The Sun.
London, England, 1818-08-19 00:00:00

FOR THE sEN.

[LETTER ll.]
Err-fon,—lt iz= not for me to rebuke you
for corduciing your Journal upon principles con-
genial with the sentiments you entertain upon
the great leading questions of policy in Church
and Sr:,te ; and very far from my wish or inten-

/ion was it to call there in question, since it is
fr,ut an approval of thoso principles that 1 have
been induced to trouble you with my opinions

upon certain topics in which they are vitally con-

coned. You say, in your observations upon my
former Letter, that had I " read your observa-
tions on the following day (after the insertion of
the account of "lhe British and Foreign School

Society'), I should find that you had strenuously

condemned Mr. Brougham for hi: attempt to

mingle politics With a meeting which had profess-
edit' nothing to do with politics, but was apparent-
ly intended for the charitable purpose of diffusing

the advantages of Educatiou among the interior
classes of Society." You add, further, that you

bad before " animadverted upon the attempt of Mr.
Broti halo to derive popularity, by endeavouring
to disturb venerable Establishments conducted by

persons of unimpeachable character, &c." Now,
it appears from these observations, either that
you had very cu iy r ead over my Letter, or
that the positions which I therein attempted to
make good were untenable, or insufficient to carry
conviction to your mind; for my object was not to
prove that Mr. Brougham hacl obtruded hunself
or his Politics upon the Meeting of " The British
and Foreign School Society," but that the prin-
ciples of the said Society were in perfect con-
formity with those of Mr. Brougham, and that
he attended and addressed the Meeting as one of
the patrons and supporters of all Societies whose
object is to undermine the foundations of our
Church Establishment, in order more securely to
root out those feelings of attachment and loyalty
by which our inestimable Constitution has hither-
to been upheld and maintained in its strength and
purity. This is a very different thing from any
attempt, upon which you may have animadverted,
" to disturb venerable Establishments," by the
obtrusion of politics, for the sake of populaiity.
Here the essential property of the Establishment is
to undermine every thing venerable in either Church
or State ; and Mr. Brougham was not only no
intruder, but an essential instrument to give po-
pulitrity to the Society, and not to obtain it for
himself. The fact is, The Edinburgh Review, in
which this active citizen first plumed his wings
tor a political flight, was established upon the
principles, and after the design of the French
Encyclopedists, and by men of similar habits,
temper, and prejudices. When the vigorous
efforts of Mr. Pitt to suppress the daring attempts
of organized Jacobinism in this country had roused
the latent feelings of loyalty, and respect for
social order ; when the open and daring attempts
t'o establish a Republic under the auspices of men
like Palmer, Muir, and Gerald, had issued in the
Ilia! ant: condemnation of its promoters ; the suc-
cessful labours of the French Philosophists
offered an example and encouragement to men
possessed of-higher talents, but with Unmitigated
zeal in The Cause, to adopt a more progressive,-
but not less certain, mode of corrupting the mass
of the people to their purpose. The country—
that is the great majority of the nation, holding
fast by the opinions which their ancestors had
transmitted to them as the spring and support of
the Constitution, were unfit and unprepared for
the reception of those desperate principles to
which the French Revolution bad given birth. A
political work, under the form of a Review, was
therefore most aptly and artfully supplied to the
Public, by a Junto of Briefless Lawyers, aspiring
Adventurers, hoary Metaphysicians, and avowed
Freethinkers, who laboured so successfully in
their vocations, that in a very few years, every
opinion that had been deemed sacred and consti-
tutional, with respect to our National Establish-
ments, was loosened at its very foundation, and
the very schoolboys encouraged to spurn at ali
received notions as prejudices, at religion as
pie,tcraft, and attachm6nt to country as founded
in n arrow and illiberal views of the nature of
things. It is, Sir, to this Review that I feel my-
self justified in ascribing all that laxity of prin-
eple, that indifference to moral conduct, and
that political corruption, which darken the fair
face and form .of our loved country in the pre-
sent moment. It is, you will say, assigning a
high rank to a single publication, to trace such
consequences to the extent of influencing the
minds of a large proportion of the people of an
e\tensi ye empire ; but the credit is due, and I have
no wish to withhold it ; and those who have pros-
tituted the talents which were bestowed upon
leiu tor better purposes, to such a use, are fully

entitte(l, and Are left to enjoy the glory unmo-
lested by any thing but the sting 3 of their own

consciclicc,, Hutt the contempt of the virtuous ;and
uncorrupted ruction of their countrymen. If the
sentiments of this Review assume a character of

greater moderation, or are now given in a more
subdued tone, it is not from any conviction of
former errors, nor can it be. mistaken for a dis-
position to recant them. Success has engendered
a degree of indolence, the speculators and projec-
tors of the year 1802 are no longer to be found
in the Cellars or Fiats, the scenes of their primi-
tive institution, but translated to time English
Metropolis, rolling in their carriages, and taking

their seats among the Legislators of the Country.
They are no longer brieliess Lawyers or pining
Adventurers—the great object of their union i 3
achieved, and if the plans they revolved for the
regeneration of their country be not yet realized,
they themselves at least have reaped the harvest
of their principles, and have revolutionized their
own lot in life. Mr. Brougham, Sir, was 9n
original known and acknowledged writer in this
Review. We are not, therefore, at a loss to
know what are his real principles ; however the
forms of public life, and the convenient use of
general propositions, may aid to disguise them
from the unthinking pot tion of the community;
and as we have constantly been instructed in that
publication to treat with contempt,all those opi-
nions which have derived their sanction from
antiquity, and all National lostitutions connect-
ed with what are called the prejudices of those
who have gone before its, we have little difficulty
in discerning and appreciating the motives of
this now Lull-fledged Statesman in pursuing an
object so long defined, and to be traced in a direct
line to the principles originally laid down in his
theoretical lucubrations. I have adduced in my
former letter an authority for the measures now
platting by those who are hostile to our Esta-
blishment in the Church. Ido not charge upon
the Honourable Gentleman a predilection for any
one of the hundred and one divisions of Sects
Ppposed to the Church of England. I give him
credit for maintaining a strict impartiality on
this head. Nothing is marked but his enmity to-
wards the object of their combined hostiloy—and
this may be considered as the bond ot onion by
which his services are retained for THEIR common
use and benefit. The Edinburgh Review has, it is
tune, been occasionally sportive, through the me-
dium of clerical wit, upon the follies and absurdi-
ties of Methodism, but these are to be pardoned
as the occasional sallies of a wanton and redund-
ant ituaginatioo, let loose for the purpose of en-
livening or relieving the more sombre shades of
Scotch metaphysics, or the monotonous diatribes
against orthodox Divines. The scope and design
of the work have uniformly betrayed themselves
in a systematic hostility against what: are de-
scribed tinder the generic term of " Old English
Principles," and to overlay them with a super
stratum of French Philosophism, and modified Ja-
cobiuism. Is it not then time, Sir, to look als‘oit
us, when w e see gradually developing itself throogo
a succession of measures, gonialedly conceeling
their ultimate object, a scheme for carrying
into active agency, a principle which has mice
already, in this Country, been successfully em-
ployed to overthrow the Constitution Are we to
behold in silence, and without warning our Cutin-
trymen, the very sante machinery ot Commutee%,
through whose instrumentality Cromwell achieved
all his atrocious and ambitious designs, multiply-
ing and concentrating the power of the three
estates, and vesting themselves with a power
known only in the practice of the lioptisittens or
its faithful Copy, represented during the ascen-
dancy of a Protector, more absolute than any
Monarch that ever sat tipon the Throne of these
Realms ? No, Sir, if the Liberty ot the Press be
vindicated to its utmost licence, to serve the
purposes of these self-created patriots, it shall
also find advocates ott the side of the Constitution,
who can and will wield it for the exposure of po-
litical and spiritual hypocrisy, and of designs
that teens with danger and mischief to those ob-
jects most desired in life by honest and upright
men of every class and description of civilized
society. I cannot at present pursue the 'object
further, but I feel that in closing this letter, 1
shall meet with your indulgence, Sir, if I again
recur to the opinions which I ventured to oiret in
my last. Your word is amply sufficient to con.
vinee me I was wrong in supposing that the ar-
ticle respecting " the British and Foreign School
Society" was paid for in your Paper; but 1 do
assert, and assert without fear of contradiction,
that it was originally paid 'for in the Journals
which first inserted it. There is a fund in every
one of these charitable institutions, for the pur-
pose of publishing speeches, and for giving cur-
rency, through the press, to their proceedings ;
and your account of a Meeting of the British and
Foreign Bible Society (a twin brother of the
School Society) was also paid for, and well pail
for, in the Provincial Paper from which ;it was
taken. Nay in some instances (I speak to the
tact), a larger proportion is taken from the sub-
scriptions of charitable persons, for the purpose of
paragraphs and placards, than goes directly to the
professed objects and purposes for which sub-
scriptions are solicited. Such is the anxiety, such
the zeal, with which every Dissenting Society,
within or without the Church, is forced forward
upon the public notice; such is the blindness and
perverseness of faction, in politics or religion,
that no means are thought too low, no union too
inconsistent, that can tend to give force or cur-
rency to the object it has in view. Look, Sir, to
the fact ; read the lists of supporters to associa-
tions of this nature, and you will find clubbed to-
gether and united its a fraternal knot, the hardy
infidel and the fierce bigot, the. puling saint and
the vain scoffer, professing liberally to merge all
differences of opinion or di3tinctimiot creed, to
carry on the good work of overthrowing the
Church, and eventually (as a consequence appa-
rently inevitable) the State and Constitution of
Englantl.—l our Sir, .&c.
rENTON WYKE.