The Sun.
London, England, 1837-08-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The rage of the Tories at the result of the Irish
elections is not provoked by the decisive majority
which is now secured in favour of- the Queen's Go-
vernment. It is by the character and quality of the
additions to the representation of Ireland that the fer-
ment :of rancour and despair has been raised, which
for some days has been boiling over in the Tory press
of London. It was said of Cobbett that much of his
power as a writer arose from his determined and perse-
vering repetition of the same dogmas, stated over and
over again with a pertinacity and bold defiance of refu-
tation that impressed upon the reader a notion of the
writer's conviction, and tempted him to receive as tru-
isms what were unfolded with an earnestness appear-
ing to warrant sincerity. The whole efficacy of the
Tory press seems to consist in that part of their tac-
tics in which they copy Cobbett. They ring changes
upon the same bells, until the ear, at first stunned by
the recurrence of unvirying sounds, becomes at last
so full of then as to retain a sense of the noise with-
out needing new impressions. From the accession of the
present Ministry the scribes of their enemies hare plied
the same topic with a perseverance which, while it sick-
ened some, made others so habituated to the daily
fiction as almost to believe as true what was said so
often and so boldly. O'Connell has been the ogre,
and Ireland the enchanted castle ; and the Ministry
are ever the spell-bound victims of the arch-enchanter.
They found that this game was, to a certain extent,
successful in a certain quarter, during the late reign.
They are playing the same game with hopes of a
similar result in the present. But they forget, not
only that they have, thank heaven ! far different mate-
rials to work on now, but that the late Irish elections
have utterly extinguished even the appearances from
which these audacious libels drew their daily food.
They know full well that the character of the new
portion of the Irish representation, once ascertained
and understood, must put to flight for ever all their
splendid theories about the sinister influence of O'Con-
nell, and the conspiracy of priests and demagogues
against the institutions of the British empire. They
dare not analyze that representation. They fear to
gaze upon it ; they shrink from speaking of it in detail.
And they resort to the old system of plain, point-
blank, unblushing, unreasoning, unmeasured false-
hood—yes, falsehood, repeated, reiterated—now in
the form of simple statement, now in that of
sly inuendo—anon in some valorous assump-
tion (as if of something too clear for the
proof of which it is not susceptible), and then
again in the empty thunders of rapid declamation ;
falsehood in every shape, from the lightest sarcasm to
the most ponderous and lumb,ling invective, composes
still the materiel of Tory warfare. Accordingly, they
go the whole bog ; they describe the entire majority of
Irish representatives as the nominees of Mr. O'Con-
nell. We beg pardon ; there is now a new element of
mischief. The present Irish representation (such of
it as is not Tory) is the work of some wide-stretched
conspiracy spread throlL,ll the whole island, and corn-
posed of a set of Lisp rapparees, called " Ribbon-
men This is the last ne,v discovery of the Tories,
as a hypothesis for accounting f'or their utter disconi-
liture in Irelaerd. Lord Brallilzou is returned to Par-
liament as the tool of O'Connell and the Ribbonmen
in the metropolitan connty, under the nose of Lord
`,lnlL!rave, Sir Edward Biakenev, and Colonel Shaw
Kennedy, Ivith some 30,000 men under their orders.
Mr. O'Calla!,lian, the son of one of the largest
resident landed proprietors in Ireland (Lord Lis-
more), procures at Dungarvon, a thriving town
in the county of Waterford, a singular combi-
na:ion of the Rihbonmen, the Duke of Devon-
shire, and Mr. O'C.).inell, to return a scion of
tire Irish aristocracy to tire British. Senate. Mr.
11,,samish, in the great and populous city of Cork, is
unable to prevent a similar atrocious conspiracy of the
merchants, traders, and householders, leagued with a
gang of Rilobontnen, or rather twiner themselves

hurmei:.of the most occult and dangerous kind—from
forein!, him into the House of Commons. As for
Lord Belfast and Mr. Gibson, the prevalence of Rib-
bonism in pushing these obscure and unknown men
into Parliament—and this, too, working so baleful a
result in the Protestant capital of the Protestant north
of Ireland—is one of the worst features in the present
condition of that unhappy island. And as for the
two Messrs. White, it is quite clear that their return
must have been the result of a most ferocious outbreak
of Ribbonism ; for how else could two brothers—and
-such brothers--have been selected to represent the
county of Longford ? One of the most glaring in-
stances of this pestilence, has been the return of Mr.
Fitzpatrick in the Queen's County. It is quite
impossible that anything less potently diabolical
than this treasonable conspiracy, could have achieved
such a result—and even that would not have
been successful if the traitors had not initiated
into their infernal mysteries some of the chief pro-
prietors
of land in that fertile and flourishing country
--the Ladies Fitzpatrick, whose sex, Sir Henry Par-
nell, whose absence, and the Marquis of Lansdowne,
whose high station in the councils of his Sovereign,
have not made them proof against the seductive blan-
dishments of this rabble association. Some people
may be surprised that Mr. Curry, the highly respected
and able Barrister, the nephew of Mr. Leonard Dob-
bin (a cautious and wealthy man), and who is himself
reputed to be a person of considerable property and
some knowledge of life, should have entered into a
league with a gang of traitors, who, though unheard,
unseen, and unknown, have parcelled out among their
favourites the Irish representation. But so it is.
Under the very gates of the archiepiscopal Palace of
the Primate of all Ireland, at Armagh, the Ribbonmen
held their dreadful orgies ; and, drinking a bowl of
human gore, registered a vow, which they subsequently
fulfilled with " desperate fidelity," to make (portentous
selection !) a Presbyterian Queen's Counsel Member for
that fallen borough! 'With respect to Sir W. Somerville,
he should be at once attainted, and his fifteen thousand
a-year should be forfeited to form a fund for the extinc-
tion of Ribbonism ; for he is shrewdly suspected of
having become a member of the confederacy on the ex-
press condition that he should without a contest be re-
turned member for Drogheda. Mr. Ashton Yates,
and Mr. Maule, the eminent English barrister (one a
Member for the county, the other the Member for the
borough of Carlow), are understood to have given in
their adhesion to Ribbonism upon the extraordinary
terms of remaining Englishmen, Protestants, and
Unionists, until the expiration or dissolution of the
present Parliament, and of being then at liberty (if
they can effect such a transformation) to become, not
only Papists and Repealers, but also Irishmen, and to
remain so for the remainder of their lives. But the
most puzzling, and at the same time the most masterly
exploit of the Ribbonmen, has been accomplished in the
ease of Mr. Howard, now Member for Youghal. Not
only did they persuade that young gentleman to
join them, but they actually succeeded in enlist-
ing into their ranks his youthful bride, and her
near relative, Colonel Cavendish, a Member of the
Household of our gracious Sovereign ; and having
taken off the bride and the bridegroom, and con-
fined them together (the wretches were merciful enough
not to separate the wedded pair in their happy honey-
moon) for three long weeks in the custody of Colonel
Curry, auditor of the Duke of Devonshire, in his
Grace's Castle of Lismore, they effected a truce with
so large a number of the Protestant Corporators of
Youghal, that Mr. Howard is now the representative
of that loyal borough. Astonishing and appalling
achievement ! Daring and too successful a union of
force and diplomacy ! Considering that Mr. Howard is
a near relative of Lord Morpeth, no one can be sur-
prised at the very general sanction which the public
have given to the project, recently promulgated, of a
Parliamentary impeachment of his Lordship, in the
first week of the ensuing session. Singular it is, and
one of the most remarkable events of the times, that all
these men, thus selected by a horde of ruffians, whose
aim is first to pull down the Church, then to repeal the
Union, and, lastly, to level all property, should b_e Pro-
testants, enjoying or inheriting, collectively, vast wealth,
and should also be known supporters of the Union.
There are but two modes of accounting
is
this ap-
parent anomaly. The Ribbonmen, it s true, are
aware that there is a probability of a long Parliament.
But then, either they haVe made sincere converts of
these men, or else they artfully cloake their nefarious
designs by doing the very opposite of that which, in