The Sun.
London, England, 1838-12-20 00:00:00

PHUT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We perceive from a report of a meeting of the Work-
ing Man's Association, held on Tuesday night, at Ches-
ney's Rooms, Foley-street, contained in The Sun of yes-
terday, that Mr. Feargus O'Connor is resolved to give
battle in the metropolis. " The Ifieekly Chronicle," he says,
" edited by George Henry Ward, the Member for Sheffield,
had the audacity to attempt to intimidate me, by telling me
that the moment I came to a London meeting the police
wcalid arrest me. lam here now, and I dare the police—.
I defy the police—and I dare the masters of the police."
After such a bravado it might have been expected that he
would call on the working men to hold one of those meet-
ings by torch-light in the metropolis, for the legality of
which he so stoutly contended, and the use of which he so
significantly pointed out in Lancashire. But he is now all
for moral force ; and he denounces the philosophical Ra-
dicals as the men who wish to have recourse to physical
force :
" A party," he says, have sprung up, calling them-
selves " Philosophical Radicals"— a party of men who,
instead of assailing the strong.hold of corruption, would
assail the tea-pot and the exciseman —(Laughter)—a party
of men who speak of moral courage and denounce physical
force. Why, they would be the first to use physical
force, and to abstain from anything like a trial of moral
exertion in this country. I have been denounced as a
person who recommended physical force. I stand here before
you, and if my life hung upon the lips of a judge, or upon the
verdict of a jury of shopkeepers, if I had recommended phy-
sical force I would not retract the assertion. But during my
whole existence—during my whole Radical career— I never,
directly or indirectly, recommended physical force."
We had no idea that Mr. Grote and his friends were
such dangerous fellows. It might be prudent, after this
warning, to have the Honourable Member for London
searched when he presents himself in the House of Com-
mons in February next, lest he carry a dagger about him or
some other lethal weapon But Mr. Feargus O'Connor,
though he now denounces physical force, considers moral
force of little worth—nothing without strong physical ac-
companiments. " I consider it moral force," he says, "to
meet tlose men who are to carry the Radical petition to
the House of Commons, four or five hundred thousand
strong, marching down without arms in your hands, and
sending your compliments into the House of Commons, to
say that Mr. Attwood and Mr. Fielden are the bearers of a
mess ige, and that you wait for a reply outside." This piece
of swaggering exhibits a sad falling-off from the language
held in Lancashire ; but it exhibits some tact. He
compliments the Government on their kindness.
" Lord Melbourne," he says, " puts clown our torch-
light meetings—When ? Not until he finds our party is
about to be broken—not until the men of Edinburgh have
treasonably come forward and denounced the principle they
were the first to advoc_te. The very moment desertion
takes place in the ranks, it is followed up by hostility on
the part of all the press." Mr. Feargus O'Connor tells us
his audience is not to be cast down at the apparent seces-
sion in Edinburgh :
"We are all right in the north.—( Cheers.) Don't be
afraid of two or three foolish men, with a parson at the bead
of them—Dr. Brewster. I suppose Dr. Brewster one day or
other, intends to be primate of the Radicals. He does not
like the Church property to be meddled with, because he ex-
pects to have his share of it.—( Laughter.) Don't be alarmed
about the state of feeling in Edinburgh, for I intend, with the
blessing of God, to try the real feeling there, early next
month.—(Cheers.) I am not to be frightened by those
voices, though they may come thundering from the north. I
am going to see in Dr. Brewster's own town, whether the real
Radicals or the sham and philosophical Radicals' are the
strongest party."
Mr. O'Connor not only renounced physical force, but he
read an edifying lecture on the importance of capital to
labour, and professed as great a hatred of civil war as the
Duke of Wellington himself has :
" Why," he says, " do we ask for Universal Suffrage ?
Why, that labour should be represented ; and if labour
is represented, capital must, because without the employ-
ment of labour, capital would be of no use, and without the
expenditure of capital labour would be of no use.--( Cheers.)
I give you my advice : never, so long as you have a foot of
moral resting ground, be misled by any man to enter into a
civil war, for when it once commences, Gad only knows where
it will end ; and the working classes, by going on in their
undeviating course of assaulting by their moral power, will be
able to affect all that is necessary f.:r themselves."—( Cheers. )
Feargus becomes quite edifying, and the adage is most
assuredly falsified in him, that " Birds of a feather flock
together ;" for he seems to have made choice of the Rev.
Mr. Stephens and Mr. Oastler for his associates and col-
labaratcurs from pure abhorrence of the advice they give to
the working classes. Was ever good man so calumniated
as this Mr. Feargus O'Connor. Mr. Feargus O'Connor
has profited by the lessons read to him at Edinburgh,
Birmingham, and elsewhere. In fact the newspapers
which the working classes most generally read disclaim on
the part of the real Radicals all connection with the fire-
brands whose names have been so frequently before the
public of late. The Sheffield Iris, for instance, answers
for the working men of Sheffield:—
" We wish," says that journal, " to remove the impression
entirely from the mind of the timid, that the real Radicals,
that is, the real Reformers, ever entertained the idea of resort-
ing to physical force so long as they had the powerful moral
arguments to support the rights they now possess. Recent
events in Lancashire render this step the more necessary on
account of the prominent part the Rev. J. Stephens has acted
in Radical demonstrations, and the influence he possesses
among a large body of workmen in his own neighbourhood." '
The same journal observes, with regard to the torch-
light meetings :
" It looks as if Englishmen were ashamed to meet under
the broad canopy of heaven, to ask justice of their rulers,
in the face of that sun which shines equally on the rich as
on the poor, and sheds its cheering ray on the slave in his
miserable dungeon equally as on the crowned tyrant on
his luxurious couch. The sight is not more imposing at
these torch-light meetings, nor are the proceedings more
calculated to produce an impression, unless it be to strike ter-
ror into the more timid and wavering spectators. What com-
parison is there between the unsteady flickering of a few
torches scattered at intervals among a crowded assembly,
throwing their dim light over their care-worn, toil-engrained
faces, hardly sufficing to render darkness visible, and a meet-
ing of thousands in the broad day, responding with buoyant
hearts to the sentiment, that ' Britons never shall be slaves'
either to foes from abroad, nor to merciless task-masters at
home."

However, though Mr. Feargus O'Connor was last night
quite smooth, some of the speakers who followed him were
otherwise. A Mr. Parlow was quite astonished that the men
of Scotland should find any language too strong, and hinted
that moral force was very good as a precursor ; but though
" good as the first step towards the success of their cause,
it could not be rendered effective until the people were
concentrated ;" and a Mr. Vincent was quite heroic, for—
" When the grand national display would be made--
when the truly majestic banding of the people would take
place--when their petition was spurned by the House of
Commons, and when the Convention issued its proclamation,
aye, its order, to its constituents, calling upon them to leave
the anvil, the plough, and the loom—( Vehement cheering)--to
stand as in the solemn stillness of the tomb, and to speak to
the Government in the language of awful wattling, and
tell them if they did not come down on their knees,
and yield up peaceful possession of their rights, they would
find that there was a point beyond which human endurance
could not go—beyond which they could not remain quiescent
—that they would suspend their work and never return until the
whole of their privileges were granted."—( Much cheering.)
Our readers will laugh at the device by which Mr. Feargus
O'Connor proposes to elude the proclamation against torch-
light meetings :
" I am going," he says, " to give Lord Melbourne something
to do next month ; we shall hare a pretty new moon in January,
and let us see if he will put out the moon.-4 Loud and long-
continued cheering.) Let us see if Daniel O'Connell, and his
staff of Precursors, will come to his assistance, and go up to
the man in the moon. Let us see what they will do when
placed in this emergency, but don't you be afraid in London."
We know not whether the Lancashire Liberals are suffi-
ciently moon-struck to follow this advice ; but in London
it will literally be considered a matter of moonshine.—
Morning Chronicle.
We confess that the result of yesterday's trial of the case
in which this Journal was concerned has struck us with
surprise, not unmixed with indignation. We will therefore
abstain, at least at present, from any comment on the pro-
ceedings, the entire report of which we had not an oppor-
tunity of reading till a late hour last night. We shall con-
tent ourselves with referring our readers to the zealous,
able, and 'manly address of the Attorney-General, and to
that—what shall we call it—the summing up? No; the
zealous and hostile reply made by the Learned and Noble
Chief Justice to the powerful speech of our distinguished
advocate. From the Attorney-General's appeal we extract
one powerful sentence, descriptive of the sort of process to
which we were yesterday subjected—a process which made
it a matter of impossibility for us to call a single witness in
explanation or justification of the statement which we
had published. Let our readers attentively peruse this
short passage :—" But, gentlemen, I think that it is not
credit..ble to the law that the truth should be excluded ;
that a counsel for the prosecution, like my learned friend
Mr. Thesiger, should find that the only question which a
Jury has to determine is this—whether the publication
contains a charge that is defamatory ; and that, although
there might be witnesses to prove in every respect the
truth of the allegations, even from the mouth of the pro-
secutor himself, still that it would be the duty of the
Learned Judge to reject that evidence, and to say that he
can only, when the case comes before a Jury, see whether
the publication is brought home to the defendant, and
whether it will bear the construction put on it by tLe
prosecutor." Now read the defence of this sort of investi-
gation (?) put forth by the Lord Chief Justice. "In a
proceeding by way of criminal information, the only
questions which you, gentlemen of the jury, can have to
determine, are these—the fact of publication, the identity
pf the individual relerretl to, and the construction which ,