The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-25 00:00:00

titg _•;1014,

LONDON!,
TUESDAY, JANUARY 25, 1842.

The Reverend FRANCIS DIEDRICH WACK..
ERBARTII, Bachelor of Arts of Queen's Col-
lege, Cambridge ; Honorary Corresponding
Member of the College of Civil Engineers; late
Priest of the Anglican Church; now a Priest

of the Church of Rome, and destined, in
his "own opinion, to figure in the Rubric some
two hundred years hence as a canonised saint

and confessor, has just published a very extra-
ordinary pamphlet, under the curiously quaint
title of " The Egyptian Bondage ; or, a Second
Call to Union ;" dedicated to that mystical con-
coctor of creeds, ST. ATHANASI us, and addressed
to the benighted people of England. Whatever
importance might otherwise attach to this pam-
phlet, neither its subject, nor the reputation of
its author (which, by the way, has yet to travel
beyond his title-pages), would provoke us to no-
tice it, but for two reasons, which affect rather
the accidents of its publication than the tract
itself. The first is, that the Reverend author, a
very short time ago, so abused the Editor of the
Tablet for a supposed attack on his "brethren"
the Puseyites, as to draw down upon himself the
rebuke of one of his spiritual superiors in the
Romish Church—thus manifesting, by his ill-

timed zeal, the identification of his principles
with those of the Puseyite sect. The second
reason is, that he assures us in his Preface that this
tract was prepared by him " while a member of
the Established Church, and while it was his
full intention to remain within her pale." Mr.
WACKERBARTH, while a clergyman of the
Church of England was a Puseyite, and agree-
ably to the principles of Puseyism he composed
this pamphlet. Being manifestly, from his style
of writing, a man of warm imagination, and more
remarkable for zeal than sound judgment, he
did not, like the Tractarians of Oxford, make
his approaches to Rome by gradually but surely
sapping the foundations of the Anglican Church.
Naturally a fanatic, he could not drill his mind
into the adoption of the zigzag shiftings and
turnings of hypocrisy. What Puseyism pri-

vately inculcated he thought it a sin not to pro-
claim and to practice. Hence his pamphlet is
important as a real exposition of the principles of
the Puseyites, and of those of many clergymen
who, with intentions less pure than Mr. IVAcxEn-
BARTH, are resolved to "live and d►e within the
pale of a Church which compensates for want
of faith by superabundance of pelf—which
makes up for schism by rich benefices and ec-
clesiastical sinecures. Hear, then, how an An-
glican priest, resolved to " live and die" within
the pale of the Church could write of the Lu-
theran Reformation :

It is evident to every person who has eyes to see
withal, that the Church of England, as at present con-
stituted, dyes not answer its purposes ; nor is this to be
wondered at ; for while, instead of bwailing and la-
bouring to remove the deplorable schism which rends us
from the rest of Christendom, the greater number of us
will rejoice therein, and speak thereof as of a thing
that is " glorious,"—while we hear on all sides among
us such phrases as " our glorious separation from Rome,"
" our happy deliverance from Papal dominion," and the
like,—while so many thousands in our communion
proudly boast, like the Pharisee, of their own purity,
and revile as antichrist our holy and apostolic mother,
blindly thanking God that they are not as other men
are, nor even as the mother church of Christendom,—it
is indeed with but faint and flickering hope that we
can look out for Heaven's blessing on our labours.
The withering curse of Erastianism has eaten its way
into the very heart of the people, and they have learned
to look upon God's Church merely as an engine of the
State, and are content with those sad fragments of the
Gospel which the tyranny and rapacity of the libidi-
nous monsters of the sixteenth century have left them
—nay, they will even rejoice in having lost the rest ;
they will patiently, and even approvingly, look on,
while the high dignities of God's Church are made the
reward of the vilest political profligacy,—while rich
benefices, prebends, deaneries, and, alas! even the thrones
of the apostolic order, are lavished upon men without
principle and without devotion, as the pay of simonious
electioneering service, or the price of support in Par-
liament,—or, at best, as a provision for a pauper rela-
tive or hanger-on of some person in political power.
" Amazement and horror are come to pass in the land ;
the prophets prophesy in deceit, and the princes domi-
neer by their hands, and my people love to be so." I
feel persuaded that there is but one way to put an end
to this miserable state of corruption and secular bondage,
and that way is to repent speedily, and return to the
obedience of faith ;—to replace the Church of England
under the dominion of Christ's appointed Universal
Vicar, that the weight of his sacred authority may
counterbalance the hopeless corruption of the State. I
avow, then, once for all, that my object is to repeal
the Reformation, which I maintain to be the vilest hoax
whereby a nation was ever defrauded of its faith and
freedom, or God's poor robbed of their subsistence,- -to
recongregate my countrymen within the fold of God's
shepherd Catholic—whence, for libidinousness and ra-
pacity's sake, the brutal tyrant Henry the Eighth de-
coyed them,—to free them from State-bondage in holy
things, and to bring them once more to the enjoyment
of that holy peace and Christian liberty which spring
from unity of faith and righteousness of life. Such is
my avowed object,—to which I desire to consecrate my
life, my labour, and all that I have to offer ; albeit, as
men's minds and notions are now formed, my prospect
is but dark, and well nigh desperate ;—and it is with a
heavy heart, and distant misgiving hopes, that I address
myself to so great a task.
The open avowal of such sentiments as these is
not likely to please the cunning Puseyite, albeit
written by one of the sincerest of their fraternity.
Mr. WACKERBARTII next proceeds to expose and
denounce the three " grand locks whereby the
chains of the Anglican Church are rivetted."
The Rev. Gentleman is certainly no great master
of style, but that is his affair, not ours. These
" locks" are, firstly, usurped patronage or inves-
titure, which Mr. WACKERBARTH would take out
of the hands of Kings and Kings' concubines, and
restore to the Holy See; secondly, the concu-
binage of the clergy; and, thirdly, impropria-
tions. It would be an insult to the good taste and
Christian feeling of our readers to quote all the
ribaldry against the Church of England which
Mr. WACKERBARTH has written under these
these several heads. The title of the second,
" concubinage of the clergy," proves that it was
written before he had made himself fully ac-
quainted with the doctrines of the Romish
Church. That Church never charged our clergy
with the crime of concubinage, because it has
never been brought to admit that Holy Orders
exist in the Church of England. This is one of
the sorest points touched upon by the Puseyites,
and the one which has given most mortification
to Church of England divines. Thus, if a Roman
Catholic priest enter the communion of the
Church of England his ordination previously'is
acknowledged valid, and he can at once enter
upon the discharge of the priestly functions. But
a clergyman of the Church of England on em-
bracing the faith of Rome, is but a layman, and
before he can administer the sacraments he must
bere-ordained by a Prelate of the RomishChurch•
In the eyes, therefore, of Roman Catholic divines
the Anglican priests are mere laymen, and there-
fore as well entitled to marry as other members
of the community. This our clergy look upon

as anything but a compliment; and perhaps no-
thing annoyed them more during the reign of
ELIZABETH and JAMES 1., than an allusion by
the Jesuits to the famous " Nag's Head Conse-
cration," at which the libellers of the early Re-
formers reported' that they consecrated Bishops
by the imposition of the hands of a Pre-
late while in a state of intoxication. A ribald
Papist poetaster, who assumed the name of
WARD, wrote a doggrel history of the progress
of the Reformation in England, in which he
makes Queen ELIZABETH consecrate Archbishop
WHITGIFT by the imposition of her MAJESTY'S
fair hands:—

She bade him kneel, and having spread
All her ten digits on his head :
" Take thou authority to preach
" God's word sincerely, and to teach
" Or force my people to become
" In faith and worship uniform.
" To bind and loose take thou the keys,
" And rule thy flock with awful ways."
This said, she bade the Bishop's grace
To Canterbury haste his pace.

Mr. WACSERBARTH'S blunder, therefore, about
the concubinage of the clergy of the Church of
England proves him to have been but a very
shallow theologian, even while dandled on the
knees of Dr. PUSEY. From what we learn of

him from his pamphlets, we think the Church of
England well rid of him. But we suspect that,
before all is done, Rome will have as little cause
to boast of him as she had of the famous CHILL-
LINGWORTH. He has made his first, but we
by no means think his last, recantation. Be that,
however, as it may, he has unmasked Puseyism,
so that honest Protestants will henceforth know
what to think of a system which is preying upon
the very vitals of our Universities.

In speaking of the " Deputation of the Short
ime Committee," on the 12th instant, we said

" it is certain that the Deputation was indeed a
fraud." Since that date our statement has been
amply confirmed. On Tuesday a public meeting
was held at the Music-hall, Leeds, to hear the
report of the Deputation, when Mr. Hossort, the
chairman of the meeting, stated that " on the
10th of October the Shore-time Committee re-

ceived a communication from their friends in
London, engaged in watching over, and promot-
ing, the interest of the factory workers, recom-
mending that deputations of the Short-time Com-

niittee should be appointed to proceed to Lon.

don, and there seek interviews with Sir Ro-
BERT PEEL," &c. The Leeds Committee, on
the 13th of October, took this recommen-

dation into consideration, and thereupon " him

self and Mr. FLEMING were - appointed
as the Deputation from Leeds." The origin of the
Deputation, then, was London, and some instru-
ments at Leeds of the agitators in London de-
spatched Mr. HOBSON and Mr. FLEMING as the
representatives of the operatives of Yorkshire.
They were not sent, as was admitted at the meet-
ing, by the operatives of Leeds or any other town,
publicly assembled, although, after the flourishing
reports which they got published in the Times,
they obtained, by the help of a little trick,
the sanction of the meeting held last Tues-
day. But the origin of the Deputation, and
the character under which they were pre-
sented to the Ministers, clearly convicts the
whole scheme of fraud. Such also is the
expressed opinion of the Leeds papers on the
subject. The Leeds Times designates it " The
Short-time Hoax," and say's—

A very neatly-contrived cheat has been recently got
up for the entertainment of the public, by the self-con-
stituted " Deputation of the Short-time Committee of
the 'West-Riding of Yorkshire." Five gentlemen, bur-
dened with self-importance, journey up to London (at
whose expense nobody knows), and, heralded by the
above high-sounding title, they obtain interviews with
the principal members of the new Tory Administration
—whom they lecture, exhort, and counsel on the sub-
ject of machinery, home colonization, and Ten Hours'
Bill, with all the gravity of prophets sent to warn the
man who " has a heart," of the impending fate of this
devoted country.
There is a gross and palpable fraud on the face of the
whole thing. It is obviously got up to serve a purpose—
to bolster up a party whom the great mass of the people
distrust and despise ; to excite odium against the manu-
facturing and the trading classes ; to raise hopes on the
part of many which are never to be satisfied ; and, not
improbably, to draw off the working c!asses from a move-
ment to which they are deeply and devotedly attached.
The Leeds Mercury says of it---

A ridiculous effort is making by the Tories and Tory-
Chartists to get up a diversion from the Anti-Corn-law
agitation, for the benefit of the Tory Ministry and filo
landed aristocracy. The question they are attempting to
set up for this purpose is a resurrection of the Ten Hours'
Factory Bill ! To show how consummately absurd is
this cry at the present moment, we only need remind our
readers, and especially the suffering workmen, that the
Corn-law has for the last three years been much better—
or worse, as they or their families may deem it—than a
Ten Hours' Bill for them. To most of them it has been,
and now is, an Eight Hours' Bill ! To many it has been
aNo Hours' Bill ! There is no prospect, we fear, of the
mills being run more than ten hours for some time to
come. So that the resurrection of the Ten Hours' agita-
tion at this time of day is really too gross a fetch to gull
any but those who wish to be gulled, that is, Tories, or
that section of Chartists who have on all occasions sup-
ported the Tories.
However, as there is a prodigious demand in Down-
ing-street for some question to act as a counter-irritant,
and, as supply always arises equal to the demand, under
whatsoever difficulties, so now a self-elected coterie,
partly residing in Yorkshire, and partly in London, call-
ing themselves the Short-time Committee, and consist-
ing of Tory-Chartists and Socialists, prompted by the
old high Tory agitator of the Fleet Prison, Oastler, have
put forward a demand for a Ten Hours' Bill, on behalf
of young persons between thirteen and twenty-one years
of age!

At the meeting on Tuesday Mr. JONES, an

operative, said—

Let Mr. Fleming look at Paisley, where men could
not get work at all, and then say if this was the time for
a Ten Hours' Bill agitation. They wanted ten hours'
work if they could get it; but they could not get five, or
six, or seven hours' work. He would tell them what he
thought, and he believed he should express the opinions
of hundreds in that meeting, as to the publication of this
report just before the meeting of Parliament. Mr. Flem-
ing said that the Tory papers praised the report; ought
not that to make them look with suspicion on the plan?
—(Loud cheers.) It was brought forward just before the
meeting of Parliament to smother—what? His firm be-
lief was, that it was brought forward to smother the Peo-
ple's Charter.—(Cries of " True," and loud cheers.)
We need add nothing to these extracts ; they
fully establish the true character of the Deputat ion.
The Times may now see the propriety of ex-
plaining to the public, whom it has been instru-
mental in deceiving, how it came into possession
of the manufactured Report, and why it described
these few self-appointed gentlemen as the repre-
sentatives of the working people of the manufac-
turing districts.
We must inform the public, also, that the
Times is accused b the Leeds Times of having
inserted, on WedMday last, a report, which
" is a piece of the most barefaced trickery in re-
porting that it ever recollects to have met with."
That report described the resolution for thank-
ing the Short-time Committee as having been
carried by a vast majority;and it implied that an
amendment, moved by a Mr. BROOKES, in favour
of the Charter, had been rejected; when the
facts are, that Mr. BROOKES' amendment was in-
corporated with the motion of thanks,—that the
great majority of the meeting was in favour of
the Charter,—and that the mover of the vote of
thanks to the Deputation was glad to acknow-
ledge the Charter as a means of carrying his
motion. Either our London Contemporary has
been most egregiously imposed on, or it has
wilfully misrepresented the course of proceed-
ings at the meeting at Leeds on Tuesday, to pro.
duce an impression on the public—as the Leeds
Times says—that the working men of Leeds have
unceremoniously thrown the Charter overboard,
in order to engage in this Ten Hours' Bill
agitation.

The melancholy termination of the expedi-
tion to the Niger, conceived in the most phi-
lanthropic spirit, fostered by men of the highest
reputation for piety and worth, sanctioned by
the foremost statesmen of both parties, and
promoted with all the zeal and art possible, is
sufficient, we think, to make the gentlemen who
projected it somewhat mistrustful of their own
i 4 deceitful hearts." They. have, too, according
to Sir FOWELL BUXTON'S own statements,
aggravated the horrors and increased the
amount of the slave-trade, by the
they have recommended to sur- ,wean
are compelled by such - '
rt,ress 4, We
trust their polio.'' ~ireuttustam,ces to mis-
ing ' At this moment it is involv-
in serious contentions with the United