The Sun.
London, England, 1834-08-19 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The views we took of the object of the Conserva-
tives in rejecting the Irish Tithe Bill, are embraced by
the best-informed Journals of Ireland, the conductors
of which have opportunities of seeing more closely the
motives of these creatures :
" War is declared—(says the Dublin Evening Post of
Saturday last)—war to the knife ! Read the proceedings of
the meeting on Thursday. Above all, and before all, read
the denunciation of the Beresfords. His Grace the Primate,
called by the providence of God to preside over the Irish
Church, has spoken by his deputy and near relative, and
brother in the faith, the Rev. Marcus Beresford. These men
are anxious for war—these Beresfords are ready again for the
riding•house—ready again to erect the triangles—ready again
to score the characters of their loyalty upon the lacerated backs
of the King's subjects. Let the monsters be met—let the
dogs be muzzled.

" Marcus, take care ! The people of Birmingham have
given up burning Dissenters, and the Government of Ireland
will not allow you or your like to cmbrue your hands in the
blood of Catholics.
" Take care, your Reverence ! Do not believe that you or
the sanguinary brutes you would halloo to slaughter, will be
treated hereafter with the mistaken lenity and impolitic for-
bearance with which, heretofore, their insolence and disloyalty
were sought to be soothed. Pat a Beresford on the back—pet
a she-wolf.
" It will be for Lord Wellesley to adopt immediate mea-
sures—ne respublica quid detrimenti capiat.
" We tell his Excellency that it is threatened. We tell
bim that he is threatened. Of his energy we have no doubt. Of
the clearness and accuracy of his perception his enemies en-
tertain none. In his wisdom and his experience the country
confides with as much security as a British army would confide
in the military talents of his mistaken brother.
" It will be quite necessary that the Executive should be on
the alert. Every effort is already making to exasperate the
feelings of the population. They have imported madmen from
England felt the purpose of adding fuel to the flame.
" It is a mistake to imagine that the Beresfords and their
gang would have incurred the tremendous responsibility of con-
signing the Protestalit clergy to starvation, without some other
object than that of merely spiting the minister or embarrassing
the government of the country.
" The war, indeed, is already declared; and it will be for
the Attorney-General seriously to consider whether a Pande-
monium is to be opened in Dublin, for the sole and exclusive
purpose of organizing a resistance, perhaps an armed resistance,
against the King's peace, his crown and dignity.
" Of this we are satisfied, that if prompt measures be not
taken, we shall hear, in the course of the next week, from the
North of Ireland, a response to the speech of the Rev. Marcus
Beresford. Or, without a figure, we shall hear a tale of blood.
" Do we fear rebellion? No—not at all; but outrages and
murder we fear.
"In the mean time—for the satisfaction of all parties—it is
right it should be known that Government is resolved to act
with promptitude and decision."
We have no doubt that the Government will act
with promptitude and decision; that they will not
allow themselves to be bullied by the madmen whom
the Dukes of Cumberland and Wellington would let
loose in Ireland. Whoever is mad enough to attempt
an armed resistance to the King's peace, his crown
and dignity, will assuredly come to an ignominious end.
We know that the Conservative Peers dare not openly
abet the miscreants who are longing to begin the work
of carnage ; they know there are, scaffolds and execu-
tioners ; but they do all they can, without committing
themselves, to set the work a-going. In the mean time,
they who have influence with the Catholics, ought, above
all things, to impress on them the necessity of leaving to
the King's Government the duty of chastising the viola-
tors of the law. Let them reflect that all that their
enemies want is the opportunity of raising a cry of mas-
sacre, that the feelings .of the people of England may be
interested in their behalf. The Rev. Marcus Beres-
ford, who calls himself a Minister of the meek and
lowly Jesus, utters these Christian sentiments—" We
twill get rid of the bloody Popish rebels from amongst
us.—(Loud and continued cheers.) We will stock
our lands with honest Protestants. *
I would, and I declare it most solemnly—(Here the
Rev. Speaker raised his arm and his voice)—l would
rather eat a potatoe and salt with a good Protestant,
than live like a king in the midst of Papists.—(Cheers,
and a cry of ' The true blood 9fa Berefford !') Some
of our Clergymen wish to put Protestants on our glebes,
but some conscientious men to whom I have spoken
said, ' Oh, we get our tithes from the Papists, but
now the Papists pay us no tithes, and shall we not
get rid of them ?' "—(Cheers.) How this Reverend
Minister disgraces the name of Protestant I The
brute talks of driving from their native country five or
six millions of men with as much indifference as if
they were so many insects. Such an idea never
entered into the conception of an Attila I The nations
of the Continent must be astonished that there should,
in the British dominions, be found an assembly in
which a person uttering such language would notin-
stantly be hooted down. In England, the Rev.
Marcus Beresford would assuredly have been kicked
out of any room he should pollute by his presence.
To think, too, that the Marquis of Downshire, Lord
Roden, and Lord Winchilsea should encourage such
revolting language ! Why do we speak with indigna-
tion of the Inquisition, when a man calling himself a
Protestant, coolly talks of sacrificing a whole nation
merely because they are Catholics ? The expul-
sion of the Moors, cruel as it was, would sink
into insignificance compared with this. But the
Rev. Marcus Beresford does not tell us how he
is to get rid of the bloody Papists. He would not,
surely, cut the throats of all them—England could not
receive them. Giving him, therefore, every credit for
the murderous intention, the threat is a mere brutum
fulmen, from the utter impossibility of any men or set
of men reducing it to practice. Before fifty thousand
Papists were got rid of in one year, all Europe would
be agitated at the recital of the cruelty. The people of
England, they may rest assured, will not abet the To-
ries" in any of these pranks. The moment any crack-
brained Orangeman raises a hand against the peaceable
subjects of the King, he will be coerced. They are
great boasters---mighty men to hear them talking of
what they intend to do ; but their first movement will
teach them a humiliating lesson ; and the English
people will, in the meantime, profit by what takes
place, and be better able to estimate the merits of the
House of Peers. We may judge, from the samples of
bigotry and ferocity displayed at this meeting, how
much' Ireland owes to the circumstance of having
a sinecure Church—a Protestant Church—in a na-
tion of Catholics. At this meeting Colonel Verner
exclaimed, " What can we expect from this pre-
cious Ministry, and this Reformed Parliament ? As
a specimen of what some of the Members of this
Reformed Parliament are, I will state to you what I
heard an English Member say a few nights ago in the
House of Commons. He stated that it was his opi-
nion that tranquillity could never be established in
Ireland until that dreadful and abominable nuisance,
the Church Establishment of Ireland, was totally abo-
lished 1" Colonel Verner will find that the sentiments
of this Member of the Reformed Parliament are
shared by many persons in this country ; and the lan-
guage of most of the speakers at this meeting is not
certainly calculated to make them enamoured of a Pro-
testant Church under such circumstances. The
Standard, indeed, states that the Protestant Church of
Ireland being the true Church, ought to be maintained
without reference to the opinions or wants of the
people :-
I.,The Ministerial doctrine (says our contemporary) assumes,
as its hypothesis, that in the eye of the State all religions are,
or ought to be, alike—that which we believe to be false—that
which we swear to be "damnable and idolatrous"—that which
we know to be anti-social, tyrannical, and cruel—no worse
than that which, if we are Church of England Protestants, we
believe to be the religion of the Gospel. The State, says the
Morning Chronicle, is unjust if, in providing the means for
dispensing what it believes to be saving truth, it provides not
also the means for inculcating what it knows to be, temporally
and eternally, ruinous falsehood. This is the Ministerial
doctrine—this, we doubt not, is the Ministerial faith,
political as well as religious, and this very justly concludes in
the inference of the Morning Chronicle, that the maintenance of
a- Protestant Church in Ireland, even upon its own resources,
is'a monstrous stretch of toleration. In other words, that the
Protestant Church of Ireland must be extinguished, and its re-
venue* transferred to the Roman Catholic priests of that king-
dom."

Whether the Catholic priests should in any case be
paid by the State is a question we will not discuss.
I he Catholics themselves do not wish their clergy to
be so paid. But before we speak of what religion the
State ought to inculcate, we must first ask what is the
State ? The State in this country does not entertain
one creed, because all religious bodies have their re-
presentatives in that body which is the great and pre-
ponderating power in the State—the House of Com-
mons. The House of Commons consists of Scotch
and Irish Presbyterians, British and Irish Catholics,
English and Irish Episcoloalians and Dissenters, in-
cluding even Quakers. The English Church. is net

established because it inculcates true religion, but be-
cause it teaches the religion of the majority of the
people. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland is
established not because it inculcates the true reli-
gion, but because it also teaches the religion of
the majority of the people. If we take any other
ground we insult all those who profess different
religions from that established. The people of
these islands are all at liberty to choose their re-
ligions ; and no one who professes one religion is
entitled to say more than that he himself believes it
true—he is not entitled to say his own is the only true
religion, and his neighbour's is false. To claim par-
ticular advantages to the professors of one religion,
because it is the only true one, is a degree of persecu-
tion which can have no other effect than stirring up a
counter-persecution. We must come at last to fire and
faggot. The Papist will burn the Protestant for in-
culcating what " is temporally and eternally ruinous
falsehood ;" the Protestant, in thin, will burn the
Papist for " inculcating what is temporally and eter-
nally ruinous falsehood ;" and the Presbyterian, be-
lieving both to be in error, will burn both. Toleration
was forced on all these sects ; but toleration would be
absurd if we allow one sect to possess advantages be-
cause its creed is true, andsubject another to privations
because its creed is presumed to be damnable and idola-
trous. The admission, however, of all sects into Par-
liament must necessarily lead to equality of treatment.
They who do not respect others cannot expect to be
themselves respected.—Morning Chronicle.
The reform of the Chancery system was of the
reforms which the Whigs zealously advocated before
their accession to office, and of which they seem to be
now perfectly forgetful. Does the system, which they
used to describe as radically vicious, now work so well
that there is no cause of complaint ? Have delay and
expense been so diminished to suitors that a legislative
reform of the system would be superfluous ? Any
man who has a fancy for a Chancery suit may expe-
rimentally satisfy himself that it must be a long purse
which its bill of costs will not drain, and a very lid-
.oi us constitution indeed which its delay will not wear
out. The amateurs in litigation of the school of
Peter Peebles, who are never so happy as when hunt-
ing, or being hunted through the mazes of a legal la-
byrinth—who have the unspeakable enjoyment of wor-
rying and perhaps ruining others, while they are consci-
ous that in the worst event they have themselves
nothing to lose—all such inveterate amateurs in
litigation, we say, will find the Court of Chan-
cery as pleasant a paradise to them as it ever
was. To all others it still is, and, until reformed root
and branch, it will ever be, as painful a purgatory as any
that was ever devised to punish the sins of mankind in
this world by an ingenious system of equitable torment.
But though the expenses of a Chancery suit may
still be very great, how can there be any consider-
able delay, we are asked, seeing that, according to the
Attorney-General's statement, there are now no ar-
rears of causes in Chancery ? We fear the Attorney-
General, in making this statement, has been imposed
upon, or that the statement itself is bottomed upon a
quibble not unworthy of a special pleader. Let us
see. Upon this important question of Chancery
arrears, which one would think could be easily set at
rest by documentary proof, the Attorney-General and
the Hon. and Learned Member for Galway, Mr.
Lynch, are at issue. The former, who, be it observed,
is not in equity-practice, stated in the House of Com-
mons, the night before the close of the Session, that
there were at the present time no arrears in the Court
of Chancery. The latter, who is an equity lawyer,
and in considerable practice, not being present when
Sir John Campbell made that statement, contradicted
it in his place the next day, and said that the arrears of
causes in Chancery were little short of what they were
at the time when, in order to clear away an accumula-
tion of arrears, and to prevent any such arrears from
accumulating in future, the Vice-Chancellor's Court
was established. Previously to the establishment of
that Court in 1813, the Lord Chancellor had to dis-
pose of motions, causes, and bankruptcy business, be-
sides appeals. At present the Lord Chancellor's Court
is confined almost exclusively to appeals. It has a con-
current jurisdiction with the Vice-Chancellor's Court,
which is only a branch of itself in causes, but, in
point of practice, the causes are on the list of the Vic-
e Court. They are 200, or within a few
of what the amount of arrears was in 1813. It then
may be asked what the public has gained by the esta-
blishment of the Court ? It is important that the pub-
lic should be correctly informed on this subject, be-
cause, if the statement of Mr. Lynch be correct, the
necessity for that Chancery Reform, which was so
often promised, but the promise of which has been
always evaded, is as strong as ever. If the present
Lord Chancellor has to do exclusively, or almost ex-
clusively, with appeals, that was not the case with his
predecessors. Since Lord Brougham was raised to
the Bench, the bankruptcy business has been sepa-
rated from the other business of equity. Lord
Brougham has consequently more time to attend to
causes than Lord Eldon or Lord Lyndhurst had. Why
then should there be 200 causes in arrear ? The
Attorney-General says they are not in the Court of
Chancery. Mr. Lynch says the Court of the Vice-
Chancellor is only a part of the Court of Chancery,
to' facilitate the despatch of the business of that
Court. It matters not, as far as the public is con-
cerned, whether the arrear of causes is in the one
Court or the other. The fact that there is such
an arrear of Chancery business cannot be denied ; and
the public may ask why all the business except ap-
peals, why the causes and motions are all driven into
the Court of the Vice-Chancellor? There has been

a Chancery regulation Act within a year or two. The
object of the Act was to facilitate proceedings and di-
minish expense. Mr. Lynch says that so far from af-
fording greater facilities to the proceedings, greater de-
lay and greater impediments are interposed ; and as to
diminishing expense, this object was, by the new table
of fees, entirely frustrated. Is there not, therefore,
sufficient to make the public doubt that anything has
been yet done to supersede the necessity of a thorough
reform of the Court and system of Chancery?—Morn-
ing Herald.

During nearly the whole of the last Session a Com-
mittee of the House of Commons has been sitting on
the subject of the Metropolitan Police—sitting, we
believe, with closed doors ; at any rate, either by acci-
dent or design, little or nothing with regard to its pro-
ceedings has been allowed to transpire, its witnesses
having been entirely of its own selection. At the close
of the Session it made its report, a copy of which has
found its way into the Press long before the Parlia-
mentary print, with the evidence, is likely to reach
the public. It is quite clear, from the whole tone of
this document, that the Committee sat out and sat
down—nay, continued its sittings—with but one ob-
ject, which was to extol the new police system as
one of perfection, which has answered every ob-
ject, without eliciting any thing, so much as one word,
in the shape of objection. That this has been the de-
termination of the Committee, per fas et nefas, is clear
from the boldness of an assertion, more than once re-
peated, that had there been any objections they were
sure to have had them presented to them ; the real
fact being, as we have already stated, that no one had
access to the Committee but witnesses of their own
selection, selected of course to suit and forward their
object. That the new police system may have done a
great deal in the way of prevention, as well as in the
detection of crime, we do not at all dispute ; but that
does not at all meet the objection to the unconstitu-
tional nature of the establishment, or in any degree
prove that the same results might not have been
brought about by more legitimate means. The ob-
jection to the system is, not that it
,has been con-
verted to bad purposes, but that it is capable of being.
Nemo fruit repente tulpissimus ; and it is the nature
of tyranny to make its approaches by degrees, by sap
and mine, rather than by open manly assault. We
remember the time when such a system as that of the
new pollee would have been made a dangerous
State engine—when it would have done the work of
the Castles and Olivers of those days, or of days not
long succeeding them. Nor is there any security,
that, if the opportunity offers, it may not be converted
into a similar engine of hateful espionnage.; but which
would not be the case, or at any rate be so liable to be
the ease, had the nomination of the constables remained
with the parishes. Toa boast, as this - Committee in
its report does, of this force as now cotiatituted being

a more constitutional force than a military one, is a
species of special pleading and of trifling unworthy of
grave assertion or of serious discussion. It cannot, to
be sure, be said to amount to a distinction without a
difference, for the difference is great enough. In the
,suppression of a mob or tumult one troop of Life
Guards is of more use than the whole of the police
force ; while, emanating from the same authority,
having heads broken by truncheons, or rioters dispersed
by the quiet means of well-trained horses, offers a
choice in which there can be, we imagine, no difficulty
in deciding. Whether the report in question is in-
tended as a mere feeler, or ultimate measures are to be
grounded upon it, we know not ; but it behoves not
only the metropolitan: parishes, but those which the
system has not yet reached, if not to be up and stirring,
at least to be on their guard, lest, under the colour of
civil protection, civil liberty does not become a mere
shadow.—Morning Herald.
The great Protestant Meeting in Dublin has excited,
as might have been expected, the anger of all the ene-
mies of the Protestant Church. It would have been a
worthless meeting, indeed, had it failed to do so. The
Ministerialists or Revolutionists, for the terms appear
to be convertible, affect to consider this important
meeting, and the bold sentiments it uttered, and the
solemn resolutions it adopted, as the unmeaning ebul-
litions merely of heated minds, as the insignificant
effusions of party violence and rancour. It is evident
however, that this affectation of contempt is entirely
assumed. Nothing can be more certain, and of this
our contemporaries are fully aware, than that such a
meeting cannot be convened, and such language uttered
and universally applauded, unless society has previously
been brought into a state into which it is the chief
business of statesmen to prevent society from ever
being brought. The Protestants of Ireland .at this
meeting held a language which is important from the
number, the weight, and the influence of theirassembly,
but which is still more important when regarded as
the natural and just expression of the feelings of a
very numerous and influential body of men labour-
ing under the consciousness of oppression, the sense
of injury, and the apprehension of danger. The vio-
lent subversion of the Protestant Church is to them
an insult, an injury, and a danger, and the subversion
of the Protestant Church by violence is not merely
threatened, but is actually commenced. The admis-
sion of this fact forms indeed the very basis of all the
Ministerial reasoning which have recently heard or
read upon the subject onNeland. This reasoning
may be thus succinctly repeated :—The House of
Lords ought not to have rejected Mr. O'Connell's
plan for the abolition of tithe in Ireland—the Pro-
testants of Ireland ought not to have met to express
their honest sentiments upon the present situation of
affairs—because the policy of Government has cre-
ated a state of affairs in Ireland in which it is im-
possible to collect the tithe ; in other words, the Church
should be abandoned by its friends because its ene-
mies have succeeded in placing it in a position of ex-
treme danger. This reasoning may suit the unprin-
cipled partisans of an unprincipled Ministry, but it
is not thus that the Protestants of Ireland or of
Great Britain will reason in regard to the affairs of
the Church. The friends of law and order, as such,
all who have an interest in the maintenance of law and
order, must unite their forces upon the question of
upholding the rights of the Church with the Protes-
tants of Ireland, were it possible to imagine that any
of the former exist who are not already upon other and
higher grounds the allies of the latter. This is a ques-
tion which decides the very existence of the British
Government in Ireland. The power and disposition
to enforce the law are essential to the very idea of a
Government. Without them there is no Government.
Those who in defiance of the law to-day refuse the
payment of tithe, with impunity, are at liberty to-
morrow to refuse the payment of rent or taxes,
and to refuse the next day any other act of obedi-
ence to the civil magistrate. The Protestants of
Ireland foresee clearly enough that the course now pur-
sued by Government must terminate in this result.
In the non-payment of tithe they see the extirpation
of British power, and the cessation of that effectual
protection which they require, and have a right to ex-
pect. Every pretence even for the refusal of thistist
and legal payment is a menace, or attack rather,
directed against the British Government and British
connection. The tithe, it is said, is collected for the

support of a Church which is not that of the majority
of the people. Whatever of truth there is in this pre-
tence points distinctly to the separation of the two
countries, for the Church, on account of which tithe

is collected in Ireland, is that of the majority of the
British people. But it points also to a speedy re-
sumption by Roman Catholics of the land in Ireland
of which the present owners are Protestants, and so far
as it is permitted to succeed effects in some degree
that resumption ; for the tithe in Ireland as elsewhere
is really paid by the landowners, and the majority
of the actual landowners of Ireland are members
of the Church to which the tithe legally belongs.
The Roman Catholics of Ireland have just as much
right to say that they will separate themselves from the
destinies of Great Britain, as to say that tithe shall
not be paid in Ireland because it is paid to a Church
to which they do not belong. The tenantry of Ireland
have just as much right to say that they will hence-
forth occupy the land as their own, as to say that they
will not pay tithe to a Church which is that of their
landlords, although it be not their own. And there
can be little doubt that if these parties be permitted to
act in the spirit of the one declaration, they will soon
begin to act in the spirit of the other. The British
people, if they wish Ireland to be preserved to the em-
pire, or would avoid a protracted and sanguinary civil
war for the dominion of that country, must unite with
their brethren of the Irish Church to discountenance
and put down the present tithe rebellion, which is evi-
dently only intended as the precursor of a political and
social rebellion.—Morning Post.

We look forward with considerable curiosity to the
appearance of a Ministerial manifesto, such
as that
which was put forth last year, in which the measures
of the session may be surveyed as through a solar
microscope. Campbell, in his life of Siddons, adverts
to the anecdote of a stage-struck brewer in a riot,
who, in set theatrical phrase, expressed his hopes to a
mob.clamouring for liquor, that as his strong drink
was exhausted, they would show their usual indulgence
to the small beer, called upon at so short a notice to
fill the part of double stout. Doubtless, without the
candour of this apology, we shall see the small- beer
brewage of the session served up as double stout; and,
flat and sour as it is, with the small beer the nation
must needs be content, for there is nothing else, and
marvellously small it is, and withal, as Foote said
of the Constantia, " very little of its age." Quantity,
in the case of certain things, makes up for poorness in
quality, but in this instance of the legislation of the
season we shall have small-beer in a liqueur-glass.
What human being has reason to thank this Parlia-
ment for its year's labours ? In order to feel an obli-
gation to it, one must have the fortune to be robbed in
the. Surrey suburbs, and thus be made to benefit by the
convenience of the Central Criminal Court. The relief
from the house-tax was no act of grace---4 was ex-
torted ; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer has
spontaneously taken off some taxes, and the author of

the IVlinisterial manifesto will doubtless do full justice
to his services in respect of shepherds' dogs and stone-
bottles. But these are times to make men thankful
for what they can get, and we are grateful to a proper
degree, we trust, not only for shepherds' dogs and
stone-bottles, but also for the reduction of the duty on
currants, a notice of which was strangely omitted in
the King's Speech. However, we make no question
that full justice will be done to that beneficent act in
the concoction of the expected manifesto. Each Mi-
nister will in that document take in hand the praise of
his own performance. The Chancellor will hug his
Old Bailey, which the King is made to hope will fur-
nish a useful example to the kingdom, but not, we
trust, in the common sense of the phrase, with refer-
ence to executions. Mr. P. Thomson, who like little
Jack Horner put in his thumb and pulled out a plum
from the subjects of fiscal oppression, will cry, "What
a fine fellow am I," upon the currant relief ; another
will pour the praises of the Ministry into stone-
bottles ; and another will make the country sensible of
the prodigious blessing of untaxed shepherds' dogs.
By the way, we look upon this as a most important
act of the session, for it is the only performance in

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1834.