23 NOVEMBER 1844, Page 8

The Dublin Evening Freeman of Thursday announces what it calls

the "first blow at the independence of the Catholic Church " : rumours "of the most profound and painful nature," [what is the profundity of a rumour ?] that Catholic Prelates and laymen of respectability have con- sented to become Commissioners under the Charitable Bequests Act— namely, Dr. Crolly, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, Dr. Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Kennedy, Bishop of Killaloe, the Right Honourable Anthony Richard Blake, and Mr. John Richard Corballis. This report emanates from "those who must know the truth"; and it is said that the appointments were to be gazetted on Friday, Jr. O'Connell was feasted in Limerick, according to appointment, on Wednesday. The great festival was bare of any novelty : the de- scription of almost any " monster meeting" would do for it : there was a procession extending "as far as the eye could reach," to meet the Liberator on the road ; he addressed the people from the window of an hotel; and then at night there was the banquet in the Theatre, with two Bishops, eight Members of Parliament, three Mayors, seven or eight hundred gentlemen, five hundred ladies, and one of Mr. O'Connell's stereotyped speeches, about the nationality of Ireland, the unequal Par- liamentary and civic representation, " the city of the violated treaty," &c. &c. At the out-door meeting, O'Connell talked, as formerly, about "no monarch of Europe having a larger army at his command," only the people of Ireland are not inclined for any thing but "the laws of order and propriety." He looked well and hearty.