THE IRISH REBELS. [From the Times, October 25.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 376, 10 March 1849, Page 3

THE IRISH REBELS. [From the Times, October 25.]

It has been resolved to spare the lives of the convicted, Irish rebels. This announcement, though really important, and calculated to raise some very grave questions, will be received as a matter of course by the public, so • entirely has it been anticipated, from the date of the rebellion itself, not to say earlier. For one reason or another no one was prepared to see Smith OBrien dying the death of a malefactor. The scaffold was either too ignominious, too dignified, or too grave, for so silly and contemptible an offender. He is not an assasin, like Thistlewoofl ; he is not a murderer like Greenacre ; he is not a patriot, like Wallace ; but simply a spoilt child who, partly from pique, partly from imitation, chose to* play at the game of rebellion. Vanity pointed out the only possible line in which Smith OBrien could hope to be distinguished. Without habits of business, without genius, without common sense, and, above all, without

temper, he courted a people who would not tr*ust him, a clergy who betrayed him, a party which would neither obey him nor manage itself — all in the vain expectation that he would step into the seat of O'Connell, and pass thence, perhaps, to the presidency of a Republic, if not to the traditionary throne of his ancestors. We have seen in this country and in the Senate, that he made himself the jest of the nation by his peevish "and pointless obstinacy. We say it with all seriousness, that the solemn execution of such a crack-brained mountebank would have shocked the national sentiment as much as if the dread ceremonial were performed on a monkey, or a fifth-form schoolboy. We say this of OBrien, ?but really the same applies to all. Their rebellion has been only a Christmas mummery a little out of season. We are not underrating the dangerous character of the crime, or the amount of mischief which these men might have done. The farce might have turned into a tragedy, and an ocean of blood might easily have been ~ shedtosatisfy the humour of a few silly boys. ThereV. are many things however to be taken into account in dealing with crime. The penalty is not merely according to the mischief. It has respect, also, to the capacity of the author. Even the counsel for the defence has told the jury that the prisoners did not know what they were saying or doing. In the case of Meagher, 'especially, the jury were entreated to suppose that this loquacious and headstrong stripling had learned a heap of common places about tyranny, patriotism, republicanism, and so forth, and then, in the casual excitement of " the crisis, had poured forth a set of philippics in the falsetto tone of a debating society, or in the unconsciousness of a mesmeiic trance. The jury very properly declined to make themselves responsible for a plea which would have given all the madcaps and fools in the empire special license to rebel. As long as the plea of idiotcy was not expressly urged, it was necessary to treat the prisoners as sane. The punishment, however, is another question, and one that admits of more considerations. Among those considerations ideas of fitness come in, and every body feels that wholesome discipline at Bermuda, or some other safe retirement, would suit Mr. Meagher's complaint much better than the gallows. In making these remarks on this particular case, and this knot of "delinquents, w.e are not committing ourselves to the question of capital punishment for political crimes. On the , contrary, we feel that a vast quantity of twaddle has been talked on this serious subject, We fear that the blood of innocent myriads will still flow through a foolish scrupulosity for the life of a rebel. If anybody deserves death on a scaffold, it is the man who arrays citizen against citizen, who stains the homely pavement with the blood of peaceful men, who opens endless quarrels, and throws the state into confusion, merely because he has a fancy for some theory of government -which has never been tried, or because, not being satisfied with his place in the existing system, he' hopes to better himself in a scramble. Such men are generally political gamblers. They are so imbued with the spirit of chance, and so apt to play double or quits in common affairs, that they look' to a street fight with more relish than horror, trusting that they will not be in the trifling per-centage whom the random bullets maim or kill. What terror then, is there for such minds ? The scaffold. Its tedious preliminaries, the trial, the suspense, the verdict, the condemned cell, the final leave-taking, the priest, the passing bell, the grim and brutal executioner, the detestable apparatus, the rope or the knife, the basket the coffin, the prison-yard grave, the place in the felon's calendar, the obloquy, — all these are things that tell even upon men ready any day to throw the dizzy die of revolution or the grave. The indulgence of a wanton and selfish ambition, at the certain cost of both guilty and innocent blood, is murder and something more. They who are guilty of such crimes deseive an ignominious death. When justice speaks unequivocally nothing should be allowed to contravene her decision, except a clear case for mercy or prudence. It may be a wise mercy, or a merciful prudence, to mitigate the punishment. But to forgive desperate, hard-headed, and hard-hearted offenders, who have long meditajed the crime, and who are certain to repeat it on the first opportunity, is neither mercy nor prudence. Justice it certainly is not. Let not the doom of the murderer be thought too much for the crime,, or too base for the rank of such men. We wish that one rebel should die rather than ten thousand men should follow his example, and, possibly, perish in his stead. It is childish and false to argue that the . Government of this country is itself founded on revolution ; and that the treason is only an ill name for resistance, and rebellion for defeat. No mere rebellion has ever permanently succeeded in this country. The great revolution of 1688, on which the present dynasty and government stand, was not a resistance to law and authority. It wts the

lawful resistance of the people to the rebellion of the King* The King was the traitor and .was punished accordingly. The law of this country defined his authority and duties as clearly as it did those of his subjects. He «et to work establishing a system beside affd ■above the laws. .If be was brought to no regular tribunal, if his punishment was devised with secrecy and effected by force, that was because the nature of the case allowed no other method of proceeding, nor "had the constitution supposed the case of an enemy in the person of the King. But no historical precedents can avail to prove that rebellion is not a crime. If it is guiltless, then what is to hinder men from continual rebellion, and why are we not to live iv a perpetual struggle for , change and scramble for power ? Why not j make a hell upon earth in the sacred name of liberty ? The law under which we live is our judge in these matters. There is no appeal from it. They who violate it do so at their peril. The only merit of rebellion is that it is a personal risk, and nothing can be so mean jand ridiculous as to wish to risk the country and secure ones-self. On whom properly fall the risks of a rebellion ? The rebel or the loyal man ? We may have a certain respect for the man who, from a strong sense of oppression, comes forward to resist the law with a halter round his neck. That halter goes ■some way to consecrate his cause. We cannot find this redeeming circumstance in the Irish rebellion. For a variety of reasons it was felt by all, by none more than the leaders themselves, that their own necks were insured, and that if the worst should come to the worst, Government would be merciful to those whom it would no longer fear. The prospect of a mitigated and very mild punishment has grown into such a certainty in the course of the trials, as to impart a'mock heroic air to the speeches of the prisoners before sentence. When a man has nothing more terrible in contemplation than a tranquil and perhaps studious life in a genial climate without the labour and anxiety inseparable from an honest and useful career, he can talk very gracefully and comfortably of the scaffold and the judgment, — of his country, and his judges, and other personages of the drama in which Be is acting. It was our painful duty for months to record and comment upon the falsehoods, the calumnies, the incentives to hatred, and the instigations to massacre, which Mr. T. Meagher freely cast like burning brands an the explosive medium of Irish temper. We see no truth or piety in a solemn reference of such villainous trash to the judgment seat of the Almighty ; but we see a good of hypocrisy in such an act when to all appearance the speaker is not so near that judgment-seat as he was six months ago, when surrounded by his dupes and nattered with the hopes of a Gallo-Irish Republic.