The Sun.
London, England, 1849-10-12 00:00:00

SUN,

LONDON,

not these noisy malcontents, the Sabbatarians, require
every member of their household to attend Divine
service on Sunday mornings ? if they leave
their dwellings to be robbed at pleasure
by any irreligious burglar ? or if, on the
contrary, they do not themselves proceed
to church, leaving some servant at home by way of
security ? If they are so very punctilious in their
sanctity, at least they might be consistent. Do they
prohibit the shoe-black from polishing their boots, or
from cleaning their knives between Saturday night
and Monday morning ? Are their cooks relieved
from all servile work within the same interval—
required to light no fires, to boil no water,
to toast no bread, to roast no joints, to fabri-
cate no puddings ? Really the frivolity of
the whole proceeding is beyond all serious argu-
ment. And in testimony of this, in proof of the
exquisitely ridiculous inconsistency of the Sabbata-
rians, we transcribe from Mr. Jour; O'CosmaLL's
recently published "Recollections, &c." (Vol. 1., p.
252) the following appropriate reference to the late
leader of the Sabbatarian movement :

"Sir Andrew was the target of many shafts, for the
exemptions which his measures reserved for the Sabbath
pleasures of the rich; while they came down with a
heavy hand upon the scanty enjoyments, and even com-
mon comforts of the humbler classes. But no rebuff, no
sarcasm, no sharp commentary seemed to daunt or affect
him, till Mr. Ward, the present Secretary to the Admi-
ralty, brought against him the soft, but undeniable im-
peachment, that he had been seen travelling in a public
coach himself; in one of those very vehicles, whose
lr,comotion on Sundays he had denounced as sinful,
while entirely silent as to private carriages; and further-
more, that when the coach stopped for dinner, he had
ordered a special beefsteak for himself; thus causing
servile work to be done, in flagrant violation of the
spirit and teaebings of his own legislative essays."
Throughout the recent movement against the new
regulations of the Post-office authorities we have re-
gretted to observe the contagion of an excitement
which should have been allowed to die out from its
own intrinsic absurdity. We have been deeply
grieved, for example, to observe a man of liberal
opinions, like Sir JAMES DUKE, carried away by this
idle and most mistaken frenzy of indignation, and
aiding the interposition of the malcontents in his ca-
pacity as Chief Magistrate of the city of London.
Altogether, nevertheless the community has every
reason to be gratified with the determination arrived
at by the Prime Minister and his Right Honourable
Colleagues—a determination to pursue the course
dictated by right reason and by rational morality, un-
influenced by the peevishness of ignorance or by the
ravings of fanaticism.'

The Irish Executive has discharged an act of
public duty, which will be hailed with satisfaction by
every right-thinking man in the British isles. The
Orange magistrates, who manifested such real or
affected ignorance of the laws of the land in the
investigation of the Dolly's Brae massacre, have been
removed from the commission of the peace. Stern
justice and sound policy alike demanded
.this manly,
straightforward course ; and we know no act,
which State necessity required, more calculated than
this is to give to the able administration of Lord
CLARENDON the impress of equal and impartial justice.
The Orange magistrates of Castlewellan were either
really ignorant of the laws which they were bound
to administer, or they were so besotted with bigotry
as to misinterpret them—in either case they were to-
tally unfit to hold the high offices with which they were
entrusted ; and we hope the Lord Chancellor's
supersedeas has ere this relieved all the clerical
justices who figured on the same occasion from their
magisterial functions, and enabled them to devote
more of their time to the exercise of their holy calling.
Scenes of strife and blood are not meet places for the
priests of a religion of peace; the sword is an un-
seemly weapon in the hands of a minister of the faith
of CHRIST, whose most earnest precept was that "ye
love one another."

When, on a former occasion through the columns
of this journal, we energetically called upon the Irish
Government for the dismissal of those men, we gave
expression to the feelings of regret we felt for the
position of Lord RODEN. We felt no sympathy with
the unchristian fury of political parsons ; they
should be made to feel the power of those laws which
they disregarded and abused. The nauseous and
frothy effervescence of Mr. Blum's bigotry
should not be allowed to evaporate from
the seat of justice. It is much better
suited to the wayside Shebeen of some jovial brother,
where, in their midnight orgies, he may join the
worthy fraternity in offering unholy sacrifice to the
demon of bygone feuds. With such men as these
we have no sympathies, but we confess we do feel
a degree of sadness at the melancholy fate of the
venerable nobleman of many years, and many virtues,
upon whose declining age these wretched parasites
have brought the marks of dishonour.
The creeping parasites in the vegetable world,
unable to sustain themselves, will twine round some
noble tree, sapping its vitality until they leave it a
withered and useless trunk ; so have those parasitical
weeds of Ulster twined round this time-honoured
Nobleman," till they have stripped him of the honours
due to his station and his virtues." But while
the age and virtues of Lord RODEN awaken our
sympathies, the rigid justice with which his
offence has been visited calls for our warmest com-
mendation ; we feel that grey hairs cannot sanctify
crime, or make folly respectable ; we feel that the ami-
abilities of private life cannot and should not shield a
man from the consequences of his public wrongs, and
that Lord CLARENDON has but done an act of solemn
justice in dismissing from the commission of the peace
the Orange magistrates of Castlewellan.

We remember when many of the gentry
of Ireland were dismissed from the commission
of the peace for merely joining an associa-
tion, the professed object of which was the
repeal of an Act of Parliament by legal and con-
stitutional means—an Act too which the majority
of the people of that country believed injurious to
their interests, and the repeal of which
they were led to believe would prove a
panacea for all their wrongs and sufferings.
There was no violation of the laws, no open defiance
of the Government, yet any magistrate who sent his
adhesion to this body was forthwith unhesitatingly
struck off the magisterial list by a predecessor of
the present Viceroy. Could then Lord CLA.RENDON
allow the magistrates of Castlewellan to parade at
the head of an infuriated, armed, and illegal mob
with impunity ? Could he, with a shadow of a show
of justice, or with the smallest claim to an impartial
administration of the laws, allow those men to go
unpunished—men who first openly instigate to
crime, and then indecently use the powers with
which they were entrusted to turn aside the sword of
justice? No, Lord CLARENDON has acted with
courage and wisdom ; social order, impartial justice,
the peace of Ireland demanded that the majesty of the
law should be vindicated in Down as well as in
Tipperary, and that the besotted bigots of Castle-
wellaa should receive as wholesome a lesson of obe-
dience to the laws as the insane conspirators of
Ballingarry.

And what, after all, is the meaning of this bragga-
docio exhibition of Orangeism on the 12th of July ?
History tells us that a father-in-law and son-in-law
contested for the Crown of England on the banks of
the Boyne. The Irish fought for their lawful
Sovereign, the vacillating and weak-minded JAMES.
WILLIAM was supported by the tried ♦eterans of
many nations ; his army was composed of Danes,
Dutch, Flemings, Swiss, French Huguenots, English,
Anglo-Irish, and Germans, amounting to at least
36,000 men, well-appointed and well-disciplined,
while the force of JAMES did not amount to
23,000 men, most of them raw and undisciplined
and badly supplied with :arms. The Irish fought
with their accustomed bravery, but were of course
vanquished by the superior numbers and discipline of
WILLIAMS troops, composed as it was of veterans of
the greatest number of nations that ever before or
since fought for or against the British Crown. The
lands of the vanquished were confiscated and divided
amongst the victors. The broad acres of the faithful
and loyal Irish became the spoil of this mongrel
army, and we have no wish to disturb their descen-
dants in their quiet possessions ; we would but say to
them, " eat your puddings, fools, and hold your
tongues." The issue of this battle was no doubt
productive of glorious results, in placing the British
Crown upon a fixed and enduring foundation; but
in the unequal contest itself we can see nothing
to stir up any glorious recollections, or at all to
justify the 'illy vauntinge exhibited in Ulster