The Sun.
London, England, 1835-03-06 00:00:00

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LONDON,
FRIDAY EVENING, MARCH 6, 1333.

The Reform of the Irish Church is a question to
the settlement of which the country is now looking
forward with intense anxiety. That the Ministerial
Measure will be unsatisfactory, not only to the Irish
people, but to the whole empire, may be safely pre-
dicted. Its plan is essentially defective—its funda-
mental principle is wrong—directly opposed to the
principle of justice-Land, what is still more fatal to a
Legislative enactment, it outrages, and sets at defiance
the feelings and opinions of the people. It is ra-
ther
_too late in the day for legislation of this
description. Those who make laws in the nine-
teenth century,'must not deem it beneath
their dignity to look to the circumstances and
consult the feelings of those who are to obey them.:
Just notions of civil and religious liberty'iarp too widely
spread and too siceply rooted for the Church of Eng-
land to lord it over the consciences of men, as she did
in her high and palmy state, when she wielded the
whole power of the State, and could give cruel effect
to her intolerant: spirit. But . power abused seldom
escapes punishment. Sooner or later the " oppres-
sor's wrongs" recoil upon his own head.

The fiery trial which the Church of England is
now undergoing mar be considered as a signal instance
of that retributive discipline with which it would seem
to be the intention of Providence that communities, as

well as individuals, should be visited. She is now reaping

the bitter fruits of her own former doings—the effects of
'her unholy Nvai fare against liberty of conscience in the
16th and tith centuries. The people of Scotland
resisted her tyranny to the death. They who had
shaken off their allegiance to the Roman Pontiff
scorned to bend their necks to the yoke of the Arch-
bishop of CANTERBURY. They flung the service-
book in his face—took to their good broad-swords--

and successfully asserted their right to choose their own
religion, holding forth to the world a memorable exam-
ple—oh, that Rulers' would profit by the lesson !—of
the utter powerlessness of all human efforts to subdue
the immortal mind of man. The English Dissenters,
differently situated from their brethren in Scotland,
pursued a different course. They opposed to the fury
of their persecutors a more passive, hnt not less deter-
mined and effectual resistance.

The Act of Uniformity—that Act of cruel and in-
fatuated policy by which the Church of England
sowed the seeds of her own dissolution—compelled
upwards of two thousand of her ablest and most
popular ministers to quit her communion, and spread
the principles and the practice of, dissent, through-.
out the length and breadth of the land. Those
illustrious confessors, who in sacrificing every
worldly' constderation at the call of duty and con-
science, bore a noble testimony to the in nonce of the
Christian Faith, did think their pastoral connection

with their flocks severed by the act which E. Y. eluded
them from the communion of the Church of England.
In spite of the severest penal statutes that could be
enacted, and in defiance of all the cruelty with which
these statutes were enforced, the ejected Ministers
gathered congregations everywhere, and from that time

to the present, dissent has continued to grow and
flourish, till her wide spreading branches have over-
shadowed and threaten to extinguish the Church.

The. Marquis of WESTMINSTER has, for the pre-
sent, postponed his promised motion with respect to
the Peers voting by proxy. We trust, when the fitting
time shall arrive, his Lordship will bring the subject
before the attention of the House, that this blot upon

the character of a deliberative assembly may be wiped
away. That a legislator should have the power of
influencing a decision upon questions, the most mo-
mentous, without having heard one syllable in favour
of, or adverse to, the points mooted, is both absurd
and unjust : with as much propriety may eleven ab-
sent jurors have the power of placing proxy verdicts
in the hands of a twelfth, to decide upon the guilt or
innocence of an accused person, for an offence involv-
ing liberty or life. The system cannot even be justi-
fied on the ground of hereditary wisdom ; for, even
among Peers, differences of opinion will prevail. The
possession of such a power is an insult to the con-
science, and a disgrace to the intelligence of the age.

Among •the many measures of reform which must
of necessity soon engage the attention of the legisla-.
titre, it is to be hoped that Police. office law will not be
one of the last or least. The instances of seeming
tyranny which are continually recorded, arising either
from personal inclination or legal compulsion—the
inadequacy or the misapplication of the powers vested
in the 31agiereates—and the disproportioned inflictions
that are allotted to offenders from the greatest to the
smallest degree of delinquency—require an extensive
modification of the judicature of these petty Courts,
and some abridgment of the power of those who therein
dispense the laws..
The apparent arrogance which is every now and then
exhibited by some of their Worshipit—if the reported
details are to be credited, and we have reason to infer
their'seneral accuracy—is extremely offensive and in-
jurious. We are very willing to concede that some
allowanee.ought to be made on this account for persons
fulfilling duties that bring them in daily contact with
all that is brutal, criminal, and debased, in human nature,
of both sexes and every age. Haughty and imperative
manners are perhaps unconsciously imbibed. Yet it
behoves every man exercising judicial functions to
guard against these outbreaks of intemperateness, for
they tend not only to lower him personally in public
estimation, but to bring reproach upon the Court in
which he officiates, and upon the laws he is appointed
to administer.

With respect to the powers granted to Police-office
Magistrates they are manifestly not adapted to the
demands for public protection, and to the just punish-
ment of individual delinquency. The laws ap-
pear, in repeated instances, to be interpreted by
these officers, rather according to the letter than
the spirit of their framing. Now if a proper surveil-
lance were exercised over magisterial authority, they
might be vary safely invested with a much larger,
amount of discretionary power than they at• present
tfian
rous to The punishments frequently awarded
to trivial ()Tenders, and the immunities, allowed under
some legal evasion to the most depraved criminals, do
not always comport with strict justice. The act, con-
sidered abstractedly, and not the animus of the law-
breaker, appears to regulate the measure of penal in-
flictions in frequent instances. The ruffian who all
but fatally maltreats a passenger is perhaps sent to a
tread-mill for three months, while the destitute crea-
ture, who, without the means of procuring food or
shelter, is found sleeping under a hedge, is sentenced
to a month's punishment .at the same prison for the
crime of vagabond poverty. Contrast the offences in
degree of guilt, and by what equitable process shall
we discover the rule of penal proportion ? Such may
be the law, but such is not justice !

The, case of those miscreants to whose nefarious
practices the death of the poor girl at the Hospital 'a
short time since was solely attributable, is a disgrace
either to the laws of the country, or to the restrictions
which confined the Magistrate's power; and may be
adduced as one of the numerous instances wherein the
law has been defective, or the Magistrate's influence
unjustly circumscribed. Arbitrary power is only dan-
gerous where it is irresponsible; and under proper
supervision, the Magistrate might be safely armed with
an authority to inflict upon such atrocious criminals
that punishment which the judgment of every morel
heart would award.

We repeat that Police-office law, and the manner of
its dispensation, require instant revision ; and we invite
the services of some active and intelligetit Member of
Parliament in effecting so des cable a reform.

At a Meeting of the Marylebone Literary and
Scientific Institution, Which was. held on Wednesday
last at the Lecture Room in Edward-street, Lord
BROUGHAM OVIIO was in the chair) in the course of
a sagacious and convincing speech, in which he gave.
a history of the rise and progress of Scientific
Instita-
tions in England, observed, " I have often been told
that I went about voluntarily attending meetings of
the public, and that I was wrong in doing so. This
is not the case ; the story of my attending meetings
voluntarily, is a positive fiction. I have but attended
two of. my own accord—one, for the purpose of
meeting my friend, Earl GREY, •at Edinburgh, and
the other to meet Mr. BANNERMAN, at Aberdeen.
It has happened that in various towns the people
have assembled-whom I had served, by contributing
to afford them freedom of election, and I could not
refuse to acknowledge them, when fatigue would have
impelled me to decline ; but I have come here volun-
tarily to-day; and any man that pleases, may
stigmatize the act as unworthy." Lord BROUGHAM
has here condescended to refute calumnies which
are unworthy of. the slightest notiee ; and to proffer
explanations where none were necessary. None but
the upstarts, and would-be aristocrats of society, who
hold all communication with the people as throwing
a slur on their own doubtful pretensions, imagine for
an instant that his Lordship was " Wrong," 'in proving
that, though a peer of the realm, he was not
unmindful of the claims that the untitled had
upon his attention. Hie free and repeated
communications with all classes, to far from
calling for an apology or an explanation, re-
dound to his credit as a philosopher and a British
nobleman. He is more bound to the people than he •
can ever -be to the Aristocracy. It is not as the
possessor of a title, but as the poor man's friend, that