The Sun.
London, England, 1845-04-17 00:00:00

illi firnin k .__, is

LONDON, THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 1845.

The House of Lords did not sit last night.
In the House of Commons the SPEAKER took the
chair at Four o'clock.

An immense number of petitions were presented on
the subject of the grant to May nooth.
Sir J. lIANmEa gave notice that, on going into Com-
mittee on the Bill, he should move the omission of the
second clause, giving power to the authorities of the
College to receive bequests.
The Calico Print Works Bill was committed pro forma.
The adjourned debate on the Maynooth Bill was then
resumed by Mr. G. A. HAMILTON, who opposed the
Bill as contrary to the Constitution of the British empire
which was essentially Protestant.
Mr. EtiacE would vote for the second reading of the
Bill. He should vote for Mr. WARD's motion with re-
gard to the source from whence the funds for carrying
this measure into effect should be derived, but in the
event of that motion being negatived, he would support
the present measure as an act of tardy justice,
and partial
restitution to the Irish people.
Mr. GORING opposed the measure as one which would
be regarded with alarm by the agricultural interest
(which declaration was received by the House with shouts
of laughter), and as an insult to the Protestants of
Ireland.

Lord ASHLEY opposed the measure, as one full of
peril to the Established Church in Ireland.

The CH iNCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, in a lengthened
speech, explained and defended the conduct of the
Government.

Sir W. CLAY supported the grant.
Sir J. EASTHOPE supported the measure, which was
opposed by Lord BERNARD.
Lord JOCELYN thought it necessary that the Catholic
priests should receive a proper education. It was a
measure calculated to conciliate the people of Ireland,
and to draw closer the sympathies between Protestants
and Roman Catholics, who bad been too long divided,
and, therefore, it should have his support.
Mr. BRIGHT was an advocate of the voluntary prin-
ciple, and therefore he opposed Vie measure. It was
said that it would soothe the priffigh)od ; now he consi-
drred that it was the duty of the priesthood to proclaim
e.e wrongs of Ireland, and he should be sorry to have
them bribed into silence.
Lord Jou:4 XANNNas supported the measure, and was

lad to see that the Government now entertained dif-
f3rent opinions to those which they promulgated in
1843. In that year they had been told by a Member of
the Government that conciliation had reached its limits.
Mr. RUTHERFORD considered the measure imperatively
called for. It was the first benefit which Inland had
derived from the Legi*lative Union. and he hoped it
would only be an earnest of future benefits.

Mr. SMYTHE trusted that the effect of this measure
would not be, as some of its promoters hoped, to raise
the priests above the people. The priests were the
natural leaders of the people, and should be of the
people. He supported the measure, and considered that
the conduct of Sir ROBEKT PEEL, as Prime Minister,
contrasted most favourably with that of Mr. Secretary
PEEL.

Mr. REDINCTON, as an Irishman and a Roman Ca-
tholic, felt bound to vote in favour of the measure.
On the motion of Mr. CUMMING BRUCE the debate
was adjourned.
The other orders of the day were then disposed of,
and the House adjourned at Half-past Twelve.

The accounts from Ireland respecting the grant to
Maynooth are on the whole satisfactory. The measure
appears to give general satisfaction to the Catholics, but
the value of the boon is greatly diminished by the
strong feeling evinced against it in England, and the
revival of the "No Popery cry, of which not a whis-
per has been heard for years till now, though Puseyism,
or Popery, has been making such fearful inroads on
the Protestant Establishment. At Oxford, one of the
great fountains of national education, the Catholic reli-
gion is priced far above the Protestant ; several of the
teachers of youth openly avow its tenets, others, with
more tender consciences, have gone over to the an-
cient faith, and not a few of the Bishops have
been exerting themselves to bring back the po-
pulation to the bosom of Mother Church ; but,
if we except the demonstrations exhibited in two
or three dioceses where the attempt has been made
prematurely, there has been little said against such
traitorous proceedings. Have not the Irish, therefore,
reason to complain that this religious zeal of the Eng-
lish and Scots is very partial, and that they submit with
wonderful composure to the spread of the Catholic reli-
gion in England and in all her colonies, and view
it with horror only when it is associated with the sister
country. Such a contradiction is quite inexplicable
here, but in Ireland, we regret to find, the cause is attri-
buted not so much to religion as to a hatred of the Irish
nation. That hatred unfortunately is too mani-
fest in many instances. Their priests are
reviled, and the system adopted at Maynooth
is described as tending only to evil, as preg-
nant with mischief to the community, and an en-
couragement to rebellion and immorality. So invete-
rate is this prejudice in some English minds, that the
only Government journal in London cannot defend the
grant without insulting the Irish. Was there ever such
a preposterous argument in support of Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S policy, as the following put forth in the Morning
Herald ?--After adverting to the Charitable Bequests
Bill, the bewildered writer says : " But next comes
the Maynooth Bill as necessary to complete the work of
permanent pacification. With the priests of the present
class—heated with politics, illiterate and unfitted for
habits of either restraint or economy by a long life of
coarse indulgence—nothing can be done having the least
promise of success ; and therefore it is necessary
to improve the education of the future priest_
hood," Well may Sir ROBERT PEEL exclaim, " Save
me from my friends." Mr. O'CoNNELL, at the Repeal
meeting on Monday;adverted to this uncharitable spirit !
with great mildness—a quality for which he is not re-
markable—and spoke of it in sorrow rather than in anger
He condescended to refute the calumnies raised against
the prelates and the inferior clergy educated at Maynooth.
" Our enemies," said he, " have been villifying Maynooth
in all manner of ways. Now, he could tell them on in-
disputable authority, that of upwards of 15,000 students
who went through the course of education at Maynooth
during the past fifty years, not a single one was ever
charged with a crime—not one was ever brought
before a magistrate charged with an offence. It
was a miracle that of 15,000 young men, with all the
weakness of manhood, not one was brought before
the authorities charged with a crime." Can Oxford
or Cambridge, or the Uni►ersities of the North say as
much ? We will not furnish instances to the contrary,
because certain proceedings in our Ecclesiastical Courts,
and at the last assizes, are fresh in the memory of every
reader. We mention the fact only to show how a
malignant spirit might be excited between the two
countries if the Irish chose to retaliate ; but
they have more Christian charity. They pass over such
insulting expressions ; they admit that " everything in
the Bill has been done well, and they are grateful and
thankful for it." These are Mr. O'CortliELL's words,
and we confidently express a hope that the benefits in
tended by it will not be marred by the revival of na-
tional antipathies.

Mr. HUME has a notice on the paper, for the 17th (to-
night), of a character that demands our best atten-
tion. It is to the effect—" That this House will, on the
day of April, resolve itself into a Committee of the
whole House, to consider the following resolution: That
an humble address be presented to her MAJESTY, pray-
ing that she will be graciously pleased to grant such a
pension as she shall think proper to the Right Hon. Sir
HENRY POTTINGER, Bart., K.C.8., as a reward for his
eminent public services, and especially for having, as her
MAJESTY'S Plenipotentiary in China, brought the war
in that country to a conclusion by a peace alike honour-
able and advantageous, and to assure her MAJESTY that
this House will make good the same.' "
There may or there may not be technical objection to
the form and wording of this resolution—a question into
which we do not feel ourselves qualified now to enter.
But there is no mistake, and can be no doubt, about the
truly public-spirited motive which has dictated the no-
tice. Mr. HUME has now been before the public for up-
wards of forty years in the character of a consistent,
jealous, and uncompromising guardian of the public
purse. In that capacity he has fearlessly pursued,
through good report and through evil report, the unbroken
tenor of his self-imposed but most important duty. The
exercise of functions such:as that duty supposes, often
invidious, always liable to misconstruction, and never
secure of being duly appreciated by a contemporary ge-
neration, demands the rare union of sustained energy,
unsleeping vigilance, and uncompromising disinterested-
ness. The worst enemy of Mr. HerstE—and he has
many more than might have been anticipated from the
admitted advantage which the public has realised from
his labours in the work of retrenching the public expen-
diture, and developing the resources of the public re-
venue—the worst enemy he has cannot dispute his dis-
interestedness. Had he sought office, there have fallen
out abundant occasions on which he could have com-
manded it. We can all of us remember some conjunc-
tures when the Ministerial succession has been " in
abeyance," as it were, for days and even weeks together,
to the great uneasiness of the public mind. It is certain
that had Mr. HumE, in these instances, sought to cm-
barrass the free action of the constitutional choice of
the Sovereign, he was at the head of a section in the
House of Commons whose support or opposition must
have made or marred the newly-formed Cabinet before
it could have concentrated its strength for active Par-
liamentary warfare. But Mr. HUME was pledged to
measures—not to men ; and he fairly and honourably
gave opportunity to the new servants of the Crown to
make good their appeal, if they could, to the confidence
and favour of the nation. A general concurrence of
political opinions, and views of commercial as well as
fiscal policy, has not enabled us, on all occasions, to go
with him in some of his extreme notions connected with
such matters. We have found ourselves differing from
him widely at times, and have felt ourselves bound to
record that dissent in very unequivocal and emphatic
terms ; but we have always remained convinced of the
honesty of his prepossessions, even when we could not
coincide in them. In short, whether in consideration
of the vigilance to detect, and the energy to expose,
abuses, which his whole Parliamentary career has mani-
fested—of the disinterestedness with which he has main-
tained that career against open vituperation and secret
obloquy, only to be silenced by the invincible fact of his
voluminous efforts being unimpeached by any solicitation
fvrooart,annagedunrequited by any dispensation of, office, or
, or emolument—or, of the millions by which
he has directly or consequentially reduced the public
expenditure—we hold that a very inadequate expression
of public favour and respect has yet been proffered to
him, in return for his almost innumerable services, in
a very various and extended sphere of usefulness.
We have dwelt on these facts the rather because they
singularly enhance the value and-significancy
of
pliment which even so meritorious and distinguishedm a-
iIPOATITLI I7xitF. For Mr.
Mr. llumE
slay
well feel gra-
tified ictosehrvaavnetealiscitSeidr
fromto take the initiative in proposing
to her
MAJESTY to grant this eminent diplomatist such
sion as her MAJESTY shall think fit," without a
la.en-
prevl
suggestion or stipulation of any kind as to its
arnousan
is a triumph less marked, indeed, by the splendour o,
brilliancy of its accessories than festivals, and ban.
quets, and balls in his honour in all the mercantile
capitals and emporia of the kingdom. But Sir HENRY
may feel assured that such a step, by such a man as
Mr. HUME, towards moving the Crown to so signal an
act of grace and recognition in his (Sir HENRY'S) be-
half, is a certain and unfailing assurance (if that indeed
be wanting) of the confirmation which the British public

is fully prepared to give to any, even the most impres-
sive and munificent testimony of appreciation and confi-
dence which the SOVEREIGN may,he advised 0 tender to
.tie of its most accomplished and successful servants.
We congratulate Sir H. POTTINGER most cordial]) on
this remarkable tribute to, and effect of, his rare abilities
soul rarer fortune. Whatever m b. the fate of Mr
HUBIE'S motion, the object it purposes to achieve can•
not long remain unperfected ; but the manner in which
it has occurred to the most inflexible and unsparing
champion of economy in the disbursement of the public
money thus to originate an act of national respect and
bounty, without even preliminary conditions or limita-
tions, is alike extraordinary, interesting, and honourable
to all parties concerned in it.

The philosophy of crime is a branch of psycholo-
gical inquiry which the events of every day are
forcing upon the reluctant consideration of the
British public. The deplorable, the fatal frequency
with which one crime of hitherto unparalleled atro-
city is succeeded by another of enormity so stupen-
dous as to throw its predecessor into shadow—not to
say comparative insignificance—must have some
specific, immediate cause. It cannot be, entirely, the
result of that old leaven of ignorance which is pro-
verbially said to be the mother of guilt. Neither the
person accused of the murder of his young and
accomplished and confiding wife, who was ac-
quitted, nor JOHN TAWELL, who, less fortu
nate, has paid the righteous forfeit of his life
on a:public scaffold—nor the convicted felon who
was on Friday adjudged to undergo the same ignomi-
nious fate, for a most brutal and sanguinary assassi-
nation under circumstances that have possibly
a deeper base of horrors (happily unrevealed
to the tribunal before which he was brought), than
has existed in either of the other cases ; neither of
these offenders was an ignorant man. But, in truth,
to the disgrace of our country, our age, our civilisa-
tion, the intensity of crime seems to be governed
among us by the same law which, before M. GuizoT's
accession to power, was so fatally demonstrated to
govern it in France. Not according to the crassitude
of ignorance, but rather to the degree and refine-
ment of education, is the ratio of the intensity of
crime. The better educated the delinquent, the more
shocking and elaborate the character of his crime.
The habits of self-possession and control, which are
superinduced by education, give to such criminals a
degree of moral constancy, an inflexibility of per-
sonal bearing, in the very face of their impending
and inevitable fate, which is productive of the worst
and most dangerous influences on the sympathies
and impressions of the bystanders, and of the people
generally. Is this occasioned by the creature-comfort
attentions of sub-sheriffs bursting into a little noto-
riety within the ring-fence of county fame ;
or the overstrained respect of deferential turn-
keys, hoping one day to blossom into full-grown
gaolers, and even prison governors, through the ex-
cellent things daily recorded of them by their friends
among the penny-a-liner " gentlemen of the press ?"
Either men are apt to pity an offender of this sort by
reason of this stoical fortitude, although believing
him to be guilty; or this fortitude, despite all the
accumulated evidence which has been given to his
guilt, infects them with an indolent, uninquiring, but
not the less decided, impression of his innocence.
Reverting to the demeanour of many among the most
desperate offenders who have perished within the la-t
five years under the hands of the public executioner,
we are tempted, at first, to believe, either that death
has lost its terrors with " those who are appointed
to die;'' or the law, which was intended to secure
the inviolability of human life, that ordinary degree
of respect for its enactments, and that dread of its
penalties which the mere prejudices of our social i
habits seem to attach to other of its injunc-
tions, and to the punishment decreed for their
transgression, where the offence it is addressed to
is of a far more trivial character, and the
consequences of infringement infinitely less serious.
We have schemes of prison discipline, theories of pri-
soners' classification, systems of penitentiary treat-
ment, and model prisons without end, or stint, or
measure ; converted, organised, practised, enforced,
built—at GOD knows what amount of charge to the
country. Where is the result of corresponding be.
nefit ? Ti the interior economy of our gaols be ma-
naged with a little more of decorum and decency than
heretofore, when every manacled " Macheath" was a
furtive hero in fetters—approachable, communicable,
conversable to and for all the world, and as much so
on the eve of execution as on the first day of his com-
mittal to Newgate ;—we do not see that beyond the
walls of these gaols crime has become less prurient in
its excesses, vice less scandalous in its publicity, or
convicted infamy less certain of securing, from the
more "enlightened" readers, who gloat over their
scores of columns of exclusive reports of executions,
or the better educated mob of sight-seers who as-
semble beneath the gallows-tree to witness them—a
less amount of morbid and meretricious compassion,
solicitude, interest, or whatever the feeling be, which
makes a THURT ELL a martyr, or a TA WELL a highly-
respectable " unfortunate." There must be some-
thing very wrong at the bottom of this condition of
things. It is a most alarming and a very nauseous
symptom of what we shall call " a moral consump-
tion" in the frame of society. The tear of pity which
bedews the details of such appalling iniquity as the
press has lately had to record is really a very maudlin
tribute of a very sickly sympathy. The blush which
such details calls into the check of many a reader
who at first mistakes an unwholesome excitement for
the impulse of an innocent curiosity, is not, we fear,
the mantling expression of a generous and virtuous
indignation at the convulsive hectic of an already
diseased imagination pampering to its self-destroying
demands.

Where the fault lies we will not now attempt to
inquire. That the evil exists nobody, we apprehend,
will attempt to deny. Surely no questions can better
deserve the careful investigation of the authorities,
civil and executive, connected with the administration
of the law, than the cause and effect which involve
a signal failure in the highest and most solemn
branch of positive law to vindicate its own majesty, or
to deter men from breaking through its restraints
and braving its penalties. The law has already lost
half its force, as well as its justification, when its
extreme vengeance is encountered habitually, as it
were, with an indifference which amounts to defiance,
or a fortitude which is the manifestation of indiffer-
ence, and this in the face of all the world, and at the
last closing moments of their existence in it.

The Madrid Garotte of the Bth publishes a decree
giving the royal assent to the following resolution
adopted by the Cortes :—" The property of the secular
clergy that is unsold, and the selling of which was sus
pended by the royal ordinance of the 26th of July, 1844,
shall be restored to the clergy." The Chamber of De-
puties met on the Bth. All the Ministers were present,
and previous to the commencement of the discussion on
the budget, General NARvAEz, amidst general attention
rose and read the following decree relative to the mar-
riage of the QUEEN-MOTHER with Don FERNANDO
MUN'

"Considering the powerful reasons submitted to me by
my august mother, Donna Maria Christina de Bourbon,
and after hearing my Council of Ministers, I authorise her
to contract marriage with Don Fernando Munoz, Duke de
Rianzares ; and I declare that, by contracting that mar-
riage of conscience with a person inferior in rank, she
has iorfeited nothing in my heart and tenderness, that she
shall retain all the honours and prerogatives belonging to her
as Queen-Mother; but that her husband shall enjoy only the
honours, prerogatives, and distinctions belonging to his
rank, and retain his armorials and name; the children that
shall issue from this marriage shall be subjected to the pro-
visions of article 12 of the ninth law, title the 2d, book the
10th, of the New Collection of Laws, and shall be enabled to
inherit the free property of their parents, in conformity to
the provisions of those laws.
"Given at the Palace on the 11th of October,:lB44.
(Signed) " THE QUEEN."

The QUEEN'S Civil List was 'then voted unanimously,
and the pension to Queen CHRISTINA of 30,0001. was car-
ried by a majority of 116 to 9.
The funds rose considerably on the Bth, and conside-
rable transactions took place in the Three per Cents.,
which closed at 35/ cash, and 354 at 60 days. Five
per Cents., 26 at 60 days. Passive Debt, 84, at 60
days. Vales Reales, 10:1 at 60 days.

The Paris papers bring no intelligence of importance
On Monday, at nine in the morning, the KING left the
Tuileries for the Chateau d'Eu, where he will remain, it
is said, till Friday. The Presse states, that previous to
lais departure, his MAJESTY signed five ordonnance:,
raising the following persons to the Chamber of Peers,:
NEsw
on —The Duke of TREVISO, M. BERLIN DE VAUX, M.
'VICTOR HUGO, General ACILARD, and M. LE TILLEY.
The Journal des Debats has a long article on the grant
to lyiaymnioToritt, "Fragment inwhich
it gives
the longlrish Church," extracts
faronmouStlx;:e
of the discussions in the Commons,
and other-
particu-
lars, which may render the • " •
subject intelligible to fo-

reilznerA, but posQesses little interest for tbo English
reveler.

These journals contain an account of the poe:edings
in the extraordinary Diet, which met at Zurich, on dif,
10ft. Al. Deputy of Thurgau, tee repert
of the Committee appointed to investigate the late un-
fortunate recurrences at Lucerne, which may be thus

summed up:—
" The Committee commenced by obtaining accurate no-
tions of the state of facts. It first of all heard the Federal
Commissioners. These expressed a fear that some capital
executions might take place at Lucerne in the course of the
week. The accounts of the state of the prisoners were not
very favourable. Huddling them together in a way to en-
gender sickness was particularly complained of ; the wounded
were better treated. After having heard the Federal Com-
missioners, the Committee sent for two of the Deputies of
Lucerne, MM. Siegwart and A. ttenhofer, who declared that
it was impossible that executions or even judgments could
take place during the week ; that the proceedings and their
consequences would demand several weeks. The Deputies
of Lucerne took this occasion to express a desire that the
Diet should not adopt any
.measures likely to attack the can-
tonal sovereignty. This circumstance engaged the Commit-
tee to examine the question of the amnesty in all points of
view, and it came to the decision that the most efficient means
of arriving at favourable ground for this question was to pro-
pose measures in completion of the decree of the 20th of
March respecting the free corps, and to order the political
refugees to be removed from the Lucerne frontier."
M. KERN'S report was listened to with the utmost in-
terest, and after it came very long discussions (from
nine in the morning until five in the evening) on diet% o
p. °positions first presented by the Committee. That of
the free corps met with but little opposition, even on
the part of the states which rejected it three weeks
back, but it called forth violent recriminations between
the deputies of Lucerne and Argau, on the part taken by
the volunteers in the last troubles. In this discussion,
the exultation of the victors wasmanifested without con-
cealment. The proposed decree did not please them, be-
cause, in their opinion, it did not go far enough, in not
placing a direct responsibility of a character sufficiently
strong on the cantonal governments which might tolerate
the free corps. The Deputies of the cantons favourable
to the Jesuits, therefore, all demanded modifications of a
more severe tendency. But they could get to-
gether only seven or eight votes, and they were
obliged to fall back on the plan proposed by the
Committee, and which was supported in its ensemble
by the votes of all the cantons except Glaris and Vaud.
All the states called by the Liberals Ultramontane pro-
nounced in favour of the Diet's abstaining from all pro-
ceedings relating to the amnesty, contesting its au
thority to meddle with that question ; adding that
even if it bad a right to interfere, the moment was
inopportune for doing so. The most powerful con-
siderations found, on the contrary, eloquent inter-
preters in several Deputies, and amongst others,
those of Glaris, Thurgau, Vaud, and Zurich. Some
other Deputies, who spoke in favour of the same con-
siderations, desired to see some changes made in the
wording. On the vote, eight states and two half
ones pronounced in favour of not meddling with the
matter. Nine states and one half state voted against
the proposition of the majority of the Committee. Three
other states kept the protocol open. Thus there
was no majority either one way or the other. All the mein-
hers of the Diplomatic corps were present at the sitting.
The Diet was to take into consideration the other pro-
positions contained in the report; but this grand Council
evidently is without power, the representatives of the
different cantons cannot agree on material points, and
a sufficient number of votes either one way or the
other cannot be obtained, so as to render any decision
elective.