The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-08 00:00:00

iFIE.I.i. OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times, in a leader on the late Protestant meeting in
the Rotundo, Dublin, notices one class that was almost
unrepresented. There were present peers, members of
Parliament, chiefs of families, magistrates, in fact, all the
higher classes, but the people of Ireland were absent. On
this occasion the governing class had its say as to the de-
mands of the governed. As this strange political dialogue
has been going on now for several centuries, and circum-
stances themselves bring some novelty to the topics dis-
cussed, we might hope for some novelty in the arguments
or the tone. But we may safely say that nothing said or
read at this demonstration would have been in advance of
the age any year of this century or the century before.
To maintain everything just as it is, leaving the
people to do what they may, must, or will do under
the circumstances, was the loudly and easily expressed
decision of this aristocratic and privileged crowd.
Speeches' were made not wanting in ability, and papers
were read which shew Irish eloquence to be irrespective of
party; but it was evident that one thing was to be said,
one only, and that was—" No surrender." All right of
private judgment, the free exercise of reason, and the
inspirations of genius itself had been dried down to the
one cuckoo cry, which nothing but parliamentary pro-
priety expanded into the form of speeches and the sem-
blance of argumentation. In this one point all agreed.
There could be no division. The appropriation of the
religious endowment to the exclusive benefit of the small
but rich minority was to be maintained not only for its own
sake, and as the homage due to truth, but r.s the only
means of preerving the British connection and averting
spoliation from the landowner. The Church and the land
would stand or fall together. The Protestants alone loved
the British rule, and held Ireland for the empire ; and
they did it in fair return for their acknowledged and
stipulated ascendancy. The compact broken and the re-
cognition withdrawn, it was not easy, or rather it was only
too easy, to say what would follow. The Protestant Esta-
blishment gone, the land would fdllow ; the land gone,
Ireland, too, would go. This was not a question of love,
of common feeling, or any of the ideas usually supposed to
assimilate races and form them into a national whole. It
was wages and work : payment and consideration for it ;
for holding Ireland, and keeping its natives in good order
the Protestants must have all the Church property, and
all their present position, whatever it is, in the possession
of the soil and the government of the people.
The Herald looks upon the demonstration in quite a
different light. The Protestants of Ireland have at length
accepted the challenge flung at them with much provoca-
tive insolence by the English Radicals and the Irish Ultra-
montanists. The demonstration in the Rotundo at Dublin
is aimed at both sections of their assailants—at the
Limerick clergy and the London Reform League, at Dr.
Cullen and Mr. John Bright. We apprehend that
neither are very well pleased with the spirit they have
evoked. A few waspish speeches from Radical agitators,
a sinister "pastoral" from a prelate more Roman
than Irish, and the carpings of a few discontented
priests. are manifestations which are dwarfed into
insignificance when contrasted with such a display
of strength and resolution as that exhibited on
Wednesday. The Protestants of the North have endured,
with credible forbearance, the provocations and the
menaces which of late have been so liberally directed
against them. They discerned, no doubt, that until re-
cently the agitation which threatened at once the exist-
ence of the Irish Establishment and the ownership of the
soil was chiefly kept up by a small though active politico-
religious organisation in England, and so long as this was
the case they were content to look on in contemptuous
silence. But as soon as the cause was taken up by the
Radical party and the Ultramonta,nists it became the duty
of the Protestants to accept the challenge. And our con-
temporary thinks that they acted wisely and well.
The legal appointments just made by the present Go•
♦ernment have, in the opinion of the Daily News,
weakened the appellate jurisdiction of the Court of
Chancery, without at all strengthening the law advisers ol
the Crown. They have also the demerit of disregarding
the rule by which the different branches of the law con-
tribute equally to the offices of Attorney and Solicitor..
General ; and most unnecessarily, because Mr. Baggallay—
quite as eminent a practitioner in the equity courts as
Mr. Brett is in the common law courts—is in the House
of Commons, and has been just as determined a supporter
of the Government as Mr. Brett, though he has not
clamoured for every legal post, from the Court of Passage
at Liverpool when it became vacant to puisne judgeship
that were not created. Through the elevation of Sir Charlee
Selwyn to the high office of Lord Justice, the appellate
jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery must fail to inspire
confidence. The warmest friends of Lord Chelmsford will
not compare him as Lord Chancellor, either in learning,
capacy, or industry, with the late Lord Campbell, Lord
Westbury, or Lord Cranworth ; he is, in point of fact, a
weakiudge, who skilfully avoids the difficulties which his
predecessors would have dealt with to the satisfaction of
the bar. Lord Cairns is brilliant ; some think more
brilliant than solid ; and though no one would have
objected to have seen Sir Charles Selwyn made Vice-
Chancellor, when any errors he might commit could be
swiftly and inexpensively corrected on appal, the idea of
his at once, without judicial experience, with very mode-
rate learning, and no high capacity of any kind, being
foisted into an appellate position, where his mistakes
admit only of tedious and costly correction, is an outrage
on the administration of justice in the Court of Chancery.

The Post, dealing with Abyssinia, points out that on a
small scale, and with much less excuse, we are apparently
repeating the terrible blunders which cost us so dearly
thirteen years ago in the Crimea. A great deal has been
said, and with truth, of the immense sums expended by
the Government in preparations for the present expedi-
Lion. That the bill prosented to the nation will be a large
one, no one need entertain the slightest doubt. Parsimony
Is not often a failing of the English Government whet,
important enterprises are organised ;but prodigality in ex-
penditure is not, as the Crimean campaign amply testified
synonymous with the exhibition of prudence and foresight,
or the perfection of the most ordinary preparations fo:
the most obvious wants. How those who had the manage
ment of the Commissariat Department in the Crimea lef
the troops without the ordinary necessaries of existence,
and the horses without forage, seemed utterly inexplicable
at the time ; but now we are asked to solve the still mor
marvellous problem, namely, how those to whom Cat
direction of the Abyssinian Expedition has beet
assigned have transported thousands of baggage animals
to a country where they must have known they would find
no water to drink, and under circumstances which rendered
it hopeless to expect that they could be adequately cared
for.

To the Saturday Review it appears extremely doubtful
whether Mr. Bright's plan for dealing with landed
property in Ireland would effect his principal ob-
ject. But it is admitted that it is in no respect unjust or
revolutionary. It is a reproduction in substance of the
project which the orator first announced at Dublin. For
the purpose of converting the occupiers of the land into
freeholders, he proposes to advance money for the purchase
of small holdings which the existing proprietors may be
willing to sell ; and he calculates that, by a payment of
five or six per cent. on the price for principal and interest,
the purchasers might clear off the incumbrance in five-
and-thirty years, having during the interval enjoyed secu-
rity of tenure on condition of meeting the annual charge.
As Parliament, representing the tax-paying community,
would lose little or nothing by the operation, the volun-
tary transfer of property would neither be objectionable
in principle nor burdensome to this country ; yet the ques-
tion arises whether the process which appears to Mr.
Bright so easy would be either simple or successful. Lord
Stanley not unseasonably protested against a resort
to quacks merely because no complete or certain cure was
known for a social disease. The retort that when a dis-
eas e has defied the efforts of regular practitioners, it may
be
expedient
to try a quack, is ingenious, but in common
with much effective rhetoric, it is fallacious. The appeal
from a regular doctor who has failed to understand the
case, to an empirical charlatan who may hit by accident
on a remedy, is not analogous to a preference of an arbi-
trary device to sound economical doctrine. It was against
quackery rather than against quacks that Lord Stanley
warned his audience and the country.blThe special plan
recommended by Mr. Bright waPr
Stanley's purview when he denounceda not within Lord
chimericalyetit schemes
judicioustonstime
duislianisteten
which practically involved confiscation ;extremely
doubtful whether it would be
purchases
of land by advances of public money.
Ilnded estates is already in progress through the disintegration
ollithef
Encumbered Estates Courts, and it is evidently better tx
deal in the first instance with the lands of enabarrasse
proprietors than to buy up, as Mr. Bright wishes, the
flourishing estates of wealthy absentee noblemen. Expe.
perience spews that the Irish middle classes, including the
farmers, have large hoards of money, and of late years the
officers of the Estates Courts have found that the highest
amount of purchase-money is realised by the division of
estates into lots of moderate dimensions. Within twenty
years one-ninth part of the soil of Ireland has been sold
under the direction of the court, and fez- some time past
no large properties have been alienated in bulk. When
small .
-hasera are able and willing to pay the highest
prices, it seems at least unnecessary to reinforce their
private resources by the funds of the State ; but it is true
that the buyers of encumbered lands are not generally the
persons whom Mr. Bright wishes to favour. The lots are
sold to small tradesmen and village money-lenders, rather
than to the occupiers of the farms ; and consequently a
class of petty landlords, resembling the middlemen of a
former generation, is gradually coming into existence. The
Irishman whom theorists desire, on plausible gro Inds, to
elevate into a peasant proprietor, himself greatly prefers
Cie ease and dignity of landowner subsisting on his rent ;
and if #l..v ._821t1). and 'West of Ireland were ajr thifsgigullt