The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-30 00:00:00

BFIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Times remarks that the country has been putting
itself to a vast amount of trouble and expense during the
last fortnight, and the time has now come to inquire what
its objects were, and whether they have been attained. It
has, in fact, been at work on two things. It has been
deciding for itself upon the general merits of a great
measure submitted directly to it, and has simultaneously
been selecting persons to carry out that measure in
its behalf. In respect to the disestablishment of th.,
Irish Church, the majority of the new members are
but delegates. They go up to Westminster pledged to
accomplish a particular end. The House of Commons hal
been called the Grand Inquest of the Nation. But the
nation sometimes, though not very often, resolves to be it,
own Grand Inquest while electing a new House. It has
been so now, and verdicts such as that just brought in by
the country are irreversible, if only the question has been
put to it intelligibly. Future elections may augment the
Liberal forces, as Liberal friends of the Church of Englan I
discover the groundlessness of their panic; but it hardly
seems probable that any question can be mooted for a
long time to come on which the Liberal party will
be tempted to choose more uncompromisingly Libel: I
representatives than on this of the Irish Church. ,
The working class, which has primarily benefited by last
year's Act, might have been expected to infuse a new
element into the representation ; but it has not yet learnt,l
as the middle class had in 1832, by battling for a common
object in company with classes already in possession of a
political status, the necessity of combining forces. It has
consequently reduced its political influence to nullity by
the vain ambition to be a power in the State by itself. It
squandered its sympathies on candidates whom no
other class, and not even their own with any
unanimity, would support, while its more educated ,
champions were left to fight close boroughs. The ,
Times regrets the excessive manifestation of provincial
sentiment. Each constituency has an incontestable right
to choose the man it thinks best suited to its own circum-
stances; but the theory of the Constitution is that every
member of the House of Commons represents not one
place alone, but the whole kingdom. It is a disposition
to be encouraged that constituencies should in their turn
sometimes select their representatives with a view to their
capacity for fulfilling this Imperial duty.
The Daily News thinks the Liberal party may be very
well satisfied with their majority, or indeed with the
lowest figure to which their numbers can possibly be
reduced. For parliamentary purposes there is no appre-
ciable difference between a majority of 107, a majority of

114, and a majority of 121. The lowest figure represents
an overwhelming preponderance. The highest cannot be
more than overwhelming. It is of little matter to the
Conservatives themselves whether they are drowned in
seas a hundred and ten fathoms or a hundred and twenty
fathoms deep. But the moral significance of the elections
as a declaration of the mind and purpose of the country is
increased whenever a Liberal victory is won, and is par•
tially impaired by every Liberal defeat.

The Post says that M. Berryer was of that quick,
vehement, impulsive cast of mind, governed and directed,
however, by a shrewd and penetrating intellect, which
seems essential to the great forensic orator. It is a
singular trait in the character of this illustrious advocate
that in his youth he had a passion for becoming a priest.
It was the cloister, rather than the forum, that seems to
have attracted him ; and but for the decisive influence
and authority of his father, who was himself a lawyer, he
would have been lost to the bar. He combined the liberal
man of business and man of the world with the Church.
man and the Legitimist. His independence of mind
saved him from fanaticism both in religion and politics ;
at the same time that his pious instincts and veneration
for ancient institutions made him look up to the
old traditional authority in Church and State. In
1814 he proclaimed publicly the fall of Napoleon; on the
return from Elba lie shouldered a royal musket. But
when the old rc,ginze was restored, and Legitimacy was
triumphant, we find him figuring in the character of a
mediator, and vainly trying to tone down the bigotry, the
vengeance, and the tyranny of those who had learned
nothing and forgotten nothing. He did not scruple to
warn the ill-fated dynasty of the wrath to come in the
shape of reaction against their foolish system of rule; but
even when the day of reckoning which he foresaw had
arrived, he still cherished a sentimental loyalty to the
Bourbons, though his strong sense made him accept what
he saw and knew to be "the inevitable." In his old age
he took the oath of allegiance to the Empire, and, having
been elected a member of the Corps L6gislatif, showed that
at seventy-four he could speak as well in the Chambers as
at the Bar. His eloquent tongue is now mute for ever.
It is curiously suggestive that the first important public
act of M. Berryer consisted in opposition to the First
Empire, and his last in swearing allegiance to the
Second.

The Standard considers that the less said about violence
-and intimidation the better. For every case in which
these forces have been employed in favour of the Conser-
vative candidates at least ten can be adduced in the oppo-
site sense. It has been so throughout Ireland, and it was
so in Worcestershire, Leicestershire, Cambridge, Durham,
Barnsley, Monmouth, Shropshire, East Cumberland, and
dozens of similar instances. At Blackburn at this moment
there is a man lying dead whose only crime was that he
had shouted " Vote for Hornby." Some friends of the oppo-
sition candidate set upon him in the street, and when he
asked " My God ! am I to be killed fur being a Tory ?"
the answer was prompt and unmistakeable. They
bludgeoned him to death there and then. It may be well
worth the while of our contemporaries to shew that the
great constituencies have thrown over Mr. Gladstone and
the Radicals, and given in their adhesion to the Conserva-
tive party for some other reason than that they distrust
the one and have confidence in the other ; in fact, that
they have said exactly what they do not mean. But no
amount of silly vapouring about bribery and violence and
intimidation will suffice to prove it, or to dilute and
eviscerate of its patent meaning what is for the Radical
party the most awkward fact of the clay.
The Morning Summary says : Whether Mr. Gladstone
comes into power, or a Coalition Ministry be patched up,
the Radical party will equally demand a programme satis-
factory to themselves. True it is that they have suffered
heavy losses in the constituencies, hit this will only exas•
perate them the more with the Whigs. The latter would
fain see the question of the Irish Church dropped, and a
laissez-faire policy adopted. Hence their objection to Mr.
Gladstone being Prime Minister, because they know
he is too conscientious to consent to such a scheme.
When he introduces a bill in earnest, the Whigs must
declare for one side or the other—for the rights of pro-
perty or for its confiscation, for the Constitution or against
it. If the Dukes of Devonshire and Argyll are prepared
to cast in their lot with Gladstone, surely the Duke of
Somerset, the Earl of Clarendon, Earl Granville. and
many others will hesitate. But if they allow a criminal
jealousy of the Conservative party to get the better of
their patriotism, we warn them that they will be left out
doubly in the cold; for when the people realise the true
position of affairs, they Will rally round the Conservative
party, the only reliable supporters of their liberties, which
are intimately bound up with those of the aristocracy, the
Throne, and the altar.

The Telegraph rejoices over the extinction of the Tory
party. It is as dead as a door nail, or his late Most Gracious
Majesty George the Fourth of Blessed Memory. That
its survivors do not realise the fact is nothing extraordi-
nary in the history of parties ; for an extinct school of
belief or a sect in politics is almost never aware of its
demise at the time when the event occurs. There is a
curious theory ventilated in certain metaphysical books,
to the effect that as we are born without knowing
it, so we also die unconsciously, and pass to new
conditions of existence with merely a vague idea that cir-
cumstances have changed. Such is the case with that
which was the " Tory party ;" for not only is this respec-
table and historical entity dead, but it is positively fos-
silised. It lies under new layers of events and policies in
a stratum which is already Eocene. Measured by the
stride forward which affairs and statesmen have taken, it
is absolutely antediluvian. Its name remains, just as the
pterodactyle might have been called a bat, or the
ichthyosaurus a fish ; but nothing in heaven, or upon
earth, or in the waters under the earth, remains like the
Tory party of Castlereagh, of Wellington, or even of
Canning.

ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL FOR WESTMIN-
STER.-- A pastoral letter from Archbishop Manning was
read on Sunday in the Roman Catholic churches of London
respecting the proposed cathedral intended as a memorial
of Cardinal Wiseman. In the letter it was pointed out
that although a commencement of the collection was made
soon after the cardinal's death, it was felt that the neces-
sities of the diocese, especially with regard to the educa-
tion of poor children, were so great that all matters not
of urgency must be postponed for a time. Accordingly,
the ctfort to promote education was first followed up.
The collection, however, for the cathedral was not for-
gotten, but went on at home and abroad, and a consider-
able sum had been subscribed. A site in Carlisle-place,
Westrninner, had been secured, and a large amount of
the purchase-money pail over. Respecting the church,
the archbishop further stated that it must be the
work of a very long time, but that he hoped soon to com-
mence, so as to make the buildings which ought to be
about it subservient to the work of the diocese. One of
those buildings would be a house for the residence of the
diocesan. These buildings would be executed by Mr.
Gilbert Blount, and the designs for the cathedral
were entrusted to Mr. Clutton. To the ability of each of
those architects the letter bore marked testimony. The
pastoral stated that the collection for the cathedral would
not be allowed to interfere with the other works of the
-vcese.