The Sun.
London, England, 1852-06-16 00:00:00

JUNE 16, 1852.

happily characterises some of the very best of French-
men. Cowardice, in the ordinary sense of the term, is
perhaps not imputable to Louis Napoleon; but there
must have been a deplorable lack of civil courage in the
man who employed thefirst moment of security to:make
so glariag an admission of the fears with which the per-
fectly legitimate, and not very dangerous', opposition of
a 'Bourbon Prince had inspired him. Hypocrisy must
have framed or adopted the pretext by which that deed
of, unmanly revenge was sought to be veiled. Cynical
contempt of prescriptive right was betrayed by the very
'.imagining of Fuch a method of retaliation; and ser-
vility to the judgment of the lowest populace shone
in, every line of , the - clauses which distributed the
possessions of the dead Kiug among the con-
ventional . objec:s of "charity and compassion.
A revelation of such qualities in the principal author of
the recent events was a commentary on the events them-
selves. The country awoke to the absurdity of sup-
Posing itself blest in a Constitution which had been
to lend them
nutactured by such hands, and to the degradation of
tieing governed by the servile few who could be brought
by which
*elves to a participation in so mighty a
pretences
It at once became alive to the emptiness of the
of goveeersn
entire blame of the_ its passive
,when the letters tnent had been obtained. It had already
grown sceptical as .
onthe complicityperverseness
changeofthe
Assembly, to. the imputations which fixed the
a
ciere came to fasten the guilt on the proper head, and
the last unfort "
f Changarnier and Lamor-
stitutions had assumed, attr unal,e form which free in-
black treachery by which theyva by contrast with the
probabl were destroyed. But for
never have been written, and it (i'.
the Orleans decree it is
°certain that they would
have met with no general credens that those letters would
to be published, the Government merely In suffering them
made the mis-
take of supposing that the state of opinion was such as
it undoubtedly would have been ifnoviolation of the
simplest maxims of morality had been perpetrated to
change it.

COMMITTEE on the CASE of.lllR. O'CONNOR•
Yesterday, the Committee appointed to inquire into
the matter of the petition of Miss O'Connor, praying
that Mr. Feargus O'Connor may be liberated and con-
fided to the custody of his friends, met at four o'clock'
in Committee-room No. 13. Present—Mr. Walpole
(chairman), Mr. M. Milnes, Mr. V. Smith, Mr. Miles,
Mr. M. J. O'Connell, the O'Gorman Mahon, and others.
Dr. Tweedie and Dr. Lawrence, who have been in daily
Attendance on the unfortunate gentleman during his
confinement, wore examined on the subject-matter of the
petition. Subsequently Miss O'Connor, who is a petite
and rather prepossessing person, with the O'Connor
caste of countenance subdued into the delicacy of female
feature, was examined, and requested permission of the
Committee to be allowed an interview with her brother.
The Committee deliberated, and asked the advice of
Dr. Tweedie, who expressed himself adverse; but
on Miss O'Connor becoming importunate, her re-
quest was acceded to; and Mr. O'Connor having
been conducted from the " tower" down stairs,
she proceeded to see ,him, accompanied by Captain
Gossett, the Assistant-Sergeant-at-Arms, Mr. Bell,
M.P., D. Tweedie, and two of the messengers. Hero
they met Mr. O'Connor, with two messengers and two
sergeants of police, quietly promenading along the well-
known lengthy corridor of the Committee-rooms of the
House of Commons, the doors at the entrance from the
grand staircase having first been securely closed. Miss
O'Connor appeared much affected, and the unfortunate
gentleman continued to walk up and down with his left
arm cast carelessly behind his sister. On arriving at
the doors that had been locked he called out to the
police, through the glass panels on the other side, " Open
this, open this," at the same time trying to undo the
doors; bat on being told by Captain Gossett it could not
be allowed, he returned quietly, and continued talking to
his sister, No remarkable change has taken place in Mr.
O'Connor, either for better or worse, during the last few
days. He still indulges in rapid, rambling, aberrations,
reciting to his attendants snatches of what he states to
be his own poetical compositions, uttering now and then
an eloge on the lato Sir Robert Peel, abruptly broken
off to descant on the disasters of an old woman and her
pig in the bogs of Ballinhassig—of a stud of some
twenty.loog-tailed black horses his brother kept in Ire-
land, all whimsically interwoven by such canticles as
are heard at the Coal Hole, or by the recital of a litany,
interlarded with tears, on the failure of the unfortunate
land scheme. A difficult question has presented itself to
the Committee as to what it will be their duty to do, or
rather what jurisdiction they can have in the matter,
the case being without precedent on the journals of the
House. It appears, however, to be the impression that
although Mr. O'Connor is in imprisonment for contempt
of the House and disorderly conduct, yet that the proper
course will be to discharge him and assign him to the
care of his friends or Hanwell, from which asylum Dr.
Conolly visited him yesterday, and was understood to be
of opinion that Mr. O'Connor's insanity is only symp-
tomatic or incipient, and that with attention, and in a
short time, ho may be restored to a state of mental con-
valescence. His nephew visited him yesterday, and the
interview is stated to have been similarly affecting to that
with his sister.