he arose. No man, surely, ever less deserved to be heard, -no man ever obtained from the Speaker's peculiar selection such prompt opportunities of delivering his sentiments. We believe the Speaker to be far too honourable to be conscious of his tendency to be partial, which we state, indeed, with reluctance, and after the most scrupulous and dispassionate practical observation;—but a warm partizan is partial, despite himself, and Power winks at its own abuses. We should be very happy if this page, at least, liberal though it be, should ever "catch the Speaker's eye;" and we are quite sure that his attention once aroused to self-examination, his integrity would hereafter keep a strict watch over his inclinations.

One source of undeniable congratulation arises, at least, from the Speaker's re-election, we have saved 4000l. a year. We think, indeed, that the sum might have been saved otherwise, without an equal sacrifice of the dignity of Ministers, the services of friends, and the harmony which, to say the least of it, would be decorous between the Legislative Assembly and its President. Still, however, it is saved! We rate this benefit much higher than the "Chronicle" does: we hug to our heart of hearts that consolatory thought,-four thousand pounds are saved! Oh! how Providence directs our affairs for the best! All this intrigue and counter-intrigue, this drawing back and coming forward, this final resignation and speedy return, this bowing and scraping across the Cabinet,this plotting of one party counteracted by the manœuvre of another, this reforming majority, chosen by Reformers, making their first act the election of an Anti-Reformer;-all these various and singular tricks of the time have produced, at least, by a miracle hitherto unknown in the annals of Courts and the shuffling of parties,—a saving of four thousand pounds! In vain does the "Chronicle" say we could have spared the saving; we could not have spared a single stiver. Spendthrift Governments make a miser people. Millions upon millions are we taxed; it is very true; but we exclaim, with the French Minister-Four thousand pounds!" they are the taxes of a village!"

THE POLITICIAN.

THE LAST PETITION FROM THE IRISH PEOPLE TO THE ENGLISH MINISTERS AND THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

ERE yet that Bill has passed which takes from a people oppressed with grievances the right to petition, suffer us respectfully to address you,-not in armed numbersnot in nightly associations,-but through this subtle and bodiless medium; forcing our complaints upon you, not obtruding ourselves; somewhat, as it were, forestalling what you are about to make us: Vox, et præterea nihil,

-a voice, and nothing more; but a voice of wailing and of dread, whose warning may perhaps haunt you years hence, when you may be desirous of reviving that which you are about to destroy-the affection and confidence of a whole nation. The man who passed his life in the pursuit of his own shadow, was wise, compared to you! You are about to engage in a chase yet more fruitless. The law is the shadow of Power-the Co-operation of the people is the substance. You are about to divide the two, so naturally inseparable; and the utmost you can do with the shadow is, to strive henceforth to unite it to the body from which you now so wantonly divorce it!

Let us state our complaints to you. For many centuries we have been oppressed and impoverished; a large proportion of us are ignorant and breadless. Placed under your care, it was for you to educate and feed us. These duties have been neglected: injuries have accumulated-angry passions been inflamed; and, instead of revering a master, we have learned to tremble-but tremble frowningly-at a tyrant. This is to be lamented; but whose is the fault? The fault is not with us. Education forms the child,-legislation forms a people.

Your legislation makes the crime, and then punishes it: it is at once the first seducer and the king's evidence!

But crimes abound in Ireland; you must punish the criminals. No matter by whom the criminals were made, it is clear that they must not carry destruction to the innocent. We allow this. We see these predatory associations of reckless and wretched men, with the same terror that inspires you. We pity them, perhaps, more than you; for we see the temptation-you only the crime; but we are equally willing to condemn. The Whitefeet and the Rockites must be put down. You must snatch the knife and the brand out of the ruthless hands of men who are joined together for the purposes of plunder and revenge: nay, we ask you to assist us in this; for the guilt of these criminals stands between us and justice; it has been the excuse for the delay of redress and the perpetuity of abuse. When we have murmured against tithes, we have been answered by laws against Whiteboys. Whatever our distress-our poverty -our wrongs,-still, while these banditti exist, we are told that the honest cannot be relieved, because the guilty must be punished. Alas, what logic! But let it pass: we will not pause to arraign it. These offenders, then, stand between us and justice: we are more anxious than you that they should be punished—that they should be exterminated. Make laws against them,-crush, destroy them. In this, Ireland will co-operate with the law;in this, the Political Unions—the Agitators-O'Connell himself-will assist you. Pass even extraordinary laws against the guilty; but do not suspend all law for the guiltless. This is what you are about to do. Let us consider.

In the first place, PETITIONERS are not guilty. You acknowledge that we, the unoffending part of us, have many sufferings that we have some wrongs. How can we represent those sufferings to you, or express those wrongs? By petitions-by petitions alone! You have taken away from us all other power. We have no Legislature of our own: the Aristocracy-are Protestant-the Magistracy—are biassed against us; for religion with us has been, as it always will be where the Church is of one

persuasion, and the people of another, the parent of hatred not of love. In our own natural protectors, years of struggle and of passion have made us behold our relentless foes. We have, then, no guardians-no Court of Appeal but your Legislature. To you respectfully we would come with our wrongs; and you are now about to cut off from us that appeal. You confess the wrongs, but you will not allow them vent;-YOU ARE GOING TO TAKE AWAY FROM US THE RIGHT TO PETITION. Does this law, -we ask you humbly,-does this law touch the guilty alone?-does it touch the guilty at all?-does it touch the Whiteboy and the robber? No; it falls upon the guiltless, it falls upon the assailed, not the assailer,— it falls upon the farmer, the peasant, the trader, the clergy themselves. The Whiteboy does not petition; he has gone beyond that stage of complaint. The honest man. petitions, not the robber: it is not to your peaceful halls that banded marauders carry their complaints. Will you leave us no other appeal but theirs? Have we no choice between silence and the sword? Pause, then-pause, we entreat you. Discriminate between complaint and aggression: do not stifle the voice while you bind the hand. No complaint is so dangerous as that which may not speak; no wrongs are dangerous while they have a vent. You see, then, that the law which takes away the right to petition does not afflict the guilty alone;-it afflicts the innocent alone.

Pass we to your other enactments.-You propose to institute a Court-Martial in the place of a Court of Law.

Will your Court-Martial punish only the guilty?We beg to refer you to former times, when the Insurrection Act-when the Military Law was in force. In that unhappy and awful day, were the guilty alone punished?-Do not all men who are cursed by the remembrance of those measures, recall them with a secret shudder?-Yes; even those who supported those harsh and vindictive decrees, do not support their effectsthey acknowledge that the general state of society, thus robbed of its simplest laws, was that of suspicion and terror-of spies and informers of a general confusion of innocence and guilt. I call upon the English people to imagine a whole county-its legal courts numbed and

silenced-armed men, schooled in the haughty aristocracies of discipline, sitting in judgment upon offences of insubordination-Ensigns under age induing wisdom with a uniform-and Lieutenants, summoned from the grave occupations of flute-playing and billiards, to bear upon their shoulders the responsibility of epauletted justice! You tell us, these gallant men are impartial— that they are strangers in the land-that they know not one party or the other, Protestant or Catholic, Orangeman or Whiteboy:-that they are thus untinctured by local prejudices, and have no previous prepossessions to bias the weights of justice. False persuasion!-Do not the Military, wherever they are quartered, mix with the provincial gentry?--do they not necessarily associate with the Orange Protestant and the partial Magistrate? -do they not inevitably take their notions of the country, which they know not themselves, from the reports of those with whom they alone mix?-"Respectable men, our informants," they will say to each other, "who can have no interest in distorting facts or irritating their dependents." Yet these men, respectable though they be, are so partial, that even you yourselves confess the partiality, and suspend their functions partly on that very account. In vain, then, you say that these new judges will be free from bias;--they will take the bias from the very men we most dread, because, by the rites of hospitality and the custom of our Irish courtesies, it is with those very men they come the most into contact, and by them are the most influenced. They are only the Representatives of the Magistrates, but armed with a sterner power. They are Magistrates, but with swords in their hands and soldiers by their side. Summary justice!— who ever before heard that phrase used against a people? -summary justice, dealt out by wholesale, is but another expression for undeliberating despotism! But the office of the Military is not confined to Adjudication:— recollect that they are to assist the Magistrate in quelling disturbances they are to attack to-day the very men they may judge to-morrow!-They are thus to be at once plaintiff and accuser. And is this indeed to be called an impartial Tribunal?--Men, reeking with the heated passions of an armed struggle, are suddenly to be