The Sun.
London, England, 1847-11-10 00:00:00

0.91[V7
SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURN 1

resoles THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAP.
TINES.—Among the many speculative sus gges-
tions offered for Ireland, the public are alma est in
danger of forgetting those essential conditions c b Irish
prosperity about which there can be no di subt or
speculation at all. Whatever laws, under fav ourable
circumstances, may have a tendency to adr ince the
interests of that country, it is very clear that nothing
will work well, all will be wasted, and nee ad vance
made, unless life and property are secured. Sec urity
is the very breath of social existence. We mig ht as
well expect a man to exist without sleep, cI. to
breathe freely under the peine forte et cure of an-
tique barbarity, as that Ireland should thrive and
develop itself while its vital organs are crushed by
the incubus of terrorism. It is mere mockery for
Ministers, and Viceroys, Secretaries, and journal ists,
to goad on the landowners to duty, to residence , to
enterprise, to useful expenditure and personal det lie],
if all the time we are driving them to the very -iaws
of the grave. They may reply, they will reply , as
they have replied,—" Make our lives our own ; !give
us back our own property ; protect us while we exe-
cute your orders, and then we will make the attetript."
To this there is only one answer. If we choesee to
put on others the perilous honours of a forlorn 'nape,
we must bestow what protection we can. We protect
our colonists from Kafirs and New Zealanders.
Wherever we push our advances into the heart of bar-
barism or the wilderness, we tote care to afford Belch a
basis of oreration that our hardy outposts may ai-w-ivs
rely on the Imperial support. It would be folly to
neglect these precautions in Ireland. We ceniaol, in
reason and honour send the champions of loyalty and
order into the thick of the foe, and then leave the two
parties to settle it between themselves. It would be
a standing disgrace to the nation were it to set the
brave and loyal subject "in the forefront of the hot-
test fight," and then " retire from him that he may
be smitten and die." There can he no doubt of a
wide-spread conspiracy against the rights and laws of
property in Munster, and in other parts of the islaiid.
The sudden increase of crime evidences concert.
Whatever may be said against the harshness of such
a supposition, it is felt to he true by those who are
too nearly interested to insist on the rigours of logical
inference. "The Irish metropolis;' we are told, "was
never so full at this period of the rear; every one who
has the means at his disposal is flying the rural di.
tricts, and seeking for safety in t.l). crowd of the
city." Men who 'have heard their doom whispered
long, who have seen the bloody lists of proscription,
who find their fellow-victims falling around them.,
and perceive too clearly that the destruction of agents,
process servers, interlopers, improving landlords, and
all who offend against the agrarian code, is univer-
sally acceptable, are not in a position to argue. Self-
preservation dictates their course. Unless they have
frames of iron—unless they will be ever on the
watch, and fight night and day for their lives and
their properties, they wi I fly. Nothing will hold
them ; and we should he assuming an awful responsi-
bility if we should induce them to continue in the
field against such fearful odds. It is very possible that
they who are immediately and actually implicated in
these crimes may be few. It is possible that few have
attended the midnight council, given the fatal suffrage,
cast the lot of murder, negotiated with the assassin,
or struck the very blow. Were it so however, that
would neither clear the people of a moral participa-
tien, nor releese the State from the duty of Vigorous
measures. There is every reason to believe that the
mass of the Celtic population in certain districts of
Ireland Wee as much part in the maintenance of a
savage code as the minority does in enforcing the law
of the land. Judge, jury, sheriff, executioner, and
every other rank or shade of officer, constitute alto
gether but an insignificant fraction of the people.
Yet no one would hesitate to say that in England the
execution of the law is the act of society. Grieved
as we are to say it, we must say, that in the same
sense, a certain lawless and sanguinary system is the
combined act of the Celtic population. Major Mahon
was murdered on his own estate, among his own
people, and only a hundred yards from cottages
occupied by his tenants. Three armed murderers
had been lying in ambush some time un-
molested, and unmolested they retired after
the bloody deed. The Major had long been known
to be a doomed man, and on the fatal morning, we
are told, the whole neighbourhood had been in a
state of evident commotion, as if with the expecta-
tion of the horrible event. The same fatal mark,
of safe audacity, and a previous general presenti•
ment, characterise almost all the crimes reported.
The people are never surprised. The result fulfils
not only their ideas of what ought to be, but their
actual expectations. Long before the execution the
offender has been arraigned, his crime declared,
the verdict given, and the sentence pronounced.
The motive of fear is hardly enough to account for
so great and universal a concealment as that which
secures impunity to the murderer. Further, who
could read the addresses lately
,delivered at Holy-
cross, and compare them with recent events, with-
out being struck with their evident connexion ? The
murder of a hard-hearted landlord, that is of any one
whe should not surrender to the present occupier
the property of his land, was said to be a less
crime than the tyranny it revenged. There is
another still more painful sign of general complicity.
Major Mahon had been reprobated from the chapel
altars the very Sunday before his death, and abused
as a tyrant and an oppressor; thus adding one more
instance to hundreds proving the fearful import of
priestly denunciation. The Legislature fcr these two
years has dealt hard measures to the landowners, ex-
posing their estates to waste and their lives to danger.
It is now the time to meet an evil more serious even
than famine or pestilence. A murderous organization
is to be broken and suppressed. We feel very sure
that no measures, no powers, will he denied the
Minister, if they be only such as will really meet the
occasion. It has been the fault of former Coercion
Bills that they have been more vexatious than effecs
tive, and if passed, have rather disfigured the statute-
book than repressed crime. The evils, however, are now
undeniable, and as there exists the most unanimous
wish to strengthen the hands of the Executive, it rests
entirely with the Minister to say what shall be done.
If we may venture to anticipate his course, he will first
put in full force all the instruments of executing the
law already in the hands of Government. He will take
care that localities compromised in crime shall be
brought under the eye of the Executive ; and that,
when there is reason to ascribe a guilty knowledge,
accompanied with a general interest in the perpetra-
tion
of a crime, the accomplices shall gain nothing by
its accomplishment. lie will then safely ask that a
population which combines to resist and neutralize
the law shall be mulcted for a time of those constitu-
tional privileges proper only to the well-affected
citizen, and that' the law shall he adapted to a state of
intentional rebellion. The accomplice, the harbourer,
and the concealer should be treated according to their
several shares in the crime. We wish, too, that some
means could be devised that should make the priest
feel that responsibility to human law which he seems
in some cases to have forgotten to the Divine. In
this island, the least approach to an offensive personal
allusion in the mouth of the clergyman subjects him
to punishment. Extend the principle to Ireland,
where personal allusions are too generally the prelude
of death. Let the priest have some share in the re-
sponsibility of the crime which he has the credit of
commanding or foretelling. Whether this be done or
not, one thing is clear,—England will consent to none
but whole and effectual measures.
CHRONICLE.—If we have been rather less
shocked than some of our contemporaries on learning
the Papal condemnation of the new Irish colleges, it
is not that we are at all favourably inclined to the
principle of foreign eccle-iestical intervention in our
domestic affairs. We quite agree with those who
pronounce it an " impertinence' for an Italian eccle-
siastic, however respectable in personal character or
political status, to interfere in such a matter as the
secular instruction of British subjects, on British
territory, and under the provisions of a British Act
of Parliament. Nor are we disposed to bate a jot of
that ancient_ national protest, the gist of which is,
taheaatirGsrien her own
has the right to manage her own
rev?twhin way, and recognises no concurrent
jurisdiction
or potentate whatsoever. these realms, in any foreign prince
bound ttsoever. At the same time we
hardly feel
matter as some of
our neighbours
so very serious a face on the
n
two disagreeableaspercnt eighbours have done. Of the
jnwhich the business presents,
one is not, under e
circumstances, altogether
open to British criticism,:annd the other is of too fa-
obnoxious emotion. The
miliar a kind to excite
ma
obnoxious Papal rescript
pYiec, regardedaaiecsf
rdpo I Political
tahirrno inter-
s as
an irregular and offensive
ference b a foreign priecaen,
dor's'
point a
ecclesiastical assumption
mindedness. Lookinf
g at it in the former sacerdotal
view, we really do not see that we are ewnittTed to
say much. We have no right to quarrel
Pius IX. in his political capacity, for in thatheiapPacoiPtie-
we have not thought proper to recognise him.
we had regular diplomatic relations the elective
f
monarch of central Italy, we should certainly be
entitled to resent so palpable a breach of interna-
tional propriety as the attempt to prejudice a section
of our own community against an Act of our own
Legislature. As, however, we have deemed it wise
to know nothing of any such monarch or monarchy,
the Papal decree is, to us, nothing more than a sort
of private letter, addressed by an eminent foreign
divine to the heads of a religious community by
whom his opinion is held in peculiarly high esteem.
Viewed in this light, it is, of course, a fair subject
of criticism; and we need not say that we entirely
agree with those who have criticised it unfavourably.
We con
tsidete tlle opinion expressed in the document
sllhOtreetery mistaken one, founded on erroneous
rePmSeWionseand narrow ideas, and calculated to
retardthelerogress of intellectual and social improve-
ment. Wee.egret, likewise, to find that a potentate
with whotii'we • hive so in,
cm eandmany sympathies and inte-
restsl whose political character and

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