The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-24 00:00:00

Mina E iy

LONDON, MONDAY, MARCH 24, 1845.

The Established Church of this country appears to
have fallen, in our times, upon evil fortunes. We
are sorry for the fact; but we still more sincerely
deplore the aggravation of her mischances, which she
must experience in the knowledge that they are
almost exclusively visited upon her by the misconduct
of her own ministers. It is our profound respect for
her doctrine, our grateful recollection of the signal
occasions on which she has nobly identified her own
independent existence and action with those of civil
liberty, that have caused us to view the progress of
Puseyite innovation, bigotry, and contumaciousness
with so much apprehension and disgust. Civil and
religious liberty is too noble a " birthright," God
knows ! to be sacrificed for " a mess" of ceremonial
mummery. Yet there are scandals more disgraceful
to the character of the Church, so far as this is to be
collected from the deportment of her ministers, than
the wildest follies, the most solemn impertinences of
that ecclesiastical coxcombry, which is now vexing
her peace and compromising her welfare. Of these
scandals none are so flagrant, or so offensive to all the
common sympathies of our nature, as the ebullitions
of intolerant bigotry which certain country parsons
appear to be given to, from a self-consciousness, one
might almost infer, of inability to attain dis-
tinction in their calling by any more le-
gitimate means, such as the orthodoxy of their
doctrine, the purity of their lives, the extent of their
learning, or the superior Christian charity and
humility of their bearing. We read in the Wiltshire
Independent a case of " Clerical Bigotry Extraordi-
nary," stated to have recently occurred at War-
minster, which would have seemed scarcely credible
to us had it been told even of some remote village in
the heart of Spain,—the head-quarters of priestly
domination and of lay ignorance. An aged and re-
spectable female, whose parents were Members of the
Established Church, and she had been herself bap-
tized a member of it, married, many years ago, a
member of the Unitarian Church of the same place,
and with him had since attended its service. After
being afflicted with many years of ill health, she was
seized with a sudden affection on the 6th of this
month, which next day terminated her existence.
She had brought up a family of fifteen children.
Four of these lie buried in the parish church-yard of
Warminster, one of them having been interred there
only last year (the victim, we infer, of some distress-
ing casualty.) Of the survivors, many are respect-
ably settled in life. Iler widowed husband, mourn-
ing for his aged partner, to whom he had
been united for fifty-seven years, applied to the
parish sexton to re-open the grave which had
so lately closed upon their daughter, with
whose remains it was her wish that her own should
be deposited. The Vicar, Mr. FATE, interposed his
written veto, in a notice addressed to the widowed
husband, in its tone so unmanly, so unchristian, so
inhuman, and withal so insolent, that we should com-
promise our duty as public journalists were we to
abstain from holding up this precious document to the
public indignation it so richly merits. The old man,
bowed down with years and humbled by his recent
affliction, was overwhelmed at finding himself;at such
a time, and under such circumstances, the object of
animosity and accusations which he knew to be so
unfounded. But his present anxiety being to fulfil
the last wishes of his wife, by laying her bones near
those of their daughter, he obtained and exhibited a
certificated copy of the entry of her baptism from
the parish-church register, concluding that—as we
we are fully prepared to contend it legally was—this
document would be sufficient to obviate the difficulty
which had been raised to the burial of the deceased
according to her instructions. But all further nego-
tiations were fruitless; and he was at last compelled
to commit the body to unconsecrated ground, apart
from the mortal relics of the children and family
with whom, in life, she had been so fondly con-
nected. The matter has been since brought under
the notice of the Bishop, who has promised to insti-
gate inquiries into the facts.

We now come to the letter itself of this Reverend
Vicar. It is a production, in point of style, feeling,
and expression, evory way worthy of the persecuting
spirit and paltry bigotry which dictated it, and
though as a composition it be absolutely beneath
criticism, it is not the less expedient to analyze it,
paragraph by paragraph. The time has arrived at
which, if the Established Church is to retain its
former influence over the attachment and respect of
its flock, the high-dying pretensions of these " chur-
lish priests," must be distinctly and permanently put
down. If the superior: olergy, the diocesan or the
spiritual courts will not or cannot interfere with effect
for such a purpose, the Legislature must do so by
express declaratory enactments, for nothing short of
these will satisfy the growing impatience of the public
for the repression of these offensive outbreaks of petu-
lant intolerance and spiritual tyranny. Let it not be
objected to us that we are prejudging the
merits of the case before us, pending the
result of investigations which the Bishop of
the diocese has promised to institute. No investiga-
tion can alter the admissions of this amiable Vicar',
own letter to the ancient widower. We assume that
the Wiltshire Independent has not been imposed upon
by a forgery, and we, therefore, without hesitation,
denounce the language we are about to quote as
equally presumptuous and cruel. What says this
minister of peace—this servant of Him, whose Divine
mission it was to proclaim " on earth, peace and good
will towards men "—to the aged and sorrow-stricken
parishioner, desiring to have the remains of his wife
committed to the same grave which had formerly
received those of her daughter ? He commences his
letter in a strain of unornamental address, such as—
out of the Church—we apply rather to dogs than to
men. From the " ILsisEs" which " leads" the papers
all margin of pity, recognition, or concern, in respect
of a suffering fellow-creature, is carefully cut off.
His pointer Ponto, instead of his parishioner, might
be the animal addressed by this meek Vicar ; but a
touch of the odium theologicum, in its full intensity,
soon shows itself :—" HAINES—I understand your
wife has died as awfully suddenly' as others of your
family." The purport of this in uendo developes itself in
the next sentence—" She has died in an awful and
damnable heresy" Humane, gentle, considerate,
soothing, Christianlike pastor! Just the topic this,
and just the time to discuss it, for a wounded spirit.
If the reverend writer conscientiously believed that his
Unitarianism was a " damnable, awful heresy"—and
just the happy selection of the moment for this pal-
pably hinting that the "awfully-suddenly" departings
of the deceased and of her children before her were the
judgments of an offended Godhead on the form of
religious faith which they had adopted, or on them
for that adoption—" which renders it impossible for
her to be buried in the church-yard ? I refits, her
burial there." The italics are this humble-minded
parson's ; and so is the law announced in this passage ;
his law is as worthless as his divinity, and his logic
still worse than his law. For what has the abstract
criminality of a profession of " damnable heresy" to
do with the physical " impossibility" of burying in
the churchyard the dust of her who professed it?
It might make it impossible for his exalted consent to
given, and that was probably what this man of double
adverbs and a triple armour of folly, bigotry, and in-
humanity meant to say. "If you choose to have
her buried, without any service, you may do so."
Gentle spirit! Permission freely given for what he
had it not in his power to refuse. This, however, is
but a little gratuitous impertinence. Let us now
mark how far a bigot's gratuitous insolence may
carry him. To this old man, for seven and fifty years
the husband of the respectable woman deceased
(themselves and their children having been reared

and nurtured as parishioners of Warminster), he adds,
" Or lest I should appear to deal harshly with you"
(never suspecting, holy man, that his harshness was
an obdurate, strong, heart-tearing fact), " I will pay
the ("barge for her burial, in the unconsecrated ground
at Townsend ; but in the church-yard, with the burial
service, she shall not be buried."

He pay the charge of the poor woman's burial !
Had the widow's husband submitted to such contume-
lious charity, he would have been guilty of a
" heresy" to domestic affections, to the cause of those
civil rights, to the vindication of which every man is
bound by the condition of their enjoyment, more
" damnable" than we shall trust ourselves to describe.
Least of all could we trust ourselves to the calmness
necessary for such a purpose, after the miserable hy-
pocrisy of the sentiment which follows :—" I trust
Almighty GOD may open your eyes to repentance"—
(of what crime ? The not having attended this Mr.
FARE'S Church, to be edified by his personal ex-
ample of meekness, charity, and love ?) He proceeds,
" if such a thing may be, but I fear you have
sold your Saviour for thirty pieces of silver." This
metaphor is utterly inexplicable to our dull apprecia-
tion. If it have anything to do with some fancied
analogy in the treason of JUDAS ISCARIOT to the con-
duct of Mr. HAINES, Mr. FARE may be in posses-
sion of the application ; an exclusive secret, we
should say, likely to remain as long undiscovered as
that of the composition of the Whitby Doctor's nos-
trums, but by no means calculated to prove as profit-
able to the discoverer. The humane and lowly parson,
who had so abruptly hailed his widowed parishioner
as plain " HAINES," concludes as drily and abruptly
by writing himself " ARTHUR FANE," without one
" of any sort, or one addendum of any kind to
his own designation ; but for the Wiltshire independent
we should never have discovered that the letter had
been written by a clergyman.

But we have a little" vale " for the Reverend Mr.
FANE. He may take our word for it or not, as he
pleases, (we grant him as unlimited a leave in this
matter as he gave about burial in unconsecrated grounds
and for just the same reason—namely, that we cannot
help it); that he will find, in the :event of any legal
proceedings against him, it is every difficult matter to
sustain, on the grounds upon which he rests his denial
of HAINEs'S application—the refusal to bury in his
churchyard a once baptized member of the
Church of England. The law of these cases
was most laboriously argued in two or three
great cases before the late Sir JOHN NicisoLL,
and has been still more recently affirmed by Sir Hint-
BERT JENNER FUST. We state this, be it observed,
in the absence of all allegation that the deceased was
ever a relapsed or abjuring member of the Church of
England. Her baptism seems clearly proved. The
Rev. Mr. FANE may yet have to learn that he has
done " awfully foolishly," as well as cruelly, in ne-
glecting the injunction of a layman and a poet, whose
divinity really seems to us of a higher strain than his
own—in his prayer—(we quote it from memory)
Let not my weak and erring hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
Or deal damnation round the land
On each I deem my foe."

We direct the attention of our readers, and espe-
cially those who are bent on closing public-houses on
Sunday, to a letter of Mr. BUCKINGHAM, in another
part of the paper. Mr. BUCKINGHAM has studied the
question—possibly he is a living example for tee-
totallers, drinks no spirituous liquors, and never
enters a house of refreshment on Sunday. He
is a sincere friend of the lower classes,
anxious for their improvement, and his opinion on
the subject, therefore, is entitled to consideration.
But really he advances no argument against drinking
beer, and gin, and wine, which might not be urged
against the blessings which have been bountifully
provided for rational beings. Before he can gainsay
our argument, he must have recourse to a postulate
which the wisdom of ages has rejected. No man in
his senses will grant that wine and beer are poisons,
or even admit that they are injurious to health, if
taken in moderation. We have the highest autho-
rity for the use of wine. Sr. PAUL, recommended it to
young TIMOTHY ; and one of the most remarkable
miracles on record was the turning of water into
wine. Grave moralists, therefore, can only blame
the abuse, and to that we are as much op-
posed as Mr. BUCKINGHAM or Father MATIIEW.
But to punish one man for the crime of another—to
prevent the sober from drinking three glasses of
wine, or one glass of gin, because drunkards will
swallow three bottles of the former, and one of the
latter—is the very perfection of tyranny. " But,"
say the new moralists, using the most offensive
epithets for houses of refreshment—" the gin-shops,
beer-shops, and taverns, into which so many thou-
sands who have homes of their own, congregate on
the Sundays, are not necessary for such refreshment,
and may therefore fairly be put on the same footing
as all other shops where provisions, goods, or wares
are sold." This is mere assertion, for others can
reply that they are necessary. A man cannot carry
his home with him if he goes with his family
to see the green fields and bright flowers at Putney
or the environs of Gravesend, and if he carries re-
freshment he makes a toil of a pleasure, without serv-
ing one good purpose. Punish the guilty, but let the
innocent go free. The law, as the poor know to
their cost, is sufficiently strong, and the
distinctions between them and the rich
are already sufficiently odious without these
new-fashioned schemes for making men reli-
gious by Acts of Parliament, and sober by forbidding
them the rational enjoyments of life.

Accounts from Madrid, of the 14th inst., state that
the court-martial, held at Vittoria, on the prisoners
implicated in the conspiracy at that place, had deli-
vered its judgment. Several of them were con-
demned to imprisonment for ten years, but none had
been capitally convicted. We, therefore, hope the
reign of terror is passed, and the law is to be admi-
nistered as in civilised states.

The Three per Cents. closed at 35 at GO days ;
the Five per Cents. at 25f for cash, and 26k at GO
days ; and the Coupons at 28i at 30 days.

The articles in the Paris papers relate chiefly to
the Bill for preventing abuses in the formation of
railway companies, and the abolition of vote by
ballot. The Bill on railways, which has been con-
siderably mcdified in Committee, does not appear to
give very general satisfaction, but its object is good,
and, if carried into effect, will check fraudulent
schemes. According to the Bill, any number of spe•
culators may issue prospectuses and deliver shares,
but these must be genuine, and not got up for frau-
dulent purposes, otherwise they become liable to im-
prisonment for not exceeding twelve months, and a
fine of from .500 f. to 10,000 f. The new mode of
voting in the Chamber took place on the annual
grant for military pensions, when the PRESI-
DENT announced that the vote on the ensemble
of the Bill would be made by the new plan
of division. An usher then ascended the tri-
bune, and placed a black urn (for rejection) on the
marble ledge on the left, as the Members generally
ascend for the purpose of voting, and laid a white one
(for adoption) on the opposite side. The two urns
were thus separated by the whole length of the
tribune, or by a distance of about eight feet. The
Members then crossed the tribune to vote. As each
passed the Secretaries, he received a ball which he
dropped into one of the urns. The result of the
division was-238 votes for the Bill, and 4 against
it. This new plan is generally approved of. The
ballot will be resorted to only on particular occasions.
The intelligence from Zurich is to the 18th instant.
It appears from the New Zurich Gazette of that date,
that the Committee appointed by the Diet to examine
the questions respecting the amnesty, the Jesuits,
and the free corps had made their report. They were
unanimous as regardel the amnesty, and came to the
following resolution :—" The cantons of the Valais,
of Tessino, Argovia, and Lucerne, are invited to
rant an amnesty to the authors of political offences
committed of late years." With regard to the
Jesuits they were divided, and proposed that th•
Commissioners should be deputed to address a
friendly invitation to Lucerne, for the reception of
which the Grand Council of the Canton should be
convoked before the termination of the sittings of the
Diet. Upon the question of the free corps the Com-
mission are agreed, with the single exception of M.
DRUEY, who, contrary to the opinion of the majority.,
maintains that the Federal Act is sufficient of itself
to repress any illegalities which they might commit.
The result is unanimity with regard to the amnesty;