ebe Country.

The provincial news this week consists almost entirely of accounts of meetings to petition the House of Commons not to sanction the mutilation of the Municipal Bill by the Irresponsible branch of the Legislature. The most numerous assembly was at Wakefield, on Monday; when the Reformers of the West Riding of York, to the number of L5,000, passed spirited resolutions, expressive of confidenee in Ministers, and regret and astonishment at the conduct of the Peers. A petition to the House of Commons was agreed to. Sir F. L. Wood was in the chair; but the chief speakers were Earl Fitzwilliam and Lord Milton. The former apologized for his absence from Parliament by saying, that his individual voice would have had no effect in arrest- ing the course of the majority, and that be had left his proxy with Lord Radnor. He condemned the conduct of the Peers as revolutionary and impolitic; and expressed his approbation of the conduct of Ministers, and of the leading provisions of the bill. [Lord Fitzwilliam ought to have been in his place in the House of Peers, where Lord Melbourne has greatly needed the support of men of his high character and im- mense possessions. Who was to know that he had given his proxy to Lord Radnor?] Besides Lords Fitzwilliam and Milton, Sir E. M. Vavasour, Sir W. B. Cooke, and Mr. W. R. Stansfield, addressed the assembly. The requisition to the Sheriff to call this meeting was signed by 700 of the gentry and freeholders of the Riding.

The other principal meetings have been at Wolverhampton, Frome, Gateshead, Ludlow, Romsey, and Stockport.

It seems that the Birmingham Political Union is in process of reor- ganization. The following address has been issued by the Council.

"Town Hall, Aug. 29. 1835.

"Fellow Countrymen I The time is come! The crisis is desperate! Shall the People or the Lords govern this great country ? That is the question. Shall a handful of factious Peers rule the high. spirited People of England ? Your implacable enemies, the Tories, threaten you With WAR! CIVIL *WAR! I You beat them in 1832, and by the same means may beat them again in 1835. Let your watchword be sow as then, UNION I UNION! Your old tried friends, the Political Council, are at their posts. Let the standard of the Union be again unfurled, and rally around it. The eyes of all England are upon the People of Birmingham. Display the same undaunted courage and perseverance you have displayed before, and victory is secure.

" The Council will call a public meeting without delay. " By order of the Council, "P. IL Warn, Chairman."

"GEORGE EDMONDS, Hon. Sec

The friends of Civil and Religious Liberty in Manchester have' invited Mr. O'Connell to a public dinner; and Mr. O'Connell has accepted the invitation, in the following letter to the gentleman who was the organ of communication between him and the men of Man- chester. The letter will repay perusal ; for it is full of just and liberal sentiments, pithily and powerfully expressed.

" London, 1st September 1835. "My DEAR SIR—I had the honour to receive this morning the letter which you and several other gentlemen of Manchester and its vicinity have done me the honour to send, inviting me to a public dinner, as a token of your appreciation of my exertions in favour of Civil and Religious Liberty.

"Permit me to request that you will be so good as to do me the honour of informing those gentlemen, that I accept the invitation with sentiments of the greatest pleasure and truest pride.

You do me but justice in thinking that my life is devoted to the advancement of the great principles of Civil and Religious Liberty.

"Civil Liberty is nothing but justice reduced into action. It drives the unjust, the peculator, the underworked public officer, the partial judge, the squanderer of the public purse, from power, from station, from the opportunities of doing wrong. It gives to the People equal laws, good laws, cheap laws. It leaves to every honest man the full enjoyment of all his property not indispensably required to defray, in the most economic manner, the general government of all. It scruples to levy a tax almost as it would scruple a robbery ; and it has its bases in the utmost possible extension of popular control over all public functionaries, with one only, and a safe exception.

"Religious Liberty is, I own it, more dear to me still. Religion is the most important and awful concern of human existence ; but its tenets are matters between man and his Creator. It is the great Creator who alone cau see the hearts of men; and he alone can judge how far each of us is sufficiently sincere, and sufficiently cautious in the adoption and maintenance of his religious belief. Our fellow men have nothing to do with it. The law of man is impious, I would say blasphemous, when it usurps the province of God, and in the pride of its usurpation dares to coerce conscience anti to attempt to compel belief. I feel that in vindicating freedom of conscience I vindicate our common Christianity from the foul stain of persecution. "Pardon me for obtruding these thoughts upon you ; but the compliment you pay to my exertious on behalf of Civil and Religious Liberty has forced me to pour out my heart before you, rejoicing at the sympathy you evince for the prosperity of that sacred eauEe.

Will you allow me to name Monday. the 7th instant, as the day of my arrival in Manchester ?. You may reckon with certainty on my being with you before four o'clock '00 that daY. I have the honour to be. of you and of your fellow subscribers,

"The very respectful faithful servant,

"DANIEL O'CONNELL."

A.dinner was given to Sir Robert Peel at Tamwortb, on Thursday evening, by about two hundred gentlemen of the town and neighbour- hood. Sir Robert delivered a long speech, in defence of his conduct as Premier, and of his more recent proceedings in Parliament. He also dwelt upon the necessity of respecting the privileges of the Peers ; and quoted some accounts of outrages in America, to prove that Monarchy was better than Republicanism.