The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-19 00:00:00

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LONDON:
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19, 1842.

It was properly and forcibly represented by
Mr. SMITH, in pleading against CHARLES SOUTH-
WELL) at Bristol, that religion is the great rer
straint on human passions on which society de-
pended for itssecurity. Hence the State establishes
and pays a Public body of clergymen. This
opinion is very 24.enerally promulgated by the
landlords, and by all those who, enjoying the
advantages of Positive institutions, rely on laws
enforced by religion for safety and protection.
Whatever weakens its Power over the mind is,
therefore,• severely condemned; and to punish
Mr. SOUTIMF-LL for putting forth writings ac-
cused.of producing that effect, was the object or
We must, on this account,
prosecuting him.
cull attention to a passage in the speech of a Dr.
TAYLOR, delivered at the Edinburgh Conference,
as an illustration of the et:Wets of the Corn-laws
in weakening the influence of religion on trio
mind. That they keep grown up people from
church, and children from school, on account of
the wretched poverty they induce, has been
proved at every meeting at which the condition
of the People has been described. That they,
therefore, deprive the young Of education, and
the mature of religious admonition, is one of their
most certain effects. But, besides this, they are

in their own nature so contrary to the precept s
of religion, that religious teachers find it ex-
tremely difficult to enforce the doctrines of re-
ligion without attacking the authority of law.
Dr. TAYLOR said, and we have no doubt that si-
milar observations must have occurred to a great
number of those whose ministration lies with the
poor—

That the privations of the lower classes, and suffer-
ings, tend to harden their minds against religious im-
, pressions was so fully his conviction; that he declared
he felt himself very much hampered and fettered in his
attempts to inculcate doctrinal and practical Christian-
. ity on his people. A few details- would best illustrate
the point. A minister surely did not go beyond the
range of his commission when he enjoined contentment;
but he felt that at present he could not do so without
at first attempting to demulce their spirits, as Baxter ex-
presses it, by a clumsy and awkward, and, in other cir-
cumstances most unseasonable preface, setting forth
what contentment does not imply—thereby very likely
commencing a train of reflections and awakening emo-
tions which he feared might go far to nullify the sub.
sequent exhortation. When speaking of the bounty of
divine Providence in satisfying the wants of everything
that lives, he bad felt constrained to say that the des-
titution many of them were experiencing proceeded
from laws enacted not by God but by man, and in di-
rect contravention of the divine law; and thus, instead of
calling forth gratitude to the Deity, there was danger
of exciting resentment against a portion of their fellow-
creatures, an effect exceedingly to be deprecated, but
still necessary to be chosen as the least of evils ; for, at
all hazards and at all-costs, the government of God
must be cleared from imputation and suspicion.—
(Cheers.) He had felt restrained, when conducting
public worship, from, in so many words, blessing God for
filling our hearts with food and gladness, lest, instead
of exciting feelings of devotion towards the Giver of all
Good, it might only kindle indignation against those
who intercept his bounties, and are regarded by many
of the people as being to them the authors of all evil.
Again, he, for one, held that the ordinances of religion
are, by the appointment of its Founder, to be main-
tained by the contributions of those.who enjoy them—
that it is the part of Christianity that he who is taught
in the word should communicate to him that teacheth in
all good things. But how could one inculcate this an
people in such circumstances as we have been hearing
of ? Might they not reply, " That law of Christ has
been, for the present, practically abrogated, in our
case, by a law of the British Legislature ? The
Corn-laws have, in the meantime, suspended that
ordinance of the Savour, as far as we are
concerned. We have no good things, in which to
communicate, and therefore the passage does not apply
to us?" Or how can we at present call on them to
honour the Lord with their substance by contributing
to the cause of missions, when it is manifest that, though
their circumstances were vastly better than they are,
they might at once cut us short by quoting the Scrip-
tures, " If any provide not for his own, and specially for
those of his own house, he bath denied the faith, and is
worse than an infidel." Nay, though there is clearly
no proper connection between a scarcity of the bread
that perisheth and the free and pressing offers of that
which endureth unto everlasting life, yet the mere juxta-
position of the two will, in some minds, augment their
aversion to the latter. Just picture to yourselves a
family in want—the unemployed head of it, with his wife
and children, sitting shiverin around, not the fire, but
the place where a fire should have been, enduring the
cravings of hunger, and well nigh maddened by oppres-
sion—conceive a minister, in these circumstances, enter-
ing the dwelling to urge them to seek the salvation of
the soul as the one thieg needful, and who that has any
acquaintance with human nature, or any sympathy with
its kind, will not see that he must feel embarrassed
and impeded in the discharge of the appropriate duty of
his office ?

So the ministers of religion cannot preach the
hope of salvation to those who are enduring the
cravings of hunger; they cannot call on their
congregations to bless GOD for his goodness, lest,
by contrast, they excite anger against men;
and they cannot inculcate contentment under
the dispensations of Providence without the risk
pf exciting revolt against human authority. Those
ministers practically and daily feel that the pre.
cepts of religion and the law of the land are at va-
riance, and at length they have been driven pub-
licly to take a part, and at " all hazards and at
all costs," as Dr. TAYLOR says, " to clear the
government of GOD from imputation and suspi,
don." We are bound, as the Conference is &-
sailed by our Tory-Colitemporaries with much
ribaldry, to express our cordial approval of
its doctrines, and to assert that those who vin-
dicate, as it has done, the authority of reli-
gion, render to society, on the principle of their
opponents, the most essential service. The mo-
nopolists maintain that if the authority of reli-
gion be destroyed, society will be endangered ;
and that can only be preserved by getting rid of
unjust laws, which contravene it, and bring, at
one and the same time, the authority of law and
religion into disrepute.

We arc bound also to vindicate these gentlemen
from the censure of our Tory Contemporaries.
The Times calls on the LORD ADVOCATE to pro-
secute them, because the Rev. Mr. MARSHALL
asked—were such laws as the Corn-laws to be
obeyed? The Post, with brutality commensurate
to its fear, declares that they ought to
be whipped at the cart's-tail. Those who, by
means of the laws, would punish men for dif
fering from them in opinion, would be assassins
if they were not also cowards. It is not new in
the history of Scotland that the beloved minis-
ters of the people are subjected to contumely
by the minions of faction but it will be some-
thing new if such insults and injuries as those
heaped on the people and their ministers by the
Tory press do not fire their blood, and make
them ten-fold more zealous and more vehement
in denouncing the irreligious laws against which

they have now taken their stand.
Those ministers have emphatically declared
that the Corn-laws are an unrighteous robbery ;
that they arc a national sin ; and they have
asked, Ought such laws to be obeyed ? This is
their offence. They did not give the answer•
We will boldly say, that laws -of that description
ought not to be obeyed. They ought never to
be enacted. We have said as much before. We
have already put the case of another HErtop

ordering the assassination of infants, which order
men would be justified in resisting. The minis-
ters of religion in Scotland call the Corn-law a

national sin—a monstrous iniquity ;it is, therefore,

an action of the same species in their estima.

Um), but, perhaps, not quite so atrocious, as the
law of HEROD ; and they would not be consist-

era if they did not conclude that it is a crime

to obey such a law, if it be possible successfully
to resist it.

It. is useless for the Tories to rave about se-
dition, and men having too much liberty. The
really seditious persons are the men who make
iniquitous laws; those who have too much liberty
are the law-makers. Their despotism' can
only be met by an assertion of liberty on

the part of those who think it wrong to
be bound by their decrees. For them is claimed

the power not only of making laws, but of de

tiding on the propriety of obedience. But the

claim cannot be realized. It is impossible to
deprive men of their right and power to decide
for themselves, if they will take the consequences
whether or not they will obey a law. That cir-
cumstance cannot be altered ; and if the Anti-
Corn-law men were able to resist the Pro-Corn-
law men, they would be justified in doing it to-
morrow.

" The justice," says Paley, "of every particular case
of resistance is reduced to a computation of the danger
and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and
judge
ofof redressing it on the other. But who shall
of this ? We answer every man for himself. In con-
tentions between the Sovereign and the subject, the
parties acknowledge no common arbitrator, and it would
be absurd to refer the 'decision to those whose own inte-
rest, authority, and fate are immediately concerned in it."
It is one of the worst consequences of the
Corn-laws that they provoke inquiries into the
duty of political obedience-•--into the right of
property—into the authority of the law, as con-
tradistinguished from the authority of religion,
at a time when the people are almost maddened
by hunger and despair. From such investiga-
tions no danger can arise, when people are pros-
perous and well fed ; but now to provoke them
by threats, insults, and injuries, is full of danger
to the commonwealth. On their heads be the
guilt who maintain the law which withholds
food from the people, and assert for the laW-
givers a power to make such laws unquestioned
and unresisted.

The laying of the first stone of the New
Royal Exchange excites, by a comparison with
the past, some little regret for a very marked
alteration in the relative position of the citizens.
Queen ELIZABETH Was received and entertained
by Sir THOMAS GRESHAM; Prince ALBERT was
received and entertained by Mr. Alderman
PIRIE, who, though an estimable man, has not
earned for himself a niche in history. So
far as the building is concerned, Sir THOMAS
seems to have been represented by Mr. LA*.

BERT JONES, and he is a gentleman even less
known to fame than Mr. Alderman .PirtiE.
" The Queen's Merchant," as Sir THOMAS
was called, was, in his time, perhaps a greater
man than ROTHSCHILD and BARING united.
We are told that he at one time so operated on the
exchanges on Antwerp, that he saved his Sove-
reign vast sums of money. On another occa-
sion he managed, by his extensive commercial
correspondence, to exhaust the tills of all the
merchants of Genoa, and lay up in idleness for
a whole season, because funds could not be ob-
tained to equip it, an armament that was to be
directed against England. Mr. Alderman PIRIE'S
services to the State are limited to a few adjudi-
cations on the Bench, and those of Mr. LAMBERT
JONES are better known 'to the Corporation than
to the public.

Though some of our princely merchants, who
may be compared to Sir THOMAS, took part in the
festival, they dishonour the City by standing
aloof from all civic dignities. To that, perhaps,
we may attribute the absence of every other ora-
tion on the memorable occasion than the Chap-
lain's prayer, which, besides being tinged with
the superstition so profitable to the clergy that
GOD can be bribed by men giving him their sub-
stance, was not sufficient to commemorate such
an important event. Neither the LORD MAYOR
nor Mr. JONES was competent, we presume,
though it could have been admirably done by
Mr. JONES LLOYD, to pronounce an appropriate
discourse on the immense advantages of com-
merce, to which the City of London was about
to erect a temple. For the iionour of their call-

ing, the princely merchants and princely bankers
of the metropolis ought, like Sir THOMAS GRES-
HAM, to share the duties and the honours, of the
Corporation, and if possible restore it to its an-
cient dignity.

It may be useful also to notice that the leading
idea of the ceremony, performed by the father of
our future Kings, himself all but a King, assisted
by great statesmen, is that of political power
protecting and honouring traffic. It was ex-
pressed by the Chaplain in the first sentence of
his prayer, when he spoke of the ALMIGHTY,
whose vicegerents on earth Kings are, " having
raised up great cities, until their merchants and
traffickers are the honourable of the earth." It
was reproduced when Sir R. PEEL, the First Mi-
nister of the Crown, referred to that foundation-
stone as " the centre of attraction to which the
commerce of the world will gravitate." It was
re-echoed, when the journals of the day de-
scribed it as "inaugurating with fitting honours
the spot where the greatest merchants of the
greatest city of the greatest trading people ever
known, are to congregate for time to come." It
was the professed homage of all the instruments
and organs of political power in the State to the
huxtering, and bartering of humble tradesmen.
So considered, too high honour, in return, cannot
be rendered to the Royal Prince, to the dignified
statesmen, and to the bishops and clergy gene-
rally, enriched by traffic, who, by their presence,
acknowledged their duty to protect and foster, in
accordance with justice, the 'meanest industry of
the people.

But the statesmen and the clergymen, who by
their presence, acknowledged their obligations
to traffic, must either have been the most
ignorant or the most unfeeling men alive, if they
could witness the ceremony without sorrow,
shame, and remorse. The %Chaplain spoke of
"God having prospered our commerce ;" the
reports, which we yesterday published of the
state of trade in Scotlard,and which we have of
late frequently publiSheci, of the lamentable con-
dition or a great portion of industrious England,
convict the Chaplain of an error, or the deposi-
taries of political power of a crime. Commerce
is not now prospering. From all sides, we have
the most deplorable accounts of distress. Traffic
is only the exchange of the surplus products of
industry, and can only increase as they increase.
But the statesmen who then honoured traffic are
the patrons of restrictions which limit and cur-
tail it. By a policy not susceptible of defence,
they wilfully doom to decay, and probable anni-
hilation, those manufactures which are the pabu-
lum of traffic. There stalks around them the
gaunt evidence of their guilt, and they em-
blazoned it by their displa3% The leading idea
brought before the public by the great ceremony)
seems only to have been conjured up to brand
with reprobation the political agents, who assisted
at it.

We call attention to an able and excellent
article in the Westminster Review, of the pre-
sent month, the principal points of which will be
found extracted in another part of The Sun,
under the head " Claims of Prerogative and
Wrongs of the Subject." It relates to the case of
the claimants for losses in Denmark, and clearly
illustrates what we believe to be the fact, that it
is much more easy to obtain justice, in some par-
ticular cases, in the most despotic nation in
Europe, not even excepting Turkey, than it is to
procure redress from the Government of this
country, unless some private job or interested
motive of some one or more Of the Ministry be
not connected with the concession of it. The
delay in granting relief to the sufferers by the
Danish reprisals after the repeated favourable
decisions of the House of Commons, to whose
arbitration the matter was expressly referred by
the Government, is a great cruelty, more espe-
cially as the case has now become a constitu-
tional one, involving the privileges of Parliament,
and even of the Crown itself, whose authority
the Chancellor of the Exchequer virtually
has, according to precedents shown by the
article referred to, for paying these unfortunate
claimants.

The French Journals of Monday have

reached us. They are unusually barren of poli-
tical news. M. DE SALVANDY, the noted diploma-
tist, was expected to take his seat in the Chamber
of Deputies on Tuesday. The letter of M. CuAm-
noLLE, the Deputy, avowing himself the writer of
the article in the Siecle, was read in the Chamber
of Peers on Monday, but no further notice was
taken of it. The responsible editor will there-
fore have to bear all the brunt of the Chamber's
wrath.
The debate on the Address of the Deputies, in
answer to the Speech from the Throne, was com-
menced on Monday, but it presented no feature

of interest. The Right of Search Treaty was
generally condemned by the,Deputies. The in-
terest will begin with the Spanish question.
The Echo du Nord mentions the following unexpected
circumstance, resulting from the bold defence made by
the widow Boulanger against_ the two robbers who as-
sailed her in her lonely cottage at Beau Marais, near
Calais, and of which we gave a full account at the time.
"On New Years-day, while the good widow was enter-
taining her family and friends, an elegant carriage drawn
by four horses drove up to her door. A servant in
handsome livery got down, opened the carriage, and
a gentleman with a lady and two younger ladies
alighted and entered the humble dwelling. The gen-
tleman, announcing himself as Lord Gainsborough, told
the widow that, having heard of her heroic conduct, he
wished, on coming over to France, to view the theatre of
her siege and defence, and express to her his admiration
of her courage. The widow Boulanger then related to
the noble family all that had passed, showed the broken
door and windows, her ditch filled with water over which
she had to make her way in her escape, and then said
that the arm chair in which his Lordship was seated was
for a considerable time occupied by one of the robbers.
Lord G. replied that he wished to reward her presence
of mind and resolution, and begged her to accept a couple
of guineas as a testimony of his admiration. One of the
valuableyoungl shawl ladies, as,
and threw sa token of
itof over her
thesati shoulders e
fhe
satisfaction, tookoft:a
oldcoutet nd nsi
cottager, ne'sehoemtehneyanthd kindness."enleft,ocome to tears by
so m
The Prussian State Gazette of the 1I th instant an-
nounces officially that M. de Geissel, Bi.,hop of Spire,
has taken the oaths as coadjutor and admintstrator of
the Archbishopric of Cologne with-the right of succes-
sion. The same Journal also publishes a letter to the
Archbishop, Baron Droste de Vischering, relieving him
in direct terms from all imputation of having used secret
revolutionary practices. The new Coadjutor will return
to Spire till next month, and then go to Cologne.
The Correo Nacional states that while Rubini was at
Madrid he sung in a concert given by a society, for the
relief of distressed religious sisters and military invalids.
The receipts amounted to more than 16,000 reals
(4,000 fr.), and Palafox announeed, in the name of the
invalids, that, with the genuine spirit of Spanish gal-
lantry, they gave up all their share of the profits in fa-
vour of the religious sisters,
The Borsenhalle of Hamburgh mentions the death of
the father of the student Frederic Staps, who twice at-
tempted to assassinate Napoleon. The-old man was a
Protestant Minister, and was aged 84.