-
tion had left Scutari for the island of Lesandro,
which is near the Montenegrin tet ritory, °nib irked
towards evening to the number of 50 in three
boats and rowed towards Lesandro. On arriving
Hear the island, they withdrew to a small hay,
where they concealed themselves. After a while
three of their number went form in a small boat
towards the Turkish vessel, and fired on them.
Thirty Turks in a boat pursued them. By this
ruse de guerre, the greater portion of the Turks
were separated from the island and were pursued
by the other Montenegrin boats. Thu Turkish ves-
sel defended itself, but was boarded by the Mon e-
negrins, and after a comb it the Turks wt re de-
feated ; the heads of 20 of them, taken ;prison, rs,
were cut off, and 1U ot,,ers were drowned. The
Montenegrins had 7 killed and 14 wound d. In
the bark were 20 quintals of gunpowder, a great
quantity of balls, and three shells."