The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-25 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times says : Most sincerely do we hope we shall
have the very able assistance of Sir Roundell Palmer in
the new and comparatively uninformed House of Com-
mons, and still more do we hope to see him before long at
the head of his profession ; but we are bound to say that
his utterances at Richmond savour of the lawyer rather
than of the statesman. It is a very old saying that lawyers
make bad politicians, and they testify themselves to the
truth of the saying by their frequent asseverations that
politicians are bad lawyers. Sir Roundell is a politician,
and even a liberal politician, so far as regards abstract
principles, and we fully believe that had he to recon-
struct our electoral, our ecclesiastical, and even our legal
systems, he would do so on the fairest and most liberal
basis. But a statesman has to do more than deal with
abstract principles, for he has not only to carry his reckon-
ings very far beyond the term of legal prescription, but
also to measure the sudden exigencies of the hour. Sir
Roundell has had a good deal to do with Church property
and.like matters. He finds the title good, the transmission
regular, the benefit considerable. He becomes cognisant
of the great pains taken and the great costs incurred
in the management of the property, and he cannot
fail to regard it in intimate association with its holders.
The case, indeed, must needs wear a very paradoxical
appearance in the eyes of a lawyer. the property is not
even in dispute. There is no claimant, no twentieth
cousin, nobody with a sackful of parchments and a crowd
of aged witnesses, no heir cast up by the waves or returned
from the Antipodes, not even a reversioner asking decla-
ration of title. So far as regards the rest:of the world, the
property is a mere hunchback, which people only see to
disclaim and avoid. It is no man's child, the damnosa
kereditas of old family legends.
It appears to the Post that Sir Roundell, in his Rich-
mond speech, failed to distinguish between public and
private endowments ; for it is with the former alone that
it is proposed to deal in the case of the Irish Church,
and it is with reference to them alone that the term
disendowment is and has been used. Sir Roundell
Palmer must be aware that nobody has ever pro-
posed to take away from the Church in Ireland the
power of receiving or retaining endowments made to it by
private persons ; what is proposed is that the State should
no longer charge itself with providing or maintaining
endowments obtained by a system of taxation from the
people at large ; but he makes no such distinction, and,
unless we entirely misunderstand his speech, he would
maintain (with the qualification already mentioned) all
;he endowments, both public and private, which the
:Mural now enjoys. It is evident that with such con-
ditions attached to it disestablishment would not
touch the great original grievance, which is, that the hulk
of the Irish population is taxed to support a Church in
which it does not believe ; and if that really is Sir Roundell
Palmer's idea of religious liberty, the sooner he amends it
the better. The best part of the speech is that in which
Sir Roundell explodes once more the idea that
there is anything in the Queen's coronation oath
to debar her from joining with her Parliament in
reforming the Irish Church. That doctrine he holds to be
" most highly unconstitutional." It is humiliating to have
to notice such wretched old arguments as these, especially
as they have already been overruled by practice ; but the
subject is one upon which no argument seems to be con-
sidered too old or too wretched, and Sir Roundell Palmer
has done good service in strewing so clearly and forcibly
the hollowness of this particular pretence.
The Herald sees that Sir R. Palmer is now ready to
concede the disestablishment of the Irish Church to his
friends, but is still a strong and determined opponent of
the disendowment with which they intend to follow up the
disestablishment, and will be ready, if a member of the
next Parliament, to oppose all propositions that may be
brought forward in that sense. Considering the position
the learned gentleman has occupied in the Radical party,
and his personal relations to its leader, we cannot be
surprised that he has endeavoured to bring himself
as near to them as possible, and with that view has
sacrificed some of his cherished opinions. For all
Sir Roundell Palmer's contemptuous treatment of the
oath and supremacy arguments, and his careful distinc-
tion between disestablishment and disendowment, we
cannot believe that he would not regard the mere dises-
tablishment of the Irish Church unaccompanied by
disendowment, whether local or partial, as a great evil.
Indeed, his aversion even to disestablishment is apparent
enough. Sir Roundell Palmer, it is quite plain, considers
the proposal to abolish the Irish Church as a quack remedy
for Irish disaffection, and we must not condemn him if a
regard for his friends kept him from saying so in distinct
terms.

The Standard reminds us that while strongly deprecat-
ing the rude and ungenerous temper in which Dr. Pusey's
propositions for modifying our university system were
received by the Wesleyan Conference, it carefully avoided
expressing any opinion of the scheme, beyond observing
that at a first glance it appeared to be almost revolu-
tionary in its character and tendency. We should have
been well pleased to be spared the necessity of criticising
it more minutely, but as Dr. Pusey has thought fit to
republish it and explain and defend it at considerable
length, we are in a manner forced to recur to it. We
apprehend that " revolutionary" is not too strong a term
to apply to a proposition which contemplates the alienation
of Church foundations and revenues to the purposes of
Dissent, and the establishment side by side with the
existing colleges of seminaries for training the youth and
the ministers of hostile sects, supported out of the endow-
ments originally bequeathed to provide an education in
which the religious element was to be supplied by the
Church. The Standard asks Dr. Pusey for his authority
to open negotiations with the Dissenters. Whatever is to
be the ultimate settlement of the disputes of which our
university system is the centre, the negotiations must be
initiated and conducted by the legitimate and recognised
representatives of the interests involved. Dr. Pusey—
we say it with all deference—is the leader of a party, and
of one which by no means ranks high in the estimation of
the country just now.

According to the Telegraph the Government apparently
means to keep its promise as to the date of the impending
general election. We can, at least, reckon confidently on
the resolute endeavours of Mr. Gathorne Hardy that no
time shall be lost in taking the sense of the country with
iespect to the great question at issue between the Liberal
and the Conservative parties—and so delivering
the Administration from the peculiar position of
difficulty and humiliation which a distinguished member
of the Government has characterised as unendurable.
When, therefore, Mr. Hardy causes the Mayor of Bir-
mingham to be informed that the writs for the new elec-
tion " will be issued in all probability early in November,"
we have fair ground for the belief that the strategy of
procrastination will not be employed to defer the decision
of the country.

The Daily News remarks of the week's casualties that it
is, perhaps, the unusual nature of the disaster at Abergele,
and the too usual character of these calamities upon the
coast, which makes their impression on us so exceedingly
different. The whole world is reading with a thrill of
unspeakable horror and pity the accounts of the railway
accident, but these seafaring losses excite only a local and
temporary feeling. The thought of those three and
thirty people swept suddenly into a sea of fire,
with no time to make an effort to escape, or
even send forth a cry for help ; the story of
those sad heaps of ashes undistinguishably mingled in
Abergele church, make an impression on the imagination
which it is impossible to escape, and shed a feeling of sad-
ness over every family in the nation. But the know-
ledge that many times that number have been suddenly
swept away by the sea is less painful because it is less
definite. The dullest imagination pictures the scene
at Abergele, but the scattered shipwrecks, of which we
only know in each case that a vessel went down,
cannot be vividly realised by us—yet, in reality, the one
is as terrible as the other. The suffering is not upon
the spot, but far away in desolated homes, in
widowed mothers and orphaned children, and longing
eyes which look for those they love, and look in vain. The
victims at Abergele probably suffered little. There was
just time for two lovers to embrace, but none for any
effort to escape, and probably not one of them knew the
nature of the calamity by which they suffered. In the
shipwrecks the individual suffering would probably be
greater. There would be a longer struggle for life, and
probably some hope even to the last ; but neither
struggle for life, nor sudden sense of unknown
and immeasurable calamity, is at all to be compared
with the dull suspense, the long uncertainty, the agony of
fear, which the friends of the victims experience. It is
terrible to think how many homes in Great Britain and
Ireland the calamities of the past week have desolated,
and added to the desolation the sense of terrible uncer-
tainty. But if we measure the magnitude of the disasters
by the number of these surviving victims, by those whose
homes are desolated, and who look in vain for familiar
faces they will never see again, the storm of Saturday was
the greatest calamity of the week.

TUGS TALKE COLLIERY ACCIDENT.—The Talke
Relief Committee have just issued a statement, from which
we learn that for the relief of the sufferers by the greal
catastrophe at the Talke Colliery they have received
£1G,682. Oc this sum, £1.,345 has been expended in relief
and Mr. Pattison, the actuary who was called in, estimates
that about £12,000 more must be set aside as capital tc
meet the various claims on the fund, including continua.
tion of weekly allowances to widows and children, medical
attendance, funeral expenses, education, outfits for chil.
dren, an marriage portions for widows. A balance of
£3,000 will be left, and this is to be the nucleus of a per.
manent fund for the relief of Alf(44llpoltrtt
iu NOrtitiitaifigsialairse".***'