The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-17 00:00:00

THEATRE-ROYAL, OLYMPIC.

Tits EVENING, at 7, SL A SHER & CRASHER : Messrs Atkins,
Vaughan, G. Vincent, &c.: Miss Lennox Grey and Mrs Caulfield.
After which, at 7.45, THE YELLOW PASSPORT : Messrs. 11.
Ne ille, G. Vincent, E. Atkins, H. Vaughan, H. Cooper, and H.
Wigan; Mesdames Furtado, Lennox Grey, and Caulfield

ROYALTY THEATRE.
Under the Management of Miss M. Oliver.
Tuts EVENING. at 7.10, A LOVING CUP. Mr. Dewar. Miss
M. Oliver. To he followed by THE RISE AND FALL OF
'CITA RD III.; or, A New Front to an Old Dicky: Mr. Dewar
'lr. Danvers: Miss Collinson, and Miss M. Oliver. To eon -
:Jude with THE uLOCKMAKER'S HAT.

PRINCE OF WALES'S ROYAL THEATRE.
Under the Management of 3liss Marie Wilton,
THIS EVENING, TAME CATS: Messrs. Hare, H. J. Montagne,
Blakeley, Montgomery. and Bancroft; Mrs. Buckingham White,
Miss C. Addison, and Miss Marie Wilton. After which, WHO
SPEAKS FIRST ! Messrs. Montague and Blakeley ; Miss C.
Addison.

ROYAL SURREY THEATRE.
Lessees. Messrs. Shepherd and Creswick.
fins EVENING, THE WIFE'S SECRET. Sir Walter Amyott
Mr. Creswick; Eveline, Miss Pauncetort After which, TIME
TRIES ALL,

CHRISTY MINSTRELS. St. James's Hall, Every Night, at 8.
Wednesdays and Saturdays, at 3 and 8 all the year round.

ROYAL ALHAMBRA PALACE. THREE BALLET 4,
Promenade Concert. Band of CO. Begin at 8. ls. Box-office
open from 11 to 4.

ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, Regent's-pack, OPEN daily (ex
cept Sundays). Admission, ls.; on Mendays, 6d.; Children
under twelve, 6d.

TO OUR SUI3SCRIBERS.
" THE SUN " WILL BE PUBLISHED AS USUAL ON

CHRISTMAS DAY.

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LOKDON, THURSDAY, DEC. 17,
_lB6B.

The Earl of Mayo•

We have just received information, the accuracy
of which we are not at liberty to question, that the
rumour of the recall of Lord Mayo is incorrect. We
were not ourselves the first to give this statement
currency. But before our comments upon it on
Tuesday evening last were penned, we received a con-
firmation of that rumour from a quarter so distin-
guished and well known in liberal circles—a noble-
man of very high rank—as to render it impossible
for us to doubt the truth of the particulars we
announced.

The Ballot Question never looked more hope-
fully. This last General Election has strengthened
the hands of its supporters wonderfully. There are
more advocates of it returned to the new Parliament
than have ever until now been brought together within
the walls of the house of Commons. Converts to
the Ballot have multiplied within the last few
months beyond all previous experience within so
brief an interval. Conservatives have come to re-
cognize, at last, in many instances, the expediency of
a protection so simple, and yet so effectual,
for the humbler class of electors against the otherwise
imminent possibility of intimidation. It is an old, a
trite, and an oft-repeated assertion, and yet it is one
that cannot even now be too frequently reiterated,
that a single valid reason has never yet been adduced
against the Ballot. Tho absurd remark.by which it is
often attempted to set it aside, to the effect, namely,
that it is what we are accustomed to term with our
national self-sufficiency, un-English, is belied by
the fact patent to us all that this so-called un-
English system of the Ballot is one habitually
in use in all the West•end Clubs among Eng-
lish gentlemen. That sonsttless imputation there-
fore is simply preposterous. Besides which it is, by
implication, an asper:Aon upon those nation=, our
allies, upon either side of the Atlantic, by whom
the Ballot is employed habitually as an integ-
ral portion of the machinery of representation.
Regarded upon either hand, whether as applied to an
ultra Democracy, as in the United States, or as
applied to an Imperial despotism as in France—it is
found, as a system, to work as smoothly and as

satisfactorily as any system possibly could.
Within twenty-four hours, with not a dis-
turbance of any kind, with the precision
of clockwork and with the accuracy of a
calculating machine, the Ballot Box receives and
registers the votes of the whole male adult popula-
tion. Universal suffrage being the law alike in France
and in America, the electors, here of the Empire,
there of the Republic, are enabled to pronounce, each
man amongst them individually, an unbiased and dis-
passionate opinion in regard to the representation of
those two great nationalities, whether yonder in
the Congress at Washington, or yonder in the
Legislative Chambers on the banks of the Seine.
Intimidation is impossible. Bribery and corrup-
tion are out of the question. The suffrage speaks
frankly and distinctly through each individual en-
trusted with it. Elections are rendered comparatively
inexpensive. The gathering of mobs about a hust-
ings is swept aside among the obsolete follies of the
past. Drunkenness is not priolically encouraged
by the excitement and turmoil of those contested elec-
tions which are, by means of the agency of the
Ballot, decided calmly by the people thiniselves
through the rational medium of a simple arithmeti-
cal calculation. What works so well among the free
electors of the United States, among the ten millions
possessors of the franchise in Imperial France, among
the educated gentlemen of England who are the
habittt%'s of the West-end Clubs of the metropolis,
may in reason be regarded as not unsuit-
able for the intelligent multitude of house-
holders now entrusted with the electoral fran-
chise in the United Kingdom, and the humbler classes
amongst whom ought in fair play to be guarded,
by some such means as those afforded by this very
system of the Ballot, against the :otherwise cruelly
multiplied zisks and temptations surrounding them
at every turn, the temptation of bribery, and the
risk of intimidation.

Looking, as we cannot help doing now very
eagerly, to the more than ever hopeful posi-
tion assumed by this great question of the Bal-
lot in the new louse of Commons, we would
earnestly trust that the honourable member
for the city of Bristol may be induced at last, if
only in consideration of his advancing age and of
his failing health, to resign into younger and more
energetic hands the cause so long intrusted to his
own. And we would hope this all the more
earnestly, because, as has long since appeared to
us, the Question of the Ballot is one of such
serious and Of such vital importance that it ought at
last in reason to be brought under the consideration
of the assembled Legislature as something better
than an annual practical joke, through the indulging
in which the leading advocate of the Ballot has
been, year after year, afforded, during one sessional
sitting, an opportunity for the display of his own
feeble and frivolous powers of Parliamentary face-
tiousness.

PARLIAMENT will not meet for business until
February 11. Easter is very early next year.
So that the prce-Paschal session, which is usually the
most important, and determines the course of the
whole parliamentary year, will be unusually short.
At the same time the business will be unusually heavy.

The postponement of the meeting of Parliament until
so late a period is an arrangement that will no doubt
receive explanation. At present we can only surmise
that Mr. GLADSTONE and his colleagues require time
for drafting their scheme with regard to the Irish
Church. Nor is this solution improbable. It must
be remembered that the work of the elections left
Mr. GLADSTONE little leisure for elaborating a plan
during the recess. True, he has come to office a week
or two earlier than he expected, but a considerable
number of his colleagues are new to the
duties of a responsible Minister, and with
them he has to confer before he introduces
a measure which they will have to support.
So far only one of them—Mr. BRIGHT—has given
anything like a clear idea of what lie would do: Mr.
GLADSTONE has been reticent with a caution quite
unusual to him.

Meanwhile certain newspapers are venturing to
indicate what the Ministerial programme will be.
The Times came out with an article, on Tuesday,
intended to enlighten its readers, though scarcely
calculated to effect that object. The Tele-
graph of the following day snubbed its contem-
porary for assuming to be in the confidence of
the Cabinet, and declared that nobody knows any-
thing about the subject, except of course the "jour-
nal with the largest circulation in the world." Seeing
that JUPITER Senior had committed the indiscretion
of blabbing secrets which were really no secrets,
JUPITER Junior decided to tell the truth. We imagine
that both our contemporaries were equally informed—
i.e., uninformed. If Mr. GLADSTONE wants nearly
two months to devise his scheme, he is scarcely
likely to communicate it even to able editors of
leading journals. If the bill for dealing with the
Irish Church is not to be ready before the second
week in February, the Times and the Telegraph are
not likely to be favoured with it in the second week
of December. In fact, the articles themselves betray
the absence of official inspiration. Can anything, ,
for instance, be more absurd than the argu-
ment of the Times, that because Sir BENJAMIN
Gti INN ES s restored St. Patrick's Cathedral,
the services at that church ought to be
conducted as nearly as possible as he would
have approved ? How far is this principle to
be carried ? If a person half restores a church, is he
entitled to have half the services conducted as he
would wish ? Supposing two men effect the restora-
tion, one of whom is High and the other Low, are

the services to be partly according to one type, partly
according to the other—is morning prayer to be
Ritualist and evening prayer Puritan ? And if the

restoration is the work of many hands, as most
restorations are, how then ? What is the smallest
contribution' that will entitle the contributor
to have a voice in the arrangement of the
services ? Will a font, or a reredos, or
a painted window suffice ; and if the last
is enough, must it be a window of two lights, or will
a lancet be enough ? The truth is, that no amount of
private benefaction spent upon the material building
belonging to a national Church will transfer the
jurisdiction over it to the benefactor. Mr. BERESFORD
HOPE has no power to arrange the services at All
Saints, Margaret-street, nor Mr. HUBBARD those of
St. Alban's, Holborn ; nor have the heirs, admi -
trators, and assigns of the late Sir B. GUINNESS
any power with regard to St. Patrick's, Dublin.
JUPITER must not only have been nodding, but
sound asleep, when it suggested such an absurdity.
With far greater discretion, the Tithes declares that
it is " premature " to discuss the purpose to which
the surplus property of the Irish Church shall be
appropriated. That is a confession of ignorance
which might have been made with advantage
earlier in the article. Thus much, however,
is likely to be true. The private endow-
ments of the Church will be respected. The
property that will be allowed to remain to the
Church will be vested in a commission. The old
machinery of Church government will be replaced
by new, and to that end the clergy will be allowed a
definite period—one or two years—for coming to an
arrangement with the commissioners. The two great
principles by which the Government will be guided
are, that so far as the property of the Church is
national property, it will be competent for Parlia-
ment to deal with it; and that the Church will be
left with ample funds for carrying on the worship
and the religious education of its members.

IT is to be hoped that one of the earliest measures
of the new Parliament will be to abolish the At of
ANNE whereby M.P.'s on taking office under the
Crown are conapelled to ask their constituents for
re-election, The Act was wise enough at the time