The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-14 00:00:00

tistning UAL

LONDON, MONDAY, DEUEMBEII 14, 1846.

We have received information that an order
was forwarded, on Saturday to the Tower, from
the Board of Ordnance, directing a troop of artil-
lery to be dispatched to Ireland forthwith. The alarm-
ing condition of the people in that country, and
the frequent recurrence of outrages in many districts,
justifies the Executive in taking immediate and
strenuous measures for the protection of life and the
preservation of the peace. Our accounts,
published in another column, present a
fearful catalogue of murders and robberies; and, '
from the frightful starvation which is now afflict-
ing the peasantry, there are no lack of incite-
ments to insubordination. On Friday, it will be
remembered, we published the account of nine
deaths from famine, and every additional packet cor-
roborates the impressions which have been all along
entertained as to the destitution in Ireland. 'We
trust, however, that intimidation will be sufficient to
restore the population to a sense of their duty, and to
an obedience to the law.

Of all commodities, ancient and modern, we believe
the one most rare and difficult to be obtained is the
whole truth upon any Irish subject. Isolated Irish
facts—that is portions of the whole truth—we have
upon almost every Irish matter; but a fullin
examina-
tion of any Irish subject, conducted from beginning
to end with exact and unshrinking truth, irrespective
of all consequences, is just as rare now as in the days
of GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS.
Whenever, therefore, any investigation of an Irish
question has taken place which has the slightest ap-
pearance of having been conducted in the above
manner—so common in England, so rare in Ireland—
we conceive it to be a paramount duty of the press,
ai the great advisers of the nation, to publish the
matter, to discuss it, and to endeavour thereby to
grasp some plank of truth, however slight, which may
possibly assist in extricating that unhappy country
from the ocean of misery which at present threatens
to overwhelm it.

To be thoroughly acquainted with the Act of
Union between Great Britain and Ireland—to be
perfectly aware of all the obligations imposed by that
great international compact, is the paramount duty
of every British senator; for the whole case
of Ireland must be discussed and decided upon
immediately after the assembling of Parliament.
Yet how few of our legislators are instructed upon
this important subject; how few are aware even of
the fact that such things as articles of union between
Great Britain and Ireland actually exist, and are the

terms and conditions upon which the treaty of union
was agreed to, and ratified by the two kingdoms.
A long and elaborate argument on the nature and
proper construction of the treaty of union has been
lately made at the registration court of Clones, in the
county of Monaghan; the argument is reported in
several Irish papers, and, amongst others, in the
Leinster Express of the sth of this month. It is de-
serving of attentive consideration; for if the argument
does not contain that grand desideratum in Irish
matters, the whole truth, a careful consideration of the
matters discussed in it will be extremely likely to
lead a calm and dispassionate reasoner to the disco-
very of the whole truth upon this most important
subject.
The case to which we allude is short, simple, and
striking. Mr. ELLIS, of the Irish bar, as counsel for
a person of the name of JACKSON, applied to hare his
client placed upon the roll of Parliamentary electors
for the county of Monaghan as a forty-shilling
freeholder in fee, notwithstanding the Act of the 10th
GEORGE IV., C. 8, which abolished the forty-shilling
franchise in fee. In support of his case Mr. ELLIS
proved that his client was possessed of land in fee
within the county of the value of forty shillings
yearly—gave in evidence the Acts of Parliament de-
claratory of the existence of the forty-shilling fran-
chise in England—read the sixth article of the legis-
lative union, which covenants that from the first day of
January, 1801, the subjects of Great Britain and Ire-
land shall be entitled to the same privileges, and
showed that the treaty of union did not contain any
proviso authorising the alteration of this covenant.
Having made these proofs, Mr. ELLIS argued at
great length that the Imperial Parliament is bound to
maintain unaltered (except in cases of extreme neces-
sity) such covenants in the treaty of union—such
covenants being, in point of fact, the stipulated price
agreed to be paid by England to Ireland in exchange
for her independent legislature ; and that every Act
of Parliament, passed since the legislative union, is t.)
be read as if it contained a proviso that nothing con-
tained in it should be construed to alter or annul any
matter finally agreed upon and settled by the articles
of union.

If this argument be correct—if all past Union Acts
of Parliament should be read with this understood
proviso, no doubt that portion of the Act of the 10th
GEORGE IV., c. 8, which abolished the Irish forty-
shilling franchise in fee, is null and void, and the
right to this franchise exists in Ireland precisely as it
exists at present in England.

The entire question plainly hinges upon the al-
leged unalterable nature (except in extreme cases) of
those portions of the articles of union for the
alteration of which no provision has been made
by the treaty of union. This is a question
of strict law, which we propose to discuss
hereafter; at present we shall merely attempt to show
what would be the result of the establishment of Mr.
ELms's proposition, reserving the consideration of the
law, and also of the fairness and honesty of the cases
for a future occasion.

If these articles of the union be legally unalterable
—if the united Legislature be bound to maintain
them, except in those extreme cases of national neces-
sity when all covenants must give way, if required,
to preserve the State ; and if a decision to this effect
shall be given in this case by the legal tribunals of
the country, such a decision will declare her MAJESTY'S
Irish subjects entitled, as a right,.to every civil privi-
lege, benefit, and advantage of every kind, to which
her MAJESTY'S British subjects are entitled ; and will
set aside, as null and void, every Parliamentary
enactment that attempts to take from Irishmen any
civil right or privilege which is not also taken uno
flatu from Englishmen.
We shall sincerely rejoice at such a result; it
would remove the great cause of Irish agitation, it
would make Ireland truly a part of the British em-
pire, sharing with us in all our political advantages
If the results of such a decision stopped here we
should rejoice at it, and consider the united empire
strengthened and consolidated by such results ; but
they would not stop here.
If our judicial tribunals should decide that those
articles of union, for the alteration of which no pro-
vision has been made in the treaty of union, are not to
be altered, except in the last resort of national dan-
ger, then the crowns, kingdoms, and parliaments of
Great Britain and Ireland are legally indivisible;
for the first three articles of the Act of Union declare
that the crowns, kingdoms, and parliaments of Great
Britain and Ireland shall be for ever united, and no
provision for the repeal or alteration of any
portion of the three first articles of union,
at any time, is made in any part of
the treaty of union ; the same decision,
therefore, that would decree the Irish people, by
virtue of the sixth article of union, entitled to every
civil right, privilege, benefit, and advantage, which is
enjoyed by the people of England, would also decree
the union to be indissoluble; and would thus, by one
memorable judgment, declare the British Parliament
incompetent to repeal the Union, or to enact or re•
taro any law which would make such repeal desirable
to any one except the wildest and most insane en-
thusiasts ; for, beyond doubt or question, the agitation
that has for ages desolated Ireland derives its exist-
ence from injustice inflicted. upon that country—it is
the spawn of our own wrong. Put an end to that
wrong, and the agitation caused by it must neces
sarily cease. Irish agitation holds the same relation-
ship to Irish wrongs that the fabled Hamadryad held to
its native oak—the blow that felled the one dismissed
its attendant spirit to the winds.

Hitherto we have abstained from commenting
upon the very disgraceful circumstances of the action
brought against Lord MAIDSTONE,III the Court of
Exchequer, on the 2d ultimo, by Mrs. SARAH
FRANCES CROCKFORD. We considered that the re-
port of that singular trial, published in our columns,
that the straightforward exposition of the Learned
Counsel for the plaintiff, that the ready and
decisive verdict delivered by the jury, rendered any
observations as to the merits of the transaction
altogether superfluous. The statement of the facts
was the crimination of the defendant. It required no
elucidation to prove that the debt of 961., in the non-
payment of which amount the action had originated,
was voluntarily incurred by Lord MAIDSTONE; that
any evasion of such liabilities subjected him to the

penalties of a defaulter, and that the pleas entered by

the legal advisers of the Noble Lord were
gross aggravations of his original culpability.
Every one must have recognised, without any par-

titular explanation from the press—without the tom•
ments of Mr. HUMPHREY—without even the emphatic
negation uttered by the Lord Chief Baron himself,
that the/refusal of Lord MAIDSTONE to liquidate the
sum claimed because " the house in question was a
common gaming-house," was a discourteous, a
flagitious, a shameless, and, we will say so,
a shuffling prevarication. Every one must
have recognised this without any adventitious
assistance, because no quibble, however adroit, could
deceive the public judgment in a matter so remark-
ably notorious.
When the celebrated Orockford's Club-house, in
Pall-mall, was first projected, in 1824, it immediately
acquired the character which it maintained till
the recent decease of its founder. That character,
we will admit, was unquestionably not the
most enviable or unimpeachable, but it was a
character which would still have rendered the im-
putation cast by Lord MAIDSTONE upon the dead
principal essentially libellous and actionable. It must
not be forgotten that the members of Crockford's

(numbering between four and five hundred individuals)
were men moving in the highest ranks of the nobility,
men who, in many instances, have become remarkable
for their wisdom, and who, in many cases, had ac-
quired for themselves a name of unimpeachable in-
tegrity. They were statesmen, not sharpers : they
were members of our national Legislature, not
swindlers and blacklegs. They were such men as the
Dukes of WELLINGTON, BUCCLEUCH, RUTLAND, and
ARGYLE, such men as Lords SCARBOROUGH
and STUART DB ROTHSAY, not the villanous
and abandoned persons Lord MAIDSTONE
would render them by his aspersions upon
the establishment. It is indisputable that the

illegal and odious passion for gambling there found
opportunities for its exercise ; that the lust of play
was ministered to by the deleterious atmosphere of
that society ; that the roulette ball and the dice-box
were not forbidden to the frequenters, It is even
notorious that the magnificent appurtenances of