The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-29 00:00:00

THE NEW CHARTER OF THE
COLLEGE OF SURGEONS.

The following is the petition of Mr. Guthrie, the
celebrated army surgeon
The petition of George James Guthrie, of Berkeley-
street, Berkeley-square, a Councillor and late Pre-
sident of the Royal College of Surgeons of LondOn.
" Humbly showeth—That although yinir petitioner,
in his collective capacity,' has been compelled to accept
the grant of -a 'new Charter to the said College, a copy
of Which was lately laid on the table of your Hon.
House, he considers several of the provisions of said
charter to be illiberal, exclusive, and unjust.
" That, independently, of its placing a bar on the poor
man, preventing, in many cases, his obtaining by his
own exertions such places of honour as there may be in
the profession of surgery, it offers unnecessary advan-
tages to the richer student in the attainment of these
offices, who may not possess half his ability, his perse-
verance, or his knowledge, it presses with peculiar seve-
rity on the officers of the public service, nearly the whole
of whom are deprived by it of those privileges they
hitherto enjoyed, in common with their surgical brethren
of equal standing in civil life; whilst they will also be
deprived in future of the hope of succeeding to these
offices of honour or profit, whatever may be their
ability, or the pre-eminence they may have acquired in
the service of their country, from their talents or their
labours.

" Your petitioner has hitherto believed that a gentle-
man employed in the service of his Sovereign did not
forfeit those rights which he had previously acquired as
a citizen and a subject ; in virtue of which rights your
petitioner has twice held the office of !.'resident of the
College, but which he could not have done if this
charter had been formerly in existence ; that, as the
friend of many of the seniors, the teacher of many of
the junior officers of the medical departments of the
navy, the army, and the East India Company, they
have called upon him to use his best endeavours to pre-
serve to them the rightsand privileges they have hitherto
enjoyed.
Your petitioner humbly approaches your Hon.
House, in compliance with such call, on behalf of the
whole of these officers.

" Your petitioner believes there are few Members of
your Hon. House who, in the persons of their fathers,
their brothers, their children, or relations, have not had
reason to be thankful for the professional services of the
men it is now intended to deprive of their ancient
rights and future prospects ; he has seen many of the
officers of these services lay down their lives in the
service of their country, suffering solely from their de-
votion to their duties and the privations they necessarily
underwent. He is aware that many others performed
very arduous duties with a coolness and precision,
under circumstances of difficulty and danger, deserving.
of the greatest praise, and for which they, as well as their
more martial comrades of all arms, have on many occasions
received the thanks of Parliament ; that several of these
officers who shared in these thanks, said to be the greatest
honour a grateful country can give, now find themselves al-
together omitted from the privileges proposed to be granted
by this charter, or placed below gentlemen who were not
even born when these thanks were bestowed, and whose
principal merit is, that they are living and can live in
London with a reputation, which, however great and
well deserved it may hereafter become, has yet to be
acquired.
" Your petitioner believes that the evil which has
been thus committed has been unintentional, and that it
can be remedied by a supplement to the said charter.
" Your petitioner therefore humbly prays, that your
Hon. House will not confirm the said charter by any Act
or Acts whatever relating to medical or surgical arrange-
ments for the United Kingdoms until your Hon. House
shall have granted your petitioner an opportunity of
being heard, by himself or counsel, against them, or
the particular parts to which this charter must neces-
sarily relate, either at the bar of your Hon. House, or in
such other way as your Hon. House may be pleased to
direct.

" And your petitioner shall ever pray.
" July 18. " GEORGE JAMES GUTHRLE."

THE RAILWAYS BILL.

The present Government is made of very squeezable
materials. Accordingly we find•in the instance of the
Railways Bill, that the bold front which they at first as-
sumed is now altogether abandoned, and that instead of
marching under the banner of the public welfare, they
have faced about in the opposite direction. Future rail-
way companies are to have it all their own way for
twenty-one years, while existing companies are to be
left to themselves, and the people are to be consoled with
the chance that the Parliament will, at the end of that
period, take it into consideration whether the railways
shall be revised or purchased at twenty-five years' value
of their annual rate of profit, whatever that may be. And
so the assumed zeal of Government for railway reform is
little better than make-believe after all.

Our objections to the original Bill were, that it did not
go far enough; that it did not include all existing as well
as future railways; that it did not make it imperative on
all to run third-class trains of covered carriages at fixed
rates and times; and that it did not make the option of
purchase or revision apply whenever the profits reached
ten per cent., and not at the end of fifteen years only.
The powers of revision and purchase, which were the
characteristics of the Bill. appeared to us to be the only
ones which rendered it at all beneficial as a check upon
practical monopolies of land transit, which, like the
canal companies, might become a great and expensive
drawback upon the internal traffic of the country. The
objection of the quantity of patronage which a Govern.
ment system of railways would involve, did not appear
to us of any great force;—first, because the chance of a
railway holding out against the Government was re-
mote, and, secondly, because the lines would, in all pro-
tability. be leased by Government, if ever they fell into
its hands. As the clauses which convey these powers to
Government appeared to be somewhat vague, the present
amendments have expressly enacted that they shall not
he exercised at all without a particular application to
Parliament. Thus, then, the wholesome fear which
would have prevented a grasping company from vic-
timising the public is withdrawn, and with the addi-
tional substitution of twenty-one, instead of fifteen years.
as the period before which no interference of any kind
can take place, it may be safely said that private in-
terests have triumphed over the public welfare in this
instance, and have succeeded in rendering the Bill little
better than a nullity. As it stands, the Government may
pretend that they have shown great regard for the
poor, by retaining an empty option of purchase, which
is a mere brutum fulmtn,sbut in reality nobody will be
benefited by it but the railway proprietors.
One weapon the mutilated Bill still retains against the
old companies, and that is, the power of encouraging
competition. We hope the Board of Trade will make
use of this engine to bring refractory companies to
reason.

This Bill could not pass through Committee without
giving Mr. Gladstone an opportunity of exhibiting his
peculiar religious notions. Sunday travelling was to be
forbidden to the poor occupants of third-class carriages,
while it was permitted to the richer travellers by first
and second class-trains;—but the House, en the motion
of our townsman, Mr. Thornely, defeated the manoeuvre
by a large majority. We must confess that we hardly
expected to see Mr. Gladstone amongst the Pharisees.
The sickening cant in which he indulged was well re•
buked by Mr. Sheil's allusion to Lazarus and Dives, and
an adverse majority barbed the shaft which quivered in
the side of the Ministry.—Liverpool Merculy.

THE DISSENTERS' CHAPELS

BILL.

The following amusing article appears in the
Church and State Gazette of Saturday. How Peel is
supported by his friends !
It would be a work of supererogation to inform
our readers in what way, and when debased Roman
Christianity intruded itself into our country under
the monk Austin, and finally became possessed of
the Welsh, Scotch, and Irish endowments. The
merits attending, and the advantages following,
the conversion of a heathen Saxon king, we will
not dispute ; but the consequent forcible entry
made into the British Christian Church was, in its
character of intrusion, precisely similar to that
of the Socinians into Presbyterian endowments.
It was a fortunate circumstance that at the Re-
tbrmation there was no Minister to move a Popish
Chapels Bill to legalise the Romish holdings of those
things into which the Papists had intruded. If such
a Bill had then passed (and if now, why not then ?)
there would have been no reformation of either
Church or State. The people would have em-
braced Reformation principles, and the Church and
State would have decimated the people. But as
luckily there was then no Government leader to
plead the principle of the Dissenters' Chapels Bill
as it now stands, the Reformation went on. Sir
R. Peel thinks that the principle of his Bill legalises
our present holding as intruders into Roman Ca-
tholic endowments. Mr. Sheil knows better than
that. And we are convinced that he does so, from
his assertion that the Romanists supportel, the Dis-
senters' Chapels Bill to a man. We are further con-
vinced of the better knowledge of Mr. Sheil and his
party, from O'Connell's visit to London, simply to
give his vote in favour of the same fatal Bill. The
reason is obvious. The Queen has now signed the
Dissenters' Chapels Bill, and as soon as O'Connell
regains his liberty, he will agitate for making
Popery the Church of Ireland, on the plea that the
principle of his motion is already conceded to him
in the Dissenters' Chapel Bill—as it is—thus :
Popery under Henry Plantagenet, and Adrian, and
Alexander, intruded itself into Ireland. It occupied
and improved the Church secularities. It found
itself, and continued for many years, unchallenged as
an intrusionist. Nevertheless, as an intruder, Popery
was at length ejected. But this same Popery having
never been since then for twenty-five years together
silent as to its claim to recover its holdings—and Pro-
testantism, moreover, having constantly been made
sensible by the Pope, the Pretender, the battle of the
Boyne, the Irish rebellion, Guy Faux, and O'Connell,
cum multis aliis, that Popish claims were alive and
energetic—it would be unavailing for Protestantism to
plead twenty-five years' quiet and undisturbed possession
in Ireland, since the Reformation.. Some other future
Parliament, therefore, having in it, in addition to the
present Socinian and Popish parties, a Government So-
mien party, purchased by the Dissenters' Chapels Bill
—these combined, in gratitude to the Romanists for
their recent help to a man, will assist the latter to
put Popery in Ireland in the place of the present
Established Church. And they will do so according
to law ; the Dissenters' Chapels Bill keing 'virtually
•

a repeal of the Reformation principle of the Consti-
tution, and the substitution of a principle which will
eventually endeavour to thrust Socinian and Popish in-
fidelity in all our high places. Our readers may have
observed with what attempt at elect the Synod of Ul-
ster (Socinian) have waited upon O'Connell in gaol to
thank him for his valuable assistance. The con-
junction of these parties is threatening to reli-
gion. The mischief to ensue will, if not checked
by a vigorous political Trinitarian combination,
eventually destroy the State organisation of Esta-
blished Episcopal Churches ; and also the organi-
sation of Presbyterian and Methodist-Trinitarian
communities. A bounty is now offered to Papists
and Socinians to do what they have always done,
in fact, and what Channing did and countenanced
his party in doing—that is, to enter other churches
professing Church principles, until they have parti-
zans sufficient to throw off the mask and seize all.
This is the history of Socinianism in Boston, and
elsewhere in the United States. Channing, when
first suspected of Socinianism, denied the charge,
until eventually he found his party strong enough to
stand in defence of their hitherto concealed heresy.
No sooner had they achieved this position, than they
came out boldly Socinian, and defied any attempts to
dislodge them from their Trinitarian endowments.
Popery is too crafty not to profit by the Government
hint, or to lose sight of Mr. Channing's practice."

WHAT SORT OF EDUCATION
SHOULD BE GIVEN TO THE POOR ?

After struggling for above a century, the opponents
of general education have been reduced to silence, and
are compelled to give in their adhesion to some kind
of general education. _ _

The question now is one of degree. The old oppo-
nents of education are still for giving as little as pos-
sible, and that- of the worst sort. A little reading, less
writing, and no arithmetic, is what their liberality
would extend to ; but still the two latter cannot he
absolutely refused, and though reading can be con-
fined at schools to hymns, psalms, catechisms, and
tracts, the schoolmaster, who is sure to be imbibed
with a better spirit than his haughty superiors, is led
to give instructions in writing and arithmetic of the
best kind to some of the better scholars, who neces-
sarily become favourites, and almost his adopted
children.

Never was there a greater mistake than to narrow
the education given to the bulk of the people. It
ought to be as extensive and liberal as possible, for
nature is very capricious in her gifts, and, instead of
following the ordinances of man, and giving the best
minds to the great and noble, she is frequently de-
mocratic enough to confer them on the meanest and
poorest of the people, who sometimes, if they can but
obtain a scrap of education, will work out wonders,
and have often astonished the world with their prodi
gious discoveries, far surpassing all that was ever
made by the proudest disciples of the schools.
If some of the cheap and popular publishers of the
day would give well- condensed biographies of all the
great men who have sprung from the common people
and acquired immortal fame through the strength of
their own, often unaided, and frequently persecuted
genius, they would confer a greater benefit upon
society than by almost any other work of the kind
which has hitherto been published.
Let us briefly glance at a few. The intricate
Ptolemaic system, supported by Aristotelean dogmas,
had maintained undisputed possession of the schools
for hundreds of 'years; to have questioned it would
have brought the inquisition and the thunders of the
Church down upon the head of the impious innovator;
for, in those days, to reason was considered synonymous
with Atheism. Copernicus, a poor obscure Polish
Roman Catholic priest, appeared, and contended that,
instead of the sun going round this little lump of
earth of ours, the earth went round the sun. The
learned world stood astonished at the assurance of the
contemptible priest ; but truth, whenever she shows
herself, is invincible ; Copernicus at once divided the
learned world, and half of it became reluctant con-
verts. Still, as both systems were little better than
theories, no further advance could be made without
more numerous and accurate observations, to obtain
what no unsound theory can withstand—facts.
The father of Galileo was so poor that he could not
maintain his son at Pisa ; he applied for a bursary ;
was disappointed, and Galileo seemed doomed to hope-
less poverty, when he obtained a patron in Guido Ri-
baldi, who got him a lectureship at 151. a-year, and
this poor scholar, who left college because un-
able to defray the expense of a doctor's degree,
upset all the learned schools in Europe ; at-
tacked with fearlessness Aristotle's doctrines of
mechanics, and overthrew, as with the spear
of Ithuriel, his fine-spun theories of the perfec-
tion, smoothness. and absolute incorruptible essence of
the heavenly bodies; for Galileo had a telescope, in -
ven.ed and made by himself in his hand, and dis-
covered the rugged irregular surface of the moon,
and what was far more important, the satellites
that revolve around the planet Jupiter. So palpable
and striking an analogy to the primary planets
revolving about the sun, furnished an argument in
favour or -the Copernican theory, to which the most
bigoted followers of Aristotle could scarcely with-
hold assent.

And how did the enem;es of education meet these
truths ? They declared the doctrine of the earth's
motion to be false, and imprisoned Galileo.
" It is in vain," exclaimed Pascal with honest zeal,
" that you have procured against Galileo a decree from
Rome condemning the opinion of the earth's motion.
Assuredly that will never prove it to be at rest; and
if we have unerring observations proving that it turns
round, not all mankind together can keep it from
turning, nor themselves from turning."
. _ _

Those observations were made-by Tycho Brahe,
who, not being a poor man, nor a commoner, does
not come within our range ; but the immortal Kep-
ler, every way Tycho Brahe's superior, does. At
twelve years of age we find him a poor sickly pot-
boy in a miserable public-house kept by his father.
He afterwards went to the University at Tabingen.
The word university has an aristocratic sound in
an English ear ; for though in former days Oxford
could boast of 30,000 poor students, all commoners,
both our English Universities have long since
been devoted exclusively to the education of
the rich, and the poor, with here and there an excep-
tion, as in Bishop Prideaux's instance, have long
since been prohibited from entrance to places origi-
nally built expressly for their use. But the terms
" university" and " student" have a widely different
meaning in Germany, a clear though not very full
account of which may be found in the Life of Thomas
Platter in the 79th volume of the " Family Library,"
containing the " Lives of Individuals who raised
themselves from poverty to eminence or fortune."
Another strong instance of the importance to so-
ciety itself of giving to the very lowest classes an op-
portunity of obtaining education is furnished in the
life of Valentine Jomerai Duval, librarian to the Duke
Leopold, of Lorraine. He was the son of a labouring
man, who left a wife and large family in a season of
unusual scarcity. Dural kept turkies fora master by
whom he was almost starved. He afterwards became
cowherd to the four hermits of St. Anne, who assisted
him in gaining some useful knowledge, and taught
him to write, and the use of figures in arithmetic.
His own genius led him to study astronomy, and,
obtaining some old maps of the world and of the
constellations, he was enabled to make a kind of
armillary sphere—in which the earth was, a ball of
clay, and the lines bent hazel twigs. Thus, almost
without any human assistance, and with the aid of a
few old books, he mastered, to a considerable extent,
mathematics, and, as all self-taught persons are irre-
gular in their studies, heraldry. It was in the
midst of a forest, clad in the homeliest habiliments,
and pursuing his studies, that he was found by Leo-
pold Duke of Lorraine, who took him in his rude
garb, and sent him to the college at Lunneville,
where he subsequently became professor of history,
antiquities, and of ancient and modern geography.
This is one of the numerous instances in which
genius has forced itself to eminence in spite of all ob-
stacles ; but if we wish to have a serious, happy, in-
dustrious population, means of extending educati©n
to all, on the most liberal scale practicable, must be
supplied.—Brighton Herald.

THE LATE HORRIBLE CHARGE AT STOCKPORT.—
Our readers will probably remember this charge, mentioned
in The Sun of Monday. On Wednesday the rev. delin-
quent, R. H. Cresswell, the incumbent of St. Peter's Church,
Stockport, who was under bail to answer the horrible charge,
underwent an examination before the Mayor, and Messrs. .
Walmsley, C. Baker, and P. E. Marsland, two of them being
Churchmen and two Dissenters. As he was not in a fit state
to be removed from his bed, the examination took place pri-
vately at his residence, at the Parsonage House, St. Peter's,.
square, Mr. W. Vaughan and Mr. H. Turner attending for
the defence. The first witness called was a youth named
James Booth, a servant employed in the prisoner's house,
who detailed several revolting particulars, unfit for publiea
Lion. His evidence was in many respects corroborated by
different domestics of the ha.ose,ande magistratestheeross-elt
on
aienlnsiciateiorends
t: that th
of the prisoner's solicitor did not at all shake his testimony,
ry ws
the rev. offender to Chester Assizes
it The
their resultd duty
toyf tthoe
commitinqui
for trial. Not being in a fit state to te removed, however, he
was admitted to ball, himself in 2,0001., and two sureties of
1,0001. each his uncle, said to be a magistrate in Leicester-
shire, and his father, a person in opulent ciscumstances, we
understand, residing in the same neighbourhood, becoming
sureties. The revolting affair has caused much excitement in
Stockport.
THE HARVEST.—Owing to the great number of
agriculturists from all parts of the two western coun-
ties, who have, during the last few days, embarked at
this place for Southampton to atten4 the meeting
of the Royal Agricultural Society, we have been
able to make very extensive inquiries relative to
the harvest. " One and all" are exhilarated by
the fine prospects which are presented. The white
crops will all be good, but wheat especially ; Nnk hide will
be far beyond the average in straw as well as grain ;
while even the green crops, which it was thought VON
damaged, and in sprile instances destroyed, by the long
drought; have been surprisingly invigorated by the late
riling. This is good news for the poor and the country
at large.—West of England Conservative,