The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Speaking of Sir Stafford Northcote's observations on
the Irish Church, the Times observes that the right hon.
gentleman would like to ignore the centuries of wrong;
and begin afresh. Well and good ; but to begin afresh we
must start, for Irish reforms, not from the state of things
after, but from that preceding, the period of misgovern.
went by penal laws. For what was the very object of
those penal laws? It was that the Established Church
might keep its predominance over rival persuasions. It is
a pleasant fancy to say, so long as the solid profits are
retained, "We got the predominance by usurpation, and
we long kept it by violence ; but we find it was a mistake
to try to keep it by violence ; the expenditure of suffering
was brutalising ; it was even impolitic and dangerous
to our own comfort and security ; we have repented, and
will reform and amend our ways ; we will keep it without
-violence." Unfortunately, there is not the slightest
symptom at present of a likelihood that the proposed com-
pact to live henceforth as brothers on the footing of the
status quo will be executed except by the party in posses-
sion. Irish Roman Catholics suspect that their adversaries
have abandoned a policy of persecution from incapacity to
continue it. In any case, they decline to withdraw their
protest against one grievance in consideration of
the relief they have already won for themselves from
another. So much for what Sir Stafford Northcote seems
to have intended as an appeal to the Catholics of Ireland
to let the Protestant Establishment ride on its way, and
be thankful that the spirited charger is no longer trained
to kick. His appeals to sentiments and fears of a different
kind will fall equally dead, we think. Owners of property
will hardly be afraid that the Legislature will be as facile
as he shews himself in argument in confounding the dis-
tinctions between public and private property. The
friends of the Union will net be alarmed at a policy in
conformity with the eager desires of the great bulk of
the Irish population, in lieu of one agreeable only
to an inconsiderable section. The friends of the Esta-
blished Church of England will view with philosophy the
reduction of the Church of Ireland, which now suggests
chiefly a burlesque of that institution, to a sober condition
62 more consistent with its owls favourite claim to be a
missionary Church. Finally, the benevolent in a Liberal
darty will, like the Barnstaple assemblage, accept as a
joke the appeal to them to postpone eradicating a source
of national discontent three centuries old on the ad mileri-
cordiant plea that all " ought to assist the progress made
in Ireland, and not be in a hurry to pull up plants that
are jut beginning to take root."
Upon the question of policy the Standard thinks Sir S.
Iftrthcote spoke with explicit and manly straightforward.
rem Ile acknowledged the past wrongs of Ireland--
wrongs which, he frankly said, must make us feel, as the
children of those who inflicted them, that Irish disaffec-
tion and rebellion only " astves us right." But those
wrongs have long since been redressed, and the rankling
resentment they have left behind would in no degree be
appeased by a new wrong towards a different party—a
new course of spoliation and injustice—a new policy of
confiscation. Repose and security are the vital needs of
Ireland ; and the overthrow of the Church must excite
fresh quarrels and once more shake the foundations of pro.
perty. Ireland wants capital ; capital will never go where
credit and confidence are wanting ; and the confiscation of
a property held by a prescription of three centuries must
make confidence impossible for a generation to come. It
is sufficient to call the reader's attention to the hearty
sympathy with Irish feelings, the earnest desire for justice
to Ireland, which pervade the speeches of the Conserva-
tive candidate for North Devon, and whose sincerity con-
trasts forcibly with the Liberal affectation of similar senti-
ments assumed to mask the intense selfishness of a policy
which makes Ireland the battle-ground of English faction,
and which sacrifices her last chance of peace and prospe-
rity in order to make, by the overthrow of Irish institu-
tions and the confiscation of Irish property, a breach in the
Conservative defences through which 'Mr. Gladstone ma;
force his way back to Downing-street.
The Herald remarks that it is but a small consolation to
us, and less to those who have perished, to call to mind
that earthquakes have been as frequent in history as
battles, and even more destructive. Yet so it is. Thirty-
three years before Christ an earthquake in Palestine
swallowed up 30,000 persons ; seventeen years after
Christ another overthrew thirteen great cities of Asia

Minor. In A.D. 79 Mirenum was destroyed ; and in the
year 115 Antioch was swallowed up. For 1000 years after
these frightful disturbances continued in this part of the
East, so that many other great cities were in their turn
laid in ruins. In the year 1040, 50,000 souls perished in
an hour at Tabriz, in Persia. In 1139, 100,000 more
were buried under the ruins of Gansana. In 1263,
60,000 perished in Cilicia. In 1580 there was a great earth-
quake in France and England. In the next two centuries
Italy and Sicily suffered terrible visitations, and there
were great rumours of disaster in China and Japan. In
1746 Callao, in Peru, was swallowed up by the sea. In
1754 Cairo was nearly destroyed, with a loss of 40,000 lives.
In one year, 1755, Quito was thrown down, a city in
Persia overthrown with immense loss of life, and the great
earthquake of Lisbon occurred, which is said to have slain
150,000 victims. From that time to the present these
terrible visitations have been chiefly confined to the
countries of the Andes, which are now known to us as the
home of earthquakes, as the West Indies of hurricanes, and
whose giant volcanos of Chimborazo and Cotopaxi, flaming
summits twice as lofty as the higher Alps, seem insufficient
to relieve them of those bursting stores of molten rock
which geologists tell us are ever blazing and foaming not
so many miles beneath us, and will force their way up to
the surface from time to time, now at one part of the earth
and now at another, shaking terribly an rending every-
thing asunder if not allowed free exit.
The Daily Ngtos does not hesitate to assume the authen-
ticity of the despatch sent from the Foreign Ministry at
Berlin to the Prussian Charg6 d'Affaires in Paris. In
that despatch the Prussian Government made known to
tee French Minister of Foreign Affairs that by the gra-
cious order of the King the reserves of the Prussian army
would be discharged as soon as the autumn manceuvres
were completed, and that the annual levy of recruits would
be postponed for three months. It may be that the dis-
tnisse,l of the reserves earlier than usual, and the adjourn-
ment of the annual levy for a few months, are in themselves
very slight reductions of effective strength ; that they are
measures of economy (are not all peaceful measures eco.
nomical?) ; and that, according to the constitution of the
Federal army, the whole armed force of the entire nation
will be as instantly available on a supreme emergency
after these reductions as before. Still, the despatch
announcing this economical policy to the French Govern-
ment expressly declares it to be based upon a belief in the
continuance of peace ; and however insignificant may be
the figures in the budget which represent it, it is at least an
example of acts instead of words. It is because the French
Government speaks fair words which are incessantly con-
tradicted by its acts that the Emperor finds himself
obliged to make the somewhat humiliating confession that
his words have lost their credit and authority in Europe.
In taking leave of his generals at the. camp at Chalons
Louis Ne,poieon, if we may trust the semi-official Etendard,
was obliged to excuse himself from saying more than that
he had been very happy at the camp, and much pleased
with the zeal and devotion of the troops, because if he
had said more, his words, however moderate, would be
misinterpreted in a warlike sense by the newspapers. No
doubt it is flattering to the press to find his Imperial
Majesty so far susceptible to public opinion and conscious
of his accountability. But it will occur to many neither
captious nor adverse critics to remark, that if the
the Emperor had said no more than the Constitutionnet
has found so insipificant in the mouth of Prussia, he
%would have done more to re-assure the public mind than
by imputing to " the newspapers " the prevailing dis.
trust which is engendered by the irresolution of arbitrary
power.

A large proportion of the candidates now before tr
constituencies have dealt with the unsettled relations
between capital and labour, but the Post thinks that Mr.
Lancaster, the Liberal candidate for Wigan, treats the
subject with the most particularity and distinctiveness.
He says that " conviction is most absolutely impressed
upon his mind that the time is arrived when, if the rights
of labour and of capital are to be equally secured to the
possessors of each, and if the position of the great in.
dustries in the markets of the world, whether home a-
foreign, is to be securely maintained, the relations
between masters and workmen must be placed upor
a sound and simple basis universally recognised ;
and then goes on to say that " he is intimately convinced
that this object can only be attained by restoring thai.
directness of contact and communication between the em-
ployers and the employed which, in the rapid development
of trade in this country, has been thrust aside and tempo
scarily lost." This hits the nail upon the head. The great
error in the schemes which have hitherto been put forward
bag been a fundamental one, and it is because they have
thus been ill based that they have failed to secure confi
dence or to realise success. They have proceeded on
the assumption that the remedy should consist in
interposing some third person or third body between the
master" and the men, in the same way that buffers with
powerful springs are placed between railway carriages to
prevent or modify the shock of immediate contact. Inter-
vention by arbitrators, however able, has never prevented
An impending strike, and has rarely ever cured one or
stard its progress. The masters have no longer the same
individual acquaintance with their hands, and the men
insist upon dealing in the niarketin masses. It is thus, as Mr.
Lancaster correctly states it, that directness of contact
and communication have been thrust aside and lost, and
the only remedy of a restorative character capable of
fruitful application now, and under the present condition
of industry, appears certainly to be that which would
include most largely in its composition the principle of
representation ; that principle is, in fact, the very kernel
of the organisation which has been so successful under the
management of Mr. Mundella.
_ _

A great step was taken towards the thorough educatio:
of the people when the Department of Science and Art
planned certain classes which, throughout the cuuntry,
should, after work hours, give mechanics and others the
means of studying such snbject3 as mechanical drawing,
matherra`,ics, and clieznistry. But, says the Telegraph,
the Yorkshire Board of Education has learned, the task
is beset with a great difficulty. Where are the scientific
teachers to be found': How, in remote country
town, can we get men fit to teach organic and
inorganic chemistry ? In Yorkshire the difficulty has
hitherto been insuperable; but the county Board of
Education has hit upon a plan which promises to be
successful. In order to teach students, it has determined
to begin by teaching schoolmasters ; and a Saturday after
noon class will speedily be opened at Leeds, where a series
of lectures on chemistry will be delivered by the head
master of the scientific schools at Halifax and Hudders•
field. In other towns similar c:asses are to he held ; and
the plan might with much advanta•-e be adopted wherever
mechanics' institutes lack teachers'of science. In most
country places the difficulty is to get lecturers rather than
rtudents.

THE VOLUNTEERS AND THE
_APPROACHING ELECTIONS.

The following circular was issued on Monday morning to
the lord-lieutenants of counties by Sir John Pakington :
"War Office, Septemberll, 1868.—1 n view of the approach.
ing general election, and of the proceedings preparatory
thereto, I think it right to remind you that volunteers in
uniform should take no part in any political demonstration
or party meeting, and I have accordingly to request that
you will give directions to this effect to the commanding
officers of all volunteer corps within the county under your
charge. I have further to request that you will also inform
them that they are not to assemble their corps for drill or
any other purpose between the issue of a writ and the
termination of the election in any county or borough in
the neighbourhood of their headquarters." There is
nothing new in this circular, it being quite in accordance
with former instructions issued 7th June, 1861, by Mr.
Sidney Herbert.