The Sun.
London, England, 1839-04-22 00:00:00

colleagues to a little torture every day. They were
too prudent to be caught in such a snare, and they have
left Lord RODEN to work out his accusation after his
own fashion. The Committee, consisting of a great ma-
jority of Rodenites, will, of course,make a suitable report,
which nobody will place the least confidence in ; and then
what will the Rodenites do? They cannot impeach Lord
NORMANBY : if they address the Crown to remove him
from her Majesty's service, a counter address of the
House of Commons will stifle the Rodenite device, and
they will gain nothing beyond the appointment of a Corn-
' m:ttee, the Report of which can carry no weight with it
whatever. The Whigs have gained the sanction of the
House of Commons, and may laugh at the Report of Lord
RODEN'S Committee. They have gained, too, the approba-
tion of Sir R. PEEL. He praised Lord NORMANBY'S
distribution of Church patronage, and he declared that
religious opinions were not to be made a criterion for
appointing to office. This is really what Lord Nort-
MANBY has done, and this is exactly what the Rodenites
have most severely condemned him for doing—it is the
very reverse of what they would do were they in office ;
so that Sir ROBERT PEEL in professing impartiality
on the subject of religious opinions, both sanctioned
the Whig principles of Government for Ireland,
and opposed the doctrines of his new master. With
such evidence of divisions amongst the Rodenites,
backed by a one-sided Committee of the House of
Lords, while the Whigs have Sir ROBERT PEEL'S
approbation of their policy and a vote of the House of
Commons in their favour, the question the publicask is,
' What will the Rodenites do ? We must leave them to
answer that. The Whigs have gained their object.
We beg in conclusion to say a word to those Radicals
who did not support the Ministers by their votes. Mr.
FIELDEN is probably the chief constituency of Oldham,
and if be pleased himself by his vote his constituents
will be satisfied. Mr. BENETT also, it ill likely,
satisfied his constituents, who are much under the in-
fluence of the parsons by his absence. But the consti-
tuents of Mr. S. JERVIS, Mr. WAKLEY, and Sir Was.
MOLESWORTII, will certainly not approve of their not
voting. Their votes belong to their constituents, and
are not to be given to gratify their own crotchets or
caprice. If they think with Lord RODEN that Minis-
ters have not governed Ireland as they ought, it was
their duty to have voted against them. Neutrality in such
a contest is wholly unpardonable. There are few or
no neutrals among their constituents, and one way or
the other they were bound to vote. The substantial
interests of the empire are not to be sacrificed to per-
sonal dislike or doctrinal niceties, and we trust that the
electors of Finsbury, Leeds, and Bridport, will require
Mr. WAKLEY, Sir W. MOLESWORTH, and Mr. S.
JERVIS, to explain why they stood neuter when the fate
of the Administration and the empire was in the
balance, and ought have been decided by their votes.
Mr. DUNCOMBK, Mr. LEADER, Mr. GROTE, and other
Members of the party, expressed their disapprobation of
the conduct of Ministers on some points. but voted in
their favour ; Mr. WAKLEY, Sir W. MoLEswoRTH, and
Mr. JERVIS, were silent and absent. Such conduct, in
such an exigency, is, we believe, unprecedented, and dis-
franchising these boroughs will not, we presume, be tole-
rated by the constituencies.

Some attention has been excited by the assertion
that Viscount LORTON was engaged in a design to get
rid of his Catholic tenantry, and his friends have been
extremely anxious to vindicate him from what they call
a gross calumny. We have, however, now lying before
us the " Statement of the Views and Objects of the
Irish Protestant Tenantry Society," of which the first
patron is Viscount LORTON, the second the Earl of
DUNRAVEN, and the third the Earl of ENNISKILLEN.
One of the objects of this Society is to retain the pre-
sent Protestant population, and to introduce a Pro-
testant tenantry " into large districts which were not
long since peopled with those gallant and faithful men,"
but which " have been weeded of them to such an
extent that not a single Protestant is now to
be found in them." The Society supplicates sub-
scriptions under the auspices of Viscount LORTON,
to supply a Protestant tenantry, to Ireland, and get rid
of those who attend the Popish Mass-house ; and yet,
it is said, that his Lordship is calumniated, when he is
accused of such a design. " From those districts," says
the Society, '° all rational hope of the revival, either of
true religion or civilization, through any other means
than the replacing a Protestant tenantry, is utterly
banished." Under Viscount LORTON'S patronage then,
a Society is established to extirpate the Catholic and
establish a Protestant tenantry in Ireland. Such an
avowed crusade will hardly recommend to the Irish
Catholics the Government of Viscount LORTON'S
friends.

The Society, by its complaints, admits that the en-
dowed Church of Ireland, with all its immense legal
advantages, has completely failed to make Protestants
of the people. To maintain the supremacy, however, of
this useless Establishment, the Government is to be
changed, and the Irish justified in revolting, if they
please. The attempt seems already to have excited a'
somewhat diabolical spirit of persecution in the land.
The Reverend Gentlemen and Lay Elders who consti-
tute the Synod of Glasgow and Avr, at a meeting of
that body on Tuesday week, passed resolutions by
a large majority to petition for the re-enactment of the
penal laws against the Catholics. Of their flushed and
persecuting hopes Sir ROBERT PEEL assumes to be the
organ, as he is the head of their party. In truth he is
closely allied with all the bigots of the country ; he
stands pledged to promote most of their objects, and he
would have to undo his own Emancipation Act, or be-
come unto them a veiny JUDAS. Reenactment of the
Catholic penal lows, and the extirpation of the
Catholic peasantry, replacing them by a Pro-
testant tenantry, are some of the objects which Sir
Roamer PEEL'S friends contemplate, and which
he, in office, would have to countenance. When
such projects are nourished by his supporters, who are as
violent and as erroneous in one extreme as the Chartists
are in the c.ther, to place him in office would be not
much wiser than to make Mr. ATTWOOD or Mr. FROST
Prime Minister. In fact, they are both more opposed,
we believe, to the physical force men than Sir ROBERT
is to Lord LORTON'S extirpating Society, and to the Re-
verend crew of Scotch would-be persecutors.
We must add that Mr. O'CONNELL alluded to the
Protestant Tenantry Society in his speech on Friday,
and our notice would have been more complete. had we
had, previously to writing it, the benefit of his remark&
The article wri4, however, in type before be spoke,
but was kept out of the paper by the length of the
Debate.

The hopes so confidently entertained by the Court
party in France, in the early part of last week, of being
able to command a working majority in the Chamber
of Deputies, have since been eutirely blighted. On
Thursday and Friday, the Secretaries and Qua3stors
were ballotted for, when of the four Secretaries elected,
three, namely, MM. HAVIN, DUBOIS, and LEON DE
MALLERVILLE, belong to the Coalition. M. BIGNON,
a moderate Ministerialist, was alone returned by the
Cot rt party. On Friday the Chamber was declared to
be regularly constituted, when M. PASSY, the new Pre-
sident, addressed his colleagues as follo•.vs

" In calling me to the high honour of presiding over this
Ch amber, you have given me a testimony of your kindness,
tie value of which I am fully sensible of, and my first great
wish is to express to you how deeply I am affected by it.
Perhaps, Gentlemen, the duties which will be imposed
upon me by present circumstances may not allow aye to
exercise for any length of time the functions with which
you have invested me.—(Great sensation.) They have
been recently performed with a talent and brilliancy which
only increase their difficulty. Permit me to rely upon your
support, and the desire we all have of seeing that order,
calmness, and dignity reign over our discussions which will
facilitate their progress, and will insure the decisive in-
fluence which it is so necessary they should preserve over
the opinions of the people. Gentlemen, the session has
opened under the weight of embarrassments which are not
yet at an end. Let us hope that those will shortly be
settled. The wisdom of the Chamber may remove many
obstacles. The country relics upon it. Its guarantee is
our attachment to the noble institutions by which we are
governed, and our lively sense of the obligations we en-
tered into when we accepted the charge which has caused
us to assemble in this place."
There being no business before the Chamber, se-
veral Members rose, and seemed about to leave it,
when M. MAUGUIN, one of the most formidable oppo-
nents of the ad interim Cabinet, ascended the tribune.
We give the substance of his speech, and tile proceed-
ings in the Chamber consequent upon its delivery, as
we find them reported in the Constitutionnel of Sa-
turday :

M. Manguin amended the Tribune, and said—Gentle-
men, the country awaited with impatience the moment of
your tieing constituted. The spectacle which the higher
regions of power have for too long a time presented dis-
quiets, and at the same time afflicts the country ; its in-
terests are suffering, busir,ess is at a stand, and the com-
mercial crisis is justly attributed to a `political crisis, pro-
longed from day to day. It is necessary to quit a situa-
tion which cannot longer endure without exciting discon-
tent. It is above all things necessary to know the posi-
tion in which we stand. If we may credit the Ordinances
of the Ist of April, we have a serious Ministry before us ;
but if we are to attach belief to the official journal of the