The Sun.
London, England, 1837-11-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Speeches from the Throne have for many years
ceased to possess much interest ; but the Speech of
Queen Victoria to her Arst Parliament is looked for-
ward to with an eager curiosity. We should suppose
that the Speech to be delivered from the Throne this
day will commence with an assurance of the anxiety
felt by her Majesty to meet Parliament, and to co-
operate with the two Houses in such measures as may
be deemed calculated to promote the welfare of her
people. The Speech will naturally next advert to our
relations with foreign powers. It will state, we should
suppose, that her Majesty continues to receive assur-
ances of the friendly dispositions of all foreign Govern-
ments, and that she trusts she will be able to continue
to preserve for the country its present state of peace.
Among the other advantages of such a state of things,
that of enabling the Legislature to bestow its undi-
vided attention on the melioration of our laws and in-
stitutions will probably not be forgotten. A com-
mercial treaty has just been concluded with the Re-
publics of Peru and Bolivia, and reference will natu-
rally be made to it. It is understood that the reason
for so early an attendance of Parliament was the ne-
cessity for settling the Civil List. We expect, there-
fore, that the Speech will announce that the attention
of Parliament will, with as little delay as possible, be
directed to the consideration of the Civil List, in which
a strict economy will be enjoined. It is understood
that her Majesty intends to make over to the disposi-
tion of Parliament every branch of her hereditary reve-
nues, without any exception, and this important depar-
ture from the practice of her predecessors will no doubt
also form a part of the Speech. Some of the more promi-
nent of the measures to be submitted by Ministers to Par-
liament will be particularly specified. And among these
it may be supposed that Irish Poor-laws, Corporation
Reform in Ireland, and the settlement of the Irish
Tithe question on principles calculated to conciliate
all classes of her Majesty's Irish subjects, will occupy
a prominent part. It will also be announced, no
doubt, that measures for the reform of our laws, and
their better administration, will be brought under the
consideration of Parliament. As the affairs of Canada
occupied much of the attention of the last Parliament,
and must demand the attention of the present, we must
infer that this important subject will not be overlooked
on the present occasion. The Speech will conclude
with an expression of her Majesty's recommendation
to Parliament -to treat all these and other subjects
which may come before it with justice and impartiality,
and with an assurance of her Majesty's reliance on the
attachment of the people.—Morning Chronicle.

The zeal and earnestness of those services, however
humble, which we have tendered to the cause of Irish
Protestantism and of civil liberty (for they are wholly
inseparable) will not, we trust, be doubted. When
the Roman Catholic nobility and gentry of Ireland
were, as we thought wrongfully, because we thought
needlessly, excluded from all share in those political
privileges which their Protestant fellow-subjects en-
joyed, and when it seemed to us that justice, which is
but another name for sound policy, required their re-
admission to the exercise of public trust and power, so
far as an equal share in legislating and administering
the law with the members of their own religious com-
munion was concerned, we should not scruple to call
for the evidence of any Roman Catholic who has the
least sense of truth or honour, in support of our asser-
tion, that no individual or body of men in die political
world, and certainly no portion of the press in either
country, surpassed the Times in the diligence, patience,
and manly energy with which under many discourage-
ments, and, among the rest, under considerable public
odium, this journal presented itself, from year to year,
from week to week, from one meriting to another, as the
advocate of what was then called " Catholic Emanci-
pation." Nor did ally, the most eager and interested
Roman Catholic, rejoice, on selfish grounds, more ex-
ultingly than we did, on grounds which could have had
no particle of selfishness or narrowness in them, at the
passing of that. great constitutional measure, -which,
as it not merely satisfied the demands of justice, but
in their fullest amplitude the petitions of Lite sufflrers
themselves, we, in common with others wiser and
more experienced in practical statesmamliip, hoped
would prove a final settlement of all adverse or dis-
puted claims between Roman Catholic and Protestant.
That we were deceived was a misfortune, in which the
wi-ole Monarchy participated. Irish exactions and ex-
tortions, which had neither right nor truth, nor good
faith, nor integrit3—no, nor a reasonable regard for the
public safety, to recomtnend them, grew upon the
shoulders of that one concession, to which- the cha-
racter of " completeness" had been so solemnly, by
(hose who prayed for it, and so confidently, but alas!
so erroneously, by those who granted it, affixed.
'l".te perfection of religious and political tolerance in
the . acts of the Protestant Legislature was met, in those
of the Papist body, by an excess of intolerance, greedi-
tuss, treachery, and insolence, unexampled since the
reign of James IL—The position of parties, and the
corrupt profligacy of the Whigs, who forced Sir
Robert Peel to relinquish office, and with office his
pLana of enlarged and substantial reform, stimulated
the cupidity of one class of Papists and the ambition
of another, bartering the government of Ireland and
its profits for the nominal direction of measures, and
the real enjoyment of office here, and throwing in the
prospective ruin of the heretic Irirn Church as a lure
to the consciences of those Papists who might have
qualms about the morality of other items in the com-
pact. Thus was a total change effected in the relations
of the parties. Popery became the aggressor, Pro-
testantism the aggrieved. Sir Robert Peel and the Con-
servatives had avowed, and acted upon, the expediency
of a commutation of Irish tithe, and of an internal im-
provement in the distribution of ecclesiastical revenues,
English as well as Irish ; both which changes, taken
together—viz.. first, in the collection of the property—
second, in the distribution of it, embrace the entire of
what, strictly speaking, deserves the name of " Church
Reform," in so far as it constitutes a fitting subject to
be regulated by act of Parliament. But this will not
at present do for the factious Papists, nor have they
so defined or limited their objects since the overthrow
of Lord Grey's Administration. They began, about
that period, openly to threaten and insist upon the
absolute extinction of the Prostestant established
church, and the diversion of its property to what they
nicknamed " national," but which are in reality nothing
more nor less than exclusively Popish--that is " anti-
national," purposes. For example, the O'Connell
gang talk loudly upon " popular education," as being
a grand " national" object in Ireland ; but when you
come to cross-examine them a little, you find that,
practically, this "national" education is to be education
completely governed—that is, warped and distorted—
by the priesthood, for the extension and consolidation
of its own despotic power. This places the Legislature
therefore in a cleft stick. Education is wanted to en-
lighten the people, and to liberate them from priestly
thraldom. But the sort of education to be granted
is one which deepens the ignorance of the Popish
multitude into Egyptian darkness, and rivets and
perpetuates their blind subjection to the priests.
Again, the spirit in which the executive authority
has been administered, the magistracy appointed, pa-
tronage prostituted, and justice crippled—the degree
to which the advances of Popery towards supreme
power have been encouraged, and peaceful and loyal
subjects of the other creed discountenanced and put
down, has still further tended to work out the entire
transposition of the Popish interest and the Protestant,
as compared with the relations which formerly existed
between them, and have imposed it upon all men who
wish to see the law once more in vigour and the empire
itself secure, as a duty the most pressing and indispen-
sable to uphold the Protestant, which is now the in-
jured and persecuted cause—which is, moreover,: at all
times, in its abstract character, the cause of freedom
and morality, as compared with that of the Papists,
and to employ every constitutional means for the defeat
and expulsion of a -Ministry which has sold itself and
betrayed both Crown and people of England to the de-
clared enemy of both. It is as Protestants, therefore,
primarily and especially, that we meditate this forth-
coming crisis. . It is as English Protestants that
we am filled with disgust in retracing the progress
of the • last. Parliament, and with anxiety in me-
ditating the general composition of that which
is now at' the very outset of its portentous
course. A correspondent of the Times, who knows
what he treats of, has drawn a portrait of the majority

the last House of Commons, and of the despicable
Ministers kept in office that mean and base ma-
jority, which we shall not weaken by attempting to re-
touch ; nor can we do more than refer our readers to
it, as a valuable momento of the wrongs and humilia-
tions which may be inflicted on a mighty state in the
name and under the ascendancy of " popular govern.
ment." But there are other proceedings, and in a very
different quarter, which no well-wisher to the cause of
" Protestant ascendancy," or to the reign of law and
regular government, as contradistinguished from Popish
tyranny and multitudinary violence, can look at other-
wise than with extreme concern. We allude now to
an effort making at this moment while we write, to re-
incorporate, both in form and substance, that society
which was lately and so laudably dissolved—viz., the
Orange Lodge system of Ireland, although never con-
nected with the Irish Orangemen otherwise than
by strong religious sympathies, and by a co-part-
nership, we hope and trust, in the same loyal and
reverential affection for the British Monarchy, and
for our ancient, free, noble, and Protestant institutions.
We have profoundly admired the manly and martial
bearing by which those brave enthusiasts in the defence
of all that good and honest men hold dear have inva-
riably been distinguished. Our heart has been with
them, even when our judgment was not. Nor have
we ever failed to repel with the indignation which it
merited the foul charge that Orangemen were bound
together for any objects but these which the spirit of
the Constitution recognized, though the letter of it
might not perhaps recommend the mode adopted by
the Orange Society for pursuing them. The steady
love of British connexion, an unfeigned and ardent
devotion to the ProteStant Church and State, and a
rooted distrust of those dark purposes to which the
vast mechanism of temporal Popery is throughout the
whole earth, but in Ireland above every other spot on
earth, framed to be subservient ;—these are and have
been the attributes of Orangemen, and have been
vindicated in the field with as little hesitation as they
were avowed in word or writing. With such senti-
ments it is impossible that any loyal Protestant or
true Englishman should fail to identify his own.
Nor if a proved necessity should arise, like that in
the year 1798, for re-organizing in all its outward
and formal characteristics the Orange Institution
of that dreadful era, when no other expedient
could be had recourse to for enabling each Pro-
testant threatened with hourly massacre to know
where he might find a brother and how he might
be saved, we should be the last to say anything that
could damp or paralyse such a spirit of well-regulated
co-operation among loyal men, or that could dissuade
from the instantaneous execution of the plan now re-
vived in Ireland. But we would respectfully beseech
our fellow-Protestants to ask themselves, ill-used and
misgoverned as they have been by Lord Mulgrave,
whether a case of such extreme necessity has yet been
made out for the satisfaction of the world as would
justify a fresh recourse to those means which were so
recently, and with an approbation from all reflecting
lookers-on so cordial and so general, relinquished ?
Violenccs there may be, housebreakings, robberies of
arms, extensive plunder of ammunition, murders, dar-
ing and savage, by the roadside ; individual suffering
there is, and will he, much. But there is not that
open warfare carried on by regimented bodies of armed
men, and for the professed aim of wholesale Protestant
extermination, which rendered inevitable in 1798 a
formal array of able-bodied Protestants for the defence
of their lives and families. Who is now responsible
for the protection of life and property in Ireland, and
for the enforcement of the law against offenders ? We
admit most freely that adequate protection is not
afforded—that the law is not even decently enforced—
but often and scandalously violated. But this cannot
last for ever. Lord Mulgrave is now responsible. We
have reason to believe that he has incurred severe
penalties fur breach of his most solemn duties, and has
rendered himself liable to legal punishments which
will not fail to be inflicted. Very well. Do our
Protestant brethren,- who have signed the report in
favour of a resumption of the Orange system, wish to
take the law into their own hands ?—assert the right
to be their own protectors ? thus relieving the Anti--
Protestant Viceroy from that heavy responsibility
under which lie now labours, and from the fear of that
punishment which now infallibly awaits him ? Is
that not a bounty on the Viceroy's guilt, and a shift-
ing of his actual responsibility from his shoulders
to their own ? But further, what is the real,
what the rapidly increasing strength of the posi-
tion now held by the Protestants of Ireland ? It
is the fact of their being an injured, oppressed,
and persecuted race of men—it is the cer-
tain!v that they will in the course of things have
effectual redress for their injuries, and the satisfac-
tion at once of seeing their tyrants crushed, and their
own future safety and welfare as a people placed
on a secure foundation. Will they forfeit this ? But
tchere, again, lies the strength of the Irish Protestant
community ? Here, in England. The English peo-
ple arc now pervaded by one common sense of the
cruel sufferings entailed upon their fellow Protestants
in Ireland. The people of England are ready at the
first call in Parliament to interpose, and save those
who have no other protectors. They see, on the one
hand, that the Protestants are loyal, peaceable, and
oppressed ; on the other hand, that the agitating
Papists are turbulent, fierce, and tyrannical. Is it
possible that such a state of Opinion in this country
should not promply root out the evil which has produced
it? Can we suppose that the Conservatives in Parlia-
ment, or that the nation out of doors will suffer such a
condition of things to endure ? Is it possible that Eng-
lishmen will long be passive spectators of the pros-
trate and pitiable downfall of whatever exists in Ire-
land with which they can claim kindred, or sympathy,
or affection ? We say no. The day of reckoning comes,
and sharp and formidable will be that reckoning, un-
less the party in favour of whom it is to be enforced
shall create a revulsion of principle and feeling against
themselves, and teach their English brethren to ex-
, claim, that "if Irish Protestants, instead of leaning
upon us, will set up an unlawful standard of their own,
to wage a war of violence upon their lawless enemies,
we cannot conscientiously uphold them in such an ex-
periment, but are inclined to let the belligerents fight
it out." If the Irish Protestants find that fearful long-
suffering brings no succour nor redress, it will then be
time enough to call in the "ultimer ratio populi," and
there will be none to blame them. But in the mean-
time let our injured fellow-subjects listen to their
friends, and disappoint their enemies, who could do no
otherwise than rejoice over the threatened act of indis-
cretion. Let them keep the Orange flag still furled,
until they see the Royal standard itself torn from its
flag-staff by the polluting gripe of O'Connell.—Times.
The Queen having evinced, in the most decided
manner, in her first speech to Parliament, the great
and heartfelt interest which she takes in the mitigation
of the criminal law, and public opinion having been
pronounced, on various occasions of late years, une-
quivocally in favour of such a thorough reformation of
our penal system of justice as may limit to murder
alone the dreadful vengeance of an unsparing law, or
get rid of the stain of judicial bloodshed altogether
from a Christian land, the time seems to have arrived
when neither Tory prejudices nor Whig treachery can
any longer offer an effectual resistance to the demand
of an enlightened people for the purification of the
Statute Book from the errors and cruelties of barba-
rous legislation. It only requires that the public feel-
ing without doors should have an adequate voice
within the Legislature to realise the wishes of the
Queen and the hopes of the people in clearing out from
the sanctuary of justice the implements of human sa-
crifice and the altar of revenge. We may take this
opportunity of alluding to the notice taken of our
humble efforts in the cause of enlightened legisla-
tion by the Glasgow branch of the Scottish Society
for Procuring the Abolition of Capital Punishments.
Next to the pleasure which it would give us to suc-
ceed in accomplishing the great object to which those
efforts have been all along directed, is the gratifica-
tion of learning that our labours to place the laws
affecting crime on a level with the advanced civilisa-
tion of the country. are not appreciated by well-in-
formed and influential classes of our countrymen. Per-
sonally unacquainted as we are with Colonel Sykes, or
Colonel Campbell, or Mr. M'Farlane, or any one of
the gentlemen who constitute the Glasgow branch of
the Society in question, we:feel the more strongly the
obligation which they have laid us under by the testi-