The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-12 00:00:00

tali; tiling

LONDON; TUESDAY. NOVEMBER 12, 1844.

It is nosy some weeks since, in his manifesto, date,
from Derrynane, Mr. O'CONNELL announced his pre-
ference of Federalism to simple Repeal, and yet, m
to the present moment, not one single individual ha,
come forward to tell us what Federalism really is—
what are its character and tendencies, and what tht
chief objects which it proposes to itself! Vague
wordy intimations, indeed, have transpired from timt
to time, from which we gatl.er that it is somethir4
like a grand jury legislature; but beyond this, nothing
pwiiive—nothing definite seems to be known about it.
and even the great legislator himself is forced ti
confess that, to a considerable extent, he is
the dark on the subject, It is curious to find s,
wary and experienced a politician as Mr.
O'CONNELL thus committing himself to the advocae}
of a project, of whose exact merits he is, comparative].)
speaking, uninformed ; and not less curious to fin(
others vehemently opposing it who are in an equa
state of ignorance. That Federalism is a proposal fo
the institution of a limited, emasculated Irish Parlia
ment, which is to work after a peculiar fashion of it,
own, app .ars to be the utmost amount of knowledge that
any one possesses of it ; and yet agitation on the sub-
ject of this mystery and marvel has been carried on
quite as fiercely as if it were a well understood, well-
defined scheme, about which—as in the case of Repeal
—there could nut be the slightest shadow of a doubt
At the present moment the more active and stirring
spirits of Ireland are divided into two parties—Fede-
ralists and Anti-Federalists, the former of whom are at
a loss to say why they are Federalists, and the latter
are Equally at a loss to say why they are not so !
The Belfast Viatlicator seems to be in this last pre-
dicament, and after condemning in no measure(
terms the Federal scheme, is at length forced to con-
fess the awkward fact, that it knows nothing at al
about the matter. " Where are the Federalists ?"
asks our Irish Contemporary. "Again we say, when
are they? During all the storms of our monster
meetings, the cry was still, they come—the Fede-
ralists are on us ! We were reproached for our vio-
lence. Our songs were rank treason, and our pros(
was lurking sedition. Can you not be prudent, i
was said to us, and the Federal junction will takt
place. Where is the Federal junction ? A
great party, insinuated another wiseacre, a great
party is somewhere or other being formed, and Mr
SIIARMAN CRA.WFORD, and Lord CHARLEMONT, and,
may be, the Duke of LEINST R, and hundreds of
others of antique lineage and Eglrreoaat personal cha-
racter, will break upon delighted
England with a proposition. Whnedr, and astonish
airne they
Where is the proposition ? Again and again
pleasant
men where is Federalism ? Many ingenious gaand
men are daily employed in endeavouring to tell us
a!bakii,,is, and by their varied accounts nothing can
be-friore‘4llTerent from itself at times—more strange,
more 21.01'.0 ‘re changing, than this same bashful

Federalism." Its bashfulness is, we suppose,
its great recommendation with Irishmen, whose
excessive cli7.l2nce is proverbial, for other-
wise it is impossible to understand why they
should agitate, either for or against it, seeing
that, as yet, it has no substantial, settled
existence, and, in fact, is a mere chimera of Mr. GREY
PORTER'S brain, to be shaped, and moulded, and fully
developed, some day or other—but when, no one
exactly knows. Tom THUMB, as we are assured by
FIELDING, " made the giants first, and then he killed
them ;" but the Irish Anti-Federalists are more in-
genious still, for they—with the Editor of the Nation
at their head—are busily engaged in endeavouring to
kill a giant who is not yet manufactured ! We have
no objection, however, to all this extraordinary
hubbub about a non-esistent crotchet. It serves to
divert the mind of Ireland from the more serious
agitation of Repeal, and, so far, is productive
of good. Meanwhile, we await with some
confidence, not unmingled with anxiety, the
announcement of the remedial measures which, it
is presumed, Sir ROBERT PEEL is now actively en-
gaged in concocting for the welfare of the sister
country. If these be such, as, from the Premier's
intimation towards the close of the last session, we
have a right to hope that they will be, we shall hear
little more either of Repeal or Federalism, both of
which will have received their death-blow; but if
they be not—if they be merely tame, imperfect,
wishy-washy remedies, then we think it far from
unlikely that a combination will be formed among all
parties in Ireland—with the exception, perhaps, of
the Orangemen of the old school—for the purpose of
agitating in a determined, energetic spirit, the
ticklish question of the restoration of the Irish Par-
liament.

The recent defections of many members of the
Church of England ordained ministers, some of
them—to the Church of Rome, are a remarkable in-
dication of the danger that results from postponed
reforms in institutions which are admitted to require
amendment, by those, even, who most strenuously
resist the adoption of any remedial treatment. Since
the reigns of the last two STUARTS, under whom
the principles of the Anglican Church and the disci-
pline of its clergy were subjects occasionally en-
forced upon public notice, and therefore matter of
salutary discussion, notwithstanding the general
laxity of morals which pervaded the whole aspect of
society, from that period to the present time we
have had a succession of polemical authorities—
Bishops and divines of the Establishment, pious Non-
Conformists, and (more lately) enthusiastic sectarian
teachers, who have all concurred in denouncing the
decay of earnestness, of zeal, of singleness of pur-
pose, of apostolical simplicity and disinterestedness in
our clergy, and the growth of an indecorous and
slovenly administration of the sacraments and cere-
monial of our Established form of worship. Yet tl.°
Establishment has drowsily nodded on, though occa-
;ionally disturbed by such shocks as the imprison-
ment of the seven Bishops, or the High Church fac-
tion of SACHEVEREL, or the Anti-Popery cry of
1779, renewed at various subsequent intervals, as in
1793, 1807, and 1828. The last uneasiness she has
experienced, owing to the matured growth and de-
velopment of the Tractarian heresy, does seem to
have at last alarmed her. She apprehends—and
with reason—that the "disturbing force" in this
movement, must be of deeper seat and more formid-
abl.e intensity than that of which she has heretofore
experienced the action ; and she has almost aroused
herself to attempt, in good earnest, the serious in-
. vestigation of the causes that have engendered it.
She may find the work too much for her, if she
cannot rally all her energies for its accomplishment.
Of the very children whom she has reared, there are,
it seems, those who denounce her as a nuisanca;
who not only abjure, but reject and execrate, in the
face of the world, the first elementary charter of
her rights and authority; who anathematise Pro-
testantism by name ; and deplore, with wailing and
in ashes, the mighty "Reformation" commenced by
flusay VIII. in 1534, and completed by the recog-
nition and profession of ELIZABETH, at her accession
in 1558. Foremost in the rank of these deserters
ire—not the influential laymen (and yet they are not
vo), who have leaped her pale and betaken them-
-elves !.o that of Romanism—but priests and deacons,
alio have tJen ordained according to the tenor of her
institutes; have expounded the Scriptures, according
t, her rule of construction ; and habitually solemnised
Divine worship in her churches, and according to her
ritual. It is hard for her to be repudiated by those
whom she has received into her bosOls and carefully
nourished, and at parting has (in some instances)
generously endowed. The course of their prolAeed-,
'rigs is, in truth, marked with the signs of origina,
luplicity and ulterior falsehood. They set out with
I pretence of effecting a sort of approximation of the
&nglican to the Roman Church, in matters indifferent,
with a view to the ultimate conciliation of the two
great denominations of the Christian world. This
was wisely projected. Any proposition for knitting
and uniting together the hearts and affections and
worship of all classes of Christian men in one great
-piritual unity, is, akstractedly considered, calculated
to enlist the attention—and, if proved, to realise the
support, of an intelligent community. The first
steps, too, openly taken in the same direction, were
well judged. The prevailing laxity of discipline in
the Establishment had been not only insisted upon
Ind lamented by some of its Bishops, in charges to
their, clergy, and in speeches delivered in the House
if Lords ; but many Bills had been passed for its
.!orrection, and the extension of the jurisdiction
)f the diocesan in the repression of this evil, which
the Legislature had been as often vainly called upon
to pass. The Tractarians cleverly advocated a more
,trict adherence to the rubrical instructions contained
in the Book of Common Prayer, in matters that re-
garded the rites of our Church and their administra-
ion. They instanced, at first, one or two ; and after-
wards, from time to time, advocated a similar ob-
servance of others ; but it was not until after the
issue of a century of " tracts," and numberless con-
troversial pieces in answer to the various challenges
these had excited, that the amount of their object
was avowed, namely, to enforce conformity with the
whole of the Rubric as incorporated into the au-
7horised " Common Prayer" of 1548, with all its
admixture—by implication—of doctrines—and—ex-
pressly—of ceremonials, including some of those
most strenuously insisted on by the Church of Rome,
Ind most distinctly renounced by the Reformed
Church of England as superstitious, human, non-
ssential, and inconsistent with the ptirity of its re-
formed doctrine. The controversy waxed "fast and
furious," tilt at length the impetuosity of the Trac-
arians accomplished the repeated predictions of their
antagonists. From simple dissentients or non-con-
tents, the latter have become (in the persons of
some of their most eminent leaders) irreconcileable
enemies of the former. They have gone over to the
Church of Rome, renounced the ecclesiastical alle-
giance they had vowed to the Anglican Church, and
following the rule of almost all bigoted proselytes
they bid fair to become the most rancorous persecu-
tors of the fold which they should have guarded, but
have quitted.
For our own parts, having a sincere respect and
affection for Protestantism, we are very sorry for
what has occurred. But we cannot shut our eyes to
he proof it affords of the variety of mere forms as
lefensible outworks or securities for the substantive
loctrines of religion. The moral of the case resolves
tself into the terse apostrophe of Earl GREY to
the Bench of Bishops. We must say to the
Established Church at large, " Set your house
in order." Let those who have the best means
and most efficient authority for such a work, examine
vigorously into the elements of her constitution, and
the manner of their working; let them remove ex-
crescent bodies, which mar the action of the machine,
Ind defeat its unity. Let them supply omissions and
leficiencies, whilst they extirpate unseemly redun-
lancies. If the revenues of the Church be indeed (as
'ler enemies charge) so unequally divided, that the
working parson, or his still harder worked curate, is
in a vast proportion of cases scandalously under-
paid, and subjected to the most sordid evils of
poverty, whilst he is upholding, by his example
and preaching, the great truths he has been
'ailed to teach ; let the vastly over-paid Bishops
(the
.Bishop of LONDON knows we do not point
Llandaff, or Rochester, or Bristol or Bangor,
Bristol and Gloucester, or Oxford) _ ,tribute from
th •ir enormous incomes and the fine A ccruing under
ht it life interest in the sees they ho;1(17 funds propor-
tionally large towards the adequate payment of all the .