BUTTONS.
NOT worth a button" must cease to be a proverbial saying in Ireland ; for buttons are there worth persecuting and being perse- cuted for. The war for and against the Repeal button is urged with vigour. The military authorities appear to have hit upon an ingenious device for making men abandon it ; but, unluckily, the law refuses to bear them out. If the barrack-regulation, that any dun wearing a Repeal button may be turned out unpaid and sans ceremonie, could be enforced by civil and military debtors, the Re- peal button would soon disappear. But, like many other objects of devotion, it might only disappear outwardly to be more warmly wor- shipped in secret. Mr. DANIEL O'CONNELL junior recommends his friends to carry their buttons in their pockets. What an alarming condition for an Irish Secretary !—looking with anxious jealousy at the fob of every man he meets, conjecturing whether a button may not lie concealed in it ! Notwithstanding Sir ROBERT PEEL'S avowed distaste of spies, it would clearly be necessary to organize a corps of pickpockets for the detection of concealed buttons. Why should pockets be more sacred than letters ? It must be confessed that a button is rather an Irish emblem of Repeal ; on this side of the Channel it would be taken for an emblem of Union. But, bulls apart, the leaders of the Buttoneers appear to know what they are about. There is more meant than meets the ear in the sly advice of Mr. DANIEL O'CONNELL junior : young as he is, that gentleman knows that the man who pockets his button may find it difficult to button his pocket when the Rent-day comes round.
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