The Sun.
London, England, 1836-11-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OTl'il E PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The vacant seat in the Irish Court of Exchequer
is at length filled. Mr. Ologhlen ha; accepted the
situation, and is now puisne Baron. The Right Hon.
Gentleman did not, however, take his seat on the first
day of term, in consequence of the non-arrival, in suffi-
cient time, of the King's letters patent. The eleva-
tion of Mr. O'Loghlen to the judicial bench is an in-
teresting event. He has been the first Catholic ser-
geant, the first Catholic Solicitor and Attorney-Gene-
ral, and is now the first Catholic judge in these realms
since the Revolution. The last Catholic judge who

sat in a superior Court of justice in Ireland was Mr.
Nagle, a progenitor of the estimable Baronet of that
name who now represents the county of Westmeath in
Parliament; and the lovers of " curious coincidences
will be pleased to know that he was Chief Baron of
the same court to the bench of which a Catholic is now
raised for the first time after a lapse of a century and a
half. In another respect Mr. O'Loghlen has been
peculiarly fortunate. Always a firm supporter
of liberal opinions, he has invariably enjoyed the
confidence and esteem of his own party, and the
respect of those to whom, as a politician, he has
been opposed. Owing his honourable success at
the bar to his own talents, industry, and probity, he is
now a judge with the full and cordial consent of every
man of every party and profession. It is on all hands
acknowledged that were the vacancy a chief instead of
a puisne judgeship, it could not be more properly be-
stowed than upon the late Attorney-General, whose
professional capacity has been proved by his profes-
sional eminence ; and whose personal fitness may be
collected from the fact—an unprecedented thing in
Ireland—that all parties approve of the selection.
There is another peculiarity about Mr. O'Loghlen's
career that does him great credit, and ought to be no-
ticed. He was Attorney-General during a period of
great excitement, and in the daily habit of reading in
the Tory journals attacks the most ferocious and
libellous against the Government. Impressed with
the conviction that a Government that needs
the shelter of ex-officios is based upon a sandy
foundation, and that a virtuous Government must
always gain by the free exercise of the liberty
of the Press, Mr. O'Loghlen never instituted a
criminal proceeding against a newspaper. How
different a position he holds in this respect
from all his predecessors—Saurin, Plunket, and
Blackburne especially—in the office of Attorney-
General ! By wholesale did these prosecute the
Press, and they amassed wealth, and damaged the se-
veral Administrations whom they were paid to serve.
Mr. O'Loghlen instituted no such infamous prosecu-
tions, and he greatly served the Government, but not
enriched himself. But though he did not amass gold
in a vile crusade against public opinion and its organ,
the Press, he stored up a more valuable and enduring
treasure, in an upright character and the esteem and
respect of his political friends and opponents. Baron
O'Loghlen is succeeded as Attorney-General by Mr.
Richards, lately the Solicitor-General ; Sergeant
Woulfe is Solicitor-General ; and the vacant coif has
descended upon Mr. (now Sergeant Ball) ; three ap-
pointments for which the most envenomed tooth of
factious slander cannot hurt the Government. These
appointments create two vacancies in the representation
of Ireland. We have not heard if the new Attorney-
General has any intention to offer himself to the notice of
his predecessor's constituents. Should it be thought ne-
cessary by the Government that both their Irish law offi-
cers should be in Parliament, there is little or no doubt
that Mr. Richards would be returned for Dungarvon ;
while of the Solicitor-General's re-election for Cashel
there can be no question. Sergeant Ball does not va-
cate for Clonmel. So that if the Attorney-General
choose to get into Parliament, the present Government
will have both their law officers in the House of Com-
mons, besides their sergeant ; while it is a notorious
fact that neither of Sir Robert Peel's Irish law officers
could obtain a seat in the Legislature of the country ;
notwithstanding the outrageous extent of Sir Henry
Hardinge's unconstitutional efforts to influence the
elections, as attested on oath during the recent inquiry
into Alderman Smyth's conduct, to which we mean to
call particular notice very shortly. These are impor-
tant facts. Under the Peel usurpation, the circum-
stance of being the Usurper's employe was alone suf-
ficient to exclude the unpopular official from a seat in
Parliament. To be the law adviser of Earl Mul-
grave is the surest passport to popular favour, and to
the interior of the Senate House. The import with
which these facts are big, cannot be mistaken.—Morn-
ing Chronicle.
The total failure of Lord Gosford's mission to the
Canadas, long anticipated both here and at the other
side of the Atlantic, has now been confessed with as
little circumlocution as was consistent with public de-
cency on the part of the Noble Lord himself, who re-
presents, how adequately is another question, the
dignity of the British Crown. The Noble Lord has
come to ultima ratio of timid and mediocre minds,
between an Executive Government baffled and disap-
pointed, and a body which has turned its legislative
rights to no other purposes but those of desperate and
incorrigible faction. After a short and fruitless effort
at pacification, he has prorogued the Assembly of
Lower Canada, concluding the speech which form re-
quired of him on the occasion with these acknowledg-
ments of an humbled and harassed spirit :—" In
taking leave of you, I will only express the hope I
am unwilling to forego, that however the political
embarrassments of the country may appear to multiply
around us, the inherent elements of prosperity and
contentment which it contains may triumph over
all adventitious causes of difficulty Now, consider-
ing what has been the real origin of the difficulties
here alluded to—what were the obvious motives of
those who caused them—to what a perverse and
malignant point the machinations of the Canadian
malcontents have proceeded, and what must be the
inevitable consequence of yielding to their demands,
we cannot forbear frcm an expression of astonishment,
mingled with no small portion of disdain, at the whin-
ing and lacrymose language that has in every instance
been resorted to by the Whig-Radical Lord Glcnelg
and his chosen functionaries of the Gosford mission,
when the business was to carry on a discussion with the
factions of Lower Canada, upon any of those points
wherein the latter strove to encroach upon the para-
mount rights of England, or to insult and intimidate
'her councils. Sir F. Head got nothing from the se-
ditious clique of Upper Canada but impertinence, so
long as he kept minuet-dancing and bowing to " con-
ciliate them ; whereas the moment he began to dis-
play the spirit of an Englishman, and to lay about him
with those weapons which the laws of England and
the national honour had placed in his hands, the peo-
ple of the province took their tone from the King's
Governor—they treated the enemies of England as
their enemies, and returned for their representatives in
the Legislature well-affected and loyal men. While
it is still a question what may be the nature or ten-
dency of a demand made by a colony upon the mother
country, it is fair and reasonable to let the thing
develop itself clearly, and thus 'oring the weight of
public opinion to bear evese'cually upon the party in
the wrong. But in this case, from the outset, the end
in view was palpable. A particular faction, alien to
England, conspired with those at horn? who were not
her friends, for what amounted on the face of it to a
final overthrow of the supreme dominion of this country
over Canada, by a usurpation into their own bands of
the entire legislative authority. Nor was the form
which the project assumed in Canada very different
from what it ste'd bears among ourselves. Under pre-
tence that t
.lie Legislative Council of Lower Canada
did not represent the feelings of the country, by which
the cesnspirators meant their own feelings ; that the
Legislative Council set itself up in opposition to the
public voice, by which they meant their own clamour ;
and that it rejected measures which were called for by
the public welfare, whereby they meant nothing but
their own selfish interests—those rebels in' heart cried
loudly that the Legislative Council should no longer
be appointed by the Crown, but should be nominated
by popular election—that is, by a disaffected rabble
which they had themselves inflamed, corrupted,
and suborned. It is not very difficult to guess,
therefore, what would become of the executive
power, and what a state of utter slavery and de.
gradation it must soon be reduced to, with one House
of Representatives, and another of Councillors, passing
bills of which the main and sole object would be to