The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-29 00:00:00

LAW AND POLICE.

SETTING FIRE TO LEvirra.—At the Mansion House
Police-court, Ann Jones, a young woman who had been
charged with throwing lighted paper into letter-boxes in
the City, was sent to the lunatic asylum of the City of
London Union, she having been certified to be of unsound
mind by the surgeon of Newgate.
ROBBERY WITH VIOLENCE.-At Worship-street Police-
court, Richard Segar was charged with having been' con-
cerned, with three others not yet apprehended, in steal-
ing, with violence, a silver watch, value £9, from the
person of Mr. Somerset Job Hyams, the vestry-clerk of
Christ Church, Middlesex. Mr. Graves appeared for the
prisoner. The prosecutor deposed that about half-past ten
o'clock on the night of Wednesday last he was proceeding
along the Whitechapel-road, when the prisoner and three
others placed themselves across the pavement and sur-
rounded him. He came up and desired to be allowed to pass,
when one of them seized his chain, dragged his watch
from his pocket, and give him a blow in the pit of his
stomach which almost brought him to the ground. They
then ran off together down St. Mary-street, and
succeeded in effecting Their escape. Information
having been given to the police, together with a
description of the assailants, the prisoner was apprehended,
and in answer to the charge he declared that he knew
nothing about the matter. He was tonveyed to the
Spital-square Station, where he was placed among seven
other men, and on the prosecutor being brought in he was
immediately picked out. The accused was committed for
trial.

THE ATTEMPT TO MURDER A BOT.—At the Thames
Police-court,Timothy Keefe, an Irish cripplc,was charged
on remand with feloniously shooting Edward White with
intent, &c. The wounded boy was brought from the Lon-
don Hospital for the first time to give evidence. He was
pale and weak, and is not yet out of danger. He stated
that on the 13th of last February he was living with his
parents at No. 2, Harebrain•court, Royal Mint-street,
Whitechapel. He was called by the prisoner, who lived
at No. 4, opposite. As soon as he reached the room of the
prisoner the latter went to a box, from which he took a
pistol and did something as if loading it under the bed-
clothes. He then put it behind his back, and suddenly
wheeled about and presented it at his breast and
fired. He felt that he was shot directly, and he

saw blood running from a wound on the breast,

where a bullet had entered. The boy's mother said
she heard the report of a pistol in Keefe's dwelling on the
13th of February, and saw her son leaving the house with
a bullet wound in his breast and streaming with blood.
The surgeon stated that when he first saw the injured boy
but little hopes could be given of his recovery. The pri-
soner, in defence, said he did not know the pistol was
loaded when he presented it at the boy White. Mr.
Benson reminded the prisoner that the prosecutor had
seen him doing something to the pistol, as if loading it,
before he fired. The accused was committed for trial.

The San Joaquim Gazette sass that a Mr. Mitchell,
of Paradise Valley, has 4,700 acres of grain growing in
one field.

Her Majesty the Queen will be graciously pleased
to receive an address unanimously signed by the arch-
bishops and bishops of the Irish provinces of the United
Church of England and Ireland immediately after her
return to Windsor.

FENIANISM IN NEW ZEALAND.—New Zealand
advices to March 8, brought on Tuesday by the Atrato,
mention that Fenian tendencies were being shown in the
colony. The Duke of Edinburgh was at that time ex-
pected to reach Auckland on the 21st of this month.

DREADFUL DEATH OF A POINTSMAN.—A points-
man, named Robert Hall, who was employed at the Lan-
cashire and Yorkshire Railway Station, Great Howard-
street, Liverpool, was lately in the act of signalling a pilot
engine, when a passenger trkin advance'd from the opposite
direction, ran over the poor fellow, and orushed him to
death.

WILLS ANI) BEQUESTS.—The will, dated- the
11th of September, 1867, of George John Barclay, late of
Mitcham, Esq., who died on the 10th ult., was proved on
the 16th inst., by Fanny Barclay, widow, the relict, and
Alfred Austin, Esq., two of the executors. The personal
property is sworn under £l4,ooo.—The will, dated the
13th}, of February, 1868, of Edward Jesse, late of Belgrave-
.place, Brighton, J.P. for Middlesex and Westminster,
who died on the 28th ult., in his 89th year, was proved at
the principal registry on the 24th inst., by Jane Carolina
Jesse, widow, the relict, the sole executrix, The personal
property is sworn

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE WAR OF

CLASSES.

Nothing is more useful than at certain
periods to take stock of life—to enter, as it
were, into a mental " retreat." In the spiri-
tual ife the Church enjoins periodical " re-
treats " as the best—indeed, the only sure—

means for growth in holiness. What is good
for the individual, what is salutary in spiritual
life, cannot be wrong for society at large. In
an epoch like ours, when the first principles
of religion and the essential order of Chris-
tian society are being called in question, would

it not be well for the Catholic world to go into
a sort of spiritual retreat ? In the Syllabus of
eighty-two condemned propositions, Pope Pius
IX. has -provided Christendom with a most
complete, close and searching means of self-
examination by which it ma); discover whether,
and how far, it has sinned against law, order,

justice and religion.
But modern society has set up certain defi-
nite principles which, not being Christian,
lead in their results to the adoption of the
very errors condemned in the Syllabus. We
are not now speaking of the theological prin-
ciples of modern society, for they have been
abundantly discussed and condemned, but of
the social, political, and economical maxims by

which the World is now governed, and which
are producing visibly in most countries of
Europe, but especially in France and Austria,
a conflict of interests, a war of classes, which
threatens at no distant period a violent disrup-
tion of society. The evil lies in this : that in
society, as it has now constituted itself, there
is no recognised basis, no common ground of
agreement on which conflicting interests may
meet, where men, representing the most op-
posite and divergent claims, may learn the
secret of union, of happiness—love of one
another, self-denial, mutual abnegation. But
in the absence of such a common ground,

supplied only by motives higher than those
dictated by self-interest, society falls back on
the disintegrating principle—the principle of
barbarism—self-love. The individual is all-in-
all, society nothing. This setting up of indivi-
dual interests, of class interests, against the
interests of society at large—this internal war
is what in France and Germany is called the
social question. This conflict of interests, how-
ever, is simply the natural consequence of the
severance of social and political life from re-
ligion. Under the Government-of no higher
law than his own interest the individual is bent
upon the attainment of purely selfish aims.
For this end he co-operates with those whose
immediate interests are identical with his own;
in a word, with his own class. Hence the
most reckless selfishness becomes the law of
the various classes of society, and the result is
an antagonism fatal to social order and to the
existence of civilization.
many is in no small measure due to the supreme
The spread of socialism in France and Ger-
many
and reckless selfishness of the bourgeoisie, of
the great manufacturers, traders, and capital-
ists ; in their hands are concentrated immense
wealth and political power, whilst the vast mass
of the producers is unprotected and in a state
bordering on abject and helpless poverty. The
Governments of Europe are falling more and
more into the hands of this selfish and sensual
, moneyed class, and its flatterers and worship-
pers—the astute and
utterly unprincipled pro-
fessional classes. Professors, doctors, lawyers,
newspaper writers, speculators on the Bourse,
in the pay or under the protection of the
moneyed and of the Jews, fill the
Chambers
and classes,
for
m
the Cabinets of Europe.
In this section of society which is the strong-
hold of Liberalism, the denial of the Christian
faith is being completed by the rejection of
the laws of Christian civilization, and by the
substitution in their stead of the principles of
the political economists of the day--principles
condemned by reason and experience as well as
by the Syllabus. The consequence of this ab-
sorption of power by the moneyed and mercan-
tile class is that the whole course of legisla-
tion in most European countries is directed
with persistent and unerring aim against the
interests of the producing classes, against the
emancipation of the slaves of the labour market.
But the worm trodden under foot will turn at
last. The labouring classes, under skilled and
unscrupulous leaders, are banding together in
trade unions, in co-operative associations, in
political leagues, in secret societies. The force
and opportunities and material resources which
to-day are at the command of organized • social-
ism will render, when it comes, the conflict be-
tween the classes one of life and death.
But
bureaucratic Liberalism, triumphant for the
only itself last thirty or forty years, has • lf to
blame. Has it not proscribed Chi-isti. •an edu-
cation, and made the
village
schoolmaster the
enemy of the priest ? Has it not attacked the
most sacred bond of society by
the introduction
of civil marriage ? and has it not created and
supported throughout the whole of
Europe a
press whose incessant aim has been to make
religion ridiculous, contemptible, hated ? It
has succeeded but too well. A e neration of
a mans
the working-classes—the rt. g of the great
cities—has grown up under this evil influence.
Material aims, sensual lf •
se -gratification have
been held up before them as the sole purpose
of life—the law of existence. Baulked in
promised share of life's enjoyments, condemned
to ill-remunerative toil, too commonly to de-
privations bordering on starvation in the sight
of the wealth of their t mas ers—wealth which
every instinct of their nature has been sedu-
lously taught to covet—is it to be wondered at
that the last appeal of their
baulked
appetites
should be to physical force ? Terrible will be
the day of their revenge.
On the other hand, the Liberalism of the
moneyed middle classes has formed for itself a
school of political economy, formed on the
principles of Adam Smith—principles which
are not those of the Gospel; and which, in their
operation, are oblivious of the rights common
to all, the right to live, the right to earn by the
sweat of the brow bread sufficient to increase
and multiply the human family and Christian
race. The Gospel made all mein brothers ;
political economy makes all men enemies. The
charity of the Gospel is the uniting principle
—the principle of civilization ; the self-love
of political economy is the prin-
ciple—the n disinteg rati
principle of destruction. The effects
of this principle we are now witnessing in
Europe in the collision between labour and
capital, in the war between the classes, in Com-
munism and Liberalism. Liberalism sees its
danger, and has uttered a cry of terror. Those
in possession of wealth and power, of the Par-
liaments and Governments of Europe, see sud-
denly the no longer disorganized masses arrayed
against them. They are in dread, like Actaeon
by his own dogs, of being devoured by their off-
spring. Liberalism, in its fear and madness,
turns round upon those who, like Bishop Ket-
teler, of Mayence, suggest a means of reconci-
liation between the suffering and the moneyed
classes—between those who legislate solely in
their own interests, and the victims of this
short-sighted policy, and impute their inter-
position to a hatred of the party now in power
in Europe, and to a desire to see it swept
away even by a triumphant Communism.
But Catholic thinkers and writers, bishops
or laymen, who oppose the false doctrines of
political economy, are not on that account to
be denounced as advocates of Communism.
Communism, equally with Liberalism, is con-
demned by the Syllabus. What Catholics are
working for, as far as they are working at all
in the matter, is not for the triumph of Com-
munism, hut for the overthrow of Liberalism
with its false political economy and anti-social
principles. Opposed only by the doctrines of
Liberalism, the triumph of Communism is ine-
vitable in Europe. Catholicism, alone with
its social, political, and religious principles,
is able to cope with the two opposing and
destructive forces—Liberalism and Commun-
ism ; and to find a middle term, a basis solid
and broad enough for permanent agreement.
But the misfortune is that both Liberalism and
its natural offspring, Communism, have lost
faith in Christianity. Liberalism believes only
in political economy, and Com:anthem in phy-