The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-28 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.-SUN OYFICZ, JULY 28.

THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADS.
79—highest since noon yesterday.
69—lowest this morning and during the night.
77—this day at noon.
BAROMETER-30'18.
Wm , Southerly, inclining to West ; rather fresh, with
dull cloudy weather, and close.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tuis DAY.—Morning, Oh. Om.—Afternoon, 12h. 22m.
To-Monatow-Morning, 12h. 53m.—Afternoon, lh. 22m.

According to the announcement in the Moni-
teur of this morning, there is to be a reduction
both in the French army and navy with the least
possible delay. Good, very good, if true. But why
is all this compound reduction ? Is lit a blind
to back up the advic3 of the Moniteur the other
day that there was no necessity for the English to
increase their armaments in such red-hot haste—
or is it a necessity to make some show of modera-
tion in compliment or in deference to our assumed
disbelief in the sincerity of our gallant neighbours ?
Take it as we may, there is no question that the
position of neutrality declared by England,
and hitherto so deliberately acted upon, has
quickened the sensibility of NAPOLEON, who
now finds that our national distrust is not to be
trifled with. This apparent or professed reduction
of the Army and Navy comes with a strange look
at the very moment when the present state of
Europe is taken into account. The Italian war
is not ended, if we may judge by the state of irrita-
tion so prevalent throughout Italy. Besides—the
Emperor of the FRENCH has his army so com-
pletely in hand that he might affect to
disband one-half to-morrow, and recal them
again in a week. As for the navy,
-why, the ships are even now all but ready, and we
know that it is only to sound the bugle and the
conscription will pour in its myriads in a week !
Still, let us be thankful that our determination
to be " all right" in case of any unprovoked enter-
prise on the part of our neighbours, has brought the
Emperor NAPOLEON to respect our position, and
by appearing to pay homage to public opinion he
has so far shown that our friendship is better than
our indifference. We wish the French people well,
but they will believe us when we tell them that we
do not love our own independence the less.

Another good round sum—amounting this time
to very nearly £l6,ooo—the House of Commons
voted last night in Committee of Supply for the
current year's expenses of the National Gallery.
Not however until after there had been two divi-
sions—one upon a very moderate, the other what
we can only rightly designate a very " slashing"
amendment. The former of those two amendments
—defeated by a clear majority of 131 in a com-
mittee of 211, as many as 171 having voted against,
and as few as 40 in favour of the• proposition—we
owe to the rational and energetic opposition to the
mismanagement of our national art collection, the
resolute and unflinching opposition still persevered
in to the very last by the hon. gentleman,
the member for Brighton ! " Than whom"—and
we commend Mr. STIRLING'S attention particularly
to this emphatic expression of opinion volunteered
last evening by the Right Hon. the CHANCELLOR
of the EXCIIEQUER—" Than whom, said Mr. GLAD-

STONE, no one was more competent, in his opinion,
to deal with the subject before the Committee." That,
recollect, was the volunteered estimate of Mr.
CONINGIIAM'S qualifications as an art-critic, an
estimate of his abilities spontaneously offered yes-
terday to the House when in Committee by no
less dispassionate and unthoritative a witness than
the Chancellor of her MAJESTY'S Exchequer.
The hon. gentleman the member for Perthshire
thinks differently upon the matter however a nd takes
especially good care moreover to tell the house he
does so. Yet the manner in which Mr. STIRLING
pronounces his opinion of the powers (or rather,
according to his view we should say perhaps, the
weakness) as an art-critic of Mr. CONINGRAM,
evidences in every syllable such uncalled-for acer-
bity, and petulance, and irritation—that we find
ourselves irresistibly reminded at the close of the
hon. member's remarks, of an extremely old pro-
verb, common, we should imagine to many coun-
try's—a proverb which runs thus, " Two of a
tra,de,can never agree," in our own homely ver-
tiuseidar. Mr. STIRLING talks of course quite ex
oatl4lra. That is we may presume upon the
0
strength of his " Annals of the Artists of Spain."
And he appears to be particularly wroth that the
hon. member for Brighton should presume for an
instant to have anv opinions at all upon art—Mr.
CONINGIIAM, forsooth, being only a pamphleteer
The hon. member," .aid Mr. STIRLING, in the
course of his ill-tempered observations last evening,
" the hon. me; caber had indeed published a
pamphlet
On the subject, but so far as he (Mr. STIRLING)
could see, that pamphlet, as well as the speeches of
the hon. gentloman, was made up almost entirely
of assertions." Really, so far as we can see, Mr.
STIRLING'S own remarks yesterday in committee
might be me ,st accurately described in that very same

identical phrase—they were, beyond all manner
of doubt, from first to last, made up entirely of asser-
tions, and as it appears to us, moreover, of extremely
loose, and even it might be added of extremely
ridiculous assertions. According to Mr. STIRLING,
for example, in the matter of that Holbein portrait,
Sir CHARLES EASTLAKE stands acquitted, if we
are to folllow the preposterous logic of the member
for Perthshire, precisely because Sir CHARLES
EASTLAKE " had himself the candour to confess that
he had been wrong in purchasing it as a genuine
picture." A mode of reasoning, surely, to say the
least of it, absolutely, in its way, quite ludicrous.
As to the pictures of the Spanish school, which had
been purchased for the National Gallery, under
Sir CHARLES EASTLAKE'S management, or as we
should always prefer to call it, mismanage-
ment pictures which the member for Perth-
shire took occasion last evening to remind the
house, then in Committee of Supply, "it was
the opinion of the honourable gentleman (Mr.
CONINGHAM) were altogether unworthy of
that institution"—Mr. STIRLING went on imme-
diately to add—" But upon that point he begged
leave to differ from the hon. gentleman, and to
express his belief that those pictures were highly
creditable to the taste of those by whom they were
bought." After which oracular opinion, of course
nothing further remains to be said upon the mat-
ter. It is the author of the " Annals of the
Artists of Spain" who has said it—not one of
your mere art pamphleteers. [Though for that
matter, by the way, it would be well
for Mr. STIRLING'S modesty in future, if the hon.
gentleman would bear in mind that the greatest of
all the art critics of our day, and—making allow-
ance for a few whimsies and crochets of his own—
one of the greatest art critics that has ever lived,
JOHN RUSKIN, the Oxford Graduate, is now, year
after year vindicating a peculiar right to that very
title as one of his most honourable designations,
that of an art pamphleteer 0 But Mr. STIRLING,
as we have seen, pronounces (in opposition to
Mr. CONINGHAM) such and such pictures
purchased for the Natianal Gallery at the instance,
or at any rate, with the consent of Sir
CHARLES EASTLAKE—to be " highly creditable."
Wherefore, of course, they are highly creditable.
Mr. STIRLING has said it, and we must accept as
meekly, as thankfully as may be, Mr. STIRLING'S
authoritative pronunciamento ! Mr. STIRLING is
necessarily right in his opinion. Mr. CONING-
HAM is necessarily wrong in his opinion. Yet the
very man who talks in this haughty, arrogant,
dictatorial tone, had the coolness only a few
minutes previously to remark with a sneer of Mr.
CONINGHAM —" He condemned the purchases
which had been made for the National Gallery,
but something more than mere assertion was re-
quired to demonstrate the justice of that condem-
nation." Surely his words may be echoed back
upon him—surely we may say en revanche to
himself, that something more than mere assertion
is required to demonstrate the justice of his appro-
bation

It might naturally be supposed from the acri-
mony of the opposition made by the member for
Perthshire to Mr. CONINGHAM'S amendment, that
that amendment was characterised is some way or
another by remarkable extravagance. Yet the
member for Brighton, it will be found, merely
proposed that the decision arrived at last ses-
sion by the House of Commons—namely, that
the absurd item to defray the charge for a
travelling agent should be struck out of the esti-
mates—should not be evaded this session by the
surreptitious insinuation of the same charge in
another way. The amendment, in fact, moved by
the member for Brighton was couched in these
simple words :—" That the vote for the National
Gallery be reduced by £650 charged as travelling
expenses." It was not therefore a very monstrous
proposition that a trifling item like this
one of £650 should be struck out of a " little bill "
amounting in all to the tolerable sum total of
£15,985. Supposing the proposition had passed in
Committee, there would still have been voted
£15,335 for the National Gallery. But no—the
House of Commons, after deciding in 1858 that we
should no longer have to pay the expenses of a
travelling agent like Herr MUNDLER, or Herr
MUDDLER, or Herr BUNGLER, or however else he
may be designated—consistently rejects Mr. CO-
NINGHAM'S proposition in 1859 that they should ad-
here by that decision—and resolves by a clear
majority of 131 in a houso of 211 that £650 shall
be paid for travelling expenses, and that the vote
shall pass undiminished to the full tune of £15,985.
Not, however, until another division has been taken
—this time upon the bold and sweeping proposition
of the member for North Warwickshire—that that
total should be at once reduced by no less an
amount than £lO,OOO. The clear majority upon
this division, it is worth observing, had dwindled
down to seventy-two, in a house of 200-64 voting
in favour of and 136 against Mr. SPOONER'S
amendment. Here, again, as in almost every other
instance—the old Whig consolation is held out to us
ostentatiously. According to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, " next year" we may have an oppor-
tunity for improvement. It is the old " put off,''
no doubt of it—but still really and truly it does so
happen that, next year, we shall have such an op-
portunity. The Treasury minute having been
arranged for five years in 1855—it follows that in
1860 the whole subject must come again under the
consideration of Parliament. Then, obviously, will
be an opportunity—and what is more, a very excel-
lent opportunity.

" Die game" should be Mr. NEWDEGATE'S
motto. It required, certainly,no little assurance to
come forward in the face of a house which, by the
large majority of 73, following upon a majority as
large in the previous session, had doomed Church-
rates to die, and propose to restore them in another
form. Indeed, hardly in another form ; for there
was to be a rate still—a rate collected with the
county rate, and which did not depend on the will of
the parishioners. He accepted, he said, the deci.
sion of the house that Church-rates should be
abolished, and incontinently proposed that it should
levy a Church-rate which no Dissenter could evade.
Wherever for seven years the rate had not ceased
to be collected, he proposed to levy a rate of 2d. in
the pound on the property, to be paid by the occu-
pier, who should be entitled to deduct it from the
rent. The proceeds were to be entrusted to the
care of the Governors of Queen ANNE'S Bounty.
and many complex provisions were to be framed
for the collection and administration of the rate.
The sum of all, however, was a rate on property
generally, with the exception mentioned, and a rate
fixed in amount by Act of Parliament for ever !

Mr. NEWDEGATE doubtless thinks himself, like
the followers of GEORGE FOX, " raised up to bear
a testimony," only one directly the opposite of
theirs. GEORGE and his friends " testified" against
all ecclesiastical taxes when it seemed ashopeless to
abolish them as it would have been to abolish the
Constitution. blr. NEWDEGATE and his disciples
" testify" in favour of ecclesiastical taxes, even to
the most odious of them, and that at a time when
there is a decided majority for abolition. In some
respects, Mr. NEWDEGATE'S martyrdom is certainly
a much more pleasant one than the old Quaker's.

He has not to go to prison for upholding Church-
rates, as Fox had for denouncing them ; we may
even venture to question whether he would pre-
serve them at such a personal cost. But he has to
face the infliction of certain defeat ; he has to act
the part of folly, by gratuitously wasting the time
of the House of Commons in the last week of July
and it requires somewhat of the spirit of martyrdom
to stand up thus before such an assembly, and bid
it " write him down bore." Possibly, however, Mr.
NEWDEGATE had nothing to overcome. Bigotry
has little sensation. It could walk, like the Esqui-
maux, on broken glass, and not wince, because it
felt nothing. " Doing God—that is its God—ser-
vice," is a shield and armour against all the ridicule
of common sense ; and we have little doubt that a
minority of 92 did not trouble Mr. NEWDEGATE at
all: probably he regarded it as one of his title-
deeds to honour in that happy place where Church-
rates are never refused, because they are never
asked.

Mr. WALPOLE more modestly asked, for the land-
lords, power to charge their estates voluntarily with
a sum equal to the present amount of Church-rate
paid by their occupiers. Mr. NEWDEGATE is much
bolder. He would fix on them, whether they
liked or not, a tax for all generations ; their only
hope of relief to be a Landlord Church•rate
Abolition movement. It seems wonderful he
could, after Mr. WALPOLE'S moderate proposal and
its rejection, and after the affirmation, so emphati-
cally, of Sir JOHN TRELAWNY'S thoroughgoing
bill—that he could have the audacity to offer his
resolution to the House. He got, indeed, 99 sup-
porters. We question whether he would have got
half-a-dozen, had they not been perfectly sure of
being outvoted. The " Noes," Mr. DISRAELI him-
self among them, we are pretty confident, went
together into the lobby in exemplification of Mr.
DISRAELI'S recent and eloquent defence of " party"
Government. Mr. NEWDEGATE belonged to the
party. He must be encouraged when encourage-
ment could do no harm ; but we feel as certain as
we can be of anything of such a kind, that Mr.
DISRAELI would never, in a Government, lend his
sanction to anything like a permanent Church-
rate on property, and one placed beyond the con-
trol of the ratepayers.

As if Mr. NEWDEGATE had not exhibited
enough of folly on the subject, Mr. CROSS must
try how time could be wasted by a factious
amendment in committee, and he succeeded in
the commendable object of talking against time.
He merely revived some of the old exploded schemes
for enabling dissenters to " sign off," and for
limiting the purposes to which Church-rates may
be applied. Of course, these antiquated crotchets
will be kicked out with the contempt they de-
serve, when the talkers for talking's sake will
allow a division to be taken, which we hope the
good sense of the leaders of the Opposition will
compel their followers to submit to, soon. Mr.
DISRAELI will not allow his " party" to disgrace
itself by merely vulgar obstructive tactics. He
will teach them the difference between party, and
faction.

The question ought now to be considered settled.
The Select Committee of the House of Lords is
like the two proposals adverted to, a mere factions
trick of the Evangelical Duke to gain time. He
knows, and we all know, all that can be known
about Church-rates. The Lords will be foolish
indeed if they allow the Church-rate Saints among
them to lead them into another Jew Bill contest
with the Commons. This is a money question.
The Commons, to whom such questions fairly
belong, have decided by repeated majorities, that
the money shall no longer be raised compulsorily.
It is unconstitutional even for the Lords to resist
on such a question. They have not even the pre-
text that it is the imposition of any new tax by
which they as landlords are affected. They will
be relieved, if they please, not taxed. In fact they,
and all good Churchmen, will be left to their own
generosity and liberality, which will most certainly
provide ten times the amount now raised by rates.
The country is impatient for a settlement; the
House of Commons shares its impatience —it
has told the Lords so again and again, and it is
now time for the Peers to do what they must do
soon, whether they will or not.

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THE SUN.
THURSDAY, JULY 28, 1859.