The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-21 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1844.

The Bishop of EXHTER, like another Jumus,
seems resolved to create a popular ferment by his
Letters. Scarcely is the ink dry with which he
penned his two former ones, when he issues a
third
addressed to the churchwarder., of two parishes in
Exeter. This last epistolary communication breathes
precisely the same spirit as its predecessors. The
language is studiously courteous—the tone firm and
unbending to a degree. "The voice is the voice of

We regret to perceive, by the; advertised resolu-
ons of a meeting of bankers, landed gentry, and
others, of the county of Lanark, held at the County-
hall in Hamilton on the 15th instant, the Right Hon.
Lord BELHAVIN in the chair, that there is still an
influential portion of the Scottish people whose op-
position to the monetary legislation of Sir R. nine
is based upon a very limited, and, therefore, very
dangerous view of the question. Keenly alive to the
impolicy and mischief of endeavouring to substitute
for a national symbolic currency (of small bank-
notes) a gold circulation of positive intrinsic valuer
(and for that very reason of fearfully fluctuating
quantity), the Lanarkshire requisitionists appear to
have no sympathy with the sufferings of this enormous
portion of the empire. Sir R. PEEL'S fatal con-
trivance of 1819, with its " complement " of 1843
is all very good, it seems, for England; yet the same
Minister's infatuated propensity for tampering in
Scotland with the same species of monetary system
which those measures have overthrown and extin-
guished south of the Tweed, is justly denounced by
the same requisitionists as an uncalled-for and mis-
chievous experiment, having for its object to over-
throw a condition of things under which, for one
hundred and fifty years, Scotland has steadily ad-
vanced in her marvellous career of agricultural, com-
mercial, and social improvement. We own, with
pain, that unless we could imagine the Lanarkshire
meeting disposed, at the sacrifice of their own better
convictions and practical experience on the subject,
to bespatter Sir ROBERT PEEL with eulogies for the
desolation and decay which he has brought upon the
debtor interest and the enormous masses of the in-
dustrial producing classes of this country, by a
scheme of currency imposing inevitable limitations
and restraints on commercial enterprise, a permanent
tendency of increasing depression in prices and
wages—unless we can imagine the Lanarkshire meet-
ing willing to make so unworthy a compromise with
the sound principles they advocate, in order to en-
sure, if possible, the concession of them to the case
of Scotland, exclusively, at the expense of England
and of Ireland, we cannot reconcile the antagonistic
assertions of one resolution with the avowed doc-
trines of another. Thus, the ninth resolution affirms
" That this great success of the banking system of Scot-
land" (i.e., with especial reference to its issue of small
bank-notes under 51., long since abolished in England in
favour of a currency of gold sovereigns) " has been
mainly owing to the perfect freedom of its action, and to
the absence of all legislative interference; and, therefore,
this meeting earnestly deprecate any intermeddling now
with a system which has hitherto worked so well, and
has proved so undeniably beneficial to all classes of the
country."

Now, this was also the condition of things in
England when it pleased the present Premier to
saddle her with his cruel burden of a currency founded
on his own Act of Parliament unaltering price, as to
that currency, of a commodity fluctuating from day
to day and hour to hour, in both price and quantity, in
the open markets of all the world outside of the four
walls within which he persuaded Parliament to sanc-
tion his nauseous nostrum. The embarrassments of
1822 ; the hideous panics of 1825 ; the wholesale de-
solation of every house connected with our vast trade
to the United States, in 1836, extending through
1837 and 1838 ; the downfal of eminent metropolitan
bankers ; the paralysing shocks sustained by com-
mercial confidence ever since the accelerating down-
ward pressure on prices ; the grinding reduction of
the wages of labour and industry ; the spread of pau-
perism ; the thus engendered between the
crippled possessors of property and the starving ap-
plicants for work, which cannot be given to them;
the yearly perishing away of some branch or other
of our foreign trade ; the successful competition of
the foreign manufacturer with our best and oldest
customers ; the despondency of our shipowners who
can no longer earn remunerative freights ; these
are some few among the more remarkable fruits
which the gold standard of Sir ROBERT PEEL has
belasqtu efiavt hed
e .an to b _
twee
n gatheredty
years b y hisT countryhes e
are
th e duringfr
fruits
the
which, so long as his "convertible paper" is to be
payable on demand in gold, at the Mint price instead

JACOB, but the hands are the hands of Eseu.- Like
old GEORGE the THIRD, the Bishop sticks firm 'o his
Prerogative. He will not tolerate even the slightest
murmur of remonstrance against his decrees. He is
a more rigid martinet than even Colonel MARTINET
himself, the notorious disciplinarian in the days
of the Grande Monarque. He has ordained that
there shall be changes in the Church service
throughout his diocese, and changes there shall be,
no matter how distasteful they may be to the great
body of the Devonshire laity. He acknowledges
that the changes are of no great moment—that some
of them are even of a trifling character—but his fiat
respecting them has gone forth, and—like the laws
of the Medes and Persians—that sovereign fiat must
be held immutable. In justification of the arbitrary
course he is pursuing, the Right Rev. Prelate pleads
the necessity of restoring peace and harmony to the
Church. We acknowledge the necessity, but we
deny the wisdom of the means taken fur bringing
about the restoration of good order among the clergy.
"It is among my first duties," says the Bishop, "to
seek to place on the firmest footing—peace in the
Church, which cannot be secured without uniformity
in the worship of ALMIGHTY GOD." What flimsy
sophistry is this ! How does the substitution
of the white surplice for the black gown contribute
to secure uniformity of worship ? The question is
not one of doctrine, but simply one of form, and
therefore is in no way connected with worship. But
then, says the Right Reverend Prelate, I enforce the
wearing of the surplice as a means of restoring peace
in the Church. The answer to this argument shall
be given in the words of the Exeter Post :—"ln the
churches of St. David, St. Sidwell, and many others
that we could mention, several of the congregation
took their, departure the moment they saw the
clergyman enter the pulpit in his surplice. The
feeling of all Church-goers appears unanimously to
be that this alleged rubrical observance is an innova-
tion that calls for an immediate manifestation of
public opinion I " A change, whose very first effect
is to produce such results as this, is
certainly one most happily calculated to restore peace
and harmony! It is as if a man should fling a big
stone into a lake, by way of keeping its waters in a
state of undisturbed calmness. The Bishop professes
to be quite astonished at the uproar excited against
his changes in the Church service. They are so
trifling—so innocent—that it is an act of positive
absurdity to protest against them. " They will be
found so trifling," he tells his correspondents, " that I
venture to think you will be almost ashamed to re-
collect that you have suffered the arrogant dictation
of London newspapers, or the baseless suggestions
of persons nearer home, to terrify you with
so mere a bugbear." If the changes in question
be really so trifling and unimportant, why does Dr
PIIILLPOTTS insist, on them with such pertinacity ?
Why does he disturb the minds of his laity by enforc-
ing innovations which he himself directly acknow-
ledges to be of no earthly importance ? Is it worth
while to throw a whole diocese into an uproar for a
mere trifle ? But the Right Rev. Prelate knows
well—whatever he may choose to maintain to the
contrary—that the surplice question is no such
frivolous one. True, on the first blush of the thing,
it seems to be of no great moment whether a clergy-
man preaches in a black gown or a white one—for it is
his doctrine, and not his dress that is to be regarded;
but then it should be borne in mind that the surplice
i 3 a virtual encroachment on old principles and asso-
ciations--is, in fact, a revival of one of the principal
symbols of Catholicism, and was abandoned as such at
the period of the Reformation. It is in this light
that the laity of Exeter seem to regard it ; and
whether, they be right or wrong in their view of the
question, we do think that the Bishop is bound in
justice to make a concession to their conscientious
prejudices—more especially as he himself admits that
the surplice is a change of so purely a trifling cha-
racter as to be hardly worth a moment's serious
consideration. We say nothing of his charge of ar-
rogance launched so unceremoniously against the
" London journals." He should be a good judge of
what is, and what is not, arrogant, for no man has
dealt more largely in this commodity than himself ;
and we suppose he is jealous at seeing—or fancying
that he sees—his favourite monopoly invaded by the
Metropolitan Press. We have not yet done with the
Bishop of EXETER, for we clearly foresee that for
some time to come he will be constantly before the
public, in consequence of the popular turmoil which
he is exciting so officiously throughout the length and
breadth of his diocese.