Dec. 7,] 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



[1844. 



I 



Hoid near the Savings Bank, and thence to the rising 

 ground in the Long Walk, where it will admit of travel- 

 ling on to Shaw Farm by the Frogmore estate, occupied 

 by the Duchess of Kent, Old Windsor, Egbam, Staines, 

 and ultimately to join the South Western line between 

 the Woking and Weybridge stations. According to this 

 plan the Frogmore road would be done away with alto- 

 gether, and the Frogmore estate, belonging to the 

 Crown, annexed to the Home Park, which would be very 

 desirable to Government, now that Windsor has become 

 the principal residence of the Sovereign. — The Leeds and 

 Selby Company have wound up their affairs by declaring a 

 dividend of 2/. Is. 3rf. per share for the pe iod from the 30th 

 June last to the present time. 1 he company hereafter will 

 be incorporated with the York and North Midland. The 

 last named company is to pay 210,000/. for the 2100 

 original shares of 100/. each; and with this sum the 

 Leeds and Selby have at their disposal, from bonus 

 arising from sale of moveable stock, for mortgage?, for 

 rent due, by savings effected in interest on mortgage, &c, 

 the sum of 232,799/. J 4$. Ad. The disposable funds of 

 the companv are to be appropriated as follows: — From 

 the principal money, amounting to 225,000/., the sum of 

 105/. 18s. 9d. per share will be paid to the shareholders, 

 being equal to 222,46SZ. 15s. from the 2100 shares, of 

 which the original capital stock of the company consists, 

 leaving in the hands of *he directors 5661/. IGs.Orf. for the 

 discharge of the ascertained debts of the company, and 

 the balance of 332/. 8x. 7rf. to cover any remaining 

 liabilities which may hereafter appear, and subject to 

 such liabilities to be disposed of by the directors at their 

 own discretion. — The Porthcawl and Duffryn Llynfi 

 Company have declared a dividend of 3 J per cent., and 

 the progress of affairs is said to be highly satisfactory. — 

 A meeting of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne and North 

 Shields Company, was held last week, at which it was 

 resolved to agree to the following proposals : — 1. To the 

 extension of the Newcastla and North Shields Railway 

 from North Shields to Tynemouth ; 2. To a railway, or 

 communication by tunnel or otherwise, from the Conduit 

 Head, near the terminus of the railway at Newcastle, to 

 the quay, near the Folly Wharf; 3. Ta the union and 

 consolidation of the Newcastle and North Shields Com- 

 pany with the Newcastle and Berwick Company. The 

 meeting was numerously attended, and the object of the 

 proposed union and consolidation being to take in a por- 

 tion of the Newcastle and Shields line, in the route from 

 Newcastle to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and thence to Edin- 

 burgh, according to the survey and plan of Mr. Stephen- 

 son, the proceedings created considerable interest. 



IRELAND. 



Dublin. — The Roman Catholic members of the new 

 Roard of Charitable Bequests have all been appointed. 

 Sir Patrick Bellew, Bart, Lieutenant of the county of 

 Louth, baa been selected as the second lay commissioner, 

 and it is said that Mr. Redmond O'Carroll, barrister, 

 has been appointed Roman Catholic Secretary of the 

 Board.— The general assembly of the Presbyterian church 

 in Ireland, last week presented an address of congratula- 

 tion to Lord Heytesbury on his appointment as Lord 

 Lieutenant. In his reply his Lordship says : — M As Her 

 Most Gracious Majesty's representative in this countrv 

 I can have no other wish than to secure to each the free 

 exercise of his religious opinions and worship — to disse- 

 minate in as wide a circle as possible the advantages of 

 moral as well as of general instruction — and to contribute 

 in every possible way to the development of that indus- 

 trial prosperity of which so many encouraging symptoms 

 are daily manifesting themselves in every part of this 

 beautiful kingdom."— The weekly meeting of the Repeal 

 Association took place on Monday, Mr. Somers, M.P. 

 for Sligo, in the chair. Mr. O'Conr.ell commenced the 

 proceedings by advising that no person should speculate 

 in the railways now in progress throughout Ireland who 

 could not afford to be out of his money for 3 or 4 years. 

 He then read a letter he had received from Mr. J. A. O'Neill, 

 in which that gentleman defended the character of the 

 French people from the unjust attacks which he considered 

 Mr. O'Connell to have made indiscriminately upon them at 

 the last meeting. Mr. O'Connell said, he must have been 

 nrsieported if such appeared to be the effect of his address. 

 He never said that the entire French people were im- 

 moral and irreligious At the same time he could not 

 £0 the length of saying, with Mr. O'Neill, that they 

 wpre all moral and religious. There was a strong in- 

 fidel party in France— a party who not only had no re- 

 ligion themselves, but who hated and execrated all who 

 had any. There weie, however, among Frenchmen as 

 fine qualities as amongst any people on earth. Basely 

 ungrateful should he be if he did not recollect how they 

 treated the Irish Catholic gentry during the existence 

 of the penal laws. At the commencement of the French 

 Revolution he had no less than ; 2 relatives officers in the 

 French array, three of whom had risen without a friend 

 to the rank of General. He was, therefore, grateful to 

 the French people. He admired the religious portion 

 of them, he admired the chivalrous Christian gentry of 

 France, but he hated and denounced French infidelity, 

 and the sneering mode in which the infidel party as- 

 sailed religion and the clergy. The Constitutional had 

 gone the length of hiring 'Eugene Sue to write libels j 



. The National followed in 



against the Catholic clergy 



*is tra k, and it was against them and their admirers 

 •hat he had levelled his indignation and his hatred. The 

 hon. gentleman concluded by moving the insertion of 

 Mr. O'Neill's letter on the minutes, which was agreed 

 to. A report on the formation of Repeal reading-rooms 

 w »a then brought forward and received, after which Mr. 

 O'Connell adverted to the necessity of a new University | 



for Ire'and, and of the remodelling of Trinity College, 



Dublin. Some donations from America were announced, 



and Mr. O'Connell then proceeded to make the speech 



of the day. 



He began by describing: the principle of their action in re- 

 viving the agitation for Repeal, which was only to end with a 

 Parliament in O.-l lege- green. That principle denied the right 

 of obtaining any political advantage by force, violence, or 

 crime. He was the apostle of peaceful exertion, and the 

 preacher of moral combination. As such he had invited the 

 Federalists to join them ; but instead of joining them they had 

 deceived them. They were good-natured people enough, but 

 they were not genuine Irishmen, for they thought thit Irish- 

 men on»ht not to govern thpmselves.and the love of fatherland 

 did not Burn brightly in their bosoms. He now declared that 

 he expected no nid from them. The English newspaper of the 

 Dissenters, the Patriot, alleged that he was looking for Repeal, 

 not in order to obtain it, but in order to coerce England to do 

 something in the way of justice for Ireland. That was a total 

 mistake, and he wished the people of England to understand 

 that there was nothing equivocal in his looking fur Repeal, and 

 that England could offer nothing short of Repeal which he 

 would iCCept of. Hiving again hurled his indignation and 

 defiance again t the Whig writers of the English press, and in 

 particular of t!>e Examiner, by whose rascality, he said, the 

 people of England hat lost the confidence of Ireland, the hon. 

 and learned gentleman proceeded to establish the first of 

 ten propositions, to the effect, that the Union was no con- 

 tract, but had been forced on the Irish nation by for 

 and fr?ud. His second proposition was, that the Union 

 had produced the most disastrous results to Ireland, and li 

 principal proof-; of it consisted of the decay of Irish manufac- 

 tures and the statistics of the population. He then proceeded 

 to substantiate his 3d proposition,— that if the Union were a 

 real one, Ireland would have got at least 1/5 members instead 

 of 100, and entered into details to show, that according to the 

 population of Ireland she was entitled to more than 200 mem- 

 bers ; and that, taking population and revenue together, she 

 was entitled to 175, ending the subject by declaring that the 

 paucity of Irish representatives was one of Ireland's greatest 

 grievances. The 4th, 5tb. 6'h, and 7th propositions related to 

 the Parliamentary franchise, the limited nature of which Mr. 

 O'Connell described as a crying injustice, and to the Irish 

 Municipal Reform Act, which he declared to be miserably de- 

 fective, particularly as regarded the franchise, which was so 

 high as to exclude about three-fourths of those who would in 

 England be burgesses. On coming to the 8th proposition, 

 stating that the peop'e of Ireland were obliged to contribute to 

 the support of two churches, he said, that although he had 

 already been addressing them for an h ur and a quarter, 

 he wished he was only beginning, for this was a subject 

 of SHich importance that it demanded a dissertation in itself. 

 In England and Scotland, he observed, that the State tempo- 

 ralities belonged to the Church of the people, but in Ireland 

 they belonged not to the people, but to a small remnant of the 

 people. He did not want the State temporalities of the Irish 

 Church for his own Church, because he considered that an alli- 

 ance between it and the State would be the greatest misfortune 

 that could hefal it. But he wanted what they had in England, 

 and what they had in Scotland— he wanted fair play and justice. 

 On the 9th proposition, viz., that a gross fiscal robbery was in- 

 flicted on Ireland by the Union, he dwelt only for a moment ; 

 and on coming to the 10th, that the Union enormously aug- 

 mented the dsastrous effects of absenteeism, he expressed his 

 gratification that it was the last, observing in reference to it, that 

 if they had a Parliament of their own, they would be able to tax 

 absentees to the extent of f8 per cent , or even 80, in order to 

 compel them to reside in Ireland, and that for the principle of 

 taxing absenteeism they had a precedent in the income-tax of 

 Sir R. Peel, who hunted out the Irish absentees residing in Eng- 

 land, and madethem pay that tax. The hon. gentleman concluded 

 by urging the absolute necessity that existed for an absentee tax, 

 which he said a domestic legislature would not hesitate to im- 

 pose, and then alluded to the evils consequent on a distant and 

 remote legislature. On concluding, Mr. O'Connell moved that 

 the ten resolutions on which he had spoken he referred to a 

 committee, to prepare an address to the people of England, 

 founded upon them. 



After some further business had been disposed of, 

 Mr. O'Connell announced the rent for the week to be 



493/. 5s. Gd. 



Limerick.— There is at length a prospect of a recon- 

 ciliation between the Poor-Law Commissioners and the 

 Limerick Board of Guardians. The Commissioners have 

 made the first advance towards an adjustment in a circu- 

 lar addressed to the Limerick Guardians, in which they 

 express regret at the late misunderstanding, and state 

 that the Guardians will find, on the resumption of their 

 duties as a Board, that the most anxious desire of the 

 Commissioners will be to co-operate with them in the 

 administration of the law for the relief of the poor in 

 every way, and to every extent compatible with the obli- 

 gations of their official duties. 



'fHfscellanrotift. 



Miss Martineau on Mesmerism.— In the last Alhe- 

 nceum Miss Martineau continues her letter upon mes- 

 merism, an abstract of the first part of Which we gave 

 last week. The present communication is devoted to 

 the case of a young girl, who, while under the mesmeric 

 influence, had visions, and predicted events in an extra- 

 ordinary manner. M : ss Martineau gives this girl a high 

 character, and seems to think her quite different, from 

 the truthfulness and consistency of her statements, from 

 the usual run of somnambuies. The first occasion of her 

 being mesmerised was while suffering severe pain in the 

 head and inflammation of the eye. The mesmerist was 

 Miss Martineau's ma ; d, who, it will be remembered, 

 operated on the lady herself, and it is related that after 

 being mesmerised the pain and inflammation ceased, and 

 the general health of the patient improved so wonder- 

 fully as to attract very general notice. While in this 

 state of trance, the patient described the disease of her 

 eye as structural, which will prevent its being entirely 

 removed. It seems that when awoke from this trance, 

 the girl had no knowledge of what she had said except 

 on one occasion, and then she said she had been dream- 

 ing of what she had heard in church regarding the na- 

 ture and destiny of -ran. This girl had the rower of 

 telling when she would awake from her sleep, which she 

 said to be a common power with those under mesmeric 

 influence. We pass from Miss Martineau s introduction 

 to this case to the peculiar circumstances attending it. bne 

 savs : _« It soon became evident that one of her strongest 

 powers was the discernment of disease, its condition and 

 remedies. She cleared up her own case first, prescribing 



\ for herself very fluently. It was curious to see, on her 

 awaking, the deference and obedience with which she 

 received from us the prescriptions with which she her- 

 self had just furnished us. They succeeded ; and so did 

 similar efforts on my behalf. I cannot here detail the 

 wonderful accuracy with which she related, without any 

 possible knowledge of my life 10 and 20 years ago, the 

 circumstances of the origin and progress of my ill health, 

 of the unavailing use of medical treatment for five years, 

 and the operation of mesnoerism upon it of late. One 

 little fact will serve our present purpose better. Soon 

 after she was first mesmerised, I was undergoing my 

 final severance from opiates — a serious matt-r to one 

 who had depended so long and so desperately upon them. 

 As I have said, I got through the day pretty well ; but 

 the nights were intolerable, from pain and nervous irri- 

 tations, which made it impossible to rest for two minutes 

 together. After four such nights, I believe my mesmer- 

 ist's fortitude and my own would have given way toge- 

 ther, and we should have brought the laudanum-bottle to 

 light again but for the bright idea, ' Let us ask J. !' 

 She said at once what my sufferings had been, and 

 declared that I should Bleep more and more by 

 degrees, if I took — what was as contrary to her own 

 ordinary ideas of what was right and rational as 

 to mine — ale at dinner, and half a wine glass 

 of brandy in water at night. I refused the pre- 

 scription till reminded- — * Remember, she baa never 

 been wrong.' * I obeyed ; the fact being kept secret 

 between us two, in order to try, every evening, J.'s 

 knowledge and opinion. She always spoke and advised, 

 in a confident familiarity with incidents known only tons 

 two, and carried me steadily through the struggle. I lost 

 my miseries, and recovered my sleep, night by night, till, 

 at the end of the week. I was quite well, without stimu- 

 lant or sedative. Nothing can be more remote from J.'s 

 ordinary knowledge and thought than the structure of the 

 human body, and the remedies for disease; and, though 

 I was well aware how common the exercise of this kind 

 of insight is in somnambules — how it is used abroad as 

 an auxiliary to medical treatment — I was not the Jess 

 surprised by the readiness and peremptoriness with which 

 a person, in J.'s position, declared, and gave directions 

 about things which she is wholly ignorant of an hour 

 after, and was, during the whole of her rife before." 

 Miss Martineau also relates the circumstance of children 

 under mesmeric influence having the power to discourse 

 about the Scriptures without having any previous know- 

 ledge of them, if only mesmerised !■>/ a clergyman ! 

 The patient stated in the course of a sleep, that the ligh' 

 she saw was beyond what was to be seen on earth, that 

 it was produced by the three powers of the soul, the 

 mind, and the vital powers of the body. She then 

 stated that the mind died, the body died, hut the soul 

 lived, being self-existent, and independent of either. 

 Being asked the relation of the soul to God after this 

 statement, the patient was somewhat perplexed, but 

 said it was by him re-united to the body, at the same 

 time expressing a strong mesmeric disbelief in this truth. 

 This point was carried no further, the mesmerist, at the 

 critical moment, changing the ideas of his patient, & fa- 

 culty on his part, which is described as the most won- 

 derful in the whole process. The last revelation of this 

 patient i?, however, scarcely less remarkable. Miss Mar- 

 tineau says : — M The next evening (Monday, October 14) 

 J. did not come up as usual to our stance. There was 

 affliction in the household. An aunt of J.'s, Mrs. A., a 

 good woman I have long known, lives in a cottage at 

 the bottom of our garden. Miss A.'s son, J.'s cousin, 

 was one of the crew of a vessel which was this evening 

 reported to have been wrecked near Hull. This was all 

 that was known, except that the owner was eone to Hull 

 to see about it. J. was about to walk to Shields with a 

 companion to inquire, but the night was so tempestuous, 

 and it was so evident that no news could be obtained, 

 that she was persuaded not to go. But she was too 

 much disturbed to think of being mesmerised. Next 

 morning there was no news. All day there were 

 flying reports— that afl hands were lost — that all were 

 BOTed— but nothing like what afterwards proved to 

 be the truth." In the evening, when the girl came to 

 be mesmerised, Miss Martineau interrogated her on the 

 subject, no tidings having then arrived :— " J. was pre- 

 sently asleep, and her mesmerist, knowing the advantage 

 of introducing subjects on which the mini had previ- 

 ously been excited, and how the inspiration follows the 

 course of the affections, asked, as soon as the sleep was 

 deep enough, ' Can you tell us about the wreck ?' J. 

 tranquilly replied, ' Oh ! yes, they're all safe ; but the 

 ship is all to pieces.' * Were they saved in their boat ?' 

 4 No, that's all to pieces.' 'Howthen?' ' A queer boat 

 took them off; not their boat.' « Are you sure they are 

 all safe ?' * Yes ; all that were on board ; but there was 

 a boy killed. But 1 don't think it is my cousin.' * At 

 the time of the wreck ?' « No, before the storm.' ■ H 

 did it happen ?' < By a fall.' « Down the hatchway, or 

 how ?' • No, be fell through the rigging, from the mast.' 

 She presently observed, « Mv aunt is below, telling them 

 all abaut it, and I shall hear it when I go down.' My 

 rooms being a selection from two houses, this 'below 

 meant two stories lower in the next house. She con- 

 tinued talking of other things for an hour longer, and 

 before she awoke, the gentlemen were gone. After in- 

 quiring whether she was refreshed by her sleep, and 

 whether she had dreamed (» No,') we desired her to let us 

 know if she heard news of the wreck ; and she promised, 

 in all simplicity, that she would. In another quarter of an 

 hour, up she came, all animation, to tell us that her cousin 

 and all the crew were safe, her aunt having returned from 

 Shields with the news. The wreck had occurred between 



ow 



