The Sun.
London, England, 1834-08-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Our indefatigable Irish contemporary, the Standard,
continues his commentaries on the politics and Church
questions of Ireland. The present alarm-bell of the
Standard is a prediction of the -near advent of a Move-
ment Ministry, embracing Mr. O'Connell. This
dreaded event, and the Dublin Orange Meeting, con-
stitute the stock in trade—the Welch text—of the
political sermons of our contemporary. Last night
the Standard manufactured a communication from
Lord Grey, on his retirement, to the. King, not one
word of which is true. We revert, however, to the
symptoms of public opinion in Ireland. Mr. O'Con-
nell exhibits sagacity and judgment in his present
policy. We rejoice to know that employment was
never so abundant in Ireland—that the harvest wears
a golden appearance—that English capital is banking
in Ireland (see our advertisement and report of a
Waterford meeting)—that crime has diminished—that
tithe is practically extinguished—that Mr. O'Con-
nell does not imitate his enemies—that the people of
Ireland discern an honest intention in Ministers to
do justice to that misgoverned country. But we re-
turn to the expiring Orange faction. We shall soon
have to pen its obituary. The Catholics, we are glad
to find, laugh at the threats of the speakers at the
" great Protestant meeting ;" and, if we may credit
the accounts which we have received from Ireland,
more importance has been attached to the meeting
here, than the character and situation of the speakers
ought to have obtained for it. 'We have received the
following communication on the subject from an Irish
source of great respectability ; and on the principle of
impartiality we willingly insert it, though it makes light
of a matter which we were led .to view as very serious:—
" I,Ve have not as vet learned that the ' great' Protes-
tant meeting in Ireland has produced any very remark-
able results, beyond extracting five hundred pounds from
the plethoric purse of Lord Winchilsea. It is, indeed,
more than probable, that if this Noble Lord had not been
brought down to star it, there would have been but empty
benches, and the dulcet tones of the gentle Ro-
DEN would have come back in refracted dulness
upon himself. The truth is, there is no sympa-
thy in Ireland with such proceedings, if we ex-
cept the sympathy that exhibits itself amongst
that small party whd have a direct personal inte-
rest in the sustainment of unjust power and as-
cendancy in that country. It would have been
but consistent in the orators at that Meeting,
when assailing ' the ignorant Government' —as
that very illuminated person, Lord RODEN, designat-
ed the present Ministry—to have added to the list
of crimes which the Government have perpetrated
against the Protestants of Ireland, a deliberate
design to murder them all—upon the obvious
principle of the poet, that you take away one's
life if you do take the means whereby lie lives !
This is the . true motive of all these meetings,
and all this opposition to the Government : self-inte-
reSt—pelf, are the instigating agents of this hostility
to improvement and reform. Religion is merely the
pretext, and has nothing to do with the real question.
.I'he actors at this meeting have been chronicled with
a fidelity so intense as not to permit one person with a
decent coat on his back to go unnoticed ; and who are
they ? With the exception of the Noble Lords whose
names we have mentioned—one of whom aspires to be
a leader of his very insignificant party, and the other
having no permanent connection with the county,
being merely a performer by particular desire, and
for " this occasion only," as the qffiches of other
farces express it—there was no Nobleman present of
any importance or weight derived from high character,
intelligence, or superior fortune. We should certainly
have excepted one name that escaped our recollection,
on account of the little association of ideas in our
mind with such proceedings, that the name of this No-
bleman could call up—we mean Lord Downshire. In
the example of this Nobleman, the Irish Orangemen
may learn a secret, which, if turned to account by the
peculiar means of producing conviction, which they
cultivated in his case, may soon do wonders in multi-
plying supporters for the good cause. This Nobleman
within a few days being required, as the Irish news-
papers say, in his character of a Magistrate, to enforce
a statute prohibiting the insulting party-processions
that periodically take place in Ireland, was assaulted
in the streets of his own town by a gang of infuriated
Orangemen, felled to the ground by a blow, forced
down upon his knees, and compelled, by the admoni-
tory bludgeons that were hanging over him, to ask
the pardon of " the injured °Protestants" who be-
leaguered him!! Will it be believed that this No-
bleman—with the recollection, as one would ima-
gine, of this transaction fresh in his mind, with the
blow still tingling in his ears (if the newspapers
be correct), with the mud that he ,ntracted in
his genuflexion scarcely brushed off—turns round (no
doubt convinced by the process of reasoning to which
he had been subjected), and proclaims, to the best of
his small ability, the injuries that the Government
have inflicted upon the Irish Protestants ? Shame,
where is thy blush ? We have said that the
.neeting was not distinguished by the importance
of the persons who were present. We were quite
right. As to the two or three representatives in
Parliament for Orange counties, they were present of
course ; there was, besides, a country gentleman or
two, who, being disappointed in their counties with the
elections, felt naturally irritated, and availed themselves
of this occasion to evince their spleen ; but with these
few instances, which serve to prove the accuracy of our
• statement, the meeting was nothing more than a beg-
garly account of empty boxes. To read the pro-
gramme
of the meeting, one would suppose that the
Baronetage of the United° Kingdoin had concen-
trated itself in ' the great room' (everything
about this meeting was ' great') ; but, upon a
near acquaintance, we discover that these great men
are the corporate nobility—retailers of small wares,
who, by the lucky accident of being mayors or she-
riffs when a Lord Lieutenant entered upon office, or
having fitted to a nicety a Viceroy in his inexpressi-
bles, were, according to the custom, knighted, or be-
nighted (the terms are convertible in Dublin), as a
proof of Viceregal approbation ! Where were the
great landed proprietors ?—where the opulent mer-
chants, the bankers, the virtuous citizens, for which the
capital of Ireland is eminent ?—where were they, we
• ask ? With the exception of those we have enume-
rated, we ask to how many persons of those who have
been chronicled in The Evening JVlhil would a bank
lend money on their notes of hand, or which of them
would a fastidious gentleman trouble with an invitation
to dinner ? In this enumeration we do not notice the
crowd of Protestant clergymen, who were naturally
solicitous to hear what plan Lord Roden and
his Noble Friend would propose for their re-
lief, after the sentence of present starvation and
ultimate ruin that they had legislatively passed upon
the Established Church ; neither do we refer
to the one- or two of the noisy clerical agitators
of the meeting, who, considering their former
religious opinions and their milesian patronymics,
felt themselves called upon to make themselves
appear protestantibus ipsis protestantiores. In this
hasty analysis of the materials of this meeting, we have
shown that when the smoke and uproar of that party
in Ireland that sets itself up in opposition to a reform-
ing Government clear away, and that in the calm at-
mosphere of truth and deliberate judgment there is
time for reconnoitring its force, whether morally or
physically considered, there is every inducement to a
.
wise Government to persevere in a course of steady
and inflexible reform in the institutions of that part of
the empire. The Irish Orangemen hold out the threat
of separation from this country if there be full justice
done to Ireland. On the contrary, do we say, let there be
full justice done, and there is no danger' of any dis-
union between the countries. The people of Ireland
a
are like all other people, and their condition should
be subject to the same immutable rules of good go-
vernment. Indeed Sir John Davies, himself an Eng-
lishman, has recorded his opinion of Ireland in one en-
during sentence, in which he says that there is no people
in the world so fond of justice as the Irish. We are
glad to perceive that already has the conduct of the
:t esttntGovernment wrought a remarkable change on
..s':„ _4 ii\Keiety. There is a total surrender of agitation
~47, k2rHe of the popular party ; and our private let-
't.:::. -7r INter-s'lpt s that this quietness will remain unbroken.
-.. • ~. ,i., . , • .
,•,,--,--ef-- ,Tht e of Ireland have latterly placed confidence
ee- \-e-,,..; e)s--
-- isjettr,..: ment, and they look forward with great
-1.,,e- . ?'"•• Ai:".)-i.
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hope to the proceedings of the next Session of Par-
liament. " With the people of Ireland at their side,
a reforming Government may laugh to scorn the puny
hostility of party, which, by its violence and its in-
justice, greatly assists the fulfilment of the objects

-which it designs to prevent." No people yet ever
tolerated an alien religion. 'We do not assert that the I
Church question is the root of Irish grievances ; but-it
is the spark which ignites the fuel of other and more
deep-seated combustion. We shall hereafter discuss
the real causes of the miseries of the Irish population.
They are as ancient as the time of James I. Lord
Bacon, in his " Considerations touching the Planta-
tion in Ireland," eloquently states, in 1606, the capa-
bilities and natural advantages of Ireland—a land
" endowed with so many dowries of nature (consider.
ing the fruitfulness of the soil, the ports, the rivers,
the fishings, the quarries, the woods, and other mate-
rials ; and especially the race and generation of men,
valiant, hard, and active) as it is not easy, no not upon
the Continent, to find such confluence of commodities,
if the hand of man did not join with the hand of
nature." Lord Bacon—the great master spirit of his
age—wisely counselled his Sovereign to adopt the
policy of concilition. " The harp of Ireland puts
me in mind of that glorious emblem or allegory,
wherein the wkdom of antiquity did figure and
shadow out the works of this nature. For the
poets feigned that Orpheus, by the virtue and
sweetness of his harp, did call and assemble the beasts
and birds, of their nature wild and savage, to stand
about him, as in a theatre ; forgetting their affections,
of fierceness, of lust, and of prey ; and listening to the
tunes and harmonics of the harp ; and soon after called
likewise the stones and woods to remove, and stand in
order about him ; which fable was afterwards inter-
preted of the reducing and plantation of kingdoms ;
when people of barbarous manners are brought to give
over and discontinue their customs of revenge and
blood, and of dissolute life, and of theft, and of ra-
pine ; and to give ear to the wisdom of laws and go-
vernments." Would to God that the harp of Orpheus
may triumph over the Harpies of Corruption—the
Church of Ireland in a Catholic country and the Beres-
ford Family !—Morning Chronicle.
A correspondent, who signs himself " A Trades-
man," whose letter we inserted in yesterday's paper, is
anxious to know what part we take in the disputes
which have so long existed, and are still unhappily
raging, between the master builders of the metropolis
and their workmen. To this inquiry-we unhesitatingly
answer,"none"-" none whatever," if by " part" is
meant a thick-and-thin advocacy of the one side or
the other. If one party were decidedly in the .right,
or the other unequivocally in the wrong, we should
feel no difficulty, were it then incumbent upon us,
which side to take. But while we have remained, as
we mean to continue to do, unbiassed, unpledged, and
unfettered upon the subject, we have not 'been in-
attentive observers of the conflict, in which, from

its commencement to the present moment, botn
parties have proved themselves too much in the
wrong to elicit our approbation or call for our support.
Of the recent unions among the operatives generally,
we may say that there has been by far too strong a tone
and appearance of defiance and intimidation about
them to deserve the support of any of the friends of
peace and good order ; and, however unpalatable the
avowal may sound in the ears of many of themselves
and of their advocates, we feel convinced that the
working men of the metropolis did themselves and
their cause much harm, when they made that show of
physical strength in the metropolis on a day in the month
of April last, which will not soon be forgotten. To
say nothing of the effect of such displays on the
timid, we believe that numbers with strong nerves
and sound judgment looked at that novel exhibi-
tion as one which could have no effect in obtain-
ing legitimate objects, and, on the contrary, that
it seemed a prelude to a reign of terror, which every
good citizen was called upon to disclaim and to re-
press. Since that time, however, the alarm which
that display occasioned has happily been dying,
away ; and though the Trades Unions were not dis-
solved, we have no doubt but that both their influence
and their numbers were much abated. The master
builders of the metropolis, seem however, in an evil hour,
to have determined to arrest this temporary calm, and,
flushed by the success of the master tailors, to have
determined to impose upon their workmen a test, which,
if it he right, should, we apprehend, be imposed upon
them by law, or not at all. It does not seem, that, as
a body these combining masters will take much by
their motion. In setting the example of that which
.they deprecate in the workmen, they add but little to
the justice of their cause ; while, by opening the door
to such a display of their own proceedings as is given
in the letter of our correspondent, " A Tradesman,"
they exhibit the hateful system of centralization in one
of its worst features as can regard a great trading
community like that of England. We have thus
stated, we hope, enough to show why we are on'neither
side in this dispute. To both parties we would coun-
sel a spirit of amity and mutual forbearance. They
are, in every sense, important members of the same
body, of which the union should be general, not exclu-
sive.—Morning Herald. •
The. time of the next Session of Parliament is
bespoken in the 102 notices of motion to which we
have already adverted. It will be said that every
member has a right to exercise his discretion as to
what he should propose, and the right we do not dis-
pute ; but constituents have also the right to exercise
their judgment upon the discretion which their repre-
sentatives have evinced in their prOpositions, and the
season of them. The practice of giving notice in one
Session of motions to be made in another seems of
questionable convenience. The discussion of a sub-
ject which may appear vety proper in the circumstances
of one year may be very much out of place, and occupy
time that might be devoted to the consideration of mat-
ters of more pressing importance in the altered circum-
stances of another year ; but the Member is apt to
consider himself pledged by his notice, and all those
who happen to be interested in it will solicit his perse-
verance, and endeavour to make it a point of honour.
In the list beforc us we see several motions which are
well aimed, supposing them to be well timed, which no
mortal can now divine. There are others which would be
frivolous and impertinent in any season. Colonel
Williams bears away the palm of absurdity in his pro-
posed resolutions—" That the petitions on the part of
the people to this House for cheap bread ought to be
met by the suppression of the practice of converting
human food into useless and destructive drink. That
from a time to be fixed the distillation of ardent spirits
from grain should be at once and entirely prohibited
in Great Britain and Ireland." It has never occurred
to the Colonel that man cannot live by bread alone, or
he gravely holds with the waggish baker, that bread is
to be eaten " with the gin it." It would seem hardly
possible for any one to witness the hardships to which
the labouring classes are exposed in wet and severe
weather without confessing the necessity of some sti-
mulants, however much it may be desired that .they
should be used in moderation. As for the argument
against the waste of grain by its conversion to spirit, it
might be met by a counterproposition against convert-
ing meat into gouty gravies. The agricultural labourers
don't eat meat more than once a week, while Colonel Wil-
liams swallows the juices of half-a-dozen pounds of meat
in the soup, which is hardly considered as more than a for-
mality in the repast, a thing not to be counted, a skirmish
before the general engagement. In the hors-d'eetivres,
then, what conversion of masses of animal food into ex-
tracts called sauces. And all this while thousands of
industrious bard working people only know meat as a
weekly luxury. If Colonel Williams thinks it wise to
propose sumptuary laws, let him .begin with laws re-
trenching the luxuries of the rich for the benefit of the
poor, and then we will give him credit for sincerity, if
for nothing else. Why does he not cut_the throats of
his hoises r Is it not shocking, according to his ab-
surd train of reasoning, that horses should consume
what the people of Scotland would live on ? He
could walk on foot as easily and comfortably at least
as the poor could forego their glass of liquor. It is a
very dangerous thing to begin laying down rules as to
the things without which other people could do. The
poor may some day think of retorting these tender
cares, and
apply to stopping the
,waste and cutting off
the superfluities of the rich, and all from a zeal
to cure their betters of the gout, which is so apt to trou-
ble them, In this world it is a grievous thing to be