The Sun.
London, England, 1845-04-30 00:00:00

ettenin4 41111".

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 1845.

The House of Loris met at Five o'Clock.

The Church Buildings Act Amendment Bill vas read
a second time, as was the Customs Duties Imports Bill.
Lord BROUGHAM again drew their Lordships' atten-
tion to the encroachments of Railway Companies.

After a short conversation on the :.übject of the Welsh
bishoprics,
Lord DENMAN moved the second reading of the Oaths
Dispensation Bill.
Lord CAMPBELL and Lord Baouctram censured the
principle of the Bill, wh.ch was objected to by the Earl
of WICKLOW.

The Earl of DEVON objected to leaving it to the dis-
cretion of the Bankruptcy Court to decide whether the
objection to taking an oath «as conscientious or not ;
and the Duke of WELLI.,;oToN suggested that a general
declaration should be substituted for at, oath.

This suggestion was acceded to, and the order of
the day was diseharged, in order to afford an opportu-
nity of introducing a clause to carry the suggestion
into effect.
The Bail in Error Bill was read a second time.
The Earl of DALHOUSIE moved the second reading
of the Auction Duties' Bill.

After a few observations from Lord BROUGHAM and
Lord STANLEY, the Bill was read a second time, and
the House adjourned.
In the Commons, as there were but twenty-nine
Members present at Four o'Clock, there was no House.

Taking advantage of " the present state of political
tranquillity, and the revival of trade," Lord JoHN Rus-
SELL is about to propose certain measures which " may
tend permanently to improve the condition of the
labouring classes." Such an all-important subject could
hardly be introduced at a more fitting season; the pre-
sent session has already done much to retrieve the errors
of the last—Conservatives have thrown aside their Con-
servatism, and dared to exchange prejudice for prin-
ciple; while the Opposition has nobly refused to oppose,
preferring integrity to interest. Party spirit being thus
cast to the winds, all may now cordially unite to pro-
mote the interests of their common country. Having,
to a certain extent, vindicated justice to Ireland, the
next act of the House must be one both of justice
and humanity they must legislate— for the
people at large. Aware of the necessity for improve-
ment, and feeling the deep importance of the subject,
Lord J. RUSSELL has not brought forward any single
measure, but has proposed for the consideration of the
House a series of resolutions, all having for their object
the improvement of the great body of the people. In
one of the first he declares " that the laws which impose
prohibitory duties impair the efficiency of labour, re-
strict the interchange of commodities, and impose ruin-
ous taxation." They are few who can conscientiously
contradict this assertion—they are yet fewer who dare
act in accordance with their convictions. Year after
year, session after session, the great question of the
corn-laws has been brought forward, argued, de-
bated, and dismissed, but never finally defeated.
It may continue so for years to come ; but
of its ultimate decision no one can doubt. This law can
never be permanent, for it is opposed to the great prin-
ciples of the country. It is one of the last remnants of
the feudal times—one of those laws tending to conserve
in the bands of the few the wealth and power acquired
by the labour of the many. As such it, can never be
tolerated in England. Does she owe her power and great-
ness to her proud aristocracy ? What has made the
little island of the " painted Britons," the leader of na-
tions, and the mistress of the teas—not only the first
of all civilized countries, but greater even than the
mighty empires of antiquity ?

" Not one of all the conquerors that are, or ever were,
In wealth, or fame, or grandeur, with England can compare."
And to what is all this owing? Is it to geographical posi-
tion or natural advantages? Has she the glorious cli-
mate of the south or the boundless riches of the east?
Have her sons more vigorous frames, or higher forms of
thought? The secret of her power is this—the little island
has learned that " union is strength." She has found that
men are all dependent on each other—not like
slaves and tyrants, but by the cordial co-operation of a
free people : by this she has acquired the blessings of
liberty—by this she has learned the power of commerce.
What have our Kings and Prinei,s done to compare
with the deeds of the people themselves? The con-
quests of our llENnts and our EDWARDS are forgotten;
but the acts of the people are revealed in the nation's
glory. The name of ELIZABETH is celebrated, but that
of GRESHAM will be as immortal. It is needless to
pursue the subject—all must admit the source of our
greatness. Then shou:d the people be neglected in the
prosperity they have created ? Should commerce "lie
in fetters on the soil which gave her birth ?"
Should industry be bound down and restricted by
those whose power she herself has made? Surely the
afeibte,
better
acted upon. Now,
day is at hand when
time,atrtutthhiAAall
b letbe
nuost hoonpley,
&Ong is diffused through the hind. The poor feel

their rights—let the rich perform their duties. The
proud noble could no more exist without the humble la-
bourer than the lofty summit of an edifice could be sus
tained without the foundation ; but the higher the
building is raised the deeper must that foundation be
depressed, and so it seems with the people. But injus-
tice cannot last—only truth is eternal. Let us trust the
motion of the Noble Member for London is but the
commencement of a system of legislation not
supported by factions, or suited to classes,
but based on the broad principle of justice and humanity.
Lord J. RUSSELL, by introducing this measure, will find
himself in a far nobler situation than any he occupied in
the days of power, and the Government, by agreeing
with their opponents, will enjoy the greatest satisfaction
place and power can offer—the approbation of their
country, and the approval of their conscience.

It is impossible to regard without profound interest
the present tendency of legislation in this country to re-
pair the wrongs, the omissions, the injustice of past pe-
riods of civil oppression, of political animosities, of re-
ligious bigotry. If, under some aspects, " the present
age" is really to be regarded as " that of a cold, selfish
utilitarianism" (a proposition which, however confidently
advanced, we take leave flatly to dispute), it must be
allowed by its worst defamers that it presents others of
an ennobling and most generous character. It is in
these that the healing spirit of conciliation is mani-
fested—now so happily extinguishing long-rooted and
exhausting prejudices, and infusing new life and energy
and harmonious action into the various members of our
great national family. Between Protestants of the Es-
tablishment and Protestant Dissenters the influence of
conflicting dogmas—nurtured by unworthy jealousylon
the one hand, and estranging disabilities on the other,
into destructive prejudices of caste and party—is fast
subsiding. Day by day they are returning into relations
with each other of Christian fellowship. The repeal of
the Test and Corporation Acts is fast doing its good
work of paralyzing that principle of repulsion which has
for centuries driven a Christian of one denomination
from the presence of a Christian of another. The re-
peal of the Roman Catholic disabilities, in like manner,
has operated, in spite of the accidents of party strife
and the re-action of politico-religious agitation, to pro-
mote a gentler and more genial feeling in members of
the Romish for those of the Protestant Church, than the
Christian world has witnessed, perhaps, since the Re-
formation. To smooth the " rough ways" which the ob-
stacles interposed by religious intolerance have, too long,
offered to their uniied march in the career of uni-
versal charity and improvement, of active benevolence
and speculative morality, has surely been among one of
the holiest, as it has been—so far as it has yet proceeded
—one of the most successful efforts of British legislation
during the last eighteen years.
But whilst the two great divisions of the Christian
Church of this empire have thus been brought nearer
together by the counsels of an enlightened toleration,
which leaves the general responsibility for religious doc-
trines to be settled between the creature and his
CREATOR ; and whilst the results of these counsels have
displayed themselves in the increased impetus communi
cated to the movement of the national progress through
all its branches of material industry and moral energy,
there is one great community among us still hampered
by the badges of civil disqualification—of political re-
pudiation—imposed upon them by the barbarous preju-
dices of benighted ages. Christian lawgivers in every
country in Europe—in many more harshly, but in none
mere obstinately than our own—have combined, under
the delusion of rendering a signal homage to truth, to
visit with pains aad penalties that devoted race whose
existence is identified with two thousand years of suffer-
ing and persecution for that they have conscientiously
believed to be THE truth. By the Churches of Romanism
and Protestantism the Christianity of both has been
derived through the Jews. Both of them, despite their
conflicting polemics, concur in recognising. their Jewish
origin, in the succession of patriarchs and prophets,
which preceded the nativity of the DIVINE FOUNDER of
their common faith. The perverseness of the Jews,
in obstinately refusing to acknowledge the identity of
that DIVINE BEING with the promised MESSIAH of their
sacred Scripture and their native traditions, is a fatuity
which one might have imagined it were better to leave
to be dealt with by the OMNISCIENT SUPREME, than to
attempt to coerce or to restrain by human ordinances
and vindictive penalties. To these, however, that mar-
vellous and venerable people, which boast to this
day its irrefragable evidences of having produced
by far the most illustrious of human law-
givers, have been subjected for twenty centu-
ries. The theatres and the progress of their
civil amelioration have hitherto been but few
and tardy ! If in Holland, and Prussia, and some
parts of the Austrian dominions, they have acquired
large political and municipal privileges, they are sore
persecuted in Russia, and from Poland they have been
driven forth with a rod more stern and terrible than that
wherewith the Assyrian smote their captive fathers. If
in England and in France they have been raised to the
highest rank of that social intercourse which many
among them have refined by their talents and embel-
lished by their magnificence, they are permitted
"Pariahs," only, in the Papal States; they are outraged
in Italy; they are but upon sufferance in Spain and
Portugal ; and in the most refined countries of the East
their tenure of property and life is almost as precarious
as that of their occasional honours, or the favour of the
Sovereigns by whose caprice or connivance they hold
them. But in England—the land where personal rights
and the claims of legal citizenship are best appreciated—
their position of civil disability is more anomalous than
it could be in any other country. It now becomes a
question of deep interest to the moralist, as well as the
political observer, " What will be the ultimate fate of
the Jewish Civil Disabilities Bill, now pending in the
House of Commons ?"

Upon what principle are these disabilities to be con-
tinued ? In which of the elements that constitute good
citizenship are our modern English Jews wanting ?
Is it in loyalty to the SOVEREIGN ? Obedience to the
laws ? In habits of industry, in commercial ability or
enterprise ? In thriftiness ? In the accumulation,
employment, and diffusion of capital ? Why, it were as
idle to challenge their pretensions in any one of these
particulars as to dispute their expansive charity (for
that is by no means sectarian or exclusive), or their
general kindliness of deportment. In treating such
questions as these, we are not to be hampered by a few
miserable exceptions which, however,, if they came be-
fore us more prominently or offensively in persons of the
very lowest and most abject of this people, are common
among the more inferior classes of all nations. Looking to
the general position the Jews occupy—to the ability and
integrity with which they must be allowed to have dis-
charged whatever duties and trusts of a public nature
you have yet confided to them—we cannot repress our
astonishment that there should be any, from which, on
no better warranty than that of mere worthless, legen-
dary prejudice, you still exclude them by law under a
sweeping sentence of civil disability. If he make an
unexceptionable sheriff, what is that peculiarity in the
idiosyncracy of a Jew which incapacitates him from be-
coming an excellent Alderman, or an unimpeachable
Lord Mayor, or an eminently useful Member of Parlia-
ment ? And yet, by as adamantine gate, more impas-
sable, hitherto, than that which shuts out a Soodra from
all possibility of entering the Brahminical caste, you
shut nut the Israelite sheriff on that side from all that
lies on this I But we are of good heart. The tide of
common sense, as well as common justice, has set in :
and we have a strong faith that the day is not distant
when our Jewish sisters shall snatch from " the willowss,"
that have so long wailed over their humiliation and
sorrow, " the harps," whose strains shall be exchanged
for those that erst were wafted " over the waters of
Babylon," for the music of that exultation and joy
which shall bespeak a people restored to the long lost
dignity of freedom and equality among the equal and
the free of a happier land.

We have accounts from Madrid to the 22d inst. The
Gazette of that date publishes a decree, by which the
Government is authorised to contract a loan of
15,000,000 reels (150,000 L) for roads and canals. No
country is so badly off for roads as Spain, and if the
Government have only credit to raise the money, much
benefit may be produced. " It was only under the
reign of FERDINAND V 1.," according to the preamble of
this decree, " that the Government bestowed its atten-
tion on the opening of roads. Under CHARLES 111. and
CHARLES IV. various works of that kind were under-
taken, hat unfortunate events did not admit of their
being finished. At the present day, such as are
finished, and such as are projected, are far from respond-
ing to the wants of commerce and industry ; and,
as public order and tranquillity are more and more con-
solidated, it becomes necessary to adopt means, more
direct and more efficient, to supply those wants. It be-
hoves us to establish a complete system of general roads
l
wprvreaietpanhsrseeewdssehanf
representatives
xwvecei
ebe connected the provincial and vicinal
roads, thus covering the whole peninsula with a vast net
of communications." The Chamber of Deputies had
esodfestimates,tthhee
people
revenuebu t
ar
eT very
election
erunfortunately,yli era
l Committee
with though
theirthe
e
o
app examine
money to
y troeitmv.raanlid
koef themen r gbocoodß. efxor-
Sal
anala niaidostates eear,had declaredh
t.tlt St nuenor.
The iCASTEILO Y AYENZA,
the Spanish Envoy at. Rome, had presentedcharacter
his creden-
tials, and been treated in his official by toe PopE

with all due honours. That journal adds that the official
relations between Spain and the Court of Rome are now
re-established, and that about the commencement of May
the POPE will hold a public Consistory, in which his
Holiness will announce the conclusion of a concordat,
and the recognition of ISABELLA IL by the Holy See.
The Three per Cents. were done at 35i at 60 days ;
the Five per Cents. at 25 9-16 at 60 days ; and the
Debt without interest at 81. at 60 days.

The only political intelligence in the Paris papers is
the official announcement in the Monikur of M. GIIIZOT'S
temporary retirement from office, from indisposition.
The following is the royal ordonnance to that effect :

"Considering that M. Guizot, our Minister Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs requires, for his health, some repose,
we have ordered, and do order the following :—" Count Du-
chatel, Minister Secretary of State for the Interior, is en-
trusted, ad interim, with the department of Foreign Affairs.
" Given at the Palace of the Tuileries on the 27th of April,
1845. " LOUIS PHILIPPE."

In reference to this circumstance the Siecle says :
" If the restoration of M. GUIZoT to health experiences
any delay, an attempt will be made to save the Cabinet
by intrusting the department of Foreign Affairs, to M.
DUCHATEL, who will be succeeded in the Ministry of the In-
terior by M. MONTALITET. The return of the Duke DE
BROGLIE to an office which he has twice occupied, and
which he would retain as a sort of trust, has been like-
wise talked of. We cannot believe, however, that M.
DE BROGLIE will carry devotion to his friend so far as to
consent to act a temporary and subaltern part. There
would consequently be no other alternative left except
the appointment to that department of M. DUCHATEL,
which would be a new progress made in the degrada-
tion of our policy, or the dissolution of the Cabinet of
the 29th of October, which has already too long en-
dured for the interest and honour of the country." The
Journal des Debats, on good authority, gives a different
version of the affair:—

" We attach no importance to contradicting beforehand
the commentaries to which the leave of absence granted by
the King to the Minister of Foreign Affairs will no doubt
give birth. We merely warn the public that we shall allow
the Opposition journals to say what they like. M. Guizot's
health has never inspired any serious inquietude. lie wants
repose, and this repose will be short. The statesman and
orator has solicited and obtained from the King a leave of
absence, but for the purpose of re-appearing in the tribune
with all his strength, and of continuing the struggle which
he has sustained so brilliantly for the last five years. In the
interim the administration of Foreign Affairs is confided to
M. Duchatel. It is the only reply that it was suitable to
make to the calumnies of certain journals, which, not having
succeeded in overturning the Cabinet, endeavour awkwardly
to divide it. M. Duchs.tel is the political and personal friend
of M. Guizot. The King, in selecting that gentleman to
temporarily supply M. Guizot's place, has given an equal
mark of confidence to both. We have not a word more to
add."
M. GUIZOT, it was understood, would leave Paris in a
day or two for a villa near Passy, and afterwards pro-
ceed to the Vichy Waters in the Bourbonnais. On
Monday the Chamber of Deputies assembled in large
numbers, in expectation of some personal explanation
between the Marquis DE L'ANGLE and M. LEDRU
RoLLIN. The Marquis had on Saturday made an angry
speech on duelling, evidently directed against M.
Roumr, in the belief that this writer had alluded to him
in an article in the I?efortne journal. Explanations of a
pacific nature took place, through the influence of M.
DUPIN and M. ODILLON BARROT, and the matter ended
to the satisfaction of both parties.
The accounts from Switzerland are still unsatisfactory.
Tho Presse says that the situation of affairs in the
Canton of Berne was becoming more menacing. A
popular assembly hostile to the Government was to
have taken place on the 27th, and great apprehensions
of a revolution following similar to one lately accom-
plished in the C.snton of Vaud. The inhabitants were
about to form themselves into a national guard for the
protection of persons and property. A letter from
Sch%yta, of April 23, says:—" Every one here is in the
greatest anxiety, as it is generally believed that another
expedition of the free corp; will take place. Public
prayers are put up every night in all the churches.