The Sun. — 1846-04-24 (London, England)

BRIAN SEERY." These are the terms used by this parish priest in a letter addressed to a Mr. DEVITT, of Limerick, thanking him for the receipt of 6/. 3s. 3d. towards this patriotic pespose. But that is the least striking part of the letter, and we therefore give what follows, to show the dangerous spirit which animates certain of the lower Irish clergy, and the determination to destroy all community and all friendship between Protestants and Catholics. The letter is published in a Dublin paper of Liberal politics, with the words marked in italics as we give them, the underlining, we presume, having been made by SAVAGE himself:—" SEERY was a man of the best character. Six respectable Catholic witnesses proved at the trial that he aas nine miles from Rochefort at the hour the attack was made on Sir FRANCIS HoPtaNs. The man who actually fired the shot at Sir FRANCIS openly declared his own guilt, but a Protestant baronet having sworn—no doubt conscientiously—that SEERY was the man, a Protestant jury believed the Protestant baronet, an outcry is raised, hang him, hang him,' and he was hanged, having declared with his dying breath that he had neither act, nor part, nor hnowledge of the crime." Here we have the loose and unauthenticated saying of the " man who actually fired the shot," according to this priest, placed in the balance with the oath of a gentleman highly respected in the neighbourhood, and the solemn verdict of Welt e jurors. It is a well known fact, that ninety-nine out of a hundred of these self-accusations of murder are without the slightest foundation, and put forth solely for some temporary purpose, and it is equally well known that one-half of the persons convicted of capital offences on the clearest evidence deqlare their innocence to the last. But that is a matter of trivial importance compared with the awful consequences of the principles upheld by this Catholic priest, for he distinctly tells the people that SEERY was innocent, that the Protestant baronet had declared a falsehood on oath, and that the Protestant jury were guilty of murder, in condernnihg a man of the " best character," on the evidence of one Protestant, distinctly contradicted by " six respectable Catholic witnesses." According to SAVAGE, no Protestant witness and no Protestant jury ought ever to be believed or trusted when a Catholic is tried. Need we wonder that so many assassins escape, or that so many Protestants are murdered, when we find such doctrines laid down by a teacher of the people, who, it appears from the accounts of the execution, had the :lower classes of the district around Mullingar so completely under his control, that the whole of them stayed away in order to mark their conviction that this assassin was a "martyr?" A martyr to what cause ? A martyr to the patriotic and Christian principle of expelling Protestants from Tipperary by assassination. Need we wonder that Catholic peasants when murder is committed in broad daylight " stand laughing bye" and that not one of them will bear evidence against t another for crimes the most disgraceful to human nature, perpetrated against a fellow-creature, merely be cause he is a Protestant, and claims the privileg • • oecup)ing Lis own land? Is the important business oot the session to be stopped because a few Irish Members are opposed to any legislative Act fur abating such a ruinous and barbarous system?  A correspondence, which is just now published Mayor of NOTTINGHAM, and which consists of by the halHozen communications between himself', as aotne chairman of Lord LINCOLN'S election committee, and M T. B. T. HILDYARD, induces us to make some retrospective remarks concerning the recent contest for the representation of South Nottingham. The circumstances to which this correspondence bears reference, and to which our observations are here applied, are simple enough in tb.wselves ; and the deductions which must necessarily be drawn from them are so obvious, that we shall content ourselves with a mere narration of them, unaccompanied by any indig