nated by our self-constituted constituent committee, and the rumour is so absurd that it is not improbably well founded. So far there is nothing to distinguish this new movement from any of the thousand forms into which the Protean spirit of Irish disaffection has entered both before and since the Union. But when we come to consider the composition of the Association we shall find grave cause for reflec

tion.

1

The most prominent leader of the agitation is of course Mr. Isaac Butt, Q.C. His eloquence and intellectual powers, directed with the practised skill of a great lawyer, enable him to make the best of any cause he may choose to advocate. His pamphlet has reached a third edition, and it is the only work of the slightest consequence which we as yet owe to the Association. Next to Mr. Butt in celebrity is Sir William Wilde, an eminent oculist, and an amateur archaeologist of great fame, but who until lately has, so far as is known to the outer world, loved to meddle in politics as little as the needy knife-grinder. Mr. Shaw, M.P. for Bandon, is best known as having been the first to free that old Protestant borough from the domination of the Bernard family. The Rev. Joseph Galbraith is a Fellow of Trinity College, and has been Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Dublin. Mr. Laurence Waldron has been, what he will never be again, M.P. for Tipperary; he is an Education Commissioner, and the possessor of large property. Mr. Edward Purdon has been Lord Mayor of Dublin. So far the list is not a very formidable one. The Association is, however, a sort of Cave of Adullam, where discontented Toryism has taken refuge. The Orangeman and the Roman Catholic have kissed each other, the Fenian ap

plauding loudly. It is as it was in the days of the United Irishmen :

ξυνώμοσαν γὰρ ὄντες ἔχθιστοι τὸ πρὶν πῦρ καὶ θάλασσα.

Discontent makes strange bedfellows. The copy recalls the original in a feeble and undecided manner still both find dilettante admirers. Peers and M.P.'s do not openly espouse the new doctrines, but they flirt with them more or less openly. The Dublin Evening Mail, the old organ of Orangeism, is very strong on the subject. The Irish Times, whose hand is against every man, lends a fitful support. But the real Nationalist prints, the Irishman and his congeners, have widely different objects, as the Federalists very well know. From a Federal Union, in which our local affairs are to be managed by a kind of aggravated Grand Jury, to the Republic democratic and social, is a very long way indeed. But even the Red Spectre, never quite hidden in these days, does not frighten our theorists, and they play with the Mephistophelean fires like children who do not know the danger.

Mr.

The principal public appearance of the Association has been on the occasion of a dinner to Mr. John Martin, the nationalist and ci-devant rebel, who has lately beaten the clerical candidate in Meath. Martin's views go much farther than those of his entertainers. Some extracts from them, as reported in the Dublin Evening Mail of February 6 last, show how completely he is prepared to break through the cobwebs of the constitution mongers.

In June 1844,' he says, 'I became a member of the Repeal Association; there has been no change whatever in my political creed and principles of action.' Alluding to the rebellion of 1848, he says, 'A friend of mine, then and now, John Mitchel, was the boldest advocate of resist