The Sun.
London, England, 1834-09-08 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Mr. O'Connell has commenced a series of epistles
to Lord Duncannon, on the sins of the Whigs towards
Ireland since their accession to office ; the first of
which we shall insert to-morrow. He has noted down,
he says, no less than twenty-one separate charges, which
fall within the categories included in the chapter of
Irish history which he is writing. Three of the charges
are disposed of in' the first epistle, and the remaining,
eighteen charges are reserved for future flights of elo-
quence.- The charges in this first letter turn out to
be, the makin-g Lord Plunkett Chancellor, Mr. Joy
Chief Baron, Mr.- Doherty Chief Justice of the Com-
mon Pleas, and Mr. Blackburne Attorney-General. As
to Lord Plunkett, there never, he says, lived a public
man in Ireland so devoid of popularity. " There was
something about him which made it impossible to place
confidence in him—a Presbyterian in his days of
poverty, a Protestant as lie grew into wealth." His
object has been, he contends, to heap offices, livings,
and emoluments upon his sons. Mr. Joy was an
Orange Tory. Mr. Doherty had no great repu-
tation for legal knowledge, and he would have
accepted an assistant barristership. With respect to
Mr. Blackburne, of all the members of the Irish bar,
he was the very worst choice that could have been
made by the Whigs. In making out his catalogue of
faults and follies of the Whigs, Mr. O'Connell has,
he says, two objects in view--Ist, to vindicate the po-
pular party from the charge of having, without any
just provocation, evinced hostility to the Whigs; and,
next, to reconcile, if possible, the popular party with
the present Minister. " To effect a reconciliation (lie
says) it is absolutely necessary to point out which
party has been hitherto in the wrong ; and if the po-
pular party had been so, I should be the first to advise
them to retrace their steps, and to atone °for their er-
rors." Though we are as sensible as Mr. O'Connell
can be, that the Orangemen are not to be coaxed into
any thing like attachment to the present Government,
we cannot see the advantage, if his object be concilia-
tion, of recapitulating all the sins of commission and
omission of the Whig Ministry since November, 1830.
We are not among the admirers of Lord Plunkett,
and we always thought that Mr. Doherty's promo-
tion to the Bench was a questionable measure, though
Mr. O'Connell has himself admitted that he is one of
the best of the Irish Judges. But Mr. O'Connell, in
his anxiety to convict the Whig Ministry of injustice
to the Catholics, is himself grossly unjust towards the
individuals be. has arraigned in this epistle. Mr.
O'Connell hai unquestionably much influence with his
countrymen ; but of course his influence must always
depend in a great measure on the use he makes of it.
Were he -to be thought a lukewarm advocate of their
claims, he would be supplanted by others. Some
allowance ought, therefore, to be made for the difficul-
ties inseparable from Mr. O'Connell's position. In-
deed, in this letter, he does not hesitate to say—
" I am ready to aid in the perfect reconciliation
of the . people with the Ministry ; but I have neither
the power nor the inclination to do so unless you will
conter on that people, not sweet and soft words,
but substantial and distinct acts of friendship and
protection." Ministers have a straightforward course
to pursue. They ought not to submit to any
improper' dictation from Mr. O'Connell, merely
because he is possessed of great influence ; but
neither ought they, on the other hand, to avoid doing
what is right, merely because Mr. O'Connell has told
them of it, from the puerile weakness of not wishing
to be thought under the guidance of Mr. O'Connell.
We fear that there is but too much truth in Mr.
O'Conpell's charge, that nearly all the influential
offices in the management of affairs are committed to
the decided enemies of civil and religious liberty—to
men equally hostile to the government which employs
and pays them, anti to the people over wham they are
placed. We have, indeed, heard that this character
applies to almost every man in office in Dublin. It
may be impossible to remedy this evil at once, but a
commencement should, at all events, be made. Mr.
O'Connell endeavours, at some length, to show that
the Orangemen are without legitimate cause of com-
plaint. The Standard says, " Briefly we will tell
Mr. O'Connell of what the Protestants (for Protest-
ants substitute Orangemen) have to complain—not cer-
tainly of any law or statute, but of the privation of the
protection of all those laws to which they have ever
yielded prompt obedience and zealous support. As
an apostle of anarchy, Mr. O'Connell may think
the privation of the protection of the law no grie-
vance ; but, nevertheless, the danger of being mur-
dered, the certainty of being robbed, through the ma-
gistrates neglect, are grievances, and serious grievances
too, to men whose morals forbid them ptotectinee, them-
selves by the menace of retaliatory murder, or to
make good their losses from robbery by making free
with.. the property of others."—Why, the magistracy
is chiefly .in the hands of Protestants, and if the
Orangemen -have to complain of the privation of the
protection of law, they have themselves chiefly to
blame. The -complaint amounts to a confession that
under 'the ascendancy the Irish have been alienated
from their laws. The laws have been made by the
Orange ascendancy, and administered by them. The
people hid no attachment to the laws, and little
Confidence in the administration of them ; and
hence a habit has been formed of combining to
elude the law. This is the necessary and in-
evitable result of conducting Government not for
the benefit of the people, but of an ascendancy.
The people must feel that they have an interest in
the execution of the laws, or the laws will not be
executed. The system of governing through an as-
cendancy was continued till it fairly broke down under
the Duke of Wellington. His Grace acknowledged
that he would not have emancipated the Catholics
could he have-avoided it ; but the measure was essen-
tial to the safety of the empire. Emancipation was
but the means to an end, and that end is the placing
his Majesty's Catholic subjects on the same footing in
every respect with the Protestants. So long as the
Orangemen cherish the idea that they may preserve
their old ascendancy, so long will Ireland be agitated.
Party having long run so high in Ireland, it is impos-
sible that its effects should not continue to be felt
under even the wisest and most moderate Government.
It will, for some time, be no easy matter, therefore, to
satisfy either the Orangemen or the Catholics. Jus-
tice and impartiality must, however, in time produce
their fruits. Morning Chronicle.
If, as a quaint old writer says, " it is pleasant music
to hear disarmed malice threaten when it cannot strike,"
the vocal performances at the grand Conservative din-
ner in Lancashire must have sounded most agreeably
to the public ear. The whole thing was in the rail-
way fashion—the Tory company came by the rail-way,
they went by the rail-way, and they talked in the rail-
way, and at a fiery speed. For men who professedly
desire to hold things together, these gentlemen have a
strangely explosive style of conversation. Except in
the writings of Messrs. Hetherington and Cleave, we
know no match for the talk of the professors of order
and quietism. A sprung mine, a fired born-shell, a
lighted petard, has as good a title to the character of
conservative. With similar aptness the engine which
is said to discharge a stream of bullets as a fire-engine
_
discharges water, is styled a pacificator. At the Lan-
cashire meeting the Chairman, Lord Wilton, set out
by saying " We must endeavour to discriminate a
spirit of loyalty and attachment to the laws and con-
stitution. We must endeavour to show the people
the delusion attempted to be practised on them ; we
them of the kindly feeling that
must convince
exists towards them on our part, and instead of
being, aq represented, wanton oppressors, we are their
best friends—the friends of national enjoyment and
liberty." In conformity with this advice Mr. Roby,
the very next speaker, " discriminated the spirit of
loyalty and attachment to the laws" by
.raving of trai-
tors " wallowing in their filthy profanities in the sty
of St. Stephen's !" Further, to show the people
that the Conservatives are their best friends, he stated
that the object of their meeting was to strengthen for
a great struggle which is approaching, "to review their
troops ere the battle," &c., to prepare " to combat a
Whig-Radical monster, begotten by French malice on
English credulity ;" by all which rodomontade is meant
an attempt to beat down the influence of the people
and to re-establish an oligarchy. Such is Mr. Roby 's
method of showing the people that the Tories are their
best friends. His bark, however, is worse than his
bite, poor gentleman, for he, and such as he, may rail

long. indeed before they rail the seal from off the bend
of the reformed constitution. He and his friends
may sooner batter down St: Paul's with pea-
shooters. Seeing this great enterprise before him,
he says, " Each man can do something, and what-
soever he findeth to do let him do with all his might."
Mr. Roby has spoken most rigorously up to his
precept. Each man can talk nonsense, and finding
that he can talk nonsense, Mr. Roby has talked non-
sensense with all his might. The same orator, with
an amusing attempt at the sublime, said, " Having
no hopes from a Government such as this--deserted,
betrayed by the very men wlo should have been our
protectors, we are to sit like Roman senators, with
our garments decently folded, awaiting until the hordes
of barbarians and plunderers shall see fit to extermi-
nate us. No !" No, indeed. They did not sit in
the slightest degree, like Roman senators, with their
garments decently folded ; but like a set of scolding,
old women, with their garments disordered by a ram-
pant action, making a most indecent exposure. Ro-
man senators, forsooth I The Sabbath of the witches
in the Faust is a simile incomparably apter. But
they ride their broomsticks harmlessly, though not as
they say, with garments decently folded like Roman
senators, and their grotesque extravagance, though not
without vice in intention, are without mischief in ef-
fect. Lord Skelmersdale, who followed Mr. Roby,
launched into praise of the House of Lords and all its
doings and undoings. In apology for its passing the
Reform Bill, he said that it was done not from fear,
but to oblige the King, who had pledged himself that
the bill should pass. In what a statesmanlike point of
view does this explanation place the conduct of the
Lords. It is pretended that the Reform Bill is fraught
with the destruction of the monarchy, and Lord Skel-
mersdale tells his Tory friends with exquisite simpli-
city, that the Lords passed the measure alleged to be
pregnant with ruin to the monarchy, purely to oblige
the Monarch, or to enable him to redeem his pledge to
self-destruction, for to that, in substance, it comes,
by the Tory showing I One of two things is clear—
either that the Reform Bill is not so bad as.the Tory
Lords describe it, or that the Tory Lords are not so
wise and bold as they describe themselves. But, ac-
cording to Lord Skehuersdale, it was not only oblige
his Majesty that the Lords passed the bill. He adds,
" They consented to it also rather than see 100 of all
sorts of persons forced into the House whose qua-
lification would be to vote as instructed." This is
like the statement of the coxcomb in the French
farce, that a lady died through love of him and
dropsy on the chest. it requires no ghost to tell us
that the dropsy had most to do with the effect.
With the same mixture of causes, fortune-hunters
declare that they marry partly for affection, and in
some degree for 30,0001. Though the fear of the
creation of peers comes in as an ac etiam, after the
disposition to oblige the King, we cannot help think-
ing that it was the main cause. Mr. Hulton also
favoured the Conservative company with a speech.
We suppose that this is the Mr. Hulton who rejoices
in describing himself as Mr. Hulton, of Hulton, lest
he should be called Mr. Hulton, of Peterloo. If so,
he is the Mr. Hulton who was one of the Magistrates
implicated in the bloody business of the 16th of
August, 1819. Such a man was peculiarly fitted to
carry into effect the design of Lord Wilton—namely,
to convince the people of the kindly feelings that exist
towards them on the part of the members of the
meeting, and the Tories generally. The lovingkind-
ness of Mr. Hulton had been experienced most prac-
tically, and certainly it was not of the sort that spareth
the rod. With a language appropriate to his charac-
ter, this gentleman said, that since the passing of the
Reform Bill, Conservative principles had spread with
" a stable, stern, and unrelenting fixedness of pur-
pose." If his principles have been waxing more stern
and unrelenting, Heaven have mercy on mobs where
lie directs sabres. After reading the rant and rodo-
montade—the idiot's tale of sound and fury, signifying
nothing--of the Lancashire Tory meeting, the thing
that most strikes us is the prudence of the Duke of
Wellington in holding himself aloof from it. His ab-
sence is the conspicuous circumstance, and it does ho-
nour to his discretion. Indeed, there was not a Tory
of any mark or likelihood at the meeting, and the noise
made was but the crackling of the burning sticks of
the party. The shrewd and sensible Tories know that
this is no time for parading their opinions, and that
they have but one chance, which is to un-Tory them-
selves as quietly as possible. They see that it is a
rout, and will not make a stand merely as a mark to be
shot at, but slip off their uniforms, and covet a tem-
porary retirement, in which the people may pass an
Act of amnesty, if fresh provocations are avoided.—
Times.

Lord Duncannon's visit to Ireland ought to be an
object of considerable jealousy, if not of suspicion.
Scarcely warm in his office, and, of course, uninformed
of its duties, he sets off for Ireland, leaving the busi-
ness of the most important department in the State
(which under existing circumstances it undoubtedly is)
to the chapter of accidents, or to such care as those
who have other. offices and duties to attend to can
bestow upon it. That his Lordship may have very
legitimate claims upon his presence in Ireland (if
private claims can be allowed to supersede public
duties) we do not deny. But, unfortunately, there is
an awkwardness as to time about his movements,
which, we repeat, renders them an object of jealousy,
if not of suspicion. On this point we cannot ex-
press our own meaning better than in the words of
one of our Correspondents in Ireland, who says—
" In the present Administration Lord Duncannon
is the adopted child of the Agitator, and is the in-
dividual who would, in all probability, be selected
to make overtures for a junction between himself and
the Government. To-day I have been informed, and I
have reason to place reliance upon my authority, that
an interview is appointed to take place between Mr.
O'Connell and Lord Duncannon on the subject of
the new appointments." This, if true, is indeed a
fearful state of things, and holds forth a premium on
agitation, not to say on spoliation and rebellion, never
before heard or dreamt of. That the most flaming pa-
triotism has its price history, if we need go back to it,
leaves no doubt ; and it has been frequently alleged as
a fault both in the Duke of Wellington and Earl
Grey's Government, that the price of the individual in
question was not-long since found out and paid. There
are those who think that it would have been money
well laid out, both for the peace of England and of
Ireland. But both sellers and purchasers, on these as
well as on other occasions, may outstand their mar-
ket ; and there is now no boon or price which the Go-
vernment can hold out to Mr. O'Connell, which will
not overwhelm them with disgrace, and which will not
hold out, to all who choose to follow in his steps, at
once a premium and an absolution to practices totally
at variance with the safety and well being of so-
ciety. We would fain pause, then, before we credit
the assertion made by Mr. O'Connell, that the Govern-
ment is in alliance with him in his avowed hostility to
the Protestant Establishment ; we would fain pause
before we fall into our correspondent's rumour—that
Lord Duncannon, the Secretary of State for the Home
Department, is in negotiation with Mr. O'Connell on
the subject of the latter's elevation to office. It may
be so ; but we trust, for the honour of British States-
men, hitherto never so tarnished, that it is not. Of
Lord Duncannon, the alleged mediator on this occa-
sion, we would, assuming that there is any truth in the
rumour, speak more in sorrow than in anger. Of
Lord Duncannon's character as a landlord, and in all
the relations of private life, too much, we believe can-
not be said in the way of praise ;- but as a person to
whom it is fit -that the destinies of England or of Ire-
land should be confided, we look in vain for any proofs.
Beyond the office of whipper-in and teller on a divi-
sion, his Lordship's political talent is unknown.
While he has, however, a fame and reputation of one
sort to make, he has a great deal on the other hand,
to lose ; and if our counsel could reach his ear in the
perilous crisis to which he is said to be approaching,
that counsel would be to remember the recent fate of
Mr. Littleton, and to shun, as he would the basilisk's
touch, a touch which can only poison or destroy.-...
Morning Herald.
Mr. O'Connell's promised letter to Lord Duncan-
non on the grievances of the Irish Catholics his at
length been published. It is a "grandis et verbosa
epiitola," as truculent in spirit and perfidious in de-

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1834.

sign as ever was sent .by Tiberius from his retreat at
Capreea. Withal it is a clumsy and nerveless docu-
ment. In his last letter he avowed himself a Minis-
terialist, and amused his subjects with fairy visions of
the great blessings that were in store for them under
the Whig dynasty. Now he proposes to prove cate-
gorically the " faults, follies and crimes," of the Whig
Government towards Ireland. There is no contradic-
tion or inconsistency in all this, as might appear to
many. The secret coalition between him and the Go-
vernment, not entered into formally and. ratified on
both sides, but dexteriously managed by intermediate
agents, is still maintained, and likely to be maintained.
He dwells on the past offences of the Government
for two good reasons. His first is that they may not
alarm his votaries by his professed confidence in the
future measures of the Whigs, a confidence so much
at variance with his former declarations and denun-
ciations against them. He therefore abuses the
Whigs of the past day lest the "people " should
think of his former backing on the affair of " the
wings," and say of him again, " Dan is a slippery
thing." That would not do, for it would endanger
the rent, which is the great end and aim of agitation.
In the second place he opens a retreat for the Go-
vernment from those courses of policy which they
formerly pursued in Ireland by holding forth their
past actions to public ium, and warning them
against a similar career inluture. He thus can say,
" You see I attacked them when they deserved it, but
if I expect better things from them in future, now
that they must see their error, I must support them.
They promised me that they would do Ireland justice ;
if they attempt to retract I will force them to do jus-
tice." His purpose is then answered,. for the general
cry will be, " Dan is honest after all—only for him
we would get nothing—he deserves more than ever.
So the rent will be multiplied. " Well, then," the
Government will say, " we must conciliate the Irish
people, i. e. the levellers ; We must withhold further
support to the Protestant party, else we cannot govern
the counrry." Thus they too carry their point ;
O'Connell lends them his tail in the House of Commons;
their majorities are swelled, and their places are secured.
O'Connell, in his letter, says that the Protestants
(in his phrase the Orangemen) have no substantial
cause of complaint. The only grievances they will
suffer are the loss of their influence, and the abolition
of tithes—trifling grievances in his estimation to the
Protestant interest in Ireland. But the Catholics, he
says, have twenty-one solid causes of complaint. How-
ever he, for the present, only enumerates four; the
rest he reserves for twenty or thirty other letters. The
first was the appointment of Lord Plunkett to the
Chancellorship.

" Lord Grey'," says Dan, " did not deserve his station
unless he was aware that there never lived a public man in
Ireland so devoid of popularity as Lord Plunket. He had
obtained rather than earned the hatred of all parties. There
was something about him which made it impossible to place
confidence in him. A Presbyterian in his days of
.poverty, a
Protestant as he grew in wealth, the advocate, and yet deemed
the deadly foe, of the Catholics, his whole mind seemed con-
centrated in self. His cold repulsive manner, the sardonic
sneer which ever played about his lips, marked him as a man
without a friend—friendships he had none. The most efficient
advocate the British empire ever produced, he had no reputa-
tion as a lawyer, and gave any thing but satisfaction as a
Judge."
The second grievance was the elevation of the late
Attorney-General Joy to the office of Chief Baron.
Mr. Joy's only crime was that he stood at the head of
the Orange Bar. The third was making his deter-
mined, able, and successful Parliamentary antagonist,
Mr. Doherty, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas;
a man, he says, of moderate talents (he himself, how-
ever, found them formidable enough in the House of
Commons), trivial success at the Bar, who would be
flattered at being called a sixth-rate Barrister. He
too was an enemy of the Whigs. But the master-
grievance of all was the appointment of the present
Attorney-General, Mr. Blackburne, who, he says,
began his career in 1806, by a speech of virulent op-
position to the Address of Congratulation from the
Irish Bar to Lord Duncannon s relation, Chan-
cellor Ponsonby, and the celebrated Curran, on
their elevation, and who has since continued an
active member of the Kildare-place Association and
the Bible and Tract Societies ; in a word, a bitter
Anti-Catholic. Well may O'Connell feel mortified at
Blackburne's continuance in his present office, for he
has been in stern reality " a rock of offence and a
stumbling-block" in his way. He is the only func-
tionary that ever patiently watched him, and traced
him through his sinuosities, until he grappled with him
at last, and laid him prostrate. His celebrated prose-
cution of Mr. O'Connell—the perseverance, tact, and
resolution that he evinced on that occasion—will not
be soon forgotten ? As a lawyer Mr. O'Connell was
long thought by his friends invulnerable ; but Black-
burne hit their legal Achilles in the heel at last. It is
said that O'Connell often forgets the friend who gives
him a lift, but he was never accused of forgiving the
enemy who " floored" him. " Hic fons nzalorum.
This is the spring from which flows his complaint of
the appointment of the Tory Blackburne to office as
one of the crimes of the Whigs and the calamities of
Ireland.—Morning Post.