NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE climax of the Irish rebellion is of so trumpery a kind as scarcely to deserve the name of a crisis; and although the rebels have been beaten by a handful of policemen, there is scarcely so much success as to be called a victory.. Mr. Smith O'Brien and the other more ardent leaders of- actual revolt, as soon as the decisive course taken by. Government was known, left the capital ; and Mr. Smith O'Brien. tame to light again on the Kilkenny border of Tipperary; the centre of his operations being the hill tract of Slievanamon, in the midst of a mining district. The region is evidently agitated by an Anti. British feeling, and by bitter social -discontent : the people lootked downcast and sulky ; the gentry Were living in barricaded,I)Auses as a defence against the peasantry: Mr. Smith O'Brien went:about from town to town trying to raise the people en ..masse. The result amounted to signal failure. The excitement, of his manner, exasperated probably by disappointment; caused mistrust; and the people whom he did collect were-twice dim:faded front following him by an eloquent priest. • At length, hoviever' he succeeded in gathering- about a thousand men; and with that force invested a house in which a body of police was ensconced. The narrative of this siege is pitiable ; although it more than verges on the lu- dicrous, ridicule is checked- brthe reflection that life and death were at stake—that patriotism and bravery were burlesqued by a mean hero and a squalid rabble. The chieftain skulking among poor Mrs. M'Cormack's cabbages—dragged out by the anxious widow, tugging at his collar, to negotiate the surrender of her house and children—and rolling over among the cabbages at the report of a gun fired on his retreat—is a picture that should pro- voke laughter ; but the farce was stained, with blood. O'Brien fled at the head of his army. There has been a good deal of. crowing at this triumph of the police ; but to us the exultation seems premature. O'Brien has been beaten ; but it is nothing new to discover that the Irish are as incontinent to run as they. are. to attack,— a common characteristic of wildness. The priests exhibit a dilatory regard to public order : some are evidently sincere ; and if others are less sincere, their conduct at least proves the high estimate formed, even in the remoter districts, of the power which. Go- verntgent can command. But although the priests, anxious above all filings for the safety of the people from whom they spring and on whom they depend, are against overt rebellion, it does not follow that they could or would prevent the covert conspiracies against order which are the custom in Ireland. The confidence of the people in genteel leaders has been destroyed ; but their wildness, their ignorance, their misery, and their discontent, remain ; and it is only too probable that they will revert to the leadership of Captain Rock or Molly Maguire.
Lord Hardinge has assumed the command in the rebellious district;- but he labours under the disadvantage of having no enemy to encounter. A great army cannot be kept up to main- tain a running fight with Captain Starlight or Paddy M'Kew the soldiers must be withdrawn, and the Irish county again left to its native misrule.
