The Sun.
London, England, 1824-01-22 00:00:00

WEARE'S MURDER-AWFUL TRUTHS.

( From the Antidote.)
The curiosity and attention awakened in the
public mind, and the unusual space in the public
journals, which, since the perpetration of the
shocking deed, every circumstance connected
therewit has occupied, has been to us a matter
in accounting for which we felt ourselves at a
loss. Murder is, at all times, and in every in-
stance, an appalling crime, and one in which
sympathy is universal towards the victim, and his
or her relations, while horror and indignation is
expressed against the perpetrator; but, in this
particular case we are at a loss to account for that
intense feeling which seems to have been excited.
There was not any tie of friendship or consangui-
nity between the murderer and the murdered ; no
particular bond by which individual members of
society are united, was broken upon this occa-
sion : nor was the character of the victim, or of
any of the guilty persons, such as to make so
unusual an impression upon the public mind,
though some of the parties wore a better coat, or
were better educated than many of those gene-
rally impeached with the horrible crime of murder.
No—in this case we could not perceive any of
those extraordinary shades of guilt which call for
general execration; we could, upon attentively
perusing the English Journals, alone perceive that
a murder had been committed, but a murder of no
uncommon kind ; it was unmarked, unattend-
ed with any of those dreadful features of atro-
city which we have had, from time to time, to
record, and which have brought shame and dis-
grace upon unfortunate, unhappy Ireland ; but
which were only the conversation of a day, and
passed over as unheeded as a case of common
brutality under Martin's Act : we are really at a
loss to account for this astonishing fact. In Eng-
land the commission of murder is by no means
rare, nor unfrequently attended with circum-
stances of an aggravated nature ; revenge insti-
gates to some ; the desire of gain to others ; and
but too frequently, in England, the unfortunate
female becomes the victim of her seducer, an
occurrence, thanks to the lenity of our laws,
rare in Ireland. On the late occasion, the in-
citements were more complex. Thurtell seems
(from what we have
_heard) to have been a cool,
plodding gamester, whose mind was wrought
upon by the strongest feelings of revenge and
disappointment, and who was ready to take ad-
vantage of any pecuniary resources thrown in
his
i ps v
t el villain, without feeling or prin.
‘e,amycOnmeipYnele competent gratification. Hunt is a despe-
ra
ut to the achievement of any deed,
whethera o of on the highway or in privacy, whereby the
dissipation could be supplied ; and Pro-
bet
accessary after the murder, was a
bankrupt
m
purse, a bankrupt in principle, and,at
r, thoughin an
once, entered into the spirit of the sanguinary mea-
suresassociates, and partook of their spoils ;
were tutored in the modern school
of hisassociates,
which is synonymous with bar-
oafll
ptloirgeielism,
bar-
barism. Weare, the victim of their revenge and
avarice, was a cautious gambler, who having once
pounced upon his prey, coolly plucked him of
his last feather; yet so suspicious withal, that his
ill-earned gain was never accounted secure when
separated from his person ; it is generally under-
stood that he was seldom without 1,0001., or
more, sewed within his flannel jerkin. These
we believe to be a true statement of the facts,
and the inference is easily drawn. Public sym-
pathy, it would seem, was first excited by the
report that a conspiracy had been entered into
by a few of those desperadoes to assassinate
twelve or fourteen marked persons, who were
obnoxious to them ; and the circumstance of the
murder of an obscure individual of desperate
character, connected with the idea that twelve or
mtigehtpowerful impression, and
also fall under the assas-
filled the pages of the Conti-
shiat,s fourteen
sftoere
irn,o
ot hinne tairidss:
hnental, British, and Irish Newspapers 1. Are
those things so rare, so much beyond the sphere
of common crime, that they are not to be equal-
led ? No. Does not our domestic history furnish
instances innumerable, compared with which,
the murder of Weare, with all its addenda of
conspiracy, &c. is but as the dust in the balance,
or a grain of sand upon the sea-shore ? We shall
not ransack the pages of history, or look to days
that have long passed away, to give an affirmative
answer to the latter question ; the burning of
Wildgoose Lodge is a recent occurrence, in wich
eight human beings were sacrificed upon the
altar of Molech by a gang of modern legislators,
whose plan was matured in a Popish Chapel, after
the ceremony of mass had been concluded, and
from whose porches they issued to accomplish
their blood-thirsty purpose. (Wildgoose Lodge
is within four miles of the residence of our en-
lightened and faithful guardian,- Sir Harcourt
Lees, who was himself threatened with destruc-
tion, having detected and desperately wounded a
Whiteboy incendiary who had made his way into
the house, and attempted to corrupt his servants ;
it was subsequently set on fire, and the lives of
his infant and amiable family endangered, it is
supposed, by a part of the Wildgoose Lodge
gang, as by his own parishioners he is idolized.)
This is not a solitary instance ; we can still refer
to another, if possible, more atrocious; that of
the Sheas, wherein sixteen persons became a prey
to the devouring element ; whilst the savage in-
cendiaries, outside the funeral pile, made the
welkin re-echo with their shouts of exultation.
If these are still insufficient, our catalogue can
be lengthened to an almost unlimited extent, es
we scarcely yet entered upon it. Let our
readers recall the fate of the following persons,
whose bodies can scarcely be said to be cold in
their graves—the Franks, the Goolds, Crofts,
O'Hara, Torrance, Brereton, Collins, Going, &c.
&s. And why were these overlooked by the
English Journalists, or if casually glanced at,
noticed only as the ephemeral produce of an
Irish soil ; unworthy the consideration of civiliz-
ed beings ; and unattended by any excess of
• sympathy either at home or abroad ? It cannot
• surely be urged that there was no conspiracy
leading to these atrocities, by which the matter
was rendered doubly interesting ; nor can it be
• said that they fall short, in aggravating points, of
.the murder of Weare, for the annals of English
,history produce no such examples as those al.

lulled to. A conspiracy certainly exists in Ire-
land, the object of which is the total extirpation
of the Protestants, and of such of the Roman
Catholics as lend not themselves to their treason-
able purposes. Whoever doubts the truth of
this assertion, needs only refer to the recorded
words of Wm. Conyingham Plunkett, who it
cannot be believed would misrepresent those
whose cause he has espoused, (the Papists) or be-
tray the trust reposed in him by his sovereign :
he states that an association has " for some years"
been organized, whose objects are,—" to extir-
pate all the Protestants of the country, to over-
throw the Government, and to recover the rights
lost at the reformation." So says the Attorney-
General for Ireland !—We have thrown those
few hints before our readers for their considera-
tion : let it be kept in remembrance that it is the
duty of some of the radical prints of this country
to forget past events, and put as smooth a face as
possible upon the present. We shall only give
our English readers one other statement—in the
month of February, 1823, there were no less than.
Twenty-five persons murdered in Ireland by the
Whiteboys !!! Let our English readers reflect
upon this;—we shall say no more.