The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-16 00:00:00

N. LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 16, 1859.
-THE SU..,

hird-earned wages of the people at large that he
should have succeeded in putting another brother-
in Jaw at the head of the commission that is inquir-
ss. into the sugar affairs at Glocester. (Hear, hear.)
use, -ss about, I understand, to proceed to the in-
We al. nf another system of Reform. What
that .1s no man
eveiSigation s
,Seept the Cabinet Ministers, who
meet esvPrY 411-7' ca:l properly tell us. Are we to
have the? the operations of bribery ? I
open wider' till to
franchise lowered, and the door thrown
Ilse not; but it will remain entirely in
hope and trus.
the hands of thos' to whom the government of the
country is now entre
: k
dad what sort of Reform Bill
electorst. at large". You in
Bristol will, of course, watt_ _
it carefully,' It may
will be presented to the
rtnnes of England
which no 'man can foresee. Evers .
now in this country upon what the e e
have an effect on the future is
1 electoral fran-
chise-thing depends
I call the democratic
and a large portion of what _
element of the constitution is introduced,
for the time being may be. If reduced too low,.
then we
may see desolation and dismay In the country.
(Hear, hear.) If, on the contrary, however, a fair
balance iS maintained, there can be no doubt but
that England, as she has ever hitherto done, will
hold her bead up amid all the trials and difficulties
w
she may encounter. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, when I
here :last you know that Berkeley and Lang-
ton were the mere nominees of a party. That party
was headed by John Bright, and John Bright was
the man whose name was in the mouth of every
one, and when I ventured to suggest the name of
John Bright upon the day of the declaration of the
poll, every man on the side of Berkeley and Lang-
ton, with out an exception, took off his hat and
cheered. And now what has John Bright been doing
lately ? Lie has been attempting for the hundredth
time to throw the apple of discord between the
working *classes and the owners of capital in this
country, :and using the most apparent and trans-
parent fallacies possible for a man to conceive. Is
John Brig;ht the man to select as a statesman to
whom to confide the destinies of England ? (" No,
no.") He has been lately saying that the working
classes cosstribute 40 millions out of the enormous
sum raised by taxation in this country, but which
ought by right to fall on the possessors of property.
Why, arty one who understands what represents
property swill know the difference between capital
and laboir. The whole commerce, industry, and
power of the country are made of the two combined.
(Cheers.) And to say that, because there is a cer-
tain amount of indirect taxation which every man,
rich or poor, be he living on the earnings of those
who preceded him, or on the earnings of his daily
labours,—to say because working men pay indirect
taxation that they therefore pay it, and not the
capitalist, is an absurdity, because the capitalist at
last pays it, as he is compelled to pay a larger
amoune to enable him to obtain that labour which
has to,pay the taxation of the country. (Cheers.)
There '
can be nothing more gross, more absurd, or a
more transparent fallacy than that enunciated by
John Bright, whom I consider to be a most danger-
ous man in this free country, because his talent is
great. (Hear.) Gentlemen, whatever is in store
for me, humble individual as I am—whether on ano-
ther occasion I shall be called upon to come forward
and to the utmost of my ability fight the battle of
Conservatism in Bristol—(cheers)—no man can tell.
If, however, it is to be fought, and I should again
be the honoured choice of such an honoured assem-
bly as this, I pledge my word as before that I will
nail my colours to the mast and stand to the last.
(Loud cheers.)
"The Health of the Members for Bath," coupled
with the name of Mr. Arthur Edwin Way, was
drank with much enthusiasm.
Mr. A. E. WAY, M.P. in responding, said he
thanked them most sincerely for the great honour
they had done him, and the kindly manner in which
they had received his name. That honour, in such an
assemblage as that, would be flattering indeed to the
highest individual in the land, and to him that
honour was greatly enhanced, inasmuch as that was
the first- time he had been called upon to return
thanks as member for the noble and beautiful city
of Bath---(cheers)—the constituency of which,
since they last met around that table in Bristol to
commemorate the anniversary of Colston, had
shown their perseverance in and attachment to the
Conservative cause by placing him in the high
position of member of Parliament—(hear, hear)—
thus setting to Bristol a proud example, and one
which, he felt sure, if he read aright the signs of
the times and the steady growth of Conservative
principles, Bristol was determined to follow on the
first opportunity that presented itself, in spite of
every difficulty and opposition. (Cheers.) His
sympathies had long been linked with that excel-
lent society, and he spoke as an old member of the
Dolphin when he said it must be a source of joy to
all present, as it was individually to him, to wit-
ness 'so large and increased an attendance round
the tables that evening, (Hear.) He hailed with
joy and approbation the presence of the ladies—
(cheers)—whoso lot it was to lighten their labours,
and who cheered them to their tasks by the radiant
influence of their genial smiles. (Cheers.) There
philanthropy . and Conservatism progressed like
twin sisters, hand in hand, and what could be more
gratifying than to witness such an association as
he now found—an association of gentlemen em-
bracing in a wide spread circle every position and
grade of life, assembled round the festive board to
replenish the stores that a twelvemonth's charity
had exhausted, to distribute funds under a dis-
criminating committee, pouring on misery the oils
of consolation, bringing exultation to the heart of
many a drooping widow, giving new life to many
aged and infirm annuitants, and apprenticing
orphan boys to useful trades, and conferring on
those of whom it might truly be said that their
poverty was their Misfortune, and not their fault,
a degree of pecuniary assistance which without the
aid of such societies as the old Dolphin would be
quite beyond their reach and opportunity ?
(Cheers.) Their city presented on that anniver-
sary a very remarkable spectacle, and one which
other communities would do well to follow. Set-
ting one day apart from active enterprise, they as-
semled, after invoking the Divine blessing, each dif-
ferent society marked by its distinctive shade of po-
litical character, not .to ,renew again bitter ani-
mosities and political amenities, but to vie with one
another in acts of charity and enlarged benevolence,
following in the footsteps of that great and good
man whose memory they were commemorating.
(Hear.) Associated as he was in political views
with most of those present he would advert to some
few of the great political events which had taken
place since they last met under the shadow of the
Dolphin. They had seeil France madly rushing into
the plains of Italy doing battle for an idea with
Austria, and, after pouring out the blood of her
soldiers and the treasure of her citizens like water,
leaving the Italian peninsula more ripe for revolu-
tion and more confused than she found it—(hear)—
and it would be idle to attempt to disguise the fact
fhatin eensequence of the position assumed by
Watitir and the great increase of warlike arma-
ments great gloom and distress at the present mo-
ment pervade the councils of Europe. It would be
idle also to disguise the fact that in this country an
opinion had gained ground—but ho hoped without
sufficient cause—that they might be called on to
exercise all their patriotism against the fate of a
forpign invasion. (Hear.) They had lately met in
China with a sad defeat, and one which he thought
might have been averted by the ordinary rules of
prudence. But &though their arms had suffered a
temporary check in endeavouring to carry out the
treaties • with that country, such a state of things
had been revealed as would compel them to place
beyond a doubt tho dignity and power of Fngland,
and to secure to her a proper respect in future
transactions in that quarter of the globe. (Hear.)
At home they had seen a Reform Bill introduced by
a Conservative Government, not because Lord
Derby undertook the introduction of the Bill as an
imperative necessity, but because it had been men-
tioned in speeches from the Throne on a number of
occasions. Had that bill been allowed to go into coin-
mitten and passed, it would have added to the elec-
toral franchise some 500,000 votes—a larger number
than would have been added by the much vaunted
bill of 1852—and the question of Reform would
have been at least settled in their time.
(Hear, hear.) But the Whigs arrogated to them-
selves the monopeltof the Reform question, and
were jealous at seeing Conservatives working with
what they called their own weapons. Hence arose
the factious opposition of Lord J. Russell, and that
contest of political opinion throughout England in
which his friend Sir F. W. Slade So nobly main-
tained their reputation as well as his own. (Cheers.)
For his own part, they had been pleased to couple
his name in connexion with the city of Bath, and
proud indeed ought he to be of the connexion. Ho
looks upon his first defeat as almost a necessary an-
tecedent to his future success, and he would not
allow himself to doubt for one moment but that
when another trial came on 13ristol—come when it
‘may—would obtain what the Conservatives of Bath
had already achieved--a most triumphant victory
—(cheers)—and that he should have the pleasure of
witnessing, as he had before, that true blue banner
inscribed " Church and State"—(cheers)—floating
over every steeple in their ancient city. (Cheers.)
tioc:filog( Ate, istogeinlhrel:
n. t,tintoit
eti; aiaginadoyfo waspi.tai
The result of hat last contest, as they all knew, had
e
been a great triumph of Conservative opinions,
son;ui
ent
endet
el
were
the
euie.ec
eHousetehd
that tint one single vote was absent
—a thing almost unparalleled.i. .t 1
te annals of Par-
liaineeite (Cheersl) • lie would mention another
feet kgnifiean
tasto th ,• 9 spiced of demo-
eeecy.- mentioned the fact because the hon.
Membheafor was probably engaged at that
, •
ery,iyaitteut in another place in antici esting the
Baccesi:ofhis hobby-hors (1 t) 1 -
e— auga er —the ballot.
leiniavinaoteletnio7

TILE POPE AND TILE PRIESTS.

(Renewed laughter.) At the last election out of
140 constituencies changing their members the bal-
lot party did not gain one vote in Parliament.
(Cheers.) But the Whigs, smarting as they were
from their defeat, had obtained the triumph they
wished, and the Conservative party were at present
obliged to sit in the cold shade of opposition and
look on at the measures that might be adduced.
The present Administration, however, was com-
posed of all sections of politicians, like a happy
family--(laughter)---to whom united policy was
impossible, and it was also impossible for them to
count on a majority on any important question,
watched as they were on the flanks by the ultra-
Liberals. They might almost be said to be at the
mercy of their united Conservative opponents, but
he for one deprecated constant changes in Govern-
ment; and hoped that forbearance which they re-
fused to show the Conservatives might be shown to
them, so that their bark might be able to float on
the summer sea, but if they became engulfed in the
complicated waves of foreign politics or of Reform,
their fate was certain. (Cheers.) The hon. gentle-
man again thanked the company for the reception
given him, and concluded by proposing "The Com-
mercial Prosperity of Bristol." (Cheers.)

An eminent writer has shown with his usual'
force and eloquence that though opinion is like the
tide, perpetually =eying backwards and forwards,
it is in this unlike the tide,—that, with all its os-
cillations, it is steadily and continually advancing.
The flood of one ten years is the ebb of the next,
and the advancing stream carries high water-mark
further and further into the deserts of ignorance
and prejudice. It requires all our faith in this
dictum and its author to reconcile us to what is
passing before our eyes in every country of Europe
in which, the Roman Catholic Church exercises
any considerable influence:- At the time in which
we live,ete should say that religious differences are
more enfenomed, and exercise more influence over
the conduct of private life, than at any period since
the Emancipation Act was passed. It is not so
much that men are more really religious than they
were.' Faith has grown cold exactly in proportion
as zeal has grown hot, and mankind are willing
and eager to immolate each other on the altar of
a religion to the teaching of which they yield too
often but a cold assent, the doctrines of which they
will not apply to the regulations of their private
life and conduct, and the priesthood of which they
]tither esteem nor respect. The spread of know-
ledge is met by a more than corresponding spread
of intolerance, and the decline of faith fails to give
us the advantage which we had a right to expect
by way of compensation,—an increase of charity
and of allowance for unavoidable difference of
opinion. '
Take Spain as an instance. Spain is by no means
the paradise of unhesitating belief that she
once was. She has as little of the undeviating con-
viction as of the . military and naval strength of
Philip 11. She has adopted by the aid of heretical
England a dynasty certainly not the one favoured
by the Pope and the clergy. She is fat with the
plunder of the Church, which bell, book and candle
cannot persuade her to disgorge. Yet Spain is- at
this moment burning with the same zeal which in
the minds of Cortez and Pizarro surpassed even
their love of gold and of blood. She is arming for
a-new crusade against the Moors, and, without
waiting to achieve her own liberties, or bestowing
a thought on that wholesale repudiation which
makes her name a byword cm every Exchange in
Europe, she is- about to waste the strength that
) should win her freedom and the money that should
redeem her honour, in a profitless war, where no
aspirations save those of the bigot and the persecutor
can be gratified. Spain has confiscated the property
of her Church, while England has spared every
convent and monastery in Lower Canada. Our
religion teaches us to spare the property of others,
oven though their faith be not ours. The religion
of Spain instructs her to rob the Church in which
she bslieves, and to make war upon the faith in
which she does not believe, in the name of the very
Church which she has robbed.
Turn from Spain to Ireland. Better things might
be expected from a land where a power which can-
not be resisted forces upon the people freedom of
worship, equality before the law, a system of public
education open to all sects, a perfectly impartial ad-
ministration of justice, and an entire freedom from
persecution of every kind. Yet can any one look
at Ireland as it is without tracing with melancholy
distinctness a revival and increase of fanaticism
and, intolerance ? I)ablin, if still one of the most
slatternly of cities, is advancing in wealth, and
the whole country is undergoing a mighty change.
The rude agriculture of former years is giving
place to better methods of cultivation, and,
though much remains to be done, no ono can
doubt that Ireland is launched on a career of
material prosperity, and that the increase of her
capital will be more rapid as the neglect has been
greater than elsewhere. But, while her material
resources are thus developed, has Ireland kept pace
with them in her social and political progress ? Has
the increase of wealth been attended with that
which an increase of wealth should bring with it—
good will, good nature, the spirit of union, friend-
ship, and co-operation? We are sorry to be obliged
to admit the mortifying truth, that while she has
'advanced materially Ireland has receded in many
matters even still more essential to her welfare.
Never, even in those gloomy days when the Roman
Catholic party of Ireland attainted by name almost
every Protestant proprietor of the soil, and the
Protestant Parliament retaliated by those infamous
penal laws against the Roman. Catholics which have
been only too good and valid an excuse for genera-
tions of hatred and bitterness, was the dividing lino
between Protestant and Roman Catholic more
sharply marked then at present. The feeling may
not be exactly the same ; then it was the contempt
of a victorious party for a despised and vanquished
race ;`now it is a feeling that difference of religion
places a wider gulf between the two races than any
mere temporal expedient can bridge over. There
is a stronger disposition than ever in the votaries
of each of the rival religions to live for themselves
and by themselves. The marriages of Roman Ca-
tholics with Protestants, which were at one time be-
coming frequent, are now rare occurrences, op-
_posed by the whole weight of domestic opinion, and
still more:efficiently by the influence of the priest-
hood. It becomes more and more difficult to in-
duce the clergy of the two religions to unite to-
gether for the purpose of any public object which
extends beyond the male of their own communion.
The elements of repulsion seem to have strengthened
and gathered force from the improvement in wealth
and the subdivision of property which have resulted
from the famine and the Encumbered Estates Act.
Whilst. such is the attitude of the Roman
Catholic Church in Ireland towards the Pro-
testant minority—a body by no means slow to
take up and respond to the defiance—we may
trace the same process of estrangement with
regard to the general politics of the empire. For-
merly the Roman Catholic body in Ireland united
itself cordially for purposes of political action with
that party in England which was most favourable
to a system of toleration, and the Whig Government
was notoriously retained in power for several years
by the assistance of O'Connell and his followers.
In those days the Irish Roman Catholics acted as
men who had a common interest and common feel-
ing with their fellow-subjocts, but now these tac-
tics have been changed, and, instead of an adhesion
to either political party, the policy pursued is that
of opposition to each Government in succession.
Nor is this all. The bishops of Ireland have re-
cently presumed to meet together with their clergy,
and to address the Pope, a foreign sovereign, in
terms highly disparaging to the Government of the
Queen to whom they owe allegiance. In the same
spirit they are seeking to break down the system
of mixed education, mainly from dread of the effect
of the instruction of Protestant and Roman Catho-
lic children in the same school. The cause of this
melancholy retrogression in the relations between
Roman Catholic and in Ireland, of this
increase of intolerance;. is not 'far to seek. It is
only too apparent that since the overthrow of 1848
the policy of the Papacy has undergone an impor-
tant-modification. Perfectly aware that he has no
support within the States of the Church, and that
nothing but foreign influence can maintain him on
his tottering throne, the Pope, or rather those who
act for him, have determined to look for foreign
support, and to make themselves necessary as
friends or formidable as adversaries to every Go-
vernment in Europe. To Austria and to France
they have given support by using their power over
the Roman Catholic hierarchies of the two coun-
tries in favour of the existing Government. In
Ireland they have exercised their power to em-
barrass the English Government as much as pos-
sible in order to make a diversion, by giving us
trouble nearer home, in favour of the temporal
power of the Pope. How far they have succeeded
with France and Austria events now about to
develope themselves will show. In this country,
so far as the political object is concerned, the
machfnations of the Roman Catholic hierarchy have
completely failed. They have met with no open
opposition from the intelligent laity of their reli-
gion, for that we have- long ceased to expect ; but
they have been, and will he, unable to stir them
to active support. Bishops and priests may forget,
but no layman who is not utterly blinded by Super-
stition can forget, the difference bet nen the Go-
vernment of Queen Victoria and that of Pius
or lend himself to the monstrous iniquity of per-
petuating an odious tyranny over millions of his
fellow-creatures to Gratify his own
sympathies. But, ecclesiastic 11
though -the political object has
failed, the , evil is nevertheless done. To make a

diversion in favour of the Pope, the Roman Catholic
clergy and bishops in Tr:land have widened the
:division between the two religions, and they have
placed themselves and their church in a position of
isolation and estrangement from the rest of the
empire, which, harmless for the object for which it
was designed, cannot fail one day seriously to recoil
upon themselves.—Times