NEWS OF THE WEEK.
SENATORIAL displays in the provinces are now about over. Never was there such a season for feeding and flummery, talking and
treating, as the Parliamentary recess which ends on Monday next. But the courage of the vapouring, and the professions of the patriotic, are about to be tested in the House of Commune ; and for the next six months the country must look to the Metropolis for excitement and information. We hope that for the profusion of " manifestations" and protestations, we shall be able to return an account of the work done.
But before we filially drop the curtaih on the exhibitions of the recess, sundry dinners and meetings which have occurred since our last publication must be mentioned will) due honour. This will not give us much trouble: for the Tories have, as usual, been the principal performers ; and their staple topics have become ragged by incessant wear and tear. In Warwickshire, and Hampshire, there have been grand Conservative dinners; and an Orange outbreak in Dublin, which may well alarm Sir ROBERT PEEL, for Ile dares not quarrel with the RODEN% CII AR LEVI LLES, and PONVERSCOURT3, while every discreet and peaceable Tory must shrink from contact with men whose vituperatien of their opponents is beastly, whose rage is that of frantic desperadoes, and who avow principles which, if acted on, would produce civil war and the dis- memberment of the empire. To make the Orange exhibition in Dublin still more disastrous to the Tory party, the mild but firm and consistent Duke of LE1NSTER has taken up his right posi- tion as the premier Peer and only Duke of Ireland, and headed a protest (which thirty-four Irish Noblemen and fifty-seven Mem- bers of the House of Commons have signed) against the insolent as- sumption of the RODEN cabal, that they engross the Pretestantism and the property of Ireland. Tile
e protest s a calm and grave de-
claration of regret that any attempt should be made by a small body of factious Peers to bias the Parliamentary discussion of measures necessary for the promotion of the public interests and the preservation of tranquillity in Ireland. Nothing can more strikingly illustrate the desperate spirit of' the meu who met to defy the Government in Dublin, than the conduet of the Earl of CHARLEVILLE: he exhibited the LEINSTER protest to the meet- ing, then in a fury threw it on the ground, and stamped on it, amidst the execrations of the Orange mob who surrounded him ! These be your associates, your supporters, your party in Ireland, Sir ROBERT PEEL! And for your consolation be it added, these men, who are ready to use the industrious official and the plau- sible rhetorician, remember the year 1829, and regard their "Pie- tulet'" with distrust and scorn.
Turn we now to London, and the Drury Lane dinner to the
Middlesex Members. The originators of this assembly, we be- lieve, had mainly in view the security of Mr. BYNO and 'Mr. Hume at the next election. It was to consolidate the Reform party in Middlesex, that certain Liberals proposed the truly Bri- tish expedient of a feast. Support of Ministers was nes especially aimed at; but, with their usual dexterity, some persoas of Down- ing Street connexion contrived to give the affair a Ministerial tinge. They succeeded—we will not now enter into the particu- lars of the quomodo—in managing matters ss that the bite noire Downing Street, Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH, was by some accident not 10 be of the party ; MT. LEADER, his friend, who had been invited, withdrew ; and that very annoying person, the Mem- ber for Bath, was, of course, quite out of the question. As it happened, however, utter all, the dinner was a Radical affair. Old Mr. BYNG was the only thoroughly Whig Member of Par- liament present. With the exception of Mr. BVNG, all the speakers were RadWals ; and the manuer in which Radical opi• nions and allusions were received, proved that the great majority of the company were not Whigs. 01 all the Wile.; noblemen, A1 Ito allowed their names to be placarded as stewards, not one at- tended. We are glad of this; for they were not invited in the expectation that they would be present, but with the lackey-like rit Aimee V ••■••0 • 571 notion that the mere parade of a Lord's name gives importance and dignity to a meeting of Englishmen ! To a certain extent, the exertions of the Ministerial agents were successful. Mr. GROTE, to be sure, abstained from committing himself to any line of policy that trenched upon perfect indepen- dence ; and Mr. WAR I), who proposed" Justice to Ireland," was free from the necessity of' touching upon points of Whig-Radical dis- agreement, and avoided them; but Mr. Hume, in the course of a rambling speech, almost pledged himself again to vote "black white" in order to keep in Lord ME LBO URNE ; and Mr. CLAN- dwelt with as much satisfaction on the preeminent merits of the Whig- Ministers as if he had been regularly inlisted in the Government corps. Now, surely, there has been enough of this laudation of Minis- ters. Many excellent Reformers are tired, and some are offended, by the constant harping upon one, or at most two strings—" Ter- rible Tories," " Virtuous Whig Ministers." As a matter of taste as well as of principle and prudence, we hope that Independent Representatives will abstain in future from mawkish adulation, which will assuredly be thrown in their teeth at an awkward time. And as regards the Tories, we wish for our own part to be distinctly understood as believing, that the more imminent danger threatens to come from another quarter : we apprehend, not so much the return of PEEL and the Tories, as thelowering and debasing of the standard of popular feeling, which will not only' let in the Tories," but paralyze that healthy political action to which the nation must ultimately trust for righting itself, whoever may be the Ministers. Are not the electors of' Middlesex and the Tower Hamlets entitled to put such questions as these to Mr. Hume and Mr. CLAY: "Do you nat—did not the great majority at the Drury Lane meeting—deem it of the last importance that Ministers should make a decided advance in a popular direction ? Do you believe that they will take that step ? If you are per- suaded that they should, but have no conviction that they will do this, then we ask, why did you blarney them by the hour toge- ther? Do you mean what you said?" In concluding our remarks upon the Middlesex dinner, it is gratilying to state, that every truly Liberal sentiment was ear- nestly adopted by the vast assemblage; and that the toast of " Justice to Ireland," which Mr. WARD introduced in an ad- mirable speech, was received with universal enthusiasm, in the extensive meaning which Mr. WARD himself attaches to it. Mr. O'Cosreett, when lie settles accounts with the Newcastle folks for their last election, may "take his change out of that."
