The Sun.
London, England, 1837-04-27 00:00:00

towards members of the Romish faith those laws

by which the rights of all British subjects ought to
he protected. In that case not merely are the sympa-
thies of Protestants engaged on behalf of those who
may have suffered wrong, but in sound policy and self-
defence they are bound by all those prudential motives
and maxims which usually govern the citizens of a free
community, to take an active interest in the quarrel,
and for their own sakes, and as a means of keeping
aggression from their own doors, to make common
cause against individual oppression. The "Most
Rev." Dr. Crolly—he who in spite of the Bill for re-
lieving Roman Catholics from civil disabilities, usurps
and rejoices in the title of " Archbishop of Armagh
and Primate of all Ireland"—is already known to
the public for certain proceedings, wherein he was
alleged to have employed within this year or two
his prerogative as a Romish prelate against a clergy-
man of the same Church, and in a way which
savoured at least of oppression, the only crime of the
parochial priest being, that he had resorted to the law
of the land against one of his spiritual superiors, for •
redress of a civil wrong, obtaining damages at his
hands by the award of a common law Jury. An
evening Contemporary of ours, the Standard, pub-
lished some days ago a long correspondence between
another priest of the Roman Catholic Church and the
same Dr. Crolly, who was accused by the former,
viz., Dean Lyons, Roman Catholic Dean of Killala,
of having inflicted on_ him sundry grievous wrongs,
and refused him every kind of reparation. The cor-
respondence, of which nine-tenths arc from the pen of
Dr. Lyons, states a series of acts of persecution, of
which the character may be shortly comprised in these
words—the direct violation of the complainant's rights
as a British subject, ingrafted upon a gross perversion
of the ecclesiastical powers delegated to Dr. Crolly by
the see of Rome, in the matter of certain discords,
which he was instructed to investigate and compose,
between Dr. O'Finan, Bishop of Killala, with some
of his clergy on the one hand, and with the notorious
Dr. M‘Hale on the other. It would appear, if the
statements of Dean Lyons can be credited, that Dr.
Crolly performed a " visitation" to the diocese of
Killala for the ostensible purpose, no other purpose
(according to the account of Dr. Lyons) being au-
thorized by the Roman Pontiff, of examining into
the above causes anti circumstances of clerical dis-
pute, but that he took the opportunity of Dean
Lyons's absence at Rome, whither he • had gone
to defend himself against some personal charges, of
which he was there fully acquitted, to examine wit-
nesses with regard to the conduct of Dr. Lyons, not
merely as to the discharge of his spiritual functions,
but in his relation of landlord towards his tenants ;
that ha (Dr. (holly) forced himself (the precise me-
thod-of the intrusion is not stated) into the house of
Dr. Lyon s, during the master's absence, employing
practice,s of the roost indefensible and disgraceful kind
for the sal.e of doing him injury. On this point the
complainant, in the comae of a long and formal pro
test agains the proceedings of the Romish Archbishop,
and in aesigninoothe reasons for that protest, expresses
himself as follows :—" Because you attempted to
violate the sacredness of my own house, and to create
disunion in toy- by seeking to examine my
lrrotier and sisi-ers, with• a view Of. eliciting from
them some acknowled,7mont that might be construed
to my di,advantae.- " Because you
have so conducted the proceedings, that if tirey
shook' be ratified, it could not fail to implicate the
Court of Roma with the British Government, inas-
much as you exerciscd civil power and authority as
the delegate of the I loly See, for in your character of
apostolic visitor you administered oaths—inquired
into civil contracts letween landlord and tenant—in-
terfered in private and secular concerns—inspected
books of account and other private papers which had
nothing to do with eccicsia.,:tical matters, without the
permission of the tuner, and committed various other
acts of wilful trespass on mq farm of Shanohee, iit
violation °I mq temporal rioh ls as a British subject."
have not to-day room 'for the whole of the pro-
test from which the above pithy- paKages are taken,
not as conveying charges in themselves more heinous
than many others which that curious document con-
tains, but as addressing themselves more directly and
familiarly to those feelings and principles of the Pro-
testant mind of England which are most connected with
the sense of civil freedom, and with hatred of individual
tyranny. Now this priest, Dr. Crolly, is at the head
of the liotnish Church in Ireland. He displays, we are
bound to believe, no harsher or more arbitrary spirit.
than that which inspires the whole hierarchy of which
he is the chief. Yet if the complaints of Dr. Lyons
be well founded, and he has made them in an open and
unflinching manner, what a portrait does the whole
narrative present of that sort of dominion to which
Irish Roman Catholics are subjected ! What a light
does it throw upon the truth and honesty of the asser-
tion, that the power of the priest is coqfined to matters
purely spiritual ! What a notion must it impress
upon Englishmen of that ecclesiastical corporation, by
whose incessant clamours they are tormented, for hesi-
tating to deliver into their hands the constitutional li-
berties of their Protestant brethren in Ireland ! What
a sample of the sort of forbearance from persecution,
or respect for law or right, which animates those who
threaten us with " a bloody rebellion," if we do not
concede " justice to Ireland," by clothing them with
power !—Times.
And so, after all, the Irish Municipal Bill has had a
second reading, notwithstanding the predictions of our
Tory contemporaries, that it would be thrown out !
From•this circumstance we should have been inclined
to augur that a better feeling had taken possession of
the House of Lords, as well as a stronger sense of jus-
tice towards the oppressed people of Ireland ; but,
alas i the second reading is merely the programme
of a civil murder—a mere harbinger of the same
cutting and maiming which fell to the lot of the
Bill last year, and which also awaits the Church-
rates Bill, whenever it shall find its way into the
place of legal slaughter. The Bill will be again
burked in the Committee—its beneficial clauses cut
out seriatim—and the insult again offered to the
people of Ireland, that they are incapable, and be-
cause incapable unworthy, of the same corporate
rights and privileges which have been so justly ex-
tended to those oft England and Scotland. What
but insanity, or a determination to excite a civil
war in Ireland could prompt the Lyndhursts to
come to such a determination ? The people of Scot-
land, and in point of population they form even now
but a small portion of that of the British empire, stood
forward in past times in defence of their civil and re-
ligious liberties, and most gloriously achieved them at
the peril of their lives—and do the Lords imagine for
a moment that their gallant brethren in Ireland, hav-
ing such an example before them, will not follow it ?
They would not be men if they did not—but the
Tories contemplate nothing of the kind—their object
is to oust the present Administration, and like " Jim
Crow," who has had his day of celebrity, to " turn
about, and jump about, just so," and having ousted
thenn to bring forward, with a few slight alterations
of detail, the very same measure which they now
declare to be destructive of the Protestant religion,
and inimical to the best interests of the country.
Are there proofs wanting of this assertion ? Look
to the long, ardent, and strenuous exertions of Sir
Samuel Romilly and Sir James Mackintosh to effect
a reform in the criminal law of the country, and the
opposition invariably offered to them in their bene-
volent labours by Administrations with which a large
portion of the existing Tories was 'connected in office--
and then see how Sir Robert Peel availed himself of
their toilsome investigations, and attempted to grace
h's brows with that crown which would have sat more
easily upon their heads ! The robbery of their just
fame was open,, though unacknowledged, and the jack-
daw that strutted for the hour in borrowed plumes,
was driven from the flock of the genuine brood into
that of creatures of a more ignoble species. The im-
position was attempted—the imposition succeeded for
the moment ; hut, like all impositions, time imposition
failed. " The hand felt to be the hand of Jacob, but
the voice was the voice of Esau." Again, with
r_-
bard to Catholic emancipation, need we tell the story
of the Tory opposition—of the Duke of Welling-
ton's " tutoring his back," to use the late Lord Cas-
tlereagh's expression, upon his own sentiments—
or of Peel's sacrificing the dictates of his alleged
conscience to the expressed feelings of the public
mind ? All this must be fresh in the recollection of

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 1837

the English people, as well as another little matter
of Tory consistency—we mean the expressed will of
the Duke of Wellington, during the temporary re-
signation of Earl Grey, to carry the Reform Bill out,
in all its parts, notwithstanding his previous stern
opposition to it, as a measure that would deprive his
Majesty's Government of the power of carrying it an.
And yet these are the men who aspire to office !
these are the persons who put in a claim for consis-
tency—these are the men who complain of insults to
the House of Lords—these are the men who would
unseat the Melbourne Administration, and who arto-
crate to themselves the name and virtues of Conserva-
tives ! Verily there are Daniels in our days, as there
have been in past times, and dreamers, too, even as
there have been dreamers in all ages. Let us whisper
a word in their private ear. They Lave no chance of
office—they are net trusted even in Me highest quarter,
and farther, not only is Lord Melbourne the favourite
Minister of the people of England, but he has in one
sleeve the Dissenters of the United Kingdom, and in
the other the eight millions of Ireland, to combat for
him, for his principles, and for his Government.—
rizlng Advertiser.

The Lords have very properly abstained from offer-
ing any opposition to the second reading of the Irish
Municipal Bill. Their Lordships have agreed to abo-
lish the Irish Corporations, which are Protestant, and
which are complained of by the Roman Catholics of
Ireland as being exclusive in their nature, and there-
"bre injurious in their operation. But the abolition of
Protestant Corporations, because of exclusiveness, is so
far from being an argument in favour of establishing
Roman Catholic Corporations in their stead, that it is
an argument on the other side. Ireland can derive
nothing but evil by the proposed Ministerial transfer of
exclusive corporate power from one party to the other—
from the-Protestant party to the Roman Catholic—
from the friends and supporters of British connection
and British institutions to those who do not disguise
their hostility to both, and who at one time cry out for
a Repeal of the Union, at another for the destruction of
the Church. We believe the more respectable Roman
Catholics of Ireland, who keep aloof from the demagogues
and their sedition-disseminating associations, have .no
wish to see Mr. O'Connell's " normal schools of political
agitation" established, for it is not their interest that the
democratic faction should become so powerful as it en-
deavours to be—but they are overawed by popular in-
timidation, and dare not openly oppose scseheme which,
if successful, they know will be ultimately worked to
displace the respectable classes permanently from their
proper position in society, and give an unnatural and
degrading ascendancy to the vulgar traders in popular
excitement, the audacious and unprincipled disturbers
of their country's peace, the worst enemies of its pros•
perity. By agreeing to the second reading of the Bill,
the Lords acknowledged that a change must he made
as to corporate government in Ireland—they admit that
the existing Corporations must be abolished, but they
do not admit that the ,nonopoly of corporate power in
Protestant hands shall be converted into a Romaa Ca-
tholic n;onopolii. They consent to abate what has been
" a nuisance," but to tranyCi it to the other patty
would he nothing more or lees than the restoration of.
the nuis ince in another form, and under circumstances
likely to be more productive of evil to society than
what had previously existed. As to the allegation
that it is an insult to Ireland not to le4islate fur it in
a mlniner exactly similar to the legislation for England,
it applies to several of the measures brought forward
by the Whigs themselves in reference to, Ireland, if it
have any application at all. Nced we instance the
Whig-Radical Irish Constabulary Bill—the Poor-
law measure for Ireland, and others which will occur
to the recollection of our readers? The fact is, the
Ministers must endeavour to pay the price of the
conpact at Lichfield House, and the Irish Municipal
Bill is a part of that price. If tire Ministers cannot
carry that Bill as
,they have proposed it, and are
obliged to give up the Church-appropriation clause,
they will be driven to a declaration of insolvency on
their dishonoured Bills.—Morning Herald.
If we may judge- from a conversation which tool:
place last alight in the •House of Commons, Lord
John Russell, the proposer of the Bill of Parliamen-
tary RefOrm, neither feels nor desires to inculcate sen-
timents of reverence and affection for that statute as
a permanent part of the Constitution of the country.
The conversation to which we allude occurred on
the second reading of a Bill now before the House,
called " The Freeman's Admission 13i11," the object
of which is to relieve persons entitled to the free-
dom of Corporations from the payment of a certain
stamp duty with which they are now chargeable
when they claim admission to their corporate rights.
The Noble Lord supported the second reading,
and in doing so took occasion to intimate his
opinion that, as the Bill before the House placed the
freemen in a better situation than they occupied
before the passing of the Reform Bill, some equiva-
lent ought to be given to the ten-pound household-
ers by a relaxation of the rate-paying clause of that
Act. It is, we think,. impossible to avoid the con-
clusion that the statesmen who reasoned thus must
have intended to show to the nation at large how little
in his estimation the Reform Act is entitled to respect
as a solid and permanent part of the Constitution, and
how slight the grounds upon which he is ready to as-
sail and to annul its most important provisions. What
has the admission of freemen of Corporations to do
with the Reform Act ? Did that Act create or ex-
tend their rights municipal or political ? It did, how-
ever, create the elective franchise of the 101. house-
holders, attaching to the exercise of that franchise the
condition that certain rates and taxes, due by the
claimant on the 6th of April in every year, shall be
paid within a certain period after that time. Why
should this condition be dispensed with in the case of
the voters who owe their franchise to the Reform Act,
because another class of the King's subjects, who do not
owe their franchise, and many of whom possess no
Parliamentary franchise, are relieved from a certain
tax ? Lord J. Russell seems to us to mistake this
matter altogether. He should have argued it not po-
litically,m but financially. •As thus---:if the freemen,
who are not necessarily householders, are to be re-
lieved from a tax on assuming their corporate rights,
others of his iVlajcsty's subjects who are householders
ought in fairness to be relieved from the window tax,
or some portion of it. This would have been better
logic than that to which Lord John Russell resorted ;
but it is probable that it might not have been a pleas-
ing kind of logic to the Noble Lord's Right Hon.
Colleague the Chancellor of the Exchequer. To sug-
gest the remission of any portion of the general taxation
of the country would, as times go, be a serious matter.
To suggest an invasion of the Reform Bill, a contemp-
tuous invasion inasmuch as it is supported by no solid
or adequate reason, an invasion which, therefore, would
supply a precedent for future invasions without limit, is,
however, the merest trifle. We suppose the time may come
when, under the auspices of a wiser and better Chancellor
of the Exchequer than the present, it may be possible to
remit the whole, or a considerable portion, of the win-
dow tax. Upon Lord John Russell's rational and
enlightened principle of equivalents, we should be glad
to know what is to be done in this case for such of
the freemen of Corporations as do not happen to be
householders. This relief from taxation, whenever it
takes place, will unquestionably facilitate to the ten-
pound householders the acquisition and maintenance
of the elective right. Does Lord John Russell pro-
pose that after this happy event each freeman shall,
as an equivalent, have two votes instead of one ? Or
to what other equivalent will his Lordship think the
freeman class of voters entitled ? It would be well if
such Statesmen as Lord John Russell could be
taught how much easier it is to disturb tire political
relations of society than to arrange or compose them.
—Morning Post.

The late Mr. Villebois has bequeathed the bulk of
his fortune, said to amount to between 300,0001., and 300,000/.
to his younger brother, Mr. Frelerick Villebois, the manager
of the Craven hounds. Who will take to the 11. 11. country,
so many years hunted by the deceased, is unknown.—Jiamp-
shire Telegraph.

The state of the ribbon weavers at Coventry has
during the past few weeks, occupied much of the attention of
the wealthy population of that city. A meeting was called
last week to consider measures most likely to alloviate their
present wants, and to memorialise the Queen on the subject,
at which a petition to her Majesty was adopted. A deputation
was also selected to convey the petition to Lord Howe, with a
respectful request that he would with all possible dispatch lay
it before the Queen.