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

in I rtanix !--',. Ant

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 1845.

The House of Lords met at Five o'Clock.

The Church Buildings Act Amendment Bill was read
a second time, as was the CustomslDutics Imports Bill.
Lord BROUGHAM again drew their Lordships' atten-
tion to the encroachments of Railway Companies.
After a short conversation on the subject of the Welsh
bishoprics,
Lord DENMAN moved the second reading of the Oaths
Dispensation Bill.

Lord CAMPBELL and Lord BROUGHAM censured the
principle of the Bill, which was objected to by the Earl
of \Vic KLOW.

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 was conscientious or not ;
and the Duke of WELLINGTON suggested that a general
declaration should be substituted for an oath.

This suggestion was acceded to, and the order of
the day was discharged, 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.

Another division has taken place on the Maynooth
grant, and the majority, as at the first, is still as large
as the friends of liberty, and justice, and charity, could
desire. In a House, consisting of 355 Members,
232 voted for the grant, and only 119 against it,
leaving the large majority of 113. Oxford and
Cambridge have thus tried their strength, and
they have been signally defeated. But we do
these learned bodies injustice, for they have
not petitioned against the Bill, nor in any way
moved against the Bill—they have, on the
contrary, rejected all solicitations for that purpose; but
still the bigoted Tories, who represent them, have per-
severed in their preposterous career, and thereby fixed
a stigma upon our seats of learning, which in this
instance they little deserve. Indeed, their conduct
in the whole affair, which has raised such a fierce outcry,
is highly commendable. They have adhered to
the purposes for which they were instituted—the in-
struction of youth in elegant literature, arts, and sciences
—in labours, the object of which is to civilise the
human mind, and prevent Englishmen from degrading
themselves like barbarians, by indulging in national
antipathies and wicked religious animosit'es. The,
Church of England, we rejoice to say, has
at last shown the same Christian disposition,
and its conduct has been nobly followed by
another Church—the Church, too, that has in-
flicted incalculable woes on Ireland. There has been
no opposition in that quarter. On the contrary, many
of the heads of the Establishment, but more especially the
rectors and curates, who live among the Catholic popu-
lation, have given to the measure their full adhesion
and regard it as the very best measure that could be de-
vised for allaying the irritation that has so long pre-
vailed, and absolutely destroyed every influence that the
Protestant religion could by any chance have exercised
in a country abounding with Roman Catholics. We are,
therefore, inclined, looking at all these demonstrations
of the Established Church and Universities in both
countries, to attribute the opposition raised by
Sir ROBERT INGLIS and Mr. LAW to personal and
individual motives, and it is gratifying thus to
find that men who can oppose such a just and
necessary measure have so very little influence in the
community, and also have been so thoroughly de-
feated even with a host at their back who, by the way,
have not one feeling in common with the representatives
of the two national Universities. Sir ROBERT INGLIS
conducted himself with his usual ability, which is re-
spectable, but Mr. LAW added no honour to his former
displays in Parliament. When making the first speech
against the measure, he was repeatedly interrupted for
reading it. When he, at last, announced his motion, no
one could understand it, and he finally adopted the usual
phrase, that the Bill " be read a second time that day six
months." In this he has been triumphantly defeated, and
we therefore trust that after such fair trials this will be the
last serious contest on the question. At all events,
whatever may happen, Sir ROBERT PEEL is prepared to
persevere with unabating zeal in the good cause, alike
regardless of the reproaches of bigoted friends and
worthyer occasion o f
the taunts of political enemies. His speech on M7l-11,3•
war sn a
1 in
ei s
rt ee rm
eomf
bethredidCrhowe nso,
eaonmdploentenlyo
f.
a Minister
w satisfy every reasonable mind, that in 1829 he had no
alternative but to remain in office and fight with WEL-
LINGTON in putting down all those bigoted and blind par-
tizans who would have risked a civil war in Ireland, under
the hypocritical pretence of maintaininc, the bl •
blessings of the
Established Church. The most bitter' opponents of the
measure, it is well known, were GEORGE IV. (though
his opposition was carried on underhand) and his Royal
Highness—the chief of the rebellious Orange Club--now
his Majesty of HANOVER. It is a singular feature
certainly in this contest that the two great bulwarks
of Protestantism at that time were the KING and the
Duke of CE3IBERLAND. We wish the Church of Eng-
land joy of such saints. Sir ROBERT red, at that

time acted a wise part—he set the Court
and the Church at defiance, and triumphed over
intolerance and bigotry. He is pursuing a much
more easy course now, for the Court is fully
with him. The Church, at all events, is quiescent, and
he has mainly to contend against Sir ROBERT INGLis
and Mr. LAW, supported by only a very small section of
Tories, and resting almost entirely on men whom they
more cordially hate than Catholics or Mahomedar.s
The question in fact is settled, but coma what
may Sir ROBERT PEEL will fight in so just a calls., to
the last, either as a chief or a subordinate officer. The
concluding part of his speech on Monday, which is admir-
able, leaves no doubt on the subject, and the Irish may
trust to his promise. His words were:—" I will
not say that I was net prepared for the
opposition which this measure has met with from
the Dissenters ; but I will say this, that much as I re-
spect the expression of public feeling upon all subjects,
so far from deterring me upon this, it will only tend as
an additional impulse to me to proceed. Ido not say this
in defiance of any party, but to prove to the Roman Ca-
tholics of Ireland that the Government of this country are
prepared to adhere to their measures, which are dictated
by none other than a kindly feeling. But of this Iv. ill
give them the assurance—that, in office or out of office,
that which I have undertaken to do I will, to the utmost
of my power, fulfil ; it may be short of their expecta-
tions, but they never shall have cause to charge me with
abandoning their interest-11 hich I will advance to the
extent to which I feel, consistently with my public duty,
I can promote it."

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 jealousy Con
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 united 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 Thymic BRING with the promiseditMEssiAli 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 classos 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 an adamantine gate, mo:e impas-
sable, hitherto, than that which shuts out a Soodra from
dl possibility of entering the Brahminical caste, you
shut out the Israelite sheriff on that side from all that
lies on this ! 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.

On recurring to the debate of Friday night last, on
Sir ROBERT PEEL'S moving the House into Committee
on the subject of Irish and Scotch banking, we must
repeat the expression of our satisfaction with the general
features of the plans announced by the Premier. If this
satisfaction appears at first sight somewhat inconsistent
with the earnest and anxious tone of deprecation we
have adopted, on so many occasions, in looking forward
to that exposition, which has now been given, of the
Minister's intentions, we must take leave to remind our
readers that our misgivings, up to Friday evening itself,
were shared in by the whole Scottish public. On that
very morning, indeed, there was published in some of
the London journals a report of the proceedings and
votes
of one of those numerous meetings of the Scottish
nobility, gentry, bankers, &c.,
which have been conTened