The Sun.
London, England, 1834-12-27 00:00:00

Radical contemporaries,—that they have no real or
substantial ground of complaint, that desperate misre-
presentation is their stable commodity, and that they
have traded in that worthless article until they arc
bankrupts equally in topics and in reputation. The
Administration of Sir Robert Peel is proof against
such puny attacks ; supported by internal worth and
external confidence ; strong in the integrity, the talent,
and the harmony of its component parts ; its friends,
the friends of order and good government ; its ene-
mies, a miserable band, leagued for the combined pur-
pose of attaining their own selfish ends and of destroy-
ing institutions the excellence of which they have not
the faculty to appreciate.—Morning Post.
Though we may regret the failure of Sir Robert
Peel's attempt to infuse into his Administration those
outward elements of reform which would have given
increased confidence and satisfaction to the country,
we are not on that account at all inclined to despair of
the measures of the new Ministry being in the end any
the less gratifying to the country. Of course, what
the new Premier could have originated or perfected with
Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham as his colleagues,
he is quite as capable of bringing about without them.
But of all the doctrines which have ever been palmed
upon the country, that now so vehemently insisted
upon by the advocates of the ousted Whigs appears to
be the most preposterous. That doctrine amounts to this
---that the Ministers who have passed the Reform Act
are entitled to an unlimited and perpetual possession of
the Government. This absurd proposition has been amply
refuted by Sir Robert Peel, both in his address to
the electors of Tamworth, and in his speech at the
Guildhall dinner. It is, perhaps, like breaking a fly
upon a wheel to bestow any further comment upon so
wild a proposition. If any further refutation of it
were wanting, it is furnished by the very persons
themselves on whose behalf it is put forward. Has not
the very Ministry, for which this perpetuity in office
is claimed, fallen to pieces of itself ? Was not Lord
Grey, at once its head, and the steady consistent fa-
ther of reform, driven from the helm of public affairs
by the basest intrigues among some of his own asso-
ciates in the Cabinet ? Had not the Duke of Rich-
mond, Lord Stanley, and Sir James Graham previ-
ously withdrawn in disgust from their association ?
Was not Mr. Ellice on the eve of retiring ? Had not
Lord Althorp been withdrawn by his father's death
from the office, his tenure of which had been held in-
dispensable ? And could Lord Brougham, under any
circumstances, have continued to hold office which had
ceased to be in his hands, one of respect or con-
fidence ? Thus diminished, self-condemned, and torn to
pieces by its own acts, what prospect was there of its re-
maining rump holding together, or, if holding toge-
ther, being capable of carrying on the Government ?
Its dissolution, then, being inevitable, it is rather too
much to talk of its perpetual right to office. Such
conduct on the part of the Whigs and their adherents,
if made available, would realize a very close analogy
to the fable of the dog in the manger—they could
neither carry on the government themselves, nor permit
the King to resort to others for the purpose. The
good sense of the country will, we trust, in spite of
every attempt at excitement, repudiate this attempt.
That the true spirit of reform should be up and stirring,
and should be enforced upon the Ministers, as well as
all candidates at the ensuing election, we are far from
condemning. But we do condemn all attempts to sub-
stitute clamour in the place of fair deliberate judgment.
We condemn any attempt to prejudge men of whose
measures the country has as yet neither knowledge nor
foretaste ; and, above all, we condemn any attempt to
bolster up and recall to the head of affairs men whose
acknowledged imbecility has so recently displaced them.
Formerly, " when the brains were out the man would
die ;" but here are the Whigs, not contented to have
knocked out their own brains by successive assaults
against a wall of their own erecting, still wishing to
substitute their headless trunk—a body without a soul,
as a sufficient and available instrument of carrying on
the government.—Morning Herald.

We have suffered a day or two to elapse without
offering any precise opinion upon the dreadful tragedy
which has been enacted at Rathcormack, ii?the county
of Cork. It was our wish to have all the facts before us
in an authentic shape, that there might be the less
questionable matter as to the immediate causes of this
frightful calamity, and as to the legal relations in which
the parties respectively stood. We have employed the
phrase of " immediate " causes, and that of " legal"
relations, knowing well that the great and general cause
of the present and much former bloodshed in Ireland is
one for which neither peasants nor soldiers are
responsible ; that it is the existence of the tithe
system, of which the pressure has been intolerably
aggravated by the concurrent necessity of paying
a rack-rent to the landlord, and the hatred of
which in the minds of the people has been in-
flamed by the most systematic and unprincipled
agitation, whose object ever was to excite that out-
rageous violence, whereof in words it disavowed and
condemned the use ; and to drive the peasantry with
headlong fury to a lawless vindication of whatever
their deceitful guides persuaded them was " justice."
On this occasion it appears that there were 12 or 13
men slain upon the spot, and perhaps a greater num-
ber wounded. For the present we shall suppose what
the first accounts described to be the fact, but of
which no report has yet been forwarded to this coun-
try : the proceedings of the Coroner's inquest being
but in an early stage, we shall, however, take for
granted that the people were in the wrong, and made
an attack upon the soldiery, who merely attended the
distraint for tithe to protect the civil officer in his duty.
But we must ask whether on that hypothesis, which
there is every ieason to think may be the true one,
whether that law ought to be left upon the sta
tute book, which, without looking further into it,
hundreds of the lower order of people in Ireland,
in day light, deliberately, where it is the case of a
neighbour,—where there is no instantaneous process
against themselves or their habitations,—when they are
unarmed, in the presence of a regular and powerful
force, will rather risk and lose their lives than tamely
suffer to be executed ? We ask, whether such a law,
so detested by a whole country, ought to be left upon
the statute book ? Every humane and prudent person
must answer in the negative. In truth, Parliament
has already answered in the negative ; and if the Clergy
of the Established Church in Ireland—nay, in Eng-
land, too—could be canvassed, sure we are that 19 out
of 20 would bow down in thankfulness to see the tithe
commuted. What may be the case as between land-
lord and tenant, it is impossible for us to predict ; but
all collision between clergyman and occupying tenant
must be put an end to, or the catastrophe of Rath-
cormack will have its parellel in every village of
the three Southern provinces. The mischief, how-
ever, of this deplorable eneounter does not stop
here. To what a diabolical purpose has O'Con-
nell already turned it. Stanch blood-hound as
he is, without his unslaked appetite for the overthrow
of everything like law or peace in Ireland, the people
would have waited for the near opproach of those mea-
sures by which the tithe system will be ere many
months superseded, and would have discharged the
tithe due for the interval without a serious murmur.
Hear his words in addiessing his lacky Parliament at
the Royal Fxchange of Dublin : he accuses Sir Ro-
bert Peel of saying that " such horrors (as the Rath-
cormack slaughter) shall continue for ever." Where
has Robert Peel used or countenanced any threat so
insane ? It is a monstrous and unblushing falsehood.
Has Sir Robert Peel ever so much as hinted that
there shall be no commutation of tithe ? Yet O'Con-
nell proceeds, as if it were a truth recorded or self evi-
dent, to declaim upon this iniquitous calumny, and to
apostrophize the man who may raise his voice on
behalf of such a Government (qu. a Government
so maligned and slandered ?)—" a Government
which would abandon his country to the curse
of tithes and of bloodshed to enforce them for ever, as
a heartless wretch, lost to all sense of shame, and of
humanity." Why, it is true, if any Government were
what he has wickedly and falsely accused the present
Government of being, no man with the faculty of feel-
ing or thinking could raise a voice or hand in its de-
fence. But he is as bad a man, and as contemptible,
who belies a Government for the sake of rousing
against it a spirit of desperate insurrectioP7
and of de-
nouncing as " tithe-traitors," or as " abettors of 1
tithe-murder"—that is, as proper subjects to be put
to death themselves by every peasant who felt tithe to I

be a grievance--all constituents who should at the en-
suing election be rash enough to give a vote for any
except O'Connell candidates. If he mean civil war,
let him have the pluck to say so. Let him lay
aside his hypocrisy, and while he spurs the passions
of the wretched multitude to rebellion, charging them
to the muzzle with combustibles which he knows must
explode—let him not meanly and cringingly beseech
those whom he has thus driven to madness, that they
will commit "no breach of the law"—" Oh I I entreat
you never violate the law." I know that " you are
brutally and villainously plundered ; that some of your
priests and some of your liberators have wrung the
last farthing from almost every man among you ; that
the laws have been made by your atrocious tyrants to
torture you, their abject slaves ; that you have nothing
worth living for ; that life is a burden to you ; that
death would be a blessed release to people so bar-
barously oppressed and trampled on : therefore—there-
fore—pray do nothing for which you can be hanged
or shot. Oblige me by understanding that you ought
to be rebels, and that the first wish of my heart is to
make you rebels, but that I don't like to suffer the
pains of rebellion, either for you or with you." Such,
in plain English, if words and actions are to be con-
strued by each other—such is the policy, at once trea-
sonable and treacherous, of this true son of &hal.
But we are misinformed if he have not already begun
to quake. A single fortnight will do something to-
wards the further development of an impostor, who
mingles more of the sordid, the sanguinary, and the
pusillanimous than any agitator of ancient or modern
times.—Times.

THE MEETING AT THE LONDON TAVERN.

Yesterday an application was made to the Lord Mayor,
at the Mansion-house under the following:circumstances :
It is fresh in the recollection of the public, that on
Tuesday last, the party opposed to the Conservatives as-
sembled in great multitudes in Bishopsgate-street ; that the
crowds continued to pour into and out of the London and
the City of London Taverns ; and that a vast deal of con-
fusion took place within the walls, particularly of the latter,
where those who supported the present Administration had
appointed to assemble, and those who were opposed to it,
gathered together at an early hour for the purpose of car-
rying any resolutions which might be proposed in an
amended form. The confusion and botheration were not
confined to the rooms and passages of the buildings. The
overflow of the taverns crowded Bishopsgate-street, and
the pathway before the London Tavern was completely
obstructed. At the time when the bustle appeared to be
very great, some men paraded the street bearing large
boards, with placards upon them, inviting the friends of
reform to assemble ; and the Lord Mayor, having been
given to understand that such boards were exhibited, or-
dered the City Marshal not to permit any thing of the kind.
In obedience to this direction, Mr. Brown, the principal
Marshal, desired the persons who carried the boards
to move them away from the neighbourhood, and the
order having been disobeyed, immediately proceeded
to seize them. The excitement at this period was very great.
Some gentlemen of the Corporation interposed, and deoied
the right of the Marshal to take possession of the boards.
Mr. Brown said that he acted under the orders of the
Chief Magistrate, and could not help adopting the course
he pursued. Application was, we understand, afterwards
made to Mr. Alderman Wood, who expressed surprise at
the issue of an order from the Mansion-House to such an
effect, declared it to be in every respect unwarrantable, and
calculated to lead to instead of preventing breaches of the
peace, and said that he had never heard of a similar pro-
ceeding upon the part of a Chief Magistrate of the city of
London. The boards were forcibly taken and deposited is
the station-house, and were applied for by those tradesmen
from whom they had been hired next day. M'Lean, the
inspector of the district, however, did not consider himself
warranted in giving them up, and referred the applicants to
the Lord Mayor.
Yesterday a person from Mr. Crouch, the owner of three
of the boards, told the Lord Mayor that he called upon his
Lordship to request that the boards might be given up.
The LORD MAYOR-Why do you ask me to give
them up ?

Applicant—Why, my Lord, because they are private
property. They belong to Mr. Crouch.
The LORD MAYOR—And because they are private pro-
perty you think you are at liberty to create a public nuis-
ance with them? Do you suppose that I, as Chief Magis-
trate, will allow you to presume to come into the city of
London, to excite a riot and confusion in the streets ? .If
you do, I assure you that you were never more mistaken in
your life.
Applicant—My Lord, they are the property of Mr.
Crouch, in whose name I come to demand them.
The LORD MAYOR—I tell you that they were the cause
of an excessive nuisance, and I consider that it is great
presumption in you to ask now for them.
Applicant—l don't see that there is any presumption at
all in my asking for the property of the right owner, who
has desired me to wait upon your Lordship, to ask for
his own.

The LORD MAYOR-It is great presumption in you to
come into a Court of Justice upon such an occasion, and
you ought he ashamed to do so.
Applicant—l am not ashamed, my Lord. I don't see
why an honest man should be ashamed to make a fair de-
mand in a Court of Justice, or elsewhere.

The LORD MAYOR—I certainly shall not give the boards
up. You exhibited them in defiance of my orders, and com-
mitted a great public nuisance by the exhibition.
_ _

The fora) MAYOR then asked Mr. Brown whether his
orders, which extended to every sort of placarded board,
were strictly attended to ?
The Marshal applied in the affirmative. He had di-
rected the officers to prevent the exhibition of all placarded
boards, not excepting even those which related to the de-
parture and arrival of coaches. It was necessary to do so,
for the prevention of every embarrassing impediments.
Passers-by were obliged to walk in the middle of the street.
The LORD MAYOR—And after you seized these boards
you found that the pathway was quickly cleared ?
The Marshal—ln less than a quarter of an hour there
was not the slightest impediment in the street, and no repe-
tition of the nuisance took place. In my attempts to obey
your Lordship's direction I was struck twice, but we took
no person into custody.
The Loan MAYOR stated that he should have no objec-
tion at all to receive a visit from the gentlemen of the Cor-
poration who disputed his power to issue directions tending
to preserve the peace of the city. Whatever might be
their opinion, he should act to the best:of his judgment,
without consulting them, particularly in that part of his
business, with which they had nothing on earth to do.