The Sun.
London, England, 1848-07-25 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 25, 1848.

At last the demagogues of Ireland will find that
they cannot embroil the people of these islands with
impunity either to themselves or to their wretched
subordinates. Nobly have the Lords and the Com-
mons fulfilled the expectations of England. What
April was in reference to the multitude, July has
proved in regard to the Legislature. When the
miserable rabble of the Chartists threatened an insur-
rection, all party feeling, all the invidious distinctions
of classes, all the feuds and jealousies excited by re-
ligious differences, were forgotten en the instant.
The population rose to a man ; they stoodto barrister
ebeyr
side—the gentleman and the mechanic, h
and the groom, the aristocrat and the shop-
keeper—brothers in the defence of their common
nationality, fired by the same enthusiasm and aniMated
with the most stern determination to vindicate the
majesty of the law, the blessing of order, and the
glory of the Constitution. In a similar spirit the
two Houses of Parliament have responded to the
threat of rebellion on the part of the miserable fac-
tions of Ireland. All the hickerings of political ani-
mosity are lost to the recollection in the indignation
excited by the diabolical efforts of the insurgent de-
mocrats beyond St. George's Channel. Lord JOHN
RUSSELL and the supporters of his Government, Sir
ROBERT PEEL and his numerous followers, JOSEPH
HUME, and those who were recently his liege-men
in the advocacy of Parliamentary reform, Protection-
ists, Radicals, Whigs, and Conservatives, the bur-
gesses from the manufacturing towns, and the
knights from the shires famous for their agricultural
enterprise—all combine to attest the fervour of their
loyalty and the sincerity of their patriotism.
On Saturday the Government Bill for the Sus-
pension of the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland was passed
through all its stages in a single sitting of the House
of Commons through the preliminary forms,
through the first reading, through the second read-
ing, through Committee, clause by clause, and through
the final ordeal of the third reading, in rapid suc-
cession. Yesterday the Ilouse of Lords
dacted with
equal promptitude, the Bill being
Imperial
at once
through all the forinidos of the lo:fpittihneg Legislature.
This very day, while
the
ee
law
we
hwords,
latnha
the Bill has become
will of the
been ratified by theaying
Legislature
passes
vr a
Before
this evening's impression of The S'lcu
from the hands of the publisher,tll
of the proceeding of the Britishon
will have been some hours its road to
Ireland. Greater activity could scarcely have been
evinced by Parliament, and certainly that activity
will not Lave been useless—seeing that it is a legis.. I
lative corroboration of the unanimity displayed on the
memorable and glorious Tenth of April. It is an
additional and conclusive evidence that the British
Ewpire is indestructible, and that the British Consti-

tution can never be overthrown by merely human
agencies—because it shows that that Constitution is
rooted in the hearts of an united people.
Voices earthly and unearthly cry out to Ire-
land in the first paroxysm of her insane rebellion.
The Voice of O'CONNELL the Liberator sounds
from his august tomb—repeating that noble
axiom which fell from his living lips like a
diamond of thought—" No political advantage is
worth gaining which requires the effusion of a single
drop of human blood !" The Voice of History, the
reproaches of England, who, in the days of her own
tribulation, lavished ten millions of the public money
and four hundred thousand pounds of private charity
upon the starving peasantry of Erin ; the warnings
of LAMARTINE, who repulsed the traitorous de-
putation from Dublin; the contempt of the
Paris newspapers, at this moment breathing
scornfully from the capital of Republican France
upon the would-be Republicans of the Ro-
tunda; the mandates of the benevolent Pius speaking
as their spiritual preceptor to the Roman Catholic
population of Ireland ; the horror of Europe, the exe-
crations of humanity, the anathemas of Christendom
—all sound bodingly across the waters of the Chan-
nel to the promoters of this mad Revolution. Will
Ireland hearken to these appeals of reason—or will
she listen merely to her own dark passions, to the in-
sidious war-whoops of her demagogues, to the
atrocious dictates of a mistaken and suicidal ven-
geance ? England awaits an answer—earnestly
but serenely. And accordingly as the answer is fa-
vourable or otherwise will the historian of Ireland
have to write of 1848 as the year which witnessed
the propitious commencement of her happiness or the
awful and tremendous consummation of her misery.

Italy is now in that intermediate position which is
the most perilous to a civilized nation. It stands
midway between revolution and tranquillity—be-
tween anarchy and order—between constitutional
freedom and unbridled democracy. To retrograde
would be to cause a terrific explosion among the
passions of nineteen millions of the human family.
To precipitate the reforms rendered necessary by the
age would be to loosen those beautiful ties which
bind together in the network of fraternity the
different classes of the community. The former step
would be dangerous because it would defy into
frenzy the natural yearnings of the Italians. The
latter would be dangerous because it would stimulate
too hastily the already over-excited ambition of the
multitude. Never was a medium course more im-
periously demanded by circumstances than it is at
present throughout the Roman peninsula. Never
was the holy cause of Moderation more imperatively
required than it is at this moment in the council-
chambers of the Italian Princes. Christendom has
recently seen the glory of LAMARTINE darkened in
consequence of his faithfulness to that great political
creed of Moderation. It will soon see whether the
kindred glory of Pius can be obscured by a similar
devotion to the interests of humanity. The spectacle,
we must allow, at once, is a terrible one, but it is as
sublime as it is terrible.

A glance at the map of Italy, and a moment's re-
flection upon the position of affairs in that country,
will satisfy the most sceptical that its inhabitants are
lying in the intermediate state we have already ex-
pressed—however similar the situation of the parties
in the different divisions of the peninsula, may, at first
sight, appear to be. Lombardy, it is true, is still in-
volved in the doubts and vicissitudes of war—to the
eastward, the Venetians are awaiting the issue of the
contest between the Sardinian Sovereign and the
Pro-consul of Austria, to the westward, the Pied-
montese (those at least who have not embarked
their lives and fortunes in fighting the battle of
independence against Germany) are tarrying for
the consummation of the victories already gained
by CARLO ALBERTO, in a kind of ecstacy of con-
fidence. Further southwards the petty principali.
ties, such as Parma, Modena, Lucca, Guastalla,
and Piacenza, are drifting to and fro amidst the
convulsion of the political elements of Italy
a circumstance which is scarcely surprising
in a time when the moral electricity of
civilization is setting all our calculations
at defiance, when the needle varies to all
points of the compass in the hands of the most ex-
perienced statesmen, when, in short, even the cele-
brated " Pilot who weathered the storm " of mis-
government in England, would find himself distracted
by the innumerable shoals and sunken rocks which
have suddenly sprung up about the bows of Europe.
Tuscany, more than any other of the independent
states of Italy, is paralysed into inactivity for the
time being, until the prospects of the Italian million
are more fully developed, when it must be whirled
away either to the right or to the left, either to
ultra-democracy, or to constitutional moderation,
with a velocity only commensurate with its recent
quiescence. Beyond these—beyond Venice, Lombardy,
Tuscany, Piedmont, and the minor principalities—are
the States of the Church, the kingdom of Naples,
and the island of Sicily. For the last-mentioned
territory has severed the yoke which chained, it to
the footstool of the inhuman Bourbon, who only the
other day wore upon his brow the crown of the Two
Sicilies, and whose name is now the execration of the
whole world. Once more the famous island of
THEOCRITUS with his idylls, and of POLYPHEMUS
with his one eye and his jealousies, has assumed to
itself the right of choosing its monarch, and of vindi-
cating its long derided nationality. The diadem
which, according to a beautiful legend, passed from the
head of Good King ROBERT, when he slumbered one
Sunday evening in a church after the chaunting of the
Magluficat, has descended at last, towards the middle
of the nineteenth century, upon the forehead of the
Duke of GENOA. The plums of good fortune seem
to be falling to the lot of the house of Lorraine,
The symbols of Venice and of Lombardy are flung
at one moment into the helmet of CARLO ALBERTO,
and at another, the symbol of Sicily is tossed into the
ducal cap of his son. Meanwhile the fate of FER-
DINAND of Naples is very different. His troopers
and their coadjutors, the brutalized lazzaroni, being
his only defenders against an ignominious assassi-
nation, and the remembrance of his atrocious and
dastardly triumph over the unfortunate Neapolitans,
being his only consolation for the present abhorrence
of his contemporaries and the future execration of
posterity. Last of all—most sad, most affecting,
most solemn, most unaccountable, amidst all this
mournful catalogue of vicissitudes—there is Rome
and the surrounding dominions of the Papacy. It
was the PONTIFF who gave the signal of regenera-
tion, it was 'from the hill of the Quirinal that the tri-
colour of United Italy was first unfurled, it was from
the heart of the Eternal City that first emanated those
doctrines of civil and religious liberty which have
since, within a few months, carried joy and exulta-
tion from one extremity of the peninsula to the
other. And yet, it is the POPE, who, every
now and then, feels most bitterly the sorrows of
ingratitude, it is the Quirinal which is inter-
mittently regarded with the most suspicion,
it is the Eternal City which is at all times the most
embarrassed by the vices of democracy and by the
intrigues of demagogues,
of
Already
the G
patriotism, of
lOBERTI has
spoken upon this subject—and
the liberality, of the democracy of C
xIOBERTI, who
dares to raise the whisper of a doubt? GIOBERTI—
this true, patriotic, radical, democratic GIOBERTI—has
spoken of the possible alienation of Pio NONO and the
Romans, and he has spoken of it thus Woe be to
me ! " he cried, " if, losing sight
,of the double
dignity and double responsibilities of plus, I
can ever have the madness to doubt the sincerity of
his patriotism." No, the Romans should ever re-
member that ; they should ever remember that
while they are squabbling in the precincts of
the Roman Parliament the soldiers of Piedmont are
fighting for the freedom of their common-land, to
the war-cry of " pius•—ltaly—and CHARLES AL-
BERT I" There is at this moment, however, an inter-
mediate pause throughout the peninsula. Let the
Italians avail themselves of the opportunity and
unite, or—to use that cant phrase of the day, which
expresses so much—let them fraternize !

No political pamphlet ever appeared more oppor•
tunely than that to which we have already referred on
two occasions—we mean the intelligent " Sketches
of the Progress of Civilization and Public Liberty,"
by JOHN MACGREGOR, M.P. We are induced to
recur to this brochure, not only because we have
been captivated in a great measure by its
serene and masculine declamation, not only
because we regard the arguments of a close

reasoner like the author of the " Progress of
America," as eminently entitled to consideration, not
only because the history of civilization and the spread
of liberal ideas during the lest hundred years, dating
from the middle of the eighteenth to the middle of the
nineteenth century, are here epitomized in seventy-
two pages octavo--but because to all these circum-
stances may be added just now the extraordinary
position of affairs both within the realms of England,
and beyond the seas in either hemisphere. So mar-
vellous, so rapid, so comprehensive, so sudden, be-
wildering, and tremendous have been the political
changes effected since the commencement of 1848,
that the average views of the multitude upon the
great questions of social distinction and constitutional
government are liable to fall into an appalling state of
confusion, unless the direct tendency of the popular
movement is continually forced upon the recollection
of the community, even at the hazard of a wearisome
itteration and tautology. Never, indeed, was it more
requisite to remind the people of these islands again
and again, in language admitting of no possible miscon-
struction, of the actual sequence of the events which
have led England and Europe into their present
astonishing predicament. A t this important junc-
ture Mr. MACGREGOR publishes a pamphlet precisely
adapted to the existing emergency—a pamphlet which
cannot fail, if read with due calmness and deliberation,
to place even the most ignorant au courant of the late
revolutions on the continent, and to explain
away those things which may have hitherto
appeared to them of a wholly irreconcileable
and anomalous character in the development of
modern civilization. Our distinguished pamphleteer
has concentrated into some sixteen miniature chapters
a narrative which spreads over enormous files of
old newspapers, over annotations and commentaries,
and memoirs and autobiographies, and the lumber
of the most garrulous reminiscences, making in all
a library, the very catalogue of which is
voluminous. Here, therefore, is more than an " Illiad"
compressed into a nutshell. And this, we take it, is
sufficient reason for our continual reference to the
small but solid and philosophic argument of the Ho-
nourable Representative for Glasgow.
If the Communists of Paris and the Red Republi-
cans of Dublin could find leisure for reading in the
midst of their sanguinary and diabolical intrigues,
we should certainly conjure them, in the name of
every quality that is best and bravest in man, to pon-
der over the facts recorded in this pamphlet of Mr.
MACGREGOR. Those facts would demonstrate the
madness of a merely spoliative insurrection—they
would show the French anarchists that their favourite
doctrine can only lead to their own destruction and
execration—they would prove to the Irish rebels that,
by abandoning the Moral Force system of their im-
mortal LIBERATOR, they have not merely rendered
their own political annihilation inevitable, but they
have, by a series of dastardly and ignominious crimes,
caused Ireland to become at once a curse to England
and an abomination to Christendom. It were lunacy
to imagine for one moment, however, that the ravings
of madmen can be in any respect abated by the
wholesome diet of a logical disquisition. Our re-
peated allusions to the pamphlet of Mr. MACGREGOR
are consequently made with a direct reference to
men other than the rebel bands of Citizen BLANctur,
or the raw recruits of the would-be King of MUN-
STER. We speak not to the irrational but to the rational
—not to traitors but, to patriots—not in the hope of
converting insurgents to loyalty, but with the inten-
tion of confirming in all, their just, patriotic, and
loyal sentiments, the thoughtful men of this old
Saxon England. With such an avowed purpose then
we earnestly direct the attention of the English
people to the third section of this interesting and re•
markable pamphlet—the section respecting the
" Effects of the American and First French Revolu-
tions." Not that the chapter conveys any novel or
startling revelations—its statements, in fact, being
every one of them patent to the student in European
and American history—but because it condenses the
long annals of those revolutions into the most compact
and portable compass, while the pamphleteer deduces
a great truth from the occurrences on either side of the
Atlantic. After recounting the colonization of Vir-
ginia and Maryland by republican spirits who sought
the realization of their visions of political indepen-
dence beyond the shores of the United Kingdom—
after detailing the struggle which ensued between
the descendants of these primitive emigrants and the
Government of the mother country, that great
struggle which ended in the isolation of the United
States, and the dismemberment of the colonies of 1
Great Britainr-after telling how it came to pass that
the French officers who had fought in North America
under the victorious banners of GEORGE WASHINGTON,
carried with them to France the enthusiasm of repub-
lican ideas, and " ingrafted revolutionary principles
on the philosophy of the Academy"—the Member
for Glasgow shows that the visionaries of an Infidel
and Democratic Revolution saw only the chance of the
restoration of his natural rights to Man in the de-
struction of Christianity, and in the subversion of
the existing systems of monarchy and oligarchy.
That terrible blunder is now goading on the rebels of
Ireland, as it did recently the insurgents of France.
The catastrophe of their heinous guilt be upon their
own heads, and the infamy of the whole movement
be concentrated on the memories of their depraved
demagogues !

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris papers of yesterday.
They are principally occupied with the affairs of
Ireland, and with the exception of the Referme, the
organ of LEDRU Rouarr, they denounce, in no
measured terms, that which they justly designate as
the Communist and Jacobinal movement, at the head
of which Messrs. SMITH O'BRIEN and MEAGHER have
placed themselves. The fact that the Rgornie is
favourable to the Irish rebels would be alone sufficient
to stamp their cause as the cause of Communism, and
the war which they declare a war not against England
only, but against all order, all property, and all
civilization.

The Journal des Deists thus accurately describes
the character of the movement :

" It is the Young Ireland, or, in other words, the Ja-
cobin, party that makes the present movement. It is
not only a Republican movement, which can no longer
be a crime in our eyes, but also a Communist movement.
This is what distinguishes it from the old agitation, by
the aid of which O'Connell drew from England religious
emancipation, and so many other. reforms. The war
which the Irish clubbists wish to raise is a servile war.
It is an insurrection against property, of which the
avowed end is the division of the land: That transfor-
mation of the Irish agitation is what makes it in the
present circumstances so grave, and the reason is this—
Formerly an insurrection in Ireland could find no echo
in England, while now the Jacobin movement in the one
corresponds with the Chartist movement in the other,
and the shots fired in Dublin, Waterford, or Cork, may
set fire to Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, or Notting-
ham. The English Government knows this, and it is on
that account it is taking the most rapid means possible
to cut short the insurrection."

The same writer thus calculates the chances of
the success of the movement :

" We do not believe in the possibility of the success
of the insurrection. The forces are not equal. The
movement party is much less numerous than many, on
account of the noise they make, suppose. It is composed
of the Young Ireland party only, which has against it,
not only the English party, but almost all the Old Ire-
land party, namely, that of O'Connell and the clergy.
On the one side, then, there is disunion—on the other
there is not only union but discipline. There are about
50,000 troops, who can be carried with rapidity to any
point; and besides this, the whole of the north is
Orangist and Protestant. We, therefore, consider the
success of the general movement as impossible; but we
think that a series of partial insurrections, which cannot
inevitable.
This suppressed without the effusion of blood, is
This is our opinion, but with so singular a country as
Ireland it is difficult to answer for anything."
The Univers, the organ of M. DE MONTALEMBERT
and the parti pretre, is also exceedingly severe in its
denunciation of the Young Irelanders for their
departure from the moral-force system so success-
fully practised by the late Liberator, O'CONNELL.
It was rumoured in the Salle des Conferences, yes-
terday, that the Committee on Foreign Affairs were
all but unanimously of opinion that, in consequence
of the advance of the Austrians to Ferrara, the army
of the Alps, under the command of General OUDJNOT,
should immediately enter Italy.

Ga/igruzni says that, on Saturday morning, Gene-
ral CA.VAIGNAC received the officers of all the corps
of the army present at Paris, of the National Guard
of Paris and the Banlieue, of the Garde blobile,
together with members of different administrative
bodies, the medical officers of the army, and
also the Judges of the Courts of Cassation, of
Appeal, of the Tribunal of the tiei4e and