The Sun.
London, England, 1838-08-17 00:00:00

DUBLIN.

- - - -
Many of you will have seen the covert personal attack
which was made upon me in the House of Commons on Mon-
day last by one of the sitting Members for your city, Mr.
Daniel O'Connell. The Parliamentary report in the news-
papers contains it. If I show you, and I think I can do it
in a short space, that he has used his privilege of a scat for
the city, in this instance, where no public end was to be an-
swered, for the purpose of making a wanton and unmanly
attack upon me, I conceive he has by this act, if he
had by nothing else, disentitled himself to expect the
support of any man of common honesty, or, indeed, endued
with the ordinary feelings of humanity; but the out-
rage is even aggravated by an assumed pretext of
jealousy for the public money, which makes it the more
detestable. I shall first observe, that it appears his speech
did not procure the support of any Member, English, Scotch,
or Irish. The motion was made to postpone the third reading
of the Pensions' Bill to Tuesday, that the mover might, in the
mean time, prepare a Clause to place the Marchioness of
Westmeath's p,:nsion in abeyance until my death. He, con-
fessedly the most expert lawyer of the day, demanded, in
form, twenty-four hours' delay to prepare a clause, which the
most inexperienced M. P. could have composed on the mo-
ment—five short lines would have sufficed.
But though he had time to turn in his mind the materials to
blacken me in a well.considcred speech, and to make refer-
ences, he would have the House to believe it was not to make
the speech he had risen, so much as to obtain 24 hours' post-
ponement to do that, which even a schoolboy could perform
in five minutes. Well, he knew that his clause would not be
entertained, even if prepared and proposed ; and he was just
as well aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer
would not stop the progress of the Pensions' Bill for
such a
"Pose. The debate shows it. But further—
the proposition that Mr. O'Connell had sketched was to
abate the pension during any life, and that it should be
revived if Lady Westmeath should survive me. Now, if it
had been a wish to effect a saving of the public money that
actuated him, Mr. O'Connell (having had a knowledge of
th" of this pension ever since the p;:p,ers were
first printed in the early part of the Session) hau several
months to ascertain the public grounds on which he should
have moved in the matter. The slightest disposition to
inquire would have enabled him to know, that in the event

of my death, Lady Westmeath has a jointure of 3,0001.
a year, Irish currency. secured to her; and it is upon such
a contingency that he proposes a pension should revive,
which, until then, was to be abated—that is, now, while he
states she is in comparative poverty, it was to be taken from
her, and (in the interest of the public) to be given back
in an event when she could not possibly want it. The
hypocrite And he could not be ignorant of the fact of the
existence of that jointure, for my title has been before
him with a statement of incumbrances; and it is not in
human nature that, meditating such a speech, the facts
should not have occurred to his vigorous memory. But
finally, after having emitted his venom, he withdrew his
motion. However, this is not the worst. Of all men exist-
ing, Mr. O'Connell is the very last who should have made such
a personal attack upon me, as you will presently see. It is
true I have with perseverance, to the utmost of my power, ex-
posed in Parliament the pernicious effects on society of this
bad man's influence upon the Government of the country. In
his tour of mischief through the north of England and Scot-
land, 1 was subjected by name, as a Member of the House of
Lords, to the compliment of his low-lived, vulgar abuse—
since then, also, in some of his speeches, to the same distinc-
tion, and in such terms as no one who had been born and bred
a gentleman, could have stooped to use. I have had, there-
fore, the right and the leisure to analyze the vow in heaven
from which the foul-mouthed hypocrite obtains his impunity;
and I ask you, fellow-countrymen, whatever may be your
political opinions, whether it is humanly possible that a
man can have registered a vow with the God of peace,
of justice, and of mercy, who knows no measure in
the indulgence of private malignity, when provoked by
the offence of merely political opposition—who stops at no-
thing as far as his great talents, so hellishly, perverted, can
enable him to go, to indulge in attacks upon the private cha-
racters of political opponents? If not, then you have a well-
defined coward for your Member, and I do not see how any
other conclusion can be arrived at. The miscreant has stepped
beyond the sphere of ordinary men, merely by the force of his
talents : it has not beer, by their legitimate use.
He has by fraud, perjury, and'impudence, embodied a system
to deprive property of its due share of representation for Ire-
land in the House of Commons, and to substitute his own
nominees (most of them not even qualified), all for the avowed
purpose of ulterior and endless aggression against the Protes-
tant institutions of the country. Does it not behove every
Protestant who is not a fool or a knave to resist him ? Inas-
much as I, then, for one, have put my shoulder to the collar to
do so, I am become a peculiar object of his vindictive hate, and
what is more, of the never-sleeping malice of those ministers of
peace, his fellow-labourers, the Roman Catholic priests ; for in
every parish where I have property, they never suffer any, the
slightest occasion to pass, which is afforded them, of promoting
dissension between me and my tenants; while their altars are
profaned by coaxing and threats to extract the money of my
tenants, and the tenants of others, to put it into the pocket of
this demoniac, that he may, vulture-like, live in affluence,
without industry, and continue to disturb the peace of society
here, and proclaim to foreign nations the shame of Great Bri-
tain and of its Administration, which permits such a nuisance
to exist in its bosom, not only unabated, but nourished for
those purposes which no individual of the Government would
dare to avow, but which the Government collectively cannot
deny, and of which it is convicted daily, from sunrise to sunset.

I come now to the next cause of Mr.-O'Connell's everlasting
shame, as connected with this transaction, if anything could
shame so abandoned a villain. He has in his speech referred to li
certain suits and decisions in the ecclesiastical courts in Eng-
land, between me and the Marchioness of Westmeath, thus
wantonly reviving before the public, matters into which the
public never inquire, except when before the tribunals of the
country ; and which, of all men, he should have abstained
from alluding to, because his own treachery, when my paid ad-
vocate, mainly led to the result it now suits him to exsult in.
In the progress of these suits, and in January 1825, I found it
necessary to institute criminal proceedings for conspiracy
against several of the witnesses sent from this country to sus-
tain some of the allegations preferred against me.
There were five persons of them indicted at the Sessions of
Green-street, for conspiring by false evidence to sustain those
imputations, and the attorney of Lady Westmeath was indicted
for the same offence along with them.
Mr. O'Connell was one of my counsel. The trial lasted two
days. When near its conclusion, all my counsel (they were
five) were invited to leave the Court, and to confer in an ad-
joining room, and I was requested to attend them. The case
was nearly ready to go to the jury, and Mr. O'Connell then
made the unprecedented proposal to me, when in the agony of
suspense as to a result which I considered of more importance
than my lfe, to allow Lady Westmeath's attorney to be ac-
quitted, by way of ensuring the conviction of the rest. This
proposal came from himself. It was not made in concert with
any other of my counsel, who are all now living, and can con-
tradict me if I misstate it. One of them, the present Master
a the Rolls, who, although it has been my lot to differ with
him in politics, I owe it to truth to say, is an ornament to
his country as a lawyer and a judge, openly opposed
the proposal. His words to me, said in the hearing of
those present, were—" Hold him on, Lord West-
meath." However, Mr. O'Connell blustered, and his
recommendation prevailed. The agent was enlarged,
under these suspicious circumstances, by Mr. O'Connell's own
act. I might, to be sure, have resisted it ; but I could hardly
have been expected to take so decided a line against the urgent
recommendation of the counsel whose share it was to speak to
the evidence and to the jury. Judge Vandeleur, however,who
was trying the case, expressed his opinion of the proceeding
so as no legal man could mistake it, by saying " it should have
been allowed to go to the jury." And what ensued? I
merely obtained by all my trouble, anxieties, and expense, the
conviction of three perjured wretches from the dregs of society
(for two were acquitted)—who were mere tools in that infa-
mous business : and when the result of that trial was to be
transferred and criticised by the Ecclesiastical Court in Eng-
land, the moral effect of the acquittal of the agent was the
white-washing of the principal, and thus Mr. O'Connell, against
the conviction of every one who heard the trial, and who knew
of the affair at the time, is now, in consequence of his own act,
enabled to volunteer to resuscitate this shocking affair, and
to say in the House of Commons, that he may blacken me,
" the lady is blameless." I never could have conceived the
disastrous effect which the step he had advised would have had
upon me. Ilad he but permitted the effect of what OP a ac-
tually performed and done to take place, the whole fabric of
the matter which now gives Mr. O'Ccnnell his exultation
would have been cast the other way. The charges of cruelty
( which could never stand the test of a trial at common law,
when the witnesses were examined viva voce, and their faces
seen in the day light), when put to that ordeal would have
been scouted out of Court, as they have been laughed at by
almost every one whom the process of time and other events
have undeceived upon the subject. That this must have been

:he result could not have been hid from one of Mr. O'Con-

ne!l's legal acumen; but 1, little thinking that following his
treacherous advice was to fasten nearly ten years' more litiga-
tion upon me, wrote him a letter of thanks for doing merely
his duty as to the conviction of the rest.

Then I shall be asked with what motive do I now charge
Mr. O'Connell for taking the step he did. lam convinced
he zeas I i idly bribed to do it. It was, towards me, an act of
treachery, of which, at the time it was committed, I could
nit hale sip owed any human berg csrable; bnt the pres-
sure which 1 have endured in consequence of it, and the de-
velopmer4 of his chararcter for scoundretsm 'n the turpitude
of his political life since, has convinced me he was not only
capable of it, but that it is eminently in consonance with the
nature of the man. Did he not receive money for supporting
the factory Bill, and did he or did he not acquit himself for
his wages? Did he not solemnly go up to the table from his
place in the House, and adjure his God to the denial of a
fact which every dispassionate person in the House and all
Ireland now knows to be true ? Did he not in the hearing
of Captain Vignoles and of two officers of the 71st regiment,
now ready to substantiate the fact, in a speech at Carlow thus
deliver himself :_.

" Men of Carlosv, are you ready ?—( Aye, aye.) I am
the last man to recommend the shedding of one drop of
blood ; but we have tried every means of attaining our just
rights, and they have failed. We have no course left now
but that which I have hitherto deprecated—the shedding of
blood ; blood must be shed."
And he has had the impudence since to try and extricate
himself by a brazen denial, and nothing else.
These three matters, selected from the annals of the
infamous political life of the national incendiary, are my
proofs of what the man is capable of.
The facts of my own case, which I have referred to, bad as
they are, never should have been mentioned by me, but for the
gratuitous attack lately made by the fellow in the House of
Commons. They refer to other parties, and, all considered,
it must have been my natural wish to let the matter sleep. No
other consideration should have induced me thus far to revive
them. Good-feeling commanded that I should not do so,
but I am not permitted so to act.
The public have heard that Mr. O'Connell has lately had
the option of stepping in upon the judicial bench. I cannot
credit it to be possible, that any British Minister would be so
bold as to recommend to his Sovereign that a man implicated
as Mr. O'Connell is, should be so raised ; above all, I will not
believe Lord Melbourne would think of such a thing.
Our illustrious Sovereign must be first studiously blinded
as to the past history of tho man, or such an appointment
could never happen. Lord Melbourne is not, in my opinion,
a man to go twat length, or, on the other band, to admit that
any mere expediency could justify such an experiment on the
public endurance.
I have learnt by report (for I was not in London) that the
ruffian ventured to present himself at Court. I learnt also
that a Prince of the Blood, in the presence of the Sovereign,
forgot himself so far as to shake bands with this common
blackguard. I cannot believe it. But if it be really fact, and
that it was done for the assertion of a principle, methinks
it would have been more consistent and generous in his
Royal Highness to have taken some practicable mode of
showing his countenance to the object of it during one
of the late reigns, because then Mr. Daniel O'Connell was
struggling against the presumption of success in his project
of dismembering and revolutionising these dominions. The
dunghill demagogue had not assumed the garb of a cour-
tier in the times of George IV. or of the late King; and
although he " God-blessed " his late Majesty to satiety
while the Reform Bill was in progress, yet he did not make
up his mind that matters were ripe for his appearance at
Court in the late reign : therefore, the salutation by hand
could not well have happened in the Royal presence then ;
but, for consistency sake, this distinguished privilege might
have been accorded elsewhere, though it certainly was
not. But now, when the reviler of the Saxons for
a quarter of a century, and of their women especially, pro-
duces his potato-plebeian-face at the court of the Queen
of the Sixons—i,t the Court of nor most (=rat-Anus Que2o,
a Prince of the.Biuod steps out to offer an insult, thend
presence of the Sovereign, to every lady in England and
every gentleman in Ireland, by forcing the distinction of
familiarity up on this vagabond—upon the greatest trading

. liar that was ever trained by the Jesuits or cursed the
earth—aye, upon the very pivot of treason and disaffection
, —upon the fostering parent of perjury and Irish demorali-
zation. I treat it as a fable. It could not have passed.
But again, I say if it did, inasmuch as I know that that
illustrious Prince has, out of an enlarged benevolence, be-
queathed his royal body for dissection after death, I recom-
mend that he should anticipate the entire gift so humanely
intended, and cut off the hand which was so defiled, that he
may entitle himself to appear again in the presence of his
abused Sovereign and niece, and also learn from she sur-
geons who hare to analyse that dishonoured limb, the amount
of the defilement incurred, that his Royal Highness may
repent in proportion, before increased mischief is generated
from so foul an example. The fate of Egalite is pregnant
with counsel against such like associations.
Fellow coutitryrne,n, electors, repudiate the monster ; if
ru be Roman Catholics, he cannot be a friend to your re-
ligion if he dishonours your country ; if you be Protestant,
he has planned your destruction. Send him back to Kerry--
the Kerry men have guaqed him, and let these send the petti-
fogger to Parliament if they will.
Mr. O'Connell will possibly, however, inquire again after
your suffrages. If so, pause, and at least reflect that if he
has not been long since on the felon scaffjld, it is only be-
cause he lacked the courage ; but remember, he has seat
hundreds of others to an untimely end since his career began,
and reflect also, that his black, brooding heart inevitably will
deluge this island in blood, by setting man against man
within it, unless it pleases Providence to open the eyes of our
Sovereign to the mischief which is hatching by his contrivance,
and to awaken you also to your confidence abused by this
temroughly profligate adventurer. If this happens, we may yet
hope to see

" In every honest hand a whip,
To lash the rascal naked through the world."
I have the honour to be, fellow-countrymen, respectfully
your well wisher and obedient servant,

WESTMEATH.
Clonyn, Castletowndelvin, August 11, 1838.

A direct intercourse has been opened between Limerick
and London. The first steam-packet sailed this day.
ORANGE ANNIVERSARY.--The 12th of August, the anni-
versary of the siege of Derry, was celebrated in the maiden
city with a great share of the usual triumphant rejoicings.
The arch at the entrance of the Church-yard was decorated
with orange lilies, and the bells played party tunes through-
out the day. There was, however, fortunately no dis-
tubrbance.

COMBINATION.--A serious affray arising out of combination,
took place in Limerick, on Monday. Some carpenters who
did not belong to " the body," were attacked by a party of the
" united carpenters," and beaten very severely. One man,
named William Green, was struck on the head and cut in a
desperate manner. The assailants are known, and will be
brought to justice.
THE HARVEST.—A quantity of new oatmeal of the primest
quality was shipped from Drogheda for Lit erpool on Monday.
This would indicate an earlier harvest than was generally an-
ticipated.

The Dublin Registry is at present proceeding very drowsily.
The numbers admitted are few, and the victory is alternately
with the Liberals and Tories, with astonishing regularity.
Unless Mr. O'Connell succeeds in banishing the apathy which
at present exists, the Reformex-i will have gained no accession
of strength by the present session.