The Sun.
London, England, 1867-05-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TimEs.—Mr. Mill last night proposed that the
House of Commons should legislate on a subject of
great importance. The metropolis of England pre-
sents, perhaps, the greatest anomaly in this country
of anomalies. It is the hugest assemblage of houses
on earth, a region covered with buildings, the limits
of which no one can define. It is made up of many
towns; it has a great commercial emporium, a port
reaching far down the river, several manufacturing
suburbs, while the western district of it is the seat
of Government, and the residence of the wealthiest
aristocracy and middle class in the world. By
means of various Acts of Parliament this wonderful
collection of neighbourhoods has been united for
certain purposes, such as public works, police, and
Poor-law administration. But it is not the less an.

ill-arranged, incongruous mass, and a fortuitong
concourse of tenements, without plan or unity in its
creation, and without any due superintendence after
it has come into existence. Nobody, as far as we
have ever been able to ascertain, knows much about
the government of London and we doubt whether
there are ten men in the ;louse of Commons who
can tell what are its component parts, how they are
administered, what are their resources, and what
are the requirements of their inhabitants. Yet in
the midst of this vast shapeless miss there is a mu-
nicipality of great antiquity and authority, vast
wealth, and a reputation reaching to the ends of the
earth. The Prefect of the Seine, who administers
the whole of Paris, and its suburbs, is hardly a
greater man in the eyes of his countrymen than our
Lord Mayor, the civic potentate who can close a
gate in the face of the Sovereign of England, and
at whose banquets princes are entertained as
guests. The City Corporation and the City Com-
panies are bodies which in position and in wealth are
worth the capital of a great kingdom. They exer-
cise, too, a certain influence, and amid all the changes
of politics and commerce they maintain, chiefly by
their traditional relations with the State, a position
which no one can despise. But when we are asked
concerning their usefulness it is difficult to reply.
To a stranger it must be explained that the scarlet-
cloaked Lord Mayor of London and these violet-
gowned Aldermen do not represent London at all,
in the sense in which he understands it. The tena-
city of English people in clinging to the material
forms of things after the life has passed out of them
is ahnost ludicrously exhibited in the maintenance
of the Corporation of the City of London. This
city, the stranger will have to be informed, is the
city of the Middle Ages, and consists of a little dis-
trict in the neighbourhood of the old fortress and
the old cathedral, with sundry outlying pieces of
ground that were dependent on it. For generations
it has not been extended, though the great capital
which takes its popular name from this ancient
nucleus has been growing with the rapidity of a
Transatlantic settlement. Thus, the City of Lon-
don, with its imposing corporation and its abundant
possessions, contains but a thirtieth part of the
whole population of the metropolis, and an area
which is even less in proportion. The rest of the
capital has no share in the advantages which this
time-honoured organisation could confer. West-
minster and Southwark have some faint traces of
corporate life ; but the rest of London, containing
some of its richest and most splendid districts,
is simply left to the old parochial system,
which grew up when they were meadows
and gardens. The Vestry is the representative
of the householders in the wealthiest and best-
built districts of London. The rector takes the
chair, churchwardens attend, and the business of
what is really " no mean city" is transacted pre-
cisely as if it were a rural parish in Dorsetshire.
The consequence is that London is, beyond dis-
pute, worse administered than the capitals of far
less wealthy and enterprising States. There is a
general indifference about its affairs, an indifference
the result of which is seen in hideous public build-
ings, in a prevailing slovenliness and want of taste,
and sometimes in real neglect of cleanlineSs. Had it
not been for recent legislation, which has given some
general power to various officers and boards, the
evils of such a civic anarchy would be intolerable.
Mr. Mill now comes forward and proposes to legis-
late in a comprehensive manner on the subject. As
we are not yet aware of the details of his plan, we
are unable to pronounce a definite opinion on it ;
but certainly the objects he has in view are most
desirable, and the general tenour of his proposal is
reasonable. He proposes, so far as we understand,
to establish a central Federal Municipality for
the whole metropolis. This, without destroying
the traditional City, would, we presume, extend
the Corporation to the whole metropolis, so that
there might be one person chosen by the inhabi-
tants of London who should be its real chief and
representative, and others who might speak for the
various districts in any question of general in-
terest-. The only objection to such a scheme
that we have ever heard is that such a Cor-
poration would be too powerful; that a Lord
Mayor who ruled three millions of citizens would
be too independent a potentate to be dealt with by
the Home Secretary, and that his Common Council,
or whatever his civic Parliament might be called,
would in London matters trench on the authority of
the House of Commons. Even if we were to admit
any force in this argument, yet it should not
suffice to deter Parliament from endowing the
metropolis with so powerful an instrument for
energetic and combined action; since if the func-
tions of any such federation were strictly defined
it might safely receive power to do many things to
which Parliament has not time to attend, and
which official boards and local vestries do very in-
efficiently. The second proposal of Mr. Mill, to
which he asked the assent of the House of Com-
mons yesterday evening, is the establishment of
Municipal Corporations conterminous with the me-
tropolitan boroughs. There are many things which
these communities, equal to the populations of large
continental cities, can do better by local action than
in concert with the rest of the metropolis. But on
the relations between this scheme and that of a fede-
ral municipality we need say nothing until Mr. Mill
produces his bill. No doubt Mr. Ayrton and his
committee will be able to give the country much in-
formation on this subject, and anything that may be
unsound in the projected measures will be keenly
criticised. But there will be a general satisfaction
that the subject has been taken up by one compe-
tent to treat it, and we hope the session will not
poss away without a real effort to adapt the insti-
tutions of this neglected capital to the requirements
of the time. The task is, no doubt, difficult, for
there are vested rights and inveterate prejudices
against the Reformers ; but the necessity is urgent,
and with energy they may be overcome.
THE 44 IVEST3IINSTER GAZETTE" ON CHURCH OF
ENGLAND AND COLONIAL PROTESTANT CHURCHES.
—Unity and Universality are the essential charac-
teristics of the Catholic Church. Spread over the
various parts of the globe, among the most re-
mote nations and tribes, speaking various tongues,
it yet retains its perfect corporate unity under
one common head and under one supreme juris-
diction. If, in the most distant diocese, a suffra-
gan bishop were to teach false doctrine, a
complaint would lie against him at Rome, and,
on the sentence being published by Rome, the
dispute would be ended, the suffragan bishop
would have to submit, or else would be con-
demned as a schismatic. In striking contrast to
this corporate unity of the Catholic Church, and
to this supreme jurisdiction of the Pope, is the
local character of the Protestant Churches, and
the utter absence, as a necessary consequence, of
a supreme, universal authority. No such autho-
rity exists; each Church is isolated. The Royal
Supremacy does not extend beyond the realm ; it
is limited to the United Churches of England and
Ireland. The Anglican Church is independent
of
,any control outside its own local limits. The
same isolation and independence exists in the Pro-
testant Churches in the Colonies ; they are not
members of the Church of- England, they are not
of the same body, not under the same supremacy.
The highest ecclesiastical tribunal of this country
has decided that they are voluntary associations on
the same footing as the Dissenting bodies around
them. The corporate unity of the Anglican
Church, even such as it is, does not exist outside
the narrow boundaries of England and Irelarid.
The principle of Protestantism, even under its
least repulsive form, is isolation, as that of Catho-
licism is universality. Bence the spasmodic
struggles—how vain we all know—of the advanced
sections of the Anglican Establishment towards
unity, if not with Rome, at least with the Greek
Church. This organic disunion of Protestant
Episcopalian Churches has been brought once more
before public notice, by the speeches made at the
meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts, held last week, at St.
James's Hall, under the presidency of the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. Mr. Gladstone took a pro-
minent part at this meeting, and in alluding to
the position of the Colonial Churches since the de-
cision of the Privy Council—that they were not a
part of the Church of England, but mere voluntary
associations— he confessed, " with some degree of
pain, that there was some want of faith in those
fears, which we might have been apt more or less
to harbour, that when once the assistance and con-
trol of the State was in some degree withdrawn
from the Colonial Churches, the effect would be a
tendency to diverge from one another, and from
the Church of England." However, Mr. Glad-
stone was hopeful and confident that such diver-
gences would not take place. He put the best
face on the matter ; and, since there could not be
organic union, he was fain to content himself with
full and complete communion. But how long is
this full and complete communion likely to last,