The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-18 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times says that while all the friends of Ireland are
fondly believing that they see the very dawn of order,
peace, and goodwill, a terrible incident seems to throw tie
back half a century. It has scarcely a parallel in its cha-
racter, its manner, and its results. A landlord, with his
bailiff, a labourer, and, as it turns out, the insufficient
escort of four policemen, serves notices on some of his
tenantry, and encounters a hostile population, content, at
fi:.st, to use threats, abuse, and barricades. Against the warn-
ing of the police he proceeds to a farm which has been loop-
holed, fortified, garrisoned, and armed for defence ; with
some of his party he enters the farmyard, and is imme-
diately met with a murderous fire. It is literally
murderous, for the object is not merely to resist, but to
slay ; and one poor fellow is shot while he stoops to
lift up a wounded comrade. The slain policeman is
found riddled with bullets. Mr. Scully has received
several severe wounds. The verdict of the jury
upon the bodies of the murdered men is no more than
was to be expected under the circumstances. It admits
that they were murdered by Mr. Scully's tenants, which
o. course it was impossible to doubt or deny ; but it shows
no anxiety to fix on the very hands that fired the fatal
shots, and invokes the aid of the British Legislature to
prevent any possibility of such collisions for the future.
IThe proceeding which the jury deprecates was
the service of a notice, and it is not easy to
see how any business relations whatever can be
conducted without regular forms of communication.
A notice to quit may be a very disagreeable
document, but even Irishmen would rather be served with
it than suddenly and forcibly expelled without it. The
jury had no wish to be involved in the quarrel, and if they
did not know who had fired the fatal shots at Ballycohey,
they knew very well who would be disposed to shoot them
if they made themselves disagreeable. It was not neces-
sary in the interests of justice that they should say more
than they did, and as the facts were difficult to handle,
they took refuge in the legislative aspiration.
The Daily News remarks of the Tipperary murder that
it is no new secret organisation which has inspired this
act of bold defiance of the law—it is simply the old open
feud of Irish society. It is no fresh kindling of a flame,
but a flash from the ever smouldering. embers of an ex-
tinguished fire. It merely shell-8 that the same evils still
exist, and that so long as the present relations between
Irish landlords and Irish tenants remain unchanged, so
long will agrarian murders continue to redden the soil of
the Emerald Isle. The law put itself in armed antagonism
to the people, and they aimed to meet it.
The Times ridicules the Protestant demonstration. The
weather was unfavourable, and the affair was a flash in
the pan. Lord Fitzwalter forgot the Irish Church for the
subject of Ritualism. Indeed, according to him, the issue
before the nation at the coming election is to choose
between the Queen and Mr. Mackonochie. There is some-
thing in this adaptation of the old dilemma, the Queen or
the Pope, which may suggest a want of novelty in the
idea ; but all other considerations are lost in our surprise
that Lord Fitzwalter should hope to secure from the
present Government the exemplary punishment of
Ritualists. The faith of Lord Fitzwalter and of those who
agree with him must be great. Mr. Disraeli is, indeed, as
we all know, an ardent anti-Ritualist. Did he not reveal
to the House of Commons—a House sceptical and some-
what scandalised, it is true—a conspiracy such as many
excellent women bad long believed in, but were never
quite certain about until they thus got the word of the
First Minister of the Crown upon which to rely ? The
Times recommends the Protestants to ally themselves with
the Radicals.

The Post thinks the "demonstration" affords matter

for congratulation, not only to the speakers, who thus
found an unlimited opportunity for airing their views—or
rather their sentiments, for they nowhere rise to views—
but also to the nation at large, which is thus put in
possession of those sentiments, and is enabled to
appreciate the sort of attitude taken in defence of
them. From beginning to end the whole pro-
ceedings amounted to nothing more than a terrific
shaking of the red rag which has already more
than once frightened John Bull out of his propriety. The
Act of Settlement, the Bill of Rights, the British Consti-
tution, and our wives and daughters, were all knocked over
like so many ninepins, and at the end of the affair the Pope
of Rome was the only creature left standing in the field
engaged in organising a ritualistic Te Deum to celebrate
the forcible conversion of Mr. Whalley, the burning alive
of Lord Fitzwalter, and the final extinction of Protes-
tanW m.

The Star reminds us that the Throne of England rests
upon a wider and more secure basis than the support of a
few Orange fanatics. The loyalty of the people does not
depend upon the exact meaning which antiquated theolo-
gians may attach to the Coronation Oath. The safety of
Protestantism may be secured upon other conditions than
seemed good to William 111. The Constitution is
not fixed to the formulas of 1688, or limited to
the measures which were passed by the Parliaments of
that day. The world grows older in spite of us, new con-
ditions arise requiring altered policies, and monarchs,
parliaments, or parties who fail to appreciate these very
elementary principles of political science are generally
reminded of them in a very rude and effectual way.
The knot of harmless zealots who sputtered forth their
effete doctrines are doubtless well meaning and loyal
enough in their intentions. When they call upon the
vast city to come at their bidding to help to defend
the Throne, they doubtless imagine the monarchy to
be in danger, the moment to be critical, and
the newest of the peers the right man to prop
everything up afresh for another century or so, by the
utterance of Orange nostrums. If the Crown had no
wiser advisers, the lease of life of the monarchy would be
brief indeed. The Church they cannot harm, for it does
not rest upon political arrangements and parliamentary
settlements. The Church of England may so rest, and
the Church of England in its political aspect is capable,
doubtless, of receiving dangerous wounds in the house
of its own foolish friends ; but the Church of Christ
existed before William 111., and will survive all the efforts
which have been made to link her fortunes to the decaying
and changing institutions of the world.

The Herald is grateful to a Liberal contemporary for
describing Mr. Gladstone's policy as no more limited to a
purely Irish appl'cat:on " than a European war can be
described as French." Quite so ; but if it was worth
while to keep all this in the background up to the close
of the session, o-All'ng vc,us people by the promise
that the English C hur el should be held sacred, where is
the use of blurting out the truth on the eve of a genera!
election ? Is it because it is now found that Churchmen
are no longer to be hoodwinked as to the logical conse-
quences of Mr. Gladstone's policy, and that it is now
thought advisable, as a Bernier ressort, to bid heavily for
the Anti-Church-and-State party ? At any rate we are
properly grateful for this leisurely recognition of the accu-
racy of our first impressions, and we are tolerably confi-
dent that the frank confession of a truth long suppressed
will exercise an influence upon those who are . halting
between two opinions, the reverse of that intended and
desired by our contemporary. It may avail to appease
"secularist impatience," but it will set the "thousands of

electors" thinking very earnestly of the prospect opened
out before the country by this "imperial policy," which
begins with the destruction of the Church in Ireland.

The Standard asks Mr. Childers to state his plan for
reducing the expenditure. Would he reduce the army,

or leave off building vessels likely to offer some resistance
to the guns of the present day ? It is easy to talk about.

economy, but what expenses would Mr. Childers cut
down ? He has been named for a seat in the, Cabinet when-
ever a Whig Ministry comes into power again, and there-
fore he ought to be capable of suggesting a definite
policy. His ideas upon the subject appear to be of

as little practical value as those of Mr. Fawcett,
who made a great outcry about diminishing the expendi-
ture, and when the time came for making proposals could
do nothing better than recommend that no more money
should be spent on the repairs of St. James's Palace, bu;
that a building which has so many interesting historical
associations should be allowed to go to ruin. Another
economist of the same school proposed that Hampton
Court Gardens should no longer bo kept up, thus de-
priving, the labouring classes of one of the most healthy
and charming places of recreation open to them out-
side London. It would seem that Mr. Childers also

belongs to the penny-wise and pound-foolish set o'
financiers.

The Telegraph thinks Lord Mayo may not be the best
possible Viceroy, but why call him in advance the very

worst? If the Tories are to have the nomination, why
not leave to Mr. Disraeli the responsibility of the choice?

And why on earth should we decide that Sir Stafford

Northcote, or any other mild Conservative "illustration,"
is a fitter man? If we are to "open our
mouth and shut our eyes," and take what Mr.
Disraeli sends us, one Tory statesman is just as good aa
another, and, as Lord Mayo's countrymen would say,
" perhaps Letter." re,idesi, the outside public, easily
able to see whether a man is a good speaker or a clever
adept at political trick, knows very little in the rival

merits of administration of Mr. Disraeli's colleagues ; but
he does. If, unbiassed by personal feelings—and in this

case we see no reason to suspect any— he thinks Lord

Mayo a better man for the post than other Conservative

candidates, in all likelihood he is quite right. We may
not be certain of it, but let us give him the benefit of the
doubt.

Notwithstanding the rain which has fallen, the
floating island in Derwentwater lake still keeps increas.
ing in size, and is daily visited by large numl?ers of
POOPki.