The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—On dit (we know Sir Robert likes to
see that expression in our columns) that it is not yet
settled definitely whether the John Bull or the New Mo-
ral World shall be the recognised weekly official organ
of the Administration. In the meantime, these worthy
rivals make the most emulous use of their respective ad-
vantages of access to the embryo Councils of the Powers
that be. The organ of Mr. Owen appears at present
" the favourite" in the race. The familiar intercourse
lately accorded by the chiefs of the Cabinet to the
subaltern scribes and under-spur-leathers of Socialism,
gives them a great start ; and while the John Bull
is only enabled to " have reason to believe "
that Lord Ashley will, soon after the meeting
of Parliament, heat up his old hash of the Ten
Hour Bill again, and to anticipate as one of
the alternatives which may follow its passing—
that " manufacturers will return in a variety of cases to
manual labour in the production of their goods"—the
New Moral World soars a bolder flight, and gives us
Pisgah glimpses of a total organic change in the whole
structure of society, in consequence of the light breaking
in upon Ministers through Mr. Owen's antes damnees.
The Northern Star, which will, we suppose,take the place
of the Times under the new regime, which his Grace
of Buckingham, Mr. Gladstone, and their Socialist
friends are so well agreed about, interprets this
Cabinet fraternising with Owenism after its own
fashion, and announces that the "question of the' Land'
has been fairly set before the Government as a
remedial measure for the manifold evils we endure."
It is hoped that this New Harmony will not be in-
terrupted by indiscretions on the part of the Bench of
Bishops on the opening of the Session of Parliament.
On dit, that the flexibility which sometimes tempers
Episcopal fervour is much confided in to prevent Henry
of Exeter renewing his crusade against Socialism. It
has evidently become quite a presentable thing, since
the Melbourne Ministry. There is no Home Secre-
tary now in the Lords, to be asked why he does not
put the law in farce against the very existence, or ru-
mour of existence, of Socialist communities. The Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of London, it is
expected, will see the propriety of now smothering all
the fears which it was suitable to express when a Whig
Minister humoured the vanity of an old gentleman by
presenting him at Court.
STANDARD.—We are reminded by some Cor-
respondents of the Morning Post that we misnamed
the new Psalter of the Tractarians, from which
we lately made some extracts, in calling it the " Lyra
Poetics." Its name is "Lyra Apostolica," a title
which we cannot help thinking less decent
than the application of the general title " Psal-
ter," the use of which by us the Morning
Post's Correspondent calls by no more gentle name
than " blasphemy," Looking to the etymology of the
words we cannot help thinking ours the more venial
desecration, if there is any desecration in the case.
We are again blamed for saying that the Lyra Apos-
tolica lies between Mr. Kettle (mispelled Mr. Keeble)
and Mr. Williams ; whereas no less than six authors
have contributed to the work, whose several pro-
ductions can be assigned as accurately to the
respective owners as the papers in " The Spectator."
This may be so ; but we must respectfully observe
that the persons in the secret lie in a very narrow
circle—a circle probably not much wider than
that contemplated by Swift's maid servants, who said,
" all the world says that I am going to leave my
lady." For our own part, we have not met with any
one able to affiliate the articles in the " Lyra Apos-
tolica ;" nor can we at this moment say whether
any or all the plainly Romanist extracts which we
have given may not be of the muse of Mr.
Williams. There seems to us, we confess, to be
something excessively mean in all this shuffling
and " thimble-riggery " about the editorship of the
" Lyra Apostolica," and the authorship of its arti-
cles. It is quite fair to remain anonymous until
one is questioned seriously by some one having the
right to question, and as long as our act or writing
is not injuriously imputed to other,. But every
member of Convocation has surely the right to
know the extent to which a professing Protestant
Clergyman, seeking to be a Professor of Poetry
at Oxford, is concerned in the compositiol; of a
Romanist " hymn book ;"—that phrase, we sup-
pose, will not offend, —or whether he is con-
cerned in it at all ? And if Mr. Williams has
a difficulty in giving an answer which might seem to
throw responsibility upon others, these others, if they
are men of honour and Christians—and if they are
sincere Protestants they must• be botk—ought to come
forward and exonerate the unlucky candidate ; the
shuffle and the silence taken together are, not to use a
harsher term, exceedingly un-Protestant, like all the
proceedings of the 7'ractarianr.
CO U RIE R.—As the appointed period for the meet-
ing of Parliament approaches, Anti-Corn-law agitators
become more intensely active and malignant, doubtless
with the fallacious hope that their furious ravings,
and one-sided statistical reports, will serve to in-
fluence and give directions to the course of
legislation which the present Cabinet may pro-
pose on that much-vexed question ; but if any of
them, lay, or self-dubbed clerical, should lay that
flattering unction to their soul, or fancy that the coun-
try or the Administration does not view their pro-
ceedings with supreme indifference, and l'sten to
their turgid threats with sovereign contempt, the
pleasing delusion will, we promise them, be
speedily 'dissipated on the instant. We know
of nothing more unconstitutional nothing more
likely to be attended with consequences of the most
disastrous kind—nothing less consistent with that
freedom of thought and action, which of necessity
belongs to a deliberative assembly, than that the sup-
position that its deliberations could be influenced, or
its measures dictated by itinerant spouters or mis-
chievous intermeddlers, whose knowledge of the great
political question which they met, not to discuss, but to
determine, seems to consist in an insane hatred of
the agricultural community, and whose sole object
would seem to be to accomplish its ruin. There is
mixed up with this a faint and distant glimmering
of self-interest—a kind of impression, half-hope, half-
belief, that their own condition would be elevated in
proportion as that of those engaged in agricultural pur-
suits would be depressed, labouring under the pernicious
fallacy that the agriculturist and manufacturer stand in
the relation of antagonists, and that what is taken from
the one will find its way into the pockets of the other.
It is to impress the public mind with this erroneous
and invidious notion—to make the owners and occu-
piers of land appear in the light of exacting mono-
polists and grinding oppressors—that the prints in the
service and pay of the League so industriously and per-
severingly labour, that Dissenting propagators of sedi-
tion bold " their conferences," and that even otherwise
respectable mercantile men lend their names and in-
fluence to Anti• Corn-law demonstrations.