The Sun.
London, England, 1833-07-29 00:00:00

paper, and refused to appear at the bar of the
House to answer for his conduct. It is matter
of history—and the voice of history ought not
to be uninstructive—that the House having
made a second order, calling on Wilks to
appear at the bar on a particular day, and
finding that he was resolute in his determina-
tion not to obey the mandate, saw no other way
of getting out of the difficulty of its own creation
than to adjourn over the day fixed on for his appear-
ance. The order being thus dropped, never was
renewed, so the contumacious Press went on pub-
lishing the debates, and, after a sleep of upwards of
sixty years, the standing order against reporting the
speeches of Members is attempted to be practically
revived, and that too by a champion of liberty—
who is indebted for whatever fame or popular in-
fluence he possesses entirely to the prodigal indul-
gence of the Press. If to report the debates at all
be a violation of privilege, it follows that the more
accurate the reports are, the more direct and pal-
pable the breach of privilege is. It might be ar-
gued that incorrect reports do not transgress the
standing order, because they do not in reality send
forth to the public that which has passed in the
House. But no such palliative argument can be
urged in favour of reports which are chargeable
with the guilt of correctness and the crime of
fidelity. Is it not inconsistent and absurd that
Members of the House of Commons should com-
plain of inaccuracy in reports of their speeches,
when they denounce the most correct reporting
as a breach of privilege, and arrogate to them-
selves a right of visiting the offence of being scru-
pulously correct with penal consequences ? There
is no tyranny so odious or oppressive as one
under popular forms. If the House of Commons
ever becomes tyratinical,it will be the worst tyranny
that England ever saw. The possibility of the
popular branch of the Legislature coming in colli-
sion, at some future time, with the people to whom
it owes its existence, is a prospect which we do riot
like to contemplate. Such an event would carry
with it a long train of calamities to the country ;
but we cannot help thinking that those Members
are ignorantly and unadvisedly forcing on such an
event, who vindictively draw from its antique scab-
, bard the rusty sword of privilege, to cut down the
liberty of the press. When Mr. O'Connell de-
scended from die situation of a senator, to enter
into the details of printing offices, and made state-
ments touching an alleged reduction in the salaries
of parliamentary reporters, which, so far as we
know, had no foundation in fact, we did not con-
, sider the matter worthy of serious discussion. But
the case now assumes a different aspect. The
champion of liberty, for the gratification of hisown
personal feelings, strikes at the very life of public
opinion—for, if the mere' reporting debates be
treated as a breach of privilege, to comment on
them must be a high contempt of Parliament. As
to his quarrel with the reporters, we shall merely
observe, diet there are among that body men of
education, and gentlemen, who are as incapable of
falsifying the debates, as they are of submitting to
unmerited obloquy, or despotic domination.—Mora-
lug Herald.

The spirit of Mr. O'Connell's present undertaking
is in keeping with the whole course of his actions on
his own theatre, at the other side of the water. In
Ireland his single aim has been to make every man
his subservient slave. Free agency there, or even
the most direct vindication of personal independence,
is treason against the dynasty of Derrinane Abbey.
Abuse is the general weapon of the leader of mobs.
He who shows the least resistance in Ireland is tor-
mented by systematic calumny, until its frequent
and brazen repetition begins to stagger the better
knowledge of the injured person's friends, whose
original disbelief of the fiction gives way to doubt,
or finally, perhaps, to acquiescence ; the self-confi-
dence and moral courage of the victim himself are
gradually shaken, until, in utter despair of a suc-
cessful self-defence against one who boasts of his
6,000,000 of satellites, the best man in the commu-
nity may at length degenerate into a wretched brow-
beaten subject, nay tool, of this ignoble tyranny. Such
are the means by which, in numerous cases, sabmis-
sion has been brought about among the Irish people.
The learned autocrat plumes himself on having " put
down" the Dublin reporters, and intimates that he
will be equally victorious here. His Dublin
triumphs have furnished him, we suspect, with but
a miserable measure for the press of London. He
may have moulded his anti-union meetings in Ireland,
composed of his own creatures, to any purpose,
however foolish or offensive, that might suit him;
but will he be equally clever with the Imperial
House of Commons ? Will he succeed in dragging
the Parliament of the empire through the dirt, and
making it the instrument of his own vengeance,
upon parties whom he has one reason certainly (but
no other) for hating—viz., that he has wantonly
injured and insulted them ? Mr. O'Connell's rage
has extinguished what little judgment nature ever
gave him, or he must have seen that in this last
attack upon the press he was pursuing a moral im-
possibility. Grant that he may so far prevail on the
House of Commons to stultify itself as to issue an
order that all speeches shall be published verbatim,
—what follows ? Why, unquestionably, that there
can be no more reports. Grant again that an
order proceeds from the chair for all speeches to
be " fairly" reported. What, again, is the opera-
tion of such an order ? That the reports will be
just what they have been hitherto—the best that
the gentlemen who frame them have, in the exercise
of their extraordinary patience, vigilance, and in-
dustry, been able to produce, abridged only by the
employment of their best discretion. And if dis-
cretion be at all consulted, whose but that of the re-
porters themselves can be appealed to? It is their
general interest, and that of their respective journals,
to give the most ample and the most faithful ac-
count of all proceedings that take place in Parlia-
ment—as much fulness as the space of a newspaper
will afford, and as much fidelity as is consistent
with that essential condition. That these obliga-
tions have in the main been fulfilled,so as fiot merely
to merit the approval of Members of Parlia-
ment of all parties, but to excite their astonish-
ment, has been recorded everywhere. It is not
a twelvemonth, to the best of our recollec-
tion, since this Irish disturber himself admitted

that his speeches had been as fully reported,
and had occupied as large a portion of the newspa-
pers, as his influence and position in the House
of Commons entitled him to. Then what can have
happened since to alter those feelings towards the
Learned Gentleman which secured for him such an
ample measure of courtesy so short a period back ?
Literally nothing that we know of, nor do we be-
lieve in our hearts that any of those gentlemen who
report debates, and who have been so shockingly in-
sulted by Mr. O'Connell, ever once conceived that
he had the slightest ground of just complaint
against them. But in what condition stands the
man himself who deafens the House of Commons
with his attacks on others ? Is he not at this mo-
ment in the act of circulating a letter to solicit sub-
scriptions for shares in a new paper, whose regular
occupation will, no doubt, be threefold—first,
to run amuck at all the property and institu-
tions of the country—second, to vomit forth,
every four-and-twenty hours, the most spiteful
and foul mouthed abuse of this Journal —third,
to bolster up by every possible expedient, the name
and projects of Mr. Daniel O'Connell himself, its
chief proprietor ? What chance of upright and im-
proved reports may be contemplated on behalf of
Members of Parliament enlisting themselves under
such high auspices, it is not for us to anticipate ; but
some key may be furnished to the secret motive of
the Learned Gentleman for thus assaulting establish-
ments already in ex'stence by recollecting the cld
maxim about rival shops. Let us not be misunder-
' stood. Our disposition is what it has always been,
to correct every error which, from whatever cause,
may be imputable to the journal. We can appeal
to many Members of Parliament for the cerrectness
of this statement, and, as the following correspon-
dence will show, we may confidently appeal to Mr.
O'Connell himself, The correspondence refers to