The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
GLOBE.—While the Times is alternately exalting
and asperiing Bishops, it is seeking to revive one of
the worst claims of priestcraft in behalf of " Pres-
byters"—we mean the claim that auricular confession
of criminals is to be held sacred to them. The Rev.
Henry Formby, curate of Ruardean, has been backed
by the Times in the announced resolution to plagi
arise from the Romish • Church (in contempt of
law) the doctrine that confessions made to him by a
dying criminal are sacred from justice. His peni-
tent was a woman who had committed repeated acts
of infanticide—it is supposed with an accomplice—
and her dying confession Mr. Formby keeps secret.
The law recognises no such privileged communica-
tion ; the State, which upholds church endowments,
probably does not uphold them in order to maintain
functionaries who aid and abet crime, and comfort
criminals by easing their bosom of the perilous stuff,
which they are found so often ready to reveal to
justice rather than retain uncommunicated. We are
now told by the Times, and by the curate of Ruardean,
that the State ought to permit the clergy of its choice
to receive these confidences, under the seal of confes-
sion, and thus, in many cases, intercept them from
justice. It is easy to see with what motive a section
of the Anglican clergy may desire to snatch this
privilege of confession from exclusive enjoyment of
the Romish priest. It is a power over weak and
guilty minds, useful for priestly purposes. The
question is whether it is conducive to religious,
moral, or political ones. Whether the intention
of the State, in upholding a Protestant clergy,
is to revive the doctrine of a power in the Church
to absolve delinquents from their human duties,
and to defraud human justice of the benefit of
their confessions. This has always been held by Pro-
testants the worst relic of priestcraft among Roman
Catholics; and the Times has not been the slowest to
denounce its supposed effects in Ireland. In those ptirts
of continental Europe which were long the most priest-
ridden, and partially are so still, the effects of the prac-
tice appear most unequivocally . "When in the South of
Europe" (we quote the late esteemed historian, M. de
Sismondi),we find all assassins, all thieves, all prostitutes,
very scrupulously fulfilling all the observances of re-.'
ligion, we are apt to accuse them of hypocrisy, and to
imagine that, by their exterior of Christianity, they
hz,so no other object than to deceive those who observe
them. This is a mistake ; throughout the South of
Europe, this refuse of society is bona fide religious.
Malefactors becoming numerous, have found, have
formed bad priests, who live by their offer-
ings, and who, as they partake the product, are
always ready to sell the absolution of crime.
STANDAUD.—We must respectfully- claim the
attention of our readers to the proceedings in the
Court of Common Pleas yesterday, in the case in
which this journal was charged with libel. We
shall not be accused of having neglected to raise our
voice against the libel code until that code touched
ourselves : the readers of the Standard know that we
have never permitted any distinction of class, or sect,
or party, to restrain our protest against that op-
pressive and degrading
code as often as the oc-
casion occurred. This has been our conduct through
a long course, in which extraordinary care,
and we hope the influence of an anxious desire, never
unnecessarily to damage the interests, or wound the
self-love of an individual, has . obtained for us an im-
munity from libel prosecutions. Yesterday was the
first conviction—almost the first prosecution--of the
Standard for a libel, since its establishment, nearly
sixteen years ago, and of the offence, whatever it
might be complained of yesterday, the proprietor or
editor of the Standard was really as innocent as any
person who may read these lines. Under such cir-
cumstances it may be forgiven us if we feel
deeply hurt by a conviction, and if we demand
to present our wrongs to the public. We feel
I that we suffer a grievous injustice, not from a judge
or a jury—who must act as the law requires them—
but from a tyrant law ; and the individual's acute sense
of injustice it is a duty to proclaim, because the sense
of individual wrong, from tyranny of every kind,
serves to the social body that purpose of announcing
the approach of danger, which physical pain sup-
plies to the natural holy. It is by practical expo-
u e, as instances occur, that the public is to be
taught the true character of that libel code which
places the property and reputation of every person
committed in the public Press, at the mercy of what
every individual pleases to indulge his cupidity or
malice at the expense of a newspaper proprietor: We
do not conceal that in the present case the command
of public duty is powerfully re-inforced by an earnest
wish to acquit ourselves of the moral stain, for as such
we esteem it, of a libel conviction. We are not con-
vinced by Sir Thomas Wilde's reasoning that a good
character is a bad thing, which ought to go in aggrava-
tion of the punishment of him who has earned it,
and there!bre we shall try at whatever pecuniary
cost to preserve the character we have earned, re-
joiced that a good character is the only topic of
reproach which our general conduct affords to a vin-
dictive accuser. With infinitely- more pleasure do
we pay 2001. as the penalty of a good character, than
we should obtain one hundred times the sum as the
fruit of acts that could justly fasten upon us a cha-
racterr of an opposite description. We are not of Sir
Thomas Wilde's school of mercantile morality; we
cannot bring ourselves to think of money lost in da-
mages for libel as merely so much tare and tret upon
it may be a gainful trade: we might think so if it
v:ere the money only that was lost, for that is
nothing; but no profit can in our judgment be set in
the balance against even a formal conviction of a vio•
lation of the law to the injury of a fellow-subject.

QUEEN'S BENCH.-(THIS DAY,