The Sun.
London, England, 1867-05-10 00:00:00

IttEL AND.

DUBLIN, May 9•

James Gorman, a respectable looking young man,
was arraigned at the Commission Court yesterday
for high treason. He refused to plead by the ad-
vice of his counsel, Mr. Butt, who raised a point
on the ground that the prisoner had not been fur-
nished with a copy of the indictment ten days be-
fore, and he put in a declaratory plea to that effect.
The Court ruled that the plea ought not to be re-
ceived. That being so, Mr. Butt said the onus rested
with the Crown of proving the service of a copy of
the indictment and also a copy of the lists of wit-
nesses and jurors. Mr. S. Lee Anderson then de-
posed that he had delivered those documents to the
prisoner in
.proper time. lie pleaded not guilty.
Three constables deposed that the prisoner was
among those who attacked the police station at
Stepaside. But their identification of him was
much too doubtful to warrant the jury in convicting
on such evidence, and besides the witnesses admit-
ted that he had no arms, and that he did nothing
but walk along the road. Mr. Green, a farmer,
proved that he came to his house on the day in
question, being very ill in consequence of a fall over
a ditch while escaping from the Fenians, and request-
ing that a prison doctor might be sent for. Dr.
Franklin, who attended him, deposed that he was
really suffering from an internal hurt, and not sham-
ming disease. To the police and all the other wit-
nesses the prisoner made the same consistent state-
ment, to the effect that he went out to take a walk
on the Rathgar road on Shrove Tuesday evening,
when he was met by a body of insurgents, echo com-
pelled him to accompany them when they went to
attack the police stations. At this point the Lord
Chief Justice interposed and said there was no case
to go to the jury. One of the jurors then exclaimed?

" My lord, that was my opinion and detcrmina-
Gm] !" This vehement declaration excited general
laughter. A formal verdict of acquittal was handed
down, and the prisoner was at once discharged.
The Lord Chief Justicct announced that the Court
of Criminal Appeal would sit on Monday next to
tonsider thepoints reserved in the case of 11Peafferty.
There is the greatest difficulty in obtaining juries
for these triads. Over 100 jurors have failed to
answer to their names, and hays incurred tines of
v2O each. - In consequence of this difficulty the
Crown and the prisoner's counsel agreed that the
jury in the box should try the next case, which is
to come on this morning. The Court then ad-
journed about half-past 4 o'clock.

Two influential Roman Catholic clergymen, the
Very Rev. Dr. Sprat and Canon Pope, are exert-
ing themselves to save the lives of the convicted
Fenians. Through their exertions a requi.iition is
being signed requesting the Lord Mayor to convene
a public meeting to adopt a memorial to the Queen,
praying that mercy may be extended to the persons
found.guilty of high treason. A similar meeting is
to be convened by the Mayor of Cork. Two con-
siderations will, no doubt, influence the Govern-
ment in this matter. • First, would the punishment
of death on the gallows deter the American filibus-
ters from making future attempts to disturb the
peaee of this country ; and, second, what would be
the-effect-mrtlyrtAiviettvrervfliMeMPNimst

who sympathise with such Movements and desire
the overthrow of the British Government, and
without whose sympathy all such foreign efforts
must be abortive ? My own impression is that
while the first object would be gained until the
American Government could be induced to inter-
fere, the hatred of the Government at home, on
which the American Fenians count, would be made
more bitter and intense. Mercy would tend most
to conciliation, and after the displays of British
power and Irish loyalty which the crisis has
called forth, no one could say with any semblance
of truth that the Government could be intimi-
dated. It is evident to all the world that the
great effort of the authorities has been to restrain
their overwhelming force, so as to inflict as little
injury as possible on the miserable insurgents; while
in every case where the latter attempted fighting,
their action was characterised by the most con-
temptible feebleness and faint-heartedness. In the
prosecution of the prisoners, the authorities, far
from being vindictive, have shown the utmost in-
dulgence compatible with the proper discharge of
their duties. It would be a happy thing if the re-
sult of the Commissioners would be to heal old
national wounds, instead of inflicting new ones—to
inspire gratitude rather than inspire terror.
Noonan, the Killarney Centre, who left the
country after the rising, has been arrested in
London.

The Division of Last Night.

(From the Times.)

The Compound Householder has once more had
his day, or rather his night, and will, we trust,
henceforth be satisfied. A majority of 66 in favour
of the Government in a large House is decisive.
Yesterday saw, indeed, the culminating debate
of the Session on the Reform Bill. The fate of
the Government scheme, the future of Reform,
hung in the balance. On the one sick lay a
plan for amending our electoral constitution, of
which it may at least be said that by this time its
future operation, if adopted, is fairly understood.
The Ali eisterial proposals have been turned over
and over, and scrutinized under every possible
aspect, and we know what they are. They are not
faultless, but faultlessness is rare. They are open
to criticism and to commendation. They offsr the
franchise to a very large /meshes of persons who
are now excluded from voting, and yet the offer
is made under conditions to which no single per-
son can object, though they will prove effectual
in keeping out the improvident, the careless, and
the nomadic householder. On the other hand, what
had the Opposition, or the energetic few who stimu-
lated the mass of members on the Liberal benches
into opposition, to submit for consideration ? Far
from having a clear scheme of their own, they
bad nothing " but clouds instead and perdur-
able dark." The passionate energy with which
Mr. Gladstone supported Mr. Hibbert's Amend-
ment—a temper altogether dissimilar to that
shown by Mr. Hibbert himself—disdained to con-
sider the alternative involved in the rejection of
the Government proposals and another failure of
Reform. Mr. Gladstone was defeated, and if any
hoped that he might succeed we congratulate him
on his disappointment. Had the extravagant
dreams nourished by some of, the Opposition been
realised, the dreamers would have awakened to a
sense of their own imprudence. They would have
found themselves carried away by their own success '
—borne along by the spirit they had evoked, forced
by the exigencies of their situation to pursue ob-
jects from • which they recollect with dread even
while pursuing them. The House of Commons
wisely declined to send Reform adrift in deference
to a contention too impalpable for common appre-
hension. Satisfied that the last propositions of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer were at once just and
practicable, they accepted the Ministerial plan of
emancipating compound householders, and infe-
rentially rejected Mr. Hibbert's alternative scheme,
by a majority of 66 in a committee of 578 members.
It is pleasant to know that, apart from the sound
conclusion at which the House of Commons last
night arrived, the long night's debate was not
wholly thrown away. Many great orators spoke,
and with great power, and yet the result of their
oratory was small. We have to thank Mi. Hibbert
for pointing out, in the very fair argument with
which he advocated his amendment, that the
Compound Householder, with whom every one is
now familiar, is misnamed, and that he ought to be
called the Tenant of a Compounding Landlord.
There is a fine sense of the nicety of language in
this sound distinction, and the house received it with
just approval, although it is to be feared that the
new description of the occupier who has been the
innocent cause of so much discussion is too long to
come into familiar use. The Compound House-
holder will remain the Compound Householder as
long as he figures in our municipal system ; but we
may be pardoned if we make the most of Mr. Hib-
bert's observation, because, setting it aside, the long
hours the House of Commons spent over the Tenant
of a Compounding Landlord disclosed absolutely
nothing new. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright re-
peatad a familiar tale. We may, perhaps, make an
exception in favour of Mr. Mill's apprehension that
too many Compound Householders would be brought
on the Parliamentary Register by the machinery
others have denounced as too cumbrous for use.
Mr. Gladstone first assumed the burden of proving
the impolicy of accepting the 'Ministerial plan, and
his speech was excusably voluminous, as it travelled
anew over all the now familiar grounds of objection
to it. Ile receded a little from his former position,
that the Compound Householder paid, as it is, the
full rates incident on his occupation, now declaring
that he pretty nearly did 60; but this trifling
qualification was the single point of variation front
what we have heard before. Ho did not even
take the trouble to refer to the reAsoning by which
many of his arguments have been met, and, as we
conceive, refuted. He urged, for instance, with
much elaboration, the question submitted by our
correspondent " H." in our columns yesterday, why
there should be any difference in the facility of
access to the register dependent upon whether an
occupier paid his rates directly to the overseer or
in
weekly driblets to his landlord. The very slightest
acquaintance with the habits of the class of weekly
tenants is sufficient to answer the question. A
landlord is clothed by the law with such powers for
exacting his dues that the most shiftless of occu-
piers cannot escape him. Payment of rent is a

necessary, an inevitable consequent of oanpatfon
e his
satetheal
chance of
can be ainadeeisetprtedcads,
iandif
the
if be h
tenant
s Inaosn a
a tenant is small. The ovarseer has no such sum-
mary remedies. Ile cannot realise his claims by
making a• distraint mero motu, but is forced to seek
his remedies for non-payment by a roundabout
process. The ability and willingness to meet the
overseer's demands directly are the tests of fitness
for receiving Parliamentary privileges;- they enable
the Legislature to put in motion what Mr. Glad-
stone in hapoier hours once called, borrowing the
phrase from the students of physical science, " the
principle of natural selection." It is the personal
discharge of public burdens which cut be evaded
11.eati•!e, net easily enforced which affords a cri-
teHon of the fitness of au occupier for enfran-
chisement, and not, as Mr. wadstonc and Mr.
Lowe, who followed him, would have us suppose,
the mere fact that some modicum of rat can be
screwed out of an occupier by converting his land-
lord into a parochial agent. The fine of which we
heard so much, and at one time properly heard so
much, lias become " beautifully less" as the Govern-
meat method of treating the compound householder
has been modified, and is now of such vanishing
dimensions that the most vehement opponent of the
Ministry could make little of it last night. Mr.
Lowe pointed out with great accuracy that the
landlord-, being relieved of a liability, would lose his
compensation for it, but he could only surmise that
an attempt might be made to extract from the
pocket of the tenant the bonus . thus taken away.
Mr. J. B. Smith, from his knowledge of the com-
petition among landlords, confidently predicted that
the attempt, if made, would prove a failure, atp,l
that the effect Of the Government scheme would be
to subject the compound householder who sought
enfranchisement to no more than his existing bur-
;dens. lle will hi,l%-e—to Meet them in a‘different
way, in a way indicative of his qualifications to per-
form other political duties,. and . this is all. The
majority of the House was of this opinion, and not
improbably agreed with Mr. Smith in the condem-
nation he pronounced on the policy of compositions
for rates; but, without entering into this general
question, the committee was content to approve the
Government plan, and inferentially to discard Mr.
Hibbert's amendment from further consideration.
The vote of the committee could be no longer
doubtful when the nature of the latest proposals of
the Government had been announced. It had already
decided by a considerable majority in favour of the
principle of making the personal payment of rates
a condition of the franchise, and nothing remaine d
but to prevent the incidence of the fine which was,
involved in the machinery as first devised by the
Government. The authority given to the compound
•
householder to deduct from the rent accruing to his
landlord the full amount of the rates paid by him-
self relieved the Ministerial measure of this defect,
and, unless the committee saw fit to recede from
its first decision, of which no trace was apparent,
it was inevitable that the Ministry should again re-
ceive its support. The committee has, indeed, ex-
pressed its former opinion with greater emphasis.
Mr. Bright's argument was no more than au
attempt to renew the debate which was 'decided
before Easter, and, consistently enough, the familiar
comparison of Birmingham and Sheffield, described
by Mr. Roebuck as mere " stump oratory," was
once more put in requisition. We are glad to know
that the struggle to
.reverse the decision of last
month was unsuccessful. Another obstacle to the
settlement of the Reform question has been repaired.
The animosity of their opponents has proved in-
effectual. A complete scheme has been approved
after exhaustive debating on its essential features,
and we may hope that the remainder of the work
to be accomplished may be achieved in comparative
peace and 'security.