The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-25 00:00:00

THE _ SUN, LONDON,

borne to the chair is already split into a league of many
and almost antagonistic movements. The men of the

south combine with the men of the north and the

west in a feverish desire, probably, for a rupture with
Great Britain. But the north is opposed to the south
on the question of the Texas annexation, from a con-
viction of the disturbance of that superior authority
they now wield in Congress, which such an event
would occasion ; and if the Loco-focoism of the north
were content to abandon its anti-slavery views in favour
of a combination with that of the south against Great
Britain, there are other questions besides the Oregon
occupation to sow incurable jealousies between
their various members, should such a compact
be ever acted on. The preponderance of the
Whig party influence, at least in the Senate, will
for some time, at any rate, maintain the foreign political

_ .
relations of the States in their present course. This

seems to be the °pi-lion of some of the American
journals, even, which are favourable to the cause of

POLK. And although the New York Herald is con-
gratulating its readers on that gentleman's election,
in the teeth of all its recent enthusiasm for CLAY,

---,
assures them that the prospects of the United States

are brightening every day, we must say we perceive
many symptoms in their social aspect, their in-
ternal economy, and the condition of her

coasts, marine, &c., which hatdly warrant
these congratulations in reference to the mischievous

and hostile purposes to which they are addressed.
Upon the whole of this intelligence, though we
regret, in our respect for and confidence in Mr. CLAY,

hat his discomfiture seems partly attributable to a
. .

little want of singleness of purpose and decision in
recent public declarations that have been made by him,
touching leading questions of American and European
interest; we are yet prepared to believe that the

salutary influence of his talents, his integrity, and his
party, may still predominate over, and regulate, the
action of the United States Government, under its
new President.

The grand " Repeal Demonstration," to celebrate
he liberation of Mr. O'CoNNmLL and the geLtlenien

who were his fellow-prisoners and traversers, took
place in the city of Limerick, on 'Wednesday evening
list. It consisted in one of those " monster gather-
ings" of the Irish people, which are really among
the most remarkable phenomena that our times or
country can exhibit—in a most extensive and im-
posing procession ; and in a sumptuous banquet of
honour, given to the llon. and Learned Gentleman
and his friends, in the Theatre. 'We trust that this
" demonstration" will not be without its salutary in-
fluence on the counsels of her Majesty's Government, in
calling their immediate attention to the danger of
delaying " justice to Ireland." Mr. O'CONNELL was
everywhere greeted, from his arrival in Newcastle,
in Limerick county, to his reception at the banquet,
with the most enthusiastic welcome ; and his addresses
to the people in acknowledgement of the honours
thus paid to him, were distinguished by their
animated freshness. For these, and other parti-
culars, we must refer the reader to the detailed
report which we gave on Saturday. 'We intend, at pre-
sent, to recur to the "Liberator's" speech at the
banquet, inasmuch as it raises the question of the
soundness of Mr. O'CoxxELL's views on certain

oints connected with the great question of repeal,
from which views we have heretofore had the mis-
fortune to differ essentially. As sincere and con-
sistent advocates of the just and indefeasible claims
of the Irish nation upon the Legislature, and the
people of this country, for the removal of numerous
civil and political grievances, we have thought it in-
cumbent upon us distinctly to propound the grounds of
such difference. If this was a task not unaccompanied
with difficulty, in consideration of the eloquence and
talent of the various speeches to which our remarks
were, in such instances, addressed, that difficulty is
now much enhanced by reason of the ability and
force which pervaded the Hon. and Learned Gentle-
man's remarkable speech of Wednesday, on returning
thanks for the sympathy and acclamations with
which the toast of the evening, his health, had been
received by the 750 gentlemen who were assembled
at the banquet.
Mr. O'CorusaLL distinctly nails his colours to the
mast. The one great came he fights for he avows

Justly assumed that this unexpected termination 8f
great contest, the Victorious issue of which, even in
the several States of the Union, was so unhesitatingly
anticipated in favour of Mr. CLAY, down to a period
almost immediately preceding the dates to which the last
advices reach from New York, is a result as little wel-
come as it could be expected on this side of the Channel.
Few elections to the office of Chief Magistrate of the
American Union have occurred, ever since her confe-
deration was established, that have been associated with
relations calculated to prove of more profound interest to
Great Britain, than that which may now be looked upon
as terminated. The results which are, in this view,
presented to our consideration, in the present in-
stance, may be briefly combined. That numerous
and powerful party in the population of the United
States which is " the child and the champion" of an
unqualified democracy in civil government and its
institutions, and the rallying point for all hostility
to this country, under whatever manifestations or
nretexts, has, in this election, clearly triumphed over
their more moderate and practical antagonists. These
latter, advocating, equally, popular rights and the
popular control of their own Government, carefully
respect the guarantees of treaties which they have
entered into with other Powers, and will presume in
favour of the good faith of these Powers until overt
acts to the contrary towards themselves justify
their suspicions and mistrust of others. The
" Loco-foco" interest which returns Mr. Pout,
is, beyond all doubt,.that which embodies the repre-
sentatives of slave property, and vindicates the prin-
ciple of slavery, on behalf of the southern States of
the Union against the northern. It is that powerful
faction which, identifying the renown, and influence,
and moral authority, of Great Britain among the
nations, with her bold, consistent, and disinterested
adhesion to the self-imposed principle of slavery
abolition ; devotes itself to her denunciation in time of
peace, and to the provoking against her a speedy war of
reckless jealousy and unprincipled revenge. It is
that vast section of American citizens who, animated
by these impulses, and heated by the prospects of
local triumph in securing to the States of the
west and the south that preponderance in the coun-
cils of the Union which has hitherto remained with
those of the north, urge on the annexation of
Texas to the general federal territory, by all or any
means, however contrary to national good faith, to a
sound Republican policy, to an expedient foreign
policy, to the paramount authority of Mexico, or to
the wishes of the great bulk of their countrymen
throughout the Union. It is that unprincipled but
vast cabal which would precipitate the occupation
of the Oregon, or the violation of the Canadian fron-
tier, to carry out its own primary objects of aggran-
dising the slave property and the legislative votes of
the States of the south, and insulting the dignity
and crippling the general power of Great Britain.
IVe may add, too, that it is the motley "class inte-
rest" of the Union which is for a tariff of absurdly
high protective duties for the assumed encourage-
ment, but the practical ruin, of the trade of America,
through the most impolitic discouragement, in the
meanwhile, of her best customers, those foreign coun-
tries against whom that tariff is directed.
We do not, therefore, blind ourselves to the nature
or the extent of the results which may be predicated
as consequent on Mr. PoLs's election to the chair of
the President. But we cannot participate in all the
gloomy apprehensions which the fact of that election
seems to have infused into the minds of some of our
Contemporaries. We imagine that many of the evils
whose probable occurrence it is not easy to dispute,
on any argument of analogy drawn from the present
aspect of circumstances, have yet a practical tendency
to dissipate themselves without eventuating, so to
speak. It is an important truth, and to be noted in
the first place, that whatever amount of influence, and
whether more or loss direct, the opinions and views and
wishes of the party to whom he owes his elevation,
may be expected to exercise over the career of the
new PRESIDENT ; there is but a limited capacity for
my independent political action in the Constitutional
scheme of his official functions. His powers are
rather restrictive and negative than original and
transmissive. The recent example of the dead moves
Hof that most check-mated of PRESIDENTS, the re-
doubtable Mr. TYLER, may serve to show how little
-,he known personal prepossessions of the ostensible
head of the Government necessarily influence the de-
terminations of the great Nationtl Council. But,
again, the very force on whose shoulders Mr. POLK is

to the telpeal of tB dnithn. He deillares that he
will accept nothing less; that there must be an inde-
pendent national Parliament for Ireland in Dublin;
that there shall be no such thing as the centralization
of legislation, so far as Ireland is concerned ; that as
for the wrongs, even, of which she has so long com-
plained, and the grievances the redress of which she
has so vainly solicited from the Imperial Parliament,
any compromise with her, founded on the satisfaction
of the one and the removal of the other, which might
now be proposed, would not be accepted by the
Irish people. "We will," said he, " make John
Bull understand us; and even if he should then
offer to remedy them in the Imperial Parliament, we
will tell him you spoke too late. We have come to
the understanding that we shall do it ourselves.'"
And again, in a preceding speech, delivered from
CRUISE'S Hotel, "Well, there had been no surrender,
no compromise.—(Cheers.) Some blockheads said
that he wanted less than their rights. It was the
other way, for those repealers were calling for twenty
shillings, but he asked that, and ten shillings more.
—(Laughter.) That was by the way of tilly.—
(Laughter.)"
It is very natural that Mr. O'CONNELL should
feel an absorbing, uncompromising, solicitude about
the result of a grand scheme of national agitation
to which he has bent all the extraordinary energies
of his powerful organization, physical as well
as mental, with a degree of ardour and
devotion—rarely, if ever, exhibited by the youngest
of political leaders. But we cannot help thinking
that his enthusiasm tempts him sometimes into indis-
cretions, the inevitable tendency of which is to defeat
his own object. In the first place, he miscalculates,
in our judgment, the influence of public opinion in
Great Britain (which is not unlikely to suppose it-
self interested, as the more important integer of the
empire), on the question of repealing the union; by
altogether overlooking the disinclination of the majo-
rity to consent to the dismemberment of Ireland. Mr.
O'CoNnnLL's own complaint is—and he puts it in his
Limerick speech with some degree of bitterness—that
the people of England cannot be made to see the
justice of his demand. He proposes "to make John
Bull see it." This purpose can be achieved in one
only of two ways; and we have much too high an
opinion of Mr. O'CosuseLL's sagacity and tact to
doubt, for an instant, which course he has selected.
But does he—we would put it to his own candour—
follow out that course of conciliation by this indiffer-
ence to the opinions or the wishes of "John Bull ?"
We are sorry, too, to find Mr. OICONNIILL throwing
to the winds, beforehand, all or any adjustments of
Irish grievances which " the Imperial Parliament"
may " offer to remedy." We would repeat the ad-
vice we have before pressed upon the Hon. and
Learned Gentleman—to await that closely-approxi-
mating day, at which those in authority who have
given strong manifestations of their individual adhe-
sion to liberal principles of government will feel
themselves strong enough to carry out those measures
they have long contemplated for the amelioration of
Ireland, by fair and frank concessions of remedial
justice and equity to that country. It seems at least
questionable in point of judgment and policy to put
in jeopardy, by ill-considered taunts, the fruition of
events of which the tendency, in our notion at any
rate, is—rapidly to determine in elevating Ireland to
her due rank, and the full enjoyment of all its ad-
vantages, as a member of the Imperial Union.
We may be forgiven if our profound interest in
that beneficent consummation prompts us to submit
the apprehensions we thus express to the calm con-
sideration of Mr. O'CONNELL. It would be a de-
plorable termination to a career of such matchless
zeal and activity in reclaiming, one after another,
rights and franchises so long denied to, or so long
lost by, his native country—to see her onward march
arrested and turned by the force of fears, or pre-
judices, or (no matter which), needlessly ex-
cited, or rashly challenged. The Liberator must be
satisfied that he has given to the agitation of her just
cause—her demand for full equality of rights and
careful redress of injuries and wrongs—a momentum
which no power can now stop short of its destined
and legitimate end, save that which imparted to it the
impress and force of its wonderful movement—
his own.
At parting with this speech, to the general ability
and effectiveness of which we must again bear testi-
mony, we must own to the feeling of surprise and re-
gret with which we read the following passages,
That feeling has no reference to the charge against
English journals, for newspapers are, by the doom of
their original institution, fair marks for the shafts of
all the world—their friends and their foes, their
readers and their defamers. But we cannot suppose
that a little more reflection would not have suggested
to Mr. O'ConNELL's mind the many noble manifes-
tations which the last thirty years—and of that
period, the latter term more especially—have elicited,
on the part of the people of England, of an active,
generous, and disinterested sympathy for the political
wrongs of Ireland, and the domestic misery and pri-
vations of large communities of the Irish people.
Whether or not they want the readiness which the
Hon. and Learned Gentleman attributes to his own

countrymen in arriving at conclusions, we shall not
stop to inquire, but they have betrayed no sluggish-
ness, no insensibility, we apprehend, in responding to
the appeals of Irish social suffering to the best feelings
of our common nature. There is nothing graceful or
felicitous, surely, in these allusions to them :
" I have much thought upon the impenetrability of
truth into England, anti I solemnly declare that it ap-
pears to me as if a kind of adamantine wall surrounded
that country, making it impervious to every approach of
truth. It may arrive on the four wings of Heaven, and
with the force of electricity to every human being else-
where ; but the fact is most astounding, that it never
can penetrate into England.---(Hear, hear.)"
And again :
" It might be said that the use of the English press
was to keep up the ignorance of the people. It sup-
ported the delusion under which John Bull is labouring,
and told him that the Irish people had no grievances to
complain of ; but I am determined to give an opportu-
nity to every man, woman, and child in Great Britain to
understand the contrary. To be sure I cannot answer
for the capacity of their genius, for they have but little
of the shrewdness which enables Paddy to arrive so
rapidly at facts."

For his own sake, ♦ery much—for the sake of Ire-
land, much more—we trust that the lion, and
Learned Gentleman will abstain from this random,
but not innoxious skirmishing. His own eloquence
wants no such aids—his country's cause is but da-
maged by them.

We never despaired of the Protestant people of
England when the doctrines of the Puseyites should
he fairly brought under their notice. Englishmen,
fortunately, are not hasty in their decisions—they
take time to consider, and no people, perhaps, after
mature deliberation, ever come to a more upright and
conscientious judgment. They have now had at
least three years to form an opinion on this new
Popery scheme, and laymen of all ranks—men,
indeed, of every grade in society, excepting those who
wear the shovel-hat and the surplice—are unanimous in
condemning Pussy and NJ MAN. This is a noble
tribute to the blessings of the Reformation. Parishes
in every direction are rising up against their Popish
rectors, vicars, and curates ; they will have no Roman
Catholic ceremonies, however harmless and innocent;
they justly regard them as the forerunners of slavery
and the re-establishment of a religion to which the
whole constitution of the country, in Church as well
as State, is directly opposed. It is a reproach to
Protestants to say that this feeling has been created
by the wild schemes of certain bishops to force upon
them a weekly collection for the poor. Their objec-
tions are of a much higher and more sacred character.
The Church of England is purely Protestant. It has,
till within the last four years, shunned the
Court of Rome as the " mystery of iniquity ;" it has
denounced every concession to Catholics ; it has
grudged the paltry pittance to Maynooth ; it strug-
gled to the last against Catholic emancipation ; it up-
held, in every instance, the great and glorious prin-
ciples of the Reformation; and the people naturally
believed that the Church would adhere to principles
which it had avowed as the very essence of its exist-
ence. A new race, however, sprung up in the
University of Oxford. They were regarded at fir'`
as mere drivellers, as contemptible as the Morn],
Or the followers of JOANNA SOUTIICOTB, till Jaites,
taken under the especial care of the F• chey were
The people rebelled against -t'
.iscopal Bench
sent forth by this new sect. the missionaries
the bishop of the dio,- , appealed for protection to
replies to these r-
-ase, but in many instances the
we refer to'' -opeals were jesuitical, and in others—
ticular, .ne Bishops of LONDON and EXETEiIt par-
..y—the Protestants of the Established Church
v
ifere insulted and branded as disturbers of the Ca-