The Sun.
London, England, 1836-11-25 00:00:00

treachery and mismanagement that the fact of the
Tories having obtained an ascendancy in the Town
Council of Inverness is to be ascribed. These pretended
Reformers—men with Whiggism on their lips, while
Toryism is rampant in their hearts—are precisely that
class of persons who, of all others, the friends of li-
beral principles ought to dread, and against whom they
ought to be specially on their guard. We scarcely ever
yet knew an instance in which the Reform cause was
defeated, in which such persons had not more or less
to do with that defeat. Their conduct in Inverness so
disgusted the Reformers in that borough, that many
of them determined on having nothing to do with the
late municipal election. Several of the stanchest
friends of liberal principles abstained from voting alto-
gether, and thus the Tories may be said to have
walked the course. Perhaps the genuine Reformers of
Inverness, if they saw no chance of being able, under
existing circumstances, to return to the Town Council
men of the right sort, acted wisely in abstaining from
voting at all. We ourselves, in such a case, would
much rather have downright Tories, than sham Re-
formers. The Conservatives of Inverness are, we
understand, about to start a new paper in that town.
It is to be of the " ingenious device" school in its theo-
logical opinions ; in other words, it is to be established
by the O'Sullivan, M'Ghee, and Crotty party in the
North. One would have thought that the Journal is
in all conscience Tory enough. •So it is, we doubt
not, even in the estimation of the party starting the
new paper, is so far as politics are concerned ; but,
then, the Journal unfortunately knows nothing more
about polemical theology, than it does about the mu-
nicipal institutions—if there be any—of Timbuctoo.
The new Tory Inverness print is to go the " whole
hog" in polemical religion, after the fashion of the
Exeter Hall performers. It may live twelve months ;
it certainly will not survive eighteen. Before then it
will be said of it, as it has been of many journals be-
fore it—" it died, and made no sign."—Morning
Advertiser.
The defence put forth by the Ministerial Papers for
the conduct of the Archbishop of Dublin, in prevent-
ing the Rev. Mr. Nolan from preaching in his diocese,
although licensed by Archdeacon Magee to use the
pulpit of the church of which he is incumbent, is
wholly inconsistent with that which was volunteered
by a Conservative Evening print to which we alluded
yesterday, and which, if it correctly stated the ground
of the archiepiscopal inhibition, would have re-
lieved Dr. Whatcly from the charge of having silenced
a Protestant clergyman, lest his sermons might prove
an offence and a stumbling-block to the Church of
Rome. It appears Dr. Whatelv's friends by no
means adopt a line of defence thus proferred upon
technical grounds—they boldly, and we must add,
honestly, admit that the Archbishop's objections to
the Rev. Mr. Nolan were substantial and personal,
and not at all technical. These objections may be
summed up by stating that Mr. Nolan was a Ro-
man Catholic, and ig a Protestant—was a clergy-
man of the Church of Rome, and is a clergyman
of the Church of England—and that, having given
offence to Rome, by abjuring its faith, and continuing
to give offence by preaching against its errors, lie
had disqualified himself .from preaching in any pul-
, pit within the extent of Dr. Whately's episcopal
jurisdiction. It is said by a Ministerial print that the
facts of the unpleasant and irritating effects of Mr,
Nolan's preaching upon the theological sensibilities o!
Roman Catholics, were communicated to the Irssl
Government, and no doubt that Was so, and we have
it upon the same authority that, " as the Archbishop
of Dublin is a member of the Privy Council, it is not
unlikely that his Grace obtained official knowledge of
the mischief which Mr. Nolan's renegado zeal edocted
in another province and archiepiscopal see." Here we
see the advantage of an Archbishop being a member
of the Privy Council, at least of such a Privy Council
as is presided over by the wisdom of a Mulgrave, and
enlightened by the genius of a ..Morpeth. He was
thus enabled to hear of the misconduct of Protestant
clergymen who are daring enough in these days to
preach in Ireland the principles of the Reformation,
and who add to that delinquency the still greater one
of being converted members of the Church of Rome—
a guilt which they share in common with all the early
Reformers, many of whom were punished for that guilt
still more severely than Mr. Nolan has yet been—
having expiated, by fire and faggot, the crime of read-
ing the Bible and expounding its doctrines to the
people. To be sure it is somewhat difficult to discover
how the preaching of Air. Nolan in the pulpit of St. John's
Church could shake the nerves or shock the notions of
a Roman Catholic congregation, inasmuch as his au
(hence would have been a Protestant one ; and Roman
Catholics, in Ireland at least, are not in the habit of
attending heretical places of worship. If Protestants
went to a Roman Catholic place of worship and heard
what they did not like to hear, as most likely they
should, the answer to their complaints would be
" What brought you there ? who compelled you to go
and listen to what you did not like to hear ?" It is
the duty, we should think, of a Roman Catholic cler-
gyman, even though he be a converted Protestant,
like a certain member of a noble family, to preach
to his congregation according to the doctrines of
his Church—to denounce heresy including all Pro-
testant tenets, and to warn the flock against all Pro-
testant expounders of the Scriptures, as ensnarers of
the faithful and blind guides in the path that leads to
perdition. It might not be agreeable to Protestants
to hear their faith and their ministers so described,
though we believe it would not provoke any of them
to acts of " anarchy, outrage, and bloodshed." They
would not be Protestants if they so imitated the un-
christian spirit—the ruffian violence of a Tuam mob—
adorers of a Machale and persecutors of a Nolan—
" Proving their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks."
It being, then, the duty of a Roman Catholic clergy-
man, as long as he continues to believe in the dogmas
of the " infallible and immutable Church," to de-
nounce heresy—and to show by force of controversial
preaching, if he can, that out of the pale of the Church
of Rome there is no salvation—what right, we ask,
would Protestants have to obtrude themselves among,
his congregation, to raise a disturbance, insult or mal-
treat the preacher, and exhibit the zeal of their most
Christian piety with all the fury of the most savage
intolerance ? What right would Protestants have to
surround a place of Roman Catholic worship, placed
under the protection of the law, smash the windows,
fling stones and other missiles in amongst the con-
gregation, and threaten to take the life of the
preacher ? If any Protestant could so act, we are
sure a truly Protestant Government would not invert
the order of justice in such a case—that is, arrest
the preacher, and let the malefactors go free. But
Dr. Delaney was arrested, as Mr. Nolan has been
silenced, to gratify the aggressors, to conciliate
the violators of the law, and to save that many-
headed guardian of Papal purity, a ferocious mob,
from the trouble of exhibiting their zeal in acts
of " anarchy, outrage, and bloodshed." But after
all, the silencing of an eloquent and powerful preacher
of the doctrines of the Reformation in one diocese,
will be of little avail unless he can be silenced in all.
Perhaps the time is drawing near when that prohibi-
tory process may be extended by his Majesty's Irish
Privy Councillors to the whole of Ireland. An arrest
of a Protestant clergyman here, and an inhibition of
another there, is but a piecemeal and imperfect way of
making it understood that a Papal ascendancy must
be acknowledged in Ireland even before that country
becomes " great, glorious, and free," by a repeal of
the Union. The most
mode of
practisedsilencing
preachers of the
by such apostolic Prelatesas Bishops Bonner and
was that Gardiner. The Papal crusade against Protestant
clergymen in the nineteenth century is yet but young ;
it is not older than the " healing measure"—the , it tran-
quillizing Bill of 1829 • yet wants the finished prac-
tice of the elder days of persecution • ; it may improve
as it goes on ; and, as Ireland is rapidly filling with
monastic institutions,
.so it may be blessed with the
appropriate accompaniment of Holyal •• •
Inquisition.—
Morning Herald.
We insert a letter from Mr. O'Connell to the people
of Ireland, on the subject of the late run upon the
banks in that country. The object of this epistle seems
to be to persuade the people that it is a very foolish
thing to make a run upon banks, and more especially
upon joint-stock banks, and still more especially upon
the National Bank of Ireland, "of which," says Mr.