The Sun.
London, England, 1845-06-03 00:00:00

eltentllS 2/11:11t.

LONDON, TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 1845.

The House of Lords met at Five.
The LORD CHANCELLOR announced that Mr. O'Dais-
coLL had been dismissed from the commission of the
peace in Ireland.
The Duke of WELLINGTON moved the second reading
of the Maynooth Bill.
The Duke of CAMBRIDGE supported it as one of the
most conciliating measures that had ever been introduced
into the House.

The Earl of RODEN moved, as an amendment, the ap-
pointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the na•
ture of the instruction given at Maynooth.

A long debate ensued, in the course of which their Lord-
ships were addressed by the Bishop of LONDON, the Earl
of St. GERMANS, the Duke Of MANCHESTER, Lord BEAU-
MONT, and the Bishop of CASHEL, and eventually the
debate was adjourned at one o'clock.

The House of Commons met at Four o'Clock.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, in answer to
Mr. P. M. STEWART, said it was the intention of the
Government to commit the Scottish Banking Bill pro
forma, for the purpose of making some trifling altera-
tions, and to take the discussion on a future day.
The adjourned debate on the Academical Institutions
(Ireland) Bill was then resumed by Mr. MILNES, who
expressed his regret at the course pursued by the Roman
Catholic clergy of Ireland, and his approval of the Go-
♦ernment measure.

Lord J. RUSSELL also supported the measure,
although he believed it stood much in need of im-
provement ; but in the hope that it could be improved
in Committee, he should vote for the second reading.
The House was afterwards addressed by Mr. A.
HOPE, Mr. V. STEWART, Mr. HAMILTON, Captain B.
OSBORNE, Mr. GLADSTONE, Mr. WYSE, Mr. ACLAND,
Mr. MORE O'FERRALL, Sir H. PEEL, and Mr. M. J.
O'CONNELL. The House then divided when the motion
for the second reading was carried by a majority of 265.

SO much has been said and written about the May-
nooth Bill, that we believe most readers are heartily tired
of the subject, but the new features which the question
assumed last evening by the appearance of two Bishops
in opposition to it, and the very grave effect produced in
Ireland by the hostility of certain Churchmen and
sectaries in this country, require a few observations.
One of the first fruits of that hostility was the enthusi-
astic, national, and, to not a few, alarming display exhi-
bited in Dublin on Saturday. On no one point is ana
tion so sensitive as on that of religion, because it is justly
held sacred, because it is the choice of the people, and is
a matter not between statesmen of different countries,
but between man and his CREATOR. Could it be expected,
therefore, that the Irish—a jealous and excitable people—
would remain apathetic amidst insults heaped upon their
faith, and their venerated priests and prelates, not only
by sectarians who differ from each other, but by
Churchmen, who recognise the Catholic Church
as their head, and are anxious to be again
joined with it in communion? This is a fact which
can admit of no dispute. Popery has `already made
great inroads upon the English Protestant Church :
the Primate and a large proportion of the Bishops are
believed to be strongly infected with the errors of
PLISEY and NEWMAN, and the open and decided measures
adopted by the Bishops of LONDON and EXETER leave
no doubt whatever that they are cordial believers in
these errors ; yet Dr. BLOMFIELD last night denounced
the Catholic religion in the strongest terms, as if he
were a Protestant of the purest character. "He had
pledged himself," he said, " by solemn and awful words
to discountenance and drive away all strange and false
doctrines, and he could not consistently vote for the
maintenance of an institution, the express object of
which was to propagate error." Yet good Protestants
consider the Puseyite doctrines both " strange and '
false." Mr. WARD and others denounce the Reforma-
tion as a great crime ; the Bishop of LONDON,
both in charges to his clergy, and the new formulas
which he recommends, gives every countenance to these
strange and false doctrines, yet now he holds himself up
as a mirror of ecclesiastical perfection, and loads the
Irish Catholic prelates with reproaches for their errors
and heresies. But another more important reason
seemed to sway the pious Bishop's mind. The measure
would lead to the establishment of two antagonistic
churches, and to the endowment of all religious systems.
The plunder of the old Catholic Church he therefore
feared would be divided, and consequently his share
would be less; and how did th's subtle and J,suitical
Churchman get over the difficulty about Canada ? In
that colony a religion full of errors and heresies was
established by Act of Parliament, with the consent of
the Episcopal bench, but that gives no offence to the
conscientious prelate; the division of the spoil in that
distant land cannot affect the English Church,
but nevertheless it establishes two antagonistic churches
or more, and therefore is liable to the more weighty ob-
jections for which a ban is pronounced against May-
nooth. Not a word is said against liberal grants to
Canada and Malta for the support of Popery, be-
cause, says this peace maker, " they were conquered
countries," and Ireland is therefore to be treated worse
than a conquered country. If the object of this Right
Rev. Father in God were to drive the Irish nation to
Madness, he could not use more forcible and more appro-
priate language. Does this agree with the injunctions
of that sacred volume to which, with uplifted eyes, he so
often appeals ? Can he insult and provoke the inhabi-
tants of the sister island and at the same time
sing with the Psalmist— " How good and how pleasant
it is for brethren to dwell together in unity !"
We turn with delight from such religious bigotry to the
language used by the Duke of CAMBRIDGE, contrasting,
too, so nobly with that of his late brother, the Duke of
YORK, and to the
.just and humane sentiments expressed
by the Duke of WELLINGTON, who told the House, with
his usual frankness, that there was no religion in the
question, but a great Christian principle.

Another awful catastrophe, occurring between one and
two o'clock on Sunday morning last, has added a new
testimony to the scandalous neglect of all precautionary
protection against accidents by fire, which it seems to be
a point of honour with all the authorties of the metro-
polis, municipal as well as parochial, to. maintain. The
scene of this calamity was in Fenchurch- street—one of
the most eensely-crowded districts of the, City, where
the accumulation of houses is so excessive that one's only
wonder is how the thriftiness of City-owners hip can so
long have tolerated the existence of many spa cious and
even magnificent mansions, fitted for the accommodation
of a civic aristocracy which had not yet vown too
proud to live " within the walls," but which in these
altered times occupy, with their marble-floored halls, and
their oaken staircases, and their spacious landing v? so

much room that might be far more profitably devoted to
the little minikin tenements of modern times, so many
of which could be erected on the ground-plot now occu-
pied by a single one of these substantial fabrics. In
point of fact, in the rear of the house which was de-
stroyed—a building, in many respects, of the character
we have described—various very inferior tenements, of
which the frontage was in Lime-street, had been
bricked out by a substantial, unbroken back wall, rising
much above those tenements, and shutting out all in-
gress and egress to the houses that have been gutted
by the fire, except from Fenchurch-street, in which was
their own frontage. Can any situation be imagined
more hopeless as to the chances it would offer for
the escape of the unfortunate inmates suddenly
aroused by the alarm of fire? The results in this in-
stance were just what might have been anticipated from
such conditions. A wife, having with great difficulty
aroused her husband to an indistinct sense of their com-
mon danger, and persisting with a noble resolution to
devote the precious moments available for that purpose
to recover him from the sort of stupor which the heat and
smoke of burning timbers so fatally induces, succeeds in
this generous object. But, in the confusion of the scene,
she becomes incapable of availing herself of the same
means for securing a retreat which she had indicated to
her husband, and either mistakes the stair ascending to
the roof through which he had already passed, or falls,
overcome by the fury of the conflagration, before she
can reach it. Horrible to relate, herself and her young
infant were consumed to ashes! The almost lifeless feinale,
whom the husband had seized up from her prostrate position
on the leads, or roof, and borne through many dangers
to a place of safety, under the impression that he car-
ried with him, his wife, turned out to be their servant,
who had fainted, and, but for his timely assistance,
must also have been consumed. The house of these un-
fortunate people consists of several stories, with large
and capacious windows in each floor. A fire-escape
might have been most readily applied to either, axed
had it been to the second or third floor win-
dows, there can be little doubt—there is every
human probability—that she might have been
saved, together with the infant, whose existence
has been thus violently terminated in its first blossoming.
But no fire-escape appears to have been brought—to
have been at hand—to have been even thought of ! For
aught that appears to the contrary, it may be inferred
that no such machine exists in that most populous neigh-
bourhood. At little more than an hour after midnight
three houses are consumed in an incessantly frequented
thoroughfare ; little or no property is rescued from
them, and two human beings are permitted to fall a sa-
crifice to the same unaccountable apathy, or neglect,
about the better provision and security against such visi-
tations, which, only a week before, had involved five
others in the same terrible form of destruction in an
opposite quarter of the metropolis.
At what point of cumulative extermination our
authorities mean to interfere what may be the
maximum number of "deaths from fire" which
they will regard as sufficient warranty for in-
curring the expense of providing and depositing, at
so many convenient stations in each of the City
wards, an escape apparatus, costing so many shil-
lings each—it seems difficult to surmise. The still more
appalling casualties by fire which, since the conflagra-
tion in Bucklersbury, a few years ago, have given a cha-
racter of fearful interest to fires breaking out in the City,
have hitherto produced so little disturbing influence in
the indolence of the magistracy and the subordinate
functionaries, in the establishment of any arrangements
in system to mitigate the most disastrous evils attendant
on these catastrophes, that we can hardly venture to
anticipate any more beneficial result from the lesson
which this last sad incident should teach them. What
are they about ? Is the constitution of the municipality
of London so exquisitely selfish in its principles, that
until some Alderman or Deputy-Sheriff—some Common
Councilman, or some member of the Bridge-House
Committee, at least, becomes himself a sufferer in his
own person, or the persons of his connexions, by these
midnight fires, the private residents, tradesmen, and
others—whether of the Livery, or unadmitted to its
freedom—must not venture to hope that their lives or
their property may be deemed of sufficient importance
to be the legitimate objects of civic protection and soli-
citude ?

The accounts from Madrid, which are to the 26th of
May, are of a very singular and alarming character.
No sooner had the QUEEN left Madrid than NaßvArz
committed an act of despotism which would scarcely
have been endured had he been entrusted by the Cortcs
with the full powers of absolute Dictator. The two
editors of the Clamor Publico, Senors CORRADI and
CALvo, arrested for a humorous article directed against
this military chief, were within twenty-four hours after-
ward forced into a coach at the prison door, and carried
off, without trial or even indictment or accusation to
Cadiz, to be there shipped for Manilla. If the Spaniards
submit to this, liberty is utterly extinct in that de-
voted country, the constitution a mockery, and any
safeguards of rights and privileges a mere delusion. A
,meeting of the editors of different papers was to take
place at the office of the Tiempo, but should they speak
their sentiments, they will propably be marched off as
companions to their unfortunate brethren.

BOURSE.-Three per Cents., for cash, 33,1 ; Ditto, for
Account, 341; Five per Cents., for cash, 23; Ditto, for
the account, 24k.

The principal topic of discussion in the Paris papers
is the abdication of 1)on CARLOS, but with the exception
of the Journal des Debuts, which is understood to ex-
press the opinions of the Government, there is nothing
in them of interest to the English reader. That journal
says, one of the clauses of the Spanish Constitution ex-
cludes the family of Don CARLCS from any alliance with
the Royal Family, but at the same time adds, that if the
marriage of his son with the QUEEN would eff, ct the
blessings promised in the Prince's manifesto, the Spanish
nation would abandon that point, and accede to an act
which would close family differences, and prevent the
possible recurrence of a war for the succession. It may
be inferred from the whole article, that such a result
would not be disapproved of by the French Government.
These papers contain no news. Several of them adopted
the enlarged size on Sunday, and now have a respect-
able appearance, as vehicles of intelligence, which could
not be said of them before.

Nothing of consequence was done in the Funds al
TORTONI'S.

HOUSE Or' LORDS-(THIS DAY.)
Their Lordships met this morning at eleven o'clock to hear
appeals.

RICARDO V. GARCIA&

The further arguments in this appeal occupied the House the
whole morning.
The Peers present were—The Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham,
and Lord Campbell.