The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-23 00:00:00

ittinng

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 93, 1844.

In the last number of the Edinburgh Review there
is an article entitled "The Results of Tory Rule,"
which is penned in a moderate and—considering that
the writer is a partisan of the Whigs—an impartial
spirit, giving all due credit to the Ministry where
credit is due, and pointing out their numerous errors
frankly and boldly, without, however, indulging in
the slightest exaggeration or acrimony. In the
course of this article, the Reviewer makes one or two
remarks, which, at the present crisis, are worthy of
particular attention. " The growing inattention,"
he observes, " manifested by both Houses to the
performance of their functions, is, we know,
daily more and more complained of ; and
this subject is of infinitely greater moment
than it is generally considered to be. Tl-1,
respect and confidence which the public have been ac-
customed to feel for the deliberations and decisions
of Parliament are, indeed, lamentably diminished.
The keen interest which its proceedings formerly ex-
cited, exists no longer. Even the ambition to obtain
a seat in Parliament is lessened ; the difficulty of in-
ducing well-qualified candidates to come forward is
complained of; and the whole relations between the
public and both Houses are, we grieve to say, altered
for the worse. The tone in which public affairs are
discussed, is lowered, and a languid indifference is,
by degrees, extending its chilling influence over
the representatives of the people and the people
themselves." Disheartening as is the tone of
these remarks, no one can deny that they have
their foundation in truth. The deep interest with
which the public used to regard the proceedings of
their representatives in Parliament has of late—that
is to say, since the accession of the Tory party to
office—given place to a sort of phlegmatic indiffer-
ence, which is one of the most dangerous symptoms
that the popular mind can possibly exhibit. Through-
out the last session, this indifference on the part of
the people was specially marked, aad towards the
close, men seemed to think no more of what was doing
in Parliament than if there had been no such institu-
tion in existence. A slight stir, indeed, was created
by Sir ROBERT PEEL'S announcement of his intention
to prepare, during the recess, some remedial
measures for the benefit of Ireland, for which
he was paid in advance by the applause
of the Liberals ; but if we except this
momentary excitement, nothing could be more
humiliating nothing more decided than the
generalindifference which existed when the House
of Commons closed its labours for the year.
There must be some cause for this apathy on the part
'
of the people, and that cause may, we think, be found
in the conduct which our Conservative Government
has thought fit to pursue since it first established it-
self in snug quarters in Downing-street. Instead of
steering its course by the steady light of' principle, it
has allowed itself to be led out of the right track by
the ignis fatuus of expediency. It was placed in office
by the energetic efforts of the Monopolists, under a
firm conviction which those bigoted and weak-minded
men entertained, that it would do their bid-

ding promptly, cheerfully, and successfully. In-
stead of this, however, no sooner was it fairly
installed in power, than it began to look
coolly on its supporters, and even attempted
to kick down the ladder by which it had risen. The
principles it professed on the hustings were all for-
gotten. The measures which it had scouted in oppo-
sition, were fostered the instant it had taken up its
position on the right hand of the Speaker's chair.
From having been the partizan of Monopoly, Govern-
ment became all at once an advocate for "free trade
in th© abstract." It had previously lent a willing ear
to the sophistries of Mr. BAKES. It now listened
with deference to the suggestions of Mr. Conn Ex.
By such equivocal--such shuffling conduct
it succeeded in alienating one large portion
of the community—namely, the Monopolists,
while it failed in securing the confidence of
another numerous body—viz., the Free-traders. Both
equally felt that it was making a tool of them—
countenancing or discountenancing them, just accord-
ing as it suited its own interested views; consequently,
both hold it in distrust, and despairing just at present
of obtaining a change of administration, have fallen
into a state of calm indifference from which
we see no immediate prospect of their
being roused. The equivocal proceedings of
Government are, we contend, the chief cause of the
existing apathy of the people, and this apathy bids
fair to continue so long as Sir ROBERT YELL sees fit
to legislate on what he calls, the " expediency
system." Expediency! We contemn and abhor
the phrase. It is in direct antagonism to principle,
and is in too many instances the pretext put forth by
knaves to justify their most indefensible practices.

The two besetting sins, and most characteristic
distinctions of our days, are, certainly, cant and cox-
combry. A. meddling patronage-jobbing Prelate is
the type of the one—a ceremonial-loving, priestcraft-
preaching parson of the other. Of such Prelates, the
" Church-multiplying-principle" Bishop of LONDON—
and of such parsons, the Puseyite crotchetty Vicar of
Ware, are about the most obtrusive examples that
occur to us. The readers of The Sun cannot have
forgotten the account we gave some months ago, of
the rise and progress of the parochial polemics which
had then involved, and have ever since retained, the
contumacious vicar and his offended parishioners in
terms of mutual but most unseemly dissatisfaction
with one another. The Bishop, being appealed to by
the men of Ware, did interpose, to some extent, be-
tween them and their pastor ; but so reluctantly and
ungraciously, that, like a certain other peace-maker,
his intervention did but " worse embroil the fray."

The churchwardens addressed a respectful letter to his
Lordship. The Right Reverend Father snubbed the
churchwardens in reply, with no more of forbearance
or meekness than one of his prelatical predecessors
would have exhibited to a body of disputatious lay-
men in the palmiest days of the Popedom. The
churchwardens renewed their representations ; but
brought down only a rude and ill-bred notice from
the Right Reverend " CHARLES JAMES'S" secretary,
haughtily intimating—if we rightly remember—
that the churchwardens, having thought fit to publish
their correspondence with that gentle Bishop, with-
out previous permission obtained from him, his spi-
ritual Lordship declined to favour them with (the or-
dinary civility of) an answer. Therefore the church-
wardens and the parishioners, who were of the Esta-
blished Church, left to their own remedy, and finding
the vicar inflexible in his resolution to uphold the
literal injunctions of the Rubric, even as to those ob-
servances which they deemed most offensive to the
opinions of the great bulk of the Church in the pre-
sent day, and utterly opposed to the practice of its
ministers during the last century and a half, had re-
course to other modes of proceeding. They required
that, having declared himself bound by the letter of
the Rubric in all things, he should in all things con-

form his official deportment to it, and, inter alia, pub •
licly catechise the children of the parishioners after
the second lesson. This observance the vicar could
not well escape from, and therefore complied with,
until almost a month ago, when he discontinued it, on
an alleged pretext which will be found to form the
main subject of a further correspondence, terminating
only a few days ago, that we print in another
column.

From this last correspondence it will be seen that,
notwithstanding the lofty pretensions of indefeasible
religious duty and solemn convictions, operating with
the Puseyite vicar to follow the letter of the Rubric
"even in the event of his being enjoined to the con-
trary" by his spiritual Lordship, they have not been

sufficiently founded in the good faith of primitive
Christianity, or the stern truthfulness of a pure mo-
rality, to induce the Rev. Gentleman to redeom his
own pledge to his parishioners (as to his concurring
in the certain conciliatory " arrangement" referred to
in Mr. COBHAM'S letter to the Bishop), or to with-
hold him from starting, at the eleventh hour, a pe-

cuniary diffwulty, of his own suggestion, as the flimsy
plea for his departure from his reverend word. This
fact supplies "/3 mot d'enigme." Nothing can exceed
the Lord Bishop of LONDON'S disinterested anxiety to
multiply new churches within his diocese, except—
his interested anxiety to secure the presentation pa-
tronage which they give him. So this reverend
vicar, Mr. CoreneoTores, enthusiastic reverence for
the Rubric commentary on a discipline and doctrine of
which the ritual enjoins, among other things, a lowly
and charitable bearing on the part of the minister to
II his flock—is to be moved from the inflexible ad-
hesion of a Puseyite "purist" to the letter—of his
own undertaking, by a "pecuniary difficulty." We
are really disgusted with the disgraceful exhibitions
which this fashionable purism—this " favourite fancy"
of fanatical incumbents and ambitious prelates, whose
bowels yearn for the re-installation of Romish power,
with Romish forms, in the ministers of the altar—
this vain and insidious Puseyism, in short, is con-
stantly tempting our Protestant Churchmen to make
of themselves. The evils it works to the cause of the
" Reformed Church as by law established"— an
epithet of constitutional modification which your
Puseyites naturally detest—are incalculable. Whole
congregations desert her service, and are forgetting
her communion. In another town of Hertfordshire,
not long since, the offended parishioners fitted up a
Dissenting meeting-house, we are told, for the cele-
bration of the form of worship which should have been
presided over by their minister ; but he had become
tainted with this spiritual coxcombry—(we know no
better designation for it). And when the Church at
large finds its own Prelates abetting the mischief—
like our sleek Bishop, in his correspondence with Mr.
COBHAM, as representative of the churchwardens of
Ware—it will soon begin to doubt how far its alle-
giance can be tendered to a hierarchy of which some
leading members so ill discharge the reciprocal duties
of protecting it from vain and schismatic innovations,
whether of ceremony or of doctrine ; and of meek
and Christian patience and gentleness in communing
with their flocks. Does the Bishop of LONDON prefer
to aid the peace of the Church or the progress of
Puseyism ? Do his notions of pastoral love and epis-
copal responsibility attach the stronger claims upon
his countenance and favour to the respectful but
earnest remonstrances of a congregation, devoted to
the religion, and the modes of worship, adopted by
them, after their forefathers, for many past generations ;
—or to the fussy mummery of a Pusey-struck vicar ?
Does the Right Rev. Prelate opine that the Church
was instituted for the people, or for its bishops ?
Does he hold it better, wiser, more Christian-like, to
vindicate the freaks of this Mr. CODDINOTON, or to
cut off from the Church the congregation she has
hitherto possessed at Ware ? 'Will ho have Puseyism
or Protestantism ?

The Paris journals, for want of a better subject,
still keep up the war with each other about the result
of LOUIS PHILIPPE'S Visit to England. The Globe
thus attacks certain ill-natured comments in Queen
CHRISTINA'S journal the Presse, and with some effect.
These malignant war journals vainly claim the merit
of representing the feeling of universal France :
" The LORD MAYOR of London, in having done to-
wards the King of the FRENCH what has never been
done for any Sovereign, by going out of the City,
and carrying to Windsor the expression of
the sympathies of the great capital towards his
Majesty of FRANCB, has, in the opinion of the
Presse, done nothing more than an act of com-
mon politeness, which established no distinction
between the visit to Eu and the visit to Windsor;
andan ea xn cyl o exclaims—' s
think— '
of
iit'.' Acknowledgmentsßutmight fornot
such
Englanda tr:ltaley
have
Can
left undone w hat she has done? If the LORD MAYOR, for
example, had chosen not to disturb im he had con.