The Sun.
London, England, 1835-05-11 00:00:00

THE -SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 11, 1835.

ested in the tithe, the magistrate who had under-
taken to direct the operations of the police, him-
self a party in the affray, actually appears as that of
one of the justices who sat with Mr. Greene on
the bench, and conducted the investigation I The
Learned Sergeant must have perfectly well known
that nothing could have been more improper than that
one of the patties liable at least to be accused, should
have sat to try his own case ; but in Ireland this is
the practice of the law I Mr. Greene states that
" none of the country people who were on the spot
had come forward as witnesses. He mentions this
fact incidentally as one that did not in the least excite
his surprise. In Ireland, unhappily, the people habi-
tually refrain, whenever they possibly can, from going
into Courts of Justice as witnesses ; and for this plain
reason, that the individuals on the bench are generally,
with the exception only of some of the judges of the
superior courts, their most violent enemies. Was it
to be expected by any man in his senses, that any
of the peasantry who had been engaged in the
affray would have come forward to give evidence
to a court where the minister of a hostile Church,
the magistrate who had led out the police, and who,
the people had every reason in the world to think
gave orders for provoking them to the murderous
combat, was himself upon the seat of justice ? We
call upon our countrymen, in the name of religion and
the law, to say whether they are prepared, with such
facts as these before them, to impose for ever this
blasphemy against Christianity, this mockery of the
administration of justice, upon Ireland ? Another
feature of these transactions discloses a volume of
commentary upon the state to which the oppressions
of a Church rejected by the people of that country
have reduced them. We almost envy the apathy of
the man who can read without emotion the following
extract from the evidence of Patrick Smith. The
simple language of the poor cottager much touch the
stoutest heart with compassion for the wrongs of which
he is only one out of millions of victims :
" I was at home all the morning of the Ist of December :
I hold eight acres odd ; I am a tenant-at-will ; I paid the tithe
of 1832, 6s. i d. ; there was no demand from me for 1833 ;
I saw the police coining up ; I suspected what they were
coming for ; I shut the door, because the police were coming.;
I locked my barn door; my potatoes were in, they were worth
a pound ; there was a padlock on the barn ; I had a cow, a
heifer, and a pig out ; one of my sons drove them off from the
house ; part of the policemen and drivers came to me ; they
asked for no money, but one of the drivers asked me to open
the door ; I said I would not ; he then put his shoulder
to the door, and opened it ; it was barred inside by the
children; one of the police went in with a driver, and searched
the house ; I went after; they took nothing ; there was plenty
of pledge, butter, yarn, flax, and potatoes ; they came out,
and broke the barn door; they did not ask me to open the
barn door ; I said that there was nothing in the barn but po-
tatoes, arid that there was enough in the house ; they said
nothing, but broke open the barn door at once; they took no-
thing at all out of the house or barn."
Here, therefore, is a case where a poor cottager, who
owed no tithe, against whom there was no claim what-
ever, beholds his house and his barn invaded and
broken open by a set of ruffians clothed in the garb of
officers of the law. An Englishman's house is his
castle. If an officer without any legal warrant attempt
to force one of our habitations, we presume him to be
a robber, and if we choose may shoot him on the spot
with the full approbation of the law. If he succeed
in effecting an entry, and the owner is overpowered
by his violence, the verdict of a jury vindicates the
law, and compensates the injured family by exemplary
damages. But Smith is a mere Irishman ;"—h6
is without the " pale" of the British Constitution.
The thought of bringing an action against the bur-
glar who so wantonly violated the -security of his
" castle," never appears to have entered his head.
If we happened to have witnessed this scene, and
advised him to appeal to a Court of Justice against
so gross an outrage upon all that renders society valu-
able, or life worth its pains, lie would have desired us
to wait in the county of Armagh for a few weeks, and
then he would have led us to the court where the Rev.
Magistrate, Blacker, by whose authority his house
was broken open, was engaged in the duty of admi-
nistering the law of Ireland in a case where he him-
self was the principal culprit. The poor man would
then ask us by viliat sort of process he could expect
to gain justice in Ireland. Englishmen ! have we
not reason to blush for our country ? At all events,
may we not ask whether it would have been " plunder,"
" fraud," " iniquity," to take from the priest,
who, probably, has not a single member of his
congregation in the entire parish of Keady, the
sum of 251., which he declared he did not want,
and apply it to the education of those children
who ought to have been at school, instead of
spending their earliest days in learning the most effec-
tual mode of " barring a door" against the police. If
the rising generations 'are to be brought up in this
manner—as they must be, if the tribe of Blackers are
to be maintained---it is sheer madness to think of pre-
serving Ireland as a part of the empire. We take it
for granted that this clerical violator of the laws is no
longer in the commission of the peace ; and we cannot
doubt that the policemen who acted on this occasion
have been 'all dismissed from his Majesty's service.
The inquest returned a verdict that Hughes was mur-
dered by a policeman unknown. Mr. Sergeant Greene
has the courage to assert that this finding, signed by
twenty-three " good and lawful men," is not justified
by the evidence. 'We believe that out of Ireland he
will not find an unprejudiced man in the King's do-
minions who reads that evidence to agree with him.
We expect that Mr. Perrin will supersede the Orange
Sergeant's opinion, and have the murderers tried by
their country.—Morning Chronicle.
Parliament will soon assemble, and the great sub-
ject of the moment—the Protestant Church in Ireland
—will be brought under its discussion. In the annals
of our country has no greater measure ever been con-
templated ; it is one which, if triumphant, must give a
character to the age—in fact, stamp it as an epoch
which has given birth to the most transcendant prin-
ciple of political justice the world has known. Well
may an odious and atrocious faction call from their
lowest depths their energies to struggle 'against and
overcome it ; well may the fiend-intelligence of ty-
ranny and the arch-intolerance of priesteraft-corrup-
tion, tremble at discovering in it the herald of free-
dom and enlightenment, and, consequently, the signs
of their own downfall. But it requires no gift of
miraculous augury to foresee that the sinister designs
of this faction will not succeed. if the champions of
the people now in Parliament do their duty, triumph
to the cause of liberty and truth is certain ; for the
alarums of "No Popery" and " Church in danger,"
are no longer to be mistaken for anything but
what they are—the ignorant bigotries of a demo-
niacal spirit, not the true inspirations of reli-
gion. The antiquated fallacy that would link the
Church with the State, to preserve the tottering
edifice of an unsound system of morals, is no longer
in consonance with the wisdom of the age : and
mankind have awakened to the truth, that to preserve
the vices of a creed is to abolish its virtues ; or, in
other words, if religion require outward props to
sustain its power, it has lost its inward and only natu-
ral ones of the heart. The contemplated measure for
reform of the Protestant Church in Ireland may effect
this—may sever the irrational union between sacer-
dotal and political government ; but the people are no
longer to be led away by the delusion that true reli-
gion
purple w i
al lo idio to r bmei
oho e
anreefi tneedo
obssyariyt,
toor
athantatthioen ps ovmirptooef.
America is before them in proof of the contrary ;
and Spain, with its old and ponderous chains of
priest-influence and monkish interference in its
political system—and even Portugal, worse perhaps
than Spain in its imputed sin of ecclesiastical
bigotry—are examples in the present day to be
cited to the same intent. In both of those countries
measures by their respective Legislatures have been
introduced, authorising the fullest appropriation of
Church property to affairs of the State ; and surely
where countries, so long and at the present period
under the sway of Popedom, on such, a point may be
adduced, it is time that enlightened Britain should be
prepared for a similar assertion of intelligence over
superstition, and of morality over the errors of a vi-
tiated polity. On such an occasion, that the cry of
" No Popery," and " No O'Connell," should be the
watchword of a base and motley fraternity of Peers
and Prelates, shows only more forcibly the extremity
to which it is driven, and the besotted fanaticism of
which it would wake the people the dupes. But let
the House qt. Commons adhere to its late resolution,

and, in spite of the machinations of its enemies, the
country will see the great measure of appropriation
carried into effect.—Morning Advertser.

COURT OF COMMON PLEAS.