The Sun. — 1846-07-30 (London, England)

CONNELL. Ile may pine for the days when under the prestige of that extraordinary man, he, Mr. WILLIAM SMITH O'BRIEN, was deluded into the belief of his importance. It is but natural that the individual who could , sulk in a dirty little room adjoining the Parliament House, because his attendance had been required upon certain railway committees, and who imagined thereby that he had acquired immortality as a martyr of Irish liberty—it is but natural, we say, that such an individual should mistake the language of BOIIADIL for eloquence, and the tactics of BOBADIL for wisdom. But we are amazed that one who evinces the possession of such a lively imagination should be so entirely divested of common sense as to believe himself capable of superseding the Liberator. Does Mr. Satrru O'BRIEN forget that it is solely through the complacency of Mr. O'CONNELL that he has been enabled to emerge from obscurity; that his present prominent position as a representative of Irish opinion is attributable. solely to Mr. O'CoNNELL's patronage ? That if he, Mr. SMITH O'BRIEN, has been a chieftain among his fellow-countrymen, he has only attained that elevation, like the Grecian monarchs of old, by being raised upon the shield of O'CONNELL? Does not Mr. SMITH O'BRIEN remember that, unless the Liberator had proclaimed to the multitude that an oracle was about to address them, they would have beheld in him, Mr. SMITH O'BRIEN merely a middle-aged gentleman of very ordinary capacities ? Does he not feel that it has been through the instrumentality of O'CoNNELL, and through the instrumentality of O'CONNELL alone— not, ttN fromiE any inherent genius— that he, Mr. SMITH o B has occupied any particular share of public attention? Knowing and feeling all this, where is his frietiship, where is his gratitude for such generous and magnanimous condescension ? As to the moral possibility of his superseding the Liberator as the leader of the Irish population, the notion is altogether dispelled by a comparison of the two men. Surely the homeliest intellect would recognise the disparity between them. A sensible Irish. man need scarcely be asked his opinion as to the fitness of O'CONNELL or O'BRIEN for so reponsible and distinguished au office. O'CONNELL, the tried, consistent, resolute, enthusiastic patriot; who has pleaded during so many years, and with such a touching and beautiful eloquence, for the extinction of the woes of his afflicted race ; whose indomitable zeal obtained a voice in the national Legislature for the members of that Church in whose pale seveneighths of his fellow-countrymen were numbered ; whose ardour is not the animation of a momentary caprice, but the predominating influence of a long life; whose oratory has not merely elicited the acclamations of the people, but has acquired boons  fur his native land ; who has rejected honour and emolument, when both might have been purchased by his silence ; who has fought the good fight of patriotism through evil report and good report, through panegyric and vituperation, manfully to the last devoting to the cause of his country the bloom of his youth and the prime of his manhood! And for the desertion of this man the Irish are to be lured by that very excellent person, Mr. WrLmAnt SMITH O'BRIEN! We are the more indignant at the impudence of such a movement as this, first, from our unaffected respect for the character of that renowned and venerable patriot, DANIEL O'CONNELL; and secondly, because in that movement is involved one of the most pernicious doctrines of political domination; we mean the doctrine of physical force. In all ages and in all countries that terrible doctrine has, whenever it has been adopted, brought with it countless curses and infinite wretchedness. Its acceptance is, in short, nothing less than the legalisation of civil war. It is substituting the divine right of monarchy to the divine right of murder. Where was this truth more lamentably evinced than in the first glorious revolution of France, beginning so nobly with the mental struggles of the Tiers Etats for liberty, and merging into the riots of living creatures, with the forms of men and the hearts of demons ? Was the object of that gigantic revolution attained, the more s9curely or speedily by the resort of the Parisians to physical force ? Was it not, in fact, retarded ? Did it not arouse throughout the monarchies of Europe that great spirit of opposition which twice conducted the allied armies to the walls of Paris, and forced upon the French people the representative of that Bourbon dynasty which they hoped to have annihilated by the execution of Louts