epiniond of nit tOrvill.

INSIGNIFICANCE OF O'CONNELL.

Aloes:mu CHRONICLE—It is amusing enough that the Tory writers have not yet agreed among themselves whether Mr. O'Connell is a man of any Import- ance or not. As Grizzle charges Tons Thumb with having runde the giants importance it killed, so the John Bull reproaches the Times with making the it assails in the person of Mr. O'Connell. The Times, with its ember logic, replies to this, that it shall prove Mr. O'Connell to he a man of very !roan con- sequence, "at the risk of being again charged by simpletons with giving ' the man undue importance by noticing him.'" The Times., indeed, adonts that Mr. O'Connell has power in Ireland, but adds, that it is "to the disgrace of the law authorities." Let us ask whether Mr. O'Connell had less power in Ireland during the Wellington-Peel Ministry, and whether his power then was " a disgrace m the law authorities " under the Government so loved and lauded by the Times? As for England, the Times denies that Mr. O'Connell has any power in it, except over his Majesty's Ministers, the Ministerial press, and that part of the population called Destructives by the Times. The columns of our virtuous contemporary must, therefore, by its showing, be daily filled with tirades against Mr. O'Connell, for the especial enlightenment of the Ministry, its friends in the press, and the Destructives ! To whom else can the railings against Mr. O'Connell be addressed? Not certainly to the people of England, for the people of England, according to the Times, are already of the right way of thinking about him. The Times then proceeds to prove by the map, that Mr. O'Connell is of no importance in England. This is demonstrated by the fact, that Mr. O'Connell travelled through Hertfordshire, and that no mention was made of him in that county ; and that in passing through one hundred and eighty miles of the fairest and richest part of England, no mere notice was taken of the "missionary" than if he had gone "encased in a beer-barrel." The test of popularity, in the judgment of the Times, would have been a meeting or a dinner at every stage. When Sir Robert Peel is entertained at "Tamworth, does not an address and an admiring multitude await him wherever be changes horses? But Mr. O'Connell, save the Times, " neter even saw the people of Enyland." He has never been in Printing-house Square; and what is the population of Manchester, Newcastle, and such nutshells? The people of England are the folks who addressed Sir Robert Peel in the Times newspwer last December, and nofortunately so over-advertised themselves, so exhausted themselves in one grand puff, that they had no resources left for the saying rif :the comas), from all its present unseen horrors. We next come to a piece of excellent wit, in the true stylefof the Times. Me. O'Connell is .icia to have passed through Yorkshire air quietly " as a b,rrel of red-herrings." In the Midland Counties no more notice was taken of him than if he had been "encased in a beer-barrel." In the North he travels like "a barrel of red herrings." What delightful drollery is this—all upon the barrel. We next come to the history anti mystery of Mr. O'Connell's invitation to Leeds ; and the Times here discovers the extent and particularity of its information. A person calling himself Mr. Charles Young arrived in Leeds (states the Times), called at the shop of Mrs. Mann, a vendor of cheap publications, and then and there, in concert with Mrs. Mann's son, aged eighteen, proposed a public re- ception and dinner to Mr. O'Connell, and got eleven hundred signatures. The historian of Puddle Dock must now speak for himself.

" The invitation luol to he presented. A deputation must present it. Manchester was forty miles oft: Coarli fare was expensive, and the wa7gon too slow, At last, how-

ever, a penny subseription was raised to meet the expen,es ; and Mr. C Itarles Young a perstal n”hoda kaor, awl thr ■outh of eighteen, were selected out of the eleven hundred as the fittest persons antom;st the Eat to represent the affluent town of Leeds on this important occa,ion."

What follows is an example of that eurtous and valuable information with whirh the Times now treats its readers. The dignity of the daily historian is wonderfully sustained in these details, which are of the truth and taste for which our contemporary is celebrated.

" All was not over yet : another h'teh presented itself: the junior delegate had got his shi,es rhymed arid las twat I rushed, and was quite reallt the the start to Manchester ; hut alas, Mr. Charles Yonn4. • the purely politeal tatrist, round it necessary to have a clean Mint before appearing in the presence of the great • Agitator.' What was to be done ? No one would lend • Me Hit eat tourist' at shirt ; Ham pressed: at last, however, young Mann procured a shirt. and off they set to Manchester.'

The Jain Bull will surely go mad with chagrin when he sees such a tribute to the consequence of Mr. O'Connell, as a passage in the leading article of the once self dubbed Leading Journal, narrating the circumstances, important as connected with the tail of Mr. O'Connell, that his Lteds requisitionist had not a clean shirt till one was procured by young Mr. Mann, aged eighteen' the son of Mrs. Mann, &c. &e., for further pat ticillars of whom we must refer to the Times. Mr. O'Connell's importance certainly loses nothing by this kind of treatment. When a man's followers are of such note, merely as his followers, that their linen is watt-bed by publicists, and its state and the circumstances of change recorded in leading articles, what must be the consequence of the man himself ?— October 9th.

LORI) BROUGHAM AND THE TORY PRESS.

TIMES—We find in the Standard the following curious paragraph, explain- ing the grounds t,f Lord Brougham's present alistinence from the use of his distinguishing weapon, and intimating in pretty plain terms that the hopes and anticipations of the noble orator will never he lealized.

" An invitation was lately presented to Loral John Russell to assist at a public dinner somewhere in Devonshire, but all that could be obtained was a polite refusal.

We should like to have MOO t•xplanat Ion of this almost portentous silence of a party commonly so clamorous. What has bound tlown the indefatigable organ of Lord Brougham's eloquence ? llis Lordship, even when trammelled by the Great Seal, and hardened by the mace, email command activit y and vigour to run to Edinburgh. His aonIship declaactl in that city, and in a hundred other places, that it was the ditty of piddle men to lie vigilant OtIli constant in their communications with the public, and undoubtedly be then discharged this dut y with all the assiduity of a zealot. But motionless is now that tongue which twelve months ago one would \Minh, ilepe to pUt :It rest, though Peliou. Ossa, and Olympus:, were all laid upon it, anti Lora Brougham is now unencumbered by seal or mave. Has the noble and learned lord been commanded to leave tlte stage free for Mr. Daniel O'Connell ? We confess our- selves at a loss to guess at his slit-net', exeept it be, as we have beard intimated, a truce allowed to Lord Melbourne while he shall congider the ultimatum lately transmitted by the noble anti learned lord. According to rumour, Lord Bmugham lass proposed terms w kb which Lord Nh.lbottrite, if hIO were able, and if he were wan., is unable to comply. These terms mu•d, therefore, be refused, and then twe

--bad Latin enough, but it nmst pass."

With reference to the same subje;1, the following hint from one of the most thoroughgoing Ministerial hacks is sufficiently expressive- " It is intend.-ii to mat Lord Brougham in nomination in January next for the aim of President of the Southwark Literary Society—the gentleman at present holding that office intending to resign it. The number of members now amounts to lire hundred anal twenty." So the noble and learned lord is to be recompensed fur his strenuous services during the last sitting of Parliament, anti intlemified for the loss, the loss for ever, of the Great Seal, by being promoted to the dignity of a President of the Southwark Literary Society ! The whole Ministerial phalanx of speakers and writers, the united power of Whigs and Radicals, the influence of all the Cabinet, frotn O'Connell, its master, and Lerd Melbourne, its Premier, down to Mr. Spring Rice, its touter, and Dr. Bowling, its laureate, is to be employed to secure the Ex-Chancellor's election to what is fondly imagined to be the ultimate object of his ambition—the chair of a club of suburban gentlemen, who relieve the toil* of hat-making, bide-tanning, aria soap-boiling by a little occasional gallantry with the Muses ! Verily, the O'Connell Cabinet takes somewhat amusing estimate of the wishes and expectatiens of their noble arid learned volunteer. They give him credit for a gullibility at least a hundredfold greater than their own, and a tameness of character which even Jerry Sneak might be ashamed to acknowledge. Poor devils! they little know the pitiless storm that will pelt their " looped and windowed raggedness "—a storm which, though it will pass innocuously over the public mind, will, as it reasonably should, scare even the apathy of Lord Melbourne, and make the timid Lord Lansdowne, even on the coldest winter night, prefer a bivouac on the barren hills of Kenmare to the warm and indolent repose of the well- aired chamber of the House of Lords. Let the Ministers presume to break their promise to Lord Brougham, not express, indeed, but Implied by a thousand circumstances, to reinstate him on the Woolsack, and he will keep the promise which, in the event of any other person being put io his nest, he has long made to himself and his friends—that he will so maul the Ministers, en masse and individually, that they " shall think the Devil is come from hell." Now let us not be misunderstood; we say that Lord Brougham ought not again to have possession of that seal which he has dragged through the mire, amidst the laughter of the unprincipled and the disgust of all reason- able men ; but certainly lie has a right to pour out all the reservoirs of his bit- terest sarcasms and most contumelious diction on that set of men, who, while they lick the dust from O'Connell's feet, presume to treat him, their more ancient ally, with as much indifference and contempt as if he were a super- annuated parish-watchman.— October 9.

THE MARQUIS OF CHANDOS.

GLOBE—We never suspected the Marquis of Chandos of that vulgar discern- ment which enables men to take matter-of-fact and common sense along with them in their public declarations and arguments. A morning contemporary " is at a loss to understand why the Marquis still clings to the Tory party.' For our own parts, we are at no loss at all about that. The Marquis of Chandos is one of those political oracles who designate themselves, as if by exclusive right, " practical men," and who make good their claims to that title in no other way, we can at present discover, than by showing a most noble disdain of the plainest rules of practical statesmanship. For the proof of this we need go no further than the very speech of the Marquis of Chandos veported in our columns of yesterday, and which we will say displays a degree of self- complacent party blindness quite characteristic of the "practical" people. We shall content ourselves with one instance of this, which has escaped our contemporaries. The Marquis makes Sir Henry Parnell and the other Excise Inquiry Commissioners state it to be their opinion that one half the duty on malt can be taken off. The Commissioners state precisely the contrary. This we pointed out the other day, drawing our own conclusions. We cannot,, perhaps, expect the Marquis of Chandos to be our " constant reader.' We may be allowed to wish, however, he had read the Report which he chuckles to find coincident, as he fancies, with his views on the blalt-tax. Ile would have found in that Report the most triumphant ex- posure (the more so, as conveyed without the least indication of party feel- ing), of the half sordid, half stupid cant of those Malt-tax abolitionists whose aim is not a public benefit, but simply a rise in the price of barley, and thence an ultimate rise of rent ; the landlord being the sole party who would benefit in the end by the change in any degree worth estimation ; while a de- ficit would be produced in the revenue fatal to public credit and confidence. The Commissioners showed clearly, though the Marquis of Chandos cannot see it, that the reduction of the Malt. tax must be coupled with the admission of foreign barley to produce any greatly-increased consumption, and by con- sequence any sufficient compensation to the revenue for the sacrifice of half the impost. The restrictions on the import of grain remaining unaltered, they declared it would be impossible, and inconsistent with all principle, to lower the existing tax. We do hope the farmers will be at length brought to ask themselves what is their real or solid interest in the schemes of landlords for raising rents ; and whether they do not lose more, in common with the rest of the nation, by the pressure and restraint on consumption caused by such a tax as the Malt-tax, which the restrictive system tends to perpetuate, than they can possibly gain by lending themselves to interested clamours for objects in which their interest is at best only precarious, and in which landed monopolists have the lion's share.— October 6.

STANDARD—The speeches of the Marquis of Chandos, in Burlingham- shire, have been too seasonable, too powerful, and too fully fraught with truth, not to excite alarm in the Whig Cabinet ; the command has, therefore' been issued to all the Whig journals to make a simultaneous assault upon his Lord- ship. The noble Marquis has reason to be grateful. If any thing is wanting to his deserved fame and unrivalled popularity, it is that the types still wet from daubingeulogies upon the worst man in the empire Mr. Daniel O'Connell,

i

be employed n vilifying him. The praise of those who delight iu rendering honour to virtue and talent is an imperfect tribute, if unaccompanied by the slander of the habitual panegyrists of profligacy. We feel the same difficulty in rendering justice to this distinguished nobleman that was confessed to em- brirrass the apologist for Hercules ; but we feel also the same consolation,—that the defence is difficult only because it were superfluous to the extent of absurdity. In what part of the empire can it be necessary to speak of the consistent course of active patriotism pursued by this able and unspotted nobleman ? Where is the man who has lived so long before the public—and, though happily still a young man, Lord Chandos has now undergone a public trial of many years, in times of extraordinary difficulty—where is, we say, the man who has passed through more than ten years of unceasing public activity, without incurring some shade of suspicion as to his wisdom or his integrity, except Lord Chandos alone ? Let those, too, who think lightly of the justice of public opinion, or of the value of the social and domestic virtues, mark well what has been the reward of such a brilliant course. Let them ask of any English farmer, or any unprejudiced Englishman whatever his pursuit, what is his estimate (Idle blarquis of Chandos? Let the inquiry be urged most closely where this noble- man is best known—let it be urged in Buckinghamshire—in that circle adorned and instructed by his domestic virtues. We have no distrust as to the answer.— October 9th.

RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT IN RELIGION.

COUR/Elt—We are accused of belonging to a school of politicians " which pa:a an equal regard to all sorts of religions and no religions." This accusa- tion we do not deny ; and we have more than once declared that statesmen have nothing to do with the religion of the people but to protect them in its exer- cise. The propositions on which we come to this conclusion are plain and simple, and strictly deduced from the doctrines of the Reformation. The great principle then triumphantly asserted was the right of private judgment in matters of religion. In fact, that principle did not require the Reformation to establish it ; for it is as "old as the hills," though it was necessary to vindicate it from usurpation. Religion concerns the individual, and not the State. The State is not promised eternal life; and though it may use the opinion which individuals entertain of future punishments or rewards as a means of promoting morality, the salvation of the individual is of such preeminent importance, that the views of the State as to public good can never be suffered to weigh against each individual judging for himself on the means of his own salvation. Individuals are to be saved by their own faith, and not by the faith of others. Thus the full and complete right of private judgment in matters of religion is an essential part of the doctrine of Christianity, and was not first discovered, it was only rescued from error, at the Reformation. But if each individual can and must judge for himself—if be is to be saved by his own faith, and not by the faith of another—how can any legislator or statesman pretend that his particular creed is to be made the rule for the guidance of others ? The pre- tension, if carried out into acts, is a violation of the right of private judgment. But the Legislature, and, in fact, the whole system of Government, is established to secure to each and every individual all his rights, so far as they are compati- ble with the rights of others, including the right, essential to salvation, of pri- vate judgment in matters of religion. Whatever creed, therefore, the states- man or legislator may himself adopt or prefer, he is bound by the very prin- ciple from which he derives his power, and on which he claims obedience from his subjects, not merely to respect the right of private judgment in all the people, but to protect each and all of them in its exercise. Whatever may he the errors of the Roman Catholics, the statesman who requires them to obey the laws because he protects their rights, is bound not to interfere with their faith. Individuals may lament over those errors—may wish them undone ; but the duty of the statesman, as such, is to protect the Romanists who are obedient to his laws in the full exercise of their right of choosing their own path to Leaven. Like the Standard, we claim fin. the Protestants of Ireland the same right, and shall always be ready to resist every interference of their Papal countrymen with their religion. The Standard is, therefore, right in saying we belong to a school of politicians which pays an equal regard to all sorts of religions ; for it is as politicians, and not as individuals, that we hold such an opinion. Politicians have nothing to do with religion; the circle of their du- ties is confined to political rights ; but individuals cannot be indifferent to reli- gious truth, and we feel ourselves bound, as we hope our exertions daily testify, to diffuse truth of all kinds, including religious truth, amongst all classes of the people. Our contem rary seems to regret that martyrdom is no longer called for, and is willing to er himself as a sacrifice in resisting the Whig Appropri- ation clauses. He sadly mistakes however, and misrepresents the spirit of the English Reformers who died in defence of the great and solemn principle of private judgment in matters of religion, when he insinuates that the men of three hun- dred years ago were weak enough to submit to be burned rather than connive at the appropriation clauses of Queen Mai y. If they like the pseudo religionists of our day, had made the mere flesh-pots of the Church a pi etext for exciting public strife, like them they would have been universally and for ei er despised. —October 5.