The Sun.
London, England, 1845-05-22 00:00:00

Morning

LONDON, THURSDAY, MAY 22, 1845.

The House of Lords did not sit yesterday.
The House of Commons met at Four o'Clock.

The Lord Mayor of Dublin, attended by two of the
Aldermen, appeared at the Bar, and presented a petition
from the Corporation, praying that the Hibernian Bank-
ing Company, and other new joint• stock-banks in Ireland,
might be included in the provisions of the new Irish
Banking Bill. _ _

The secon 1 reading of the Malt Drawback Bill was
postponed for a week.
Capt MANGLES put a series of questions to the Go-
vernment
on the subject of the occupation of Sinde, in
reply to which,
Sir H. PEEL stated that at present the government
of that territory was placed under the superintendence
of the Secret Committee, and that as soon as he could
do so without prejudice to the public service he would
give the House all the information on the subject that
it was in his power to give.
The adjourned debate on the third reading of the
Maynooth Bill was then resumed by Colonel VERNER,
who opposed the Bill, and accounted for the apparent
apathy of the Protestants of Ireland on the subject
by saying that they were deterred by appre-
hensions of danger from stating their feelings
with regard to the measure ; and that they con-
sidered it useless, after seeing how petitions on
this subject had been treated, to petition the House. He
wished to know at once how far the Government in-
tended to go, that he might be prepared for the worst ;
for he knew that this measure, wrung as it was from the
fears of the Government, could not conciliate the repeal
party of Ireland.
Lord H. VANE asked if the Gallant Colonel wished to
govern Ireland by force ? That system had been tried
and failed. He supported the measure because as Roman
Catholicism was the religion of the large majority of the
Irish people, it was the religion best entitled to endow-
ment, and how those gentlemen who vitro favourable to
religious endowments• on principle could oppose this
measure he could not understand.

Mr. CoLQuHouN, in opposing the motion, said that if
the Conservative party wished to maintain a character
fur consistency they should, now they were in powers
adhere to those principles which they had maintained in
Opposition. He alluded to the state of France as
a proof of the danger of endowing the Roman
Catholic religion. The Right Honourable Baronet
had, in 1838, adopted the views of the Right Honour-
able Member for Selkirkshire, who to his honour had
preferred principle to place, a somewhat more creditable
course than that pursued by another Hon. Member
who had preferred place to either principle or rea-
son. In 1838, the Right Hon. Baronet had expressed
his fears of that section of the Roman Catholics who
wished to render civil Government subordinate to eccle-
siastical rule, and he felt curious to know would the man
who told them in 1838 that his fears were justified, tell
them, in 1845, that those fears were groundless, unwor-
thy, and fanatical ? The Hon. Gentleman then attacked
in bitter terms, the Roman Catholic priesthood in Ire-
land, and concluded by reiterating his determination to
oppose the Bill to the utmost of his power.
Mr. F. MACKENZIE complained that his speech at the
Peebles-shire election had been misrepresented. What
he had said was, that tlie small grant to Maynooth had
done mischief; and that he would support the large grant
as. an experiment. He had further recommended the people
of Ireland on that occasion to cherish the Union as the
people cf Scotland had done, to repudiate agitation, and
to devote themselves to the cultivation of the land. This
was a slight sketch of his speech at Peebles, and such
were still his opinions.
Mr. WYSE did not recognise, in the number of th'e
signatures to the petitions against this grant, anything

I.ke an expression of the universal will of the people of
England. Ireland contributed to the support of
English and Scotch ecclesiastical establistimQnts. Ire-
land was taxed for the English National Debt
The Presbyterians enj.yed the Regiunt Donum, and )et
when it was proposed to make this grant for the educa-
tion of the Catholic clergy, it was opposed with all the
virulence of religious fanaticism, and the Catholic
Church was charged with all sorts of fanaticism.
This was going back to the days of Lord GEORGE GOR-
DON, %%hen all the violence of sectarian zeal was let forth,
in order to crush the freedom of religious opinion. By far
the better plan would be to sink all those differences,
and to avoid those disputes which plucked out of the
Gospel the bright gem of charity, and tended to divide
wen from each other, and to excite those points of dif-
ferf ace and division which was opposed to every interest
of humanity.

The House was subsequently addressed by Mr.
DARBY, Sir J. GRAHAM, Mr. SHEIL, Mr. PLUMPTRE,
Mr. Sergeant /MURPHY, Mr. FERRAND, Captain LA-
YARD, Mr. M`LEAI4, Sir H. PEEL, and Lord J. RUSSELL,
after which a division took place, when the numbers
were, fur the the third reading 317, against it, 184—
nrijority 123.
Mr. DUNCOMBE then moved that the powers of the
Bill should Le limited to a period of three years, upon
hich, after some discussion, the House divided, and the
proposition was rfjected by a majority of 98.
'The House then adjourned at Halt-past Two o'clock.

In the very brief but excellent speech of .Earl FITZ-
wILLIAm on Tuesday on the measures brought forward
by the Government for Ireland, there is one fact t•tated
which he recommended to the attention of Sir ROBERT

INGLIS, who denounces the Academies' Bill as " a
gigantic scheme of godless education." The public will
infer from the words of the representative of Oxford,
that religion is taught to all the pupils in that
University, and what is the fact ? No religion
is taught in the colleges, with the exception of that
taught to Divinity students, and what is more, the high-
est authorities of the University had recommended the
lay students not to attend the lectures of the theological
professor. In fact, the custom has long been ob-
solete, and Sir ROBERT INGLIS knew that as well as
Earl FITZWILLIAM. His opposition to the measure cannot
be founded on religious grounds, and we are therefore to
infer that his acceptation of the word "godless" is very
different from that used by other men. It is quite re-
freshing to turn from the political bigotry of the Mem-
ber fur Oxford, to the liberal views, sound sense, and,
at the same time, Christian doctrines of one of the
most upright and religious Members of the House of
Peers. " Infidelity." said he, " was much more likely
to arise from the hostile spirit which actuated one sect
against another, and if they could succeed in educating
the youths of different sects together—in inducing them
to take their recreations and enjoyments together, they
would go a long way in destroying that spirit of intole-
rance with which one sect regarded another."

In a very recent article we gave an outline of Captain
BERKELEY'S argument of Friday evening last against
the absurd practice of sending out our ships of the line to
sea with a different complement in time of peace from
that which they are allowed in time of nat., though the
canvass to be carried, and their number of guns and their
weight of metal should be exactly the same in the one
case as in the other. It is remarkable that when Captain
BERKELEY was speaking to the fact of the Albion carry-
ing her proper complement of from 800 to 830 men on
board the experimental squadron, whereas she had been
dispatched to Lisbon, where there lay a large squadron
of the French navy, and at a period in which our hostile
collision with France appeared to be almost inevitable,
short of that complement by 100 men, he was inter-
rupted by a remark from Sir GEORGE COCKRURN, which
seemed designed to impeach the force of the case esta-
blished, by showing that it would not necessarily lead to
the results apprehended. Sir GEORGE remarked that in
the expedition to the coast of Syria under the late
Government, one of our 90-gun ships had on board no
more than 680 men. If that isolated fact could have
proved anything in favour of the vicious system of under-
manning, which it did not, it would have been corn
pletely <et aside by the pithy rtjuinder of Captain
BERKELEY, that at that very time he was remonstrating
with and almost retiring from his colleagues in office
because they would persist in such dangerous and un-
warrantable experiments. That Sir GEORGE COCKBURN,
himself
mse to l
inf justify
esonoffice a
folly
are
a member of the present Administration, by whom
these colleagues have been driven from office, should
stoutly
condemned
now plead the precedent of their pernicious
which,prac-
tcjen socn,o
ensconce
ocer onlynat thserumpopscelcilaevssei
themselves behind
occasions,
ho
iohnfedhhtohaw
prone
the
authority of any precedent ready to their hands rather
than be at the trouble of establishing a better practice