The Sun.
London, England, 1837-09-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

__-
Nothing but the marvellous has attractions for the
Standard. " The Ribbon conspirators," it Last night
repeats, " have returned the Irish majority; and there
is not a Member of that majority who does not know
the influence by which he has been returned." The
H ratian rule,

" Nec Deus istersit nisi dignus vindice nodes,"
may be advantageously appealed to in this case. What
necessity is there for a conspiracy to effect that which
the people of themselves are inclined to do ? The
Members returned-for Ireland are truly the representa-
tives of the peoples' choice. The Orange-Tories will
not, surely, have the audacity to maintain that they
are not detested by the great body of the people in
three provinces at least. The most they can pretend
to is to bribe 01 intimidate the electors ; and the Irish
peasantry, knowing that their Orange landlords have
no sympathy with them, and would punish them un-
relentingly for any refusal to obey their most tyran-
nical mandates, may, from a sense of common danger,
have been strongly impressed with the necessity
of making common cause in some cases against
the combination directed to crush them. The rela-
tions between landlord and tenant, indeed, are such in
Ireland, from the occupation of a piece of land being
necessary to existence, that the peasantry are driven to
combine for mutual protection. It requires no prophet
to foretell that if the Ballot, or some equivalent, be not
adopted in England and Scotland, the unjustifiable
pretensions of the Tories will lead to combinations for
self defence among the electors. " But," says the
Standard, "we have Mr. O'Connell's authority for
the fact, that in the very last summer Ribbonmcn as-
sembled in Dublin in vast numbers—in such num-
bers as to burst the gaols, and to load the trans-
port ships and the gibbets." And then it refers
to the reports of the " Pacificators." Mr. O'Con-
nell has too much penetration not to be aware
that a population constantly verging on extreme
destitution is under a strong temptation to lock
to secret societies for relief. But for that
very reason no man has more earnestly denounced
these societies than he has done. His language
to the people has always been, "Do not suffer
yourselves to be drawn in. The moment you belong
to a secret society you are at the mercy of any scoun-
drel who chooses to swear against you. You cannot
prevent spies from joining these societies, and what-
ever designs they choose to attribute to you, your
mouths aro sealed." Mr. O'Connell, who is not defi-
cient in tact and foresight, has always, it appears,
strenuously opposed that to which he is indebted for
his influence. Surely Englishmen have too much
good sense to be led away by such contradictory non-
sense as the Standard would palm on them. Mr.
O'Connell 'is popular because his countrymen know
that but for him they would still have been the slaves
of their Orange tyrants. The instinct of self-preser-
vation leads them to confide in one whose heart they
know to be with them, and whose power is their rock
of safety. The Liberal Members returned for Ireland are
believed by the people to be the honest and zealous cham-
pions of the Reform cause, and the opponents of Toryism
areassociated in the minds of the Irish with all that is base
and bad. Were we to see the Irish people return
Orangemen, then we might say, this is unaccount-
able—this strange effect must have had some
equally strange cause--what conspiracy has been at
work ? But a conspiracy to cause Irishmen to vote
for the candidates of their choice is like the splendid
and complex machinery for cutting cabbages of one of
our popular satirical writers. The late Mr. Wilber-
force observed, that England owed a large reparation
to the people of Ireland for the evils it had inflicted on
that country. Without attaching much credit to the
highly-coloured pictures of Irish civilization previous
to the English invasion, there is, we think, little doubt
that if Ireland had not been oppressed by England it
would not now contain the most destitute peasantry of
Europe. Nay, Prince Puckler Muskau, who visited
Ireland, declares that even the Fellahs of Egypt are
much better off than the Irish.

" I paid," he says, " constant attention to this subject,
and became firmly convinced that the Fellabs here, in com-
parison with many others of their class, especially, for in-
stance, the Irish peasants, who, however, are subjects of
the most enlightened Government in Europe, are in a situa-
tion which the latter might envy.
" The houses of the Fellahs are small huts, built of
bricks baked in the sun, or only of clay, for the most part
without any opening besides the entrance. But these habi-
tations are. at least weather tight, and warm in the winter,
affording shelter against rain and storms, giving shade in the
summer, and roomy enough for the limited wants of these
people ; whereas in Greece, even the better sort of country
people have no roofs that keep out the snow or rain ; and
the pigsties, filled with suffocating smoke, in which the poor
Irish live, in a climate comparatively cold, scarcely afford
any shelter. The Fellahs are poor ; but in the meanest
villages that I visited, I always found bread, milk, butter,
cheese, often vegetables, in abundance, and even poultry—
in the larger villages even butcher's meat, all w hich were
offered us at reasonable prices ; whereas, i❑ Greece onions,
water, and maize-bread, which is scarcely eatable, are often
all that you can procure, or that the people themselves have
to live upon, as in Ireland they do on potatoes and
whisky. Nor did I ever hear that a Fellah had died of
hunger, which, to the disgrace of humanity, has been, and
unhappily still is, nothing uncommon among the Irish pea-
sants. The Fellahs are scantily clad ; but here, too, the
comparison is to their advantage ; for, in the first place,
they need less clothing in their mild climate ; and, in the
second, I have never seen the women here, like those in
Ireland, without rags enough to cover themselves so far as
decorum requires. On the contrary, you sea the wives of
the Fellahs, though often in tattered garments, yet, like
the other eastern females, covered up to their eyes ; for
the most part, too, they have five or six pieces of gold
coin sewed in a row from the face to the breast, which
does not agree with the excessive poverty of which our
philanthropic travellers draw so frightful a picture."
Providence never surely could have destined the
brave and high-spirited people of Ireland to be for
ever the opprobrium of the civilized world merely to
gratify the bad passions of the Orange Tories, who
would willingly purchase the gratification of re-rivet-
ting their fetters by sacrificing all hopes of the im-
provement and tranquillity of the country.—Mornina
Chronicle.

It is generally understood, in well-informed circles,
that Parliament will meet for the despatch of business
about the second week in November, until which time
the exertions of the people cannot be better employed
than in the formation of Reform Associations, the
chief objects of which should be to attend to the Re-
gistries, to call public meetings, prepare petitions, and
serve as foci round which may converge the liberal and
intelligent spirits of the community, whenever an
emergency may arise for prompt, decisive, and ener-
getic action. We rejoice to perceive that a number
of such societies are already in course of formation in
several places around the metropolis, and earnestly hope
that their example will be speedily followed by every
county, city, town, village, and even hamlet, through-
out the empire. It is only by an extensive and well-
organised combination amongst the Reformers that he
powerful demonstration necessary to counteract and
overcome, by peaceable and constitutional means, the
obstructions to the progress of popular rights can be
effectually made. By a timely and decisive demon-
stration of public feeling the Lords may—though we
doubt it—be induced to allow the enactment of such
laws as are necessary to the public welfare, without
fo.reir% the country to the necessity of those all but
violent manifestations which carried the Catholic
,emancipation and Reform Acts. In the approaching
Session the great struggle will be between the Lords'
and the people. The Queen is favourable to Reform,
the Ministry is pledged to principles and measures emi-
nently calculated to carry into effect the intentions of
the Reforin Act, the House of Commons has already
twicg ter thrice approved those
nl.asures, and as it is
at present constituted, is •prepared again to stamp the
seal of its approbation to similar propositions. What,
then, is the obstruction which prevents the acknow-
ledgment of laws sanctioned by such high and
such general authority? The Lords. What is the
power to overcome this obstruction ? The people.
The Lords and the people are, therefore, the parties
who must sustain the brunt of the engagement, and on
whose exertions will depend the issue of the approach-
ing struggle. The other parties in the contest will
have no alternative but to follow in the train of the
victors, conquerors with, or captives to, the successful
power. The House of Commons at present furnishes
no indication of the state of public opinion, farther
than a mere majority in favour of views of Govern-
ment, which, under a fair system of representation,