The Sun.
London, England, 1829-09-24 00:00:00

r eceity c i,l:ltarpen their wit e, betetuse a gi,nd
Police will necessarily improve the thieves in their
trade. Still we trust much to the efficacy of orga-
nization. In time the other great towns will avail
themselves of the best parts of the scheme. We
conclude with repeating our approbation of the
scheme as a whole. It is highly creditable to
those who framed it, and is equally creditable
to Mr. Peel, who, if he had no hand in the
framing of the instructions, is at least entitled
to the merit of judgment in bestowing his ap-
probation on them. When so much property is
txposed) and so much necessity and ardent
passions come in contact with it, there will always
Ate ktime ; but we would fain hope ii at the trade
k'J,' a thief will not be so good as it has
.been.
Hitherto it has been one of the best in Lorelon.
—Morning Chronicle.
There has appeared in some of the Irish
I)apeea 'a very curious document, purporting to
4.‘e 51 report of proceedings which took place at
‘..!neeting held lately in Cork. When it is stated
that the design of the meeting, and of the reso-
lutions which were there unanimously adopted,
ws to obtain iroin Parliament an extensive re-
Cern' of abuses in the established Church of
hngland and Ireland, most of our readers, more
cspecie..ily those who call themselves the " Old
(.:)i#!irch and King party," will exclaim, " Ay, we
old you how it would be : we knew well enough
that the Papists would never be quiet ; we warned
You that, once admitted to the state, the church
would be the next object of their rebellious ma-
chinations ; and you now see that the Relief
NH is not six months (Act when the priests and
~.a.git-ators are as fierce as ever, in an open assault
,tmp.on the reputation and property of the clergy."
Ilan attack of this description had been made
from the quarter whence complaints against the
Church have usually proceeded,—at least in Ire-
land,--it might not, perhips,'have been unpar-
donable, nor very unnat urel ; but sure we arc
that it would have been attended with no im-
mediate result of any sensible importance.
1n fact, however, the Catholics--we mean
.those among than who have been accus-
tomed to represent the general sentiments of
their body—have, since emancipation, behaved
with more respect towards the establishment
than at any former period within the last twenty
years. A variety of circumstances, in - all parts
of Ireland, might be brought in testimony of the
rapid, if not yet total extinction of an exclusively
Catholic interest, as arrayed against the Protes-
tant power of the state, and against the esta-
blished church as its instrument, organ, and
symbol. No meetings for purposes hostile to
the church have been called together, that we
can now recollect, or attended principally by Ca.
tholies, since the law for their relief was carried
The meeting now alluded to—wonderful thougl
it may seem—was neither composed of Catho-
lics, nor convened by Catholics, nor were its pro-
ceedings and resolutions adopted in a spirit ol
hostility or even hike:warmness to the Church ol
England, or in any way characteristic of an ex-
ternal pressure upon the rights and interests of
the Protestant clergy. It was not, moreover, an
assembly of splenetic, morose, or obscure indivi-
duals, who, under the designation of some one of
the 100 sects of Protestant Dissenters, would
strip the church naked both of forms and sub-
stances, and leave her no possession but her
name. The Cork meeting, for a large and
sweeping reform of abuses in the temporal ad-
ministration of the church of the United King-
dom, was composed exclusively of members of
that church—men of high rank and vast pro-
perty, and decided high church and Tory poli-
tics, whose resolute and consistent, though mis-
taken opposition to every stage of the Catholic!
Relief Bill was founded ostensibly, and, we be-
lieve, truly founded, on their zealous attach-
ment to the established church—to the Protest-
ant interest, as means and appendages of the
refortred religion. These noblemen and gen-
tlemen, with Lord Mounteashell at their
head, have come forward with a petition to
the King, grounded on reiolutions of which
the meaning may be briefly stated as-1. A
reprobation of the idle, worthless, and unprofit-
able conduct of numbers of the established
clergy. 2. An equally strong condemnation of
the corrupt manlier in which church patronage
has been distributed, whereby the above class of
undeserving ministers have been introduced into
all the best preferments of the church, over the
heads of humbler and more meritorious pastors.
3. A bitter (and we do not say unjust) com-
plaint, that time perhaps inevitable—perhaps de.
sirable—inequalities of income among the clergy,
have been perniciously and oppressively widened,
by accumulating the revenues of many benefices
• into few hands, thereby depriving the most faith-
ful and usefUl ministers of an adequate reward
for their labours, and of a decent support for
• their families, refusing to a great proportion of
Protestant parishioners throughout Ireland their
rightful enjoyment of the services of a clergyman
on the spot, and ineumbering the church with an
. army of high-born or highly-favoured minions,
whose sole inducement for entering its holy pre-
chiefs is to be fed on this plunder of laymen who
pay tithe, and of the class of working clergymen
who arc thus debarred from the receipt of it;
while the cravings of their cupidity and ambition
demand to be quieted by a perpetually increasing
aggravation of the abuse of pluralities and con-
solidated livings. We, of course, cannot be
altogether insensible to the danger of tamper-
ing with the church. But it is only common
sense and candour to acknowledge, that a refor-
mation proceeding from within its own body,---
recommended by its own zealous disciples,—and
executed with fair views for its honour and sta-
bility, by those who would cut out an ulcer from
the system for no other end than to hinder the
disease from spreading, comes upon us in a far
different form, and ought to be more kindly
and respectbilly received, than when the professed
enemies of the establishment were used to
launch -their reproaches at its head, in a spirit
of menace and aversion. The most difficult
feature in any attempt at church reform has al-
ways appeared to be an apprehension of the hn-
mediate warfare which it would provoke from an
aristocracy whose interests were more or less
identified with the worst abuses of church pa-
tronage. When a Minister (not of the Gospel,
but of Downing-street) once gets access to a
Bishop's car, the effect upon his diocese is felt
after no long interval. Without giving the least
approbation to a scheme for diminishing the sum
total of that property which has been set apart
for the maintenance of the Irish church, and
which, if turned over from clergyman to 'squire,
mould not reduce, but much aggravate the pres-
sure on the people, besides renuering all property
precarious, it is a very distinct matter to propose
that the unimpaired bulk of church revenue
should be applied to the service of religion, by a
more convenient and equitable scale of distriliu-
tion, than that which has hitherto, unfortunately,
not regulated, but disturbed, the relations of Irish
clergyinett towards their parishioners and to each