The Sun.
London, England, 1848-08-08 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 8, 1848.

LATEST FROM IRELAND.

[BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.]
DUBLIN, MONDAY ETBNING.
There is an insurrectionary movement near Abbey-
feale, supposed to be headed by O'Gorman.
Lord Hardinge is gone down to Kilkenny.
General Macdonald has removed his camp from
Thurles to Limerick.
Dr. West, Dr. M'Carron, Meany, and Brennan, are
fully committed for high treason.
Numerous arrests in Waterford and other, places.
—Chronicle.
The following is from our correspondent in
Dublin :

" DUBLIN, MONDAY EYENINO.

" The mid-day mail from the south reports the
continuance of tranquillity ; no further arrests had
been made. A letter, dated from Thurles, Sunday
three r.m., states that at one o'clock P.M. this day'
the light division under General Macdonald received
orders to proceed by railway to Limerick en route to
the county of Clare, where a rising is expected. The
tents were 'struck, baggage loaded, and the men off
the ground in one hour.' Another eccount states the
final destination of the column is supposed to be
Abbeyfeale, where O'Gorman is reported to be at
the head of an insurgent force.
"Lore Hardinge left town with his staff this
morning for Kilkenny. The Noble Viscount takes
command of the southern division. General Mac-
donald continues in the command of the moveable

column.
"Colonel Clark, late of the Scot Grays, and
Colonel Pennefather, have been appointed to tha staff
of Ireland.
"Among the arrests in Dublin are two American
sympathisers."— Times.

The Irish intelligence, that used to be so anxiously
looked for, has lost its chief interest since the capture
of Mr. SMITH O'BRIEN. True it is that Mr. IVIEA..
GIIER, Mr. DILLON, and Mr. DouENr, are still at
large, and that the police on more than one occasion
hare been in rather an unpleasaut proximity to the
latter ; but they are mere vulgar traitors compared
with the descendant of BRIAN BORHOIME, the would-
be King of Munster. There was a certain degree of
chivalrous generosity about Mr. O'BRIEN, which,
combined with his ancient descent, position in
society, pecuniary independence, and unques-
tionable enthusiasm, well qualified him to be-
come the leader of a revolution. He was, how-
ever, deficient in some of the characteristics most es-
sential for such a position, and chiefly he wanted that
stern and inflexible resolution, without which it
would be impossible to control and cement together
the conflicting elements, which are flung to the sur-
face in periods of popular excitement. There was too
much vacillation and want of decision in his conduct.
lie was also too tender hearted. lie would much
himself
than' endure the most aggravated sufferings
than: see the unfortunate dupes whom he had misled
victimisedtin consequence of having placed too implicit
a dependence upon his promises. This amiable
weakness (for weakness it may be oalledorneptahree to
of an insurgent leader, who should be prepared
sacrifice numbers of innocent persons to the benefit
of the cause,) affords the only probable solution of the
otherwise inexplioable circumstanoes attendant upon
his arrest. He could not possibly have hoped to
escape recognition and capture, when he determined
to proceed to Thurles, a town through which he
had repeatedly passed, in which he was well
known, and which ; was swarming with mili-
tary and police, all anxious to obtain
the large reward offered for his apprehension ;
and if by a vt acle he had succeeded in evading
detection pre-06 sto the starting of the train, how
\
could he hait*lgassed from the station at Limerick,
, where he was iiisiversally known, without the fact

1 4-4

being immediately made known to the constabulary,',
and his instant capture being the inevitable result?
In fact, he virtually surrendered himself; but, in
place of doing so withia good grace, and thereby re-
cording his submission and acknowledgment that the
rebellion had been completely crushed, he suffered
himself to be taken by the first person who
chanced to take advantage of his weakness.
There was, in all this, a total absence of
every selfish feeling—a self-devotion that in a
worthier cause would have been deserving of the
highest [commendation. He might have remained
concealed for many months in the mountain fastnesses
into which he had retreated. The peasantry would
never have betrayed or surrendered him who flung
himself upon their generosity, and they would have
braved all the consequences that might be incurred
for affording shelter and protection to the proscribed
traitor. But he himself shrunk from imposing so
painful an alternative upon the people. The procla-
mations which had been posted through-
out the oountry announced that, the] punishment
for harbouring a party charged with high treason
was death. He saw that, although the hospitality be
demanded was never refused, yet tilt it was given
with fear ani trembling, that he was an object of
terror, and he resolved to endure any penalty himself
rather than bring down exemplary punishment on his
humble hosts, more particularly when he despaired
of ultimate success. This led to his descent from the
mountains, and he would most probably have at once
surrendered himself, but that he feared it might be
regarded as an attempt to obtain a mitigation of the
penalties to which he was liable—a desertion of those
involved in the same desperate enterprise with him-
self. Hence the act itself, and the manner of it—his
determination no longer to remain concealed, and his
suffering himself to be captured rather than to sur-
render himself a prisoner.
It is said that it has been intimated that Mr.
O'Bitiett's trial will not take place during the present
Commission sitting in Dublin, that the only political
prisoners who will be tried on the present occasion
are those who were in custody under the Treason
Felony Act previous to the late outbreak. It may,
perhaps, be intended to try all the parties more
deeply implicated together, so soon as the
fugitives are made amenable to justice; perhaps
the prisoners concerned in the insurrection may be
kept as hostages for the tranquillity of the country.
Whatever may be the object for postponing the trials,
we trust most sincerely that mercy may be extended
to all the misguided men implicated as participators
in the insurrection. A general feeling appears to
exist that the law may be sufficiently vindicated
without the sacrifice of human life ; that the fairest
prerogative of the Crown may in this instance be
exercised, without any injury to the public in general.
There are many mitigating circumstances which
may reasonably be allowed their due weight.
Not a single one of the police, military, or of any
engaged in the cause of order, lost his life during the
entire transaction. Even the captured policeman,
who, on the day of the contest at Boulagh, was taken
prisoner, and brought before Mr. SMITH O'Batax,
was set at liberty, without the slightest injury being
inflicted upon him. Life and property were in every
instance respected. Now, although these facts cannot
possibly justify what has taken place, they may, un-
doubtedly, be regarded as extenuating circumstances,
more especially when it is infavorem vitce that they
are put forward, ' not as the ground of an acquittal,
but merely for the favourable consideration of the
Home Secretary, and the extension of clemency by
the Crown to the unresisting prisoners.
It is not, however, on these grounds that we
would mainly rest the case. It is on the
moral effect which the punishment, whatever
it may be, will have on the country. The
cruelties that took place in 1798 on the part of
the authorities greatly contributed to the atrocities
perpetrated on the rebel side. The hanging and the
flogging of parties concerned in, or suspected of,
treasonable practices led to the burning and the piking
of loyalists. Public executions led to private assas-
sination, which the ignorant and excited multitude
were taught to regard as justifiable reprisals on their
enemies. We trust that there may be no repetition
of these barbarities on either side—that the rebellion
of 1848 may not have the same sanguinary recollec-
tions attached to it that degraded every class of Irish-
men in 1798.

Further efforts, we observe, are making, among the
pretenders to morality, to enforce the injunctions of
Holy Writ by Acts of Parliament, or, as it has been
happily said by one of the town -councillors of Man-
chester, to render religion an inconvenience by placing
a municipal padlock on the conscience. According to
the police authorities of Rotherhithe, a little urchin
who vends a handful of figs for the purpose of buying
a crust for his Sunday's dinner is violating the prin-
ciples of Christianity. According to a wretched
minority in the House of Commons, it is sinful to
sell a mackerel five minutes after eleven o'clock en
Sunday morning, and equally sinful to draw a pint of
malt liquor before the chimes of one o'clock on the
same afternoon have sounded. Glasgow, or at least
a very moral proportion of the corporation of that city
—the very PECESNIFFS of Lanarkshire—wished a
few months back to signalise their orthodoxy by
putting a stop to all railway travelling on every
seventh day between their own locality and the
capital of Scotland. 1 kindred group of religionists
threaten to ride roughshod over the unfortunate citi-
zens of Manchester by endeavouring to close the
post-office for the space of twenty-four hours in the
course of every successive week, in that great mart,
from which the civilizing influences of commerce are
in a state of perpetual irradiation. Indeed, the spu-
rious morality of these worthies extends beyond the
boundaries of Lancashire—they have an ambition to
cast a huge wet blanket of sobriety over the
whole of the United kingdom. During the
course of last week a majority of - eighteen
against twelve of the town-councillors of Manchester
decided that a memorial be presented to the Post
master-General, praying that the post-office in that
city may be henceforth closed on Sundays. But that
there is an inherent impotence in this spirit of pig-
headed fanaticism, we should certainly be roused into
a paroxysm of indignation. Fortunately, however,
the bigotry which proceeds to acts of such exag-
gerated and Quixotic piety renders itself for ever
harmless by becoming inexpressibly ridiculous.
Nevertheless, as there are many who are doubtless
ignorant of the numerous and irrefutable arguments
by which this movement against what is erroneously
called the desecration of the Sabbath, is proved to be
preposterous—we may briefly recapitulate a few of
the most conspicuous. Among other things therefore it
must be remembered—That the Post-office is the me-
dium through which society is illumined by the esta-
blishment of a connecting link between town and
town, between county and county, between nation
and nation, and that consequently the stoppage of
that medium of communication would throw a tem-
porary darkness and estrangement among the various
divisions of the human family, not every hundred
years, not every decade, not every lustrum, not every
year, or every fortnight, but for the space of twelve
or twenty-four hours in the course of every seven
days—fifty-two times in the passage of the twelve
calendar months ! Besides which, it must not In
forgotten—That supposing the post delivery
were stopped on Sundays, people would
get their newspapers in defiance of the Government.
That twenty news-boys would, by that means, be
forced to labour on Sundays in the place of half a
dozen adult letter-carriers. That other classes, such
as druggists' apprentices, are compelled to attend to
business during church service, and no statistical
calculations have yet demonstrated that druggists'
apprentices are peculiar for their licentiousness. That
great misery, inconvenience, anxiety, and possibly
sometimes even ruin and life-long wretchedness,
might result from this interruption of correspondence.
That the present system of delivery promotes the
general emotions produced by social intercourse and
visible good fellowship—emotions eminently ap-
propriate to the day dedicated by Christianity to
the service of OMNIPOTENCE. That little annoyance,
comparatively speaking, might accompany the im-
pediment in its relation to the wealthier portions of
the population, but that, at the same time, one of the
sweetest boons, and certainly one of the most inno-
cent pleasures of the poorer classes—that of cor-
responding
brightness,
each
theothe other,
lightand of f
friend preserving,
p an din l allve
its
original
in the midst of the darkness of their daily labour and
continual impoverishment—would be effectually, and,

,c. some instances, permanently, interrupted. For
1 Sunday is the only day on which a vast majority of
1 the labouring classes can find leisure for letter-writing,
and even for the minor occupation of letter-reading.
We must confess, however, without any mental re-
servation whatever, that we have not patience to con-
tinue the catalogue of arguments against this ridicu-
lous and extravagant sham of religion. On former
occasions we have insisted that it is impossible to
make men moral by Act of Parliament. We reiterate
that assertion ; and we maintain, that—once com-
menced—there would be no end to this legalised and
really demoralising morality. If the Legislature
were to prevent the running of railway trains, the
delivery of letters and newspapers, the selling of
mackerel, and the retailing of malt liquor on all Sun-
days, as a desecration of the Sabbath punishable by
the law, we should ultimately have penalties
inflicted on the shoe-black and the coachman, on the
scullery wench and the butler, on the kitchen-maid
who shelled the peas for the dinner table, and the
under cook who toasted the muffins for tea. The
men who agitate such outrageous questions as these
—blowing their little penny trumpets of virtue at the
street corners, after the fashion of the Pharisees—are
foremost among those who make religion contemp-
tible, and render the otherwise seductive and majestic
doctrines of Christianity ridiculous and repulsive.

SPAIN.

Madrid journals of the 2d instant have arrived.

The Gacete publishes an official notification of the
appointment of Senor MoN as Ambassador Extra-
ordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Vienna.

The contract between the Bank and the Govern-
ment has been rescinded. The necessities of the
Government require advances which the Bank is now
unable to make ; it on the contrary requires support
itself from the Government. The latter paid the
Bank a commission of 14 per cent., which gave the
Bank a profit of 10 millions (180,0001.) a year, but
the inducement to do this was the facility of obtain.
ing advances, and as this has ceased, the Government
will henceforth collect the re►enue through their own
agents, and by the machinery which existed before
the contracts with the Bank commenced.

There appear to have been recently some Carlist
movements on the banks of the Ebro, as the Gaeta
publishes a dispatch from the Captain-General of
Valencia, announcing the defeat of a Carlist band,
with the loss of one killed and several wounded. It
is said that CABRERA has crossed the Ebro, and that
he will commence operations in the provinces of Va-
lencia and Arragon.
MADRID BOLSA, AUG. 9.—The Three per Cents.
have rallied to-day, and aro 19f buyers, sellers.
Fire per Cents. were done at 10i cash, and remain
at that price. Passive Debt, 37 buyers, 4 sellers; and
the Foreign ditto, 31 sellers. Coupons not quoted.
Bank Shares are 50 sellers, and the discount on Bank
notes has risen to 8 and 81 per cent.

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