The Sun.
London, England, 1848-10-14 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1848.

The trial of Mr. T. B. M‘Mastus was concluded
on Thursday. The jury having heard the reply of
the Solicitor- General on behalf of the Crown, and
the charge of the Lord Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas, retired for three hours, and returned into
Court with a verdict of " guilty " on the first count,
thus convicting the unfortunate gentleman of the
principal treason laid to his charge, the levying war
upon her MAJESTY, by attacking the police force who
took shelter is the Widow CORMACK'S house, at
Boulagh Common. Like their brethren who sat
upon the case of Mr. SMITH O'BRIEN, the jury ac-
companied their verdiCt by a strong and unanimous
recommendation of the prisoner to the mer-
ciful consideration of the Crown—a recommenda-
tion which, we doubt not, will receive that
attentive consideration from the Executive which
it so fully deserves, and which is only due to the
highly respeotaPle gentlemen who honestly and COD.
scienttensly discharged the painful duty imposed upon
them. It is, indeed, deplorable to find a gentleman
of aaimpeachable private character, who was enabled
to produce witnesses as to his general conduct and
reputation, such as those that appeared on his behalf
in the witness-box, involved in such fearful conse-
quences. Mr. M‘MaNus bad for many years carried
on business at Liverpool with the utmost integrity
and probity, earning for himself a handsome in-
come, and gaining golden opinions from all with
whom he had been in any degree connected. England
was the rand of his adoption. He was received as
freely and permitted to exercise his trade as fully and
beneficially as if he had himself been of English
firth and origin. No person could have better ap-
preciated the happy results of that union, which
placed such advantages within the reach of every
Irishman who chose to avail himself thereof, than

lam4elf. He was surrounded by all the indications
of mercantile and manufacturing activity. Trade
S I` doll feitivnerce flourished on every side, and the town
_ bic he resided maintained an almost daily in-
ur'' sf, ith every part of the civilized world. How
'l,'";3- t ight have contrasted the prosperity and
indistry. • ich he witnessed in the home of his
- chance grit the distress and poverty, the listless idle-
-
ss_ that prevailed in his native land. How clearly
• aught be have learned that the true mode ofpromoting

the welfare and happiness of Ireland was to cement
more closely the bonds by which the countries were
united—to make them in every repect one nation and
one:people, with a unity of interests, and equal rights,
equal laws, and equal privileges for the inhabitants
of both islands. Unhappily for himself, he took a
different view of affairs, his imagination was excited, ,
his sounder judgment misled by exaggerated and dis-
torted visions of Irish nationality depicted by mis-
taken enthusiasts. With a disinterestedness worthy
of praise in a better cause, he staked his all upon
what he was lad to believe was the cause of his
country, he stood the hazard of the die, and the lot
has been decided against him. Although we may
condemn the acts of such a man, it is impossible not
to sympathize with his melancholy fate, and to desire
that his life may be spared, that he may have an
opportunity of learning the folly and the wickedness
of the course he has pursued.
The reasons which we have already urged at con-
siderable length in Mr. O'BRIEN's case will also
apply to that of Mr. M'MANus, and if mercy is ex-
tended to the former, as we hope and believe it will
be, it cannot be withheld from the latter. Indeed, if
there could be a distinction taken it would be in
favour of Mr. M‘MAisus. Mr. O'BRIEN had been for
some time in the field as an agitator—but the name
of Mr. M'MArius was little known, and had scarcely
attracted attention, until the foolish speech which he '
made at Liverpool induced the authorities to place
him under the surveillance of the police. It should
be borne in mind that on his trial he most emphati-
cally repudiated any connexion with the Chartists,
and that the law officers of the Crown acknowledged
the justice of the disavowal. There is nothing,
therefore, to aggravate his guilt. He desired political
changes, which he would hare been fully justified in
seeking, had he restricted himself within constitu-
tional bounds. He however, unfortunately for him-
self, transgressed the limits sanctioned by the law,
but in doing so he neither injured nor desired to in-
jure the persons or properties of his fellow-citizens.
We are happy to find that the people of Ireland
are not idle under the present circumstances, but that
measures have been adopted to support the recom-
mendation of the juries, and to express the unani-
mous feeling of all classes in society in favour
of a humane and merciful decision. A meeting was
held in Dublin on Thursday, which was most nu-
merously and influentially attended, a t which a
memorial was adopted in favour of Mr. SMITH
O'Buinx (the result of Mr. APMexus's case not being
then known). A committee was also appointed to
obtain signatures thereto, and a deputation to wait
upon his Excellency the Lord-Lieutenant, for the
double purpose of ascertaining, whether there was
any truth in a rumour that had been circulated that
the warrant had already been dispatched for
Mr. O'BRilN's execution, and also when he
would be prepared to receive the memorial.
Seven gentlemen, one of them the Lord Mayor of
Dublin, five Members of Parliament, and another
gentleman who took an active part in calling the
meeting, constituted the deputation. The interview
with his Excellency was of a very satisfactory
character. It was clearly ascertained that no war-
rant had been transmitted ; indeed, his Excellency
characterised the rumours in that respect as "being
utterly false and unfounded." He also stated "that
he would be ready to receive the deputation to pre-
sent the memorial, as soon as it was signed to the
extent desired." There is, therefore, every proba-
bility of a successful termination to the humane
labours of the advocates of mercy, but should they on
that account relax in their exertions ? By no
means—any want of energy or apparent indifference
as to the result may be most erroneously inter-
preted. There should be a general manifestation, as
well from the people of England as of Ireland, and
every subject of the United Kingdom should have
cause to bless the mild and beneficent rule of our
most Gracious SOVEREIGN, who, at the very period
when other nations are convulsed, and thrones and
old-established dynasties crumbling to atoms, can af-
ford to show mercy to those convicted of an attempt
to levy war against her MAJESTY, to alter the es-
tablished constitution of the realm by force of arms.

Democracy is charged with crimes, with blood,
with pillage, with incendiarism, and all abomination.
The index-finger of horror is pointed at the assassi-
nation of LATOUR, at the murder of LAMBERG, at
the massacres in Sicily, at the butcheries in Frank-
fort, at the insurrection against the Prussian Govern-
ment, at the sanguinary battle which raged in Paris
daring the four terrible days of June, at the smoul-
dering ruins of the Chateau d'Eau, at the bonfires
around the vice-regal palace of Palermo, at the dese-
crated cathedral of Vienna, at the ashes of the dead
killed at Pos. n, at the bones of the CrJatians whiten-
ing on the plains of Hungary, at the mausoleums of
♦enerable martyrs, like Dams ArFah, the Arch-
bishop, at all the tokens of the popular outbreaks which
have ravaged the face of Europe from one extre-
mity to the other since the first explosion of re-
volution in February. All these atrocities are
levelled against the cause of democracy ; their hideous
details are given with the most scrupulous minute-
ness; one pamphleteer recounts how the "Sicilian
savages" roasted their prisoners to death at slow fires,
and then devoured them with the gusto of Carribsans;
another enlarges upon the exquisite tortures resorted
to during the slaughter in the streets of Frankfort-
on-the-Maine, where the tongues of soldiers were
torn up by the roots, where their eye-balls were bored
out of the sockets, and where the agonies of disso-
lution were prolonged by the fiendish caution of the
insurgent populace. These infamous deeds are re-
iterated again and again, and we are asked how can
we continue to feel any sympathy whatever in the
progress of what is called the popular movement.
One of the Tory journalists, indeed, has gone so far
as to exclaim tauntingly—" The admirers of demo-
cracy had need be men of strong nerves, comprehen-
sive views, and not over delicate sensibilities." It is
expected that we, the admirers of democracy, unless
sustained by these strong nerves, comprehensive
views, and not over delicate sensibilities, must recant
our political faith ; and that, scared by the inhuman
devilries of the rabble, we must throw up the cause of
democracy, and fall back into the arms of Conserva-
tive Absolutism. So far from this being the effect
produced upon ourselves by the atrocities perpetrated
in the course of the great continental revolutions of
1848—our devotion to the cause of democracy is only
confirmed by that rapine, by that blood-guiltiness, by
those awful and appalling murders, the murders, the
blood-guiltiness, and the rapine resulting from the
revolutions.

And this, because we regard the crimes of the
people as wholly and solely attributable to the crimi-
nal Governments against which they have raised the
red hand of rebellion. If the people are sanguinary,
it is because their tyrannous rulers have inured them
to sternness and implacability. If the mob are cruel,
it is because their masters have set before them ex-
amples of cruelty—examples, too, extending back-
wards over many past generations. If the populace
imbrue their hands in blood for a few hours or a few
days—the minions of absolutism had done so before
them during a succession of many dismal centuries.
The people have been tutored to these acts of inhu-
manity, and their tutors have done a thousand theses in
cold blood what they are now doing in a momentary
paroxysm of wrath. Besides which we can never
forget that noble metaphor about the agonie3 of a
revolution, uttered by the historian MACAULAY, where
he argues that a nation oppressed by tyranny, is like
a man possessed by a devil; and that in the exorcism
of that great Devil of Despotism the whole body of
the nation must, by necessity, be wracked and torn
by throes almost as terrible as those of dissolution.
We rejoice whenever that evil spirit is expelled from
a nation, even though the expulsion be accompanied
by those stormy and distracting pangs. The terrors,
the crimes, and the infamies by which that grand
political exorcism is attended, are attributable, not to
the body itself, but to the Devil by which
that body has been possessed. Away, then,
with these miserable prevarications, these dastardly
slanders, and ignominious inuendoes! Away, then,
with these sentimental lamentations for kingcraft
dethroned and reprobate, alien and vagabond on the
face of the globe ! Away, then, with these calumnies
on the people—on the people abused and outraged
even in the solemn moments when they are vindi-
cating their independence, and calling up from the
stubborn grave of ages the beautiful Genius of their
nationality I
Hitherto it has been the custom to bewail the mu-
tability of royal fOitunes, and to moralise over the

vicissitudes of those who have been expelled from
the scenes of their pomp and authority, from the time
of TARQUINIIIS SUPEREUS down to the days of
Louis Pninirrir. We have cried out from one
generation to another almost in the language of
CICERO :—" 0 fallacem heminum spese, fragilemque
fortunam, et inanes nostras contentienes quce in
media spatio :cape franguntur, et corruunt, et ante
in ipso cursu obruuntur, quam portum conspicere
potuerunt." When the Imperial and Royal fortunes
of the Boi de Rome, of the Dauphin, or of the
Comte de Paris, have recurred to us, we have lamented
over the perishable character of dynastic glory, and
our sensibilities have been removed by the spectacles
revealed to us of the banished or imprisoned children
of the great Houses of NAPOLEON, of the BOURBON,
or of ORLEANS, whether those spectacles have
been revealed to our imaginations in a dungeon
of the Temple, in the Castle of Schonbrunn,
or in the secluded palace of Claremont.
Is it not time, we ask, to reserve some of this sym-
pathy for the races who are maligned as well as for
the rulers who are overthrown ? Must our sensi-
bilities be lavished alone upon those, the baubles of
whose childhood have been the phantoms of sceptre
and diadem ? Shall we not reserve a sigh for the
Lombards who have been thwarted in struggling for
their freedom, for the Sicilians who have been again
prostrated under the troops of the atrocious monster
who wears the crown of the Neapolitans, for the
Hungarians who are assailed by the predatory bands
of Croatia and menaced by the German forces col-
lected together under the banners of the Ban ?
Instead of recoiling before the atrocities which have
tarnished the victories of the Viennese, we are
only impelled the more earnestly to proclaim our
allegiance to the cause of democracy, because in those
horrible and preternatural acts we see merely fresh
reason to abhor the policy from which they have
emanated. Loathing and detesting from the depth
of our soul those horrors of rapine and murder which
have accompanied the revolution in Austria, we are,
nevertheless, only the more fully convinced by them
of the evil influences of the late Government. If
the Cmsars of Germany have fallen for ever, they
have fallen under the sword of the Nemesis evoked
by their own criminal administration.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris papers of yesterday.
The National Assembly, on Thursday, voted fifteen
articles of chapter 5 of the Constitution, regulating
the Executive power. An amendment, proposed by
M. MATHIEU (de la Drome), giving the Assembly
power to dismiss the President, was rejected, as was
an amendment, proposed by M. ANTONY TROURET,
for the purpose of reducing, by one-third, the salary
proposed to be allowed the President. All these
articles, therefore, have been voted as originally re-
commended by the Committee.
It was observed during the sitting of Thursday
that neither M. SENARD, M. VAULABELLE, nor M.
RECURT were seated on the Ministerial benches.
They took their places among the Members of
the Committee on the Constitution, and when M.
MARIE entered the Assembly shortly after the com-
mencement of the discussion, he took his seat as
an ordinary representative, and did not occupy a
place on the Ministerial benches.

It was rumoured yesterday morning that at a meet-
ing held at General CAVAIGNAC'S, on Thursday
night, the Ministerial modifications were finally
arranged. M. Dursusta is to succeed M. SENABD
as Minister of the Interior, and M. GurrAvz DE
BEAUMONT, who is at present the Minister of the
French Republic in London, will succeed M. VAULA-
EELLE as Minister of Public Instruction. The other
members of the Cabinet retain their portfoloies.
The following are the articles of the Constitution
relating to the duties of President, which were agreed
to in the sitting of Thursday :
" Art. 4S. He is elected for four years, and not
to be re-elected until an interval of four years shall
have intervened.
" Art. 46. He oversees and assures the execution
of the laws, and has a right of presenting to the
Assembly Bills agreed to in Council of Ministers.
" Art: 47. He disposes of the armed force without
power of ever commanding in person.
"Art. 48. He cannot cede any portion of the terri-
tory nor dissolve the legislative body, nor suspend in
any manner the constitution and laws.
" Art. 49. He presents each year, by a message to
the National Assembly, an account of the general
state of the affairs of the Republic.
"Art. 50. He negotiates and ratifies treaties. No
treaty is definitive until it has been approved by the
National Assembly.
" Art. 51. He watches over the defence of the
State, but cannot undertake any war without the
consent of the National Assembly.
" Art. 52. He has the power of granting pardon,
but can only exercise it with the advice of the
Council of State. Amnesties can only be accorded
by a law. The President of the Republic and Minis-
ters, when condemned, can only be pardoned by the
National Assembly.
" Art. 53. The President promulgates laws in the
name of the French people.
" Art. 54. Laws declared urgent are to be pro-
mulgated within three days, and ordinary laws within
a month from the period oetheir reception from the
hands of the President of the Assembly.
. .

" Art. 55. Within the time fixed for such pro-
mulgation the President of the Republic may, by a
message motive, demand a new deliberation. The
Assembly deliberates : its resolution becomes defi-
nitive, and is transmitted to the President of the
Republic. After this the law to be promulgated
within three days.
" Art. 56. Should the President not make the
necessary promulgation, it shall be done by the
Assembly.
" Art. 57. Envoys and Ambassadors of Foreign
Powers are accredited to the President of the Re-
public.
" Art. 58. He presides over national solemnities.
" Art. 59. Fixing the salary of the President at
600,000 f. a year.
" Art. 60. He resides at the place where the Na-
tional Assembly holds its sittings, and cannot quit
the territory of the Republic without being authorised
to do so by a law.
" Art. 61. The President of the Republic appoints
and revokes the Ministers. He appoints and revokes,
in the Council of Ministers, military and naval com-
manders, prefects, the commandant in chief of the
National Guards of the Seine, the governors of
Algeria and of the colonies, the procureurs general,
and other functionaries of a superior order. He ap-
points and revokes, on the proposition of the compe-
tent Minister, in the regulating conditions determined
by the law, the subordinate agents of the Government."
On the subject of the Ministerial crisis, the Patrie
has the following :
" Towards the middle of the sitting to-day it was
stated that, after several conferences held in the
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of M. .I“vier Durieu is said to have in-
duced General Cavaignac to come to a determi-
nation to change the Ministry ; but the Moderate
party, it is added, declared that it would accept
only of a combination in which its friends should
be numerous, and that the following list had
been submitted to General Cavaignac :—M. Du-
faure, Minister of the Interior; General Bedeau,
Foreign Affairs ; M. Vivien, Justice; M. de Fallout,
Public Instruction ; M. Achille Fould, Finances ; M.
Bineau, Public Works ; M. Tourret, Agriculture
and Commerce; General Lamoriciere, War; and M.
Lacrosse, Marine and Colonies. General Cavaignac
has not accepted this combination, which contains, as
will be seen, only men of the party of order and
moderation, who are truly the expression of the
wishes and interests of the country. It appears that
the following names have been definitively decided
upon : —M. Dufaure, Interior ; M. Gustave de Beau-
mont, Public Instruction ' • and M. Stourm, Public
Works. This evening M. Gustave de Beaumont was
spoken of to replace M. Senard at the Interior ; and
M. Dufaure has accepted the Finances or Public
Works. Another statement was that M. Armand
Marrast takes the Interior, and that be has accepted
the mission of forming a Cabinet."
The Nati•narl says :
" P.S.—Rumours of Ministerial modifications have
been current all day. At the hour we put to press
nothing had been decided. We are, however, assured
that the Moniteur of to-morrow will announce the
formation of a new Cabinet."
The Debate has the following :
-

-
" P.S.—At midnight it was said in the 'alms of
the President of the Assembly, in which a great number
of reprt sentatives were assembled, that the Ministe-
rial crisis was on the point of being settled. Two
Ministers only would retire from the Cabinet, and be
replaced by M. Dufaure and Gustave de Beaumont.
M. Bastide, Minister for Foreign Affairs, remains."
M. PAeNEREB has given notice of the following
amendment on the 119th Article of the Constitution