The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-05 00:00:00

AN7I-CATIIOLIO PREJUDICE.

From a letter which the Archbishop of
Westminster recently addressed to the Rev.
Mr. Lockhart, it would appear that his Grace
has the intention of some day giving us an
account of the queer notions held by our Pro-
testant countrymen concerning Catholics and
their religion. It would be difficult to imagine
a more useful, and, in a certain senses more
amusing, work than such a book must inevi-
tably prove. Few, indeed, amongst us could
form an adequate idea of the helpless and dense
ignorance of English Protestants as to all that
concerns Catholicism. Even among the Ritual-
ists, that section of the Anglican Church which
devotes itself to the study of our dogmas and
the imitation of our rites, the most ludicrous
errors and misconceptions prevail widely. But
in regard to the more numerous section of
non-Catholics, taught simply to hate and de-
spise us as a body given up to the grossest
superstitions, they have been hitherto only too
ready and willing to credit any wild and ab-
surd assertions as to the religious practices
and belief of Catholics. In fact, men who in
the ordinary run of affairs may be held to be
of sound judgment and good common sense—
men who are not at all given to accept idle
rumours, or, indeed, anything but well-ascer-
tained or highly probable matters—will, never-
theless, credit any absurdity, provided only it
be set down to the account of Catholics.
Indeed, the strangely-distorted ideas of the
Romans concerning the doctrines and rites of
Christianity in its first age were scarcely farther
removed from the truth than are many of the
notions held of us even at the present day by
hundreds of our fellow-countrymen. Take one
of the most intelligent men from among those
who are most active in their denunciations of
Catholicism, and question him about those
doctrines which he so violently condemns, and
his ignorance of the very first and elementary
principles of our religion will astonish you—
if, indeed, you were not convinced of it be-
forehand.

Of course such a state of things is deplor-
able ; but it serves to set out in strong relief
one of the ruling characteristics of the nation
—its susceptibility to blind unreasoning preju-
dice. For centuries past Englishmen have
been brought up in determined hatred of every-
thing Catholic. From their earliest years they
were taught to look upon Rothe and the Pope
as the centre and head of nearly all evils ;
and the notions thus instilled into their minds
in early youth were increased and deepened in
manhood by all the influences of interest and
association. Such a course of training as this,
acting upon material as stolid and stubborn
as that of the average Englishman, could only
result in that incarnation of stupid and persist-
ent prejudice of which so many specimens are
unfortunately to be found around us. To im-
press natures of this kind with the truth, or
even possibility of truth, of the views of
their opponents, is wellnigh impossible. To tell
them that after all, perhaps, the Catholics and
their religion were neither so bad nor so
absurd as they are generally represented to be,
is in their eyes to suggest a plot for the de-
struction of the constitution of the kingdom.
Almost with the air they breathe theyhave im-
bibed an irrefragable conviction that Catho-
licism, of the nature and doctrines of which
they are entirely ignorant, is the worst of
all mundane e7ils ; and they resolutely close
their ears to all argument or evidence which
could endanger their darling prejudice, only
to open them widely and credulously to slan-
ders and falsehoods which they would not even
believe of their worst enemies.
To a certain extent this state of feeling as
to Catholics pervades all classes, from the
highest and so-called educated to the poorest
and most ignorant. But, unfortunately, it
reaches its highest development in that class
of persons who are precisely in the most favour-
able- position for making the weight of their
aversions felt by all kinds of petty, indirect
persecutions. It is the misfortune of our sys-
tem of local self-government that it places so
large a share of power in the hands of that
section of the community which, both by edu-
cation and career in life, is least fitted to use
it in a public-spirited and beneficent manner
—bucolic magnates and retired shopkeepers.
Any one who will for a moment realize to him
self the mental condition which must be super-
induced by the business avocations or other
associations of these classes will find no diffi-
culty in understanding the incredible narrow-
mindedness which characterizes all the pro-.
ceedings of bumbledom and visiting justices
It is obviously too much to expect that men
who have passed the greater part of their lives
in pettifogging transactions, and bamboozling
the public to their own great profit, should,
at the eleventh hour, as it were, adopt wide
and generous views. The whole business of
their lives has been passed in a routine which
could only tend to narrow their views and
contract their sympathies. To resist, to ob-
struct, to assert their petty authority in a hun-
dred irritating ways, has become their second
nature ; and it is only to be expected that
Catholics, a small and somewhat feeble minority
in the country, and, therefore, one of their
safest objects, should be made specially to feel
the weight of their bigotry and prejudice,
which they conceal beneath the guise of a
Quixotic devotion to the imperial Protestant
interests of the country.

It is satisfactory, however, to feel that this
state of things is giving way. Protestantism
is fast losing its hold upon the nation, and
with it the anti-Catholic prejudices which
have been fostered as its essential foundation
in the national mind. A certain section of Pro-
testants are fully aware of this, and alive to
its consequences, and hence the frantic but
unavailing efforts of the Whalleys, Brock-
mans, and their troop of hired slanderers to
arrest the current of public opinion. But the
tide has set in too strong for them, and by some
curious fatality they and the whole band of
prejudice-mongers fail to see that their labours
are but hastening their own final discomfiture.
—Westminster Gazette.

RELIGION IN FRANCE UNDER LOUIS

PHILIPPE.

I have shown how religion, chained down
by the Concordat, as the King by the Charter,
had no power to curb the revolutionary spirit
which in 1830 was still as anti-religious as
in 1792. The Concordat, by
the maliciousin-
terpolation of the organic articles, was made
a handle by the Liberal party to keep religion
in subjection, which was e
very year exposed
to the most disgraceful attacks in the Cham-
bers on the occasion of voting the subsidies for
public worship. These attacks resembled not
a little in their abusive bitterness the annual
debates that used to take
place in the Eng-
lish Parliament in voting the Maynooth grant.
Although the Ministers, according to the Char-
ter, were alone responsible, yet every fault they
committed was imputed by the so-called Liberal
party and by the public press to the King, who
thus became the cons ',ant target for the dis-
graceful attacks of a misguided faction. The
Revolution of July, 1830, was carried in Paris
with the cry of " Vive la Charte." A tri.
coloured flag, hoisted on every mail and stage-
coach, conveyed the intelligence to every de-
partment. The Church shared the unpopu-
larity of the King, and religion was attacked
and insulted in Paris; but the working classes
respected the Sister of Charity ; they regarded
the bonne scour in something the same light
as they are accustomed t.) regard the mere
of their trade guilds. In France every guild
or corporation of artisans and Workmen is
placed under the tutelage of a mere. She is
to the trade guild what the vivancliere is to the
regiment, only held in even greater respect and
honour. The Sister of Charity, the bonne scenr,
like the famous Sister Rosalie, was treated even
in the heat of the Revolution with the greatest
reverence by the working men of Paris. She
was in their eyes, if not invested with a re-
ligious character, at least to be respected as

the mere of the moral and charitable institutions
of the country. And though the people had been
taught by the public press to hate religion, thei
sight of so many devoted Sisters of Charity
taking care of the wounded in the hospitals,
victims of the three glorious clays, made them
perceive that religion was not altogether use-
less. It was the habit of the devoted Sister of
Charity that saved the soutane of the priest.
Besides, as every child had been taught the
Catechism in order to make his first commu-
nion, so the great majority were in the habit
of calling in the priest on their death-bed.
The priest was, therefore, a necessity, and it
was that necessity also which prevented, in
1830, every priest from being murdered as in
1792. It is a very remarkable fact, that in
that circle of forty miles round Paris, called
by the world the most enlightened portion of
France, in which nobody attends church even
on a Sunday, no sooner is a man taken ill than
he calls in the priest. This fact shows at
least that the belief in the immortality of
the soul, in a future world, in the judgment
of God, survives even in the worst part of
France. It also shows how fashion and
human respect work upon the better judgment
of men. The influence of the infidel press is,
indeed, the
_real cause of much of the anti-

religious feeling; for these impious papers are
to be found on the table of every country-inn,
and the people do not dare to contradict what
is read to them in print. The Catechism and
the fruits of their first communion were, there-
fore, the only barrier left to keep up that
sense of religion which, when once obtained,
never dies; God cannot visit, by a worthy com-
munion, the heart of a child without leaving
in it an eternal benediction.

Although at first the voice of the people was
in favour of a republic, that honest voice was
soon put down by the traitors of the day. The
great schemer of the day, Lafayette, was in
league with the Palais Royal ; he and many
other noted characters of the time were leagued
together for the purp use of getting the Go-
vernment of France into their own hands.
They pleaded how useful it was to have a
King subjected to the power of the Chambers ;
and in the name of liberty and of the charter,
they proposed the Orleans family. They had
little difficulty to prove to the people that a
King was a necessity, and the people in their
simplicity thought they were going to have a
King with unlimited power. Kingship in
France accords with the genius of th nation
—a nation of heroes must have a King. There
is no gradation or glory in rank without a
King to award the recompense. The younger
branch of the Bourbons, in spite of being
Bourbon, was proposed to the people, and the
Orleans family, previously
_prepared by the
conspiracy which had been for some years at
work at the Palais Royal, accepted, in spite of
their. oaths and family coiiaection, the crown
of rFrance. From that moment France fell
into the hands of perjurers and unbelievers,
who had the effrontery to require an oath
from every official ; they thought that they
could only be safe in the han Is of as great per-
jurers as themselves. The consequence was
that every place-man wh3 had any regard for
honour and conscience was obliged to resign
his post, and France was abandoned to the
guidance of freethinkers. The people felt the
disgrace they had fallen int); partial revolts
took place every six month, ; the sovereign
was called the King of barricades ; his life
was many times attempted. Religion was more
than ever restricted. The civil Government
found fault with the bishops for having too
many pupils in their seminaries ; no religious
order was allowed to open a house of educa-
tion ; the persecution was such that Catholic
families had to send th3ir sons to the col-
lege of the Jesuits at Bruc,elette in Belgium,
and to Fribourg in Switzerland. With one or
two exceptions it was impossible to get a
Catholic education in France, and those houses
which did escape the fury f the persecution
were not allowed to obtain for their pupils
university degrees.
The centre of this evil was the University
of Paris, which enjoyed a monopoly of the edu-
cation of the country. It was in the hands of
Deists and Materialists ; it was the great seat
.of the propagation, not of faith, but of uabe-
lief. Materialism was openly taught from its
chairs. The consequence was, as might have
been expected, that year by year it sent out
into the world its students corrupted in faith
—teachers of infidelity and materialism. The
University of Paris was not merely the centre
—and that would be bad enough—of ration-
alism and unbelief, bat it was a monopoly which
held in bondage the whole of the higher edu-
cation of the country. Against this monstrous
evil Montalembert fought his glorious fight ;
he rallied round his standard " freedom of
education," all that was still sound and free
in France. The Catholic party in the Cham-
bers and in the Press kept up a prolonged and
noble struggle for freedom of education. They
knew that religion in France, the safety of the
State, public morality, depended upon freeing,
the education of the country from the dis-
graceful bondage under which it suffered.
M. Louis Veuillot, in the /Mixers, for nearly
sevente6h years, waged this war of freedom of
education without cessation, and yet with won-
derful intellectual fertility and vigour. The
evil effects of this monopoly of education on
the part of the godless University of Paris
was everywhere visible. I might recount
from my own experience innumerable in-
stances of its corrupting influence. I will,
however, content myself with one or two illus-
trations. Crossing one day in 1831 the Place
du Carrousel, I met the head master of the
University Lycee of Nantes. He was a good
Catholic :—" Well, sir," said I, " were you able
to hold your post after the revolution of 1830 ?"
" I was. I thought I might do some good, so
I kept my place; but later, finding things were
getting even worse than you knew them, I was
so disgusted that I have sent in my resigna-
tion." " Well, sir, I often repeat that out of
the 800 boys and masters only about twenty
went to their Easter Communion." "In my
opinion," he answered, " if you exaggerate at
all, it is in saying more went than fewer.
What good could I possibly do in such deep
iniquity ?" I was a student in Paris in 1830,
where I met many of my old school-fellows,
some from the Jesuit college of St. Anne,
near Auray ; most of them had abandoned
the •virtuous lessons of the good fathers ;
they had been led astray by human re-
spect and the bad example they had con-
stantly before their eyes. They dared not go
to church on Sunday, nor abstain from flesh
meat on Fridays in the public restaurants.
Vice was allowed to walk in the open day, the
vilest pictures were exposed in shop windows,
the most abominable romances were sold, and
religion, in a word, was regarded as only fit
for idiots. Some priests even did not venture
to appear in the streets in their soutane ; the
livery of religion was looked down upon with
disgust by the free thinkers; there was scarcely
a man who went to church on Sunday to be
found in the administration or in official circles.

In the army there were many men of honour,
or at lepst men of integrity ; their, example
offered a great contrast to the shameless pen-
lation which was going on at the time in every
other Government department ; but as to reli-
gion, the army of France at that time, even in
its highest grades, knew nothing of it. Offi-
cers and soldiers alike were practical unb3-
lievers.

Every man who had resp3e for religion
and virtue, and considered perjury as a stain
on his honour, had retired into private life.
Many of the gentry or noblesse who had coun-

try seats, were engaged in agricultural pur-
suits ; now and then, iu the midst of their re-
tirement from public life, some of them gave
expression to their indignation by pamphlets,
exposing the depth of the general corruption
and predicting its necessary consequences.
Religion was never so powerless as during
that immoral period of 1830 to 1848 ; Eng-
lish newspapers had lavished the greatest
praises on the Constitutional King ; the recep-
tion of the Queen of England at the Château
cannot be forgotten. A Protestant was

Prime Minister; the eldest son of the King had
been married to a Lutheran ; there was every
t hope on the part of Protestants that France
•was about to adopt the so-called reformed re-
ligion. But whatever may be the amount of
irreligion and infidelity in France, common
sense remains. The people know that if there
be any truth in religion, that it is only to be
found in the Catholic Church—that all other
sects have worldly motives, or motives of self-
interest in view. Every Frenchman has a keen
sense of the absurdity of the system of pri-
vate judgment which pretends that every indi-
vidual is capable of safely interpreting the
often mysterious and mystical language of the
Bible ;—they know that to be a lawyer or a
doctor it is necessary to study for three years
at the faculty of law or medicine at the Uni-
versity of Paris, and they think it the height
of unreason to believe in a self-taught theo-
logy, and to reject the authority of the Church.
Fortunately, for France, there were no tithes
and church estates held, as in England, by a
hostile establishment, whose worldly interest it
is to oppose, as it has done, by a long conspi-
racy against truth and common sense, the
Catholic Church, and "to support by its ill-
gotten estates, church aril abbey lands, a false
system .of religion. France, more fortunate
than England in this, escaped the great danger
of a systematic perversion of truth. It is true
that freethinkers in France and worldly men
heap every kind of slander and abuse upon
the clergy ; they have political interests to
gain, passions to gratify ; but such abuses do
not bear lasting fruits, as every day they are
contradicted by the saintly lives of the clergy,
whose good example the people of France have
ever before their eyes. It is not so in England,
where the clergy of the Established Church are
themselves most interested in keeping up pre-
judices against the Catholic priesthood. They
can be moved to revenge, even to bloody deeds,
as during the great revolution, for the sake of
correcting more or less crying evils, or for the
sake of following the craving of their worldly
appetites. But those deeds carry with them
their own remedy in the disgust vice always
awakens, and in the reaction which it invari-
ably produces. But even in the corrupt days
of Louis Philippe's reign, there was no danger
of France falling a victim to Protestantism.
Since the first outburst of the Reformation
Catholic nations, Lord Macaulay says, have
become infidel, and have become Catholic
again, but have never lapsed into Protestant-
ism.—Correspondent of the Westminster Gazette.

WHITHER ARE WE TENDING?

(From the Anglo-Americaa Times.)

The biggest placards everywhere announce the
biggest journal in the world, an I those-who would
like to see that elephant d tracing should read the
Stakdard or Morninj Herald, or whatever it calls
itself, of Thursday last. This elephantine jig is per-
formed to a tune of the New York Herald, which
on the 7th April published an article in reply to the°
question—Whither are we tending ? " From one
on i of the laud to the other," accor ling to the New
York Herat 1, " the people are the pray of politic d
harpies. Property, order, periocal rights, are
mere names, and in all things in which a Govern-
ment should secure the governed, the people are at
the mercy of an unscrupulous class, who, in virtue
of universal suffrage, hold the offices and make the
laws." Instead of the purity and economy the
States expected to secure after casting away the
tyrannical and corrupt yoke of the British Mo-
narchy, by making the rulers feel the direct in-
fluence of the people, the Herald finis that " after
eighty years our experience only results io show-
ng the world how to secure the worst
vernment the sun can shine on, hive to orga-
nize the system meat certain to defeat all the
good objects of government, an 1 how to tie the
people hand and foot, and hand theta over to
the rogues and wretches of the community."
Here are fine texts for the Tory journal ! and
how it avails itself of them we may gather from Ls
remark—" It is the perpetual pressure of these ob-
ligations (promises of political support) which has
brought about the dreadful cnu Ittion of the national
finances, the terrible stat. 3 of corruption in the
Revenue Department; and that fearful necessity for
more olices, which has driven the Legislature to
the removal of the PRESIDENT ani the encroach-
ment on the Presidential power. The final result of
universal suffrage is to set up the whole wealth of
the State and the property of the citizens ' as the
reward of the winner in a race for office'—the
winner being, four tines out of five, one who seeks
his position only that he m ty make money out of
it. As for universal suffrage, which was not origi-
ginally contemplated by the framers of the Consti-
tution, it is the parent of all the vices in the politi-
cal system of the United States." No one denies
the gross political corruption prevailing in the
United States. The question is, To what is it due ?
And of course to this the Standard instantly replies,
To universal suffrage. But, unfortunately for the
Standard, the most corrupt period of English his-
tory was the time when the franchise had been
reduced to its narrowest limits, and the Govern-
meet was that of the aristocracy. Every Republic
has fallen by its tendency to create an oligarchy
and the gross corruption which ensues. This arises
from the unscrupulous educated, using the want of
knowledge in the masses to further their own de-
signs—the alliance of knavery with ignorance. It
is not the fault of Democratic institutions that cor-
ruption has gained so firm a h it l in the United
States; it is purely duo to the dense ignorance
shipped into the country from Europe. The marvel
is that the institutions of the United States should
so well have stood the strain, nor is there any in-
superable difficulty in working a thorough reform.
Take away the prizes in the lottery of villany and
there will be but few candidates. Make the civil
service of the United States a profession for which
lads are educated and rise through the different
grades as they do in the army, and all the gang of
corrupt politicians are knocked on the head. This is
the grand work for the incoming PRESIDENT, who,
we most fervently hope, may be General GRANT—
not that we care for one candidate more than
another, but because we believe that he would lend
himself heartily and with single-minded patriotism
to this work. Democratic institutions have not yet
had fair play in the United States, nor can they
until the European tide of ignorance passes through
some preparatory straining before admission to
the exercise of the franchise. Indeed we much
doubt whether any process could qualify the
bulk of the immigrants, and the people should
not forget that in leaving .prizes to he striven
for by the unscrupulous, and freely giving the bal-
lot to the immigrant, with one hand they offer the
inducement for, and with the other the means of demo-
ralizing the community. If England adopted for
a year the civil service system in force in the United
States she would be precipitated into ruin. No
country but one patient under taxation and in the
highest degree law-abiding would endure it. But
there is no necessity for enduring it in America, as
it can without much difficulty be remedied, and an
immense reform effected. What the American
people have to defeat is the chance of any mere po-
liteian, such as ANDREW JOHNSON, being elected to
the Presidency; GRANT, or CHASE, or CHARLES
FRANCIS Anasts, are of the stamp, whatever their
political proclivities, from whom, unless infatuated,
they will elect their next President. Except
the man elected be devoid of true patriotism,
he will turn the whole forbe of his energies to
the reformation of the civil service. Although
the people stand aghast before the political cor-
royion developed since the war, the system is in
truth the mere expansion of that in existence be-
fore the war. Toe machinery of Government has
been vastly increased, an 1 in p •op irtien to that in-
crease has been the corruption. Before i; was com-
paratively a minor evil, but the increase to which
we hive alluded has made it a stupendous one.
It is bad enough for the people to have their means
of existence wrung from them wholesale as now ;
but it is worse that ad litional burdens shout I be
added to fatten up such blood-suckers, and that the
plunder squeezed from the nation shout I.be used as
a means of demoralizing the nation. Fortunately
for the United States the magnitu le of the evil has
directed to it public attention, au .I the President

of next November, be he Democrat or Republican,
must stand upon the platform of Civil Service Re-
form. It is not, however, fair to charge against
Democratic institutions the vices arising from a
want of system. No man pretends that Republican
institutions will alter human nature, although they
may modify it, Men will be dishonest, whether
rolling in luxurious carriages in Rotten-row or
"stumping" the States, and the greatest thieves of
modern dap have been shown to be the Rotten-
row men. We freely confess that the next greatest
are professional polkiciaus of the United States.
Bat Democracy had as little to do with educating
the one as the other. We do not suppose that even
the Standard will argue that the privilege of elect-
ing his rulers must necessarily make a man corrupt,
though it may increase his opportunities of being
corrupt. Its influence instead of being to degrade,
is to elevate, and in the whole mass, if the propor-
tion of elevation be greater thou the measure
of evil it has evoked from 'the naturally vicious,
then we maintain that Democracy is good. If
all men were impracticably evil it would be
impossible for Democracy to stand. Its princi-
ple is that men are not wholly vizioas, and the more
enlightened and educated they became, the better
qualified they are for self-rule, and the only true
Conservatism is resting power on the individual
shoulders of every citizen. No one expects the
United States to develope a perfect form of Govern-
ment, but what believers in Democracy assert is, that
in so far as it attains this the true end of Conser-
vatism, it is better than any other. The Standard
points to the vast mass of rottenness shown by the
article of the New York Herald, and this we franklY
admit to be a huge blot marking the inroad of the
enemy against the liberty of mankind, and proving
how the best institutions are defeated by the vice
of human nature. But to understand the subject
we must take a more comprehensive glance. Sud-
denly the lightest taxed and least governed of the
Great Powers found itself overwhelmed with im-
posts and officials. The transition was, in truth, as
instantaneous as the change a min makes who
swims across a river, the bank on the one side and
the bank on the other being his connecting points,
though all around him may be altered. So it was
with the States when they passed through the civil
war. The country they left and that they entered
were widely different, and the difficulty is to accom-
modate themselves to the change. That they should
have succeeded so well ought really to be the matter
for surprise, not that while the baggage is still
strewn on the bank that robbers should be active.
There is every reason to expect that the reform in the
Civil Service will soon be inaugurated, and the abuse',
over which the Standard danced its elephantine joy
on Thursday, will at one stroke be swept away.
But is it fair, in reviewing Democratic institutions,
to take one phase, and that arising from such
peculiar circumstances as the demoralization grow'
ing out of a defective Civil Service System, in face
of a total change of circumstances ? IVh it have,
been the predictions and the earnest desire of the
oligarchical organs ? In the first instance, they
in untamed that a Republic hal not the consistencY
and determinatioa successfully to fight through
desperate and long-continued struggle. They held
that a pure Democracy could not stand the strain;
that the people were too fickle, too little inclined
for honour, patriotis.n, or for any other motive to
endure privation and mike great sacrifices. This
the United States dispelled by facts so patent that.
none could deny them. It was then asserted that,
though kept up by the excitement of war, and
bribed to acquiescence by the seeming commercial
prosperity which always in the first instance attend°
the substitution of a paper for a metallic currencY,
that Democracy could not bear the after strain
when the liabilities had to be met. The United
States have patiently borne a system of taxation,
it is confessed, no other nation on earth
would endure, couple 1 with the very corruption 01
the Government employs which furnished the
tune to which the Standard last Thurs.! ty dancei•
The third prediction was, and even now is, that the.
Cons'itution would break down ; that it was !Il
very well for times of peace, and very pretty l
theory, but when tested by the fiery ordeal it would
be found wanting. Now here again the Republic
presents a grand spectacle—that of a President,
Commanding-in-Chief the Armies and Navies
of the United States, an 1 exercising the whole exe'
cutive power of the nation, being tried by a civil
tribunal, and all his acts brought to the peacefu
arbitrament of law. Can the Standard tell us whet
such a sight had ever been seen before ? Rulers
have gone down in scores before armed violence,
and instances are not infrequent in which nun
surfeited with the pomps and vanities of this 'wick°
world, have voluntarily surrendered power, b°6
never was there an instance of a great executive
officer, the head of a powerful nation, being
quietly arraigned like any ordinary citizen befoee,
the tribunal appointed by law to test the legality 01
his conduct. This is perhaps as grand a ti!uall3s
as ever Democracy achieved. We put aside the
constant prediction of the great financial convulsion
which was to collapse the States as an opera hat is
flattened beneath the arm of its owner. We have
had the financial collapse, but it has been in Egg'
land, not in the United States ; and the effect is°
unlike that of a man enjoying the spectacle of °
fight between two others, who suddenly and unel"
pectedly gets knocked down himself. It is natural for
him to look for either of the pugilists to be floored!
but he gets up surprised, confused, and utterly unabl;
to account for the fact as regards himself. It
,1
unfair, when reviewing Democracy, to confine 100
discussion to a single phase, while the whole is be,
fore us; and although we deplore the currupeon.dc,
A
veloped among the political harpies of the Unit
States as much as the New York Herald, we believ°
that the country is tending toward a more polet
goal, because in other respects Republicanism 11;
brought out in striking relief the virtues of the
people.

THE ECLIPSE OF t '
THE SUN.—Major Tennant
going out to India to observe the total eclipse of AOO9.
18, with a special view to photography and polarisatio%
the cost of the expedition having been sanctioned by
Secretary of State for India. This eclipse is already e%-
citing unusual interest among astronomers, in e,..°135:;
(pence of the (comparatively) long pariod of dar6,n,;itt
which it will occasion. A line drawn on the map (roof
Aden across Hindustan, and away to the southern coast n-f
New Guinea, will represent pretty accurately the /tile ,;,:e
total obscurity. It so happens that on the clay
named the moon will be almost at its nearest to the ear ,e
and the sun at its furthest from the earth, consequcetyt:
the moon will hide the sun so completely that the clutle.9
tion of the total darkness will be nearly seven reinu„,i,
This is so rare a phenomenon that all interested iu CO8"30
cal science are earnestly desirous of getting all theY coo
out of it by observation. Foremost among theini.rea.
Royal Society have taken such measures that, if the
ther bo only favourable at the time and place of obaefbey
Lion, most satisfactory results will be obtained.•
have sent out to India a number of newly constructed ,„,s,
stru men ts—telescopes, spectroscopes, prisms, actinoine:4
and others, by which all the phenomena of an eclipse 7, of
be well observed : and as the observers will be some
the most skilful of the officers employed on the tho
trigonometrical survey of India, we may hope th,,,,a 800
highly important questions involved in the phen°',oth"
will be cleared of their present uncertainty. If the '"0011
west monsoon, which will then be blowing, wi,11,11
leave the sky clear at the place of observation, we snight
Christmas next know more about the sun and its
and atmosphere than hitherto.

Births.
,r gar
* MOSELY—On the Ist inst , the wife of Mr. B. L. °-
312, Regent-street, W., of a son. Lodge'
MONTMORENCY —0 a the 3d hist , Poundisford
Taunton, the wifo of Captain the Hon. R. 11. De

rnorency, 32d Light Infantry, of a son.
PORTER—On the 3d inst., at 4, Chancellor Villa's' F3evfic;
road, West Dulwich, the wife of Thos. Porter, B 41"

SOD.

Marriages.
Act°lll r
BALLARD lIALSE —On the 2d lust at St. 111ar ~ -pof
Edward Ballard, M.D., of Islington, to "151- 1
• youngest daughter cf. John liaise, Esq., of Acton' foil('
GOOCH—BLAKE—On the 2d lust., at Bratnerton, Dicgt.de
Marlys U. Gooch, Esq.. of Wstbourne-terrac -`yo;el
p,,rlc, to Mary, eldest daughter of the Rev'.
rectJr of Brainerton.

. .: Lord Culp
CALTTIORpE—On the 2dDeaths
inst., at Elvethan, al° ''''')
thorpe, aged 77. ~t, gov•
FollßEi—On the Ist iust , at Richmond, the Rig'
Walter, Lord Forbes, aged 7U. Vijri
STUART—On the 17th ult., at 31, Melville-street tiart
burgh, Katherine, widow of the late Sir James t
Bart., of Allan Bank, N.B. - cared
WENLocx— On the 2d ins+, at 29, Beikeley_squarel
_......!
line, the Dowager Lady Wenlock, aged 75

r
London: Printed and Published by WiLLIA
vw
of No. 112, Strand, Printer, at Dia SUN ffio°,oo-alty
Strand, in the Precinct of the Se Yoh In the -
Middlesex.—Tuesday, May 5, 1808. S. 11-0 go Op