The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-07 00:00:00

ctUirnilt UAL
-

LONDON, TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1845.

We quote the following curious passage from the
Post of Saturday morning :—" What right have the
lay persons who meet together at Exeter or elsewhere,
to give their opinion about Church matters, and to
call for alterations, unless they consider themselves
members of the Church ; and if they be members o'
the Church, why should they be so utterly oblivious
of the conditions of their membership ? It is mani-
feA that they never think of this—that they do not
recollect that their undutiful conduct, in meeting and
talking as they de, disqualifies them altogether from
interference in Church affairs. Their mode of inter-
ference destroys their right to interfere. The mind that
is in these people is the mind of mere Dissenters—
latlY,tit is much more licentious than the mind which
belongs to regularly organised bodies of Dissenters,
for even they recognise some rules of church govern-
ment. Rut these stu/ti of Exeter, who meet to babble
and talk and make a disturbance, seem to have no other
idea than that clergy and Church are only to be held
in respect while they are pleasing to them." 'We
have been induced to quote this somewhat lengthy
passage, because we consider it in its way as a cu-
riosity—as a shaughty,
supercilious of dogmatism and
supercilious intolerance singularly and amusingly a
variance with the tone of thought and feelingprevat-
lent in the present day and for many a long year
and worthy of a journalist in the days of LALD,Poars
sycophantic Court scribe during the brief tyrannical
sway of JAMES the SECOND. Imagine indeed the ar-
rogance of a public writer denying the right of the
laity to express an honest and :decided opinion on a
matter that deeply concerns themselves—denying
their right to make the slightest opplsition to innova-
tions that shock their feelings, disturb their sense of
propriety, and degrade the established faith in their
eyes-by associ,lting it with a variety of obsolete, worth-
less usages and .superstitious rnummeries, borrowed
avowedly from an antagonist Church, which they
,and their fathers before them have been taught to
hold in conscientious aversion ! The laity not justi-
fied in taking a vital interest in Church affairs!
lVhy, the laity greAemselves the national Church,
quite As much sOsteven the clergy l Such at
least TwAs the opiniorf ethe late Dr. ARNOLD, one of
the best, and wisest men that modern times have pro-
duced. Bat` not only are the laity, according to the
Posts atttlioritalive dictum, bound to abstain from all
s , •

I

interference with the Bishop of EXETER'S decrees;
but they are bound, in addition, to receive them
with thankfulness and humility, and pay to them the
blindest and most unhesitating submission, no
matter how rash, unsuitable, and absurd they
may appear to them. All honest, rational
freedom of opinion is to be scouted as
downright contumacy. It is for the Bishop to issue
what ordinances he pleases, and for his flock to obey
in mute, obsequious silence. Such is our Contem-
porary's High-Church, LAUD-like theory, but such
is not the theory of ecclesiastical government enter-
tained by the community at large. The people have
outgrown the leading-strings in which they were
kept for so many ages by priestly domination. They
have reached the years of discretion, and will think
and act for themselves. They will pay all becoming
respect to the decrees of their spiritual pastors and
masters, when those decrees are founded in reason,
and do not run directly counter to long-cherished
feelings ; but they will not sit tamely by while a
set of idle ceremonial observances are forced upon them
which have long since dropped into desuetude, simply
because they were felt to be superfluous, not to say
absurd. But we have not yet done with our arrogant,
contumelious Contemporary, i❑ whom the spirit of
Tractarianism is exhibited in its true colours Mark
the insolence of his allusions to the " mind of mere
Dissenters"—just as if Dissent were an undeniable
proof of want of intellect, of liberality, of all that
graces, ennobles, and humanises a man ! The " mind
of mere Dissenters !" Why, some of the loftiest,
boldest, and most sagacious spirits that England has
known for centuries, were Dissenters. WATTS—
DODDRIDGE—BA XTE R—the late ROBERT HlLL—the
mild, conscientious WESLEY—the earnest, intrepid
WRITEFIELD—aII these great men were Dissenters ;
and the greatest of them all, Jour; MILTON, he, too, was
a Dissenter ! 'We owe to the " mind of mere Dis-
senters" two of the most popular works that were
ever penned—" Robinson Crusoe" and the "Pilgrim's
Progress"—works that have achieved a European
reputation, and will survive to instruct, amuse, and
elevate humanity ages after the present generation
shall have passed away into nothingness. But the
Posts contempt is not confined exclusively to the
Dissenters. No, our Contemporary is singularly
impartial in his abuse, and designates all that portion
of the Devonshire laity who have remonstrated against
the rash decrees of the Bishop of EXETER, by the
polite appellation of "ste/li," or fools ! Judging from
his article of Saturday morning we should say that he
ought to be a good judge of what constitutes " folly,"
though in the present instance his censure is singu-
larly inapplicable.

It must be conceded to the Anti-Corn-law League,
by its most determined opponents—even by those who
are the stoutest champions of the claims for exclusive
Protection to the " landed interests"—that the agita-
tion which that body has invited and maintained with
so much energy, has benefited no class of the com-
,nunity so much as the agriculturists themselves ! If
this assertion " sounds," at first, " a paradox," a
moment's consideration will establish its soundness.
It affords us sincere pleasure to observe that awakened
spirit of research and improvement which, in every
great rural district of the kingdom, is sedulously
Applying itself to the pursuit of agriculture as a
practical science. In this fact lies the true secret of
that amelioration which, in all human probability, the
great primary and permanent occupation of mankind
—the cultivation of the soil—is about to experience
in this country. But again, we insist that, but for
the stirring appeals of the League against monopoly
prices for corn, there would have been little or no-
thing accomplished by this time, of all those important
discoveries and -improved processes in tillage, hus-
bandry, and cereal economy which will stamp the
year 1844 with a distinction more noble than that
which any epoch can derive from multiplied victories.
Determined opponents as we have ever been, upon
principle, to class-legislation, which is bad, and to
class-protection, which is worse, we have never
undervalued the vast importance of agriculture, as a
primary element of the grandeur and strength of
nations. In this country, notwithstanding all the ad-
vances it has made within the last century, its move-
ment bore no proportion to the gigantic strides of our
commercial, manufacturing, and mechanical, develop-
ment. What has been the reason of this sluggishness
on the part of our agriculture ; simply that adherence
to traditional practice, in defiance of scientific experi-
ment and demonstration, which the ignorance or
irninity of prejudice cherishes as a meritorious ho-
mage to the " wisdom of our ancestors," in respect of
so many arts and institutions in which we are most
behind the progressing genius of our age. In agri-
.ulture, this is a principle which elevates mere tech-
nical imitation above the merits of the most enlightened
liscovery, the value of the most improved agents, or
the success of the most productive new combinations.
In portions of the Metropolitan Counties, themselves,
especially in parts of Middlesex, Kent, and Surrey,
a system of slovenly farming, which would scarcely
have discredited the primitive practice that may have
prevailed under the lleptarchy, still attests the
naneful influence of this " as you were" principle.
better and a brighter day dawns upon us. Geo-
logical chemistry opens an inexhaustible treasury of
really " useful knowledge" to the practical agricul-
turist. Chemical analysis detects and developes new
priciples of fermentation, new combinations of gases,
snd new modes of extracting ammoniacal salts 'from
various substances hitherto unapplied or unknown for
the important purposes of manure. In the foremost
rank of those illustrious contemporaries, foreigners and
Englishmen, to whom agriculture is most largely in-
debted for its improving prospects, we recognise the
Admirable LitniG. lie has approved himself the
chemist of the soil. But let us be just to our own
countrymen. If COBDEN had not "read " his poli-
deal lectures to our landowners, the land would have
derived no benefit from the chemical experiments and
discoveries of LIEBIG. The political economist first
wrought the conviction in our agriculturists, that
they must devise securer bases to rely on for their
Future incomes than the average yield of the land,
alder the existing system of tillage and dressing,
and existing prices of produce, would continue to
give. When they had once been induced seriously
to ponder on this conviction, the chemist of the soil
demonstrated by what means that yield might be
so largely and economically increased as to go near
satisfactorily to achieve the desired object. But in other
tuarters, Mr. L. Fox, of Yorkshire, Mr. W. PITT, of
Lymington, Scc , have shown how enormous a saving
nay be accomplished in the aggregate of seed wheat
annually sown in England and Wales, and how in-
•onceivable an increase may certainly be derived from
libbling the corn at given and regular distances.
We entreat the agriculturists to persevere in the
.vise course of careful observation and experiment
apon which so great a body among them appear to
save embarked in good earnest. But they will greatly
srr if they stop short at these improvements of system
,nd processes. Let them be up and doing for the re-
moval of such substantial grievances as they endure
from the game-laws, and the preservation of game.
Let them learn to see through the one-sided conces-
sions of selfish landlords—who offer, like Sir R. PEEL,
to abandon their high " taboo" upon hares and rabbits
m the express understanding, however, that the phea-
;ants and partridges shall still be maintained, like
he Praetorian cohorts of old, in a sort of fortified
;amp—and the insolence of a legalised impunity of a
()articular body of men, who care nothing for the
.acrifice of human life and liberty which follows on
he practice of poaching—poaching being the inevita-
sle consequence of game-preserving. Let the agri-
:ulturists look to the county Members, and insist on
their procuring the repeal of those obnoxious laws,
under cover of which, as a Wiltshire correspondent of
the Times has lately proved, a farmer may be sub-
iected,V pheasants alone, to the destruction of grow-
ing crops to the extent of 2501. or 3001. a year. We
would fain hope that if the tenant farmers succeed in
)cashing these social as well as professional improve-
nents, we shall hear no more of their emulating, in
their turn, the tyranny of some great landowners
(who are also game preservers), towards them, in
straining the law to its utmost severity of tension
tgainst the wayfaring pauper, or the wandering men-
licant for purloining a turnip or burning a faggot.
These are moral ameliorations in which we feel at
least as much interested as in those material ones,
upon which they will soon have so much reason tc;
upo
congratulate themselves.

The last news from Otaheite, though not destitute

,f some features of novelty and interest, does not
present any aspects upon );r:-,',,74 we deem it expedient

at present, to offer any observations.. But, though
further discussion may tend to prolcng angry feelings
between the Governments of France and England,
it must not be anticipated that the violence which has
been offered by the French authorities to the native
Princess who has appealed to our protection, and the
insult which has been cast upon the dignity of the
British nationality by their injurious treatment of
Mr. PRITCHARD, will not very often be turned upon
the wrong-doers, in the shape of a self-recorded case
of political delinquency, which, like cases of moral
delinquency, is sure in the end to entail upon the
actors in it, its own punishment. Our present
purpose is simply to express an ardent hope that the
British Government, warned by the disastrous conse-
quences of such anomalous interventions in the affairs
of remote, and barbarous or semi-civilized countries,
as have signalised their shilly-shally, would-and-
would-not treatment of New Zealand and Otaheite,
will turn its most prompt attention to a general revi-
sion of the whole condition of those scattered settle-
ments, which it has but recently acknowledged by
specific acts of sovereignty, or which it still leaves to
the same ambiguous constructions of possessory or
non-possessory title, that in both hemispheres have
been of such fatal development. We take leave
rapidly to name a few, a very few, of these doubtful
or " no-men's" lands, as to which, if the principles
were to prevail that have been followed by all the other
maritime nations of Europe in scores of instances,
the title of our flag to paramount and primary
authority cannot be questioned, if it be specifically
and at once asserted. The exigencies of our com-
merce, and the political defences of our broken range
of transmarine and colonial dominion, make this
assertion an affair of momentous interest and in-
describable importance. The eighty or ninety years'
postponement of the boundary line between the
conterminous frontiers of British North America and
of the United States ;—the north-eastern and north-
western lines of demarcation—the rights over the
Oregon territory and the mouth of the Colombia
River—the New Zealand districts, over which the
title of aboriginal owners is not, and those over which
it is, alienated or defeased :—these suggest a few of
the more modern exemplifications of the luxury and
safety of undetermined rights, unascertained titles,
or unsurveyed possessions. We should like to know
in what condition and under what settlement the
lands, once the property of an African Association,
and afterwards transferred to this Government, now
are, on the Gold Coast ? Is there no conflict of
pretensions between ourselves and Holland, or Den-
mark, as to any portion of them ? Do the stipula-
tions of our treaties with the Sovereigns of Ashantee
and other neighbouring Powers expressly recognise
us in the possessions we virtually hold ? Are our
settlements on the Senegal Coast altogether aban-
doned; or, if not, are they in private British hands ?
Have the pretensions of the French in the Portendic
affair been finally conceded, since Dr. LUSLIINGTON
retired from the House of Commons to
the Admiralty tribune ? Do we retain any hold
on the valuable gun trade, of which it may not be
proposed, from a deficiency on our part of diplomatic
recognitions, some fine morning, by one of the two
French Chambers, to deprive us under the force of a
string of " resolutions," after the fashion of Mr.
President TYLER'S management ? Has Portugal
been left without a loophole through which to rake us
in our possessions on the eastern and south-eastern
coast of Africa, where she still affects, in her political
decrepitude, to trace the footsteps of her more vigo-
rous youth of maritime enterprise and discovery ?
On the southern coasts of America, do we mean to
retain as Crown possessions, or do we intend to aban-
don, the Falkland Islands, whose ill-understood value
as a refitting and refreshment station for our navy
about 80 years since, nearly victimised us for the
purposes of Spain, practising on our ignorance
or our credulity, our apathy or our rash-
ness ? Is it intended in the Indian Archi-
pelago to allow Holland to affix the seal of pro-
scription, stamped by our own unaccountable acqui-
escence in her crafty policy, on that decree of virtual
exclusion by which she has so far succeeded in shut-
ting us from the richest markets in the Eastern
World, after all that our courage, capital, and ad-
venture had opened and accomplished in these lati-
tudes during the last three centuries? We shall re-
turn to this subject on the occasion of entering into
some examination as to the operation of our existing
treaty with the Netherlands' Government, of the
year 1824. 'We believe it to be a subject that, if not
seasonably entertained, will be forced on the attention
of our Legislature and Government next session.

According to accounts from Madrid of the 29th
ult., the QUEEN had published an amnesty in favour
of the persons implicated in the late rising at Lo-
grono and Huesca, excepting, however, the general
officers, public functionaries, and the leaders of the
rebellion. On the 28th the Chamber of Deputies
met, when the President announced that a number
of Members had seceded, and given in their resigna-
tions. These resignations, which amounted to seven-
teen, were referred to the Minlster of the Interior.
In reference to this step, which shows that the
Members regard their attendance as useless, Senor
OftENSE said the Ministry intended to govern with
the co-operation of Parliament, for which it enter-
tained the greatest consideration ; and it would
labour, as far as in its power lay, to organise the
country in a becoming and definitive manner. The
Chamber afterwards adjourned to the 2d instant.
On the 28th ult. the Three per Cents. were done at
32 for cash, and 32 at sixty days ;Jthe Five per Cents.
at 23 3-8 at sixty days ; and the Debt without interest
at 7-1-, at sixty days.

The Paris papers are entirely occupied with dis-
cussions on the result of the elections in the Chamber
of Deputies, but as nothing certain is yet known
respecting the fate of the Ministry, each party
reckons on success—the Opposition from the small
majority obtained by M. DEBELLEYME as Vice-
President, and the Ministry from the vast majority
obtained in the Committee for drawiilg up the Ad-
dress. It would be of no interest to the English readei
to give lengthened extracts from the articles in these
papers on the question. It is stated in some of the

journals that M. ST. MARC GIRARDIN is to move an
amendment on the Address, objecting to the terms
of peace granted to Morocco, and that a dead heat
between the parties is extremely probable. If the
Journal des Debats, however, continues to take its tone
from the Hon. Member as formerly, the report must
he without foundation. According to that paper the
Conservatives are as much united as ever, and the
appointment of the last Committee is given as a proof.
" A moment of indecision," says the writer of an
article on the subject, " in the majority which sup-
ports the policy of the Cabinet had been near giving
the advantage to the Opposition in the last ballot that
took place for the formation of the bureaux. The
Opposition was in too great a hurry to triumph, and if
some persons had speculated on the division of the Con-
servative party, they will be obliged to:postpone their
hopes. For our parts, we have never ceased to count
on the good sense and good feeling of the majority.
We had appealed from the secret ballot on proper
names to the frank and open discussion on things them-
selves, and our expectation has not been deceived
Yesterday the question of things had replaced those
of persons, and the majority which intrigue had
a moment shaken has been found as firm and com-
pact as ever. The Ministry did not refuse to answer
any of the questions addressed to them, whereas
it may be remarked that the most influen-
tial members of the Opposition, who in similar
cases usually draw forth precise declarations from
the Cabinet, have shown an intentional reserve, and
refrained from speaking. After this first trial, the
Cabinet can await with confidence the public discus-
sion. The Conservative majority has rallied, the
former situation is re-established." The Globe
takes rather a more serious view of the late divi-
sions, and in the following extract evidently alludes to
Count MOLE and his friends, who had entered on a

line of policy of which they seem now to repent :
" The situation of things, over which the coalition
had triumphed for a moment in spreading a mist, has
just appeared to well-thinking persons in all its truth
and clearness. They saw, in fact, that the question
was not merely to change the Ministers, but to alter
the present line of policy, which is a grave matter,
particularly when this policy is that of order,
ndustry, and peace. They perceived that
the question was to break the English alliance
which is at present the most solid support of good
harmony in Europe, and the most efficient instrument
of civilisation. These results alarmed the men who
are seriously the friends of their countri, and their