The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-18 00:00:00

here.

THIS DAY'S SHIPPIN G.

LONDON, Nov. 18.—Wind this day at noon—North-
Westerly ; moderate breeze and dull weather, with sharp
frost.

CLYDE, Nov. 16 —Wind N.W—Arrived—Claubel,
from Demerara. Sailed—Young American, for Duneden,
N.Z.

QUEENSTOWN, Nov. 18.—Arrived—Africa, steamer,
from New4York. •
PonTsmouTrr, Nov. 17.—Wind N.W.—Sailed—Cathe-
rine, for Hayti.
PLYMOUTH, Nov. 17.—Wind N.W.—Sailed—Octavia,
for Madras.

FALMOUTH, Nov. 17.—Wind N.—Arrived—Mary Ann,
from Rio Janeiro.

GRIMSBY, Nov. 17.—Wind N.W.—Arrived—Christo-
bel, from Sunderland for the Cape of Good Hope, assisted
in by a smack, with loss of foretopmast, maintopgallant,
and jibboom,

(EY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.)
SOUTHAMPTON, Monday Morning.
Arrived—Wild Duck, from Patras; Audenira, from
Dublin.

Sailed—Weser, for Lanelly ; Witch, for Launceston.
(BY SUBMARINE AND MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.)

GRAVESEND, Monday Morning.
Arrived, Nov. 17—Askur, from Dram ; Lord Stanley,
from Sonnesund •, Normandie, from Dunkirk ; James
Ronnie and Carl Albert, from Konigsberg ;,Angeline, from
Riga; Planet, from Hamburg.
Arrived, Nov. 18—Taurus, from Havre ; Gipsy, from
Rotterdam; Senator, from Gottenborg ; Prevent, from
Aalborg.
Sailed,;Nov. 18—Albion, steamer, for Boulogne.
DEAL, Monday Morning.
Anchored—Harrington, for Algoa Bay; Vision, for
Now York—both from London.

THE WEATHER.

METEOROLOGICAL REPORTS.

This Day,
etween 8 and B. E. M. D. F. C. I. S.
9 a.m.
- — —
Nairn 3O/0 35 33 5.W.3 8 o. 3
Aberdeen 12022 33 31 W. 3 1 b. 4
Leith
Berwick 3O/6 33 31
I W. 2 5 .b. 2
A rdrossan , 2013 33 31 E, 1 8 f. 1
Portrosh
Shields
Galway 30.41 33 32 Calm 0 3 c. 1
Scarborough 2021 34 32 W. 1 1 b. 2
Liverpool
Valentin 36.45 35 34 S.W, 1 4 b. 2
Queenstown 30'44 36 35 N.W. 3 4 o. 11
Yarmouth 3Ol 0 4 30 N.W. 4 rn. 4
London 3013 38 N. N.W. 1 0 f. 0
Dover 3016 22 31 N. W. 4 1 h. 3
Portsmouth 30.30 32 31 N. 3 6 0. 2
Portland
Plymouth
l'enzance
ERPLANATION.—B. Barometer, corrected and reduced
... Q., ~,-,. ..,- ~,,..n cn,n lovel: each 10 feet of vertical rise

EXPLANATION.—B. Barometer, corrected and reduced
M 32 deg at mean sea level k each 10 feet of vertical rise
causing about 1-100th of an inch diminution, and each 10
deg above 32 deg causing nearly 3-100ths increase. B.
Exposed thertnoffieter in shade. M. Moistened bulb (for
evaporation and dew-point). D. Direction of wind (true--
not magnetic).
.1". Force (1 to 12—estimated). C. Cloud
(1 to 9). I. Initials :—b , blue sky; c., clouds (detached) •
fog. ; h., hail ; I.t lightning ; m., misty (hazy) ; 0.,
overcast (dull) ; r., rain; s., snow; t., thunder. A letter
repeated augments—thus, r.r., much rain. S. Sea disturb-
ance (1 to 9).

THE MURDER OF THE GAMEKEEPER NEAR
OTLEY.—Yesterday morning, Waller, the desperate poacher
for whose apprehension a reward of £75 was offered for
murdering Smith a gamekeeper, near Bingley, was appre-
hended in a barn about two miles from the scene of the
tragedy. He was concealed in the straw, and was haggard
in the extreme.

FLOOD IN THE NORTH RIDING.—On Friday the
rivers Rye and Derwent overflowed their banks, and for
many miles laid the land on each side under water. From
Helmsley, in Ryedale, to Ayton, in the Derwent Valley,
the rivers form a vast lake, and in the low-lying districts,
especially about Newsham Ry ton, and Yed Ingham,
the roads are in some places three feet deep in water. On
Friday night the waters were still rising, but the weather
wm Ozer,

TO THE CLERGY.

A FEW PLAIN WORDS ON THE CHURIH-RATE
QUESTION.

You, or most of you, think it right, as I may pre-
sume from your proceedings in vestry, to uphold
Church rates and to compel Dissenters to pay them.
You think it, perhaps, not only right, but of posi-
tive advantage to the Church, to keep this obnoxious
impost alive. I venture most respectfully to tell
you that it is neither right nor to your advantage so
to act. And I invite you to a brief and friendly
discussion on the subject.
Let us begin at the beginning. What is " the
Church 9" Ido not mean the Church of England,
We will have no confusion in terms. What is " the
Church" which existed before England was known
It comprises, as you know, all everywhere, Dissen-
ters as well as Churchmen, who heartily accept
the great truths of Christianity. This is the
Catholic Church, or Church universal. A
particular Church is a section of this comprehen-
sive Church, and the rightful members of every par-
ticular Church are members of the great universal
Church. Whether a man worships in a "steeple-
house" or a "conventicle"—in a barn or a cottage
—if only he does worship Him to whom worship is
due, he belongs to "the Church"—to that Church
which is older than the Church of England, and of
a much broader and firmer foundation—to that
Church which recognises a truth which one of the
Fathers asserted concerning it, in its particular
form, " ybi tres mat, icclesia est, licet 1(10."

You Church-of-England clergymen claim for your
limited Church the rights and prerogatives of an
only and exclusive Church. You map out all Eng-
land into parishes, ignore other members of " the
Church" who do not belong to your Church, and
assume the authority of acting in all things as if
the Church of England were co-extensive' and in-
deed identical, with the aforesaid Church of the
broad and firm foundation, which we call the Ca-
tholic Church, or the Church universal. If this be
a mistake on your pa. t, it is a most unreasonable
one. if not a mistake, it is an attempt at deception.
Now, every man has a right, and an equal right
with all others, to worship God freely according to
his conscience. No man comes into the world with
a higher right in this respect than another. There
is no royal road, no clerical road, no Church-of-Eng-
land road to heaven : all must walk the same way
and on the same level. If one man may tax another,
or if one class or sect may tax another, for the sup-
port of that one's religion, then a special favour is
enjoyed by one, and a special burden and disadvan-
tage is imposed upon another, in this matter of
worship where all are rightfully free and equal.
But it should be put to you; who have the
education, refinement, and status of gentlemen,
whether it is not a most contemptible thing that the
Church* of England, which has tithes and endow-
ments Amounting to several millions a year, and
nearly all the aristocracy and great landowners on
its side, should pretend to need an exaction from
Dissenters—aye, even from the very poorest of
Dissenters—to keep the rich Church agoin g—to pay
for the sacramental elements, and to defray the ex-
penses of religious service down to the washer-
woman's bill for cleaning your surplices. Can you
bring yourselves to believe.that it is right—that it
is as the good loving Master would have it—that
brother Christians not of the Church of England
should be &strained upon and imprisoned, for taxes
levied for relief of communicants of that rich
Church of yours?
You think this state of things right, do you?
How do you justify it? You appeal to the law of
the land. Christianity, you know, is above and
beyond the law, otherwise Christianity would have
been abolished—at least in its genuine form—long
ago. The Church—that is, the true Church—rests
on Divine law: it belongs to the supernatural. "The
Bible, the Bible only," we are told, "is the religion
of Protestants." As Protestant clergymen, then, I
may fairly ask, Where is your authority in Scrip-
ture for levying Church-mail on the people ? The
Jews, with a religion which all the nation ac-
cepted, and amongst whom, therefore, were fonnd
no Dissenters, had no compulsory exaction of any
kind for religious purposes. Their tithes were
free-will offerings, and were not enforceable by
secular power, as are Church-imposts of modern
times. Christianity, alas ! which came to free men
from every form of bondage, has found, by means
of the Church of England, a yoke and a burden
unknown to the stern and rigorous code of Judaism.
But still it is the law of the land, you say again.
Yes ! if the majority approve. But does that make
it right ? Are the laws of the laud necessarily
right ? Why do we repeal a small cart-load of them
every year, if they wore not proveably, to a large
extent, very, very wrong ? Yes you say, it is the
law of the land. We have but one response, and it
is this—" More shame !"

But now we ask you whether it is desirable for
the Church of England that it should continue to be
a tax-gatherer and an oppressor ? Surely not.
People instinctively dislike what is forced on them,
especially in matters of religion. To threaten a
man with a constable and the lock-up is not the
best method—certainly not the Christian method—
of gaining his heart for your Church or your
Master. Can you possibly think it is.
You probably have never thought on the infe-
rence which reasonably and necessarily follows
from your expressed apprehension that to abolish
church-rates would be to ruin the Church. What
becomes of the Divine foundation which you claim
for your Church, and where is your faith in the
Almighty protection which guards and preserves
His truth ? You preach faith, and have it not.
Yea speak of your Church as of a rock against
which even the gates of Hell cannot prevail, and
then turn pale because an enlightened Parlia-
ment is likely to take the unchristian power
of persecuting away from you! Christianity
surely has some better defence than Justices'
warrants and the police. But as these seem
going, you are, or affect to be, in terror lest the
Gospel itself should go with them ! The Gospel
was ushered in by a heavenly host, and Heaven has
ever since been for all faithful ministers, martyrs,
and confessors an exhaustless treasury of help. But
in additic,n to the heavenly powers you want the
police ! Reflect, clergymen of the Church of Eng-
land, before you ever say again, that your Church
cannot do without Church-rates,

You studied logic, probably, at Oxford or Cam-
bridge. I give an argument which you may put
to the test :—The Church of England either needs
Church rates, or it does not. If it does need
them, it is not Divinely founded, nor is it Heaven -
protected. If it does not need them, there can be
no:ground of complaint if they be abolished.—Yours
faithfully,
Quo WARRANTO.