The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-31 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, JANUARY ad, 1845.

The retirement of Mr. GLADSTONE from the
Cabinet may be regarded as an event firtunate for
the country, sad a proof that Sir R. PEEL is not in-
different to the anomalous, disgraceful, and dan-
geroto condition of the Protestant Establishment.
From all accounts this gentleman came from college
amplyimbued with the Puseyite doctrines. An article
in a quarterly publication, imputed to him and not
denied, shows that he had lost n: ne of his enthusiasm
tar the new tenets by his political labours, and his
mingling with the world ; and his determination to
leave office rather than aid in checking this dangerous
sect, justifies the Prime Minister in acce,Aing the re-
signation of a colleague, who, with all his abilities,
Must &e a blind bigot, and a dangerous accomplice of
the tied enemies of the reformed religion. This
event *lso leads the public to anticipate some Legisla-
tive measures, by which men, who entered
the Church as Protestants, shall be com-
pelled to adhere to their ordination vows,
er be cut out of a community in which they are

acting the part of traitors and conspirators. But for
some measure of this description Mr. GLADSTONE,
we should imagine, had no reason to differ with his
colleagues, unless, indeed, on their commercial policy,
respecting the admission or exclusion of slave-grown
sugar, &c. It has been said that the scheme of " cer-
tificated growth," finally incorporeed into the Act of
last session, was not one that had previously received
the unanimous support of the Cabinet. Mr. GLAD•
STONE is an excellent man of business, a good speaker,
well acquainted with trade, both practically and
theoretically, and perhaps as fit for the office which
he filled as any Member of the House. Sit R. PEEL,
however, cannot fail to see that the mischiefs caused
by Puseyism are every day increasing—that the
Church has become the laughing-stock of Catholics
and Dissenters—that the Bishops are powerful only
for evil—and that the law alone, by which the
Establishment was constituted, can prevent its
crumbling to pieces. We attribute to him higher
motives, but even the political existence of his party
would urge him to adopt some strong step for
maintaining one of its great bulwarks. No class

of the community are so useful for what are
called " Church and State" purposes; at elections they
are unrivalled in throwing abuse upon their oppo-
nents, in obtaining votes per fas et nefas. The influence
of the hierarchy from it enormous patio !age is almost
unbounded and in ordinary times can easily decide the
fate of rivallpolitical parties at a general election. It
would, therefore, be imprudent in a Tory leader to
allow such a valuable machine to go to wreck. But
putting these considerations out of the question, he
cannot fail to see the many blessings which the ra.
formed religion has bestowed upon his country, the
noble contrast between its principles and those prac-
tised by the Jesuits, of whom the Puseyites are

faithful followers, and tf.e rapid progress which Eng-
land and Holland and Prussia, and other countries
not shackled by ecclesiastical despotism, have made
since the days of the Reformation. With the excep-
tion of France, what Catholic country can show
such marked and beneficial changes ? but it is not
just to make France an exception. Though she has
not adopted the reformed faith, she has adopted many
of the principles which flow from it. She has cast
off the yoke of the priests, she has confined them more
than any other state in Christendom to their peculiar
functions, and has prevented them from interfering,
as in Spain and Italy, with the progress of truth and
the spirit of free inquiry. There is another point of
view, however, which cannot escape the most careless
observer. The Protestant laity of England are to a
man ho3tile to Puserism. They are rebelling against
the young clergy in all directions, after having ap-
pealed to the Bishops in vain. The entire diocese of
Exeter is in an uproar, and the churches of other dio-
ceses are justly alarmed at the approach of an epide-
mic for which the professed guardians of Protestantism
will provide no remedy. They look now only to

the Legislature. Never was there an opportunity for
a Minister to do so much good, or obtain so just
popularity in a righteous cause. He would be sup-
ported by every political party in the State. Tories,
Whigs, Radicals, and Chartists, would join with him
in putting down a sect which has broken its vows,
polluted the very sources of learning, truth, and liberty,
and is madly bent on bringing back the darkness of the
middle ages, and the thraldom which a grasping and
worldly religion imposed on mankind. There ought
to be ne scruples about touching the canons or the
rubrics, or any of the ecclesiastical laws formal
for the regulation of the Church. The Protestant
religion is the established religion of the country, and
must be maintained at all hazards. The rubrics are
admitted by several of the Bishops to be contradictory
—possibly, so are the canons—and the safeguards of
Protestantism, therefore, are not fitted for their
original purpose. If they and the Bishops together
cannot exclude Catholic tenets and Catholic rites,
and traitors in the bosom of the Church set all au-
thority at defiance, nothing short of a reversion—in
other words, ecclesiastical reform—will satisfy the
English people.

It would be presumption in us to offer any opinion
on the technical merits of the case on which, as we
perceive, the unfortunate Baron DB BODE is still
made to undergo the experimenturn crucis of the law's
machinery for releasing the Government from the
payment of its just debts. No candid mind which
has possessed itself of the general facts of this case

can doubt of the soundness of the Baron's claims in

reason and in equity. But all men of plain common
sense, and a practical knowledge of affairs, may be
allowed to doubt of the poor Baron's further powers
of endurance. No man, among the many and dis-
tinguished advocates which his " claims" have found
in the House of Commons—(and of them there was
none more eloquent than Lord STANLEY himself)—
no man but has been fully satisfied of their moral
validity before he pleaded in their behalf to the Go-
vernment present in the Legislature. But the
affirmative opinion of the Legislature has been para-
lysed by the Government. We have seen, as in the

last two or three discussions of the Danish claims,

that the House say actually concur in an address to
the Crown, recommending compensation for losies
sustained by private individuals through acts of the
Crown or its servants, which the Government will
flatly refuse to support or counsel. It can be little
satisfaction to the Baron to point to the various stages
of his own protracted appeal for justice, with the view
of showing how, step by step, the pleas which he has
recorded have been consolidated and affirmed; and
the proofs, once vainly tendered, have been made out
and admitted ;—if this sort of forensic " question"
is still to be administered to him, so often as he per-
sists in re-affirming his rights. It seems that of three
issues upon which his appeal was rested, the Court of
Queen's Bench found for one (in spite of a vigorous
resistance of the law officers of the Crown), and
rejected two. On a subsequent occasion the app'i-
cation by his counsel, to have effect given to this find-
ing—so far at least as related to the issue affirmed—is
opposed by the Solicitor-General, praying that, since,
if the two others could not be legally substantiated, so
neither ought this to have been found, judgment
may be pronounced for the Crown, upon the whole.
This sort of defence to the claims seems to be the
crowning mockery of that farce of remedial justice
which is played, in this country, with disgraceful
success whenever its subjects are the unrequited
wrongs of such individuals as the Baron De BoDE, or
that class of the Danish claimants who still remain
without redress. The Baron's, it will be recollected,
was a claim upon the enormous funds covenanted,
on the part of France, at the end of the last war to be
paid over to Commissioners, appointed by the British
Government for making good to British subjects,
whose property had been seized and confiscated by
the French arms and authorities under certain cir-
cumstances, and within certain defined territories on
the continent of Europe. The French Government
most honourably discharged its undertaking, and
paid the money in full. After a lapse of time, within
the extreme limits of which it has been unsuccessfully
attempted to show some of the Baron's claims or
papers were not given in, the reception of claims,
in the usual course of such commissions, ceased.

It is enough to prove that his claims were registered,
and that further proofs, documents, &c., were de-
manded of, and supplied by him—to dispose of the
attempted objection last noticed. What followed?
The bulk, if not the whole, of the other creditors'
claims were disposed of—adjusted or refused; and
there then remained a vast surplus—some hundreds
of thousands, if we remember rightly—undisposed
of. What became of that surplus ? Have we not the
evidence of the enormous transfers made, in our own
op

Inion illegally made, by the French Commissioners
.o the Board of Woods and Forests; and by the
Woods and Forests Board appropriated, to gratify the
unscrupulous wishes of GBORGB the FOURTH, in de-
fraying the expenses of his architectural perpetra-
tions in the absurd monstrosity at Brighton, or the
WTATVILLB "improvements" at Windsor Castle?
But the money went to the Woods and Forests, and
the Baron's claims to the wall. Is he not amply
justified in assuming from this fact, in connexion
with the often-exposed weakness and captiousness of
the objections to his claims announced by the Trea-
sury, that he is the victim of an official misappro-
priation which, for some reason or other, the succes-
sors of the wrong-doers will neither fairly submit to
the examination of Parliament and the opinion of the
public, nor manfully address themselves to provide
compensation for.

It has been well remarked that, in England, men
in high office will commit themselves, as a Govern-
ment, to acts of gross oppression and injustice from
the bare imputation of which each of them, as an in-

dividual, would recoil with horror. We would en-
treat her MAJESTY'S Ministers well to reconsider to
what extent they are guilty of something very like
fraudulent conspiracy in persisting to refuse—after
so emphatic a division as the very last taken in the
House of Commons, on the third and only remaining
class of unsatisfied Danish claimants—to liquidate
such righteous demands ? We would respectfully
invite them to reflect whether this pertinacious con-
test with the Baron DE BODE to prevent his taking
any benefit even under this limited finding by a
court of law in his favour, does not savour more of a
feeling of personal animosity and official persecution,
than of a conscientious conviction, on their own parts,
that his claims are unfounded, and a dignified expres-
sion of that conviction ? The man has been cruelly
ill-used : he has rallied, bravely, after every defeat,
and sternly renewed his applications, unmodified, un-
disguised. The Parliamentary friends who have
gone into his case and disinterestedly supported it are
confirmed in their good opinion of it, surely, to the
extent of the issue which has been found for. It is
to be lamented that Secretaries of the Treasury and
Chancellors of the Exchequer are apt to be governed
by one maxim only—when there is money to repay,
the inconvenience and burden to be imposed on the
public by each repayment. This inconvenience and
burden are never once thought of by them when the
question is—to take money into the Government
coffers from the public. We remember that Mr.
SPRING Rica was quite pathetic in denouncing the
" mischief" of entertaining these claims. He en-
tered no protest against the enormity of denying
them, if they were just. Mr. GOULDURN, with
equal levity, appears to assume that they have no
foundation, because predecessors of Mr. SPRING RICE,
who were members of a Tory or Conservative Go-
vernment, had not confirmed them. He conveniently
forgets that they had already misapplied the funds ;
so that, justly or unjustly, the Baron's demands must
have been " dishonoured," on account of " no effects"
in the French Claims Commission. Upon these facts,
which we have rapidly sketched from memory, but
apprehend to be stated with substantial correctness,
we do trust that the Government may speedily be
brought to look upon the Baron's case more in the
feeling of investigators and referees—less in that of
interested opponents. It is a sorry contrast which
the tricky, " sharp practice" defence that successive
E glish Governments have made to these claims,
offers to the liberality and go-d faith of a former
French Government in paying over the moneys out
of which they should have been defrayed, if they
come (as we presume they do, and as our own Minis-
ters do not seem to dispute) within the spirit and
meaning of the terms of the Commission, even
though, in a technical point of view, they should
happen to be just short of the threshold of its letter
and its legal scope.

Madrid journals of the 23d inst. have been received
but they possess no intere.t. The Bourse was closed
on the 23d, which was the feast of San Isidro.

Whatever may have been the intentions of LOUIS
PIIILIPPE ten days ago with regard to the GUIZOT
Cabinet, no doubt remains row that it has his full
support, and that all the wavering Conservatives who
were watching signals from the " chateau" have re-
turned to their posts in the rear of M. GUIZOT.
SALVANDY, who has:been ono of the waiters on the
Court, has at last made up his mind, and accepted the
important office of Minister of Public Instruction, in
place of M. VILLEMAIN. On Wednesday a very
large meeting of the Conservatives was held at a
public room in the Rue Richelieu. The number
present exceeded 200, and among the leading men
were Marshals SEBASTIAN' and BUGEAUD, M. DB
SALVANDY, M. D'ARBLAY, M. EMILE DE GIUARDIN,
and M. JIARTMANN; the senior member present was
called to the chair, and after suitable speeches in
reference to the late divisions, the power
of the Conservatives and the necessity
for standing by the Minister, the Presi,
dent put the question whether they were pre-
pared to act as a compact body, and maintain their
principles against the motley coalition formed in the.
Chamber, when the meeting by acclamation replied
in the affirmative. M. DE SALYANDT spoke out like
a Minister of the Crown, cast off all his doubts and
difficulties, and conjured the Members to act with
energy and decision on an occasion of such interest to
their KING and country. Several Conservatives, who

hung back on the Otaheite affair, and especially the

PRITCUARD indemnity, were present, and said, as that
difficulty had been surmounted, they were now pre-
pared to take up their usual positions in the Chamber•
A deputation was appointed to wait upon the Presi-
dent of the Council and the Minister for Foreign

Affairs, consisting, among others, of SEBASTIANI,

SALVANDY, and BUGEAUD—aII men dependent
on the Court, and said to be much in the
KING'S confidence. The old Marshal, upon whom
they waited first, seemed a good deal annoyed
at the small majority for Ministers, and doubtful as
to the result of a still further trial :of strength. He,
however, yielded to the suggestions of the deputation
and engaged to lend his influence in furthering their
views. M. Guizor received them more frankly, though
he admitted the majority was too small for practical
purposes, but as it had reference to only one point of
diffeience, he would join heart in hand with the de-
putation, and stand to his post. The Count, too, has
thrown off all reserve. The KING, it is said, speaks
in the strongest terms of his determination to support
the Ministry, recommends another trial of strength,
and should that be unfavourable, hints, as a last re-
source, at a dissolution of the Chamber
Indeed this is the most probable upshot of
this awkward business. The Chamber is so
equally divided, that no business can be done without
a struggle at every step, which only retards the pro-
gress of affairs, and keeps the country in a state of
constant excitement. According to some accounts
measures for this purpose are in active preparation.
Circulars have been sent to all the Prefects, with in-
structions to lose not a moment in adopting steps for
returning, as far as in their power, Ministerial candi-
dates. The Duke of BRoGI.IE gives the Cabinet his
full support. This was the state of affairs on Wed-
nesday, but on the preceding day, judging from one
of the Ministerial organs, the Cabinet had all but
made up their minds to retire from office, waiting only
to see whether the Conservative party were prepared
to make any movement which might encourage the
Government to maintain their ground. This is
evidently the drift of the article in the Journal des
Debuts, and as it evidently contains information that
may be relied on, we give it at length :
" The Opposition journals triumphed yesterday; they
declared the Ministry conquered, overturned; this was to
be expected. For our parts, we have not dissembled the
gravity of the situation v%hich Monday's vote ettablished
fur the Cabinet. If any one wishes to know what is our
personal opinion on the important point, what advice in
our friendship for M. Guizot we would recommend him
to adopt, we declare with the same frankness that, in our
mind, the Ministry would do best to retire; abandon the
game to the intrigue ; and leave it the burden of power!
Let it be seen by a trial what these men, so arrogant in
the tribune, are worth! Power is the chastisement of ar-
dent ambitions and of inferior minds. Let them feel in their
turn the pressure of responsibility—their acts will be com-
pared with their superb words! They are so clever in get-
ting up a Parliamentary stroke! They find it so amusing;
and so convenient to recompense by stupid abuse the
devotedness of those who sustain the weight of affairs !
Place them a little in face of real difficulties, that we may
admire their genius ! Either we are much mistaken, or
the retreat of the present Cabinet at this moment would
do it honour, and would not be long. It would retire
voluntarily, not having lost the majority, but not ac-
cepting the charge of governing with too feeble a one.
It would retire without having been beaten on a single
point of its policy, yielding to an intrigue, and to
wretched personal rivalities ! It would retire after hay-
ing restored order everywhere, re-established peace on a
solid basis, and forced its adversaries them: elves to pro-
test, whether truly or falsely, hypocritically or sincerely,
in favour of the English alliance I It would retire with
the cannon of Isly and Mogadore still echoing; and this
Ministry of four years has rail, d those who made part
of it high enough not to fear that France should forget
them. After so many fatigues courageously supported
and services rendered, it is certainly allowable fur
honourable men to select the moment of their re-
treat from official duties. The moment is very
propitious. At present they could retire freely and
with glory. M. Ate
has always quitted power smaller
than he entered it ; who dares assert that M. Guizot
does not go out greater ? Can a Ministry like that of
October 29 be contented with a majority of eight votes?
Such is the counsel which we would not hesitate to give
to the men whom we love. They entered on power like
men of honour ; we should like to see them leave it
without constraint, and the head high ; to do honour to
their principles, and not to yield to necessity. Patriotism
demands sometimes that one should sacrifice one's self
to the end ; it demands sometimes'also that one should
reserve one's self. It is for the interest of France that

M. Guizot and his colleagu,s should not exhaust their
future. These considerations are grave, yet they are
not the only ones that the Ministry is obliged to weigh