The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-06 00:00:00

TIIE SUN, LONDON, MONDA

no one would be surprised to hear that Washington
had become the scene of the first great battle be-
tween slaveholders and freemen.
We were right in our conjectures as to the ships
burned. They were those in Norfolk Harbour,
and the Gosport Navy Yard was also completely
destroyed. It was done by the Unionists to pre-
vent their falling into the hands of the Virgi-
nians ; most of the ships were laid up in ordinary,
some, it is said, were of little value. They were
supposed, however, to be of some, or they would
not have been destroyed. They were the Pennsyl-
vania, 120 ; the Merrimac, 40, a certainly splendid
steam frigate; tha German Town, 22 ; the Colum-
bia, 50; the Raritan, 50; the Delaware, 84;
the Columbus, 80; the United States, 50; the
Dolphin, a brig of 4 guns ; ono 84 on the stocks,
and possibly another or two. The PRESIDENT has,
however, still left him all the ships in active service ;
the Minnesota, the Niagara, and the Mississippi,
are all ready or nearly so for immediate duty, and

the number of smaller vessels of war is consider-
able. We should think the PRESIDENT, therefore,
will have little difficulty in blockading the five
Southern ports, through which alone the South
could export its produce in European bottoms, and
obtain supplies of every kind.

Some grave questions will, however, now be raised
respecting privateering and the right of blockade.
Europe is interested in them, and neither North nor
South is in a position to despise its voice. Some of
them will be mooted in the House to-night, and we
may hope to hear the opinion of the Government
lawyers on the most important points.

Between the imminent possibilities of a general
war in Efurope and the actual horrors of a sanguinary
civil war in America—a civil war that may any
day flame out into a servile conflict upon the rising

of 4,000,000 negroes in armed insurrection—it seems
almost trifling with a dread emergency to dilate
now at any length upon the convivial doings of
Saturday evening in the principal room of the
Royal Academy. However, as the Ministers
themselves disdained not to participate, and that,

moreover, quite evidently con more in those agree-
able proceedings, it were nothing less than a
prudish and squeamish affectation upon the part of
any mere outsider, any one not personally invested
with administrative responsibilities, to shrink from
—what, nevertheless, still does appear to us the
exceeding and almost indecorous incongruity of
descanting at this particular juncture upon an inci-

dent absolutely nothing less than frivolous, as
associated at such an interval as this with the
chiefs of Her Britannic MAJESTY'S Government.

It reminds one, of course, of the old proverbial
phrase about dancing over a Volcano. It is some-
thing, perhaps, more than the 999th thousandth
reminiscence of DAMOCLES feasting voluptuously
under the pendant blade glittering upon the
suspension of a hair. Yet it has its encouragement,
too, in some sort, this careless momentary aban-
donment, even at great crises like the present, this
seeming temporary forgetfulness of the toils and
responsibilities of office by the leaders of our Ad-
ministration. " All work and no play makes Jack
a dull boy," says the nursery distich. And the
truth, latent in the familiar aphorism, is applicable
alike to a burly "old boy" like Farmer BULL him-
self, and to his diplomatic representative, or, alter

•
ego, let us say, JOHN, commonly ,called Lord JOHN

RUSSELL. And so Ministers themselves hesitate
not to partake of the Academy hospitalities yet
once more—with unbent brows and forgotten red-
tape and locked-up pigeon-holes crammed full
(these last) with reams upon reams of " papers',

folded lengthways ! Prime Ministers and ecre- '
taries of State, noble lords and right hon. gentle-
men, all with beaming faces and good appetites,
consequently crowded up the eastern staircase of the
National Gallery quite as pleasantly as the noble earl
and the right hon. gentleman the leaders of her
MAJESTY'S Opposition with their principal lieu-
tenants, to feast and chat on Saturday even-
ing last at that the ninety-third annual ban-
quet given each year to the most :eminent
men of the time, by the gifted and
right hospitable Royal Academicians. This—not
merely the European crisis and the American en-
ternecine war to the contrary nevertheless notwith-
standing ! But—what is if possible yet more sur-
prising as an unlooked for appetizer under the cir-
cumstances—in flagrant despite of the glaring fact
that Government and Opposition still confront each
other ; breathing hard from their late tussle for the
mastery ; still we say confront each other like
skilled fencers at a duel for the life and death, their
swordblades crossed, their eyes keenly upon the
watch, every nerve and muscle upon the alert—
ready for the next move!! And that next move
probably at the present moment close upon us—
this very evening ! Yet--in defiance of that
most imminent among many other imminent, and
all of them momentous possibilities—there, at the
Royal Academy banquet, sat and feasted together
the antagonistic chiefs of her MAJESTY'S Govern-
ment and her MAJESTY'S Opposition.
Turning from the mere convivialities of Satur-
day evening to the more vital theme of the actual
position of parties as they now stand opposed to
each other in the House of Commons—one cannot
possibly but marvel whether, after all, the Conser-
vatives can make another fight of it in this matter
of the Budget after what has so very recently oc-
curred ! After—that is to say—the resolute strug-
gle that was made during the night between
Thursday and Friday last down at Westminster.
Has the country even, as. yet, thoroughly estimated
what that fight actually was—how far it actually
went as a trial of strength between the Government
and the Opposition ? Why, in connection in one
way or another, directly or indirectly, with that
division of Thursday night or Friday morning, out
of the whole mass of the 658 members set down
by the law of the land as constituting the sum
total of the House of Commons—only twenty-tw•
in all yet remain unaccounted for ! Is any one
incredulous ? The following will prove the extra-
ordinary fact we are here alluding to, will prove
this startling fact to absolute demonstration :
Ministerial majority . . 299

Opposition minority. ,
Tellexs
Speaker and Deputy-Speaker . ....
Pairs
Vacant Seats
Left unaccounted for. .

282

Total, Q.E.D 653
It is but very rarely indeed, we may confidently
assert, that parties are put to such a very close
test as that—the whole House of Commons, with
the exception of no more than Tteenty-Two " Ab-
sentees" (setting aside as of course of no account
whatever the nine "Vacant Seats") taking part in
the contest between Government and Opposition.
And recollecting how the fact—as we have thus
shown quite clearly by a simple tabular arrangement
of numerals—recollecting, we say, how the fact
stands actually thus with the contending Parties,
we cannot possibly do otherwise than marvel
How, or Where, or with what conceivable chance
of immediate success the. Conservatives can again
show fightuiot io
to
tin upon the Budget in a position directly
ant
OOTermalent. There is certainly
ago

EVE

the Paper Duties Resolution still to be a. ace 'pted
or rejected, or divided upon in committee c if Ways
and Means, but that has virtually—the He iv se and
the country understand clearly that has N <i rtually
been already settled by the acceptance of t 1 lie Tea
and Sugar Duties Resolution towards the end of
last week and the consequent rejection of Mr, HORS-
FALL'S Amendment. However, the Oppositit in will
—to use Mr. BUCKSTONE'S phrase, in "Grin ishaw,
Bagshaw, and Bradshaw," have, by this ei ening,
had " a good think." They will have corm ed the
result of this last division ; they will have en refully
ruminated on the mystical majority whin isically
spoken of by Mr. DISRAE,LI as numerically a mino-
rity, at any rate as hardly a majority, seeing that it
was but yet in its teens—that (for the Opp )sition)
particularly tantalising and mysterious main rity of
" Seventeen." And having thus deliberati Bly re-
flected at their leisure upon the matter as it now is,
we shall hear this evening from the Riglut Hon.
Leaders:of the Opposition what will come of it.
Coming as the Academy Banquet kid just
intermediately between the settlement of the Tea
and Sugar Duties Resolution, and the settlement
of the Paper Duties Resolution, it is really as if
on Saturday evening the opposing armies had sat
down for a pleasant amicable interval to eat salt
together, side by :aide to smoke the CaLumet of
Peace complacently.

A society held its annual meeting last weak which
the Conservatives, or a certain number of them,
have brought of late into no little notoriety. Not a
bill has been rejected lately in the Lords or the
Commons if its object was any extension of Religious
Liberty, which has not called forth some bitter de-
nunciations, generally contemptuous of this society.
Yet it must have struck hearers or readers of the
speeches of the two Lord ROBERTS, the HARDIN,
the BENTJNCKS, and all the class which threatened
to break loose from Mr. DISRAELI'S leadership, un-

less he headed " the Tory reaction," and which have
dragged him too far after them—it:must have struck
most hearers, that the society was, to them, rather
more alarming than contemptible. They exalted its
existence into a reason for refusing the slightest and
most reasonable concession, they even got up a
hostile society or societies ; and laid so much stress
on its exertions in the House of Commons, that
members who had charge of measures for religious
liberty, seemed to think it necessary to proclaim
aloud—" No connection with the shop at Sergeant's
Inn." On the last occasion of this kind, Sir
MORTON PETO himself, who wanted to obtain per-
mission for Nonconformists to bury a corpse with
Christian decency in the churchyards which they
are compelled to maintain, though he has subscribed
to the society, and though last year he spoke at its
annual meeting, thought he should promote his
object by proclaiming his regret that " Societies
for the liberation of Religion " and for " Church
Defence," should exist at all. Not indeed that he
gained much by sacrificing his society to his bill,
for it was lost by a larger majority than any of the
other bills for religious liberty rejected this session.

It is rather singular that this society should have
been adverted to of late as a discovery. It was
detected by the living representative of the con-
queror at Blenheim, who represents the Great Duke
by fighting for the Church and alI its abuses at the
head of its Evangelical Regiment. • Church-rates
were tottering to their fall. The Abolition Bill had
passed the Commons by large majorities, it had in-
vaded and appalled the House of Lords, but the
Master of Evangelical Tactics bethought himself of

a committee of the House of Lords, and placing him-

selfat the head of one, extemporised in a short time
a defence of bluo books, constructed of sandbag.i of
evidence of all kinds, in which it was hoped the
hostileshot would bury itself. Success was beyond
anticipation. The pro-rate witnesses made to be
sure, so far as we remember, a poor business of it ;
they agreed but in'one thing—desire to keep the
Rate ; but as to how to keep it, no two of them
seemed to be of one mind.
Very conveniently for them, at least for their
present object—and the future must look to itself
—they got before them, we believe, by their own
offer to give evidence, two members of the now
celebrated " Liberation Society "—Dr. FOSTER,
Chairman of its Parliamentary Committee, and the
well-known City merchant, SAMUEL NIORLEY, Esq ,
an active, wealthy, and highly respected Noncon-
formist. These gentlemen told the committee very
frankly indeed they seemed pleased with
the opportunity of such a platform to
speak from—the constitution and object of their
society. In a long pupa state of existence
it had been designated the Anti-State Church
Society; but finding that opponents would confound
antagonism against an establishment of any Church,
with hostility to the Church itself which was estab-
lished, they rebaptised the society under a name
definitely expressing its object. To them, as to
the "Tree Church" of Scotland, which assumed
that name to express its characteristic in regard
to State control, all Established Churches
appeared to be in bondage. They entered,
therefore, upon a new phase of existence,
under the full title of " The Society for
the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage"
—a title which the necessities of breviloquence
commonly shorten into that of the "Liberation So-
ciety." _ _

Its representatives gladly described its objects,
though its title seems to do that sufficiently, and its
modes of operation. Meetings, lectures, tracts,
small books, and very frequently vestry meetings
called to lay church-rates, were all adverted to ; it
was also mentioned that it kept up an active cor-
respondence with all liberal constituencies, urging
them to look to the soundness of their represen-
tatives on questions of religious liberty. The
most amusing thing is, however, the use
made of all this. Never, it seems, for
a long time has a Blue Book had such
a sale. Every incumbent of course must have
a copy ; and all at once Dr. FOSTER and Mr. MoR-
LEY became the talk of the clerisy of the whole
kingdom. It may seem strange to those of us who
live in the daylight of common life, that a society,
so old that we forget
the year of its birth, and
which had been using every effort to become known
all the time, which not only did not conceal its
objects, but proclaimed them on the house-tops
e xi
its t
ecnocuel dJ—that the fact of such
should now for the first time
dawn on the clerical mind. No doubt with many
aassofcaiertya'ss
who speak of " a discovery" from the evidence of
the above-named gentlemen, it is affectation to do
so; but we have little doubt that on the thousands
of the State clergy throughout the country, the
clear perception that a large number of very
active persons at elections, intelligent persons
too, really contemplated the peaceable liberation
of the Church from the State, saving always the
pecuniary rights of present incumbents and patrons,
caine like a revelation, and a revelation, too, from
the infernal world, as they thought.

Hitherto they had never demeaned themselves to
notice what they hardly knew of, and what, if they
did, seemed to them beneath contempt. They had
not, we believe, any realisation in their minds of
anything so definite and hostile. They thought
Dissenters had all the religious equality they could
want, what would they have And they were