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

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.

1100

jartiga Correspon4enct.

PARIS, Thursday.
Tim great news of the week is that the Emperor of
the French has addressed a letter to his cousin,
Prince Napoleon, which, though not in express terms,
is virtually an undertaking that the practice of
obtaining blacks on the western coast of Africa as
"free immigrants" to the French colonies, which
has lately been practised by France on a rather large
scale, shall cease. This is a new and graceful con-
cession to England on the part of the Emperor, and
I doubt not that it will be duly appreciated by all
our right thinking countrymen. I call it a conces-
sion to England, because I know that the Derby
Cabinet represented, both to the Duke de Malakoff
at London, and through Lord Cowley to the Minister
of Foreign Affairs in this city, that the so-called
" free immigration " system is regarded by the great
majority of the people of England as nothing less
than the slave trade in disguise ; and that so intense
is their horr3r of that odious traffic' that it would be
impossible long to maintain a friendly alliance
between England and France in the event of the
latter persisting in it. This representation, made
with that mingle.' frankness and firmness which
mark the foreign policy of Lords Derby and Nlalines
bury, produced a great impression on the Emperor
and his advisers; and—his Majesty's letter is the
result.

It is generally believed that the prosecution of
Count de Montalembert, for the publication of a
seditious article in the Correspondant, will be
abandoned. The friends of the Government say
that it will be so because to the examining magis-
trates the Count has earnestly protested that he did
not mean to " excite the enmity of the Government,"
or to insult the Emperor, or commit any other of the
offences with which be is charged ; his friends, on
the contrary, assert that the Government is afraid
to go on with it, because to put so important a
personage into prison—and M. de Montalembert
vows, they say, that if condemned he will go to
prison—would create a painful impression in the
country. For my part, I suspect that both parties
would not be sorry to " declare off" in the affair :
the Government to spare itself the odium of prose.
cuting a distinguished man; the distinguished man
himself to avoid the bore of being deposited, for a
given time, in a small cell without either carpet or
easy chair, and the still greater bore of figuring in
the army of political martyrs, which, truth to tell,
has, in these degenerate days, become somewhat

ridiculous.
People here are in a good deal of perplexity about
Lord Palmerston. Has he, or has he not, been on
visit to the Emperor and Empress at Compiegne?
WWI he that old, old man, who, seated on a big horse,
at the last Imperial hunt, was from stiffness in the
joints so ill at ease that he made courtiers smile and
drew from Imperial Majesty the compassionate
inquiry, " Milor, hadn't you better get down ?" or
has he remained quietly at home ? Compiegne
journals say positively that the noble lord has been
with the Emperor, and Parisian journals say the
same thing ; whilst a let:er in one of the papers
asserts that after leaving Compiegne ho paid a visit
to Lord Cowley at Chantilly, where our ambassador
(owing to the embassy being under repair) is still
residing. Bat, on the other hand, the official
Moniteur has not announced his arrival, and it would
hardly have left the presence of so distinguished a
personage unrecorded ; neither has Gafignani nor
any of the correspondents of the London daily news•
papers said anything about him. The good public
then, you see, knows not what to think, and as
Lord Palmerston is naturally the greatest of man-
kind in its eyes, its perplexity is painful in the
extreme.

Very grand ere the hunts and other festivities at
the Royal, or, as I suppose it must now be called,
Imperial Palace of Compiegne ; very strict, too, say
the newspapers, is the etiquette observed—only a
select few, even of the invited guests, being allowed
places at the Imperial table, or to penetrate into the
inner salon in which of an evening Imperial Majesty
sits. The expen.e caused the Emperor by his visit
to Compiegne is described to be prodigious: all the
household is there, and the household is vast in
number and dear to keep ; the hunting establish-
ment is there, and it exceeds in number and magni-
ficence, and consequently in cost, that which
Charles X. used to maintain—and yet dearly did that
royal Bourbon love hunting, and right royal was his
wenerie ; guests of high degree are Caere, and have
troops of lackies with them; and last, but not least,
the entire companies of various Paris theatres are
taken down twice or thrice a week to amine the dis-
tinguished party ; and what try, and presents,
and feasting, and travelling, " incidental ex-
penses," those companies absorb a good deal. Nor