The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

On Thursday Parliament will reassemble, and some of
the gravest subjects a Legislature can consider will come
on for discussion. The Reform Bill of last year must be
completed. The state of Ireland will probably occasion
excited and vehement debates. In the face of a future
always onerous, and this year full of dangerous symptoms,
the Times is unwillingly reminded that the First Lord of
the Treasury lies ill at Knowsley. The malady which has
so often disabled Lord Derby from active work has during
the recent weeks of winter been especially troublesome,
and though the last reports declare that Lord Derby is
better than he was, it is known that he has been left
enfeebled and easily susceptible of renewed attacks. He
has been unable to preside over the Cabinet Councils
which invariably precede the reopening of Parliament—
the consultations deciding the character and extent of
the legislation to be proposed as the work of the
session. It is feared that Lord Derby will be
unable to move to London in time for the meeting
of Parliament, and the House of Lords will miss his
guiding influence, and will feel the loss of his ready
retort and facile management. It is impossible not to
lament the occasion of Lord Derby's absence from West-
minster, but it is equally impcs,ible not to acknowledge
the embarrassments into which public affairs are in conse-
quence always on the brink of falling. ikt the same time
who would not condemn the selfishness which would call
Lord Derby to his post Rt all risks ? We all know—Lord
Derby hao himself put it on record—the extreme unwil-
lingness he ielt to resume the burden of office. The possession
of power wa,to him an exchange of necessary ease for in-
evitable labour, the abandonment of the graceful recrea-
tions which occup.;ed his mind without endangering his
health, and the assumption once more of duties bringing
with them many mortifics.tions and few moments of un-
alloyed satisfaction. We know also how far Lord Derby's
third tenure of office has justified his hesitation and fore-
bodings in accepting it. Last session he had once and
again to retire temporarily from the active conduct of
the business of Parlianient. During his enforced
absence on one critical occasion the House of Lords
were betrayed into a course requiring his presence
to induce them to retrace their steps. Those who saw
Lord Derby in the Upper Chamber near the end of the
session, when he came to it from his sick room, will not
easily forget his appearance. Pale and worn, evidently
suffering at the time he was addressing the House, his
spirit bore him above the pain of the hour by sheer reso-
lution to accomplish the task he had set himself to do.
Those who are sensible of personal sympathies may have
had some twinges of doubtful feeling about such a conse-
quence of the feat they had seen performed.. a
was enough
for the politician absorbed in his special pursuit that Lord
Derby had rectified a great error by his intervention, and
had relieved the two Houses of Parliament, at what cost
to himself it mattered not, of a threatening occasion of col-
lision. No party has a right to expect from its leader
such devotion as is involved in the continued discharge
by Lord Derby of the duties of his office. No nation can
desire to over-tax its statesmen to the exhaustion of their
energies. We need say nothing of the impediments to
vigorous legislation necessarily occasioned by the enforced
absence of the chief of an Administration from the scene
of his duties. We need not insist on the impossibility of
governing England from Lancashire. Even if the
country were in a state of unruffled prosperity and con-
tentment, and no necessity of prompt counsel and ready
decision could be apprehended. there would still remain
the indispUtable fact that the physical strain of govern-
ment was reducing Lord Derby's strength, and a generous
people would interpose to arrest the process before it was
too late.

The rejection by the Corps Legislatif of the amendment
proposed by the Opposition, submitting press offences to
the adjudication of a jury, will render, remarks the Post,
the new law for the regulation of the press as delusory as
its bitterest opponents have stigmatised it as being. There
was just one means of rendering this measure what it pre-
tends tobe, namely, one of enfranchisement, and that means
has, after an animated debate, been rejected by an over-
whelming majority. If a vote decided by a majority of
109 against a minority of 35 fairly represented the con-
scientious opinion of the French Chamber of Deputies,
we should have nothing to say, because that vote might
then be accepted as indicative of the national will, and we
are not so fondly wedded to our own notions on this sub-
ject— nor, for that matter, has the union been of so old
date as to justify us in presuming that we must necessarily
be in the right, and that the majority of the Corps
Legislatif are in the wrong. But it would be mere affecta-
tion to pretend that, whatever may have been the merits
of the question in dispute, the vote of the Chamber, con-
stituted as it is, could have been otherwise. The " Govern-
ment candidates," as they are not incorrectly termed by
the authorities at the parliamentary elections in France
when returned, invariably do their duty to those who
secure their election, and it would be just as likely that
they would vote according to their conscientious opinions
on the merits of any measure submitted by the Govern-
ment, as it would be for an English " whip " to give his
support to the opponents of the party to which he be-
longed.

If the person arrested in Cork as Captain Mackay prove,
to be the man he is taken for, and if the acts of which he
is accused or suspected be brought home to him—points
which it is fair formally to reserve—his capture is, in the

opinion of the Daily New 3, the most important that has
recently been made. The man appears to he the type of the

Fenian leader. Mr. Mill and Mr. Matthew Arnold have

expressed in terms nearly identical their opinion that the

qualities of the Celtic and of the Saxon races are espe-

cially fitted to correct and supplement each other, and to
form a moral compound more valuable than either of its
separate ingredients. It may be so with respect to their
. .

better elements.

In the Irish-American, as Fenianism

spews him to us, we have unfortunately an amalgam of
the wcrst qualities of the two races. The lawlessness of

the filibuster and the lawlessness of the secret-society man

arc united in his pcnon. The character formed in the

conflict with wild beasts and Red Indians and with the
outlaws from civilisation in the Far West of America
amid the anti-social violence of the lately Slave States, in

Nicaragua raids, rand in the bush-whacking of the late
civil war, blends with the character formed in Ribbon and
Whiteboy lodges, and by agrarian outrages. The adven-
turous and daring ruffianism of a new civilisation meets
the crafty and conspiring criminality which is engendered
out of the vices of an old society. The result is Fenianism
as it exhibits itself in the persons of its military leaders.

According to the Herald, rumours of an intention on
the part of the Opposition leaders to strike at once a blow
for office herald the meeting of Parliament. The story,
which has assumed the most definite form, attributes to
Mr. Gladstone the design to move a resolution with regard
to the Irish Church, which will, it is confidently asserted,
rally to its support Liberals of all shades, and achieve the
purpose with which it will be brought forward—the defeat
and resignation of the Ministry. Mr. G-ladstone's friends
do him a very ill service in crediting him with such a
scheme, which has no existence, we are confident, except
in the heated brains of impatient partisans. It is incre-
dible that Mr. Gladstone, who whilst in office made no
sip of a desire to abolish or reform the Irish Church, and
who up to a very recent time was one of its warm sup-
porters, should attempt to prejudice the consideration of a
question which is being examined into by a commission of
inq
inquiry ranted at the instance of his own immediate
political chief. That the right honourable gentleman
chafes in the cold shade of opposition we are ready to
believe, but we are not ready to believe that he will take
a course at once so futile and so indecent as to endeavour
to overthrow the Government by an abstract resolution
about the Irish Church. He may probably take the occa-
sion of some of the debates, which Irish members will
insist upon raising, to come out as a leader of his party
on
the question, but he can hardly be betrayed into identi-
fying himself with the paltry manoeuvre with which his
name is now associated by some of his followers.

There is, says the Standard, weeping and gnashing of
teeth in the Radical camp over the discomfiture of Air.
Rogers in the rec ant contest for the chair of Political
Economy at Oxford. It is true that the result of the
polling has only substituted one Liberal for another, and
that Air. Bonarny Price is not more likely to influence the
youth of the university towards bigoted Toryism than
Iripredecessor. But Mr. Rogers had so identified him-
self with the extreme Radical faction, and had taken such
pains whenever the
opportunity
arosJ to proclaim his
sympathiesiftaarandl wide, that. his defeat is resented by a
c,iorus of
o we have no'' papers with passionate indignation.
condolence, hut fault to find with their expressions of •
against the majoritye object to their unfounded charges
According to one of our
votes ousted the late professor.
isutrbacontemporaries the least that is
said against them
true ;" "they raked missiles''" they stated what was not
of the kennels of religious
as well as political fanaticism (11,
"they made use of half
truths, which are worse thanni total falsehoods." This the
quitewith
t trueh
;;/,/ndard denies. It is
did charge the university
ayacturing votes,
and that he afterwards confessed herr
aisi3reenedned a me etin g
guilty of an
~,arpration. It is quite true that he
-afyre ; though
in a 'Baptist chapel condemnatory of
Rogers has
on this fact little stress is laid. But it is
less, and not a " half truth." The lesson Mractineverthe-
m be
received is a very salutary one. It is because 7,e believe
the character of our universities to stand hi
nation, and because we believe a severe blowg wouldwith the
struck at their just influence, if their leading
stooped, for political purposes, to the arts an mistarepere
s,,ntations of the vulgar demagogue, that we record with
satisfaction the result of last week's election at the Uni-
versity of Oxford.
The Tetegiaph favours its readers with a leader on the
C:inibr•d s I rniver;ity election. Mr. Hope's supporters,
it ~q \-.4, have' tile 31,1acity to say that the I,iberals should
v„t,. i „ Li, f:ivuur on the ~,,roinid that he is hostile to Lord
I`,..!,y's ( :ovcrum,ut, hut they omit to tell us in what
5.-0., 1:e is ho.,tile. He is lioAde, not L,cause he is les.:
T,,ry than tho pre,'ent Ministry, but because lie is more.
I ',,1,11.1,1 wit h him, the most Con-wrvative member of the
t '31,M.,t is 3 I;:ulit.al who \‘,.oul+i gladden tli heart of Mr.
l:right.. Whatever lie could do to defeat the objects of
the Lib-Tal party and to punish the Ministry for exe-
cuting Liberal work, he did ; and, as a reward for his
obstruction, he solicits Liberal votes. After this, we may
expect to see Mr. Whalley claimin.; the support of the
whole Roman Catholic population, because he has stead-
fastly opposed the efforts of every Protestant Government
to do theta justice. The plan will not answer ;it is too
grAesquely Batavian. Besides Mr. Beresford-Hope is
so amiable a gentleman that even his political opponents
can afford to wish him well ; and the best advice they
coal give him is to be coutehted with Stoke-ulpon-Trent.