The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOiRNALi:

..,The Times comments in strong terms upon the hesita-
tion and uncertainty of the Ministerial policy with regard
to the Irish Land Question. Lord Clanricarde's Land
Tenure Bill has again been read a second time in the
House of Lords.., Will it be allowed to proceed further?
So far as her Majesty's Government is concerned, the
answer is "No."_ We catuaßt conceal our conviction that
this attitude of the Government upon the Irish Land
Question is likely to produce—nay, is producing—very
grave mischief. It would seem, primet facie, that the
energies of the Lords might have been usefully directed to
the consideration of the Ministerial Land Bill. Allow,
however, that the bill could not be introduced in the
Lords, and it would still require proof that it could not be
carried in the Commons. The Irish Church Bill will
apparently pass from the Commons immediately after, if
not before, Whitsuntide, and there will still remain two
months of full parliamentary activity. But we have
no desire to deal unreasonably with the Ministry. Let
them have the full benefit of the assumption—unfoundecl
as we think it— that it. would be impossible to pass an
Irish Land Bill this session, and we shall still be con-
sti ained to repeat that their attitude with reference to
this question is producing great and growing mischief.
The Government must speak out. This is the least they
can do. It is necessary to pronounce decisively and with
precision upon the policy the Government are prepared to
pursue. We see in Westmeath and Tipperary the natural
fruits of the ambiguous language which has hitherto pre-
vailed, and of the hopes it has excited. We do not con-
ceal from ourselves the difficulties of the question, but it is
the duty of a Government to meet and overcome diffi.
culties, and it is the privilege of a strong Government to
be able to accomplish this duty. It may be—and this is
the most probable interpretation—that they simply desired
to postpone a difficult discussion. But, whatever be their
motive, they are adding to the difficulties of a question
already overcharged with difficulties by their vague and
elastic utterances, and it is incumbent upon them at once
and decisively to prevent the aggravation of a dangerous
state of things by a frank explanation of theirprineiples of
policy.

The Standard reminds us of Mr. Gladstone's word,',
"Behind the Church lies the question of the land." That
was scarcely a prudent statement for anybody to make
who was proposing, at the very moment ho made it, to
abolish and impoverish the Protestant Church out of de-
ference to alleged Irish wishes. But the Times caps Mr.
Gladstone's imprudence, and, with a yet further frank-
ness we can never too much admire, urges that, far from
the land question lying behind the Church question, it is
inextricably mixed up with it. It is certainly not the
novelty of the assertion that surprises us. We have made
it ourselves, and have been making it now forsome consider.
able time. It is the ingenuous approximation of our not
usually very ingenuous adversaries to our own opinions that
has filled us with such a thrill of wonder. Now what does
this all mean? We ask this the more plainly after the
halting admissions of Lord Granville on Tuesday. It either
means that Ireland is to be governed from behind hedges,
by bludgeon strokes dealt in the dark, by sudden dis-
charges of slugs, by the firing of police-stations, by the
rifling of gunmakers' shops, by the assassination of those
who have by those who have not, or it means nothing.
It is pretended that the Irish Church is being sacrificed to
fear, though in reality it is being sacrificed to nothing
of the kind, but only to party necessities. Are
we now going in earnest to yield to intimidation,
having encouraged it by a hypocritical make-believe
that it has already instigated our policy? Every
Liberal knows that not a shot has been fired, not
an arm raised in Ireland, for a quarter of a century, out
of mere direct hostility to the Church, but that lives upon
lives have been sacrificed to the determination of the Irish
peasantry to establish, if possible, perpetuity of tenure.
Yet they have falsely affected to be influenced by alarm
in their spoliation of the Church, and having indulged in
that perilously disingenuous pretext, what will they do
now that the promoters of so-called tenant right strive to
advance their cause by employing the arguments they are

assured have already proved so efficacious ? It would
have been more damaging to the Liberal party to have
avowed its real motive in attacking the Irish Church, but
it would have been infinitely less mischievous to the
nation. As it is, they have gratuitously sown the wind,
and the Times at least seems preparing itself to reap the
whirlwind.

The Herald asks if we shall ever have a Liberal Home
Secretary who knows when to hang people, and when not
to hang? In the days of Sir George Grey it frequently
appeared as if the man who was hanged ought to have
been reprieved, while the man who was reprieved ought
to have been hanged. Things became so bad at last that
on one occasion seven hundred policemen were sent to
keep guard round the foot of the gallows. Bow thankful
Sir George Grey would have been for the Execution
Within Prisons Act ! Mr. Bruce is favoured in this
respect, but is quite as unlucky as Sir George in
distinguishing the particular merits and demerits of
capital offenders. The miscreant Wiltshire has
his life spared, his brutal ferocity being held as a token of
insanity ; while the conscience-stricken Sheward is left to
die the death of shame. There is something pitiless in the
doom of this man. Altogether, it is a strange and
terrible tale. But we cannot think that the execution of
Sheward was desirable. We even fear that it may throw
discredit on the punishment of death, strengthening the
cry for its abolition, and thereby tending to weaken one
of the safeguards of human life. In the case of Sheward
there was confession before detection. Such a confession
implies repentance, and after a lapse of eighteen years—.
period itself doubtless replete with mental agony—it
might have been hoped that the bitterness of death was
Paste•
The Times declares itself in favour of a reconsideration
of the proposed site for the new law courts. Mr. Lowe's
remarkable speech gives, we believe, the deathblow to the
Carey-street scheme. He startled the House, and he will
certainly startle the public, by his statement of the enor-
mous expenditure into which this gigantic undertaking
has been leading us. Four millions instead of a
minion and a half are enough to compel a new examina-
titni of the whole subject. There are other considerations
which may influence the decision. It is possible that in a
few years this country will have its provincial courts
sating in the great centres of industry and commerce, and
that little more than the proceedings in appeal will be
brought in London. Everything, indeed, portends that
the congestion of legal business in the capital which now
characterises our system will be greatly lessened. If so,
the scheme of an enormous legal Babel in the middle
of London will fall to the ground, and the moderate
building which will then be necessary may be erected
on some more eligible site, and at a cost less absolutely
outrageous.
The Daily News cannot but regard it as unfortunate
that a debate on the site of the law courts should be drawn
out to an adjournment in the very midst of the committee
on the Irish Church Bill. To reopen the question at all
is to delay a most important public work—to reopen it
now is to waste the time of Parliament. Perhaps the
lawyers who spoke on Tuesday were a little too certain
that nobody but a lawyer could understand the subject.
The House never takes kindly to any argument which
presupposes its own incapacity to understand. It always
dislikes talking shop, but the lawyers were obligee.
to talk shop on Tuesday night, as the question was
that of building a great legal shop. It was, however,
quite true that the advocates of the Embankment
site entirely overlooked and ignored the uses of the
building. They regarded it from the outside—the lawyers
regarded it from within. They assumed that the building
would be as useful in one place as in another, and argued
the question from that of appearance. The Carey-street
scheme was before the House in a mature shape; the
other scheme was nowhere. Every man had his own
suggestion towards a plan, and all spoke of Sir C. Tre-
velyan's suggestions as splendid dreams ; but there were
no definite plans, and there was not much definite infor-
mation. Perhaps when the adjourned debate comes on
we may learn more on the subject, but we can scarcely
believe that the House will consent to Mr. Lowe's sug.
gestion, to put an end to the royal commission and begin
again, unless some very clear, definite, and certain plan is
before it, and a whole volume of information which has
not been discovered as yet.

The Star is inclined to think that Lord Russell's pro-
posed literary peerages might improve the general esti-
mate of the profession. The value of having exalted titles
placed within reach of the literary class might be to render
the general opinion of the body socially higher. The fore-
most names in the profession do not require such an aid,
and their owners would not, perhaps, care much for the
additional reputation ; yet as figments they would be of
considerable service to their less famous brethren. The
author might or might not be vain of his bauble, but
at any rate a feeling would grow abroad that making
books was not so poor a trade when it led to a
marked distinction equal to that for which judges
and politicians were eligible. :erom the nature
of the pursuit we are scarcely inclined to think that the
life peerages would result in a superior set of authors.
Many more might take to the craft, but no ambition to
get into the aristocracy would prompt a man to write
above his power: The establishment of a literal aristocracy
of letters would be a coarse but effective way of impress.
ing ordinary people with so distinct a notion of the value
of the literary calling that in a short time the stupid sort

of commiseration and narrow estimate of faculties would
be likely to disappear. On the whole, however, we believe
literature would be neither much better nor much worse
uff than it is, headed by what the Spectator calls a new
..aste. The most we could expect would be a social deft)-
, nee f um a class whose patronage is important enough
ma:.:, or mar a book, but whose critical estimates
.1 the vniter would not be either very desirable or im-
)remive.
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