The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-03 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—War and police are necessary evils:
but there are aggravations of war and police, whici.
I the first free country in the world ou?ht to be the
first to abandun. Two of the worst of these aggra-
vations, post-office espionage, and privateering, have
most unexpectedly found apologists at this period of
the nineteenth century—the one in a French Prince
of the Blood —the other in two Committees of the
British Parliament. We need not say that our refe-
rence is to the privateering Naval Essay of his Royal
Highness the Prince de Joinville, and to the Reports
of the Secret Committees of Lords and Commons, on
the Secret Openino. of Letters at the Post-office.
We hold that the English and French public have
each their duty to perform in this matter. They have
each to disclaim and repudiate the doctrines thus ad-
vanced in the highest quarters. 'We should be puz-
zled to which to award the bad eminence of superior
barbarism. If England had not recognised in her
Home-office the morals of Vidocq, while France
adopted as her banner the black flag of Paul Jones
(so far as the avowals of high official authorities can
commit either nation), the one would have sunk her-
self, by her apathy or connivance, to an immeasur-
able depth below the moral rank held by the other.
Perphaps it was providentially ordered that France
and England should disgrace themselves, at the
same moment, in the same style; lest either
should feel itself to have lost that comparative
level in self-esteem, the loss of which would have
driven it to war with the other pour avoir
(le la consideration. Our attention is recalled to these
subjects by articles in the Westminster Review and
Spectator. The former adduces more evidence than
we had yet seen of the unworthy participation in the
worst vices of the police of foreign countries, into
which our rulers have been led by permitting them-
selves to be made the instruments of the vengeance of
foreign Governments—without a motive—and with
an aggravation—the aggravation of secrecy and per-
fidy. Perfidy is impossible on the part of those Go-
vernments to their malcontent subjects ; because these
malcontents know them too well to repose any confi-
dence in their treatment. But in England every
one is free in everything but breach of the laws, and
every ene thinks himself safe. It is, therefore, we re-
. peat, perfidious in this Government to break the
confidence reposed in its freedom ; and having first,
by that freedom, encouraged foreigners who resort to
, our shore to commit themselves, in words and in
writing, by disclosures they never would have ven-
tured elsewhere—it is most perfidious to spy secretly
into those disclosures for the purpose of transmitting
them to the Governments whose vengeance the exiles
have fled from—to whose vengeance their connexions
are still exposed. We do not mean to say that our
Government should take part with the exiles
of other States—or even that it should not arrest
machinations commenced in this country to dis-
turb them. England does not profess herself
a refwgium peccatorum for all manner of plotters
—an Archimedean standing room, from which they
may move the world with revolutionary enginery.
But is there no medium between this connivance
with foreign enterprises making our shores their
starting-point —is there no medium between
leaving conspirators and their Governments ig-
iorant that such things are detected (and therefore
putting each on their guard—the one to desist, and
the other to be vigilant)—is there no medium be-
, tween this permission of plots and armaments against
friendly neighbours, and .the secret communication to
, foreign Powers of the secrets of other men—without
warning those men of a danger they could not have
, feared in a free country ? This is even something
worse than the old fame of Venice, and her lion's
mouth. It is inveigling men to criminate themselves,
and others, in the confidence of correspondence. It
is leaving them, unwarned, to proceed from wild
words to overt acts, and handing them over, as they
leave our shores—or their friends and connexions on
their own—to the secular arm of their irritated Go-
vernments, whom we have taken into our secret con-
fidence.
STANDARD.—The Morning Chronicle has to-
day a long article upon the Writ of Error—an article
full of misrepresentation and malice, but probably
containing no passage more false or malicious than
the following :—" The recognition of this Irish-judge-
made-law of conspiracy, by the court of ultimate ap
peal, would be the establishment of a principle with
which none of the usual modes of political activity in
England could exist. Political societies would be-
come ipso facto conspiracies. Public meetings would be
almost as unsafe as associations, and even parish ves-
tries would have to bridle their tongues. These results,
it would be more proper to say, would happen, if the
Irish conspiracy law could be not only sanc-
tioned but enforced in England. But everybody
knows that it could not be enforced, and that no Mi-
nister would dare to make the attempt. The oppor-
tunity for doing so has been open here as well as at
the other side of the Channel. The Anti-Corn-law
League is quite as much of a conspiracy as the Re-
peal Association. In one sense it is a more formidable
body, inasmuch as, if permitted to exist, it will cer-
tainly effect its object, which the Irish League is not
likely to do. Moreover, the jury which convicted
Mr. O'Connell would most certainly have convicted
Mr. Cobden, if he could only be brought before them.
But, for all this, nobody has seriously thought of in-
dicting Mr. Cobden, nor is it likely that any
one will, even if the decision of the House of
Lords should be such as to encourage the design."
The answer to this statement lies in a single word ;
it is not for the use of any of the usual modes
of political activity in England, but for the abuse
of nearly all these modes that Mr. O'Connell
and his accomplices have been prosecuted and con-
victed, upon the principle of law, " abesus non tollit
usum," it is obvious that the modes of political ac-
tivity, if innocently and legally resorted to, are wholly
unaffected by the decision in the case of' these parties.
Whether the Anti-Corn-law League have or have not
transgressed the legal limits of political activity may
be a question ; but it would appear that the law ad-
visers of the Crown think differently, for it is un-
true that a British Government would not in like cir-
cumstances act as the Government of Ireland has
acted. Witness the prosecution of Henry Hunt and
others, twenty-four years ago; and the more recent
prosecutions of Mr. years
O'Connor by the Whig-
Radical
Ministers. But whatever may be the posi-
tion of the Leaguers in this respect, it is quite indis-
putable that the limits of legal political activity were
largely transgressed by Mr. 0 Connell and his con-
victed associates. We may admit that the law allows
men to organise political societies to hold multi-
tudinous assemblies of the people, and to express their
political opinions freely and boldly, but it cannot be
pretended that these privileges are not qualified, as the
exercise of all the privileges of freemen are qualified,
by the condition that they shall not be exercised to
the injury of the community, or so as to endanger the
established order of law and government. Now
it will hardly be denied by the Morning Chronicle
itself, that the practices of Mr. O'Connell, and
the other Repealers, in the last year, and for
many preceding years, grossly violated this con-
dition—the injury occasioned by the unrestrained
repeal agitation is proved more strikingly by nothing
than by the happy change in the social state of Ire-
land, which followed its suppression almost with the
rapidity of a charm. The danger of the agitation
to the established law of order and government was
the daily theme of complaint with all the Whig-
Radical journals and statesmen during the session of
1843. Here, then, we have distinctly marked the
dfferentia between " modes of political activity"
generally, and " the political conspiracy" prosecuted
at the State Trials in Dublin. " Modes of political
activity" may be harmless or otherwise ; but' when
they become mischievous and dangerous they be-
come criminal conspiracies. It is, however, to
be conceded, that in a free country " moles
of political activity" that are undesignedly in-
jurious are to be regarded with tenderness, and we
cannot help thinking that the Lancashire conspirators
of 1819 had hard measure, as, notwithstanding the
dangerous tendency of their proceedings, it diffi-
cult to believe that they designed any permanent
evil. It was certainly right to suppress their con-
spiracy, but the penalties inflicted upon Mr. Hunt,
and some others—penalties threefold greater in
duration, and tenfold more severe in all their
circumstances, than those imposed upon Mr.
O'Connell and his fellow-prisoners—were almost
excessive. The Lancashire conspirators comtem-
plated no great or enduring evil as a means
or as an end, but the utmost extravagance
of charity would fail to acquit the repeal con-
spirators of resorting to criminal means for the
attainment of a criminal end. What are the
means, of employing which they have been dis-
tinctly convicted, not upon doubtful evidence, but
upon evidence supplied by themselves ? These
means were by speeches and writings exciting hatred
between different classes of the people, exciting
hatred also against the laws and the Government,
superseding the authority of the Government by the
establishment of rival courts of justice, endea-
vouring to destroy the power of the Govern-
ment, by debauching the military from their duty,
collecting vast multitudes of the most ignorant and
excitable of the population, frequently in military
array, for the purpose of alarming the Govern•
ment and the well-affected, and encouraging the
disloyal by an illusion of their irresistible strength.
These were the means contemplated—not con-
templated only, but put into extensive action, and
not put into this extensive action upon a single ,
occasion, as happened at Manchester, but constantly
and frequently, and for a succession of years.
And to what end were these means directed ? To
extort a repeal of the union by intimidation, the Re- I
pealers themselves say; or, perhaps, scarcely less than
high treason ; but common sense discovers another,
and, if possible, a much more criminal end—the
wresting of Ireland from the British Crown. These 1]
are facts so obvious and familiar, that it would be but i