The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-04 00:00:00

brlitlT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Times says that Mr. Bright's speech at Edinburgh
was in some sort a challenge, not vain or boastful, but
still a challenge, to all the world to examine his views of
national life and his principles of political action ; and it
is probable that no better task could be undertaken at the
present moment. Mr. Bright has arrived at a great
position. He has a right to say that he has
accomplished much, and he is justified in asking his
c3untrynien to consider whether they will not ge
along with him in his attempts to accomplish
more. What, then, are the reflections forced upon the
mind of any person who dispassionately reviews Mr.
Bright's career ? He must frankly admit the beneficial
influence of Mr. Bright's action on all questions affecting
the internal well-being of the people. Sometimes, not
unfrequently, perhaps, his indignation led him to the use
of language which a larger intelligence of the
causes of his opponents' errors would have led
him to modify, but the special legislation he
has forwarded has been almost uniformly beneficial.
Still there are departments of national life with which
he has no sympathy, the foreign relations, for instance.
Mr. Bright's constitutional aversion to conceive the neces-
sity of war impairs to a certain extent his character as a
public man. It may be said that his energy is totally
arrested when this element of international life has to be
considered, and it must be remembered that until all
nations become just, war is as necessary an element of
politics as the intervention of a policeman is in social
life.

The Post draws a melancholy picture of the degradation
a candidate has to undergo, and receives the announcement
of the issuing of the writs with great satisfaction. A can-
didate can hardly go through the process of canvassing
without a loss of self-respect. Not only must the candi-
date be content for the time being to degrade himself, but
he must pay heavily for the privilege of being allowed to
do so. It is only candidates and their agents who can
form any idea of the multiplicity and the variety of the
wants which their presence in a borough seems instinc-
tively to suggest to the townsmen. Dismissing for the
moment individual wants, such as the payment of arrears
of rent, satisfaction of outstanding claims, and not
unfrequently payment of crisp bank-notes for no
ostensible purpose save the benefit of the recipient,
there are wants of a more general, and, it is suggested, of
a more legitimate kind. Local institutions need to be sup-
ported, and timely application is made, and not unna-
turally, to those who evince so much interest in the
borough or county to which they belong as to represent it
in Parliament. Lastly come the purely legitimate
expenses, at least what the agents and the electors con-
sider to be so. The process of sucking the orange is unin-
termittent, and no one need have felt surprised at seeing
so frequently of late the announcement that candidatei
have retired after what is termed an unsuccessful canvass.

The fact is they overrated their powers of endurance, or
underrated the rapacity of their hoped-for constituents,
and ignobly failed to pass through the ordeal to which they
voluntarily submitted themselves.
The Herald takes farewell of the late Primate. Ener-
getic, without officiousness—earnest, without bigotry—
firm, without severity—Dr. Longley, in a great number
of important respects, realised our ideal of the ecclesias-
tical authority who is entrusted with the highest honour
and weightiest responsibilities which it is in the power of
the Church of England to bestow, causing it plainly to
be seen that in whatever he did he was acting merely in
obedience to his own convictions of what was right. It
was impossible for such a man to give offence.
Always ready to take the widest view compatible
with his sacred office of great theological questions,
Dr. Longley never failed to attract to himself the respect-
ful sympathy of his clergy, even where he did not meet

with their entire and unreserved agreement. With
administrative powers of uncommon calibre it was his
good fortune to have the opportunity of checking more
than one dissension which might have developed into a
serious schism, just as he never failed to employ the same
happy faculty in the defence of the true principles of the
English Church. He was a thorough and conscientious
Churchman, and knew no form of Anglican worship save
that sanctioned by the Church's laws. Never did bishop
sit upon the bench who exhibited both by his acts and
his speeches a more thoroughly just idea of the relative
position of matters religious and profane—of the inter-
communication and inter-penetration of Church and State.
The loss which the Church sustains in the death of a
champion so devoted, and a worshipper so earnest, at the
present crisis, it is impossible to exaggerate. That what-
ever can be done efficiently to refill the place left vacant
by Dr. Longley will be done the latest instances of eccle-
siastical promotion of the Government are sufficient to
assure us. To the late Archbishop of Canterbury it is in
great measure due that the ranks of the clergy of the
Church of England present as firm an opposition as they do
to all attacks from without, as well as that there is so little
disaffection from within, and the task which will devolve
upon the new primate to perform it is a glorious distinc-
tion for Dr. Longley to have rendered easier and plains
than it could otherwise have been.

The Daily News comments upon the remarks of Dean
Alford, that the late archbishop broke through the iron
fetters of conventional precedent, and, in placing himself
in close contact with the working classes, did that which
was not expected of an archbishop in fashionable society,
but which was the duty of a pastor in the eyes of the
Shepherd of Souls, In these days our bishops are
expected, in the intervals of confirmations and prosecu-
tions of Ritualists, to climb up into lofts over stables and
address the horsekeepers, and we are all glad to hear of

it. - But in Dr. Longley's early days it was not so :
bishops thought it enough if the people were properly
ministered to by the parochial clergy. He did his
duty conscientiously and lovingly according to the
views of duty which then prevailed. But he lived to
see and feel that that the Church of England must free
„herself from the trammels of a false dignity, and,
pious old man that he was, he no sooner gained this en-
larged view of his duty than he set about performing it.
Concerning the customs and ways of thought which rear

these artificial barriers between the pastors of the Church
and the flock, there is much to be said, which possibly
might be just in proportion as it was severe ; but to our
minds there is something touching in the spectacle of the
aged archbishop, at a time when many would have consi-
• dered themselves entitled to rest from their labours, setting
- himself to learn, by the example of younger men, the best
way to fulfil his duty as a bishop in the altered condition
of society which he lived to witness.
The Standard complains that Mr. Goschen claims the
Foreign Secretary as a Liberal. We know what are the
principles which guide Lord Stanley's foreign policy; he
expressed them very powerfully in his recent speech at
Liverpool : scrupulous respects for the rights of other
nations, of the weakest as well as the strongest-; a
strenuous maintenance of our own rights ; a study
to preserve, in the first instance, the peace of England,
and next, as far as in us lies, of Europe and the civilised
world ; to seek no narrow, no exclusive good, but to con-
, eider that our interests are indissolubly connected with
those of neighbouring nations. These are the principles
' upon which Lord Stanley says the foreign policy of Eng-
land should be based, and upon which, since he accepted
the seals, it has been based.. But what have the Liberal

party to do with these principles ? Their principles
of foreign policy must be found in their .adini-
nistiation of foreign affairs. If we want to
know what they are we must look at what Lord
• Russell did, instead of listening to what Mr. Goschen may
• talk. The principles of the Liberal party are embodied
in Lord Russell's meddling and muddling. It is idle for
Mr. Goschen to attempt to ring the changes. lie cannot
pass off Lord Stanley's principles of foreign policy as
the principles of the Liberal party. The country has too
• much reason to remember the mischief Lord Russell did,
•- and too much cause to congratulate itself upon the good
Lord Stanley has achieved, to be caught by such a clumsy
device.
The Daily News agrees with Mr. Mill as to the evil of
folding out to ambitious men all over the country induce-
- ments to become Tories to serve their ambition. Most
. men will concur with him in thinking that human nature
has not yet reached that stage of improvement that the
cause of progress and justice can do without those people
who during the time of Oliver Cromwell used to be
called self-seekers. The first duty of a Liberal
majority, on these grounds and on many others,
•is to place a Liberal Government in office. To
defer till February what can be done in Decem-
her would be to lose not only the time between
'December and February, but a great part of the session
of 1869 also. The month of January may be very con-
• veniently occupied with the new Ministerial elections
which must take place if the House of Commons should
proclaim its want of confidence in her Majesty's present
advisers, and with the deliberations and preliminaries of
legislation which will he equally necessary, whether Mr.
'Disraeli keep, or Mr. Gladstone gain, power.
The Star looks hopefully to the result of the elections.
.Those who argued that under an extended franchise the
representation of the country would become the prey of
needy or illiterate adventurers must be thoroughly
ashamed of their foolish vaticinations. It will have pre,
,cisely the opposite effect: and if such a reform in the
. machinery of elections were instituted as would enable men
of moderate means to take the field as candidates, we are
convinced that the House of Commons would undergo a
still greater improvement ; and that, while more tnily
representing every class of the people, it would exhibit in
a yet greater degree those high qualities that befit the
foremost representative assembly in the world. Professes I
..rawcett's proposal with reference to election expense,
would have remedied a great evil, and it cannot be doubted
that before another general election takes place candidate# I
`will be relieved of a tax as unjust as is inftwiouk