The Sun.
London, England, 1837-10-03 00:00:00

;PIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS►

We perceive, from the communication of our Lis-
bon Correspondent, which we received last night by
express from Falmouth, that the movement in favour
of the Charter of Don Pedro, which for some time
promised so successful a result, has for the present
failed. We can understand that in a country devas-
tated and exhausted as Portugal has been by civil wars,
a considerable portion even of Lae classes most disposed
in themselves to adhere to a moderate and constitutional
system of government may be unable or disinclined to
make further sacrifices in support of a cause which
has already cost all classes so much. An active and
unscrupulous democracy, possessed of the powers and
resources of Government, has, it appears, been too
strong for the limited means possessed by the few
brave men who volunteered to take up the cause of
Constitutional Monarchy. Notorious Miguelites have
been accepted without scruple as allies of the ultra-
Liberal Constitutionalists, and the Clubbists and
their Ministerial allies are for the present tri-
umphant. They will do well, however, to make
a prudent and temperate use of their victory.
Let them take advantage of the brief repose af.
forded them to settle the Constitution, now about to
come again under discussion, upon a moderate basis ;
let them remember that there are other parties in the
country to be consulted besides the mob leaders and
mob journals of the metropolis ; let them expel from
among them all blood-thirsty notions of vengeance
upon fallen adversaries; let them look, in brief, to the
permanent welfare and contentment of Portugal, and
not to the ephemeral interests and paltry gratification
of a party. Unless the acts of the party now in the
ascendant in Portugal are moved by this spirit, we fore-
see that the contest, thus suddenly terminated, will be
ere long again renewed ; public discontent will never
be without a banner under which to display itself.
Their country, to which, whatever an anti-English
faction may say, we sincerely wish well, will be the
perpetual victim of the selfishness of its rulers, and
the ruin, towards which it appears latterly to have
made no small progress, will be decisively and finally
consurnmated.—Morning- Chronicle.
Throughout the vast British empire, embracing
both extremities of the globe, there is at this moment
but one field of battle—there is but a single bone of
strife—there is no more than one definite subject of
deep and pressing anxiety ; and each and all of these
are afforded by the state of Ireland. From Ireland,
therefore, and' from what passes there, and from what
we are menaced with in that dark and inauspicious
quarter, it is morally impossible for any thinking Eng-
lishman long to withdraw his meditations. A' paper
which we have received from a trustworthy and ho-
nourable correspondent is inserted elsewhere under the
head of the " Irish Magistracy." There is no depart-
ment of the Monarchy in Ireland which has not served
Lord Mulgrave and his coadjutors as a hot-bed where
to hatch their brood of public enemies, created for pur-
poses directly subversive of the State, " bribed by the
money of the English people to betray the interests of
the English people." The Police Bill was passed
for no end but to place a standing army of constables,
bearing muskets at the disposal of Mr. Daniel O'Con-
nell. The promise made by Lord John Russell,
tendered by him -in the most solemn manner when
driven to the wall by the Opposition Leader—a
promise that the bulk of the subordinate police
functionaries should be selected and appointed by
the gallant officer, of tried loyalty and honour, who
was announced as commander of the whole—that pro-
mise has in no part of it been realized. It has been
kept as all the pledges of Mr. Daniel O'Connell and
his assistant-agitators, the Sheils, the M'Hales, and
the rest of them were kept when they declared before
the Parliament and the country that the act of Roman
Catholic Emancipation would entirely content them ;
that they would receive it with everlasting gratitude,
and would absolutely forbear from using any of the
privileges or powers derived under it to the despoiling,
the enfeebling, or in any manner disturbing, the pos-
sessions or the peace of the Irish Church establish-
ment. Yes, ai that insidious promise was fulfilled by
the unprincipled men whose whole existence from that
hour to the present has been one unvarying violation
of it, even so has Lord John Russell adhered to the
engagement by which he disarmed the adverse suspi-
cions of Sir Robert Peel and the great body of Con-
servatives, and betrayed them, the Conservative Mem-
bers both of the Commons and the House of
Peers, into a vote of acquiescence in that cun-
ning but most profligate Police Bill. As Mr.
Daniel O'Connell kept no faith, so we repeat, in the
reforming spirit of an obsequious morality, did the
Whig operative statesman keep no faith. He us
xl
Colonel Shaw Kennedy as a decoy-duck, to quiet the
apprehensions of honest and public-spirited men ; but
the instant that, under the cloak of that gallant gen-
tleman's popularity, his Lordship had secured the
Bill for new modelling the Police, he began those ma-
noeuvres which he has since diligently followed up,
for perverting it into an engine of disloyal Popery,
treating Colonel Shaw Kennedy's recommendations
with such contempt, that the gallant officer, we are
told, now never dreams of troubling the Government
with any, while Mr. Daniel O'Connell, the Priests,
and the demagogue associators, abuse, as was ine
vitable, their inordinate power, by manning the police
in all its ranks and branches with officers and privates
upon whom the revolutionists can depend, whatever
the Precestants and gentry of the land, with those of
their fellow-subjects attached to the interests of the
British monarchy, may do, or however fruitlessly they
may cry for justice and protection. There are (says
our Correspondent), some fifty of the class of sti-
pendiary magistrates in Ireland, of whom nineteen
were introduced into the Police system after, and in
consequence of, the New Police Bill. What de-
scription of persons have been so introduced, and what
'l..fort are candidates for the office under Lord Mul-
i't-leie• ,is plainly enough implied by our Correspondent
• • ascribes the incessant and virulent abuse
rged from every pore of agitation against the
• hekelitary proprietors of estates, who have likewise
heretofore constituted the majority of resident Magis-
trates throughout Ireland, to a longing desire for the
extinction of all such Magistrates, that their places
may be filled by Radical stipendiaries of the right
O'Connell breed, and not less eminently-fitted to poise
the scale of justice between rebel and loyalist than the
O'Connell policemen are to wield the musket and the
sabre. Why is it, as our Correspondent shrewdly
asks, that the constabulary force of Ireland was formerly
a perpetual topic of brutal invective with O'Connell,
and are now treated as the favoured corps, the house-
hold troops of Popery ? Why, for the obvious rea-
son, that the patronage of the police forcers in the
'ands of O'Connell himself ! which, as people are
aware, " makes all the di ft in the world." That
worthy personage, therefore, has henceforth little to
fear from any of those awkward obstacles which
might, under otlier circumstances, be presented by an
armed power, maintained for the enforcement of the
laws. But what does his patronage consist of ?
We speak now of police patronage only. The
Stiteendiaries," as they are called, and a numerous
body, as above stated, we find them, have an income
of about 6001. per annum each; 34 sub-inspectorships,
at 300 i. a-year ; chief-constables, all but infinite,
200/. a-year ; sub-constables, thousands, who may at
O'Connell's bidding be composed of his own crea-
tures exclusively, 301. per annum ; and the protection
of the Peaceful and the well-disposed throughout the
whole kingdom is committed to guardians of that ex-
emplary stamp I As usual, the O'Connell partisans
parade their official " tables" to prove how many
professed Prstestants there are in the police
body, aria 'what a moderate portion of priest-ridden
Papists. The hypocrites, is not the choice of constables
in ;rie priests ? and do they select dependents for their
10.yeilty, let what will be their creed ? But if one law
tan be perverted in its execution so can another. Our
Correspondent reminds us, that while the Police Bill is
made a machine for packing the lower functionaries of
the Government, so has the Bill, enabling the Crown
to appoint Lords-Lieutenant of Counties in Ireland,
been frustrated in practice by a virtual superseding of
the authority which it was the declaredohject of the Bill
to create. That Bill passed when Lord Melbournehim-
self was Secretary for the Home Department, and when
Lord Grey was Prime Minister. The Home Secretary
beiu&the aforesaid Lord Melbourne—stated expressly in
the House of Lords, that the great object of the Bill