NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE business of a Tory tavern-keeper must be about the best now going. The newspapers are again filled with long reports of Con- servative dinners. Within a few days there have been glorious manifestations of the oratorical and potatorial powers of the party, at Norwich, Liverpool, Kettering, Tunbridge Wells, Chesterfield, Burton-upon-Trent, Newport, and other places "too tedious to mention." Everywhere the same old stories about the Irish bugaboo were repeated. The Tories continue to live upon O'CON- NELL. His power and his profligacy are their constant, almost their only topics. We may venture to say, that not a single set speech has been delivered at any one of the recent Tory gather- ings, in which be has not been vilified in terms that, if retorted, would be cited as specimens of ruffianism.
There must have been a motive, not avowed, for this movement of the Tories. Perhaps it was intended to influence the registration ; perhaps to act upon the approaching Municipal elections. Be that as it may, they have almost all the feasting and the talking to themselves ; and their noisy exultation contrasts strongly with the dulness and repose of the Liberals. It is indeed but prudent for the Liberals to stay at home and hold their tongues; for talk- ing may do mishief : even the would-be cautious Lord FITZWIL- LIAM might have done better if he had kept silence. Time was when the Liberals spoke out fearless of giving offence in any quarter ; but now they are under a disagreeable constraint, arising from want of confidence in the Liberal Ministers—anxious to avoid what may cause disunion, yet feeling acutely the Tory taunt that they are groping blindly after men who know not which way to turn themselves. Never perhaps was there a time, till the pre- sent, when the party forming a majority in the country and in the House of Commons was so much at a loss as to the policy of their leaders. But the time is approaching when the mask must be thrown off, and when something besides the composition of the Irish Constabulary and the treatment of Colonel SHAW KENNEDY will be discussed by Ministerial journals.
