The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Saturday Beview,---in discussing the progress of the
Irish Church Bill, thinks that the Reform Bill has effected
a great change in the conduct of Liberal party. What-
ever may have been the good or the harm of the bill, the
belief that it would at least strengthen the Executive,
and make government a little more possible, has been
justified. Members are much more bound up with their
constituencies than they were. It is difficult to get, and
very difficult to keep, a seat; and the man who happens
to be sitting has to think very carefully what his local
friends will say of him. The Liberal constituencies do not
like being left out in-the cold, with their member voting
and speaking and caballing and intriguing according to
his own, personal whims, and fancies, and interests. They .
want to see the Liberal party triumpt and they want
their man to contribute to this triumph. They have a
perfect horror of Caves, which, they conceive, owe their
origin to the piques and passions of individuals, and to
an inherent contempt felt by London gentlemen for
humble country electors. Undoubtedly this increase of
political power has been purchased at the cost of some
degree of honourable independence on the part of the
members. This is an evil, but the evil of trying
to govern a great country through an assembly of
six hundred people, each thinking and talking and acting
in his own way, is greater. The want of all motive force
in the unreformed Parliaments was fast bringing parlia-
znentarygovernment into contempt. Everything attempted
was laid aside, and put off to another session. Now the
Irish Church Bill hasbeen got through before Whitsuntide,
and if the remedy applied to produce such a change has
been strong it has been very successful. And, perhaps, of
all the parts of the Reform Bill which have wrought this
change, the disfranchising clauses have been the meet
operative. There were far too many seats which nominal
Liberals could command, and which permitted them to
chew, not any real and sensible independence, but a com-
plete indifference to the interests of their party. Any
fancied slight on the part of Mr. Gladstone, any hint that
his vote was counted on by the Ministry, was sufficient to
send one of these very free awl independent Liberals into
the wrong lobby. It is a very good thing that this has
come to an end. Session after session spent in-abortive
attempts at legislation, under a successionof weak Govern-
ments, involve a most lamentable waste of time and
strength. The present ardour of obsequiousness to the
Government will probably soon pass away. There will be
less certainty of opinion in the constituencies and in the
House ; but at any rate we may hope that we shall not
have any Caves for some time to come, and that, if
sections of the Liberal party differ from each other, they
will do so on public grounds, with a real sympathy
between members and electors, and not out of mere
wantonness, or from a wish to take a petty vengeance or
to gratify personal spite.
The Spectator thinks that if all Americans were as
reasonable as the two gentlemen whose letters appear in
the Times of Wednesday-letters which in their temperate
force are-worthyof statesmen-there would be little reason
to apprehend the calamity which many now believe to be
impending over the world. Our conduct with reference
to the Alabama can be submitted to arbitration without '
dishonour, and without more difficulty than attends the '
preparation of "issues" in any suit of first-rate import. '
ance or complexity, and if the question is - confined to
that-as the "American Citizen," for example, says it
will be confined-it is within the grasp of diplomatists or
lawyers. But we see grave reason to apprehend that it '
is precisely this limitation to which Americans object, that
powerful men in Washington seek rather to strengthen
than to weaken the objection, and that the demands may
be extended into a region in which true negotiation is
impossible, in which . the only alternatives are submission
under more or less plausible pretexts or war. Look at it
how we will, war between America and England is mere
destruction, mere loss, a civil war in which the only pos-
sible gainers are the enemies of both ; but why in that
contest of suicides should we not be at least the last to
perish? Because the Union is so large ? Com-
pared with the territories of Queen Victoria, it
is a speck on the earth's surface. That sen-
tence is nonsensical, we acknowledge, but it is true,
and is as sensible as the argument it refutes. In war con-
centration is everything, not dispersion, and we have the
population of the entire North concentrated in a territory
less extensive than Pennsylvania and New York. The
policy which crushed the South cannot be applied to us,
for when we had lost the lives the South has lost, all we
should feel would be that our existing emigration had been
diverted to an unforeseen purpose. There is something j
shocking to ourselves in the mere use of such an argument,
but the war against which we use it would be more shock-
ing still-a war between equals, between brothers, a civil
war spread over earth, a war in which every incident of ,
slaughter would have the moral effect of massacre, a war
in which every victory on either side would be sheer loss,
a war without a limit or a con ceivable end. We could
gain nothing by the war, even if we triumphed, and ,
America nothing, for Canada is not worth a doubled debt ; i
while if we lose, we lose only Canada, and America, if
she loses, loses the unity she has spent so much blood and
treasure to-preserve. There never was such an act of
lunacy as such a war would be,. yet it is such a war that
speeches likeethat-of Mr. Sumner would force on. 1
1
The Examiner and London Bericzo says that seldom has
a great assembly on the tiptoe of rage been more laughably
baulked than the House of Commons was on Tuesday i
last. If the Mayor of Cork spoke on the banks of the ,
river Lee in praise of assassins, on the banks of the Thames I
he was ready to declare that he disapproved entirely of
assassination. As municipal monarch of the chief city of
Munster, he had placed the civic crown on the heads of
Fenian rebels ; but that did not prevent his declaring
within the precincts of the city of Westminster that "he
believed the battle of his country was to be fought on the
floor of the House of Commons." In a word, he who had
been to the end of last week ambitious to win the rank of
O'Sullivan More, was now content, under good advice, to
be O'Sullivan Beg ; and, as the first appropriate act of his
changed condition, he begged to abdicate in favour of the
Queen of England. All things considered, it was certainly
not unnatural that the Chief Minister of her Majesty
should wish to make sure that the versatile functionary,
who had thus offered to surrender at discretion, should
not once more give them the slip at indiscretion. Napo-
leon had broken out of Elba in breach of his covenanted
word ; and who could tell but that another great enemy of
ours might break into Cork once more, and that there
might be there, as in Paris, another Hundred Days
of- misrule. Who could tell but that he might be
re-elected, this present act of abdication notwith-
standing? "Wherefore it was proposed that all further
proceedings should be stayed for a month. We must say
it was very sarcastic of Mr. Gladstone to declare that the
time should be a lunar month ; as if he meant thereby
decorously to hint that, if no fit of Fenianism should
return for the space of four weeks, this poor old good-
natured country might then sleep soundly and safe, and
save the money that would otherwise have been necessary
for locking up the head of the O'Sullivans, or, at least,
for locking him out of Cork. But more bitter and burning
far was the sardonic rejoinder which Mr. Gladstone's sug- '
gestion drew forth from Mr. McCarthy Downing, a repre-
sentative
of the county of Cork, and well acquainted,
therefore, with the feelings of the people, and the effect i
likely to be wrought upon them by the scene then enacted.
The House, he said, might rest perfectly confident that, 1
after what had taken place that day, there was not the I
least likelihood that Mr. O'Sullivau would ever be re. I
elected Mayor. So we should suppose, for we never
recollect to have read of a "prize-fight prevented" in
which the disappointed crowd were not described as ready
to visit with every mark of derision and disgust the
champion whom they suspected of having given a hint
overnight to the police. Already, indeed, we hear quite
enough from afar to satisfy us that there is not much
danger of anyone being chosen chief magistrate of Cork
who will identify himself with Fenian festivities, or who
will talk ambiguously of Fenian crimes.
The John Bull says that the debate in the House of
Lords on Thursday is an instance of the continued alarm
felt at the outbreak of agrarian offences in Ireland. Tim
imputation of party motives is utterly at an end when
Earl Rumen, the old.and tried supporter of Lileeralism. ,
considers the crisis grave enough to arrest a motion for
the adjournment of the House by a demand for such
explicit declaration on the part of the Ministers as 'll
lo
allay that anxiety and discourage the perpetrationwl
of
agrarian crime. It is hard to see how that -deznanl l
be met. The avowed opinions of a leading member of ca
Government are before the world, and are asserted to be
the stimulant to crime, and the cause of anxiety to all
holders of property in that country. The excuses which
Earl Granville and Lord Kimberley have offered for the
incendiary letter and speeches of Mr. Bright would be iu
part sufficient if they concerned England-they are
wholly beside the mark, when we note their effect upon
Ireland. They resemble too much the wild promptings of
O'Connell for us to wonder that they are followed by
scenes such as followed the speeches of the archeigitetor
of the past generation. Nor is the excuse that the letter
of Mr. Bright, the burning words of which have passed
like a fiery cross from one end of Ireland to another, was
a private letter sufficient to exonerate the President of the
I:oard of Trade from having caused the mischief which
s e deplore. A private letter is supposed to speak
more tutreservelly the settled convictions of the writer
than his public and official utterances; so that the senti-
ments of that letter may be taken as the deliberate belief,
end the expression of the deliberate intentions of Mr.
Bright. Nor is it unusual to assume this. Within the
last week the Mayor,of Cork has very properly been corn
polled to resign his office in consequence of the language
used by him, not in court nor in his official Capacity, but
at an unofficial dinner party. And we have yet to learn ,
t :let he was less culpable in choosing such an occasion for
the utterance of sentiments so atrocious as have com-
pelled hint to retire from his,offic'al post. Nor is it any
extemiation of Mr. Bright's language-never disavowed.
be it remarked- that it occurred in a private letter. It is
lee; alleged that such language fails to represent the
epilielie. of the President of the Board of Trade ; and so
lug a e. leading meniLer - one of the drienteirs of. her
M:ejesty's Government-excites to plunder, whether in a 1
private letter made public, or in a public speech, no-
weeder that the seil of Ireland is weekly stained with 1
blood, and a feverish anxiety fills the nal4-de et all WIWI 1
LUC =At to lie ill that couutp I