The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC' JOURNALS.

The Times appeals to the clergy of those constituencies
which have not yet elected their representatives to recon•
eider the judgment their brethren in the clerical office
have as a body pronounced. It is impossible to defend
the Irish Establishment. Lord Stanley, with cha•
racteristic candour, acknowledged so much months ago,
and the Conservative Ministry, by their proposed legisla-
tion, shewed that they believed the only way to maintain
it was by bribing the rival creeds of Ireland to silence.
If a Roman Catholic University were established
and endowed ; if the status of the Roman Catholic
hierarchy and priesthood were recognised ; if funds were
set apart either from the surplus revenues of the Irish
Church or by new grants .of Parliament for the main-
tenance of the priests ; if the pittance of the Regium
Donum were increased, the Irish Establishment might
survive for another generation. Every one of the condi-
tions of this result is impossible, and the clergy not only
know them to be impossible, but hate and detest the
suggestion of them ; yet they have rallied to the
support of a Ministry which, by hints, decla-
rations, and open propositions, by every eloquent
indication of opinion, ,Eve confessed that if
they be not adopted the Establishment must be surren-
dered. We entreat the cler;y not to be misled by vague
alarms, but to look the frightful proposition of disestablish-
ing and disendowing the Irish Church in the face, and
they will see that the policy they oppose is the policy of
justice, of peace, and of safety for themselves and the high
interests they have at heart. The policy they support is,
in strictest truth, a policy of revolution and destruction.
The Post expresses fears as to Mr. Gladstone's tact
as a leader. With all his eloquence, and with all his
earnestness and sincerity, Mr. Gladstone may again fail
as a party chief. No one conceives that Mr. Bright, who
is equal to Mr. Gladstone in eloquence, could lead the
House of Commons, and if it were proposed to put the reins
in his hands there would be some rude kicking over the
traces. Lord John Russell, after leading the Liberal
party for eighteen years, fell back into its ranks and
acknowledged the supremacy of Lord Palmerston ; and
Mr. Gladstone, who, when Lord John Russell was elevated
to the peerage, took his place next to Lord Palmerston
in the House of Commons, though his financial ad.
ministration proved most prosperous, failed to obtail.
a personal following. The truth may be that Lord
Palmerston's geniality in a manner spoiled the House ; hut
it can hardly be the whole truth, seeing that Sir Robert
Peel was said to be "the greatest member of Parliament."
The apprehension which has been expressed on every side
cannot be ignored, and, perhaps unreasonably, it has been
naturally enough intensified by an event the moral effect
of which can hardly be calculated. Since Mr. Gladstone's
defeat his friends have made no secret of the causes of
their anxiety. But for our part, we have adverted to the
subject, not without reluctance, because it concerns the
interests of the country, and with no other end in view
than that the policy which has recommended itself to the
great body of the community should he carried out with
statesmanlike discretion, and in a spirit of honourable
conciliation, consisting with the requirements of the time,
the manners of Parliament, and the antecedents of the
Liberal party.

The Daily News remarks that the members who were in
the Liberal party without being of it exist no longer. The
individuals may be the same, but they live and move in a
different political medium. The moderate Liberals, who
fear extreme measures, have seen that Toryism
can coquet with revolution. The advocates of
progress and improvement note Mr. Disraeli's
tendency to fall back upon doctrines which it
was thought bad died out in the lunacy of George
111. The fond idea cherished in some Tory circles
that there are aristocratic jealousies which will
interfere with the success of Mr. Gladstone's leadership, is
an entire hallucination. The gossip-mongers who are
making unauthorised use in this connection of the names
of Whig nobles, will doubtless go on inventing fables sa
long as there are fools to believe them. The truth is, that
the events of the past three years have led Liberals of
every class heartily to welcome, as the best guarantee for
safe and peaceful progress, the leadership to which Mr.
Gladstone has been called by the voice of a people who,
when they are in earnest, cannot be trifled with without
something worse than inconvenience.

-The Times has a leader upon the recent legal decision in
its favour. It remarks :—There was no fear that, what.
ever the decision, the nation would allow itself to be
deprived of its right, which is far more truly its privilege
than ours, to know what passes in its own Parliament.
The only doubt was whether judges, without being pro-
pelled by direct legislation, would surmount the fact that
some of their predecessors entertained, in common with
most of their generation, different views on what was
for the public advantage from those which the whole
empire, excepting always Mr. Wason, does now. The
judgment of the Court of Queen's Bench, pro-
nounced by its chief, proves that the judicial
intelligence has not lagged behind that of the
country, and that the unwritten common law of England
itself has, with many defects, the countervailing merit,
Its Sir Alexander Cockburn boasts, of elasticity and
capacity for development with the varying needs of the
age. We do not expect Mr. Wason to recognise that he
has brought his present vexation upon himself. He is
quite welcome, so far as we are concerned, to think him-
self a victim for the general good. He has in truth, we
will acknowledge, achieved something in being the instru-
ment by his defeat for obtaining the solemn affirmation of
the privilege of publishing parliamentary debates. It is
much for his name to go down to posterity in company
with the decision of such a question.
The Morning Summary thinks a comedy of Aristophanes
furnishes an allegory of our own times. The father finds
his former creed all wrong, and sends his son to learn the
new one. Away with antiquated creeds and ideas of
duty ! Let us worship the new divinities, the fleecy
aesthetic clouds, rose-tinted, of a new Liberal era in
politics and religion ; the strange masses —cirro-cumulus
and eumulo-stratus—which, though threatening, Mr.
Gladstone says are not revolutionary ; but, above all, the
great wind-bag, once Jupiter, which sends forth a daily
strain to the world, as from fway pipes. While we con.
template, we shall learn to believe according to the way
of the wind ; we shall cease to wonder, or to have
scruples, or to feel responsible. As, for instance :
there was an old-world notion that the Church's
tithe was a sacred offering, entailed on the land,
and that the union of Church and State, like
that between man and wife, ought not, save for utter
infidelity, •to be broken. But all that depends on con-
venience, and the use of right words. We have only to
call the Church in Ireland " the Church of the minority,"
and give her a bill of divorcement. We need only take the
figure of a tree, not of that type in the parable, but, as
Gladstone paints it in his speech, a tree toppling to its base,
" waiting the stroke of these elections ;" then it seems no
sin to disestablish and divide the spoils. There was
formerly a prejudice in favour of religious education, as
an antidote to ignorance and vice ; but the doctrine would
be inconvenient now. The die should be clearly cut, as the
Bishop of Oxford said to the teachers of Cuddesdon, to
make a clear impression on the wax—but it must only be
cut with the three R's, the monogram of the new Govern-
ment office seal, and as to the religion, we are advised to
leave that—to the clouds !

The Standard accuses Mr. Gladstone of a palpable false•
hood in announcing a "second edition " of his pamphlet.
An " edition" is something published. A book only
privately circulated is no "edition" in a true sense. As
to the excuses offered by Mr. Gladstone for not making up
his mind, they are flimsy to the last degree. If the ques-
tion was not one of " practical politics," whose fault was
that more than Mr. Gladstone s? The Legislature, we
are told, "had other subjects to deal with besides the
Irish Church," But the course of the Legislature
was shaped, for many years, by the party with
whom Mr. Gladstone was acting. He could have
made the abolition of the Irish Church a practical ques-
tion if he had so chosen. The case, according to his
own showing, was quite as bad a dozen years ago as
it is now. Not only did not Mr. Gladstone attend
to it, but he opposed every attempt to do so on the part of
others. The conviction that the maintenance of the Irish
Church was " grossly unjust" is a conviction that must
necessarily have come to Mr. Gladstone soon after 1847.
Yet he took no measures to put this conviction in force—
even to make it known to the public—until the time had
come when some great radical proposition for a change
in the Constitution was necessary to unite the Liberal
party and to bring back Mr. Gladstone to office. This is
the substance of the matter of which Mr. Gladstone is
accused, and to this accusation the " Chapter of Auto-
biography" furnishes no reply.
_ .

The Telegraph notices that an immense change has come
over the Church since the days of Wesley. She has ceased
to he a mere political institution, and has discovered that
her power and authority may be supported on a. better
basis than Acts of Parliament, desirable as those aids may
be to regulate her relations with the worldly side
of society. The active controversies and struggles
which are going on within her bounds may be
in many respects painful ; but they are, at least, signs of
vitality. Even the bitter strifes which exist, even the
theological enmities which divide religious parties, are
preferable to the numbness and dumbness of apathy. A
judicious surgeon would rather that a patient who has
suffered bodily injury should cry out and writhe with pain
than lie voiceless and unconscious in the torpor of utter
nervous exhaustion. The Telegraph criticises Sir R.
, halimore's judgment in the Maciconochie case, which is
elaborate, but contains some remarkable historical
iduildFrs and looks anxiously for the decision of the
udicil Committee, and believes that the spirit which
has animated Mr. Mackonochie in these labours of love
is sincere—and in the same spirit it expects that he tivill
comply readily with whatever regulations the Privy
Council may decide to be tiece7;:,,..e for the just main-
tenance of the relations between t!, Church and society,
1Y".19°,1-41.1111:,:s 'I:S with uurelaxed

ENTHRONEMENT OF THE A.RCHBISHOI
OF CANTERBURY.

Great preparations will be made for the enthroni•
sation of Dr. Archibald Campbell Tait, 93rd Archbishop
of Canterbury, in the metropolitan church of his
diocese, but no day can yet be definitely fixed for
the ceremony. Before the installation of Arch-
bishop Sumner, in IS4B, the metropolitans of the
Province of Canterbury had, for upwards of two centu-
ries, ceased to be induoked in person, the dean generally
acting as their deputy. Archbishop Wake, who was en-
throned in 1716, was the last Primate who underwent the
ceremony in person, until Dr. Sumner revived the earlier
usage. Dr. Tait will appear in person, and will be
installed by the Ven. B. Harrison, M.A., archdeacon of
Maidstone ; the archdeacon of Canterbury, upon whom the
duty would in the ordinary course devolve, being prevented
by age from attending. The archbishop willbe accompanied
by Dr. Jackson (who will at that time have become
Bishop of London and provincial dean of Canterbury), the
Bishop of Oxford (as proxy for the Bishop of Winchester,
provincial sub-dean), the Bishop of Rochester (provincial
chaplain, or cross-bearer), and Dr. Wordsworth (who will
by that time have become Bishop of Lincoln and provin-
cial chancellor), the canons residentiary of the cathedral,
the six preachers, the cathedral clergy, &c. The archbishop
will take up his position on the north side of the cathedral,
with the Bishop of Oxford on his right band, the Bishop
of London on the south side, the Bishops of Lincoln and
Rochester being also stationed within the altar rails.
When all are seated, the Hallelujah Chorus will be sung.
After morning service the archbishop will be conducted to
the archiepiscopal throne, a handsome structure of exqui-
sitely carved stone, the gift of Archbishop Howley, if ate
at the upper end of the south side of the cl t
rravers 'l'wiss, the vicar-general of the prov
then produce the Queen's mandate, in virtue c
the archbishop will be enthroned. Afterwards the arch-
bishop will be conducted by the Dean of Canterbury and
the bishops present to the patriarchal chair in the south
transept, between the altar and the chapel of the Holy
Trinity. This antique seat, called the chair of St. A.ugus-
tine, is composed of grey marble, in three pieces, carved
in panels, and rises in a solid mass from the pavement.
According to tradition, the chair is that in which the Pagan
kings of Kent were enthroned, and which, presented by
Ethelbert to Augustine, has ever since served as the
metropolitan cathedral of Canterbury. In the placing of
the newly-elected Primate in this venerable chair consists
the principal solemnity, or the enthronement, as it puts
the occupant in formal possession of the metropolitan dig-
nity, authority, and emoluments. The new archbishop
will bring the service to a close by pronouncing the
apostolic benediction.