TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD BROUGHAM'S FALL ON O'CONNELL.
Ills Lordship threw himself on Mr. O'Connell, with an evideut determiuntion to crush him if possible by one great effort."—Morniny Chronicle, May 1.
THE debate on the Repeal question was managed in the House of Commons, on the whole, with praiseworthy discretion by the Government. The tone of Mr. SPRING RICE was a little too triumphant, and his smart hits at O'CONNELL were perhaps ill- judged; but some allowance must be made for a rather insignifi- cant person who had been placed for the time in a prominent position, and who felt conscious of being backed by an immense majority of those whom be addressed. But Mr. STANLEY, the member of the Government most offensive to the Irish, was wisely kept back, although the crack Ministerial debater ; and the tone of Lord ALTHORP and Mr. LITTLETON was conciliatory and becoming. Mr. O'CONNELL seems to have felt this ; and his reply was not calculated, like his opening speech, to keep up the agitation in Ireland. In the House of Commons, indeed, the question may be said to have been happily got rid of, for this session at least.
But the scene changed to the House of Peers. And here it is impossible not to admire the manly and dignified bearing of Earl GREY, including the apology for his own conduct, as well as the rebuke which he administered to the agitators for Repeal. He avoided personalities, while his assertion of the determination of Government to put down offenders against the law in Ireland was firmly and impressively made. It would have been well if the matter had closed here : but the restless Pedagogue on the Wool- sack would not keep his peace. There is a fatality attending the words and actions of some men where O'CONNELL is con- cerned. The Agitator had received a heavy blow on the Repeal question; and Lord BROUGHAM, finding the enemy at his feet, tried to crush him. It is not hazardous to prophesy, that Lord BROUGHAM will find he has miserably failed in this attempt. He has undone the good that his colleagues had accomplished by being for once forbearing in their personal treatment of O'CON- NELL. The abuse of the Chancellor will endear their champion still more to the Irish people. Mr. STANLEY might as well have spoken after all; for the mischief is done in Ireland. But thus it always is. The blunders of hisantagonists replace O'CONNELL on the vantage-ground from which he had fallen; and each suc- ceeding year beholds him still the idol of the millions of his countrymen almost in spite of himself. It has been remarked by some of the Daily Papers, and indeed it is evident to all men of common discernment, that the allusions made by the Chancellor to the O'CONNELL tribute were in ex- ceeding bad taste. He charged O'CONNELL with mendicancy, personal and political. Had O'CONNELL been himself present and in a situation to retort, we are certain that this topic would have been omitted in the Chancellor's lecture. As it was, it showed considerable powers of countenance to allude to political and personal mendicancy, in the presence of the Dukes of WEL- LINGTON and NEWCASTLE, whose mothers received pensions for many years from the public—in the presence of Earl GREY, who has quartered a whole tribe of his relatives on the nation, mon whose names were never heard of till he became Premier—in the presence of Lord ELLENBOROUGH, whose enormous sinecure in- come is a disgrace to the man who pockets it and the Government which sanctioned its existence—in the presence of a whole host of pensioned aristocrats, who never have performed a single action to redeem their names from merited obscurity. The peasions of all these people are paid out of the produce of the taxes, sonic of which are wrung from the necessities of the poorest &asses; and yet the useless recipients of these sums consider themselves en- titled to sneer at O'CoNNELl., because his income is (ierived from the voluntary contributions of his admiring countrymen !* It is easy to assert that O'CONNELL pursues the game of agita- tion for the sake of the money it brings him. It is equally easy to assert, and as difficult to prove, that Lord BROUGHAM attached himself to the Whig party for the sake of pelf and power, flattery and patronage; that his motives are not patriotic, but thoroughly selfish; that he made his democratic speeches a stepping-stone to place merely ; and that his sole aim through life has been his own glorification. His income and that of O'CONNELL are both de- rived from the same source, the pockets of the people: but one is paid willingly, the other through the agency of the taxgatherer. Which mode is the more honourable to the receiver?
• The l'eus:on list motion, on Monday, will enable O'Cominw. to retaliate.
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