Yesterday week, Mr. John Mitchell was to deliver a lecture
on Tipperary in the theatre at Cork. He was not well enough to read his own lecture, but he managed to show himself for ten minutes while a son of the late Mr. Dillon, M.P., read his lecture for him. Mr. Mitchell's lecture will not improve the estimate formed -of him by any true friend of liberty, either in England or Ireland. He boasted of his love for the cause of American Slavery, and that two of his sons fell in battle on the side of the South. Mr. Mitchell stated his belief that the Government would be very happy if all the men of Tipperary had but one neck, that they might all be hanged at the end of one rope. More violent nonsense it would be hard to talk. Further, he denied the alleged breach of faith by which he is said to have escaped from his imprisonment in Van Diemen's Land, and used in relation to it the singularly silly argument that if he had done that shameful deed, it would be impossible he could now stand up and look his countrymen in the face. That would
• depend surely, first, on the state of Mr. Mitchell's own moral sensitiveness ; next, on that of his countrymen in relation to any deed, however unscrupulous, by which he baulked the British Government ; and lastly, even if the Irish people are scrupulous on points of honour, on their care or carelessness in investigating the facts of the case. We do not doubt but that every one of these conditions would be favourable to Mr. Mitchell's standing up and looking his countrymen in the face,' in spite of his having dealt without any inconvenient rigour with the point of honour. Cer- tain it is that the Irish Nation, at the time, examined the whole case minutely, and decided that Mr. Mitchell never had restored the status quo of arrest, as he was bound to do, before effecting his escape.
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