IRELAND.
Mr. O'Connell had a great Repeal demonstration at Lismore, its Waterford county, on Sunday. The meeting had two peculiar inci- dents: there was a greater display than usual of police and soldiery collected to preserve the peace ; and some of the Roman Catholic clergy in the place were opposed to the nieeting,—though one of them. Dr. Fogarty, explained on the platform, that he only opposed it in the fear that it would prove a failure. Mr. O'Connell stopped by the way, on Saturday, at Dungarvan ; where he was entertained at a _public dinner by about sixty persons, who presented him with 200/. of Repeal rent. The Chairman at Lismore, on Sunday, was Sir B. Morris: the first resolution was moved by Sir R. Musgrove, and seconded by Mr. R. A. Fitzgerald, one of the dismissed Magistrates. A '.tong the speakers were several parish-priests ; one of whom, the Wei end Mr. Cantwell, delivered himself of a very heated oration about "toe wrongs of his insulted country "; saying— The greatest panegyric he could bestow on O'Connell was to say, that le never knew a bad man in Ireland yet who did not hate him. (Laughter.) He would support O'Connell with his voice ; but be would support him with more : "Look at that arum—(Stretehing forth his right arm)—after the magn:e Scent scene I have this day witnessed, I'll die a death, or see Ireland free." (Tremendous cheering and waning of hats.) But the most stirring speeches were, upon the whole, those deliverer' at the subsequent dinner, at which about two hundred persons sat down ; for even Mr. O'Connell's open-air speech was comparatively tame. The Reverend Mr. Sheehan, parish-priest, in returning thanks for the people, addressed himself fiercely to the subject of Absenteeism— Ireland would wrest Repeal from the English Government. as she hail wrested Emancipation ; and, once she was able to legislate for herself, she wonht soon do away with Absenteeism—an absenteeism which was tbe consequence of the confiscations of Elizabeth, and Cromwell, and William the Third—a sys- tem which allowed the Marquis of Hertford, who never was in Ireland, and whose father nor grandfather never were in Ireland, to hold estates in this country and spend the rents of them out of it, or, as in the case of the late Marquis, to will a portion of th,ir proceeds to a Swiss servant for pandering to his passions,—a system which allowed Earl Fitzwilliam to draw money from the country which would be better emplo3ed in the county of Waterford, and which enabled the Whig Duke of Devonshire to do the same, to the detriment of the poor. [This was followed by loud cheers of approbatien ; "although; says the reporter of the Times, "I learned in various quarters that the Duke of Devonshire is an excellent landlord and very much liked."] He loved the liberality of the Duke of Devonshire, bathe loved Ireland more. (Cheers.) Be he Whig or Tory, Liberal or Radical, he was an absentee, and as such was a curse to Ireland. (Loud cheers.) Did they suppose that NVhig liberality would ever give them a Repeal of the Union, or the means of doing away with Absenteeism ? Could they expect at the hands of men who were the suc- cessors of the former confiscators of those estates, any measure which would be likely to curtail their own power? He thought not. But the people mi.
seared tile means within themselves of obtaining justice; as was seen by the manner in which they had achieved Catholic Emancipation, broken down the Rotten Borough system in England, and overthrown the tyrant of Spain, who wished to trample on their rights. Province after province had pronounced against him. In like manner were the counties and provinces of Ireland now pronouncing against Saxon legislation ; and when a whole country pronounced against a bad government, it was impossible for it to stand.
The Reverend Mr. Cantwell gave more of his church-militant assur- ances— The priests must continue with the people yet awhile; he did not mean at their tail, but at their bead. His advice to the people was to put themselves in an open, manly position. He was a man of peace, and would never act on the offensive ; but from his soul he declared, that on the defensive he would take a very active part. He had not come there as a delegate, but he could assure the company that he left behind him 7,000 persons who would go with him to the mouth of the cannon. (Enthusiastic cheering.) Mr. O'Connell declared that the people and the priests were super- seding him in his own business of agitation— Like the heavy schoolboy on the ice, his pupils were overtaking him. Here- tofore his duty had been to excite—it was now to moderate. It was now his duty to regulate the vigour and temper the energy of the people—to compress, as it were, the exuberance of both, springing though they did from their lore of country. Be had sufficient force at his back, moral and physical, to insure success. The great secret would be to keep it entire, and not suffer any por- tion of it to flow into any channel but the right one. After a good deal in his usual style, he alluded to the Tory newspa- pers; which, he said, were urging him faster than he was wilting to go— Like the barrister who said to the witness, "Rascal, why don't you say something lean lay bold of? " his enemies were angry that he did not give them an opportunity of pouncing on him. Be defied them to go to war, and now he defied them to go to law with him. If they did not pack the jury, he imust be acquitted ; for he bad committed no violation of the law ; and if they did pack the jury, they would make a martyr of him ; and if they made a mar- tyr of him, let them consider how far that would tend to quiet the people. (The company here rose en masse, shouted most vociferously, and waved their handkerchiefs and hats for some minutes.) They might put him into prison— (A voice, " Dare they r)—but they would not be a bit more secure for that, for they would thereby make moderate men violent, and violent men more so. Be daredthem to their teeth, and from that spot he defied them to go to law with him. (Cheers.) At the weekly meeting of the Repeal Association, on Monday, the rent for the week was declared to be 690/. At another meeting, on Wednesday, Mr. O'Connell regretted that Mr. Connor had not been expelled for his conduct respecting the payment of taxes and landlord's rent ; and be moved the erasure of his name from the books.
The Court of Arbitrators met again at Black Rock, about four miles from Dublin; but the only person that came into court was one plaintiff; the defendant not making his appearance. The Court adjourned for a week.
At a weekly meeting of the Dublin Operative Protestant Association ard Reformation Society, an address was adopted "to the Inhabitants of the Countries subject to the British Crown, in answer to the recent address of the Repeal Association. In a speech introducing the sub- ject, the Reverend Mr. Gregg anticipated great results from the per- severing exertions of the Society- " These exertions never would cease but with the successful termination of their work. They would blot the name of Mr. O'Connell from the page of history. That history would run thus—One O'Connell at this time made a great stir, and by his exertions procured the Emancipation Bill : hut such were his subsequent violence and bad faith, that in twenty years all was undone again, and things were reduced to their former state ; after which, the British constitution, from the experience of the past, worked more gloriously than ever. O'Connell, therefore, resembled the monarch of whom it is said,
• The King of France. with forty thousand men. Marched up the hill sad then malehed down again.'
Ile (Mr. Gregg) had some hand in producing the present state of' feeling. God forbid he should glory in it boastfully ; it was the Lord's doing ; be was but an i humble instrument n it. That, however, he did think himself to be; and he confessed he felt jealous when be saw malignant attempts made to injure, through him, one of the greatest works in the world."
The address, though not so long as Mr. O'Connell's composition, is
too long for our space. It denies the right of the former address to assume to speak in the name of all Ireland ; as the Irish Protestants, two millions in number, are almost to a man opposed to Repeal, and they would ever refuse suljection to a local Parliament. It purports to pick the O'Connell document to pieces; but it deal.; rather with the most generalizing passages than with specific allegations and sugges- tions: for example- " They go on to say, that England has inflicted more grievous calamities on Ireland than any country on the face of the earth beside has done upon any other.' Base and grovelling confession ! Why, what a contemptible whine is here—what a pitiful and snivelling complaint In the name of tile might of Ireland, we denounce the infamous imputation. What ! would Scotland, with its handful of invineibles, talk in such a tone as this? No; the blood of Wallace would rise into the cheeks of its inhabitants, and urge the repudiation of so foul a sentiment. England could not, though she had banded with her in close alliance all the sovereignty of the earth, crush Scotland, nor afflict her as it is here said that she has afflicted Ireland. And are we, with our seven millions, inferior to Scotland ?—or less able to defend ourselves from England, who are separated from her, not by an imaginary border line, but by the roar- ing sea—a barrier, as it were, erected by God himself? We tell you, fellow- subjects, that England has neither afflicted our country nor could do so. The cause of the wretchedness, the misery, the destitution, the want, and the beggary, and of worse evils than these (which are passed over in the Repeal document)—the cause of the bondage, the degradation, the darkness, and the tyranny, which abound in our country, comes from a very different quarter. It is not imposed by force, but self-inflicted; and the true authors of the mischief are Irishmen themselves.
"The document proceeds to say that 'we, the Irish, are not on a level with the English—that England has not, in fact, conceded unto us equality.' This is lie the second. We are fully, completely, entirely, and perfectly both equal to the English and admitted so to he. If it be meant, indeed, that Irish . Papists are not on an equality with Euglishmen considered as Protestants, that we fully admit, and are prepared to defend by unanswerable arguments. Papists are absolutely and necessarily inferior to Protestants; and there is no power on earth which could raise them to the same level with them." Mr. Gregg's address declares that Popery is the cause of the miseries of I-eland- " England WAS afflieted as this country is until she abandoned the Antichrist of Rome : then she flourished ; then was she glorious—' the envy of surround- ing nations and the admiration of the world.' She has of late again identified herself with the system so far as to admit its principles into its schools and ite members into her senate ; nay; she has even gone so far as to say that she will not recognize any distinction between truth and error. And what has been the consequence? Why, that she is herself, at this present moment, suffering in every part of her dominions the punishment that is due to participation in crime. 'She is partaker of her sins,' and she is receiving of her plagues.' She is drinking of the very same cup of misery which the vengeance of the Most High has distributed to the Popish nations of the earth, and to Ireland in especial. What, then, is the remedy for the evils of our country ? Why, of course, the extirpation of their cause—that is to say, the eradication of Popery."
At a meeting of the Monaghan Farming Society, on the 21st, Lord Cremorne was Chairman, and Mr. Lucas, Under-Secretary for Ireland, Vice-Chairman. In toasting the Society, Lord Cremorne remarked-
" I think it the duty of both landlord and tenant to aid it, by their money and their exertions ; particularly at this moment, when we see the little protec- tion that remained to agriculture every day diminished by the Legislature. I think we need look no longer for a protection of agricultural produce, when we see its bulwarks sacrificed, that the manufacturers of Great Britain may under- sell and rival every other country in their own markets. Under each circum- stances, we must depend upon ourselves, by bringing our funds and our ener- gies into the struggle for our own agricultural prosperity."
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