The Sun.
London, England, 1850-11-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS Or THIS DAY.

ADVERTISER.—We publish to-day the more im-
portant portions of a document, which will be read with
intense interest in all parts of the community. It is the
pamphlet of Cardinal Wiseman, the newly-appointed
Popish " Archbishop" of Westminster, which has been
announced as on the eve of making its appearance for
some days past. The document is ushered into existence
in the form of an" Appeal" to the people of England, in
reference to the commotion which has been caused in
this country by the recent Papal aggressions. It
would be unjust to withhold from Dr. Wiieman's
pamphlet the praise of great learning and ability ;
but, when we say this much, we must add, that it is,
from beginning to end, a pii ce of special pleading. It
bees the quest' aa throughout. It assumes certain things,
and proceeds to argue on them as if they were either
self-evident or admitted facts. The impress of an ac-
complished Jesuit is visible in every page. The " Ap-
peal" is ushered into notice by several pages of intro-
ductory matter. In the introductory observations the
cloven foot of Popery, as an aggressive system, is so inani-
fes., that no one can fail to perceive it. There is a bold-
ness in the introduction which fully prepares es for the
audacity which is throughout exhibited in the body of
the pamphlet. In the outset of the " Appeal," Dr.
Wiseman makes a very important admission. He does
not, it is true, make this admission directly, but no one
who reads the passage to which we allude, can help
coming to the conclusion that it is made by
" The Established Church of England," says he, " looks
upon the new eonstitution, accorded by the Holy See
to Catholics, as a rival existence." " The new constitu-
tion!" The words are pregnant with meaning. The
partition of England into Popish dioceses is, indeed, a
new constitution. It is one hitherto unknown in this
country. No writer on the Constitution of England ever
dreamt of a second constitution. We have been accus-
tomed to think and speak of only one constitution. We
are now, if the Church of Rome is to have her own way,
to have two constitutions in England—of one of which
Queen Victoria is the head, and the other recognising
the supremacy of the Pope. Both, it is clear, cannot
co exist together. It is for the people of England
to say which of the two constitutions they
are to have—that which has existed for so
many generations, and been productive of so much
glory and happiness to these realms, or that which has
just been inaugurated by a bull from the Roman Pontiff.
Dr. Wiseman is guilty of what looks very like an inten-
tional misrepresentation of the facts of the case, when,
in the very next sentence, he says that the agitation
against the recent Pape! aggressions has been lately
subsiding into a mere clerical and parochial movement.
It a man will have the cool effrontery to pen a sentence
like this, in the face of facts which so notoriously and
explicitly speak the very opposite language, he must not
be surprised if we regard him as capable of proceeding
to any lengths in the pathway of moral mendacity. Dr.
Wiseman, we unhesitatingly assert, must know that he
does not speak in consonance with the dictates of truth,
when he says that the present anti-Popish agitation is
kept up by the clergy, and is confined to parochial
cliques. We fearlessly affirm, that never iu the his-
tory of agitations, in this or any other land, was
there a movement more thoroughly national than that
which now convulses this country. It is the most
popular movement, by far, which has been witnessed in
our day. Men of all classes and of all grades in so-
ciety vie with each other in the ardour in which they
engage in it. So far from being a clerical or parochial
agitation, the clergy and parochial authorities play a
very subordinate part in it. The meetings, crowded to
suffocation, no less than the enthusiasm displayed,
wherever assemblies of her Majesty's subjects take place
to express their opinion on the question. attest in a
manner not to be misunderstood the thoroughly national
character of the agitation. The people of England, not
the clergy, are the parties who have got up and keep
up this anti-Popish movement. And that Dr. Wiseman,
and those who choose to indorse his flagrant mis-
statements, will find to their cost. This a clerical and
parochial agitation! We are appalled at the audacity
which in open day could venture on such an assertion.
Does, then, this newly-fledged " Archbishop" mean to
say that the clergy and parochial functionaries are
also the instigators and props of the anti-Popish agita-
tion, which is kept up in the press, as well as at public
meetings? Does he mean to say that our contempora-
ries and ourselves are operated upon by clerical influ-
ences? We scarcely know whether to regard the auda-
city of the Pope, in making his recent aggressions on
England, or the mendacity of Dr. Wiseman, in making
an attack so notoriously at variance with the truth, as
the most consummate in their way. The two ecclesias-
tics are worthy of each other. Like master, like man.
Or, rather, the man surpasses his master. The Cardinal
beats the Pope hollow, inasmuch as to the attribute of
effrontery, he. adds the quality of an utter disregard for
the truth. Like a genuine practised Jesuit, Dr. Wise-
man, in a few paragraphs further on, proceeds to try
the effect of a dose of flattery on the people of England.
He labours with all the skill of which be is master to
put them off their guard against the designs of
Popery, by a piece of adroit cajolery. " What
resource," says he, after describing the imaginary
injustice which Government and the press have done
the Roman Catholics, or will yet do them—" what re-
source have we yet left ? What hope ot justice ?" His
Eminence answers his own questions. " One," says he,
"in which, after God's unfailing Providence, we place
unbounded confidence. There still remain the manly
sense and honest heart of a generous people ; that love
of honourable dealing and fair play, which, in joke or in
earnest, is equally the instinct of an Englishman ; that
hatred of all mean adva:Jtage taken, of all base tricks
and paltry claptraps and party cries employed to hunt
doe n even a rival foe." The people of England are not
' to be bamboozled by the flattery of Dr. Wiseman.
They will not be misled by his cajolery. As they are
not to be frightened from the path of duty by the
thunders of the Vatican, so neither will they be allured
from it by the blandishments, either of Cardinal
Wiseman or of his master in the Quirinal. They are
now fairly aroused to the perils to which not only their
Prceestsntistn, but their civil liberties are exposed,
and they will not rest until they have disabled the
Popish monster. Dr. Wiseman hurls defiance at the
Protestant people of these realms. His manifesto is
not only, in many parts, audacious, but insolent. He
challenges us to the combat. We accept the challenge.
We are prepared for the conflict. We fear not the issue.
So far from being discouraged by the effrontery and
mendacity which he displays in his pamphlet, we re•
joice that he has thrown off the mask. We now know
what we have to deal with. We discern, in this docu-
ment, the same spirit of persecution which the Romish
Church has ever shown, as clearly as in any page of
Popish history. In the " rights," as he calls them,
which the Roman Catholics claim for themselves, and
the arrogant tone in which he urges them, we see that
which, were Popery again in the ascendant in this
country, would rekindle the fires of Smithfield, or
bring the present Lord John Russell to the block, as
it brought Lord William Russell to the scaffold about
200 years ago.
DAILY NEWS.—We have not had time to cast more
than a glance at Cardinal Wiseman's rejoinder to his
numerous foes ; but have seen enough to admit that
some of them have caught a tartar. Never were blows
dealt with more hearty good-will. His Monsignoreship
is evidently no slumbering, mumbling, dozing sun of the
Church. clad in purple, and fed with incense; but a busy,
worldly, go-a-head son uf an acute and an industrial
age. He has evidently emerged from no cloister, nor
from the desk" of any antiquated administration. The
Cardinal, cardinal though be he, is ono of us. and one
not ef our effete or dandy classes, but a terra filius, who
has touched the mother earth of common lite, and learned
rude-thuughtedness with his vernacular. Cardinal
Wiseman, we see, claims to be an Englishman, and no
adeu. His style, his rudeness, his hard hits, and his
plain sense certainly go tar to prove that he is
neither a Spaniard nor an Italian. The document
that we print is manifestly the work of a slashing
English reviewer, not of a Roman casui't; and the entire
vein of thought and of expression, savour far more
strongly of the man of the world, than the servant of
the Church. Dr. Pussy has ten times more unction,
more Leatitude, more Jesuitry, and, without the red
hat, tar more Popery about him. But although the
Pope has had the sagacity to come amongst us in the
unusual garb of a man of the advanced world, with a
bold aspect, a fertile invention, and a ready pen, the
Pope's agent is not the less but rather more to be feared
and dealt with carefully. His professions in this book
are those of great humility. The Queen has no more
loyal subject, the public no more respectful aspirant .r
favour. It be became a cardinal it was not of his seek-
ing, and if of Westminster, it was of necessity not fore-
knowledge. The Pope's claim and his own to administer
all the spiritual, and no small portion of the temporal,
affairs of England, are merely phrases, to which none save
an Anglican bishop would take offence. Catholics can-
not worship without bishops; and the Emancipation Act,
which allowed freedom of the one, sanctioned the full
development of the other. On the subject of his title,
authority, and precedence, the Cardinal says little, ex-
cept that his pretensions are the result of circumstances,
the natural and foreseen consequences of the Emancipa-
tion Act, the inevitable and concomitant of any tolera-
tion of the Roman Catholic religion. We regret to see
how strongly this line of argument goes to strengthen
the power of the fanatics, and to induce statesmen to
look backward in the cause of religious equality and
tolerance. In this point of view we cannot but look
upon the pamphlet as an unfortunate and further step
in that way of provocation which has kindled religious
animosity throughout the land. There never was a
more direct challenge, a more glaring outrage on that
decorum of mutual respect which all Christian sects
should hear each other, than the Bull, which heralded
Bishop Wiseman to the assumption of what was evidently
marked out as the supreme ecclesiastical authority in
England. To the arrogance of the Church dignitary--
to the assumption of the Roman Prince—is now strangely
and offensively added the sneering satire of the pam-
phleteer, mocking the cathedral service at Westminster,
' and descending to "pull caps" or mitres with the bishops
of the Established Church. Into the arguments of Car-
dinal Wiseman's pamphlet we have now no time to enter.
But we could not present it to our readers without some
remarks upon its general tenor, and without giving the
impression made by its first and hasty perusal.

CARDINAL WISEMAN'S APPEAL.—The appearance
in the mor ing journals of the above Appeal, it would seem,
has caused the :4-top of Messrs. Richardson, in Fleet-street,
the publishers of the Cardinal's pamphlet, to be absolutely
besieged by persons who were anxious to obtain a copy of
that work, in the convenient form in which their firm have
brought it out.
FOREIGN HORSES.—lmportations of horres from
the Continent are now taking place by the steamers from
France and Belgium. The vessel Fame, from Calais, has
brought seven horses as part of her cargo, consigned; and
the steamer Princess Victoria, arrived from Antwerp, has
brought 21 horses, of Belgian production, consigned to order.
T. TEA TRADE, Nov. 18.—The tea deliveries
in London last week were &06,0261 b. The market is very
firm, and holders are indisposed to sell.