The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-16 00:00:00

ings held in Baitinglass, Mullaghmast, Donnybrook
Tara, Drogheda, and on the Curragh of Kil 'are, so that
they may be classified as witnesses to be examined on
the forthcoming trial." Threatening notices, it is said,
have been sent to members of the jury, and every effort
is made to concentrate popular indignationupon the heads
of the jury, who, it seems apprehended, may find accord-
ing to the evidence. We are not going to remark on
this audacious, though not wholly original attempt to
overawe the Judges by a monster-meeting of witnesses.
Whatever extravagant amount of intimidation and
perjury may be intended by this apparatus, it is for
the Lord Lieutenant and the jury to provide against.
With these recognised instruments of agitation we do
not at present meddle, though the time may come when
we may be bound to do so. Our yesterday's paper re-
corded a more discreditable though much less dangerous
style of manoeuvre. A Mr. Moore, a kind of dirty-
work counsel for the traverser:, appears charged, at
whatever expense of honesty and common sense, to keep
on saying something which shall at least delay the trial,
and furnish a cue to those who are anxious to be abusive,
but don't know how. Let us hear this gentleman set
forth his grievance—
" If ever there was a case," ho tells us, "in which it was ne-
cessary that the administration of justice should be kept as
free from suspicion as possible, the present was the case.
Their Lordships were aware, he presumed, that many of the
traversers were Roman Catholics ; and it appeared that 27
persons professing that religion, whlse qualifications were de-
cided upon by the Recorder, did :Mt appear upon the jurors'
lists. It was in evidence before them that Mr. Kemmis
struck 12 names, 11 of whom were Roman Catholics, out of
the list of 48."

The list of persons eligible to serve on this Dublin jury
should, it appears, have consisted of 782 individuals.
But a blundering registrar, wholly unconnected with the
prosecution, appears to have lost one of the papers from
which that list ought to have been compiled, containing
the names of—whom ?—of all the Roman Catholics
eligible ? of half the Roman Catholics ? of a set of men
of whom the Roman Catholics formed the majority ?
Nothing of the kind. Of 65 persons, of whom nearly 40
—considerably more than half of the whole number—
were Protestant. And, knowing this state of facts—fully
aware, not only of the trumpery nature of the blunder,
but, also, that for every three Roman Catholics four
Protestants had been affected by it, this Mr. Moore has
the folly and dishonesty to detain the Court by reite-
rating his parrot-like insinuations of partiality, at the
exclusion of 27 Roman Catholics from the panel !
And now for the Crown solicitor's part of the
matter, which bas been honoured by the notice not
only of Mr. Moore, but of an aggregate c 0 meeting of the
Roman Catholics of Ireland ;" a meeting signalised by
more than usual emptiness of declamation. It is not
pretended to impeach his legal right of challenge. His
misdeed is merely introduced into the court of law to in-
terpret and aggravate the delinquency of the registrar,
on which Mr. Moore's rhetoric and logic are mainly ex-
pended. But in this or any character this interference
with the unquestionable and most necessary right of the
prosecutor requires to be promptly denounced. Let it
be remembered what the peculiarity of a jury is. A
jury-box on such an occasion as the present is no scene
of compensation or compromise. The folly, prejudice,
or dishonesty of one man cannot be corrected or over-
borne by the sense or integrity of his eleven colleagues,
One single individual of ordinary strength and perseve-
rance, if only sufficiently regardless of the obligation of
an oath, or sufficiently impenetrable to the force of evi-
dence, suffices to defeat justice. Nothing but that oath
prevents any one jurur from triumphing com-
pletely and irresponsibly over the plainest evidence, and
absolving the most undoubted criminal. What sort of
protection that oath is we unfortunately know too well.
English juries are bad enough, but Irish ones, even
under circumstances of ordinary excitement, are intole-
rable. Above all, would any man of sense, quietly sit-
ting down by his own fireside to consider the probabili-
ties of the case, allow himself for a moment to expect
that twelve Irishmen, of whom but three were Repealers,
would, under any contingency, convict O'Connell?
Would not the very nomination of such a jury be at once
hailed as an acquittal ? Timid men, and courteous men,
and all who like soft words better than truth, may be
anxious to gloss over these things—but this is not an oc-
casion on which it will do to shut our eyes. Beat round
the bush as we may, the truth of the matter comes to this
- —that the chances are incalculable against a Repealer's
proving an honest juryman. None of us dream of such an
event. Mr. O'Connell knows that he would himself be the
first to scout and denounce such a man as traitor to his coun-
try. His myrmidons are already preparing to stone such
scrupulous politicians. We will venture to say, that if
there is a position on which the ultra-Orangeman and
the ultra-Democrat of Ireland, if it were but conve-
nient to speak their minds, are wholly agreed, it is this
—that there exists not in the ranks of repeal a man
whom any amount of evidence would induce to convict
the " Liberator." And Repealers, or something tante,.
mount thereto, every one of the Romanists challenged
by Mr. Kemmis were understood to be. We wish it
could have been otherwise ; and so, we doubt not, do
the Government. No more valuable juryman could have
been found than a trustworthy Roman Catholic. But
none such appeared on the panel ; and this being the case,
Mr. Kemmis, or whoever is responsible for the challenges,
would have been mad if he had hesitated for a moment to
accept the full weight of obloquy which was involved in
removing from the list every single person who could be
fairly presumed to be under repealing influence. The
other party had the same power and they used it in the
same way. They did not challenge their own friends ;
they struck off Protestants, and as many as they could.
We find no fault with them, Mr. Mahony might fairly
view a known Orangeman with the same suspicion which
attaches in Mr. Kemmis's eyes to a declared Repealer.
Let each protect themselves. It is for such a purpose
that the right of challenge is given. It is to remove those
from the judgment-seat who may fairly be suspected by
one or the other party as biassed judges ; and it is only
by such means that a fair and unanimous verdict can be,
we do not say secured, but even hoped for. Let us, then,
hear no more of these drivelling complaints. What has
been done is no more than is necessary—absolutely ne-
cessary, to secure fair play ; and everybody knows it
to be so.

ADVERTISER.—The aggregate meeting of Roman
Catholics held in Dublin on Saturday, and to which we
had only space to make a passing allusion yesterday, is,
in many respects, the most important demonstration
which has yet taken place since the commencement of
the Repeal agitation. The assembled thousands were
drawn together by a burning sense of the gross outrage
which had been offered to their religion by the exclusion
of all Roman Catholics from the jury list. They re-
garded that exclusion, as we predicted they would, as a
virtual repeal of the Emancipation Act, and as, in fact,
proclaiming to the world that Roman Catholics were
not to be believed on their oath. The result of the fla-
grant insult thus offered, not only to Catholicism as a
system of faith, but to the Roman Catholics personally,
has been to enlist in the ranks of Repeal thousands
who were formerly opposed to it. Sir Robert Peel will,
ere long, discover that in the meeting of Saturday
there was something more ominous—something much
more calculated to inspire alarm, than in the Clon-
tarf meeting which the Irish Government put down by
proclamation. It is a remarkable circumstance, and one
which is pregnant with fearful import, that the leading
speakers at the aggregate meeting were chiefly men
who had hitherto kept aloof from the Repeal agitation.
They will keep aloof from it no longer. Ministers are
literally compelling all such persons to identify them-
selves with that agitation. And not those only. who
attended the meeting, but the Roman Catholics in all
parts of Ireland, will feel that they must now make
common cause with the Repealers. Not only is a stigma
cast on their religion, but every individual entertaining
the Catholic faith must henceforth feel that the Irish
Government regard him as a man who is not to be
believed on his oath. Where is the man that could
endure this ? Not among the Catholics of Ireland—
not, we hope, in the dominions of her Majesty.
The Catholics of Dublin have done what all ex-
pected they would do. Had they remained passive
under the gross and gratuitous insult, offered alike to
their faith and themselves, they would have incurred
the contempt of the civilised world, covered their mea-
sures in all time coming with obloquy, and compromised
the rights of their descendants. They have acted with
becoming manliness : they have told the Orange faction
whose inspirations are perceptible in every successive
stage of these prosecutions : they have told that faction
in language not to be mistaken, that seven millions, in a
country whose entire population does not exceed eight
millions, are not to be thus insulted with impunity. If
Sir Robert Peel does not perceive an awful significance
in the proceedings of the Dublin meeting, he must be
labouring under an infatuation to which there are but
few parallels in the history of the world. But the
insult offered to the Catholics of Ireland, and to
their religion, is not the only light in which
the striking off the names of Roman Catho-
lics from the jury list is to be viewed. The
question is one in which the ends of justice are
deeply involved. The result of the exclusion of all
those professing the Roman faith, is to render the jury,
who are to try individuals on a charge affecting their
liberties, and indirectly their lives, of an exclusively
Orange complexion ; for in, Ireland, there is scarcely
such a thing to be met with as an impartial, unprejudiced,
Tory Protestant. The traversers, so far as the verdict
of the jury is concerned, may already, and we believe
do already, consider themselves convicted. Their only
hopes of escape rest on the discovery of some fatal flaw
in the mode of procedure, or on the chapter of acci-
dents. Can any man, entertaining any sense of what
is right, and just, and proper, contemplate this
state of things with any other feelings than those
of horror ? Can we wonder when we hear of such
transactions that Ireland should be convulsed ? Ought
it not, on the contrary, rather to excite our surprise that
the Irish people should have so , long and so patiently
endured the manifold insults heaped on them, and the
acts of flagrant injustice of which they have been made
the victims ? In this last and crowning act of outrage
and injustice, it will speedily be discovered by Sir
Robert Peel that he has allowed his underlings in Dublin
Castle to carry their system of insult and oppression a
little too far. The exclusion of all the Roman Catholics
from the jury-list will be found to have been carrying
the experiment of Catholic patience somewhat beyond
bearable bounds. That bold and iniquitous measure will
rebound against those who resorted to it, and against the
Government that sanctioned it. It will light up—it is al-
Feads lighting up—a flame throughout Ireland,:which will
burn and blaze with an intensity, of which those who
kindled it had little anticipation. They will, moreover,
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perilous in us to use, what the Catholics of Ireland think
of this new and crowning act of injustice to themselves
and insult to their religion. In the meantime that Act
will be held as prOving more conclusively than a score
of Mr. O'Connell's speeches, the necessity for repeal, and
will give the repeal cause a greater impulse than it
would hive rewind from tt dozen " monster " meetings.