The Sun.
London, England, 1851-08-22 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 1851.

Mendacity, barefaced, unblushing, unhesitating
mendacity, has in every age and in every clime been
the invariable characteristic of the sacerdotal despot
who claims a right divine of setting truth, in com-
mon with every other moral obligation, at defiance,
but never has that mendacity been so shamelessly dis-
played, as it was by the Roman Catholic bishops and
their satellites, who assembled in Dublin, on Wednesday
last, to form an association, the very title of which is
a falsehood; they call their association a Defence As-

sociation forsooth, it being in reality an association
for offensive and aggressive purposes, acting in co-

operation with, and in obedience to, the orders of a
foreign Power. To particularize every untruth
uttered, or insinuated or inuendoed by these Mitred
agents of foreign tyranny would require more time
and morespace than we can devote to the subject; but
there are certain assertions made which are so palpa-

bly untrue that we cannot but draw to them the
attention of all unprejudiced persons. Foremost
among these stands the assertion by the learned and
astronomical Dr. PAUL CULLEN, that the Catholics of
this empire had done nothing to bring about the pre-
sent state of things, but had been forced into the atti-
tude they had assumed, whereas it is manifest that
had they " done nothing," had the system of 1849
been continued in 1850 and 1851, had no rescript
appointing Romish bishops with territorial titles been
issued, no man living would have thought of the
enactment cf any measure such as that the adoption
of which has called forth the ire and inspired the elo-
quence of these Right Rev. agitators. Dr. PAUL
CULLEN then makes serious complaints, that the
sacred mysteries of his religion were caricatured, and
the grossest insults offered to the saints. We readily
admit that it is exceedingly wrong as well as exceed-
ingly ill-bred to caricature and insult the religion of any
man, but this complaint comes with rather a bad grace
from the Archiepiscopal superintendent of those who
boast that they burn the Holy Bible wherever they can
find it. Again he says, " the Catholic Church and all
her true children proclaim that there is but one true
faith ; they reject heresy and error, but at the same
time, in the spirit of our REDEEMER, they pray for
those that are in error, they have compassion on
them, they love them, and all we ask for is a full and
free exercise of our religion." The Thug asks for the
same, yet if he attempts to carry out the full and
free exercise of his religion he is hanged, and de-
servedly so—hanged not as a Thug, but as a mur-
derer. All these, however, are but matters of minor
importance when compared with the assertions of the
same Dr. PAUL CULLEN, in interruption of the
speech of Mr. G. MooRE. We give the passage
_ .

in extenso as reprinted in one of the organs of the
parti-pretre:—" The LORD PRIMATE here interrupted
Mr. Moortn, and said that he was wrong if he in-
tended to intimate that the POPE was ever inimical to
civil liberty. Wherever the Catholic Church pre-
vailed there true liberty followed—wherever Catho-
licity has been superseded, there slavery followed.
It was so in every country from the beginning of
Christianity." Great must be the powers of face of
Dr. PAUL CULLEN if he uttered this with a grave
countenance. What then, there is according to the
Cullenean theory true liberty in Austria, where
women are flogged and men are shot, hanged
or immured for life in loathsome dungeons
because they have been guilty of the ,crime
of giving to a starving man a morsel of
bread and a cup of water ; there is. true liberty in
Naples, that Naples the horrors of whose prisons, the

• .
atrocities of 10;030 Government, the pandering to
perjury of whose priests has been so graphically and
so truthfully described by Mr. GLADSTONE ; there is
true liberty in Rome, where, within the last two
months, an unfortnnate man has been received into
one of the prisons, and there subjected to the most
atrocious cruelty, on the expressed ground that he
had been convicted by the Holy Inquisition of some
unknown crime, and where there is at this moment
languishing in gaol a man who is practically
condemned to imprisonment for life, inasmuch as im-

mediately on his arrest he was excommunicated ;
and since neither officers of justice, nor lawyers, nor
witnesses, can hold communication with him without
being also excommunicated, the unfortunate man can
never be brought to trial. This, according to Dr.
PAUL CULLEN, is true liberty, whilst to live
in a country like England or America, where we
have the habeas corpus to secure us against arbitrary
and causeless imprisonment, and trial by jury, to se-
cure to each man a fair and impartial trial, is, ac-
cording to Dr. PAUL CULLEN, a state of slavery.
Surely Dr. PAUL CULLEN must have studied history
and politics in the same school in which he studied
mathematics, and his fame as an astronomer will be
now eclipsed by his notoriety as a political philoso-
pher; here we must pause, even the assertion by Dr.
GILLIES that the Ecclesiastical Titles Assumption
Act rubs out for ever the privileges of the Act of
1829, while standing by his side were Mr. JOHN
REYNOLDS, M.P. ; Mr. W. KEOGH, M.P. ; and Mr.
G. MOORE, M.P., neither of whom would have been
m.p. had the assertion of Dr. GILLIES been true,
sinks into insignificance when compared with this
assertion of Dr. PAUL CULLEN, Of whom FERDINAND
MENDER PINTO was but a type. The men who could
swallow such an assertion as this have credulity
enough for anything, and can scarcely be considered
in a sufficiently sane state to be intrusted with the ma-
nagement of their own affairs.

The many monuments of public taste with which
our metropolis abounds have been rendered familiar
since the memorable month of May to many myriads
of foreign visitors. Yet in the multiplicity of objects
it is likely that a certain bewilderment is generated
in the brains of many, and it may not be mai-a-propos
to make a hasty enumeration, " on hospitable thoughts
intent," of a few of the various objects of attraction to
which the eye of the stranger should be specially
directed in a survey of the marvels of the modern
Babylon. Of minor features of beauty or subli-
mity we need but mention the lordly obelisks
which sentinel the foot of Ludgate-hill,—the
effigies of CIIARLES JAMES Fox, seated on
a stool in Bloomsbury-square—the little black
am, peeping over the railings at the top of
Portland-place—the airy network which gracefully
guards the capitals of the Monument, and of that
western column, from whose summit his Royal
Highness the Duke of YORK, with a spike arising
from the centre of his skull, contemplates in serene
majesty the gambols of the water-fowl and the
nursers-maids in St. James's Park, and the airy fane
Margaret's, harmonising with the general tone
of Westminster Abbey, yet distancing the Chapel of
HENRY the SEVENTH in genuine and acknowledged
beauty. But a just and pardonable sensation of
pride impels us to direct attention to the Three
Great Wonders of the chief city of the British Empire
It is in no vain-glorious spirit of vaunting, or of that
extended selfishness commonly called patriotism, but