The Express.
London, England, 1848-04-13 00:00:00

is not calculated to arrest or check the evil against
which it is directed. It is meant to elevate the atro-
cious speeches of the Mrratems and MEAGHER...4 1
from the rank of misdemeanors to that of political
offences. Now, their monomaniac disposition to fa-
miliarise the imaginations of the populace with acts
of bloodshed and cruelty, and thereby to dull the na-
tural horror of them or superinduce a morbid appe
tite for committing them,
is more a social than a po-
litical crime. MrtatELL's lectures on preparing ex-
temporary instruments of cruelty would be quite es
culpable, if intended to promote agrarian outrage,
astheyla,
they are when levelled against the stability of govern-
ment. Their inevitable consequence is, to render
men savage and bloodthirsty ; and they do their work
by the means of constant ite ratio
—of incessantly
repeating the same images. Both these features of
the crime are overlooked by the bilhich govern-
ment has introduced. Should itl w
become law,
MITCHELL would, under it, only stand on the same
level with a FITZGERALD or an Emmen ; the latter
were misguided, dangerous, but not brutalised and
d, moralised men. Should it become law, one hasty
unreflecting speech, in a moment of intense excite-
ment, might subject a man to the same responsibility
as the Dublin professor of carnage and brutality, who
lectures his scholars weekly on the arts of murder

and anarchy.
We object therefore most strenuously to the clause
of the bill upon which we have been commenting, in
so far as " open and advised" speaking is concerned,
and hope that as Lord JOHN RUSSELL has an-
nounced that the operation of this provision
is to be of limited duration he may be in-
duced to withdraw it altogether. This part. of
the measure as it stands may be rendered subservient
to political oppression, and it leaves untouched the
offence against which it is more particularly levelled.
We have sought to divest our remarks of passion ; we
have avoided all appeals to popular sympathies; we
would address ourselves to the judgment of ministers
alone in begging them before they again bring in
their bill, to withdraw a provision of so objectionable
a character. We have avoided all reference to the
circumstances in which the bill has been introduced,
or to any inconsistency it may imply on the part of
ministers : these considerations, not without weight
in themselves, have been exhausted in the able speech
r of Mr. OSBORNE.

IF there were any guarantee, or could be any fair
possibility of the repeal of the union between England
and Ireland turning out a mere political revolutioi,
a tran-ference of power from the parliamentary class
of English politicians to the more capable and emi-
nent of the Irish themselves—if this could be achieved
without any social anarchy, dispossession of the pro-
prietorial class, destruction and persecution of religion—
a great many Englishmen would be most ready to
waive whatever remains to this country of a trouble-
some and unprofitable ascendancy.
But, unfortunately, it is too evident that was Ireland,
abandoned to herself, especially in the present time,
her upper sawn, her institutions, and her legislature
could not but be at the mercy of the most ignorant,
the most bigoted and the most destitute population
in Europe. An Irishman of birth and educa-
tion, bconging to the morentent, declared in
the House of Commons that the property of
any landlord opposing his schemes should be
confiscated. ROBESPIERRE never uttered anything so
audacious ; nor would the Jacobin club of Paris,
for the first three years of its stormy existence, have
suffered such a threat. Mr. S. O'BRIEN, indeed, forms
his categories and classifies his proscription lists.
Landlords behaving in one way he will respect—land-
lords behaving in another he will reduce to beggary,
and landlords behaving in some other way he, no
doubt, will guillotine. But who is to guarantee the
observance of Mr. S. O'BRIEN'S categories by the mob?
The English power and army once withdrawn, and,
in case of repeal, the QeEEN'S forces would
be as little tolerated in the country as in
case of separation ; there remains no source of
power but in the mob, and no means of retaining
power but by flattering it. The NiITCHELIS and the
MEAGEEBS must reign. Let Englishmen be ever so
disgusted, can they abandon to fiends like these
that class of persons in Ireland, who from race, creed,
habits, property, are looked on by the ultra-Irish as
Englishmen ? Could her Majesty's government or a
British parliament give up the settlers of Welling-
ton to be devoured by the New Zealand savages?
Very little different from this is the question of
immediate repeal. And we believe that if ever
the English chartists could see clearly the inevitable
consequence of repeal to men of English race and
tongue, and to men of English creed, they would shrink
in horror from aiding to give up their fellow country-
men to slaughter, and the great principles of religious
and civil liberty to inevitable degradation and ex-
tinction.
Gradual repeal is, however, a different thing; or
at least, the gradual concession to the Irish,
without revolution or social anarchy, of every
boon and every act of justice, and of every sacrifice of
pride, that repeal in its happiest achievement could
produce. All these concessions Englishmen should
be prepared to give, as fast and as completely as they
can be safely given; and this, not only because the
Irish are strong enough to conquer them, but because
by refusing them, we perpetuate the present relations
of the two countries, in which Ireland is a weakness
and a drag upon the power and wealth and happiness
of England.
The feeling of Englishmen in general, that is, of
the liberal English and of parliament, has been, that
the present, whenever that present is considered, is an
exceptional state of things, and that its difficulties are
to be got over as best can be done, without too much
concession. For, that bad as things are, still, now
that the attention of the legislature has been turned
to Ireland, its wisdom cannot fail to work due reforms,
remove inveterate abuses, and lay the foundation for
a new state of things in the future with which the
Irish themselves must be contented.
English men and politicians are, we fear, too
sanguine in their hopes and too self-complacent in
their schemes. They give themselves credit for more
wisdom than they possess. And their policy to
Ireland does not warrant such self-laudation. Let us
consider the great acts of the English government and
legislature with respect to Ireland these late years.
These have been the poor law, and the relief during
the famine, which grew out of the poor law. In both,
England was most generous, most humane, moat well-
intentioned, and it employed its wisest heads to
imagine, and to examine, and to execute. Yet what
has been the result?
The poor law, that great act ofjustice, and the relief
measures, that monument of monster charity,
have in their carrying into effect contri-
buted immensely to increase the alienation
of all classes of the Irish from England, and inspired all
with a disgust and a contempt for English rule.
The lower classes received both with grudges and un-
thankfulness. The middle classes have made use of
the sell-government, and local power given them by
the Poor-law, to discredit the Poor-law itself, and to
make the government that sent it odious. The upper
classes, which it mulcted and coerced, have been
of course its enemies. Previously, English rule,
or the superseding of Irish by English authority was
felt in Dublin, or by professional classes. But in the
working of the poor law and of relief, there was not a
court, nor a district, nor a square, that did not feel
itself set aside and slighted by engineers and in-
spectors and whole hosts of foreign subaltern autho-
rities. Thus if the poor law was left to local
guardians, these turned their power to defeat
and discredit the law ; if they were super-
seded by poor-law pachas, grudg ensued,
resistance, and disaffection. And parliament has
been as unsuccessful in meddling with the Irish,
as government. Thus, when a committee was asked
to inquire into the working of the Irish poor law, it
was instantly assumed in the house that it was but a
trick of the Irish landlords to weaken or neutralise
the law. The demand was rejected. And Lord
MILTOWN, followed by other gentlemen, instantly re-
pudiated English colours, and took his seat in Con-
ciliation-hall.
Let not the English parliament and government,
therefore, lay the flattering unction to their souls,
that because they have been well-intentioned to Ire-
land, they have been wise. And let both, in consi-
dering and discussing the question of repeal, admit
that they have shown great ignorance of Ireland, and
committed the greatest blunders in dealing with it.
Repeal, indeed, we think impossible. The consequenses
do not so much affright us for England's power as
they make us shudder for Ireland's fate, and above all
for the fate of certain things and classes in Ireland,
that England cannot in honour and humanity
abandon.
Mr. Joint O'CoNNELL made an able and temperate
speech on Tuesday. Did he always speak so, he

would do his country more service in parliament.
Lord Monrwrit's speech did honour to his heart and
to his head, bat neither his Lordship nor the Secretuy
for Ireland seemed empowered to make those pro.
mists and declarations, which appear called for, and
indeed indispensable, in the present state of Ireland.

Or the conservative triumvirate to whom we yes.
terday adverted, the Duke of WELLINGTON is thee
only one whose consistency entitles him to speak
decidedly. More modesty might be expected from
neophytes like Lord BROUGHAM and the Times, •
their denunciations of what, if it is sin, they have
ul
themselves been guilty of. The complacent tone in
which they talk of monster meetings and processions
as illegal and a " nuisance," looks like the weakness
of a great author who was said to " hate for arts
which taught himself to rise." The JONE-ES and
Northern Stars of 1848 have, after all, a strong
family-likeness to the BROUGHAMS and Timeses of
1830-32. They are coarse copies, indeed, bearing much
the same likeness to their originals, that the cuts in a
certain class of cheap publications do to those from
which they are pirated, or the publications
of Mr. REYNOLDS to those of GEORGE SAND. Theo
was much more taste and tact in the diatribes of the
' Times than in those of its more recent copyists, but
' the question is one of law and morals, not of taste.
The Times is (at least was on Tut oday last,
for it is difficult to catch ere it change this
" Cynthia of the minute") of opinion that if we
are to be threatened with a repetition of monster
meetings or processions, "it will be time to
think of some cheaper, less troublesome, and more
summary way of suppressing the nuisance," thus
the law at present provides. Not so thought or
spoke the Times in the merry month of May, in the
year of grace 1832. During that month the whole
of England was in a stsee of intense and angry ex-
citement. Political unions were organised in every town
and village, and in active communication with each
other : men talked of arming, men talked of refusing to
pay taxes, and the Times cheered them on like a whip.
per-in encouraging his staunch fox-hounds. From the
4th to the 24th of May, the Times kept threatening
the House of Lords and the Court with popular (ego.
initiation and physical force. All this may have been
right, or it may have been wrong, but it is not decent
in the journal which acted thus, when one branch of
the legislature was actually awed into submission, to
invoke coercive laws on the heads of those who may
have the will, but have not the power, to emulate it.
This is too palpable an avowal of the doctriae, that
laws are cobwebs in which flies are caught, but which
wasps break through.
It is scarcely possible to convey to readers, who
did not actively participate in the scenes of 1830-32,
an idea of the exact nature and tendency of the
leading articles in the Times at that period. Oar
iioritegium will give as faint an idea of the ensemble of
the articles imbedded among reports of public meet-
ings, the letters of "Radical," &c., &c., as a specimen
of coral in the British Museum does of the glistening
and variegated beds which adorn the depths of the
ocean. Our specimens, however, will show that if the
Times thundered as it did, and did no harm, we may
be at oar ease with regard to the squibs and crackers
now going off about oar shins.
In the beginning of May, 1832, the Reform Bill
(No. 2) got into the House of Lords. The Times
opened its batteries up 's their lordships before they
had an opportunity of showing their teeth. On the
4th of May it lectured them after this fashion :
We have some reason to su-pect that the metropolitan
clauses of the bill are those which the whole body of anti.
national peers have doomed the foremost to destruction. U
so wild a vote he passed, we once more warn the noble per.
sons who may be guilty of it, that twelve hours will not Face
elapsed before they will repent themselces in sackcloth and
ashes. The spirit of the nation will brook no such unworthy
proceeding. • • • The country will not endure a rejee-
tinn of the metropolitan, or of the 101. clause of this bill.
The measures consequent upon a vote fee the rejection of
them are already
.at this moment organised throughout ths
kingdom, and grievous will be the self-reproach of those
who compel the people of England to put in force their roo-
tlet issu.
This is pretty well for a beginning. The overture
does not open pianissimo. The Lords are told that
an organisation exists throughout the country, which
will make them within twelve hours, "repent them-
selves in sackcloth and ashes," if they do not do as
the Times bids them. On the ith of the month the
warning was repeated, with more direct allusion to
the numbers of the supporters of the Reform Bill.
Will the nation bear to be duped or dragooned out of this
idolised clause of the bill [the 101. clause] ? 1.10 noble led'
hear anything of what is passing around them ? Do they
know that such places as Edinburgh, and Glasgow, aid
Leeds, and Manchester, and Birmingham (the population of
which,mests this day) exist within the island ? And with
proots before them of what the nation has r
•esolved ox, will
they set Great Britain at defiance ? • • the
be forced upon us by these God
speed why then we
cry ' Old England for ever! God speed the people, the
constitution, and the right! "
We maybe told that the wager of battle here
alluded to is metaphorical. Be it so. The great
meeting at Birmingham noticed in the above quota-
tion passed, among other resolutions, one which de-
clared that the people ought to provide themselves
with arms. At the suggestion of Mr. SALT, the
immense multitude assembled solemnly " devoted"
themselves, their wives, and children, to the cause
of their country ; and one of the speakers declared
with vast applause—" The people of IVolverharopton
were convinced that if the Reform Bill should be re-
jected, some dreadful convulsion would take place,
but they would be ready whenever the time came to
stretch out their hands against their oppressors." Of
the proceedings of this meeting, the Times, on the
9th of May, spoke in the following suggestive and
eulogistic strain :
Monday will long be a memorable day in the annals of
Birmingham and of the British parliament. On that day
I was assembled in the great unrepresented mart of our iron
trade a meeting of reformers the most magnificent for its
numbers and strength, the most formidable front its 'mime
and enthusiasm, the most impressive from its order, disci-
pline, and resolution, that ever was seen in England or the
world. On that day this mighty host of 200,000 persons,
ranged under trusty leaders and appropriate banners, ani-
mated with one spirit, breathing one hope and wish, assem-
bled to petition the 'louse of Lords to pass the Reform
Bill in its integrity. • • • We shall not attempt to
estimate the strength of these patriotic feelings which
could bring such masses of people from such distances. We
shall not advert to the speeches by which their enthusiasm
tots kindled, or the in/mess-with which their opinions
were expressed and their purposes formed. The topic might
lead us to reflections which we would rather avoid mires
sing, and which will suggest themselves to the minds of the
reader without assistance.
On the 12th of May the Times, which on the 4th
had announced the existence of an organisation
throughout the kingdom to overawe and coerce the
House of Lords, and which, on the 9th, had spoken
approvingly and encouragingly of a resolution to arm,
passed by 200,000 men, intimated its approbation of a
determination not to pay taxes:
Birmingham refuses to pay taxes, Manchester refuse' to
pay taxes, Westminster and London, there is reason to be-
lieve, will not pay taxes until the Refor•m Silt—the 'outgun
nt
-
toted Retorts Bill—shall have missed. • The sentime
is . verywhere ; the obligation to nonpaymert, except only
of those rates by withholding which the poor might suffer,is,
throughout the United Kingdom, felt by a large majority of
in n to be the most sacred of political duties.
It is generally believed that about the period of
which we are speaking, the Times recommended
bludgeons or brickbats as a means of making political
converts. We believe that in this, injustice has been
done to it. Mr. Coenetr, if we recollect right,
twisted some unguarded expressions of the Tinies
linto such a suggestion, but the journal itself, we be-
lieve, did not go beyond such expressions as occur ill
Ithe following quotation from its leader of May 24. It
must be confessed, however, that in this passage it
sails close to the wind. Some attorney-generals
might try to convert the words " more legitimate and
effective powers" into a declaration that the use of
paving stones was legitimate in a less degree.
Those who posses' the franchise make it in 99 cases out of
100 their organ for expressing whatever opinion guides, or
whatever political passion or prepossession moves them. They
give their vote and interest cordially in favour of the cause
and the champion which they mean to support. Yelling',
Footings, filth, and paving.stones are the weapons of at.'
es
whom the law has excluded from the exercise of more kyl-
mate and effective power.
Now really, the Times, which in its uncalculating
enthusiasm was carried each lengths in 1832, might
have more sympathy with the unguarded language of
its imitators in 1848. Of the reckless way in which
the Times pointed oat particular individuals to popu-
lar odium, at a period when the passions of men were
roused to excess, we have had no example in these
latter days. It was after the meeting held at New-
castle, where one of the speakers startled his hearers
and shocked the majority of them by reminding them
that the annals of the French Revolution told how " •
fairer head than that of ADELAIDE had rolled on the
scaffold," that the Times published in a leading allide
the following piece of court gossip :
There is a lady of very high rank who must be taught I
salutary lassos. She may be bold as sa Amason sii