The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC lOTTBNALS.

The Saturday Review says : Mr. Gladstone has long
promised itself and the country that our affairs would
be conducted under a " more earnest rlgime" when we
had a new Parliament. We are already in a position to
ascertain whether this anticipation has been fulfilled.
Earnestness is a comprehensive, and therefore a mislead-
ing word. Earnest people arc a recent invention, like
" brave minds" and " forthright spirits" and "workers
for man." We do not profess entirely to understand
what is called earnestness, though we dare to say that
when Mr. Gladstone thought of earnestness he was
thinking of Mr. Gladstone. Earnestness, according to
the cheap newspapers, is an enemy to theory
and speculation. An earnest man must be a
practical man ; above all, he must not have a
rag of philosophy about him. Englishmen, they tell
us, are an unphilosophical race ; metaphysics they can
neither abide nor understand ; they want things done, and
first principles, or any abstract grounds for policy, they
resent as an insult. This Peckham-omnibus view of a
senator's qualifications has certainly prevailed. Of all the
classes of candidates who have suffered most severely the
doctrinaires have been hit the hardest. In another direc-
tion the electors have sheen a remarkable disability to
profit by new lights. In one respect the new Parliament
is likely to be more dogged and pertinacious against inno-
vations than any of its predecessors. For good or for
evil, the new House not only perpetuates but exaggerates
the character, be they the faults or the excellences, of their
predecessors. Al vastmajority of Liberals has been returned;
but they arq, all of the old Liberal type ; rich tradesmen,
hereditary Whigs, and the old members make up most
of Mr. Gladstone's supporters. No doubt the new Par-
liament faithfully enough reflects the national will. The
borough members have been elected to do a certain and
distinct and precise work, which is simple enough, and
does not require much refinement, much reflection, much,
if any, independence. What seems to be the taste of the
borough voters is little thought, no philosophy, no
genius, no originality, no " viewiness," no large-
ness of conception. Such is the work, and such
the instruments. Like Pope's women, Parliaments may
come to have no character at all ; and it is, after all, not
so unnatural—though it was not quite expected, and
certainly the reverse of it was promised—that the House
of Commons should so faithfully reproduce the narrow-
netss and stiffness, the obstinacy and the unarguing, if
eolid perhaps stolid, convictions of the untrained English
mind. Satiety has produced apathy, and the frenzy of
excitement under which the contest wSil begun has sub-
sided into a general distaste, if not disgust, for promised

or threatened revolutions and innovations.
The Spectator was thinking of the Lishop of London
when it declined to name any candidate for the vacant

•. _
primacy, lest respect or sympathy so dangerous should
militate against his claim. Believing, as we do, that Dr.
Tait is not a man to shew different phases according to his
station in the Church—to lose his manliness and indi-
viduality as he gains in dignity—to become less simple and
less catholic, and more enamoured of that peculiarly eccle-
siastical capacity for " hedging," as Primate than as Bishop
of London—we heartily rejoice in the firmness or the
weakness, the wisdom or the good fortune, whichever
it may be ; and we confess we do not see the fairness,
in spite of Mr. Disraeli's general shiftiness, of denying
him credit for the better motives where we should
unquestionably, in case of a thoroughly bad choice,
have held him responsible for the worse—that has
enabled the Conservative Prime Minister to make so
good a choice. It is true, of course, that Dr. Tait is a
bitter and, as it seemed to us, unscrupulous opponent of
Mr. Gladstone's Irish Church policy—as where is the
bishop, unless it be Dr. Thirlwall, who is not?—but in al
other matters he has been a steady Liberal, and we should
scarcely have attributed it to virtue, even if Mr. Disraeli
had gone anxiously out of his way to put an avowed
enemy of the Irish Establishment into the highest seat of
the English Establishment. If we are to give even the
devil his due, we need not grudge to say of Mr. Disraeli
at least as much as this—that if he had really had a soul,
and had intended to throw it into the task of his last and
most important ecclesiastical appointment, he would hare
acted very much as he has done.
The Saturday Review is highly satisfied with the appoint-
ment. The attempt to make propagandists archbishops
has been followed by the most disastrous results. Abbott,
Laud, and Sumner are conspicuous examples of this. To
give a bishopric to Dean Stanley would have offended all
Evangelicals and High Churchmen. The Bishop of Lon-
don is sufficiently alive to the tendencies of the day to
recognise them. Of Bishop Jackson our contemporary
remarks that nonentity has its place, and even its
supremacy. Dr. Wordsworth will be a bishop of the old-
fashioned type, carrying out certain accredited, if some-
what obsolete traditions.
The John Bull regrets that Mr. Disraeli has neglected a
great opportunity for breaking through the routine of safe
appointments. When the history of Mr. Disraeli comes to
be written the interviewbetween the Prime Minister and his
Royal Mistress, on the day when Parliament was dis-
solved, will probably prove, when what passed may
be revealed, that, as in the case of York, a higher power
than a Minister made the appointment. We know well
the many difficulties with which Mr. Disraeli has in more
than one quarter to contend, but be would be the first to
admit that he must be held responsible for his appoint-
ments. The Cabinet knew nothing of them. They are
the personal nominations of the Minister, subject to the
Queen's sanction. For the translation of the Bishop of
London there to much to be said. It has precedent on tt
side. But there was one overwhelming objection, which,
if we mistake not, was the real cause (not in Mr. Disraelli
mind) of the appointment. The bishop supports -the
Establishment, but he does so on the most Erastian
grounds, and he is utterly opposed to the freedom of the
Colonial Church. However, as the Bishop (who was
always open to conviction, and was most kind and con-
siderate to those who differed from him) will certainly
leave London a much better Churchman than he came to
it, we can only hope that he will, as Primate, see his way
to a yet bolder enunciation of the primitive faith, as taught
by the English branch of the Church Catholic.
The Imperial Review remarks that the Bishop of London
nas been advanced to the Primacy of All England not
merely on account of the traditional sequence of promo-
tion which the Whigs on' one occasion broke in order to
deprive Bishop Blomfield of his well-earned honours, but
because he bad shewn himself in St. James's Hall and in
all the antecedents of his episcopal life, an earnest and
resolute supporterof the union of Church and State. Such
a Primate may be, we think, relied on to maintain unim-
paired the constitutional principles on which the present
position in the country of the Established Church is
founded, and to resist with the authority of his high office,
as well as with his own, natural energy and ability, the
attacks which have already been made and are likely in
the future to be made upon the national character of the
Church and upon the supremacy of the Crown. The
results will, we believe, prove that the fact of the appoint-
ment on the part of the Premier was as well-advised as
the motive which prompted it was impartial. Of the
successor to Dr. Tait in the diocese of London it is hardly
necessary to speak in eulogy. The judiciousness of the
promotion of Bishop Jackson all will allow, except, per.
haps, the Ultra-Ritualistic party. The elevation of Arch-
deacon Wordsworth to the see of Lincoln is the last of Mr.
Disraeli's appointments. This everyone who admires
Christian learning, who venerates Christian piety, and who
sympathises with Christian courage must rejoice in.
He has long been looked up to by moderate and earnest
Anglican Churchmen as one who would prove an orna-
ment to the Episcopal bench ; and they will now look with
confidence to see their anticipations fulfilled. If modera-
tion without timorousness, and zeal tempered with judg,-
rnent, are elements of success, Dr. Wordsworth will be a
successful ruler in his diocese. These appointments, no
doubt, will be widely criticised. But they must be criti-
cised in connection with the actual dangers and existing
necessities of the Church, and not in a narrow and partisan
spirit. The Church, as a whole, is of more consequence
than the parties in the Church. Extreme men may be
disappointed ; but the Established Church will be the
securer for the Tory-Conservative policy which has placed
the influence and power which is attached to her dignities,
and her places of authority, in the hands of men who are
scholars, divines, and achninistrators, but are above all
pledged, by the whole course of their past lives and actions,
to maintain and to hand down to posterity the great
constitutional principle of the Union of Church and
States

The Jo. t n Ball says.: The battle of the borotighs is over and
the small towns, the strongholds of the shop ac r and
Dissent, have declared against the Government. From
Little Pedlingtons innumerable, the electric wires flashed
the news that the Liberals had triumphed, and were
anxious to see Mr. Gladstone in power. The Liberal
rapers had predicted the result; but they had left an
important element out of their calculations. The work-
ing men of England, in the large constituencies, who
have been enfranchised by Mr. Disraeli, are not to be so
easily bamboozled ; and they have of their own free will,
in Lancashire especially, rallied round the Conservative
flag, and proved the wisdom of Mr. Disraeli in settling
the Reform question on a large and broad basis.
Whatever the temporary losses of the. Conservatives
may have been, we cannot doubt that an energy. has
been infused into the party, by their gains in large con-
stituencies, which will hereafter bear excellent fruit.
The London Review notes that Mr. Gladstone will have
at his back a grand majority of members pledged to reli-
gious equality ; , with all its faults, the House of Com-
mons is the last place in the world where a man is likely
to forget or to violate pledges of this liberal and en-
lightened tenour. If the controversy should take such a
turn that mere parliamentary strength will impress the
House of Lords with the necessity of immediately
succumbing, all will be over ; and at the next election the
manufacturing towns will forget there ever was a religious
or Irish question to frighten them into the arms of the
party they have heretofore consistently opposed. If, on
the other hand; Mr. Disraeli should succeed in making a
great deal of the few but important Liberal reverses, the
House of Lords may be encouraged to prolonged resistance.
In ths.t ease we shall have another Appropriation Clause
story, but with a different catastrophe. Mr. Gladstone
will not yield to the House of Lords ; and the [louse of
Loris is now weak in influence, whereas in 1835 it still
retained the appearance and much of the reality of
its historicalpower. Ugly discussions are now arising as
to its legislative status ; and 111 r. Horsman and Mr.. Lowe,
who dreaded a £1 franchise bill, are the first to propose a
revolution in the constitution and authority of the peers.
If this discussion become linked with that of the Irishish
Clinrch,_ we shall see events quite as startling as even
enthusiasts expected from th9.4e.f01.111 Bill,