The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-08 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOUR,NALS. THE CONVICT MICHAEL 13A.R.RETT.

The Times observes that there was joy in store for those
who delight in the dust of battle. As soon as Mr. Glad-
stone's resolutions had been passed, and Mr. Laing had
withdrawn his untimely rider, Mr. Aytoun brought for-
ward another supplementary resolution. Mr. Aytoun is

a Scotch Liberal, who has voted with Mr. Gladstone
throughout the recent discussions, and his motion was
seconded by Mr. Lamont, another Liberal Scotch mem-
ber. They have supported the disendowment and dis•

establishment of the Irish Church ; but they are
equally resolute that no part of the secular-

ised funds of the Irish Establishment shall be
devoted to the endowment or furtherance of the

Roman Catholic religion. Mr. Aytoun's resolution

was so ill drawn that, not content with declaring the

necessity of discontinuing the Maynooth Grant and the
Regium Donum when the Irish Church is disestablished,
and protesting against the devotion of the secularised

fonds of the Establishment to the promotionof the Roman
Catholic religion, it declared against the application of
any State funds in any way to such an object. This
last phrase gave rise to infinite misconception, if not
misrepresentation. It was twisted altogether out
of its natural import. A scene of confusion
ensued, which was long protracted. Amendments
and cross-amendments were submitted to Mr. Aytoun's
resolution. The chairman was again and again

appealed to on points of order, and language of un-
usual violence was heard. Mr. Disraeli, who described
the scene as " a quarrel over the plunder," provoked Mr.
Mr. Bright's wrath, and most unseemly recriminations
marked the close of the discussion. Liberal members
clustered about Mr. Aytoun, beseeching him to withdraw
or alter his motion. Mr. Mill was called to order for

turning his back upon the chairman iu his eagerness to
remonstrate with the refractory Scotchman, and it was
probably only owing to the abstinence of the Ministry
from taking any part in the division that the resolution,
After many alterations, was finally rejected. It would
have been more for the credit both of the House and of
its most eminent members if it had been moved that the
chairman should " report progress " after Mr. Glad-
stone's resolutions had been agreed to.

The Post gives currency to the rumour that the present
Prime Minister meditates another of those wonderful sur-

prises which during his brief tenure of office have so
startled the simple-minded. It is believed that on the
high authority of Lord Cairns the Cabinet will be told
that, 'without inconsistency or dereliction of duty, it may
advise the sovereign to give her consent to the intro-
duction of a bill of which, nevertheless, every mem-
ber of that Cabinet totally disapproves. Without stop-
ping to inquire into the reasons on which this view is
based, it is needless to state its object. It is presumed,
and probably not without good cause, that the measure
will be defeated in the Lords, and the Government
be thereby relieved of any embarrassment which it
might occasion them. But the Post asks, in the first
place, is a Minister of the Crown who sits in one House of
Parliament justified in assisting the passing of a bill
affecting the royal prerogatives through that House be-
cause he has good grounds for supposing that it will be
rejected in the other House. And, in the second place,
it asks what would the Government do if by an odd acci-
dent the bill should be carried through the Upper Theme.
Mr. Hardy has distinctly stated that he will never be a
member of any Administration which assents to the pass-
ing of a bill striking at the existence of the Irish Church.
But if the bill passed both Houses, what would he and
his colleagues do? Advise the Queen to veto the
bill? Such a course would be without a precedent since
the reign of George 1., and, in the opinion of the late Mr.
Hallam, would be grossly unconstitutional. It is perhaps
useless to utter warnings, but we would sincerely recom•
mend the colleagues of Mr. Disraeli to examine with some
little care the very crooked path in which he has for some
time been leading them. They pride themselves on being
the leaders of the Conservative, and par excellence the con-
stitutional party. Surely the mere wish to hold office for
a few months longer will not induce them to overthrow all
;hose constitutional usages which the country holds most
dear, and affix on their own names a stigma which can
never be effaced.

The Daily News points out that the next step in this
business will be the proposal of an address to the Queen,
praying her Majesty, with a view to legislation in the pre-
sent session, to place at the disposal of Parliament her
interest in the temporalities of the Irish Church. The
course which the Government will take upon this matter
has not been indicated. For anything that appears they
may renew upon it their suspended opposition to the policy
of the House of Commons. The address is certain to be
carried in any case. Will it be followed by the dissolution '
which Mr. Disraeli has obtained her Majesty's permission
to have recourse to ? If this penalty on independence is
not inflicted will the address be graciously answered by
the sovereign, or, as Mr. Disraeli seemed to imply, left
without answer ? In the latter event, we may assume
that the precedents to which Mr. Gladstone referred for
legislation upon matters affecting the rights of the Crown
without the Royal Assent will be followed. The House
of Commons is not in a mood to be trifled with ; and it
will meet the unusual assertion of prerogative by the un-

usual but legitimate exercise of its own privileges.
The Herald is indignant at the clamour which took place
in the House on the passing of the resolutions. It lays
the charge of having produced that scene at the door of
Mr. Gladstone. No candid and honest man will be in-
clined to impute to Mr. Disraeli any deficiency in the
qualities or the principles which enable the leader of the

House to contribute to the preservation of its dignity.
For twenty years he has been a leader in that assembly,
and whether Lord J. Russell or Lord Palmerston were his
opponent—whether in office or out of it—he has never
given occasion for the slightest complaint of his personal
conduct or of the manner in which he has exercised his
influence over his party. While he, together with one or
the other of those distinguished men, was responsible for
the management of the House, its dignity was maintained,
and its debates characterised by that moderation and
sobriety and demeanour, that elevation of tone, which
traditionally belong to the Parliament of England.
If there has been a falling-off in this respect, it is
only since Mr. Gladstone became the leader of the
Liberal party, and Mr. Gladstone must be held
responsible for it. Even while he was only a subordinate
of Lord Palmerston, his chief had more than once to inter-
pose to calm the storm which he had raised, and to check
his vivacity of temper. Since he took the first place on
his own side of the house he has not belied the anticipa-

tions of those who expressed these misgivings. His per-
sonal rudeness to Mr. Disraeli has always been marked,
and sometimes outrageous ; his temper, more than even
his policy, shipwrecked the Government of Earl Russell,
and in 1867 led to a renewal of the intestine feuds of the
Liberals ; and within the present week it has been mani-
fested in attacks on the Ministry which have transcended
all bounds of reason and all restraints of courtesy, and have
hardly spared the Crown itself.
The Standard, observing that the resolutions are
adopted, points out that the Queen will be asked to
place her interest in the temporalities of the Irish
Church at the disposal of Parliament, and in the
event of a favourable answer being returned, Mr.
Gladstone will bring in a bill to suspend all appoint-
ments t 6 dignities and benefices in the Irish Church until
the Ist August, 1869. Assume the answer to be favour-
able—that is to say, that her Majesty's Government, upon
the careful consideration which Mr. Disraeli assured Mr.
Darby Griffith the resolutions should have—deem that the
proper advice to give to her Majesty would be to allow Par-
liament to entertain the question, and it is still perfectly
clear that no Act suspending the appointment to vacant
dignities and benefices, and so prejudging that very ques-
tion which by mutual consent is to be referred to the new
constituencies, would be passed this session. We do not
believe that a bill intended to effect this object would pass
through the House of Commons ; we are quite sure that
no such measure would be read a second time in the House
of Lords. The session has been wasted, and for a factious
purpose. Mr. Gladstone cannot vindicate his policy in
the way which, as he has admitted, it could alone be jus-
tified.

In a leader on the St. James's Hall meeting, the Tele-
graph notes that there was an Irish Protestant bishop at
the meeting on Wednesday—the Bishop of Cork. He is a
specimen of the Hibernian bench. He was formerly a
very popular preacher in Dublin, and the Protestants of
that city, whose sole idea of religion is ribaldry directed
against Roman Catholics, had an idea that Dr. Gregg knew
Greek because he could read the New Testament in the
original, and to their great delight he thumped his pulpit,
bellowed himself hoarse, and preached damnation for all
and sundry who did not follow his specially evangelical,
and sometimes ungrammatical, advice. Since he has been
made a bishop his energy and fine religious feeling have
increased, and the other day he publicly called Mr.
Maguire, M.P., " the son of a dog." There is a good deal
of force in the expression, and, with the last word in
the feminine form, it frequently adorns street rows.
Doubtless
,Dr. Gregg picked it up casually, and in a
natural manner he gave it a masculine turn of thought.
We should be sorry to repress the exuberant spirits of a
bishop who can thus, as Victor Hugo says, " bark in,
slang." If we expect an Archbishop of Canterbury to be
ethereal, on the other hand, we anticipate real Irish
vigour from a Hibernian bishop, and it would be a pity if
he restrained the flow of his words. He really knows no
other or nobler discourse. A man without dignity, or
learning, or decency, who has bellowed his way to the
bench, is quite good enough for the " mere Irish." We
I.lay, indeed, hint a doubt whether it is the imperative
duty of the English Government to pay Dr. Gregg £2,000
a year merely for the pleasure of hearing him call a mem.
her of Parliament " the son of a

The inquiry into the evidence offered on the part of the I
defence is still proceeding at Glasgow, and fourteen dis-
tinct affidavits have been transmitted to the Home Office.
Five of these are by persons who saw Barrett at the
torchlight procession in Glasgow on the night of the 21st
of November—namely, three weeks before the date of
the Clerkenwell explosion. These testify to the fact that
at that time he had short whiskers, and one of them refers
to the accident by which one of his whiskers was singed
by a torch. Two of the affidavits are by persons who saw
him frequently in Glasgow between that date and the
end of December, and corroborate the evidence of his
presence at the meeting at the Bell Inn on the night of
the explosion. Three are to the effect that on Sunday,
the Bth day of December, five days before the explo-
sion, Barrett was present at a christening in Glasgow—
these latter affidavits being sworn by the father and
mother of the child who was christened, and one of the
guests who wag present on the occasion. One is by a
man who saw him on the 12th and 13th of December ;
on one of these days in company with Mullen, the
man who, as will be recollected, was stated on the trial to
have taken Barrett to M'Nulty's (the shoemaker) on the
12th, the day before the explosion. One is an affidavit
by his employers, which testifies to his good character,
but is otherwise immaterial, as he was compelled to dis-
continue work in the month of August, owing to ill-
health. One is by a man who spent two hours with
him on the morning of December 14 (the day after
the explosion), and one by a labouring man of his
acquaintance, who saw him on the quay at Glasgow on the
12th December. The inquiry is still proceeding, and addi-
tional evidence will probably be forthcoming ; but in the
presence of such a mass of testimony as to Barrett's pre-
sence in Glasgow during the entire period in which,
according to the statements of Mullany, his apprentice,
Morris, and his workwoman, Keppel, he was in London, it
is thought the Government will not permit the sentence to
be immediately carried into effect.

The Glasgoic Herald says that on Thursday the affidavits
of fifteen persons were sworn to in the Justice of Peace
Court Hall, in presence of Mr. William M`Lean, justice.
Of the eleven persons whose depositions were taken on
Monday by Mr. Lewis, Barrett's solicitor, nine took the
oath, two—one of whom, at least, made an important state-
ment—having failed to put in an appearance. In addi-
tion to those examined on Monday, six were examined
on Tuesday, but a note of their evidence was not sup-
plied to the newspapers. We are informed, however, that
one of them speaks to having seen Barrett in Glasgow on
the day of the explosion at Clerkenwell. Witness
was quite positive as to the day of the month ; but
on being asked by Mr. Douglas, J.P. Fiscal, what day
of the month yesterday was, he was unable to tell. The
testimony of the other witnesses, we are told, referred
principally to the torch-light procession on the Green, at
which Barrett was present. The witnesses whose affi-
lavits were sworn to are almost exclusively Irish, and, of
course, were not subjected to any cross-examination.