The Sun.
London, England, 1836-03-04 00:00:00

the greatest of blessings. Mr. Wallace is entitled to
the best thanks of the Dissenters throughout the king-
dom for bringing the subject before the Legislature.
We cannot think that any Churchman will object to
the relief sought for by his dissenting brethren. The
question is quite distinct from that of whether or not
there should be a religious establishment at the public
expense.—Morning Chronicle.
Four clergymen of Bishop Mant's diocese have
published a contradiction of an opinion expressed by
Mr. Gore Jones, a stipendiary magistrate, that all the
Protestant Clergymen of the north of Ireland were
Members of Orange Clubs or Associations. We know
that very many of them did disgrace themselves and
their calling by joining that confederacy ; but the asser-
t tion that all had done so appeared to us quite too
sweeping, and by no means credible. It gives us
much pleasure, therefore, to find, on so good an autho-
rity, that Mr. Jones was mistaken. The imputation
of Orangeism cast upon the whole army has provoked
the following gracious burst of indignation, which,
notwithstanding its bitterness, shows the existence of a
sound feeling with regard to such a charge, which we
think a good sign :
" We take this public method of contradicting this solemn
statement made by Mr. Jones, in his evidence before the Com-
mittee—not because we attach any importance to the accusa-
tion, but because we conceive that a misrepresentation of so
determined a character could not have proceeded from igno-
rance, and that he was not prompted to make it from any good
or Christian motive towards the Established Church.
JAMES R. PHILLOTT, Chancellor of Connor.
" ROET. GAGE, Rector of Rathlin.
" STEVENSON HUNTER, Rector of Rathguile.
Wm. S. BLACKWOOD, Rector of Armoy."

It appears from this, that all the Protestant clergy
in the north of Ireland were not Orangemen ; and,
from 'the high tone of this contradiction, it may be
presumed that even a considerable number of them
might plead exemption from the charge of being so.
We can further state, with great confidence, that the
majority of the Protestant clergy in the other parts of
Ireland never did enrol themselves in Orange clubs or
societies. We mention the fact to their honour ; al-
though their not having done so brings them under the
no less sweeping, and certainly not more gentle, de-
signation
of " scoundrels," which one of their pro-
fessed champions, in his zeal, has bestowed upon
every Irish Protestant who is not an Orangeman.
" With a few scoundrel exceptions," says this meek
apostle, " all the professing Protestants in Ireland
are thorougly Orange in principle." We shall leave
the clergymen of Connor to settle this point with
their friend. It was only the other day that the
same curious defender of the Church branded the High
Churchmen amongst the clergy—that is, two-thirds of
the whole corporation, as composed of equal parts of
Protestant, Papist, and Socinian. But Durham was
not then vacant, nor had Dr. Hampden been dubbed
" Kettle " by those High Church " Pots "—the heads
of houses in Oxford. Doubtless, if these events had
occurred in time, High Church would have been let
alone for a season, or at least until Bishop Philpotts
should have had an opportunity of throwing his cap
at the County Palatine. But let the Church adjust
these matters with its own preux chevalier. As to
the, lall " scoundrels," who have not been Orange-
men, when Orangeism was a name of mark, they
must only endure the indignity as well as they may.
We deny, however, that they are " few." And when
we name the Fitzgeralds, Caulfields, Ponsonbvs,
Achesons, Brabazons, Clementses, Brownes, &c., &c.,
among the Nobility ;—the Brownlows, Musgravcs,
Somervilles, Chapmans, Napers, Putlands, Palmers,
Fr2nches, Evanses, < rnin,-, the Gcntry•—Plunkett Per-
_ _

rin, Moore, Crampton, Holmes, Richards, Mercdyth,
Wallac, Curran, Lyle, Brady, Hudson, on the Bench,
and at the Bar: the Latouches, M'Kennys, Orrs, Guin-
nev,ses, Bewleys, Fluttons, and Croathwaites, in the
mercantile community—we defy any one to name more
steady, conscientious Protestants, more influential and
valuable members of society, or men who more
sincerely abhor and abjure from their hearts and souls
the principles and objects of Oraiveism: We could
enumerate hundreds besides, equally pure from the
taint of sectarian hatred or exclusion, and scarcely in-
ferior in respectability to those we have named ;
these arc sufficient to set the charge of scoundralism,
advanced by the Standard against all Irish Protes-
tants who are not Orangemen in principle, in its just
light before the public. Perhaps as the name of
Orangeman is dead now, and has been duly buried with
funeral honours, we have bestowed too much notice on
this characteristic howl over its gravc.—Morning-
Chroliele.
This fraud of the Ministers and their adherents
must be put au end to—we mean this false and
dis-
graceful attempt to make the Conservatives answer-
able for the crime, if it be a crime, of which their an-
tagonists are really guilty—that of destroying the
Irish Corporations. The existing corporations ae
" destroyed" by the Whig Municipal Bill, because
they have been exclusively Protestant. And the on'v
question that follows, as AV C have explained repeatedly,
is this—whether the local administration, so abolished,
shall be replaced in the manner recommended by the
Irish Attorney-General—namely, by a municipality of
Popish priests, and the more illiterate and servile part
of their congregations ; or in that proposed by Sir R.
Peel, according to which the local magistrates shall he
nominated by the Crown, instead of by the priesthood
—whether the town police, both in its selection of
functionaries, and its rules of action, shall be regulated
by the Lord-Lieutenant, or by the 51. creatures of the,
aforesaid priests ; and whether the custody and ap-
plication of local funds shall be vested in responsible
commissioner., of the Crown, or in Popish personages,
falsely called spiritual, who may appropriate such
funds, after the M'Hale fashion, to the building or
repair of Rotnish places of worship. When we are
told that the majority of the inhabitants, being Roman
Catholics, have a right to the power of governing the
whole, and are aggrieved by the refusal of such a power,
we answer that the argument assumes the inherent
dominion of an unqualified democracy, without regard
to any other title than that of gross numbers. Such
may be a very fine political theory, but is not that of
the British Constitution. Property is the test of right
to the exercise of power best known to the constitu-
tion of this country, and most rigidly exacted by it.
All else is republicanism of the broadest and coarsest
character. The assertion of mere numerical majority
as a test of right excludes that of property altogether ;
whereas the \linisters themselves, in their concoction
of this bill, have recognized a property qualification as
their principle, and have thereby raised against them-
selves the question—whether their qualification be of
the proper standard ? We think it is not. Our de-
cided conviction is, that a 51. household qualification in
Ireland is by far too low, because we find that the 101.
leaseholders in counties lie prostrate under the hoof of
the rough-riding priesthood, and vote implicitly as their
excommunicating autocrats direct. It becomes there-
fore a question, and a grave one every man with two
ideas in his head must acknowledge, whether the
numerical majority of inhabitants of Irish towns, con-
fined to a single sect, moved by an undivided priestly
power, embracing, indeed constituted in great part by,
the ignorance, the superstition, the pauperism, the
disaffection of the place, shall be suffered to exercise
unchecked dominion over its intelligence, property, and
love of legal order ? We trust that the Legislature
will agree with us in resisting to the last the creation
of such an authority, to be vested in hands which can
employ it no otherwise than for purposes subversive
of enlightened liberty, of Protestant security, "and of
British power. Upon this view of the Irish corporate
measure, of the amendment upon it, first suggested by
Sir R. Peel, and, as appears from the notices of Wed-
nesday night, to be moved by Lord F. Egerton next
llonday—upon this we take our stand. A " tyrannical
majority" in the House of Commons—a factious, con-
federate, self-discordant majority, may outvote that great
and more far-sighted body, with which we have the honour
to concur ; but there are resources in the constitution
of this monarchy for redeeming what may thus be lost,
and for vindicating what, through an impulse of mo-
mentary rashness, or a scheme of calculating selfishness,
may be, however, deeply injured. The system of
normal schools for advancing the system of mita-
tion," and for promoting the knavish ends of its pro-
fessors, will not yet, we trust, be extended to Ireland—
at least, until the guilty parent of that system shall
have been laid low—and the nature, principles, means,
and objects, which now belong to it, shall have im-
bibed some less pernicious character. It is not very