almost confined to the right of petition-have determined that the audacious outrage of a venal and cowardly magistracy in a neighbouring country, shall not prevent them giving their opinions fully and unequivocally on the conduct of those who would presume to interfere illegally with the exercise of their constitutional rights. A requisition is therefore determined upon, we understand, which, in a few days will appear before the public, containing those points of inquiry and remonstrance which the present occasion so peremptorily demands.

After all the consideration we have been able to give to the subject, we are satisfied that this is the plain, honest, ingenuous course which the inhabitants of Belfast should take.

We either have or have not the right to petition. An effort has been made by an audacious band of magistrates (for the unfortunate and ignorant Yeomanry are comparatively innocent) to rob the people of this right. They have presumed to imagine a levying of war against the king's government, or a conspiracy to terrify and intimidate by force of numbers and an hostile array of sticks and staves, at the moment they are obliged to admit, that there was not a single manifestation of violence throughout the entire assembly, many of whom were women and children. This Round Robin of Magistrates, these arch conspirators ogainst the Constitution and Laws of the Land, have dared to run their armed Yeomanry on a defenceless and naked multitude.

Is Ireland to remain silent when such scenes are going forward? "Yes, (says the Irishman of 1800) let us look on with folded arms-England robbed my country of her constitution, and murdered her children in 1798 and 1800.Here now is her just retribution! England bound up Ireland's arms, and then calls upon her to assist her against her common enemy. She set fire to the Irish cottage, and then she calls on our aid to assist in stopping the conflagration which threatens to burn up her rich and comfortable habitations. No! we will not stir-we shall look on and laugh at the slaughter of this unkind and ungenerous nation." Such is the language of the honest but unreflecting Irishman. He does not stop to consider that it was but Jately Englishmen had thrown off the incubus that preyed so heavily on their understandings; that a few months, nay, a few weeks have passed by, since Englishmen have demonstrated to the world that they will no longer be the dupes of the policy to which they have for years been the victims. Look at the Address from 80,000 Englishpen as

sembled in Smithfield to the People of Ireland, breathing in every line the spirit of the purest and most unalloyed philanthropy.

The House of Commons, that boasts of its learning, its wisdom, and its purity, rejects the prayer of Ireland humbly begging for a redress of her grievances. Mark the difference-50,000 Englishmen-Burke's swinish multitudeopen their arms, and receive them with their hospitable and kind embrace. They proclaim to the world the principles of Civil and Religious Freedom, and raise an altar to freedom on the ground which was once covered with the bones of her martyrs. Should Ireland be deaf to this sacred appeal-should Belfast be blind to a scene that calls up the finest visions of the imagination, and will she not volunteer in tearing from her bosom the miserable records of the cruelty of the Boroughmongers? "It was not we, the People of England, who put your nation to the torture, or blotted your name from the map of Europe. We were deceived and betrayed, and we acknowledge the fraud that was practised on our understanding, and we make the only reparation in our power, that if we recover our rights you shall be a participator in the enjoyment of them. Come, then, and co-operate with us in the great constitutional work in which we are now engaged; in which all the great names of our country have distingished themselves; of whose sentiments and whose principles we are but the feeble echoes, though the zealous, determined, and unsubdued supporters.' To such an Appeal it is not easy for Ireland to close her ears. (Belfast Irishman.)

To the above powerful appeal to the feelings of Irishmen we can add but little. We know their political sentiments, although every effort has been made by Castlereagh, Canning, and others of equal notoriety, whom the sons of Erin blush to acknowledge as countrymen, to quell its expression. We know their enthusiastic love of independence, however humbled, heart-broken, and politically degraded: and are confident their generosity will induce them to forget all former enmities, and unite heart and hand in a cause the success of which must be as beneficial to Erin as Albion.Let them remember that if England had a Pitt to raise the whole force of an unwilling people against the rising sun of freedom, they had a Cto surpass him in that iniquity. If the former plundered this nation of its wealth, the latter not only did the same by Ireland, bnt subsequently sold it to England; and, for ought we know, may now be intriguing to dispose of both to Russia or the Grand Signior. For a quarter of a century the acts of the English govern

ment have not been the acts of the people. It would be as great a libel to say that the people of England keep Buonaparte a prisoner in St. Helena, as to say that the patriotic, the noble-minded Emmett was conducted to the scaffold by the Irish nation. He, who scarcely saw his four-and-twentieth year, when the tears of his sorrowing countrymen fell upon his unhonoured bier, and whose melancholy requiem was the sigh of Freedom, when departing from his native land. There is a pleasure, 'tis, perhaps, in some instances, a melancholy one, but yet it is a pleasure to do justice to the character of a hero, and Ireland will never again be the residence of freedom until the statue of Emmett graces the principal street of its metropolis,—until then

"Oh breathe not his name, let it rest in the shade,
Where cold and unhonor'd his relics are laid,
Sad, silent, and dark be the tear that we shed,
As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head.
But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it weeps,
Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps;
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls."

MAGISTERIAL WISDOM SPREADING FROM
LANCASHIRE TO SCOTLAND.

A mania seems to be prevailing in the northern parts of the kingdom, amongst magistrates who are contending with each other to know which shall exceed the other in rendering themselves conspicuously ridiculous. If their folly did not in a most mischevious manner affect the general interests of the community, we might perhaps laugh at their childishness; but when it tends to exasperate the populace to acts of such violence as it is our present duty to lay before our readers, we cannot avoid expressing the most heartfelt indignation, not towards the magistrates but towards those who could lodge so important an authority in the hands of a set of drivelling boobies. As the Royal approbation was bestowed upon the Manchester murderers because forsooth their unfortunate victims marched to the place of meeting, with banners bearing inscriptions of independence, the Magistrates of Paisley took it for granted that if with the assistance of the constables, they could manage to capture the flags borne by the Glasgow Reformers, their names would be transmitted to posterity as rivals in military glory to a Bonaparte or a Moreau, and the captured flags placed beside the eagles at Whitehall which were taken upon that fatal day when despotism triumphed over the liberties of Europe. The attack is accordingly made, the flags are se

cured, and while congratulating themselves upon their suc cess, the people return in numbers and in a short time half the windows in the town are demolished. These are the effects which might have been expected to result from Lord Sidmouth's circular, and from the Regent's thanks to the heroes at Manchester. The former incited magistrates to stretch their authority beyond the law-the latter proved to the people that justice was closed against them, and they had no hopes of redress except by taking summary vengeance upon those who commenced upon them an unprovoked attack. The mischief we are confident will not rest here; magistrates are anxious to get themselves into notoriety whether infamous or otherwise, and as Lord Sidmouth tells them their opinions are to be law, they seem resolved to take advantage of his protection to commit deeds for which there is no other law than their sapient "ipse dixit"-The people, on the other hand, are also resolved to oppose every infringement on their liberties, and when brought before the bench have had in several instances the assurance to make these same magistrates look like fools, by their evident superiority in intellect, in understanding, and every acquirement in which a man might, but in which a magistrate should not be deficient. Let the people be firm and their apparent superiority of talent, must ensure them a victory in the convulsion which is fast approaching. The puny puerile artifices to which ministers resort to suppress the public expression of opinion through the medium of the press, is sufficient proof of their terror, and terror always proceeds from conscious villainy or from conscious weakness, or (as we believe to be the case at present) from both, Our readers will be enabled to judge of the validity of our opinions from the following extract which has been received with others of a similar purport from a letter from Paisley.

"Saturday being a very fine day great numbers gatherd in from the neighbouring villages. They marched in order with music and flags at their head, and with inscriptions on them. I noticed one with Justice and Liberty, and another with the letters R. L. upon it. These two came with a group from Glasgow, and were allowed by the civil power to pass through the town without molestation. At the meeting these initials were explained and commented upon and proved to stand for Rights and Liberties. In consequence they were seized on the return of that party from the meet ing and in consequence the disturbances began. At nine o'clock on Saturday evening the lamps were broken and also the windows of the Town-House. The special constables with great difficulty succeeded in restoring order that

evening; but on Sunday morning when the report of what had happened spread abroad throughout the country, the people poured in from all quarters, and attacked the magistrates, going and returning from church. By the evening the town was in a state of uproar. In less than an hour all was fury and demolition; many thousand panes of glass were broken. In the houses of two of the Clergymen, on account of the tenets they maintain, not a single pane was left unbroken. In the town chamber the public Coffee Room, and in all the Warehouses more or less on the causeway-side, the destruction has been nearly equal. The houses of Mr. Pollock, in Maxwilton, and Mr. Buchannan, are a complete wreck. All the houses were shut, and proclamations issued for the well disposed inhabitants to assemble at different places. A party of Cavalry arrived in the town on Saturday night at twelve o'clock, and yesterday more of the military were sent for. A few of the ringleaders were taken. Those who are most active are Glasgow people, and from the adjacent villages."

"P. S.-I open this at the Post Office, to state that the Riot Act was reading as I passed the Cross; the town is at present tolerably quiet, but a report is just brought from Glasgow, that a large body of rioters are assembled there. More military are coming into the town."

Thus we see by the accounts from Ministerial quarters, (for none others have as yet been received) that the people were quietly dispersing, when the silly Magistracy must fling the torch of discord amongst them, which, however, they were not so easily able to extinguish as they at first imagined. In the midst of these scenes of Magisterial iniquity, it is grateful to view the manly and patriotic conduct of the Mayor of Norwich. At a meeting where this gentleman presided as chairman, strong resolutions were passed to mark with reprobation the authors of the Manchester Tragedy, of the 16th of August, and an Address voted to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, similar to those already passed at the late Meeting at Westminster, and at the Courts of Common Council in the city of London, the answer to the latter of which will be found in another pige. We enjoin, we entreat the people to be firm in the cause in which they are embarked, a cause which is sanctioned by every honest heart in the nation. We entreat that ere they suffer another suspension of the charter on which our liberties are founded, they will arm and perish to a man, in the defence of those Rights and Privileges which were bequeathed to them by their forefathers, unsullied and un-hakled by the chains of Military despotism. That England is such at pre