The Sun.
London, England, 1837-09-19 00:00:00

credulous in proportion as slit, Is honest, has from
;line to time, so far as civil rights were concerned,
raised the Irish Papist from the earth, and placed him
on an entire level with the best and noblest of her own
children. But the lessons which European history
confirmed by the experience of the iTth benittry, at
home, ought to have impressed ht iron characters on
the r. collection of English statesmen, were forgotten.
It was forgotten that, whatever may be the religi'6ll;
creed of Popery, or w,rafcr€r tlio roliiie assurances of
its profes,or::;, the nAture of the Popish priesthood,
and the political action of that most formidable
of all existing or recorded Corporations, is utterly
adverse to the enjoyment. of any thing like an equal
distribution of right or privilege in a free community.
Where Papists are not numerous, the priesthood can
little harm beyond their own seet—whcre I.:ilitary or
despotic Government has the law in its own hands, and
can check by the bayonet every rival power, the num-
ber of Pepists, or the machinations of their hierarchy,
need be no subject of profound alarm to the State but
where the passions of the Popish multitude are ad-
mitted by law to find vent in an incessant influence
upon the political movement of the commonwealth, the
power which impels and directs those passions is a
tremendous power. It is of all powers the most
terrible when stimulated by inordinate ambition, and
guided to its object by consummate skill, unrestrained
by one particle of conscience, except of a conscience
which is itself habitually, perhaps blindly, perverted
into an instrument for the furtherance of immoral
schemes and enterprises. Such a power is the Roman
hierarchy of Ireland, working to its selfish ends the
physical force of five or six millions of an ignorant
and half destitute people. The fact of this fierce and
inexorable corporation being engaged in a standing
conspiracy against the existing institutions of the state
is now too manifest to be any longer dwelt upon. It
is avowed. The agitators, who are but subaltern en-
gines of the priesthood, boast of such a conspiracy.
Their Bishops and parochial Clergy (vide their
speeches and altar addresses, recorded in the minutes
of the Intimidation Committee passim, and the letter
of Dr. Foran the other day) are exclusively founded
not alone on the existence, but on the notoriety
of a Popish revolutionary league for the total
subversion of the Protestant Church and Monarchy.
What mankind, then, must regard as altogether mon-
strous, and what posterity will scarcely dare to credit,
it is into the hands of such a treasonable and hostile
power that an English Ministry has for three years
past been labouring to throw the patronage of office,
the administration of justice, and the direction of the
Royal Government, from no assignable or imaginable
motive but the retention of some dozen salaries by as
many ostensible servants of the Crown, who have no
security for the enjoyment of that share of the public
spoil one hour after they shall have forfeited the sup-
port of the " Irish enemy" by the faithful discharge
of their sworn duties to Great Britain. We can
therefore sufficiently understand the abuse of words so
conspicuous in the correspondence of Lord Morpeth,
no less than the shameful disregard of principles,
which has rendered the viceroyalty of Lord Mulgrave
a period that every English historian will hereafter
blush while he commemorates. We are gravely told
that the Irish must not be further " exasperated,"
and that the continuance of this Melbourne Govern-
ment can alone preserve us from civil war. "Further"
exasperated ! How ? They have had nothing to
exasperate them within the last eight years but a pro-
digality of indulgence and concession, of which six-
teen years ago they had not so much as dreamed.
There is something worse, however, than Irish
exasperation. Even Lord Spencer has acknow-
ledged that there are worse evils in the world than
civil war, should it result from Irish exasperation ;
for he declared that there were measures proposed by
O'Connell, the recognised master of these Ministers,
which he, Lord Spencer, would risk a civil war to
avert. On the authority of this same O'Connell, ne-
vertheless, we find that no further concessions whatever
are required or hoped for by the people of Ireland.
He tells us that the grand nostrum for pacifying Ire-
land is neither a Tithe Bill nor a Corporation Bill,
nor an elective House of Lords, nor Universal Suf-
frage, nor the Ballot—but simply the continued pos-
session of the Government by Lord Melbourne, who
need not, it seems, carry in favour of Ireland a single
" vital" measure of all those for his supposed repug-
nance to which Sir Robert Peel was voted out of office.
No, says Mr. Daniel O'Connell, the beauty of all state
policy, and perfection of all rcform, is, that "Lord
Melbourne and his colleagues should retain their
Cabinet offices, and that for all offices out of doors
they should still be, as they now are, in the gift
of Daniel O'Connell. Whatever may be the phra-
seology of the Queen's speech next November, the
substance of it will be " Men, not measures;" that
truth a few more weeks will demonstrate—the reader
may take our word.--Times.
In commenting upon the dismissal of Colonel Verner
from the Magistracy and Deputy-Lieutenancy of the
county in whinh he resided, a Contemporary, equally
notorious for its audacity and apostacy, after endea-
vouring to establish a parallel between the " battle of
the Diamond" and the battles of the Boyne and Vine-
gar-hill, and the defence of Derry, confidently re-
marks :

" Suppose that an old brother officer of Lord Lake,
being a magistrate, had toasted the memory of " Vinegar-
hill," would Lord Mu!grave (whatever might be his wish)
presume to visit such a magistrate with official vengeance,
and to strike his name out of the commission of the peace ?
The respective parties were of the same description at
Vinegar-hill as at the Diamond—on one side Protestants,
Papists on the other—loyal men on one side, on the other
rebels."

This is certainly a most ingenious attempt to con-
'ound two affairs perfectly distinct and different. With
is much justice might a comparison be instituted be-
tween the massacre of St. Bartholomew's and the
repeated massacres of the Irish people under English
domination ; between the Sicilian Vespers and the
slaughter of the " wild Irish" at so much a head
under Elizabeth and her predecessors ; between the
murders of the Spanish_inquisition and these of Rath-
cortnac and Carrickshaugh ; because in all these cases
-the respective parties " on one side were Protestants,
Papists on the other," having only this trifling dif-
ference, that the slaughterers in one case were the
slaughtered in the other---in one case the Papists
murdered the Protestants, in the other the Protestants
murdered the Papists ; and in all cases the aggressors
called themselves " loyal men," and their opponents,
or rather their victims, " rebels." But who, except
a sanguinary bigot, who would be himself ready to
perpetrate similar atrocities, if opportunity offered,
would seek to excite a feeling of vindictiveness or
triumph by the commemoration of such henious
enormities ? Yet, making confusion worse confused,
the 'Times asks-- -
"Suppose that at a dinner of any Corporatinti in Ireland,
one of the company, being a Justice of the Peace, were, in
full accordance with that very policy on behalf of which,
though at different periods, the battles of Vinegar,hill,
the Diamond, and the .Boyne, had been fought, tot' which
JDacmrreys•
bheaedn bdeeetnbrbornaed,
bravely defended,
111,
fcndedthLta beenyeunt and bigot
King of England, and the succession settled in ctrhoewpnoesd-
terity of Sophia—suppose any loyal subject were to
, give as a toast, " The H_9..,rse et Brunswick, and may they
never forget the iirineriples which raised them to the
Throne,"—v:oultl Lord Mulgrave dare to expunge the
name of such a Magistrate from the Commission ?"
VVe:answer this interrogatory unhesitatingly. Lord
Mulgrave dare not. But why ? Solely on account
of the dissimilitude of the circumstances which the
7 lines, with more craft than stupidity, appears to re-
gard as parallel. But the Times flounders in its
historical reminiscences; or it would not represent the
" Boys of Derry" as " loyal" boys, for the loyalty
of these youths differed from that of the " Papists"
of Vinegar...hill merely in the result. Both resisted
despotic authority--one succeeded, the other failed,
and on the principle that « treasou never prospers"
the victors in one case are now lauded as "loyal men,"
and the vanquished in the other denounced as " re-
bels." The observations of our Contemporary convey
their own exposure more vividly than could any com-
mentary of ours, when with affected indignation it is
asked—.

" Would, We say, Lord Mu!grave dare to issue his vice-
regal orders to Lord llorpetb, or the latter Lord, with a
description of folly, smacking of half•repressed buffoonery,
venture to obey them by writing a letter to any magistrate
who toasted " the principles which placed the House of
Brumwick on the throne,' announcing to him that for such