The newspapers are hardly worth our notice. They are written by nobody. There is no ostensible writer, no ostensible proprietors. They are chiefly made up of mystery and circulated by tricks. I have just seen that the British Press" of Tuesday has a violent and misrepresenting attack upon my shop and proceedings, and upon the proceedings of the Rev. Mr. Taylor. This is a dying paper. I am well informed, that something like the sum of fifty pounds weekly has been sunk upon it for some months past. It must die, and perhaps its last hope is to court a prolonged existence from the saints by its apostacy and attack upon me and the Rev. Mr. Taylor. It shall have no further no tice from us indeed, the writer has exhibited his incapacity to judge of right and wrong, he has said that the exhibition in my shop window is obscene, which is so far from being true, that a Bible-scene is the only thing in the shop approaching to the obscene. The writer is most learnedly ignorant of all that constitutes morality and social welfare. You, my Lord Mayor, ought to have learnt, ere this, that we are not to be opposed without making our opponents appear ridiculous. We value neither opinions nor manners that can be well opposed; we are open to all sorts of correction; but we will discuss them, we will not take them when imperatively imposed, we will not even take them from the magistrate without discussion as to their fitness.

The great error among verbal antagonists is the imputation of motives. The motive is bad or weak that imputes a bad motive to any literary disputant. It matters not for the ends of utility what are the motives by which truths are elicited; therefore, in in all attempts to elicit truth, every thing in the shape of an imputation of motive should be avoided. It matters not to the reader what are the motives of the writer, so as the argument for the elicitation of truth be fair. The consequence and not the motive is what the reader looks after or ought to look after.

Throughout all religious controversies, bad motives have been imputed to new opponents. It is the intolerant quality of religion so to impute bad motives to its opponents; for that which is established denounces all that is unestablished as erroneous. The difference of sects has made no difference in the imputation of motives; for not one of them has thought of the right and propriety of free discussion and that truth and rectitude and not system should be the universal aim. All religious disputes have • been disputes about erroneous systems, disputes about the attributes of a god or gods, without stopping to enquire whether such a god or gods existed. You, my Lord Mayor, are a dissenter from the established church. Had you lived in the reign of Charles the Second or before, you would have been hunted down as a conventicler. Had you lived in the early part of the last century, you would have suffered as a nonconformist, you would have

been called what you have lately called the Reverend Mr. Taylor; in other times, you would have been a heretic, a schismatic, an infidel, a blasphemer, an obstinate wretch, a jacobin, an Atheist, an enemy to the king and to all religion. Pray, look back, and consider whether such epithets would have been applicable to you and how you would have felt under them; consider too that you would have merited them for your dissent, quite as much as the Reverend Mr. Taylor has merited your imputations for his dis sent from your dissent.

There is an admirable paper in the Westminster Review for April on this and other subjects connected with religion; and though it has admissions which I consider faults, I think of making free to print it as a separate tract. This paper quotes instances of the dispositions of the best of the Christian writers to impute bad motives and bad characters to all dissenting opponents. Even the tolerant Tillotson, himself a reputed Atheist, was not free from the fault. It has been the common error of religious people. It is a principle of religion; for every religious man feels a religious infallibility toward others that makes him a mental tyrant. Such was the foundation of your magisterial attack upon the Rev. Mr. Taylor. It was the littleness, not the greatness, of your mind; it was your ignorance, not your wisdom, that led you into that common error.

This subject of motives is all that I have to speak of this week and I hope it will prove a better and more profitable discourse to your Lordship than any that you have paid sixpence for at the chapel of the Reverend Doctor Winter. The assembly at Founders' Hall Chapel has not been lessened by your Lordship's interference and compliments about its being crackbrained. Many new ladies did not shrink from joining the crack-brain throng on Sunday last and again on Tuesday to hear the Reverend Mr. Taylor return you the compliment. The best proof that this gentleman is not mad is, that he is producing great effect and some most vivid sensations in the country. The metropolis is thickly placarded with annuncia-` tions of discussions about him: and whether these discussions end in favourable or unfavourable resolutions of him, is to him of no consequence; they are but so many proofs that he produces a great and useful effect, and he has only to pursue a dignified course of life and character to become most eminently distinguished. Little men and little things should become beneath his notice. His is a high sphere, and nothing little should detract from its dignity. Free discussion, which was never before established within the records of mankind, is now established in England, and those whom you would fain call mad, have been its great progenitors. RICHARD CARLILE..

MR. SHIEL'S SPEECH AGAINST THE DUKE OF YORK.

We do not often meddle with politics of this kind; but there is something here which is worthy of being extensively read. The newspapers have been setting up a howl at a certain after dinner speech of Mr. Shiel's, when, in answer to the proposal of the Chairman, that the health of the Duke of York should be drunk, Mr. S. proposed to substitute the health of Mrs. Mary Ann Clarke. The following is the retort of Mr. S. upon the London newspapers:

MR. SHEIL said-I have waited until the chair had been left, and the meeting of the Association over, in order to introduce a subject, which, as it is of a purely political nature, I refrained from mentioning during the discussions of the Association, lest it should give them a character of illegality, and expose us to the imputation of having violated the law. I refer to the recent observations which have been made in the London papers upon the report of a speech of mine at a public dinner. I hope that I shall not be considered guilty of an overweening egotism, in drawing the attention of the individuals who happen to be assembled here, to what may appear to some to relate to myself But the topics on which I mean to address you are of public as well as personal interest. The truculent joeularity and the spirit of savage jest which have been ascribed to me, in expatiating on the infirmities of an illustrious person, have been regarded as characteristic of the moral habitudes of the body to which I belong. Thus my vindication, for I do not rise to make an apology, extends beyond myself. Yet let me be permitted to suggest that it is most unfair to impute to a whole people the feelings or the sentiments of any single man. The Catholics of Ireland have been repeatedly held responsible for the unauthorised and unsanctioned language of individuals. Every ardent expression, every word that overflows with gall, every phrase uttered in the suddenness of unpremeditated emotion, are converted into charges against seven millions of the Irish people. It is dealing rather hardly with us, to make a loose after-dinner speech (the mere bubble of the mind, thrown off in the beedlessness of conviviality) a matter of serious accusation against a whole community. I am not endeavouring to excuse myself upon any such plea as the the Bishop of Kilmore might resort_to (a laugh) in extenuating his late oration in Cavan. On the contrary, I am prepared to show the cir cumstances which, in my mind, gave warrant to what I said. But I deprecate the notion that the language employed either by myself, or any other individual, should be held to represent the opinions of the Irish Catholics. (Hear). It has been stated, that laughter was produced by an ebullition of disastrous merriment. I suppose that some two or three dozens of individuals, in an obscure country town, did not preserve the solemnity with which any allusion to the maladies of an illustrious person ought to have been received; it is wholly unjust to hold the Irish Catholics responsible for their lack of sensibility. Having said thus much in order to rescue my fellow-labourers in the cause of emancipation, from any responsibility for individual demerit, I shall proceed to state, what, in my judgment, affords a justification of the language employed upon the occasion to which I refer. I shall not deny that I entertain a solicitude upon this subject. It

is affectation on the part of any man to say, that he holds the censure of the press in no account. "The Times," "The Morning Chronicle," and "The Courier," have two much weight upon public opinion, to he treated by any individual, however exalted, with disregard. I cannot but be sensible that I am, from my comparative wart of personal importance, more exposed to the injurious consequences of such a simultaneous assault. But I do not complain, whoever intermeddles in public proceedings must be prepared for occasional condemnation. It is one of the necessary results of notoriety, and I submit to it, as a portion of my fate. I shall not, therefore, insinuate that there is any mock sentimentality in the amiable indignation with which the writers of the Whig Journals have vented their censures upon what they call the barbarous hilarity of an after-dinner ha-、 rangue. I will not say that it is easy to procure a character for high sentiment, by indulging in a paroxysm of editorial anger. Nay, I give the gentlemen who have put so much sentiment into type, credit for sincerity, and without attempting to retaliate, without referring them to their own comments upon the illustrious immoralities of the distinguished person to whom I have alluded, I shall state the grounds on which I conceive that I have been unjustly assailed.(Hear, hear.) It is right that I should at once proceed to mention exactly what took place. The Chairman of the meeting in question deviated from the ordinary usage at Roman Catholic dinners, and, in compliance with what, from his experience, he considered to be a sort of formula of convivial loyalty, proposed the health of a man who is an object--to use the mildest phrase-of strong national disrelish. This, I confess, excited my indignation.-(Loud and long continued cheers.) I felt indignation--and where's the man, who has one drop of manly blood in his heart, who would not feel indignation at being called on to offer a public homage to the individual who has an oath in heaven" against his country. I was tempted at first to remonstrate in the language of violent reproof against such an obnoxious toast, and I own that I felt it difficult to restrain the emotions which, in common with every Roman Catholic, I entertain towards the man, who is the avowed and devoted antagonist of Ireland (Loud cheers.) I recollected, however, that the Chairman had done no more than comply with what he conceived to be a mere form, and I therefore preferred a mockery of the sentiment to any solemn denunciation. To the toast, the expression of a hope was fannexed that, with the restoration of health, his feelings toward this country should undergo an alteration. "My gorge rose"-rose at the notion of a man, whose hereditary obstinacy has been confirmed by an adjuration of his God, becoming a valetudinarian convert to liberal opinions. The transition from anger to derision is an easy one, and I could not help indulging in the luxury of scorn (for it is not without its gratification), and in the spirit of a gay malevolence, but not of heartfelt ridicule, I stated that I did not despair of seeing a consummation of the pious aspirations in which I had been called to join, when I recollected that protestations in politics might be as fleeting as those in love, and that as "Jove laugh's at lover's perjuries," I apprehend no unfortunate stability in "So help me God."(Laughter.)

It was not unnatura!, then, in this mode of unpremeditated mockery, I should make citations from certain celebrated epistles, where vows of everlasting attachment where succeeded by infidelities of so much infelicitous renown. The report of what I said was not full, and although I do not affect to say, that the expressions imputed to me were not used, yet they are presented to the public eye, without much concomitant matter, which would show them in perhaps a different light. I am sorry that the

references to those celebrated letters were omitted. The following were among the passages to which I alluded, and which I think will bear me out,How can I sufficiently express to my sweetest, my darling love, the delight which her dear, her pretty, letter gave me--millions of thanks for it, my angel-(Loud laughter). Dr. O'- delivered your letter. He wishes much to preach before Royalty, and if I can put him in the way of it, I will. What a time it appears to me, my darling, since we parted, and how impatiently I look forward to next Wednesday night. God bless you, my dear love; oh, believe me, near to my last hour, your's, and your's alone" (Loud laughter). Thus, you perceive, that his affection was sealed with as stray a vow as his antipathy. The next letter gives vent to still more impetuous notions. "How can I express to my darling love my thanks for her dear, dear letter! Oh, my angel, do me justice, and be convinced that there never was a woman adored as you are! (Loud laughter). There are still, however, two whole nights before I shall clasp my dear angel in my arms (Loud laughter), Clavering is mistaken, my dear, in thinking there are any new regiments to be raised.-(Thereby hangs a tale.) Thanks, my love, for the handkerchiefs, which are delightful; and I need not, I trust, assure you of the pleasure I feel in wearing them, and thinking of the dear hands who made them for me. Adieu, my sweetest love, until the day after to-morrow; and be assured, that, until my last hour, I shall ever remain your's, and your's alone."-Loud laughter.) It would be doing injustice to the celebrated writer of these exotic effusions, if I did not add that his recommendation of an Irish Divine was fully justified by the result, for The Morning Post mentions that while the Doctor with the Irish Omega in his name was preaching, the father of the illustrious individual was very attentive, and his mother and sisters were melted, into tears (Loud laughter). There is an amusement of a demi-literary kind commonly called a cross reading. I have sometime, put the So help me Godoration into juxta-position with the amatory lucubrations from which I have given a few extracts, and the reading stood thus-" It was connected with the serious illness of one now no more.. Dr. O. wishes much to preach before Royalty. I have never seen any reason to change the tone which I then took. Oh, my angel, do me justice, and be convinced that there never was a women adored as you are. There are, still however, two whole nights before I can close my angel in my arms." I feel very strongly on the whole subject. Ten thousand thanks, my love, for the handkerchiefs which are delightful," here his Royal Highness became sensibly affected. "I have been brought up all my life in these principles and be assured that to my last hour I shall ever remain your's alone. So help me God'." This amalgamation of his passions and his politics, in which his vices and his virues are fused together, presents his character in a singular light. But I should lay aside the language of derision; they have made these references to transactions which but for his relentless antipathy to my country, I should readily have forgotten? It is not in the spirit of wanton malignity and inglorious revenge. It is for the purpose of recalling to the commentators upon my speech the period at which the illustrious person was an object of as much aversion in England as he is in Ireland this day.—(Loud cheers.) It is for the purpose of branding his protestations about conscience with all the scorn which they merit; it is in order to exhibit in their just light his appeals to heaven, to put his morality in comparison with his religion, and to tear off the mask by which the spirit of oppression is sought to be disguised-( loud cheers); conscience forsooth! It is enough to make one's blood boil to think on it! That he who had publicly, and in the open common day,