The Sun.
London, England, 1841-03-05 00:00:00

POLITICAL SUMMARY OF THE

MORNING JOURNALS.

The Times of yesterday observes, in the course of a
leading article on the subject of Irish Romanism :—" Even
O'Connell, with all-his schemes of political and eec:esiastical
aggression, has been called into existence entiraly by the
licoded incendiaries-of Alaynooth, is retained as their special
p:eader, and, knowing their terrible sway over the millions, is
contented to depetal upon their doles fur his sulsistence. The
Repeal re: ellion, ce we persist in calling, it, inferring eventually
a Popish Parliament in DuLlin, as well as the final ejectment
and c xtirl anion of Irish Protestant landl-rds, i., at bottom,
'be exclusive w.a-k of the priests.". The Morning Post, speak-
ing of Conservative policy, says :—" The clanger of the pre-
sent time is the revolutionary tendency which exists in popu-
lar feeling, and the popular policy of Conservatives wig be tho
policy of counter. revolution, of improvement as contradistin-
guislied front revolution." The Morning Chronicle comments
as follows on the recent conduct of the Irish Teries :
"Until within the last year or two, the Irish Tories
have generally Leen themselves foremost in evety aggression
calculated to incense and embroil their countrymen; but we
must d there the justice to state that latterly they would, with
a few exceptions, have been quiet and well-behavedenough, had
they not been hounded on anew against the people by the never-
flagging rancour of the Lord of Bickerstaff, and the scent of re-
stored power and ascendancy snuffed into their nostrils from his
nefarious Bill." The following is from the Morning Herald:
—" In our columns of to-clay will be found a letter signed
' Protestans,' in answer to the writer in the Times, who,
under the signature of Catholicus,' has made Sir Robert
Peel's Address at Tamwo rth the subject of much unfair and
invidious commentary. We believe with Protestans,' that
Sir Robert Peel, in impressing with all the strength and
suavity
.of, a highly...cultivated and graceful eloquence upon
his and ence, the advantage of scientific pursuits, not only in
developing the intellectual powers, but in opening sources of
inentalpleasure before unknown, and in contributing in some
degree to the formation of the moral character, by leading the
pai444,44*e44a,ttnazse„_kroplations„ Clad
=. riot 'sent:nee:Which Christlnity- itself would censure or
repudiate. If by the mere contemplation of the material
heavens, and the wonders ,of The firmament, the glory' of
God is revealed, and the handy-work' of a Deity made
manifest, will such contemplation, when, aided by the search-
ing po,ers of astronomical science, it ascertains the laws by
which all that magnificent host of planets, suns, and ada-
manine spheres,' are in their various motions governed
and harmonised as one stupendous whole; the lets lead
the mind from stature up to nature's God?' Let Catholi-
cus' ask the Psalmist why he so frequently speaks of the works
and wonders of creation as testimonies to the power, and good-
ness, and wisdom of the Almighty, if the science that gives to
human inspection the admirable contrivance, structure, and
design of those works and wonders, has no tendency to lift the
mind of man out of a state of brute unconsciousness of supe-
rior intelligence into the apprehension of the existence and at-
tributes of God? No; the contemplation of the works of
nature, with the aid of science, does not lead men's minds to
atheistical conclusions—but to the opposite. Well did the
pious poet, Young, with a mind bowed down with affliction, 1
but lull 1.,f holy aspirations, exclaim—
'fhe underout astronomer is mad.'
But Catholicus,' dogmatising in the true strain of the propa-
gandist hatred of Gaiileo's noble science, would say he was on
the high road to Atheism, when he invoked his young friend
thus:

' Together let us mount, Lorenzo,
And kindle our devotion at the stars.'

Addison was, we imagine, as pious a Christian as any writer
who ever signed himself Catholicus: He has given a beau-
tiful paraphrase of one of the Psalms, in which the following
lines occur, in allusion to the religious influence which the
voicelt ss testimonies of Divine power strown over the firma-
ment shed upon the human mind :
In reason's ear they all rejoice
And utter forth a glorious voice,
For ever singing as they s.hine,
The hand that made us is divine.'

But what poet or prophet ever equalled in the language of
sublime simplicity the to:lowing passage of the Psalmist, hich
is di cisive of his inspired conviction that to examine, exp!ore,
and meditate upon the visible works of the Creator, leans not
to atheism but to All thy works p:aise thee, 0
Lord. '1 hey show the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy
power. That thy power, thy glory, and the mightiness of thy
kingdom might be known unto men.' We have thought it ne-
cessary to say so much as this in allusion to the somewhat
Popish doctrine of ' Catholicus.' For other arguments
founded on high authorities, and which even a Jesuit will find
it very difficult to answer or evade, we refer to the letter of
Protestans.' "

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
( From tha Globe.)

We say Lord Stanley is the leader of a revolutionary
party. He would make power change hands. This is
frankly declared by the organs of his party. The Stan-
dard avows it. If the Bill of the leader of the Tories
tt e:e to pass, the sixty Irish Members would become
twenty, and the forty Orange Members would be made
eighty. This is a revolution of power. 'By the Re-
form Bill power was taken from the aristocratic bo-
roughmongers and given to the middle alasses—this was
a revolution of power from a class to a class. Lord
Stanley tries a far more dangerous thing—he would effect
a revelation of power from (me t ale and creed to a.hosti:e
race and elec.'. Dl.n who will quietly allow power to
be taken from themselves arid Oen to another class of
themst Ives, will not submit to either the deprivation or
the transfer when they are in favour of men of a dif-
fereat race at,d religion. This it is which makes the
damp r of Lord Staul'y's Bi 1 greator than the danger of
the Reform B 11. The Whigs fought for the people, the
Tories fight for potter and place for themselves merely ;
and like the gentleman who to roast his own eggs set fire
to his neighbour's house, they inflame Ireland to make
their own berths warm. They will be hot enough. Lord
Stall.), is determined to mow down the Catholic electors
of Ireland ; and that none may he left, he would subject
the whole ground to the perpetual gleaning of sharp and
greedy attorneys. His success would legalise the bribing
of electors with lease,, or rather it would at once create a
new species of slaves heretofore unknown in Europe,
consisting of a constituency of electoral serfs ; the
Orange landlords would be ever)thing, and the Irish
people would be nothing. This cannot be. They are
eight to one—they are a fiery northern race— the
spirit of liberty is high in them ; and if they are not
powerful in constituencies, whit• human nature lasts
they will bo terrible in conspiracies.
(From the Standard.)
That Sir Roberl Peel committed a great error in
1829 ee must be the last to deny ; but every day's
disclosures give proof that his conduct on that
occasion was the sery reverse of selfish—it was, in
truth, a sacrifice of himself, made in the nob.e3t
spirt, though in a bad cause, and upon fallacious
grounds. Whea Sir Robert brought in the Bi lof
that sear, le said that he knew he was proposing a
bad measure, but that ho did it to obviate worse evil.
What that imagined worse evil was we know in part,
but in part only ; for although the death of
the double-minded King whom his almost
worshipFe a Sir Walter Scott, charges with
trying to usurp all power by balancing parties—
for rlthough the death of George the Fourth has
given some of the secret transactions of 1829 to the
province of history, still others remain unknown, and
must continue to re.riain unknown, until all the
principal agents have passed from the' scene. When
Sir Robert Pee!, therefore, boasts of his part in
what is called the Emancipation Act, as he some-
times does, to the dissatisfaction of unreflecting friends,
let it be remembered thLt he has never spoken of the
measure as an abstractedly good one—he did not so
speak of it when he introduce) it : his boast, and it is a
just one, is, that he sacrificed his friend, and office, and
consistency, encountered misapprehension and obloquy,
and the task of doing what was hateful to him, under an
overwhelming sense of duty to the public safety.
Sir Robert Pcei's error in the case was an ignorance of
the strength and spirit of the Protestant democracy—
an ignorance that would now be without excuse, but
which was unavoidable to persons in his station in the
days of red tape politicians, and before the Reform
Bill had clearly marshalled men according to their po-
litical opinion.