The Sun.
London, England, 1837-08-28 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

O'Connell is still the bugbear with which a section
of the Tories think they can " fright the isle from its
propriety." We have shown that, if Mr. O'Connell
were a bad or a foolish man, the present representation
of Ireland is not one which he could ever make the
instrument of wickedness or folly. It is at the same
time abundantly manifest that every accession of
strength to the Liberal party in the House of Com-
mons—if Mr. O'Connell act with that sagacity which
even his enemies ascribe to him, and with that regard
to the public welfare which we are convinced he feels,
and of which he has given the most signal proof in
the recent elections—will and must augment his power
to aid in preserving the helm from Tory hands, and to
assist in sustaining a Liberal Government acting up to
its principles and professions, and in keeping such a
Government steady in the performance of its own duties.
The false and hypocritical outcry against the support
which Mr. O'Connell has given to the Whig Ministry,
is one of the most disgraceful instances of political cant
that has marked the recent career of the Tory party in
England. There is not a rational man in either island
who does not know that the shouters of this wild
halloo employ it to gather around them packs of sup-
porters whom they could not decoy with less coarse and
vulgar deception. Some five and thirty years ago, a
practising barrister in Ireland, with moderate though
independent private fortune, at a very early period of
life, with the Court, the Government, and the then
newly-united Legislature against him ; with a Roman
Catholic people but a few years disenthralled from a
state of little less than political servitude, and as yet
hardly accustomed to an erect posture, or a movement
directed by their own will ; with no aid from the
roweifil, with litt'e assivance from the :rich, and
pressed by the necessity of creating a public spirit out
of no other materials than the wrongs of a whole
people, their susceptibility to feel them, and the re-
sources of his own mind ; this singular man
formed the design of working his countrymen to
instruments of their own redemption. He put himself
at the head of this movement at an age when sonic men
are yet boys. With every opposition from power, from
craft ; from determined, interested, and exasperated ene-
mies ; from the mistakes and follies of his own party,
and often with impediments arising from his own
errors—inevitable in the career of a man who
undertook his Herculean task concurrently with the
daily toils of a most labourious and time-exhausting
profession—he still struggled en. Year after year he
roled the ball up the opposing mountain. Year after
year it tumbled back to its former level. Year after
year ha brought his countrymen nearer and nearer to
tile goal, and bound, faster and faster together, the
increasing millions who congregated to gain it. Gained
it was at laSt. The citadel was surrendered, with a
frank avowal that the spirit which Mr. O'Connell had
done so much to embody was not to be resisted ; and
the extraordinary incident of his election for the county
of Clare (a Catholic, in defiance of law, returned, to
he rtjected, ns a Member of a Protestant Parliament)
se tied the question of Catholic emancipation. That
sti a man, winning such a victory for his country-
men after some seven-and-twenty years of incessant
conflict, should become an object of unprecedented
popularity, was to be expected as an event in time
or.irnary course of nature. Whether he would have
reelinea his vast influence had he ceased to be the
su',jest of marked and continued offence, amount-
in almost to persecution, is unhappily now a matter
merely of speculation. The Duke of Wellington,
whether or not coerced by a power that controlled his
own wiser wishes has bcen never yet explained, not
only denied to Mr. O'Connell the practical benefit if
the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, but, in strange incon-
sistency with tile principles of his own measure, and
with a pertinacity perfectly unaccountable on any
maxims by which the conduet of men acting the part
of Statesmen is usually scanned, refused the practical
operation of that measure to the mass of those for
whom it was framed. Having yielded emancipation
with avowed reluctance, he sought to govern on the
principles on which it had been so long denied. The
result was, to cast around Mr. O'Connell, in addi-
tion to the devotion to him which arose from the
people's gratitude, the further charm which persecu-
tion, or the appearance of persecution, ever gives,
when its real or supposed victim is also the object of
strong popular attachment. When Lord Grey became
Minister, that wise and sound-hearted Statesman is
said to have been fully penetrated with the importance
of bringing to the aid of the Government and the pub-
lic service the vast power with which the singular
circumstances of the man and the nation in-
vested Mr. O'Connell. Unhappily, the Government or
advisers of Lord Grey and of his colleagues, had
then badly studied Ireland, and, as the event proved,
had made sad mistakes respecting the condition
of parties there, and, what was still more strange, re-
specting the individual characters of public men.
Events have demonstrated that the bitterest enemies
of the principles and policy of the government of that
enlightened nobleman contrived, by same singular fa-
tality, to nestle themselves in Ireland as its nearest and
most trusted advisers ; and the Irish appointments
made at the very accession of Lord Grey, and some
untoward circumstances to which it is vain now to re-
cur, led to that tempest of political agitation which
raised the frenzy of the repeal of the Union, and
placed Mr. O'Connell, and the vast party which con-
tinued to give him their unwavering confidence, in
an attitude of open hostility to the Government. Suc-
cessive Ministries had fallen in the effort to govern
Ireland upon maxims of coercive policy. The whole
history of both countries indicated the necessity of
the experiment, which has been made with such
astonishing success for the last two years and a
half, to rule that island in the spirit of the
statute which passed the irrevocable measure
of Catholic Emancipation—that is, with per-
fect impartiality in the administration of the
laws, and with the determination that religious creed
shall neither advance nor retard the claims to the pa-
tronage of Government of those who shall honestly
sustain its policy. The fruits of this system of admi-
nistration are the best proofs of its wisdom. The
failure of every other scheme of government in Ireland
demonstrated the necessity of its tardy adoption. Each
succeeding day's experience shows the benefits which
it has produced, and the peril, and, indeed, the
utter impossibility, of ever abandoning it. Ire-
land was never so tranquil, or so prosperous ;
crime has diminished, not more by reason of a
vigorous administration of the laws, than by rea-
son of the universal confidence in the Govern-
ment which pervades the great mass of the
people. Where habits of this sort are once acquired,
their improvement becomes every day more and
more accelerated by mere force of the continuance
of the causes and impulses which originally pro-
duced them. The most signal proof that could
possibly be given of the improved temper of the
people was afforded in the recent elections. The creed
of the candidate was no passport to popular favour.
The people forgot their predilection for a domestic
Legislature in their confidence in that which xas
called under the auspices of a young Sovereign in
whom all their hopes were centered. "To support
the Queen's Government" was the only pledge re-
quired at the Irish hustings. Never before, since
Ireland became part of the dominions of the Bri-
tish monarchy, was attachment to the Government of
the Sovereign the condition of popular favour at a ge-
neral
election in Ireland. Such are the fruits of this
policy. The Minister who. should attempt to govern
on an opposite system, would fall like the Duke of
Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. The Ministry who,
in carrying out that policy, should perversely reject
the aid of Mr. O'Connell, must be either knaves or
madmen. The influence of Mr. O'Connell forms part
of the existing condition of things in this realm.
Some puling canters may affect to deplore it, but
they know full well that it can no more be removed
than can the transactions of the last thirty years be
recalled—than can Ireland be sunk in the ocean.
However that influence has been produced, there it is ;
a stupendous engine for good or evil. Are we, by
using it, to control it, and to direct it for the advance- j
merit of good government; or are we, like mulish chil-
dren, to fling it from us, in the chance, if not cer-

tainty, of giving it a wrong direction, and then leave
it to its own fitful and eccentric movements ? The con-

duet of Mr. O'Connell during the elections which