The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-10 00:00:00

their forbearance on this point a mistaken one, as
we consider it to be, or not, in this matter they have
not hesitated to vindicate that principle by a generous
and disinterested sacrifice of the most effective of all
the means of partisan warfare that can reconquer and
consolidate political power. Nor is it possible to be-
lieve that had Lord JOHN RUSSELL and his friends
been of that class of political mercenaries who can
readily persuade themselves to blink the stringency or
application of their recorded professions under the
extreme exigency of altered circumstances, they
would not have found a most formidable diversion
in their operations for re-effecting their junction
with office, in acting upon the acknowledged
divisions and dissatisfactions that have long existed in
the Conservative camp, between its Commander-in-
Chief and some of those officers who have given him
good aid, and done some signal service in executing
certain movements rendered essential by his scheme
of action, whilst he was still in the " open country" of
opposition.

Now, however, since the opposed forces have so
amicably combined their movements in several direc-
tions as to take away from those movements all cha-
racter of hostile conflict, we really wish they would,
in a sober, business-like manner address themselves to
the business of amicably ascertaining, and publishing
to the world, what the points are on which they do,
and what are those on which they do not, in the
main, concur. "Justice to Ireland," we have a fond
and confident hope, is about to be no more a
mere ironical figure, thrown in the teeth of every
successive Government by every successive Opposi-
tion; but the grand object of a grand imperial policy
about to be carried out to the letter of its promise
It is the mere dismounted, invalided,' non-effective
proportion of either force, which cannot yet be disci-
plined to a right appreciation of the free-trade evo-
lutions, so utterly unknown when they first entered
the service, but now becoming so universally popular
with all sections of the " effective rank ani file."
Beneath the influence of the sugar question, under its
various phases, and in relation to the various schemes
of duty, the most embittered misunderstandings of
party and local prejudices are becoming much miti-
gated. Animosities—active hostilities—those pitched
battles that determine in divisions only ex-
cepted (and even these not always)—turn
rather upon details than broad abstract
principles. Pity that the combatants can-
not be induced to compromise their remaining dif-
ferences, and enter into some sort of honest, straight-

forward, public-spirited negotiations, which for the
first time in the history of parties contracting, or
coalescing, shall have for their object the true welfare
of the country, and the much-neglected interests of
the overtaxed, long suffering, and patiently enduring
British consumer of the corn, colonial produce and
foreign commodities, with which there seems to be,
happily, an awakened desire to indulge him for the
future on more reasonable terms than have yet been
accorded to him.

Our Dublin correspondence is sufficiEntly uninterest-
ing, so far as regards the general interest of its general
contents. Nevertheless, it suggests some considerations
to us, which do not appear to have produced, hitherto,
much impression on the other side of the water. Mr.
O'CONNELL and his friends would seem to have hit
upon the oddest expedient imaginable for obtaining a
redress of grievances—by retiring from the field on
which alone those grievances can be effectually resisted,
or their removal permanently accomplished. Because
they want the legislative union repealed, they remove
their pleadings out of the only court in which they
can ever—if at all—obtain a decree to that effect.
Because they protest against the tendencies of the Im-
perial Parliameat to overlook the peculiar wants, and to
neglect the specific interests and rights of Ire-
land, they retire from that assembly altogether,
and leave it, with impunity, to indulge that
anti-Irish bias which they are so forward to attri-
bute to it. Because they have succeeded in
arousing the attention of the whole empire to the dis-
organisation and oppression experienced throughout all
ranks of domestic society in Ireland by reason of
absentee landlords, they are resolved to persist in the
analogous experiment of absentee representation on the
political welfare of their country. That larger section
of the Irish Members whom Mr. O'Commt.i. influences,
concur with the Hon. and Learned Gentleman in bitter
complaints that the English and Scotch Members so

frequently outvote them on essentially Irish questions;
and therefore—they withdraw from voting at all, in the
House of Commons, or exercising any other duties
of the legislative trust. Their just complaint
has long been, that the voice of Ireland has not
been sufficiently heard in deliberations and acts of the
Imperial Parliament, and yet their usdoubted devotion

to her cause impels them to retire to Dublin, instead of
giving their personal presence and supervision when
questions so important as those which have already
signalised the present session were to be discussed, in
connexion with public expenditure, taxation, and tho
foreign policy of the Government. This may be a
very emphatic, very picturesque demonstration, as it is
certainly a very original one. But if it be considered

in Ireland an eligible or effective mode of accomplishing
the objects of the repeal movement—(a point on which,
we suppose, we must allow the parties most active in
promoting that movement to be the best judges)—we
cannot help submitting that, on a common sense view of

the matter, in England, it is at once an unprofitable
course for the Repeal party, and an invidious one to-
wards the people of England and Scotland. They might
not unreasonably have looked, from the Members for
that integral portion of the United Kingdom which
is exempted from the burden of the property and
income-tax, for some sympathy and active assistance in

averting from the people of England and Scotland the
three years' renewal of that most arbitrary and inquisi-
.

torial impost. It has not been denied by the most zealous
champions of repeal that Ireland has found in the House
of Commons, more especially since the passing of the Re-
form Bill, a large party of steady, able, and unflinching
Scotch and English friends, who have manfully asserted
end upheld her just rights, and insisted on a full and fair
hearing fur her just complaints. Commercial treaties and
party alliances, of late years, have had one common, dis-
tinguishing feature. They profess, in their turns, to be

founde l on a basis, of reciprocity; 'in their working, the
condition of reciprocity is always carefully evaded by one
of the two contracting parties.
Our opinions on the repeal question, wo have so
often and emphatically avowed, that it cannot now be
necessary to restate them. But we are not biassed in

the doubts we must express of the wisdom, or the
propriety of the tactics adopted by Mr. O'CONNELL
and his friends, in not being " present in their places"
in Parliament, by our recorded and entire dissent
from them in the objects of their agitation, for a
repeal of the union. We perceive that seven-eighths
of the business of the " Conciliation Hall" sittings are
occupied by its assumption of the functions of
a Court of Review, sitting in judgment on all
the contemporary legislation of the House of Lords
and Commons in Westminster. Would not the stun.
Lions and labours of Mr. O'CONNELL at d his friends be
occupied to much better purpose, and in a manner much
less obnoxious to any exception, if, on the one hand,
they were at their posts of duty, in person, within the
" halls"—not of their Dublin Convention, but—of the
Imperial Legislature? Do they detect nothing in the
" signs of the times" to warn them, on the one hand,
that what they have hitherto failed to achieve for their
compatriots, others, who have the power, may accom-
plish in their absence? Or, on the other hand, that
whilst they are fighting for a shadow, opportunities
of obtaining substantial justice and permanent
advantages for their compatriots may arise, pass
away, and be irretrievably lost during their tem-
porary abandonment of their positions in the
House of Commons ? We recommend to their serious
deliberation the repeated pledge of Sza ROBERT PEEL
to adopt a large course of liberal government towards
Ireland; the announced intentions of the Ministers to sub-
mit a much extended Government grant to the College of
Maynooth ; and the rumoured return of Mr. GLAD-
STONE to office, on the explicit understanding that he
acquiesces in those liberalised measures of Irish ad-
ministration said to be in contemplation by her Ma-
jesty's Government.

It will be a remarkable episode, indeed, in the Minis-
terial history of the Premier, if ever, on this question of
Ireland, it shall prove to be his fortune to step in, as he
has done in so many other instances, and reap a
harvest which has been sown by other hands.
As regards the mere interests of party it H ill
be well for the Repealers to consider the risks they run
of losin: all the popularity they have acquired in Ireland
by their agitation of a hopeless proposition of dismem-
berment, whenever it shall happen to others (especially
if these latter be the possessors of office at the time)
to confer upon the Irish people some measures of such
pratical and universal utility and benefit to them, so
gratify ing to their dearest prepossessions, so soothing to
their national senstiveness, that they shall secure to
those who dispense them a popularity as lasting as the
real conciliation they shall establish will be widely dif-

"usive.

We have accounts from Zurich to the 6th inst.
The debate on the Jesuits still continued. On the 4th