The Sun.
London, England, 1827-03-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE 'PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Mr. Grattan on Monday last presented to the House of
Commons, a petition from the Roman Catholic Bishops
of .Ireland, complaining that the body to which the pe-
titioners;belonged have derived no benefit from the sums
of money granted by Parliament for the education of the
Irish poor—but that those grants, which last year amount-
ed.to 32,000/., went to the support of certain societies,
which had not so much the interests of general education,
as the conversion of thelower order of Catholics to the
established mode of worship, for their object. This ap-
;sear! to us to be one more illustration of the frightful
state of Ireland, under the tutelary system of the penal
laws. Where religion has been made a pretence for the
punishment of those who profess it, we need not wonder
if every other good becomes likewise a source of discord
, and distraction to the whole community. Distrust is the
necessary consequence of injustice. The wrong-doer can
place no reliance on the injured---nor the injured man on
him. Thus the zealot of Kildare-street. dreads the dif-
fusion of knowledge as he would of wealth or power, or
military discipline, among a people whose minds were
early impregnated with a conscioeeness that they have
grounds for resentment against the ascendancy faction,
and seeks to neutralize the danger by rendering the
course of instruction which he proffers, ati instrument
for alienating the heart of his pupil from the former
habits of his life, and the natural objects of his confi-
dence and attachment. 4v, the Catholic parents and
priests look with jealousy at this undertaking of Pro-
testants to educate the Catholic poor. They know that
the Catholic, in his ;tank state, has not much reason to be
grateful to the "x;rotestant for liberal or disinterested kind.
ness. T'
_oey cannot easily imagine that he who tramples
father, from apprehension or contempt, will, from
Motives of patriotism or humanity, cherish that father's
offspring; and hence we are sure, that, although the Kil-
dare-atreet Society and its affiliations throughout Ireland,
may liaye acted on a scheme of at least negatively encou-
raging. conversion, by winking at all attempts to proselyte
on the part of its subaltern officers, the minds of the Ca-
tholic party are prone to exaggerate the amount of this de-
scription of error in their adversaries, and to affirm that
there is nothing right, because much of what exists is
reprehensible. The result then we are afraid has been,
that education, at once the child and nurse of religion,
has; like religion itself, become, in Ireland, an instrument
of aggravating the general misery; as with a body diseased
in all its parts, the most wholesome aliment will turn to
the deadliest poison. Until the late avowals in Parlia-
ment, we did not credit the reports of the Irish news-
papers, that the scheme of making proselytes from Popery
had been entertained by men in their right senses, as an
ellit-.:ent engine for improving immediately the temporal
<77,iidition of Ireland. That it must be the wish of every
sincere Christian to see all men redeemed from the errors
of a faith which he considers unfounded, we shoUld
be the last to deny. But that statesmen, or those who -
have the ear of statesmen, should reckon on proselytism
as a useful portion of that active and effective policy, by
which alone the progress of Ireland towards destruction
can be outstripped and checked within the life-time of any
man now breathing, is what from unassisted common sense
•ve never could have anticipated. If we take a proselyte
per day, as the outside of what Protestant Missionaries
have -accomplished, since what is termed the second re-
volution began, see what in the end it amounts to. , In 20
yeari we should have acquired 7,300 converts; in a thou-
sand years we should have gained over 365,000 Catholics
from an original .population of about 6,000,000; while,
judging from the occurrences of the last century, an equal
number of our Protestant countrymen would, in the like
period, have abandoned the Established Church, and en=
tered the ranks of its rival. Now, when we had succeeded'
in " bottling off the Atlantic Ocean," we might attempt
an enterprise no less arduous—namely, that of curing the
political evils which rage through and ravage the un-
happy land, by commencing a war of controversy with
a fierce and exasperated priesthood, in the presence of
a multitude whose passions it has wielded, ever since
the degradation of their common country furnished food
for the excitement of those passions. What preaching
and vituperating can never effect, it is equally plain
from the long and well-known wretChedness of which
Ireland has been the scene from the 12th century down-
wards, that a deliberate system of coercion and inti-
midation must inevitably fail to accomplish. Have we or
have we not ruled Leland by force ? Have we ruled her
as Englandlias been governed ? Have we not been suffi-
ciently iigarous and penal ? Has not the policy of ex-
cessive harshness been carried as far as in tire nature of
things was practicable—and, with regard to human nature,
to a point equally fruitless and shameful? Then let us ask
the enemies of emancipation what ought to be our next
experiment ? What alternative now remains to be tried?
AA, hat is the actual condition of the miserable island under
our notice ? It isTthii—that no country in Europe can be
named,so desolated by the indirect consequences of tyran-
nical Governmeut, as what is called in ridicule, our
" Sister" Island. There is no imaginable evil to be ex-
pected from a change of policy, which does not exist in
hideous amplitude, as Ireland stands at this moment. The
rich and poor are enemies—the Catholic and Protestant
are deadly enemies—the established Clergy and their pa-
rishioners are at least in the ostensible relation of plun-
derers and victims to each ether. Rents and tithes are
equally considered as extortions. Attempts to instruct the
ignorant are made grounds of reproach to the teacher—ale
tempts to preserve the peace arc looked upon as an exer-
cise of oppression. The Magistrates arc called jobbers in
iniquity—the, laws are hated as weapons against the
weak. England, which might haVe enjoyed the inflw.
once of a parent, combined with that of a Sovereign,
by merely practising the parental virtues, is felt
we say not how justly—to be the spring of poverty and
misfortune to the blighted land. Could all this have been;
if some.canker had not buried itself in the very core of ,the
nation ? That canker is and has been, the principle`or the
Government, which in every stage of .history since the
conquest, sacrificed the native interests of Ireland, to inte-
rests which were altogether foreign : of those foreign in-
terests—the Protestant ascendancy, the growth of the last
130 years, is now the type, and the most tuonstrom and
melancholy specimen. , Now, we do not expect that there
ever willsbe,or can be, the slightest tendency to composure
and social order in Ireland, until the upper classes of native
Irishmen—the Catholic aristocracy, whether of land or
comnierce—be rendered content with their condition.—
Until that moment shall arrive, they never will cease to
communicate their own irritated and resentful feelings to
the body-of the people of Ireland. The priests, the only
portion of the body whom it would be bopeless to conci-
liate, except by paying them, and whe, so long as they re-
main urrid, will foster views alike hostile to the Pro-
testant Church,- and distinct from those of their own Ca-
tholieleity=the Priests, we say, can never be stripped of
the poWetthey now exercise over the public welfare, until
the laity shall be detached from them,by being incorporated
with the British constitution. We terminate these remarks,
by: repeating to his Majesty's Ministers—" You have re-
*led Catholic EmanCipation: then look your country in
the face, arid tell her, if you dare, that you will do nothing
*the tranquillity of Ireland. If otherwise, what is it that
~
ypu will do? There is no time to lose." —Times .
A meeting of Catholics took place on Monday at the
Crown and Anchor Tavern, his Grace the Duke of Nor-
folk in the chair. The following passages we think it
right to extract, from the resolutions proposed to this
most respectable assembly of English Noblemen and
Gentlemen, alike illustrious for their descent, and esti-
mable, many of them, for their virtues, but no less objects
of deep compassion, for the heavy sufferings inflicted on
them, by ignorance, prejudice, and obstinate blindness,
.?.isgraceful to an enlightened age, and to a people who
justify their own hatred of Popery, on the spirit of in-
tolerance and persecution of which their forefathers ac-
cused it.

Risovrzn..—.That we most solemnly appeal to the justice and
intelligence of our fellow-countrymen, we call upon them enspha
tically to proclaim, whether they doeire to disqualify us in our