FRIENDS OF IRELAND.
A SOCIETY, under the title of " the Friends of Ireland, of all Reli- gious Persuasions," has existed for some weeks in Dublin. Not- withstanding the strenuous efforts of its friends and enemies—with whom every Irish molehill is a mountain, and every mole a mam- moth—it has attracted little attention. All that we recollect of it is a speech of JACK LAWLESS, in the " 111 do and I'll do and I'll do" vein, in which he declared his intention of rebelling against England and the Member for Aberdeen, if the office of Lord Lieu- tenant were abolished. This society has been suppressed by a pro- clamation issued under the Catholic Association Suppression Bill. Its suppression in this violent way may be variously accounted for. It may be no more than a peace-offering to the party still in power in Ireland, as the act that legalizes it notoriously was. Instead of boldly standing forward to compel submission to the letter and spirit of those laws by which the Catholic and Protestant are placed on an. equal footing, and thus laying the foundation of permanent peace in Ireland, the Government may be giving up to the clamour what it denied to the prayers of the Protestant party, and thus as far as pos- sible perpetuating the anarchy which it was the object of the Catho- lic Bill to put down. Or, in the second place, Ministers may have in- terposed merely to check for a time an agitation which prevented the subsidence of feelings that interfere with the safe and sound discus- sion of real grievances. Their justification, in this point of view, must rest on the formidable character of the suppressed society. We have stated all that we recollect of' its history—do our readers recol- lect more ? Mr. O'CONNELL was a member of it ; but few, almost none besides, of those gentlemen who gave influence and power to the Catholic Association, were members. We cannot indeed learn that it was an object even of simulated dread to any party in the kingdom, ex cept the Corporation of Dublin, and the gentlemen of the Irish Ultra press ; two sets of men to whom treasons and stratagems have been so long familiar objects of contemplation, that they have at length become as the air they breathe—deny them, and they die ! Lastly, the suppression in question may have been called forth, not so much by the prejudices and panics of the enemies, or the power of the friends of the sodiety, as by the nature of the objects it aimed at. The objects of " the Friends of Ireland" were the modification or repeal of the Union—of the Subletting Act—of the Vestry Act ; there were some others, but these were the chief. The discussion of the repeal of the Union, it strikes us, is as harmless as the discussion of the squaring of the circle. Ninety-nine hundredth parts of Ireland and the whole of England have made up their minds on the subject for at least five-and-twenty years, and the reunion of Great Britain and America is at this mo- ment quite as probable as the disunion of Great Britain and Ireland. The Subletting Act and the Vestry Act not only require revision in the opinion of the Friends of Ireland, but the latter requires revision in the opinion of his Majesty's Ministers; and how any discussion of their defects or merits could be deemed dangerous, is to our simple understandings incomprehensible. If it be contended that all socie- ties for the discussion of political grievances are mischievous, then, we say, let them all be put down,—aristocratical and democratical Union societies, Reform societies, Owenites, Pittites, Foxites. If the suppression of opinion be the only safeguard of the state, restore us, we pray, those halcyon days when two or three might not meet toge ther unless a magistrate were in the midst of them to preserve the peace and the constitution ! After all, we believe that none of the topics of discussion which "the Friends of Ireland" originally contemplated was so obnoxious to Go- vernment as one which Government itself has supplied them. The only subject in which, in point of fact, "the Friends of Ireland" pos- sessed the sympathy of their countrymen, was their opposition to the meditated suppression of the Irish political press, under the pretence of consolidating the Stamp Acts. We are most friendly to an assimi- lation of duties throughout the kingdom, but there are two ways of effecting it. Let Mr. GOULBURN lower the newspaper and adver- tisement taxes in England to the level of those taxes in Ireland, and neither the Friends of Ireland nor any one else will utter a syllable against the measure. The doubling of an iniquitous impost under the semblance of consolidating the laws by which it is levied, is a financial swindle, dishonourable to its author, whoever he may be, and to the Government that adopts it.* * This attempt has been justified on the pretence that it was stated, in the Budget speech, to be in contemplation ;—for the rule now is, that you may do any wrong you have a mind to, provided you give warning. The following are the terms of the oracular annunciation:— " This measure (the Consolidation Act), though not intended as such, and not applying as such generally, will act in augmentation of the tax, and consequently produce an in- crease of revenue, while it will introduce a desired uniformity into this department; for at present the duties paid upon articles which affect the transfer of property in this country, is in Ireland, in some respects, materially different from this country,—a dis- tinction which, I confess myself, I do not think defensible. A necessary consequence of a consolidation of the collection of those duties must be the assimilation of the charges." —Mirror of Parliament, No. L. p. 768. Question—" What is a newspaper 1" Answer—" An article which affects the trans. fez efproperty," Talk Oft profundities 0 Mr, NICHOLAS VANSIWART after this I
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