The Sun.
London, England, 1829-04-17 00:00:00

TO THE CATHOLICS OF IRELAND.

When I am writing these lines, it is more than pro-
bable his Majesty is giving his Royal Assent to the Eman-
• cipation of the people of Ireland ; and, before I go further,
give m leave to set the mind of my country right on one
subject which in my mind thy do not fully understand.
Who is the auth, rof the liberty of Ireland ? Who is the
first cause? Whose is the impelling mind? I say, after
a close and industrious inquiry, the King, George the
Fourth, is the liberator of Ireland. It was he who gave
the tone, set the example, made the converts, and achieved
the %venders of the days we live in. Is it flattery to power
which prompts the publication of these honest truths ?
No man who knows me who will not acknowledge that if
my present Sovereign was the reverse of what he is, the de-
voted friend of by-gone rrejudiees, the humble echo of
Lord Eldon, I should not be backward in speaking of
him in language I hope not unworthy of the high character
I alluded to, but most certainly not unworthy of the cause
of which lam an ardent advocate. But the King has
put an end to discussion, he has taken his station at the
head of all that is powerful from wealth and eloquence and
genius, and he has sent round the entire circle a fire,
which has illuminated one party and consumed another.
To the King, therefore let Ireland pay the first tribute,
and next to those Ministers, who, if the King were not
the ascendant mind, dare not, would not, attempt that
which they have gloriously accomplished. It is, no doubt,
a glorious and heart-exciting era in which we live. I
have now been in this land of freedom and integrity five
weeks—l have mingled with all parties, high and low, and
I can assure you that I never met with any man who did
not admit the claims of Ireland on the justice of England.
Even those who differed from me (and I found some) always
differed like gentlemen and scholars, never denying the sin-
cerity of my opinions, and of course answered by me with
tile expression of reciprocal satisfaction. I have had a hun-
dred discussions with the most distinguished men in Eng-
land, whom I met at the Tavistock Hotel, and I never
found one—no, not one—whose bosom did not over-
flow with the kindest and most generous feeling for
Ireland. Nor will I presume to say that my presence
brought forth such opinions. I sincerely believe they
were the natural offspring of kind and generous hearts,
and springing directly from their native sources. It is so
every where in the British empire. The Bar of England,
witls Scarlett at their head, a body of light and learning
which burns up the old-woman follies of Eldon—the Bar
of that great and wonderful little country, Scotland—the
literature of Scotland, with Sir W. Scott at its head—the
commercial intellect of England, with that enlightened
Corporation, the Corporation of London, at its head, the
Favells, the Waithmans, the Rouths, at its head. What
had the cause of civil and religious freedom to fear when
such were the champions? Delightful is the atmsophere
I now breathe ; with triumph I look forward to the day
when my children (and they will do honour to their coun-
try) shall enjoy the fruit of what I, following in the wake
of my great countryman O'Connell, endeavoured to sow
the seed ;—when they will enjoy the opportunities a par-
tial Constitution gave to such a man as Lord Eldon to
rise (and great is his praise for so doing) from the family
of a blacksmith to be Lord Chancellor of England. My
fine children may now look forward. That they will be
grateful to the King, loyal to the Constitution, and fearless
in its defence, I will be the guarantee. It is true—oh !it
is quite true—that our great generous, and magnanimous
people, the forty-shilling freeholders, are flung into the
shade—they are deprived of their invaluable right of voting
for their Representatives in Parliament. Te preserve the
rights of the existing freeholders I have done my best ;—to
prevent the operation of a retrospective Act I have not
been idle. I have failed in the execution of my wishes;
but much has been conceded ;—olt ! yes, much has been
conceded—so much that the spotless integrity and wisdom
and eloquence of Earl Grey yielded to the temptation.—
Holland gave way—Durham gave way—the Whigs of the
Lords and the Commons surrendered to what they con-
ceived the greater good ;—am I in error when I bow
my head to such authorities ? I should be presumptuous
if I did not defer. I therefore take the Bill with the sin-
cere hope, that it may be all its most sanguine friends anti-
cipate. I have said much has been obtained ; the Irish
Bends for the future will be without suspicion ; the Jury-
box will be purified ; Catholics will be Sheriffs ; Pro-
testants and Dissenters will be Sheriffs; national confi-
dence will be the result. I trust another year will not pass
over until the Irish forty-shilling freeholder will be re-
stored ; the fraudulent freeholder deprived of his fran-
chise, and the fearless, honest man restored. Wellington
has astonished the empire. So did the elder Brutus asto-
nish Rome. He was thought a fool. He rose front his
mother earth, and established the freedom of his country.
I can find no better parallel in history. Excuse this letter ;
it is written as I have ever written, with a heart full of
enthusiasm for the union and happiness of Ireland, and
the strengths and invincibility of the British empire.

JOHN LAWLESS.
Tavistock Hotel, April 12, 1829.

MR. LAWLESS.

'A NOTE TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND.

Ireland has been stigmatised by her enemies as wild,
vindictive, and turbulent; and eulogised by her friends as
the land of hospit dity, generous ardour, and daring
valour : but by neither friend nor foe was the Irish heart
ever yet styled ungrateful. Shall we permit that worst of
epithets now to be applied to her? Now, in this her
dawning hour of prosperity ; now, when (to use the words
of one of the most elo luent of her sons), " the rancour of
sectaries is about to vanish, and the altars of uncharitable-
ness to smoke no longer." When the nation sends up her
patriot voice to Heaven, and implores its choicest blessings
on O'Connell, as her benefactor, shall he who has been as-
sociated with that great man in his splendid career, who
with him has " borne the burden and heat of the day,"
and put to hazard his all, in the mighty struggle for na-
tional freedom, shall he be forgotten ? Let it not be hence-
forward a reproach to the soil of his birth, tint one of the
first, if not himself the foremost of the founders of Irish
Liberty, has been overlooked by the men of his own time.
Amid the glorious triumphs of political importance
which Ireland is yet destined to enjoy, and when un-
born generations shall decree, as most certainly they will,
a Statue to the memory of John Lawless—" Ingrata Pa-
tria," will be inscribed on its base, should we of the pass-
ing age, forget him and his services? It is to be
hoped that nothing so degrading as this fact, will
stain the fair page of the future story of Ireland,
but that some very strong proof of the gratitude
of his countrymen will attest their deep sense of the talents,
courage, perseverance, 'and patriotic devotion of a man
without the honourable mention of whose name the annals
of our common country would be defective, and without
whose manifold exertions that dear country's cause would,
in all proLability, have been lost for ever. I will not, for
I am sure I need not, say more. E. I\,
Bath, April 6, 1829.

SIIERIDAN had half a (IWR bottles, and as
many candles, befere hitn wben the familiar spirit of poetic
Capture was upon him; thus philosophically proving that
light and heat are the congenial elements of life. BURNS
composed his immortal song of Scots, wha /sae, after tak-
ing a " Stirrup cup." THOUSON, being asked how he
could paint spring so beautifully in the midst of winter,
replied that he had an " evergreen e,"ii Lo;d;
BOT'S table." SAVAGE forgot over u‘ bottki. o> Iv* that
he was a bastard ; and GO:c.-lETII never compose:) feli-
c:tously till after he ha 4 ibe. favekn, IiVRON wrote
his immortal satire, of' :the .44105 h Lards and Scotch
.flevc:ee..;sbe.tt:ecn: tvo bottles, one wine, the other gin.
translated Virgil over a bottle of Lord DORSET'S
wine i and SHARSPEARE himself, Fancy's child, wrote his
Merry Wives of Windsor when drinking Queen Riss's
present of sack. BARRY CORNWALL, of pieto4al memory,
conceived his noblest and boldest deigns aver his bottle of
claret; and it was there, t;o, that LocKE first thought of
combating the
.A riztptelian logic. POPE kept a bottle of
champagne in his study, to " help the Muse's speed," and
k4I3IIIER had one in his writing-desk.—himpoailMion.

TITT, MIRE OF WELLINGTON IN THE

FIELD.

Head-quarters sometimes dashes by us, or across
our line of march with him, who, now, (like Mat l-
borough, or the angel, (I forget which,) in the be-
ginning of the last century,) " rides on the whirl-
wind and directs the. storm," leading, often singly,
at the front. We know Lord Wellington at a great
distance by his little flat cocked hat, (not a fraction
of an inch higher than the crown,) being set on his
head completely at right angles with his person, and
sitting very upright in his hussar-saddle, which is
simply covered with a plain blue shabrack. His
Lordship rides, to all appearance, devoid of sash ;
as, since he has been made a Spanish field-marshal,
lie wears on his white waistcoat, under his blue sur-
tout coat, the red and gold-knotted sash of that rank,
out of compliment to our allies. Fr6m the same
motive, lie always wears the order of the Toison d'Or
round his neck; and on his black cockade two others,
very small, of the Portuguese and Spanish national
colours. His Lordship, within the last year, has taken
to wearing a white neckerchief instead of our black
regulation, and, in bad weather, a French private
dragoon's cloak of the same colour. I continue
these details respecting our great captain (who may
yet lead us to the gates of Paris), as I always found
every minutiae of celebrated characters as much
sought after by the inquisitive (among whom I class
you), as the very deeds which have brought them
into notice. Often he passes on in a brown study,
or only returns the salutes of the officers at their
posts; but at other times he notices
_those he knows
with a hasty " Oh! how d'ye do," or quizzes good
humouredly some one of us with whom he is well
acquainted. His staff come rattling after him, or
stop and chat a few minutes with those they know,
and the cortege is brought up by his Lordship's
orderly, and an old hussar of the First Germans,
who has been with him during the whole Peninsular
war, and who, when he speaks of him, uses a Ger-
man expression, literally meaning good old fellow,
emphatically implying in that language attachment
and regard.—Naval and Military Magazine.

LOUIS .FIFTEENTH AND THE FIVE

SISTERS.

Five sisters of the family of Nesle, whose fortune
was not equal to their birth, and whom natnre,
though with much diversity, had endowed with her
most precious gifts, had the most easy access to the
Queen. Madame de Mailly, the eldest of them,
good, simple, free from artifice, liable to weakness,
but capable of great constancy, was the first mis-
tress of the young Prince. The courtiers had but
little fear of any ascendancy that she might gain : she
was not pretty. This intrigue was involved in mys-
tery ; but the second sister, Mademoiselle de Nesle,
afterwards Marchioness of Vintimilla, had already
in the retirement of a convent, conceived the plan of
becoming Madame de Mailly's rival. Divested of
timidity, now flattering the Prince and now his
Ministers, now pretending gaiety, and now deco-
rum, she made a conquest of the King, who, then
taking the first bold step in the career of scan-
dal, publicly avowed her as his mistress. She
died. Mademoiselle de la Tournelle, blooming
with beauty, and pretending to blush at the example
of her two sisters, aspired to replace them. She
inflamed the Monarch by the indifference with
which she pretended to receive his homage; but,
yielding at length, after she had sufficiently resisted,
she was created by her royal lover Duchess of Cha-
teauroux. She was also overtaken by death. The
King was, for a long time, inconsolable for this loss ;
but the dissipation of a brilliant and corrupt Court
having effaced the sad impression in his mind, and
wakened him to the necessity of fresh delights, he
formed a plan for the conquest of the remaining
sis-
ter. The Duke de Richelieu, who prided himself
on_ having been intrusted with the infamous affair,
was righteously doomed to the shame of its miscar-
riage. She was replaced by the Marchioness
d'Etiolle, afterwards Duche,,s de Pompadour.—
Monthly Magazine.