IRELAND.
A report has prevailed in Dublin, as well as in London, that Lord De Grey is to retire from the Viceroyalty ; to be succeeded by Lord Wharn- cliffe, or the Earl of Westmoreland. Another rumour is, that Lord De Grey intends to try a warmer climate for the benefit of his health, which suffers from rheumatic gout ; and that rumour is regarded as the origin of the other. They do not appear to be incompatible.
. Three candidates have been announced for the representation of Londonderry, all Conservatives,—Captain Peel Dawson, Sir Hervey Bruce, and Mr. Thomas Bateson, brother of the late Member. Captain DAWSON however, retires in favour of Mr. Bateson.
The weekly meeting of the Repeal Association was held on Monday ;
Mr. Thomas Steele in the chair. Mr. Smith O'Brien was the chief speaker. He alluded to the debate in the House of Commons, the al- tered tone which pervaded it, and Sir James Graham's abandonment of the assertion of last year that concession had reached its limit— A series of Government measures was to be introduced : but if the relations subsisting between landlord and tenant were to be taken into consideration with a view to adjustment—if the system of registration were to be altered— if there were conceded an enlarged grant for the purposes of education—if the Roman Catholic clergy were now for the first time for two hundred years to receive a status, and a law were to be passed to permit benevolent individuals to endow them with glebes—to what, he asked, did they owe these promised con- cessions, if not to the Repeal agitation—to the Repeal Association ? Last year he had submitted to Parliament, in the most respectful manner, a motion ask- ing for a committee on the Poor-law ; but his motion was contemptuously re- jected. If an Irish gentleman had proposed to Parliament to legislate first and then to inquire, be would be laughed at as having fallen into an Irish mis- take; yet such was the course of the Government in reference to this measure. They legislated last session, and they were about to inquire during this. They were at length beginning to travel in the right path in reference to this coun- try. But he told them from that place, that they must bid higher than they had hitherto done, in order to gain the good will of the Irish people, and destroy the recollection of the manifold injuries under which they still smarted. He told them more—they bad not much time to lose.
Mr. O'Brien moved a long petition on the subject of the trials. It is a cento of the current grievances,—the exclusion of the Catholics, the Chief Justice's charge, the violated right of free discussion, and so forth ; with various "protests "—against the doctrine that the Associa- tion is responsible for newspaper-articles, against the doctrine that the people must not peaceably submit their disputes to arbitration without being accused of disloyalty, and against the doctrine that they must not discuss the organization and administration of the Army without being accused of attempts to sow disaffection in the Army. The petition was carried by acclamation. The week's rent was said to be 562/.
At this season, Dr. M'Hale, titular Archbishop of 'foam, usually issues a pastoral address to his flock ; and in that just issued he de- nounces the scheme of a State endowment for the Roman Catholic clergy— "Those who unblushingly slander the Catholic priesthood of rreland are e4gyh, panting for the opportunity of making them hired mercenaries, and corrupting by bribes the virtue which is exercised not less in the interests of religious mo- rality of every kind than in the preservation of public order. A greater evil could not come upon the country than the infliction of a stipendiary priesthood; and we have every hope that God in his mercy will save so devoted a portion of his inheritance from this unspeakable calamity."
The Nenagh Vindicator says—" There is no truth in the statement furnished by a correspondent of the Evening Mail, to the effect that turf was thrown over the barrack-walls of Tullamore in order to set fire to the powder-magazine."
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