The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FPDX THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—The long-delayed " Royal fiat" has at
length reached Dublin. " The Lords Justices have
received the Queen's letters empowering the Lord
Chancellor or Keeper of the Great Seal to issue letters
patent, appointing Joseph Devonsher Jackson, Esq.,
a Justice of the Common Pleas, in the room of Mr.
Justice Foster, deceased ; and Thomas Berry Cusac
Smith, Esq., Q.C., to be Solicitor-General, in the
room of Mr. Jackson, promoted to the judicial bench.'
This has brought matters to a crisis. The perplexity
into which the London oracles of the Government are
plunged by the untoward state of things in Ireland,
is most amusing. The Post implores the Irish Go-
vernment, and those in this country who have the
power of directing its policy, to pause, and retrace
their steps before it be too late :
" It wAI not conduce to the advantage of the Con-
servatiie cause is Ireland, or to any other practical
good; to create a division in the University of Dublin
on the present occasion, by presenting to the choice
of the electors any other Ministerial candidate in op-
positipn to Mr. Hamilton The Govern-
m-''nt will act wisely in putting an end to the controversy
which arises from its pursuit of an object, important
we admit, but clearly unattainable, and which, so long
as it lasts, is calculated only to engender heats and
tlis,ensions among its friends, and to lend a colour to
the misrepresentations of its foes."
The Standard, on the other hand, supports the
Irish Government in its course, and Mr. Smith, its
oandlclate. Objurgations are heaped and reproaches
hurled upon the heals and hearts of the soi-disant Pro-
testauts of the faithful University. We really cannot
comprehend the Standard. So adroitly does it shift
its ground—with such facility adapt its views to its
changed position, that with every possible desire to
egard its policy as consistent, we find it utterly
impossible to reconcile its present with its for-
mer advocacy. What agreement can exist, we
ask, between the low Protestantism now urged
by its reasoning upon the Dublin University,
with the high Protestantism of the most exclusive
caste, which it formerly held up as essential to the
safety of the Church, and the maintenance of the
Protestant religion in Ireland? Mr. Hamilton ex-
pressly states, and his supporters reiterate, that the
Maynooth grant, and the .National Education ques-
tion, on both which his views are opposed to the
Government, form the grounds of the opposition he
is doomed- to encounter from the Ministerial candi-
date ; and yet the Protestant Standard urges the
withdrawal of the opponent of the Maynooth grant,
and of the Government scheme of National Educa-
tion in Ireland, in order that a candidate who is
hound hand and foot to promote both may walk over
the course !
STANDARD.—As rewards the apology for the
capture and detention of the Caroline, it is just such
an explanation as every just and rational man, how
high-spirited soever, gives when he has inflicted a
merited chastisement. It tells why the British au-
thorities seized and destroyed the pirate steamer,
and it tells nothing more. The British Minister
was not surely to say, "We destroyed the vessel
in wicked wantonness, or for the purpose of in-
sulting the United States Government." He was
to tell the truth. The pirate was destroyed be-
cause she was a pirate engaged in a piratical
war against the British possessions, and she was
destroyed on the United States territory, because
there she was found, and because the United States
authorities had proved unable or unwilling to put a
stop to her continued acts of piracy—a circumstance
which, as well as its proper consequence, the British
Government regrets. Mr. Webster calls this an
apology, but an apology in the humiliating sense of
the term it assuredly is not. If, however, at the
other side of the Atlantic the term apology is soothing
to the self-love of the Republicans, there is no reason
why we should grudge them whatever consolation it
affords. We know that Great Britain never will refuse
such apologies—we trust never will be wanting in
firmness to furnish occasion for them, when so pro-
voked.
There is a character in one of (we think)
O'Keefe's plays, as happy in interpreting apologies
as Mr. Webster himself—a Cockney, who, offering
some affront to a gentleman, is knocked down
by the offended party ; an officious friend of the
O'Trigger school successfully urges a challenge,
a challenge is delivered, parties meet, but the
challenger's courage being exhausted, an explana-
tion is proposed ; the challenged, however, will
give no more than this—" I am sorry that your
conduct rendered it necessary to knock you
down ;" the challenger is contented, and walks
away exulting in the apology that he has received.
Lot us not, however, be misunderstood ; we do not
quote the little fable as reflecting upon the courage of
the American people. They are too true to the cha-
racter of their fathers to be open to imputation in
this respect. If they have been compelled to
submit in the matter of the Caroline, it is not
from want of gallantry, or from want of power,
but from want of a cause which just and
honourable men could vindicate ; we have
borrowed from the dramatist merely to illustrate the
folly of considering Lord Ashburton s explanation as
an apolagy in any humiliating sense. Finally, if the
questinns of the right of search, of the right of im-
pressment, and the affair of the Creole, still remain
unsettled, these perplexing topics are of themselves
in no worse position than before, and their con-
dition is otherwise greatly improved by what has
been adjusted. It is the accumulation of causes
of quarrel which generates serious enmity—
by removing two or three from the heap you do
Rot merely diminish the aggregate—you detract in-
finitely from the importance of those that remain.
We believe that Lord Ashburton's Treaty has laid the
solid foundation of a lasting peace between this em-
pire and the United States. If nothing else were
gained towards such a foundation, much is gained in
the proof afforded that differences may be accommo •
dated without war, and even without menace of war,
by just and equal negotiation.