The Sun.
London, England, 1835-09-14 00:00:00

THE DINNER.

At six o'clock in the evening, about 250 gentlemen sat down
to an excellent dinner, in the large room at Hayward's Hotel.
Numbers were also admitted after the cloth was drawn, and
such was the desire to see and hear " the great agitator,"
that the dinner tickets were for a day previous at a conside-
rable premium. We have heard of two being sold for 51. the
original price being 10s. each.
C. J. S. WALKER, Esq., presided on the occasion ; at his
right were Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Thomas
.Potter, Mr. Bre-
nand, Mr. Daniel Lee, Captain Donovan, and Mr. Kelly, of
the county of Tipperary ; on his left, Mr. J. C. Dyer, Mr.
Morgan O'Connell, M. P., (the second son), Mr. Ebenezer
Jacob, late the member for Dungarvon, and Mr. Caton, of
Liverpool.
The cloth being drawn, the Chairman gave in succession—
the King (3 times three); the Queen ; the Princess Victoria
—(3 times three) ; the Duke of Sussex and the Royal
Family—(3 times three) ; Earl Grey (3 times three) ; and
" Lord Melbourne and his Majesty's Ministers ; and long
may they continue to be supported by the general
voice of the nation, and to merit the good opinion
of the people." This toast was drank with the most enthusi-
astic cheering. After " the people, the source of all legiti-
mate power," had been toasted with three times three, the
Chairman gave " the health of our honourable and learned
guest, Daniel O'Connell, Esq., thanks to him for his distin-
guished and patriotic services, and may he long continue to
promote, by the exercise of his great talents, the cause of
civil and religious liberty." The toast was drank with three

times three,-and " one cheer more," the company rising,
clapping hands, waving handkerchiefs, &c. When silence was
restored—

Mr. O'CoNNELL rose and said—Gentlemen, your excellent
Chairman has apologised for the shortness of his speeches by
promising you a long one from me, and indeed if tediousness
were the English name for gratitude, and that I were ten
times as tedious as I can be, I'd have the heart to bestow it
all upon you.—( Laughter.) But it is not the insignificant
individual who addresses you that has elicited this applause
here, or congregated thousands to-day. No ; it is the cause
in which we are all engaged. lam but like the straw that
floats upon the torrent's surface ; it shows the course of the
current, and the rapidity with which it flows, but it no more
leads the torrent than I lead the people. I am but an
index of the popular mind, and I glory in being so. I never
despaired of my own conntry ; and yet when I was born, the
night of darkness and desolation was set upon her—the
great mass of her people was marked with a brand of slavery
of a darker dye than the sun ever burned upon a negro's
visage. The faction was small, but virulent and spiteful,
and malignant, and hating, and oppressing ; and all in the
name of religion. But do you know what gave them strength ?
I'll tell you that at once. The British government,.—for they
had no strength in Ireland,—and the acquiescence of the
British people. But why was the British Government mis-
guided; and why were the British people mistaken? Because
they knew us not ; and they did not know that there glowed
in the hearts of these Irish slaves as pure a spirit of freedom
as ever bled with Sidney upon the scaffold, or with Hampden
in the field.—{Cheers.) And why are we beginning to dike
each other better? Simply because we are beginning to know
each other better. And even I can proudly boast (and it may
be called a boast that I take) that I, Irish, born a slave, hav-
ing broken my own manacle, I used the broken part of it in
striking at the heads of our oppressors. I, even I, took share
in that triumph which yoa have celebrated in your toasts to.
night. (The Hon. Gentleman here repeated his statement as
to the Irish Members carrying the second reading of the Re-
form Bill.) But though I boast of this, is it in the spirit of
any instil-Ong or-presuming to call it saperiorify? Oh, no. I
am using it as a petitioner making a claim—l am using it as
a missionary of my country, going. -round to speak to
strong good sense of the middle classes of England—and
they are to independent to be Peers, :and too wealthy to be
dependent upon anybody—to carrythe good senseof the middle
classes of England with me .to farce the remaining House of
the Legislature, for the House of Commons is well disposed
already, to do justice to Ireland, and to give perfect secu-
rity to Great Britain.—( Cheers.) lam engaged in that
mission ; I am labouring in that vocation ; I trust I may say
it without profaneness, I am working out my salvation, by
the single instrumentality of endeavouring to do good to my
country and to my countrymen. I want that the advantages
of your civil institutions shall not only extend throughout the
remotest portions of the empire, but that they shall be ame-
liorated in their progress, and improved in the course of
their extension. I want that you yourselves, for here we
have common cause, shall lave that machinery of legislation
which shall enable you to reform every abuse, to cut away
every corruption, to ameliorate every portion of your institu-
tions, and to secure to you that progress, which you have
secured to yourselves in arts, 111 science, in commerce, and
industry and literature, I want to secure to you the same pro-
gress in the great arts of good and of cheap government. I
will come to the point at once. You have one house of legisla-
ture, the majority of which is disposed to do its duty. You
have
another house of legislature avowedly against the people ;
having an interest that ells them to stop the progress of im-
provement, and faithfully acting up to that interest you may be
sure. Well, now, if any man can suppose the House of Lords
ten times worse than it is (and Heaven knows he niust have a
powerful imagination), what remedy have you.? How would
you controul them? You cannot turn them out. Can you,
without violence arid revolution, have any species of redress?
Are they not there, from father to son, fixed in their scats in
spite of you, without any species of correction but that
which we should abhor. I remember some one asking at a
meeting in London, " What do you mean by
cleansing the
Augean stable of the loose of Lords ?" " Why the Augean
stable was cleansed by turning a river into it." ols, I have
it now; but if, instead of turning the river into the Lords,
suppose we turn the Loris into the river.—( Laughter. )
Now that's a plan I totally disapprove of. lam afraid,
amongst other reasons, that there is so much lead
in the upper region, and would therefore be so much
alacrity in sinking, that they would stick in the mud.—
( Shouts of Laughter.) But, in sober sadness, is not this
great country come to that point ? Do you ask why have we
not arrived tit long since ? Because the Lords were masters
of thp House
of Cvmmora when old Sarum had represeuta.