The Sun.
London, England, 1828-08-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

From the Irish Papers we collect that there
is no lack of circumstances favourable to a repe-
tition of those election contests, on the frequency
and wise management of which the Catholic
body may expect to build in all the forms of'
constitutional punctilio, a perfect representative
organization. Mr. Cuffe, an Orange member
for the Borough of Tralee, is dead, and a Ca-
tholic canvass is already on foot, to provide, or,
if the plan fails, to worry his successor. A. letter
pfreoamrs tilirie indefatigable
anothercol pen
um of 0
fo
ir Mr.
Journal,O'Connell
lvi ap i
ici, -,
if it does not
.manifest very clearly the grounds
rt
n tort'
nof Tralee,b,ee before
e
almost
another election triumph for the Liberals, fur-
nishes at least such facts with regard to the his-
oParliament,andm o sstuc venturedl i t
ao
sp lil cos of an argument
ad verecundia, when that history shall he
brought s—
to H
soatyi,s
no
oo f
Houseo tri -
oof Lords—can evade, in considering a Bill for
the future disposal of the Borough. We have
heard of seats negotiated and played for, and
the
sacred
shot for, and bribed for by the vote, by the
dozen votes, by the gross-7,a. seats sold in rep.
version like church livings, sold like opera-boxen
for alternate seasons, sold for cash, for al-11mi_
aties, br yl
nauction
e; a
dbuts u
sthis
that
ts
atligingeiv
given
first
portionl
risi_tie so
t time,l of
most
f
bodytioon trusts—has of
the
thieu kingdom---the
been locked
constituent
of
all
l I ra
up by marriage-settlement, as a nidus of goldN,
eggs, to support in splendour the offspring of the
happy nuptials about to be celebrated the mo-
ment after the virtuous parchment should be
signed. To this exemplary instrument, more-
over, a former: Judge of the Court of King's
Bench in Ireland is actually one of the trustees.
The end avowed was, a provision for youngel.
children. The constitutional existence of pos-
terity was mortgaged, that successive generations
of well-born .vultures should be fattened on this
mass of perennial corruption, while the countr%
will be told that marriage settlements and " char-
tered rights" being equally holy in the eye of the
law, are immovable obstacles to the free repie-
sentation of the people. We do not know how
this struggle for a just and honest return to Par-
liament of a member fitted for the duties of le-
gislation will terminate. It is at least desirable
that the effort should- be made. But we are
sure that every prudent man will agree with us
that nothing can be so impolitic, or full of peril,
as a system which eternally exhibits its own
practice in direct opposition to acknowledged
principles, and impresses on those who honestly
seek reform, that no reform will ever he attain,
able but through a revolution which begins by
sweeping away all the subject matter of gradual
and tranquil amendment. Mr. O'Connell ap-
pears, by his address to the inimbitants, very
.earnest in his wish that some Protestant gentle-
man of independent spirit should espouse and
stand upon the popular interest at Tralee_
Though vain the effort, should the borough be
in fact .a close one, there is more sense in this
than in. his. own vain, abortive, and ridiculous
election for a borough, which, up to the present
day, he has by his mock representation of it, iti
effect diffranchised.—Times.

It is quite amusing to bear those Journak
that used to inveigh so bitterly against the re-
tention, by the late Duke of York, of the high
office of Commander-in-Chief, on the pretext of
such an appointment being unconstnutionat„
from his Royal Highness's near relationship to
the Crown—it is quite amusing, we say, to heat
these same constitutional and consistent politi-
cians lament the dismissal, or rather resignation,
of the Duke of Clarence. If it were unconsti-
tutional to intrust the one situation to the Duke
of York, it was much more to intrust the other
to the Duke of Clarence. When the former
was appointed to the head of the army, the King
was comparatively • a young man, and the la-
mented Princess Charlotte stood between the
Royal Duke and even the hope of his being
the Heir Presumptive. Not so was it when th,-
Duke of Clarence was made Lord High Admi-
ral. He stood next in degree to the throne. It
was possible that one day he might have been
inspecting hulks, or deciding the superiority of
sailing cutters, and the next, King of England.
He might have been to-day impeached by the
(.o:nd omt ion ons
of
morrow, in
Englandthe capacity of Monarch, been
for high misdemeanours,
called upon to sign his own condemnation. And
will any man of moderate information, much less
one desirous to be deemed a patriot, say that
this was a dilemma in which the King's servants,
and the Heir Presumptive, ought to have beet,.
placed ? But the appointment emanated from
the wisdom of the late Mr. Canning, awl, there-
fore, say the liberals, it was a commrndable and
constitutional appointment. We wish these gen-
tlemen would, for their own sakes, be a little
more consistent. No one, we should think,
who is not blinded by prejudice or faction, will
be so rash as to affirm that the Minister of Ma-
rine should not be a Cabinet Minister. The
Duke of Clarence had no seat in the Cabinet ;
and not having a seat it was impossible he could
know what was desirable to be done, without
being at once made acquainted with its most
secret designs. At the present moment, when
we are su imperatively called upon to watch
closely the movements of Foreign Powers, to
make preparations and yet be silent, to have a
Beet in every sea, a pilot at the mouth of every
harbour of Europe, an equipped force, like a
masked battery, the guns of which, the lighted -
First t the
Lord be o
i'.
matches of which, cannot be seen—atualy
it is absolutely necessary that the . .
when tale balance of Europe tremblesFoi
'net Minister. Oe the Admiralty should be a Cabinet
of
this the Noble Duke at the head the Admi-
nistration has been for some time aware. Per_
thought, that this is i
play—for gunpowder rePrlemgs--or mere fresh
water show, and heavy Treasury bills. That
the Duke of Clarence, like every member of the
haps, too, he thought, .as
Royal Family', was. capable of' filling honour.
ably whatever situation he might be called upon
to fill, we are far from denying. 1 I rLiat lie re-
' warded merit----was in heart and soul a sailor—
was unronintbig in his attention to his duties,
and accessible to
all
applicants, we also freely
-.oncede. No
ne can estimate more highly his
Royal Highness' . ~,,
s virtues than we do ; but still.
emisid ..
ellng his rank, and his relationship to the
Thron
-e, we still cannot refuse our approbation
to .that prudent policy which advised 163 resig-
iiation.---Ntu Times. ot
others
eirns, moment.

The proceedings of the Reformation Society
at Bristol, on Monday the 4th and Tuesday the
:nth of August inst, have caused an extraordi-
nary sensation in that part of the country. Tht-
Report of the first day only, in the Bristol
Mercury of Tuesday last, occupies no less than
eight closely printed columns. All the argu-
ment, nearly, was on the side of the Catholics,
who both i►► gentlemanly conduct, and in elo-
quence, had greatly the advantage of their adver-
,:irie,. The Catholic Priests mustered %tong)

there being present, the Rev. F. Edgwortk, the
Rev. M. M'Donnell, and the Rev. P. 0. Far-
rell, while only one clergyman of the establish-
ment stood forward in defence of the Reforma-
tion, and he deemed it prudent to disappear on
the second day. There were, indeed, some•Die-
senting clergymen present, and one of them, the
Rev. Mr. Phillips, relieved Capt. Noel in the
chair the first day, and it was taken by another
Dissenter, the Rev. Mr. Hall, the second.—.
The Bristol Mercury introduces a long artiele
with the title " Reformation Society defeated."
—A resolution had, it seems, been passed for
forming a committee for managing the affairs of
the Society, to which Mr. 'W. Harris moved the
following addition :
" That. it be an instruction to the said Committee
to examine the Liturgy of the Church of England as
by law established at the Reformation, and in use at
the present day, and to report to the next General
Meeting of this Society, whether there still remain
in such' Liturgy any relics of Popery, and whether
it would be conducive to the principles established
at the Reformation, and to the interests of this So-
ciety, that such veil,- of Popery should be expunged
from the Liturgy, and to consider of the best means
by which such expulsion may be secured."
This, of course, was not the Reformation
which was in contemplation, and the proposition
dispersed the Meeting immediately, so that no-
thing was determined. The Clergy of the Es-
tablishment must have had a suspicion of the
danger ; for, notwithstanding the boast of Capt.
Cordon, that he was countenanced by the most
influential Clergy of the diocese, they prudently
kept out of the way. The Bristol Mercury re-
marks on this—" It was an odd way of counte-
nancing them to turn their backs upon them."
The beat of the matter was, that the cause of the
Established Church was thrown upon the-Popish
Priests. The Rev. Mr. M'Donnell, conceiving
that the Reformation Society, in a Report,
had libelled the Established Clergy, pro-
ceeded to vindicate that body in a very amus-
ing manner.—" The paper I hold in my hand,"
he said, " is the Catholic Journal for the
24th May, and in it I find extracts-- from the
Report of this Society, which, I maintain, are
foul Miele on the Ministers of the Church by
law established. The Committee (says the
Report) cannot take leave of England without
remarking, that the British Reformation Society
opens the only probable channel for the con-
veyance of scriptural truth to the lower orders of
its Roman Catholic inhabitants;—(Hear, hear.)
Sir, I deny it—the Clergy of the Established
Church are well known to be a pious—(A
laugh)—a learned—( A laugh)—and indefati-
gable body of Christian teachers.—(General
laughter.)—ln particular, Sir, they are univer-
sally celebrated for their attention to the poor—
(Continued laughter)—ever willing to deprive
themselves of the comforts of a well-provided
table to administer to their temporal wants, thus
proving the sincerity of their compassion for the
spiritual infirmities of their people.—(Great
laughter.)—The Committee proceed While
this class of our fellow-subjects in the sister
country are contemplated by every religious in-
stitution, and are beginning to be viewed by the
Established Clergy as part of their parochial
charges,' &c. What, Sir, are we to be told, that
after having for nearly 300 years watched over the
Reformation with pious assiduity, the Established
Clergy are only beginnisig to regard the benighted
Papists as a part of their parochial charges ? Sir,
this is too bad—l stand up for the Clergy of the
Established Church—(great laughter)—and I
maintain that they are calumniated by this So-
ciety." The truth is, and Captain Gordon and
Captain Noel have found this out ere now, no
doubt, that the Church of England is more
favourably disposed towards the Catholics, than
to the circulators of Bibles without note or
comment. The Church of England is con-
eidered by Foreign Protestants generally, to be
not Protestant, but fundamentally Catholic, the
King supplying the place of the Prince-Bishop
of Rome. " The English Church," it is said
in a learned and eloquent volume, published at
Heidelberg, in 1826, entitled Considerations on
Protestantism, " as it builds upon tradition as
a substantive rule of belief obligatory on the
conscience, thereby evinces her complete coinci-
dence with Catholicism, and acknowledges a
doctrine not only foreign to Protestantism, but
absolutely hostile to it." " In this Priesthood
our attention is above all called to that im-
mutability of its nature, which fixes it under
all the mutations which time brings forth to
the place first chosen, which bids defiance to
every innovation, whether truth or error, and
amidst the incessant changes of opinions and events
of a long series of generations, remains uniformly
the same even in the most accidental of its forms,
and At the very time when it seems to yield to
the destiny with which it combats. A certain
lave innocuousness into which the Episcopal
Church would seem for several generations to
delight, may at first sight be deemed a proof of
her Innocence ; but in her interior she conceals
the same poison, from which the remaining part
of society was only able to free itself after con-
vulsions of 100 years. The same exclusive
estimation of her hierarchical form agreeably to
which she will recognise no visible worship of
God, except that in ceremonies, and those cere-
monies her own ; the same claims to -authority,
founded on a divine commission, which makes
every independent religious conviction, as a
pretension which in injuring her, is injurious
so the Divine Majesty ; and with respect to her
relation to the State, always the same repugnance
to the principle of civil liberty, and her hereditary
predilection for the doctrines of unlimited poli-
tical subjection ; because, in the eternal concate-
nation of things, the latter is favourable to pros-
tration of mind, and the former is favourable to
freedom of conscience. Its; ey a Prince
like one of the Stuarts, ad a Parqoires onlliament like
some of those which were at their command, to
revive a Laud and a Sheldon, and it would not
he necessary to seek in the personal qualities of
esich men, the motives for an activity, which is
to be explained by their office, and only by it,
In All times the English Clergy have had not
fewer members distinguished for :virtues, and
%;ot more members distinguished for vices, than
the Clergy c)f other countries ; but the good or
the former was peculiar to them individually,
whereas the bad of the latter was a common
property of their Corporation ; and however
much the members of this Church may change
and improve and be deserving of esteem as men,
they must cease to be Priests before they can
cease to be bad." Such is the opinion eeter-
taMed among Protestants on the Continent, of
the Church of England, which, in constitution
and in principle, they contend, is nearly as much
Catholic as the Gallican Church. " A distinct
al
idea of the nature of the EpiSCop Church,"
adds the writer, " is the more important to
triery Protestant, as the more clearly will it ap-
pear to him from this example, that Protest.
antism by no means consists in the mere set-
tine aside of the authority of the Pope, or
al mere changes of certain hierarchical forms.

More or less incompatible with all changes,
it never owes its existence to the mere
absence of any one of these forms. Religi-
ous restraint may be found in London as
well as at Rome ; as despotism may be found in
Republics as well as Monarchies. And as that
people only deserve to be called free in which in-
dividuals are free, so that Church is alone de-
serving of the name of Protestant which is not
only independent, but also free in each of its
members, and in which the rights of conscience
of each individual appear secured against do-
mestic constraint, as well as against foreign do-
minion." The very principle of recognising the
authority of tradition, will always render the
Established Church slow in circulating Bibles.
The English Church owes the most of its peen-
, liarities to tradition, and appeals to a Church
' which existed and promulgated the Christian re-
ligion, long before,any of the Books of the New
Testament were written. The consecration of
the Bible alone as a rule, would shake the au•
thority of much which the Church wishes to be
held sacred. It is therefore quite obvious that
the Reformation Society will never be cordially
supported by the Clergy of the Church of Eng-
land, who must always be more inclined in their
hearts to the Catholic Priests, than to lay inter-
lopers like Captains Gordon and Noel.—Morn-
ing Chronicle.
Our readers -will observe, from our report of
the proceedings of the Vice-Chancellor's Court,
that the Lord Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor
have very properly preferred the interests of the
public to the convenience of the three distin-
guished Barristers on whose representation the
original intention of meeting in October had
been abandoned. The Vice-Chancellor informed
the Bar,
.yesterday, that it had been agreed on
with the Lord Chancellor, that the sittings of
the Court should commence on the 16th of
October, and the reason assigned was, that from
the great time employed in motions and cause
petitions, and from little progress made in the
bankrupt petitions, it was necessary that the
sittings of the Court should be resumed at an
earlier day than the beginning of November.
What we stated with regard to the dissatisfac-
tion of many members of the Bar at delay is
confirmed by his Honour, who very properly
observed, in answer to Mr. Sugden, that " how-
ever personally inconvenient the earlier meeting
might be to the Bar and to the Judge, there
was some sacrifice due to the public." We are
glad to hear that suitors are at last allowed to
be something. One would have supposed, from
the language previously used, that suitors were
merely for the convenience of the Court and the
Bar, and not the Court and Bar for the conve-
nience of suitors.—lbid.

Though there has not been the same degree of
mawkish sensibility shown in the case of Corder
as there was in that of Thurtell, there has been
by far too great a disposition to credit his asser-
tions, and, as it were, to sympathise with his
sufferings. Among other things, his confession
has been taken for granted; though it is just as
likely to have been untrue in its detail as his de-
fence was. They were both made under the
same asseverations of truth. The one is now
acknowledged and proved—what no one ever
doubted it to be—a vile and wicked fabrication ;
and so may his assertion be that he had not the
poniard about him at the time of the murder.
Can any one doubt that he inveigled his victim
from her home on purpose to murder her ?
Does any one believe that he took with him the
loaded pistols for any ether purpose ?—And
yet he would have the world believe that " when
they left her father's house they began quarrelling
about the burial of the child, and other sub-
jects ; that a scuffle ensued, and that at the time
she had hold of him, he took the pistol from his
side-pocket, and fired; that he had no sharp instru-
ment about him at the time ; and that no other
wound but that made by the pistol was inflicted by
him." We do not deny that circumstantial evidence
must always be received with caution ; and that,
in the case of the post mortenz examination of a
corpse so far decomposed as this appears to have
been, great reserve should he attached to the
testimony of even surgical witnesses. But if
this man's confession is to be believed, why did
he not explain the purpose for which the sword
had been sharpened, and the purpose for which
the pistols were-loaded ? and why did he not ac-
knowledge or explain away the lie by which his
victim was induced to leave her home, in the
disguise, too, which he compelled her to assume ?
In Short, where a whole transaction is bottomed
and carried on in falsehood ; and when, after his
doom is irrevocably sealed, the hard-hearted
monster has the hypocritical assurance to treat
confession as a Popish ceremony, to which his
fine Protestant feelings are opposed, it is not at
all too much, or at all uncharitable, to assume
that he who has been " a liar from theibeginning,"
may have been so to the last ; and that the very
last falsehood he utters is resorted to to throw
a doubt over the testimony of those whose evi-
dence went so far towards producing the just
judgment with which his crimes have at length
been visited.—Morning Herald.
The resignation of the Lord High-Admiral,
and the causes which led to it, are the subject
of universal remark, and we may also add, so
far as we have been able to acquire a knowledge
of the general feeling, of universal regret. The
conscientious and upright manner in which his
Royal Highness discharged the duties of his
high office—the determination which he mani-
fested, from the commencement, not to permit
any undue influence to displace the juster
Claims of merit, as a certain Hibernian Se-
cretary can testify—the numerous wrongs which
he redressed, and was engaged in redress-
ing—the uniform attention, bringing with
it, as a necessary consequence, attention on
the part of others, which he bestowed on
every department of the Navy—and last,
' though not least, the affable and condescend-
ing manner in which he listened to the oppressed
and to the needy—all tended to render his Royal
Highness as great a favourite with the Navy as
the late Duke of 'York was with the Army, and
to inspire the country with hopes that it would
be rescued from the state of degradation to which
and T,estorei. once more to its former al-
it '634 been consigned by the minions of corrup-
tion,soepa.a.oveur.4
mßitilitt.artyh eves er e
m hopesier
nhda v
ae
d
_ciency at.militar G 1 d
that the army shall have
Government—it
at the flors Guards
the ascendancy, and the Duke of Clarence,
ovNeVreumhen is the order of the day
in accordance with it, has been dismissed.—
The next step, we presume, will be to place
a General Officer at the head of the Navy—
at least there will be no more isonsisteney
in
such a step than in having a military chief as the
head of the Government, and another as Secre-
tary for the Colonies. The bank-paper
gentry
ought, therefore, to be on the look out ; for as
times go, here is no hope for them. The present
Premier is a man of decision ; and it cannot, ill
consequence, be suppos:ed for a moment that he

will tolerate in his Cabinet gentlemen who haVe
not made up their minds respecting what they are
to do. The next question is, who will be Lord
High Admiral ? We answer, no one. The same
jealousy which dismissed the Duke of Clarence
will effectually interpose to prevent the appoint-
ment of another. Mow then is the Navy—we
write the word advisedly—to be disposed of?—
To Lord Melville ? The very name stinks in
the nostrils of the country, and is a terror to
every well-wisher of the Navy'. Who then ?
We know not ; but that it will be a creature of
the great Chief there need be no doubt ; and
that Chief will be ousted in no great length of
time is as certain, as that in no instance but one
has he wielded the immense power with which
he has been invested, either to the
.satisfaction, or
to the benefit of the country.—Morning Ad-
vei fixer.