The Sun.
London, England, 1850-04-22 00:00:00

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE
BRADFORD REFORM ASSOCIATION.
Sir,—On Wednesday the 17th, the Education Bill
was moved to be read a second time. The opposition
to it brought out a fearful exhibition, couched in the
silkiest phrases, of the bigotry which sensible men
begin to see is gathering round us in a multitude of
directions simultaneously, and likely to carry us back
to something like the condition of mental subser-
viency from which our forefathers emerged at the
first Protestant Reformation, which is beginning
grievously to want a second.
The opponents stated, with tones so soft, and voices
so musical, and looks so rapt, as might have served to
win the most orthodox of widows to a young church-
man's arms, that all they asked for was liberty of
conscience ; and their conscience was, that nobody
should receive any education except intermingled
with religion, and that religion theirs. To which
they added the modest syllogism, that because their
sect was the majority, they had a right to the sole
exercise of this conscientious freedom.
What is the difference in principle, between this
and the liberty of conscience claimed by that Most
Holy Office, which felt impelled to assert its freedom
of burning all heretics it could lay hands on ? It is
difficult to deal with this kind of consciences, unless
by the intervention, where practicable, of a prison or
a madhouse. We are fast falling under the rule of
such men, not forgetting the women either. Protes-
tant Abbesses, " black, white, and grey, with all their
trumpery," beard our Chief Justices,—(the Justices
have the beards),—and to their ability insult
them for doubting of their Holy Water. And for
these designs, the first object is to get and keep the
direction of the education of the masses. Teach the
children of the peasantry that Holy Water washes
away sin, and in the next generation we shall have
the subservient peasantry who will worship the
curate of the parish as the great washerman.
The Prime Minister was full of unction and con-
ventional propriety, in the speech with which he
favoured us. It is a faculty, among others good and
indifferent, which he possesses to some extent. No-
thing is so difficult as to assume the appearance of
religious feeling going one inch beyond the habitual
pitch of the mind's elevation. Any attempt either to
win the support of others, or to conciliate the inward
man by saying to him " See what a good boy am I,"
invariably betrays itself, at least to spectators at all
familiar with the case.
The fallacy which ran through the speech of the
Prime Minister and all tbo opposition, was that of
professing to suppose, that the Bill opposed the teach-
ing of religion. Whereas it only said, there should
be a division of labour and hours. Why do we allow
our children to take a lesson in drawing or music
without the interposition of religious teaching, but
because they are taught religion at other times ?
Enormous sums and an immense machinery are appro-
priated to teaching religion in various ways ; and
simply because it is a point men cannot be prevented
from quarrelling on except by being divided like the
pugnacious kinds of animals, it is declared to be stuff
of the conscience that there shall be no teaching of
reading, writing and arithmetic at one hour, and
religion at another. No man shall eat his beef first
and his pudding afterwards, but every man shall be
obliged to have his meat and pudding chopped to-
gether, simply because it makes the whole process of
eating unsavoury and likely to be rejected.
Writing to you as I do, very much for the use of
the operative classes, I take the opportunity to im-
press upon them, that they are made to pay taxes up
to eleven times the rate of what is laid upon the rich,
and there is a vigorous refusal to allow any portion of
the money thus collected from their hard earnings
to be expended on the education of their children,
without insisting on its being chopped up with the
teachings cf a church, the active part of whom are in
direct hostility with the principles of Protestantism and
civil supremacy as settled at the Reformation, and eager
for nothing so much as to carry the working classes
back to that subserviency to priestly power which
existed at the preceding period. The falsification of
the Scriptures is their great instrument, and with this
view they persist on shutting up the waters of worldly
knowledge from all who will not take it through
their dirty cup. A well-informed people cannot
easily be misled, on that or any other point. The
recovery of Euclid from the Arabic was a forerunner
of the Protestant Reformation. Therefore the people
shall not learn Euclid by itself, lest they should
reform again.
Nevertheless there is hope, not only from
the general difficulty of carrying back a
people to the ignorance of former days,
but from a circumstance existing within the body
from which the danger comes. All that active and
powerful portion of the clergy whom popular par-
lance styles the Evangelical, are on the other side.
They scout holy water, as their fathers did. And it
is not to be doubted, that in case of necessity their
Cranmers and Hoopers would be forthcoming. Let
it be our business te see that such necessity shall not
come near them.
The debate on the Bill was finally adjourned to
the 20d of May.
On Thursday was a debate on another interesting
question. There is a law by which any of the chil-
uren of the working classes (for it was never intended
to be executed on any other), under fourteen years
of age, found guilty of taking a turnip in the field,
may be whipt by the public executioner at the dis-
cretion of two magistrates without a jury. You are
a whipt people, it is clear ; or like to be.
The present Bill is to extend this power of whip-
ping, from fourteen years of age to sixteen. Now
assemble your working men, or as many of them as is
convenient, and tell them to lay their hands on the
heads of their children under fourteen years of age, and
maturely reflect that the law is that those children (I
believe, by some process known only to lawyers,
the girls are held exempt),—but that little boy that
you have taken with you to the workshop or to the
field, and that perhaps puts you in mind of those who
are gone and never can return, may be sent
to you whipt by the public executioner,
at the direction of two squires (I think there is a Bill
promised, which is to do it at the direction of one), if
in his hunger he has taken a turnip, or for what I
know, a bramble-berry. And specially mind this,
that when the squires in the House of Commons were
asked how they would like one of their own children
to be sent home to them in such sort, the squires
roared with mirth at the notion that there
was to be any conformity between the feelings
of a working man and theirs. Run to the Re-
form Associations ;it is your only chance. Wet
Tyler turned out upon an insult to his child; and I
remember a good and brave man whose bones now
lie in a foreign land, telling me forty years ago,
that \Vat Tyler was our first reformer. And so he
was. We thought we had got past such days, and
that there were neither Wat Tylers nor cause for
them. But it seems the squires know better.
Yet let me not forget to say, there were those in
that rank and upwards, who manfully stood up for
you. There was the Member for Preston, whose an-
cestors were with the Parliament in the Civil Wars.
The Member for Sheffield, of course, did not let the
thing alone. S
eat e ffir Robert Peel, too, came in at the
last with grect. And men of note of the agricul-
tural party, who are not always the foremost in caring
for the people, will be found on the right side of the
division list. The weakness of arbitrary power in this
country is, that in a good cause the people always can
find leaders.
On the whole, I think the new Bill was pretty well
scotched by the success of Sir George Strickland's
proviso. The Conservative evening paper is probably
right in its surmise, " that it is no longer worth any-
thing." But this does not remove the old.
On Friday the debate was on the form of govern..
ment for the Australian Colonies. Parliament will
probably succeed in settling what it is to be ; which
is a very different question from what it would be
best to be.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
AN OLD REFORMER.
London, 22nd April, 1850.

--------
EXPECTED ACC
QUEOUCHEN.EMENT OF
T HE
gishuoepeno'sf
At a late hour last night the several members of
the Cabinet, the Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop
Canterbury, and principal members of the
household were suddenly placed on the, qui vice by
an intimation proceeding from t.i‘hiePeast7e tAhattthsyenllapt:
there was nothing
toms had developed themselves of the approaching
fmhoerrning
and early
r o
1 a(iitc..cpu:sci-h:nin e
thic o
beyond this intination to denote that there would be
any immediate increase to the Royal Family. All
we can state to relieve the public mind is, that shortly
after dinner the Queen expressed herself rather un-
-14 di, and that symptoms '
presented themselves
Ns
which leave little doubt that
within
n 24 hours that
event will occur in which the nation feels so deep an
interest. —.Herald.

ARTILLERY.—WOOLIVICII7 APRIL 21.
have •ustb
21.--
The gOaYrAriLson orders for the routine of to-morrow (Monday),
April 'l'2, have
~::ler„ at 9 :30 A.M.,
JArtilleen issued, and they state that the whole
of the
anal
willthe g
guard
.nntlbel
ee,n
iiinn light;,;. will
takentarchlianc
reviewp toe-
f.,,, 4su,:s at ten o'clock. There will not be any
papers, as the day
se.,,r the intended review which whl shortly
Inot(m, a,„ pTsitive,ly stated in some of the Sunday news-
eo doubt
reviewthe
tpruil
ii: ..7
jell isis
enot a ydee t
act:deeed.c.utphoend
ayTehne There
which
NN ill take plea, to en the last occa.:.
isichnothd
ion the exc?llent arrange-
ments made by Licutmorft,General Sir Thomas Downman,
C. 8., K.C.11., Commandant cif the garrison, ably assisted by
Br gade-Major Bingham, proved so satisfactory to the autho-
iities here and to the public, that no inconvenience was expe-
rienced, the battalicns having lined the ground front the
Common to the mortar and howitzer battery, and the staff
rode down the centre of the battalions leisurely, which pre-
vented the running and crushing of the spectators witnessed
on previous occasions.
GRAY'S INN.—Thomas Trevethan Spicer, M.A.,
gree of Bar-
LL.B., was on Wednesday last called to the de
ri4te3.--at-Law by the Ileaottrable Society of Gray
'o lan,