18 OCTOBER 1828, Page 1

The Government has assumed a more commanding attitude and a

bolder tone in Ireland. The military force is augmented, accord- ing to some exaggerated estimates, to forty thousand men ; and the reputed strongholds of Orangeism in the North, as well as the pure Catholic districts, have been garrisoned by infantry and artillery. It is understood that the Government is determined to do equal jus- tice to all parties, and to repress with firmness the turbulent and illegal acts of either Protestant or Catholic.

The actual agitation is become most noisy at least on the side of the Brunswickers. In the capital, Trinity College, disregarding its statutes, has formed to itself a political club, under the as- cendant banner ; and the Dublin Guild of merchants have resolved to petition the Head of the Church against any new concession to the Romanists, and the Parliament to take from them the elective franchise which they already possess. On the other side, there have been a few provincial meetings, for the establishment of " liberal clubs." At one of them, (in Maryborough) the Catholic priests manifested hostility to all such institutions, even in their own favour : they associated them, in imagination, with the infidel and revolutionary clubs of France, and would not avail themselves, like their brethren the Jesuits, of doubtful means to accomplish a desirable end.