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

cost of every other class of the community.
The Post imposes on those who are disposed to
follow its counsels, a labour equal to that of Sisyphus:—
" The farmers, who now think only of demanding a
repeal of the malt-tax, may soon find courage to demand
a repeal of the new corn-law, of the tariff, and of the
Canada Corn Act. The same energy which will be
required to get rid of the malt-tax would suffice to get
rid of the free- trade measures of the last three years, and
of the Currency Act of 1819 into the bargain." And
yet this was the kind of argument with which the far-
mers suffered themselves to be deluded at the last
election. The same oracle of the agriculturists com-

plains of what it calls the violation of these promises,
and the consequent disappointment of agricultural
hopes :—" Promises may have been made to farmers on
the subject of the malt-tax, and those promises may have
been violated. Nothing, however, was said during the
great struggle in 1841 between the League and the agri-
cultural body on the question of the tax on malt ; and
the pledges—express and implied—which were given by
our present rulers, and by the majority of their sup-
porters, bore reference, assuredly, to matters of infi-
nitely greater inipoetance." The " straw" is manifestly
" moving"—not fur the repeal of the-Malt-tax, but for
objects yet more embarrassing to Ministers than any
movement in that direction.
STANDARD.—The Morning Chronicle of this day
commences a long article as follows:—" The friends of
the Church of England may well be alarmed at her pre-
sent position. The Puseyite crisis exposes to the world
the two fundamental defects of her constitution—the
want of any supreme governing body, and the vicious
system of promotion, which has filled her high places
with men destitute of that statesmanlike ability that
could guide her through her present difficulties." We
shall observe upon the latter imputed defect first. We
do not find that: the Divine Founder of our Church
selected statesmen as his Apostles. We have the qualities
requisite in a bishop more than once distinctly enumerated
by the inspired teacher of the Gentiles; but statesman-
ship:or political wisdom isno where mentioned among those
qualities, which may be classed under the heads of
piety, purity of life, and a meek temper—qualities in
which no man will say that the Bishops of our Church,
as a body, manifest any deficiency. They may err, as
all men err • but surely the common complaint has
lately been that they have erred on the side of forbear-
ance towards men who would bring in heresies. And if
one or more of them manifested more energy than the
rest, it is the generally meek character of the order
which causes such conscientious energy to be regarded
as turbulence. But as our view of the conduct of
others takes a colour from our approbation or disap-
probation of their end (the observation is as old
as Aristotle) wo are disposed to characterise as
turbulence that energy employed in oppositioa to
our opinions which we would gratefully welcome as
manly courage if employed on our own side. The con-
sideration, however, which we would press is that an
excessive meekness, and superabundant charity, are the
faults—the only faults—which can be charged upon the
present Bishops as a body ; but these faults are Chris-
tian virtues, and better become the fathers of a Christian
Church than the opposite virtues of statemen—vigilant
distrust and some amount of unfeeling rigour. The first
defect imputed to the Church is one that really does not ex-
ist; and we are not a little surprised to see its supposed
existence matter of complaint with a Liberal journal.
The defect in question is, " the want of a supreme go-
verning body," explained as follows in the next para-
graph :—" The constitution of the Church of England
presents the singular anomaly of an extended and com-
plicated hierarchy, complete in all its organisation, with
the one exception of a head. It has neither Pope, nor
council, nor general assembly, to wield the sovereign
authority, and enforce uniformity of doctrine and prac-
tice throughout its entire body.' The want of a " ge-
neral council" is one which the Church of England has
endured in common with the Church of Rome for ex-
actly three centuries, the last general council of the
Romish Church, that of Trent, having been assembled
in 1845. The want of a Pope is, therefore, the
only respect in which we are at a disadvantage
as compared with Rome. And this is made
matter of complaint by a journal professing upon
all occasions to be the champion of civil and re-
ligious liberty. If, however, the Church of
England acknowledges no human arbiter of religious
doctrine—no despotic master of its ritual—it surely has
an equivalent for such human arbiter in the Holy Scrip-
tures, and for such despotic master of ritual in the law.
—the law, which is quite strong enough to maintain the
authority of the Scriptures, so long as the people are free
from utter corruption, and to enforce or to amend its own
ritual arrangements. Comparing the state of the Eng-
lish and Romish Churches during the latter half of the
three centuries that have elapsed since the last general
council—the first half was a period of almost con-
stant political disorder in Christendom, from the in •
fluence of which religion could not escape—comparing,
we say, the state of the English and Romish ehurches,
during the last 150 or 200 years, we assuredly do not
find that a Pope has, even with the aid of the Inquisi-
tion and the temporal sword and the faggot, more
effectually maintained uniformity of doctrine and ritual,
to say nothing of political order and personal morality,
than the Scripture and the law have maintained them all
in England. It is, in truth, out of the happy tranquillity
and implicit confidence arising from an experience of
the operation of our English system, that the present
danger, the magnitude of which no honest and observing
man will dispute, has arisen. Indulgence on the part of
the heads of the Church, implicit confidence in their
clergy, had been nursed into inveterate habits by the
calm, and steady, and glorious progress of religious
truth. It was not that the Bishops slept on their posts,
or that the laws had lost their power ; but there
really was no fit occasion for the active interposition
of either ; all was going on so - well without
the help of either Pope or general council,
that any rude interposition would be indeed a wanton
challenging of danger. Such was the state to which the
Christian liberty of centuries had exalted our Church
twelve years ago, as every Englishman now living can
attest. We say of Christian liberty, because the govern-
ment of law is liberty, and the only true condition of
liberty ; and the government of law is most perfect
where the law is least frequently invoked. Of liberty,
however, it is a necessary attribute, that men may go
wrong if they are prepared to abide the consequences of
doing so. And se it has proved in the Church. About
twelve years ago, certain stupid, ignorant—we repeat it,
most ignorant—conceited, and perverse men sought to