The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-12 00:00:00

natural to honourable minds, has recently
given place to indignation. The striking of the
special jury panel, when every Roman Catholic
was regarded as ipso facto disqualified because
of his creed, has created not merely indignation,
but alarm. The Government which directed the
proceeding, and the functionaries who con-
sented to act upon its directions, have drawn
upon them the indignation of the Catholics,
who constitute the large majority of the
Irish population, and of every liberal Protes-
tant in the country, while they have alarmed
the apprehensions of their friends, lest the pro-
vocation thus supplied to the population should
prove too powerful to be kept within the limits of
legal restraint. Scarcely has the public mind
recovered from the sensation produced by the
stretch of prerogative to secure a partisan jury,
than another " untoward event" for the Govern-
ment is discovered. An omission of sixty-
three names from the High Sheriff's list,
from which the special panel was struck,
has been detected. The High Sheriff's list, not
being a faithful transcript of the juror's book as
authenticated by the Recorder, by whom the spe-
cial jury list was revised, is manifestly fatal to the
list, in the striking of which the law officers of
the Government had succeeded in obtaining a
jury of one creed. Thus they disqualified, at
once, those whom the law has invested with the
rights of citizens. On the pending trial
between the Crown and the repeal leaders,
it was essential, no less for the ends of justice
than for the satisfaction of the country, that
Catholics and Protestants should, at least in a
fair proportion, have been impanelled to itry
the issues. The organ of the Irish Government
(thepub/in Pachet), in endeavouring to justify
the course taken by the Government, asserted
that the eleven Roman Catholics expunged from
the list were Repealers. This is shown to be po-
sitively untrue by a reference to the expunged
names. Thus the desperate defence set up for the
Government in its extremity is demolished;
and the proceeding in all the hideous charac-
teristics of its manifest unfairness to the ac-
cused, stands forth without even the sem-
blance of an excuse ! The Dublin Monitor
gives an explanation of the mysterious omis-
sion of the sixty-three names from the list
of jurors, in an article which we quote at
length in another column. It is stated that the
majority of the omitted names are those of
Catholics--a circumstance that renders it the
more essential to the impartirl administration of
instice that the panel should be set aside,
aud a new jury be struck. The difficulty
thus suddenly created on the very threshold
of the trial, has, we scarcely need say, occa-.
sioned dire confusion amongst the law officers of
the Government. In anticipation of, and to
provide for, the delay that will be caused by the
applications which will be made to the Court on
behalf of the traversers ; the lengthened argu-
ments which will arise;* and the probable
decision of the Court against the validity of the
jury list, the Crown solicitor has served a notice
on the solicitors for the traversers, of the inten-
tion of the Attorney-General to " move the
Court to-morrow (Thursday) or as soon after
as possible, that should the trials not have ter-
minated on the 31st instant, each succeeding day,
up to the 15th of April, shall be considered
as part of Hilary Term, for the purposes of the
said trials." The Cabinet Council summoned for
yesterday (the second during this week) is sup-
posed to have had reference to this new " diffi-
culty" in Ireland. We venture to predict that
the prosecution will be abandoned. If Sir Robert
Peel be not positively demented,-he will avail
himself of this new blunder to extricate himself
from a position which every day beccmes more
embarrassing to his Government,, and more pe-
rilous to the country.
STANDARD.— We are accustomed to look to
the Morning Chronicle for instruction, as well as
for the amusement which clever reasoning and
clear writing are sure to affbrd. The instruction
is, however, of a description somewhat narrow,
and, if we may say so, professional. When
our Contemporary's leaders" are short, we
are apprised that there is something plau-
sible to be answered, but when they ex-
tend to a very great length, we are pretty
confident that the day furnishes nothing that
can be worked up into a decent case. With the
Morning Chronicle, as with the rest of the world,
rigmarole, as it is disrespectfully called, is the
resource when facts and reasoning cannot be had.
The Morning Chronicle has to-day a very long
leading article. The reader is aware of the infe-
rence. The purpose of this long article, as far as
we can detect a purpose in it, is to show that the
empire is suffering very grievously by reason
of a suggested discrepancy between the decla-
rations and the acts of the present Government.
Now we must deny both assertions; we deny that
the empire, in integro, suffers any thing; maintain-
ing on the other hand that, as a whole, the em-
pire holds a higher and happier position than it
ever held, certainly than- it has held at any time
within the last 14 years. No less positively do we
deny that there has been any discrepancy whatever,
between the declarations and the acts of the pre-
sent Government. We have spoken too lately ofthe
actual state of the empire to allow a recapitula-
tion of all the advantages which it has obtained
within the last three years to be necessary. Peace
conquered, and confirmed—territory profitably
enlarged—commerce restored and boundless
fields opened to commercial enterprise—the value
of the public securities enhanced 10 per cent.— a
sadly deficient revenue replaced by a rich
surplus contribution to the Exchequer the
rebellion, nursed up in Ireland, by ten years
of Whig-Radical fondling, broken in spirit and
in strength, if not utterly subdued; and its mon-
ster meetings dissipated by the wind of a con-
stitutional common law prosecution. And all this
good effected without expedients and without
quackery. Here surely there are no symptoms
of grievous suffering to the whole empire—we
say to the whole empire, for the suffering of
the whole empire, through all its departments and
classes, is the subject of the Morning Chronicle's
complaint. But general prosperity may no doubt
be consistent with the suffering of particular
classes, and may be even connected with that
suffering, and we see that to some extent this
is the case with the British empire. In the
case of manufactures, more particularly, great
prosperity is frequently the effect as well as the
cause of much suffering to the working classes;
the effect, because, in the competition of
the world, it must imply low wages ;
the cause, inasmuch as it tends to bring
much money into the hands of a few men,
who are the very men naturally disposed to
make money the substitute for labour, and
thus further to depress the rate of wages and to
depress it permanently. It is not, however, of
an excess of manufacturing activity that the
Morning Chronicle complains, and this, indeed,
is the very last thing of which our; Con-
porary would complain. The distress of the
working classes is, however, the only ex-
ception to the general prosperity of the
empire, and that we trust to see soon semedied.
The second point upon which we are at issue
with the Morning Chronicle is the suggested
discrepancy between the declarations and the
acts of the present Ministers. Here, from the
impossibility of proving a negative, we must chal-
lenge the positive testimony, and we challenge it
confidently, that no such alleged discrepancy can
be produced. It will not be sufficient to take
a qualified proposition, strip it of the qualifying
words, and then call it a declaration. This, we
know, is the manner in which the opposition
journals have endeavoured to establish the
charge ofinconsistency between declarations and,
acts brought by the Morning Chronicle. But
though such ingenious devices may be well
enough for newspaper war, no men are such fools
as to follow so gross a fallacy in the conduct of
their affitirs, and that in fact few have been
misled by fallacies of the kind is pretty clear
from the general prosperity which it has been
our pleasant duty to describe. If any have
been such fools as to surrender themselves to
the delusion, let them not blame the Govern-
ment, which has spoken distinctly and guard-
edly, but the dishonest journals that have
misrepresented the Government. If we were

_ .
not afraid of falling under the suspicion which
we have acknowledged to attach to all long
articles, we should add a third issue with the

Morning Chronicle, in the shape of a ques-
tion whether it was by the perfect cor-
respondence between the declarations and

the acts of the late ministers they brought
the empire into that happy condition in
which Sir Robert Peel found it upon receiv-
ing the administration of public affairs—a
prepared rebellion in Ireland—quarrels in the four
quarters of the globe—depreciated funds—ruined
trade—a deficient and stilldeclining revenue? This
would be a wide discussion, and therefore we mere-
ly ask the Morning Chronicle to reconcile all the
declarations of Lord Melbourne and Lord John

Russel with their acts, in reference to- tile;

subjects only—Parliamentary reform, the corn-
laws, and the degree of favour due to Mr. Daniel
O'Connell. We seem to ourselves to remember
rather gross discrepancies between the declara-
tions and acts of the two Noble Lords upon the
questions named.

A mail coach has commenced running daily
(except Sundays) between Hexham and Bellingham ; it
leaves Hexham at four o'clock in the afternoon, and Bel-
lingham at eight o'clock in the morning, and affords
great accommodation to the retired district of North
Tyne.—Newcastle Advertiser.