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

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SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF TAI = DAY.
GLOBE.—When the fact became known that every
Roman Catholic name had been expunged from the
Dublin jury-list by the Crown agents, and the practical
injustice of such an extreme application of the prerogative
was pointed out, the objection was met by the Government
organs with an admission, that had the Roman Catholics so
struck out been excluded as Catholics, therewouldhave
been grounds for impugning the act as invidious and
and
uf un-
just.the But it so happened, we are told,that the
whole
eleven Catholicsr s
Theystruck
out
wereo
rejected,
f th list
sCatholics,
Crown
gent
were Repea .
but as Repealers. As on the trial of Chartist leaders
for sedition or conspiracy, or any other offence, alleged
to have been committed by them in such relation, the
Crown would object to Chartists as unfit to exercise,
' with the requisite impartiality, the functions of jury-
men in such a cause; so, it was urged, Repealers were
properly excluded from the panel from which a jury
for the trial of the parties accused of conspiracy and
sedition, as Repeal leaders, was to be selected.
There was a show of reason in this mode of
stating the question. It would have been difficult, if
not impossible, to overturn the argument, supposing the
assumption on which it was based to have been valid.
The whole case rested on the simple matter of fact—
were all the Roman Catholics who were drawn on
this jury, Repealers ? Every Catholic was struck off.
If any were rejected who were not Repealers, then it
followed that the* rejection was in consequence of their
religious creed, and not of their political predilections.
The fact is now ascertained to have been—nut as the
unscrupulous organs of the Government stated, bat that
four of the Roman Catholics struck from the list by the
Crown agent were not Repealers, and never had any
connexion whatever with the repeal movement !
Driven from this refuge of lies by the force of in-
contestable facts, the fiction they had invented—as a
temporary relief from the overwhelming odium which
the bigotry and injustice of the act had provoked—being
demolished, the ground is shifted. The exclusion of
the Catholics, as such, is now boldly vindicated. Pro-
testant ascendancy in the jury-box is insolently vin-
dicated as essential to the attainment of a verdict of
which truth should be the element. The organs of the
party—which, in the country where the trial is to be
had, constitute so decided a minority—take heart, and
now impute to the Roman Catholics a destitution of all
regard to moral obligation. Not merely the peasantry
—the labourers—the lowest of the Catholic population,
but the higher class of tradesmen, the first-class shop-
' keepers, the merchants and gentry of the county of
the city of Dublin, are charged with the deep deprave-
) tion of moral principle, and disregard of social ties,
which the crime of perjury involves ! Such is the foul
charge which the Herald—the now back-bone advocate
of all the Government says and does—imputes to the
Roman Catholics, as a body. The senseless calumnies,
I creations of bigotry in its dotage, and of ascendancy tot-
tering to its fall—which the Eldons, Rodens, and the
Wetherells, with the smaller but not less virulent shoals
se of clamourers against Catholic Emancipation, urged as
, reasons for excluding the Catholics from the common
rights of citizens--are again revived. A Roman Ca-
tholic will regard perjury as a meritorious act, if
the interests of his religion are to be observed by
its commission. "If a single Catholic had been al-
lowed to remain on the reduced jury list in the trial now
pending between the Crown and O'Connell, that indi-
ts vidual "—so the Herald assures the country—" would
have received a significant hint from his spiritual
rulers, that his soul's everlasting welfare
.depended
on his loyalty to the Church in this important
'3'i crisis !" The inference is irresistible. The ingenuity of
r man—the reckless impudence of the venal Heralds of
.% a Government which aspires to the bad eminence of
'l4 the Castlereaghs and Sidmouths of days we had fondly
hoped had passed away for ever—cannot evade the
sis, ignominy, nor silence the indignation, which the rejection
'7' of honourable citizens as unfit to serve on a jury, be-
-5% cause of their religious opinions, has produced. The
o Government has branded the Roman Catholics with the
o crimp of perjury by their acts ; the Government organs
los• have admitted the acts, their motives, and their object,
4 by the justification they have put forth in its behalf.
5N The foul insult to a nation in its most sensitive part, the
63, creed which it professes, and to the Clergy who minister
5 at its altars, will recoil upon the Government which has
dared to inflict the wrong. Public opinion, against
9 which no Government can long prevail, will speak out
5 its reprobation of a proceeding so fraught with danger to
634 the peace, because so pregnant with wrong to the people,
2g of Ireland. The suspiciously " dropped" sheets, contain-
s ing the sixty-three names omitted from the revised jury
i• list, assumes a form vastly different from that it would
4% have borne but for the striking out the Roman Ca-
-8 tholics from the panel. That which would have been
5
2 received as a blunder, is now looked upon as a fraudu-
lent abstraction. The more the list was reduced, the
sss less probability would there be of an inconvenient num-
-3 ber of names pertaining to the proscribed creed
being drawn upon the ballot ; and consequently
1U the greater chance of the jury being exclusively
) of the right sort. But what an onus has the Go-
vernment placed upon the jury, as packed by its
officers ! We scarcely know whether a conviction or an
.74 acquittal of the parties charged will be the most da-
ass maging. An acquittal will be a popular triumph, which
will prostrate the Ministry in the dust, because obtained
;Is in spite of its preconcerted schemes to force a convic-
) tion; while a verdict of guilty against O'Connell and the
)311 rest of the traversers,Swill be deprived of all moral in-
fluence by the disreputable means which have been taken
to secure that result.
3N STANDARD.— At the aggregate meeting of Roman
Catholics, which was held in Dublin on Saturday last, the
02 Emancipation Bill was proclaimed a nullity, because the
law officer of the Crown had availed himself of the right
s of challenge provided by the statute, to reject some 10 or
3 11 Roman Catholic Repealers from the panel; the attorney
for the traversers having challenged an equal number on
!.i his part, apparently for no other reason in the world
) than that they were Protestants and not Repealers ! It
would be idle to repeat the proofs we have already ad-
-3 r duced, that the conduct here complained of was not
; only perfectly proper and legitimate, but that the Crown
) Solicitor would have been guilty of a gross dereliction of
' his duty bad he acted otherwise. How, in the name of
5
) common sense, was the panel to be reduced, if both parties
) were not permitted to strike off the number required by
iN
the law ? Was Mr. Kenimis to reject the names of re-
t spectable Protestants, with whose intelligence and up-
rightness he might happen to be acquainted, for the
5 purpose of retaining some ten or eleven persons, who were
2 not only Catholics but Repealers—men who had pledged
1
8 themselves deeply on the very question they were called
a upon to try ;or was it expected of him that he should
3 leave the panel in the hands of Mr. Pierce Mahoney, in
3 order that he might challenge twelve Protestant jurors
3 with impunity. "But," says Mr. Thomas Wyse, "if
being a Repealer renders a man unfit to sit upon a jury,
3 why should not an anti-Repealer be deemed equally in-
-114 eligible?" We will answer this inquiry by another. If
'S being a notorious burglar renders a man unfit to sit upon
a jury impanelled to try a gang of housebreakers,
1% why should not a person who has never committed the
Pt crime of house-breaking, or shop-lifting, be considered
) as equally disqualified ? Simply, because it would be a
i 34 mockery of justice to depute a man who is obnoxious to
3.% punishment himself, to decide on the guilt or innocence of
!N a fellow criminal and, in all probability, an accomplice.
),§ It constantly happens in this country that men
:34 of the most irreproachable character are rejected from
a panel on the bare suspicion of being friendly to
14 the parties they are to try, but no one has ever regarded
1% their exclusion on such a ground as a stigma on their
credibility. If the Emancipation Bill be a mere nullity
because Roman Catholic Repealers are not permitted to
1% sit in judgment on each other, it is, we trust, long likely
to remain so. The argument of Mr. Ford, that
)34 because Roman Catholic constituencies had occa-
sionally returned Protestant agitators instead of
3x, representatives of their own religious persuasion, they
were incapable of being influenced by religious prep
-
3 dices, is hardly less absurd. A Protestant agitator is
5 often more useful in his vocation than a Roman Catholic
2of the same political profession could be ; and this is
2 precisely the reason why such a man will fre-
-5 quently secure a preference over a moderate and
5% conscientious Roman Catholic. Mr. Sheii's speech,
o in which he did not overlook the 63 jurors acci-
t dentally omitted from the panel, affords a striking proof
that a Protestant representative is often selected, not
iN because he is a Protestant, but because he is the chatn-
N pion of Roman Catholic agitation, and only boasts of
'Ys his Protestantism when he desires to give value to his
% attempts to degrade and calumniate it. Mr. Steele
is a Protestant ; but who ever heard him give
the Church, or the community- to which he
Is professes to belong, a good word ? Yet the head pacifi-
cator is, for obvious reasons, a greater favourite at the
Corn Exchange than many Roman Catholics of much
more exalted character and pretensions. In a feeble and
jejune speech, stuffed with the usual number of thrice-
Lls, refuted falsehoods, and presenting, in fact, a mere echo
of the groans of Mr. Pierce Mahoney on the latest of his
grievances, Mr. O'Connell is silly enough to invite
a comparison of the probable treatment of Chartist
'3 with that of Roman Catholic jurors. He has the
effrontery to declare his belief that Chartist jurors
14 would not be rejected in favour of men having
s, no avowed sympathy with the parties prosecuted, or
that if they were, they would not put up with such
an indignity. We have no doubt, did Chartists
often happen to be qualified to serve on special juries,
that they would be equally liable with Roman Catholics
to be rejected from the panel in cases in which they
would be called to sit in judgment on their brother
Chartists ; nor would they have reason, therefore,
to complain that any stigma had been imposed upon
them. Men of the slightest delicacy of feeling would
rejoice • at being relieved from a position which, if they
meant honestly, must be a most painful one—
that of weighing the imputed offences which have
originated in the very principles and prejudices by
which they themselves profess to be actuated. The pre-
text that the right of challenge has ever been regarded
in this country as conveying the slightest reflection on
the character of the party rejected, is notoriously un-
founded. Who that had the right to exercise such a
privilege, would hesitate, in the absence of a more serious
disqualification, to challenge a friend, or even an
avowed political sympathiser of his opponent, in pre-
ference to rejecting Imp-hazard some one who might be
much better qualified to deal impartially with the case ?
Such objections are made every day in British courts of
justice without giving rise to the shadow of a complaint
that the credibility of the phrties so rejected is intended
to be impeached. The whole tenor of Mr. O'Connell's
speech
grossinsult to the Roman Catholic body • for
treating his figment as a fact, that so many as 35 Roman'
Catholics were omitted from the panel, among the 63
of whose absence he makes such bitter complaint, he
would, he tells us, " have beaten the Attorney-General
with his own weapons." In other words, he ex-
presses his conviction that had he been able to
secure the presence of but one Roman Catholic on
the jury (for the proportion, even under the cir-
cumstances he describes, could hardly
.have been
greater), he would have been Securo of ti trullPh 1 If