The Sun.
London, England, 1850-01-23 00:00:00

to introduce those amendments, and asked for a few
days' delay, we readily assented. It was true the
delay was very dangerous—it was late in the ses-
sion; every day was now precious; and during, not
that session only, but the three antecedent ones, it
had been a constant battle for delay on the part of
the Government. Nevertheless, we had now the
Minister's word—his assurance that the Bill would

be put into such a shape as to secure its passing with-
out difficulty completely satisfied us—and we thus al-
lowed ten more days to be lost.
. .

" The House then went into Committee pro forma
on the Bill—it was late at night, and the House im-
patient. The Attorney-General was moved into the
chAir. The Home Secretary handed in his amend-

ments—they were put, one after another, from the
chair--R0 one heard a word—and no one tried to

hear. It was a matter of course that they were the
amendments which the Prime Minister had promised

should be introduced in that Committee. I should

as soon have dreamt of keeping my eye on a Cabinet
Minister lest he should steal my hat, as of suspecting

him of substituting one set of amendments for
other which had been promised. So the business was
galloped through, as formal business usually i 9, at
half-an-hour past midnight. The amendments were
reported to the Speaker, and the Bill ordered to be
re-printed ; and, though some days more must be lost
in the re-printing, we left the House with the convic-
tion that at last one step had been achieved in the
great and important work of Church Reform, and
that the days of the Ecclesiastical Commission, in its
then mischievous and irresponsible shape, were num-
bered.

" You may, therefore, imagine, but I cannot de-
scribe to you, my surprise when the reprinted Bill
came out. I could hardly believe my eyes. Not a
single one of the promised amendments had been in-
troduced ; nay, it was impossible to discover, from the
beginning of the Bill to the end, that one single line
or one single syllable had been altered so as to bring
it more into conformity with the recommenda-
tions of that Committee on whose report it was
professedly founded. What then were the slips of
paper which I saw the Home Secretary hand in, as
the promised amendments, to his:colleague in the:
chair ? I leave you _to jucge. 04 the character of
that proceeding I will not permit myself to nfake
single comment. But its result we!, that the GO-
vernment had succeeded in gaining a whole month at
the close of the session ; and the raising a remon-
stranc© or reviving a discussion at that late period,
with a view of getting a good Bill passed, was entirely
hopeless.
" The Government bad accomplished its purpose
f postponing an improvement of the Ecclesiastical
Cemmigion now for the fourth year.
" I have cften been asked why, after such very de-
cided pledges as we had received from the First
Minister of the Crown, we did not achieve more last
%cssion ? You have now the answer.

" I make these statements advisedly, and not be
hind any man's back. Immediately after the occur-
rence of these facts, I embodied them in a letter of
re monstrance to Lord John Russell, dwelling espe-
cally on what had taken place on the committal of
the Bill, and apprising him of my intention to make
it public. Had there been, on his part, the faintest
indica:ion of a denial I should have hesitated before
I committed myself publicly to statements which
might well excite hcreduiity.
"But, gentlemen, one reflection arises immediately
out of ad this. What is that unseen and mysterious
influence which imposes so much that must be painful
on the Minister ? It is not his interest to postpone
Ecelviastical Reform, and it cannot be his wish.
With him the path of duty is also the path of popu-
larity and power. Nor have our Episcopal rulers, out-
wardly at lease, the means cf so coercing him to the
public injury and his own embarrassment. In their
obstructive policy they have met with no Parliamen-
tary encouragement they have long ceased to com-
marid popular sympathy ; they are unaided by the
clergy, and unknown to their flocks ; and yet, without
any of these outward or visible signs of influence,
they do contrive, by the exercise of some means as
sterious as irresistible, to divert a Minister from
the wisest courses—compelling him to depart from his
pledges to Parliament— to mock its forms, and trifle
with its expectations—nay, to become the slave of the
liitrarchy in the perpetration of abuses which his
judgment has long since condemned, and in with-
holding from the poor of his country those religious
blessings which, as a statesman or as a Christian, it
must he his first wish they shOuld receive.
" Whence, I ask again, this mysterious and mis-
chievous power ? Will it hear investigation ? Can
it much longer endure ?
"But though we have not had complete success, we
have, as yet, met with no discouragement but delay—
aed delay, in such a cause is, happily, not defeat. We
may be baffled for the moment—but the question of
Ecclesiastical Reform will lose nothing ultimately by
that. The longer postponed, the more severe the
operation ; and I, for one, will not now be satisfied
with what I contended for three years ago.
" Many of our friends, who knew nothing of Par-
liamentary proceedings but what appears in the
reports, have thought that the question of Ecclesiasti-
cal Reform was lost sight of last session. I have,
therefore, thought it right to give this explanation.
" You will perceive that I allow no weight what-
ever to the apology, now habitually put forward by
the Ministry fur the evasion of their duty, that they
have difficulties to deal with.' This plea of diffi-
culties I have found so little to justify in the case of
Eccelesiastical Reform, that I have been tempted to
Inquire whether it is not put forth on equally
slight grounds in other cases; and the conviction
that it is so has led me to deal with other measures
of the Government in a freer and less indulgent spirit
than might seem quite agreeable to their notions of
party obligations end requirements. But party with
:tie has no meaning and value, except as symbolical
of principle ; and I own no allegiance to leaders, ex-
cept as the faithful types and exponents of the prin-
ciples of the, party that placed them in power.
"Between the majority of the party with which I
have ever acted and our present Ministers it is un-
happily too apparent that a great want of sym-
pathy has been created, by the reluctance of the latter
to deal with those abuses against which they were so
virtuously indignant in opposition.
" If I had succeeded in my intention of visiting you
I should have gone further into these questions, and
contrasted the difficulties with which Lord J. Russell's
Government has had to contend with those of pre-
ceding Ministers ; but I do not wish to make them
the subject of a written address. It is obvious, how-
ever, that, as regards Ecclesiastical Reform, with so
many motives to promote it, and so many aids—in
pubiic approval, Parliamentary support, and the most
laudable of all ambitions in a Minister, the desire to
elevate the moral and religious character of a people
—the real difficulty consists, not in granting the re-
form, but in withholding it.—l have the honour to ha,
Gentlemen, your very obliged and faithful servant,
"E. 1.1011.5*AN."

RAILWAY SHARE MARKETS,
BRISTOL, JAN. 22. _

STOCK EXCHANGE.—The market was again firm to-day,
and a good business has been done, but the only alterations
in prices were—Great Western, Quarters, 10 13-16—Ditto,
171. Shares, b% dis.—Midland, 46—Wilts, Someset, and
Weymouth, 10% dis —Berke and llants Extension, % die.