A Correct Account of the Horrible Occurrence Which Took Place at a Public-House in St. James's Market / In Which It Was Discovered That the Right Rev. Father in God the Bishop of Clogher, Lately Transferred From the Bishopric of Ferns, Was a Principal Actor With a Common Soldier! To the Disgrace Not Only of the Cloth, to Which He Was Attached, and as a Commissioner of the Board of Education, and a Dictator of Public Morals, but as a Member of That Nation Which Gave Him Birth!

by Anonymous

The Morning Herald and the British Press gave nearly the words of the Observe but inserted the article in as obscure a manner as possible. The Morning Post curtails the article of the Observer to about a fifth part, and puts it at the bottom of a column, in a part of the paper likely to escape observation. The Morning Advertiser curtails the article still further; bestows no expression of horror upon the deed, and merely says, “That a person of consideration and a soldier were taken to the office, charged with a gross misdemeanor.”

We now come to the Morning Chronicle, which fills four columns of its paper with Mr. Hume’s nonsensical resolutions about the National Debt and the operations of the Sinking Fund; but which can spare only just seven lines, put in the obscurest part of all of the paper, to say that “two persons” (and not a word about a bishop!) were discovered in a public house, and so forth. But we will take the very words of the Chronicle. They will not fill up much space; and they will enable the public to judge of the real character of this paper.

“A Sunday paper states that on Friday night, two persons were discovered at public-house in St. James’s market, in a situation which left no doubt respecting the nature of their crime, that they were taken to watch-house, and brought to a Police-office on Saturday morning, when it appeared from papers in the pocket of the one, that he filled a high station, which we will not name. The magistrate is said to have admitted them to bail.”

“Two persons!” And the Chronicle could find out nothing but two persons; though it had read the Observer as well as we, and though it would not take us much to prove that the Chronicle must have heard all about the matter on Saturday night, seeing that an Evening paper in the neighbourhood had the intelligence actually composed and going to the press on Saturday afternoon, and had stopped the press to cancel the matter! From what motive this cancelling took place, let the indignant public judge. The Chronicle, had this been an affair between two persons in common life, would have rung us such a peel upon the subject as would not soon have been forgotten; and let our readers judge how powerful must have been the motive that could have induced it, not only to abridge the article of the Observer, not only to tell less than it had read in the Sunday paper; not only to cram this important matter into seven lines and hide it at the bottom of a column; not only this, but to talk of two persons; not to name a Bishop or a soldier at all; and to be guilty of the infamous injustice of imputing by implication the crime indiscriminately to all classes of Englishmen!

Let us now come to the elect of the respectable part of the press: John Bull; the New Times; and the OLD TIMES. We have already told our readers, that these were all of the same stamp; and now we shall see. John Bull is quite silent. John came out very late on Sunday morning. There was a rumour on float on Saturday, and we have already related, that an evening paper had actually got the matter set up; that is to say the types composed for printing an account of the transaction! and that it was induced to stop the press, take out the article, scatter the types and put in another article in its stead, probably an article from the Vice Society or from some Bible Society. What happened to John Bull we do not know precisely; but something seems to have seized John all at once early on Sunday morning, or in the middle of the night before. For, we sent to get John’s paper, on Sunday morning about ten o’clock; and the vender of the paper informed us, that it would not come out till very late, because an accident had happened to the machinery in the office. This was the story told to those who went to buy the paper! Yes, our readers will see that John’s machinery had been operated upon by something perfectly accidental, and yet of a very potent nature.

Now. we come to that brace of brothers, the New and Old Times. Perfectly silent both! Not a single word upon the subject,—not a single allusion to it, though the Old one has actually put forth this day two papers, which it sells for one, in pursuance of those desperate efforts which it is making to sustain itself. It has two papers, measuring nearly two feet square, containing 16 square feet of print, one and a half square foot of which consists of an advertisement of the Irish Subscription. In the whole of this 16 feet of square print, room was not to be found for the insertion of one single word about the Bishop and the Soldier! not a single allusion. Nothing that could let its readers suppose that such a thing had taken place. The cause of this need not be stated to our readers: they will all see the cause at once; and they will all despise the man that they shall in future see with one of these papers in his hand.

We could here, if we had time, refer to the statement of Dr. O’Meara, or rather to what the Times has said about the bribe of £3000, the evidence of which Buonaparte found amongst the papers of the run-away Bourbon. We must leave that to be noticed another time; and in the mean time request our readers to pay attention to the facts which we have now stated, never forgetting the sentences on Joseph Swan, Mr. Carlile, his wife and sister. We have said before and we repeat it, that the THING is now fairly on its trail. In former cases, there may have been doubts and difficulties in the way; there may have been that which blinded and deluded honest and well-meaning people; but here the matter lies in a nut-shell. Here the question is too plain to admit of being obscured and too monstrous to admit of palliation. The time cannot be distant when the decision shall take place; and in the mean time we beseech our readers to keep watch; to look at the conduct of all these papers, to contrast that conduct with that which they shewed in the case of the Vere-street gang, to compare their present conduct; their present silence with the unsparing, but just and laudable abhorrence which they then expressed: our readers are requested to make this comparison, at the same time that they make a comparison between the rank and riches of the party now offending, and the obscurity and comparative poverty of the parties then offending. They are requested to do this, and we are sure they will exclaim with us, that this “respectable part of the press” is surely the most infamous thing that ever existed in any country in the world.

We must quit the subject for the present; but not without assuring our readers that, strong as corruption is, great as are her powers of smothering and stifling, she will not have it in her power to stifle the truth in this case. We care not how the THING acts. Let the THING do what it pleases; and let the public watch it; look sharp after the movements of the THING, and see what it will do. Thus we close our remarks for the present, leaving the public, as we trust it will, to congratulate itself on the existence of one newspaper that cannot be hushed into silence.

We cannot dismiss this article without observing that it is with great and unfeigned sorrow that we have to record this degradation of rank and dignity; but the way to uphold rank and dignity is not to be guilty of such base partiality as that which we have noticed; and the best way is to single out, as we have done, the guilty, and leave it to be supposed that it forms an exception to the mass.

FINIS.