The Sun.
London, England, 1828-10-23 00:00:00

I enough in a cause where victory is certain, but they
are too politic to embark in one where discomfiture
is sure. The gasconade of the newspapers amounts
to nothing. The rabble of St. Giles's cannot con •
veniently be let loose on a working day; and, even
if they could, the men of Kent are not of that class
who are to be silenced by riotous shouts or defeated
by flimsy oratory. Their hearts are in the cause—
the question at issue is Protestant or Catholic as-
cendancy—and their verdict will decide, so far as
they. are concerned, 'whether the last stone of the
political edifice is to be removed, the Protestant
church made the handmaid of the Pope, and whe-
ther the splendid and impious mummeries of Papal
Rome are to be sanctioned by the constitutional
laws of England. It is said that Lord Bex-
ley is to move an amendment to the resolutions,
the tendency of which is to check the expression
of any decided opinion, under the conciliatory dis-
guise of leaving the decision of the question to the
Cabinet. We cannot believe this. Lord Bexley is
incapable of making himself the instrument of any
such experiment. lie would only dishonour himself
in the eyes of the people of Kent, and expose him-
self to public scorn. The effort would be unsuccessful;
he 'would compromise his consistency; he would be
laughed at even by his enemies, and despised by his
friends. The motives for such conduct would be self-
apparent, and he would be hooted down as an impo-
tent friend too feeble to be trusted, and as a concealed
enemy too weak to be feared; but we cannot believe
the rumour. It must be a base slander invented to
injure Lord Bexley in public estimation. It is an in-
sidious blow aimed at its political consistency—a de-
vice of the enemy—an attempt to excite against him
public reprotth, and wound his personal feelings.
But that an attempt will be made to defeat the
object of the meeting is, nevertheless, exceedingly
probable. It will not be an open er manly at-
tempt—it will not appear in the shape of -a sta)tion
to petition Parliament for the concession of the
Catholic claims—but merely to suppress the opinion
of the meeting on the question, and leave it in
abeyance. Need we say that such an attempt
will be defeated? The men who) meet on Friday,
have been rallied in defence of the national institu-
tions, of the religion they hold dear, of the sacred
rights handed down to them by their ancestors; and
are they likely to surrender to finesse what they can-
not yield to conviction ? They have not met a mo-
ment too soon to save the Constitution—they have
not met till every hope they had in the Government
had been extinguished—they see that in the moral
force of public opinion is their only safety, 'Mid that
if they waver now all is lost. They cannot turn back;
they must either make a successful defence, or lay
down theirarms, on any conditions the liberals and the
Catholics may choose to impose. But it is not the
Catholics alone whom they have to combat. It is
apparently for them alone that the warfare is waged,
but there are other parties deeply interested in the
result. They have opposed to them an immense
-host of Dissenters—not the most respectable, we
admit of that body--but the most bitter and
inveterate of the enemies of the Church of Eng-
land. • Among these we comorehend the entire body
of Unitarians; a numerous, a powerful, and an ambi-
tious sect. These persons are, to a man, decidedly
opposed to the Church, to its doctrines,
to its discipline—to its tithes, which press upon
them—to its revenues, which they assert oppress the
country. They are, to an extreme, relentless in
their enmity to our ecclesiastical institutions, and, if
the Catholics were in power, would be the first to
join them in levelling them with the ground. The
one party would act from a spirit of mischief—the
other from policy. If the Catholics could not share
in the church revenues, they would seek their aboli-
tion; the Unitarians would not seek to share them,
but they would demand their abolition also. The
two forces united would be powerful, perhaps resist-
less. It is for the friends of the Established
Church, that church which is the only strong hold
of religious liberty in Europe, to prevent the junc-
tion of those hostile factions. If they were once
met in Parliament, every link of the chain which
connects our civil 'with our religious establishments
would, one after the other, be broken, till secta-
rianism and Popery had obtained the supremacy.--
Morning Journal.