The Sun.
London, England, 1837-11-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OYTEIE PUBLIC JOURNALS..

The state of Ireland will be brought before the
public to-night by the motion of the Earl of Roden.
His Lordship brings this important subject forward
with the no inconsiderable advantage of having had
the case, which, we presume, be designs to prove,
already powerfully stated by the Tory journals ; and
being thus enabled to bestow his undivided attention
upon the selection and arrangement of the evidence
necessary to sustain their positions. The public ex-
pects, and has a right to expect, from the Noble Earl
a fair attempt to prove the charges which have been
deliberately and pertinaciously advanced against Lord
Mulgrave's Government by the Times and Standard.
We shall not consent to have a mitigated case brought
forward now in Parliament, after the enormous one
that has for months been daily and nightly submitted
to the country in the columns of the Tory press. We
shall expect, in the first place, to have evidence pro-
duced to prove not merely the universal prevalence of
Ribbonism in Ireland, but the frightful extent to which
that system influenced the late general election, and,
what is worse still, the monstrous fact, distinctly and
repeatedly alleged, that Lord Mulgrave connives at
the existence of this abominable conspiracy, the bond
of whose union is an oath "to walk in the blood of
the heretical clan," meaning, of course, the Protestants
of Ireland. The Standard has gated—
" Here, then, is proof of the existence, no matter to.
what extent, of a treasonable, murderous, and secret con-
spiracy, contemplating, as one of its objects, the return to
Parliament of persons nominated by that individual by
whose support Lord Melbourne's Cabinet stands in defiance
of the people of Great Britain. The conspiracy exists.
What has Lord Mularave done to prove that it does not
exist by his connivance ? Has he instituted any prosecution
against Ribbonmen? Not one. Has he discountenanced
those persons who rely for support upon Ribbonmen ? Arc
these proofs of any disposition to put down Ribbonism—are
•they not, rather, proofs that Lord Mulgrave knows and
feels that to a Ribbonmen majority—a majority returned
by Ribbonmen, using all possible means to assist Mr. Daniel
O'Connell in his great plan'—he, Lord Mulzrave, owes his
continuance in office °"
Lord Roden will of course go into evidence of the
heinous charges here advanced by one of the most
reputable organs of his party. But he has more to
sustain than the allegations contained in this strong
passage ; for the Standard went still further, and
asserted, repeatedly and confidently, that more than one
Itibbonman had actually been returned to Parliament ;
nay, more, our Contemporary declared that this was a
fact which he was ready himself to prove in person
at the bar of the House, so that Lord Roden can
have no difficulty whatever to cstab!ish this
,part
of his case; lie has only to produce the editor of the
Standard, whose anxiety to discharge his bosom of
the awful secret with which it has long been swelling,
must of necessity be extreme. Having demonstrated
that the bulk of the Irish people are thus bound toge-
ther in a " secret, murderous, and treasonable society,"
contemplating objects the most sanguinary and dia-
bolical, wielding power the most enormous, and exer-
cising paramount influence in the highest places, and
over the highest personages in the country, Lord Roden
will, we may presume, proceed to spread before the
House the appalling consequences of this system. And
here again his Lordship has his case stated to his
hand; he will only have to read the following series of
extracts from the columns of the Times, and the
speeches of Sir Francis Burdett, which we have taken
the pains to collect for his Lordship's assistance ; and,
having done this, his task will be simply to recapitu-
late the various massacres and hot and ruthless perse-
cutions which have so horribly distinguished Lord
Mulgrave's viceroyalty from the happy Governments
of his Tory predecessors, and cast deep into the shade
the harrowing tales of the Albigenses and the Vaudois.
The Times, of September 22, put the 'following inter-
rogatory :

We ask all men, is it now an unquestionable fact that
the Protestants of Ireland, the Clergy in their daily bread,
the laity in their persons, are those who, suffering from the
non-administration of the law, have neither themselves
disobeyed it, nor clamoured for the abolition of it, but are
the undefended victims of 'violence, qf robbery, of wanton
hatred, of cruel murder, of every form and degree of per-
secution, of every excess of fiend-like malignity, that ever
cursed a devoted country, or rendered infamous the deposi-
tories of power r

Ana some days afterwards the public was told in
glowinr, phraseology by the same Journal that " Every
wave that breaks across the Western Channel wafts
hither the yell of outrage or the moan of suffering from
the Irish shore." Or if his Lordship would prefer to
hold forth upon a text furnished by Sir Francis Bur-
dett, let him take the following passage from the ora-
tion of that upright and consistent statesman at the
late Tory festival in Wiltshire :
" What the partisans of O'Connell called peace was at-
tended by miseries far more calamitous than a state of
honourable warfare. Every day Protestant blood was
shed in the most cruel and outrageous manner, only because
'nen were not afraid to exercise their legal and constitu-
tional rights, and would not be deterred from voting ac-
cording to their consciences in matters which they believed
concerned the interests of their countrymen. Li7:e martyrs
these men scaled their devotion with their blood, and per-
severed in defending a just cause, undeterred even by the
fear of death."—(Cheers.)
_ _

But if any Noble Lord should be so inquisitive as
to ask how this wholesale destruction of human life
can consist with the establishment of the constabulary
force, an armed body of many thousand men spread
over the country and expressly designed for the public
protection, the Times of October the 3d will tell
him, and Lord Roden will of course feel himself
bound to demonstrate that " the Police Bill was passed
for no end but to place a standing army of constables
bearing muskets at the disposal of Daniel O'Con-
nell." It will also tell him the means by which this
end is accomplished :—" Mr. Daniel O'Connell, the
priests and the demagogue associators, abuse, as was
inevitable, their inordinate power, by manning the po-
lice, in all its ranks and branches, with eicers and
privates upon whom the revolutionists can depend."
Nay, more, that this end has been actually brought
to pass The police or civil force of Ireland
has been so remodelled as to afford a fruitful field
of patronage to the Papist agitators, and, through
the friendly and liberal bias of the Castle, has
been so purged of Protestant dross, and so en-
riched with the precious metal of O'Connellism,
as to answer all the purposes of negative, at least
(if not yet active,) assistance to the villainous mal-
practices and outrages dictated by the Popish priest-
hood." Such, then, is a sample of the statements
which, day after day, have been reiterated by
- every Conservative orator, and poured forth from
every Conservative press. To delay a moment
in bringing the whole of such a case before the
public would be an act of cruel treachery to the
• sufferings of persecuted Protestantism, of which to
suspect so zealous a friend as Lord Roden would be,
no doubt, the grossest injustice. Lord Roden must
do one of two things. He must repeat the charges
of his able allies, the Times and Standard. "My
lightning thou, and thou my thunder"—he must de-
clare his belief that the majority of the Irish represen-
tatives are returned by electors, the majority of whom
are sworn to walk in Protestant blood—he must
declare that some of those representatives are
themselves sworn Ribbonmen—he must declare
that such of the Protestants as have survived
that unintermitted havoc, to which, according to
Sir Francis Burdett and the Times, they are
subjected, are now, " counting the hours with
their sighs, and the minutes with the distilling of
their bloody wounds"—he must repeat all this,
and declare his readiness to prove it, or he
will acknowledge that those statements are gross
and palpable °rnisrepresentations—outracreous false-
hoods—forged for the abominable misrepresentations—outrageous
of
kindling English prejudice against the Irish
people, and thus withholding from them those
rights to which the Union declares them to be
heirs. What ! does the Standard believe that
the public will endure to be told, during the recess,
when complete refutation was impossible—to be told,
we say, day after day, that 4‘ murder was stalkini,
through the land"—that the Protestants were the
victims, the unprotected victims, of this murder that
the majority of the Irish people were sworn to extir-
pate not only Protestantism, but its professors ; and
now, when the opportunity and means of proof are all
at hand—nosy when a Protestant Parliament is as-
sembled, and the Protestant heart of England beats high
—does our Contemporary, we say, believe that the fair