The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-04 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1845.

It is unnecessary for us, we trust, to remind our read-
ers of the undeviating earnestness with which we have
ever advocated the claims of Ireland to participate in
the advantages of her Legislative Union with this coun-
try, to the fairest—that is to say, to the fullest extent.
Deprecating, as we have never ceased to do, the imprac-
ticable and mischievous agitation of repeal, we are, on
the other hand, just as distinctly prepared to maintain
the indefeasible rights of our Irish brethren to a perfect
equality of all the civil and political benefits, the
diffusion of which was the pretext and remains
the still unsatisfied condition of the union in
question. Now, whatever be our objections to the
general policy of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Government,
and on some great questions they are neither
slight nor few, we conceive that it is impos-
sible to deny that he deserves the praise of
being actuated by a sincere and zealous desire to ex-
tend " justice to Ireland." It by no means follows that
because her MAJESTeS Ministers cannot follow, pari
passu, Mr. O'CONNELL and his partizans in their courso
of operations for the redress of Ireland's grievances--
and for something beyond that object—therefore they
are to be justly suspected of insincerity or lukewarmness
in the cause. Motives of prudence, views of policy, con-
siderations and even necessities of circumstances that can
have no such immediate bearing upon private individuals
combined in an extensive association may well operate
with Ministers to make them consider maturely—and,
therefore, at some sacrifice of time—every step they take
in the affairs of Ireland, looking to the vast amount of
responsibility under which any measures for the amelio-
ration of Ireland must be adopted. The risk of defeat—
of defeat the consequences of which can only react with
destructive effect on their own official existence, and to
the general disorganization of the State—is sufficient to
bespeak a large measure of indulgence for some
tardiness in attempting. But, upon a candid con-
sideration of all the elements that compose the " Irish
question" with which they have to deal, it must be
allowed that her MASESTY'S Ministers have com-
mitted themselves by some very momentous
concessions to a scheme of civil regeneration for the
Irish people. This they have done to so decided an ex-
tent, that if the required degree of success have not
hitherto attended their well-meant efforts, we may fairly
assume the fault to be in the counsels which govern the
department of the Irish people. It is not to be forgotten
that a pertinacious demand for a repeal of the union
must, in the nature of things, inevitably retard the pro-
gress of equal justice to Ireland, not alone with the
Imperial Legislature, but with the vast majority of
the British people ; who, entertaining a strong
opinion that to concede that repeal would amount
to a virtual dismemberment of the empire, never
will, and never ought to, sacrifice that conviction
to the language of intimidation or the physical elo-
quence of multitudinous assemblages and monster meet-
ings. We must say, with sorrow, but in sober earnest-
ness, that it is high time this sort of machinery should
be discontinued. It should be abandoned from its po-
sitive incompetency to attain its avowed purpose, were
there no other reason for such abandonment. But
we fear it has already produced bad results, and
excited hostility against those denounced as " Saxons."
Our columns to-day record another of those fright-
ful mid-day assassinations in Tipperary which are
the curse and the infamy of modern Ireland. Another
landlord, in the very act of superintending the employ-
ment heihad devised for a large band of labouring men—
in that land the great social evil of which is admitted on
all hands to be the deficient demand for a ready and
unlimited amount of labour—has been shot dead by two
ruffians, with the obvious object of personal revenge
under the usual circumstances of cowardly, creeping,
and calculating bloodthirstiness which distinguish these
more than monthly murders of Irish landlords or ma-
gistrates. They have been of late so frequent—their
features present so much of unmitigated atrocity—their
detection has been, and yet remains in so large a ma-
jority of instances unaccomplished, if not hopeless—and
the peasant communities of whole districts in which
they occur manifest so brutal an apathy about sur-
rendering, or, rather, so evident a desire to favour the
escape, of the guilty criminals, that it is in vain for the
great leaders and directors of the Irish national
party, as it is called, to affect to attribute these
horrors to English misgovern:_lent or Imperial legisla-
tion. The fault lies with the Irish people themselves.
The peasentry aro all too prone to indulge in these

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