Mr. I. Butt, in yesterday s sitting of the Commons, gave notice Why Mr. Butt is indignant only at the trafficking for money will be understood by those who remember that the legality of any other mode of trafficking was settled during last session. Since 1830 Downing-st. has been placed at the mercy of the Irish Brigade. It is the Irish members who have created and kept in place the Ministers to their mind. In 1834 they drove from the Cabinet Sir J. Graham and Lord Stanley. In 1835 they compelled William IV to dismiss the Peel Ministry and to restore the Melbourne Administration. From the general election of 1837 down to that of 1841, while there was a British majority in the Lower House opposed to that Administration, the votes of the Irish Brigade were strong enough to turn the scale and keep it in office. It was the Irish Brigade again who installed the Coalition Cabinet. With all this power of Cabinet-making, the Brigade have never prevented any infamies against their own country nor any injustice to the English people. The period of their greatest power was at the time of O'Connell, from 1834-1841. To what account was it turned? The Irish agitation was never anything but a cry for the Whigs against the Tories, in order to extort places from the Whigs. Nobody who knows anything about the so-called Lichfield-House Contract, will differ from this opinion that contract by which O'Connell was to vote for, but licensed to spout against, the Whigs on condition that he should nominate his own Magistrates in Ireland. It is time for the Irish Brigade to put off their patriotic airs. It is time for the Irish people to put off their dumb hatred of the English and call their own representatives to an account for their wrongs.
Karl Marx in New York Tribune 1854