The Sun.
London, England, 1840-09-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNA

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY,
(From the Courier.)
A keen controversy is being carried on by two of our
Evening Contemporaries as to the means, which at the
present conjuncture of affairs at home and abroad,
might be adopted with safety and likelihood of success
for allaying, if not completely extinguishing, that spirit
of fierce and baneful agitation which is raging in Ireland.
Now whatever diversity of opinion may prevail with regard
to the precise line of conduct Ministers ought to pursue
for the purpose of effecting so desirable an object as the
suppression of Repeal agitation, there can, we think, be
but one opinion entertained by impartial observers, and
that one of unqualified disapprobation of the impolicy,
riot to say guiltiness, of the course they have hitherto
adopted regarding it, characterised as that has been by
a slavish submission on their parts to the will, and cul-
pable connivance at the designs of the originator of the
mischievous and treasonable project. It may be, as the
evening organ of the Government intimates, that any
attempt at checking its progress would be attended with
danger to the public peace, and that interference would
aggravate to mischief those now "harmlessly" engaged
in exciting seditious feelings amongst their countrymen ;
if that were always the rule, bow did it happen, we should
like to know, that a similar course had not been last
year adopted towards Chartism and Chartist agitation ?
But history furnishes us with a still more forcible and
unequivocal proof that the " dignified abstinence" main-
tained by the Irish Government on the subject of Repeal
agitation, is solely ascribable to the necessities of the
Whig Cabinet, and the precariousness of its position ;
for when agitation for such a purpose, and with such
,ivowed objects, was first started in 1831, the Whigs
of that day (how changed!) denounced it, issued
Royal Proclamations against it, indicted, ay and
convicted on charges of sedition, the arch-agitator
end his accomplices—and finally succeeded, by the
use of these stringent and vigorous measures,
,n suppressing it. Can a stronger case of culpable
neglect, or a contrast that involves greater turpi-
tude and degeneracy, be imagined than what these facts,
when compared with their present course of conduct,
establ.sh against them? The character, origin, and aim,
of that system of agitation which threatens to con-
vulse Ireland, and fire the great bulk of her popu-
lation with feelings of hatred and hostility against this
country, are identically the same at the moment we
write, as they were when Lord Anglesey filled the of-
fice of Viceroy, and indignantly denounced its authors
and abettors. The very persons that were then dragged
to the bar of justice, who, with the hope of escaping the
penalty, pleaded guilty to a violation of the law, are the
same that are now engaged in prosecuting the revived
scheme of Repeal: and yet how different is the
treatment they now experience from aWhig Government
to that which then thwarted their purposes and baffled
their designs. Now the Whig Government maintains a
dogged and sullen silence—then it took the earliest
opportunity and most efficacious means of denouncing,
the wicked confederacy, and of expressing its determi-
nation to crush it, even though the effort might pro-
voke a civil war. What a painful and degrading contrast
between the vigour of Lord Anglesey's Irish Adminis-
tration, and the weakness and timidity of Lord Ebring-
ton's ! but not a whit more degrading or more striking
than the difference between the mode the Grey Cabinet
adopted of manifesting its insuperable abhorrence to
Repeal agitation, and its determination to subdue it at
any cost or risk, and the paltry and cowardly course
pursued under precisely similar circumstances by Lord
Melboerne and his colleagues.
(From the Globe.)
The Manchester Chronicle contains a very long report
of a great Protestant meeting, held in that town, at
which a clergyman (the Rev. Mr. Hall) presided. That
the speakers might be in no danger of interruption,
but that they might hive it all their own way, and thus
send forth to the world, uncontradicted, the inflam-
matory statements they made to the assembly, and
which they expressed themselves most amusingly an-
'Liens should be printed and published, the necessary
precaution was taken, and " the admission to the
Exchange was by tickets only ; for the purpose," says
the report, "of preventing the admission of improper
characters ; there being at the same time an understood
pledge that the parties to whom they were delivered
would refrain from addressing the meeting, or in any
way conducting themselves so as to cause disturbance or
confusion, a precaution rendered necessary by former
proceedings at public meetings held at the Corn
Exchange with similar objects." The Rev. T.
D. Gregg was the great gun of this meeting,
and fully sustained his reputation as the most in-
veterate vilifier of Roman Catholicism who ever ap-
peared on that or any other stage. Having alluded to
• the prevalence of commercial distress in Manchester and
in other [arts of the kingdom, he had the temerity to
attribute this calamity, the source of so much privation
and suffering among the labouring classes, on which he
dwelt for a considerable time,to the displeasure of Heaven
(loon the land and its rulers for their toleration of
Popery ; and having read the curses denounced by
Moses against the Israelites, as the punishments of (Es-
' obedience, actually paraphrased and applied those de-
nunciations to England and Ireland ; and insisted that
all those evils were in course of being poured out upon
those nations, and could only be averted by the exter-
mination of Popery ! Of all the approaches to a blas-
phemous accommodation and perversion of sacred writ
which it has been our lot to hear or read, whether
from the lips or pens of the most wild fanatics or the
most inveterate infidels, we never read any composi-
tion more calculated to lower the dignity and pollute
the sanctity of Scripture, than is this rhapsody of the
Rev. T. D. Gregg. The design of this incendiary
paraphrase was as opposed to the purpose of the
sacred wrAer as it was at variance with the func-
tions of the ranting bigot, who thus desecrated the
office and influence of a Christian minister, when
e\,rnivvphelasottymwingogoo: d the
be worstothstota, passions,
the cause of faction, by
issld
i.o,nsanind thelresge jarbeuornf
alltsolwinheiscsh.
b:azon forth imprudent and indefensible expressions,
uttered by some bigotted and besotted Papist against
the Protestant Church, say, if they found in any such
speech, such language, ?mantis nuttandis,as the following,
which the Rev. T. D. Gregg used in the speech before
us ?—" Popish chapels are the rendezvous o„ f criminals ;
there murders are contrived and concocted t Popery
is an abomination ; offensive in the sight of God, and
destructive to mankind, and the cause of all the mi-
series in Ireland."—".The priests continue to maintain
their sway by darkness and terrorism." We might
multiply extracts, containing expressions equally offen-
sive and irritating, because applied to that for which
every man, whatever be his creed, professes a strong at-
tachment—the religion on which he founds his hopes of
happiness hereafter, and the affection for the persons
and character of time minister on whose inteructious hg
relies as worthy his attention and regard,