The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-25 00:00:00

Russia has been at last induced to postpone for a time
the active advancement of her traditional policy in the
East. This result, says the Post, is mainly due to the
firmness and good sense of Lord Stanley. He was the
first to make a stand during the recent crisis in favour of
Turkey, and had the courage for some months to venture
upon a policy which had the temporary effect of isolating
Great Britain from the other great Powers, who all corn-
billed in their diplomatic efforts to persuade the Porte to
give up her sovereign rights over Crete. Successive repre•
sentations of a very energetic character are alleged to have
been lately made in concert, by England, France, Austria,
and Prussia, at Belgrade, against the organised attempts
which have been so long fomented by Russian influence in
Seevia to stir up an insurrection in the frontier lands- of
Turkey ; and with this latest expression of European
diplomacy we can well afford to rest content. Too much
praise can hardly be given to Lord Stanlay for his tact
and prudence in the conduct of this complicated business.
He has had to deal with some of the ablest diplomatists
living, and they have been unable to obtain the smallest
advantage over him by any artifice, however specious.
The Kingdom of Hungary having re-entered into pos.
session of its ancient rights, naturally seeks to realise the
advantages of the fine position which it has finally won,
thanks to the capacity, patience, and fortitude of its states.
men. The peaceful conflict it maintained for sixteen
years with the Austrian Government has resulted in a
success by which each party gains immensely, for the Em.
peror of Austria, not less than the Hungarian people, may
bless the constancy of M. Deak. The Daily News observes
that one of the first uses to which the Hungarians are turn-
ing the right of self-government is the development of the
-material resources of their country, which has suffered more
than can be told from the stagnation to which political
uncertainty has condemned it throughout a period in which
almost every other country of Europe has made
i nmense progress in everything that can contribute
to the well-being of its people. The first and, most
pressing want of Hungary is railways and canals to place
its vast corn-fields in communication with the great con-
suming populations of Western Europe. It is for this
purpose that the public of London and Paris are invited
to subscribe to the loan of £8,000,000 which is just
announced. This is the first time that the Hungarians
have been in a position to present themselves to Europe
and ask to be trusted with funds as a definitively constituted
nation. Hitherto their financial affairs have been mingled
and for all practical purposes confused with those bf Aus-
tria, and subjected to all the chances of a fluctuating
policy, over which they could exercise no effectual supF
vision. An end has now been put to this state of things.
the Hungarian Diet has now a real control over the tax,
tion of the kingdom. The loan now announced is offere4
under the authority of a law passed in the Diet, and no
reasonable doubt can be entertained that it will be strictly
applied to the purposes for which it is proposed. - -
The Herald, referring to the statistics lately adduced in
its columns relating to burial societies, says :—lt is as long
ago as seventy years that the original Act for the encourage-
ment of friendly societies was passed ; but its scope was
avowedly the regulation and protection of clubs purely
local, all whose officers, with the single exception of the
secretary, should be unpaid, which should employ no col-
lectors, and the majority, at least, of whose members
should be known to each other. Such a state of things, it
is obvious, would guarantee probity, simplicity, and
economy. But what is the condition of most friendly
societies at the present day ? Mr. Tidd Pratt informs us.
They have highly-salaried treasurers and directors, and
employ an army of handsomely remunerated agents and
collectors in all the principal towns of the kingdom. It 1/
as plain as day that trades unions, still regarded exclu-
sively as friendly societies, whilst encumbered with all this
heavy, costly, and questionable machinery, would be work-
ing, as Mr. Corrance alleged at Ipswich, on an 'Unsound
principle, and that the guarantee that their promised
benefits would accrue to their members must be very alight
indeed. How can friendly societid, thus conducted, cora.
pets for the favour of the working man who is alive to his
own interests with the post-office savings banks suggested
by Mr. Scudamore and established by Mr. Gladstone?
The Saturday Review, with regard to Lorct Stanley's
speech at the Bristol banquet,'observes that he oire much
on Ireland, and all that he said was sensible and true. But
it was nothing more. He simply sees a blank before him
when he tries to conceive what ought to be done for
Ireland. If the highest feat iltatisman could perform
in our days would be to grapple with the Irish difficulty,
and chew us what we cast do and ought to do for Ireland,
then to this statesmanship Lord Stanley made no approach
and
Pretence. He had, however, the' great merit of
statingn°
simply what cannot be done, and of declaring his.
self incapable of saying
what cannot be done. He had
arrived at
the Point which every sensible man in a club,
in a train, or any other pl
arrives it. Re sees .ac.e of common discussion, easily
England fromlr'eita7ll if
talking, "sepa-
rating
we talk of rearranging then land Re also sees hat, when
system of Ireland, we
must either have or not hp,
and that we must clearly make uspchoemtir e of confis'eation ;
have confiscation at all, we must talc; confiscation't that, if
with
e
all its serious and far-reaching e.,senueu .* All this
very true, and we are glad it should be said distinctly
but it is not much to say. It sounds rather disap-
pointing when we find Lord Stanley has no other
remedy whatever to offer for the woes of Ireland ex-
cept some sort of modified Tenant Compensation
Bill like that which the Government proposed last
session. We quite own that if a Minister, or any public
man of eminence, has really nothing to say on a great
subject, he should not talk vaguely, as if he had a
mysterious secret which he forbears to disclose. The
leaders of the Liberal party lately fell into the mice
of hinting that they had some Secret of the sort, while yet
they were not prepared to give the slightest hint of what
this secret was. Mr. Bright, indeed, has relieved himself
from the imputation of never making a definite proposi-
tion. He has proposed that the State should buy large
estates, and resell them, which is a plan that, as stated,
is free from the taint of confiscation, although it might pave
the way for something of the sort. But discussion—even
the discussion of honest and fair critics, and not of critics
who flatter a little foolish vanity by decrying everything
Mr. Bright does or says—has not led to a result at all in
favour of Mr. Bright's plan. The objection to his plan
is the same as to all plans whatever that we hear about
for dealing in a large way with Irish land. The Irish
want what is bad for them, not what is bad for us Eng-
lish, or for great Protestant landowners or ®Sy of the
people that Irishmen hate, but for the Irish themselve.s.
They 'tvkiii small holdings of lands, in a wet climate, with
a very poor soil. Supposing we give them yvhat they

want, would it sot e ruinous for them to have it? If it
would—as Lord Stanley, expressing the opinion of the
best judges on the subject, said it would—can it be right
to give it to them ? Why should we condemn them to
eternal poverty and potatoes? They wish for it, certainly,
and sa they wish for unlimited whisky ; but the State is
not to be expected to let all Ireland get drunk at the
charge of the Consolidgted Fund.
The recent Educational Conference at Manchester seems
to have declared itself distinctly in favour of two impor-
tant principles : 1. The frank admission of denominational
and other religious schools into perfect equality with all
ether primary schools, on condition of their adopting a
complete conscience clause, and satisfying the inspectors
of their efficiency as teaching institutions ; 2. The repeal
of that provision of the Privy Council which refuses aid to
purely secular schools—or, in other words, the admission
of purely secular schools to perfect equality with the
Church, denominational, and other religious schools. The
Spectator agrees heartily with both these conclwsions, for
it is disposed to consider private schools established by
honest secularists as a particular species of sectarian
schools—schools in which the sectarian principle takes the
form of a vehement prejudice against all religious teaching.
And as the most purely secular education is certainly
better than none, even on the religious ground, since it
undoubtedly opens the minds of those submitted to it to a
number of new moral and intellectual influences which are
not by any means purely secular—we do not think it
would be right in the State to refuse aid to any well-
conducted private schools ignoring religious teaching,
which it would grant to other private schools partly
aiming at the inculcation of their own special views. If
there be any considerable number of Jews, Deists, Secu-
larists, or Positivists amongst the working class, it is clear
that their children ought not to be debarred by their
peculiar views from such general education as they can
get, and it would be very unjust to place schools specially
established for the children of such persons under any
special disadvantages to which the schools of, it may be,
almost equally eccentric sectarians are not exposed. Of
course, in case secularistic principles were directly incul-
cated at such schools as subversire of religion, it would be
essential that that they, too, should be subjected to the
action of the conscience clause, and that the parents of
all children attending them should receive due notice of,
and be entitled to proper protection for, their children
from the inculcation of such controversial negations. But
there is a further question of considerable moment as to
the general influence which the foundation of new district
schools, supported by borough and county rates, will have
on the religious character of our primary schools. Under
Mr. Bruce and Mr. Forster's bill, the School Committee
(elected by town councils in municipal boroughs and
elsewhere generally by the ratepayers) has full power to
manage a district school itself, or to delegate its manage-
ment to other qualified persons, under condition, of course,
of full compliance with the conscience clause and all
other conditions imposed to test efficiency. There is
nothing to prevent such a School Committee from itself
setting apart a time for the specific religious instruction
of all children whose parents do not object to it ;
and they are expressly empowered to hand over theil
school for certain hours to other denominational
managers for this particular purpose. Thus there is
practically no limitation at all except the will of the
ratepayers, and the views to which the elected members
of the School Committee are pledged, to the power of the
School Committee to inculcate any particular religious
faith they please on those of their scholars whose parents
do not object. But the difficulty which we foresee in this
matter is that the old church-rate cry may be again raised.
Under the proposed bill it is clear enough that compulsory
rates might be in part used for remunerating the teachers
of religious principles from which some of the ratepayers
would conscientiously disagree. It is true that their chil-
dren would not be compelled to attend such lessons—but
neither was it ever compulsory on Dissenters to attend the
services of the churches whose rates they paid. The cry
was that there was abstract injustice in compelling any
man to contribute at all towards the teaching of what he
held to be pernicious or false—or even towards the repair
of the building in which such teaching went forward. We
have never sympathised much with those who raised this
cry, and not at all with those who objected to support the
fabric of the national Church ; but we are quite sure that
it would be a great evil for the educational cause if this cry
were raised again, as it certainly will be unless great care
is taken, in relation both to the tax laid on a parish to
build an edifice the accommodation of which may be made
over in certain hours to special religious teachers, and to
the rate laid on the borough or union for supplying funds
for the remuneration of sectarian masters and mistresses.
It will be said, not without plausibility, that it is one thing
for the State to aid equally all kinds of sectarian schools,
in proportion only to the efficiency of their general teach-
ing, and quite another for the public rates by which a
school-house is built and a school administered to be
diverted in any degree, however small, from the common
service of all, to the advantage of any one religious body.
Hence we should Ifear that the ;elections of school corn
mittees will be occasions for very hot sectarian contests,
the various candidates either pledging themselves to
attempt to abtain the school-house and the aid of the school
teachers out of the general lesson-hours, for the Church,
or the Wesleyans, or the Baptists, or any other denomina-
tion strong in the district—or else pledging themselves to
resist the attempt of any religious body whatever to profit
in any way by rates which come from the pockets of al
alike. Now, any opening for contests of this kind would
be most disastrous.

A POSTER OF SEDITIOUS PLACARDS,

At mid-day on Friday a young man was taken in the
act of posting a Fenian placard on the front of the Man-
sion House. He proved to be an Irishman, named Michael
Gough, 17 years of age, a bookbinder by trade, and the
same person, there is reason to believe, who committed •
similar act on Saturday, the 18th instant. Since then the
district police have been on the alert, in anticipation of
fresh attempts being made to degrade the official residence
of the Lord Mayor, and. among other arrangements, they
had enlisted the services of a trustworthy commissionaire,
named Samuel Neale, wearing the badge 64, who is usually
on duty in the immediate neighbourhood. About half-
past two in the day, Gough, who is a mere stripling, was
seen by the commissionaire and James Burn, of 337,
Strand, who happened to be passing, to stop abruptly in
front of the house and hastily affix a placard upon the
lower part of the portico. Before they could arrest him
he had taken to his heels and ran along Walbrook, but
he was followed and caught by a Mr. Cunningham, of 48,
Oxford•street, who had heard a cry of " Stop thief," and
who handed him over to the custody of Timothy Carroll,
a City police-constable, who joined in the pursuit. The
prisoner was forthwith conducted to the Bovt-lane Police-
station, where he at first refused his address, but at length
said he was in the employment of Messrs. Symonds, book-
binders, in Bouverie-street, Fleet-street. Upon him were
found two cheap editions, nearly new, of Moore's " Irish
Melodies," and a copy of the Universal Newspaper, on the
front page of which, in conspicuous type, was an article
headed " Reminiscences of Young Ireland." He had also
in his possession a well-used copy of the Roman Catholic
manual " The Garden of the Soul," and a pocket diary,
which there were copious entries, proving beyond doubt
his sympathy with the Fenian Brotherhood, and many of
them written in the most extravagant language. One was
as follows :

" Saturday, Nov. 23, 1867, was a day the remembrance
of which should never be effaced from the hearts of Irish-
men, for on that day, at the hour of eight in the morning,
in front of the New Bailey Prison, Salford, England three
additional names were inscribed on the roll of mar_ yrs t
t,
liberty—the glory-roll of Ireland—as follows :—Williamo
Allen, Michael Larken, Samuel Gould, who were sacrificed
in order to appease the thirst for blood and to stay the
stomach of that bugbear of uncivilised States and peoples,
the British lion. '1 hey were sacrificed in the vain endea-
vour to terrify those who might effectually succeed in
striking terror into his most magnanimous heart ; and a
foolish endeavour it was, for those whom it was in-
tended to terrify were those on whom it took quite an
opposite effect, and men said Ireland shoisid be
free, her cause being re-baptised and regenerated by the
blood' of those heroic men."
Another entry in the prisoner's diary was in these

terms
" Fri." (probably an abbreviation for Friday)—" C. H. F.
Diabolical outrage at Clerkenwell, attributed to Fenianism.
Went to the scene of the disaster. Met K., and lost each

other in the crowd."
The placard posted, or attempted to be posted, in the
front of the Mansion House by. the prisoner, like that of
the previous week, was wholly in manuscript, but in cha-
racters closely , resembling ordinary type. It began with
the letters 1.R." signifying, it is presumed, Irish
Republic. Below these was a pen-and-ink sketch of an
Irish harp, encircled by representations of the shamrock,
and beneath that were the words, " Erin-go-bragh— God
save Ireland!" The rest of the document was as fol-
lows :---.

" IRISHMEN !
" Another name is inscribed on the glory-roll of Erin's
heroic martyrs. The pure-souled Duffy has been done to
death. Irishmen of London, of England, your enemies
now publicly appeal to you to aid them in oppressing our
unfortunate (as yet) country. Will you silently submit to
this insult to your name, to your nation (for we are yet
unconquered) ? Will you tamely take the bait laid for you
by British craft? Shall the blood which has flowed for
centuries have been shed in vain ? Be not deceived ! They
would use you to propagate disunion among us, and
when you had served them you would be discarded as
worthless. You have been told plainly that it is useless
begging for your rights any longer. What, then, shall we
do? Rise manfully. Unite! Irishmen, let no petty dis-
cord blight your hopes. Press forward fearlessly in the
path to freedom. Let there be no vile truckling with the
enemy. Liberate our land I Behold a regenerated Ireland !
ad
Strangle the British Lion, the bugbear of savage poten-
tates, Irishmen who, through
timidity or for their own intereate, forget their ancestry,
that ogorY !
Toe nstihg Oise proclaim to the
worldatesin
hyou is
aren w
free
we Bar 5

" Knaves and traitors stand aside,
Cowards, curs, your heads go hide,
Slaves and dastards ' fag an bealae.' (sic.)
God save the Green."