MR. SADLER. •
TOPICSIOF THE DAY.
SIR ROBERT INGLIS declared on Tuesday night that the Catholic question had not been sufficiently discussed ! What are the ideas of the worthy member for Oxford on the subject of lengthy dis- cussion, may be inferred from this declaration. We, Who have read and listened to arguments of all kinds, frqm men of all parties and of all degrees of intelligence, for the last twenty years, incline to think that it has been discussed enough and More than enough. The public, we can assure the worthy baronet, are pretty nearly weary of the question ; and both sides (it would not be pasy to say which side most earnestly) wish both, see it settled in some way, that they may get rid of the equal bore of listening to its advocates and opponents. One novelty has indeed started up since we approached the question last, and most thankful are we for even that favour ;-- the opponents of Ministry have got a new speaker. The gentle- man, a Mr. SADLER, who was nominated by the Duke of NEW- CASTLE for Newark' the other day, made his debut on Tuesday. The Standard describes him as "an Englishman fresh from the soil, with the air of the country about him, unpolluted by the con- ventional cant of clubs, or political trimmings of Parliamentary interest." Those who knew nothing of the debutant might expect, from this description, such a speaker as the good-humoured Colonel Witsm, whose harangues have roust the House so agreeably of late. Mr. SADLER, however, is by no means disposed to accept the character which is thus put upon him; on the contrary, he has, according to his own account, acted rather an. important part in the political drama of the day, and the downfal of the late Mr.
CANNING was in no small degree due to his v opposition to that statesman. We confess honestly,—it is no doubt a humiliating confession,—so little acquainted are we with the great world in which we live, that until Mr. SADLER'S name was mentioned in the newspapers as nominee for Newark, we were not aware of his existence ; and yet we used to hear a good deal of Mr. CANNING'S enemies.
The member for Newark, so far as we can judge, is about fifty years of age; somewhat above the middle size ; his voice neither good nor bad; his delivery more rapid than elegant,—which, how- ever, we are inclined to attribute to the circumstance that his speech of Tuesday was repeated, not spoken ; the copy having been, if not in the hands of the printer, at least fairly 'written out, before he entered the House. Those who clamoured so loudly about SuRies acting as his own reporter, will perhaps impute this to Mr. SAD- LER as a fault. We certainly deem it none in any man, whatever be his party, that he pays to the audience he_ addresses so much regard as to consider beforehand what he is t6 say. At the same time, though facts must be collected, and arguments. weighed, (nor is it nnprcgier that the language in Which4ithel'isittossed should be culled with all due carefulness,—and though arrangement must by studied by all who spealeVyith a vieW to comance still, rhetorical, shad much More • passionate :speeches, come over the ear of thefisteners Somewhat Strangelyirhen coupled with the fact of their being previously drawn up in the coolness and still- ness of. the orator's closet. HERAC4rus Might smile to hear a speaker pouring forth on a popular assembly, with all the seeming energy of impassioned feeling, a torrent of ,. meditated impa- tience, deliberated anger, and composed lamentation, mingled, for verisimilitude's.- sake, with carefully remembered lapses and nicely conned-over inaccuracies.
Considered merely as a piece of writing, we are disposed to view Mr. SADLER:S speech rather favourably; and had its-author been ; thirty years younger, we should have thought it promised well; but apart from; its rhetorical graces, it has little to recommend it : it presents to new views, nor does it greatly vary old ones. There is very little in it that did not appear in the Duke of NEW- CASTLE'S letter to the Secretary of the Irish Brunswick Club ; nor are, the Duke's plans for quieting Ireland more forcibly put by his follower. The argument, that, while the great causes of Irish tumult and , Irish suffering were passed over unheeded, 411 might yet be-well-'provided the small causes, which have hitherto led to neither, were removed,—may be worthy of a per seeking for• en aristocratic path to political eminence, but it is wholly unlike the reasoning, either right or wrong, of a philosopher" 'fresh from the soil," or eVenfreim the locim. What would be said of a physician., summoned to a patient Suffering under the agony of the storie;who should tell him that neither lithontriptics nor operations eould.be for a moment permitted, but that if be _behaved himself properly, and ceased from his groaning. and wrifffing, he should have a nice bit of plaster for the piiniple On 'his great-toe? There are indeed two discoveries in Mr. SADLER'S speech, which, weralhey as true as they are novel, might be worth somethi*: "The present remedy, he says gravely, is the worst yet pro- posed—Why? because it is the latest! This is one arg-ument against the plans of Ministers, Which no previous speaker had' al- luded to. Unfortunately Mr. SADLER'S own plan is still later than the Duke of WELLINGTON'S—it is worse, therefore, than the worst.
The other discovery is, that Parliament cannot pass .the Relief Bill—they have not the power; We admit, with Mr. SADLER, that the omnipotence of Parliament is but a fiction ; so is the omniik- tence of law ; so is the political infallibility of the Sovereign. Par- liament might-so vote—laws might be so administered—Sovereigns -might so act—as to provoke the physical resistance of the people, and insure their own destruction. IT Mr. SADI,Ea meant no more ParliaMen than this when he denied the power of t, he enunciated a small truism : if he meant that Were Parliament to pass the bill now before them, the people Of Great Britain would rise in open rebellion and put an end to 'Parliament altogether, then is Mr. SADLER one of the weakest and most credulous gentlemen in the town -of Leeds or out of it. For our own parts, We believe it will pass ; and we also believe, that, so far from rebellion following, the whole of the present disputes will be as v forgotten in six months' timeAss if they had never been. We go further: we be- lieve that if the bill do not pass—if the present Ministry be de- stroyed, as some say they will be—although the- feelings of the losing parties may be acute enough, there will be ho rebellion nor attempt at rebtfilion.
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