The Press. — London, England, 1858-11-13 00:00:00

1099 : racter were fam pos ures in the c we were not y , Te klessness wit of the " Londo their affairs. I o f the brother, JAME; managing direc Bank,' was re were not prep found such fac men of business ate some of ti set forth this w The year 18 JOHN SADLEIIi who negotiated the Coalition ( had taken a sh, be kept three talked glibly . a REYNARD ; he and said soft counterfeited t: In a luckless ex-Dublin atto by the credit extended his Yet even the about him. " DFASY, "in C "directors and "in extensive "portion of I "only be liken, "They were " Swiss, and S "lated in a Ca " LEIR also sy "and he also y " Estates Cour Our readers have placed i public have extreme sim innocence, in parties referre the lands p now disputed and the officis The question answer to be co-directors " London and " proper influ " at London of " If they did " ignorant? to know it ? FRITII, one of County Bank accommodatio be enough fo] about the ni Bank. In 01 pressed, the S letters of cre the other. T 1 " Twenty-on( " acceptance, " on the Tipp regularly ind on the Tipi SADLEIRS WO suits. Draft and duly hon Bank Direot A pected the it over his brotl Yet certain sums. Even Lsui's proce Bank " Direc They had a z any of their z of 7,0001., yc SADLEIR, am a Proposal fr( LUNE DARGA Gashed the as debt to the 22nd of Dia, reported that by 242,000/. Amounting THE PRESS, NOVEMBETt 13, 1858. familiar to us from former legal ex - courts of law ; but we confess that prepared to hear of the extreme ith which the English conductors ton and County Bank " managed How JOHN SADLEIR, the Chairman Adon and County Bank," ruled his AMES SADLEIR, who was the sole director of the " Tipperary Joint-stock revealed more than once ; but we prepared to find that JOHN SADLEIR facile dupes in certain experienced less in this country. We shall indi ' the novel features in the evidence week at Dublin. _853 was a crisis in the career of )LF.IR. He was the political attorney negotiated between "the Brass Band " and Coalit Cabinet of Lord ABERDEEN. He 4 showy house in Hyde-park-gardens, three hunters in Aylesbury-vale, and ' l .y . about Baron ROTHSCHILD and poor he spoke strong politics in Ireland, things in England, and cleverly the air and manner of a capitalist. hour Lord ABERDEEN made the lorney a Lord of the Treasury, and it so gained SADLEIR prodigiously influence in the city of London. ten, in 1853, persons were alarmed JOHN SADLEIR," said Mr. Sergeant connection with several of his co and the English solicitors, embarked • speculations, ranging over a great Europe. Their operations could .ened to the Credit Mobilier in France. mixed up with French, Italian, Swedish railways, and they specu- Californian gold mine. JOHN SAD speculated in tallow, sugar, stocks ; purchased land in the Encumbered Court to the amount of 120,5001." readers will mark the sentence that we ' in italics, and taken either way the a right to be surprised at the simplicity, approaching to Arcadian in the complicity exhibited by the referred to there. It is the possession of purchased for 120,5001., that is dby the London and County Bank - official trustee for the Tipperary Bank. question as in point of equity turns on the A•er to be made to the question—" Did the co-directors and English solicitors of the and County Bank know of the im luence exercised by Joux SADLEIR a over his brother JAMES in Tipperary ? did not, how was it that they were so Was it because they did not choose r On the 6th of June, 1853, Mr. of the Directors of the London and intimated to JOHN SADLEIR that ion to the extent of 50,0001. should for him, and remonstrance was made number of drafts on the Tipperary order to meet the alarm thus ex- SADLEIRS altered the form in which credit were given by one bank upon They adopted this ingenious form : j -one days after date pay, without acceptance, to or order, the sum of - n the ' iperary Bank." When that form was tdorsed a binding security was given ipperary Bank, and so armed the corked away at their fraudulent pur- Draft after draft, so worded, was drawn ly honoured, and the London and County Directors still assert that they never sus influence exerted by Joux SADLEIR ether 'hams. Ttainiy the drafts ran up to stupendous -en after having been alarmed at SAD- Proceedings, the " London and County Directors continued to accommodate him. rule which limited accommodation to members, on security, to the amount 'et they suspended that rule to please id at the end of 1852 they negatived from SADLEIR to cash a note of Wu: -,AN's for 60,0001., but in 1853 they same note ! In 1855 Jonli SADLIER'S to bank reached 200,000/. ! On the -ay, 1855, a Committee of the Board that SADLEIR had overdrawn his account ,000/., and there were sundry trade bills to 13,5491. ! They recommended that the debt should be placed as a loan to him at four per cent., and they specified the securi ties for this loan—amongst others, the Chandos mortgage for 134,9341. "It required," said Mr. Sergeant DEASY, " a large amount of credulity " to believe that JOHN SADLEIR, who in 1849 " had no means, could in that year have lent of " his own money so vast a sum. The slightest " inquiry would have shown that the money was " not SADLEIR'B, but they abstained from in " quirt', as they wished to show something to the " shareholders for the enormous advances they " had allowed him." The answer of the " London and County Bank" Directors in reply to the charges thus advanced against them is substantially this : " We were not the only people imposed upon by SADLEIR. It is easy to be wise after the event ; but how could we, in '54 and '55, suspect the Chairman of our Bank, who was then at the zenith of his position. He had the appearance of enormous sums; but," and here we follow the words of Mr. LawsoN, the eminent Irish Chan cery Barrister, " JOHN SADLEIR was a Member " of Parliament, and had Members of Parliament " at his back ; he was a Lord of the Treasury ; he " was hand in glove with Prime Ministers, with " the Rothschilds ; he humbugged the whole Lon " don world ; and were we to have made in " quiries about such a man, and when he paid a " bill into the bank were we to have written to " the acceptor of it to know whether it was a " forgery ?" All that is very plausible, smooth, and shallow. The " whole London world" had not such good opportunities for being behind the scenes about SADLEIR'S modus operandi as the Directors of the London and County Bank. Their own acts seem to show that they doubted him in 1853, and yet they let him run on, getting deeper and deeper. Nor is it true that SADLEIR was not blown upon. For several years his character at Dublin had been held to be of a dubious kind, and whis pers to the effect of " Beware of him " were muttered about him. Where he was known best he was least respected, and some members of his own family were publicly known to have bad opinions of him. In the Irish journals he was repeatedly exhibited as an unscrupulous plotter and schemer. In the Dublin University Maga zine for July, 1852, there is a strong article on the Irish elections for that year ; and, though SADLEIR is not mentioned by name, there is a tracing out of his character, drawn with such warning severity, and with so much incrimination of his character, that the Globe newspaper im puted personal malice to the writer of the article. Other evidences could be mentioned, showing that there always had been strong imputations upon SADLEIR. But we need not cite them here. We refrain from passing any opinion as to the question whether the official trustee for the Tipperary Bank, or the Directors of the London and County Bank, should obtain the landed estates, the right to which is now disputed. At the time of our writing the Judge has not yet given his decision, but enough has transpired in the proceedings at Dublin to show that the regular rule appointed in any banking concern should on no account be departed from, except when a full meeting of the Board of Management is present ; and that no person, whether chairman, vice-chairman, or solicitor, should be allowed pri vileges not shared by others in the bank. There must be increased caution in the management of Joint-Stock Banks, and the last revelations about SADLEIR will not be without their utility, if duly weighed by the commercial community at large. THE RISK OF LIVING IN IRELAND. THE insatiable Secret Societies of Ireland have just obtained a fresh victim. Mr. ELY, of Ballagh more Castle, in the Queen's County, has been fired at by a Ribbonman concealed in his shrub bery. The ball struck his arm so as to necessi tate its amputation ; he died under the operation. Mr. ELY, we are told, was " a gentleman of kind, " benevolent, and popular habits." This is the second gentleman assailed by the Ribbonmen within the month. It is only what we expected. Cardinal WrstmAN's tour was a failure. Its object was, as we stated in our columns on the 11th of Jut September, to fasten Popish supremacy on the Irish peasant, and to make Ireland again a source of weakness to de tested Protestant England. " The Prince of the Church" was not so successful as he could have wished. We therefore looked for some fresh attempt in the same direction. It has come in the shape of murderous attacks on a Protestant clergyman and a Protestant country gentleman. These murders are committed deliberately, for the purpose of striking terror into the hearts of the Protestant gentry and clergy of Ireland ; and for these murders it is not the wretched assassin by whose hand they are perpetrated, but the Popish priest by whose doctrines they are insti gated, on whom the responsibility must be fas tened. We maintain, as we ever have maintained, that it is in the power of the Roman priesthood in Ireland to put down these murders. Let them only refuse to absolve the assassin, and there would not be a poor Papist in Ireland who could be brought to commit such a crime. The priest, who absolves an assassin, is legally guilty of the same crime ; ne makes himself an acces sary after the fact, even if he has not been made an accessary before it. The parties responsible for these murders are primarily the Romish hierarchy, who wink at them; next, the priests, who absolve the perpetrators; then those who compose the tribunal which decrees the assassi nation ; and last, and by far the least guilty of all, is the misguided assassin who executes the decree. The way of dealing with these murders of late years in Ireland has been inversely—viz., to offer rewards for the detection, and to hang, if detected, the least guilty ; whilst those on whom the heaviest guilt - lies have been pampered and courted by the State. There lives not a man in Ireland who knows anything on the matter but is perfectly well aware that the Roman priest hood could, if they chose, put an entire stop to these atrocities. But in England, alas! we are so innocent, that such a notion as this is set down by the great majority of the people as a notion engendered by the morbid brains of Protestant fanatics. We almost despair of reasoning to any good effect with such persons. Still, we cannot help just asking them to consider the peculiar character of these assassinations. They are committed in broad daylight ; the whole population, save the victim and his friends, know beforehand what is going to happen. When the fatal shot has been fired, and the wounded man lies weltering in his blood, not a hand is raised to arrest the murderer ; every facility is given for his escape ; no help is given to the sufferer if, mayhap, he still survive. Here, then, is a whole population so corrupted as to become willing accessanes to the most atrocious of crimes. It matters not in which of the four provinces it occurs ; the conduct of the Popish part of the population is the same. Now, this population has been bred up for the last quarter of a century in schools maintained at the expense of the State, for which this nation is now paying some hundred thousands a year. More than two thirds of these schools are under the direct control of the Romish priests. Behold the fruits of that control ! The Popish population of Ire land, from one end of the island to the other, are a band of assassins, leagued together in a Ribbon conspiracy against the lives of their Protestant fellow-countrymen. The plea of exasperated hunger is gone. If the national schools of Ireland were what they ought to be, is it possible, we ask, that they could turn out such scholars ? Nevertheless, our Liberal statesmen, backed by a reformed House of Commons, with that pro sound sagacity which is the most striking charac teristic of this enlightened age, have persevered in refusing to the scriptural schools of the Irish Church all aid from the State. What a glorious specimen is this of the intellectual progress of the nation ! The State schools of Ireland breed up a crop of murderers, and our wiseacres refuse assistance to the scriptural schools, for fear they should rival or surpass the State schools ! if this be "progress," assuredly it is only pro gress in folly.