The Sun.
London, England, 1836-05-27 00:00:00

SPI OF THE PUBLIC (JOURNALS.

The Tories have succeeded in rekindling thc smoul-
dering cumbeis of dissatisfaction in Ireland. That
" repose" which has so often been recommended by
them as an infallible specific for all the diseases affec-
ting the body politic in that country, is, by their own
insolent and tyrannous conduct, driven from the land,
and ". agitation" has become once more the order of
the day. Peace was promised to Ireland in 1829 ;
but Fersonal spleen in one quarter, and peculiar pri-
vate interest in another, disappointed. the nation's
hopes, and marred the beneficial effect of an act of
justice, by depriving the concession of grace. Still
the Catholic Relief Bill wrought great good, in spite
cf the mischievous machinations of the bigots and the
corrupt ; and from the moment the letter and the
spirit of that wise enactment began to get fair play--
namely,. since the Earl of Mulgrave assumed the Vice-
regal functions, the blessings expected from its ope-
ration were in the daily process of complete
real:zation. For the first time in the history of
Ireland, the Government became an object of
popular esteem and a well-founded confidence
11l the in'e4rity and benevolent intentions of the
the Executive, was rapidly engenderini, respect for the
law, obedience to the constituted authority, and a de-
sire for social harmony and domestic quiet. And it
is when this long-wished-for calm, out of which so
mu-li inestimable good might he derived, at length
folh we'd the administration of the laws by the head of
the Government in Ireland—it is at this moment, so
favourable for the establishment of comment d and the
eradication of intestine strife, that the Tory Peers.
blinded by the scales of faction, deaf to the voice
of reason, and insensible to the interests of the
empire, throw the apple of discord into the midst
of the Irish people, and evoke that spirit of dis-
content which former measures of justice, and, in
particular, the conciliatory conduct of the Viceroy,
had nearly laid in the sister country ! Let these
reckless incendiaries look to the report of the proceed-
ings at an open-air meeting in Dublin on Monday
(given in another part of our paper), and there behold
their handy work, and tremble, if they are men, for all
the good they have marred, and all the mischief they
have done ! The names that figure in the list
of those who took part in these proceedings—the
most important, for many reasons that will be
obvious to the reader, that liave taken place in these
countries for a considerable time—and the language
used, particularly the eloquent speech of Lord- Mil-
town, must bring home to the hearts of the wrong-
doers in the Upper Hcuse of Parliament a conviction
of the gigantic evil their fatuity has perpetrated.
• What but a strong sense of the injury arid
gross insult •that has been wantonly and cruelly
inflicted upon their father-land, could impel such
men for instance as the Earl of Miltown and
Lord Killeen to abandon that domestic retirement
which they covet, to fling to the winds that moderation
which they have hitherto exhibited, and to put them-
selves at the head of their countrymen in protesting
against the insolence and oppression of the Tory
majority in the House of Lords ? There are other,
though less distinguished names, in that list, which
would never have appeared there, did not a burn-
ing sense of humiliation and a fierce resentment
pervade the country. One of those who sacrificed
a seat in the Senate, rather than sanction the continu-
ance of agitation in Ireland, after Catholic Emancipa-
tion was achieved, is Viscount Killeen, and lain: the
outrageous conduct of the Tory Peers has driven into
the foreground of agitation. Two eminent' King's
Counsel, Mr. Ball and Mr. Dickson, who never before
took an active part in politics, have been converted into
agitators by the same pernicious cause. Merchants
and bankers of great wealth, who have hitherto confined
themselves to their counting-houses, are, we perceive,
now marshalled under the standard of agitation. From
all this, the people of England will collect how much
of animosity they owe to that profligate party who—
to harass a liberal and reforming Government, and to
spite the Reformers of Ireland for the valuable aid they
have afforded our countrymen in the achievement of
our own rights—have convulsed a large section of
the empire, and thus seriously endangered the
commercial interests and prosperity of the coun-
try. It has been impudently asked by the wicked
disturbers of the peace of the United Kingdom,
why should Ireland complain so much of the refusal
of municipal institutions to tier cities and large towns ?
We ask in turn, why have the Tory faction refused
these institutions to that country—and proclaimed the
galling reason, that " the Irish are unfit to participate
in British privileges ?" We put the case upon this
issium to the people of England and Scotland, and by
their verdict we will abide—whether our Irish brethren
would not deserve that contumely which the Tory
Peers have heaped upon them, did they not resent the
outrage upon their character and feelinas, conveyed in
the denial of Corporate Reform to Ireland, and still
more so in the insolent reason so insultingly avowed
for that refusal ! That affairs have come to a crisis
is now undeniable. It is clear that some decisive
course must be at once taken, by which the mischief
that has been done shall be remedied, if we desire
to preserve the integrity of the empire without waging
a civil war. For such a catastrophe the Tories
are panting, but the people of England are far
difrerently disposed ; and, besides, it is incompatible
with our own interests to waste the resources of the
country in dragooning the Irish into obedience to lordly
oppression and acquiescence in Tory insult. English-
men know the value of peace ; they appreciate liberty,
and they will not be parties, even by their apathy on
this occasion, to the flagitious scheme of a corrupt
clique, for disturbing one and trampling -down the
other. Neither will our countrymen pave time way for
the return of the hereditary enemies of their rights to
power, by permitting it to be said that they abet the
Tory Peers in their onslaughts upon civil and religious
liberty ; for assuredly, if we now suffer these titled fac-
tionists to ride rough shod over a reforming Government
and over the House of Commons, in a matter that more
especially affects Ireland, our own immunities will, ere
Ling, be time forfeit of our criminal acquiescence. It
is upon a principle that the two Houses of Parliament
art, by the- malignity and doggedness of the Peers,
thrown into collision. That principle involves these
considerations : first, whether eight millions of Irish-
men—out fellow,subjects, and one-third of the popu-
lation of the United Kingdom—are entitled to
,the ad-
vantages of a legislative union with Great Britain,
among time chief of which is a participation in salutary
British laws and institutions ; and, secondly, whether
seventy or eighty Tory irresponsible Peers. shall treat
with contempt, and set at defiance, and trample in the
dust, as caprice may urge them, the Commons of Eng-
land and the twenty-three millions whom they repre-
sent ? Having in one sentence accurately stated the
question upon which the will of the nation must
speedily be pronounced, we confidently appeal to the
judgment of the people.—Morning Chronicle.
It is not many weeks since we called the country to
witness, that for all time outcry raised on the Whig-
lia:lical benches of the House of Commons, awl in
the clamorous paragraphs of two or three destructive
newspapers, the false and fraudulent provisions of the
Irish Municipal Bill had made no progress towards pc-
pula'rity in the country which it was meant to impose
upon ; for that not one grain of anxiety that the Bill
should pass into a law had shown itself anywhere but
in Mr. O'Connell's letters, and in his single echo of
the miming Press, with its evening reverberations.
Timis was a remark which hit the Irish Radicals be-
tween wind and water. " What ! not agitate for our
patron saints, the Rev. political pastors of Ireland,
non' canvassing for Corporation power !" " We will
tell the Conservatives a different story by and by." So
they go to work with a megular agitation process. The
'Whitson holedays were at hand—out came Daniel
with a bulletin against the House of Lords, making
time grand delinquency of their Lordships consist in
their treatment of the municipal measure. As be-
comes-the tail, it follows the movement of the rump
to which it is an appurtenance. What Mr. Da-
mmiel O'Connell designs, why should Mr. Richard
Shed conside: it beneath him to execute ? If there he
no voluntary or natural agitation, " we will have an
agitation of our own, be it ever so reluctant and unna-
tural." " The ordinary tricks will be sure to make it
tell with time English, mkho know nothing but what we
choose to cram them with, and the democratic news-
papers, which stick at nothing." The next step is a

meeting—a public meeting—the easiest of all Irish
manufactures, and the cheapest, barriog sometimes a
few broken heads. Of the meeting the vital principle
is the oratory. Of Irish oratory there are two kinds
—the pathetic and the pugnacious ; both at the pre-
sent era' of the world so stale, that they have outlived
their appropriate functions, or confounded them ; the.
pathos of Irish political rhetoric seldom failing to
provoke every' reasonable Englishman by its falsehood,
and the pugnacious, or " Pistolian," to raise in him
a smile of- commiseration. For instance, now--At
a meeting in a place called the Coburg-gardens,
Dublin, on a par, we presume, with our Copenhagen-
fields, there was on Whitstin Aldnday what had been
intended for a grand exhibition of Irish eloquence and
power. The meeting was to serve as a model to the
provinces—a normal school of potential civil war.
Well, that glory of nobility, Lord Miltown, was the
president, and Mr. Richard Slid, an old practitioner
of rhetorical artifices, was likewise present. Of the
cwo speeches, Lon', Miltown's was on the whole the
most effective, chiefly by reason of a classical allusion
with which his Lordship had been happy enough to
prepare himself, and to decorate his discourse, signify-
ing that Irishmen, like eels, were used to be skinned,
and' therefore had become insensible to the pain of that
culinary operation. - By the way, if instead of skin-
ning eels, the Noble Lord had made reference to the
skinning of potatoes, the image might have possessed
greater local propriety, and full as much philosophi-
cal accurary, though less literary truth. as a quo-
tation. However, to proceed. The Noble Chair-
man set out, as usual, with the pathetic : ap-
pealing to his hearers, whether Ireland had not
experienced a fresh insult in the refusal to place all
corporate offices in the gifts of the Itomish priests ?
He ended, of course, wish an appeal to arras; but it
was covertly executed, by a manoeuvre borrowed from
the great master of wordy warfare, hoping that the " im-
mense crowd," whom he had done his utmost to in-
flame, would be "peaceable," and bear even their ene •
mies with " patience." So Mr. Shed, member for
that tranquil and civilized portion of the universe,
named Tipperary, began with complaining that Ireland
was wronged and insulted ; but soon giving way to
the hot belligerency of his martial nation, the heroic
orator pushed on to his conclusion ; and what was
that ? Why, that there were 20,000 gallant Irishmen
on the spot—quite enough for the purpose of this
Drawcansir ; because they would furnish some of the.
materials ",for doing justice to Ireland." But the
skilful experimentalist on the nerves of Englishmen, it
seems, bad further cause for satisfaction, inasmuch as
by the last returns of his Milesian forces he had an
army of no less than 7,000,000 of soldiers in reserve,
and this, too, without any conscription—like himself,
all volunteers ! Nor was he content with such evi-
dence of the magnitude of an host seven times more
numerous than that of Xerxes, for the ingenious chief-
tian hit upon a new expedient—he promised to com-
mission by way of Mustermaster-General an officer
who has never before; that we are aWare of, been borne
upon the strength of any European army—viz., a
raven, whom Field-Marshal Sheil has pledged himself
to drill into a frequent repetition of the words " seven
millions." Now, would not a parrot do as well ?—he,
moreover, has green feathers—of the same hue as those
standards which the same patriotic warrior encourages
his troops to hoist upon every hustings at the next elec-
tion—or, instead .of a " hoarse raven," might not a
squeaking guinea-pig be taught with less trouble to
practise any lessons of articulation likely to be inculcated
by such a master ? But, to be serious, if possible, what
does all this mean ? If not downright rebellion, it means
nothing. How durst these theoretical insurgents taint
our ears with their twenty thousands and their seven
millions ? Is it reasoners, is it statesmen, they
thus multiply by myriads ? No ; they would hint
a threat—they would insinuate that the millions have
hands, not heads—that they deal not in arguments,
but in arms. Will they dare then, to realize such mea-
sures ? Will they fight great Britain or not ? If not,
what base and wretched bullies are they to talk as if
they intended it Why,- three months before a shot
in the open field was fired, the whole tribe of them
would take mortal fright and scatter themselves like
chaff to the four winds of heaven. It does not pro-
voke our anger—it moves us to deep melancholy, to
hear absurdities so little in character with the station
and class of minds which they proceed from. Then
" agitation" is to follow upon this ; and we are to be
told that in such forced and factitious agitation con-
sists the free expression of Irish sentiment upon the
Municipal Bill, and on the fitness of the House of
Lords to remain a legislative body. The mob of Ire-
land, we are ready to admit, may through the activity
of priests and political hirelings be any day thrown
into convulsions; but to effect much harm, fortu-
nately, the people of England must join them, and
we flatter ourselves we have too much sense for that.

Either there is no bound to impudence, or John
Bull continues to the present hour the most easily
gulled of any animal that ever browsed a thistle. In
what other than one of these lights can we look upon
an advertisement,- seriously announcing a public meet-
ing, to be held on Wednesday next, "to raise a fund
to defray the political expenses to which Mr.•O'Con-
nell has been subjected, and to mark the respect and
gratitude of the people of this country for his ser-
vices." There- are, as we stated a few days since, a
certain number of Lords and Gentlemen in this coun-
try, who owe considerable gratitude to Mr. O'Connell,
inasmuch as it has been through his means alone that
they have been for some time past able to lodge certain
quarterly receipts at the Treasury ; but what English-
man there is upon earth who beyond these owes suit
or service, gratitude or respect to Mr. O'Connell,
we have not the smallest or most distant notion.
Yet the inhabitants of London and Westminster are
called together—to do what P—to repay Mr. O'Connell
for having, by the dint of money and assurance, usurped
for nearly two Sessions the two seats for the city of
Dublin, to the exclusion of the rightful occupants, who
have been put to an enormous charge in defending
themselves against this usurpation. If the people of
London and Westminster had any thing to do with this
matter—which they really have not—surely their sym-
thies would be excited in favour of the injured, not of
the injurers. It is Messrs. West and Hamilton who
are entitled to their money, not Mr. O'Connell, who
the result has proved to have been from first to last in
this transaction the wrong doer. After all, this is
nothing more nor less than an attempt to revive, in
another form, and under different auspices, a project
which has already been tried and failed. Most of our
readers have not to learn that, about a month or six
weeks ago, an endeavour was made to establish one
or more branches of the Irish rent in London, and some
other of the large towns of England, and the begging-
box was placarded as to be found at the bar of some
half-dozen gin shops in St. Giles's and elsewhere. The
thing', however, did not take. Blarney, like the brogue,
is indigenous ; and the London Patlanders, though
they are ready to toss up their caps for Dan, have no
idea of paying hitn tribute both at home and abroad.
Besides, the Catholic Priests in England know better
than to prostitute their duties to the purposes of agita-
tion ; nor could " a death's-head and cross-bones" be
used to terrify or delude. Be this as it may, for all
or some of these reasons, the a:ternpt was a miserable
failure—the whole amount of " rent" received not being
more than sufficient to pay for the gathering. Hence
the present speculation, which we confidently antici-
pate will be a failure likewise. The people of Eng 7
land owe Mr. O'Connell nothing. The attempt to
raise a subscription among them is a fallacy and a cheat.
Happily, as Liston says to the coachman, " it is alto-
gether I:optional ;" and therefore, though it may draw
a guinea or t.vo from a few wrong-headed, silly people,
the result will, we have no doubt, show " a beggarly
account of empty boxes."—Mornina Herald.
We understand that Lord Melbourne has been
much indisposed at his country seat during thc bob-
days, and scarcely in a condition to attend the circum-
stances of that political " crisis" which the public or-
gans of the Ministry and Mr. O'Connell assure us is
at band. On his Lordship's account we cannot but
regret this circumstance, though we can scarcely pre-
tend to so much charity as to' be very sad for the ad-
ditional embarrassment which it is said to have given
to a Cabinet already entangled by its own intrigues
beyond all hope of comfortable extrication. We be-
lieve, that his Majesty's Ministers are heartily tired of
the " crisis," and begin to fear that
.it may turn out a