The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PM3- LIO JOURNALS,

The Saturday Review thinks it will best describe the im-
pression which the Duke of Abercorn's speech at Derry
makes
on the reader by saying that if he had taken orders
he would certainly have been made a bishop. There is some-
thing about it which irresistibly reminds one of an episcol
pal charge. The Lord-Lieutenant maunders about the
state of Ireland just as an average bishop maunders about
the state of his diocese. The one talks of so many new
churches built here and so many restored there, so many
parishes which have three services on Sundays instead of
two, and so many more which have prayers on Wednes-
eays and Fridays besides ; the other talks of so many
more acres laid down in this crop and so many less in
that, assures his hearers that the decrease in cattle during
the last year does not surprise him, but owns himself puzzled
at the statistics of pigs. The Duke; of Abercorn was not
bound to express any opinion on the state of Ireland, but
when of his own free will he undertakes to express one, it
should not be to the effect that Ireland would be in all
respects what her friends wish to see her, if only there were
a few more turnips. Every other drawback—and the
'Puke of Abercorn admits that there are some others--is so
happily neutralised by an attendant blessing, that it really
amounts to nothing. An outrage "has occurred in a
'reality in Tipperary not altogether without a sanguinary
shade," but even this has been a blessing in disguise, since
" the verdict which has been most unmistakably pro-
nounced by honest and right-minded men of all parties
and all creeds upon the case will render such cases rarer,
if not impossible, hereafter." So that, after all, we come
back to turnips as the one real speck on the cloudless blue
of the Irish horizon. What evidence is there, to begin
with, that Fenianiim is either dead or dying? The agita-
tion always consisted of two distinct elements—an external
and an internal; and by suspending the ordinary safe-
guards of freedom, and putting Ireland into something
like a state of siege, we have for the time scotched the
former: But it is premature, to say the least, to assume
that we have more than scotched it. A mine full of fire-
damp' may be described as "in a state of the greatest
repose" so long as no one tailees a candle into it ; and if
you .have made up your mind never to work the mine
again; no exception need be taken 'to this version of the
facts. The Irish policy of the Government is an exact
illustration of this principle. They leave all the materials
of Fenianism untouched, prevent any one going near
them whom they think likely to have matches in his
pocket, and then call upon us to mark the diminu-
tion. of ",seditious disturbances and disloyal feelings."
We prefer to suspend our assent until the mine has been
reopened; without any resulting explosion.
The Spectclor remarks that a man is not always wise
because he is always conscientious, and Sir Roundell
Palmer's grandf4self-denial cannot blind us to the weak-
ness of his proposals as to the Irish Church. The speech
in which he exp.-Raided his views upon that great question
to his constituents in Richmond may raise his fame as a
Conservative lawyer,-And will undoubtedly exalt his repu-
tation for fairness and good feeling, but it will not deepen
the Liberal faith in his capacity as a statesman. With
the exception of Sir J. Karslake's, it is perhaps the least
complete speech yet delivered upon Mr. Gladstone's pro-
posals. To those proposals, and to the leader who made
them, Sir Roundell Palmer, as might have been expected
from his character, is studiously fair. He brushes away
Tory cobwebs with a heartiness which almost disgusts
them with his advocacy of their dogma, the sanctity of
corporate property, and has done, we doubt' not, more
good to Mr. Gladstone himself than injury to his cause.
But with all this fairness, a fairness springing, as all his
ideas spring, from a conscientious regard for•justice, Sir
Roundell Palmer when he approaches the real issue spews
himself a lawyer in grain, a man unable to conceive of a
power higher than that of a regularly established court.
He will not consider whether the political security of Ire-
land demands the removal of a gigantic grievance, whether
it is just or unjust that the religious endowment of Ireland
should be monopolised by a creed in which the bulk of the
Irish people do not believe, but treats the whole question
as if it were one of property alone, and of property in the
narrowest legal sense. The property was granted in
trust for certain purposes, which purposes have not been
and cannot be fulfilled, and the property, therefore, on
the extinction of the life interests, reverts, like other
property without owners, to the State,Which has as much
right to dispose of it as of any other property similarly
situated. That it will be highly expedient to dispose of it for
the spiritual or intellectual good of the people we not only
admit, but contend ; but the State has a moral right, if it
pleases, to pay it away in bounties to encourage the capture of
sharks. Justice, we fully admit, could be secured by equal
endowment, and we, at least, are not yet convinced that
equal endowment would not have been the wiser course.
The nation, however, Catholic as well as Protestant, has
decided almost unanimously against that course, and the
only alternative is the disconnection of the State equally
from all creeds. To this Sir Roundell Palmer will not
consent. lle will giVe up the State control, but will not
discontinue State aid ; will give £300,000 a year, raised by
land tax, to the Church of the minority, and some £50,000
a year, paid from the Consolidated Fund, to the Church
of the majority, and then wash his hands, and say the
ascendancy is4one of his making. All religions are equal
before the law, although only one of them obtains its dues
by legal aid. If, he says, you give the parsonages and the
churches to the Protestant Church, why not also give the
means to maintain theni ? Just because the people who
furnish those means from year to year do not choose to do
it, and because it is highly unjust to make them do it, as
at present, by sheer physical force. The truth is, Sir
Roundell Palmer cannot conceive of property changing
hands except by virtue of a decree of court, is in this
matter lawyer and not statesman, and it is for this reason
that the Liberal party, which, of all men alive, would
prefer him for Chancellor, is compelled to postpone the
fulfilment of his otherwise undoubted claims.
The London Review says that the shock produced by
this catastrophe has been so great that as yet we scarcely
feel inclined to consider the practical suggestions it
obviously offers: One is tempted to reply that the mis-
chief has been done, that such a thing it is almost impos-
sible to imagine will occur again, and that to take pre-
cautions against its recurrence is only adding a ghastly
mockery to it. Each railway accident, however, seems
the ultimatum of railway accidents until some other one
appears to tell us that our prevision was wanted here or
wanted there. We insist on the alteration of some petty
Point of railway management, and fancy that now every
avenue has been stopped up by our extreme care, and that
henceforth negligence will find it impossible to creep in
and kill. The next week or the next month a hasty
telegram in the morning papers tells us that again some
blunder has occurred, with its result of loss of life. In
the present case, whatever disclosures may be subsequently
;Tiede about the cause of the accident—and, doubties',
that will be found attributable to what can never be
wholly guarded against, that is to say, human negligence—
there is one point upon which the country should at once
insist. Let the practice of locking passengers into car-
riages be at once and for ever abandoned. It is a practice
for which not a single word can be advanced. It is simply
out of the question for railway companies to say it has
been employed to prevent fraud. That the unhappy
creatures who were thus imprisoned in the burning
carriages could not have escaped had the doors been open
is a mere aissumption which facts tend to disprove. It is
not proved that the flames of paraffin at once enveloped
and ignited all the carriages which were subsequently
consumed. On the contrary, it is distinctly stated that
the guard ran and unlocked the doors of one or
two carriages which were afterwards burned, and
that Lord Castlerosse's governess heard a lady
cry, " For God's sake, let us out." We are
not told whether this was the same lady who was urged
to throw her child out of the window, seeing that her own
mscape was impossible. The manner in which the mail-
bags were secured, coupled with other circumstances,
tends to produce a painful impression that, had not the
doors been locked, a certain number, at all events, of the
lost lives might have been spared. The probability is that
the concussion, the flames, and general confusion so de-
prived the travellers, who otherwise might have assisted,
of all presence of mind, that when they thought of saving
the poor wretches in the burning carriages it was too late.
There is something so horrible and awful in the thought of
these poor creatures being absolutely barred in and thrust
upon a fearful and agonising death that one might almost
wish that the possibility of their escape could be disproved.
It is a doubtful question whether the most protracted
inquiry into the matter will shew whether their death,
'from the mere ignition of the paraffin, was or was not
inevitable ; but in any case the custom of locking the
doors of railway carriages must be abolished. The public
is long-suffering with regard to railway companies, but we
are mistaken if the lessontaughtby the deplorable calamity
of Abergele be not sufficient to sweep away this intolerable
• and unnecessary practice.
The Imperial Review states that those who have been
engaged during the last few weeks in canvassing the new
electoral bodies, called into existence by the Reform Act
of 1867, have generally observed the prevalence of one
particular phenomenon—the accultation, so to speak, o'
the less advanced section of the Liberal party ; or, to use
a more generally appreciated metaphor, the eclipse of
Whiggery. Now the age of political shams is past.
The era of Whiggery is over. The people have not even
sufficient care for it to discuss what it was. Slowly and
sadly the old Revolution families are beginning to realise
the truth. They must either march on with Mr. Stans-
fold ai d Forster, or they must join the ranks of those
Nviio fight under Mr. Disraeli's banner. The Duke of
Portland sends a cheque to the National Protestant
Union ; Lord Amberley declares in favour of an
ingenious scheme for the limitation of working men's
families. And those who have constituted the Whig
party most choose between the two. It is necessary tc
I !Nde between a policy of destruction and one of devel.P•
nient, and the old Whigs are afraid of one and i.icapable
of the other. So they get back to their one idea—that of
demolishing the Irish Establishment. One institution,
they think, may be thrown to the wolves ; but there they
must stop. PerFa,:)s, if they can get back into office on
this cry, they in Ly pacify the wolves with colonial
g,,v.ernorships and eornin.ssonirships in bankruptcy.
Vam delusion ! The people abou. to be represented in
Parliauiant is not ta be fooled by their stale party devices.
Either we must slew the capacity of the Constitution for
vigorous government, or we must see the Radicals pull it
down. Meanwhile, the old Whigs. sit alone, apart from
the real political battle, and drone over the one cry of their
youth which the Advancing century has left them. -