"Woman's value Vindicated as the teacher and example of Man, by Mrs Bristles, late Miss Hendy, Hammersmith."
An interdict has rested, through four months, on the discussion of Irish affairs--an interdict self-imposed by the English press, in a spirit of honourable (almost of superstitious) jealousy on behalf of public justice; jealousy for the law, that it should not be biased by irresponsible statements--jealousy for the accused, that they should not be prejudiced by extra-judicial charges. At length the interdict is raised, and we are all free once more to discuss the great interests so long sealed up and sequestered by the tribunals of Dublin. Could it have been foreseen or fancied, pending this sequestration, that before it should be removed by the delivery of the verdict, nay, two months before the trial should have closed in a technical sense, by the delivery of the sentence, the original interest (profound as it was) would be obliterated, effaced, practically superseded, by a new phasis of the same unparalleled movement? Yet this has happened. A debate, which (like a series of natural echoes) has awakened and revived all the political transactions of last year in Ireland, should naturally have preserved the same relation to those transactions that any other shadow or reflection bears to the substance. And so it would: but unhappily with these rehearsals of the past, have mingled tumultuous menaces of a new plot. And these menaces, in the very act of uttering themselves, advertise for accomplices, and openly organize themselves as the principle of a new faction for refusing tranquillity once more to Ireland. Once more an opportunity is to be stifled for obtaining rest to that afflicted land.
This "monster" debate, therefore, presents us in equal proportions with grounds of disgust and terror--a disgust which forces us often to forget the new form of terror--a terror (from a new conspiracy) which forces us to forget even the late conspiracy of Repeal, and that glorious catastrophe which has trampled it under foot for ever.