merit from a distance." England has been to her colonies,

always

including Ireland, a stepinothen—noverca, niaratre,madrasta,— land to bestow good govyernment on these mi sruled provinces, that the contest for good government here is to be decided. No Ireland, thoug flh the nearest and most valuable of our colonies,

obtain so much notice, and exert so great an influence in the politics of the really united kingdom of Great Britain. We have not room at present, nor is this a fit occasion, to dwell possessed by the al origines—in Ireland, a Viceroy, the state

to-

penalParliament, enables the Irish minority to strike as it pleases the balance of parties in Great Britain. Such a state o- subject would volluties, and will occupy many thousands of I3 printed sheets, or rat: ( r tons of paper, before the curious mess shall be disentangled. But sufficient for the day is the business thereof; and we must now be content with drawing attention to by their proceedings with respect to Irish Municipal Reform. !ill the operations of government may be classed under two public matter for which local government is best suited, should met couple of " rank Tories? "* government of the ninny within the grasp of the official few who casions becomes equally manifest. Union, inseparable Union, constitute the bureaucracy. Town-government, says Lord MEL-

people, and can be best managed by themselves ; therefore let us giving to the two countries similar municipal laws. Let us, says give them kcal municipal authority. By no means, answers Sir he, create amongst the townspeople of Ireland the same motives of ROBERT PEEL let us place the government of all Irish towns in affection towards the Supreme Government as exist amongst the the hands of certain residents of Downing Street or Whitehall, townspeople of England and Scotland : as we have gratified and Westminster ; let me, if ever I should be Home Minister again, served the inhabitants of towns in Great Britain by allowing them or my old underling GOULISURN, or my new underling STANLEY,— to manage their own local affairs, so let us please and benefit, and let the bureaucracy settled in London elect all the sheriffs, magic- attach to British interests, the inhabitants of Irish towns ; let us trates, police-officers, trustees of charities, town-commissioners, give to the people of Dublin, Cork, and Limerick, a stake in the coroners, judges of local courts, collectors of local taxes, and other same hedge with the people of Norwich and Edinburgh; let us, officers, down to clerks, criers, and lamplighters ; and let us, as respects municipal government at least, make Ireland part moreover, impose rates and taxes, and dispose of the produce and parcel of the United Kingdom ; let us thus cement the thereof, and also of municipal property in money or land; let all Union, or rather convert it into something real. On the contrary, this be done, without control or responsibility, by a few right exclaims Sir ROBERT PEEL, let the municipal law of Ireland be honourable persons living in London and their nominees, for all totally different from that of England and Scotland; let Great the towns of Ireland. Most modest proposal! Yet such, when Britain and Ireland have laws not only quite different, like red stripped of pretence and phraseology, is the counter-plan of the and green, but opposite, like black and white; draw the most Tory leader. This time, at least, he has dropped the Conserve- marked distinction that you can between these parts of what Live mask, to make a display of unmitigated Toryism. is called the United Kingdom ; tell the Irish that you despise or The Times has striven hard this week to defend his Conservative hate them—that, in your eyes, they are unworthy to be admitted

friends from what appears to be a groundless imputation—that of to e hts with the Saxons; mark them as an inferior race,

qual rig wishing to destroy the present municipal government of Ireland. insult them, spit upon them; and then if they talk of Repeal, They wish for nothing of the sort. It is true that what never double the army in Ireland, in order to maintain " Union, insepa- existed cannot be destroyed ; that the Irish towns have never en- rable Union." Out upon the hypocrites! After Catholic Emu- joyed municipal authority; and therefore, that Sir ROBERT PEEL, cipation,—that is, the repeal of the Irish slave code,—there has in proposing central bureaucratic government for those towns, is been no measure so well fitted to render the Union real, as this any thing but a Destructive. So far, we go along with the Times, plan of Municipal Reform. Is it therefore that the Consers-a- who has wasted much energy in proving what is obvious. And it tires oppose the whole plan ? One can hardly imagine any must beadmittcd besides, that the Conservatives would gladly main- thing more calculated to provoke the Irish millions, and bin. if it were possible, the present Tory system of Irish munici- revive their demand of separation, than Sir ROBERT PEEL'S pal government. They never perceived any evil in the Orange corpo- plan of giving them a municipal law opposite to that of Great rations.—in the local misgovernment of all by a small irresponsible Britain. Does he want, like the Times and the Standard, to minority. Nor even now, though, as with respect to the treason- drive them into rebellion? Except through a rebellion in Ireland, able Orange Society, they abandon what can no longer be defended, it is difficult to conjecture how the Tories should ever again be do they object to the Tory principles of the present municipal sys- firmly seated in power. It may be a desperate game ; but when sera. On the contrary, they propose to give larger effect to those men are playing for their all, their play is necessarily desperate. prieciples, by bestoe ing all municipal power in Ireland on a still For nearly a year past—ever since Sir ROBERT PEEL was turned sr teller number of persons, and of persons knowing lessand caring out by the Irish Members—the Tory organs of the press, the leas about Irish towns, than those in whom such authority resides pulpit, and the packed meeting, have systematically endeavoured at present. Instead of removing a proved, which means an inde- to inflame the angry passions of the Irish mass, by the foulest tensible abuse, their object is to strengthen, extend, and aggravate • An Essex baronet of the name of SMYTH (we believe), who recently presided at a like evil. Destructives ! not they indeed : they are Tories to the Conservative dinner in houonr of Sir ROBERT PEEL, invented this term. A bold wag core, notwithstanding the Tamworth manifesto. was still a "rank Tory." TOPICS OF THE DAY. And what is the ground on which they assert the propriety of

rendering municipal government in Ireland less local, more fo- reign, less responsible, more oppressive than ever ?—It is say

CONSERVATISM UNMASKED. they, a religious ground. Their sly-boots of a leader, indeed, professes to regard the religious question as secondary to the civil OUR Colonies, including the conquered and colonized province of

one,—to dread a preponderance of Catholic town-electors, only as Ireland, are the ground on which Reformers and Tories have to

it would lead to wrong in matters purely municipal. But his fight for their antagonist objects. The field of battle per se may

blundering lieutenant lets out the secret truth. As no one ima- he despised by us Englishmen, who have been accustomed to re- gives that the Protestant municipal majorities of England will gard it with contempt; but the questions which are to be decided

use their power to the civil injury of their Catholic fellow towns- there, involve the most important interests of the dominant country. Mother -country is an improper term for that small part men—will rate them more heavily, or watch and light them worse for being Catholics,—so Lord MELBOURNE assumes, that what-

of the empire which has systematically inflicted upon all the may be the religion of the municipal majority in eland, other parts the terrible evils of what BENTHAM calls " govern- Leland, minority will not suffer municipally for their religion. He builds on a knowledge of history and human nature. Majorities

terms of which the associated ideas, not less than the sound, are in power are commonly just; minorities, never : the May seldom full of harshness and cruelty. " Dependencies" is the fitting oppress the Few ; the Few, when they are able, hardly ever fail name for all our colonies, Ireland included; and it is, we repeat, to oppress the Many. Sir ROBERT PEEL, though any thing but in the course of eflbrts by the Reformers of England and Scot-

a philosopher, is as wise a politician as Lord STANLEY, who dreads,

not the power of Catholic majorities, but that the Protestant mi-

notifies should lose their power. This too,:unless in point of in- other view of the subject would explain how questions relating to tellect we are to class Sir ROI3ERT PEEL with the WINCHILSEAS and SIRTHORPES, is the true subject of his fears. According, to

Lord MELBOURNE'S plan, there will be no ascendancy, either Pro-

testant or Catholic, in the merely municipal government of Ire- land; but if Sir ROBERT' S plan were adopted—if the whole con-

on the very extraordinary. relations which have grown up between duct and patronage of municipal government were given to the Great Britain and Ireland ; a parchment union with real separa-

exclusively Protestant officials of Whitehall or the Castle of tion in numerous perticulars ; a partial similitude of government Dublin, then might Protestant Ascendancy, with all its crying abuses, be preserved in every town of Ireland. Well may Lord with differences of t utmost moment ; in England and Scotland,

a King, the state eligion thet of the majority-, and the soil STANLEY contend that it is a religious question,-in his and his

leader's, and the Crown Prince of' Hanover's sense of religion.

religion that of a st minority, and the soil possessed by True to their Tory principles, the Conservatives cannot bear that foreigners; together with a mixture of representation in an I an end should be put to religious distinctions in the municipal government of Ireland. Destructives! not they indeed ; they are only rank Tories. By their so-called religious argument on this occasion, they avow the political creed of lel'Griee, CiSteeeiveer, of politics never existed before in the history of the world. The

and CUMBERLAND. What the Standard has boasted of for some time, is at length obvious : "there are no differences now in the

Conservative camp." Just as the Orange conspiracy is dissolved,

Sir ROBERT PEEL proclaims himself, in spirit and principle, an in- the lank Toryism and hypocrisy of the Conservatives, as shown veterate Orangeman. And Lord STANLEY too—both of them having witnessed on the spot the worst operation of religious A

supremacy in civil affairs ! Their " juxtaposition' as Mr. SHEIL into- which can be best performed by a central authority, said, is truly admirable, exposing as it does the religious and those which can be better performed by the exercise of lerance of the leader's politics, and the political character of his local powere. The principle of democracy requires that every follower's religion. What are they, after all, however, but a well- be placed under local control : the principle of Toryism, on the Seeing the pure old Toryism of the Conservatives, as exposed by other hand, delights in centralization ; it would bring the whole their treatment of this question, their hypocrisy on some other oc- government " is one of their favourite cries. Well, Lord MELBOURNE proposes BOURNE, is a local WWr which most deeply concerns the towns- to strengthen the Union between Great Britain and Ireland, by g

speaker. like Lord STANLEY, he boasted, that, for all that had come and gone yet, he

abuse of their religion and their clergy. During all this time too, the Orange conspirators have been whetting their swords, or, as

Sir HARCOURT LEES said the other day, " keeping their powder dry." There are dark and bloody visions in the aspect of recent Tory politics. Who but Sir ROBERT PEEL—the leader of "the now united Conservative party of the empire"—would have been Primo Minister, if Lord Cotes " E " had been substituted for the present " IVP " But however this may be, the actual striving of the Conservatives to provoke the people of Ireland, and revive their demand for Repeal, is a proof of rank hypocrisy in those whose preaching is of "Union, inseparable Union." Two accusations which the Conservatives have incessantly urged against the Whigs, are, that the latter never miss an oppor- tunity to create patronage, and that they systematically promote centralization in Government. Sir ROBERT wants, indeed, the face to say, that Lord MELBOURNE'S Irish municipal plan has patronage for its end, and centralization as the means. But this is the true character of his own plan. The question here is not as to the good or evil of patronage and centralization, but as to the honesty or hypocrisy of the Tories. These loud declaimers against patronage and centralization oppose a measure in which there is not a grain of either, and propose a counter-measure which is brimfull of both. Centralization and patronage being the two leading prin- ciples of Toryism, Sir ROBERT PEEL is only consistent with him- self when be insists that the whole government of all the towns of Ireland, including the appointment of officers, shall be admi- nistered from Whitehall through the Castle of Dublin : but what are we to think of the noisy Conservative outcry against patronage and centralization ? On Monday, we hope, Lord JOHN RUSSELL may shame the hypocrites by asking this question in the House of Commons.

The most superficial observer perceives, that one indirect but Certain effect of giving municipal self-government to the towns of Ireland, will be to break down the Parliamentary influence of Toryism in many of those boroughs. The Orange Corporations ceasing, and not being replaced by a long arm front Whitehall or Dublin Castle, away goes the power of a small municipal minority to command the Parliamentary votes of the townspeople. Under Lord MELBOURNE'S plan, the Parliamentary electors of Irish boroughs will be free to vote as they please. The municipal means of Parliamentary bribery and intimidation will be radically extirpated. This then is a question of party power in the House of Commons, as well as of municipal government, and of Union or Repeal. If Lord MELBOURNE'S plan should be carried into full effect, the Tories will lose some twenty votes in Parliament : if the Tory leader's plan were adopted, and another Court intrigue like that of November 1834 could be brought about, Sir ROBERT would gain as many votes in the House of Commons,—twenty, that is forty; a number which, if no material change occurred in the English and Scotch elections, might, along with the time- servers, give " a good working majority" to the Tory Premier. Who does not see the question in this light ? But have the Conservatives so much as hinted at the different party conse- quences of their own plan and Lord MELBOURNE'S? Not they : they vow that their sole aim in setting up municipal bureaucracy against municipal self-government, is—mark the hypocrites !— " the impartial administration of justice." But Lord STANLEY perhaps may be absolved from this last charge of hypocrisy esta- blished against the " candid" Sir ROBERT; be may, provided, that is, as he seems to be taking great pains to show, his " religion," being interpreted, signify Toryism. A little more, and he will stand out a naked Tory. What a pest he must be to the wolf in sheep's clothing, upon whom he has recently forced his most embarrassing support ! But it is an ill wind that blows no good : the "juxta- position" of this Tory couple will not last much longer without entirely stripping the leader of his Conservative mask. To that end, Lord STANLEY, who is a favourite, shall have our best assistance.