The Sun. — 1867-06-24 (London, England)

SPIRIT CIF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.  THE SATURDAY REVIEW" ON THE BIRMINGHAM RlOTS.—Since we last wrote, Birmingham has been for three clays under the alternate rule of mob law and military law. Two whole streets have been sacked, a Roman Catholic chapel has been attacked and seriously damaged ; it was rumoured cn Thursday night that an assault was contemplated on the Catholic cathedral ; the Mayor has had a stone thrown at his head, the Riot Act has been read in three different places, a policeman lies dangerously wounded in the hospital, above a hundred persons have been arrested, and " the greatest excitement and fear prevail" throughout the the town. And what, our readers may ask, is the meaning of all thin? Are the Birmingham people so exceptionally riotous, or are they commencing a Reform agitation when a Reform Bill exceeding all that' the most sanguine of agitators can have looked for is already making its way through Parliament ? Nothing of the kind. Birmingham certainly had a bad name for its revolutionary violence during the Reform agitation of 1832, and it was there that a Church and King mob in the last century pulled down Dr. Priestley's Unitarian chapel. In the present case, however, though we ecauntinroeltycaxgcuresee wthiethcothnedumctuyoofrtthheat ptehoep , moral,we must not legal, responsibility of what has occurred doe if does not belong in o t Birmingham he . The of c at zhcsuat bel notorious i i si agent mp l the of presencethe " London Protestant Electoral Union," William Murphy—an illiterate Irishman " with all the Popery knocked out of him," according to his own account—whose vocation it has been for some time fpoarstthteo rpouarmpoasbeouotf thinesuc ol tulini gt,r yi na s tah eh i rgerdo s s lecturer, s t and of mosthe rindecenty, ms asnunh jeeretths .e relln igione or esf paebeotut certainlya third all the Popery, if we may at all credit his own description of Popery, has not been knocked out of him ; for if ever there was a person on whom a double portion of the spirit of persecution rested, that person is Mr. Murphy, who exhibits his championship of " freedom of speech and freedom of conscience" by the fierce promulgation of sentiments whose only practical corollary would be the execution or the murder ofevery Papist. On Sunday last, in the course or his " passionate pilgrimage," Mr. Murphy came te( Birmingham to deliver a five weeks' course of lectures on the Errors of Romanism. He could hardly 6ve chosen a town in England where such an experfmeat as his would be more both of an impertinence and a blunder. There is at Birmingham a considerable Roman Catholic population, living on excellent terms with the rest of the inhabitants ; it is also, as our readers may be aware, the residence of Dr. Newman, and of a Roman Catholic bishop. The Town Hall is frequently used for Catholic meetings and bazaars, and the local charities are freely supported by Catholics and Protestants in common, and by collections made in their respective churches. It was only the other day that Dr. Manning, not unfairly, quoted Birmingham in illustration of the " silver age of controversy," when all bitterness of feeling between rival sectaries should be laid aside. Such is the place selected for his five weeks' course of antiPopery declamation by the hired agent of a proselytizing society, himself a renegade from the religion he comes to denounce, who signalised himself the other day by the publication of a pamphlet so filthily obscene that it was ordered to be seized and da sdt r wo yheod obpye utsh he smagistrates t opf r oNr)Vaogl av ne rdhaa bmyp ttohne, conciliatory announcement that " every Popish priest is a murderer, a cannibal, a liar, and a pick