The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-28 00:00:00

PIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Isom THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—Mr. O'Connell dislikes our sceptical
treatment of " the fact " that " the rebellion of 1798
was fostered by Government, in order to effect the
union more easily." We are still sceptical as to this
"fact." We never knew any .instance in which an
unsuccessful rebellion failed to be ascribed to the
unpopular Government that suppressed it. Let
it be admitted that the Government which pre-
ceded the union was an extremely bad one—
bad, because of its leaning on one Irish faction.
Let this be admitted ; let it be admitted that the
idea of revolution might naturally enough arise at
such a time, under such a Government. We know
from the Memoirs of Wolfe Tone, and more recent
publications, how completely revolutionary were the
views and projects of " Young Ireland" at that epoch.
We cannot, for our part, conceive how the then state
of feeling should have passed off without some
explosion. " They" (the Government), says Mr.
O'Connell, " had fanned discontent into rebellion ;
the men of Wexford nearly turned rebellion into
a revolution." Now the fact that, at that time, the
stirring part of the Irish people was ripe for revolu-
tion—and that the Government knew it was—seems
to destroy the inference that they either "planned" or
• "fostered" rebellion. Insidious power may " plan "
or " foster" pocket-rebellions, when it knows it can
have a cheap bargain of them. The charge, however,
is much more easily made than proved of any adminis-
trate. Our argument was that the British Govern-
ment had far too much on its hands at that
epoch, to have desired an Irish rebellion. Mr. O'Con-
nell has unconsciously strengthened that argument
by his observation that " the men of Wexford
• nearly turned rebellion into a revolution." Our
construction of the acts of the then British Go-
vernment is at least more consistent with probability
and with itself. Mr. O'Connell regards it as
proof positive of their having, if not "planned,"
"fostered" rebellion—that, for some time previous,
they had secret information of its intended chiefs.
Brit in a country so extensively disaffected as was
Ireland at that epoch, the plain policy of govern-
nient was to endeavour to detach and disarm the
intended forces of insurrection, before they were
T
ripe for outbreaking. The proclamations which
they issued prove that this was the object they had
in view; and the success which attended those
proclamations was, in fact, what precipitated the re-
bellion. That it was not more general, that it was
not better timed with regard to auxiliaries—in
short, that it was not successful, was the effect of
the previous steps of Government. But we look
upon it as the wildest romance to ascribe to their
fostering the whole fact of rebellion—for the sake
of the inference that the British Government consi-
dered a rebellion a pre-requisite pretext for a union.
It seems, however, that our friends the repealers
cannot afford to lose the topic. They prize it, as the
revolutionists of 1688 did the fabulous-Wifining-pan,
and supposititious birth of the heir they had made up
their minds not to acknowledge—or as the war party
with Spain, under sir Robert Walpole, fanaticised
themselves with what Burke has called " the fable of
Jenkins's ears." Or as the French Republican writers
have stuck to the story of the disaster of Quiberon, as
having been expressly contrived by the British Go-
vernment (at vast cost of treasure and reputation), for
the purpose of throwing all the best naval officers whom
France had to boast, in a hopeless attack—" at the
mercy of their own countrymen." Our worthy
neighbours might have recollected, while concocting
this odiously false and absurd imputation against
English honour, that it lay with themselves not to
have shot their Royalist officers, by thousands, in
cold blood. The mad violence of one nation, at some
epoch of epidemic frenzy, is not to be saddled with
this facility on another, at the will of orators or his-
torians. Let bygones be bygones—we are as far
from the Irish rebellion as from the Quiberon expe-
dition. No party—no moderate party—at present
needs identify itself with the principles or passions
which then convulsed Europe.
. STANDARD.—The clamour with which Mr.
Alderman Gibbs has been assailed, and the gross and
ungenerous artifices by which it has been sustained,
would lead to the inference that there is something
• more than meets the eye in the relentlessness of his
persecutors. In the resume of the features of the
dispute between the Alderman and the parishioners,
the motives of the resistance offered by
him to the demands of Messrs.. Rock,
Bowen, and Co., are clearly and, we think,
satisfactorily set forth. He had been appointed to
office by a select vestry, to whom alone he was re-
sponsible, aid who alone possessed the power to re-
lieve him from that responsibility. The reasons
assigned for his refusal to submit his accounts to the
inspection of Messrs. Rock and his associates are-
1. That they were demanded of him as a right, and
under the pretext that the requisitionists were the
representatives of the legal vestry. 2. That had he
admitted_ the assumed right, he would virtually have
repudiated an authority to which he was amenable,
in favour of one which had :no power to
release him from his official responsibility. 3. That
the demand conveyed an imputation on the se-
lect vestry, no less than on himself, and that had he
complied with it, he might have appeared to hare ad-
mitted that which had, he well knew, no foundation
in fact. Indeed, after the 6th of December, the day
On which his accounts were audited, and reported to
be satisfactory by the select vestry, all imputations on
the subject were, in reality, in every respect as ap-
plicable to them as it was to himself ; and any further
concession than that of publishing his accounts
and the result of their investigation of them, could
ti it fairly have been expected of him. To other
and minor points alleged in his justification, it is
hardly necessary to allude. The first inquiry which
presents itself for consideration is, whether, if the foul
insinuations, of which Mr. Alderman Gibbs has been
the object, in regard to these accounts turn out to be
wholly unfounded, there is any other charge behind
which can or ought to affect his eligibility for the
office to which he aspires ? It is, we believe, admitted
on all hands that there is none. Other imputations
did, to be sure, grow out of the principal allegation,
but they have been fully and satisfactorily disproved.
The question, therefore, whether Mr. Alderman
Gibbs has misappropriated the parish funds entrusted
to him, and whether the four gentlemen who compose
-the select vestry by whom his accounts have been
audited, have or have not conspired with him in the
alleged fraud, is the only one which remains to be
disposed of. Proof or the shadow of an attempt at
proof in support of such a charge, there is none ;
and even the presumption is founded on the re-
fusal of the Alderman to submit his ac-
counts to parties who, beside demanding their in-
vestigation in a tone which implied a doubt of
his honour, had really no legal authority for
their interference. Not satisfied with the decision of
the select vestry, the matter in dispute has been re-
ferred to Chancery, and is now under investiga-
tion by one of the masters of that Court ; yet
pending the decision of this functionary—in the
absence of all proof of improper conduct, nay, in
despite of the testimony of the only parties
to whom he is really responsible, that the result
Of the examination of his acc quits was al-
together satisfactory—that, instead of his owing
the parish money, he is in advance to it upwards of
1,5001., it is coolly suggested that his election
to the mayoralty be postponed. " Without im-
puting dishonesty to Mr. Alderman Gibbs," says
the Globe, " in the application of the parish
funds, we confidently submit that sound po-
licy requires that his election to the mayoralty
should be postponed for the present year;" the
ground for this suggestion being avowedly the
possible contingency that the report of the Master
in Chancery may be unfavourable to him ! So the
Alderman is to be subjected a rejection (a rejection
which, undel• all t circumstances would convey
a stigma on his character, stamped with the autho-
rity of his fellow-citizens) by the livery, because
be is the defendant in a Chancery suit, which
_Pan hardly be decided in time to afford him
the means of exculpating himself from the insinua.-
- lions which have been cast upon him ! This is
surely not the treatment which one Englishman
has a right to look for from another. Were the
honour of the Alderman really dependent upon the
report of the Master in Chancery, such a sugges-
tion would be wholly unwarranted. But what is
the fact ? Why, that the whole of the payments
for which he Was personally responsible, have
been declared by the Master to be correct, and
that the only items which remain for investiga-
tion are such as were paid by his subordinates
in office and entered in their accounts. If, therefore,
we are correctly informed, the verdict of the select
vestry will be confirmed, and the Alderman relieved
from all suspicion of misconduct ; although not, it
may be,. until the insinuations of the Tinzes and Globe
shall have produced the desired effect, arid the elec-
tion has been decided. Fair play is said to he a jewel ;
but it may safely be inferred that it is one with which
the Livery of London have little acquaintance if they
permit themselves to be made the instruments of the
injustice which Mr. Gibbs's rejection, on the grounds
suggested by our Contemporaries, would involve.
Should the plan succeed, no future candidate for
civic honours, be his character ever so unimpeachable,
will' be safe. We have heard of fictitious actions,
during the existence of the late glorious law of arrest
on mesrocess, in order to keep voters from the
poll ; bathe institution of a frivolous and vexatious
Chancery suit, for the purpose of prejudicing a can-
didate for the Mayoralty, is a newer though hardly
less effectual preventive.

A FATAL INDULGENCE.—A few days ago, at
Perth, a young boy who was sent home from the market
by his grandmother, with a bottle containing whisky,
made free sith it on his way, and got so intoxicated that
he had to carried to his mother's house in a state of
I
instinsibilit . He was I,IA to bed, and appeared to sleep
aounkily ti I next morning, when, on endeavouring to
Awaken him, he was found to be speechless from lock-
igw. "He-expired in the course of the day.