TIIE COMPLAINT AGAINST SIR RICHARD BIRNIE.
TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A FRACAS took place last week at Bow Street between the two Vestry Clerks of St. Paul's, Covent Garden ; who, by their double election, divide the Parish as the Pope and Anti-Pope once did Europe. Sir Richard Birnie caused Mr. Corder, the Clerk he does not favour, to be turned out of the office. Of this violence Mr. Corder complained in a letter to the Home Secretary. Mr. Peel teceived a deput lion of the parishioners on the subject, and promised there should be no recurrence of similar conduct. Mr. Corder commences his letter to Mr. Peel with this lofty sentence- " :is one of a nation lon2 famed fir the excellency of its institutions, and the impartial administration of its laws, I rentare to address you."
He speaks of " his Wor,hip being pleased to indulge in very coarse expressions, with language very unbecoming a gentleman, and with which he trusts the seat of justice was never before sul- lied." When the Bench, says he, is " made the seat of partizan- ship—when laws, justice, morals and decency are unblushingly violated, it is due to outraged society and offended justice," &c.
that he should write a letter to Mr. Peel.
It is remarkable, that the more ignorant a person is, and the less he is capable of using language correctly, the more inclined he is to strive after eloquence. He of course succeeds in nothing but raising a laugh at his own expense, and covering a just and reasonable cause with ridicule. This absurd exaggeration of an act of un- doubted rudeness and violence, was doubtless made the subject of a joke at the Houle-office ; and Mr. Peel, in spite of his self-possession and courteous desire to please, would have some difficulty in keep- ing his features, still when the eloquent letter-writer presented him- self inperson: A neat statement, concisely and yet forcibly repre- senting the circumstances of the case, and which at the same time, partly by its unaffected simplicity, and partly by its judicious infe- rences, .prepossesses the reader in favour of the writer's temper, seems to be one of the most difficult compositions in the world, if we may judge by the failures we every day witness. Certainly the men who in all other affairs stick the closest to matter of fact, and
whose daily compositions are most naked of any other ornament than a flourishing Din"Dealer" or a long tail to theg in "Bought, when they do begin to be fine, are fine with a vengeance. A tradesman in distress is more eloquent than Cicero : when he has been robbed, burnt, or turned out of a police-office, the flashings of his indignation (on paper) are worse than a thunderstorm. We are glad, however, to see that Mr. Corder's sins against taste did not injure his cause with Mr. Peel; and that it seems likely, from the report of what he said, that the Home Secretary will express his opinion of Sir Richard Birnie's conduct in terms of much more force than the heaven-and-earth sentences Mr. Corder indited in his wrath. We trust that Sir Richard will in future contain himself, and not again "sully the seat of justice."
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