The Sun.
London, England, 1842-02-02 00:00:00

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THE WEATHER.:—NOON, FEBRITAR Y 2.
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•
HIGFI WATER AT LOND'JN BRIDGE TO-MORROW
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tbe shoulders of a refbrming people, and, after a
considerable struggle, made the Reform Bill the
law of the land. But the demands of the people
Went much beyond the Ministerial plan, and re-
quired the expulsion of the Bishops from the
House of Lords, and the degradation of the
aristocracy. At that period, all the upper
classes, particularly the priesthood, were alarmed
lest England should be revolutionized. Autho-
rity seemed to have lost its hold of the human
mind, and political power throughout Europe
was shaken to its foundation.
Coeval with that great social fact, some timid,
and perhaps intelligent men, of the priesthood
began to look into the efficiency of the Church.
Their own tenets, which led them to look on it
as the source of authority and social order, com-
bined with this change of the public mind,
forced the investigation on them, and. forced
them to the conclusion that there was something
erroneous either in the doctrines or discipline of
the Church, which was the cause of its failure
as a great means of creating and preserving in
the mind the sentiment of reverence for autho-
rity. The opinions of the sect grew up, there-
fore, from a political change. It had more of a
political than a religious origin, and it keeps in
view a political purpose. It sprung from the
obvious decay of priestly power and influence,
and the ambitious and selfish object of its
founders is to revive in the hearts of men a great
respect and rev!rence for that authority of which
they claim to be the possessors.
These good and learned men perhaps have not
jet reflected on the fact whic.'n their doctrines
and exertions to promote improvement in the
Church makes apparent to more worldly persons.
With infidels and Dissenters they share the
opinion, though they snay not avow it, that the
Church, as now organised, is it total failure.
Many persons will differ frOm them as to the
means of effecting a reform, who will hail with
rapture the practical testimony of their conduct
to the inefficiency of' the Establishment.
They are not, however, singular in serving the
purposes of their opponents. There are no sects
in the Church, be they Evangelicals or Pu-
seyites, no party in the Conservative ranks, be
they Moderate or ultra-Tories,—do they demand
the aid of the State to increase the Church, or
call on the Church to extend out of its own
funds the means of instructing the people,--are
they merely the enemies of our factory sys-
tem, and content themselves with recommend-
ing a Short Time Bill; or do they propose to
raze our towns, and stop the growth of the
manufacturing population,—there is no party,
and no persons, in the Conservative ranks, who do
not now, like the Puseyites, virtually condemn
some of our institutions, or some part of society,
as it at present exists, by proposing alterations,
and what they call improvements.
Some of them content themselves by demand-
ing laws to restrict the use of machinery, or to
tax it—others admit that at least a change
must be made in the Corn-law averages ; some
object altogether to the representative system—
others only ask fur the admission into the House
of Commons, of one hundred Members, by some
rotten borough contrivance : but they all share
the sceptical, unquiet spirit of the times, as well
as - Whigs, Liberals, and Dissenters. Like
other men, they have lost all reverence for the
things which are, and demand some change.
Their conduct demonstrates their hypocrisy-.
The name " Conservatives" is a fraud, and their
conduct proves that Conservatism is an impossi-
bility. The only substantial difference between
them and their opponents is the direction in
which the ninanges shall be made, and by whose
hands. The Puseyites are extreme Conserva-
tives, and they demand an extensive reform
ill the actual practices of the Church, to be
made by the priesthood.
• The main fact on which their system is based,
is the decay of authority, which they desire to
restore. It has no other link to connect it with
society. They assume, of course, the necessity
of their authority. A belief that it is beneficial
is ground into them from the beginning of their
education, and forms a pait of their second
nature. What they aim at, is a restoration of
passed.away observances, as a means of restoring
authority. The Reformation was a great blow
to that priesthood in whose hands is the apos-
tolical succession, and one of the cardinal novel-
ties of the Puseyites is to censure the Reforma-
tion as an act of undutiful obedience.
They wish to carry the Church and the people
back towards Rome, to which they owe their
power. Hence their praise and admiration of
HILDEBRAND and GREGORY, the builders up of
priestly power, and their censure of RIDLEY and
LATIMER, who struck it a heavy blow. At the
bottom of their proceedings lies no conviction
more sacred than that authority has decayed,
no truth more general than their own fears of
its still further decay. They trace the present
weakness of the priesthood to the Reformation,
and they hope to expiate their predecessors'
sins by a return to respect and dutiful obedience.
In recognising the power of Rome, they aim at
consolidating their own.
When the priesthood was most powerful, the
members of the body were unmarried. They
devoted all their energies to' the aggrandisement
of their order and the extension of its influence.
On this account the Puseyites now recommend
the celibacy of the clergy, and sneer at allowing
sacred duties to be interrupted by the cares of a
with and family. For the same reason they
praise monachism, and are inclined to re-esta-
blish monasteries. The Romish priesthood used
many ceremouials to blind and deceive the
people : the Puseyites insist on restoring all that
are mentioned in the Prayer-book, though dis-
used in practice; and they wish to introduce
fresh ones, consecrated by the practice of Rome.
They ask for daily prayers, and insist on fasts.
Protestantism recognises, in words, if' not in
deed 4, the right of private judgment ; the Pusey-
ites, therefore, stigmatise Protestantisni as anti-
Christian. To go- forward from Rome is still
more than at present to throw off the priestly
power ; and the Tractarians on this account, too,
prefer going backwards. We need not give any
more specimens of the one leading idea of
PUSeyism. As it is based on a perception of the
decay of authority, so all its innovations, on pre-
tence of restoring the true Catholic Universal
Church, tend to the one object, of restoring and
strengthening the authority of the present suc-
cessors of the Apostles.
We have been censured in a provincial journal
for making too light of the Puseyites, and we are
assured that they are earnest and learned men,
who will not be snubbed by Sir ROBERT PEEL, There is very little
nor cease their exertions till they have obtained a French Journals of Monday. The fl2liowing is
victory. In the Established Church we are in- a copy of the answer returned:as
y the KING IO
irk the
"lined to believe that they will have great power, the Address of the French'" of Deputies,
news of intere
but out of the Church we doubt wheth • they presented et to his MA,' on Sunday eYening.
..dSTY
cau ever gain any influence. They may grind " Messieurs les
.06put6s, —lt is very agreeable to me
their nostrums into the tender mind f o some suck- to hear a ter'
:unonial like this, and it is with Pleasure
that I
.eceive it. Yes, Gentlemen, it is to the happy
lug statesman, who has the same desire to restore rxmeordanee of all the powers of the State that we
authority, and the same conscioust - •
less of its de- owe the preservkttion of public ordert and that of our
cry as the Puseyites, and, therefos'e, makes of national
erties, protected by tl-ie vtgoitr and wisdom
a heap of unsightly laws a " national conscience ;„ ?f ear institutions. With your loyal etatearrenae,
but they never will gain any great and lasting •
fluence over the people. in-
iture destinies. This confidence will dry up in their
:i nouree the insensate projects which you have so well de-
Who ever saw a race of men return from corn- tilled. It will discourapv the boldness of those knell who
are plotting secret chinations and Witt keep away
fortable cleanly dwellings to the smoke-filled from them those whilloam' a:, have 'Nth drawn in to asso-
hovels of their ancestors? When did a people
((late themselves with such'*Blemes from illusions as to
give up printing and retake themselves to the ch.- wiheicehhatbne" 'of succes and the systemi of terror by
ey are .staitsounded. I am profoundly touched by
culation of knowledge by writing? At what the seat' latent* Which the Chamber of Deputies has just
period of man's history has lie wilfully given up expressed to me in this Address."
the knowledge and comforts of civilisation for the A letter written from Goritz, by M. de Montbel,
ignorance and discomforts of barbarism ? If there alartzldthLlo.th January, eunfirmfsththehexcltehllent accounts
be no examples of such a retrograde progress how Prance,
ancdeivaenciliofruonincesVtihenatnatileo
return of thief' lii my to f
can it be rationally expected that they should '4itz will take place in the cour3c of the month of Feso,
ruary.
now sacrifice their own will, of' which men in
The Gazette de .Dauphine says,." We examined, a few
general are so tenacious, to restore the dominion
(lays ago, at the office of the Tribunal of the First In-
of exploded priestcraft?
stance, at Grenoble the list of the Jury for 1842, and it
Mankind, all over the world, and through all was not difficult for us to perceive that this list for three
time, have experienced ►much mischief from sub- hundred members, chosen out of a total of 2,400, does
mission to the priesthood, which will be a corn-
not contain the name of a single person known for the
independence of his opinions in political matters,
plete guarantee against the.revival of their power and that the inquiries which we have since made
by the instrumentality of the Puseyitess The too evidently proved to us the truth of our first haveitu'pres
decay of authority, against which they are striv- sion, and our first judgraJlit. Justice rendered by the
ins, is the natural and necessary consequence of Jury, is, therefore, but a word without meaning, tit, at
the most, tcramuse simpletons and fools. Trial by Jury
the conviction of the mischiefof unbounded sub-
will mean, henceforth, not trial by one's Peers, but by
•

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY, BFI

mission. There are no facts in the present con-
dition of society which at all correspond to those
facts in its condition on which the power of the
Romish priesthood was originally built; and
learning ten thousand times greater than that of
the Puseyites, and sincerity tctl thousand times
more sincere than their worldly-minded convic-
tions, cannotaccomplish that restoration of autho-
rity at which the Puseyites

Upwards of forty of the leading patented print-
ing firms in Paris have just published a declara-
tion, setting forth the extreme hardships to which
they are exposed by the absurd operation of
the libel law. Bad as the libel law of England
is, the law of France is still more monstrous.
Here, the printer only is liable to prosecution,
where the author withholds his name ; but in
France, the responsible editor and the printer,
must both be known; are both prosecuted; are
very frequently both fined and imprisoned;
although it is notorious, that one of them
is innocent of all intentional participation
in the alleged infraction of the law, the
circumstance is rarely admitted in extenua-
tion of punishment. In England, too, the Press
has other protections against the operation of a
defective state of the libel law, which are rarely
to be found in France. The liberty of the Press
us, both by public writers
is better e t ethose
k t
it
hwon
ra
en:
oo
r'itgio their columns fur infor-
mation and amusement. The tone of pub-
lie opinion among us is healthier than
in France ; and, consequently, Journals arc
less liable to prosecutions arising out of
caprice. A momentary, gust of public discontent
scarcely affects the stability of a Cabinet in
England, hence Ministers rarely exhibit that
sensibility to attacks upon them which prompts
the most rancorous prosecutions in France. Our
Bench maintains a higher character for impar-
tiality, if not for legal knowledge; and our Juries
are of a very different stamp from the tools of the
Procureur-General, summoned not to try, but
to pronounce sentence of guilt upon a Paris
printer. Nevertheless the document published
by the Parisi;tiaters affords interesting matter
for the consideration of the Libel-law Reformers
in the British Parliament. The printers of Paris
seek to show- that the printer of a daily journal
cannot possibly be guilty of libel within the
meaning of the law, which must of course con-
template a knowledge of the offence, and to
us it appears that in the following quotation
from their declaration they have done so
most suecessfully. The printers are quite
right in invoking the protection of the Censor-
ship, should the Government refuse to amend
the September taws. They must be ruined if
the Chamber of Deputies does not step forward
and cover them with the aegis of the Charter of
1830, so vilely trampled under foot by the Court
of Peers. We now quote the substance of the
Paris Printers' Anti-Libel-law Remonstrance :
" All the world knows that political papers. are dited,
composed, and printed during the night, that is to say,
from 9 o'clock in the evening to twelve o'clock at night,
and very often later.
" The leading articles tire formed of remarks -of the
day and the evening papers. The political articles are
never composed sooner ; very often they are only made
upon the ensan6le of the other articles of the paper, and
are, consequently, only drawn up very late in the
night. They are cut up into slips and thus put into the
hands of a great number of workmen who compose
them without following the sense, and consequently in
ignorance of what the articles contain. When thus
composed, they are read by a number of Correctors,
who are, like the compositors, without knowing what is
the sense of the whole ; these correctors, moreover, de-
pend almost entirely upon the administration of the pa-
per which pays them. These fragments of articles are
collected together, and when each is put in its place the
paper is ready, and is put to press as quickly as possible
the different copies are taken as quickly as printed oil
by the folders, who place them under wrappers, and hand
them over to the porters and distributors. All this is
done in a few hours ; all the persons are most actively
employed, and without a moment's cessation, and without
having an instant for reflection.
" We ask, now, if it be possible in this pele-mele of
activity for a master printer, supposing him present at
every one of the numerous actions constituting the
printing of a newspaper, to examine, weigh, and criticise
all the articles which are to form a part of it, when two
or three correctors scarcely suffice to read as quickly as
possible what is produced by a certain number of com-
positors ?
" Supposing even that by the utmost activity and
wonderful facility he were able to read the whole paper,
how find time to exercise his judgment sufficiently to
declare that such an article contained an offence, that
such another contained none ? It would be necessary
for him to possess an infallibility which is not to be
found even in maturely deliberating Courts of Justice.
" Admitting, however, even this infallibility of judg-
ing, a still morn serious question arises. All papers
which have given a security have entered into stipulated
arrangements with their printer, so that if a printer al?
lowed a paper to be behind hand in appearing in the
morning, he would be considered as having occasioned a
very consideraale injury to the paper as property, and
would be liable to an action for damages, proportionate
to the injury done to the paper by the delay he has oc-
casioned. This has already taken place, and the Court
of Commerce has given a verdict against the printer im-
plicated.
" What then is the printer to do? Either he must re-
fuse to print the paper, because it contains an article the
nature of which appears to him to be dangerous, and his
whole fortune is exposed to be paid away in damages,
awarded to the paper by the Court of Commerce ; or he
prints the paper, the dangerous article is declared guilty
of a political offence, and he is ruined for having printed
it against his will.
" If such be the position of a printer, who undertakes
the printing of a paper, what is that of a printer whose
whole establishment is employed in nothing but this
species of printing ? There are certain printers in Paris
who have undertaken from eight to ten papers every
day. Are they to possess a representative for every
paper ? But, if so, the difficulty is only augmented, the
fiction of responsibility is extended, and the chances of
infallibility diminished still more. This responsibility
required of the printers with regard to the editing of
newspapers is a material impossibility.
" Moreover, the authority of the Government upon
which the law confers the right of granting to breveted
printers supplementary permissions for political papers
seems to have laid down its arms in favour of them. In
fact, one papers printed in the quarter of the town of
the Chaussee d'Antin, and be who signs as printer lives
in a very remote quarter; another is at an equally long
distance from its tutelary printer. How can it be pcs-
sible, then, for these printers to carry on a rigorous sur-
veillance which the accusations now brought against
printers would seem to require? It is impossible.
" These difficulties, or rather these impossibilities,
have been comprehended by all the Courts who have had
to give judgment on similar questions; the printer has
always been put out of the question.
" If the laws upon the responsibility of papers, and
their demands in all that regards the responsible editors
—if the- guarantee of the caution money be not sufficient,
let the Chambers be called upon to decide the matter ;
but let it never be that printers, who in fact, especially
in what concerns Newspapers, are only veritable work-
men, passive, deprived of all influence, of all power, of
every capability of reasoning or dispute, are to be made
Government agents, with all the disadvantages of a com-
mercial position constantly in opposition to itself.
" The establishment of the censorship would be a
thousand times preferable. Under the censorship at
least if the printer be only a passive and unintelligent in-
strument, his fortune, his trade, his daily bread, as well
as that of his family and that of his numerous workmen,
are not exposed to the evil chances of a political error or
the right understanding of a word." ,

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