4 The Dublin Public Dinner to Lord Morpeth. [Jan. 
first occasion of showing, by a decisive declaration, that he is a British 
King. 
Lord Morpeth followed the ducal adviser of his Majesty, and his 
speech was ridiculously worthy of his personal reputation, and political 
rank. Nothing could be more in character, or less rational, manly, or 
appropriate. His Lordship commenced, of course, with the established 
apologies for commencing at all; his reluctance to take up the invalu- 
able moments of the meeting ; his blushing consciousness of the forth- 
coming absurdity, his inexperience in addressing, his hopelessness of say- 
ing anything worth listening to, and the whole preamble that makes the 
nausea of a maiden speech. After giving them his experienced opinion 
on the best way of breaking down the perverseness of English opinion, 
and recommending “ unanimity,” that word of many meanings, he re- 
lieved himself and his audience by sitting down: prophesying with the 
expiring breath of his speech, that the time would come when England 
and Ireland wolud be united as much in amity as they are now in loyalty ! 
So much for the noble young orator’s knowledge of circumstances. 
But let us not defraud him of his honours. As every Irish assembly is 
supposed, by those who know no more on that subject than on others, to be 
stark mad for metaphor, this candidate for the falling glories of the Irish 
rostrum stirred up his energies for metaphor to the following effect :-— 
“Tt has been said, that the clouds and showers with which your atmos- 
phere is occasionally charged, have the effect of bringing forth additional 
verdure, and stimulating the natural fertility of the soil ;” thus far the 
fancy, then comes the fact. “And perhaps we may trace in the ardent 
feelings and kindheartedness of the inhabitants, the sympathy produced 
by political wrong ;” as brilliant an instance of the legitimate non sequitur 
as the language can supply. What connection showers have with sym- 
pathy, or natural fertility of soil with the popular wrongs of its tillers, 
we presume not toinquire. Butit would be unfair to omit the evidence 
of his Lordship’s delicacy in the word occasional. It disarmed the visi- 
tations of Heaven of that fatal perpetuity which might make Ireland be 
mistaken for Scotland, and ‘satisfied the most irrigated native that he 
was not to live hopeless of the sun. Sheridan talks of metaphors, “like 
heaps of marle on a barren soil, encumbering what nature forbids them 
to fertilize;” and little as we ever thought of illustrating Sheridan by 
Lord Morpeth, we must allow that his Lordship ‘has offered the happiest — 
illustration of the dramatist’s sneer, within the memory of maiden 
speeches. ‘ 
The remainder of the oratory was so much in the usual Association style, 
that we may refer to any of the speeches spoken before printing, or after 
printing, or “intended to be spoken,” that have flourished in the Irish 
papers for the last five years. Even the Bishop of Norwich underwent his 
annual toast: though we can scarcely forgive the grim ridicule of the — 
reverend popish priest who burlesqued the second infancy of Cobbett’s 
old and simple friend. 
But as men are not at all times equally silly, even in the popish 1 
parliament, it excited some surprise to find the speech, which was to 
have been spoken at Pennenden Heath, repeated by its writer. Mr.) 
Shiel should know, as well as any man, that the only chance of escape 
for absurdity in argument, or error in point of fact, is the careful avoid- 
ance of all return to the subject. But if one of the advantages of table 
oratory is the genial state of the audience, one of the disadvantages is the 
