The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-16 00:00:00

Cbtrb Mbition

SUN OFFICE, Seven o' Clock.

TATTERSALL'S.-THIS EVENING.
QUARTER TO SIX O'CLOCK.
DERBY.

5 to 2 agst Ugly Buck
7 to 2 agst Ratan—taken
12 to 1 agst Orlando
12 to 1 agst Bay blomus
15 to 1 agst Leander:
20 to 1 agst Running Rein
20 to 1 agst Akbar
25 to 1 agst lonian
30 to 1 agst Qui Tam

7 to 1 agst Barricado
7 to 1 agst Princess
7 to 1 agst Sister to Martingale
11 to 1 agst Merope
12 to 1 agst All-round-my-Hat
20 to 1 agst The Bee

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNA
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.
GLOBE.—When the Whigs were in office the mem
bers and adherents of the present Government were in-
cessant in their attacks upon the way in which Ireland
was ruled. The administration of justice—the exer-
cise of the Royal prerogative of mercy by her Majesty's
representative—every act which pertained to the func-
tions of the executive, were rigidly investigated for the
purpose of discovering whether any feasible pretext
for a party assault upon the Government could be
made in either House of Parliament. The tables are
now turned upon themselves. Retributive justice
commends the poisoned chalice back to their own lips.
That which they imputed, without cause, to the admi-
nistration of their predecessors, is dealt back. This
difference is, however, discoverable. Their attacks
were the result of a factious desire to obstruct
the Government in its equitable administration ;
and thus prevent the beneficial results of the sys-
tem that was practically condemning their own
partial, and therefore inefficient, dispensation. Thus
they fostered the discontents of the great mass
of the people. The manifest intimation, too obvious
to be mistaken, made to the favoured few by the
underlings of the Government, that the many were to
be pushed aside and disregarded whenever the interests
or inclination of the former could be served or gratified
by sacrificing the latter, produced their natural effects.
On the one hand, the people relapsed into gloomy
dislike ; showed a disposition to confederate against
the Government which treated them with neglect,
and handed them over to oppression ; while, on
the other, the Government had recourse to the
old system of employing secret agencies to de-
tect crime ; and these secret agencies, in many in-
stances, have actually prompted the commission of the
very offences they were employed to discover. It is a
fact, which the records of the criminal courts in
Ireland fully demonstrate, that since the accession
of the present Government there have been more
instances of crimes committed by policemen and
other Government agents, in order to fasten
them upon innocent parties, and offences committed at the
instigation of those who were employed by the Govern-
ment authorities to detect offenders, than were supplied
during the entire period of the Grey and Melbourne Ad-
ministrations. The speech of Lord Normanby on Tues-
day evening, on moving for papers connected with the
recent dismissal of Mr. Gray, a police inspector in
Ireland, affords a striking illustration of the injurious
effects of the spy system, which has been revived in Ire-
land under the present Government. A man named
Osborne had been apprehended by the police in the
act of singing, and offering for sale, a ballad which was
regarded as seditious. He was taken before Mr. Gray,
who ordered him to find bail to answer the charge at the
assizes. The purpose contemplated by the inspector was, it
seems, to convict the printer of the ballad. To secure the
ballad-vendor's evidence against him, he was committed
to gaol. A correspondence was subsequently opened
upon the subject by Mr. Gray with the Secretary's office
at the Castle. The object was to obtain the sanction of
the Government to the man's release; and the reason
assigned for this was, that the Crown would
not thus be deprived of the benefit of his evi-
dence against the printer. The " law adviser" of
the Castle authorities declined to release the
ballad-seller; and intimated that other evidence against
the printer might be easily obtained. This hint was,
it seems, understood, and acted upon. The very
course taken by the police inspector is an illustra-
tion of the .system. A police-constable is provided
with the disguise of a beggar-man; he is supplied with
the manuscript of the song he is directed to purchase ;
and is dispatched to the ballad printer with his in-
structions. The ballad was not to be obtained, the whole
of the copies having been disposed of ; but it might be
reprinted—as it was ; and the printer prosecuted. To
get it printed was, it is said, no part of the policeman's
instructions. But as Mr. Gray, acting upon Mr.
Brewster's hint, went rather beyond what the
letter of his " opinion and advice" really justified,
so the constable went a little further than the inspec-
tor intended he should proceed. This is invariably
the case. When it is understood that a course of pro-
ceeding, not justified by the open and honest adminis-
tration of justice, is that which a Government recog.
nises as its mode of bringing offenders to punishment
there will be no lack of indiscretion in those who
are employed to carry such instructions into effect. Mr.
Gray gave a liberal interpretation to Mr. Brewster's
intimation ; and the police-constable went about his
secret mission with more zeal than Mr. Gray expected
or designed. The ballad-printer was entrapped into
the commission of an offence against the law by those
whose duty it was to prevent, and not to prompt
the perpetration of crime. The affair got wind. The
Government was compelled to investigate the circum-
stances. The result was, that Mr. Gray was dismissed.
What we most wonder at is, that the Castle authorities
did not see that, in punishing Mr. Gray with
dismissal, they admitted the vice of the system which
they act upon. The "other evidence" suggestion of
Mr. Brewster was the origin of the whole business. If
Mr. Gray was held guilty for employing the police-
man to entrap the printer, he was only criminal
in a secondary degree. Mr. Brewster, and the Go-
vernment which employs him, are the principal
offenders. When Toryism is in the ascendant, there
will never be a lack of crime in Ireland. The agents it
there employs are frequently inciters to, or perpetrators
of, the offences ; and the system on which it acts is the
prolific source of the discontent, disturbances, and alarm
which harass the country.
STANDARD.—The news from the United States
came yesterday upon the newspaper-reading public as a
refreshing shower in a dry season. Nothing indeed
can be so dull as the political horizon has been for the
last year or two. Peace, peace, peace, everywhere ; no
prospect of stirring events, or critical situations, in any
part of the world. Lord Palmerston is sadly missed,
and his Lordship's political demise has reason to be as
much lamented by " our order" as the death of Sultan
Amuratla was lamented by the owls of Bagdad—for
whom, blessed be his memory, he " provided so many
ruined villages." Let us not, however, make too much
of the windfall, seasonable as it is. The Senate of
the United States may not, after all, ratify the treaty
for the annexation, and if it should, the affair is
still no such great matter. Vis units fortior no
doubt, but it must be vis, not weakness, the union
of which constitutes strength. The things capable of an
indefinite augmentation are those which increase by
every the least addition, as time, quantity,- number.
With other things it is quite the reverse. The in-
tensity of a colour, white for example, is not improved
but diminished by the addition of a less white shade;
and such is eminently the case with regard to
nations and parties in political warfare. The addi-
tion of a weaker ally is in most cases an addition
not of strength, but of weakness. Of such an addition
of weakness, the annexation of Texas would seem to pre-
sent a remarkable example. The sources of weakness to
the United States are, too many slaves, too many
State debts, too great an extent of frontier, too
little reputation for honesty in pecuniary transac-
tions, and—may we be pardoned for saying it—a
disposition to retrograde in manners, morals, and
religion. Of this last unhappy characteristic we might
not be disposed to speak, were it not forced upon the
attention of every one by the late scene of complex
brutality in Congress, where one member "made a pass
at another " in the ardour of debate, and one of the
servants of the Assembly was shot in the thigh in
an attempt to pistol another member on the floor
of the house. Now these things—slavery, debt, exces-
sive frontier, want of character for honesty, want of civili-
sation and morals—disable any country from offensive or
even defensive war; a country afflicted by them, though
in the compact grasp of an energetic tyrant, could do
little. How utterly feeble must such a country be,
with only that shadow of government which affects
tSot exercise States the sovereign authority in the United
But,e xss,shat is the portion that the States will
have
with la ? More slaves, more State
debts, more
frontier, and certainly they will not improve their cha-
racter for honesty by a transaction which two of the
leading statesmen of the Commonwealth, Mr. Clay and
Mr. Van Buren, characterise as a gross outrage, and a
violation of public faith. The valued
pavaluetd part of the portion
slave
of Texas is, however, the Texas is adopted,
so eminently fitted by situation and climate to serve the
purpose (we write the words with disgust), of abreeding
farm for negrces; and probably the facilitiesb which it
affords to the Cuba slave smuggler, to
acguegmhuissi States,tsait coeni is
con-
traband freight of human beings into terten
not wholly disregarded among the
that seem to recommend the proposed
The annexation of Texas, if completed, will neees..
sarily confirm the United States as a slave country for
ever, or, at least, until freedom shall vindicate herself
by some violent convulsion. But, independently of all
other considerations, there is to a loosely connected
confederacy a danger consequent upon increase of terri-
tory that does not in the same degree, if at all,
affect countries subject to any other form of govern-
ment,—the danger, that the parts will fall asunder
from rivalry or from any other incompatibility. This
danger very seriously threatened the Republic from the
side of the northern provinces during the last year of
the .late war with this country, and again in the case
of the Carolina nullification proceedings ; but it
is obviously a danger which must continue to in-
crease in a ratio far b yond that of the extension
of territory. Like the houses which children build
of cards, after they have reached a certain height, some
one addition, however :light, is sure to destroy the ba-
lance
of their scarcely connected materials, and they
all fall to the ground. It is for this reason that
nothing short of a stern despotism can hold
together a great empire of homogeneous parts,
because in such an empire there must al-
ways grow up sooner or later, rivalship and
opposition of interests. The possibility of:England
maintaining at the same time her vast empire and her