The Sun.
London, England, 1848-09-19 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.--The insurgents of Waterford and Tipperary,
wo are assured, are not without either object or plan.
Their present object is sheep-stealing, and their mode of
operation is to steal in gangs, The " six or twelve
thousand" who are said to be encamped somewhere on
the top of a hill, after looking at one another for some
days in-that bleak situation, hare made the discovery
that their commissiariat was not likely to flourish by
such a concentration and in such a locality. Ac-
cordingly,: Messrs. Doheny, Mahony, and O'Gorman,
or whoever else are the Rob Roys of Tipperary, have
had recourse to -a very vulgar expedient. The rebel
forces have divided themselves into parties of thirty or
fifty, who have forthwith :proceeded to break the eighth
Commandment and divers laws of this realm, by
forcibly abstracting, slaying, and eating the flocks
and herds of their neighbours. The strength
of the detachment in each instance, we pre-
sume, is according to the importance of the
" object," fifty Irish felons being considered a
proper number to sit down to an ox, and thirty to
a heifer or a couple of sheep. The patriots, we
are assured, have the range of an extensive posi-
tion. The chain of mountains which extends right across
Munster from Waterford harbour to the mouth of the
Shannon, with its secluded glens, deep ravines, and
labyrinth of footpaths, affords unrivalled facilities for
dispersion and escape. Here, then, is the Torres Vedras
of Repeal. The long nights are coming, and we are to
have a winter of forays, of black mail, and such romantic
amusements. Stolen mutton is sweet, and should it be
found possible to get meat seven days in the week, all in
the cause of " Old Ireland and Rapale," we have no
doubt that many will take part in so delightful a duty.
Nothing can be more intelligible than such a proceeding.
Living in the mountain or the desert, every now and
then pouncing on the plain, and driving off a few head of
cattle or a few loads of corn, is one of the oldest profes-
sions of life. In the Homeric times it was all but
respectable ; indeed, quite so when the plea of re-
taliation could be alleged. But the heroic age is
past, and with it pirates and robbers are gone out
of fashion. The taste of this age may be very unro-
mantic, but it is decidedly against thieves. For
this reason we think the rebels were very unwise to ac-
cept so freely the title of " Felons." They were trifling
with a very ugly word, and the result shows that they
have weakened a moral distinction. But the age, we re-
peat, is against them. Should Mr. Doheny and his
brother felons be apprehended with a stolen leg of mut-
ton or fillet of veal in their possession, society will not be
indulgent to the offence, and the confounders of seem
and teem will be consigned without pity to the hulks, or
some antipodean purgatory of rogues. We are not in-
clined, therefore, to the opinion that, as often happens,
the "short cut " to popularity taken by the rebels will
not be found the best in the long run. It is true they
have imparted an attractive look to "felony ;"
but, on the other hand, they have stripped off
a little of that disguise they assumed towards
the more respectable and more comfortable classes.
Every proprietor of cattle, we should think,
will be opposed to a system, the first principle of which
is that they be killed and eaten by the people at large.
The British Government, too, can act with all the less
scruple and reserve in the protection of property and the
suppression of pillage. But, surely, an organization of
cattle-stealers is not so hard to be suppressed. Munster
is not quite so interminable a region as our colony at the
Cape of Good Hope. We shall not hare to march our
troops five hundred miles from our resources, to protect
an undefined frontier of two thousand miles, and follow
in the trail of savages a week without seeing them.
Cattle-stealing has long been put down in this
island, though cattle and hungry men are quite as
numerous here as in Ireland. The experience of
ordinary warfare will suggest the right methods of
dealing with the evil. Hew would any Peninsular
soldier cut off a party of the enemy's foragers ? When
our cavalry and rifles have exhibited a few success-
ful manoeuvres, the felons, if they have any spark of
sense left in their minds, will begin to reflect that it
is better not to be sent to one's account in the very act
of robbery. Under such circumstances there must be no
foolish delicacy. There is only one aspect under which
a hundred armed men descending from the mountains
and pillaging the plains can be viewed. They are in-
vaders, and as invaders they must be treated. We have
no alternative. They inflict famine and starvation on
the peaceful, and we have to choose between the death
of the robber and that of the honest man. For our own
part, we would rather see the bones of a hundred felons
bleaching on the mountain side than hear of myriads
slowly pining through the pillage, anarchy, distrust, in-
security, and neglect, which a continuance of the evil
will certainly occasion. We rest much on the audacious
and unmistakeable character of the offence. The Celtic
Mahrattas will be shortly dealt with. The population
who are preparing to pass the winter in pillage
are by no means the worst off in Ireland. On
the contrary, they have always had the re-
putation of comparative prosperity. The Tip-
perary " boys " boast that by their determined spirit
they have won better terms than ordinary from their
landlord. The Suir passes through the richest districts
in Ireland, through " golden valleys," and through vast
stores of mineral wealth—through a country of mines,
quarries, railways, good roads, and works affording
every variety of employment. These people have no
more right to wage war against property than our own
English labourers, who are often enough in great straits
for a living, and who are as little acquainted with roast
beef and mutton as with turtle soup and iced punch.
'The only difference is, that the Irish peasantry are cursed
with factious leaders, a dependent priesthood, and with a
constitutional waywardness and contempt of law. We
have no doubt whatever that many of the worthies who
calculate upon fattening this winter on felonious mutton
are actually investing in the savings-banks or buying
into the funds. Is this very improbable, when
we consider that at least a million of the
relief money wrung from honest, easy Eng-
land, was snugly invested, as it now appears, li
by the Irish recipients? The cattle-stealers will, of
course, save their maintenance, their rent, their rates,
and a portion of their taxes; and will find themselves so
much in pocket when spring comes round. We trust,
however, that Lord Clarendon, and the military autho-
rities at his command, will take care that the base spe-
culation is not without its risk. The spirit of the ad-
venture will cool down when the company begins to
thin, and when the painful thought each day presents
itself, that though they succeeded in carrying off the
sheep they left a comrade in the fold. We are sorry to
allude to such horrors, but mercy itself suggests the re-
collection of them. Bullets are better than anarchy and
famine. If there must be some public calamity, let it be
confined to the dreary hill sides, to defiles and glens, to
midnight and to armed marauders on the one hand, and
soldiers on the other. But spare the peaceful homestead,
the rich valley, and the industrious town. Save those
who have not thought of death, and are not armed either
for crime or for protection. _

POST.—M. Thiers is rising in the National Assembly.
He is made of buoyant stuff. The violence of the demo-
cratic storm cannot submerge him for ever. If we may
apply to human what was said of divine subjects, Non
confundetur et teternum. We are glad to see M. Thiers
thus vindicating the cause of sterling and tried ability
against clap-trap talents; of long public practice against
the temerity and empiricism of the new men; of know-
ledge and learning against flippancy, theory, and dog-
matism; of statesmanship against visionary promises;
of experience against experiments; of old fame against
new notoriety; of order against anarchy; of society
against barbarism. In the present state of the French,
General Cavaignac is a fitter ruler for them, not only
than M. Thiers, bat than perhaps even the Emperor
Nicholas himself would be, because the latter is so very
far short of the despotic master they require. Van
Amburgh is the proper " moderator" of the tigers,
and the present military chief of the French is the
man for the Parisians. His rod of iron is a good
answer to their insensate clamours and their blood-
thirsty struggles for liberty. But they are men at
bottom, in spite of the more than Circean enchant-
ments which have momentarily reduced them below the
level of the wild beasts. And when " the wand" shall
have "been reversed," and the nefarious charms shall
have been backward muttered, we look to see a milder
and larger-hearted rule prevail, in the midst of a less
menaced and less precarious prosperity, upon the soil of
France. M. Thiers will then perhaps resume his natural
position among the statesmen of Europe, and the least
of the great men of the monarchy show as a giant among
the Republicans. When the Commons of England in
King Charles's time wanted to substitute their corporate
tyranny for the much exaggerated oppressions of their
lineal born Sovereign—when they bad locked up the
doors of the House of Peers, all for liberty, and mur-
dered
the King, for liberty too, and declared themselves
perpetual (thus re-establishing on the unauthorised and
perfidious destruction of the people's franchise, to
which they owed their own existence, the very thing
which they had pretended it needful to abolish, that
is, an independent, irresponsible House of Legisla-
ture)—when the Commons of England had thus trampled
successively on the Lords, on the Monarch, and on the
people, all for liberty, we say, and for the constitution,
what did they gain? They gained a Cromwell instead
of a Charles, and became the slaves of their servant,
who were too proud to rest content with less than being
masters of their Lords, Sovereigns of their King, and
tyrants of their country? And so now, after the Seine
has been turned into blood, that Paris might be the
paradise of unbounded freedom, equality, and fraternity,
the Parisians have no freedom to move from the Fau-
bourg St. Antoine to the Faubourg St. Germain, with-
out as many forms as under the system which they
found so oppressive would have carried them round the
globe ; they have no equality save that of helotry to one
common superior ; no fraternity save that of courts-
martial, transportations, and executions. This is the
moral, the eternal scoral of revolutions, in whatever
epoch, or under whatever sun, their disastrous and in-
sensate course may roll—that mob violence and anarchic
uproar lead only to temporary license of an intolerable
kind, to be quickly followed by oppressions ten thousand
times more severe and grinding than those for which (a
short time previously) men were ready to wade through
oceans of carnage and horror. Nations, being composed
of men, must be subject to the laws physical and moral
which govern men. Contentment, moderation, diligence
in the pursuits of peace, frugality in their use—these
are the only roads to national prosperity, as they are the
sole by-paths to individual felicity. Let the friends of
order take heart. Society will for ever be too strong for
its enemies, however loud at-times the roar of turbulence
may swell upon the ear. The rule must in the end pre-
vail over the exception. The future will be like the
past. National Jack Sheppards and national Gawtreys
will meet the fate of their individual prototypes. In
past ages there have been revolutions. But the inevitable
step of order more or less severe has marched over their
necks. Governments have died, as men have died. But
they have also lived; and as life is longer than!death, as
the calm is more frequent and more constant than the
storm, so are power and law longer, more frequent and
more constant than anarchy and rebellion.