The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-30 00:00:00

7'HE IRISH CHURCH.

TO THE EDITOR OF TIIE SUN.
SIR,—I venture to ask space for a few remarks
upon a subject which affects not myself only, but
all those clergymen and laymen who have personal
interests to serve by maintaining the Irish Estab-
lishment, and who, notwithstanding, are not ashamed
to say that its removal might be advantageous to
religion and the commonwealth. Very recently
certain persons of high official and social rank have
thought proper to charge me, in a manner designedly
offensive, with " assailing the Church of which I
am, unhappily," so it is said, " a member ;" with
" retaining emoluments which I have denounced as
a usurpation and an injustice ;" and with making
" persistent and bitter attacks upon the Establish-

talent of which I am a member and a minister.

The Dublin newspaper which gives currency and
approval to these injurious personalities denies me
the opportunity of making any defence in its
columns. Those charges are, for the most part,
untrue. No assault was made by me upon the
Church. The injustice of the present monopoly of
Church revenues in Ireland by the Anglican mino-
rity was never denounced by me as a usurpation for
which the present recipients are blameworthy. Nor
was any bitterness, save the unavoidable bitterness
of truth, used by me iu refuting the historical and
statistical errors and misstatements by which it was
sought to defend the Establishment.
It is easy, of course, to detect the impudent

noon

fallacy palmed upon the public by those who, when
their misstatements are exposed, complain that the
Church, forsooth, is assailed. For instance, when
a noble lord is charged with announcing that the
Irish Church " became the United Church of Eng-

land and Ireland" in the reign of Elizabeth ; or
when an ecclesiastic gravely relates that a parish
situate to the east of Lough Derg adjoins another
parish which is on the verge of the Atlantic, it is
easy to understand, although not to approve, their
motive in throwing odium on the person who ex-
poses their errors by unfairly representing him as
an enemy of the Church. It is evident, however,
that clerical and lay members of the United Church
are bound to maintain truth, and especially to
oppose the spread of such falsehoods as may be em-
ployed for the temporal advantage of the Church
itself. To argue that beneficed clergymen and lay-
men deriving pecuniary advantages from the Irish
Establishment ought to resign their emoluments
and offices before venturing to express opinions un-
favourable to it is analogous to saying that naval
officers who object to the flogging of siilors should
leave the navy, or that the directors of any com-
pany who may venture to denounce profitable frauds
ought first to resign their appointments. If such
arguments were to prevail no honest man would
remain in office, and reforms would be abandoned
to the discretion of the dishonest and corrupt.
Clergymen, moreover, who cease to act as minis-
ters of the Establishment must at the same time
cease to act, at least in these countries, as ministers
of the Church, for they thenceforth cease to possess
the cure of souls. They cannot enter secular pro-
fessions. Irish clergymen who conscientiously dis-
approve of the Establishment may indeed take office
in the English branch of the Church, but they will
not thereby escape calumny. In fact, the very same
newspaper which now censures me for retaining my
Irish benefice abused me a few years ago for having,
as it was untruly reported, resigned it for an Eng-
lish benefice! But to retire from the ministry,
because of The unrighteousness of the present
arrangement of Irish temporalities, would be ab-
surd ; inasmuch as such a course would not tend to
remove or lessen, but rather would perpetuate, that
unrighteousuess. It would be somewhat like the
folly of a man with a diseased limb who should kill
himself instead of seeking surgical aid.—l am, &c.,
April, 1868. W. NIAz ERE BRADY, D.D.

At a moment when the uppermost thought in the
public mind is the treatment of Ireland and the
Irish there is, says the Times, something worthy of
attention in a little publication which, though slight
in form and jesting in its tone, sets forth in a vivid
manner the evils of the system rigorously pursued
up to a recent period with regard to Roman Catho-
lic prisoners, and by no means even now abandoned
in some of the principal metropolitan houses of :de-
tention, and still maintained with unmitigated
stringency in similar ones at Glasgow and a few
other gaols under the government of visiting jus-
tices—an appellation which sounds rather strangely
when compared with some of the decisions of that
honourable body in the county of Middlesex.. The
absurdity of filling our prisons with Roman Catho-
lic convicts, and then den) iog or restricting as far
as possible the only means by which their reforma-
tion can be effected, is ably exhibited in the hu-
morous little sketch, " Biddy yin the English Gaol,"
a witty dialogue, accompanied by a series of ad-
mirable illustrations due to the clever and always
kindly pencil of Richard Doyle. ahe facts embodied
iu the not imaginary closing scene furnish material
for a keen amount of satire, and in this instance
satire is directed to its legitimate end, the redress
Of a wrong and the exposnre of folly.

:
MITI

HER MAJESTY.

OSBORNE, April 29.
The Queen, accompanied by her Royal High-
ness Princess Christian, drove out yesterday after-

Her Majesty, accompanied by Princess Louise,
walked in the grounds this morning.
The other members of the Royal Family also

went out.

WATER COLOUR EXHIBITIONS.

The Old Society's Gallery.

By an unusual arrangement both the Old Society
at the East-end of Pall Mall (5), and the New
Society, or, as it prefers to call itself, the Institute
of Painters in Water Colours, at the West-
end of the same great thoroughfare (53), opened
each its Gallery on Saturday last to Private View,
instead of selecting, as they have hitherto done, two
distinct Saturdays for that purpose. In conse-
liue.ice, on the double private-view day we had a
surfeit of good things in the way of these always
charming Water Colour Exhibitions—a department
of art in which England stands hitherto altogether
unrivalle 1. Seiiiores priores, and therefore first as
to the Old Society—now in the sixty-fourth year of
its existence, it having been instituted originally
as far back as 1891. Twenty-eight out of the
twenty-nine members, are this season among the
number of the Exhibitors—the only defaulter
among the members who fails for once to put in
in appearance, to our very great regret, being Mr.
I'. W. Burton. There is but one picture contri-
buted by C. Haag, and there are as many as twenty
contributed by C. Smith—the least industrious and
the most industrious (numerically) among all the
Member-Exhibitors. Twenty-six out of the twenty-
seven Associates supply the walls with their contri-
butions—the one defaulter here being E. B. Jones.
Altogether there are close upon three hundred pic-
tures hung upon the wails and screens of the gallery,
297 in all, to be precise. John Gilbert, who sup-
plies half a dozen contributions, arrests our atten-
tion directly we have crossed the threshold by the
characteristic force and the thoughtful expres-
sion bf (8) " Sans peur et sans reproche."
Frederick Taylor never pourtrayed a more ani-
mated scene than his (12) " Wild Fowl, a Flight--
Winter," in which there is all the life and rustling
flutter of reality. For once forsaking his favourite
Irish cabin scenes, F. W. Topham takes us in (31)
and again in (116) to Spain and among the
Spaniards : the latter being an incident of tavern
life, a quarrel over a game of cards. C. Branwhite,
on his part, eschewing for once the snowy winter
time, reveals to us (35) " A Sunny Afternoon in
November." G. Rosenberg's fruit (42) " Secondary
Colours," isbarely successful. IVhereas T. Lamont's
(57) "Return from Fairyland" affords as charming
a view of Kilmeny, as even that vouchsafed to us
through the verse of the Ettrick Shepherd. J.
J. Jenkins, in (69) " Laid up for the Night—on the
Thames," surpasses himself : the picture has all
the hush of evening upon it. Carl Haag's one
contribution this year (110) is worthy of him.--
" The Bedowee's Devotion"—being a very re-
markable work of art, as the portraiture of an
oriental scene of the most vivid and impressive
character, though the sketch reveals no more
than the solitary figure of the Bedowee upon hie
knees on a strip of carpet in the desert, by
the side of his hampered camel. For light and
shadow out of doors, commend us to (156) J.
Burgess's fragmentary picture of the " Bishop's
Palace, Beauvais." From the truly execrable in
the portraiture of dramatic horror, we should like
to have been warned before corning to (178)
Mrs. Criddle's " Lady Macbeth." Reading the
selected sentence upon the catalogue —" Out, out
damned spot"—we are almost fain to addresa the
words to the picture itself. I. is, for all the world,
like a badly executed caricature. 1) au attention ought
to be paid by the visitor to the sin idler, but, as a rule,
not lesser pictures displayed upon the screens, some
of them being gems in their way. Instance this,
F. Stnallfield's (207) " First Rose of Summer,''
Fred. Walker's (213) " Well Sinkers," H. Brittan
Willis's (223) "In the Meadows, near Burnbam,,,
Setnerset," Birket Fo.,ter's (279) " The Donkey,
and others, which it would be unnecessary hero to
particularize.

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