The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-19 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times says it may be doubted whether the selection
of a bishop or the appointment of a judge be the occasion
of greater gossip. Everyone must at some period of his
life have known what an excitement arises in clerical
society when a see happens to be vacant. Speculation at
once begins, if it has not, as more commonly chances,
begun long before the event occurred. But the class from
which judges are taken is much narrower than the range of
possible bishops. The present Government have added to the
unparalleled number of their legal appointments by the
nomination of the three additional judges authorised
by the Bribery Act of last session. It is announced that
the Solicitor-General has been preferred to the Common
Pleas, Mr. Serjeant Hayes to the Queen's Bench, and
Mr. Cleasby to the Exchequer. There is not a barrister
now enjoying his vacation but will express his opinion,
approving or condemning the choice. The appointments
will probably, on the whole, give satisfaction—indeed,
in one view they may excite great satisfaction—but
it is idle to suppose that exception will not be
raised by some disputants. The nomination of three
judges at the same time is an event so rare, and
the affluence of legal appointments enjoyed by the
present Ministry has been so excessive, that it was thought
the powers which determine the fate of aspirants to the
bench might, without any great stretch of magnanimity,
have chosen one judge from among their political oppo-
nents. We have no notion what the politics of Mr. Ser-
jeant Hayes may he ; probably, like the late Mr. Justice
Littledale, he would, if asked whether he was
Liberal or Conservative, answer that he was
a Special Pleader ; and it is certain that he has in
no active way shewn his interest in political questions.
Lord Cairns has, it seems, been strong enough to resist the
pressure brought to bear on Lord Chelmsford in favour of
political fidelity. The first bribery judge will probably be
the Solicitor-General, and it is possible that his successor
may not be elected till the commencement of the Michael
mas Term.

The Post remarks that it W. 13 said justice to Ireland had
ceased to be a matter of sentiment and become a practical
reality, the first step towards which should be evidenced
in a more intimate association with its people. Enlarged
and generous sympathies were aroused, and found expres-
sion from politicians of every denomination. It was con-
ccled on all sides that there was much to be forgotten and
forgiven. There seemed to be some hope that in mutual
concession the Irish question would find its settlement. It
now stands proclaimed that this was but the delusion of
an hour. The social snake has been scotched, not killed.
The old spirit revives in its worst possible form, and
agrarian outrage exercises its terrorism as of old, meeting
a determined assertion of legal right by an organized
resistance to legal process, and ending in the effusion of
innocent blood. To say that the announcement of the
Tipperary outrage occasioned as much surprise as regret,
is to best convey the sentiment of the English people.
Now that the full details are published, the peculiar
atrocity of the assassination is undiminished by any one
extenuating circumstance. The victims who have fallen
were neighbours, known to their murderers as discharging
mere executive duties, uninfluenced by personal con-
siderations. That in civilised life such an occur-
rence should take place is scarcely to be credited.
That in a country under English rule a preconcerted resist-
ance to the operations of law and a deliberate destruction
of human life should be successfully carried out, is cer-
tainly not to be tolerated. Neither is the mere vindication
of abstract right in itself to be regarded as a sufficient
justification for the infliction of grievous social wrong.
The Post condemns the course taken by,Mr. Scully, and
says that it is vain to hope that, without specific and
distinct legislation, this state of things will entirely
cease. That generous and considerate landlords abound
in Ireland—even in Tipperary—is a fact abundantly
acknowledged by grateful and well-satisfied tenants
on the adjoining farms. That exceptions are
to ) frequently found is, unfortunately, equally true.
When the Church question is resolved, that of the land
can no longer be de -e red. It calls for settlement in lan-
guage which cannot he misunderstood, and writes the
history of incompetency or indifference in the blood of
those whom abortive efforts at legislation have thus per-
mittel to be victims.

The Herald, in a leader upon 'the Tipperary outrage,
holds that the law must be vindicated, and the landlord
be supported in the exercise of his just rights. But while
it is an absolute necessity for the public good and the benefit
of deserving landlords that all concerned in so daring and
fatal a breach of the peace should be punished, the con-
duct of Mr. Scully, if fairly represented in the Cork
Examiner and other respectable provincial papers, merits,
and must receive, universal condemnation. If it be true,
as stated by them, that he insisted on his tenantry
taking leases containing covenants which would enable
him to rend them adrift on a twenty-one days' notice,
without their receiving any compensation whatever for
improvements effected or the value of their growing crops,
with the alternative of prompt execution if they refused,
we can scarcely wonder at their desperation, however much
we may reprobate their violence. It is, indeed, hardly
poesible to suppose that any sane person would have acted
in the manner Mr. Scully is reported to have dune ; for
the man must have no regard for his own interests, and be
perfectly devoid of any kindly feeling or any sense of jus-
tice, who sought to force his dependants, under threat of
instant ruin, into contracts which would leave them com-
pletely at his mercy, and p. taut him to plunder them
of the fruits of their industry, and reap. the benefit
of oven the growing crops which they had sown in depen-
dence on the security of a lease wilfully framed to entrap
them. It will be well for Mr. Scully or his friends
instantly to contradict the reports so openly circulated to
the injury of his character.
The Daily ECM believes it is aimitted that the Irish
Church' Demonstration on .Monday was a conspicuous
failure, and no sooner is the fact apparent than Ministerial
organs begin to disavow the meeting, to draw distinctions
between the " Protestant" and Conservative causes, to
blame the indiscretion of the speakers, and to deplore
their references to Ritualism. This is shabby. It is
not English—it is not Tory ; for Toryisth, as we have
hitherto known it, is straightforward, and not ashamed to
be on the losing side. But whether our Ministerial
contemporaries choose to acknowledge or disown a
movement organised to support the Government at
the next elections, it is not in their power to saddle the
cause of Protestantism with the failure of Monday's
meeting. The Protestants of the United Kingdom have
no interest in the objects of the demonstrators. The chief
strength of the Protestant feeling in this country is found
in bodies whose members, far froth being supporters of
privilege, exclusiveness, and ascendancy, have suffered
from their establishment, and have learned under the
severest discipline that nothing is so favourable to the
interests of Teligion as freedom and equality. The good
sense of the country distinguishes between the cause of
Protestantism and that of the Irish Church.
The Telegraph lays on the head of their fathers the guilt
of innocent blood, the blood of brave men shot down for
protestirg against tyranny, of mothers butchered for
expressing sympathy with their husbands, of babes mas-
sacred because they belonged to a hated race. On the
head of their fathers lies the guilt of desolated homes, and
provinces laid waste, and the bitter feeling which the
name of England inspires in the breasts of exiled Irish-
On their own head lies the guilt of striving to
perpetuate that accursed system; and any effort to
uphold it by force will meet at the hands of Englishmen
with as stern punishment as was ever meted out
to traitors. That is the reply to Mr. Foster and his fellow
Orangemen. We do not know whether they claim kin-
ship with a Mr. Holden, who has said that, though he
did not like to use strong language, he must call Judas
Iscariot a gentleman in comparison with the member for
South Lancashire. We are certain that Judas Iscariot is
very much obliged to Mr. Holden, and that if he were on
earth at this moment he would take .his stand beside Mr.
Holden as one of the most fervent supporters of the Irish
Establishment. Unfortunately, when such an institution
is assailed, not only by the Liberal party, but by the
very elements themselves, in the form of pelting rain, and
when its chief allies are Judas Iscariot, the Orange
Society, and the latest atom of Mr. Disraeli's creative
skill as a peerage-maker, the end is at hand. Intended to
be a final and crushing parade of the pious host that was
to overwhelm Mr. Gladstone and his revolutionary
schemes, the demonstration has actually done him a
signal service. In the most conspicuous of places, and in
the face of the whole country, it has shewn how feeble in
numbers, how puny in political influence, and how con-
temptible in parliamentary and popular organisation, is
the party which seeks, by the exercise of fanatical bigotry,
to perpetuate a scandal to our civilisation and a disgrace
to our Christianity.

men.

Sir Walter B. Riddell, who has occupied the
position of Recorder of Maidstone for the long period of
twenty-two years, has, much to the regret of the inhabi-
tants, resigned his office. During their long connection
the most kindly feelings have existed between the inhabi-
tants and their Recorder, whose judicial capacity and
kindliness of disposition have often been acknowledged.
We believe that Sir Walter is succeeded by Mr. R. H. B.
Mn rsham, a well-known member of the Home Circuit.—
Maidstone Journal.

A NEW KNIGHTHOOD.—The Queen has conferred
the honour of knighthood upon Mr. Andrew Falrbairn,
mayor of Leeds. It will be remembered that when his
Royal Highness the Prince of Wales opened the Art
Treasures Exhibition in Leeds last May he was entertained
at a grand ball by Mr. Fairbairn in the Victoria Hall.
Her Majesty conferred a similar honour on the mayor's
father, Mr. Peter Fairbairn, when she accepted his hospi-
tality on the occasion of her opening Leeds Tcown Hall in
1357.