The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-23 00:00:00

PHARISEES AND SADDITEES.

The Morning Advertiser was always fond of ser-
monising, and especially fond of that part of it which
is called practical application. It has lately been
reading up the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and has
discovered that the first are represented in the
English Church by the Ritualists, the second by the
Rationalists. But what puzzles our contemporary
is that there should be a close alliance between
the two. It was not so in old time.
Paul once endeavoured to get out of a
difficult position by enlisting one part of his hostile
audience against the other by appealing to the men
of one sect against the men of the other. But the
Advertiser finds Archbishop Tait the Sadducee, and
Mr. Gladstone the Pharisee, coalescing. Do they not
both write in Good Words? Does not Mr. Kingsley
write there too ? and is not Mr. Kingsley a Sad-
ducee ? and did not Archbishop Tait promote
Mr. Rowsell and Mr. Rogers, and are they not
all Sadducees ? and did not the Archbishop
preach in St. Luke's Church, Berwick-street, of
which Mr. Harry Jones, the Pharisee-Sadducee, is
the incumbent ? And so on, ad ivinitunt. It is thus
that this highly religious paper endeavours to keep
the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace ; it is by
dividing men out into hostile factions which they
repudiate, and by stigmatising them with hate-
ful names, that the publicans' organ endeavours to
heal our unhappy divisions. Men giving up their
lives to teaching and comforting the army of
London paupers are denounced as Sadducees—i.e., as
men who believe in no resurrection—by the organ of
that trade which has done, infinitely more than any
other agency, the devil's work of making pauperkancl
heathens.

A NEW "PREFET DE LONDRES " WANTED.

Sir Richard Mayne has not yet resigned his office
as Chief Commissioner of the London Police, but it
is expected that he will do so very shortly, and it is
not to be concealed that the majority of Londoners
are very anxious that he should d.o it without delay.
The reason why this change is so much wanted is,
that an entire change in the police system of
the metropolis may be effected when Sir Richard.
retires. Londoners complain—and have long coin-
plained in vam—that the present arrangements are
costly and very unsatisfactory, because very ineffec-
tive. Sir Richard Mayne is an old soldier, and, so far
as military drill is concerned, he has certainly im-
proved his men ; but it is an improvement at the
expense of their protectiveanddetective training. The
London " Prefet " commands a tolerably efficient little
army, but the little army is not wanted in London,
and policemen who will lessen burglaries and crimes
of outrage are very much wanted indeed. The loss
sustained by London on account of the semi-military,
character of its police is thus illustrated by the Daily
Telegraph :—" Take one striking fact. For thirteed
hours every day the metropolitan area of 700 square
.miles, inhabited by 3,400,000 people, is left in the
charge of only 1,000 police, though the force
amounts to some 0,000. And why ? Because
during these thirteen hours a large amount of dril-
ling is always going on." Sir Richard Mayne may
think that men can drill all day, walk a matter of
four or six miles to drill, and then serve at night as
active and efficient guardians of the persons and
property of citizens. He will, however, get but few to
agree in his opinion, while there is a very general
concurrence in the view that, as regards the London
police, what is ws,nted is ,f a new lord and new
laws."