The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-15 00:00:00

vv.
wennlA

LONDON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1846.

A mutiny when the ship is sinking is not a more
pitiable spectacle than the recent secession of the
Young Ireland party from the ranks of the
Patriot and Liberator of Ireland. However
much we may be opposed to Mr O'CONNELL in his
agitation for the repeal of the legislative union, we
cannot hut recognise in that Honourable Gentleman
the truest friend of Ireland ; we cannot but recognise
in his long and earnest career the toil of one anxious
to benefit his fatherland; we cannot but recognise
throughout his professional and Parliamentary life
the solicitude of a man, devoted heart and soul, body
and mind, to the moral, physical, and political re-
demption of his afflicted country. Whatever may be
our difference of opinion as to the mode best calcu-
lated to effect the advancement of the Irish popula-
lation, we are satisfied that the Honourable
Member for Cork exhibits this pertinacity
in his favourite project solely from his convic-
tion that the attainment of his object would
ensure the regeneration of the community. He is
struggling for the possession of a phantom, but in
those struggles he is riving the chains of Ireland
asunder. He has already emancipated his fellow-
countrymen from many grievous disabilities ; he has
dissipated many of their sorrows; he has avenged
many of those wrongs which they had suffered during
successive generations. Through the instrumentality
of O'CONNELL the character:of Ireland has already, to
a considerable extent, been vindicated. By his assi-
duous exertions she has emerged from a misgovern-
mentinfinitely more onerous and repressive than the
misgovernment of thelluscovite or the Lithuanian—a
misgovernment not so much of a corporeal character
as of a spiritual, not so much of body as of soul, not
so much of municipalities as of religion. Much, of
course, has remained unreformed, which, with
due attention, might have been effected.
These oversights, however, are more attributable to
the unpropitious nature of circumstances than: to
the lack of any individual sagacity. The power
exercised by Mr. O'CONNELL in the advocacy of his
native land has been erected upon—what ?—upon the
enthusiasm of his countrymen. But how was that
enthusiasm gained ? Was it gained by the tactics
of a Mohawk ? Was it gained as DANTON gained
his victories, by exciting the passions of the mob, by
goading the people to acts of insubordination, by a
plentiful distribution of pikes and bludgeons? Was
Catholic Emancipation wrung from the Legislature
by intimidation, or by the dispassionate weapons of
logic ? Was it wrung from Parliament as the fana-
tical followers of Lord. GEORGE GORDON endeavoured
to:elicit a " No-Popery" enactment from those august
Chambers ? Has not O'CoNistELL's influence been based
upon the solid granite of peace, instead of upon the
capricious qui%iksands of insurrection? Has he not
throughout l' is agitation sheltered himself behind the
adamant of the law, and has i:ot that course already
obtained for Ireland an inestimable boon ?
A. dreadful visitation afflicts the island—a visits- ,

tion which, notwithstanding their familiarity with
suffering, has been hitherto unknown to its inhabi-
tants. Famine and winter, disease and want of
employment to millions, combine to render the desti-
tution insufferable. The perennial barrenness of
protection in the landlords is accompanied by an extra-
ordinary barrenness in the vegetation. A ban appears
to pervade the land. Ireland is in a state of national
bankruptcy. At this moment of tribulation, when that
strength which is the consequence of unity is more
than ever requisite, the ranks of Ireland's avowed
leaders are thinned by the defection of certain hair-
brained dissentients. All the world knows upon
what cause this division occurred ; all the world
knows that Mr. O'Copussu. maintained the neces-
sity of striving for repeal only by moral agency
and loyal agitation, and that Mr. WILLIAM SMITH
O'BRIEN insisted upon the Association infusing
treasonous principles into its code, and proclaiming
the rectitude of physical force. Since the first se-
paration of these parties, by a contrariety
of views somewhat more striking than that
of the Big and Little-endians, immortalised
by SWIFT, the public have heard scarcely anything,
and, what is more, have cared scarcely anythingabout
the redoubtable personages 'yclept Young Irelanders.
A casual display of oratorical pyrotechnics in the
Rotunda at Dublin has, at intervals, amused
the more sober members of the popu-
lation. John Bull, however, is blasé in
regard to those spurious specimens of patriotic
enthusiasm. He looks at the dissemblers with the
scornful nonchalance of a POCOCURANTE. Meanwhile
the condition of Ireland has been gradually becoming
more terrible and appalling. Want of employment
and dearness of provisions are greater afflictions
than hitherto from the severity with which the
season has commenced. Murders and outrages are
of more frequent recurrence in consequence. Each
successive week affords a frightful catalogue of deaths
by starvation. Contagious maladies are begin-
ning to affect those constitutions, the vigour of
which has been already undermined by inanition.

At this moment Mr. O'CONNELL makes a final
effort to conciliate those who insulted him by their
vituperations. He swallows all the selfish instigations
of pride, and renders himself liable to every species
of obloquy, because of the existing emergency, and
because he is more than ever persuaded that the per-
petuation of such a quarrel, and its consequent heart-
burnings, can only prove injurious to the national
interests. To us, there is something admirable in
this forgetfulness of personal considerations for
the sake of a famishing people. There is
something noble in this sacrifice of private
sentiment to public conviction. One gap was still
open in the forum for the salvation of Rome, and
Cuanus immolated himself for the good of the state
by plunging into the chasm. Mr. O'CONNELL has
dared the jeers and ribaldry of venal tongues and
hireling pens because, by his proposition for a con-
ference with the leaders of the Young Ireland party,
he felt he could alone hope to heal all existing dif-
ferences, and to battle against the troubles of the
country with one unbroken phalanx. Among the
many sacrifices which O'CONNELL has made for
Ireland, this sacrifice of feeling in proposing a con-
ference with his traducers is not the least.

The result of this proposition is what might have
been readily anticipated. The Young Ireland brag-
garts have rejected all offers of a conciliatory cha-
racter. Their wonderful captain—the hero of the
coal-cellar—the victor of the tea-and-dry-toast—Mr.
WILLIAM SMITH O'BatEN, has emphatically refused
the conference. He has virtually spat upon the offer
of his more noble- minded adversary. It is rumoured
in some quarters that the co-operation of this honour-
able malcontent may be ensured on certain
conditions. Conditions—pshaw !—the Irish don't
care twopence for his co-operation. Mr. WILLIAM
SMITH O'BRIEN IS not the ATLAS upon whose shoul-
ders the fate of Ireland is dependent. He has shown
the obverse side of his character. He has proved that
as he is without sterling patriotism, so is he without
magnanimity. CORIOLANUS in the hall of AuFintus,
and THEMISTOCLES asking protection from ARTAX
EREES, must be incomprehensible spectacles to Mr.
WILLIAM SMITH O'BRIEN. We trust that Mr.
O'CoNNELL may be more successful in his generous
negotiations with those whose reconciliation is of some
importance.

We adverted last week to the paramount im-
portance, to every civilised country, of a sound body
of criminal law ; to the reasons that constituted this
importance, and to the duty which men owe to them-
selves to scrutinise, with the utmost jealousy, the ad-
ministration of this branch of their legal code. We
alluded to the vast quantum of ministerial power that
is lodged with the magistracy, who admit or reject
the probability of the criminal charges brought be-
fore them, by either committing or releasing the ac-
cused parties ; we urged the consequent indispensa-
laleness of having the magisterial bench, metropolitan
and provincial, filled with men duly qualified to dis-
charge such grave functions ; and we, at the same
time, took occasion to notice the notorious incom-
petency of the subordinate justices with w hich the
country is afflicted throughout. The evils arising to the
State from magisterial incapacityare not to be measured,
and cannot, therefore, be lightly disposed of. It is
impossible to say how much the feelings of the inno-
cent have been unnecessarily rankled, by their
having been committed for trial, owing to the crassa
ignorantia, conceited perversion of facts, caprice, or
inattention of the magistrates before whom it was
their unhappy fate to be first taken. Where men
have not fitted themselves, by education, for the
judicial vocation, in the subordinate, yet most im-
portant and extensive sphere of magisterial action,
they are without due self-reliance, and are like
chips without ballast, rolling with every wave. Fre-
quently, these sage justices of ours are but mere
automata in the hands of their salaried clerks, who
compel them to move, and go through the mock ex-
hibition of criminal inquiry in its preliminary stages,
just as the fancy hits them. Others consider them-
selves too high-bred to condescend to play the part
of " dummies ;" and, like young colts, before they
have had the least training, are bent upon showing
a pace :of their own, when, if their mettle be only
well put up, there is no fence of the law they
will not clear at a bound. The responsibility
of magistrates is, practically, a fiction. There is no
redress against any wrongs suffered as the conse-
quences of any errors they commit, unless such errors
can be proved to have been wilful, so that, in effect,
the injured party has no remedy. Where ignorant
justices will manifest an independence, and not stoop
to be counselled by their official clerks, they are
prone to fall into opposite extremes, the effects of
which are most pernicious to society. Some are so
nervous, that, where there is only a shade of a possi-
bility of guilt, speciously presented, and, it may be,
maliciously wrought up, on the one side, whilst, on
the other, the evidence preponderates, almost to a
certainty, in favour of innocence, they will, never-
theless, because they have no confidence in their own
judgment, and have unfortunately assumed an office
for which they are wholly unfit, send the accused
before a jury. Others, again, pursue a reckless course
in the opposite direction : by imagining themselves
to be Solons, before they have read through the preface
to "Burn's Justice," they coolly discharge many a cri-
minal from custody who ought to have been compelled to
stand his trial. In this way justice is indirectly con-
verted into an instrument of oppression to the inno-
cent, and of protection to the guilty. Such per-
versities will continue to stain our administration of
justice until a radical change be effected in the
magisterial body. The Government must dispense
with gratuitous services altogether. As it is, every
squireen aspires to be cock-lofted on to the bench, not
because he considers himself in the least qualified for
the duties, but because he wishes to be more on a
par with his betters in the country. If he happen to
be a busybody in politics identical with those of the
Lord-Lieutenant of his district, with a little patience
and perseverance, his ambition is pretty sure of being
realised. Thus, the machinery of justice is prosti-
tuted to political purposes, and patronage is loosely
dispensed in a service which, of all others under the
Crown, should be kept free from the slightest taint or
corruption.

We have been led to these remarks on account of a
desire that has been expressed in some quarters for
the abolition of the grand jury. We shall return to
this subject to show that such an idea ought not to be