The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-16 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 1849.

Nothing can justify a precipitate condemnation of
the course pursued by the Government towards the
Canadas—previous to the examination of those official
dispatches which will be laid on Friday evening before
both Houses of the Imperial Parliament. Whatever
may be the nature of the provisions made in that Bill
of Indemnity which has originated the insurrection at
Montreal, the perfectly constitutional manner in
which that measure has been carried through the
Canadian Legislature leaves us, however, no room to
doubt that the recent outbreak is the infamous result
of a conspiracy on the part of a lawless and unprin-
cipled minority. We may each of us entertain a
different opinion as to the advisability or non-
advisability of indemnifying indiscriminately all those
who may have happened to suffer pecuniary losses
during the last deplorable rebellion. One may,
another may not, conceive that some defi-
nite distinction ought to have been made
between those individuals who were injured
in their property through their sympathy for
the Government and those who sustained losses from
their complicity with the insurgents. Such is strictly
a question of morality, of expediency, or of con-
venience, upon the merits of which the views of the
multitude might remain divided until the day of
judgment. But upon this point there neither does,
nor can there exist, any hesitation whatever—
namely, that die Indemnity Bill (good or bad,
expedient or inexpedient, convenient er incon-
venient as it may be to individuals) has been
passed into a law calmly, honestly, dispassionately,
legally, constitutionally. No one can assert to the
contrary. The fact is already notorious in both
hemispheres. The Bill itself is exclusively a Cana-
dian
measure. The mother country has not inter-
fered in the matter to the extent of one tittle. The
home Government has dictated no policy, it has not
even gone to the length of hinting a suggestion. The
Indemnity Bill is, we repeat, an exclusively Cana-
dian measure., It has emanated from Canadian iatel-

ligence ; it has been sanctioned in principle and ac-
cepted in form by Canadian statesmen ; it has re-
ceived the countenance of two successive Administra-
tions—a Conservative Administration and a Liberal
Administration. It has been passed with large ma-
jorities through the Upper and Lower Chamber of
the Imperial Parliament. Those majorities were not
only majorities of the whole Houses, but majorities
of members of the British blood. Those majorities
were not the packed majorities of a Cabinet, they were
the free and honourable majorities of Canadian re-
presentatives. Such was this Bill of Indemnity which
on its receiving the Royal assent through the lips of
his Excellency the Governor General was made the
pretext for en insurrectionary movement more
dastardly and infamous than any recorded in the
annals of our colonial possessions.
Finding that their prejudices went for nothing
against the force of public opinion, finding that they
had been outnumbered by the members of their own
Legislature—the rebel conspirators rose at a
preconcerted signal. Mind—these rebels are the Tory
gang! They are that Orange faction whose virulence
and insolence is unfortunately not restricted to Ca-
nada. True to their audacious principles, they rose.
Availing themselves of their accidental local superio-
rity in point of numbers, they domineered over their
loyal fellow-citizens. Montreal became a prey to their
wanton brutality, and seine of its noblest adornments
have irreparably fallen under their licentiousness.
The Parliament House was burnt by incendiaries ;
the public records and state papers were consumed
in the conflagration. When a shout was raised that
the French representatives were so situated as to be
rendered incapable of escaping from the burn-
ing edifice, there was a yell of diabolical
exultation. Before the match was set to
the woodwork one ruffian, placing himself
in the Speaker's chair, declared (after the fashion of
M. HUBER) that the Chamber was dissolved—
another attempting a miserable travestie of the me-
morable act of OLIVER, marched out of the hall with
the mace over his shoulder. His Excellency Lord
ELGIN was availed by the rabble of insurgent Con-
servatives (what a monstrous burlesque on the title !)
—being struck on the head with a pebble and on the
face with a rotten egg. The houses of several of the
Ministers were wantonly pillaged and destroyed.
The whole city was given up to the horrors of a
rebellion that at one time threatened a very
serious effusion of blood. Such are some of
the most conspicuous among the excesses of
the Tory conspirators against the Government. And
as to the certainty of the whole outbreak being the
result of a conspiracy, there is no lack of the most
conclusive testimony. When the mob first congre•
gated on the Champs de Mars there was a general
cry " To the Parliament House !" When those who
were already assembled in the neighbourhood of the
Parliament House heard the approach of the insur-
gents from the Champ de Mars there was a cry
" They come." So soon as the rioting was tolerably
well afoot, clubs assembled for the purpose of erasing
the name of Lord ELGIN from their catalogues ;
meetings were convened for the purpose of manufac-
turing petitions to the SOVEREIGN demanding the
recal of the Governor-General as one incompetent to
conduct the administration of affairs in the colony.
Meanwhile, above the level of the rabble, one or two in-
dividuals were brought out in a rather conspicuous po-
sition, being thus identified in the glare of day with the
excesses and atrocities of the insurrection. Colone
GUGY was carried in triumph on the shoulders of the
rioters. One PERRY stood out so conspicuously
among the incendiaries as to have been subsequently
incarcerated under a charge of arson. The Hon. G.
MOFFATT, in like manner, occupied so very visible a
place in the van of the movement as to have been
afterwards arrested on a still more serious charge—
that of high treason. As a sort of climax to the im-
pudent daring displayed throughout the whole trans-
action—the mace, stolen as we have already shown,
from the Parliament House by one of the ruffians of
the insurrection, was ultimately found in the posses
sion of Sir ALLS 111.4. Nan

One course, and one course alone, remains open to
the Government. The nature of that course is per-
fectly obvious. The robbers, and pillagers, and in-
cendiaries, who have recently desolated the streets of
Montreal, must be put down with the strong hand of
y that law whose majesty they have violated. They
must be compelled to make a bitter expiation. Their
most prominent leaders must be subjected to sum-
maryl
1 and condign punishment. And as to the recal
of Lord ELGIN, justice requires that the policy of his
administration should first of all be proved to have
been harsh, peremptory, or in any respect unconsti-
tutional. Hitherto the fault of his government
(if such, indeed, can be called a fault) has
been its excessive leniency. That leniency has, with
the Orange minority of conspirators, produced its
I own evil fruits. This must henceforth be followed
l by a rigorous suppression of those rebellious passions
1 which are only fostered into maturity by the gene-
rosity of a genial Administration. This we maintain
to be the only rational course open to the Govern.
ment, as a beginning. First of all—the infliction of
a tremendous penalty on the insurgents. Then—the
resumption of a regenerative policy for the Canadas.
Before that policy, however, is again taken up, the
Cabinet must act upon the following principle—
In the presence of Rioters, Not One Shadow of a
Concession.

The patronage of an Irish Bishopric is now vested
in the Government, in consequence of the death of
the Honourable and Right Reverend Dr. KNOX, late
Lord Bishop of Limerick. A few words, therefore,
in reference to the appointment of a successor to
that diocese may not be deemed unseasonable. The
late Prelate, for no less than fifteen years, drew from
a poor and famine-stricken district an income of
4;973/. per annum, for the supposed discharge of his
episcopal duties, which, as a Christian minister, and
a shepherd of the fold of CHRIST, he was bound to
have discharged with a willing faithfulness, duties
which in any country, at any time, and under any
circumstances, should have been strictly and re.
lig iously fulfilled, but which, in a country where the
Ch urcb, of which the deceased Prelate was an
up; ointed Bishop, was placed in so peculiar a position
wit h regard to the great majority of its inhabitants,
and at a period when death in its most appalling
for] ns of pestilence and famine was decimating the
pea ple, and threatening to turn that beautiful but
unhappy land into a wilderness, became of para-
mount importance, and should not have been con-
fids d to any hands but those of a person both able
and willing to discharge them for the benefit of the
pe eple, the advancement of religion, and the glory of
GOD. We shall not now enter into the inquiry
whether he fulfils the part of the good shepherd who
Iflies to bask in luxurious sloth in the " sunny climes"
of Italy, while his flock remains a prey to the wolves
on the banks of the Shannon. We should not wil-
lingly speak of the departed in harsh or unkind lan-
gu age—Dr. KNOX has gone to render an account of
his stewardship to the infinite justice and infinite
mercy of the KING of Kings. But we would,
strongly impress on those entrusted with the dis-
pensation of patronage the vital importance of exer-
cising a sound discretion in the appointment of a
successor to the vacant mitre, for by the present
selection the permanency of the Church Establishment
in Ireland may be materially affected.
The see of Limerick is situated in a district inha-
bite d by an impoverished population professing tenets
strangly opposed to the Protestant Church, and natu-
rally desirous to discover any arguments that may be
us ed against the continuance of a system which they
are prone to regard as unjust and oppressive—a system
which coerces a starving population, immersed in the
lo west depths of misery and destitution, to contribute
art enormous revenue to the ministers of a different
rabgion, a considerable portion whereof may be
squandered in a foreign land by some mitred digni-
tary, while the hard- working curate or the conscientious
rec for is endeavouring faithfully to discharge the
important duties of his station and his office, amid
the most horrible scenes of disease and death, and
devoting the greater part of his paltry stipend, in-
sutEcient for the Wants of his own family, to mitigate 1
the distress of his suffering fellow-creatures.
Let it not be supposed that the Roman Catholic
population of Ireland are indifferent to the distribu-
tion
of revenues to which they so largely, though
perhaps reluctantly, contribute. English writers,
clues observers of the national character, have said
that. " the Irish are a justice-loving people ;" and 1
this principle N‘ould alone be sufficient to banish i

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