eed, recollect a time when the example of the model Republic was
held up for admiration in the most respectable quarters, and was the
trump-card at every gathering of Radical reformers. But now the scene is
changed--now, "none so poor to do her reverence." Even Chartist and
Suffrage-men, Mr Miall and the Northern Star, have at last

---- "forgot to speak
That once familiar word."

They turn from her, and pass away as gingerly as the chorus in the Greek
play from the purlieus of those ominous goddesses--

[Greek: as tremomen legein
chai parameibometh
aderchtos aphotos]--

Mr O'Connell himself can find no room in his capacious affections for
men who repudiate their debts, burn convents, "mob the finest pisantry,"
and keep a sixth of their population in chains in the name of liberty!

If "the great unwashed" on the other side of the Atlantic, will only
consent to send men to their councils of moderately pure hearts and
clean hands, they may rest assured that any conspiracy which the united
powers of kings, nobles, and priests may devise against them, will take
little by its motion. But they do just the reverse, as we shall
presently show. The profligacy of their public men is proverbial
throughout the states; and the coarse avidity with which they bid
against each other for the petty spoils of office, is quite
incomprehensible to an European spectator. To "make political capital,"
as their slang phrase goes, for themselves or party, the most obvious
policy of the country is disregarded, the plainest requirements of
morality and common sense set aside, and the worst impulses of the
people watched, waited on, and stimulated into madness. To listen to the
debates in Congress, one would think the sole object of its members in
coming together, was to make themselves and their country contemptible.
Owing to the rantings of this august body, and the generally unimportant
character of the business brought before it, little is known of its
proceedings in Europe except through the notices of some passing
traveller. But its shame does not consist merely or chiefly in the
occasional bowie-knife or revolver produced to clinch the argument of
some ardent Western member, nor even in the unnoted interchange of
compliments not usually current amongst gentlemen. Much more deplorable
is the low tone of morality and taste which marks their proceedings from
first to last, the ruffian-like denunciations, the puerile rants, the