to the
dismemberment of the British empire, and the supporters of a measure
which he has so unequivocally denounced; neither can it be supposed
that any man would be such a fool as to place red-hot Repealers in the
important office of stipendiary magistrate, when the wishes of the
government might be thwarted and the safety of the country compromised
by their partisanship.

The Repealers admit their determination to accomplish the destruction
of "Saxon rule" in Ireland, and at the same time _modestly_ declaim
against the Saxon government, because they will not give them power or
confidential employment, by means of which they might more securely
carry out their intentions. Sir Robert Peel has taken every occasion,
to the great detriment and dissatisfaction of his steadfast
supporters, to give place to such of the Roman Catholic party as were
at all eligible; if the number of such persons be limited, the Roman
Catholics themselves, and not the minister, are to blame.

As to the bar, the list of Roman Catholics was run out before he came
to power. There was no one amongst them whose standing in his
profession would have at all justified the minister in placing him on
the bench; and he had men of his own party, distinguished for their
acquirements, whose interests he could not overlook, whose claims were
recognised even by Mr O'Connell himself, and whose conduct, since
their promotion, has been unimpeachable.

The agitators cannot, in justice, blame him for having recourse to the
Conservative bar, for when in trouble they sought protection from its
ranks themselves. Except Mr Shiel, who was merely employed to make a
speech, and whose legal knowledge was never insisted on by his
friends; and Mr _Precursor_ Pigott, who was retained lest a slur
should be thrown on the Whigs--all the leading lawyers who conducted
the defence in the "monster trial" were Protestants and Conservatives
of the highest order.

But what has this much-abused minister done to conciliate Ireland
since he came to office? He has nearly trebled the grant for national
education, and still continues the system adopted by the Whigs and
patronised by the priests, in opposition to a powerful and influential
portion of his own supporters;--he found a board of charitable
bequests composed altogether of Protestants, and seeing, as he stated,
"that two-thirds of the property they had to administer was Roman
Catholic," he dissolved that board and constituted a