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

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC ;)OIILITALS,

The Saturday Review, in discussing the progress of the
Irish Church Bill, thinks that the Reform Bill has effected
a great change in the conduct of the 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 mud: more bound nr with their
constituencies than they were. It, is ddTiettit to get, and
very ditlicult 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 triumph, 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
politilal 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-

inentarygovennnent 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 most
operative. There were far too many seats which nominal
Liberals could command, and which permitted them to
shew, 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 and 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 vengeanceor
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 worthy of 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? Cora-
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
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 ;
while if we lose, we lcse 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 like that of Mr. Sumner would-force ou.

The Examiner and London Review says that seldom has
a great assembly on the tiptoe of rage been more laughably
baulked than the House of Commons was on Tuesday
last. If the Mayor of Cork spoke on the banks of the
river Lee in praise of assassins, on the banks of the Thames
be 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, lie 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 3sTs. 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 conntry might them sleep soundly and safe, and
save the resiney that woulclotherwise have been necessary
for lockin gup the head- of the O'Sullivan, or, at least,
for locki''ag 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,
there' ?ore, with the feelings of the people, and the effect
liket I to be wrought upon them by the scene then enacted.
The House, he said, might rest perfectly confident that,
aftit a- what had taken place that day, there was not the
les st likelihood that Mr. O'Sullivan would ever be re-
e.# acted Mayor. So we should suppose, for we never
3:t collect to have read of a "prise-fight prevented" in
hich the disappointed crowd were not described as ready
tss visit with every mark of derision and disgust the
cb ampion whom they suspected of having given a hint
en ernight to the police. Already, indeed, we hear quits
es tough from afar to satisfy us that there is not much
• anger of anyone being chosen chief magistrate of Cork
ho will identify himself with Fenian festivities, or who
# ill talk ambiguously of Fenian crimes. ,
'The John Bull says that the debate in the House of
: Go rds on Thursday is an instance of the continued alarm
I 'el tat the outbreak of agrarian offences in Ireland. The
i m putation of party motives is utterly at an end when
3 ill srl Russell, the old and tried supporter Of Liberalism,
c on siders the crisis grave enough to arrest a motion for
t he adjournment of the House by a demand for such
e. q 'licit declaration on the part of the Ministers as will
a Er sy. that anxiety and discourage the perpetration of
a ranan crime. It is hard to see how that demand can
b* met. The avowed opinions of a leading member of the
,vernment are before the world, and are asserted to be
e stimulant to crime, and the cause of anxiety to all
.hers of property in that country. The excuses which
arl Granville and Lord Kimberley have ("tiered for the
1 icencliary letter and speeches of Mr. Bright would be in
' 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
scones such as followed the speeches of the arch-agip,:. tor,
of the pact 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:l
Board of Trade from having caused the mischief which
s e deplore. A private letter is eupposed to speak
more unreservedly 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,
and 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 veir properly been coin
pelled to resign his office in conseques'ee of the language
used by him, not in court nor in hie offic:al capacity, but
at an unofficial. dinner party. And we liaV yet to learn
that lie was less culpable in choosing such an occasion for
the otterence of sentiments so atrocious as have corn,
veiled him to retire from his offiCial post. Nor is it any
extenuf:.tion of Mr. Ttriglit's language—never disavowed,
be it remarked—that it occurs-eel in a private lei ter. It is
not aagA that such language fails to reeres cut the '
opinions of the President of the Board of Trade ; and 8°
long as a leading member —one of the dininivirs sf her
Majesty's Government—excites to plunder, whether a
private letter made public, or in a public speech, 410 1
wonder that the soil of Ireland is weekly stained es94b
blood, and a feverish anxiety fills the minds of all twho
have atwhtlo lose in that country.
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