The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
(From the Morning chronicle.)
The Times begins to be ashamed of advocating the
exterminating policy, and the substitute of a Protestant
for a Catholic tenantry. What change has come over
the spirit of its dream ?
" The landlords go to no such extent. A gentleman in
Ireland finds the tenants on his property, who are regis-
tered to vote as:leaseholders, in a state of constant distrac-
tion between a natural desire to gratify their landlords and
a'paralyzing terror of the excommunication, or other super-
stitious infliction with which they are menaced by the
priest. But for this torturing conflict, incessantly kept up
between their attachments and their fears, between their
temporal comfort and their spiritual welfare, the poor fel-
lows would jog on gaily and carelessly enough, with their
landlord helping them in this world, and their clergy
busied only in preparing them for the next. At the expi-
ration, therefore, of the lease—the fatal boon which breeds
all this misery—the landlord, if he be a Protestant and a
Conservative, is naturally desirous to take the opportunity i
of relieving the tenant. By expelling him from the land
he lives on ? No; but usually, unless the tenant be
utterly worthless, by continuing him upon that land, and
discharging him from the unhappy liabilities which the land
carried with it—that is to say, by renewing the tenantcy
without the lease."
As to the charge brought againstt the priests, that they
excommunicate voters who will not be guided by them,
it carries absurdity on the face of it. The Catholic
voters of humble life will naturally consult men in whom
they have confidence, as to the disposal of their votes ;
and it is much more natural that they should confide
in their priests than in Tory landlords, who seek their
votes for corrupt ends. The priest ought to warn the
voter against the sin against religion he commits in vot-
ing for a man who seeks to promote what is destruction
to the best interests of his country. This is a salutary
influence, and no excommunication can be necessary to
deter a man alive to the guilt of giving a bad vote, from
doing violence to his conscience. With the low notion of
religion implied in the observation, " that the poor fel-
lows would jog on gaily and carelessly enough, with their
landlords helping them in this world, and their
clergy busied only in preparing them for the next,"
we do not wonder that the Times should be unable
to compreSend the nature of the influence exercised
by the Irish priest. It speaks of religion as if good
conduct in this world had nothing to do with preparing
for the next. Translated into plain English its lan-
guage means this—You cultivators of the soil may go
to the poll either without taking any pains to inform
' yourselves with respect to the principles and character
of the party for whom you are to vote, or, knowing that
he is a man who, by the basest and most corrupt means,
will favour whatever tends to injure your country, you
may vote for him notwithstanding, without committing
any sin, or endangering in any way your future salvation.
Religion, my good fellow, is useful to speak about, and
it serves to enable gentlemen to obtain incomes for
their children ; but a poor man like you has nothing
to do with it beyond paying all the claims of the
clergyman. It is enough for you when you are at the
end of your journey in this world, to apply to your priest
for the necessary viaticum to proceed to the next.
Fortunately for the poor Catholics, their priests have
somewhat more elevated notions of religion. As to the
jogging on gaily with the landlord, this has reference no
doubt to the times on which an Irish landlord loves so
much to dwell, when the steward and his assistants,
with long whips, drove the freeholders before them to
the poll. In those days a candidate who suffered the
tenant of an adverse landlord to vote for him, laid
Err self open to a duel. The principle maintained by
the Times goes the whole length of that of the period
referred to. The long whip has been laid aside, but the
landlord claims the vote of the tenant as a matter of
right. There is, to be sure, this difference, that in the
former period the landlord forced the tenant to qualify,
now he will only qualify those of whose votes he can be
secure. But why all this outrage to morality and reli-
i gion ? If the tenant is but the conduit pipe of the land-
lord, why not make land the qualification ? Let the land-
! ►ords count votes according to rent, or some valuation
lof their property. This would leave the people out
altogether. We have no faith in the abstinence from
giving qualifications for a permanence. The landlords
do not require to be told that the vote of a lease-
ho,der can be made tolerably sure of by means of a no-
minal rent, which cannot be paid, and which w:11 leave
the tenant always at his mercy. To obtain land in
Ireland, the tenant must contract to pay whatever is
demanded, his payments being of course limited by his
ability. All beyond rags and potatoes for the susten-
ance of his family goes to the landlord as a matter of
course. Like other slaves, however, Paddy is cuening,
and sometimes contrives to wrap up a sovereign in one
of his rags. But the landlord would deem himself
cheated if the tenant obtained more for himself than
potatoes and water.

(From the Times.)
It would appear that the scheme for rekindling the
enthusiasm of the French people by the funeral honours
paid to the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte is likeiy to
share the fate of anothLr scheme of the same growth
for upsetting the treaties of 1815 by the levy of a mil-
lion of soldiers. The good sense of one part of the
nation, and the indifference of a still larger portion, ap-
pear to be as much opposed to the spirit of these posthu-
mous honours as they have shown themselves adverse to
the extravagant designs of the late Government, in whom
this strange pageant originated. French enthusiasm is
easily ex,:ited by novelty but it seldom lasts long
enough to ripen into the more serious and dignified senti-
ment of traditional veneration. The light is gone out
which projected the gigantic shadow on the canvass ;
and what remains but the painted
.slide of a magic
toy ? If funeral honours were paid in modern Eu-
rope at stated periods after death, they would afford
a melancholy proof that the memory of the greatest
is not secure from the touch of time, and that the
mass of mankind reserve their warmest enthusiasm for
the triumphs in which they share. In the present in-
stance, however (and it is certainly one of the most
curious in history), the judgment of posterity sanctions
the work of time ; and we dispassionately believe
that succeeding generations will circumscribe the real
glory of Napoleon within far narrower proportions than
those which it still usurps. The contrast which this
last superfluous scene presents to the splendours and
triumphs of the living Emperor, the contrast which it
presents, too, to the closing hours of retribution and of
death, will add nothing, to the memory of the man. On
the contrary, it will detract from the amount of ideal
uthoiratiou by subjecting that flimsy sentiment to the
test of actual feelings and interests. If the GovernMent
had not undertaken the expenses of the ceremony, all
rirance would not have raised enough money to bury
r former ruler ; and the subscription which was ori-
woolly set on foot for that purpose proved an utter
failure.

record o
" Quot libras in duce summo
But if the scelit'ivipceonpdecorations of the Invalides, and the
cia:nours of a
greedyof excitement, had ten
times the splendour and noise which appear likely
to accompany the funeral cort they would be but
idle imitations of the trophies of
war, or the applaud-
ing voicelof a
7 nation.
yearsTh of
this
passions
century arroedkouobitlsests.
extinct ; they are not to be revived hy th of the
rhis
crimes' the conflict
which fiicdh
e early
ere echo of
Napoleon's renown, or by the
But is the sentence erased from the rock
Helena ? Is it not rather confirmed in the depths
of of men's truest opinions, ratified by another
genera-
tion, and cnregistered in the history of the •orldr