The Sun.
London, England, 1837-10-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

When the people of Ireland arc called upon to
forego those Corporate privileges to which, as con-
ceded
to every other portion of the empire, they feel
themselves entitled by the Act of Union, it is only
justice to inform them for what equivalent advantage
they are required to submit tet this deprivation. The
ItyStitutions from which, by Conservative policy, they
are debarred are those which, beyond every other cause,
tended, throughout Europe, to advance civilization, to
nurture popular rights, and establish the supremacy of
the law—lnstinstions valuable to a people in exact
proportion as they exhibit those traces of incivility and
rudeness which long-protracted misgovernment may
have impressed upon their chat acter. The Conserva-
tives br.ve.declared what that equivalent is ; they have
ileelared that the loss to Ireland of Institutions, bene-
ficial as Corporations, founded upon the basis of po-
pular representation, have universally proved, is
snore than compensated by those advantages which
she derives from the possession of an Established
Church, with whose preservation they assert
(and we admit, for a moment, the truth of their
assertion), the popular power conferred by these
institutions would he incompatible. It becomes, then,
necessary to inquire how far that church is so essential
from its nature to the
general welfare of the country
so entitled, whether from the principles upon
which it was originally established, or from the sub-
sequent measures adopted to uphold it, to the love and
• veneration of the people, as to justify its supporters to
call for a sacrifice of national rights in order to ensure
its preservation, First, then, as to its nanve. It is
a church instituted to teach a creed from which six-
sevenths of the people conscientiously dissent, and
which we are often told they regard with horror as a
fatal heresy. "It is," to use the language of Ed-
mund Burke, the great champion of the Church,
"it is an ecclesiastical establishment which, though
the religion of the Prince and of most of the first class
of landed proprietors, is not the religion of the major
part of the inhabitants, and which, consequently,
does not answer to them any one purpose of a re-
ligious establishment from which they do not partake
the least, living or dying, either of instruction or con-
solation." So far, then, upon evidence which no
Conservative will gainsay, it is difficult to discover
what inherent qualities this Church possesses that
should make its maintenance paramount to every other
national consideration. Let us see, however, whether
in the principles upon which it was originally founded
m-y be descried that justice which should call forth
gratitude and respect. Mr. Hallam, whose authority
both as a philosopher and a historian is deservedly
high, thus describes and examines the grounds on
which the Established Church was originally planted
in Ireland :—" There were, doubtless, three argu-
ments in favour of this compulsory establishment of
the Protestant Church, which must have appeared
conclusive to Elizabeth and her Council. The first
was, that the Protestant religion being true, it was the
Queen's duty to take care that her subjects should
Inflow no other ; the second, that being an absolute
Monarch, or something very like it, and a very wise
Princess, she had a better right to order what doctrine
they should believe than they could have to choose for
themselves ; the third, that Ireland being a conquered
country, must wait, in all important matters, on
the pleasure of the greater island. These arguments
(continues the historian) involved a principle essen-
tially unjust, and enormously aggravated, both in the
age of Elizabeth and afterwards, the calamities and dis-
affection of Ireland. An ecclesiastical establishment,
that is, the endowment and privileges of a particular
religious society, can have no advantage (relatively,
at least, to the community where it exists) but its
tendency to promote in that community good order and
virtue, religious knowledge and edification. But to
accomplish this end in any satisfactory manner, it
must be their Church and not merely that y the Go-
vernment: it should exist for the people, and in the
people, and with the people." Having thus looked in
vain in the inherent constitution or original establish-
ment of this Church for its title' to so large a gratitude
as would barter for it the liberties of a nation, let
us, as a last resource, consider the means to which
it owes its preservation. The penal code was
forged for that avowed object. The preamble of
every statute in that chain of vicious perfection
declares its enactment essential to the protection of
the Church "It was a machine (siys Burke, speak-
ing of this church-preserving code) of wise and elabo-
rate contrivance ; and as well fitted for the oppression,
impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the
debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever
proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." Such
then, is the institution for which the Irish people are
called upon to sacrifice important privileges, and to
sink below the rank of English subjects—an institu-
tion from which the great majority of them derive,
living or dying, not the least instruction or consola-
tion—an institution " founded upon principles essen-
tially unjust and teeming with subsequent calamity"—
an institution avowedly upheld by the " oppression
and impoverishnient of a people, and the degrada-
tion in them of human nature itself"—an institu-
tion which has notoriously failed in the end for which
it was established, and has filled Ireland with dissent
and Popery. What other mode, then, can remain, of
now ureserving an establishment whose origin, history,
and failure have so little entitled it to the respect of the
people, than a hold and speedy change, not only in its
nature, but, above all, in the fatal circumstances which
ha.e hitherto attended it ? Sick and inactive from a
plethory of wealth, let it be adapted to those wants for
ministering to which its existence can alone be justified,
and thus be made an instrument for propagating truth,
not a stumbling-block in its way. Put forward as the
plea for every barlytrons or d:T.,radit-; infliction, let the
universal extension of public ri4,hts inform the people
that its existence is not considered incompatible with
their welfare—that the temple of reformed Christian
truth is no longer to stand upon the ruin of humanity
and justice.—Morning Chronicle.

.Among the slander 3 of the day, palpable to all men
but the very ignorant, and resorted to in the first in-
stance by none but downright knaves, is one which we
find hourly more in dm aud with the trading clarpleurs
of the Whig Administration, in proportion as their
cause becomes more hopeless, and their final resistance
to the ruin that hangs over them more utterly and des-
perately vain. The unprincipled assertion thus em-
ployed by the dealers in " rhetorical artifiee," is no
other than that " if the Conservatives eame in to-
morrow, we should witness a systematic effort on their
part, not merely to prevent the further progress bi re-
form. but
_to repeal or neuttedize every one of the
measures called popular which have been carried within
the last few years, from the Catholic Emancipation
Bill down to the very 'latest which had for its object
the redress of ally .public grievance." Now, this is a
broad, gross, :Ind shameful falsehood. Sir Robert
Peel, and the great Conservative body pledged
themselves 'by declarations, distinct and voluntary,
to give 'the fullest possible eff2ct to every Lai.; which,
ho,-,cver originally at variance with their judgment,
even in spite of them become the law of
England. As for the Bill by which Popish disabilities
were removed, the Whiqs and Papists are they who
have shown their discontent with that important Inca-
sur; by labouring to ingraft upon it, and to identify
with it, it series of assaults upon the Protestant church
and state, rather than consent to which all English
0
pwiticians, who deserve the name of statesmen, would
bectasarily prefer the revival of the old penal laws •
inesmuch.'asi the question has now charmed its form,
,
and the alternative
pro- posed by the PapistsS 3 them-
selves, not by rsn, Conservativa that the know qf, ig tc-
turn to that. state of th'n r in which Irish Roman Ca-
tholics ‘;:ere disarmtil power to wound the British
tiat;Ai or the establishment of an entirely new state of
things, which would disarm us Protestants of all
power of self-protection against the same Papists, de-
claring themselves to be our irreconcileable enemies.
With the Roman Catholic Bill of 1829 all the Con-
isrvg;tives that we have over heard of disclaim in the
Strongest language any wish, much les.s, any design, to
meddle. One provision of immense magnitude, arid
in our often-pronounced and still-unaltered opinion of
the most incalculable urgency, was omitted by the
framers of that Bill—viz., arclause affecting the rela-
tions of the Romish priesthood to the State—an error
now and henceforth, we fear, altogether irretrievable.
But, for the Bill, imperfect as it was, we should con-