The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-08 00:00:00

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND ST. THOMAS
A BECKE7.

Archbishop Manning's declaration at Sal-
ford, that St. Thomas a Becket died in defence
of the law of England and of the freedom of
religion, has excited a great deal of attention,
and has drawn from the Pall Mall Gazette and
the Times elaborate attempts at refdtation.
Every one regrets that the Archbishop's speech
was so curtly reported in the newspapers, but
condensed as it was the point at issue is very
clearly stated. This point is, that St. Thomas
died for the vindication of the principle of
spiritual liberty against the excess of Royal
power. The first article of Magna Charta was:
" The Church shall enjoy its liberty." That
article, said Dr. Manning, embodied and ex-
pressed the very cause for which St. Thomas
laid down his life ; and, the Archbishop added,
that it appeared to him that the great principle
of the freedom of religion from the oppressive
interference of the Royal power was the prin-
ciple avowed by two-thirds of Great Britain
and Ireland at the present day. To meet the
fact that St. Thomas died in defence of free-
dom of religion and of the law of the land, the
Pall Mall Gazette deliberately, confounds two
distinct ideas—freedom of religion and religi-
ous liberalism. Religious liberalism, as held
by the Pall Mall Gazette and the Times, was
neither the law of the land nor the principle

for which St. Thomas died, but is an abuse o
religious freedom, as repugnant to the true
spirit of religious freedom as Communism is to
the rights of property. The law of the land
was that the Church shall enjoy its liberty,
and this liberty secured to every individual
the right to practise his religion according to
the dictates of his own conscience, and in
obedience to the Spiritual Power, charged by
God, as his faith taught him, with the care
of his spiritual welfare. But this freedom of
religion was constantly jeopardized, in the
teeth of the law, by the oppressive exercise of
the Royal prerogative. As long as the Church
produced men like St. Thomas of Canterbury,
ready to resist Royal usurpations, the religious
freedom of England was maintained, but no
sooner did corruption and heresy gain the
upper hand than religious freedom was de-
stroyed throughout the entire land. With
the Tudors and the religion which was not
that of St. Thomas of Canterbury, religious
tyranny of the most oppressive sort fell upon
England. The Royal Supremacy was the seal
set upon that tyranny, and it was only by taking
up again the principle for which St. Thomas
died—the freedom of religion from the inter-
ference of the Royal Power—that the people
of England at last regained their religious
liberty. This emancipation, then, from State
control in matters of conscience, the principle
for which St. Thomas died, is it not, as Dr.
Manning affirms, the principle avowed by two-
thirds of Great Britain and Ireland at the pre-
sent day? And is not their sympathy due to St.
Thomas it Becket, the champion of religious
freedom, and not to Henry 11., who antici-
pated the religious tyranny of the Tudor Kings,
from which we have now happily escaped ?
To avoid answering the question in the affir-
mative, the Times and the Pall Mall Gazette
raise another issue and deny that St. Thomas
a Becket held the principles of religious Libe-
ralism. But who said he did ? Not Dr. Man-
ning ! Religious Liberalism is not identical
with the freedom of religion any more than
Communism is with property. Religious
Liberalism is as much a denial of the absolute
rights of God as the Royal Supremacy in
matters of conscience was a denial of the rights
of man. Man has a right to reject every in-
terference on the part of the Civil Power
with his spiritual concerns, but has no right
as against God to claim the liberty of rejec-
ting religion. It was in vindication of this
primary right of the conscience to be in matters
of faith independent of the Civil Power that
St. Thomas died, but he would have laid down
his life as readily to resist the principle of
modern irreligious Liberalism--the right in
man to reject religion and deny God.
Protestants may, then, it seems to us,
readily agree with Dr. Manning's conclusion,
that the principle for which St. Thomas died
is the principle avowed by two-thirds of the
people of Great Britain and Ireland at the
present day. Whether they hold, in addition
to this great principle of the freedom of religion
from State control, the principle of. irreligious
Liberalism, as the Pall Mall Gazette maintains,
is another question. Whether they do or not,
or how far they are contaminated with this
modern idea, has nothing to do with Dr. Man-
ning's appeal for the sympathy of England
and Scotland with the great martyr to the
cause of religious independence. We entirely
agree, we may say in conclusion, with the
Pall Mall Gazette that" the differences" be-
tween irreligious Liberals and Roman Catholics
" are deep and irreconcilable, and proceed from
contradictory principles upon the most impor-
tant subjects to which the human mind can
address itself." But in spite of this essential
disagreement, there need be no misunder-
standing as to the true character of that re-
sistance to Royal tyranny which induced St.
Thomas of Canterbury to surrender his life
in defence of the freedom of religion.—West-
minster Gazette.

MR. GLADSTONE'S ELEC7IONEERLVG

TOUR.

Mr. Gladstone met the new constituency
to whose suffrages he has determined to ap-
peal, that of South-west Lancashire, on Wed-
nesday afternoon, at St. Helens, and was very
warmly received. The right hon. gentleman
was accompanied by Mr. H. R. Grenfell, who
has been accepted as his colleague by the Libe-
ral party in the district. In reviewing the
session just closed, Mr. Gladstone said he
thought the country might be sincerely con-
gratulated upon the adoption of a measure,
with a very general and extended consent of
different parties, which has undoubtedly placed
the liberties of the people upon a wider, and,
he trusted, upon a firmer basis than that which
they ever before enjoyed. At the same time
he could not but regret that the concessions
thatlave been madebhaye been attended with
restrictions and exceptions so vexatious that
this work—great as it is—cannot be regarded
as a finished work. "It will probably be neces-
sary," he said, " before we are many years
older, that the Parliament about to be chosen,
or some other Parliament, should endeavour to
give a more consistent application to the prin-
ciples embodied in the recent measure of Re-
form, removing those anomalies with which
it is unhappily defaced." The right hon. gen-
tleman went on to express his great dissatis-
faction at the increase of public expenditure
by which the Tories had signalized their rule.
He did not refer to the cost of the Abyssinian
expedition, which nobody grudged, but he
hoped that the candidates who might oppose
his colleague and himself on the part of the
Government would be called upon to explain
why it is that after for a series of five or
six years the Liberal Government of this coun-
try, which certainly was not supposed to be
fanatically economical, had found the means
of continually operating some reduction in
the charges and burdens of the country, upon
the accession of what is called a Conservative
Government to power it is suddenly discovered
that the tide has turned, and that from month
to month almost, as new estimates are pro-
duced, every estimate and every charge is in
excess of that which preceded it." The greater
part of the speech was devoted to Ireland.
If Mr. Disraeli's congratulatory remarks upon
the condition of that country at the Lord
Mayor's table were to be taken as seriously
meant, Mr. Gladstone said he could not de-
scribe his sense of the infatuation which they
betokened. Of the two questions of the
land and the Church, the Church was in the
front and the land in the rear ; to the former,
therefore, Mr. Gladstone said he would chiefly
confine himself. He quoted Lord Lytton's
words :—" We talk of Irish bulls, but the
words Irish Church ' are the greatest bulls
iu the lexpage, It called the Irissh Church