The Express.
London, England, 1847-07-15 00:00:00

the orangemen on the other. The late contest ex-
hibited and tested the strength of these two extremes,
and proved that their united forces did not amount to
one-fourth of the constituency.
The difficulties of this party in the county of Cork
arise, not from want of candidates, but from a diffi-
culty of selecting out of a number of candidates, none
of whom have any very striking pretensions. If
family connexions should be allowed to have sway, it
would perplex the best of Spanish geneal,gista to
adjust the jarring claims of the KINGs, the Boy the
HARES, the LONOFIELDS, and the BERNARDS—if popu-
larity justly earned as landlords should decide, the
noble families we have named severally possess
strong claims, but certainly not stronger than those of
the Duke of DEVONSHIRE, the Marquis of LANSDOWNE,
Sir MATTEIEW TIERNEY and Mr. ADERCROXIBY;—if
popularity with the constituency should have sway, it
will be found that there is no such thing as a general
public opinion in the county. The east riding of
Cork knows less of the west riding than Caithness
does of Cornwall, and the name of a proprietor adored
in Middleton would be utterly unknown in Skib-
bereen. .

We are anxious that so great a constituency as the
county of Cork should be adequately represented in
parliament. We know that O'CONNELL regarded it
as one of the greatest errors of his political life that
ho thrust Mr. FEAROUS O'CONNOR upon it as a mem-
ber. The excitement ander which this act of folly was
perpetrated no longer continues: Cork during the
late election was as tranquil as if no political
contest was in progress. Never was there a better
opportunity for the great liberal interest of protes-
tant and catholic landlords—an interest stronger inthe
county of Cork than in any other part of Ireland—to
retrieve the political character of the county, and send
to parliament gentlemen whose talent, rank, and
social position, would command the attention of the
legislature.
13ut in order that this desirable object should be
' effected, the liberal aristocracy must avoid their be-
setting sin—inattention to the wishes of the people.
It will not do for the Duke of DEVONSHIRE to nomi-
nate a CAVENDISH or a PONSONBY utterly unknown
to the mass of the constituency; neither will it be
quite prudent to set forward the scion of some noble
house whose chief merit is his title. High connec-
tions will count for much in Cork, but they will
not count for everything. The tradition of repeal
remains yet to be overcome, and it cannot be subdued
by anything still more visionary and unsubstantial.
It is said that candidates very likely to command suc-
cess are deterred from coming forward through fear
of encountering the hostility of the Irish catholic
priesthood ; not so much because they fear to be de-
fea•ed by sacerdotal influence as because they are
unwilling to incur the hazard of being unjustly stig-
matised as enemies to the catholic religion and the
Irish people. Ever since the defeat of VESEY Flu-
GERALD at the Clare election, this not unreasonable
dread has haunted the minds of the liberal pro-
testants of Ireland, and has kept secluded from
political life the 131GNELL9 and HETCHINSONS
of Tipperary, the LAMBERTS of Wexford, the
DEREERTS of Kerry, the O'BarEss of Clare, and
the TALBOTS of Dublin. We have reason to
believe that the day of this danger is passed.
The new catholic Bishop of Cork, in conjunc-
tion with the majority of his episcopal brethren,
disapproves of ministers of religion becoming tribunes
of the people. Ile dreads the consequence of seeing
such anomalous agitation continued, when all the
circumstances by which it could be justified have dis-
appeared. There is, consequently, a fair field for the
exertions of liberals in the southern counties of Ire-
land, and nothing but negligence and apathy can pre-
vent the representation of these great constituencies
from being placed on a basis honourable to Ireland
and beneficial to the empire.

WE return, as we promised, to the case of POWELL
against the proprietors of the Daily News ; because it
is of the utmost importance to the integrity of the
press that the verdict shall not stand, at least in pub-
lic opinion—and to ourselves—that we should not be
legally contradicted in our demand that the character
of our servants be above suspicion. It is not many
days since a well known journal informed the public
how large a portion of its expenses was the
price paid for the honesty of its own establishment;
and if juries thus recognise the services that arc ren-
dered in opposition to the rule of impartiality which
a journal has sought to establish, we can easily con-
ceive of a final state of things in which newspaper
proprietors will have no resource but that of
bribing above the bribery from without. It must be
remembered that there are other bribes than the
money one—less mean, it may be, but not less dis-
honest as compared against abstract truth. The
bribe of the passions, or prejudices, or predilections,
though lest morally guilt in the man, wrongs tir::
ideal of Truth as much as the influence that has a
baser aspect: not to speak of the sure moral conse-
quence, that the public reporter who leaves the safe
ground of strict and honourable impartiality at any
bidding has forfeited the safety,—and may probably
find himself in the end at the beck of worse spirits.
There port in the Daily News which is the subject-
matter of our complaint against Mr. POWELL was
of proceedings in the Bristol Court of Bank-
ruptcy in the case of a party named SMITH.
It is needless to say that the reports of
the provincial courts, like the other ordinary business
of provincial societies, cannot usually find place in
the London journals—overcrowded as they are with
their own subjects of metropolitan and national inte-
rest. It requires some peculiarity of importance or
interest—or a worse motive—to take a country case
out of the rule ; and that SMITH'S case had nothing of
the former two is suggested by the fact that the
Daily News was the only one of all the London
morning journals which had gone out of its course to
report it. Even at this stage of the facts, therefore,
the reader would be apt to look for some reason of
the latter kind—particularly when it is remembered
that the paper thus exceptionally giving up its spm
to what its rivals deemed worthless is the one of which
economy is the direct principle especially distinguishing
it from their own. The case reported involved no point
of law or fact which it imported the readers of the Daily
News to know : and when the proprietors, awakened
to inquiry, found that it was a personal one in which
the ill-will of one of their own establishment was
concerned—when they saw it charged that the party
who was the detaining creditor in the proceedings in
question had been allowed to threaten his alleged
debtor with the Daily News, and to carry that threat
into execution by occupying the paper with a report
whose sole motive was an exposure painful to the
feelings of his individual opponent—they dismissed the
sub-editor who had allowed the paper to be so
used. This the jury--who, had the matter taken
that character and come before them in that form,
would assuredly have punished the proprietors for
libel—say they shall not do; but shall remunerate
Mr. Powell. for that destructive dealing with
their property. That is, taking the extreme
consequence, that the proprietors might have
in some ease of the kind at once to pay
heavy damages for a written libel and to pay the
editor a large sum for having written it! If there
were a tradesman or a merchant on the jury, it is
strange and disheartening that he could not be made
to see that—waiving the moral question altogether—
the principle here adulterated was an essential and
most important part of the property on which the
commercial success of the newspaper depended ; and
that the sub-editor who had so tampered with
that, had done us the same wrong as they
would suffer from the servant who should replace
their own honest wares by counterfeits or introduce
into them some element of deterioration.
Let us sec, then, what case the proprietors found,
on inquiry, against Mr. Powm.L.—On the morning
on which the publication appeared in the Daily News,
a letter had been addressed to those gentlemen by a
3lr.Weaat NG, employed ()lithe paper as Mr. Po w cm.'s
assistant—stating in substance that he believed a person
named SMITH would endeavour to damage him in their
opinion, and requesting that the anticipated statements
might not have credit. Our readers know—or will
observe later in this narrative—that those statements
were already in the office, addressed to the proprietors;
and, so far as they were concerned, had been sup-
' pressed. But Mr. WEARING, fearful that he might
not have it all his own way, and that the perseverance
1 of Mr. SMITH might bring him before the proprietors
in some form, had, it would seem, resolved to be before-
hand with the possibility. His calculations as to Sat an
were justified by the event —Of Mr. Wesaino's
letter the proprietors, of coarse, took no notice. While
that person discharged his duty to the paper, with
a mere personal quarrel they had nothing to do. The
letter was handed by them to the gentleman who had
the control and management of the paper ; and he, like