In the following note Lord BROUGHAM has disavowed all par-
ticipation in the attack upon O'Comeem., which the Tories put into such active circulation from the columns of the Mormng Advertiser.
Lord Brougham presents his compliments to the Editor of the 2Ifornin9 Chronicle, and begs leave to inform him that there is not the least ground whatever for the suspicions expressed of Lord B. having written or suggested, or been in any manner of way concerned in the paragraph copied from the Morning Advertiser in last Friday's Chronicle ; and that Lord B. never saw the paragraph in question, nor was aware of its existence, except by reading it in the Chronicle.
Petershani, December 13."
It would be very unpolite to refuse credence to this express disclaimer—the most precise that we have ever seen from Lord BROUGHAM'S pen. At the same time, Lord BROUGHAM would have no great cause of offence were we to retain our opinion re- specting the authorship of the article in question, which was formed on a perusal of it, without communication with any one, and before we had seen a newspaper surmise on the subject. Besides, supposing for a moment that Lord BROUGHAM really had penned the attack, was it not of a nature which he durst not avow—and being charged with it, which he must have denied? We say that we should be justified in still believing Lord BRO UGH AM to have inspired the writer in the Morning Advertiser; because no one knows better than his Lordship, that writers conceive themselves at liberty to deny the authorship of anonymous productions which they do not choose to own. Sir WALTER SCOTT, we remember, declared over and over again that he was not the author of Waverley ; and Lord BROUGHAM himself, not many months ago, disavowed all knowledge of the ISAAC-TOMPKINS- PETER-JENKINS pamphlets,—on the same principle, we presume, which Dr. JOHNSON said would justify Justus in denying himself to be the writer of the celebrated Letters.
We were the more ready to suppose Lord BROUGHAM to have used the columns of the Morning Advertiser, or any newspaper he could find access to for the time being, because we are aware that his Lordship is in the habit of scribbling in periodicals himself, and by deputy ; though of course, he has never felt himself called upon to acknowledge the nameless offspring of his restless brain. It must also be admitted as an excuse for our mistake, that the real author, whoever be may be, has a marvellous knack at imi- tating certain peucliarities of Lord BROUGH AM'S style, and has been surprisingly happy at seizing the very topics which his Lord- ship would be most likely to prefer as the subjects of his own lucubra tions.
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