DANIEL O'CONNELL IN PARLIAMENT.
TIIE clause in the Emancipation Act which excluded O'CONNELL, has deprived Ministers of an able assistant. We shall not say that it has converted him into an enemy, but it has wonderfully cooled the ardour of his gratitude ; which is never so strongly felt by a generous man as when unexpectedly surprised by an act of highest friendship from one that lie has considered and treated as an enemy. We believe that DANIEL O'CONNELL is regarded by many as a mere mob declaimer—as one whom the influence of the House of Commons will • speedily reduce to silence and insignificance. We admit the trying nature of that atmosphere, but while it is fatal to a sickly and cockered constitution, it has very little effect on a healthy and vigorous one. Men who have nothing but pretence to support them, must soon find their level in an assembly that, with all its imperfections, contains • so much wit, learning, and industry. But O'CONNELL is no one-eyed monarch of the blind—he is not great among the litie men of his own land merely—he is a shrewd, hard-headed, hard-working lawyer, with great knowledge of books and greater knowledge of men—his originally strong powers of mind matured by long practlee in a coarse but not inefficient school. At once bold and insinuating, he can employ, in order to carry a favourite position, all the resources of bullying and blandishment ; and when a coup-de-main fails, he has all the patience and perseverance requisite for a systematic approach. We seldom reckon much on the declarations in a hustings-speech, but as from all that we have learned of the member for Clare there is a method even in his wildest flights, and as the speech at the election was unquestionably premeditated, it is worth while to attend to it for the purpose of marking the plan which he has sketched of his intended Parliamentary campaign. The first great object, (and we do not wonder that it sits near to his hart) is the restoration of the franchise to the forty-shilling freeholders of Ireland ; the second is the abolition of tithes in that kingdom, • the church lands being, he contends, quite sufficient for the maintenance of the Protestant cler4.; the third is the repeal of the Union ; the fourth (which indeed includes the first) is Parliamentary Reform in its widest sense ; the fifth, a general reform in the administration of the law. These constitute the great task. to O'CONNELL purposes to address himself. Among the inintiF §oints;• the only remarkable one is his Aleaoration that he w:11 nIke. flr•r-T4 inquiry into the imputotimis on Lie character of the Duke :.:OtSZCS' ERLA.ND in reference to the affair of Captain GARTH.. -The third of thise propositions, the repeal of the Union, may be dismissed as hopelessly absurd. It is an ad captandum bit of blarney, which we are persuaded the orator despises while he uses. The Irish have not perhaps received so many advantages from the Union as they might have done, but they have received a great many notwithstanding. The Scotch Union also was a topic of angry declamation for many a year, and the dissatisfaction it created tended more than any other cause to foster the spirit of rebellion that broke out so late as 1745 ; but no man in his senses now doubts that it was the most beneficial act the Scotch Parliament ever passed. The restoration of the franchise to the forty-shilling freeholders, and more especially the abolition of tithes in Ireland, are more fitting subjects for grave consideration. The abolition of the franchise was a saciifice of prudence to prejudice, but such sacrifices are never lasting ; folly must resume its natural inferiority and be content to suffer what it cannot imitate. The act which declares that the Constitution may may be endangered by a forty-shilling franchise in the poorest part of the United Kingdom, while it is sustained by a forty-shilling franchise in the wealthiest, is one of those perpetual enactments which we see pretty commonly repealed in a couple of sessions. The question of i tithes s more complicated. Tithes are a tax on consumption : abolish them in Ireland, and you place that country in regard to production in a much more favourable situation than England. The abolition of tithes in the one country, and their retention in the other, would be an act of unequal legislation much more injurious than the Disfranchisement Bill. All that seems desirable for either is a perpetual commutation act ; which will convert, in a few years, what was a tax on the produce of the soil, into a tax on the rent. Mr. O'CONNELL is a Radical Reformer, in which capacity he will find few coadjutors and little sympathy in the House. With perhaps the exception of Mr. HUME, we can hardly point to a real thorough going reformer among the 658. That gentleman has indeed, with undeviating consistency, advocated reform on all occasions—a pound reform when he could get it, a penny reform if better might not be. We dare say he will go along with Mr. O'CONNELL, as he has done with all who have hitherto endeavoured to give practical purity to the House of Commons. But Mr. HUME will receive more help than he fives. To the capacity for continuous application, the disregard of thosetriflinopleasures that check the current of other men's usefulness, the blunt': ness of sensibility on which disappointment makes little impression, and the dogged perseverance which stops short at no obstacle which time and application can remove—to all thew, --vhich make Mr. HUME so great a bore to the impatient few ••, , blessing to the patient many, O'CONNELL joins a loft_ more knowledge of • the world, more fertility of expedients, greater learning, and elo quence immeasurably superior. To the small band of which Mr. HUME is the leader, or rather the rallying-point, O'CONNELL will doubtless join himself. He says he will enter the House with the Speaker and retire with him—and he will keep his word. With half a dozen of such men perpetually lying in wait " to entrap the unwary," it is not going too far to say, that much more rarely than at present could an obnoxious or absurd measure pass the House. On the great question of law reform, which we have discussed at some length in another place, and which Mr. O'CONNELL has pledged himself to promote, he will be a most able and most useful senator. To this question many of our best members can bring little except their votes ; but the member for .Clam comes loaded with information collected during a long and brilliant career in the Irish courts. When men who have realized a fortune by the law come forward to point out the defects of its administration, they cannot fail of being heard. O'CONNELL'S election is the addition of a new element to Parliament. He is purely a man of the people—as much identified with their feelings and interests as CORBETT himself, while his professional studies have to a certain degree softened down the ruggedness of a genius not originally cast in a mould, of class:e elegance, and given him a polish of manner and dignity of 'bearing which COB/SETT very properly despises, as he despises every thing else he does not possess. We incline to think that O'CONNELL . have great Weight in the House ; nor should we be vastly surprised to find, by degrees, the remains of the old Tories marshalling themselves undcr his banners, and Mr. SADLER of Leeds aiding with his florid eloquence the rough and vigorous oratory of the ex-leader of the Association.
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