The Sun.
London, England, 1868-10-19 00:00:00

TUE SUN, LONDON, ?t!ONDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 19, 1868

expenses, disturb their establishments, and form
altogether one of the most troublesome items of
their daily and nightly routine. At the same time
though many of these tramps belong to what we
may call the class of professional beggars, and those
whose business it is to live at other
people's expense, it is right and necessary that
some provision should be made for them.
In the cold nights of our winter months no one can
venture with impunity to dispense with food and
shelter, and while there are too many among the
casuals whose own vices, or thriftiness, or idleness
has reduced them to destitution, there are always
more or less of those who really deserve our compas-
sion. The broken-down servant or charwoman, the
needlewoman who cannot get work enough to en-
able her to live, the numbers who from some cause
or another break down in the great battle of life,
may any of them find themselves temporarily home-
less and friendless. The night refuges established
by charitable aid, where these cases are sifted,
and help is, if possible, given to them, reveal many
touching stories. It is not, however, on any other
ground than that of common humanity and pro-
priety that the State is called upon to deal with
these vagrants. It is a scandal to our country that
any person should be allowed to die of want or
cold in the public streets. Under whatever hard or
unwholesome condition there should be a Christian
country, some place where every wayfarer can have
food, however coarse, and shelter, however homely,
from the cold of the winter nights. This obliga-
tion our modern legislators fully recognise, and the
authorities of all the chief parishes have been
directed to provide sufficient accommodation for
casuals. Some parishes under the oldsystem readily
received such applicants, while others made no pro-
vision at all, and shifted their responsibilities else-
where. By this means some parishes were put to
heavy expense, which the authorities of other unions
escaped from their lack of humanity. The new
rule is that every parish is bound to provide due ac-
commodation for vagrants, and that every parish
neglecting to do so forfeits its claim to have the
cost of providing for casuals paid out of the general
metropolitan fund. It seems, however, that some
of the West-end parishes are by no means particu-
lar about fulfilling their share of the obligations,
and the Marylebone guardians who have provided
excellent wards for their casuals complain very
justly that they are burdened with
*those belonging
to other people. At the recent meeting of the
Marylebone guardians the master reported an in
crease of wayfarers, when Mr. TAVENEI2, one of
the guardians said it had come to his knowledge
that wayfarers had come to Marylebone after being
refused at St. George's, Hanover-square, and at
Westminster. A complaint on the subject had
been made to the Poor Law Board ; only the usual
vague official answer had been received from the
Board, and it is a matter of regret that
the central authority is usually so dila-
tory in seeing its own regulations enforced.
Our Poor Law is faulty in many respects, but if it
were thoroughly acted up to the deficiencies would
not be so great as they are now. At the approach
of winter it is highly important that each parish
and union should understand its duties and prepare
to discharge them fully and faithfully, knowidg
that it will be kept up to the mark by watchful su-
pervision.

The Guardians of Marylebone are to be congratu-
lated on the successful working of a scheme which
they have originated for the benefit of the boys in
the parish schools, and collaterally for the bene-
fit. .1.0 of th. ro.topmyorg_ They have
likewise established a military band and
provided a good bandmaster, and they find that it
is•easy to get tho boys so trained into military
bands. They are thus removed into quite a new
sphere away from all workhouse recollections and
thrive well. If they are apprenticed in the ordi-
nary routine in their own parish they generally
come back in after life to the workhouse as paupers.
Twenty-three boys from the schools at Southall
have lately been taken into military bands, and
have suited so well that there have been more ap-
plications than can at present be satisfied. We
hope the success of this experiment will encourage
other guardians in a similar course.

We are glad to find that a straightforward and
conscientious politician is about to receive a sub-
stantial token of public esteem and respect. Gen.
PEEL, who bears a name long to be remembered in
the political history of his country, has never filled
the conspicuous position of his lamented brother,
and though not possessing the abilities, the reputa-
tion, or the influence of Sir ROBERT PEEL, he has
discharged his public duties as a member of Parlia-
ment during many a long session. and as a member
of more than one Cabinet, with fidelity and fear-
lessness. He has never stooped to expediency
or intrigue. He has often given offence
to both sides by his resolute adherence
to his own opinions, and he has never
sought personal aggrandizement or self-interest.
Belonging to the Tory party, he has in many re-
spects modified his early views, but has never
identified himself with the party of progress. Those
who differed from him, however, found it impos-
sible to refrain from acknowledging his sincerity
and his straightforwardness. An instance of this
occurred only the other day. General PEEL had
been making an elaborate defence of the financial
policy of his party when in office, and in so doing
attributed by mistake a million too much to the
preceding Administration. He discovered this error
before any one else did, and instead of trusting
to its being overlooked, and trying to explain it
away, he at once wrote to the journals which had
inserted his former statement, pointing out the mis-
takes and modifying his charge. In this spirit
General PEEL has always acted. Like a brave
soldier he can respect his enemy, and he acts in a
spirit which compels his enemy to respect him.
However mistaken or prejudiced we may deem some
of his views, we must wish that more men of his
character were to be found among our political
ranks, and we are glad that on his retirement from
public life an influential committee should have re-
solved to present him with some lasting memorial
of his country's recognition of his honest and manly

LITERII.TILRE.

Pius VII. and NapoleA3. I.

The Edinburgh llcview. No. 262. Longinans.
In the midst of eight other exceedingly miscel
I aneous articles—varying in their theme, from " Sy-
bel'e History of the French Revolution" to a record
of "The Expiring Parliament," from a review of
" Senior on Ireland" to a review of George Eliot's
"Spanish Gypsy," from a delineation of " Hindoo
Fairy Legends" to a sketch of " The Agricultural
Labourers of England," from a scrutiny of " King- ,
lake's Invasion of the Crimea" to an analysis of
" Darwin on Variation sof Animals and Plants "
the Edinburgh in this current number contains one
paper worthy in every way of its high and splendid
reputation. It is a paper that W 3 have real from
first to last with delight and admiration. In the
masculine eloquence of its composition, it is worthy
of the Edinburgh in the days of Macaulay. But it
evidences on the part of the writer a faculty
that Macaulay with all his genius never
possessed. That faculty—the most essential
of all to a historical critic enabling him
to weigh conflicting evidence quite fairly and
dispassionately, while holding (to this end) the
balance of his judgment in a perfect equipoise. As
was said very wittily and very wisely of Lord
Macaulay by a far inferior writer, namely, by Sir
Archibald Alison—he (Macaulay) was called to
the Bar rather than to the Bench of History. He
was a splendid advocate. But he was a partizan.
He assailed with malice prepense. He eulogised
usque ad nauseam. Under his pencil, William 111.
was an angel of light—James 11. ademon of darkness.
So engrained and ineradicable was all this, that it has
been said of his last work, that what would other-
wise have been a noble History, degenerated into
nothing better than an immense Whig pamphlet.
Contrasting very finely with the partizanship of
Macaulay, are the fairness, the candour, and the noble
outspeaking of the writer who here contributes to
what was once Macaulay's organ, this really masterly
historical criticism we are now referring to as
adorning the number of the Edinburgh for October.
It is a paper relating to " The Papacy and
the French Empire"—a theme suggested, of course,
by M. to Comte d'Haussonville's recently published
" L'Eglise Romaine et la Premier Empire, 1800-
1814." Upon several points, our opinions are at ,
variance with those set forth by the Edinburgh
Reviewer. But, upon the whole, we conceive not
only that his views are just in themselves, but that
they are expressed in almost every instance with a
force, and a precision, and an eloquence that com-
mand our admiration. His delineations inciden-
tally of the character of the Emperor Napoleon I.
and Pope Pius VII. are superb. Speaking of the
latter, he says :—" If he was not a great Pope, he
certainly possessed a combination of spiritual and
moral qualities rarer than genius and certainly
more beneficent than ambition :" adding that, " of
i sawhlhloouthlceasnroavtebreeerigns of the time, he is perhaps [we
d h
p lhaacve
de said,fa ee t o
c er t s ifnaley3] the onlyN a
Napo.
on
.e
lem, and yet not suffer by the contrast." Pius
VII., he describes as " an incarnation of benevo-
!ence, humility, and Christian virtue of evangelic
sweetness," while Napoleon 1., Napoleon the Great,
he speaks of as " a man of insatiable ambition and
of Caesarian force of will," with " a pride and arro-
gance inflated to immeasureable limits by a It astound-
ing career of victories." What is it Victor lingo
has written of him somewhere—is it not in " Les
Miserables ?" When he speaks of Napoleon as
one—before whose presence " the frontier lines
of the kingdoms of Europe oscillated upon
the map"—at whose apparition there was " the
sound as of a superhuman sword being drawn from
its scabbard." Referring to the fascination exercised
over the mind and heart of Pope Pius VIC. by the
genius of Napoleon, the writer in the Edinburgh
not only quotes Cardinal Consalvi's record of the
fact in his Memoirs thus : " lie (that is the Pope)
had for him (the Emperor Napoleon) a mingled
sense of admiration, fear, paternal tenderness, and
gratitude for the powerful and ready hand with
which he re-established the Church in France''—
but the Edinburgh Reviewer takes occasba him-
self to remark thereupon : " He probably felt
in his heart a religious conviction that such an
astounding prodigy of genius and ambition was
not seat into the world witheat a Divine purpose."
td the writer goes to say, " From this fascination
he (i.e. Pius VII.) never freed himself, even in the
lays when he sefferel un nerited a 11 even cruel
persecution at the hands of his Imperial captor. In
the solitary oratory of his prison at SAV.Ma the
victim prayed. earnestly ant fervently for his op -
pressor ; and to his latest days his old affection for
the author of his afflictions survived the recollection
of insult and injury." Nor, for that matter, can we
ourselves wonder for one moment that it should have
been so. For Pius VIL could never lose the re-
membrance among other things of this most indis-
putable fact that it was the young First Consul
Napoleon Bonaparte, who, immediately upon his
acquisition of supreme power in France, celebrated
his inauguration as the dominant Head of the still
Republican Government by proclaiming the neces-
sity of re-establishing religion. Standing sword
in hand, as it were, in the milst of the, ruins of the
overthrown altars, and desecrated churches of
Franca and Northern Italy, Napoleon, immediately
after crossing the Alps, eight days before the
battle of lthrengo, uttered, on the 31 of
rune, in the year of our Lord, 180), these me-
morable and noble words—they were spoken
at Milan by the young First Consul in
the midst of an assembly of the clergy of the
capital of Lombardy—" At the present time [he
had not been before] I am provided with full
powers [he spoke then not simply as the General
or Commander-in-Chief, but yet more as First Con-
sul], and I am decided to exercise every means
I believe to be the most proper for the protec-
tion of this religion. France has learnt a lesson
from her misfortunes and has opened her eyes :
she has recognised that the Catholic religion is
the only anchor of salvation amid the storms of
the tempest. As soon as I can communicate
with the new Pope [Pius VII. was proclaimed
the Sovereign Pontiff at the moment Napoleon
was crossing the Great Saint Bernard] I trust I
shall have the happiness of smoothing all the
obstacles which stand in the way of an entire recon-
ciliation of France with the Head of the Church."
Words like those, Pius VII. never could forget.
And they were not mere words. They were fol-
lowed up by deals
justifying and realizing them
magnificently. It is noted, here, in the Edinburgh,
that " After Marengo, in defiance of the sarcasms of
Deists and Voltairians at Paris, he (Napoleon) had
a 'le Drum sung in the Cathedral." As the writer
had said previously, " His vast intelligence, with
prophetic ambition, was already marshalling his
schemes of empire." In due course—under his
auspices—came the Concordat. The Church was
re-established. The exiled clergy were recalled.
The Cathedral of Notre Dame, on the day of rati-
fication, that is upon the 18th of April, 1802,
was the scene, of a solemn religious cere-
monial in celebration of the restoration
of Catholicism to France—a ceremonial attended
in state by the First Consul General Napoleon
Bonaparte, by the two other Consuls, by all the
Generals of the French army then in Paris, by the
Ministers of the Government, by the whole of the
Napoleonic entourage. "Immobile," says M. Thiers,
" le visage severe, Napoleon restait calme, grave
dans l'attitude d'un chef d'empire qui fait un grand
acte de volonte et qui coinmande de son regard la
soumission a tout le monde." "'Phis day," says
the Edinburgh, " may perhaps be called the finest
and greatest in his eventful history, and if ever he
felt the charm and peace of contentment in his
stormy existence, he felt it then." Hence—in re-
cognition of his achievements as the Protector of
the Church and as the Restorer of Religion to France
—the magnificent painting, in which Napoleon the
Great is represented to this day in the act of com-
pleting the Concordat, over the high altar in the
Church of the Madeleine. Hence, that otherwise
astounding question and answer in the Cntechisni of
the French schools in the early part of the present
century : —"Q. Are there no particular motives which
ought to attach us, especially to Napoleon 1., our
Emperor ?;;A. Yes; for it is he whom God has raised
up in times of difficulty for the re-establishing of

public worship and the Holy Religion of our fathers,
and to be its protector. He has restored and pre-
served public enter with his profowid and active
wisti,-in ; he defends the State with his mighty
arm ; he is become the anointed of the Lord by the
consecration which he has received from the Sove-
reign Pontiff, head of the Universal Church."
" Lui qui un Pape a couronne," as Beranger sings.
And, of that sole.nn consecration and anointing of
Napoleon by the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff,
the Edinburgh Reviewer himself remarks here very
emphatically that " It was the highest consecration
in thepower of any earthly authority, on the conver-
sion of his rule in France into an Imperial dynasty."
The closing words of this splendid article in the
Edinburgh constitute for it a noble and fitting
peroration. The reviewer has been quoting some
of the most marvellous among the daring utterances
of Napoleon when in exileat St. Helena, and having
quoted them, comments upon them as follows :
" The language in which he thus declares the nature
of his project for subjugating the Papacy entirely
to the service of his own domination in Europe,
when his ambition had expanded to its colossal
Carlovingian pretensions is haughtier than ever
issued from lips of any conqueror; and if he had
succeeded in his aim never before would Europe
have been enslaved by so hopeless and terrible a
form of spiritual and material despotism. To the
honour of the Church his project was defeated.
The meek resistance of Pius VII. to the over-
whelming force which had crushed every indepen-
dent Power on the continent of Europe, was there-
fore a protest worthy of the sacrei character of the
Head of the Latin Church in favour of the dignity
and liberty of man ; and by the justice of Heaven,
the victim survived the conqueror, the feeble en-
dured, the mighty perished." Noble words, and
worthy of the Edinburgh. .

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