The Sun.
London, England, 1837-10-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Some days since we advised the Standard to de-
sist from its abortive efforts to make out a case of Rib-
bonism against the popular party in Ireland, when its
columns might be so much better employed in defend-
ing the Orange faction against the high crimes and
misdemeanours daily perpetrated by its leaders against
the public peace, against common decency, and to the
foul dishonour of the Protestant religion. Since we
tendered this counsel, a aeries of new atrocities has
swelled the list of cases loudly calling for the Standard's
advocacy. It is not when the church-bells of Ulster
are ringing merry peals to commemorate the pillage,
persecution,land massacre of the Irish Catholic sub-
jects of this realm ; it is not when the. purple flag
waves from the spires of the sacred edifices that were
built for the service of Christ, not of Moloch ; it is
not at a moment when Tory violence, indecency, and
di:4!nyalty have proceeded to such a monstrous length
that men calling themselves Protestants and gentle-
mtn propose as a toast at a political entertain-
merit " Hell and damnation to Lord Mulgrave I "
—a rufßanism of language with which nothing but
the iron seise of duty coilld compel us to pollute
our pages ; it is rot, we repeat, at such a time that
we are to be engaged 1:: laying the ghosts of plots and
dangers conjured up the Sid."tiord, or that our con-
temporary is most suitably emplovC.'fl in affecting the
position of an assailant. Ribbonism is such An arrant
humbug that the very Times has not ventured an allusion
to it. We marvel that the Standard has not been struck
by the circumstance that the Times leaves Ribbon con-
spiracies altogether to its evening comrade, the time of
whose publication is certainly the fittest season for
hobgoblins. It appears that we wronged the Standard
in stating as we did lately that he had come to his
senses upon this subject. We are accused of " false-
hood," because we alleged that he had cleared up his
intellects aid descended from the regions of fiction to
the real world. The Standard is furious with us
for asserting that it receded from statements which
went far to prove our contemporary deranged in his
intellects. We must persist, however, in proving him
less insane than he would have his readers think.
This we shall do as briefly as possible, for• we feel
that we should be more usefully occupied in ex-
posing the atrocities of the Orangemen than the
absurdities and contradictions of their organs. We
stated, upon no light grounds, that the Standard has
retracted the substance of its last three weeks' inces-
sant labour in this dull field. In fact we had only to
contrast his main allegation, that the Irish Liberal
Members are " a Ribhonman majority, returned by
Ribbonmen," with the utterly inconsistent assertions
that he brought " no sweeping charge" against the
Irish electors, or even against the Irish rabble—that a
very great number of the Irish Catholics are loyal
men and good Christians—and that even of the sworn
Ribbonmen the majority had taken the horrid oath of
the conspiracy upon compulsion. Thus, after dinning
the public ear for weeks with the cry of Ribbonism—
after sounding the alarm of a conspiracy, frightful in
extent and atrocity, so powerful as to return the majo-
rity of the Irish Members, and to overawe and con-
trol all the councils and measures of the Govern-
ment, it at length came out that it was anything
but the design of the Standard to implicate a majo-
rity of either the constituency, or so much as the
lowest, poorest, and most ignorant of the Popish mob,
in the guilt of the plot. All the revolutionary horrors
with which we were menaced were to be accomplished
by some miserable handful of mysterious miscreants,
the majority of whom were loyal in heart, Christian
in temper, and Ribbonmen only upon some utterly in-
explicable compulsion ! ! ! The absurdity of this is so
gross that we should be equally absurd were we to at-
tempt to illustrate it further. Let us just ask whether
there exists one old gentleman or lady in England in
such.extremity of dotage as to be prevailed on by the
Standard to subscribe a shilling to the petition fund,
upon the mere representation of the Ribbon plot in its
present reduced dimensions ? If the Standard had
distinctly stated, from the moment it first entered into
riralry with Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk Lewis, that not
even a majority of the lowest ragamuffins in Ireland
were Ribbonmen, and that a majority of this paltry
crew were engaged in the conspiracy sore against their
will, and were loyal men and good Christians, despite
their Ribbonism and their Popery, we put it to his can-
dour and common sense, does he think lie would have
induced the weakest old wife in the empire to lend, not
to say give, the " sacred fund" one farthing ? It
will not serve the Standard to repeat night after night,
as often as the owl hoots, that it made no sweeping
charges. None but sweeping charges would have
served the purpose in, hand ; and did ever charges
better deserve the name ? What more stupendous con-
ception could our romantic Contemporary have given
his readers of a political conspiracy than that it wields
the powers of the Government and disposes in full
dominion of the representation of the country ? With
this for the substratum of the fable, and with all the
decorations of mysterious assemblages, horrible oaths,
bloody and treasonable purposes, a prettier tale of
terror is not to be imagined, and we seriously recom-
mend it to the writers o melo-drames. Handling it as
Journalists. we are forced to compare it with other
statements or admissions by the same hand, and we are
incapable of distinguishing black from white if we are not
justified in asserting that the Standard, like the child de-
molishing his castles of sand has done for his own fabric
what his visionary Ribbonmen propose to do with the
throne and altar. If, however, the Standardwilluotallow
(through an excusable obstinacy, as some may think)
that it has destroyed the works of its own hands, per-
haps it will be good enough to admit that the little
table which we gave the public last week has pretty
well disposed-of the Ribbon clamour. That table vin-
dicates completely both the electors and the elected.
As long as Ribbonmen persevere in sending into Par-
liament such gentlemen as that list consists of, we
shall pray for the prevalence of Ribbonism in Ireland.
But we maintain that the Standard has done more
than abandon the main beauties of his plot. How
has he met the distinct challenge to name the Irish
Members, whom he still has the audacity to describe
as miscreants sworn to imbathe their feet in the blood
of our Protestant neighbours? He has positively re-
fused to do so, and founded his refusal upon the pal-
triest pretences ever resorted to by the author of a
groundless libel. He fears a prosecution. How
like the public spirit of Hudibras,
_ _

~ Who would not give himself one firk
To carry on the public work ?"

But it is not for himself he is apprehensive. Oh,
no ! he " could only successfully defend himself by
denouncing to the knives of the Ribbonmen the unfor-
tunate witnesses against the treason." How conside-
rate ! how humane ! Let the Standard, however, re-
collect that there is an excellent chance of his witnesses
falling into the hands of those ltibbonmen who are
loyal and Christian in their hearts, and whose knives
we may suppose are none of the sharpest. The Stan-
dard is very generous to give the name of the magis-
trate, which we did not ask for. We demand the
names of the Members of Parliament accused (recol-
lect the charge is aaainst more than one !), and we are
told we must first have a Parliamentary Committee !
Here is another subterfuge. Our Contemporary well
knows that there will be no Parliamentary Committee,
because there is no prinza.facie case for one ; because
the time of Parliament is not to be wasted in investigating
idle stories which, but for his own kind industry, the
Irish Protestants themselves would never have heard of.
How good it is to hear the Orange papers in Dublin
dotnking a contemporary in London for the revelation f
the lierrible state of Ireland. How good it is to hear the
Standard lauding " the Irish Conservati‘e journals,
which (it rejoices to see) are all now taking the right
view of this sul.‘ject." In what ridiculous light this
places the whole atilir ! Oh, but the Standard has
found a precedent for its conduct. Mr. O'Connell
(an odd example for the Standard), in his evidence,
in 1825, charged the Orangemen with profaning, in
their factious orgies, a verse of the 68th Psalm, and
declined naming his informant, alleging unwillingness
to expose him to personal violence. Mr. O'Connell,
we warrant, was well abused by the Orange papers for
impeaching the Orange system upon such grounds ;
and, we shall add, he was abused most justly, for al-
though the criminality of libelling the House of Com-
mons is infinitely greater than merely imputing an ag-
gravated atrocity to au illegal and seditious society,
no man, private individual, or public journalist, is

justified in advancing a criminal charge upon evidence ,
which he refuses to produce, save under circumstances
which that man, or that journalist, well knows or :
reckons confidently will never occur. We shall do our
hest, however, to get the Standard an opportunity to-
prove his accusation ; we feel the greatest curiosity to
know whether the Kibbonman is Lord Belfast, Sir
Richard Nagle, or Colonel White, who is stated in
the papers to have offered the other day 62,0001. for
the estate of a Tory Lord, whom Ribbonism is, we
suppose, driving from the country.—Morn.chroniele.

. .
The official organs of Ministers bluster loudly on
behalf of the anti-Protestant returns of Members for
Ireland. Now is their time—a few weeks hence
bluster will avail them little. They ask, " What de-
scription of person do the Tories want the Irish people
to choose ?" and then make a pompous assumption of
names, fortunes, respectabilities, &c., as if names were
things, and pounds were principles. It is true that
during the former Parliament men sat for O'Connell
seats in Ireland, whom it would have been vain to look
for under the same roof with gentlemen in any other
building but the House of Commons, and our objec-
tion to those persons was, that they could not, from
station, or personal qualities, have found their way into
such an assembly, had they not been smuggled in at
the window by some illegitimate practices, or some
preternatural and vicious force. The revolutionary po-
licy has since undergone a change, and a subtle one. It
was found that a whole corps of individuals, much below
par as to vulgar grossness—much beneath the standard
of social decency, to use a familiar phrase, " would not
•
pay ; in other words, that they entailed weakness on a
party,, instead of adding strength to it—that their acts,
and words, arid whole demeanour, threw ridicule on
the cause which they professed to serve, and on the
Government with which they voted. It became Tic..
cessary, therefore, to try another tack, and the
scheme adopted was to look for men with the birth,
station, and outward pretensions of gentlemen, who
would condescend, from factious motives, and under
the corrupt influence of evil political connexions, to
pursue that same path which the former vassals of the
O'Connell rule had followed through a blind and fierce
necessity—to do in substance, but more plausibly, that
same vile work which had hitherto been executed
clumsily and coarsely by a more offensive class of agents.
But is there a particle of real improvement here ?
Are men who spontaneously submit themselves to the
revolutionary bondage of priests and ruffians, who do
destructive work from dirty calculation, one whit less
objectionable as members of a legislative body than
those who undertook the same black business because
they were not in a position to have any choice ? If those
whom the Treasury prints boast of as " noblemen and
gentlemen," have owed their seats to the support of
O'Connell and the conspiring Priesthood, and to that
alone, having bartered for those seats their own poli-
tical free-agency, and pledged themselves to co-ope-
rate with the enemy of England in one and all of the
projects avowedly set on foot by him for the ruin of
her religion and her empire—how or to what extent is
any one of the objections urged against his former band
of satellites answered substantially by the substitution
of those persons in whose favour he has dismissed
them ? The members (or rather candidates, for mem-
bers they will not long be) may ride their horses, while
their predecessors tramped on foot; they may sip their
wine, while the others tossed off " blue ruin ;" they
may stay away from church on the Sabbath, while the
hodinen of the old Parliament went regularly to mass
and to confession ; they may wear a rich livery, while
the members of the discarded household wore a ragged
one ; but are not the parties referred to by the Trea-
sury journals by the title of " noblemen and gentle-
men' as complete slaves of the agitator as the meanest
of those who went before them ? Are they not as
notoriously returned to Parliament on the strength of
a majority (real or fabricated is another question) com-
posed of electors who had no will of their own ? Is
not their pledge to go all lengths for the subversion
of the Protettant Church and State at once mere dis-
graceful to themselves and more dangerous to the
empire than any such profligate undertaking could
have been on the part of men whose personal in-
significance deprived them of influence as examples ?
When the Ministers, therefore, ask us " what de-
scription" of candidates do the Conservatives wish
the people of Ireland to choose, we answer negatively,
"not persons nominated by Mr. Daniel O'Connell"
—not persons who will sell for a mess of corrupt
garbage the civil and religious liberty of an enlightened
people—not men who are bound in honour to vacate
their seats, or to carry into effect schemes which have
for their declared object the confiscation of the whole
property now and for ages past possessed by the church
of Ireland, and the vesting the entire power, political
and corporate, throughout that country in the hands
of a penniless rabble, doing suit and service to a
depraved priesthood on pain of eternal damnation.—
Times.

No direct accusation, nor proofs in support thereof,
against the iniquitous policy for centuries pursued to-
wards Ireland by the Tories, could ever excite so re-
volting a conviction of its atrocities and abominations
as the defences and admissions of its own advocates
must excite in the minds of all parties whose vision is
not seared by bigotry, or clouded by fanaticism. In
reviewing the history of Tory domination—a syno-
nyme for persecution in Ireland, the factious
writers themselves cannot adduce a single instance
of any positive national benefit being at any time
effected :by it—the utmost they can allege in defence
or favour of Tory sovereignty being an occasional re-
mission or abatement of the evils of its own previous
creation. Its utmost justice is merely a mitigation of
injustice, and for every cessation of a wrong as much
merit is assumed as if it were the concession of a
right. An edifying illustration of this mode of de-
fending Toryism appeared last week in the Times, where
the writer, after enumerating some of the wrongs from
which the people of Ireland were at different epochs
relieved, exclaimed against the gross ingratitude, the in-
satiable expectations and implacable hostility to England
and Protestantism, which characterise the " Irish Pa-
pists." The manner in which these charges are attempted
to be sustained is strikingly illustrative of the ethical
system of Toryism. What, reader, do you suppose
was the first " boon" for which a claim is assumed to
be established on " Papist" gratitude ? " The per-
mission to purchase land." Roman Catholics had
previously been prevented from becoming owners of the
soil which God and Nature gave them as an inherit-
ance. It was not sufficient to rob them of it by con-
quest, but an Act of the British Legislature decreed
that no " Papist" should by purchase, bequest, or
otherwise, ever again become possessed of any portion
of the land of his birth. They were thus treated as
" Aliens" in their own country, and perhaps it was
deference to this not very ancient law, a respect for it
as a " final measure," which called forth the notorious
declaration of Lord Lyndhurst, t hat the It ish were
" Aliens in blood, language, and religion." This ban,
by which the Irish people were excluded from the soil
as an outcast race, desecrating the earth, and unworthy
of a place upon its surface, was at length removed—
they were allowed to obtain by purchase what was
their own by right, and yet the insatiate, ungrateful
wretches, were not satisfied with this munificent and
magnanimous concession. Tory generosity, however,
is not exhausted, and after trying to allay discontent
such as shooting, hanging,
by extensive depletion,
and burning some thousands of the refractory race,
a further " boon" is granted, and Papists are admitted
to the bar and the elective franchise. Still the Papists
—posterity will scarcely credit the fact—were not
satisfied ; on the contrary, they became more clamor-
ous than ever. Again, the Tories, in their inexhaus-
tible anxiety for the welfare of Ireland, have recourse
to the depletory system which was tried on an extensive
scale in 1798 ; but though this produced apparently a
temporary" suppression of the discontent, in a short
time the symptoms returned with unmitigated violence.
The bayonet and the rope and the firebrand, though
still employed, had lost their efficacy—these humane
sedatives only provoked a more violent reaction, just
as periodical abstractions of blood from the human
body tend to induce plethora. Here, again, the gene-
rosity of the Tories manifested itself in a light of unw
equalled purity and beneficence. When it became
impossible longer to withhold the claims advanced by
the people of Ireland, the so-called Act of Catholic
Emancipation was passed, accompanigd and enhanced
by the chivalrous and conciliatory declaration the it
was yielded, not to )usticel but "to necessitr" if