The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-28 00:00:00

,PIRIT of t}•pi PUBLIC JOURNALS.

IRON THE EVENING PAPERS OE YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—To offer violence to a dead body, even
though it be that of an enemy, is regarded, by the
general consent of civilised society, as an act of
savageism at once degrading and disgraceful to the
perpetrators. If any considerable number unite in
the offence, it shows that the general state of society
in the place where it occurs is brutalised. What,
then, shall be said of the scene which the
Earl of Limerick's funeral exhibited ? The
body of the deceased nobleman was on its
way to the tomb of his ancestors, followed
by his nearest relatives, and attended by about
1,000 of his tenantry, attired in hatbands and scarves;
the respectable inhabitants of Limerick testified their
regard for the deceased by wearing hatbands and
weepers ; and most of the shops were closed. A
large number of idle persons, who came ' in
from the neighbourhood and the adjacent
country, were collected in the streets and prin-
cipal thoroughfares. "As the procession passed"—
the description of the scene is furnished by one who
witnessed it, and whose account we give in another
column—" As the procession moved along there was
a good deal of shouting and groaning." Such
demonstrations of dislike to a deceased nobleman,
even had his life been marked by acts of in-
famy, would have been indecent demonstrations.
.Nt ne but the lowest vagabonds would have
indulged their personal feelings at such a time,
and while beholding such a scene. The spirit of
the individual had passed to its final audit; and
his body was on its way to be consigned to the
tomb. While such a scene is passing slowly and
solemnly before the eye, the spectator—if he be not
devoid of intellect or destitute of moral sensibility—
instinctively reflects upon his own mortality, and in-
dulges the self-abasing considerations which the scene
suggests. The Earl of Limerick had committed no
offence against society. He had perpetrated no po-
sitive injustice—he had inflicted no injuries upon in-
dividuals. The infirmities of advanced age had com-
pelled him to withdraw himself from public life, and
in the bosom of his family seek the repose which
his decayed physical strength required. In private
society the deceased nobleman had acquired respect.
He had the character of being considerate and hu-
mane toward his numerous tenantry. He was
chargeable with no vice, and, confessedly, exempli-
-sed many private and social virtues. And yet,
at the funeral of such a man —as though the
crowds of peasantry whom the procession had
attracted to the spot had been divested of the
feelings, while they retained the form, of men
—as though demons had seized upon them, and
employed men to gratify their malice against the
human kind by impelling them to bring this reproach
upon humanity—the outrages, thus commenced, con-
tinued to increase in enormity until they reached their
climax. It will be asked, what had provoked this
disgraceful attack upon a funeral procession ?
this outrage upon the dead—this brutal break-
ing in upon the sanctity of domestic grief—this
assault upon the persons, extending to endan-
gering the lives, of those who were performing
the last rites of humanity to the remains of one who
heel ceased to be numbered among the living? W hat
had provoked the savages of Limerick—or rather of
its neighbourhood—to enact the scene we have de-
scribed ? The scene was " got up" as a demonstration
against the union. The Earl of Limerick was among
those who, at the time that Mr. Pitt had resolved to
unite the two countries under one Parliament, assisted
the Government in its negotiations with the leading men
who opposed the measure. The repeal agitators have
succeeded in enlisting the passions of the Irish pea-
sentry in their " cause." They have taught them
to believe that the union of the two countries is
the source of their physical an.l social evils. Many
of these calamities—the existence of which we ad-
mit and deplore—are created by themselves. Others
arise out of causes which the repeal of the union,
could it be effected, would enhance and multi-
ply. To the lamentable state of the relations
which exist between landlord and tenant—a state of
things that existed before the union, and which the
union has modified and diminished—may a still
larger share of the grievances which afflict Ireland be
traced. These are not topics to which the repeal
agitators allude in their addresses to the dupes
who crowd around them. The union of the two
countries is, according to them, the sole cause of the
woes and wants of Ireland. " Hurra for repeal !"
is shouted by them at the top of their voices,
The names of those who took any prominent part
in bringing about the union, are banded with
infamy in the speeches of the agitators; and, living
or dead, are exhibited to popular indignation as
enemies and traitors to their country. It was,
therefore, as a party to the union—as one who
appeoved and aided its accomplishment, nearly fifty
years eso—that the Earl of Limerick's funeral
procession was assailed by a mob, and his remains
treated with imljgnity. It was a demonstration of
patriotism—a practical declaration of the Irish people
in favour of repeal. We designate the proceeding as
an act of savageism, which every Irishman, who has
any respect for his country's name will condemn and
denounce. Such acts necessarily tend to weaken the
sympathies of Englishmen for the inhabitants of a
country in which they are perpetrated, and thus to
discourage the efforts of those who pity, and woulJ
aid them ; and to retard the progress of the practical
.measures by which their real calamities would be
reh-2oved.

STA..NDARD.—GeneraI Napier has incurred the
displeasure of the Times by defending its designed
victim, Lord Ellenborough, in one of the most in-

telesting and eloquent books of our day—the
" History of the War in Sinde ;" and the Times
indulges its resentment against the gallant officer
this morning in an attack upon, disguised under the
form of a defence of, the obsolete and grotesque and

most mischievous privilege claimed by the Channel
Islands, the privilege namely of retaining the laws
and practices of the twelfth century, and of not having
the benefit of English laws. The attack upon Gene-
ral Napier, charges him with having exercised his
lawful autiority,: in an " offensive, impolitic, and dis-
courteous nunner:' To support this charge not one
word of proof L offered, or can be offered—the Gene-
ral pardoned a prisoner, and when the lawful autho-
rities refused to respect; the act of grace, sent a mili-
tary party to release him. In this he did precisely
what it was his duty to do. The pardon is a separate
question. Properly or improperly pardoned, the man,
once he received his pardon, was de jure a free
man. His imprisonment for a single minute was
illegal, and it was the Lieutenant-Governor's duty
to protect a fellow-subject from an imprisonment, of
the illegality of which he had judicial knowledge by
all the means at his command. The offensiveness, the

impolicy, the uncourteousness was all on the side of
those who began the use of forcible measures to re-
sist the Queen's prerogative of mercy. The Times
is obliged to give up the judicial proceedings of the
Channel Islands as incurably corrupt, while it affects
to maintain the integrity and fitness of the constitu-
tion under which the judicial system has been cor-
rupted ; this, we submit, is nonsense. Were not the
Legislature personally identical with the courts
of law as to a great extent it is, the Legislature that
allows the growth of a corrupted administration
of justice is not worthy of trust. It is, says the
Times, like an old corporation. It is a greal deal
worse tha❑ an old corporation, for they never
oppressed any one, or resisted the royal authority
when exercised for the protection of the people.
But grant it only as bad as the old corporations.
Their charters did not protect them, though
many of them older and more explicit,
and derived from a clearer authority than the

Channel Islands' charters can plead. The strangest
of the Times' arguments, however, is that the
victims of oppression in the Channel Islands are
" aliens,' fugitive Englishmen, or persons ac-
cidentally connected with the island." The

facts are not so ; but what if they weiei
they would not much redound to the honour of
these hospitable islands. We trust that the matter
will not rest where it is—we hope that the case will

come under the cognisance of Parliament, and then
it Nvill be seen whether Englishmen ere the only vic-
tims of oppression—whether " the poor sufferer," as
Sir Robert Peel once called her—the Exchequer—