The Sun.
London, England, 1845-04-14 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, APRIL 14, 1845.

Men possessing even the ordinary powers of reason,
on undertaking any measure of importance, look for-
ward to the consequences. They are not like the
beasts of the field, left to instinct—they have been
gifted with rational minds, and are accountable for
their conduct. It may, therefore, not be out of sea-
son at the present moment to ask Sir R. INGLIS, Mr.
HINDLEY, and Sir CULLING E. SMITH, in case of
their opposition to the Maynooth grant being suc-
cessful, if they are prepared to meet the crisis which
must follow ? Should Sir R. PEEL'S scheme be de-
feated in the Commons or the Lords, he and his
entire Cabinet must resign at once. The QUEEN
would apply to Lord JOHN RUSSELL, or possibly
consult Lord MELBOURNE, with the view of form-
ing a new administration, and the result could not
for a moment be doubtful. All the Whig party, which
we admit is not very great, and all the leading men
of the Liberal party are bound to this measure, even
by stronger ties than the present Cabinet. In fact, it
is their measure ; they cannot escape from it ; and
they must tell her MAJESTY that they will not incur
the awful responsibility of forming an administration
which would be opposed to the death by seven millions
of her most loyal subjects, and which could, under
such circumstances, receive the support of not one
statesman out of the Cabinet. As a forlorn hope,
application might be made to the parties who had
upset the PEEL Government. At the head of these we
place Sir R. H. INGras; he must, of course, make the
best of his materials, and on looking at the list of the
division against the grant, he would be compelled,
probably, to choose the following members :—Mr.
PLUMPTRE, Mr. T. DUNCOMBE, Mr. G BANKES, Mr.
C. HINDLEY, Mr. B. D'ISRAELI, Mr. LEFROY, Lord
ASHLEY, Mr. COLQUHOUN7 the Hon. E. P. BOUVERIE,
Colonel SIBTHORP, Mr. E. ELLICE, jun., and Mr. E.
GROGAN. To select a Cabinet from among these names
even with Lord KENYON, Lord RODEN, and some less
prominent members from the House of Lords, would
he a hopeless task even under ordinary circumstances.
And at such a period of excitement as would infallibly
succeed the rejection of a measure so important to
Ireland, even if they were selected, they could not
keep together for one week. But placing their case
in the most favourable light, and admitting that all
the Liberals were rejected and a High Church
Cabinet constructed, with a majority too of the
House of Commons at their back, they could rul

Ireland only by the sword. Repeal meetings, and
such monster meetings too as Ireland has never seen,
would assemble in every valley and on every hill;
the spirit of Irish independence would be one and

. _
indivisible, and " death to the oppressors," would be

the watchword of a million of brave men. Then
scenes would follow which would make the stoutest
heart to quail—the subjects, and the loyal subjects too,
of the same sovereign imbruing their hands in each
others blood—in the north the nearest neighbours
fighting as the bitterest enemies, in the south
one armed camp—the horrors of Scotland under the
persecution of the Episcopalians, the deeds of the
bloodthirsty DALZIEL, and DRUMMOND, and TURNER,
and the savage resistance of the Covenanters, would
all be thrown into the shade by a civil war in Ire-
land. These are no imaginary evils—they would
succeed the appointment of a High Church Cabinet
as certainly as the effect follows the cause. And
should the power of England prevail, what would
the Anti-Popery party gain ? Would the Catholic
religion be crushed—would there be one convert ?
The number of Catholics would be diminished, but
only by the edge of the sword and the gibbet, and
the spirit of their religion, like that of the Covenan-
ters, would only rise higher, and assume a more noble,
a more holy, and a more enthusiastic tone. Let these
men, therefore, look to the end. Let them look to
history, and they will find that persecution has
never had any other result; but, above all, let
them look to their Bible, and read that the " wisdom
which is from above is first pure, then peaceable,
gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and
good fruits." This is the religion of CHRIST—the
other is the religion of MAROMLT. These topics are
not convenient for a newspaper; but when religious
zeal is producing most dangerous effects on the com-
munity; when a large proportion of the teachers of
the people appeal to religion as their authority, and
not only the lives of thousands, but the very existence
of the State is in jeopardy, no other weapons remain
to counteract the evil. Great evil, we fear, has

already been done. The Irish people, who are as much
attached to their religion as the English or Scotch, and
who have more regard for their spiritual guides, must
witness with dismay this unexpected insult. The
grant to Maynooth has been recognised by the
Crown, the Legislature, and the whole community,
for nearly half a century ; and when a proposition is
made to increase it by a sum not equal to the income
of the Archbishop of CANTERBURY, the Puseyites
ADd the Dissenters, men of the most opposite religious
opiLions, cordially unite to raise an outcry against
the rmfortunate Catholics. Mr. O'CONNELL, with all
his ingenuity, has never yet had such an argument
for repeal as this. Ireland has long been an object of
sympathy' to foreign nations—it has been regarded as
the great blot of our Constitution, alike admired for
its liberal principles and the harmony of the dif-
ferent points ; awl after Emancipation had been
conceded, and a generous spirit of conciliation was
displayed both by Whigs and Tories, a belief
began to prevail abroad that our religious animosities
were drawing to a close and justice was to be done
to the sister kingdom, when, to the joy of our enemies
and the sorrow of every friend of his country, in the

middle of the nineteenth cmitury, the spirit of per-
secution breaks forth with all the vigour of the dark
ages. This is news to the Legitimatists and Re-
publicans of France, and to still more dangerous ene-
mies, because more united—the States of the American
Republic. Are the lessons of past ages to be despised?
Will Sir R. INGLI3 and Mr. BINDLEY not look even

to the history of their own country, and know that
the Scots, who hated Episcopacy more than they
hated Popery, when Episcopacy was forced upon
them, now regard the Church of Eilgland and the
Church of Scotland as sisters, and that nearly
all the higher classes in the north profess that faith
against which their ancestors fought till thoy COll-
- ?

In the year 1845 we were really unprepared to 5e,.."
anything like the revival of those sanguinary wars,
waged in the name of religion, which have always
been the disgrace of humanity. We hatcl indulged
the hope that, the world of civilisation was nt length
awakened to the folly as well as wickedness, the im-
piety as well as the madness, of committting whole-
sale murder on large sections of the holm In family in
the name, and for the vindication of, the SUPREME
BEING, the fountain of all mercy as we 111 as of all ex-
istence. With the boasted advance of k rrowledge, the
diffusion of caucatim, and the increasir g participa-
tion of the people in almost every European
State in the control as well as t h a enjoyment
of political institutions, we woul4 have fain
hoped that the day was gone by r ct which men
could be moved from the plain and direct path of
socisl duty—the adaptation of tiv.ir tVi vn inherent,
natural, and private rights to that' r. lit of conduct
which is imposed by the exigencies Ili' b'ie common
weal—the interests of the public w Jlftwe---by the
artful excitements of selfish and des' igning Church-
men, bent really on the aggrandiseme nt of their own
order, though loudly professing to act only for " the
glory of GOD ! " As if persecution were of Gon,
or bigotry could be identified with the worship of
Divine Truth; as if the majesty ( rf DEITY could
regard, with favour, their exclusive IN tensions to an

accurate estimate of its nature and its requirements
who have steeped their dogmas in the blood of age
and infancy, of women as well as of men, of the
martyred recluse and the intrepid patriot. These
wars of religion, for some reason or other, appear to
have been always the most sanguinary and vindictive
in mountainous countries. The exterminating cru-
sades against the Albigenses and the Waldenses,
which the Romish Church waged in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries at Bezieres, at Minerba, Larvaur,
and other parts of Languedoc, Narbonne, Provence,
&c., were ominous prototypes of the fierce religious
feuds between Romanist and Wickliffite, Papist and
Huguenot, which for many centuries afterwards dis-
tracted Germany, France, England, Ireland, and
Scotland which led to the appalling catas-
trophe of St. Bartholomew's, and strewed the
purple heather of the wild hill-sides of our
Northern Highlands with the best blood of
the sincere and enthusiastic Covenanters. But since
the period of the accession of the House of Hanover
in this kingdom, and that of the Regency of Orleans
in France, this religious fury seems to have generally
vented itself through the safety-valves of angry dis-
cussion, and all the varied ebullitions of polemical
controversy. We make no account of the occasional
returns of the " mark of the beast," among the other
atrocities of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. These re-
turns, though tinctured, as indeed they had been in
the two Scottish Rebellions of 1715 and 1746, with the
old leaven of cruelty and fanaticism, were' mere inci-
dents to—not component features or necessary ele-
ments of—those political struggles. But the present
troubles in Switzerland, already stamped with the
unmistakeable and disastrous character of civil war-
fare—(of warfare among those mountain Cantons
which cradled the infant liberties of Europe, and
maintained their own precarious independence solely
by the union of the front which they presented to the
military despotisms arrayed, on all sides, against
them)—these troubles, we regret to perceive, bear
about them the frightful evidences of their pestilential
origin. They arise out of that antipathy of sects—
that odium theologicum—which is the bane of social
peace, the destruction of order, the scourge of hu-
manity, the implacable enemy of civilisation, the an-
tagonist or evil principle arrayed in immortal battle
against the essential good whose development is truth
and knowledge.
We are not undertaking to decide at present be-
tween the merits of the two causes ; that of the Roman
Catholic Cantons in its identification with the es-
tablishment and pretensions of the Jesuits, and that
of the Protestant Cantons, associated with the de-
mands for a larger infusion of the popular element
into all their municipal institut ions, &c., which are
vigorously advocated by the Swiss Radicals. We do
not know enough of their merits, were we inclined to
tender our opinion upon -them. "Non nostrum
tantas componere lites." But we look to the results.
Whether the men of Basle were the aggressors in the
first instance against the people of Lucerne, or the
people of Lucerne were driven, in a righteous self-
defence, to make battle on the men of Basle, we
may soon be in a position to determine. All that we at
present certainly knos, i 5, that the Roman Catholic
and Jesuit party of Lucerne has signalised its superior
power in a very severe and disastrous defeat of the
forces moved against it by its Protestant am) Radical
opponents. A vast number of dead were left on the
field of their conflict, and many prisoners were taken.
One of these, if not more, had already, according to
the announcements of the last advices received in
Paris from the scene of action, been tried, condemned,
and shot ! We yet hope and trust this account of the
fate of Dr. STEIGER is unfounded ;—that if it be un-
happily true, we do trust that the Great Powers of
Europe will reverse the policy of former and more bar-
barous ages, and boldly interpose their authoritative
mediation between the contending Cantons, on the
broad g•round that neither the Christianity, nor the
civilisation—the honour nor the repose—the public
feeling nor the public interests of Europe will tole-
rate war in any one of the Continental States on
grounds of purely theological differences.

The philosophy of crime is a branch of psycholo
gical inquiry which the events of every day are
forcing upon the reluctant consideration of the
British public. The deplorable, the fatal frequency
with which one crime of hitherto unparalleled atro-
city is succeeded by another of enormity so stupen-
dous as to throw its predecessor into shadow—not to
say comparative insignificance—must have some
specific, immediate cause. It cannot be, entirely, the
result of that old leaven of ignorance which is pro-
verbially said to be the mother of guilt. Neither the
person accused of the murder of his young and
accomplished and confiding wife, who was ac-
quitted, nor JOHN TAWELL, who, less fortu•
nate, has paid the righteous forfeit of his life
on a":public scaffold—nor the convicted felon who
was on Friday adjudged to undergo the same ignomi-
nious fate, for a most brutal and sanguinary assassi-
nation under circumstances that have possibly
a deeper base of horrors (happily unrevealed
to the tribunal before which he was brought), than
has existed in either of the other cases ; neither of
these offenders was an ignorant man. But, in truth,
to the disgrace of our country, our age, our civilisa-
tion, the intensity of crime seems to be governed
among us by the same law which, before M. Guizofs
accession to power, was so fatally demonstrated to
govern it in France. Not according to the crassitude
of ignorance, but rather to the degree and refine-
ment of education, is the ratio of the intensity of
crime. The better educated the delinquent, the more
shocking and elaborate the character of his crime.
The habits of self-possession and control, which are
superinduced by education, give to such criminals a
degree of moral constancy, an inflexibility of per-
sonal bearing, in the very face of their impending
and inevitable fate, which is productive of the worst
and most dangerous influences on the sympathies
and impressions of the bystanders, and of the people
generally. Is this occasioned b-si the creature-comfort
attentions of sub-sheriffs burstins into a little noto-
riety within the ring-fence of- county fame ;
or the overstrained respect of de,cerential turn-
keys, hoping one day to blossom into Cull-grown
gaolers, and even prison governors, through ex-
cellent things daily recorded of them by their fri:nds
among the penny-a-liner " gentlemen of the press ?"
Either men are apt to pity an offender of this sort by
reason of this stoical fortitude, although believing
him to be guilty; or this fortitude, despite all the
accumulated evidence which has been given to his
guilt, infects them with an indolent, uninquiring, but
not the less decided, impression of his innocence.
Reverting to the demeanour of many among the most
desperate offenders who have perished within the last
five years under the hands of the public executioner,
we are tempted, at first, to believe, either that death
has lost its terrors with " those who are appointed
to die ;" or the law, which was intended to secure
the inviolability of human life, that ordinary degree
of respect for its enactments, and that dread. of its
penalties which the mere prejudices of our social
habits seem to attach to other of its injunc-
tions, and to the punishment decreed for their
transgression, where the offence it is addressed to
is of a far more trivial character, and the
consequences of infringement infinitely less serious.
We have schemes of prison discipline, theories of pri-
soners' classification, systems of penitentiary treat-
ment, and model prisons without end, or stint, or
measure ; converted, organised, practised, enlorced,
built—at GOD knows what amount of charge to the
country. Where is the result of corresponding be-
nefit ? If the interior economy of our gaols be ma-
naged with a little more of decorum and decency than
heretofore, when every manacled "Macheath" was a
furtive hero in fetters—approachable, communicable,
conversable to and for all the world, and as much so
on the eve of execution as on the first day of his com-
mittal to Newgate ;—we do not see that beyond the
walls of these gaols crime has become less prurient in
its excesses, vice less scandalous in its publicity, or
convicted infamy less certain of securing, from the
more "enlightened" readers, who gloat over their
scores of columns of exclusive reports of executions,
or the better educated mob of eight-seers who as-
semble beneath the gallows-tree to witness them—a
less amount of morbid and meretricious compassion,
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