MR. S .O'BRIEN. (From the Times, August 8.)

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 265, 13 December 1848, Page 3

MR. S .O'BRIEN. (From the Times, August 8.)

The thouiand and one romances about Mr. S. OBrien have suddenly given way to a most simple and unromantic conclusion. The unfortunate gentleman strayed into Thurlei on Saturday, walked down the principal street, and asked a railway guard the tray to the station. He was recognued, and eventually apprehended in the quietest manner possible, just as he was taking a second-class ticket for Limerick. Everybody will ask what OBrien could be thinking of to run into the lion's mouth so directly and yet to ungracefully. Had he lurrendered liimelf to General Macdonald at the head of 2000 men, the incident would have gone down to an undiicriminating posterity, together with the surrender of Poms, of Dost Mahomed, Of Abd»el-Ka-der, and a hnndred other victims of fortune. The British preis would have done their beit to cut down the scene to iti smallest proportions, but the fact would have survived. Moreover, Mr. OBrien would thereby have established a claim to a merciful sentence. As it is, he has allowed himself to be picked up like a ,£5OO ngtc ia the' gutter. " There was just

enough concealment to deprive his movement! of the dare-devil character they might otherwise hare had. He took a second class-ticket, and was too nervoui to wait for the change. Never was there so indecisive and so characterless a proceeding. It suggests the idea of a man in a dream; but OBrien is not quite so innocent, and therefore not quite so favoured by fortune as the fair somnambulist who walks the plank in Her Majesty's Theatre. But when the King of Munster was enjoying a sort of royalty on the Keeper Mountains, what induced him to drop down in the main street of Thurles, swarming with policemen, detectivet, soldiers, railway functionaries^ newspaper correspondents, and all that »as dangerous? The nuriery ryme sayi — The man in the moon Came tumbling down And asked his way to Norwich. lii this case he asked his way to Limerick, but the sequel bids fair to be very much the same as in the mysterious legend aforesaid. Mr. OBrien will most probably visit a southern latitude, and, as an inmate of one of Her Majesty's dockyards, become acquainted with the diet the legend refers to. Thurles, for a very insignificant place, has contrive to get a good »bare of the insurrection. The ingenious and no doubt treasonable gentleman who madeThurles the seat of the first outbreak, who fired its station, tore up its rail-., and demoralized its soldiery and police, could hardly have imagined that within a few days that statiou would cover aud confine the chief of the insurrection, that policemen and soldiers would there be assembled round the great culprit, ami those rails would convey him to Dublin. There was a prophetic force in the lie which fulfilled it the wrong way. The same word which struck terror throughout Englaud is now a signal for confidence. We shall all remember Thudes, not a* the focus of a destructive and bloody rebellion, but as the place where Smith OBrien found himself too>>close watched and hemmed in by soldiers and policemen to hold out any longer ; and where accordingly he attempted to fly from a country which instead of nourishing rebellion, could not even harbour one solitary rebel. Mr. OBrien is a prey of that Sort which looses its value the moment it is caught. While th« chase Usted and the scent lay weak, the prize was inestimable. The papers were full of hi«> imaginary doublings and windings) as well as the multitude, the strength, and the ardour of the pack. An interest was beginning to att ich to the Pretender of Munster and the Boscobels of Tipperary. King Charles hid himself in the oak, and King O'B.ien in the cabbages. Rumour also added the coal-pit to the adventures of the modern fugitive. But OBrien was growing in story ; be was rising into the majestic, and looming into ihe mysterious. Passing from ridge to ridge, from the sides of Slievanamon to the tops of the Keeper of the Gultee mountains, then sinking to the subterranean world, and heard of alternately in mid Europe and the Atlantic, he was acquiring just that sort of piestige which takes deepest root in the Celtic imagination. Had he never more appeared in this vulgar wuiking life he would have lived a thousand lives in romance. 'Ihe hunter would have seen him still on the hills, and the colliers would still have heard his council assembled in the pit. Whether OBrien cares tor such ideal greatness after the piospectof more substantial power, we know not; but certain y he has dashed a world of poetry to the ground. Mr. Hulme, a tight-but oned r<ri way official, detect* hm in the street ; "in a few minutes htad-csnsiable Hanover D, produces a warrant for his arrest ; they take away Ins pocket pistol and conduct him to the gaol, in a quarter of an heur General Macdonald •■cids him to Duulia, and in a few hours after his arreit he is lodged in Xi raiinhatu with, the rest of. the traitors. We have th re ore caught our hare, as Mm. Glass l y» ; but now onr difficulty begins, what are we to do with him ? Smith o' linen is a traitor and a rebel ; way, he is more, he is a murderer ; for he gave the word tor the attack on Her Majesty's servauts, the fifty men besieged in widow Co mack's house. According to the luw, and according to the univesral idea of the crime, he is guilty ot actual rebellion. He therefore deseives to die. It is needless to say that he would have died for his crime in almost any age or any country but this. Nor can we deny that it is necessary to surround with wholes>on»e terrors so great and dangerous a crime. It judge and jnry do their duty, Smith O Brien would at least hear the sentence of that death which the success of his design would have inflicted upon thousands. If, Imwcver, her Majesty should be advised to commute the sentence we have no doubt the people of this country will (readily acquiesce m such an act ot generosity and mercy. Notwithstanding the gravity of his crime, notwithstanding the bloodshed he has entailed, Mr. OBrien moves a contemptuous sort of pity even more than our indignation. it is impossible not to smile at the seiio-comic air of his adventures. But to laugh at a man and hang him also is taking it out both ways. Were OBrien found lunatic, that would save his life. lid is not lunatic, but erazy— ciazy as Don Quixote when he charged the wiftdmills, or the sheep, or when he rescued the wild beasts or the convicts. We are not blind to the bad temper, and even malice, Mr. OBrien has uniformly exhibited; but on the other hand, we cannot help giving him the benefit of the eccentricity, vascillation, and tolly, which have marked his caieer, and rendered abhortive his criminal designs.