The Sun.
London, England, 1838-11-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Amongst the various devices to which the Tories have
bad recourse in order to destroy the influence of the Irish
priesthood, we wonder they did not sooner think of setting
the Times to praise them. Had the readers of that versa-
tile print been less accustomed to its daily pranks, how they
must have stared on Saturday morning to find themselves
reading of "an able, well-informed, independent Roman
Catholic priest !" nay, " an enlightened" (in our Contem-
porary's own emphatic italics), "an enlightened Roman
Catholic clergyman" (it is quite refreshing to transcribe
this courteous phraseology)," a reasonable being," " an up-
right and conscientious writer." Here is a specimen of
ecclesiastical zoology! the species vouched for, too, by so
eminent a naturalist as the Times ! Priest though he be,
the subject of this eulogy may for once deplore the inter-
vention of the Sabbath, which has fixed him for two
days, instead of one, in the pillory of Printing-house-
square. Justice, however, will no doubt be speedily
done to his character. This very day perhaps (un-
less Mr. O'Malley be more unfortunate than nine-
tenths of his fellow sufferers from the same cause) he
will again take his place amongst " the ignorant
savages" and " surpliced ruffians" from amongst whom he
seems to have been so undeservedly singled out. As a
matter of curiosity it may be worth while to hear our Con-
temporary's reason for his hostility to " the Romish priest-
hood of Ireland." "'lt is not without unfeigned repug-
nance," he tells us, " that we have felt ourselves compelled,
by facts of the most provoking and daring nature, to ge-
neralise our animadversions upon the Romish priesthood of
Ireland. If through influence or intimidation the Roman
Catholic Clergy, who had no political or fanatical sym-
pathy with John of Tuam, were wrought upon to conceal
their dislike of his incendiarism, we may and do for their
sakes lament their feebleness ; but we cannot justly take
the blame of it upon our own conscience." Now, consider-
ing the capacity of "our own conscience," the refusal
seems unreasonable. But let that pass. The " Romish
priesthood of Ireland" now see the terms upon which they
may purchase immunity from the animadversions of the
Times. Let them only undertake to do our Contemporary's
business—let them set to blackguarding each other,
and save the Times the trouble of "generalising its
animadversions"—let Bishop Murray set up as a rival of
John of Tuam, and show that turbulent Ecclesiastic " that
he dislikes his incendiarism"—let the whole island be di-
vided into hostile dioceses, and the Times will no longer
" generalise its animadversions." This is surely considerate ;
and should the Romish priesthood, refusing to take advan-
tage of the offer, find themselves excluded from the benefit
of Saturday's amnesty, the Times, at least, " cannot justly
take the blame of it upon his own conscience." The prin-
ciple upon which the Times " generalises its animadver-
sions"is eminently characteristic. Of the whole priesthood
of Ireland, one man, a bold and thoughtless zealot, has
opened an active campaign, preaching and writing against
the new system of education. In his opposition Dr.
M'Hale is known to be alone amongst the order of Clergy
to which he belongs ; and yet from this solitary instance a
general conclusion is formed as to the feelings and princi-
ples of the whole priesthood of Ireland. How would the
Clergy of England, or the Bench of Bishops, like this sys-
tem of generalising, Bishop Philpotts being the excep-
tion whose conduct was to be adopted as the rule ?
Morning Chronicle.

There are various destinies which may befall Lord Dur-
ham's person, no one of which would involve any conse-
quences of more than trivial, or at worst but transitory,
moment to the British nation. That he states in one
breath his entire satisfaction at the time of entering on his
official duties with the fulness of the powers vested in him
by Parliament to meet whatever emergencies might arise
by reason of their amounting to an absolute " despotism,"
and in the next breath admits his consciousness of their
total inadequacy to answer the very first crisis wherein ite
finds himself—viz, the alleged necessity of providing for the
imprisonment of traitors in the island of Bermuda, to which,
by his own ordinance, he had transported them—such
self-contradictions, whatever light they may throw upon the
genius and character of Lord Durham, or however they
may help to decide his reception at home and sub-
sequent position in the political world, cannot operate
very widely or very durably upon the British Empire.
Whatever petulance or mortified vanity the Noble
Lord may have exhibited on the late occasion—what-
ever disregard of his duty to the Crown of England, as a
functionary to whom no small portion of its authority had
been delegated, and to whose discretion some of the gravest
interests of the realm had been intrusted—whatever auda-
city, assumption of privilege, and indecency of anger be
may have indulged in, when he appealed to a rebel com-
munity for the sanction and encouragement of measures
which lead been condemned by the Imperial Parliament
and the Sovereign state of which he was the subject, such
things can have an extensive and lasting influence upon
nobody but the Earl of Durham. The seeds of disaster
were sown thick enough before he penned a line of his re-
cent manifesto, and would, if the unanimous tenour of the
private accounts from Canada be correct, have borne deadly
fruit before the expiration of the coming winter, had the in-
cendiary document never seen the light, and had its author
been ever so tenacious of that post, of which the danger had,
it is probable, been calculated by his Lordship more cau-
tiously and successfully than any other of its attributes.
This winter was represented by all who wrote home upon
the subject, as likely to bring with it a revival of the
worst scenes of November and December, 1837. We do
not say to what extent, or in what manner, the Administra-
tion of Lord Durham, from his first arrival in the St. Law-
rence, may have helped to engender such unhappy pros-
pects. The Noble Lord is bepraised by some weekly spe-
culators, whose mask of neutrality as between parties seems
no ill-contrived cover for a philosophical indifference to the
contingency of practical good or evil in the application of
principles—his Lordship, we say, is praised by such people
for having broached in his manifesto many " enlarged
views of reform." We confess this word " enlarged" ap-
pears to us in the present case of somewhat suspicious jus-
tice. Most objects look " large" in a fog, and to our vision
dimness, vagueness, and scattered looseness of suggestion
decorated, but not defined or verified, by a dressed-
up and showy phraseology, are rx.ore exact characteris-
tics of Lord Durham's colonial programme than the
tattering epithet applied to it by the otherwise
caustic commentator on the Noble Earl. However, such
views, or visions, be they " large" or luminous, had,
somehow or other, got whispered about amongst the French
Canadians, and the result was, that so little do that race,
for whose " elevation to the high level of British
subjects" Lord Durham's mighty schemes were instituted,
appear to have been charmed towards Lord Durham, by
all those vast and magnificent inuendocs, that not a single
French inhabitant of Lower Canada came forward to ex-
press a monosyllable of regret at the ill-treatment of the
Noble Lord, and his consequent departure from the pro-
vince, whilst in a body the most active of them bearded
the incensed and by that time undeceived Autocrat in his
den, meeting at the gates of Quebec to thank Lord
Brougham for the riddance thus afforded them. What-
ever, therefore, may have been the designs of
Lord Durham, and whatever his boastings—and of
the latter, truly, we have seen too much—it is
plain that he accomplished absolutely nothing ; that
he left the seat of his (null) Administration in a state more
embroiled, more clouded, and more threatening, than
that wherein he found it ; and that against the non-ad-
vancement of the Canadians towards any conceivable good
*here is nothing to set but the retrocession of Lord Dur-
ham himself in the esteem of the whole political world, which
is a matter of little political moment in a man who had at
best but a partial and hypothetical repute. There is, how-
ever, something which may have an influence, and a fatal
one, upon the future condition of the North American co-
lonies, and on their existence as colonies under any form
whatsoever. That something is the force or weakness,
the wisdom or folly, of e provision now made by
the Queen's Ministers to fill the breach in our colonial)
Government made by the entire failure of Lord Dur-
ham's experimental mission, and by his surrender of
the trust. If the Noble Lord, in whom were concen-
trated all the powers of civil government, such as they
were, and who boasted in a threatening manner that he
would not resign those powers save only into the hands of
the Sovereign from whom " alone" he affected to say that
he had received them—if that Noble Lord was appointed
to the government of North America in a mode and under
circumstances which proclaimed to the country that such
an unusual nomination was unavoidable—that there were
purposes to be fulfilled—that there were authorities to be
exercised—that there were diseases to be cured—that there
were calamities to be averted—that
in fine there were changes
to be realised--all which a man like Sir John Colborne was
incapable of performing, which could be completed only by
such an eminent undertaker as Lord Durham ; and,
moreover, that the emergency was so pressing and so
critical as early in last April toadmao
fnotcaotanloguehoe ofur's
delay ;—if, again, in addition to the preceding
difficulties at the former period so urgent, thefrethisethmeefur-
ther one of a recorded and entire failure o
then resorted to for a supply of the ernergencioy,rernzgo hutsnatcrognlrhas.
ago so pressing, can any man dispute the er
vation of embarrassment and peril in whichtli
deal
eeaml plsi,orersemuosfft
now be placed, when we are actually a great
than if the high commission had never been conferred upon
Lord Durham, and if the Government and Parliament had
all last winter sat with folded arms, and moved not a single
step towards a provision for the then existing crisis, a crisis
which has had no solution since, but has been growing
every hour more frightful ? If not a day was to be lost last
winter, without the express, laborious, and decisive inter-
ference of Parliament for the application of some strong
remedial or preventive measure to the crying mischiefs
which pervaded our Canadian provinces, and if those mis-
chiefs have not to the present hour been redressed or