may be ascribed to the same causes which dimmed the lustre of such men as Grattan and Flood under similar circumstances of transplantation, I am aware that by far the greater portion belongs to his own personal insufficiency. Those rodomontades-that superlative fustian -that brainless bombast and crazy eloquence, at which Englishmen only laugh as they read it, Englishmen would cry out upon with contempt and disgust, if it were attempted to make them listen to it. O'Connell has sense enough to know this, therefore he has not attempted it; and being nothing if he is not bombastical, having nothing in him but fustian, rodomontade, and crazy eloquence, he has consequently become nothing in Parliament. The success of his plans for obtaining Catholic Emancipation, has proved a complete act of political suicide. In Dublin, he had a voice more potential than the Duke's; in London, he is reduced so low (can he fall lower?) as to be taken under the protection of Joseph Hume, while he lay whining, like any lady's lapdog, beneath the chastisement of Messrs North and Doherty. In vain he first tried to escape silently from his blustering accusations and pledges made in Ireland, touching the Borrisokane trials, and the Doneraile conspiracy. In vain he next sought to play the magnanimous hero, by generously offering to bury all past transactions in oblivion.

"I came

thoroughly done to Mr Doherty, without quoting a few passages from other parts of his speech on the night referred to.

"The honourable and learned gentleman," said he, " told us, that on no one evening-on no one moment, would he be absent from his place or from this House. But, sir, there was a very important evening on which he was not only not in his place, but not in this House; and this, sir, was the evening on which the honourable member for Mallow gave notice that he would move for certain papers respecting those persons who were tried for the Doneraile conspiracy. Now, sir, to all who have lived in Ireland, to all who have observed what has taken place there for many months past, it must have been a matter of notoriety, that THIS was a question to which the honourable and learned gentleman stood pledged; and it was an occasion on which I fully and anxiously expected to meet the learned gentleman face to face, -because he had made the strongest allegations against my personal character, and (highly as I do, and, I trust, ever shall, regard my personal character) because he had done that which affects me still more nearly— he had brought a charge against the pure administration of justice in Ireland. I LOOKED for him, but he was not to be found!"-" I am not, sir, in the habit of entertaining suspicions respecting the conduct of honourable members of this House; but when I clearly observe a man meditating a retreat, and if he at the same time happen to be a lawyer, applying to his object all the cunning and dexterity supposed peculiar to his profession, I anxiously watch every stone he lays down to construct the bridge on which he intends to run away." "-" The learned gentleman has declared he has two distinct charges to make against me. First, that I have wielded the powers of my office for the protection of the guilty. The next and deeper charge is, that I, in concert with others, as honourable and high-minded gentlemen as ever belonged to the legal profession, formed a league to pro

↑ Sue Debate, May 11th,

duce the conviction of innocent men, while even the conspirators were in possession of documents to prove the paying of the witnesses we had to bring forward on the part of the crown. These are the charges; and I admit the facts on which the honourable and learned gentleman founds his allegations. I will not trouble him about documents; and more, I would suffer him, unanswered and unheeded, to make any assertions respecting me he pleases, if my own character alone were implicated. I would not trouble the House with any defence; for there is something here that tells me there is not a second gentleman present who would believe it possible that I could be guilty of the conduct attributed to me by the honourable and learned gentleman.-(Loud and long-continued cheering.)-He has unsparingly brought charges against me in taverns-in the streets-before the rabble-(Loud cheers)-before those amongst whom I go, not as a volunteer, but as the delegate of the Lord Lieutenant, with important and sacred duties to perform, which, I trust, I do perform, faithfully, fearlessly, and, notwithstanding the assertion of the learned gentleman, mercifully.-(Continued cheers.)-I trust, that whenever the learned gentleman shall find courage to bring forward his motion, I shall be able to prove the utter falsehood of his daily and ordinary slanders."

How Mr O'Connell made good his allegations against the Solicitor-General-how he redeemed his tavernmade pledges, when face to face with the man he so grossly accused in his absence-how the whole affair dwindled down into a tame and spiritless attack upon the constabulary force, and upon the system under which the alleged misconduct had been committed-how, in fact, the swaggering denunciations which rolled from his lips in Ireland, “like a rattling peal of thunder," died upon his tongue in England like a lover's whisper, a soft murmuring complaint, meek and gentle as the voice of cooing doves -are abundantly known to all who have heard, and to all who have read, the debate of the following evening (May 12.) But before I notice that debate, let me advert to one part of Mr O'Connell's reply this

evening, in answer to the manly and indignant scorn of the individual he had assailed. "I will not be debarred from doing my duty fearlessly by any man, however he may be supported. In saying 'fearlessly,' I allude not to that species of courage which is recognised in a court of honour, and of which I know nothing. There is blood upon this hand-I regret it deeply-and he knows it. He knows that I have a vow in Heaven, else he would not have ventured to address me in such language, or to presume that his insolence should go unpunished. He knows it-and there is not one man in the circle of our acquaintance but knows it also; and knows, at the same time, that, but for that vow, he dared not address me as he has done."

This mixture of balderdash and swagger was received by the House with ridicule and disgust; and it deserved to be so received, for it was, in effect, imputing rank cowardice to Mr Doherty, by asserting that he had assumed a tone towards him, Mr O'Connell, which he would not have dared to do, except that he knew Mr O'Connell does not fight; a tone which, of course, he would not assume towards any other member of the House who does fight. Now, I am far from wishing to question the personal courage of the hon. member for Clare; I will not cast the shadow of a doubt upon the sincerity of his regret, that his hands are stained with the blood of a fellow-creature ; every man must recall with horror such a calamity, even under the most aggravated circumstances in which satisfaction is sought or given for an injury, and infinitely more so, where some frivolous altercation may have led to the catastrophe. I do not condemn his Heaven-registered vow never again to engage in the strife of blood. All these things are matters of personal feeling and supposed moral duty, which concern Mr O'Connell himself, and no one else. But this I must be allowed to say, that a man who, by a voluntary act of his own, puts himself out of the condition of responsibility for his words and actions, other than by an appeal such as he knows will not, and sometimes cannot, be made-(I allude to an appeal before a legal tribunal)who intrenches himself behind

"vow in Heaven," while he proclaims on earth that he abjures a practice which all other men, moving in a certain sphere of society, recognise-I do say, that a person so circumstanced, and by his own free choice, not by any necessity which he deplores he cannot overrule, would, were all his feelings of the right kind, abstain, with singular delicacy and caution, from word or deed which involved consequences he knew he was not prepared to meet. He would do this, no less from a general sense of propriety and of justice towards indivit duals, than from a natural repugnance to incur the suspicion that he was playing the secure game of a privileged bully. In ordinary life, a man who wears a rancorous heart, and carries a foul tongue, with a craven spirit, is apt to be upon familiar terms with canes, horsewhips, and neat's leather. Mr O'Connell stands absolved from the last, not altogether so as to the other two; but his "vow in Heaven" shuts out from redress those he wrongs or insults, as effectually as a white feather would; and, therefore-but, as Hamlet says, "give every man his deserts, and who among us shall escape whipping?"-much less-Order! order! Chair! chair!!

The honourable member for Clare is not a fool; consequently, he may derive a useful lesson from the memorable castigation of Mr Doherty and Mr North; for it is only "your dull ass that will not mend his pace with beating." But poor Mr Hume! I never saw the worthy calculator so irate. He "fretted like gummed velvet;" and I was really apprehensive, when he first rose, that he intended to strip and challenge both the Solicitor-General and his learned friend to a bout at fisticuffs, upon the schoolboy principle of one down, and the other come on. No turkey-cock, disputing the gate of a farm-yard, ever looked so red in the gills. And then, like Audrey, who thanked" the gods she was not poetical," he thanked God he " was not a learned gentleman;" thinking, I suppose, with Mr Dogberry, to be well favoured is the gift of fortune, but that to read and write comes by nature."- -"I am surprised," said Mr Hume," that the pompous and almost insolent speech of the honourable member who has just sitten down (Mr North) should

have been received with cheers by the ministers. The honourable and learned member has applied strong epithets to the honourable member for Clare. What matters it whether the honourable member is a big lion, a puny dog, or any other four-footed animal?-(Immense laughter.)I hope the honourable member for Clare will not shape his conduct by the advice of the honourable and learned member, although he swells like the bull and the frog, bursting with self-importance.-(The roars of laughter might have been heard at Charing Cross.)-What a man to read a lecture! It was like the mewing of a kitten. The honourable member for Clare has not lost his teeth; he can bite still; and when the time comes, I will halloo him on," and so forth, down to his concluding boast, that his "honourable and learned friend had no occasion to be afraid of those two honourable and learned gentlemen; no, nor of ten like them." But the most edifying part of the honourable member's speech was that wherein he came to Mr O'Connell's assistance, to help him out of the dilemma of holding a different language on different sides of the channel. Mr Doherty, in reference to this, had said, "I did expect (in conformity with the custom recognised among gentlemen, that what a man says in one place, he is ready to say in another) that the honourable gentleman would have taken the first opportunity in this House, either of denying those words and disclaiming them, or of repeating in this House is objections to the sCOUNDREL ARISTOCRACY, the authors of the subletting act, and boldly call upon the people to stand forward in their own defence." Mr Hume justified the conduct of Mr O'Connell by a felicitous illustration borrowed from himself." Is it to be supposed," said he, "that because I am a mem ber of Parliament, and choose to go to the Crown and Anchor tavern, and make observations there upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or it may be upon his Majesty's AttorneyGeneral-is it to be supposed, I say, that I am compelled to repeat the same observations here? I say, that if I make use of observations out of doors, let them call me to account for them." (Mr Hume has no vow in

heaven.) "I admit that I say many things in this House which I should be afraid to say out of this House, knowing that there is such a thing in existence as an Attorney-General, and that it is possible for him to find pliant juries. I may be taunted with cowardice, as I have been already, for this declaration. But my doctrine is, that in these cases discretion is the better part of valour; and then, how foolish should I look, if I were to find myself laid by the heels in Newgate, owing to the interposition

of the Attorney-General!" It is impossible for me to say what difference being in Newgate might make in the foolish appearance of the honourable member; but I should not think it could be much-certainly not so much as he himself seems to imagine. I should like to hear Mr O'Connell's opinion upon this point, and whether he feels himself fortified in his own practice by the knowledge he now has of the doctrines of the honourable member for Montrose.

We have had the usual annual complaints during the last month, of the great arrears of public business, and of the extreme difficulty-not to say impossibility-of getting through all that ought to be got through. Mr Hume complains that he was sometimes kept out of bed twenty-one hours at a stretch; and therefore, he proposed Parliament should meet in November, that they might have the full benefit of the long nights. Mr Huskisson suggested that honourable members should not make speeches upon presenting petitions, but reserve their eloquence for the discussion of the several measures to which they respectively referred. Sir Robert Peel admitted the increasing difficulty of getting through the public business, and thought, if the House sat the whole year round, they would still be short of time, unless they devoted more hours than merely from seven to twelve each evening to the dispatch of public business. Now, it is quite certain, that not only Sir Robert himself and his right honourable friend, but Mr Hume, and every member then present, knew the evil lay in the scarcity of SILENT MEMBERS. There are not more than twelve good speakers in the whole House of Commons, and not one orator in the whole twelve. I will not name the twelve, for it would be invidious; so every man is at liberty to put himself down upon the list. But though there are only twelve good speakers, there are four hundred talkers-four hundred members who, one night with another, let off a speech, varying in duration from five

minutes to half an hour, If these four hundred talkers could be induced to become listeners, and to content themselves merely with honestly voting; and if the dozen good speakers would resolve to say nothing more than was absolutely necessary upon a subject, public business would be got through easily enough; members would get to their beds in good time, to the infinite comfort of their wives and families, and the saving of their own health; and five months out of the seven would be abundantly sufficient for all purposes of public good. How much unnecessary talking there is may be guessed at by the following calculation. It has been computed, and pretty accurately, from the full notes of a short-hand writer, that a man speaking, not rapidly, but fluently, speaks from five to six columns of a newspaper in an hour. When, therefore, the House sits from four o'clock in the afternoon till three the next morning, or eleven hours, it speaks above sixty columns, or more than five whole newspapers of twenty columns each! Only ima gine Mr Hume, for example, speaking three hours, or talking a Morning-Chronicle-ful in one speech! The papers, however, rarely give more than twelve columns to the debate, or one-fifth of what is said; and I put it to any one who has read twelve columns of a debate, whether he could not have spared one-half of that quantity even, and been the wiser with the other half? No, no, it is in the immoderate prating, the eternal talking of small thinkers, and

not the meeting of Parliament in February instead of November, that makes the session too short for the business that has to be done, and of necessity occasions either its total omission, or what is worse for the country, its crude, hurried, and indigested performance. The parent of this evil, as I formerly mentioned, is the practice of reporting the debates. I have myself heard members congratulating themselves that the Chronicle, or Times, or Morning Post, had given them one, two, or three columns, as the case might be, with as keen a satisfaction as if they were paid so much a-line for their speeches. I remember a conversation I once had with the late Brinsley Sheridan upon this subject. "Sir," said he, "I'll give you an instance of the influence which reporting our debates has upon the length

of them. In the early part of the Regency, a notice of motion was given," (I think he said by Mr Stuart Wortley,)" respecting the then Princess of Wales. The evening came. The House was crowded, even to the side galleries, and below the bar. We had all ordered our carriages and servants at one o'clock in the morning, expecting a long, animated, and important debate. Before the motion came on, however, some member on the ministerial side moved the standing order for the exclusion of strangers. What was the consequence? We had nobody but ourselves to talk to; and we soon grew tired of that. The debate was all over, and the house adjourned, by eight o'clock; and I recollect I was in time, after it, for half-price at Drury Lane theatre."

In one of my silent speeches, (on the 12th of February,) I observed, that "the most edifying alacrity is always displayed in paring down a salary of L.500 a-year; but one of L.5000 a-year, the lean hand of economy approaches not." Sir James Graham has since endeavoured to abolish this distinction, by his motion for an account of all salaries, profits, pay, fees, and emoluments, whether civil or military, from the 6th January, 1829, to the 5th January, 1830, held and enjoyed by each of the members of his Majesty's most honourable privy council, specifying with each name, the total amount received by each individual, and distinguishing the various services from which the same is derived." support of this motion, the honourable baronet adduced some striking proofs, not merely of the justice and decency of retrenchment in the present state of the country, but of the mockery, as well as injustice and cruelty, of making that little less, which the subaltern officers of government, the working bees of the hive, get for their labour. Nor is this all. Why make, or attempt to make, the small fry of pensioners and sinecurists give back their hundreds, when the leviathans are not made to disgorge their thousands? A clerk of the customs, for example, is su

In

perannuated upon L.750 for important services; but though superannuated for the customs, though too old and feeble for his duty there, he is brisk and vigorous enough to be an agent for Ceylon, at a salary of L.1200 a-year. This is bad. Granted. But it is worse to see Lord Cathcart holding a pension of L.2000 a-year, together with the sinecure of viceadmiral of Scotland, worth from two to three thousand a-year, besides all his military allowances as a general officer, and colonel of a regiment. There are other minor cases equally bad; but while they are countenanced by those which are much worse, it would be paltry to single out the merely bad for reform. The first Lord of the Admiralty, for instance, has L.5000 a-year, (a salary augmented during the war prices,) besides holding a sinecure of L.3150 a-year in Scotland, (keeper of the Privy Seal,) while, by order of the Lords of the Admiralty, every unhappy half-pay lieutenant and subaltern officer, who goes to receive his pay, is enjoined to take the following oath: "I do solemnly swear, that I am not in holy orders-that I have not had, from (blank day) to (blank day) any employment, civil or military, under his Majesty, or the colonies, or any place beyond seas, or any other government," &c. So, in the milk