The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-07 00:00:00

TILE SOUTB'EBN CONFEDER2ITION.

INAUGURATION OF MR. JEFFERSON DAVIS. 1:
MONTGOMERY, FEB.IB.
The inaugural ceremonies to-day were the
grandest pageant ever witnessed in the South. J
There was an immense crowd on Capitol-hill, con-
sisting of a great array of the beauty, military, and
citizens of the different States.
Mr. DAVIS commenced precisely at 1 o'clock. He
said—Gentlemen of the Congress of the Confede-
rate States of America, friends, and fellow-citizens,
—Called to the difficult and responsible station of
chief executive of the Provisional Government
which you have instituted, I approach the dis-
charge of the duties assigned me with an humble
distrust of my abilities, but with a sustaining con-
fidence in the wisdom of those who are to guide and
aid me in the administration of public affairs, and
an abiding faith in the virtue and patriotism of
the people. Looking forward to the speedy estab-
lishment of a permanent Government to take the
place of this, and which, by its greater moral and
physical power, will be better able to combat with
the many difficulties which arise from the conflict-
ing interests of separate nations, I enter upon the
duties of the office to which I have been chosen
with the hope that the beginning of our career as a
confederacy may not be obstructed by hostile oppo-
sition to our enjoyment of the separate existence
and independence which we have asserted, and
which, with the blessing of Providence, we intend
to maintain. Our present condition, achieved in a
manner unprecedented in the history of nations,
illustrates the American idea that Governments rest
upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the
right of the people to alter and abolish Governments
whenever they become destructive to the ends for
which they were established. The declared compact
of the Union from which we have withdrawn was
to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defence, promote the gene-
ral welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, and when, in the judg-
ment of the sovereign States now composing this
Confederacy, it has been perverted from the pur-
poses for which it was ordained, and ceased to
answer the ends for which it was established, a
peaceful appeal to the ballot box declared that so
far as they were concerned the Government created
by that compact should cease to exist. In this they
merely asserted the right the Declaration of Inde-
pendence of 17'76 defined to be inalienable. Of the
time and occasion of its exercise they as sovereigns
were the final judges, each for itself. The impartial
enlightened verdict of mankind will vindicate the
rectitude of our conduct, and He who knows the
hearts of men will judge of the sincerity with
which we laboured to preserve the Government of
our fathers in its spirit. The right solemnly pro-
claimed at the birth of the States, and which has been
affirmed and re-affirmed in the Bills of Rights of
the States subsequently admitted into the Union
of 1189, undeniably recognises in the people the
power to resume the authority delegated for the pur-
poses of government. Thus the sovereign States
here represented proceeded to form this confederacy,
and it is by the abuse of language that their act has
been denominated revolution. They formed a new
alliance, but within each State its government has
remained; the rights of person and property have
not been disturbed. The agent through whom they
communicated with foreign nations is changed, but
this does not necessarily interrupt their interna-
tional relations. Sustained by the consciousness
that the transition from the former Union to pre-
sent confederacy has not proceeded from a disregard
on our part, of our just obligations, or any failure
to perform every constitutional duty; moved by no
interest or passion to invade the rights of others ;
anxious to cultivate peace and commerce with all
nations ; if we may not hope to avoid war, we may,
et least, expect that posterity will acquit us of hav-
ing needlessly engaged in it. Doubly justified by
the absence of wrong on our part, and by wanton
aggression on the part of others, there can be no
cause to dcubt that the courage and patriotism of
the people of the Confederate States will be found
equal to anv measures of defence, which soon their
security may require. An agricultural people, whose
chief interest is the export of a commodity required
in every manufacturing country, our true policy is
peace and the freest trade which our necessities will
permit. It is alike our interest and that of all those
to whom we would sell and from whom we would
buy, that there should be the fewest practicable re
strictions upon the interchange of commodities.
There can be but little rivalry between our and any
manufacturing or navigation community such as the
north-eastern States of the American Union. It
must follow, therefore, that mutual interest would
invite good will and kind offices. If, however,
passion or lust of dominion should cloud the judg-
ment or inflame the ambition of those States,
we must prepare to meet the emergency, and
maintain, by the final arbitrament of the sword,
the position which we have assumed among
the nations of the earth. We have entered upon a
career of independence, which must be inflexibly
pursued through many years of controversy with
our late associates of the Northern States. We have
vainly endeavoured to secure tranquillity and ob-
tain respect for the rights to which we were en-
titled. As a necessity, not a choice, we have re-
sorted to the remedy of separation, and henceforth
our energies must be directed to the conduct of our
own affairs and the perpetuity of the confederacy
which we have formed. If a just perception of
mutual interests shall permit us peaceably to pur-
sue our separate political career, my most earnest
desire will have been fulfilled. But if this be
denied us, and the integrity of our territory and
jurisdiction be assailed, it will but remain for us,
with firm resolve, to appeal to arms, and invoke
the blessing of Providence on a just cause. As a
consequence of our new condition, and with a view
to meet anticipated wants, it will be necessary to
provide a speedy and efficient organisation of the
branches of the Executive Department having
special charge of foreign intercourse, finance, mili-
tary affairs, and postal service. For purposes of
defence the Confederate States may, under ordinary
circumstances, rely mainly on their militia, but it
is deemed advisable, in the present condition of
affairs, that there should be a well-instructed, dis-
ciplined army, more numerous than would usually
be required on a peace establishment. I also sug-
gest that, for the protection of our harbours and
commerce on the high seas, a navy adapted to these
objects will be required. These necessities have
doubtless engaged the attention of Congress. With
a constitution differing only from that of our
fathers in so far as it is explanatory of their well-
known intent, freed from sectional conflicts, which
have interfered with the pursuit of the general
welfare, it is not unusual to expect that the States
from which we have recently parted may seek to
unite their fortunes with ours under the Govern-
ment we have instituted. Fur this your constitu-
tion makes adequate provision ; but beyond this,
if I mistake not, the judgment and will of the
people are that union with the States from
which they have separated is neither practicable
nor desirable. To increase the power, develope the
waources, and promote the happiness of a con fedes
a' it is requisite there should be so much of
hornn •
generty that the welfare of every portion
would be the aim of the whole. Where this does not
exist antagonisms are engendered which must and
should result in separation. Actuated solely by a
desire to preserve our own rights and to promote
our own welfare, the separation of the Confederate
States has been marked by no aggression upon
others, and followed by no domestic convulsion. I
•
Our industrial pursuits have received no check, the
cultivation of our fields progresses as heretofore,
and even should we be involved in war there would
be no considerable diminution in the production of
the staples which have constituted our exports, in
whieb the commercial world has an interest scarcely
less than our own. This common interest of pro-
ducer and consumer can only be intercepted by an
exterior force which should obstruct its transmis-
sion to foreign markets—a course of conduct which
would be detrimental to manufacturing and ems
maercial interests abroad. Should reason guide the
,Netion of the Government from which we have
siftrated, a policy so detrimental to the eivilisec;.
wori, 1. the Northern States included, could not 134
cl--irc Efiet injur:,
dictate,' Iv even a st"P3er

i
upon us ; but, if t be otherwise, a terrible respon-
sibility will rest upon it, and the sufferings of mil-
lions will bear testimony to the policy and wicked_
ness of our aggressors. In the meantime there will
remain to us, besides the ordinary rem. dies before
suggested, the well known resources i't r retaliation
upon the commerce of an enemy. F xperienee in
public stations of a subordinate grade to this which
your kindness has conferred has taught me that
care and toil and disappointments are the price of
official elevation. You will see many errors to for-
give—many deficiencies to tolerate ; but you shall
not find in me either want of zeal or fidelity to the
cause that is to me the highest in hope and of most
enduring affection. Your generosity has bestowed
upon me an undeserved distinction—one which I
neither sought nor desired. Upon the continuance of
that sentiment and on your wisdom and patriotism
I rely to support me in the performance of the duty
required at my hands. We have changed the con-
stituent parts, but not the system of our Govern-
ment. The constitution formed by our fathers is
that of these confederate States in their exposition
of it, and in the judicial construction it has received
we have a light which reveals its true meaning.
1 Thus instructed as to the just interpretation of that
instrument, and ever remembering that all offices
are but trusts held for the people, and that delegated
powers are to be strictly construed, I will hope, by
due diligence in the performance of my duties,
though I may disappoint your expectations, yet to
retain, when :retiring, something of the good will
and confidence which will welcome my entrance
into office. It is joyous in the midst of perilous
times to look around upon a people united in heart,
where one purpose of high resolve animates and
actuates the whole ; where the sacrifices to be made
are not weighed in the balance against honour,
right, liberty, and equality. Obstacles may retard,
but they cannot long prevent, the progress of a
movement sanctioned by its justice, and sustained
by a virtuous people. Reverently let us invoke the
God of our fathers to guide, and provide, and pro-
tect us in our efforts to perpetuate the principles
which, by His blessing, they were able to vindicate,
establish, and transmit to their posterity, and, with
a continuance of his favour, ever gratefully ac-
knowledged, we may hopefully look forward to
success, to peace, to posterity.

THE ESSAYS AND _REVIEWS.

(From the Dispatch)

We scarcely expected, when we called attention
to the five authors who hare so heroically leaped
into the yawning chasm of orthodoxy, that the
public would have responded with such eager
alacrity. The fifth large edition of the arch-victim
of the Index Expurgatorius of Anglican Protes-
tantism is already sold out—Dr. M'Caul's cheeping
penny trumpet has been a book-selling success—
and the Quarterly Review is running through its
third edition. We seem to be on the threshold of
our second Reformation. Every bishop in Eng-
land, High Church, Low Church, Broad-bottomed
Church, has signed a requisition to the Archbishop
of Canterbury to put the Essayists on their trial.
From Heretic Hampden and Orthodox Oxford to
the saints and the Tractarians, the whole pack
turns out to worry the common sacrifice to offended
sacerdotalism. Every diocese has its sub-remon-
strance; every deanery musters its petition. Dis-
tricts "get up" their protest; and, shortly, every
parish will launch the thunderbolt of its anathema.
The cry of the mob is," Why need we hear more
Away with him !"

'Well, that is the free-and-easy short cut to the
solution of spiritual difficulties—the " real old ori-
ginal" recipe of the Church as by law established
for secuying uniformity. The time-honoured toast
of roaring and ranting Tories was "The land we
live in ; let those who don't like it leave it." So
long as the majority was not openly arrayed
against them, and they could persuade themselves
and society that they were too powerful to be sue•
cessfully withstood, their bluster and dictation
answered its purpose, and overawed the voice of
liberty. But men began to murmur, "'We don't
like the land we live in, and we won't leave it.
It is as much our land as yours. It is oppressed.
and 'misgoverned ; we shall expose the rotten-
ness of your pretensions, and the dishonesty
of your professions ; the truth shall be told, and the
people shall have their own." The political logic
of the Tories, which has so egregiously failed, is
exactly imitated by the theological casuistry of the
clergy. If thoughtful, earnest and free-souled men
,Hake wry faces at the Articles, and cannot swallow
the creeds, and are squeamish about the services—
if they don't, in short, like the Church, let them
leave it and resign their offices. The answer cf the
schismatic is equally to the point. 'When " the
world is out of joint," ought men to commit suicide
or to "set it right ?" I discover abuses, errors,
untenable absurdities in my Church, what is mv
duty ? To reform the evil or to abandon the Church?
If by reason of these very defects the ranks of Dis-
sent are daily recruited, and the army of the Devil
made stronger than the Church militant, is the
best way to save the Establishment to abandon it
to its fate, or to redress its defects, purge it of its
foul blots, cut the cankers out of it, and conform its
spirit to the spirit of the age
The reply of the Archbishop to the requisition of
the right reverend bench is exactly in the style of
the " good old times when George the Third was
King." "Whether the language in which these
views are expressed is such a 3 to make their publi-
cation an act which could be visited in the Eccle-
siastical Courts, or to justify the synodical con-
demnation of the book which contains them, is still
under oxr gravest consideration." " But our main
hope is our reliance on the blessing of God." He
will " take the law" of them if his attorney advises
that an action would lie; if not, he will trust to
Providence—that venerable refuge for the clerical
destitute. "We cannot understand," he groans,
" how their opinions can be held consistently with
an honest subscription to the formularies of our
Church." Don't talk about the abstract dictates of
justice, and such romantic stuff. The point has been
settled ; see here are a dozen precedents, there is the
leading case. The law is my justice. I won't
argue with you ; here are the term reports, and
there is Doctor Fust's opinion that you have not
a leg to stand on. Free discussion ! Why you
might as well ask Lord Palmerston to go back to
the fundamental principles of the social compact.
The interests of truth ! 'Why not tell me at once,
" Sell all thou hast and give to the poor," or to go
back to the pre-fig-leaf period, or discuss the eter-
nal fitness of things, the origin of society, or the
doctrine of a community of goods. We must draw
the line somewhere. The law says at the Articles.
As to going back to what are called " first princi-
ples," that would be "extremely inconvenient."
We shall stick by the law as the fathers of the
Church did before us. These are the standards—
if you can bolt them whole it will be the better
for you—if not, you are to us as " an heathen man
and publican," and the short cut to the close of the
controversy is to pronounce the "anathema niara•
nailut."

That is the parson's way of doing business, and
so long as the priests alone were the Church the
expedient might serve the purpose. But we live,
not in the fourteenth but in the nineteenth cen-
tury, and the second half of it too.' We have found
out that " the Sabbath was made for man, not man
for the Sabbath "—the fold :is for the sheep, not
for the shepherd—the Church is the property of
the State—the patrimony of the people, and of all
the people. if the great majority dissent from it,
that is a reason, not for excluding non-conformity
from the Church, but of widening the Church, so
as to include non-conformity. Will the commu-
nity " grossly gape on " and see the champions of
their spiritual liberty not openly confronted in the
lists of fair argument, but stabbed in the back by
an action on the case ? Is an attorney to fix the
faith of man's immortal soul, and the " glorious
Gospel of the blessed God" to be tumbled into
a proctor's brief bag: or to rot in the
charnel-house of tradition ? Is religion to be
fashioned for the dead or the living ? Is it, to be
made for us or by us ? Is it the individual concern
of each one of us now and here, or is it a spiritual
entail that we are to inherit with the dirty acres of
our ancestors? It is three hundred years Eince one
of the greatest scoundrels that ever set conscience
at defiance settled of his own motion " the formu
larks of our Church." That fact alone is decisive
of the question of their pretensions. Are we not so
much as to be allowed to look into them ? Is this,
the vital concern of the immortal spirit of a great
people, to be determined by class interests—tbe
same authority on which we found the powers of
secular legislation ? Our case is that, out of thirty
millions of British subjects, only five millions even
nominally give so mu3h as a mere negative assent
to these formularies. Because there is a bench of
Bishops—because a House of Lords would still re-
fuse to repeal the statutes requiring subscription,
and the laws which fix these formularies—are
twenty-five millions of accountable creatures to
yield acquiescence as to an income-tax or a prohi-
bitory duty on the importation of brandy ? This
is a question in which " De Lolme on the Constitu-
f science,
en: o
o nr
fi
t tin° n: will help us but a little way. Queen, Lords,
sea,Erteer °mt.; noi; determining
account in settling
men's religious belief than in xinir the principles
Tracinw, their is the
canons of art.
history, it probable that thew

formularies are perfect ?—is it possible that they'
should be free of grave and even cardinal errors ?
Does anybody, in point of fact, accept them sim-
pliciter ? Have not the very Bishops who
have signed this Address, and the Archbishop
who has answered it, openly and even officially
preached exceptions to them—charged their clergy
so as to challenge them by implication—nay, owned
in their places in Parliament that the 4,000 par-
sons, the lay Churchmen, the Peers who had all
demanded their revision, were justified in the criti-
cisms they made on them, and that they were to be
retained, not because they were true, but because
change was impolitic ? If Churchmen claim infal-
libility for their formularies, we have no more to
say, except that Protestantism is a gross swindle,
and that the Pope and the Catholics should have
their own again. To insist upon squaring the pre-
dication of our living teachers with the effete for-
mularies of a long superannuated Act of Parliament
or the dicta of 300 dead Popes, can only be so much
as excused upon the hardy assumption that they are
infallible, and that " The Bible" is not " the sole
religion of Protestants." Why, even the Vatican,
Popery itself, does not pretend to such an " imma-
culate conception" of "absolute wisdom." Papists
themselves, the slaves of authority, have, at least,
taken care that their infallibility shall always be
capable of changing with the spirit of the age, and
shall centre, not in dead dogmas, but in the soul of a
living man. They even enunciate thenew doctrine
of development—argue that religion is a subject of
human progress—is to be gradually unfolded, re.
vealed bit by bit, modified and expanded as intel-
ligence, civilisation, and spiritual attainment per-
mit or prompt. We are utterly amazed at the
judicial blindness which prefers such pretensions as
are at present arrogated by orthodox Churchmen.
Let them twist and turn, and quirk and quibble as
they will, what does their casuistry come to at last
but that their doctrines are to be assumed, not exa-
mined—that their articles are to be implicitly tic•
cepted, not freely argued—that their canons and
services are not to be so much as questioned, or one
tittle of them subjected to discussion. If they are
liable to error, if they are confessedly htkman, and,
therefore, imperfect, it must be the interest and
right of every succeeding generation to vindicate
to themselves the same liberty of private
judgment which must have bees asserted by
those who differed from Rome and made the new
theological dispensation—to debate and argue every
point, and to form and express each his own
opinion, as those did who, in a more bigoted and
ignorant age, tainted with the prejudices of an
early Popish education, and oscillating for many
years between new priest and old presbyter, pre-
sumed to dictate to all posterity what they were to
affirm and deny. Is it to be tolerated for a moment
that the mere ipse dixit of the half-faced Vicars of
Bray of the sixteenth century is to be crammed
down the throats of the generation whose very
ploughmen know more than did their ancestors'
priests ?
It is high time that Protestants should protest—
that the Reformation should be reformed. It has in
reality gone back. Luther was far freer-souled,
far less trammelled, much further removed from
Popery than our Archbishop of Canterbury. He
" saw this day afar off, and was glad." The age is
ripe for a second Reformation. We cannot afford to
deprecate recourse to the Ecclesiastical Courts or to
synodical action. It was better for liberty that
Hampden was prosecuted for ship-money than that
he should have been " excused his rates." We avow
the wish and hope that the Church will bring this
controversy to an issue by a formal prosecution for
heresy, and the reinstitution of an Index .Expurga-
torius. " Let us have it out." A ring ! A ring !
Let the laity, the people of England, really see the
combatants stripped to the naked truth. This bat-
tle is emphatically their concern. Snug rectors,
snug deans, oily bishops, would fain huddle it
through their Ecclesiastical Courts snuffled up in
technical subterfuge, and smothered in formal
pleas. This nation must no longer suffer the
concerns of man's higher life to be made
the sport of proctorial attorneyship. It demands
free inquiry and open discussion. It insists upon
going to the root of the whole matter. It will not
be fobbed off and bamboozled with the old clerical
dodge of an appeal to the formularies. The very
question at issue is whether these canons are wrong.
The world has long survived enslavement to pie-
tensions to infallibility. Even Italy casts off her
fetters. Germany revolts from tradition, the very
Reformation she consummated. Is England alone,
the champion of civil liberty, to remain the thrall
of sacerdotal dictation ? The issue is not whether
the Essayists and Reviewers conform to the formu-
laries, but whether they teach what is true ; and
upon the result of that inquest must the verdict
turn. Not the whole bench of Bishops, not the
Peers and their Privy Council, nor the Record with
the Evangelical Alliance at its back—no, not Queen,
Lords and Commons, can any longer c. warf this
controversy to a subterfuge of the rubric. There
are thirty millions of souls in this realm each with
its immortal longings. In this the meanest has a
voice potential as the greatest. They will know
the rights of it. They will have the truth, and the
" truth shall make them free." Let the people gird
up their loins for the coming struggle. We tell
them now that they have the glorious opportunity
of exchanging the dogmas of a sect for the enlight-
ened and unfettered religion of a nation—the drones
of moral hexagons hived in the holes of creeds for
open-souled seminal thinkers of their age, who dare
not abdicate the high prerogative of their minds to
think what is true and to speak what they think
those prophets whom every era gives to mankind,
and whose era is blessed in the proportion in which
they are heard and accepted. If they come to their
own, and their own know them not, then is the
time not worthy of them, and will sink in the
slough of the Devil, the world, and the flesh, as the
sow to her wallowing in the mire.

(From the Examiner.)
The Bishops do not appear to advantage gregari-
ously. As a correspondent of the Times points out,
upon three occasions within a few years the Bishops
have collectively dealt in protests, denunciations,
and censures, which have been utterly ineffectual
except in the consequence of some discredit to
themselves. The whole Bench, twenty-six of these
Prelates, now come forward with the Archbishop
of Canterbury at their head to pass judgment upon
the Oxford _Essays and Reviews.

. : . . . Quisnam
Delator ? Quibus indiciis ? Quo teste probav it ?
Nil horurn. Verbosa et grandis epistola venit.
The Bishops can dispense with charge, evidence,
proof. Nay, they can condemn without specifying
offence, as appears from this reply of the Primate to
a clergyman who had conveyed some address to
him :

Lambeth, Feb. 12.
Rev. Sir,—l have taken the opportunity of meeting many
of my episcopal brethren in London, to lay your address
before them.

They unanimously agree with me in expressing the pain
it has given them that any clergyman of our Church should
have published such opinions as those concerning which
you have addressed us. _

We cannot understand how these opinions can he held
consistently with an 'honest subscription to the formu-
laries of our Church, with many of the fundamental doc-
tilnes of which they appear to us essentially at variance.
Whether the language in which these views are expressed
is such as to make their publication an act which could be
visited in the ecclesiastical courts, or to justify the synodi-
cal condemnation of the book which contains them is still
under our gravest consideration. But our main hope is our
reliance on the blessing of God in the continued and increas-
ing earnestness with which we trust that we and the clergy
of our several dioceses may be enabled to teach and preach
that good deposit of sound doctrine which our Church has
received in its fullness, and which we pray that she may,
through God's grace, ever set forth as the uncorrupted
Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,
I remain, Rev. Sir, your faithful servant,
Rev. IV. Fremantle. J. B. CANTUAR.
I am authorised to append the following names J.
Ebor, A. C. London, H. M. Dunelm, C. R. Winton, H.
Exeter, C. Peterborough, C. St. David's, A. T. Chichester,
J. Lichfield, S. Oxon, T. Ely, T. V. St. Asaph, J. I'. Man
chester, R. D. Hereford, J. Chester,
,A. Llandaff, R. J.
Bath and aVells, J. Lincoln, C. Gloucester and Bristol, W.
Sarum, R. Ripon, J. T. Norwich, J. C. Bangor, J. Roches-
ter, S. Carlisle.

What the opinions are, and why they are cen-
sured, the prelates do not vouchsafe to state. They
think it enough to assert that "such opinions" have
given them pain, and that they cannot be held con-
sistently with an honest subscription to the formu-
laries of the Church. But what formularies are
contravened, and how contravened, these extraor-
dinary judges do not state. They know that they
do not like the opinions as the epigrammatist knew
that he did not like Dr. Fell, but they cannot tell
the reason why. The Holy men are not sure
whether the language in which the views they con-
demn are expressed is such as to make them punish-
able in the ecclesiastical courts—that is to say, they
are at least not certain that there is any offence
committed, but that is no reason with them for not
passing to judgment. They confess, indeed, with
their brother of Durham, that they may be unable
to make out any case against the seven, but that
does not prevent their coming to a conclusion of
guilt. Seven reputations are thus forthsith de-
stroyed, so far as it is in the power of the twenty-
six Bishops to defame by pastoral authority.
Surely there must at least be different degrees of
offence amongst these writers, and all cannot have
given the same pain to the orthodox hearts, nor
deserved the one sweeping censure in which we see
them confounded.
Amongst the Bishops we observe the name of
Hereford, who has had some practical personal
experience of the fallibility of episcopal judgments.
His promotion was the subject of protest, as the
Oford "Essays and Reviews" now are of denun-
tchiaetlicosns,;anbduth ha
se
ntooowk
hishi turn
nceo of neotnlideeßmenni
nchg,
hneerveesry-
without proof.
We: arc no champions of the " Essays and Re-