The Sun.
London, England, 1836-03-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Committee on the Carlow Election have una-
nimously acquitted Mr. O'Connell. For this our
readers were of course prepared by the evidence which
has been published.
" I beg leave," said Mr. Ridley Colborne, the Chairman,
on moving that the report and the evidence be printed—
" I beg leave to make one short observation—namely, that
this is the unanimous opinion of the Committee—and let
me add, Sir, that this unanimity is not attended with any
sacrifice of principle, or any compromise of opinion, but
that it is the result of a full and fair deliberation upon the
subject. lam very desirous to state the fact of this una-
nimity existing ; because I think it cannot fail to have its
weight with this House and the country, and also because
I believe it may tend to prove that eleven gentlemen may
meet trgether on a subject somewhat difficult and delicate,
and yet, their deliberations being of a judicial nature, have
no difficulty in laying aside all their party feelings."
But the acquittal of Mr. O'Connell is the con-
demnation of that poor, shuffling, equivocating creature
Raphael, and the parties to whom he lent himself.
No honourable man, however opposed he may be to
Mr. O'Connell in politics, can peruse the evidence, in

which one fraudulent suppression after another is
brought to light, without feeling the keenest indigna-
tion at the base arts resorted to with a view to injure
him. As to Mr. Raphael, his evidence will stamp
his character for life. How a man, not without cun-
uincr, though weak and undecided, could suffer him-
selfmto believe that the real facts of the case would not
transpire, and that the calumny would not recoil on
himself, is to us surprising. Admitting that he was
the dupe of abler individuals than himself, who may
have buoyfd him up with the, prospect of success,
still he knew the facts of the case, and be acted
therefore against his own conviction. Whether
he be capable of feeling the disgrace he has
brought upon himself we know not. The back is
often fitted to the burden, and the ex-Sheriff may
be able to bear what would sink another to the
earth. 'We will answer for it, it will no longer
be necessary to give to any one the caution which
was given to Mr. O'Connell, and which he neglected.
His character is permanently established ; so that, with-
out he change his name, he will be in the precise situa-
tion which was felt as so great an inconvenience by
Colonel Charteris. Many of our readers may wonder
that the Committee, having beeno
f unanimouand recoms in acquit-
ting Mr. O'Connell, did not garther, -
mend proceedings against his miserable accuser, for
whom, from his false evidence, they must have felt the
utmost contempt and indignation. But the trial of
Mr. Raphael formed no part of the instruction to the
Committee. They were unanimous in acquitting Mr.
O'COnnell, and this is as much as could reasonably
have been expected from a mixed tribunal of Liberals
and Tories. However, the scorn of the public will be
an effectual substitute for any sentence which the Com-
mittee could have pronounced against the ex-Sheriff.
Mr. Raphael's fate ought. to be a warning to men
not to lend themselves to conspiracies, for further-
ing party objects—the burden of the failure of
which must be borne so unequally. The Tories
may be disappointed at the result ; but it has
prostrated the wretched Raphael. He is their
scape-goat. The accusation was trumped up last
autumn, when incendiaries were sent on a mission
through the country to revive religious animosi-
ties, and to inflame one half of the population with
hatred against the other. The "No Popery" cry re-
sounded throughout the land ; and as Mr. O'Connell
had supported Ministers, the Tories thought, if they
could combine with hatred towards the Catholics the
odium of a charge against O'Connell of selling his in-
fluence in the county of Carlow for a round sum of

money, the Administration might lose ground in con-
sequence. Two or three elections which the Tories
gained revived in them the hope of getting possession
of the Government, before it could be strengthened by
the Municipal elections. In an evil hour for himself,
Mr. Raphael suffered himself to become the tool of the
Tory agitators. Ills case was a god-send. A run
was instantly made against the personal character of
Mr. O'Connell. The base 'Times, always eager for
victims, and ready with its " brickbats and blud-
geons " for the " brutes and bigots " of the Peers,
or the bloody Papists, gladly lent itself to the
conspiracy for the destruction of Mr. O'Connell's
character. Raphael was quite a God-send. Seventy-
eight articles full of vulgar malice and foul misrepre-
sentations of the contract between Mr. Vigors and
Mr. Raphael and Mr. O'Connell, who was merely
called in as a stakeholder, as being a gentleman in
whom both had confidence, appeared in the columns
of that paper. The Press was never tarnished by any-
thing so disgraceful as this unprincipled attempt to
excite odium against an individual. Mr. Raphael has
irretrievably lost himself ; but despised as he now is
by the Tories, whose turn he has not served (if he
had, he would still have been despised, for men profit
by the treason and hate the traitor), and loathed by
all honest men, he ought to atone to the public for the
insult offered to it, by contributing to the unmasking
of the conspirators. We know the parties to the
conspiracy. We know the Tories with whom he
recently associated, and who concocted with him
this precious plot. They may rest assured that
light will be let in on them. They have had it
all their own way for six months ; but the tables
are turned now. Painful and humiliating as the ex-
posure must be, they must prepare for it. They must
suffer the consequences of lending themselves to a wil-
ful misrepresentation of the arrangement between Mr.
Vigors and Mr. Raphael, in order to destroy Mr.
(Mound. No calumny is more odious than that

which is founded on circutnstances partly true, for the
proof of what is ti ue leads to the inference that what
may not he proved, but which nevertheless is not dis-
proved, may also be true. Now what arc the facts in
this case ? The accusation was that Mr. O'Connell
trepanned Raphael into the Carlow contest—that he
had a sinister interest in the pecuniary arrangements—
that he entered into engagements which he did not per-
form—and that the bargain was a breach of the statute
law, and a violation of the Sessional Orders of the
House, *securing freedom and purity, of election.
The Report and evidence distinctly prove, that
fOr twelve months previously Raphael had been
playing " fast and loose with the Carlow
Liberal Club that he selected Mr. O'Connell
as his friend to hold the money for which he
had agreed with Mr. Vigors—that Mr. O'Connell
faithfully applied the money received by him—that not
a farthitmg was ilk gally or uncons:itutionally expended,
and that Raphael, Out Mr. O'Connell, disgraced him-
self in the business. Our readers will not fail to re-
collect that, as we have already stated, the Times first
gave currency to the slander, and we shall hereafter
unmask the base conspiracy which has been got up
by three individuals, the scene of whose operations
with Mr. Raphael was the house of a Tory Peeress.
They will find to their cost that O'Connell is not to
be crushed by vulgar scribblers, or a patty clique ;
and we are much mistaken if the blows aimed at him
be not paid back with interest. In the meanwhile
we repeat the advice of Mr. Ridley Colborne, " if
the country will read the evidence, they cannot fail to
arrive at the same conclusion as the Committee."
With this advice we leave Mr. Raphael and his assis•
tants to reflections which few will envy.—Morning
Chronicle.

The Committee on the O'Connell-Raphael affair
presented its Report yesterday to the House of Com-
mons—a Report in anticipation of which the friends of
Mr. O'Connell have been exulting for several days.
This report was listened to by the House in solemn
silence. Even the tail had not the courage to attempt
to get up a cheer Upon the occasion. The report
certainly affords no occasion of triumph to the O'Con-
nellites, nor, we may add, to anybody else. It is, in
truth, a very barren production, concocted, probably,
with the view of affording a triumph to neither party,
and thus far eminently successful. The minutes of
evidence which the Committee has laid upon the table
of the House are of infinite value, but the observations
of the Committee upon that evidence arc plainly of no
value whatever, inasmuch as the observers have thrown
much the larger and more important part_of the evi-
dence clean overboard. So incomplete and inconclu-
'l6 ' a document as this Report, we venture, confidently,
~,.> (
,was never before presented to either House
~,
, , "JA
'1,6. it ent. Let us, forgetting for the present, tl-,e
,kC*--•,/Aiftt4eit `omission of all allusion to the most innyor-
-4,-;7.2„,7:te If the case, examine a little the cohrjr'
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