It is well that Parliament is not sitting, for if
it were, we should certainly be compelled to witness that always nauseous operation, an honourable member's eating his own words, or paying with his person for not so doing. Sir J. D. Astley, M.P. for North Lin- colnshire, was reported a week ago—and as- the report has remained uncontradicted, we may assume, correctly—to have said, in speaking of the present Parliament :—"There were a lot of Irish chaps in the House who sometimes made him very. angryr. He thought there were about sixty of those fellows in the House, and about forty of them were the most confounded rascals he ever saw." He,,mereover,ealls them "covies," and a second time "rascals," and complains of their "talking. about their rotten little Irelandl—whether the whiskey was to be Scotch or Irish, or the potatoes kidneys or something else." Sir J. D. Astley has no right to call Honourable Members "chaps," "rascals," "fellows," or even " covies ;" but there is a touch of pathos in the follow- ing sentence, to which those who witnessed some debates of last Session will pay the tribute of 'a yawn, if not a sigh :—"Such dis- cussions as these were one of the things which drove him clean out of the House, and tended to make a. man more careless- than he should be." The time is not yet come, however, for the ful- filment of Curran's prophecy, which perhaps Sir J. D. Astley had in his mind, when Ireland was to have her revenge for the Union by sending into Parliament 100 of the greatest rascals to be found on the face of the earth.
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