The Sun.
London, England, 1836-07-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The appetite with which Tory Lords, spiritual
and temporal, devour every tale, no matter how frivo-
lous, absurd, or unfounded, which may be invented
by the enemies of the peace of Ireland against the
eneastAfts of the present Government, is most amazing.
It matters not how palpably false the accusation
against the Reforming Government or its subalterns,
the Tory Peers and Prelates can stomach it all. How
many calumnious stories have not Lords Roden and
Wicklow, and the Bishop of Exeter, retailed in the
Upper House during the last two or three years, with
a view to injure the limited, but, as far as it goes,
most beneficial system of national education which a
Whig Ministry established in the sister country, upon
the ruins of that pernicious and fraudulent plan
which the Kildare-place Cantzuells turned to the
most mischievous account for so many years ! All these
fables have been believed by the Tory Lords and the
fanatics to whom they were addressed ; and yet, not
one case of established delinquency on the part of the
Government, or of the Board in Dublin, or of its
underlings in the provinces, have all or either of the
calumniators of the new system attempted to produce,
in support of all their fictions. Even last night,
when the modest " Narcissus" let his small-beer ora-
tory flow over, he did not venture to allege anything in
the form of criminatoryfict against the system of na-
tional education, or the Board of Management. There
was, as a matter of course, vapid declamation and ac-
cusation founded upon hearsay ; somebody, not named,
said to some other nameless person, that in some
parish or place not specified, some schoolmaster in
some school, of the name of which we are, left in
profound ignorance, expounded the Catholic prayers
to the children, and made them put a cross to their
names. Is this mode of warfare upon the Govern-
ment and their measures to be endured ? If these
factious Peers and Prelates have any specific charge
to bring against the Board of National Education—
which consists of the Protestant Duke of Lein-
ster, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, the
Presbyterian Dr. Carlisle, and the Presbyte-
rian Mr. Holmes, as well as the Catholic Dr.
Murray—why do they not prefer the accusation as
becomes men ? They are not afraid that such a charge
would be ungraciously received in the House of Lords.
Wherefore, °then, this vile persistance in the mean and
despicable mode which has been adopted of insinua-
ting false charges, and hinting shabby accusations,
which cannot be met and confuted, and the authors
and retailers of which are sheltered from exposure
and the reprobation of the country, because an
opportunity is withheld from the accused of esta-
blishing - their own innocence and the baseness of
their accusers ! The people of England will see in
Lord Lansdowne's speech a merciless exposure
of the unprincipled means resorted to by the in-
tolerant enemies of Irish improvement, mental as well
as physical, in order to prevent the Parliament from
encouraging the only plan of moral culture which has
ever yet been introduced into Ireland, with a sincere
view to the regeneration of that country, and the so-
cial improvement of its people ; and never was there
an instance in which the maxim ex uno disce omnes
was so applicable. The Bishop of Exeter's charge
against a school in the Queen's county, in union with
the National Board, is now proved to be a calumny ;
and equally slanderous, and, we fear, intentionally un-
true, are all the other accusations that have been pre-
ferred ; but so as to cover the falsehood-mongers
with impunity, against that Board. In this country
no conception can be formed of the rabid malignity
with which the Tories, lay and clerical, of Ireland
have assailed this Board, from the first hour of its ex-
istence down to the present moment, the brief interval of
the Peel usurpation of 1834-5 excepted. While the reins
of Government rested in Tory hands, the piety of Lord
Roden, the rancour of the Right Rev. Pamphleteer,
and the phrenzy of Lord Winchilsea—to say nothing
of the modesty of the Earl cf Wicklow—were suf-
fered to " sleep in the shade." Not a word was
then heard or whispered against the " bible-burk-
ing," " scripture-mutilating," " Popery-cherishing,"
" unchristian," " blasphemous," " deistical Board"
of national education. All was silence then, for the
candid S,r Robert felt the necessity of an attempt to
cheat the Liberals, by playing a delusive game in
Ireland ; and Sir Henry Hardingc actually pledged
the usurpers to an increase of the funds of the Board.
But, as if to establish their own perfidy beyond the
reach of cavil, no sooner did the usurping Minieters
deecend into the rank of his Majesty's Opposition,
than the bigots resumed the howl against the system
of national education, which they have untiringly kept
up to this hour. In the Senate, in the pulpit, in the
place of public meeting, this system has been the in-
exhaustible theme of rancorous invective and calum-
nious abuse. Yet the reviled Board have gone on
doing eleat good ; and the success they have reaped
from their labours is the hest evidence of the excel-
lence of their system and of its applicability to time
condition of Ireland. Enlarged means and machinery
arc alone wanting to make that system more popular
and more useful.—Morning Chronicle.
Mr. Gaskell's speech on Thursday night was one
of those truth-telling, straight-forward, unmanageable
declarations of a political sentiment pervading the
whole mass of English intelligence and pubic princi-
ple throughout this entire kingdom, which must at all
times wither to the very core a factious and fabricated
system of political warfare such as that exhibited on the
same occasion by disappointed and chopfallen intriguers
in office, and incendiaries who would be there if
they could. The affected calmness of Lord John
Russell—the affected confidence of Mr. Spring Rice,
as to what another session would accomplish—and
the affected blustering of Mr. Daniel O'Connell, were
all but so many signs of self-evident mortification, at
the death-blow given to their common scheme by
the unflinching wisdom of the Upper [louse of Parlia-
ment. " Great good," quoth the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, " had already been done for Ireland, and
to the cause of further amelioration they might hope'
to gain fresh converts." Now, quere amelioration?
Have the Lords rejected any one measure with regard
to Ireland which was clearly calculated to ameliorate
the condition, or to promote the views, of any por-
tion of the " people of Ireland," but of those who
fatten on the discontents and wretchedness of that
people ? Is there a single point established with re-
gard to the Municipal measure which the Lords have
quashed but that its enactment would have afforded
the priests a more extended field for their tyranny over
conscience, and to the demagogues fresh pabulum for
agitation ? But the Lords have passed other mea-
sures, according to Mr. Rice, for the " good of Ire-
land, and therefore they will pass this." If the Lords
have passed other measures, and rejected this, there is
manifest ground for conjecturing that there is some-
thing in this which renders it, according to the judg-
mente,
of the Lords, inexpedient as a measure of State
policy for Ireland. Mr. Daniel O'Connell boasted,
with his usual species and amount of courage, that he
would renew (why renew what has never been relaxed ?)
that organized turbulence which goes by the wild name
of agitation. So let him. If Ireland is never
to be substantially at peace—if hatred against
all existing laws and authorities is to be for
ever kept up on false pretences—if the spirit of
bullying the Legislature, and convulsing the realm,
is to be invariably fomented and brought to bear against
the monarchy, by men who avow their detestation of
that monarchy, but at the same time their conviction
that its ruin will be most securely and rapidly com-
pleted by avoiding, on their part, the extremity of civil
war, we say without reserve, that the sooner O'Connell
cae so excite his Irish rabble as to lose the power of
restraining them within lawful bounds, and thereby to
bring. the battle to a crisis, and to make O'Connell a
fugitive, the better for the integrity of the British Em-
pire, and for the permanent well-being of the State.
The vantage ground possessed by the Agitator now
is, that the nominal King's Ministers arc the wil-
ling,, ministers of Popish
despotism, and therefore
to a certain point, the tools of his machina-
tions. The counter benefit to the State is this—
that lipj,,,and they will fall, infallibly, together.
Tlici:siselOolllois this bragging mountebank, in one
ieipec6 Nyais fiprAlly exposed by Mr. Gaskell, w'ho
erided and".*ikV. , e slanderous absurdity that the
Vle o.E,h_edn.l'. , re with - O'Connell in the (
war-
he '.-fts-early,t%, against the House of Lords.
7.16100. 6 thapOOtle of England" have the means
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