The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT,' OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Times refers to the "humble address" presented
to her Majesty against the disestablishment of the Irish
Church by the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, and says
that it pushes the characteristic doctrines of the Orange
creed to preposterous extremes. It is asserted that dis-
endowment " will be the means of withdrawing the pure
worship of God from many parts of the country," and of
silencing the continual protest of the Established Church
against Romish errors. We reply, that if it has this
effect, the disgrace will rest with Irish landowners, who,
possessing, as we are often told, six sevenths of the
soil, and having received something like a very large
bribe from the State, will, upon this supposition, fail in
doing that which their Roman Catholic neighbours do
without a subsidy, and after paying tribute to an alien
Church. If Protestantism cannot hold its ground against
Romanism without State favour and assistance, it is high
time for it to confess its inferiority in moral power. What
has made Roman Catholicism in Ireland more " subver-
sive of loyalty " than elsewhere is simply the fact of its
being persecnted, and the existence of a party like the
Orangemen conscientiously determined to identify English
la .v with religious h.equalit3-. The profanity of represent-
ing an abandonment of Protestant ascendancy as "calcu-
lated to call 4'own the judgment of God on our land" is more
venial than holding out a threat, "in all loyalty and
respect," of a repeal of the Union. This is really the
only construction that can be put on the conclusion of the
address, and yet we are loth to believe that such was the
deliberate intention of its framers. Had it been, we feel
bound to say that we should have regarded it as a very
hollow and unscrupulous form of intimidation. It would
have been unscrupulous because no one can seriously
imagine legislative independence to be for the happiness
of Ireland, except those who entertain views and designs
which Orangemen emphatically disavow. It would have
been hollow because no class would more cordially dread
the assembly of an Irish Parliament than members of the
Orange Association.

The Standard thinks that Archbishop Leahy's pastoral
is of a quality superior to the ordinary addresses which
issue from the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and the spirit
and style of it indicate that the Roman Catholics of
Cashel have for their spiritual head a leader not only of
considerable intelligence,but of a worldly wisdom superior
to that of his fellows. We are by no means inclined to
doubt that Dr. Leahy is a man of perfect sincerity and
benevolence of purpose. It is equally evident, however,
that he is tolerably well versed in the political craft so
essential at the present time to one of his position. The
Cashel Pastoral is, in fact, not so much a call to peace
and good fellowship as a laboured defence of the
policy of the Gladstone Government. In this
respect it is worthy of more attention than is usually
given to the manifestoes of the Roman Catholic bishops.
Archbishop Leahy does not tell us what is the particular
measure of justice between landlord and tenant which he
himself desires, but he says enough to shew that nothing
will suffice for the tenants but to overturn the "traditions
of internecine warfare" dating from the Cromwellian set-
tlement. It is clear, therefore, that his confidence in
Messrs. Gladstone and Bright is based on the idea that
they will reverse those traditions, and undo what was done
at the Cromwellian settlement. In other words, he
expects an entire agrarian revolution to come from the
Liberal Government, without which revolution there is to
be no peace in Ireland. This is a state of the case, we
contend, which is quite as serious as any we have ever put
forth, and which sufficiently justifies all that we have
said of the present disorders of Ireland being due to the
policy, present and prospective, of Mr. Gladstone's
Ministry.

The Post says that the postponement of the withdrawal
of the remaining regiment from New Zealand must not
for a moment be accepted as an indication of a faltering
policy. In the present state of alarm, panic, and unpre-
paredness in the colony, common humanity alone would
prompt and justify the temporary retention of the small
nuclei of regular troops. But there is absolutely no
reason whatever for entertaining a proposition to hold
the country and to assist to subdue the rebels by
imperial troops. The colonists are in numbers more
than four to one to the Maories. They are by no
means poverty-stricken. They have over and over again
contended that they can do their own fighting. When
they have fairly and honestly made their effort, and
have failed--when they are in dire extremity, after
the exhaustion of their resources and efforts,
then it will be time enough to entertain the idea of
stepping in as before to their support. But as yet they
have paltered with the question. They have chosen to
neglect the most palpable precautions and measures. They
have not striven to rise to the occasion. Evidently the
spur of adversity is necessary to rouse their dormant
energies. Fear must work where prudence was denied a
hearing. Our duty is at all events clear. We must, for
a little time longer, give the terror-striven settlers at the
exposed stations the limited support they have so urgently
requested. But we must chew no-symptoms of wavering
in carrying out the policy deliberately entered on. The
results of the supineness of the colonists, disastrous though
they be, are no arguments in favour of an extensive or
long-continued occupation of New Zealand by imperial
troops.

The Herald comments upon the magisterial and judicial
tenderness shewn towards those who have committed
crimes against the person, as compared with the Draco-
nian severity with which it is the custom to punish crimes
against property. For proof of this we turn to Monday's
police reports. No fewer than four of the metropolitan
magistrates had to deal with cases of aggravated assaults.
At three courts the victims were policemen, and at all
four the punishments meted out were precisely in harmony
with the remarks we have made. Comment is unnecessary.
The facts are too eloquent to require either application or
improvement. At three police-courts, each compre-
hending a large proportion of the riotous and unruly
within its district, the penalty for aggravated assault
upon a policeman is declared to vary from a maximum of
two months to a minimum of twenty-one days. If the
criminal classes know their own interests, they will keep
clear of Marylebone, lest they should be sent thence to
trial, but by the same rule they will locate about Lea-
bridge, and linger round Worship-street, where they can
commit an assault, join in a riot, and attempt a murder,
with a very good chance of not being caught, and with the
certainty that, even if the fates go against them, they will
get off with a month, provided a policeman is in the witness-
box and Mr. Newton on the bench. That the scanty protec-
tion afforded by such a punishment will quicken the zeal
of the police one cannot expect. That it will tend
to diminish the safety of the public everyone must
anticipate.

The Daily News thinks it is necessary to protect the
policeman against the violence of others without giving
him impunity for violent uses of his own power. He is
not to be the master of the public, but its servant ; not to
be a terror to honest men, but to evildoers ; and sufficient
guarantees for his good behaviour must be preserved.
What is needed is to shield him against the violence to
which his duties expose him, without giving him impunity
in little acts of despotism to which his position tempts him.
As the servant of the public and the representative of law
and order it should be clearly known that any violence
used towards him in the execution of his duty is an addi-
tional crime against the law, involving additional and
special punishment, but that he is himself exactly as respon-
sible for the exercise of hispowers as an ordinary citizen. It
believes that, as the law now stands, the policeman is pro-
tected somewhat less than other people, rather than more.
At any rate, the law utterly denies his person any special
sanctity, even in the execution of his duty. Our English
habit of regarding a policeman is, and must always be, so
entirely the reverse of that of continental peoples, that
we are apt to rush to the other extreme. He is a public
servant, and we are too apt to regard him as paid to take
the risk of dealing with the criminal classes. The popular
idea is that the policeman is paid to take the chance of
kicks and beating, just as the soldier to take the
risks of war. We are not sure that this feeling has
not insensibly influenced our legislation, and that we
have not taught the roughs of society to think
lightly of law by failing to protect those who,
to such roughs, represent law. If a ticket-of-
leave man knew that in resisting arrest he was doubling
the penalty of the crime for which he was arrested, he
would probably learn a little more respect, not for the
law's representative only, but for the law itself. But
whether such a result may come of it or not, some more
cevere punishment must be attached to these assaults on
the police, and we may perhaps more confidently appeal
to them to protect us against ruffianism when we have
better protected them.

The Telegraph, in commenting upon the fifty-third con
ference of the Peace Society, says that since its founda.
tion four first-class wars, and innumerable slaughters of.
a minor sort, have put to scorn the amiable hopes of the
society's founders. But, looking more closely, we shall
find that wars have been prevented, and are at this mo-
ment prevented bythe ex,tension of agencies which are new
to the world. 'he enormous increase of commerce, the
gradual intermingling of races, the growing community
of knowledge and feeling among the working classes of all
nations, have brought us a wonderful way towards what
once seemed a ridiculous Utopia--a federation of the civi-
'Ned world. The traders of mediaival Europe gave the
Continent freedom; and the traders of modern Europe
will, by and by, give her disarmament and lasting peace.
The worst thing- you can do with a customer is to kill him
or pay for killing him. That truth at least we have
attained, and it most seriously spoils the plans of the war-
makers. By and by we may go further, and ask ourselves
whether there was ever vet any international question
which could not be settled -as honourably and justly in a
back parlour as amid bloody heaps of men—butchered,
forsooth, like the victims of the ancient augurs, to KO
whether the will of God were nut to be learned from their
entrails. • In due time we may even witness the sublime
spectacle of nations internationally refusing to massacre,
and be massacred—because diplomatists have been blun-
derers. The Peace Society did not avert one among all the
recent wars, and it will not bring on the Millennium
either this year or the next. But the list of the blessings
won by the champions of our race is a list of hopes once
pronounced ludicrous and chimerical. Even now, if the
mere talk of war between England and America has out-
raged civilisation, the protests and deprecations heard on
both sides of the Atlantic revive our faith in the humanity
of human kind. "It is proved that" the peacemalers are
wise and blesse3; and surely "it willgo_near to be thought
so shortly
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