The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-07 00:00:00

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7, 1859.

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and at one *the chair was taken by Mr. James
Gabriel, who said he was not only an advo-
cate for the people's Reform Bill, but he also
considered that there should be *a great change
made in the present _condition of the working
classes. (Hear, hear.) In order to carry out
that great object they must not put any trust in
the bill proposed by the Government, but con-
tinue to agitate night and day until they got
John Bright's Bill, as that was the only one that
would meet the demands of the people. He
would ask them openly, which bill they would
have, that of the Government or John Bright's ?
(Cries of " The Government one's no use; let us
have John Bright's.") This was received with
cheering. The chairman concluded by saying,
that from the unmistakable marks of approbation
he had heard he was satisfied that instead of being
dull of comprehension they had some very bright
ideas. .' (Laughter.)
Several other gentlemen having addressed the
meeting, the proceedings terminated, but not be-
fore one gentleman intimated that lord Derby had
better keep his Bill as a curiosity, for the people
did not mean to have
At another meeting, which took place nearer the
Marble-arch, presided over. by Mr. J. Evans, whq
described himself as a purveyor of milk, some very
strong langUage was used. The chairman said that
he had a two-fold object in appearing before them
that day, one was to oppose the bill brought in
by Lord Derby, and the other to raise his voice
against the greatest tyrant in Europe, and he was
sorry to say that there seemed no doubt that Lord
Derby was in that tyrant's confidence. He need
not mention the name of the oppressor of the liber-
ties of his country, for they all knew it. (Cries of
"Of course we do. Louis Napoleoni He would
recommend them, if the Government Bill was
pressed upon them, to refer to 'a recent number of
Punch, in which they would see represented her
Majesty's store-room. There it was recommended
that John Bull should keep his powder dry, and
he asked them to do " ditto." (Cheers.)
This meeting was the stormiest of the whole, and
at which the strongest language was used.
There was no interference with any
.of the meet-
ings, hardly a police-constable being visible. Had
any breach of the peace, however, taken place, a
large number of constables stationed in the vicinity
would within a few minutes have been upon the
spot.

OPINION MOVES ON, AND QUAKERS

MOVE OFF.

And so the " Society of Friends" is gradually
dying out. , Year by year the May Meetings show
a scantier attendance—the provincial meeting-
houses display progressively a more " beggarly
account of empty boxes." The broad brim and the
stiff collar are less seen in our streets ; the precise
bonnets, the snow-white linen, the spotless lawn of
the demure beauty, that piques the curiosity by the
glimpse of the peach-bloom of the cheek, half-
revealed half-hidden by the bonnet severe in its
jealous simplicity—all these are seldomer found,
and become daily more scarce. The nether garments
innovate on the old costume; shoes and small clothes
giving way to boots and pantaloons. The brim
becomes less broad—more turned up. At last the
loose fish turn down the collar when they get well
out of their town of residence, and drop the " thee"
and "thou." It is a rule that the society shall
choose who shall marry whom—especially that
matrimony shall be confined to inmates of the
household of faith. But—
Can love be controlled by advice ?
Will Cupid our mothers obey ?
Though my heart were as frozen as ice,
At his suit 'twould have melted away !
The bosom, fairer and more spotless than the cam-
bric that conceals it, yet heaves responsive to the
affections from whose power great Nature grants
no exemption of creed or clime ; and the " elective
affinities' assert their supreMacy over the very
mandates of religious faith. Quakers and Qua-
keresses have married out of the Society of Friends
—communion with the outer world breaks down
the distinctive habits of the sect—and the uniform
of the spiritual militants disappears from the battle
of life.

This movement among such a body is a startling
sign of the times. It shows the watermark on the
sand of the flow of that tide of progressive thought
that—

Like the Pontic sea,
Ne'er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic, and the Hellespont.
Quakerism has survived everything—social perse-
cution, proscription, the ridicule of the profane, the
abuse of the godly, the martyrdom of Church-rate
seizures, the fines of the militia, the oddities of
dress, speech, and faith in declining to take an oath
—it has maintained all these, borne with and for
them, suffered spoiling of goods, denial of official
preferment, the emoluments of the Church and bar,
the ambitions of political life ; but it cannot bear
up against the progress of thought, the expansion,
the revolution of opinion, the invasion of free
thinking and speaking., the conscientiousness of in-
dependent action. Why say "thee " and " thou,"
when other people say " you ? " Why wear a hat
and coat of one shape, when everybody else adopts
another fashion ? Why marry a Quakeress
only ? Are there no good women that wear
cherry-eoloured ribbons, and a low dress ? Why
is this many-coloured world of God's to be made
a uniform drab of the Society of Friends ? These
questions suggest their corresponding doubts—they,
indicate the growing scepticism of the rising gene-
ration of the faithful ; the answer is not very ready,
and so the sibboleth of the sect is gradually dis-
solving into the confused Babel of human univer-
sality. It is true the members still call themselves
a religious sect, they maintain their profession in
essentialibus, they meet and are moved by the
Spirit, protest against war, eschew priests and
creeds, and vain speech and action. But how long
will naked first principles hold out against the in-
novations which have sapped the outworks of the
denomination ? Tenets will fall away like old
Lear's retinue, until, beginning with questioning
the necessity f the livery, malcontents will find
out that there is no great need of the servant who
wore them. _

We own to an unfeigned regret at the change.
We like the real English picturesqueness of Qua.
kerdom. It is redolent of the soil—nowhere else
but in the country of Hampden could it rise and
be. The grotesqueness of peace and principle, the
broad brim and the plain speech, are associated
with our whole lives as a part, somehow, of Eng-
land itself. The tranquil mildness, the sincere
plainness, the strict word, the guarded speech, the
financial scrupulosity, the quiet industry, the clean-
liness and order, sobriety, the taste for the simpli-
cities of nature, the elegancies not of man but of
God, and his plastic providence, the open, healthy,
well principled expression, the chaste refine-
ment, even of the humblest—society cannot afford
to part with these; we confess our own reluctance to
let them go. Even to these mere husks and shells of
the inner soul, these integuments and uniforms of
the spirit and principle of the sect, this country
is
indebted for an ideal that has gifted it with the
best and most regenerative influences. But with
these we fear that something far more precious is
in peril. To us Quakerdom has all the prophetic
foresight of inspiration. Its founders seem as if
they had propounded an absolute revelation. Two
hundred years ago the Quaker Gospel promulgated,
became martyrs to the proclamation of principles
which the rest of society are only beginning now to
discover and acknowledge as the great canons of
social and civil polity. The whole nation has come
round practically to the principles which the So-
ciety of Friends have asserted for a brace of centu-
ries. Fox, Penn, Barclay—why these men seemed
to speak almost with the spirit of divination. When
Presbyterians, Independents, Episcopalians were
all yelping their solos that no leather was like their
leather, that they were Sir Oracle—" And when
they ope'd their mouth let no dog bark"—that
every doctrine but theirs respectively should be in-
terdicted—that anything else was heresy, and that'
heresy should be punished by the civil magistrate
—that liberty of opinion was intolerable, ad that
it was the opinion of the State, or of the
sect that was strongest, to prohibit and abolish
the development or promulgation of any other
—the Quakers alone had the sagacity to
assert that a man's religion was his own affair
alone—that priestcraft was an imposture--eeclesi-
astical authority an usurpation of individual liberty
--that a Church was merely a machine for extorting
money and conformity—that a hired prophet was
an anomaly—that a sterreotyped creed produced a
decay of religion and earnest thought, and that
there was no authority entitled to stand between
the human soul and the Holy Spirit. Their doctrine
of the moving of the Spirit at once emancipates the
conscience from all dictation, even from that .of
Bibleism and authoritative interpretations of Sp-
, ture, reducing Scripture merely to one among other cri
media whereby the Creator works upon the human
soul, and ignoring every interpretation except that
which is supplied by the inward light which the
, Spirit sends to each man in the measure of his gifts.
The king to them was but the chief ruler, o mortal