The Sun.
London, England, 1844-06-13 00:00:00

DILLON BROWNE, and Mr. VERNON Swim, Sir
JAMES GRAHAM addressed the House in opposition to
the motion. Lord JOHN RUSSELL followed on the
other side.

After long speeches by Sir ROBERT PEEL and Mr.
Slim, Mr. WARD replied, and the House divided,
when Ministers had a majority of 95, the numbers
being 179 for the motion, and 274 against it.
The House then adjourned at Half past One o'Clock.

The Conservative dinner which took place ' last
night in Covent-garden Theatre was remarkable for
nothing se much as the canting and hypocritical cha-
racter of the various speeches of those of the party
who undertook to enlighten the meeting on the sub-
ject of their political duties. Mr. Alderman Thome-
sox—once a rigid high Tory, now a latitudinarian
Conservative—presided, and, alluding to the absence
of Ministers, who, it would seem, had been specially
requested to attend, observed :—" He had hoped that
some of the members of her MAJESTY'S Government
would have been present to answer the question,
What good had the Conservative Association done to
the State? They had been most respectfully invited. He
knew not why they were not present, but he supposed
they had a good and a sufficient reason to give for such
an apparent slight to such an assembly of their friendi.
However, at the same time he must say that the
Association was not formed for the support of any
particular Ministry. (Loud cheering.) It was
truly a Conservative Association, and no more.
Their festival was not held in honour of any Mi-
nistry. They were advocates of great public princi •
pies." The allusion in the above passage to the
" apparent slight" put upon the Conservatives by the
refusal of any one member of the Government to
attend their dinner, is full of signifizance. The
truth, we suspect, is, that Ministers, one and all,
withheld their attendance because they did not think
it worth their while to show any particular respect or
deference to a party who, they well know, are left
wholly at their mercy, who dare not act contrary to
orders, and who are, in fact, the veriest slaves
of the Downing-street authorities. Why should
the "PEEL of PEELS”.-.-11S Sir JOHN HOBHOUSE
once called him in the excess of his admiration—
why should the Premier or any of his colleagues take
the trouble to conciliate the Conservative party, when
they know that they have nothing to apprehend from
their open or-concealed hostility; but that they must,
to a man, support them, no matter what public mea-
sures they may bring forward, or in what a labyrinth
of inconsistency their subserviency may involve them ?
It is evident that the Conservatives felt deeply the
"slight" put upon them by their Ministerial task-
masters, by the marked manner in which, immediately
afterwards, they cheered Mr. Alderman THOMPSON'S
swaggering allusion to their lofty sense of in-
dependence. " The Association was not formed
for the support of any particular Ministry I "
It was not wedded to Sir ROBERT PEEL'S system of
policy—it was not bound to him by its horror of free
trade, and its detestation of the innovating Whigs,
and that fiendish institution, the Anti-Corn-law
League ;—oh no, nothing of the sort; the Associa-
tion was a strictly independent one, high-minded,
consistent, spirited, and patriotic ! Such may be
Alderman THOMPSON'S notions of the virtues of a
Society over which he so worthily presides, and of
which he is such an apt representative, but such are
not the notions entertained of the Conservatives by
the community at large. Not an unprejudiced man
in the country gives them the slightest credit
for consistency and independence ; or regards them
in any other light than as the abject
tools and sycophants of Sir ROBERT PEEL.
The late divisions on the Factory question have quite
set at rest the question of Conservative manliness and
good faith, and show this amiable party in its true
colours. But if Conservatism—as the worthy Al-
derman would have the world believe—" was not
formed for the support of any particular Ministry,"
what becomes of the boast which the Premier made a
few years since in the House of Commons, to the
effect that he himself was the founder of this new.
fangled, convenient political faith, and had built
up the party professing it, of course with a
view to the support of his own opinions ? As
to Alderman THOMPSOPI'S concluding remark, that the
Conservatives " were advocates of great public prin-
ciples," perhaps he will be considerate enough to en-
lighten us on the subject of the " great principles"
which are honoured by their advocacy. 'We know of
no " principle" to which they are wedded, unless
indeed it be the " great" one of monopoly ; but firmly
believe that in their speeches as well as in their votes
they are influenced only by the basest sense of ex-
pediency.

Some of our Contemporaries have published a very
long and lachrymose circular letter from his Holiness
the Pore, to all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and
hishops, imploring each and every of his "venerable
brethren" to aid in the good work of putting down—
Bible Societies. These Societies the Holy Father
anathematises as among the most successful, and
therefore dangerous, of the " many attempts which
the enemies of Catholicism, under whatever denomi-
nation, are daily making, in our age, to seduce the
really faithful," &c. His Holiness reminds his bre-
thren that the Societies in question were "originally
instituted in England, and have since been propagated
throughout the universe." Since Sir ROBERT PEEL'S
solemn exorcism of the Birmingham and London
currency heretics, who are for having the circulation
of money unrestrained by a gold standard of value at
an irrevocably fixed price per ounce—much in the
same way as our Low Churchmen and Dissenters are
for having the circulation of the Bible unfettered by
the arbitrary restraints of texts and comment—we
have witnessed no manifestation of alarm so whimsi-
cal or so earnest as that which pervades this pastoral
letter. Had it been less satisfactorily authenticated,
we should have really imagined that it must have
been originally addressed to the famous author of the
Puseyite tract, on the " concealment of doctrine" in
certain cases ; for it advocates the identical principles
contended for by the Tractarians, in treating of the
danger of putting the Sacred Scriptures indiscrimi-
nately into the hands of the laity. In short this pon-
tifical circular is a bull of excommunication fulmi-
nated against all Exeter Hall, and " the Society's
house in Earl-street, Blackfriars ;" a voice of woe and
wailing raised against the dissemination of the Bible.
We cannot imagine a more emphatic or honourable
testimony to the objects and the results of their dis-
interested efforts who have devoted their energies,
their time, and their means, to the gratuitous commu.
nication of the original law of GOD, and of the glorious
precepts and maxims of Christianity to the once be-
nighted nations of the world ; whose races—without
this sacred code of religious instruction, and moral
and social duty,—even the civilising influence of our
own communication and intercourse would not have
sufficed to raise from the depths of abject superstition
and debasement, to the contemplation and the worship
of the true GOD.

If, in these sacred Scriptures, there were not some
pervading, self-illustrating principle of truth ; some
elementary self-proving ethics,—which taught and
accurately defined and distinguished between our re-,
lative duties towards the DEITY and towards our fel-
low-creatures ; the ancient spirit of ecclesiastical en-
croachment, of hierarchical despotism would surely
not be quite so sensitive, nor betray so much of
irritability in reference to a system that merely
supplies the text of that law, to which, even
the tyrannic jurisdiction that has been superinduced
upon it by fraudulent pretensions and subtle glosses
and fabricated testimonials, professes to be subject.
When a spiritual leader like the present POSE-zs
to the simplicity and benevolence of whose
personal character European travellers of all coun-
tries and persuasions have paid the tribute of re-
spect and regard—is betrayed into such vehement
terms as he employs against the venders of unmuti-
lated and uninterpreted Bibles and Testaments, as
those which are scattered through this circular, we
may well imagine that there are some latent reasons
for his anger besides those which appear on the
face of his documentary reprobation. Thus, his
Holiness twits the Bible Societies with being
obnoxious to the complaints formerly made by
Saint JEROME, against intermeddling and un-
qualified teachers of the Word, in the primitive
ages of the Church :—" They pretend to popularise
the holy pages, and render them intelligible without
the aid of any interpreter, to persons of every condi-
tion—to the most loquacious woman, to the light-
headed old man, and to the wordy caviller." The
Porn then cites the language of Saint PETER) in re-
ference to the Epistles of Saint PAUL, and the advice
of the former, the " Prince of the AFACes," to the