New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1881-09-09
THE BRITISH CRISIS.

eISTENT OPPOSITION TO MEASURES or PRIMARY
IMPORTANCE TO THE NArioN-rHEIR SUCCESS
sIvE sURRENDERs TO THE WILL OF THE Pro
pIE-sYsTEMATTC PERSECUTION or DIssENTERs
FROM THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH-A sIGNIFI-
CANT RECORD.
trpoN THE REGULAR CORRESPONDENT OF THE TRIBUNE.l
IoNDoN Aug. IL" Fifty Years of the House
of ords reprinted from TIE Pal Nal Gazette. has
been published by Messrs. Macmillan 81 Co., i'll a
volume thin enough to be the proverbial end of the
,vedce The appearance of these papers preceded
the four days struggle between the Lords and the
Nation which came to an end last Tuesday. They
were in time to have served as q warning, if the
English Bourbon to whom the Tory Peers have
committed the fortunes of their House capable
OF receiving or needing warning. The Saturday,
Rerier Just as that brief contest began but before
the beginning Of it could have been known TO the
writer spoke of the &" agitation against the House
of Lords ; and described it as principally stimuli
lated by The Daily Ne,os and The FaU Man Gazette.
There was, at the time. no agitation. The date of
the beginning of the agitation is fixed by the No
Surrender meeting of the Tory Peers in Lord Sails
bury's house in Arlington-st. Friday afternoon,
August H. Lord Salisbury the author of it.
sOf agitation in the popular OF the word there
was none till the terrible Marqus"-he is more
terrible to his friends than to anybody ese-tool it
into his head to make experiment whether his
single will stronger than the will of the people
of Great Britain; with results now known to the
world. The Saturday RecjeIo knows very well that
agitation not begun by series of articles en-
bodying the results Of historical inquiry into the
proceedings OF legislative BODY aud published IN
evening journal circulating at high price
among the Weather classes IL Liberal leaders,
however. think it expedite mt to keep alive the ami
mostly which the Lords so suddenly reused against
themselves, these papers will provo convenient
instrument of real agitation, though of quiet sort
But 1T is not this well-printed and red-covered
volume at half-a-crOwn which they Will make use
OF for such purpose. These 80 pages easily be
condensed into penny pamphlet. That pamphlet
would be distributed by the hundred Thousand
among the workingnen, and among other classes
who are less in need of conversion this subject
than the workingmen are. The effect of it would
be to supply those who have at present vague dis
like to the House of Lords with abundant aud
accurate grounds for reasoned hostility 10 the
permanence of it's political power,
1t is little book but full OF meat. Well informed
critics of hereditary aud irresponsible legislation
may find novelties i'll 1t. That the House OF Lords
should have stood out long they dared against
Parliamentary Reform Irish Land Bills AID Irish
Church Disestablishment will surprise nobody
But there other classes of questions on which
their action. though it has attracted less attention.
is perhaps more remarkabl. Why should noble
LORDS have opposed Municipal Reform, Law Re
form. the limitation of the death penalty, the
abolition of Imprisonment for debt the reform of
the Post Office, the repeal of the taxes knowl-
edge the reform of commercial legislation and
many other measures of a social character not
Ostensibly democratic touching in any way ON
the political privileges of class, politics at
all Many of these full of interest but will
pass on to religious questions which their
Lordships have had much to say. The Church, in
all countries has had singular hold upon the ars-
tocracy. The strength of the Roman Catholic
Church in France to-day is with the we'll born we'll
educated men of the world whose headquarters are
the Faubourg st. German. They are among the
proudest of men, and their pride has never stood in
the way of their becoming the tools of the priests;
perhaps because they were dupes before they be-
came tools. The greatest mobiles of France in
the most abject servitude to the Church of Rome
submitting TO a dictation which is both sacerdotal
and foreign in the conduct of their families, in
Guiding the education of their children and the
spiritual guidance of their wives. and in their
public lie. 1t is inconceivabe that highspirited
men should submit to this sort of degradation, but
they do submit to it, and take that their sons
shall submit to it. In England the yoke which the
nobility wear is less heavy, but it is still yoke.
The Church of England has not forgotten the lesson
her priests learned when they acknowledged the
headship of Rome. The English clergy too, have
got holl of the women. They have made their
Church the fashion. Membership of the Church of
1t is good form" to go to Church. and bad form
to 60 TO Chapel. In the upper and middle classes.
this is secret of the mold the Church keeps on tho
conscences and habits of those classes. Nobody
wants to be thought Dissenter Dissent implies
that you belong TO an inferior order come Of low
blood and not in society This is a powerful
influence in London. 1t is ten times mole p werful
in the country. SO that when you read of the
House of Lords being the enemies of religious
to hat
things, that they are oboying social opinion quite
stringent any religious conviction.
"They have BEEN" SAYS the author of tins book
tine persistent, steady and unwavering oppo-
nents of every recognition of the claims of Noncon-
formists to an equality of rights and privileges
with ChuIchmen." No doubt they have, and it
would have been strange had they been anything
else. The last thing order willingly renquishes
Is any shibboleth which marks distinction be-
tween itself and lower orders. The Lords opened
the churchyards TO Dissenters with hardly less
reluctance than they would have shown in opening
their drawing-rooms to intruders of the same sect
III their own zeal tagged, the clergy were always
at hand TO stimulate il; nay, the clergy are there
among the Lords and of them; Lords 81 ritual rul-
ing sometimes with % high hand over Lords
Temporal. They have set up "a claim TO paramount
influence on Church questions just as the railway
directors who swarm in the House of Commons
claim to be heard with Difference on railway aues-
tions. One and the other precisely the ques-
tons on which they ought to be heard with viglant
suspciousness, for each has a personal interest in
them; or In default OF a personal interest a bias in
favor of the profession in tue and the
railway system in the other They are the retained
advocates cf particular cause. But the idea
which is at the bottom of that preposterous confed-
eracy of personal interests which we call sena-
tOrlai courteSv EXISTS bara als