The Sun.
London, England, 1845-06-02 00:00:00

the essential principles of the Bill, that it
would have been more prudent, more straight-
forward, and more fair for all parties, ',if the pre-
lates had manfully rejected every clause. To make any
system of education, in these days, exclusive, is an utter
absurdity. The united voice of the country is calling
out for the abolition of tests, for more liberal institu-
tions than those established in the dark ages of intole-
rance, for an amalgamation, as far as education
is concerned, of the youth of all parties, and for abolish-
ing those sectional religious differences which have
inundated Christendom with blood, and rendered the
followers' of the Great Founder of our faith object., of
hatred and abomination to believers in every other creed.
Yet, in the nineteenth century, it is seriously
proposed to establish colleges, the great object of which
is not to furnish useful instruction, to prepare young
men for making themselves good members of society,
and to wear off the rough and unseemly edges of reli-
gious dogmas, but to maintain the old worn-out, abro-
gated, and wicked system of the very worst periods of
the Christian church. According to these doctors of
divinity, a Roman Catholic University should be esta-
blished in the south of Ireland, a Presbyterian Univer-
sity in the north ; Trinity College is to remain as it is,
half Protestant and half Catholic; the Universities of Ox-
ford and Cambridge are to be closed against all but the
true believers in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Atha-
nasian Creed—even the Liberal men of Scotland,
including the most celebrated teachers at the five
universities, are not to have their own way, but
must bar their college-gates against Catholics, Pro-
testant Episcopalians, Wesleyans, Independents, Ana-
baptists, and every other sect or shade of a sect, that
does not give implicit credence to the Confession of
Faith. The Irish Prelates must consider the Members
of the Legislature, nay, the whole population who pay
taxes, stark mad, if they believe for a momen: that
such a dangerous scheme would be received on this side
of St. George's Channel with any other feelings but
those of determined resistance and unqualified reproba-
tion. If Catholic France will not give such a
power to her own Church—if the all but una-
nimous voice of the Legislature, in which the
Court of Louts PHILIPPE fully concurs, will
support to their full extent the privileges of the Univer-
sity, and resist the grasping, insidious claims of the
Church and the Society of Jesuits—what madness to
suppose that Protestant England will be less
jealous of a Roman Catholic hierarchy and
of meddling priests ! Even in England national
schools cannot be established on such principles,
the small instruction afforded in factories must not be
controlled by Protestant bishops. as the " strong" Go-
vernment found to its cost ; and the Universities of
bigoted Scotland (we use the term supplied by Catho-
lics) are preparing the way for abolishing all religious
tests, and admitting the best teachers without material
restrictions. The clergy of that country had no fear for
the morality or faith of the young men committed to
their charge, and experience has, in the most
triumphant manner, vindicated their generous and liberal
confidence. Such a fact does the highest honour
to the country, and shows that the people have realised
one of the great principles, perhaps the greatest, of the
Reformation, and adopt their faith, not from clergymen
or the dictates of human wisdom, but learn the truth from
that sacred volume which Scotland, by one unanimous
shout, resolved should be opened for the conversion and
edification of all. The Jesuits teach a different doe •
trine, but that doctrine now is exploded by every Go-
vernment except the miserable, contemptible, and bigoted
Council of Lucerne, where the Church, as it was in the
dark ages, is still worshipped as the Goddess of Fortune.
" —Sed to
Nos facimus, Fortuna, Deam, cceloque locamus."
The Catholic prelates must, therefore, not be dis 4p.
pointed at the decision delivered by the Goverrment
last evening. The Bill cannot be materially altered,
and if the Ministry pursue this wise course ',hey will
prevail. "Be just, and fear not."

In resuming our observations on the irtech in which
Lord JOHN RUSSELL, the other night, introduced his
series of declaratory " resolutions" '.lonnected with the
condition of the poor and the gene:al state of the coun-
try, we shall confine ourselves, to-day, to the serious
exceptions we feel compelled to take as to the statements
advanced by him with regard to the operation of certain
specific causes on that condition of ~.ur industrial classes
which the Noble Lord is so anxious to remedy.

Among these causes, Lord JOHN RUSSELL assigns a
foremost place to the measure of 1797, for restricting the
Bank of England from cash payments ; and, in com-
menting ou the subsequent effects of that bold proceed-
ing, he contends that it was a measure of the most enor-
mous oppression and injustice ever inflicted on the
industrial labour of the kingdom. He maintains that
the wages of labour have never since been increased in
proportion to the depreciated value of money consequent
on the Restriction Act, and to the corresponding en-
hanced prices of commodities attendant on such depre-
ciation. He considers that, although the Act of
1819 for the alteration of the currency was intro-
duced by Sir ROBERT PEEL with no due regard
to the consideration how far its adoption could then
take place without too seriously prejudicing the various
economic interacts of the empire, and though it did
work, at first, very serious inconvenience and injury—
to the industrial ty.:cl manufacturing classes more parti-
cularly—those evils have since disappeared, and their
traces are now scarcely to be discerned. We really
know not which of these several propositions to indicate
as that which is most valuable, both as to the real facts
of the case, and the arguments to be founded
upon them. As to the Bank Restriction Act
of 1797, we would respectfully submit to his
Lordship that no man living cats now undertake to
point out what alternative, what middle term there was
between a national bankruptcy, and that, as we are pre-
pared to contend, most salutary expedient. If anybody
had imagined, previously to the publication of the last
volume of "Lord MaLmEsnuav's Memoirs and Corres-
pondence," that our Continental enemy was in no condi-
tion to take advantage of such a catastrophe to effect the
downfal of our commercial system and the ruin of our
political strength, by forcing the immediate paralysis of
those productive energies of British capital, to whose
unimpaired integrity, under the blessing of PROVIDENCE,
and in a degree next only to the irresistible spirit and
nationality of the people, the salvation of the empire has
been owing—we could have allowed that he was fairly
entitled to argue on any ease, however extensive, to
which the illustration of the abstract principles of main-
taining to the letter every contract with the public credi-
tor, might lead him. So long as there was no practical
and imminent peril of endangering the public credit, and
precipitating the loss of our national independence at one
of the most eventful crises in the history of all European
States, we might allow that, even if the suspension of
payments in gold were desirable on very many grounds
of public interest, as well as convenience, it would have been
unjust as well as impolitic to resort to it. But the dangers
which hung over us, at the period in question, are no
longer matters of hypothetical assumption. We have
learned from the highest, as well as the most authentic
sources of contemporary history, that they were not
exaggerated by the fears of eminent statesmen of all
Parties in this country at the time, and cannot tie now
explained away. But when it is in vain to deny, that
notwithstanding the temporary depreciation of the Bank
of England's paper and the public securities, which a
measure so novel and alarming at its first an-
nouncement produced for the credit not only
speedily rallied, but enlarged and consolidated its own
bases in a degree without precedent or parallel after the
restriction of 1797, and maintained itself upon them
throughout the war, increasing instead of diminishing
its resources from its ccmmencement—when it is recol-
lected that the Bank of England itself, in the same in-
terval, has attained a height of unexampled prosperity,
credit, influence, and power, which may be said to extend
themselves throughout the entire world of commerce,
we are at a loss to see how the measure by which alone
its vitality was, or could have been preserved, can now
be impugned. With its vitality the existence of
British independence was then, in a manner, borne
up. No men can more decidedly condemn this
too intimate alliance between the great money-
power of private capitalists and the Government than we
do ; but that was then the condition of things with which
the Ministers of the day had to deal. But if the Bank
Restriction Act was thus a measure of great state ne-
cessity, we can scarcely visit it with the severe reproach
of having produced prejudicial effects on the state of our
industrial community, from which they have never since

recovered.
But, as we have said, we are so far from considering
that the industrial labourer, after the Bank Restriction
Act, had to endure a pressure of diminished wages, from
which he has never recovered, that we can prove that the 1
rate of wages between the commencement of the war in
1802, to its termination in 1814, and subsequently, down
to the passing of the Currency Bill in 1819, rapidly '
rose to, and steadily maintained, a scale at which it
covered not only the depreciation in the value of money,
already alluded to, but the amount of indirect taxation
which he had to pay. The difference since 1819, or at
least since 1822-23, when the small bank-note circula-
tion of England and Wales was extinguished, has been
this—that the prices of commodities being reduced to
the gold, or natural standard, the
sof his labourers which manufacturer
abciadveitiorneprt:enttehde
wage
has been unable to
pend-
ing give
e wthoautl d
of his goods. It has been established
ing the production
the amount of indirect taxation they have to pay,