The Sun.
London, England, 1832-01-24 00:00:00

the sore place in the Right Hon. Gentleman with
respect to Ireland :

• " The Irish landlords (he said) thanked the Right
Hon. Gentleman for entertaining fears for them they did
not entertain for themselves, The fact at present was,
that the whole Irish people were revolted by tithes; that
was indubitable—and what could the legislator do? Would
he take the tithe pig? What could he do when the whole
nation was conspiring against the laws ? That was the
cse in Ireland. Whit vas the case with respect to Ca-
tholic emancipation in Ireland ? Th it it was withheld
until it could lie no longer denied. It was not conceded
until it was felt by those who conceded it to be what they
conceived a dire necessity. It was not until that last mo-
ment that the Ri2,ht Hon. Baronet oppositediel himself the
immortal honour of proposing Catholic emancipation."
No, no : it is not for the Right Hon. Gen-
tleman, after the lesson which he taught the
Irish people, to turn round on them and exclaim,
" For God's sake, do not agitate, pay the tithe
pig in peace, keep up the abomination of a
Church without a people, consuming not only
I the part of the Church but the part of the
people. You may gain greatly by obedience to
the laws, but you can gain nothing by agitation.
All the good which the people of Ireland have
ever obtained from their superiors has been a vo-
luntary emanation from their benevolence." We
rejoice with exceeding great joy that there is at
last a fair prospect that the Irish will be relieved
from the burden of a sinecure Church, and the
British empire from the reproach of seeking to
degrade the Irish people by upholding this badge
of their slavery.—Morning Chronicle.
Our opinions upon Political Unions arrogat-
ing to themselves the functions of Government
' are well known. There are still societies in ex-
istence with that name, but none that assume
the powers or pretend to the character which can
render them, like those combinations which the
Government Press most intemperately advocated,
and the Government Proclamation subsequently
denounced, liable to the charge of being dan-
gerous, illegal, and revolutionary. It matters
little what the name of a voluntary association
for political purposes is, so long as its objects are
legal, and its exertions to attain those objects are
confined within constitutional limits. The
" Birmingham Political Union," for instance,
dissolved itself as to all purposes of illegal or-
ganization ; but an association continues to exist
under the same name—and as long as it confines
itself to the temperate advocacy of political and
social improvements and ameliorations, without
intruding upon the functions of either the legis-
lative or executive authority, there can be no
reasonable, still less can there be any legal, ob-
jection to its existence or proceedings. On the
contrary, if the principles put forward' by such a
society, at any tame, be entitled to public atten-
tion on account of justness of view and force of
easoning, Government ought to attend to
them as the collective opinions of a number of
individuals who unite together to give advice to
the ruling power, and do not pretend to be
invested with any of the authority of' a
political body recognised by the Mite. It
is in this way we understand the petition of
the Birmingham Union, praying the extension
of mercy to the rioters condemned to death
under the Special Commissions. That petition
is drawn up with temperance, judgment, and
ability ;—its arguments are sensible and cogent,
whether as applied to the case of the individuals
under sentence of death, or to the system by
whose spirit of indiscriminate slaughter they are
doomed to suffer. We have laid down the
broad rule for a more just and rational system of
criminal jurisprudence than we at present pos-
sess—that crimes affecting the rights of property
only should not incur the forfeiture of life. It
is our firm conviction that this rule will be
eventually recognized by the law of England ;
and, as far as the repeated declaration of our
own sentiments on the subject can have any in-
fluence, we have endeavoured to accelerate the
coming of that day when the life of man shall
no longer be sacrificed for a sheep or a horse,
or a five-pound note,—when, in tact, we shall
no longer see justice weighing perishable worldly
possessions in one scale, and that human life
upon which immortal destinies depend in the
other ! We know there are many who advo-
cate the abolition of' capital punishments
on the ground of expediency, because they
are proved by experience to be less efficient
in repressing crime than punishments less revolt-
ing to our nature, and that do not shed blood.
Some of the abolitionists in Parliament rely
solely upon expediency. We take up the sub-
ject upon principle. We urge the repeal of
capital punishments in relation to all c,ffences
affecting the rights of property only ; not
merely because they are inefficient, but because
being opposed to that morality which was ante-
cedent to all human Governments, and to the
spirit and doctrines of the Christian dispensa-
tion, they cannot be inflicted without violating
higher rules of action than the wisdom of human
legislatures ever established. The cases of the
victims of the " Reform excitement" are pecu-
liarly distressing ones. 'lhese men were carried
very unjustifiable lengths by the agitation of the
crisis, which excited even cold temperaments,
and drove many sober men into passionate ex-
tremes. It was no small labour to us to mode-
rate the tone of the Government Press on this
question to something like a reasoning propriety.
Can we wonder that, in some places, the ignorant
multitude were led away by their zeal for the Bill
into acts of astonishing rashness, when certain
" public instructors" of the Ministerial Press
appealed to the argument of physical force, day
after day, with unmeasured intemperance, and
threw fire-brands among the people ? Will Go-
vernment take upon itself to sacrifice the lives of
ten ignorant men, who, probably, were insti-
gated, not indeed to the specific acts of outrage
which they committed, but to general violence,
by taking in too literal a sense the inflammatory
metaphors of political writers, and reducing
their startling figures into fact ? It is melan•
choly to think that, although the Reform Bill
is, as yet, very far from being passed, the blood
of ten deluded Reformers should be offered up
upon the altars of legal vengeance—we will not
say as a propitiation to the enemies of Reform,
because they disclaim the sacrifice, but as the
first fruits of that policy from which the country
only a year ago anticipated the unmingled good
of national blessings. It should be borne in
mind that the guilt of four of the Nottingham
rioters rests upon very doubtful evidence ; and
the fifth might well plead his youth in exte-
nuation ; but, supposing the criminality of the
whole of the condemned men, both there and
at Bristol, to be quite clear, we ask if blood
enough has not been shed already in consequence
of the outrages in which they took a part, and
which entirely arose out of the political excite-
ment of the Reform Bill ? There are other
punishments, severe enough, without taking
life—a species of' punishment from which, it is
well known, the heart of our humane king re-
volts. But, let partisans 014 either side of a
great political question say what they will, the
unprejudiced and reflecting portion of society
admit that Government was, in the first instance,