The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-11 00:00:00

the New Testament, and we forget how many oaths used
to be taken in due course about a pound of tea before it
passed across the counter into the hands of the consumer.
But although statutory declarations have in many
instances been substituted for oaths, still it mnst be con- ,
ceded that we continue to swear a little too much and a
little too often. A very exhaustive oath was adminstered
to each of the members of the new Government (with the
exception of Mr. Bright, who, being a Quaker, affirmed)
at Windsor on Wednesday, the recipients being on their ,
knees, but nevertheless when they take their places in
Parliament they will be obliged again to call God to
witness that they will bear true allegiance to the
Queen. Familiarity is proverbially said to breed
contempt, and we cannot avoid thinking that a states-
man who has been obliged several times in the course
of his life, from the period when he first took
his degree at the University to that when he last took
his seat in Parliament, or accepted an office from the
Crown, to repeat the same formula, concluding with a
solemn invocation of the Deity, must come to regard the
ceremony with very little reverence. Without being so
sceptical or so cynical as to suggest that no oath ever yet
operated to prevent a man becoming a traitor to his
sovereign or to his country, we have at least probability
on our side when we doubt whether the needless repeti-
tion of the same oath on every conceivable occasion when
a pretext can be suggested for its administration adds in
the slightest degree to its binding force.
The Standard takes comfort to itself in the conduct of
the populace on Thursday outside Westminster Hall. If
one-tenth of what our demagogues have been preaching to
us for the last twenty years had been true, there surely
ought to have been some kind of demonstration on such
an occasion. It was the first day of the entrance, accord-
ing to the• Right Honourable John Bright, of the
people into their rights. It was the beginning of
that ominous Householder Parliament of which we had
been warned in tones of more or less solemnity. It was
the first day of the parliamentary life of Mr. Bright as a
Cabin Minister. On that day the people burst their
chains, and an unscrupulous and corrupt aristocracy were
hurled from their seats. Surely there was something
shocking in the tame and matter-of-fact way in which the
populace celebrated this happy occasion. They ought to
have been delirious with joy of their enfranchisement—
ecstatic over their newly-found liberties. The conduct of the
populace was more than disappointing. They cheered, it is
true, the popular leaders, but it is a remarkable fact that they
cheered scarcely less rapturously the outgoing Ministers.
The joy at the assembling of the Householder Parliament
was not so absorbing a passion but that the crowd were
able to feel, and to express, an interest for the members of
the late Government. The populace, with a shameful
sense of impartiality—a sense altogether unaccountable
on the Right Honourable Mr. Bright's late theories of
the conduct of the governing classes—were about evenly
divided in their enthusiasm for the rising sun-and for the
orb whose race is, for the time, run. Of the two, Mar-
cellus had, perhaps, the best of it.

The Dail; Ne;es. compares to some extent the powers
and position of the two Houses. Between the House of
Lords and the House of Commons the physical interval is
email. Two passages and two lobbies divide the once rival
estates. The moral difference is enormous. To an ob-
server the transition seems to be from death to life, from
a galvanised to a real existence, front the past to the
present, from the form to the substance, from the vest-
ment and draperies to the body and soul of the English
Constitution. The only real thing in the ceremony, so far
as it was enacted in the House of Lords, was the inrush
of the Commons. • Thatanight be fancied to be symbolical
of the living power of the Constitution, as the immobility
of the Lords was of what is stationary and stereotyped.
The Times comments at some length on the patronage of
the Conservatives.. Mr. Disraeli himself, off his own
hook, has made a viceroy, a duke, an earl, an archbishop,
three bishops, several governors-general, three deans, and
several canons, seven peers, besides elevations in the
peerage, eleven baronets, and a swarm of Irish func-
tionaries that fairly baffles English enumeration. The
Conservative Administration, including Lord Derby's,
has made twenty-seven great legal appointments.
The total aggregate of patronage disposed of, and,
for the most part, placed for the life interests in safe Con-
servative keeping, has been estimated at a quarter of a
million per annum, and the Conservative cause is now that
much richer and stronger. The Times cannot quite censure
Mr. Disraeli for this. It thinks the patronage in Ireland
at the last moment an outrage on common sense, if not of
official propriety. At the same time it must still
admire the audacity which has enabled the garrison
to walk out, not only with the honours of war, but even
with the property they were lighting about.
Few chore'. igoers, the Telegraph appreh ends, can honestly
declare that they have never felt somewhat drowsy during
toe sermon. Of ceurse it is the fault of the heat, or of the
architect ; it would he an outrage to hint that it
could by :viy possiliility be the fault of the preacher.
The difficult question, however, still remains—
What can be done to keep the congregations awake?
.."..aw may the weaker brethren be induced to forego their
forty winks? The thing might be done, no doubt, by
the employment of a particularly pungent kind of incense ;
but insense is inadmissible, and, of the two evils, a snore
itself is not so anti-devotional a.; a sneeze. We English
are sofund of personal liberty, that a large number of
sturdy patriots would probably maintain their perfect
right to sleep in their own pews, as long as
they paid the rates ; and we arc not, therefore,
sanguine that a plan which was once tried in Denmark
would be successfW in Great Britain. Let the public
judge. A decree issued by a former King Christian com-
manded that, as the practice of sleeping in church was
scandalously on the increase, every parish should select
one or more persons to perambulate the sacred edifice,
armed with a long Nvaml, for the purpose of tapping the
~,,,,pers gently on the head ! We commend the idea to
those gentlemen who are busily introducing innovations
on our Church service; since, if the plan did nothing
else, it would at least provide useful occupation for the
beadle.