The Sun.
London, England, 1836-02-18 00:00:00

orphans have been excluded in this wicked and un-
christian proscription and persecution; that by the fear of
similar persecutions numbers of the electors have been
coerced to give their votes for the Tory candidates, who
would have otherwise notoriously supported the Reform can-
didates; that persecution by the cost and terror of distraints
for rent and other legal processes has been extensively re-
sorted to for political and party purposes; and that appalling
misery, dissensions, heartburnings, and all sorts of crime, have
been, and still are, the unhappy consequences of these illegal,
unconstitutional, and cricked proceedings."

This is a much stronger case for inquiry than the
affair between O'CoNNEI.L, and lt ruAEr. ; and
yet the organs of the Tories are up in arms against
the Committee's proposing a question which may im-
plicate the character of a Protestant landlord. "It is
felt," says the Post, with a triumphant sneer, " that
the artifice of mixing up the conduct of some of the
Protestant landlords of the county of Carlow with this
investigation will not do." Will our Contemporary
inform us by whom novel feeling is en-
tertained ? Not by the Honourable Member for
Greenock surely, though mentioned in connection
with it ; for the whole purport of his motion is
to mix up one affair with the other by extending
the inquiry. The Times, too, with that unprincipled
effrontery for which it is so notorious, treats " the
asserted wrongs of widows and orphans," through the
oppression of Tory landlords, as part of the " rampart
of multifarious rubbish" with which Mr. O'CONNELL
sought to encircle himself. The details of the suffer-
ingg of orphans and widows at the hands of Tory
landlords are, no doubt, rubbish in the opinion of the
unprincipled scribes of Printing-house Square ; bui
the people of England are not so dead to the humaner
feelings—their consciences arc not so seared against
correct impressions of right and wrong—as not to
spurn with disgust and indignation every attempt to
screen such enormities from Parliamentary scrutiny.
But the Tories shall not escape the ordeal which they
prepared for Mr. O'CONNELL. The fate of HAMAN
awaits them, however involuntary may be the suicidal
act. The following is Mr. WALLACE'S motion,
which he will this day bring before the House of
Commons : _

" That his Majesty be graciously pleased immediately to
issue a Royal Commission to proceed to the county of Carlow,
there to inquire--lst. Into the whole facts and circumstances
set forth in the petition presented to this House on the 15th
current, by Nicholas Aylward Vigors, Esquire, and especially
into those parts of the said petition which relate to the perse-
cution and ejectment of the Parliamentary electors of the said
county therein referred to, by removing them from their homes
and possessions, to the ruin of themselves and their families.
2d. Whether, in the existing state of political excitement in
the county of Carlow, the persons, properties, and suffrages of
the Parliamentary electors should not be protected in future
by voting by Ballot. 3d. Whether corruption, coercion, and
intimidation, through the actual ejection of electors, or threats
to that effect, ought not in future to form legitimate grounds
of inquiry before Election Committees. 4th. Whether any
and what measures would best secure the purity of election
and independence of the electors of the county of Carlow, and
to report their opinion, with the evidence, to this House, touch-
ing all the matters herein referred to."
The House cannot, in justice to the electoral body
in Ireland, refuse its concurrence to this motion ; and
as it will be impossible for the Committee to act with-
out a Report of the disclosures which shall be made
before the Commission, the whole will form the sub-
ject of one and the same inquiry—namely, how far the
intimidation practised against the Irish Catholic te-
nantry, by Tory landlords, is detrimental to the purity
of Parliamentary election. In the history of such
transaction, the affair between Messrs. O'CONNELL
and RAPHAEL can form no more than a brief

episode.
Now is the time for every Member of the House of
Commons, who really deplores the tyranny of which
the Irish Catholics have for centuries been the victims,
to exert himself in their behalf, by pushing forward
the inquiry. The details of the corrupt influence
practised against one constituency, will form an index
to the history of all the rest. Those who are ready to
discard the rights of the people—to treat the sufferings
widows-1 s_‘....r.o.hhish2:
tary privilege—are beneath the contempt of honest men.

To hear the Tinzes talk about inconsistency, would
extort a laugh from a stoic. For a journal which in-
stantaneously renounced, not one or two points of its
creed, but the. entire system of its political faith, to
lecture others on what it presumes to be deviations
from consistency, shews to what a pitch the power of
impudence may be screwed up.
The great organ of the Tories must be hard driven
indeed for a subject of attack on Ministers, when it is
obliged to look for one in the superiority of their pre-
sent measure for the relief of the Dissenters over that
which Lord GREY'S Government proposed. If we
are to adopt the logic employed in this charge, we
must condemn every Statesman who has advanced a
single step beyond any Administration of which he
ever formed a part. And where, may we ask, shall
we find this lag-behind policy so violently—so furi-
ously denounced, as in the columns of that journal
which hallooed on the reformers upon Lord GREY, until
the " pressure from without" scared him from
the helm ? The very policy which it urged upon
Ministers at that time, even menacing them in its
usual bullying tone, if they rejected its recommenda-
tion—that same policy when adopted now, does it lay
hold on with characteristic duplicity, for the purpose of
insinuating against them a charge of inconsistency

The Bill which Lord JOIIN RUSSELL has intro-
duced into Parliament for the relief of the Dissenters
is undoubtedly more liberal than any hitherto proposed.
But why is it so Not because the Noble Lord did
not think when he brought forward his former mea-
sure, that the Dissenters were entitled to be put on a
footing of perfect equality, as to civil privileges, with
the Members of the Church. He declared to the De-
putation, appointed by the London Dissenters to confer
with him on the subject, that it was the earnest wish of
the Government to give the Dissenters the most complete
redreas of all their grievances ; but that a Marriage Bill,
founded upon that principle, had not the least chance of
passing the House of Lords. We see, therefore, that
the principles on which Lord Jo urr RUSSELL and
his colleagues are now acting have undergone no
change. They are now what they have ever been—
the sincere friends of the Dissenters ; and we are
happy to find that the Dissenters are as sincerely at-
tached to them. From a perfect reliance on the good
intentions of the MELBOURNE Administration towards
them, the Dissenters, though, as all the world knows,
anxious enough to get rid of their grievances, have
forborne to embarrass the Government by pressing
their claims at a time when that Government had so
much to struggle with in the factious opposition of its
natural enemies, the Tories. That time is now,
thank GOD, passed away, and the Dissenters
will reap the benefit of their confidence, and
their patience. The Municipal Reform has not only
given them a great
.addition of power as a body, but
it has given a tone to public opinion which has
strengthened the Government, and which, we doubt
not, will enable it to carry through the present Mar-
riage Bill, and other measures of an equally bold and
liberal character, in spite of all the opposition which
can be raised against them.

The Tzegfdi the Portfolio contains the
copy of a very secret despatch from (i.,:oo;:: Pozzo DI
BORGO to Prince NESSELRODE, dated Dec. 14, 1828,
which, were Parliament not sitting, we should gladly
lay before our readers. It appears from this do-
cument, as well as from those already published,
that Prince METTERNICH was the only states-
man in Europe who, at that time, fully eotnprehended