The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-08 00:00:00

French interests. We should have very little grati-
tade for making fuel a little cheaper and cotton
goods, perhaps, five or ten centimes in the hundred
lower in price than they now are. But the ruin of
.the wood and coal men would be a very serious affair,
and they would make a very angry noise about it
and many villages would be reduced to ps• perism if
the cotton manufacture were taken away from them
by English competition. We will not be the destruc-
tion of these poor people, for they aro French,
and have a right to protection at our hands."
To us this appears very reasonable, because it is
founded on good feeling towards those whom French
legislators are under a natural obligation to befriend
as much as they possibly can. Again, look at the
difference between the respective Governments of
England and France in regard to holders of the pub-
lic debt at IL larger interest than that which is current
in the market. Our worthy Mr. Goulburn, who is
really as good a man as can possibly be, nevertheless
looks upon the holders of the Three-and-a-Half per
Cents. as mere abstract recipients of a larger interest
than the Government need pay them, under the exist-
ing state of the money market. He troubles himself
not with considerations of the inconvenience, perhaps
the misery, which many holders of this stock may
suffer from the reduction of their incomes. Probably
this idea never occurs to him, nor was it so much as
even hinted at by any one of the six hundred and
fifty-eight legislators to whom the proposal for re-
duction was lately submitted. It is all the same to
them whether the holders of the Three-and-a-Half,
per Cents. be poor widows or opulent proprietors, or
mere trustees, without any tie of affection to those
for whom they administer their trust, or sticks and
stones, which indeed have generally about as much
feeling of their business as trustees have. The Go-
vernment and the Legislature care not one straw who
or what may be the owners of the Three-and-a-Half
per Cents. ; they only consider that this stock may
be paideaff, and another stock, at a lower rate of in-
terest, established in their place, and upon that ab-
stract fact they set to work, and the stock is reduced
accordingly. But in France there is a large amount
of stock, bearing the interest of five per cent.,
which the Government has certainly an abstract
right to pay off at 100, though the market price is
120, or to convert into another stock bearing a less
interest, and yet the Government will not do so, be-
cause it takes into account the circumstances of
the holders of the stock, and the injury which
the " conversion " would be to them. These
people," say the Government, " have a stock which
is worth 120 in the market. If we were to adopt a
policy which would depreciate it to 100, it would be
a revolution! These people could not bear to be thus
deprived of one-sixth of their capital, and one-fifth of
their annual income, by an economical stroke of
policy." How opposite this is to the English govern-
mental mode of thinking and reasoning about the
same sort of thing we need not say. In this country,
between the governors and the governed, there is no
such thing as sympathy or community of feeling. No
one dreams of it. The relative positions—especially
in regard to matters of finance and profit and loss—
are rather antagonistic than co-operative. The Go-
vernment has no sort of feeling with the people, to
prevent it having its work done on the cheapest pos-
sible terms, and the people have no sort of feeling
with the. Government to prevent them from resisting
all manner of taxation and payment so far as they
may do so with safety. These are elements of the
political status in quo which are worth the attention
of the political philosopher.
ADVERTISER.—The "Young England" party
has made some addition to its strength by the recent
decision in Cambridge in favour of " monasteries and
similar institutions"—a decision to which we have
already directed the attention of oar readers. The
design of these worthies is to aid in Parliament ,the
cause which Pusey and his disciples-are promoting in
what is called the Church, and .both together are
, longing for the return of those monkish institutions
which nearly three hundred years since had ceased to
• darken the face of England. Purblind as these men
are rendered by the system of which they are the ad-
vocates, they seem to be ignorant of the change which
time has wrought in the social condition of our
country, and of the absolute impossibility of its ever
returning to the institutions which "'Young Eng-
land" contemplates with such fond affection. Manu-
factories put monasteries out of date, and railroads
traversed by steam-engines at the rate of thirty miles
an hour will not very happily consort with sleepy
monks, who
"Soundly sleep the night away,
And just do nothing all the day;
Who eat, and drink, and sleep—what then?
Why eat, and drink, and sleep again."
That man must be strangely unobservant of the facts
which are subjected to his every-day observation, or
as strangely. ignorant of the facts of English history,
wher needs, to be told that the age of monasteries,
when the country had a spare population—when the
alms of the baronial hall and the convent were suffi-
cient for those who had to beg—when the mind of
the.whole population, with but few exceptions, bowed
to the sceptre of Romish domination, differed alto-
gether from England in the present age, when the
whole country is thickly peopled—when a spirit of
independence animates the humbler classes, and ren-
ders them anxious to receive their support, not from
the hands of some mitred abbot, but from the labour
of their own hands ; and when the minds of men have
claimed that freedom which is their birthright,' and
irr the exercise of which they profess convictions
strangely differing from each other, and from the
ages anterior to the Reformation. The absurdity of
attempting to restore the institutions of the middle
ages to the nineteenth century, renders it unnecessary
that we should offer any serious arguments against it.
There is, however, in the present number of the Con-
gregational Magazine, a very talented article on the
suppression of the monasteries, to which, on account
of its appropriateness to the subject before us, we
cannot avoid a brief reference. "Multitudes in this
country (observes the writer), delight to contemplate
the glorious remains of monastic architecture, as seen
in such ruins as Netley or Fountain, Glastonbury, or
Tintern, and moved by peaceful scenes and hallowed
associations, are ready to say with Sir Walter Scott—
' Here have I thought 'twere sweet to dwell,
And rear again the chaplain's cell;
Like that same peaceful hermitage,
Where Milton longed to spend his age.'
This sensibility and taste have been wrought upon by
the pseudo-historians and novelists, who describe these
foundations as having been the asylums of learning,
the homes of charity, and the sanctuaries of religion;
Ivhereas, to use the energetic language of John
Foster' the proud piles were, in fact, raised to cele-
brate the Conquest, and prolong the dominion of the
rower of darkness over the souls of the people. They
were as triumphal arches erected in memorial of the
extermination of that truth which was given to be the
life of man.' " The writer then alludes to the documen-
tary evidence which is being brought to light by the
ecclesiastical inquiriessnow going on, and which shows
1' how awfully retributive were the spoliations of
Bluff Harry, and how truly he *as a besom in the
hands of the All-righteous One to sweep frcm the
earth those gorgeous
.dwelling-places of surpliced
hypocrisy and sanctimonious crime." Did the Cam-
bridge gentlemen who passed the resolution, to which
we have referred, take in their discussion, the facts
recorded in " The Black Book," made at the in-
stance of Cromwell, concerning " the vile lives, the
abominable facts, in murders of their brethren, in
sotlomies, in whoredoms, in destroying of children,
in ibrging of deeds, and other infinite horrors of life,"
of which the monasteries had been the scenes ? If
they did not, their judgment concerning the desirable-
ness of having monastic institutions restored, cannot
be of much worth ; and if they did, they deserve
the contempt and execration of the country to
which they, are ionging to restore the institutions
which our forefathers were compelled to uproot.
In any ease these Cambridge monks ought to avow]
their conversion to the 'Church of Rome, or else
to make way for the return of the men whose
places they most unjustly occupy. We make not
these references to the abominations of institutions
connected with the Romish Church invidiously, for it
must be admitted that similar abominations in their
most revolting phase occur in the history of our.pre-
sent religion. It is riot our ob.lect to condemn parti-
cular sects, but exclusive systems, with whatever sects
they may be identified or associated. Recent exhi-
tions in the- Established Church of this country fall
in character nothing short of the former pollutions of
the church which it succeeded, though in extent they
may he less enormous. This, however, is not to be
attributed so much to the change of creed as to the
progress of the civilising, or, we would rather say, of
the humanising principle, or, yet, rather the increased
facility of exposure. Had there been in former times
the same
wouldasui e
thereharis of
avee
tqitotennscyexists givingiesvt t
er re
present,aPcuhbeldic it y to clerical delin_
thatmonastic
climax
tions omi n
whicha;
now appals us, and were we now without a free press,
or a least a press comparatively free, we should have
the Established Church of the Reformation in a posi-
tion. as debased as was ever that of the Church of
Rome, and it is to this complexion—the, ascendancy
of Church abominations—that the zealous disciples of
" Young England" would now force the national
sentiment.

HERALD.—The sum of five millions three hundred
and fifty-six thousand pounds has actually been paid into
the Exchequer within the last twelve months as the pro-
duce of tho tax on the incomes of persons possessing
from 1501. per annum and upwards. The levy is after
the rate of 7d. in the pound, except on farming profits,
on which it takes only 31d. But we fear that it may
safely be assumed that a very considerable proportion
of those engaged in trade and professions have lacked
the conscientiousness to mako a return of their full and
actual income. Ireland, too, is almost entirely ex-
empted. Taking all these circumstances into account,
it will be evident that the actual receipt of so large a
sum as 5,356,887/., clearly proves the gross income, of
the higher and middle classes of these islands to be very
considerably above two bundled millions per annum!
Another gratifying circumstance requires to be