The Sun.
London, England, 1839-04-17 00:00:00

and fearfully rebuked by its utter and lamentable
failure—a failure which has been most signal and
most melancholy, in proportion as the experiment has
been most favourably and most extensively tried.—(
Beccaria, and every other autho,ity on criminal jurispru-
dence, have laid it down as an axiom that crime is to be
effectually prevented less by the amount than by the certainty
of punishment ; but it has been reserved for Lord Normanby to
make the formidable experiment of how far crime might be
restrained by the absolute certainty of impunity.—( Hear.)
Contemporary with. the discovery in physics that human
disorders arc most effectually eradicated by the propoga-
tion of symptoms analogous to their own, it has been re-

served for the late Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland to introduce
into the science of Government the homceapathic princi-
ple of " Similia similibus curantur," that crime may be
most thoroughly suppressed by affording every facility for
its propogation. But, Sir, it is impossible fur those who
are not living in the country itself, and witnesses to the
alarm and trepidation of its inhabitants to comprehend in
their full extent the disastrous effects of this rash and
daring innovation on the enforcement of the law.
It has destroyed alike the reliance of the plaintiff
and the fear of the offender for the vigour and authority of
the courts. The hope of justice is equally withdrawn from
the sufferer, and the apprehension of it from the culprit.--
whilst the ignorant and astonished population have been
taught to look upon the judges of the land as so many itine-
rant tyrants, and to regard the most revolting offences only as
so many claims to the pity and commiseration of the Crown.
--(Cheers.) But frightful as may be the contemplation
of the extent of crime in Ireland, its evidence is even less
formidable than the knowledge of the impossibility either
to punish or prevent it. Crime, it is to be feared, there
must always be in every country to a certain extent ; but
there is always a hope and a confidence that that extent
cannot expand so long as the great mass of the population
are virtuous and sound.---( Hear.) But what hope can we
entertain of a community, in which the feelings of the ma-
jority are rather with the criminal than the crime; and the
sympathies of the mass are less with the victim than the
murderer--( flear, hear, hear.) It has been said
on the one hand but contradicted on the other
that this sympathy with murderers in Ireland is the result
of a widely-spread conspiracy, the ramifications of which
arc incessantly employed either in the suborning or con-
cealment of crime. So far as regards the exculpation of
the character of Ireland, it is utterly immaterial whether
that contradiction be sustained or reversed. If there be
not a conspiracy such as this amongst a portion of the
people, then must it be what is more formidable still: a
conspiracy and conjunction of the entire—(Cheers)—an
all-pervading and unanimous impulse to tolerate assassina-
tion, to facilitate revenge, and to stifle with one consent the
call for justice and the cry for mercy. And this is the pass
to which we are compelled to admit society has arrived in
Ireland, at the close of the four years' administration of
" the paternal Government of Lord Normanlay."—( Elear.)
Sirs as the vote of this evening is to embrace the entire
policy of the Irish Government, I presume the department
of the Irish Church is not to be excluded from that consi-
deration. The Irish Church has been, all alone-, the most
prominent feature in the policy of the present *Ministry--
it was their scaling-ladder to power; and it has formed the
material of two-thirds of their deliberations in office. And,
Sir, I should be glad to learn what section of the people
of Ireland will have their feelings honestly represented by
the votcoof the majority of this House which will avow
confidence in her Majesty's Ministers upon that question of
their policy towards the Irish Church? Do youimagine that
the vote of this night will be expressive a the confi-
dence of the Protestants of Ireland upoon that point? That
people from whom for three years you capriciously with-
held an equitable settlement of that system on which they
were dependent for the maintenance of their public wor-
ship and the support of their established religion ; and to
what purpose ? only to yield to them in 1833 that measure
of justice which you factiously denied them in 1835. For
three years and upwards you kept the tithe sore open in
Ireland, festering and ulcerating society, whilst you held
the remedy ready in your hand, and yet forebcre to apply
it. The Protestants of Ireland year after year implored
you for a settlement ; we pressed upon you in this House
the very measure which, when it answered your ends, you
ultimately adopted. The Tithe Act of 1838 differed in
no essential particular from the Bill for which we prayed
in 1835, which was actually on the table of the House, but
which you refused to grant till you could no longer hope
to reap any advantage by withholding. And is it for these
three years of needlessly protracted anxiety and turbulence
and insult that you ask for the confidence of the Irish
Protestants in your policy towards the Irish Church ?
Do you include the clergy of the Irish Church in the vote
of confidence which you now solicit? Lord Normarrby a
few days since, in his partinc, address on taking leave of
his Government, declared that he had " spent four years
of uninterrupted happiness in Ireland." Sir, those were
four years of uninterrupted misery to the Established
Clergy of that country-( Much cheering)—four years of
Privation, and poverty, and bereavement, and sickness,
and death—sufferings which it was in your power to have
prevented , but when they made these sufferings known to
you, how did you redress them? The clergy have not yet for-
gotten that the Executive Government of Ireland illegally
and unconstitutionally refused them the aid of the civil force
for the protection of their property, and the assertion of
the law in their behalf, till compelled to do so by the de-
cision of the House of Lords. They have not yet forgot.
ten that you designated the complaints " a dismal tale of
an imaginary malady." They have not yet forgotten the
chilling w itticism of the Noble Lord opposite ( Lord John
Russell)— _

Call it madness, call it folly,
You shall not drive my grief away ;
There's such a charm in melancholy,
I would not, if I could, be gay."
And yet with all these recollections, fresh and galling in
their remembrance, the Noble Lord comes down to this
Hous,?, to ask a vote of confidence from the representatives
of the Irish Protestants and the Irish Clergy.—( Cheers.)
But on the other hand, leaving aside altogether, the feel-
ing of the Protestants in Ireland—has your policy towards
the Established Church, been such as to enable you to
demand a vote of confidence from its Roman assailants in
that country, or its no less formidable opponents in this ?
I-Ltve you observed your promises to them for its
reduction ? Have you redeemed your pledge of
laying the foundation for its ultimate humiliation ?
Do you ask the confidence of the Irish peasant, who, en-
couraged by your Phillipics agaidat the Church, and acting
under the advice of the National Association (of that very
Association, and perhaps of that very individual member of
it, whom you selected as your confidential adviser), was
induced to resist the payment of his lawful debts to the
clergy till lie was immured in gaol as a rebel, and
liberated only when reduced to a beggar ? Do
you ask for his confidence in your policy towards the Irish
Church—that policy which began by deluding him into a
belief that it would cancel tithes altogether as a lien upon
his land, but which has ended in cancelling his lease itself,
and in doubling the facilities for driving him from his
farm, if he hesitates one moment to discharge them ?
But, above all, do you ask the confidence of this House, cr
of the country, in the matter of the I: ish Church on the
score of your dealings with the Appropriation Clause?—
( Hear, hear.) It was the outstretched hand that rased
you into power—it wan at once the author and
the essence of your existence as a Ministry—it was
equally the foundation ond the keystone of your policy.
If there ever was a measure which, not only from its ex-
ternal accidents, but from your asseverations of its impera-
tive and indispensible nature, the public might have had
confidence would be carried into effect, it was the appro-
priation of some portion of the revenues of the Irish
Church to secular objects. The Noble Lord opposite de-
clared that it would justify an agitation for the repeal of
the Union, and the dismemberment of the empire itself, if
the resolution to that etfect were to be defeated or de-
ferred. You were bound to it not merely officially as
Ministers of the Crown, but personally as men of honour
and of principle. Lord Melbourne himself declared so on
presenting the Bill which embodied it to the House of
Lords in 1836:--
" It is upon the great and decisive principles which we have
adopted, and the maintenance of which, undoubtedly, is abso-
lutely necessary to our character and reputation ; as I believe
it to be essential to the advantage and benefit of the country.
It is upon that great and decisive principle myself and my col-
leagues are prepared to stand. . • • It is, in my opinion,
a wise resolution; in my opinion it is such a resolution as is
calculated to settle this question on grounds which will be really
satisfactory ; and therefore, not only. in point of honour, not
only in point of feeling, not only in point of reason, in point
of everything that is binding upon man, I consider myself un-
doubtedly bound to adhere to the principle and letter of this
resolution."— Lord Melbourne's See •cl Ho of
a, use Lords,
July 25, 1136.
And was the language of the head of the Ministry in this
House less deliberate or less resolute ? The Noble Lord
opposite (Lotd John Russell) ten days after, on the Bill
coming back to this House, denuded of this vital principle,
thus declared his determination :

" The House of Lords have sent the Bill back, rejecting that
which the House of Commons have declared an inseparable
part of it. . . . Hew then are we to deal with such a
Bill? I content myself with referring to the debates of last
year, and the resolutions then passed; and with declaring, that
I and those with whom I act are satisfied of the truth and jus-
tice of the principles of those resolutions, and that from those
principles we are not ready to depart, It may be a question for
the House to consider, whether, having solemnly affirmed those
principles, they are now prepared, because the House of Lords
has rejected them, to yield them up, important as they are, and
to endeavour to agree with the Lords upon this subject, either
by assenting to the Bill before them, or to same other Bill, which
migh be introduced. If the Members of the House of Commons
were to go to the bar of the House of Lords in that humble
guise—recanting their former resolutions—submitting that they
had been in error—and that the wisdom of the House of Lords
had taught them a lesson of policy which they had not before
learned; I must say that I would not accompany the House of
Commons on such a message. We are here, prepared to stand
by the principles which we have professed. We maintained
those principles as an essential part of the final settlement of
this question, when we were out of office. With the affirmation
of opposite principles now—wit's the denial of the principles
which we have professed—of course it would be our duty to re-
sign—of course it would be our duty no longer to pretend to
govern the counsels of this country. '—Speeclt of Lord John
Russell, Aug. 2, 1836.

Sir, I do se}, that when after these solemn declarations in
the face of the Parliament and of the country, we find that
that measure has been abandoned—when. after the lure even
indirectly held out to bins of an expected subversion of the
tithe system, the Irish peasant discovers that that system
has been not only repaired but reinforced ; and when, after
the threat menaced for three years of inflicting " a heavy
blow and a great discouragement upon Protestantism," the
Irish Protestant perceives that that blow is only averted
because her Majesty's Ministers,
" Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike,"
have discovered that they want the power to inflict
it. I do say that it is delusion, or something worse
than delusion, for Ministers to seek for a vote of con-
fidence in their policy towards the Irish Church at the bands
either of its friends or its assailants. The Noble Lord
(the Secretary for Ireland), Lord Morpeth, has, to be sure,
on a former occasion, challenged oar confidence in the
policy of the Government, so far as the internal affairs of
the Church were concerned, and the exercise of patronage
in the distribution of dignities and livings. But whilst- I
grant, so far as I know, their faultlessness in this respect,
inasmuch as in the Church of England, there were no
offices to which Roman Catholics arc eligible, and,
her clergy, but few political partizans of the Nobleam 01.1-41ogrsdt ,