The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-01 00:00:00

—judge and barrister, clerk and attorne y—from
their wearisome attendance in the courts, and
brings a no less welcome respite to those more
actively concerned in the snits and non-suits, the
verdicts and costs. The busy metropolis shows
a sensible diminution of its throngs, although the
common phrase that " London is empty" is never
visibly realised. Cabinet Ministers and Parlia-
mentary generals bid a brief adieu to red boxes and
blue-books, and seek to recruit themselves for the
forthcoming campaign. Even sovereigns lay down
the cares of State awhile, and strive to forget
the uneasiness too often associated with their en-
cumbering dignity. Our gracious QUEEN has
taken her accustomed departure to the north of
her dominions, and is now gazing on her favourite
banks and braes, and hills and heather. Her
journey, thanks to modern enterprise and efficient
management, has been accomplished with an ease
and a rapidity that would have somewhat asto-
nished the last Queen-Regnant of these islands.
Secure of a genuine welcome, as well as
the observance of outward ceremonial, our QUEEN
moves freely among her loyal people. Another
potentate has also abandoned for a time the
crown and purple which, to him, are some-
what more thorny and troublesome possessions.
The Emperor of the FRENCH and his charming
EMPRESS, of whose kindness of heart and liberality
we hear such frequent mention, have quitted Paris
for a season to taste the pleasures of a less cere-
monious existence at Biarritz. The EMPEROR, let
us hope, will enjoy his holiday the more from the
consciousness of having made his first step towards
the position of a constitutional Sovereign—that
step being, as our friend Punch facetiously ob-
serves, " very well for a beginner." We all admit
the difficulty of the task to be acquired by• this
same beginner, but if he prove an apt scholar, and
eonvince us that he is really bent upon achieving his
undertaking, we shall not be hard taskmasters. In
the repose of Biarritz ho may have full leisure to
mature his plans, whether of a fresh campaign or
a more glorious victory—the subjugation of discon-
tent and disaffection by liberality and leniency.
Harsh and repressive measures have been tried long
enough by successive rulers of the French without
any very encouraging results to the authorities.
Suppose, for a change, they were to adopt a more
constitutional course, by way of experiment. In
following the example of the British Sovereign in
State craft, as well as in leisure, he might secure,
like her, the gratifying assurance that, whoever
may be her foes abroad, she is secure of friends at
home.

War again in Ireland ! CULLEN and his hosts
against unsectarian education ; joined, alas ! by the
little band of WHITESIDE and his ultra-Protestants,
to the cry of the " unmutilated Bible !" If Lord
DERBY ever did, what all fair-minded men will deem,
a good deed in his life, it was when, as Lord STAN-
LEY, nearly 30 years ago, he inaugurated the Irish
National School system. It was a system expressly
designed to make education a healer of the wounds
of that distracted country. Not only was much
looked for from the naturally soothing influences of
mental cultivation and knowledge, but the attempt
was made to associate in common schools the chil-
dren of parents who had been too much taught to
consider each other as born enemies, and between
whom the watchwords were—Protestant and Pa-
pist, orthodox and heretic, Saxon and Celt, op-
pressor and oppressed. Education was felt to be a
great want in Ireland, and it was resolved so to
give it that it should be the minister of peace, and
not merely the means of sharpening weapons al-
ready too keen and too fiercely used. It was rea-
sonably hoped that children of the same neighbour-
hood, studying in the same school, and engaged in
the same pursuits, would acquire that feeling of
natural regard and s expect which often survi►es
from our school-days to the close of life—would
learn that the professors of opposed creeds have
more in common than in contrast—and might co-
operate through life as neighbours and fellow-
citizens.

To these general objects the late excellent Catho-
lic Archbishop, Dr. MURRAY, cordially contributed.
He was a patriot. A sincere Catholic, but not a
slave to Rome ; and by his aid all worked at first
as smoothly as could be hoped. Selections, inclu-
ding in one case a whole gospel, were made from
the Scriptures, that the children of Catholics and
Protestants might study even the Bible in com-
mon ; and an adequate supply of excellent school-
books were provided, under the sanction of a board
composed of members of all the leading sects, who
also administered the whole system with scrupulous
impartiality. The first opposition, we are ashamed
to say, came from Protestants ; from a small and
factious, or fanatical section of them, however, only,
Orangeism, and a kind of fanatical Evangelical
school having united to raise the cry for an " un-
mutilated Bible." It was pure sectarian and party
zeal. Not the slightest practical good was at
stake ; but this party has become clamorous for the
abolition of unsectarian education, and the trans-
ference to Ireland of the sectarian grant-in-aid
system, of which this very sectarianism is the great
subject of regret with all truly liberal-minded per-
sons in England. We cannot help the sectarianism
of the people here, so we educate through it. Most
certainly we wish the system had never begun, but
that schools adapted to all had been open to all, as
in Ireland. These Irish partizans ask for our
blemish as an ornament, for our defect as a pri-
vilege !

Of late the vastly more numerous Catholics have
taken the field in the same cause. They, too, want
the education of their own sect entirely in their
own hands. Very plausibly they say that " schools
for Catholic youth should be such as to insure for
them the benefit of a safe secular education, and
adequate religious instruction in the faith and prac-
tices of the Catholic Church." It is thus that a
Synod of Bishops, lately held in Dublin, introduces
a series of resolutions, which demand the abroga-
tion of the system of mixed instruction, and the
allotment from the national treasury of a satisfac-
tory amount for purely Catholic schools. They
have obtained the sanction of the POPE to this
move against a liberal system of education, and the
Catholic members of the Government board have
therefore felt it their duty to resign. Most of the
Catholic newspapers side with the prelates ; one or
two, however, have the manliness and courage to
denounce this ecclesiastical interference with the
province of the laity. They honourably contend
that while ready to bow to the authorities of their
Church on a purely religious question, they are not
prepared to make them masters of the education of
their children. It is admitting the old Jesuit prin
ciple of rendering education the instrument of
Church supremacy in the things of C.ESAR as well
as of GOD.
We need not say that we wish success
40 the reasonings of our more sensible and liberal
Irish contemporaries
; but we fear reasoning and
reasonableness will be thrown aw ay on Irish pre-
lates and most Irish Catholics tco.

Next session these high Romanists and high Pro-
testants are to unite their forces, we are told, in
the House of Commons. Of course, the narrowinc,
the system of education will be a far more interest-
ing subject than that of enlarging the franchise and
extending popular liberties. We trust, however,
that they live but little success in Parliament