The Sun.
London, England, 1835-01-02 00:00:00

happiness which a tolerant religion and equal laws ad-
minister to those who live under their sway ; let him
• dwell upon the excellence of that Church which re-
cognises the right of the poor and needy to the bene-
fits of spiritual instruction, advantages necessarily ex-
cluded from a voluntary system ; nor let him forget to
demonstrate how the laws of England are frame:l
upon the acknowledgment of the perfect ee;:mtity of
Britons in all matters connected with tl.le protection of
their persons and property. But? aoove all, let him ask
whether it is reasonable VI Imagine that a Duncombe,
a Lushington, a H:.rvey, a Grote, or an O'Connell
will guard those rights and privileges with greater care
and zeal than a Peel, a Wellington, a Lyndhurst, a
Knatchbull, or a Baring. Let the uninstructed and
uninformed be thus enlightened as to the real nature
of the approaching contest—that it is not a struggle
between parties contending for the possession of place
and power, but a vital issue between religion and infi-
delity, Monarchy and Republicanism, order and
anarchy. Finally, let Conservatives of every class and
order be firmly united. Surely when men of the most
opposite opinions combine under the false and delusive
cry of " Reform," which, when proceeding from such
lips, means " dangerous and useless innovation," the
Conservative Reformers of the land may associate,
regardless of petty differences, existing for the
most part in name rather than in reality. Surely
when those who declaimed most loudly against the
“ impatience" of the " Destructives " now hold out
the hand of fellowship to their former foes, and
proclaim " all differences at an end," the men who
merely differed as to the best mode of preserving
the institutions of the country, those who considerede
the Reform Act a wholesome measure, and its equally
conscientious oppcnents who regarded it with fear and
apprehension, may now meet on one common ground,
and consider what is to be done for the safety of the
State. Barren consultation, however, will avail no-
thing. Energy, activity, union on the part of the
electors of England, are indispensable. If we are
now defeated—if, with the sacred name of the King
for our watchword—if, with the patriotism, the intel-
lect, the property of the land arrayed in our behalf,
we remain inactive, or suffer our determination to wax
cod, the bad, the turbulent, the factious will speedily
seize the 'vantage ground : and, when it shall be too
late—when our institutions may have either crumbled
into dust or been violently overthrown, our welfare and
our liberties numbered with the things which here, but
are not—then a bitter but fruitless repentance will be
our portion. We shall look back to the days of our
happiness and glory, and remember, with sorrow and
self-reproach, that firmness, courage, and energy might
have preserved those blessings to us and our children.
—Morning Post.
It would be impossible to form a comprehensive ;,r
just opinion upon the tendencies of the pressns crisis
without taking into account the daily intelligence from
Ireland. If the spiritual church be the general rock
of salvation to Christians, assuredly the temporal
church of Ireland has not been a rock of salvation to
Governments ; for it, and the questions arising out of
its circumstances, as compared with those of other
churches, have proved a rock on which many succes-
sive Governments have split. The measures of sys-
tematic hostility against Irish Protestantism—against
property, and law, and authority of every descrip-
tion—the moving and predominating spirit of which
wr expressed through the language of noctur-
nal havoc, aid the effect of which was to force
peaceable families throughout the southern coun-
ties to barricade their houses, or to abandon
them, compelled Lord Grey's Ministry last sum-
mer to propose a renewal of the Coercion Bill.
Through some juggle, not yet sufficiently exposed,
the Repeal faction appear to have been allowed no in-
significant share in the enfeebling of a law which had
been designed and ought to have been fitted for the
crintrol of their outrages, and the frustration of their
projects. Lord Grey, disgusted at the mingled mean-
ness of some of his subalterns who had stooped to
take counsel from O'Connell, and the knavery of
others who had dared to meddle by crooked and in-
sidious contrivances with the regular march of the
Government, threw up his cards and resigned. The
Irish Church question having unhappily been left
as much afloat as ever by some proceedings which
took place not long before the prorogation of
Parliament, the difficulty of arranging that im-
portant question by the late Ministry after Lord
Spencer's death, which Lord Melbourne himself,
we believe, admitted, and the shape of impossibility
which it assumed in his Majesty's judgment, were the
occasion of overthrowing the Cabinet which succeeded
Lord Grey's. O'Connell and his apprentice agitators
are employing due means to perpetuate this source of
trouble and vexation to the British Crown ; and by
fixing the desires of their credulous dupes among the
people upon objects altogether unattainable, except by
the surrender of Ireland bodily into the hands of
O'Connell himself and his priests, to insure under
every phasis of rational government, the spread and
aggravation of that sentiment of hatred which they
have been long and diligently labouring to inspire
against England, her authority, her laws, and her re-
lig,ion. Dr. API-laic, who in scorn of the precautionary
provisions of that law which gave civil emancipation
to the Catholics, presumes to sign himself " John,
Tuam," has again put on (when indeed was he stripped
of it?) his well-worn habit of a political intriguer. He
has, under the name of a letter to his clergy, issued
one of those ecclesiastical tirades, so frequently, ar,d
too successfully, circulated by the Popish clergy, tq
de-
bauch the loyal feelings of the Irish Catholic:„ to in-
flame the moderate, and make the ignorant ap,:, irrita-
ble frantic. What business these prete-lid.ed Minis-
ters of religion have with the weapons of political in-
cendiaries—what part of their profeseeiunal duty it is to
undermine the natural influence property over elec-
tors—to obtrude the priest lv:Aween the voter and the
candidate—to render the Fai,Jst the sole guide of the
voters conscience in the, 'Purely to rporal question of
" whom he shall chorese for his representative," we at
least are unable to Imsvier, though Popish casuistry
will, no doubt, ersst over such practices the same hypo-
critical colouring as it has used in every age, when
the spirit 'and decency of mankind were shocked by
its encroachments upon the temporal affairs of
State, and by its desperate efforts to hold in thral-
dom the common sense and free agency of its congre-
gations. In fact, this scheme of turning a political
into a religious duty, and thereby bringing the con-
duct of every elector within the jurisdiction of the
priesthood, is the standing demonstration of that very
species of iniquitous cupidity and ambition, which has
in alI times past provoked and justified the extreme
jealousy of free and wise Governments towards the
Popish hierarchy, as an institution in the nature asid
essence of which worldly ambition is inextricably rooted ;
and therefore it is that, under any conceivable circum-
stances, the grant of political power to such a church
would be utterly inadmissible in a free State, as being
in its action dangerous to civil liberty, and in its triumph
subversive. Some means must be taken to cut away
this morbid power from the Irish Roman Catholic
Priesthood, for it aims directly at the ruin of all au-
thority but their own ; and for the attainment of this
great good, education would seem the natural and ap-
propriate instrument. But here again the same double-
toothed monster meets us, for the priests exclaim against
any instruction but that which, under their exclusive
care, serves to confirm and extend their fatal supremacy.
But Dr. M'Hale stands not alone in his attempts upon
the constituency of Ireland. He attacks this super-
stitious ignorance— O'Connell their personal safety; and
only mark the ruffianism of this man's conduct. He
finds the Knight of Kerry a candidate for the repre-
sentation for his native county, which he served in
Parliament for more than 30 years,—in no one year of
which long period had the Knight flinched from or
relaxed in his support of that which he had originally
declared to be the one great object of his public life,
viz., the emancipation of the Catholics. In 1829 he
and the other friends of that important measure saw
it carried successfully through Parliament, and O'Con-
nell's return to the House of Commons in the year
following as one of its bitter fruits. What was the
consequence ? Why, that in the year 1832 this
very O'Connell so worked upon the fears and other
evil passions of the Catholic electors of Kerry, as
to throw out the Knight of Kerry from the seat
which he had dedicated, through good and ill re-
port, to their service I But what of that ? What is