THE SPEECHES 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 RICHARD LALOR SIIEIL, M.P. 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR, &c. 
 
 BOSTON COL\A~ 
 
 E 
 
 FACUL'I V LinnAHV 
 
 i 
 
 CHESTNUT HILL, IVL 
 
 •.l;s. 
 
 EDITED 
 
 BY THOMAS MAC NEVIN, ESQ., 
 
 DARRISTER-AT-LAW. 
 
 DUBLIN : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY JAMES DUFFY, 
 23, ANGLESEA-STREET. 
 
 1845. 
 
A3 
 
 O'NEILLUBRARY 
 BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
 DUBLIN : 
 
 PRINTED BY T. COLDWELL, 
 
 50, CAPEI.-STRKET. 
 

 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 rACR 
 
 ix 
 
 Ixv 
 
 MEMOIR OF niCIIATtD LAT.OR SIIEIL 
 
 MF.KTINC. AT PENENDEN HEATH 
 
 WOEFE tone's memoirs ^ 
 
 INFORMATIONS AOAINST ^NEAS m'DONNEJ.L, MAY 8, 1827 • 8 
 
 CLARE ELECTION, SErTEMBRR, 1828 ^O 
 
 CLONMEI. AGGREGATE MEETING '-''^ 
 
 -^/ REl'EAT. OF THE UNION, APRIL 25, 1834 83 
 
 RUSSIAN ANT) TURKISH TREATIES, MARCH 17, 1834 .... 102 
 
 ;. ORANGE LODGES, AUGUST 11, 1835 ^^^ 
 
 CHURCH OF IRELAND, JULY 23, 1835 ^19 
 
 IRISH MUNICIPAL REFORM BILL, MARCH 28, 183G .... 1 35 
 
 TITHES, JUNE 2, 183G ^'^'^ 
 
 %! THE IRISH CHURCH, AUGUST 2, 183G ^'^^ 
 
 IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL, FEBRUARY 22, 1837 • • • • • • 1^5 
 
 CIVIL WAR IN SPAIN, APRIL 18, 1837 ^'^ 
 
 LORD NORMANBY's GOVERNMENT IN IRELAND, APRIL 19, 1839- 1/8 
 
 LORD Stanley's irish kkgistration bill, june 10, 1840 . 194 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE SUGAR DUTIES, MAY 1 8, 1 84 1 203 
 
 j CORN LAWS, MARCH 9, 1842 212 
 
 INCOME TAX, APRIL 18, 1842 219 
 
 FACTORY BILL, MAY 18, 1843 ... 229 
 
 IRISH ARMS BILL, MAY 19, 1843 237 
 
 VOTE BY BALLOT, JUNE 21, 1843 249 
 
 IRISH STATE TRIALS (qUEEN's BENCh) 260 
 
 IRISH STATE TRIALS, FEBRUARY 22, 1844 309 
 
 FRANCE AND MOROCCO, JULY 22, 1844 341 
 
 ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE, AUGUST 9, 1844 351 
 
 INCOME TAX, FEBRUARY 19, 1845 .350 
 
 POST OFFICE ESPIONAGE, APRIL 1, 1845 3()1 
 
 COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTH, APRIL 4, 1845 371 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 THE EIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 IIICHAIIJJ LALOIl SHEIL, M.P. 
 
 The Right Honouuable Richaud Lalor Sheil was born on 
 the 16th of August, 1791, at the residence of his lather, Edward 
 Sheil, Es.i., in the county of Kilkc.uiy. That gentleman had 
 acquired a considerable fortune in Cadiz, and invested it in the 
 purchase of Bellevue, near Waterford. Soon after his return Irom 
 Spain he married Miss Catherine Mac Carthy, of Spring House, 
 in the county of Tipperary, a near relative of Count Mac Carthy 
 of Toulouse, who sold his large property m Ireland, and settled 
 in France during tlic operation of the penal code. 
 
 Mr. Sheil received his first instructions in literature from a 
 French clergyman who had fled from his country during the Ee- 
 volution, and resided at Bellevue, the house of Mi-. Shed's father, 
 as tutor to his family. Soon after the peace of Amiens the Abbe 
 returned t<. T<.ul<.uHe, his native city, and Mr. Sheil Avas sent to 
 a school established at Kensington, by the Prince de Brogho, the 
 son of the celebrated French general, and a near relation of the 
 present Duke. The following account of his school days, written 
 by Mr. Sheil, is extracted from a periodical Avork : 
 
 "As if it were yesterday, though 'tis now many years ago, 
 (ehcufugaces !) I recollect the beautiful evening when I left my 
 home, upon the banks of the river Suir, and sailed irom the har- 
 bour of Waterford for Bristol, on my way to school. It is scarcely 
 
 h 
 
MKMoiii Ob- 
 
 germane to the matter, yet 1 cannot lielp reverting to a scene, 
 which has impressed itself deeply in my recollection, and to which 
 I oftentimes, in those visions of the memory to Avhich I snppose 
 every body is more or less subject, find it a pleasure, though a 
 melancholy one, to return. There are few rivers more pictu- 
 I'esque than the Suir, (a favourite with Si)enser,) in its passage from 
 Waterlbrd to the sea. It is ample and deep, ca{)able of lioating 
 vessels of any tonnage, and is encompassed Avith lofty ridges of 
 rich verdure, on Avhich magnificent mansions, encompassed with 
 deep groves of trees, give evidence of the rapid increase of opu- 
 lence and of civilization in that ]^art of Ireland. How often have 
 I stood upon its banks, Avhen the bells in the city, the smoke of 
 Avhich Avas turned into a cloud of gold by a Claude Lorrain sun- 
 set, tolled the death of the departing day ! IIoav often have I 
 fixed my gaze upon the glittering expanse of the full and ovci- 
 fioAving Avater, croAvded Avith ships, Avhose Avhite sails Avere filled 
 with just wind enough to carry them on to the sea ; by the slow- 
 ness of their equable and majestic movement, giving leave to the 
 eye to contemplate at its leisure their tall and stately beauty, and 
 to Avatch them long in their progress amidst the calm through 
 Avhich they made their gentle and forbearing Avay. The nuirnuirs 
 of the city Avere heard upon the light, and the lofty s[)ire of its 
 church rose up straight and arroAvy into the sky. The sullen 
 and dull I'oar of the ocean used to come over the opposite hills 
 from the Bay of Tramore. Immediately before me Avcre the fine 
 woods of Faithleg, and the noble seat of the Bolton family, (Pro- 
 testants, Avho have since that time made Avay for the Catholic 
 Avealthy PoAvers ;) on the left Avas the magnificent seat of another 
 branch of the same opulent tinbe — SnoAvhill ; and in the distance, 
 were the three rivers, the Suir, the Nore, and the BarroAv, met 
 in a deep and splendid conflux ; the ruins of the old abbey of 
 Dunbrody thrcAV the solemnity of religion and of antiquity over 
 the Avhole prospect, and by the exquisite beauty of the site af- 
 forded a proof that the old Franciscans, Avho had made a selection 
 of this lovely spot for their monastery, and Avho have lain for 
 centuries in the mould of its green and luxuriant churchyards, 
 were the lovers of nature, and that Avhen they left the noise and 
 turmoil of the Avoild, they had not relinquished those enjoyments 
 which are not only innocent, but may be accounted holy. 1 had 
 
niCHAKD LALOU SHELL. XI 
 
 many a time looked with admiration upon the noble landscape, 
 in the midst of which I was born, but 1 never felt and appreciated 
 its beauty so well as when the consciousness that I was leaving 
 it, not to return for years to it again, endeared to me the spot of 
 my birth, and set off the beauty of the romantic place in which 
 my infancy was passed, and in which I once hoped (I have since 
 abandoned the expectation) that my old age should decline. It 
 is not in the midst of its woods that I shall fall into the sere and 
 yellow leaf I 
 
 " ' Something too much of this.' — The sliip sailed, I lauded 
 at Bristol, and Avitli a French clergyman, the Abbe de Grimeau, 
 who had been my tutor, I proceeded to London. The Abbe 
 informed mc that I was to be sent to Kensington House, (a college 
 established by the Peres de la Foi, for so the French Jesuits 
 settled in England at that time called themselves,) and that he 
 had directions to leave me there, upon his way to Languedoc, 
 from whence lie liad been exiled in the llevolution, and to which 
 lie had been driven by the maladie dc pays to retm*n. Accord- 
 ingly we set off for Kensington House, Avhich is situated exactly 
 opposite the avenue leading to the Palace, and has the beautiful 
 garden attached to it in front. A large iron gate, Avrought into 
 rusty flowers, and other fantastic forms, showed that the Jesuit 
 school had once been the residence of some person of distinction ; 
 and I afterwards understood that a mistress of Charles tlie Second 
 lived in the spot Avlilch was now converted into one of the sanc- 
 tuaries of Ignatius. It was a large old-fashioned house, Avith 
 many remains of decayed splendour. In a beautiful walk of trees, 
 which ran down from the rear of the building through the play- 
 ground, I saw several French boys playing at swing-swang ; and 
 the moment I entered, my cars were filled with the shrill voci- 
 ferations of some hundreds of little emigrants, who were engaged 
 in their various amusements, and babbled, screamed, laughed, 
 and shouted in all the velocity of their rapid and joyous language. 
 I did not hear a word of Enghsh, and at once perceived that I 
 was as much amongst Frenchmen as if I had been suddenly trans- 
 ferred to a Parisian college. Having got this peep at the gaiety 
 of the school into which I was to be introduced, I was led, with 
 my companion, to a chamber covered with faded gilding, and 
 wliioh had once been richly tapestried, where I found the head 
 
MF.SIOIU Ol" 
 
 of the establishment, in the person of a French nobleman, Monsieur 
 le Prince de Broglio. Young as I was, I could not help being 
 struck at once with the contrast which was presented between 
 the occupations of this gentleman and his name. I saw in him 
 a little, slender, and gracefully-constructed abbe, Avith a sloping 
 forehead, on which the few hairs that were left him were nicely 
 arranged, and well-powdered and pomatum'd. He had a gentle 
 smile, full of a suavity which was made up of guile and of 
 weakness, but which deserved the designation of aimahle^ in the 
 best sense of the word. His clothes were adapted with a pecu- 
 liar nicety to his symmetrical person, and his silk waistcoat 
 and black silk stockings, with his small shoes buckled with sil- 
 ver, gave him altogether a glossy aspect. This was the son 
 of the celebrated Marshal Broglio, who was now at the head 
 of a school, and notwithstanding his Inunble pursuits, Avas 
 designated by every body as ' Monsieur le Prince.' 
 
 " JNIonsieur le Prince had all the manners and attitudes of 
 the com't, and by his demeanour put me at once in mind of the 
 old regime. He welcomed my French companion with tenderness, 
 and having heard that he was about to return to France, the 
 poor gentleman exclaimed ' Helas !' while the tears came into his 
 eyes at the recollection of ' cette belle France,' which he was 
 never, as he then thought, to see again. He bade me welcome. 
 These preliminaries of introduction having been gone through, 
 my French tutor took his farewell ; and, as he embraced me Ibr 
 the last time, I well remember that he was deeply affecte<l by the 
 sorrow which I i'elt in my separation iiom him, and turning to 
 Monsieiu'le Prince, recommended me to his care with an emphatic 
 tenderness. The latter led me into the school-room, where I 
 had a desk assigned to me beside the son of the Count Decar, 
 who has since, I understand, risen to offices of very high rank in 
 the French Court. His father belonged to the noliility of the 
 first class. In the son, it would have been at that time difficult 
 to detect his patrician derivation. He was a huge, lubberly fel- 
 low, with thick matted hair, which he never combed. His com- 
 plexion was greasy and sudorific, and to soap and water he seemed 
 to have such a repugnance, that he did not above once a Aveek 
 go thi'ough any process of ablution. He Avas surly, dogged, and 
 silent, and spent his time in the study of mathematics, i'or which 
 
RICHARD LALOR SIIEII.. 
 
 he had a good deal of talent. I liavc heard that he is now one 
 of the most fasliionable and acconiplislied men about the court, 
 and that this Gorgonius, smells now of the pastiles of Rufillus. 
 On tlie other side of me Avaa a young Fiench West Indian, from 
 the colony of Martinique, Avliose name was Dcvarieux. The 
 school was full of the children of the French planters, who had 
 been sent over to learn English among the refugees from the 
 Revolution. He was an exceedingly fine young fellow, the exact 
 reverse in all his habits to Monsieur le Compte Decar, on my 
 left hand, and exj)cnded a good deal of his hours of study 
 in surveying a small pocket-mirror, and in arranging the curls 
 of his rich black liair, the ambrosial plenty of whicli was fes- 
 tooned about his temples, and i'cll prol'usely behind his head. 
 Almost all the French West Indians were vain, foppish, generous, 
 biavc, and passionate. They exhibited many of the qualities 
 which we ascribe to the natives of our own islands in the Ame- 
 lican archipelago ; they were a sort of Galilean Belcours in little ; 
 for with the national attril^utes of their forefathers, they united 
 much of that vehemence and habit of domination, Avhich a hot 
 8un and West India oversccrship arc calculated to produce. In 
 general, the children of the French exiles amalgamated readil}' 
 with these Creoles : — there were, to be sure, some points of sub- 
 stantial difference ; the French West Indians being all rich rotu- 
 riers, and the little emigrants having their veins full of the best 
 blood of France, without a groat in their pockets. But there 
 Avas one point of rcconcihation between them — they all concurred 
 In hating England and its government. This detestiition was 
 not very suri)rising in the West Indian Fiench : but it was not 
 a little singular, that the boys, whose iiithers had been, expelled 
 from France by the Revolution, and to Avhom England had affor- 
 ded shelter, and given bread, should manifest tlie ancient national 
 antipathy, as strongly as if they had never l)ecn nursed at her 
 bosom, and obtained their aliment from her bounty. When- 
 ever ncAvs arrived of a victory Avon by Bona})artc, the whole 
 school Avas throAvn into a ferment ; and I cannot, even at tliis 
 distance of time, forget the exultation Avith Avhich the sons of 
 the decapitated or the exiled hailed the triumph of the F)-ench 
 arms, the huniiliation of England, and the glory of the nation 
 Avhosc greatness they had learned to lisp. There Avas one boy 
 
MEMOIR OF 
 
 I recollect more especially. I do not now remember his name, 
 but his face and figure I cannot dismiss from my remembrance. 
 He was a little effeminate creature, "svitli a countenance that 
 seemed to have been compounded of the materials with which 
 waxen babies are made ; his fine flaxen hair fell in girlish ringlets 
 about his face, and the exquisite symmetry of his features would 
 have rendered him a fit model for a sculptor who wished to throw 
 the beauideal of pretty boyhood into stone, lie had upon him 
 a sickly expression, which was not sufficiently pronoimced to 
 excite any disagreeable emotion, but cast over him a mournful 
 look, which was seconded by the calamities of his family, and 
 added to the lustre of misfortune which attended him. He was 
 the child of a nobleman who had perished in the Revolution. 
 His mother, a widow, who resided in a miserable lodging in 
 London, had sent him to Kensington House, but it Avas Avell 
 knoAvn that he was received there by the Prince de Broglio from 
 charity ; and I should add that his eleemosynary dependance, 
 so far from exciting towards him any of that pity which is akin 
 to contempt, contributed to augment the feeling of sympathy 
 which the disasters of his family had created in his regard. This 
 unfortunate little boy was a Frenchman to his heart's core, and 
 whenever the country which was wet with his father's blood had 
 added a new conquest to her possessions, or put Austria or Prus- 
 sia to flight, his pale cheek used to flush into a hectic of exul- 
 tation, and he would break into joyfulness at the achievements 
 by which France was exalted and the })rldc and power of I^ngland 
 were brought doAvn. This feeling, which was conspicuous in 
 this little fellow, ran through the whole body of Frenchmen, 
 who afforded very unequivocal proof of the sentiments by which 
 their parents were influenced. The latter I used occasionally to 
 see. Old gentlemen, the neatness of whose attire was accom- 
 panied by indications of indigence, used occasionally to visit at 
 Kensington House. Their elasticity of back, the frequency and 
 gracefulness of their well-regulated bows, and the perpetual smile 
 upon their wi'inkled and emaciated faces, showed that they had 
 something to do with the ' vieille cour ;' and this conjecture 
 used to be confirmed by the embrace with which they folded the 
 little marquises and counts whom they came to visit. 
 
 " Kensington House Avas frequented by emigrants of very 
 
RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 
 
 high rank. The father of the present Duke cle Grammont, who 
 was at this school, and was then Duke de Guischc, often came 
 to see his son. I recollect upon one occasion having been wit- 
 ness to a veiy remarkable scene. JMonsieur, as he was then 
 called, the present King of France, Avaitcd one day, with a large 
 retinue of French nobility, upon the Prince dc Broglio. The 
 whole body of the schoolboys was assembled to receive him. We 
 were gathered in a circle at the bottom of a flight of stone stairs, 
 that led from the principal room into the play-ground. The 
 future king of France appeared, Avith his cortege of illustrious 
 exiles, at the glass-folding-doors which were at the top of the 
 stairs, and the moment he was seen, we all exclaimed, with a 
 shrill shout of beardless loyalty, ' Vive le lloi ! ' INIonsieur 
 seemed greatly gratified by this spectacle, and in a veiy gracious 
 and condescending manner Avent down amongst the little boys, 
 Avho Avere at first awed a good deal by his presence, but Avere 
 afterwards speedily familiarized to him by the natural benignity 
 of Charles the Tenth. He asked the names of those Avho 
 were about him, and Avhen he heard them, and saAV in the 
 boys by Avhom he Avas encompassed the descendants of some 
 of the noblest families of France, he seemed to be '^eiisibly 
 affected. One or tAvo names, Avhich Avere associated Avith pecu- 
 liarly melancholy recollections, made him thrill. ' Ilelas ! mon 
 enfant 1' he used to say, as some orphan Avas In-ought up to him ; 
 and he Avould then lean doAvn to caress the child of a friend avIio 
 had perished on the scaffolds of the lievolution." 
 
 Mr. Shell, after mentioning that he Avas placed at Kensington 
 under the tuition of a Genoese, of the name of Molinari, and 
 that Molinari Avas suddenly ordered to proceed to Siberia, Avith 
 instructions, if possible, to find his Avay as a missionary into 
 China, states that he was hiniscK" removed to the college of 
 Stonyhurst, of Avhich he gives the following account : — 
 
 *' The College of Stonyhurst is situated in Lancashire, at the 
 foot of the high hill of Pendel, Avliich, as it Avas formerly the fa- 
 vourite resort of sorcerers, has, in the opinion of a neighbouring 
 parson, afforded, by a natural succession, a residence to the 
 mysterious ecclesiastics who are adepts in the Avitchcraft of 
 Ignatius. The scenery by Avhich it is surrounded is of a solenm 
 and almost dreary character. Immediately before the great en- 
 
M£MOIU OF 
 
 trance, Avhich opens into a considerable square, and is sur- 
 mounted by two very lofty towers, an avenue, in the old English 
 fashion, rises between two large basins of artificial water, whose 
 stagnant tranquillity gives to the approach a dismal aspect. This 
 avenue leads, on the right-hand, to a very extensive deer-park, 
 the neglected walls of which indicate that the spirit of the chase 
 has long since departed from the spot where learning and reli- 
 gion have fixed their abode. A rookery spreads behind the 
 castle (for such it may be justly designated), of ancient and ve- 
 nerable trees. The remains of a noble garden occupy the front ; 
 and although its terraces are now dilapidated, and the play- 
 ground which is used by the students has usurped upon its fine 
 parterres, a noble Avalk of thickly-interwoven yew-trees, which 
 is called the Wilderness, has been spared, and still oifers the 
 memorials of magnificence in its long and melancholy vistas. It 
 was originally intended that the building should consist of two 
 wings ; only one, however, was completed, as the expense ex- 
 ceeded the fortune of the projector. The portion of the edifice 
 which is finished, is of great extent. It is of a gothic character, 
 in the exterior ; but its apartments, and especially the splendid 
 hall, which is flagged with white and polished marble, are of far 
 greater dimensions than the rooms wliich are generally found in 
 buildings of a similar style. As you look from the great central 
 window of massive stone, you see the ridge of Pendel stretched 
 out in a long line of black and dismal Ijarrenness. The rivers 
 Odder and Hippie, whose banks arc lined with fine Avoods, flow 
 in the valley beneath. The town of Clitheroe is seen on the 
 left, where the plains of Yorkshire present a rich contrast of 
 cultivation in their Avide and distant reaches. Kipchester lies 
 on the right ; and behind, a line of heathy hills, called Long- 
 ridge Fell, extends itself for several miles. This fine old man- 
 sion Avas the ]iroperty of the Sherbourne family, and Avtis after- 
 Avards occupied for a period by one of the Dukes of Norfolk. It 
 came by purchase into the hands of the late Mr. Weld, of Lud- 
 low Castle. He had been educated at St. Omer's, among the 
 Jesuits ; and after they had been successively obliged to fly from 
 their seminary there, and from Bruges and Liege, tliey Avere 
 received by their old pupil at Stonyhurst. During his life, they 
 held the house itself, free from all charges, paying a moderate 
 
RICIIAUD LALOR SUEIL. Xvii 
 
 rent for a considerable tract of gronnd ; and, on liis death, (he 
 had first become an ecclesiastic, though he had a very large fa- 
 mily,) he devised the lands to that sacred corporation, to which 
 he was indebted for his instructions in piety, and for wliich, as 
 a religionist, he had always entertained a warm predilection. 
 His obsequies were performed with great pomp in the college 
 chapel, and a funeral oration Avas pronomiced upon his merits, 
 amongst which his bequest to the folloAvers of Loyola was not 
 the least conspicuous. 
 
 " When I arrived at Stonyhurst College, the principals, and 
 the more eniinci\t teachers, were gentlemen Avho had held simi- 
 lar situations in the Jesuit establishment at Liege. Afler they 
 had settled in Lancashire, there were some new recruits added 
 to their numbers ; but, generally speaking, the members of the 
 Society had been educated out of England, according to the 
 system adopted in the institutions under the management of that 
 literary order. They were about twenty-five in number, and 
 were, in every respect, superior to the Peres dc la Foi, with 
 whom I had sojourned at Kensington, and who merely passed 
 themselves as Jesuits. They were almost all gentlemen by birth, 
 some of them belonjjinj; to the best Catholic families in England. 
 Their manners were also distinguished by an urbanity, which it 
 is one of the maxims of their order that they shoidd assiduously 
 cultivate, and Avhich their love of elegant literature had tended 
 to heighten. There Avere, of course, a few amongst them avIio 
 Avere a little uncouth, but these Avere chiefly persons avIio had 
 been enrolled in the body since its cstablisinnent in Lancashire. 
 Those Avho had been brought up at St. Omer's, or at Liege, 
 Avere greatly superior in address to the generality of persons to 
 whom the education of boys is confided. Of the Jesuits Avhom 
 1 foimd at Stonyhurst, by I'ar the greater numl)er had become 
 members of the Society of Jesus from motives Avhich Avcrc en- 
 tirely free from all mercenary consideration. They were, as far 
 as I could form a j udgment of them, actuated by a sincere piety, 
 and a deep conviction of the truths of their religion, and a 
 zealous solicitude for the Avelfare of others, which they conceived 
 that they should best promote by dedicating themselves to the 
 education of youth. At the head of the college Avas the Rector 
 of the English province, tlie liev. Dr. Stone. He Avas a man. 
 
MEMOIR OF 
 
 trance, "which opens into a considerable square, and is sur- 
 mounted by two very lofty towers, an avenue, in the old English 
 fashion, rises betAveen two large basins of artificial water, whose 
 stagnant tranquillity gives to the approach a dismal aspect. This 
 avenue leads, on the right-hand, to a very extensive deer-park, 
 the neglected walls of which indicate that the spirit of the chase 
 has long since departed from the spot where learning and reli- 
 gion have fixed their abode. A rookery spreads behind the 
 castle (for such it may be justly designated), of ancient and ve- 
 nerable trees. The remains of a noble garden occupy the front ; 
 and although its terraces are now dilapidated, and the play- 
 groimd Avhicli is used by the students has usurped upon its fine 
 parterres, a noble Avalk of thickly-interwoven yew-trees, which 
 is called the Wilderness, has been spared, and still offers the 
 memorials of magnificence in its long and melancholy vistas. It 
 was originally intended that the building should consist of two 
 wings ; only one, however, was completed, as the expense ex- 
 ceeded the fortune of the projector. The portion of the edifice 
 which is finished, is of great extent. It is of a gothic character, 
 in the exterior ; but its apartments, and especially the splendid 
 hall, Avhich is flagged Avith Avhite and polished marble, are of far 
 greater dimensions than the rooms Avhich are generally found in 
 buildings of a similar style. As you look from the great central 
 window of massive stone, you see the ridge of Pendel stretched 
 out in a long line of black and dismal barrenness. The rivers 
 Odder and lli[)ple, whose banks are lined with fine woods, flow 
 in the valley beneath. The town of Ciitheroe is seen on the 
 left, where the plains of Yorkshire present a rich contrast of 
 cultivation in their wide and distant reaches. liipchester lies 
 on the right ; and behind, a line of heathy hills, called Long- 
 ridge Fell, extends itself for several miles. This fine old man- 
 sion was the property of the Sherbourne family, and Avas afVer- 
 Avards occupied for a period by one of the Dukes of Norfolk. It 
 came by purchase into the hands of the late Mr. Weld, of Lud- 
 low Castle. He had been educated at St. Omer's, among the 
 Jesuits ; and after they had been successively obliged to fly from 
 their seminary there, and from Bruges and Liege, they Avere 
 received l)y their old pupil at Stonyhurst, During his life, they 
 held the lutiisc itself, free from all charges, })aying a moderate 
 
niCHAUD LALOR SIIEIL. Xvii 
 
 rent ibr a considerable tract of ground ; and, on liis death, (ho 
 had first become an ecclesiastic, though he had a very large fa- 
 mily,) he devised the lands to that sacred corporation, to which 
 he Avas indebted for his instructions in piety, and for wliich, as 
 a religionist, he had always entertained a warm predilection. 
 His obsequies were performed with great pomp in the college 
 chapel, and a funeral oration was i)ronounced upon his merits, 
 amongst which his Ijequest to the folloAvers of Loyola was not 
 the least conspicuous. 
 
 " When I arrived at Stonyhurst College, the principals, and 
 the more eminent teachers, were gentlemen who had lield simi- 
 lar situations in the Jesuit establishment at Liege. After they 
 had settled in Lancashire, there were some new recruits added 
 to their numbers ; but, generally speaking, the meml^ers of the 
 Society had been educated out of England, according to the 
 system adopted in the institutions under the management of that 
 literary order. They were about twenty-five in number, and 
 were, in every respect, superior to the Peres de la Foi, with 
 whom I had sojoiuned at Kensington, and who merely passed 
 themsches as Jesuits. They Avere almost all gentlemen by birth, 
 some of tliem belonging to the best Catholic families in England. 
 Their manners were also distinguished by an urbanity, Avhich it 
 is one of the maxims of theii' order that they should assiduously 
 cultivate, and Avhich their love of elegant literature had tended 
 to heighten. There were, of course, a fcAv amongst them Avho 
 Avere a little uncouth, l)ut these Avere chiefly persons who had 
 been enrolled In tlie body since its establisinnent in Lancashli'e. 
 Those Avho had l)een brought up at St. Omer's, or at Liege, 
 Averc greatly superior In address to the generality of persons to 
 whom the education of boys is confided. Of the Jesuits Avhom 
 I fc)nnd at Stonyhurst, by I'ar the greater number had l)ecomc 
 meml)ers of the Society of tiesus from motives AvhIch Averc en- 
 tirely fjce from all mercenary consideration. They were, as far 
 as I could form a j udgment of them, actuated by a sincere piety, 
 and a deep conviction of the truths of their religion, and a 
 zealous solicitude for the Avelfare of others, Avhich they conceived 
 that th(;y should best promote by dedicating themselves to the 
 education of youth. At the head of the college Avas the licctor 
 of the English province, the liev. Dr. Stone. He Avas a man. 
 
MEMOIR OF 
 
 whom neither his long vigils, nor his habits of abstinence, 
 could reduce into the meagritude of sanctity ; and who by his 
 portly belly and his rosy countenance, seemed to bid defiance to the 
 power of fasting, and to the devotion of prayer. Nothing could 
 subdue his goodly corpulency, or invest his features with the 
 emaciation which ordinarily attends the habits of mortification 
 and of self-denial which he practised. He was the most imin- 
 terruptedly devout person I have ever seen, and verified those 
 descriptions of lofty holiness Avith Avhich the writings of Alban 
 Butler (the imcle of the celebrated conveyancer) had rendered 
 me familiar. The students were accustomed to the perusal of 
 the Lives of the Saints, and found in Dr. Stone (except in his 
 external configuration, in which Guido would certainly not liave 
 selected a model,) a realization of those pictures of exalted piety 
 which occur in the pages of that learned compiler. He seemed 
 to be in a perpetual commex'ce with heaven ; for even in his or- 
 dinary occupations, at his meals, or while he took the exercise 
 necessary for Ijie purposes of health, his eyes were constantly 
 raised, and ejaculations broke from his lips. At first view, one 
 might have taken him for an enactor of jjiety ; and, indeed, his 
 swelling cheeks, and the abdominal rotundity of his person, gave 
 liim an exceedingly sublunary aspect ; but, after a little while, 
 it was difficult not to feel convinced that his enthusiasm was un- 
 affected, and that his whole heart was devoted in the si)irit of 
 the most exalted Christianity to God. Tlie reader will think it 
 strange that such a ])erson should have been entrusted with the 
 direction of so great an establishment as this extensive college, 
 the conduct of whose finances would alone have been suf- 
 ficient to engross the mind, and would have been so utterly alien 
 to the spiritual addictions of Dr. Stone. The Jesuits, however, 
 were too shrewd to leave their money to the care of a person 
 who spent so little of his time in this world. The care of their souls 
 was, by a just division of labour, committed to this great master 
 of spirituality ; but they did not molest him with any pecuniary 
 considerations ; these fell to the exclusive province of the liev. 
 Father Wright, a brother of the Catholic banker in Henrietta- 
 street. ******* 
 
 " 1 have stated that there was a minute allocation of different 
 pursuits according to their respective talents, to the members of 
 
RICHARD LALOR SUEIL. 
 
 the fraternity. The selection of Father Wright to preside over 
 the finances, was not more appropriate than the choice of the 
 remarkable individual who was at the head of what was 
 called the Noviceship. About two miles from the college there 
 stood upon a hill, on the banks of the river Odder, a small liouse, 
 Avhich was dedicated to the residence of the young men who, 
 desiring to become Jesuits, were, according to the rules of the 
 company, obliged to go through a probation for two years of con- 
 tinued meditation and prayer. During that space of time, a 
 candidate for admission to the society must remain entirely se- 
 cluded from the world, and occupied exclusively in the work of 
 religious perfection. The novices are not allowed to read out of 
 any proflinc book more than ten lines a day. The college itself 
 was considered to be too worldly and full of turmoil for such a 
 process of complete pm'ification ; and in order that their seques- 
 tration might be more complete, a little edifice Avas raised upon 
 a slight elevation which overhung the river Odder. Here no 
 other sounds but the murmm-s of the stream as it gurgled over 
 its pebbly bed througli the deep groves that liung on either side 
 of it, were heard by tlie votaries of silence and of solitude, who 
 were embowered in this beautiful abode. How often have I 
 paused to look upon it, in the walks wliicli we were occasionally 
 allowed to take in the vicinity of this pious and lonely spot ! 
 On the opposite side of the river was a wood, in which we used 
 to go either to gather nuts or to hunt squirrels. Many a time 
 I have left the pastimes in Avhich my companions Avere engaged, 
 and, descending to tlie banks of the stream, have fixed my eyes 
 upon ' the Noviceship' upon the other side ; and as I heard the 
 voices of its inmates rising in their evening hynm througli the trees 
 which surrounded it, I liave felt myself thrilled with all those sensa- 
 tions Avluch belong to the elevation of piety, and what the profane 
 would designate as the romance of religion. In this probationary 
 hermitage the novices were secluded, and over them there pre- 
 sided a man the most remarkable for what I may call the chi- 
 valry of Jesuitism Avhom I have ever seen. Father Plowden 
 was the younger brother of a very ancient Catholic family, and 
 was, I believe, descended from the great lawyer of that name. 
 He had been oi-iginally educated in Rome, and was from thence, 
 after spending many years in Italy, transferred to St. Omer's. 
 
MKMOIR OF 
 
 He Avas a peifcct Jesuit oi' the old school : his mind was stored 
 with classical knowledge ; his manners were highly polished ; he 
 had great eloquence, which was alternately vehement and per- 
 suasive, as the occasion put his talents into requisition ; and with 
 his various accomplishments he combined the loftiest enthusiasm 
 for the advancement of religion, and an utter inmiolation of 
 liimself to the glory of the order, of which he was unquestion- 
 ably a great ornament. Thougli greatly advanced in years, he 
 stood erect and tall, with all the evidences of strong and inex- 
 tinguishable vitality about liim. His cheek, though avoiti, had 
 the hues of health upon it : and though his head was quite bald, 
 the vivacity of his eyes, that shot their light from l)eneath their 
 broad and shaggy brows, exhibited a mind whose faculties it did 
 not seem to be in the power of time to im})aii-. His poAvers as 
 a preacher were of a very higlx class. Students at a public 
 school listen to religious instruction as if it were only a part of 
 the mere routine of their ordinary occupations. When, hoAvever, 
 Mr. PloAvden ascended the pulpit, every eye and every ear Avere 
 fixed in attention. His command of lofty diction ; his zealous 
 and forcible delivery ; the noble port which he assumed as the 
 herald of intelligence from Heaven ; and, more than any thing 
 else, the profound conviction Avhich he manifestly entertained of 
 the truth of tlie doctrines Avhich he interi)reted, and the stre- 
 nuousncss of liis adjuration in calling men's hearts to God, gave 
 liim every title to be considered an orator of the first class. 
 Certainly, the belief that he Avas altogether dc\-oted to the sj)!- 
 ritual AvcHare of those whom l*ro\ idcnce had, in his opinion, 
 assigned to his tutelage, greatly enhanced the inq)ressiveness of 
 his exhortations. Pie Avas looked upon as a model of exalted 
 virtue. It Avas not to the College of Stonyhurst that he confined 
 his labours ; he avjis also busy in the conversion of the population 
 in the vicinity. It not unfrequently happened that he Avas 
 informed in the midst of a Avinter's night, that some person at a 
 considerable distance from the college Avas on the point of death, 
 and stood in need of his spiritual aid. The old man, Avho did not 
 seem to knoAv Avhat hardship was, Avould leap from his hard bed, 
 and having hurried on his clothes, he Avould go forth Avith a lan- 
 tern, attended by a lay-brother of the order, and, making his 
 Avay over the fens and morasses by which the college was siu-- 
 
KICHARD LALOR SHEIL. 
 
 rounded, hasten to the door of tlio expiring sinner, and arrive at 
 his bed-side in time, as he conceived, to speed his soul to Heaven. 
 This truly zealous and exalted Christian was the President of 
 the Noviceship ; and certainly no man could be better calculated 
 to infuse into tlie minds of others that hcroical self-abnegation, 
 and that surrender of all the passions to the advancement of the 
 society, Avhich constitute the perfection of a Jesuit. If he 
 could liave contributed to the saving of the soul of a sinner, or 
 to the promotion of the glory of St. Ignatius, by laying his head 
 upon the block, he would, I am sure, have knelt down to it at 
 the warning of an instant, and cried ' strike !' Yet, Avith all 
 this extraordinary energy of zeal, and though he carried his 
 enthusiasm to the highest point to which it could reach, he was, 
 notwithstanding, wholly free from those Aveaknesses and credu- 
 lities Avliich fire sometimes foimd in minds deeply imbued with 
 religious feeling. He Avas a firm believer in the tenets of his 
 church ; but he did not himself practise, nor did he encourage 
 in others, those usages Avhich, in truth, do not l)elong to the 
 general j)lan of Catholicity, Init have groAvn out of individual 
 fantasy, and ouglit not, in fairness, to b(! regarded as component 
 parts of the general system. It is but doing justice to the Sto- 
 nyhurst Jesuits to say, that they Avere by no means gi\en to the 
 inculcation of those opinions, or to the observance of those forms, 
 AvhIch have chiefly contributed to create a disrelisli for the 
 lioman Catholic religion amongst persons who dissent from its 
 doctrines. ******* 
 " Tliere were about one hundred and fifty boys in the college, 
 who Averc divided into six classes. Each class had a se[)arate 
 master, avIio at the termination of a year became the head of the 
 next class, into Avhich all the students under his su[)erintendence 
 Avere transferred ; so that in general the same instructor for six years 
 carried on the same boys through their successive gi'adations of 
 tuition. This plan is the more deserving of remark, l)ccausc it 
 prevailed tlu'ough all the Jesuit schools upon the Continent. 
 The loAvest class Avas called the Abecedarians, fiom their being 
 initiated into the elements of knoAvledge ; the next Avas called 
 Figures, and afterwards came the classes of grammar, syntax 
 poetry, and rhetoric. It is obvious that much of a boy's acquire- 
 ments, and a good deal of the character of his taste, must have 
 
MtMOIU OK 
 
 depended upon the individual to whose instructions he was thus 
 almost exclusively confined. It was my good fortune to be 
 placed at first in the class of the Rev. Father Laurenson, who 
 was an excellent Latin scholar, and had besides a strong relish 
 for English composition. He was an excellent man, with an ex- 
 ceedingly good heart, Avith generous and honourable feelings, and 
 entirely free from the suppleness which has been attributed, but 
 in my mind erroneously, to the body to Avhich he belonged. The 
 Jesuits who were employed in com-ts to influence the minds of 
 ministers, and to sway the decisions of cabinets, might have been 
 addicted to habits of duplicity, which are almost inseparable from 
 such pursuits; but in their colleges, I apprehend, that they Avere 
 little more than ardent instructors in classical learning ; and, as 
 far as my experience goes, I can aver that I never observed the 
 least tendency upon their part to inculcate any doctrine, or 
 to hold up any personal example, of that false dexterity Avhich 
 has been so long regarded as their attribute. The Rev. Mr. 
 Laurenson was a great gaunt man, with a deep sonorous voice, 
 and a countenance in Avhich it Avas easy to discover his vigorous 
 intellect, his open and manly nature, and an irascibility Avhich, Avith 
 all his efforts, and Avith the discipline of Loyola, he found it impos- 
 sible to conquer. Father Laurenson was obliged, from, I believe, 
 ill-health, to give up the class; andAA'as succeeded by a gentleman 
 who is at present at the head of the college, the Rev. Mr. Brooks. 
 He lately attracted some notice in Rome, having attended as de- 
 puty from the English province for the election of a general of the 
 society, iipon the death of Alagriiis Fortis, having travelled in his 
 OAVTi carriage, Avhich excited the comments of his Continental bre- 
 thren, Avho thought that a Jesuit might travel in his neighbour's 
 carriage, but Avas forbidden by his voav of poverty from lolling in 
 his OAvn. If, hoAvever, they attributed the selection of this con- 
 veyance to any spirit of ostentation in the English depvity, they 
 mistook Mr. Brooks. He Avas, Avhen he became the teacher of 
 the class to Avhich I belonged, a young man of manners Avhich 
 Avere pushed, perhaps, to the utmost limit of refinement. His 
 taste in literature Avas highly cultivated, and his mind Avas full of 
 examples from the best authors, and of precepts from the best 
 ancient and modern critics. He took exceedingly great pains in 
 exciting an admiration for the beauties of the classical Avriters 
 
IlICHAni> LALOR SlIXUL. 
 
 which it W!i3 his office to explain ; and in rendering them into 
 English, he enforced the necessity of preserving the strength and 
 the colour of the Greek or the Latin phi'ase." 
 
 Mr. Shell, after enlarging on the many advantages incidental 
 to a Stonyhurst education, says : — 
 
 " I am at a loss to discover any evil to society, and much more 
 surprised to hear it suggested that any danger can accrue to the 
 state, from the extension of a body which is far more a literary, 
 than a political confederacy in these countries. In France, in- 
 deed, where there is a large party of men whose personal interest 
 attaches them to servile habits, it may be justifiable to use the 
 strongest measures, in order to counteract the opinions which the 
 French Josuita arc supposed to inculcate. But in these free 
 islands, Avhcrc liberty is of long growth, and has struck its roots 
 so deeply into the public mind, even if the Jesuits were disposed 
 to use their utmost efforts to eradicate its principles, they would 
 prove utterly unavailing. The intellect of the country is too 
 powerful to be subdued by their proverbial dexterities. But the 
 greatest injustice is, in my judgment, done to the British and 
 Irish Jesuits, by attributing to them any opinions Avhich are in 
 the least degree hostile to true liberty. The rule of the Order 
 is, that a Jesuit should entertain and teach no political tenets 
 which are not in conformity Avith the institutions under which 
 he lives. In America, the Jesuits are republicans. Two of 
 them lately visited Rome. On being heard to express some strong 
 democratic sentiments, they were reprehended by the General of 
 the Order; but the Council of Five, to whom they appealed, and 
 to w^hora the General himself is responsiljle, declared, that as the 
 form of government in the United States was republican, it was 
 the duty of an American Jesuit to feel as an Amei'ican citizen ; 
 and rescinded the decision of the Superior. 
 
 " I should, however, limit myself to the results of my OAvn 
 personal experience; and I can safely appeal to every person Avho 
 has been educated at Stonyhurst, when I assert, as I most 
 emphatically do, that a base political sentiment was never made 
 a matter of cither immediate or indirect inculcation. The Jesuits 
 there were strongly attached to the constitution and liberties of 
 their country. For the glory of England, notwithstanding ])o- 
 litical disqualifications which affected the Iloman Catholics, thcv 
 
XXIV mi:m(hu ov 
 
 felt a deep and entliusiastic interest : of this I recollect a re- 
 markable instance. The students were assembled in order to 
 witness some expeiiments in galvanism, which a gentleman, who 
 brought to the college a philosophical apparatus, had been cm- 
 ployed to perform. In the midst of profound attention, a person 
 rushed in, and exclaimed that Nelson had won a gi-eat victory. 
 There was an immediate cheer given by the Jesuits, and echoed 
 by the boys. l*rescntly a newspaper Avas received, and the 
 whole college gathered round the reader Avith avidity; and when 
 the details of the battle of Traftdgar were heard, there were re- 
 peated acclamations at almost every sentence; and Avhen the 
 narrative had been concluded, continued shouts for ' old England' 
 were sent up, and every cap was throAvn into the air, in cele- 
 bration of the gi-eat event, by which the navy of France was 
 annihilated, and our masterdom of the ocean was confirmed. 
 Several days for rejoicing Avere given to the students, and a 
 poem, Avhich I then, at least, considered a fine one, in honour of 
 the battle, Avas composed by one of the Jesuits, and admirably 
 recited in the great hall, Avhich Avas appropriated to such 
 exhibitions. 
 
 " I found amongst the Jesuits great kindness, a generous and 
 most disinterested zeal for the advancement in learning of the 
 persons Avhose minds they had in charge ; and to their purity of 
 life, their sincere piety, and their spirit of Avise toleration, I am 
 only discharging a duty Avhich I OAve to truth, in bearing my 
 warmest attestation. The general policy of the Order may have 
 been found injurious to the Avell-being of states, in Avhich they 
 acquired an illegitimate ascendency ; their diplomatists and 
 politicians may have accommodated their morality with too ready 
 a flexibility to the inclinations of kings and of Avomen; they may 
 have placed the confessional too near the cabinets of the one, and 
 the boudoirs of the other ; but as instructors of youth, Avhen fai" 
 from coiu'ts, and i'rom a pernicious contact Avith those vices Avhich 
 the danger of infection renders it perilous to cure, they Avere, I 
 believe, in the main, what my OAvn personal experience has taught 
 me to consider the individuals of their Order Avhom I had any 
 personal opportunity of observing; and I confess, that I give my 
 full assent to the sentiments Avhich were expressed in their re- 
 gard by Gresset, in the beautiful poem which he Avrote on leaving 
 them for ever, entitled ' Adieux aux Jesuites !' 
 
UICHARD -LALOR SHEIL. XXV 
 
 " 'Qu'il m'est doux de pouvoir leur rendre un temoignage 
 
 Dont I'interet, la crainte, et I'espoir sont exclus. 
 
 A leur sort le mien ne tient plus. 
 L'impartialite va tracer leur image 
 
 Oui, j'ai vu dcs mortcls, j'en dois ici I'aveu, 
 
 Trop combattus, connus trop peu. 
 J'ai vu des esprits vrais, des coeurs incorruptibles, 
 
 Voues a la patrie, a leurs rois, a leur Dieu. 
 A leurs propres maux insensibles, 
 
 Prodigues de leurs jours, tendres et parfaits amis, 
 Et souvent bienfaiteurs paisibles 
 
 De leurs plus fougueux ennemis : 
 
 Trop eslimes enfin, pour etre moins liais. 
 Que d'autres s'exlialcnt, dans leur baiue iusensce. 
 
 En rcproches injurieux, 
 
 Cherclient en ies quittant a les rendre odicux : 
 Pour moi, fidele au vrai, fidele a ma pensee, 
 
 C'est, ainsi qu'en partant je leur fais mes adieux.' " 
 
 ]\Ii'. Shell, 60011 after leaving Stonyhurst, entered Trinity 
 College, Dublin, where his attention was almost exclusively de- 
 voted to classical literature. lie became a member of the His- 
 torical Society, in which, however, he did not obtain any 
 celebrity. His defects Avcre prominent and obvious — the shrillness 
 of Ills voice and the singularity of his gesture struck the ordinary 
 observer, and it Avas only by those Avho knew that these peculia- 
 rities could be countervailed by attributes, Avhich can never be 
 dcvelo[)cd except in great assemblies heated by real emotion, 
 that it Avas foreseen that Mr. Shell would [)roduce a very consider- 
 able effect. The Rev. Mr. James Maghee, Avho has since obtamed 
 so much notice as a polemical disputant, was by far the most 
 distinguished member of the Historical Society, during Mr. 
 Shell's time; in voice, figure, and gesture, and in all the physical 
 qualifications requisite for success, that gentleman possesses very 
 signal advantages ; but those who are most disposed to admire 
 him, must acknowledge that his composition does not exhibit 
 any faculty of a very superior order. It may be questioned 
 whether the habit of speeching in a debating society, Avhere no 
 real business is to be performed, and Avhere the excitement of the 
 puerile orator must be entirely factitious. Is not prejudicial. The 
 late Mr. North, was a man of great endoAvment, diversified 
 acquisition, and Avith a mind richly embellished by literature of 
 all kinds, but It Is believed by many Avho Avere Avell acquainted 
 
 c 
 
XXVI MEMOIII Of 
 
 with him, that he had contracted at a very eai'ly period an 
 artificial style of speaking, which at the bar and in tlie House of 
 Commons failed to produce results corresponding with his high 
 reputation, and with his indisputable talents. It Avas matter of 
 some surprise to those who had witnessed Mr. Shell's very im- 
 perfect exhibitions in the Historical Society, to find that in the 
 great Catholic meetings, in which, when a boy, he adventurously 
 took a part, thttCa sensation was produced l)y him. Animated 
 at a very early period by a vehement indignation at the Avrongs 
 inflicted upon the great community to which he belonged, he 
 had the boldness, and many thought the indiscretion to address 
 a vast concourse of Catholics, in Fishamble-strect theatre. His 
 speech was full of exaggerations — it Avas indeed a continued 
 series of hyperbole, but it was delivered with a strange energy 
 of elevation, and so much ardour of temperament, that his 
 auditors, although at first surprised, and startled, and almost dis- 
 posed to laugh, gradually became excited, and Avhen the beard- 
 less patriot sat down, the entire assembly joined in loud and 
 entliusiastic acclamation. Mr. Maurice Fitzgerald, the knight of 
 Kerry, happened to be present at the meeting, and told Mr. 
 Shell, that he had no doubt that he Avoidd one day make a figui'c 
 in the House of Commons. The speech, when published, was 
 considered to be fidl of offences against good taste, but gi-eat 
 praise was given to it, by men, who were less disposed to detect 
 fixults, than to discover the indications of future merit. Among 
 the persons of note in Dublin, who were struck by Mr. Shell's 
 speech, was the late Alexander Knox, generally knoAvn by the 
 name of " Spectacle Knox," a man remarkable for his elo(|uenco 
 in common discourse, and whose fluency of fine cx})ression was 
 almost unsurpassed. He requested that ]\lr. Shell should be 
 presented to him, and frankly told him what he considered to be 
 his imperfections, but led him to expect that by labour and 
 perseverance his favdts Avould be overcome. 
 
 Mr. Shell having served his terms at Lincolns Inn returned to 
 Ireland in 1813. He had been born to considerable expectations, 
 and was the eldest son of a gentleman, whose income exceeded 
 two thousand a year ; but his father having engaged in a mer- 
 cantile partnership in Dublin, whose speculations were disas- 
 trous, lost the entire of his property. Mr. Shell determined 
 
RICHAUD LALOR SHEIL. XXVU 
 
 not to put Ills father to any cost connected Avitli liis call to the 
 bar, and for the purpose of defraying the necessary expense, 
 wrote a tragedy Avhich he entitled "Adelaide;" it is totally des- 
 titute of plot — the style is affected, and in Mr. Shed's own opinion 
 had no merit. But Miss O'Neil the celebrated actress performed 
 the principal character, on the first appearance of the play in 
 Crow-street, and by her wonderful power produced its temporary 
 success. Mr. Shell obtained his object, and dedicated the play to 
 Miss O'Neil, whose acting he described in a citation of some 
 verses of Voltau'e, peculiarly applicative to that enchanting 
 actress : 
 
 " L/ 'illusion cette reiue des cocurs 
 Marche a ta suite, inspire les alannes, 
 Le sentiment, les regrets, les doulcnrs, 
 Etle plaislr de repandre des laihies." T,}: 
 
 In 1816 Mr. Shell married Miss O'Halloran, a young lady of 
 great personal beauty but without fortune ; and as his progress at 
 the bar was not considerable, he was obliged again to have re- 
 course to the stage. lie produced " The Apostate," and "Bella- 
 mira,'^ which yielded him by their success considerable emolu- 
 ments, but were written with so much precipitation, and Avith 
 such an exclusive view to scenic effect, that it must be acknow- 
 ledged that they will not fully repay perusal. Having more 
 leisure, and feeling that he could do something better, Mr. 
 Shell determined to take more pains, and ])r()(liiccd the play of 
 " Evadne" in 1819, which had a great run, and in which INIiss 
 O'Neil astonished London. The plot of the i)lay is taken in a 
 great measure from Shirley's Traitor,* but the scenes and the 
 language are exclusively the creation of Mr. Shell. 
 
 * Tlie following beautiful passajje in Sliirlcj', deserves to be (juolcd. 
 
 Amidea. I shall be married shortly — 
 To whom ? 
 
 Amidea. To one whom you have all Iieard talk of. 
 Your fathers knew him well : one who will ne'er 
 Give cause I should suspect him to forsake me. 
 A constant lover — one whose lips, tho' cold, 
 Uistil chaste kisses : — tho' our bridal bed 
 Be not adorned with roses, it will be green : 
 We shall have virgin laurel, cypress, yew. 
 
 To make us garlands -Tho' no fire do burn. 
 
 Our nuptial shall have torches, and our chamber 
 Shall be cut out of marble, where we will sleep. 
 Free from all care for ever. Vealh, my lord, 
 1 hope will bo my liiifhatid. 
 
MEMOIR OF 
 
 The statue scene produced very gi'eat effect : it is en- 
 tirely original, and attracted the notice of Mr. Villemain^, the 
 celebrated French writer, who told Mr. Sheil that he was 
 greatly struck with it. The scene is perhaps worth extracting, 
 not so much as evidence of what INIr. Sheil has done, as of what 
 he could have performed. Colonna, tho brother of Evadne, 
 in vengeance ibr the attempt on his sister's honom*, determines 
 to put the king to death. He advances through a gallery of 
 statues, to the door of the king's bed-chamber. Evadne was 
 concealed behind one of the figures ; but, advancing, she ad- 
 dresses her brother : — 
 
 " EvAD. Your looks at the banquet did unto my fears ■ 
 Eorebode no blessed issue, for your smiles 
 Seemed veils of death, and underneath your brows 
 I saw the silent furies — Oh, Colonna, — 
 Thank Heaven, the safety of Vicentio 
 Has given me power to watch your dangerous steps ! 
 What would you do ? 
 
 Col. Methinks it ill pertains 
 To woman's humbler nature to pursue 
 The steps of man, and pry into his purpose. 
 Get thee to rest. 
 
 EvAD. Is that high front, Colonna, 
 One to write Cain upon ? — Alas, Colonna, 
 I did behold you with Ludovico, 
 By yonder moon, and I as soon had seen thee 
 Commune with the great foe of all mankind — 
 What wouldst thou do ? 
 
 Col. Murder! 
 
 EvAD. What else, Colonna, 
 Couldst thou have learned from Ludovico ? 
 
 Col. In yonder chamber lies the Idng — I go 
 To stab him to the heart ? 
 
 EvAD. 'Tis nobly done ! 
 I will not call him king — but guest, Colonna — 
 Remember, you have called him here — remember 
 You have pledged him in your father's golden cup ; 
 Have broken bread with him — the man, Colonna, — 
 
 Col. Who dares to set a price upon my life — 
 What think'st thou 'twas ? 
 
 EvAD. 1 think thei-e's nought too dear 
 To buy Colonna's life. 
 
 CoL. 'Twas a vast price 
 
RICUAKD LALOR SHKIIi. XXIX 
 
 He asked nie then — you Avere to pay it too — 
 It Avas my Evadne's honour. 
 
 EvAD. Ha ! 
 
 Col. He gives my life upon condition — Oli, my sister 1 
 I am ashamed to tell thee what he asked. 
 
 EvAD. What ! did he ?— 
 
 Col. Thou dost understand me now ? — 
 Now — if thou Avilt, abide thee here, Evadne, 
 Where thou mayest hear his groan. [ Going in. 
 
 EvAD. Forbear, Colouna ! 
 For Heaven's sake, stay — this Avas the price he asked thee ? 
 He asked thee for thy life ? — thy life ? — but, no — 
 Viccntio lives, and — 
 
 Col. (Aside) How is this ? she seems 
 To bear too much of Avoman in her heart ; 
 She trembles — yet she docs not shrink — her cheek 
 Is not inllamed Avith anger, and her eye 
 Darts not the lightning 1 — 
 
 EvAD. Oh ! my dearest brother, 
 Let not this hand, this piu'e, this Avhite fair hand, 
 Be blotted o'er Avith blood. 
 
 Col. AVhy, is it possible 
 She has ta'en the sinful Avish Into her heart ? 
 By heaven, her pride is dazzled at the thought 
 Of having this same purple villain kneel. 
 And bend his crown before her — She's a Avoman 1 
 Evadne ! 
 
 EvAD. Well? 
 
 Col. The king expects me to 
 Conduct you to his ciiamber — shall I do so ? 
 
 EvAD. I prithee, be not angry at my prayer — 
 But bid him come to me. 
 
 Col. What I bid him come to thee ? 
 
 EvAD. And leave me Avith him here. 
 
 Col. What ! leave thee Avith him ? 
 
 EvAD. Yes — I implore it of thee — prithee, Colonna, 
 Conduct my sovereign here. 
 
 Col. Yes — I Avill try her — 
 I knoAV not Avhat she means, but, hitherto, 
 I deemed her virtuous. — If she fall, she dies. — 
 I'll here conceal myself, and if in Avord 
 She give consent, I'll rush upon them both 
 And strike one heart thro' the other. 
 
 EvAD. Send him to me. 
 
 Col. There's a Avild purpose in her solemn eye — 
 I know not if 'tis sin, but I Avill make 
 A terrible experiment. — What, ho ! 
 
MEMOIR OF 
 
 My licgc, I bear fulfilment of my promise — 
 Colonna bears Evadne to your arms ! 
 
 Enter the King /row the Chamber. 
 
 King. Colonna, my best friend, how shall I thank thee ? 
 But where is my Evadne ? 
 
 Col. There, my lord ! 
 
 King. Colonna I not only give thee life, 
 But j)lace thee near myself; henceforth thou wilt wear 
 A nobler title in thy family, — 
 And to thy great posterity we'll send 
 My granted dukedom. 
 
 Col. Sir, you honour me. 
 IVty j)resence is no longer needed here. 
 (Aside) A word's consent despatches them ! 
 
 \_He conceals himself behind the pillars. 
 
 King. Evadne ! 
 Thou fairest creature that ever feasted yet 
 My ravished sense with beauty, whose fine form 
 Is full of charms, as nature in the spring 
 Is rich in rosy blossoms — I approach thee 
 With all the trembling passion that untold 
 Save by Ludovico, — 
 
 EvAD. Ludovico ! 
 
 King. Yes, my Evadne, to his trusty care 
 I did commit my fires — nay, do not feign 
 This pretty wonderment, — my sweet Evadne, 
 Let me conduct you by the fairest hand 
 That man hath ever touched — 
 
 EvAD. (^llctiriitf/) I pray you, sir — 
 
 King. My lovely trembler, lay aside thy sad 
 And dro()j)ing aspect in this hoiu* of joy 1 
 Stoop not thy head, that like a j)ale rose bends 
 Upon its yielding stalk — thou hast no cause 
 For such a soft abashment, for be siu'e 
 I'll place thee high in honour. 
 
 EvAD. Honour, sir ! 
 
 King. Yes ; I'll exalt thee into dignity. 
 Adorn thy name Avith titles — All my court 
 Shall watch the movement of thy countenance, 
 Riches and power shall Avait upon thy smile, 
 And in the lightest l)ending of thy brow 
 Death and disgrace inhabit. 
 
 EvAD. And, my liege. 
 What will inhabit my own heart ? 
 
 King. INIy love ! 
 Conic, my Evadne — what a form is here ? 
 
niCIIAIlU LALOR SIIEIL. 
 
 The iniagincrs of beauty did of old 
 O'er three rich forms of sculptured excellence 
 Scatter the naked graces ; but the hand 
 Of niishtier nature hath m thee combined 
 All varied charms together. 
 
 EvAD. You were speaking 
 Of sculpture, sir— I do remember me, 
 You are deemed a worsliipper of that liigh art. 
 Whose bright creation lighting on the dead 
 And shapeless marble, turns it into life. 
 And mimicking divinity can make 
 Its breathing mass immortal ! — Here, my lord, 
 Is matter for your transports ! [^l^ointing to the Statues. 
 
 King. Fair Evadne ! 
 Do you not mean to mock me ? Not to gaze 
 On yonder lifeless marbles-did I come 
 To visit you to-night, but in the pure. 
 And blue-veined alabaster of a breast. 
 Richer than heaves the Parian that has wed 
 The Florentine to iimnortality. — 
 
 EvAD. You deem me of a hght capricious mood, 
 But it were hard if, (woman as I am) 
 I could not UPC my sex's privilege — 
 Tho' I should ask you for yon orb of light. 
 That shines so brightly, and so sadly there. 
 And fills the ambient air with purity — 
 Should you not feign, as 'tis the wont of those 
 Who cheat a wayward child, to draw it down, 
 And in the sheeted splendour of a stream 
 To catch its shivering brightness !— It is my pleasure 
 That you should look upon these reverend forms, 
 That keep the likeness of mine ancestry — 
 I must enforce you to it ! — 
 King. Wayward woman ! 
 What arts does she intend to captivate 
 My soul more deeply in her toils ? 
 
 jTlv^n. \^Goin(j io a Statue. 
 
 Behold! 
 
 The glorious founder of my family ! 
 
 It is the great Ko(l()li)ho ! — he Avas famed 
 
 When heroes fdlcd the world, and deeds that noAv 
 
 Are miracles, Avcre the unmarvclled growth 
 
 Of every day's succession ! — Charlemagne 
 
 Did fix that sun upon his shield, to be 
 
 His glory's blazoned emblem ; for at noon, 
 
 When the astronomer cannot discern 
 
1 MEMOIR OF 
 
 A spot upon the full orbed disk of light, 
 'Tis not more bright than his immaculate name ! 
 With Avhat austere and dignified regard 
 lie lifts the type of purity, and seems 
 Indignantly to ask, if aught that springs 
 From blood of his, shall dare to sully it 
 Witli a vapour of the morning ! 
 
 King. It is well ; 
 His froAvn has been attempered in the lapse 
 Of generations, to thy lovely smile, — 
 I swear, he seems not of thy family. — 
 My fair Evadne, I confess, I hoped 
 Another sort of entertainment here. 
 
 EvAD. Another of mine ancestors, my liege— 
 Guelfo the Murderer I 
 
 King. The Murderer ! 
 I knew not tliat your family was stained 
 With the reproach of blood. 
 
 EvAD. We are not wont 
 To blusli, tho' we may soitow for his sin. 
 If sin indeed it be. — His castle walls 
 Were circled by the siege of Saracens, — 
 He had an only dauglitcr whom he prized 
 More than you hold your diadem, but when 
 He saw the fury of the infidels 
 Burst through his shattered gates, and on his child 
 Dishonour's hand Avas lifted, with one blow 
 He struck her to the heart, and with the other, 
 He stretclied himself beside her. 
 
 King. Fair Evadne, 
 I '11 bid your brother chide you for delay, — 
 Perverse, capricious Avoman ! 
 
 EvAD. I '11 not raise 
 A tax upon your patience by regard 
 Of tliis large host of heroes. — They are those 
 Who fought in Palestine, and shed their blood 
 For the holy sepulchre. — Two oaths they swore — 
 One to defend their God — the other was. 
 With their right arms to guard the chastity 
 Of an insulted woman. 
 
 King. Fair Evadne, 
 I must no more indulge you, else I fear 
 You would scorn me for my patience ; prithee, love, 
 No more of this wild phantasy ! 
 
 EvAD. My liege. 
 But one remains, and when you have looked ui)on it, 
 And thus cojmplicd with my desire, you will find me 
 
RICUARD LALOR SUEIL. 
 
 Siibinissive to your own. — Look here, my lord, — 
 KnoAv you this statue ? 
 
 King. No, in sooth, I do not. 
 
 EvAD. Nay — look again — for I shall think but ill 
 Of princely memories, if you can find 
 Within the inmost chambers of your heart 
 No image like to this — look at that smile — 
 That smile, my liege — look at it ! 
 
 King. It is your father ! 
 
 EvAD. ( Brcoliing into exultation.) 
 Ay ! — 'tis indeed my father ! — 'tis my good. 
 Exalted, generous, and god-like father ! 
 Wliose memoiy, though he had left his child 
 A naked, houseless roamer tlnough the world, 
 Were an inheritance a princess might 
 Be proud of for her dower ! — It is my lather ! 
 Whose Uke in honour, virtue, and the fine 
 Integrity that constitutes a man. 
 He hath not left behind ! — there is that smile, 
 That like perpetual day-light, shone about him 
 In clear and bright magnificence of soul ! 
 AVho Avas my father ? 
 
 King. One, whom I confess 
 Of high and many virtues. 
 
 EvAD. Is that all ? 
 I will help your memory, and tell you first. 
 That the late King of Naples looked among 
 The noblest in his realm for that good man, 
 To whom he might intrust your opening youth, 
 And found him worthiest. In the eagle's nest 
 Early he placed you, and beside his wing 
 You learned to moimt to glory ! Underneath 
 His precious care you grew, and you were once 
 Tliought grateful for his service. His Avliole life 
 Was given to yoiu" uses, and his death — 
 Ha ! do you start, my lord ? On Milan's plain 
 He fought beside you, and Avhen he beheld 
 A sword thrust at your bosom, rushed — it pierced liim ! 
 He fell down at your feet, — he did my lord ! 
 He perished to preserve you ! \_Rushes to the Statue.l 
 
 Breatldess image, 
 Altlio' no heart doth beat within that breast. 
 No blood is in those veins, let me enclasp thee, 
 And feel thee at my bosom. — Noav, Sh*, I am ready — 
 Come and unloose these feeble arms, and take me ! 
 Ay, talcc me from this neck (»f senseless stone, — 
 And to reward the father with the meet 
 
XXXIV MEMOIR OF 
 
 And wonted recompense that princes give — 
 Make me as foul as blotted pestilence, 
 As black as darkest midnight, and as vile 
 As guilt and sliame can make me. 
 
 King. She has smitten 
 Compunction thro' my soul I 
 
 EvAD. Approach, my lord ! 
 Come in the midst of all mine ancestry. 
 Come and unloose nic from my lather's arms — 
 Come, if you dare, and in his daughter's shame 
 Reward him for the last drops of the blood 
 Shed for his prince's life ! — Come ! 
 
 King. Thou hast Avrought 
 A miracle upon thy prince's heart. 
 And lifted up a vestal lamp, to shew 
 My soul its oAvn defoi-mity — my guilt ! 
 
 EvAD. \_Disengagin(j herself from the Statue?^ Ha ! have 
 you got a soul ? — have you yet left. 
 Prince as you are, one relic of a man ? 
 Have you a soul ? — he trembles — he relents — 
 I read it in the glimmering of his face ; 
 And there 's a tear, the Ijursting evidence 
 Of nature's holy working in the heart ! 
 Oh, God ! he weeps ! my sovereign, my liege ! 
 Heart I do not burst in ecstacy too soon ! 
 My brother, my Colonna ! — hear me — hear ! 
 In all the Avildering triumph of my soul, 
 I call upon thee ! 
 \ Turning^ she perceives Colonna advancing from among the 
 
 Statues.~\ 
 There he is — my brother ! 
 Colonna, let me rush into thine arms. 
 And in thy bosonj I will try to keep 
 My bursting heart within me. 
 
 CoL. Let me behold thee. 
 Let me compress thee here ! — Oh 1 my dear sister ! 
 A thousand times mine own ! — I glory in theo, 
 More than in all the heroes of my name ! — 
 1 overheard your converse, and methought 
 It was a blessed spirit that had ta'en 
 Thy heavenly form, to shew the wondering world 
 How beautiful was Aartue ! — " 
 
 Mr. Shell received for the entire of the plays wliich were pro- 
 duced by him a sum of not less than £2000. The occupations 
 of a dramatist arc so alien from those of a l)arristcr, that it was 
 
RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. XXXV 
 
 lm])ossiblo tluit he should have made any way iu his profession, 
 as long as he continued to write for the stage ; and having ob- 
 tained by his Avritings, the means of devoting his attention to the 
 bar, he abandoned those dramatic pursuits in wluch he had 
 originally engaged, from the motives which have been already 
 assigned. Mr. Shed's progress at the bar, however, was always 
 impeded by the impression, a not unnatmal one, that his mind 
 had been dedicated to an intellectual employment, which amounted 
 almost to a disqualification for signal forensic success. However, 
 after some years, he got into considerable business upon liis 
 circuit, and was not Avithout practice in Dublin. It must, how- 
 ever, be acknowledged, that he never obtained eminence in his 
 profession, for although he occasionally delivered speeches which 
 attracted public attention, in no ordinary degree, at the bar, he 
 had not that promptitude in the discharge of the ordinary business 
 of the profession, which is of far greater importance than the 
 higher rhetorical attainments which Mr. Shell so constiintly 
 displayed. He had sufficient leisure to engage in light lite- 
 rary occupation, and wrote several articles in the Neio Monthly 
 Mdf/azinc, for which he received large remuneration. Mr. Slieil 
 and Ml'. William Henry Cm-ran,* the sou of the great orator, and 
 who now holds the office of Commissioner of the Insolvent Court, 
 of which he performs the duties in a manner above all praise, 
 imdcrtook the publication of a series of papers entitled, " Sketches 
 of the Irish Bar." These sketches attracted a good deal of 
 notice, both in London and in Dublin. 
 
 The following article, " The Calamities of the Bar," Avas written 
 by Mr. Shell, and was accounted one of the most striking of 
 those which were pi'oduced by him.f 
 
 " Not very long after I had been called to the Bar, 1 one day 
 chanced to observe a person standing beside a pillar in the Hall 
 of the Four Courts, the peculiar wretchedness of whose aspect 
 attracted my notice. I was upon my way to the subterranean 
 
 * The admirable worlc publislicd by Mr. William Henry Curran, the life of his 
 father, has made it matter of regret that his writings are not more numerous. 
 It is one of the most beautiful pieces of biography in the English language : it is 
 distinguished by originality of diction, an even and transparent flow of the purest 
 eloquence, and a filial tenderness which brings tears into the eyes. 
 
 f These essays of Mr. Shell are thus constantly introduced, because of their 
 autobiographical nature. All his early writings, which are so brilliantly written, 
 are full of las own experiences, and cannot fail to be more interesting than any 
 original matter by the present writer. 
 
XXXVl MEMOIU OF 
 
 chamber where the wigs and gowns of lawyers are kept, and was 
 revolving at the moment the dignity and importance of the 
 station to which I had been raised by my enrolment among the 
 members of the Irish Bar. I was interrupted in this interesting 
 meditation by the miserable object upon which my eyes had hap- 
 pened to rest ; and without being a dilettante in affliction, I could 
 not help pausing to consider the remarkable specimen of wretch- 
 edness that stood befoi-e me. Had the unfortunate man been 
 utterly naked, his condition would not have appeared so pitiable. 
 His raiment served to set his destitution off. A coat which had 
 once been black, but which appeared to have been steeped in a 
 compound of all rusty hues, lumg in rags about him. It was 
 closely pinned at his throat, to conceal the absence of a neckcloth. 
 He was without a vest. A sliirt of tattered yellow, which from 
 a time beyond memory had adhered to his withered body, ap- 
 peared through numerous apertures in his upper garment, and 
 jutted out round that portion of his person Avhere a garb without 
 a name is usually attached. The latter part of his attire, which 
 was conspicuous for a prismatic diversity of colour, was fastened 
 with a piece of twine to the extreme button of his upper habili- 
 ment, and veiy incompletely supplied the ])urpose for which the 
 progenitors of mankind, after their first initiation into knowledge, 
 employed a vegetable veil. Through the inferior regions of this 
 imperfect integument, there depended a shred or two of that 
 inner garment, which had been long sacred to nastiness, and wliich 
 the fingers of the laundress never had profaned. His stockings 
 were compounded of ragged worsted and accumulated inire. 
 They covered a pair of fleshlcss bones, but did not extend to tlie 
 feet, the squalid nakedness of wliich Avas visible through the shoes 
 that hung soaked with wet about them. He was dripping Avith 
 rain, and shivering Avith cold. His figure Avas shrunken and 
 diminutive. A few grey locks Avere Avildly scattered upon a small 
 and irregularly shaped head. Despair and famine sat upon his 
 face, which Avas of the strong Celtic movdd, Avith its features 
 thrown in disorder, and destitute of all symmetry or proportion, 
 but deriving from the passions, by Avhich they Avere distorted, an 
 expression of ferocious haggardness. His beard Avas like that 
 Avhich groAvs upon the dead. The flesh Avas of a cadaverous 
 complexion. His grey eyes, although laden Avith rlieuni, (.'aught 
 
niCUARU LALOR SHEIL. 
 
 a savagcness from the eyelids which Avere bordered with a jagged 
 rim of diseased and bloody red. A hideous mouth Avas lined with 
 a row of shattered ebony, and from the instinct of long hunger 
 had acquired an habitual gape for food. The wretched man was 
 speaking vehemently and incoherently to himself. It Avas a sort 
 of insane jabbering — a mad soliloquy, in Avhich ' my lord' Avas 
 frequently repeated. I turned aAvay Avith a mingled sentiment 
 of disgust and horror, and, endeavouring to release my recol- 
 lection from the painful image Avhich so frightful an object had 
 left behind, I proceeded to invest myself in my professional 
 trappings, tied a band Avith precision about my neck, complained 
 as is the Avont Avitli the junior bar, that my Avig had not been 
 duly besprinked Avitli poAvder, and that its curls Avere not deve- 
 loped in sufficient amplitude, set it rectilinearly upon my head, 
 and, after casting a look into the glass, and marking the judicial 
 organ in a certain prominence upon my broAv, I readjusted the 
 folds of my gOAvn, and reascendcd the Hall of the Four Courts 
 in a pleasurable state of unqualified contentedness Avith myself. 
 I directed my steps to the Court of Chancery, and, having no 
 better occu])ation, I detennincd to follow the example of certain 
 sagacious aspirants to the office of Commissioner of Bankrupts, 
 and to dedicate the day to an experiment in nodding, Avhich I 
 had seen put into practice Avith efl'ect. There are a set of ju- 
 venile gentlemen Avho have taken for their motto the Avords of a 
 Scotch ballad, Avhich, upon a recent motion for an by miction, 
 Lord Eldon affected not to imderstand, but Avhich, if he had 
 looked for a moment upon the benches of youthful counsellors 
 before him, Avhile in the act of deliA'cring a judicial aphorism, he 
 Avould have found interpreted in one of the senses of Avhich they 
 are susceptible, and have discovered a meaning in * We're all a 
 nodding,' of obvious application to the Bar. Confident in the 
 flexibility of iny neck, and a certain plastic facility of expression, 
 I imagined that I Avas not Avithout some talent for assentation ; 
 and accordingly seated myself in such a place that the eye of my 
 Lord Manners, in seeking refuge from the Inquisitorial physi- 
 ognomy of Mr. Plunkct, Avould probably rest upon me. The 
 Court began to fill. The young aristocracy of the Bar, the sons 
 of judges, and fifth cousins of members of parliament, and the 
 Avhole rising generation of the Kildare-street Club, gradually 
 
xxxvni MEMOin op 
 
 dropped in. Next appeared at the inner bar, the more eminent 
 practitioners tottering under their huge bags, upon which many 
 a briefless senior threw a mournful and repining glance. First 
 came Mr. Pennefather, with his calm and imruffled forehead, 
 his flushed cheek, and his subtihsing and somewhat over-anxious 
 eye. He Avas succeeded by Mr. Sergeant Lefroy, who after cast- 
 ing a smile of pious i-ecognition upon a brace of neophytes behind, 
 rolled out a pondei'ous brief, and reluctantly betook himself to 
 the occupations of this sublunary world. Next came Mr. 
 Blackburne, with his smug features, but beaming and wily eye ; 
 Mr. Crampton, with an air of elaborated frankness ; Mr. Warren, 
 with an expression of atrabilious honesty ; Mr. Saurin, looking 
 as if he had never been attorney-general ; and Mr. Plunket, as 
 if he never could cease to be so.* Lastly appeared my Lord 
 Manners, with that strong affinity to the Stuart cast of face, and 
 that fine urbanity of manner, which, united with a sallow face 
 and a meagre figure, make him seem like The Phantom of 
 Charles the Second. The Court was crowded, the business of 
 the day Avas called on ; Mr. Prcndergast, with that dei)th of regis- 
 terial intonation which belongs to him, had called on the first 
 cause, when suddenly a cry, or rather an Irish howl, of ' My 
 Lord, my Lord,' rose fi:om the remote seats of the court, and 
 made the whole assembly look back. A barrister in a wig and 
 gOAvn was seen clambering from bench to bench, and upsetting 
 all opposition, rolling over some and knocking down others, and 
 uttering in a vehement and repeated ejaculation, ' My Lord, 
 my Lord,' as he advanced, or rather tumbled over eveiy impe- 
 diment. At length he reached the lower bench, where he re- 
 mained breathless for a moment, overcome by the exertion which 
 he had made to gain that prominent station in the court. The 
 first sensation was one of astonishment ; this was succeeded by 
 reiterated laughter, wliich even the strictness of Chancery eti- 
 quette could not restrain. I could not for a moment believe the 
 assurance of my sensQS, until, looking at him again and again, I 
 became satisfied that this strange barrister (for a barrister it was) 
 
 * Mr. Pennefather is now Chief Justice ; Mr. Lefroy is a Baron of tlie Exche- 
 quer ; Mr. Blackburne is Master of the Rolls ; Mr. Crampton is one of the Jus- 
 tices of the Queen's Bench ; Mr. Saurin is dead, and Lord Plunket was Lord 
 Chancellor until Sir J. Campbell thrust him from his i)lace. Mr. Warren btill 
 continues to practice with great distinction and success Eu. 
 
niCIIAIlD LALOR SHEIL. XXXIX 
 
 wag no other tlian the miserable mau Avhoin I had observed in 
 the Hall, and of whom I have given a faint and imperfect pictme. 
 After tlie roar of ridicule had subsided, the unfortunate gentleman 
 received an intimation from Lord Manners that he should be 
 heard, when he addressed the court in a speech, ol" the style 
 of delivery of wliich it is impossible to convey to an English 
 reader any adequate notion, but which ran to the following effect. 
 < It is noAv, may it please yom- honourable Lordship, more than 
 forty years, since with a mournful step and a heavy heart, I fol- 
 lowed the remains of your Lordship's illustrious relative, the 
 Duke of Rutland, to the grave.' Tlic moment tliis sentence 
 had been pronounced, and it Avas uttered with a barbarous im- 
 pressiveness, the Chancellor leaned forward, and assumed an 
 aspect of profound attention. The Bar immediately composed 
 their features into sympathy with the judicial countenance, and 
 a general expression of compassion pervaded the court. The 
 extraordinary orator continued, ' Yes, my Lord, the unfortunate 
 man who stands before you, did, as a scholar of Trinity College, 
 attend the funeral procession with whicli the members of the 
 University of Dublin followed the relics of your nol)le relative to 
 an untimely tomb. ]\Iy eyes, my Lord, are noAV filled by my 
 own calamities, but they were then moistened by that sorrow, 
 which, in common with the whole of the loyal part of the Irish 
 nation, (for, my Lord, I am a Protestant) I felt for the loss of 
 your noble and ever to be lamented Idnsmau.' (The Bar looked 
 up to Lord Manners, and, perceiving his Lordship's attention 
 still more strongly riveted, preserved their gravity.) ' Oh, my 
 Lord, I feel that I am addressing myscli' to a man Avho carries a 
 true nobleness of sentiment in every drop of his honourable blood. 
 God Almighty bless your Lordship ! you belong, ay, every bit 
 of you, to the no1)le house ol'Iliitland ; mid aren't you the uncle 
 of a duke, and the brother of his Grace the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury ?' — < But in what cause, Mr. Mac Malion, are you counsel ?' 
 — * In my own, my Lord. It is a saying, my Lord, that he who 
 is his OAvn counsel, has a madman for his client. But, my Lord, 
 I have no money to fee my Ijrethren. I haven't the quiddum 
 honorarium, my Lord ; and if I am mad, it is poverty and perse- 
 cution, and the Jesuits, that have made me so. Ay, my Lord, 
 the Jesuits. For who is counsel against me ? I don't mean (hat 
 
xl MEMOIR OK 
 
 Popish demagogue Daniel O'Connell, though he was brought up 
 at St. Omer, and bad enough he is too, lor abusing your Lord- 
 ship about the appeals ; but I mean that real son of Loyola, 
 
 Tom , who was once a practising parson, and is noAv 
 
 nothing but a Jesuit in disguise. But let him bcAvare. Bagnal 
 Harvey, who was one of my persecutors, came to an untimely end.' 
 
 " Such was the exordium of Counsellor MaclNIahon,* the rest 
 of whose oration was in perfect conformity with the introductory 
 passages from which I have given an extract. But, in order to 
 form any estimate of his eloquence, you should have seen the 
 prodigy itself: the vehemence of his gesture corresponded Avith 
 the intensity of his emotions. His hands were violently clenched, 
 and furiously dashed against his forehead. His mouth was spat- 
 tered with discoloured foam. His Avig, of unpowdered horse-hair, 
 was flung off, and in the variety of frantic attitude which he 
 assumed, his gown was thrown open, and he stood with scarcely 
 any covering but his ragged shirt, in a state of frightful emaci- 
 ation, before the court. 
 
 " When this ridiculous but painful scene had concluded, ' So 
 much,' I whispered to myself, ' for the dignity of the Irish Bar !* 
 I confess that I divested myself of my professional trappings, 
 after having witnessed this exhibition of degradation and of mi- 
 sery, with very different feelings from those with which I had put 
 them on ; and as I walked from the Courts with the impression 
 of mingled shame and commiseration still fresh upon me, I ven- 
 tured to inquire of my own consciousness whether there was 
 anything so cabalistic in the title of Counsellor, which I shared 
 in common with the wretched man, whom I afterwards found to 
 be in daily attendance upon the Hall, and whether I had not a 
 little exaggerated the importance to which I imagined that every 
 barrister possessed an indisputable claim ? It occurred to me, of 
 course, that the instance of calamity which I had just witnessed 
 was a peculiar one, and carried Avith it more of the outward and 
 visible signs of distress than ai'c ordinarily revealed. But is 
 a^ony the less poignant, because its groans are hushed ? Is it 
 because sori'ow is silent, that it does not ' consume the heart ?' 
 
 * This unfortunate man, who liad distinguished himself in the University of 
 Dublin, and in early life had married a woman of large fortune, was lately found 
 dead in Sackville street. 
 
RICHARD l^ALOK SHEIL. xli 
 
 or did the Spartan feel less pain, because the fangs that tore him 
 were hidden beneath his robe ? 
 
 " There is at the Irish Bar a much larger quantity of affliction 
 than is generally known. The necessity of concealing calamity, 
 is in itself a great ill. The struggle between poverty and gen- 
 tility, which the ostentatious publicity of the profession in Ire- 
 land has produced, has, I believe, broken many hearts. If the 
 Hall of the Four Courts were the Palace of Truth, and all its 
 inmates carried a transparency in their bosoms, w^e should see a 
 swarm of corroding passions at court in the breasts of many 
 Avhose countenances arc now arrayed in an artificial hilarity of 
 look ; and even as it is, how many a glimpse of misery may be 
 cauglit by the scrutinizing eye that ]>icrccs through the ficcs into 
 the souls of men. The masque by which it is sought to conceal the 
 real features of the mind will often drop off, and intimations of af- 
 fliction will, upon a sudden, be involuntarily given. This is the 
 case even with those whom the Avorld is disposed to account 
 among the prosperous ; but there is a large class, who, to an 
 attentive and j)ractiscd observer, apjjcar habitually under the 
 influence of painful emotion. The author of Vatliek (a man 
 conversant in aflliction) has represented the condemned pacing 
 through the Hall of Eblis with the same slow and everlasting 
 foot-fall ; and I confess, that the blank and dejected air, the for- 
 lorn and hopeless eye, the measured and heart-broken pace of 
 many a man, Avhom I have observed in his revolution through 
 the same eternal round in the Hall of the Four Courts, have 
 sometimes recalled to me the recollection of Mr. Beckford's 
 melancholy fancies. 
 
 " If I Averc called upon to assign the principal cause of the cala- 
 mities of Avhicli so many examples occm- at the Irish Bar, I should 
 be disposed to say that their chief source lay in the unnatural ele- 
 vation to Avhich the nicnibers of that body are exalted l)y the 
 provincial inferiority to Avhlch Ireland is reduced. The absence 
 from the metroi)olis of the chief proprietors, and indeed of almost 
 all the leading gentry, has occasioned the substitution of a kind of 
 spurious aristocracy. An Irish barrister is indebted for liis imjior- 
 tance to the insignificance of his country ; but this artificial 
 station l)ccomes eventually a misfortime U) those who are de- 
 pendent iq)on their daily exertions for their support ; and Avho, 
 
 d 
 
xlii MEMOIR OP 
 
 instead of practising those habits of provident frugality, which 
 are imposed by their comparative obscurity upon the cloistered 
 tenants of the tAvo Temples, become slaves to their transitory 
 consequence ; and after having wasted the hard earnings of their 
 youth and manhood in preposterous efforts at display, leave tlieir 
 families no better inheritance than the ephemeral sympathy of 
 that public, -whose worthless respect they had purchased at so 
 large a cost. Let any man look back to the numerous instances 
 in which appeals have been made to the general commiseration 
 upon the decease of some eminent member of the Bar, and he 
 will not be disposed to controvert the justice of this censure 
 upon the ostentatious tendencies of the profession. The life of 
 an eminent lawyer may be thus rapidly sketched. He is called 
 without any other property than those talents Avhich have not in 
 general a descendible quality. For some years he remains un- 
 employed : at last gets a brief, creeps into the partialities of a 
 solicitor, and sets up a bag and a wife together. Irish morality 
 does not permit the introduction into the chambers of a barrister 
 of those moveable objects of unweddcd endearment, which Lord 
 Thurlow used to recommend to the juvenile meml)er3 of the 
 profession ; and marriage, that perpetual blister, is prescribed as 
 the only effectual sanative for the turbident passions of the Lish 
 Bar. In the spirit of imprudence, Avhich is often mistaken for 
 romance, our young counsellor enters with some dowerless 
 beauty into an indissoluble copartnership of the heart. A pretty 
 pauper is almost sure to be a prodigal. ' Live like yourself,' is 
 soon my lady's word. ' Shall ]\Irs. O'Brallaghan, the wife of a 
 mere attorney, provokingly display her amorphous ankle, as she 
 ascends the crimson steps of her carriage, with all the airs of 
 fashionable impertinence ; and is the wife of a counsellor in full 
 practice, though she may have ' ridden double' at her aunt 
 Deborah's, to be unprovided with that ordinary convenience of 
 persons of condition ?' After a faint show of resistance, the 
 conjugal injunction is obeyed. But is it in an obscure street 
 that the coachman is to bring his clattering horses to an instan- 
 taneous stand ? Is he to draw up in an alley, and to wheel 
 round in a cul de sac ? And then there is such a bargain to be 
 had of a house in Merrion-square. A house in Merrion-square 
 is accordingly purchased, and a bond, with Avan-ant of attorney 
 
RICHARD LALOR SHEIJL. xlUi 
 
 for confessing judgment thereon, is passed for the fine. Tlie 
 lady discovers a taste in furniture, and the profits of four circuits 
 are made oblations to virtu. The counsellor is raised to the dig- 
 nity of king's counsel, and his lady is initiated into the splen- 
 dours of the Vice-regal court. She is now thrown into the 
 eddies of fashionable life ; and in order to afford evidence of her 
 domestic propensities, she issues cards to half the town, with an 
 intimation that she is ' at home.' She has all this Avhile been 
 prolific to the full extent of Hibernian fecundity. The counsel- 
 lor's sons swagger it with the choicest spirits of Kildare-street ; 
 and the young ladies ajc nccom])lishcd in all the nndtifarious 
 departments of musical and literaiy affectation. Quadrilles and 
 waltzes shake the illuminated chambers with a perpetual con- 
 cussion. The passenger is arrested in his noctiurnal progress by 
 the crowd of brilliant vehicles before the door, while the blaze 
 of light streaming from the Avindows, and the sound of the harp 
 and the tabor, and the din of extravagance, intimate the joyaunce 
 that is going on within. But where is the counsellor all this 
 Avhile ? He sits in a sequestered chamber, like a hermit in the 
 forest of Comus, and pursues his midnight labours by the light 
 of a solitary taper, scarcely hearing the din of pleasure that rolls 
 above his head. The wasteful s})lendour of the drawing-room, 
 and the patient drudgery of the library, go on ibr years. The 
 counsellor is at the top of the forensic, and his lady stands ujion 
 the summit of the fiishionablc world. At length death knocks 
 at the door. He is seized by a sudden illness. The loud knock 
 of the judges j)eals upon his ear, but the double tap of the attor- 
 ney is heard no more. He makes an unavailing effort to attend 
 the Courts, but is hurried back to his house, arid laid in his bed. 
 His eyes now begin to open to the realities of his condition. In 
 the loneliness and silence of the sick nian's chaiubcr a (rain of 
 reflections presents itself to his mind, which his former state of 
 professional occupancy had tended to exclude. He takes a 
 death-bed survey of liis circumstances ; looks upon the future ; 
 and by the light of that melancholy lamp that burns beside him, 
 and throAvs its shadowy gleams upon his fortunes, he sees him- 
 self at the close of a most prosperous life, Avithout a groat. The 
 sense of his oavii folly and the anticipated destitution of his fa- 
 mily settle at his heart. He has not adopted even the simple 
 
xliv MEMOIR OF 
 
 and cheap expedient of insm-ing his life, or by some miserable 
 negligence has let the insurance drop. From the source of liis 
 best affections, and of liis piuest pleasures, he drinks that potion 
 — that aqua Tophana of the mind, which renders all the expe- 
 dients of art without avail. Despair sits ministering beside him 
 with her poisoned chalice, and bids defiance to Cranipton. The 
 hour of agony is at hand, when the loud and heartless voice of 
 official insolence eclioes ironi chamber to chamber ; and, after a 
 brief interval, the dreadful certainty, of which the unhappy man 
 had but too prescient a surmise, is announced. The sheriflTa 
 officers have got in ; his majesty's wi'it of fieri facias is in the 
 proo-ress of execution ; the sanctuaries of death are violated by 
 the peremptox'y ministers of the law, and the blanket and the 
 silk gOAvn are seized together ; and this is the conclusion of a 
 life of opulence and of distinction, and, let me add, of folly as 
 well as fame. After having charmed his country by his elo- 
 quence, and enlightened it by his erudition, he breathes his last 
 sif'h amidst the tears of his children, the reproaches of his cre- 
 ditors, and a bailiif's jests. 
 
 " The calamities of which I have drawn this sombre picture, 
 are the result of weakness and ostentation. Their victims arc, 
 upon that account, less deserving of commiseration than the un- 
 happy persons whose misfortunes have not been theu* fault. This 
 obvious reflection rccals the image of Henry INIac Dougall. I 
 hear his honest laugh, which it was good for a splenetic lieart to 
 hear ; I sec the triumph of sagacious humour in his eye ; those 
 feats of fine drollery, in which pleasantry and usefulness Avere so 
 felicitously combined, rise again to my recollection ; the roar of 
 merriment into Avhich the bar, the jury, and the bench used to 
 be thrown by this master of forensic mirth, returns upon my ear ; 
 but, alas ! a disastrous token, Avith the types of death upon it, 
 mingles itself Avitli these associations. Poor Mac Dougall ! he 
 was prized by the Avise and beloved by the good ; and, Avith a 
 ready Avit and a cheerful and sonorous laugh, had a manly and 
 independent spirit and a generous and feeling heart. 
 
 " Mr. Mac Dougall was at the head of the Leinster circuit, 
 and Avas, if not the best, among the very first class of cross-ex- 
 aminers at the Bar. No man better kncAV hoAV to assail an IrisJi 
 witness. There Avas, at first, nothing of the brow-beating or 
 
lllCHARD LALOR SHEII„ xIt 
 
 dictatorial tone about this good-humoured inquisitor, who entered 
 into an easy familiarity with his victim, and addressed him in 
 that spu'it of fantastic gibe, which is among the characteristics of 
 the country. The witness thought himself on a level Avith the 
 counsellor, avIio invited him to a wrestling-match in wit, and, 
 holding it a great victory to trip a laAvyer up, promptly accepted 
 the challenge. A hard struggle used often to ensue, and many 
 a time I have seen the counsellor get a severe fall. However, 
 he contrived to be always uppermost at last. The whole of ' the 
 fancy,' Avho arc very niuncrous in Dublin, used to assemble to 
 witness these intellectual gymnastics. A kind ol'ring Avas Ibrmed 
 roimd the combatants, and my Lord Norbvuy sat as arbiter of 
 the contest, and insisted upon fair play. The peals of laughter 
 Avhich Avcrc produced by his achievements in pleasantry procured 
 for I\Iac Dougall the title of ' Mac Dougall of the Roar.' I shall 
 not readily forget his last display. An action for slander Avaa 
 brought by an apothecary against a rival pharmacopolist. One 
 of the a})prcntices of the plaintiff Avas his leading Avitness, and it 
 fell to Mr. INlac Dougall to cross cxamiuc him. The Avily laAvyer 
 induced the youthful Podalirius to make a display of his accpiu'c- 
 ments in detailing the Avholc process of liis art. The farce of 
 the ' Mock Doctor' has never produced more mirth. All the 
 faculty attended, and the croAvd of doctors, sm'geons, and mau- 
 midAvives, reached the roof. They Avcre, hoAvever, reluctantly 
 compelled to join in the tumult of laughter created by this for- 
 midable jester at their expense. The chorus of apothecaries in 
 Moliere's ' Bourgeois Gentilhomme,' in Avhicli the various mys- 
 teries of the profession are detailed, does not disclose more matter 
 for merriment than Avas revealed in the course of this ludicrous 
 investigation. It is recorded of the ' satirical knave,' that lie 
 was assailed by the illness of Avhich he died during the persona- 
 tion of a character intended as a ridicule upon the faculty. I sat 
 close to Mr. Mac Dougall, and, wliile I partici])ated in all its 
 mirth, my attention was attracted by a handkerchief which tlie 
 author of all this merriment Avas frequently applying to his 
 mouth, and which was clotted with blood. I thought at first 
 that it proceeded from some ordinary effusion, and turned again 
 towards the witness, when a loud laugh from the counsel at the 
 success of a question which he had administered to the young 
 
xlvi 
 
 MEMOIH OK 
 
 apothecary, touching his performance of Romeo in the private 
 theatre in Fishamble-street, directed my notice a second time to 
 Mr. Mac Dougall, and I perceived that, while the whole auditory 
 was shaken Avith mirth, he was taking a favourable opportunity 
 of thrusting the bloody handkerchief into his bag, without attract- 
 ing the general attention, and immediately after applied another 
 to liis lips. Again he set upon the Komco of Fishamblc-strcet, 
 and produced new bursts of riihcule, of which he took advantage 
 to steal his bloody napkins away, and to supply himself, without 
 notice, with the means of concealing the malady which Avas hurry- 
 ing him to the grave. A day or tAvo after this trial his illness 
 and his ruin Avere announced. His high reputation in his profes- 
 sion, his private Avorth, his large family, and the opinion Avhich 
 had been entertained of his great professional prosperity, fixed 
 the public attention upon liim. It Avas at last discovered that 
 all the earnings of a laborious life had been laid out in specula- 
 tions upon lands belonging to the corporation of Watcrford, to 
 the representation of Avhich, it is supposed, he aspired. He had 
 borrowed large sums of money, and had sid)jected himself to 
 enormous rents. He Avas induced, in the hope of ultimately 
 retrieving his circumstances, to involve himself more deej)ly in 
 debt ; and the rank of King's counsel, to Avhich he Avas raised by 
 Mr. Plunket, in a manner equally honourable to both, offered a 
 new career to his talents, and led him to expect that all his diffi- 
 culties might be at last siu-mounted. But the hope Avas a vain 
 one. The pressure Avas too great for him to bear, and he sunk 
 at last beneath it. For a long time he struggled hard to conceal 
 the state of his circumstances and of his mind, and assvimed a 
 forced hilarity of manners. He Avas conspicuous for an obstre- 
 perous gaiety at the bar-mess on his circuit, and no man laughed 
 so loudly or so long as he did ; but Avhen his apparently exuberant 
 spirits Avcrc spoken of, those Avho kncAV hini Avell shook their 
 lieads, and hinted that all was not right Avithin. And so It proved 
 to be. His mind had for years been corroded Avith anxieties. 
 His constituti(m, although naturally vigorous, Avas sloAvly shaken 
 by the sapping of continual care. A mortal disease at length 
 declared itself, in the increasing gush of blood from the gums, 
 which he had employed the expedients that I have mentioned to 
 conceal. Yet even in the hours of advancing dissolution, he 
 
TIICHARD I^ALOR SHEIL. Xvlii 
 
 could not be Induced to absent himself from court ; and the scene 
 which I have been describing was one of those in wliich, if I may 
 so say, Momus and Death were brought into fellowship. He 
 died a short time after the trial in which I had noted this painful 
 incident. To the last, his love of ludicrous association did not 
 desert him. A little while before his departure, one of his oldest 
 friends Avas standing at his bed-side and bidding liim farewell. 
 During this melancholy parting, a collapse of the jaws took place, 
 which rendered it necessary to tie a bandage under the chin ; and 
 in the performance of the operation, with the blood still oozing 
 from his mouth, and trickling down the sheets, he turned his eyes 
 languidly to liis friend, and muttered, Avith a faint smile, ' I never 
 thought to have died chap-faUen.' This observation was not the 
 result of insensibility ; quite the reverse. ' You should have seen 
 him Avhcn he spoke it,' said the gentleman who mentioned the 
 circumstance ; ' I felt like the companion of Yorick's death-bed, 
 who perceived, by a jest, that the heart of liis friend was broken.' 
 It is consolatory to know, that since liis death his property has 
 been turned to good account, and that his family are placed in 
 independence. 
 
 " Never to attain to station at the Bar ; to carry the conscious- 
 ness of high talent; to tliink that there is a portable treasure in 
 one's mind, which the attorneys do not condescend to explore ; 
 to live for years in hope, and to feel the proverbial sickness of 
 the heart arising from its procrastination — these are serious ills. 
 But the loss of business, at an advanced period of life, is a fir 
 greater calamity than never to have attained its possession. Yet 
 a distinction is to be taken. Those Avho have been deserted by 
 their business are divisible into tAvo classes, essentially different : 
 the prudent, Avho, Avith the forecast Avhich is so rare a virtue in 
 Ireland, have taken advantage of the shining of their fortunes, 
 and, by a sagacious accumulation, are enabled to encounter the 
 caprices of public favour ; and they who, after a life of profusencss, 
 find themselves at last abandoned by their clients, Avithout having 
 preserved the means of respectable support. The former class 
 suggest a ludicrous, rather than a melancholy train of images. 
 The contemplation of a rich man out of employment affords more 
 matter for merriment than for condolence. To this body of 
 opulent veterans my friend Pomposo belongs. His success at 
 
xlviii MEMOIR OF 
 
 t.lic Bar was eminent. He possessed, in a liigh degree, a facility 
 of fluent and sonorous speech, and had an imposing and well- 
 rounded elocution, a deep and musical voice, a fine and command- 
 ing figure, and a solemn and didactic coimtenance. He flourished 
 at a period when a knowledge of the minute technicalities of the 
 law was not essential at the Irish bar. There wiis a time when 
 an Irish counsellor was winged to heaven by a bill of exchange, 
 and drew tears from the jury in an ejectment for non-payment 
 of rent. In those days Pomposo was in the highest repute ; and 
 such was the demand for him, that the attorneys upon opposite 
 sides galloped from the assize towns to meet him, and sometimes 
 arriving at the same moment at the open AvindoAVS of his carriage, 
 thrust in their briefs, with a shower of bank-notes, and simulta- 
 neously exclaimed that the counsellor belonged to them. Upon 
 these occasions Pomposo used to throw himself back in his post- 
 chaise with an air of imperious non-chalance^ and, pocketing the 
 money of both parties, protest that it was among the calamities 
 of genius to be stopped in the king's highway, and, drawing up 
 the windows of his carriage, conuuanded the postilion to drive on. 
 This half-yearly triumph of eloquence through the Munster 
 cii'cuit lasted for a considerable time, and Pomposo found him- 
 self a rich man. When, after the enactment of the Union, Eng- 
 lish habits began to appear, and the iron age of demurrers and of 
 nonsuits succeeded to the glorious days of apostrophes and ha- 
 rangues, it was all over with Pomposo. Still he loved the Four 
 Courts, and haunted them. Becoming at last weary of walking 
 the Hall, he took refuge in the Library attached to the Courts. 
 It was pleasant to hear him ask, with an air of earnestness, for 
 the oldest and most unintelligible repertories of black letter, in 
 which he affected to seek a pastime. Bracton seemed to be his 
 manual, and Fleta his vade-mecum. I have heard his deep and 
 solemn voice, which still retained its old rhetorical tones, break- 
 ino- in upon the laborious meditations of the young gentlemen 
 who had recently returned from Butler's or Sugden's offices, 
 bristling with cases and with points, and Avho just raised up their 
 heads and invested their features with a Lincoln' s-Inn expression 
 at any intrusion of a laAvyer of the old school into this repository 
 of erudition. Pomposo having anned himself with one of the 
 year-books, took his station tranquilly by the fire, and afler stir- 
 
RICIIAUD LALOR SIIEIL. xlix 
 
 ring it, and commenting with liis habitual magniloquence upon 
 the weather, threw open the annals of justice in the reign of the 
 Edwards, and fell fast asleep. It has been recorded of him that 
 he has been licard, upon these occasions, to speak in his slumbers ; 
 and while Queen Mab was galloping on his lingers, he has alter- 
 nately intermingled tlie prices of stocks with adjurations to a 
 Munster jury. Pomposo still goes tlie circuit. No man is more 
 punctual in his attendance at the exact hour of dinner at the Bar- 
 room. The junior, wlio is generally fresh from a pleader's office, 
 and enamoured of Nisi Prius upon his first tour, remains in court 
 until the business is concluded, and thus neglects the official 
 duty Avhlcli re(piires his presence at the l>ar-room at five o'clock. 
 I'omposo and an old friend or two enter together. Pomposo 
 draAvs forth his watch, and exclaims, ' Ten minutes past five 
 o'clock, and the junior not yet come !' Having a tasteTor music, 
 he beguiles the time Avith humming some of those airs for which 
 he Avas famous in his youth, and goes through the best portion 
 of the ' Beggar's Opera,' when six o'clock strikes. ' I protest it 
 is six o'clock, and the jimior is not yet come — 'AVlien the heart 
 of a man, &c. ;' and so Pomposo continues until seven o'clock, 
 alternately inveighing against the remissness of modern juniors, 
 and, as Wordsworth has expressed it, 
 
 'wlustling many a snatch of merry tunes 
 
 Tliat have no niirtli in tlicni.' 
 
 " The wealth which tliis very resi)ectable gentleman has accu- 
 uuilated raises him above the sympathy of the Bar. The other 
 class of barristers Avithout employment falls more immediately 
 under the title Avith Avhich I have headed this article. There 
 Avas a set of men at the Irish bar Avho, I think, may be designa- 
 ted as ' the Yclverton school of laAvyers.' Lord Avonmore, the 
 Chief Biuon of the Exchc(pier, avIiosc name Avas Bany Yclver- 
 ton, originally belonged to that grade in society Avhich is Avithin 
 the reach of education, but beloAv that of refinement. He never 
 lost the indigenous roughness and asperity of character, Avhich 
 it has been said to be the office of literatm-e to soften aiui sub- 
 due ; but he had a noble intellect, and in the deep rush of his 
 eloquence the inq)erfections of li'.s manner were forgotten. His 
 fniuiliarity Avith the models of antifpiity Avas great, and his mind 
 
M£MOIR OF 
 
 had imbibed much of tlie spirit of the orators of Greece and 
 Rome, which he infused into his own powex'ful discourses. So 
 great was his solicitude to imbue himself with the style of the 
 eminent writers whom he admired, that he translated several of 
 their works, without a view to publication. His talents raised 
 him to the highest place at the Bar, and his political complai- 
 sance lifted him to the Bench. In private life he possessed 
 many excellent qualities, of which the most conspicuous was liis 
 fidelity in friendship. In his ascent he raised up the companions 
 of his youth along with him. The business of the Court of 
 Exchequer was, imder his auspices, divided among a set of 
 clioice spirits who had been the boon companions of his youth, 
 and belonged, as well as himself, to a jovial fraternity, who desig- 
 nated themselves by the very characteristic title of ' Monks of 
 the Screw.' These merry gentlemen encountered a nonsuit 
 with a joke, and baffled authority with a repartee. A system 
 of avowed and convivial favouritism prevailed in the court ; and 
 the ' facundi calices' which had been quaffed Avith his Lordship, 
 were not unnatiu'ally presumed to administer to the inspiration 
 of counsel on the succeeding day. The matins performed in 
 coiu-t were but a prolongation of the vespers which had been 
 celebrated at the abbot's house : and as long as the head of the 
 order continued on the bench, the ' Monks of the Screw' were 
 in vogue ; but Avhen the Chief Baron died, their bags Avcrc im- 
 mediately assailed with atrophy. They lost theu* business, and 
 many of them died in extreme indigence. It may be readily 
 imagined that their habits were inconsistent with the spirit of 
 saving. They Avere first pitied, then forgotten, and soon after 
 buried. Most of these gentlemen flourished and withered before 
 my time. One of them, however, I do remember, Avho survived 
 his companions, and whose natural vitality of spirit, and Diogenes 
 turn of [)liilosophy, sustained his energy to the last. This Avas 
 Mr. Jeremiah Keller, who Avas universally known by the more 
 familiar appellation of Jerry Keller in the Courts. The attor- 
 neys could deprive him of liis briefs, but could not rob him of 
 his wit. He was a man 
 
 ' replete with mocks. 
 
 Full of comparisons ami wounding flouts.' 
 
niCIIARD L,ALOR SIIEII-. 
 
 The loss of business served to whet his satire and give more 
 poignancy to his biting mirth. He used to attend the Hall of 
 the Coiu-ts Avith punctuality, and was generally surrounded by a 
 circle of laughers, Avliom the love of malicious pleasantry at- 
 tracted about him. His figure and demeanour were remarkable. 
 He never put on his Avig and gown, as he scorned the affectation 
 of employment, but appeared in an old frieze great-coat of rusty 
 red, which reached to his heels, and enveloped the whole of his 
 gaunt and meagre person. A small and pointed hat stood upon 
 his head, with a naiTow and short curled brim. His arms wei*e 
 generally thrust into the sleeves of his coat, Avhich gave him a 
 peculiarity of attitude. Looking at him from a distance, you 
 would have taken him for some malevolent litigant from the 
 country, upon whose passions a gi'oup of mockers were endea- 
 vom-Ing to play ; but, upon a more attentive perusal of his 
 countenance, you perceived a habit of thought of a superior 
 order, and the expression of no ordinary inind. His features 
 Avere sharp, and pointed to the finest edge. There was that 
 acuteness of the nose which denotes the lover of a gibe. His 
 eyes were piercing, clear, and brassy ; they Averc filled Avith a 
 deadly irony, Avhich never left them. A flash of malignant ex- 
 ultation played over his features Avhen he saAv Iioav deeply the 
 shafl had struck, and Avitli Avhat a tenacity it stuck to liis victim. 
 The quiver of his lip, in giving iitterance to some mortal sneer, 
 was peculiarly comical : he seemed as if he Avere chcAving the 
 poison before he spat it forth. His teeth gave a short chatter of 
 ridicule ; you heard a dry laugh, a cachhiniis Avhich Avriidclcd all 
 his features, and, after a sardonic chuckle, he darted forth the 
 fatal jest, amidst those plaudits for its bitterness which had be- 
 come his only consolation. Jerry Keller, as the senior, presided 
 at the mess of the Mimster bar, and ruled in all the autocracy 
 of uri vailed Avit. It Avas agreed upon all hands that Jerry should 
 have carte-hlaiiche Avitli every man's character, and that none of 
 his sarcasms, hoAvever formidable, should provoke resentment. 
 This Avas a necessary stipiilation ; for Avhen he had been roused 
 by those potations, in Avhich, according to a custom Avhich he 
 did not consider as ' honoured by the breach,' he liberally in- 
 dulged, there Avas a MalagroAvther savageness in his sarcasm 
 Avhich made even the most callous shrink. He Avho laughed 
 
lii 
 
 MKMoia or 
 
 loudest at the thrust wliich his neighbour had received, was the 
 next to feel the Aveapons of tliis immitigable satirist. To enter 
 into a struggle with him, Avas a tempting of God's providence. 
 You Avere sure to be pierced in an instant by this accomphshed 
 gladiator, who could never be taken off liis guard. Jerry had 
 been a Catholic, and still retained a lurking reverence for a her- 
 ring upon Good Friday. A gentleman of no ordinary preten- 
 sion, observing that Jerry abstained from meat upon that sacred 
 day, ventured to observe, ' I think, Jerry, you have still a 
 damned deal of the Pu2)e in your belly.' — ' If I have,' said Jeny, 
 ' you have a damned deal of the Pretender in your head.' 
 
 "I Avas one day, (let not my reader alloAV himself to be startled 
 by too sudden a transition from Dublin to Constantinople) — I 
 Avas, I recollect, one day repeating this sarcasm to a gentleman 
 who had recently returned from the East, and mentioned the 
 
 name of the barrister, JMr. N , to Avhom it had been applied; 
 
 and I Avas a good deal surprised, that instead of joining in a 
 laugh at the bitterness of the retort, his face assumed a melan- 
 choly expression. I asked him the cause of it, Avhen he told 
 me, that tlie name Avhich I had just uttered, had recalled to him 
 a very remarkable and A'ery painfid incident Avhich had happened 
 to him at Constantinople. I begged him to relate it. ' I Avas 
 one evening,' he said, 'Avalking in the cemeteries of Constantino- 
 ple. But I have, I believe, Avritten an account of this adventure 
 in my journal, and had better read it to you.' He accordingly 
 took a book from a draAvcr, and read as follows : ' It is not im- 
 usual for the inhabitants of the Asiatic portion of the great capi- 
 tal of Islamism, to Avalk in the evening amidst the vast reposito- 
 ries of the dead, Avhich are adjacent to Scutari. Death is little 
 dreaded in the East, while the remains of the deceased are 
 objects of tenderness and respect among their surviving kindred. 
 This pious sentiment being imaccompanied by that dismay Avith 
 which we are apt to look upon the grave, attracts the Turks to 
 the vast fields Avhere their friends and kindred are deposited. I 
 proceeded upon a summer evening from Constantinople, properly 
 so called, to the Asiatic side, and entered the vast groves of 
 cypresses which mark the residence of the dead. The evening 
 Avas brilliant. There Avas not a breath of Avind to stir the leaves 
 of those dismal trees, Avhich spread on every side as far as the 
 
RICHAllD lyALOR SHEIL,. llU 
 
 sight can reach, and, being planted in long and imlform lines, 
 open vistas of death, and conduct the eye through long sweeps 
 of sepulchres to the horizon. The dwellings of the dead were 
 filled with the living. The ranges of cypresses were crowded 
 with Turks, who moved Avith that slow and solemn gait, which 
 is peculiar to the country. The flowing and splendid dresses of 
 those majestic infidels, their lofty turbans, of which the image is 
 sculptured upon every monument, thcu* noble demeanour, and 
 their silence and collectedness, by the union of life and death 
 together, gave an additional solemnity to this imposing spectacle. 
 The setting of the sun threw a mournful splendom* upon the 
 foliage of the trees, and lighted up this forest of death with a 
 funereal glory. I leaned against a cypress which grcAv over a 
 gi'ave on which roses had been planted. From this spot, full of 
 those ' flower-beds of graves,' as Mr. Hope has called them, and 
 which mothers or sisters had in all lilcelihood so adorned (it is 
 the usage in the East to apparel a tomb with these domestic to- 
 kens of endearment), I looked around me. While I was con- 
 templating ' this patrimony of the heirs to decay,' my attention 
 was attracted by a man dressed in tattered white, and with a 
 ragged turban on his head, who stood at a small distance from 
 me, and, although attired in the di'ess of the country, had some- 
 thing of the Frank in his aspect. There was an air of extreme 
 lonehncss and desolation about him. He leaned Avith his back 
 to a marble sepulchre, Avhich was raised by the side of the pub- 
 lic road that for miles traverses the cemeteries. His arms were 
 folded, his head Avas sunk on his chest, and his eyes fixed upon 
 the earth. The evening Avas iiir advanced, and, as it grcAV dark, 
 the crowds who had previously filled the cemeteries began to dis- 
 perse. As the brightness of the evening passed aAvay, I per- 
 ceived tliat dense and motionless cloud of stagnant vapours 
 ■which had disappeared in the setting sun, but Avhicli Mr. Hope 
 tells us, for ever hangs over these dreary realms, and is exhaled 
 from the SAvelling soil ready to bm'st Avith its festering contents. 
 A chilly sensation stole upon me, and I felt that I Avas ' set 
 doAvn in the midst of the valley which Avas full of bones.' I Avas 
 about to depart from this dismal spot, Avhen, looking toAvards 
 the sepulchre Avhere I had observed the solitaiy figure I have been 
 describing, I perceived that he Avas approacliing. I Avas at first 
 
liv MKMOlll OF 
 
 a Kttle startled, and, although my apprehensions passed away 
 when he addressed me in the English language, my surprise, 
 when I looked at him, was not a little increased. He said, that 
 he conjectured from my appearance that I was an Englishman ; 
 jmd was proceeding to implore, with the faltering of shame, for 
 the means of sustenance, when I could not avoid exclaiming, 
 * Gracious God ! can it be ?' — ' Alas !' said the unfortunate man, 
 
 covering liis face with his hands, ' it is too true, I am ]\Ir. N 
 
 of the Irish bar.' 
 
 "The gentleman who read this singular incident from his 
 Journal, was at the time employed in writing a Tour in the East, 
 and may have tinged his description of the cemeteries of Stambul 
 with some mental colours. But, of the fact of this interview 
 having taken place in the burial-ground of Constantinople, I 
 have no doubt. It would not he easy to imagine adventures 
 
 more disastrous than those of the unhappy INIr. N . He moved 
 
 in Dublin in the highest circles, and was prized for the grace- 
 fulness of his manners and the gaiety of his conversation. He 
 became a favourite at the Castle, ami was admitted to the private 
 parties at the Viceregal Palace. The late Duchess of Gordon 
 visited Ireland, and Avas greatly pleased with his genius, for losing 
 at piquet. No person was preferred by that ingenious dowager 
 to a votary of fortune who still continued to worship at a shrine 
 where his prayers had never been heard. It was rumoured that 
 lie was every day plunging himself more deeply into ruin ; still 
 he preserved his full and ruddy cheek, and his glittering and 
 cheerful eye. Upon a sudden, however, tlie crash came, and his 
 embarrassments compelled him to leave the country. He had 
 one friend. Mr. Croker, of the Admiralty, had known him when 
 he was himself at the Irish Bar, and was diligently employed in 
 writing those admirable satires, with Avhich I shall endeavour, 
 upon some future occasion, to make the English public better 
 acquainted ; for Mr. Croker is not only the author of ' The Bat- 
 tle of Talavera,' but likcAvise of the ' Familiar Epistles,' and is 
 
 thought to have assisted Mr. N in the composition of ' The 
 
 Metropolis.' These very able pasquinades were but the preludes 
 to high undertakings. It does Mr. Croker gi-eat honour, that, 
 in his emergencies, his brother barrister and satirist was not for- 
 gotten. The honourable secretary provided a lucrative situation 
 
RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. Iv 
 
 for Mr. N in the island of Malta. His Irish friends looked 
 
 forward to the period when he should be enabled, after recruiting 
 his circumstances, to return to Ireland, and to reanunate Kildare- 
 street Club-house Avith that vivacious pleasantry, of which he 
 was a fehcitous master ; Avhen, to every body's astonishment, it 
 
 was announced that ]\Ir. N had left the island, had taken up 
 
 his residence at Constantinople and renounced liis religion "with 
 his hat. He became a renegade, and invested his brows "with a 
 turban. The motives assigned for this proceeding, it is not neces- 
 sary to mention. It is probable, that he involved himself a second 
 time by play, and that he had no other resource than the expe- 
 dient of a conversion, through the painful process of which he 
 heroically went. Having carried some money with him to Con- 
 stantinople, he at first made a considerable figure. He Avas dres- 
 sed in the extreme of Turlcish fashion, and Avas considered to 
 have ingratiated himself by his talents into the favour of some 
 leading members of the Divan. His prosperity at Constanti- 
 nople, hoAvever, Avas evanescent. His money Avas soon spent. 
 Letters of the most heart-rending kind Avere Avritten to his friends 
 in Dublin, in Avhich he represented himself as in Avant of the com- 
 mon means of subsistence. It Avas in this direful sttite of desti- 
 tution, that he addressed himself, in the cemeteries of Constan- 
 tinople, to a person Avhom he guessed to be a native of these 
 countries, and Avhom he discovered to be his fellow-citizen. His 
 condition Avas lamentable beyond the poAver of description. His 
 dress Avas at once the emblem of apostacy and want. It hung 
 in rags about a person Avhich, from a robust magnitude of frame, 
 had shrunk into miserable diminution. He carried starvation in 
 his cheeks ; ghastUness and misery overspread liis features, and 
 despair stared in his glazed and sunken eye. He did not long 
 survive his calamities. The conclusion of his story may be briefly 
 told. For a little Avhile he continued to walk through the streets 
 of Constantinople, in search of nourishment, and haunted its 
 cemeteries like the dogs to Avhich Christians are compared. He 
 had neither food, roof, or raiment. At length he took the des- 
 perate resolution of relapsing into Christianity ; for he indulged 
 in the hoi)e, that, if he could return to his former faith, and 
 effect his escape from Constantinople, although he could not ap- 
 pear in these countries again, yet, on the continent, he might 
 
Ivi MEMOIR OF 
 
 obtain at least the means of life from the friends Avho, altliough 
 they could not forgive his errors, might take compassion upon 
 his distress. He accordingly endeavoiu'ed to fly from Constan- 
 tinople, and induced some Englishmen who happened to be there, 
 to furnish money enough to effect his escape. But the plot was 
 discovered. He was pursued and taken at a small distance from 
 Constantinople ; his head Avas struck off upon the beach of the 
 33osphorus, and his body thrown into the sea." 
 
 It will have been perceived that this article is not written Avitli 
 any pecuhar care, and that it has many blemishes in style. Mr. 
 Shell did not, indeed^ bestow much pains on anything which he 
 wrote in periodical publications, his chief attention being devoted 
 to politics, in which, from the first establishment of the Catholic 
 Association, he took a very active part. That celebrated body 
 was 'founded by Mr. O'Connell, in 1822, soon after the visit of 
 the King to Ii-eland. Mr. Sheil happened to meet ]\Ir. O'Con- 
 nell at the house of Mr. O'Meara, in the county of Wicklow, 
 and expressed his deep regret that an unfortunate apathy pi-e- 
 vailed in the Catholic body. He told J\lr. O'Connell that he 
 was convinced that it was in Mr. O'Connell's power to raise the 
 public mind from the prostration into which it Avas sunken, and 
 that he knew that it Avas only by his gigantic arm that Ireland 
 could be raised up. Mr. O'Connell had been revolving a great 
 project in his mind, and finding that Mr. Sheil concurred Avith 
 liim in the view Avhich he had taken, he asked ]\Ir. Shell Avhcther 
 he Avould co-operate, by takiug an active jmrt in the advancement 
 of the Catholic cause ? Mr. Sheil agreed to do so, and Mr. 
 O'Connell immediately drcAV up an ai)peal to the Irish Catholics, 
 to Avhich he requested Mr. Sheil to attach his name. Mr. Sheil 
 did so, and the document was put into circulation. It Avas at 
 first attended Avith little effect, and some Roman Catholic gen- 
 tlemen affected to consider it an undue assumption of authority, 
 to have summoned them to assemble. A very inconsiderable 
 meeting Avas got together, at the house of Mr. Fitzpatrick, in 
 Capel-street ; but ISfr. O'Connell attended, and expressed his 
 determination never to relinquish the great object, of which the 
 attainment has given him an everlasting renoAvn. The speeches 
 of Mr. O'Connell Avere distinguished l)y that combination of 
 eloquence and of reasoning in Avhich he is unequalled; Avhile the 
 
RICHARD LALOR SHEIJL. Ivii 
 
 declamations of Mr. Shell were calculated to inflame the public 
 mind. His harangues were regarded in England as characterised 
 by many of the faults of what is called " Irish eloquence ;" 
 but Mr. Shell's speeches in the Catholic Association bear a 
 much closer resemblance to the oratory of the French Revolu- 
 tion, which, however hyperbolical, Avas of a very exciting 
 quality. His early famlharity with the French language, and 
 his constant perusal of the most eminent French writers, had 
 influenced liis style, and contributed perhaps to create a certain 
 mannerism in his composition. In the order of his delivery, 
 and the vehemence with which he invited his countrymen to 
 combine for the enfranchisement of Ireland, his exaggerations 
 Avere overlooked ; he became exceedingly popular, and was ac- 
 counted one of the most efficient of the men by whom Mr. 
 O'Connell was aided in his great achievement. Such, indeed, 
 was the impression produced by Mr. Shell, that he was selected 
 in 1825, conjointly Avlth Mr. O'Connell, to attend at the bar of 
 the House of Commons, to plead against the Bill for the sup- 
 pression of the Catholic Association. Mr. O'Connell and Mr. 
 Shell, together Avlth other deputies, proceeded to London, and 
 heard the remarkable debate Avhich took place in the House of 
 Commons resardinfr the right of the Catholic Association to be 
 heard by their Counsel, of Avhlch Mv. Shell Avrote an account. 
 He thus describes the effect of an encounter betAveen Mr. 
 Brougham and Mr. Peel. " The latter," he says, " could not 
 *' resist the temptation of dragging Hamilton Rowan into the 
 " debate — a man Avhose Avhite hair should hide his imperfec- 
 " tlons. Putting aside all consideration of any Avant of gene- 
 " roslty in the selection of such a topic, it nuist be acknoAV- 
 " lodged that he pronounced a severe invective Avlth great and 
 " very successful force. He became licatcd Avith victory, and 
 " cheered as he Avas Avitli vehement reiteration by his heated 
 " multitudinous partlzans, he turned suddenly towards that 
 " part of the house Avhere the deputies Avere seated, and looking 
 ♦« triumphantly at Mr. O'Connell, Avith Avhom he forgot for an 
 *« instant that he had been, Avhen Secretary for Ireland, involved 
 " in a personal (juarrel, shook his hand Avith scornful exultation, 
 " and asked whether the house required any better evidence of 
 " the real character of the Association than their address to 
 
Iviii 
 
 MKMOIU OF 
 
 " 'an attainted traitor.' The effect in oratory was powerful, 
 " and, but for the want of moral dignity, I should say that the 
 *' whole passage was very finely executed. We quailed for a 
 " moment under the consciousness of discomfiture. But the 
 " success of Mr. Peel was transitoiy. Mr. Brougham was sup- 
 " plied with several facts of great importance on the instant, 
 " and inflicted on Mr. Peel a terrible retribution. He shewed 
 " that the government had granted to Hamilton Bowan a com- 
 " plete amnesty, and reproached Mr. Peel with his want of 
 " noble-mindedness in opening a wound which had been closed 
 " 80 long, and in turning the misfortunes of an hoi.om-able man, 
 " after the lapse of so much time, into a rhetorical resource. 
 " He got hold of the good feeling of the house — their virtuous 
 " emotions, and the good feelings which the spirit of party can- 
 " not entirely suppress, Avere at once marshalled upon his side. 
 *' Conscious of his advantage, he rushed on his antagonist with 
 " an irresistible impetuosity, and laid him prostrate. The noblest 
 " qualities of his eloquence were displayed by him — fierce sar- 
 " casm, indignant denunciation, exalted sentiment, and solemn, 
 " but most ardent elocution. He brought his powerful memory 
 " to his aid, and sustained Ids defence of Hamilton Rowan by a 
 " most apposite quotation from Cicero, in which the orator ex- 
 " tenuates the errors of those Avho were engaged in Pompey's 
 " cause." 
 
 The duputies were received in London with great cordiality 
 by the leaders of the Whig party. Mr. O'Connell and INIr. 
 Shell dined at Mr. Brougham's house. There were four Dukes 
 at table. Mr. O'Connell sat between the Dukes of Devonshire 
 and Leinster. The deputies dined at several other houses, where 
 they were magnificently entertained. Mr. Shell says : "I had 
 " noAv become more habituated to the display of patrician opulence; 
 " I saw the exhibition of its gorgeousness without surprise ; yet, 
 " I acknowledge that at Norfolk Plouse, where the Duke did Mr. 
 " O'Connell, Lord Killeen, myself and others, tlie honor to invite 
 *' us, and brought together an assemblage of men of the highest 
 " rank in England, I was dazzled with the splendour of an cnter- 
 *' tainment to which I had seen nothing to be compared. Norfolk 
 " House is one of the finest in London. It was occupied at one 
 <' period by members of the royal family, and the Duke mentioned 
 
 I 
 
KICUAllD JL.ALOR SHEIL. lix 
 
 *' that George the Thu'd was born in the room in which Ave dined. 
 " I passed through a long series of magnificent apartments in 
 " crimson and gold. There was no glare of excessive light in 
 *' tliis vast mansion. The massive lamps suspended from the 
 " embossed and gilded ceilings, diffused a chequered illumination, 
 " and left the deep distance in the dusk. The transition to the 
 " chamber where the company were assembled, and Avliich was 
 " glaring with light, presented a brilliant contrast. Among the 
 " guests were the Dukes of Sussex, Devonshire, and Leinster ; 
 " Lords Grey, Fitzwilliam, Shrewsbuiy, Donoughmore, Stom- 
 *' ton, Clifford, Arundel, Sir Francis Biudctt, Mr. Butler of 
 "Lincoln's Inn, Mr. Abcrcrombic, and Mr. Denman were also 
 " there. The Duke of Norfolk came forward to meet us, and 
 *' received us in the most cordial manner. Lord Fitzwilliam 
 " was the person with Avhom I was most disposed to be pleased. 
 " It Avas impossible to look on this nobleman of the olden 
 *' stamp, without a feeling of affectionate admiration. His warm 
 *' love of Ireland lives under the ashes of age, and requires to be 
 " but stirred to emit its former fire. Speak to him of Ireland, 
 " and through tlic dimness of his eyes a sudden illumination 
 *' sheds forth. He reverted with a Ncstorian pride to the 
 " period of his own government, and stated that he had pre- 
 " served the addresses presented to him by the Catholics of 
 " Ireland as the best memorials of his life : that he Avould live 
 " long enough to witness their emancipation seemed to be the 
 *' wish nearest to his heart. It does one good : it is useful in a 
 " moral vicAV to approach a nobleman like Lord FitzAvilllam, and 
 " to feel that there are politicians, animated by a disinterested 
 " solicitude for the benefit of mankind. Lord Grey tvas, 1 have 
 " mentioned, there : he Avas silent and reserved. There is 
 '* something luicompromlslng, and even stern in his aspect. He 
 '• has a tone of sadness Avhicli a placeman Avould interpret Into 
 " discontent, but his expression is not atriblllous or morose. 
 " He has survived the death and, let me add, the virtue of se- 
 " veral illustrious men, and looks like the solitary column of a 
 " fabric, Avhich he had long sustained, and Avhich fell at last, 
 *' and is strcAved in ruin round him.'' 
 
 It Avill be seen that Mr. Shell, some years after this intervicAv, 
 saAv Lord Grey in a different position and in a very different light. 
 
Ix 
 
 MKMOIK OV 
 
 The deputation to London was not attended with success : at one 
 moment Lord Liverpool is supposed to have hesitated, and in 
 order to counteract the impression that he had given way, deli- 
 vered what was called his " ether speech." He was in the ha- 
 bit of taking ether on important occasions, and in declai'ing that 
 his mind was unaltered, used a larger dose than usual, to which 
 some of his vehemence was ascribed ; others attributed it to his 
 conununication with the Duke of York, Avho took his oath in 
 the House of Lords, that he never woidd consent to Catholic 
 Emancipation, in the event of his succession to the throne. That 
 celebrated invocation was afterwards the cause of ]\Ir. Shell's 
 committinjj what he had reason to regard as worse than an ordi- 
 nary mistake. Great indignation Avas naturally produced in the 
 entire Catholic body ; and in that sentiment Mr. Shell largely 
 shared. On his return to Ireland, he took at the Catholic 
 Association a bolder and a more denunciatory tone ; but he did 
 not, in the first instance, employ any expressions which the out- 
 rage offered to the Catholics of Ireland did not fully warrant. 
 Having, hoAvever, attended at a public dinner at MuUingar, and 
 the health of the Duke of York having been proposed, exaspe- 
 rated by what he regarded as a most uuAVorthy proceeding in a 
 Roman Catholic assembly, he gave utterance to phrases, as un- 
 justifiable as Canning's unfortunate alliteration, " The revered 
 and ruptured Ogden." Mr. Slieil's fierce assaidt on the Duke 
 of York was very prejudicial to himself, but it afforded a strong 
 evidence of the violent resentment which the conduct of the Duke 
 of York had created in Ireland, and was, so far, of public use. 
 When, however, the death of the Didce was hourly expected, 
 Mr. Shell made a speech at the Association, in which he ex- 
 pressed his sorrow that he had been betrayed into the use of 
 language so reprehensible as that Avhich he had employed : " My 
 " soul" he exclaimed, in the language of the Lamentations, "was 
 " filled with bitterness, and I was drunk with Avormwood. But, 
 " noAV that we hear that a Prince is dying, and expect every in- 
 " stant that a voice Avill come upon us, to tell 'that a Prince is 
 " dead' — noAv that death, who, Avhile he levels the great, sub- 
 " dues the animosities of the humble, and Avhile he resolves the 
 " hearts of princes into dust, softens the hearts of the loAvly into 
 " commiseration — noAV that the bell of that lofty temple that 
 
HrCtlARI) I.ALOR SHKIL. Ixi 
 
 ** towers over the great city, and whose knell is reserved for 
 
 " royalty, has begun to toll It is not with affectation 
 
 *' tliat I speak, when I declare, that so far from experiencing any 
 " feeling of truculent hilarity, every emotion of anger, every 
 " vindictive and acrimonious sentiment passes aAvay, and the 
 " passions by which I confess that I Avas recently actuated, ex- 
 " pire within me. It is right that the offence which the Duke 
 " of York committed against our country should be committed 
 " to forgctfulness. Indeed it is almost unnecessary to express a 
 " desire, which the natural oblivion, that must befal the greatest 
 " as well as the humblest of mankind, cannot fail to accom})lIsh. 
 " In a month hence the Duke of York will be forgotten. The 
 " pomp of death will for a few nights fill the gilded apartments 
 " in which his body Avill lie in state. The artist will endeavour 
 " to avert that decay to which even princes are doomed, and em- 
 *' balm him with odours, which may resist the cadaverous scent 
 *' for a wliile. lie will be laid in a winding sheet fringed with 
 " silver and with gold — he will be enclosed in spicy wood, and his 
 " illustrious descent and withered hopes Avill be inscribed upon his 
 " glittering coffin. The bell of St. Paul's will toll, and London 
 " — rich, luxurious, Babylonic London — will start at the recoUec- 
 *' tion that even kings must die. The day of his solemn obsequies 
 " will arrive — the gorgeous procession will go forth in its funereal 
 " gl^^y — t'lc ancient chapel of Windsor Castle will be thrown 
 " open, and its aisle will be thronged with the array of kindred 
 *' Royalty — the emblazoned windows will be illuminated — the 
 " notes of holy melody will arise — the beautiful service of the dead 
 " will be repeated by the heads of the Church, of which he will 
 " be the cold and senseless cliampion — the vaults of thedrad will 
 " be imclosed — the nobles, and the ladies, and the High Priests of 
 " the land, Avill look down into those deep depositories of the ani- 
 *' bition and the vanities of the world. They will behold tlie heir 
 " to a great empire taking possession, not of the palace, which Avas 
 " raised at such an enormous and unavailing cost, but of that 
 " ' house Avliich lasts till doomsday.' The coffin Avill go sadly and 
 *' sloAvly doAvn ; its ponderous mass will strike on the remains of 
 " its regal kindred ; the chant will be resumed, a moment's aAvful 
 " pause Avill take place — the marble vault, of Avhichnone but the 
 " Archangel shall disturb the slumbers, Avill be closed — the songs 
 
Ixii MEMoin OF 
 
 " oi' death Avill cease — the procession will wind through the aisles 
 " asfain, and restore them to their loneliness. The torches will 
 " fade again in the open daylight — the mvdtitude of the great will 
 " gradually dispei'se; they will roll back in their gilded chariots, into 
 " the din and tumult of the gi-eat metropolis ; tlie business, and 
 " the pursuits, and the frivolities of life will be resumed, and the 
 " heir to the three kingdoms will be in a week forgotten. We, 
 " too, shall forget ; but let us, before we forget, forgive him !" 
 
 Mr. Shell proceeded to expatiate upon the circumstances of 
 extenuation, which ought ever in the mind of an Irish Catholic, 
 to be taken into account in extenuating the extent of the great 
 fault committed by the Duke of York, in calUng God to witness 
 that he would never assent to the enfrancliisement of the Irish 
 people. The apology however, if apology it could be called, 
 did not abate the feeling of deep resentment, wliich had been 
 created among those in high quarters against Mr. Shell, and it was 
 decided by the government that the Attorney General should 
 avail himself of the first opportunity which Mr. Sheil shoidd 
 furnish to institute a prosecution against him. A series of vehe- 
 ment harangues were delivered by Mr. Sheil, which were con- 
 sidered to be of a veiy exciting nature, but it was not until he 
 selected the memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone, as the subject of 
 a speech, which the government considered to be fidly as mina- 
 cious, as it was admonitory, that it was deemed judicious to 
 institute proceedings against Mr. Sheil in a criminal court. 
 There can be no doubt that the Attorney General (the present 
 Loi'd Plunket,) prepared an indictment against Mr. Sheil with 
 great reluctance. It was inulcrstood that he took this .step by 
 the express directions of the English government : — But in the 
 cabinet itself there were doubts entertained regarding the justice 
 of this proceeding, and Lord Melbourne many years afterwards 
 told Mr. Sheil, at the table of the late Lord Sydenham that 
 Mr. Canning had declared that there Avas not a sentence of the 
 speech, which would have produced a call of " order" in the 
 House of Commons. Informations having been sworn, Mr. 
 Sheil gave bail : — his bail were Mr. O'Connell, and the late 
 Chief Baron Wolfe, between whom and Mr. Sheil there existed 
 a strict friendship Irom t!ie period in which they first met in 
 Trinity College, to the day on which the country Avas deprived 
 
KICHARD JLALOR SIIEIL. Ixiii 
 
 of that eminent man, in whom a great understanding and a 
 most tender nature were united : — in the interval between the 
 taking of Informations, and sending up the indictment, Mr. Sheil 
 made the com'sc pursued by Mr. Plunkct the subject of animad- 
 version, and instead of shrinking declared that he would meet 
 Mr. Plunket face to face in com't, and prove that there was 
 notliing in liis speech on Wolfe Tone, (of whom jVIr. Plmiket 
 had been an intimate friend,) so seditious as several speeches 
 delivered by Mr. Plunket himself. It was felt by the law-officers 
 that Mr. Sheil miglit perhaps make a great impression on the 
 jury by pressing topics of this kind, and in order to insm'c u 
 conviction, it was of great moment to give in evidence another 
 speech of Mr. Sheil delivered before that, on Wolfe Tone's 
 memoirs, and published in Carrick's Morning Post, by Mr. 
 Sheil himself. Mr. Sheil when in Paris in the year 182'), had 
 become acquainted with the Abbe de Genoude, the proprietor 
 of the Etoile, wliich is now published under the name of the 
 *' Gazette dc France." Mr. Shell's facility in writing French 
 struck the A])be, and at his suggestion Mr. Sheil wrote several 
 articles on Ireland, wliich were read with a great deal of interest 
 in Paris, and attracted the notice of the English government. 
 Mr. Sheil had referred to these publications in a speech at the 
 Catholic Association, and although it coidd not separately afford 
 ground for a prosecution, it Avas considered by the crown coun- 
 sel, that it would if given in evidence, have a great effect in en- 
 suring a conviction. Mr. Lonergan, the proprietor of Cfirrick's 
 Morning Post, was called on by the Crown Solicitor for Mr. 
 Shell's manuscript, but that gentleman peremptorily declared 
 that he would not produce it at the trial. The Crown Counsel 
 then recommended that proof should be given of the words 
 spoken by Mr. Sheil, and accordingly, Mr. Christopher Hughes, 
 who reported at the Association, was applied to by the Crown, but 
 that gentleman, although wholly unknown to Mr. Sheil, and not- 
 withstanding that intimations were given by the Crown that his 
 services would be remembered, gave it to be understood in a man- 
 ner most honourable to himself, that from him no co-operation in 
 effecting Mr. Shell's conviction was to be expected. The Crown 
 was thus baffled, and the success of the prosecution became 
 problematical. Pills of Indictnient were sent up to the Ses^uona' 
 
I 
 
 Ixiv MEMOIU OF 
 
 grand jury. Mr. Plunket attended the court in Green-street, 
 and was accompanied by his friend, Mr. Peter BurroAves. That 
 gentleman seemed anxious to sustain the Attorney General, 
 whose spirit appeared to droop, or rather to shrink from the 
 performance of a most distasteful office, the prosecution of a man, 
 Avliose lanfruajrc was at most indiscreet, and had been uttered in 
 
 DO ' 
 
 a cause, in which Mr. Plunket himself had spoken so often, with 
 much glowing eloquence, and much indignant elocution. He 
 looked at Mr. Shell Avith a countenance expressive of mournful- 
 ness, in which sympathy for Mr. Shell was not unassociated 
 with self-reproach, and when the bills were found, turned his 
 eyes tOAvards Mr. Shell's counsel, Avith an earnest anxiety to 
 learn Avhat they Avould do. Mr. Shell Avas not himself anxious 
 for postponement, but thought it better that his fate should be 
 at once determined : — but his counsel, INIr. O'Connell, Mr. Holmes, 
 and the present Judge Perrin, suggested on legal grounds 
 that the trial ought to be postponed. The Attorney General 
 instead of objecting, Avhich he might haA^e done, at once acceded 
 to the proposition, and appeared as if a great Aveight had been taken 
 off his heart. The event proved the Avisdom of procrastination : 
 it was not conjectured at the time that the trial Avas deferred 
 that it could be postponed beyond a few Aveeks ; but in the inter- 
 val between the finding of the bills, and the law term to Avhich 
 the trial had been delayed, Lord Liverpool Avas struck Avith 
 apoplexy. Mr. Canning became Prime INIinister, and the prose- 
 cution Avas abandoned. 
 
 Mr. Canning's administration having Avithin a fcAV months 
 terminated Avith a life, Avhich sunk under the great aristocratic 
 combination Avhich Avas leagued against him, and the Goderich 
 cabinet having been found incapable, the Duke of Wellington 
 was placed at the head of affairs, under circumstances most in- 
 auspicious to Ireland. The energies of Mv. O'Connell Avcre only 
 augmented by the impediments throAvn in his progress, and Mr. 
 Shell continued to assist him Avith all the resources of excitement 
 at his command. The public mind Avas prepared by the Catholic 
 Association and its great leader for a tremendous struggle, and 
 at the Clare election, the Avhole proAvess of Catholic L-eland Avas 
 put forth. Mr. Shell attended that election ; his speech at the 
 close is inserted in this volume, Avith an account Avritten by him 
 
KICHARD LALOR SHEIL. Ixv 
 
 of the remarkable incidents of which he Avas a witness when that 
 great victory was won, wliich led to the immediate settlement 
 of the Catholic Question. 
 
 After Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, a cabinet minister, the attached 
 friend of Mr. Peel, had been defeated, it was known in the poli- 
 tical circles, that some great measure connected with the Catho- 
 lics of Ireland, was in discussion in the cabinet. Alarm was 
 taken by the popular fanaticism, of which the county of Kent 
 offers perhaps a more remarkable example than any other district 
 in England, and a great meeting was announced to be held at 
 Pencnden Heath on the 24th of October, 1828. This meeting 
 Mr. Shell determined to attend. He proceeded to London, pur- 
 chased a freehold, in order to entitle him to speak, and went 
 to the meeting. An account of that remarkable assembly was 
 published at the time from which the following extract is 
 taken : — 
 
 At twelve o'clock the chair was taken by the High Sheriff, and at 
 this moment we turned our eyes to contem])late this amazing assem- 
 bly, and we do not exaggerate when we say that, with nuich expe- 
 rience, we have never witnessed a spectacle at all comparable to it. 
 Upwards of 20,000 men stood gathered together in profound silence, 
 but in that momentary hush it was easy to perceive the deep solicitude 
 and the anxious passions by which the two great parties, thus mar- 
 shalled against each other, were equally agitated. Round the Sheriff 
 were assembled wliat Ave conjectured to be a class of persons that af- 
 fected to occupy a neutral station between the two parties, and, in- 
 deed, we observed from this small knot, that scarcely any expression, 
 cither of approbation or dissent, during the Avholc course of the day 
 proceeded. The whole mass upon the left, deep and dense, presented 
 at once the evidence of the strength of the Protestant party, and of 
 their inflexible determination. On the right hand, the opposers of the 
 objects of the meeting were assembled in an immense body, in which, 
 unquestionably, much of the wealth and rank of the country were col- 
 lected. In the waggon next to the Sheriff, on the right, which was 
 that of the Earl of Radnor, stood his lordship with a number of 
 friends. We remarked that Lord Camden had no Avaggon. That 
 venerable, mild, and dignified individual, occupied a place on the hus- 
 tings next the Sheriff, and Ave thought that the selection of that pecu- 
 liar locality was intended by him as an indication, that hoAvever op- 
 posed to the objects of the meeting, he did not enter into it with the 
 
Ixvi 
 
 MEMOIU OF 
 
 feelings of a partizan. Adjoining the waggon of Lord Radnor was that 
 of the Earl of Darnley ; next came that of Lord Sondes. 
 
 In an adjoining waggon two gentlemen took their station, who, not- 
 withstanding the mourning ordinances of the Gazette, were habited 
 in an attire very little suited to the melancholy mood. The first of 
 these gentlemen, tall, strong, healthy, and agricultural, with an aspect 
 and demeanour in which rusticity and intellect were happily blended, 
 though his head was grey, had a cheek fresh and ruddy. His blue 
 eye seemed to glitter with flashes of strong thinking, whilst a latent 
 expression of severity and derision was perceivable by an attentive 
 observer, under the aspect of jocularity which was spread over his 
 features. This was Mr. Cobbett. Immediately near him was Mr. 
 Hunt. Under these two champions there was gathered a large assem- 
 blage of their friends, wlio gazed with admiration upon them. A 
 succession of other waggons closed the right wing, which were occu- 
 pied by a numerous body of the Kentish yeomanry. Between the two 
 wings was a large cavalcade of farmers draAvn up like troops of horse. 
 Behind them was an immense quantity of vehicles, consisting of pri- 
 vate and public carriages, with clusters of freeholders, hanging about 
 them. Within tlie circle whicli was formed by the waggons, stood 
 upon the ground a dense body of the peasantry, who arranged them- 
 selves on the left or the right wing according to their respective poli- 
 tical predilections. The whole scene presented a most extraordinary 
 and impressive exhibition. Before beginning the description of the 
 proceedings, it may be necessary to notice a little preliminary address 
 by Mr. Cobbett to the people shortly after his arrival on the ground. 
 He was accompanied thither by Mr. Hunt, with banners — both were 
 greeted with applause as soon as they presented themselves in front of 
 the waggons. 
 
 Mr. Cobbett. — My friends, you will hear a great deal of talk here 
 
 to-day — no doubt you will — about the Pope and the devil (A laugh). 
 
 Do you take care to have nothing to do with either — take care of 
 yourselves — pay attention to the things that belong to you, and you 
 will do that if you attend to me. 
 
 After Mr. Plumtree, the member for the county ; Lord Camden, 
 Lord Darnley, Lord Winchilsea, Mr. Shee, and Lord Teynham had 
 spoken, Mr. Sheil addressed the meeting in a speech that was repeat- 
 edly interrupted, but of whicli the following is the report which was 
 published in the newspapers by himself. 
 
 Mr. Sheil. — Let no man believe that I have come here, in order 
 that I might enter the lists of religious controversy and engage with 
 any of you in a scholastic disputation. In the year 1828, the Real 
 
RICHAKD LALOR SHEIL. IxvH 
 
 Presence docs not aflTord an appropriate subject for debate, and it is 
 not by tlie shades of a mystery that the rights of a British citizen are 
 to be determined. I do not know whether there are many here by 
 whom I am regarded as an idolater, because I conscientiously adhere 
 to the faith of your forefathers, and profess the doctrine in which I 
 was born and bred ; but if I am so accounted by you, you ought not 
 to inflict a civil deprivation upon the accident of the cradle. You 
 ought not to punish me for that for which I am not in reality to blame. 
 If you do, you will make the misfortune of the Catholic the fault of 
 the Protestant, and by inflicting a wrong upon my religion, cast a 
 discredit upon your own. I am not the worse subject of my King, and 
 the worse citizen of my country, because 1 concur in the belief of tlic 
 great majority of the Christian world ; and I will venture to add, with 
 the frankness and something of the bluntness by which Englishmen 
 are considered to be characterised, that if I am an idolater, I have a 
 right to be one, if I choose ; my idolatry is a branch of my preroga- 
 tive, and is no business of yours. But you have been told by Lord 
 Winchilsea that the Catholic religion is the adversary of freedom. 
 It may occur to you, perhaps, that his lordship afibrds a proof in his 
 own person, that a passion for Protestantism and a love of liberty are 
 not inseparably associated ; but witliout instituting too minute or em- 
 barrassing an incpiiry into the services to freedom, which in the course 
 of his political life have been conferred by my Lord Winchilsea, and 
 putting aside all personal considerations connected with the accuser, 
 let me procecel to the accusation. Calumniators of Catholicism, have 
 you read the history of your country ? Of the chai'ges against the reli- 
 gion of Ireland, the annals of England afford the confutation. The 
 body of your common law was given by the Catholic Alfred. He 
 gave you your judges, your magistrates, your high sheriffs — (you. Sir, 
 hold your office, and have called this great assembly, by virtue of his 
 institutions) — your courts of justice, your elective system, and, the 
 great bulwark of your liberties, the trial by jury. When English- 
 men peruse the chronicles of their glory, their hearts beat high with 
 exultation, their emotions are profoundly stirred, and their souls are 
 ardently expanded. Where is the English boy, who reads tlie story 
 of his great island, whose pulse does not beat at the name of Runne- 
 mede, and whose nature is not deeply thrilled at the contemplation 
 of that great incident, when the mitred Langton, with his uplifted 
 ci'osier, confronted the tyrant, whose sceptre shook in his trembling 
 hand, and extorted what you have so justly called the Great, and 
 what, I trust in God, you will have cause to designate as your ever- 
 la,stiiig Charter? It was by a Catholic Pontiff" that the foundation- 
 
Ixviii MEMOIR OK 
 
 stone in the temple of liberty was laid ; and it was at the altars of 
 that religion, which you are accustomed to consider as the hand- 
 maid of oppression, that the architects of the constitution knelt 
 down. Who confen-ed upon the people the right of self-taxation, 
 and fixed, if he did not create, the representation of the people ? 
 The Catholic Edward the First ; while, in the reign of Edward 
 the Third, perfection was given to the representative system, parlia- 
 ments were annually called, and the statute against constructive 
 treason was enacted. It is false, foully, infamously false, that the 
 Catholic religion, the religion of your forefathers, the religion of seven 
 millions of your fellow-subjects, has been the auxiliary of debase- 
 ment, and that to its influences the suppression of British freedom 
 can, in u single instance, be referred. I am loath to say that which 
 can give you cause to take oftence ; but when the faith of my country 
 is made the object of imputation, I cannot help, I cannot refrain, 
 from bi'eaking into a retaliatory interrogation, and from asking whe- 
 ther the overthrow of the old religion of England was not effected by 
 a tyi'ant, with a hand of iron and a heart of stone ? whether Ileniy 
 did not trample upon freedom, while upon Catholicism he set his foot ; 
 and whether Elizabeth herself, the virgin of the Reformation, did 
 not inherit her despotism with her creed ; whether in her reign the 
 most barbarous atrocities were not committed ; whether torture, in 
 violation of the Catholic common law of England, was not politically 
 inflicted, and with the shrieks of agony the Towers of Julius, in the 
 dead of night, did not re-echo ? And to pass to a more recent period, 
 was it not on the very day on which Russell perished on the scaftold, 
 that the Protestant University of Oxford published the declaration in 
 favour of passive obedience, to which your Catholic ancestors would 
 have laid down their lives rather than have submitted ? These are 
 facts taken from your own annals, with which every one of you should 
 be made familiar ; but it is not to your own annals that the recrimi- 
 natory evidence, on which I am driven to rely, shall be confined. If 
 your religion is the inseparable attendant upon liberty, how does it 
 come to pass that Prussia, and Sweden, and Denmark, and half the 
 German states, should be Protestants, and should be also slaves ? 
 You may suggest to me, that in the larger portion of Catholic Europe 
 freedom does not exist; but you should bear in mind that at a period 
 when the Catholic religion was in its most palmy state, freedom 
 flourished in the coimtries in which it is now extinct. Look at Italy, 
 not indeed as she now is, but as she was before Martin Luther was 
 born, when literature and liberty were associated, and the arts im- 
 parted their embellishments to her free political institutions. I call 
 
RICHARD LALOR SHJill.. Ixix 
 
 Up the memory of the Italian Catholic republics in the great cause 
 which I am sufficiently adventurous to plead before you. Florence, 
 accomplished, manufacturing, and democratic, the model of your own 
 municipal corporations, gives a noble evidence in favour of Catho- 
 licism ; and Venice, Catholic Venice, rises in the splendour of her 
 opulence and the light of her liberty, to corroborate the testimony 
 of her celebrated sister with a still more lofty and majestic attestation. 
 If from Italy I shall ascend the Alps, shall I not find, in the moun- 
 tains of Switzerland, the sublime memorials of liberty, and the remi- 
 niscences of those old achievements which preceded the theology of 
 Geneva, and which were performed by men, by whom the ritual of 
 Rome Avas uttered on the glaciers, and the' great mystery of Catho- 
 licism was celebrated on the altars which nature had provided for that 
 high and holy worship ? But Spain, I may be told, Spain affords 
 the proof that to the purposes of despotism her religion has always 
 lent its impious and disastrous aid. That mistake is a signal one, for 
 when Spain was most devotedly Catholic, Spain was comparatively 
 free — her Cortes assumed an attitude nobler even than your own Par- 
 liament, and told the King, at the opening of every session in which 
 they were convened, that they were greater and invested with a higher 
 authority than himself. In the struggles made by Spaniards, within 
 our own memory, wo have seen the revival of that lofty sentiment ; 
 while amongst the descendants of Spaniards, in the provinces of South 
 America, called into existence in some sort by yourselves, we behold 
 no religion but tlie Catholic, and no government of which the princi- 
 ple is not founded in the supremacy of the people. Republic after 
 republic has arisen at your bidding through that immeasurable ex- 
 panse, and it is scarce an exaggeration to say (if I may allude to a 
 noble passage in one of the greatest writei'S of our time), that liberty, 
 with her " meteor standai'd" unfui"led upon the Andes, 
 
 " Looks from her throne of clouds o'er half the world." 
 
 False, I repeat it, wilb all the vehemence of indignant asseveration, 
 utterly false is the charge habitually preferred against the religion 
 which Englishmen have laden with penalties, and have marked with 
 degradation. I can bear with any other charge but this — to any other 
 charge I can listen with endurance : tell me that I prostrate myself 
 before a sculptured marble ; teU me that to a canvass glowing with the 
 imagery of heaven I bend my knee ; tell me that my faith is my per- 
 dition : — and as you traverse the churchyards in which your fore- 
 fathers are buried, pronounce upon those who have lain there for many 
 hundred years a fearful and appalling sentence : — yes ; call wliat T 
 
IXX MEMOIll OF 
 
 regard as the truth not only an error, but a sin to which mercy shall 
 not be extended : — all this I will bear — to all this I wiU submit — nay, at 
 all this I will but smile : — ^but do not tell me that I am in heart and 
 creed a slave : — that my countrymen cannot brook ; in their own 
 bosoms they carry the high consciousness that never was imputation 
 more foully false, or more detestably calumnious. I do not believe 
 that with the passion for true liberty a nation was ever more enthusias- 
 tically inspired — never were men more resolved — ^never were men 
 more deserving to be free than the nation in whose oppression, fatally 
 to Ireland and to themselves, the statesmen of England have so 
 madly persevered. What have been the results of that system Avhich 
 you have been this day called together to sustain ? You behold in Ire- 
 land a beautiful country, with wondei'ful advantages agricultural and 
 commercial — a resting-place for trade on its way to either hemisphere; 
 indented with havens, watered by numerous rivers ; with a fortunate 
 climate in which fertility is raised upon a rich soil, and inhabited by 
 a bold, intrepid, and, with all their faults, a generous and enthusiastic 
 people. Such is Ireland as God made her — what is Ireland as you 
 have made her ? This fine country, swarming with a population the 
 most misei'able in Europe, of wliose wretchedness, if you are the au- 
 thors, you are beginning to be the victims — the poisoned chalice is 
 returned in its just circulation to yoixr lips. Harvests the most abun- 
 dant are reaped by men with starvation in their faces ; all the great 
 commercial facilities of the country are lost — the rivers that should 
 circulate opulence, and turn the machinery of a thousand manufactures, 
 flow to the ocean without wafting a boat or turning a wheel — the wave 
 breaks in solitude in the silent magnificence of deserted and shipless 
 harbours. In place of being a source of wealth and revenue to the 
 empire, Ireland cannot defray its own expenses ; lier discontent costs 
 millions of money ; she debilitates and endangers England. The great 
 mass of her population are alienated and dissociated from the state — 
 the influence of the constituted and legitimate authorities is gone ; a 
 strange, anomalous, and unexampled kind of government has sprung 
 up, and exercises a despotic sway ; while the class, infei'ior in num- 
 bers, but accustomed to authority, and infuriated at its loss, are thrown 
 into formidable reaction — the most ferocious passions rage from one 
 extremity of the country to the other. Hundreds and thousands of 
 men, arrayed with badges, gather in the south, and the smaller faction, 
 with discipline and with arms, are marshalled in the north — the coun- 
 try is like one vast magazine of powder, which a spark might ignite 
 into an explosion, and of which England would not only feel, but, per- 
 haps, never recover from the shock. And is this state of things to be 
 
RICHAnu liAJLOU SHEIL. Ixxi 
 
 permitted to continue ? It is only requisite to present the question in 
 order that all men should answer — something must be done. What is to 
 be done ? Are you to re-enact the Penal Code ? Are you to deprive 
 Catholics of their properties, to shut up their schools, to drive them 
 from the bar, to strip them of the elective franchise, and reduce them 
 to Egyptian bondage ? It is easy for some visionary in oppression, to 
 imagine these things. In the drunkenness of sacerdotal debauch, men 
 have been found to give vent to such sanguinary aspirations, and the 
 teachers of the Gospel, the ministers of a mild and merciful Redeemer, 
 have uttered in the midst of their ferocious wassails, the bloody orison, 
 that their country should be turned into one vast field of massacre, and 
 that iq)on the pile of carnage the genius of Orange ascendency should 
 be enthroned. But these men are maniacs in ferocity, whose appe- 
 tites for blood yovi will scarcely undertake to satiate. You shrink from 
 the extirpation of a whole people. Even suppose that, with an impu- 
 nity as ignominious as it would be sanguinary, that horrible crime 
 could be effected, then you must needs ask, what is to be done ? In 
 answering that question you will not dismiss from your recollection 
 that the greatest statesmen who have for the last fifty years directed 
 your councils and conducted the business of this mighty empire, con- 
 curred in the opinion, that, without a concession of the Catholic claims, 
 nothing could be done for Ireland. Burke, the foe to revolution — 
 Fox, the assertor of popular right — Pitt, the prop of the prerogative, 
 concurred. With reference to this great question their minds met 
 in a deep confluence. See to what a conclusion you must arrive 
 when you denounce the advocates of Emancipation. Your ana- 
 thema will take in one-half of Westminster Abbey ; and is not the 
 very dust into which the tongues and hearts of Pitt, and Burke, 
 and Fox have mouldered, better than the living hearts and tongues 
 of those who have survived them ? If you were to try the ques- 
 tion by the authorities of the dead, and by those voices which may 
 be said to issue from the grave, how would you decide ? If, in- 
 stead of counting votes in St. Stephen's, you were to count the tombs 
 in the mausoleum beside it, hoAv would the division of the great de- 
 parted stand ? There would bo a majority of sepulchres inscribed 
 with immortal names upon our side. But supposing that authority, 
 that the coincidence of the wisest and of the best in favour of Ireland 
 was to be held in no account, consider how the religious disqualifica- 
 tions must necessarily operate. Can that be a wise course of govern- 
 ment which creates not an aristocracy of opulence, and rank, and 
 talent, but an aristocracy in religion, and places seven millions of 
 people at the feet of a few hundred thousand ? Try this fashion of 
 
Ixxii MEMOIR OF 
 
 government by a very obvious test, and make the case your own. If 
 a few hundred thousand Presbyterians stood towards you in the rela- 
 tion in which the Irish Protestants stand towards the Catholics, would 
 you endure it ? Would you brook a system under which Episcopa- 
 lians should be rendered incapable of holding seats in the House of 
 Commons, should be excluded from sheriftships, and corporate offices, 
 and from the bench of justice, and from all the higher offices in the 
 administration of tlie law ; and should be tried by none but Presby- 
 terian juries, flushed with the insolence of power and infui'iated with 
 all the ferocity of passion ? How would you brook the degradation 
 which would arise from such a system, and the scorn and contumelies 
 which would flow from it ? Would you listen with patience to men 
 who told you that there was no grievance in all this — that your com- 
 plaints were groundless, and that the very right of murmuring ought 
 to be taken away ? Are Irishmen and Roman Catholics so dif- 
 ferently constituted from yourselves, that they are to behold nothing 
 but blessings in a system which you would look upon as an unendurable 
 wrong ? . Protestants and Englishmen, however debased you may 
 deem our country, believe me that we have enough of human nature 
 left within us — we have enough of the spirit of manhood, all Irishmen 
 as we are, to resent a usage of this kind. Its results are obvious. The 
 nation is divided into two castes. Tlie powerful and the privileged few 
 are patricians in religion, and trample upon and despise the plebeian 
 Christianity of the millions who are laid prostrate at their feet. Every 
 Protestant thinks himself a Catholic's better ; and every Protestant 
 feels himself the member of a privileged corporation. Judges, sheriffs, 
 crown counsel, crown attorneys, juries, are Protestants to a man. What 
 confidence can a Catholic have in the administration of public jus- 
 tice? We liave the authority of an eminent Irisli judge, tlie late ]\Ir. 
 Fletcher, who declared that, in the North, the Protestants were uni- 
 formly acquitted, and the Catholics were as undeviatingly condemned. 
 A body of armed Orangemen fall upon and put to death a defenceless 
 Catholic ; they are put upon their trial, and when they raise their 
 eyes and look upon the jury, as they are commanded to do, they see 
 twelve of their brethren in massacre empannelled for their trial ; and, 
 after this, I shall be told that all the evils of Catholic disqualification 
 lie in the disappointed longing of some dozen gentlemen after the 
 House of Commons ! No ; it is the bann, the opprobrium, the brand, 
 the note and mark of dishonour, the scandalous partiality, the flagitious 
 bias, the sacrilegious and perjured leaning, and the monstrous and 
 hydra-headed injustice, that constitute the grand and essential evils 
 of the country. And you think it wonderful that we should be indig- 
 
mCHAUD LALOR SIIEIL. Ixxiil 
 
 nant at all this. You marvel, and are amazed that we are hurried 
 into the use of rash and vehement phrases. Have we alone forgotten 
 the dictates of charity ? — have our opponents been always distinguished 
 by their meekness and forbearance ? — ^liave no exasperating expres- 
 sions, no galling taunts, no ferocious menaces, ever escaped from them ? 
 Look to the Brunswick orgies of Ireland, and behold not merely the 
 torturers of '98, who, like retired butchers, feel the want of their old 
 occupation, and long for the political shaml)les again, but to the 
 ministers of the Gospel, by whom their libations to the moloch of fac- 
 tion, in the revelries of a sanguinary ascendency are ferociously poured 
 out. Make allowances for the excesses into which, with much provo- 
 cation, wc may be hurried, and pardon us when you recollect how, 
 under the same circumstance, you would, in all likelihood, feel your- 
 selves. Perhaps you will say, that while you arc conscious that we 
 have mucli to suffer, you owe it to your own safety to exclude us from 
 power. We have power already — the power to do mischief; give us 
 that of doing good. Disarray us — dissolve us — break up our confe- 
 deracy — take from the law (the great conspirator) its combining and 
 organizing quality, and we shall no longer be united by the bad chain 
 of slavery, but by the natural bonds of allegiance and contentment. 
 You fear our possible influence in the House of Commons. Don't you 
 dread our actual influence beyond its precincts ? Catholics out of the 
 House of Commons : we should be citizens within it. It has been 
 sometimes insisted that Ave aim at tlie political exaltation of our church 
 upon the ruins of the establishment — that once emancipated we should 
 proceed to strip your clergy, and to possess ourselves of the opulence 
 of an anti-apostolic and anti-scriptural establishment. Never Avas 
 there a more unfounded imputation. The Avliole body of the Irish 
 Catliolics look upon a Avealtliy priesthood Avitli abhorrence. They do 
 not desire that their bishops should be invested with pontifical gor- 
 geousness. When a bill was introduced in order to make a small, and 
 no more than a decent provision for the Catholic clergy, did tliey not 
 repudiate the oflcr, and prefer their honourable poverty, and tlie aflcc- 
 tions of the people, to the seductions of the crown ? Hoav did the 
 people act ? Although a provision for the priesthood Avould relieve 
 them from a burden, did they not deprecate all connection Avith poAver ? 
 The Catholics of Ireland knoAV that if their clergy Avere endoAved Avith 
 the wealth of tlie establishment, tlicy Avould become a profligate coi'- 
 poralion, pampered Avitli luxury, swelling Avilli sacerdotal pride, and 
 presenting in their lives a monstrous contrast Avith that simplicity and 
 that poverty of Avliich I hey are noAv as avcU the practicera as the 
 
 f 
 
Ixxiv MKMOIK OK 
 
 teachers. They know that, in phice of being, as they now are, tlie 
 indefatigable instructors of the peasantry, their consolers in affliction, 
 their resource in calamity, their preceptors and their models in reli- 
 gion, their visiters in sickness, and their companions at the bed of 
 death ; they would become equally insolent to the humble, and syco- 
 phantic to the great — flatterers at the noble's table and extortioners in 
 the poor man's hovel ; slaves in politics, and tyrants in demeanoui", 
 who from the porticoes of palaces would give their instructions in hu- 
 mility ; who from the banquets of patricians Avould prescribe their 
 lessons in abstinence ; and from the primi-ose path of dalliance would 
 point to the steep and thorny way to heaven. INIonstrous as the opu- 
 lence of the establishment now is, the people of Ireland Avould rather 
 see the wealth of Protestant bishops increased tenfold, and another 
 million of acres added to their episcopal territories, than behold their 
 pure and simple priesthood degraded from their illustrious humility to 
 that dishonourable and anti-Christian ostentation, which, if it Avere once 
 established, would be sure to characterize their church. I speak the 
 sentiments of the whole body of my countrymen, when I solemnly and 
 emphatically reiterate my asseveration that there is nothing which the 
 Roman Catholic body would regard with more abhorrence than the 
 transfer of the enormous and corrupting revenues of the establishment 
 to a clergy who owe their virtues to their poverty, and the attachment 
 of the people to tlieir dignified dependance upoii the people for tlieir 
 support. I should have done ; and yet before I retire from your pre- 
 sence, indulge me so far as to permit me to press one remaining topic 
 upon you. I have endeavoured to show you that you have mistaken 
 the character and political principles of my religion ; I have endea- 
 voured to make you sensible of the miserable condition of my country ; 
 to impress upon you the failure of all the means which liave been 
 hitherto tried to tranquillize that unhappy country, and the necessity of 
 adopting some expedient to alleviate its evils. I have dwelt upon the 
 concurrence of great authorities in favour of concession ; the little 
 danger that is to be apprehended from that concession, and the great 
 benefit which would arise from i-eligious peace in Irclanil. I might 
 enlarge upon those benefits, and show you that when factions were re- 
 conciled, when the substantial causes of animosity were removed, the 
 fierce passions which agitate the country would be laid at I'est ; that 
 English capital would, in all likelihood, flow into Ireland ; that Eng- 
 lish habits would gradually arise ; tliat a confidence in the adminis- 
 tration of justice would grow up — that the people, instead of appealing 
 to arms lor redress, would look to the public tribunals as the only ar- 
 
biters of right ; and that the obstacles which now stand in the way of 
 education would be removed — that the fierceness of polemics would be 
 superseded by that charity which the Christian extends to all mankind ; 
 that a reciprocal sentiment of kindness Avould take place between the two 
 islands — that a real union, not depending upon acts of parliament, but 
 upon mutual interest and affection, would be permanently established — 
 that the empire would be consolidated, and all dangers from the enemies 
 of Great Britain would disappear : — I might point out to you, what is 
 obvious enough, that if Ireland be allowed to remain as it now is, at 
 no distant period the natural foes of Great Britain may make that un- 
 fortunate country tho field of some formidable enterprise : — I miglit 
 draw a picture of the consequences which would arise if an enormous 
 population were to be roused into a concurrent and simultaneous move- 
 ment : — but I forbear from pressing such considerations upon you, be- 
 cause I had much rather rely upon your own lofty-mindedness, than 
 upon any terrible contingency : — I therefore put it to you, that inde- 
 pendently of every consideration of expediency, it is unworthy of you 
 to persevere in a system of practical religious intolerance, which lloman 
 Catholic states, who hold to you a fine example in this regai-d at 
 least, have abandoned. I have heard it said that the Catholic religion 
 was a persecuting religion. It was j and so was every otlier religion 
 that was ever invested with authority. How easily I could retort on 
 you the charge of persecution — remind you that the early reformers, 
 who set up a claim to liberty of conscience for themselves, did not in- 
 dulge others in a similar luxuiy — tell you tliat Calvin, having obtained 
 a theological masterdom in Geneva, offered up the screams of Servetus 
 to the God of mercy and of love ; that even your own Cranmer, who 
 WHS himself a martyr, had first inflicted what he afterwards suffered, 
 and that this father of your church, whose hand was indeed a guilty 
 one, had, even in the reign of Edward the Sixth, accelerated the pro- 
 gress of heretics to immortality, and sent them through fire to heaven. 
 But the truth is, that both parties have, i)i the paroxysms of religious 
 frenzy, committed the most execrable crimes, and it might be difficult, 
 if their misdeeds were to be weighed, to adjust the balance of atrocity 
 between them. But Catholics and Protestants have changed, and 
 Avith the alteration of time we ourselves have undergone a salutary 
 reformation. Through the whole continent religious distinctions have 
 begun to vanish, and freedom of conscience is almost universally es- 
 tablished. It is deplorable that England should be almost the only 
 country where such disqualifications are maintained. In France, where 
 the religion of the state is that of Rome, all men are admissible to 
 
Ixxvi Mi::MOIH OF 
 
 power, and no sort of sectarian distinction is instituted by the law. 
 The third article of the French charter provides that every French 
 citizen, no matter of what denomination, shall be capable of holding 
 every office in the state. The Chamber of Deputies is filled with Pro- 
 testants, who are elected by Roman Catholics ; and Protestants have 
 lield places in the cabinet of France. In Hungary, in the year 1791, 
 Protestants were placed by a Roman Catholic government on a per- 
 fect level with their fellow-citizens. In Bavaria the same principle of 
 toleration was adopted. Thus the Catholics of Europe have given you 
 an honourable example, and, while they have refuted the imputation 
 of intolerance, have pronounced upon you a practical reproach. You are 
 behind almost every nation in Europe. Protestant Prussia has eman- 
 cipated her Catholic subjects, and Silesia is free. In Geimany the 
 churches are used indiscriminately by Protestants and Catholics — the 
 Lutheran service, in happy succession, follows the Catholic mass ; or 
 the Catholic mass follows the Lutheran service. Thus in every state 
 in Europe the spirit of religious toleration has signally advanced, while 
 here, in this noble island, which we are wont to consider the asylum of 
 civil liberty, the genius of persecution has found a refuge. In England, 
 and in England only, deprivations and dishonour are inflicted upon those 
 whose conscience inhibits their conformity with the formulas of your 
 woi'ship ; and a vast body of Englishmen, in this one of your finest coun- 
 ties, are called upon to offer up a gratuitous invocation to the legislature 
 to rivet the fetters of their Catholic fellow-subjects. Do not undertake 
 so ungenerous an office, nor interpose for the low-hearted purposes of 
 oppression. I have heard since I came here that it is a familar saying, 
 that " the men of Kent have been never conquered." That you never 
 will be vanquished in any encounter where men shall be arrayed in arms 
 against you is my belief and my desire ; but while in this regard you 
 will always prove unconquered and unconquerable, there is one par- 
 ticular in which I hope that proof will be affiarded that you can be 
 subdued. Be no longer invincible, but let the victory be achieved by 
 yourselves. The worst foes with which you have to contend are lodged 
 in your own breasts — your prejudices are the most formidable of your 
 antagonists, and to discomfit them will confer upon you a higher honour 
 than if in the sliouts of battle you put your enemies to flight. It is 
 over your antipathies, national and religious, that a masterdom should 
 be obtained by you, and you may rest assured that if you shall vanquish 
 your animosities, and bring your passions into subjection, you will, in 
 conquering yourselves, extend your dominion over that countiy by 
 whicli you have been so long resisted, your empire over our feelings 
 
RICHAHD liALOR SHEIL. Ixxvii 
 
 will be securely established, you will make a permanent acquisition of 
 the affections of Irishmen, and make our hearts your own. 
 
 A great portion of this speech was not uttered, In consequence 
 of the loud uproar with which Mr. Shell was almost Incessantly 
 assailed ; but Mr. Shell published it In the Times and Sun 
 newspapers, and It attracted very general notice. The famous 
 Jeremy Bentham was greatly struck by it, and wrote the follow- 
 ing letter, which appeared In the Morning Chronicle of Novem- 
 ber 6, 1828. It was addressed by the great philosopher to Mr. 
 Galloway, in reference to a public dinner which Avas afterwards 
 givcil to Mr. Shell at the London Tavern, at which Mr. Smith 
 of Norwich presided. 
 
 " Queen-Square-Place, October 31, 1828. 
 
 " My Deak Galloway, — So masterly an union of logic and rhe- 
 toric as Mr. Shell's speech, scarcely have I ever beheld. I have just 
 received "the circular inviting my attendance at the dinner. You 
 know I labour under complaints which prevent my stirring from home, 
 cases of absolute necessity excepted. For years upon years it has 
 been out of the question with me. 
 
 " The dinner good — printing and diffusion of the speech still better : 
 this surely will not be omitted. In the Herald of this day are two or 
 three abominable letters against Sheil. What say you to adding 
 them, together with the exculpatory statement in tlie Sun, to the 
 reprint of his speech ? Might it not be of use in the way of contrast, 
 and as an exemplification of impartiality, in particular, that signed 
 ' Verus ?' 
 
 " Your's ever, 
 
 "JEREMY BENTHAM. 
 
 " To Alexander Galloway, Esq." 
 
 After this adventvu-ous undertaking, Mr. Shell returned to 
 Ireland, and was cordially received by his countrymen, who con- 
 ceived that good service had been rendered by him to tlie great 
 cause In which he had been so strenuously engaged. But at 
 the very time that the meeting at Penenden Heath was held, 
 the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were giving way 
 to the enormous pressure of the Catholic Association and its 
 great leader, Mr. O'Connell, and alarmed at the organised dis- 
 affectlon of wlilch Ireland had exhibited the evidence, had de- 
 
Ixxviii MEMOIR Ob' 
 
 termined on the enfranchisement of the Irish people. The 
 resohition of the government was, however, kept secret for seve- 
 ral months previous to the meeting of parliament. Parliament 
 met on the 6th of February, 1829, and the speech from the 
 throne recommended " a final, equitable, and satisfactory ad- 
 justment of the Catholic claims." It was believed that a 
 voluntary dissolution of the Association would assist the minis- 
 try in carrying the great measiu-c Avhich they had announced, 
 and Mr. Shell moved the dissolution of that body, which was 
 almost unanimously carried. 
 
 The Catholic Question having been settled, a great change 
 took place in the fortunes of Mr. Shell. He was made a king's 
 counsel through Lord Francis Egerton. The Duke of Nor- 
 thumberland paid him marked attention ; and Sir Henry Har- 
 dinge having been appointed Secretary for Ireland, exhibited 
 towards Mr. Shell a strong predilection, which continued long 
 after Mr. Shell became vehemently opposed to the party of 
 which Sir H. Ilardinge was one of the chief. Sir H. Hardinge 
 told Mr. Shell that he had been intrusted to award one-third of 
 the patronage at his disposal to Roman Catholics. He did not 
 continue in office sufficiently long to carry this resolution into 
 effect. The Tories were sent out of office upon Sir Henry Pai-- 
 nel's motion, in November, 1830, and Mr. Shell dined at the 
 Castle on the day on which the news of their defeat arrived in 
 Dublin. It was an exceedingly dismal festivity : a profound 
 depression was spread over the countenances of almost all the 
 functionaries, Avho were to meet no more in their official gather- 
 ings — the Duke of Northumberland himself did not appear to 
 consider his liberation from the Irish royalty of the Castle as a 
 fortunate incident in his life ; and so lugubrious was the feeling 
 which diffiised itself over this final conviviality, that with all his 
 fine wit, his admirable humour, and mirthful narrative. Sir Philip 
 Crampton, Avho was there, failed to produce the ordinary results 
 with which his delightful hilarity is attended. 
 
 Upon the change of administration, Mr. Shell proceeded to 
 London, and received from Lord Anglesea, the new Lord Lieu- 
 tenant of Ii-eland, an intimation of his desire to see him. He 
 had been presented to Lord Anglesea in Ireland, and already 
 
KICHAUD LALOK SHFII^. Ixxix 
 
 enjoyed his favourable opinion. Mr. Sheil had always done 
 justice to the earnest solicitude of Lord Anglesea for the hap- 
 piness of Ireland, and Lord Anglesea was anxious in every 
 Avay to promote the wishes of Mr. Sheil. Having learned that 
 he wished to obtain a seat in the House of Connnons, he told 
 him Avith that fascinating smile by ^ which all are charmed, by 
 whom Lord Anglesea is approached, that he would do his 
 utmost to introduce Mr. Sheil into the House of Commons. 
 
 Mr. Sheil has always expressed the highest admiration for the 
 many noble qualities by which Lord Anglesea is adoi'ned. He 
 regards him as the most chivalrous and high-minded of all the 
 great aristocracy Avith whom he has ever had any intercourse, 
 and has never failed to say, that the faults conunitted during his 
 viceroyalty of Ireland were to be imputed to the predominance 
 of Lord Stanley, by whom the generous policy of Lord An- 
 glesea was uniformly thwarted and counteracted. 
 
 Lord Anglesea brought Mr. Sheil into parliament in ]\Iarch, 
 1831, for the borough of Milbourne Port, for which he sat for 
 three months. Mr. Sheil made his first speech in the House of 
 Commons on the 2 1st of March, on the lieform Bill. A great 
 deal of curiosity was excited by his first appearance on a stage 
 80 great and so new. Notwithstanding tliat prejudices had ex- 
 isted against him, in consequence of the extreme violence of his 
 popular harangues, he was kindly received, and a favoural)le 
 hearing was given him. Mr. Shell's voice, his small figure, his 
 angular action, and the restless inquietude of his countenance, 
 were observed with surprise : the eiHorcscence of his style, too, 
 Avhich is in contrast Avith his manner, Avas soon noted, and occa- 
 sioned some unpropitious conjectures regarding his ultimate suc- 
 cess as a parliamentary speaker — he committed one or two mis- 
 takes in the tise of artificial ombcllislnncnts, Avhl(;]i had well nlirh 
 occasioned his failure. But at the conclusion of his speech, in 
 Avhicli he spoke Avitli a more natural fervour, and Avarncd his 
 hearers against committing the great error, Avhich had attended 
 the Catholic Question, by a delay of justice ; he, at last, excited 
 the house, and Avas considered to have succeeded. Sir Robert 
 Peel spoke of the speech in the terms of liberal encomium, and 
 Lord Grey, a few nights afterAvards, told Mr. Shell at his house, 
 
ixXX MEMOIR OF 
 
 tliat he had made " an excellent speech." The critics in the 
 newspapers differed — some condemned the speech as a total fail- 
 ure — othei's observed that, with many imperfections, there were 
 evidences of ability to do much more than Mr. Sheil had effected. 
 The following is the criticism in Blackwood, (August, 1831,) in 
 the Nodes Amhrosianoi, which are attributed to a cclcln-ated 
 writer. After an exceedingly unfavourable portraiture of Mi*. 
 Shell's exterior, Tickler says : " But never mind — wait a little 
 — and this vile machinery will do wonders. 
 
 " North. We can Avait — fill your glass. 
 
 " Tickler. To make some amends for her carelessness in all 
 other external affairs, nature has given him as fine a pair of eyes 
 as ever gi-aced human head — large, deeply-set, dark, liquid, 
 flashing like gems, and these fix you presently, like a basilisk, 
 so that you forget everything else about him ; and though it 
 would be impossible to conceive anything more absurdly un- 
 graceful than his action, sharp, sudden jolts, and shuffles, and 
 right-about twists and leaps, all set to a running discord of 
 grunts and moans, yet, before he has spoken ten minutes, 
 you forget all this too, and give yourself up to what I have 
 always considered a pleasant sensation — the feeling, I mean, that 
 you are in the presence of a man of genius !" 
 
 Parliament having been dissolved in consequence of General 
 Gascoign's motion having been carried, by a majority of 
 eight, Mr. Sheil was returned again for Milbourne Port ; but 
 having been informed by the present Judge Crampton, the then 
 Solicitor-General for Ireland, that Lord Anglcsca was anxious, 
 provided Mr. Sheil coidd obtain a scat in Ireland, that he should 
 leave Milbourne Port at his disposal, Mr. Sheil stood for the 
 county of Louth, and was returned Avith the concurrence of Sir 
 Patrick Bellew, and his brother, ]\Ir. Pichard Montesquieu Bel- 
 lew, the present member for the county. Mr. Sheil stated dis- 
 tinctly at the hustings at Louth, that being returned by a great 
 popular constituency, he should regard the interests of the Irish 
 people as paramount to every other consideration ; and that he 
 would never support the government at their expense. There 
 arose a speedy and unfortunate occasion for electing between the 
 Irish people and the ministry. The latter had determined to 
 
RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. Ixxxi 
 
 maintain the abuses of the Irish Church — the people of Ireland 
 insisted on a measure of large and sweeping retrenchment. The 
 excitement in Ireland on the Church Question was as great as 
 that of England on the question of Parliamentary Reform. In 
 a very short time, O'Connell and almost the entire body of the 
 Irish liberal representatives were placed in virtual opposition. 
 They remonstrated Avith the minister, but the influence of Mr. 
 Stanley, Avho was devoted to the Irish Church, was predomi- 
 nant. He had exhibited great ability in debate, and his utter 
 incapacity for government had not yet been signally proved. 
 But his services as a public speaker were more than counter- 
 balanced by the hostility which his demeanour had produced. 
 Abrupt, peremptory, jeering, sardonic, alternately scolding and 
 mocking, heedless of giving pain, reducing every man by whom 
 he was addressed in his own estimation, and giving way, in the 
 midst of the most important discussions, to a kind of harsh pue- 
 rility, Mr. Stanley contrived to centralize in himself the anti- 
 pathies of almost every Irishman to whom the Whig government 
 should naturally have looked for support. It was determined by 
 a large body of Irish members to remonstrate Avith Lord Grey 
 on his Irish policy, and a docvunent, signed by upwards of thu'ty 
 members, was laid before the Prime Minister, in which a strong 
 expostulation on the course Avliich his government were pursuing 
 was contained. Lord Grey appointed a meeting in Downing- 
 street, at the close of the session of 1832, almost immediately 
 before the dissolution of parHament, with the Irish members by 
 whom he had been addressed. More than thirty attended. The 
 scene was remarkable. The Irish members entered in a body, 
 and bowed to Loi*d Grey with great and unaffected respect. 
 Mr. O'Connell was not only polite, but deferential in his deport- 
 ment. No intention was entertained of giving oflcncc to the 
 eminent person whom they had approached, and Mr. O'Connell 
 took care to convey that assm*ance before a word was uttered by 
 liim. Lord Grey Avas cold, lofly, and austere. He drew liim- 
 self up to his full height, and stood, at first, erect before the 
 Irishmen who were gathered before him. In liis fine counte- 
 nance, displeasure and sorroAV were associated ; and his voice 
 (juivcrcd as he desired the great agitator and liis retinue, after- 
 
Ixxxii MEMOIR OF 
 
 wards known l)y a more ignominious appellation, to sit down. 
 Lord Grey also sat down, and still holding himself in as much 
 altitude as his position would permit, stated that he had read 
 the address of the Irish members with great pain, and that he 
 was surprised that after all he had done and sacrificed for Ii*e- 
 land, he should have been so luigcncrously used. lie adverted, 
 with a good deal of genuine emotion, to his long labours in the 
 cause of Irish liberty, and complained of the manner in which 
 he had been requited. Mr. O'Connell said, with great submis- 
 sion in his manner, but with a voice, of which the intentions 
 were not in accordance with his deportment, that the Irish mem- 
 bers were fidly sensible of the services of Lord Grey, and that 
 nothing but a sense of dvity could have induced them to expos- 
 tidate with so eminent a man, upon what they conceived to be 
 the principles of his government in reference to Ireland. Lord 
 Grey, after hearing Mr. O'Connell for a short time, intimated 
 some impatience, and said that the Irish Catholics were taking 
 such a course, that they Avould drive the government to the 
 necessity of adopting measures of severity for their suppression. 
 He added, however, this remarkable declaration — " that he 
 would never be the minister by whom those measures, however 
 necessary, should be proposed." The meeting almost inune- 
 diately after broke up. The first Reform parliament was called, 
 and the first measure proposed Avas the Coercion Bill. His en- 
 gagement with himself was not kept by Lord Grey. 
 
 Parliament having been dissolved in 1832, and Mr. Sheil 
 having by his marriage with the daughter of jNIr. John Lalor of 
 Crenagh, in the county of Tipperary, the widow of Mr. lulward 
 Power, of Gurteen, become connected by property with the 
 county of Tipperary, he stood for that great county, and was 
 returned the first parliament held after the Reform Bill, with 
 the Honourable Cornelius O'Callaghan, the eldest son of Lord 
 Lismore. The Coercion Bill was brought forward at the com- 
 mencement of the first session. It was vehemently opposed by 
 Mr. Sheil, by whom several of the ministers were more deeply 
 galled than by any other of the antagonists of that odious mea- 
 sure. He quoted passages fi-om the speeches of almost every 
 one of them, reprobatory of the policy on which they were pro- 
 
RICHARD LALOR SHEIL. IxXXlil 
 
 ceeding to govern Ireland. Great hostility was created by this 
 course, and an incident occurred Avhich proved how much ani- 
 mosity was entertained towards Mr. Sheil. Mr. Matthew De- 
 vonshire Hill stated at Hull, that an L'ish member, who had de- 
 nounced the Coercion Bill in the House of Commons, had himself 
 recommended the government to bring it in. It was mentioned 
 in several newspapers that it was to Mr. Sheil that JMr. HUl 
 alluded. Suggestions were made to Mr. Sheil that he ought to 
 send " a friend" to Mr. Hill, who had declared that he woidd 
 ansAvcr tlie interrogatory of any Irish member, to inquire Avhe- 
 thcr it was to him that Mr. Hill referred. Mr. Sheil feeUns: 
 that a formal encounter with Mr. Hill would not confute Mr. 
 Hill, determined that the matter should be brought before the 
 House of Commons, and to compel Mr. Hill to prefer and prove 
 his charge. Mr. Hill did make the charge against JMr. Sheil in 
 a very full and excited house, and Lord Althorp declared that 
 Mr. Sheil spoke in one way in the house, and in another out of 
 it. Mr. Sheil said, that he should make no observation on what 
 Lord Althorp had said ; but the Speaker having declared that 
 he collected from Mr. Shell's manner that he meant to send a 
 challenge to Lord Althorp, JMr. Sheil and Lord Althorp were 
 called on to promise that no hostile meeting would take place. 
 With this requisition Lord Althorp and Mr. Shell refused to 
 comply, and both were committed to the custody of the Ser- 
 geant-at-arms. Lord Althorp, after a few hours of imprison- 
 ment, being pressed by his friends, agreed to give the under- 
 taking which had been demanded, and he and Mr. Sheil were 
 discharged. Mr. Sheil insisted that he was entitled to a com- 
 mittee, to ascertain the truth of the accusation ; and Sir Robert 
 Peel strenuously contended that the greatest injustice would be 
 done, if it wex'e refused. A committee was moved — Su- liobert 
 Peel and Sir Henry Hardingc attended the committee. Mr. 
 Uevonshirc Hill was cxammed by Mr. O'Connell — alter stating 
 that his informant Avas Mr. Silk Buckingham, who now denied 
 that he had ever meant to convey such an impression to JMr. 
 Sheil, and another person whom he would not name, he declared, 
 in a state of great excitement, bursting into tears, that he not only 
 could not prove his charge, but that he was now convinced that 
 
Ixxxiv MEMOin OF 
 
 it was wholly unfounded. He begged Mr. Shell to pardon him, 
 and added that, if Mr. Shell requii-ed it, he would make a public 
 apology to him in the House of Commons, but hoped that such 
 an humiliation Avould not be inflicted upon him. Mr. Shell said, 
 that he freely pardoned him, and would not require anything 
 beyond the report of the committee. The committee reported — 
 " Your committee, in entering on the delicate and embar- 
 i-^ssing duty imposed upon them, ascertained from INIr. Hill, that 
 though he could not admit the entire accuracy of the above 
 paragraph, as a report of what he had publicly spoken at Hull, 
 lie, nevertheless, recollected to have publicly charged an Irish 
 member of parliament with conduct similar in substance to that 
 Avhich the paragraph describes. The Irish member, so alluded 
 to, was Richard Lalor Shell, Esq., member of parliament for the 
 county of Tipperary ; and Mr. Hill states the charge, to the best 
 of his belief, to have been substantially as follows : — That Mr. 
 Shell made communications respecting the Irish Coercion Bill 
 to persons connected with the government and others, with the 
 intention thereby of promoting the passing of the Coercion Bill, 
 and having a direct tendency to produce that effect, whilst his 
 speeches and votes in the house were directed to the defeat of 
 the Coercion Bill ; — such Avas the substance of the allegation into 
 which your committee proceeded to inquire. Two witnesses 
 were called before them at the suggestion of ISIr. Hill, and others 
 were about to be examined, when Mr. Hill liimself, finding the 
 testimony already heard very different from what he had ex- 
 pected, freely and spontaneously made the following commu- 
 nication to the committee — that he had come to the conviction 
 that his charge against Mr. Shell of having directly or indirectly 
 communicated, or intended to communicate, to the government, 
 any private opinions in opposition to those which he expressed 
 in the House of Commons, had no foundation in fact ; — that such 
 charge was not merely incapable of formal proof, but was, in his 
 present sincere belief, totally and absolutely unfounded — that he 
 had originally been induced to make mention of it in a hasty and 
 unpremeditated speech, under a firm persuasion that he had 
 received it on undeniable evidence ; but that being now satisfied 
 of the mistake into which he had fallen, and convinced that the 
 
niCUAIlD LALOU SUEIL. IxXXV 
 
 charge was wholly untrue, he came forward to express his deep 
 and unfeigned sorrow for having ever contributed to give it cir- 
 culation. Mr. Hill added, that if there were any way, consistent 
 with honour, by Avhlcli he could malco reparation to Mr. Shcil, 
 he should deem no sacrifice too great to heal the wound which 
 his erroneous statement had inflicted. It is with the highest 
 gratification that your committee find themselves enabled thus to 
 exonerate an accused member of parliament from imputations 
 alike painful and undeserved. The volimtary avowal of an 
 erroneous statement on the part of Mr. Hill, now puts it in their 
 power to pronounce a decided opinion, and to close the present 
 inquiry. Neither of the witnesses who appeared before the com- 
 mittee deposed to any facts calculated to bear out the allegation 
 against Mr. Sheil ; nor did their testimony go to impeach liis 
 character and honour in any way, or as to any matter whatever. 
 The committee have no hesitation in declaring their deliberate 
 conviction, that the innocence of Mr. Sheil, in respect of the 
 whole matter of complaint referred to their investigation, is entire 
 and unquestionable." 
 
 This report having been made, 
 
 Mr. Sheil rose amidst loud cries of" hear" from all parts of the 
 house, which were succeeded by profound sUence. After a short 
 pause he said : — " I stood a few nights ago before this house 
 with no other sustainment than the consciousness of my inno- 
 cence ; I now stand before it with that innocence announced, in 
 the clearest and most unequivocal language by a committee, 
 composed of men themselves above all suspicion, to the world. 
 I do feel my heart swell within me at this instant, and almost 
 impede my utterance. Justice has been done me — It has been 
 done not only by my judges but by my accuser — he preferred 
 his charges in the house, he reiterated them before the committee, 
 and having gone into his evidence and laUed, he then offered me 
 the oiJy reparation in his power, and with a frankness of contri- 
 tion, which mitigates the wrong he did me, he came forward 
 and announced that not only could he not prove his charge, but 
 believed it to be utterly destitute of foundation. That gentle- 
 man having made tliis acknowledgment, then turned, and ad- 
 dressing himself to me in the tone, and with the aspect of deep 
 
IxXXvi MEMOIK OF 
 
 emotion, asked me to forgive him ; I had, I own, much to for- 
 give ; he had wounded me, to my heart's core ; he had injured 
 me, and given agony to mine ; he had committed a havoc of the 
 feeUngs of those who are dearer to me than my life ; and to whom 
 my honour is more precious than my existence, he had furnished 
 to the secretary for the Colonies, the occasion of addressing 
 ing me in the language, and with the gesture of solenm admoni- 
 tion, and of pointing out the results of an inquiry, in the tone 
 of prophetic Avarning. I had indeed much to forgive, and yet I 
 forgive liim ; because as he protested his innocence of all male- 
 volent intentions, and said that he had been deluded, and ac- 
 knowledged me innocent of his accusation, I felt that he had 
 done all in his power to repair the wrong, and heavy as it 
 was, when he asked my pardon, 1 could not withhold it. It 
 would have been unworthy of me, to have availed myself of the 
 occasion thus presented to me, to have cast reproaches on my 
 accuser, or to have been betrayed into vindictive emotion. I did 
 not manifest it then — I shall not exhibit it now. I stood at the 
 verge of a tremendous peril, of the depth of which I was con- 
 scious, without dismay — I have trodden the edge of the precipice, 
 in calm security, and it remains that having passed it, I should 
 indulge in no exultation as I betray no fear. The noble Lord, 
 for I turn to liim, has tendered me an apology — I am to presume 
 that it is not accompanied with any miserable inuendos, and that 
 he cannot purpose to convey any injurious hint. He says that 
 as I have denied his charge — lie beUcves me, and tenders his 
 recantation and liis regret — whatever is offered in a fair and in- 
 genuous spirit, I am bound in the same spirit to accept ; but let 
 the noble Lord look back at the exact state of facts between us. 
 The government having been charged with obtaining votes by 
 alleging that an L-ish member had been guilty of an act of per- 
 fidy, was interrogated on that head. We had a right to put him 
 the question — we had a right to learn two things — first, Avhether 
 the government had resorted to secret machinery — next whether 
 any communication was made to the government by an Irish 
 member. The noble Lord answered the question in the negative, 
 but did not stop there, he went on, and founded a charge of 
 inconsistency, grounded on private conversations. We have heard 
 
iiicnARU i.Ahon SI1EU-. Ixxxvii 
 
 much denunciation from ministers respecting the disclosures of 
 private discourse, and yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the 
 representative of the government, who entertain such a horror 
 of a practice detested by all honourable men, is the very first to 
 make a reference to the babble of clubs, to declared his belief of 
 information, to which he gratuitously attaches an injurious im- 
 portance, and to annoimce that he would not give up his author, 
 but would take upon himself the responsibility. This defiance 
 having been given, the house interposed : no resource was left 
 mc, but to protest that I never expressed myself in favour of the 
 Coercion Bill, and to demand inqiury. I insisted on it — the secre- 
 tary for the Colonies, out of regard no doubt for my reputation, 
 pointed out the possible results. His suggestions had no other 
 effect than to confirm me in my purpose, and to make me call 
 more loudly for trial ; that trial has proceeded. My private con- 
 versation at a club-house, has been given in evidence, and the 
 committee declared me innocent of every charge, which has been 
 preferred against me. Did I shrink from the ordeal? did I 
 resort to chicane — did I make my honour a matter of casuistry 
 and special pleading ? no, sir, I invited, 1 demanded investiga- 
 tion — and my private conversation at the Athenaeum Club hav- 
 ing been detailed, a conversation after dinner, never recollected 
 even by the narrator for eight months, the accuser declared that 
 his charge is totally destitute of foundation, and the committee 
 at once resolve on my imqualified acquittal. One of the infor- 
 mants of the noble Lord was produced — Avliy were they not all 
 l)rought forward ? My accusers were welcome to have got to- 
 gether every loose phrase, eveiy casual and giddy expression 
 uttered in the moments of thoughtlessness and of exhiliration ; 
 they were Avelcome to have collected and collated every sentence 
 uttered by me in convivial gatherings, and to have raked and 
 gathered the sweepings of club houses, in order to have made 
 up a mass of sordid testimony, and to have cast it into the 
 balance against me. They were welcome to have put me through 
 an ordeal — such as not one of the ministers themselves could 
 encounter — wliich of you all would dare to stand the test ? wliich 
 of you would have the veil of his privacy rent to pieces, and all 
 his thoughts uttered in the familiarity of common Ufe divulged ? 
 
IxXXviii MEMOIR OF 
 
 But they were Avelcome to have got together all the whisperers 
 and eavesdroppers of all their clubs against me ; I should have 
 defied them, I was prepared -svith proof to be given by my most 
 intimate and confidential friends, the men with whom I have 
 lived on terms of familiarity and of trust, lor upwards of twenty 
 years — the companions of my early life, who knew me as I do 
 myself, and to Avhom all my thoughts and feelings are almost as 
 well known as their own. I should have been prepared with 
 their evidence, and have established that wherever the Coercion 
 Bill was glanced at, I condemned it in terms of immitigated 
 detestation, I denounced it as a violation of every one of those 
 principles of liberty of which the Wliigs were once the devoted, 
 but not unalterable champions. I did not once, but one hundred 
 times express my horror of the atrocities perpetrated, in parts of 
 the North of Ireland. I did say that to put ruffianism doAvn some- 
 thing ought to be done ; I referred to the suggestions made by 
 the committee which sat in 1832, in the Queen's County, and 
 which was composed of men of all parties — l)ut never, I repeat 
 with an emphasis, into Avliich all my heart and soul arc thrown ; 
 never did I express myself favourable to a bill, Avhich I repro- 
 bated in tliis house, which I denounced elsewhere, in terms of 
 equally vehement censure : and if in place of standing here, I 
 were lying on my death bed, and about to appear in the presence 
 of my God, I should not dread with the utterance of these words, 
 if they were to be my last, to appear before him." 
 
 This speech was received with loud and reiterated acclamation, 
 and IVIr. Sheil was placed in a far higher position than he had 
 ever occupied in the House of Commons. 
 
 In May, 1834, Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, the Duke of 
 Richmond, and Lord Rlpon retired from the cabinet. Lord 
 Grey soon afterwards resigned, and Lord Melbomnie became 
 Prime Minister. He was dismissed by William the Fourth on 
 the death of Lord Spencer, and Sir Robert Peel Avas charged 
 with the formation of a government. The Whigs and the Irish 
 members met at Lichfield House soon after Sir Robert had 
 formed his cabinet ; Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Sheil concurred in 
 recommending an amnesty — a reconciliation took place, and the 
 Irish members formed what Mr. Sheil called " a compact alii- 
 
KICIIARI) I.ALOK SUKIL. Ixxxix 
 
 ance" with the men Avho had intimated a determination to re- 
 dress the grievances of Ireland. Tliis plu'ase Avas afterwards 
 misrepresented, and " compact" Avas substituted for " compact 
 aUiance." Sir Robert Peel was defeated on the appropriation 
 question, and went out. Lord Melbourne formed a ncAV govern- 
 ment, and Mr. Shell, in a series of speeches, rendered, what 
 Lord Melbom-ne admitted to be, essential services to his ad- 
 ministration. The most strildng speech made by Mr. Shell, 
 was one during wliich Lord Lyndhurst happened to be present. 
 Mr. Shell, in adverting to Lord Lyndhurst's famous assault on 
 the Irish people, turned towards the learned Lord Avith great 
 vehemence of manner, and delivered a denunciation, Avliich Avas 
 folloAvcd by a most remarkable and almost unprecedented excite- 
 ment. So highly estimated Avcrc the exertions of Mr. Shell by 
 Lord Normanby antl Lord Morpeth, that a vacancy having 
 occurred in the office of Solicitor-General lor Ireland, both those 
 noblemen recommended that Mr. Shell should be appointed to 
 fill it ; but Lord Melbourne announced to Mr. Sheil himself, 
 that on his coming into office, the King had expressed a strong 
 desire that Mr. Sheil should not be employed ; and Lord Mel- 
 bourne stated that, although he had not made any promise to 
 that effect, he Avas convinced that the existence of the govern- 
 ment Avould be i)ut to hazard. Mr. Sheil acquiesced, but saAv 
 that he must relhiquish all hopes of ever obtaining preferment 
 in his profession. He continued his efTorts in ])arliament in 
 favour of the govermnent, Avithout any hope of rcnumeration. 
 Soon after the death of William the Fourth, however, the ob- 
 stacle to his advancement having been removed, he Avas offered 
 the office of Chief Clerk of the Ordnance, but preferred that of 
 Commissioner of GreeuAvich IIos})ital, Avhich became vacant l>y 
 tiic death of Mr. Crevey, having been led to think that the 
 office Avas permanent. After having held it for a year, having 
 been warned that it was [)ractically as avcU as legally held at 
 pleasure, he resigned an office Avhich, indeed, he ought never to 
 have selected, and, in the year 1839, was named Vice-President 
 of the Board of Trade, and Avas the fu'st Catholic connnoner avIio 
 Avas raised to the dignity of a Privy Counsellor in England, since 
 the repeal of the Penal Code. His advanceujcnt to this impor- 
 
 9 
 
1x1 MEMOIR Ob' 
 
 tant station created a great clamour, ami was made the subject 
 of vehement censure at several public meetings, in Avhich the 
 religion of Mr. Sheil was represented as a practical disqualifica- 
 tion ; but after a few weeks the matter Avas forgotten. Mr. 
 Sheil continued Vice-President of the Board of Trade for two 
 years, and a few months before the resignation of the Whig mi- 
 nisters, in 1841, was made Judge Advocate-General, in place of 
 Sir George Grey. 
 
 On the dissolution of Parliament, in 1841, !Mr. Sheil was re- 
 turned for the borough of Dungarvan. The large expenditure 
 connected Avith the repeated contests for the county of Tipperary, 
 which he had undergone, induced him to retire from the costly 
 honour of representing that fine district of Ireland. INIr. Sheil 
 continued to attend parliament as assiduously Avhen out of office, 
 as he had previously done, and took part in most of the impor- 
 tant debates which arose upon the measures proposed by Sir 
 Robert Peel. His speech upon the Income Tax was regarded 
 as eminently successful. Tlie impression produced by it was so 
 great, that Lord Stanley having risen to reply to it, Sir Robert 
 Peel pulled him back, and insisted on his right of taking the 
 lead. 
 
 In selecting the speeches of Mr. Sheil which appear in this 
 volume, an endeavovir has been made to choose those which de- 
 rive an interest from the subject on which they Avere delivered. 
 They relate principally to Ireland ; but it Avill be seen, that the 
 same theme is not always presented in the same view ; and that 
 by variety of phrase, diversity to similar topics is generally given. 
 Through the entire of these speeches there runs a strong love of 
 Ireland, although in some instances, perhaps, the " patriot pas- 
 sion" is not manifested Avith as much ardour as many Irishmen 
 may desire. Mr. Sheil's great object appears to be to effect the 
 perfect equalization of Catholics and Protestants : had he aimed 
 at the promotion of the great Avork of nationality, it is probable 
 that he Avoidd have surpassed Avhat he has accomplished. The 
 speech on the Repeal of the Union, inserted in this volume, is 
 certainly among the best ; and the reader Avill probably desire 
 that more speeches of this bolder character and loftier aspiration 
 had been delivered by Mr. Sheil. Events are, perhaps, not re- 
 
JIICHAUO LALOR SHEIL. IxH 
 
 jnote, which may call forth the constant exercise of Mr. Sheil's 
 faculties in , a cause, "vvliich, it must be acknowledged, is beyond 
 all others calculated to inspire that noblest of all kinds of elo- 
 quence, which is so incomparably superior to the disciplined and 
 elaborate oratory of which too many examples, i)crhaps, Avill be 
 detected in tliis volume — that eloquence Avhich flows from those 
 lofty sources of emotion whicli nature supplies in an elevated 
 heart. " Sursum corda" should be found in the ritual of the 
 orator as well as of the religionist ; without that exaltation of 
 the feelings, in devotion and in eloquence, nothing great was 
 ever yet accomplished. 
 
SELECT SPEECHES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 EIOHARD LALOR 8HEIL. 
 
 SPEECH UrON THE MEMOIHS OF THEOBALD AVOLFE TONE, MADE 
 AT THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION. 
 
 This book — the life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, who was guilty of a 
 distempered love of Ireland (he had great talents, and with an adven- 
 turous s[)irit combined an undaunted determination) — contains much 
 matter, in which a Catliolic can find instruction, from Avhich a British 
 minister ought to derive a warning, while to a Protestant proprietor it 
 cannot fail to afTord a theme, on which, if he shall often reflect, his fre- 
 quent meditation Avill not be misapplied. I introduce the subject with 
 some abruptness ; but it is as well that any preliminary expatiatiou 
 should be avoided, and that I should proceed at once to the topics, to 
 which it is my intention to direct your notice. I shall advert in the 
 first instance to the observations made by Wolfe Tone upon the policy 
 Avhicli he conceived it to be wise, on the part of the Catholics of Ireland, 
 to pursue. He states in a diary kept by him in Paris, that General 
 Clarke, the son of an Irishman, and who was afterAvards created 
 Duke de Feltre, expressed to him an opinion, that the system Avhich 
 was called Chouannerie in France, and Avhich is analogous in many 
 respects to the Rockism of this country, might be usefully resorted 
 to in Ireland, and that the people, through such means, might be 
 familiarised with arms, and prepared for a general co-operation Avith 
 an invading force. This suggestion was indignantly repudiated by 
 Wolfe Tone, avIio justly observes, that agrarian combinations lead 
 
 B 
 
2 WOLFE tone's memoirs. 
 
 to crimes as unavailing for any political purpose as they are morally 
 odious, and produce a barbarous and irregular disturbance, which 
 the government regard without alarm, and which affords an oppor- 
 tunity for the enactment of coercive laws, whenever it suits their 
 purpose to resort to them. Tone alludes to another important topic, 
 the disunion of the Catholics amongst themselves, and the seces- 
 sion of the Catholic gentry from the people, lie laments these 
 unfortunate incidents, and inveighs against the unhappy spirit of 
 pusillanimous compliance, which characterised the Catholic leaders in 
 the bargain which they were induced to strike with the government 
 in 1793. He states himself to be fully convinced that if, in the midst 
 of the embai-rassments of the ministry, with war without, and dis- 
 affection within, the men who negotiated on the part of the Ca- 
 tholics of Ireland had adopted the peremptory tone which the con- 
 dition of the countiy would have enabled them to assume, the 
 minister would have been compelled to yield, and a measure of com- 
 plete and unqualified enfranchisement would have been extorted 
 from him. This remark is well founded ; I am sure that our interests 
 as well as our honour will be always most effectually consulted by a 
 bold, uncompromising course ; that the men at the head of the people 
 must rely upon the people, and nothing but the people, for the accom- 
 plishment of every national purpose, and that whenever they shall be 
 weak enough to listen to the false blandishments of power, they will 
 discover that a sacrifice of principle is sure to be followed by a relin- 
 quishment of their real interests, and that of their own miwise cun- 
 ning, as well as of the craft of their antagonists, they will infi\llibly 
 prove the victims. So much for that portion of this book, which 
 relates more iunncdiately to the course which it befitted the leaders 
 of the Irish Catholics in 1793, in the opinion of Theobald Wolfe 
 Tone, to have adopted. I turn to a topic of deeper interest — to a 
 portion of the narrative contained in these memoirs, calculated to 
 awaken in the mind of an English statesman reflections of a very 
 serious kind, and in which I ventured to say, that practical admoni- 
 tion was to be found. In 1795, Theobald Wolfe Tone was compelled 
 to retire from Ireland to the United States, where he had at first an 
 intention of settling; thei'c in the bosom of liis family, with a wife 
 whom he adored, aud children who shared in liis idolatry for their 
 incomparable mother, he might have led a long and prosperous life, if 
 he knew how to form a just estimate of felicity, and could have ap- 
 preciated the opportunities of happiness with Avhich he was encom- 
 passed. But ambition, or perverted patriotism, was among many 
 passions paramount to every other : he was pursued by the recollec- 
 
WOLFE tone's MEMOlllS. 3 
 
 tions of Ireland : the memory of his countxy became a malady of his 
 heart : and in the idealism of exile the scenes of oppression which he 
 had witnessed, and at Avhich his blood had boiled, rose w^ith all the dis- 
 tinctness of unimpaired reality before him. The phantasms with 
 which men condemned to leave their country are disastrously haunted, 
 are, to men like Tone, prompters of great enterprise. There gradually 
 grew up in his mind a design as adventurous as any of which the 
 romance of history has left us an example. He formed the determi- 
 nation to strike a blow at England, where he knew that she Avas 
 most vulnerable, and to invite the French republic to become his 
 auxiliary in an enterprise which should put the British empire to 
 hazard. Full of a purpose, Avhicli at first view appeared to be as 
 extravagant as it was criminal, he set sail from America, and ar- 
 rived at Havre on the first of February, 179(J. Having reached Paris, 
 he found himself in a state which men less ai'dent, and with less 
 fixedness of intent would have looked upon as desperate : he failed 
 for a considerable time in obtaining access to any man in authority, 
 and the little money in his possession Avas almost expended. He 
 was Avithout friends, Avithout resources of any kind, and could scarcely 
 express himself in the language of the country. It is, indeed, diifi- 
 cult to conjecture a state more utterly hopeless than that to Avhicli 
 lie Avas reduced. Yet, in the desolation of a great metropolis, he Avas 
 upheld by that unalterable purpose, from Avhich the aliment of his 
 soul Avas derived. At last he obtained an intcrvicAV Avith the minister 
 of Avar. His chief credentials, the documents on Avhich he grounded 
 his claim to tlie confidence of Charles Lecroix, Avere tAvo votes of 
 thanks, Avhich he had received as their secretary from the Catho- 
 lics of Ireland. Although Lecroix had never heard of him before, 
 he Avas struck by his project, and sent him to General Clarke, whose 
 family Avas connected Avith Ireland ; but Clarke entertained such 
 strange notions about the country from Avhich his father had emigrated, 
 that he iufiuired from him, Avhether Lord Clare A\'as likely to co-ope- 
 rate with the French, and whether the Duke of York Avould accept 
 the 6ov(ireignty of Ireland, in the event of its conquest by the French 
 r('])ul)lic. Tone j)erceivcd that little could be clU-ctcd Avith Clarke, 
 and detciunincd to go directly to the President of the Directory, Avho 
 Avas no other than the celebrated Carnot, to Avhose genius the marvel- 
 lous successes of France Avere in a great measure to be ascribed. An 
 interview Avas obtained, in Avhich the victorious mathematician listened 
 to the enthusiastic Irisliman, Avitli a not very unnatural distrust in the 
 feasibility of his project. He slowly acceded to it, and it Avas pro- 
 posed by the French Government to send two thousand men to 
 
4 WOLFE tone's MEMOIUS. 
 
 Ireland. This suggestion Tone treated as an absurdity. His rea- 
 soning was so cogent, that lie prevailed upon the Directory to resolve 
 upon an expedition of eight thousand men, with fifty thousand stand 
 of arms ; hut Iloche, who enjoyed the highest militaiy reputation, 
 having been named to the chief command of the invading army, in- 
 sisted on its being increased from eight to fifteen thousand men, with a 
 large park of artillery, and arms suificient to supply the insurgent po- 
 pulation. The French Dii'cctory acceded to tliis requisition, and that 
 large force, conveyed by seventeen ships of the line, sailed from Brest- 
 While every good citizen must concur in the unqualified condemnation of 
 the man, at whose instance the French Government embarked in an 
 imdertaking which, if it had been successful, would have entailed 
 irretrievable calamity upon his country, yet, when we look back at 
 the circumstances in which AVolfe Tone was placed, and consider the 
 difficulties with which he had to struggle, that his achievement 
 was a most extraordinary one, must be acknowledged. How must 
 his heart have beaten when he beheld that great armament. With its 
 vast sails dilated in some sort by his own aspiring spirit, steering its 
 course to the island where his cradle was rocked, where the bones 
 of his fathers were deposited, on whose green hills his eyes had first 
 rested, and on whose lofty peaks, against which the Atlantic breaks in 
 thunder, he felt assiu'cd that liis triunipliant standard would be un- 
 furled. Happily for England, these visions of victory, when almost em- 
 bodied in a fatal realization, were dispelled by the winds, called so 
 justly " the only unsubsidized allies of England;" and by those auxilia- 
 ries, on which England cannot rely for ever, the want of wisdom and 
 of foresight in the Government, and the want of an army to defend the 
 country, when it was left wholly unprotected, was supplied. The French 
 fleet was dispersed by a storm; — Hoche was blown out of his course 
 with seven ships of the line ; but ten sail of tlie line, with six thou- 
 sand troops, reached the Irish coast. Wolfe Tone says that they were 
 so near that he could have pitched a biscuit on shore. A landing 
 might have been at once effected, but the Directory had given orders 
 that the fleet should proceed to Bantry Bay. Ten ships of the line 
 did proceed there, with a force which might have marched to Dublin, 
 and lay for five days in a harbour on the Irish coast. It is a most 
 remarkable circumstance that in the absence of Iloche, the connnand 
 of the army should have devolved upon Grouchy, in reierence to whom 
 these words are set down in the diary kept by Wolfe Tone : " all now 
 depends upon Grouchy." After the lapse of nineteen years, upon the 
 18th of June, 1815, in what an agony of hope the great emperor di- 
 rected his glass to the horizon in search of those battalions which he had 
 
WOLFE TONE S MEMOins. 5 
 
 confided to the same questionable soldier, expecting, to the last, that 
 in the distance he sliould behold his eagles vipon the wing to his 
 rescue. That Grouchy was an instrument of Providence it may not 
 be irrational to think, but that such implements of safety will always 
 be provided it is not an article of faith to believe. Grouchy did not 
 land ; and Ireland was preserved. I have done with the incidents 
 in the Memoirs of Wolfe Tone. Ills subsc(|uent history, the two 
 expeditions which he afterwards planned, and the last scene in his 
 eventful life, in which he resorted to Avliat Edmond Burke has called 
 " the sharp antidote against disgrace," to avoid the doom which, for 
 those who are guilty of liaving failed, is proverbially destined, — are 
 full of painful interest ; but for the purjtosc which has induced me to 
 advert to this book what I have said of it is sufficient. That purpose is 
 diflbrent from that which may, perhaps, be imputed to me. But what I 
 deeply deprecate, I may be permitted honestly to apprehend, and I own 
 that the perusal of this book has excited in my mind an alarm, to which 
 I think myself justified in giving expression. TI)e voice of admonition 
 is grating to the ear, but the reflections suggested by this volume ought 
 not to be suppressed, however disinclined a minister may be to listen to 
 them. I believe tliis country to be exposed to tlie most serious risks, 
 in consctpience of the fatal policy whicli tlic government are pursuing; 
 1 consider their security to be false, and believe them to be treading 
 on the edge of a fearful peril. Who that sees the sleep walker advan- 
 cing to the precipice, would heed how rudely he might awaken him, if 
 by boldly grasping him he can drag him from the gulf? 
 
 In the year 1796, the Catholic population of this country did not 
 exceed three millions; it amounts to double that number. In 179G, 
 the French republic had not recanted its profession of infidelity, 
 and was deeply stained with the blood of martyred priests and pontiffs. 
 The throne of France is occupied by a sovereign anointed with legiti- 
 macy ; the altar has been rebuilt, and the ancient Catholic Church lifts 
 up its mitred and apostolic head. Attractive relations have arisen, 
 where .in intercept was created by many repulsive ciicunistances. 
 The application of steam in naval warfare deserves to be taken into 
 account, and more especially by Mr. Canning, who recently told us 
 that modern science had " taken from tlie winds their proverbial 
 fickleness." To that eminent man I would more peculiarly com- 
 mend the memoirs of Wolfe Tone. He cannot fail to recollect, that not 
 very long ago, when he made it his boast that from the recesses in 
 Avhich they were immured, he could let loose the popular passions, 
 and sweep the Fi'ench monarchy in a hurricane away, Monsieur de 
 Chateaubriand, and Monsieur Ilyde de Ncuville, and Monsieur de 
 
6 "WOLTE tone's IMEMOIKS. 
 
 lieaumont, indignant at this prcsnmptuous intimation, pointed to 
 Ireland with a fierce and retaliatory menace, and warned him and 
 liis coUeagnes to beware, lest France should he provoked to do what 
 it was so obvious that it Avas in her power to accomplish. Mv. 
 Canning must have been stung to the soul by this formidable re- 
 tort : he acted wisely in not having noticed it in Parliament ; but, I 
 do think that it is his duty to tell his associates, to whose fatal obstinacy 
 the perils of this country arc to be refinred, that from the foes of 
 England this disastrous advantage should be taken away, and that 
 by an act of wise and timely justice a country exposed to imminent 
 peril should be impregnably secured. He ought to go with this book 
 in his hand into the cabinet, and plead for the emancipation of Ireland, 
 with the memoirs of AVolfe Tone. There are men among liis colleagues, 
 by whom he will be told that the Protestants of Ireland are a match ibr 
 traitoi-s, and that upon them, as the faithful and incorruptible garrison^ 
 of the country, an unfaltering reliance may be placed. No man enter- 
 tains a higher estimate of the courage, of the union, of the high and 
 daring spirit of the Protestants of Ireland than I do. Their military 
 qualities are inversely as their numbers. If England be sustained by 
 that powerful body of adherents the likelihood is, that no matter how 
 strongly seconded, France would be ultimately vanquished ; but, to 
 what a condition would Ireland be reduced, when the domination of 
 England had been restored in its despotic plenitude, and the penal code 
 in all its baneful vigour had been renewed. Torrents of blood would 
 have been shed, millions of treasure would have been lavished, civil 
 war raging in its worst and most frightful form would have left behind 
 a desolation, to which, by those who made it, th(; name of peace would 
 be assigned. In six months of a warfare, more than civil, Ireland would 
 recede more than half a century, and from that retrogradation to bar- 
 barism, the Protestants of Ireland would not most assuredly derive any 
 advantage equivalent to the calamity which would have been inflicted 
 upon their country. In the Cromwellian spoliation the misfortunes of 
 Ireland were turned by the soldiers of the slaughtei'cr of Drogheda to 
 account. Conquest was followed by conliscation ; but Protestantism is 
 now seised in fee of the island, and of the national calamity nothing 
 substantial could be made. The Protestant proprietors of Ireland arc 
 as much interested in the pacification of the country (which can be 
 only effected by the redress of the national grievances) as we are. 
 There is, indeed, a class of political sectaries whose livelihood is derived 
 from their religion. The fouler as well as smaller birds of prey 
 croak and flutter in the fear that the receptacles of ascendancy, in which 
 llieir loathsome nests are built, should be disturbed. But a Protestant 
 
WOLFE TONE S MEMOIRS. 
 
 gentleman of rank and fortune, who cannot be swayed by the same 
 sordid considerations, should consider the permanent establislmient 
 of order, tlie reconciliation of the people to the government, the 
 abandonment of all revolutionary purpose, the security of the country 
 from all foreign danger, and from all intestine commotion, as objects 
 which, at the sacrifice of his bad predominance, would be cheaply 
 purchased. A Cromwellian proprietor views the tract of woods and 
 lawns with which the piety of his puritanical forefather was rewarded, 
 in all the pride with which the consciousness of long transmitted 
 property is attended. The hope of transmitting his estate to his 
 descendants is one of the most pleasurable of liis emotions. He devises 
 his property in strict settlement, and, by complicated limitations endea- 
 vours to impart a feudal ])orpctuily to liis jwssessions; and yet, an admo- 
 nition, solemn as the warning of Lochicl, niiglit, i)erliaps, be appro- 
 priately given him, that the time might come, when, amidst the shouts 
 of insurgent onslaught, his mansion should be given to tlie flames ; 
 tliose dearer than his life-blood should lie slaughtered or dishonoured in 
 that home in which they could no longer find a sanctuary, and 
 horrors should be enacted, at the contemplation of which religion 
 trembles and humanity recoils. That the daring intimations, to 
 which I Jiave been suHicicntly venturesome to give this impassioned 
 utterance, will be read by those to whom they are intended to be ad- 
 dressed with feelings of resentment, I do not doubt ; but by the in- 
 sensibility of Protestant Ireland to the perils which impend upon us 
 all, a fearless adjuration is required. If I thought that by a reference 
 to such topics, no useful purpose could be accomplished, I should not 
 warn men of a peril, which it is not in their power to avert. In the 
 city of lava, Avith a burning mountain above, and with Herculaneum 
 buried beneath, what would it avail to bid men listen to the roll of the 
 subterranean thunder ? Avherefore speak of an eruption to those by 
 Avhom Vesuvius cannot be extinguished ? but it is in the power of 
 those to whom I have addressed this intrepid invocation, to save 
 themselves from the peril that overhangs them and to jiut the volcano 
 out. 
 
8 INFORMATION AGAINST ^NEAS m'dONNELL. 
 
 COURT OF KING'S BENCH— Tuesday, May 8, 1827. 
 
 SPEECH, IN SHEWING CAUSE WHY A CRIMINAL, INFORMATION SHOULD 
 NOT BE FILED AGAINST MR. jENEAS m'dONNELL, AT THE PROSE- 
 CUTION OF THE HONOURABLE AND VENERABLE CHARLES LE POER 
 TRENCH, ARCHDEACON OF ARDAGH. 
 
 Mr. Sheil, after reading the affidavits, said : I have stated, at very- 
 considerable, I hope not at any unnecessaiy length, the affidavits of 
 the prosecutor and of tlie defendant, together with the matter con- 
 tained in the affidavits which have been filed in sustainment of the 
 defendant's case. It remains that I should submit to your Lordships 
 sucli observations as appear to me to arise out of the facts, and which 
 in my judgment, ought to induce the court to refuse a criminal infor- 
 mation. It is right to state, in the first place, tlie principles on which 
 this court exercises its discretionary power in allowing criminal in- 
 formations. That they are entirely in the option of the coui't, will not 
 be disputed. Still this court does not act in an luicertain and capricious 
 spirit, but applies to the circumstances of every case a fixed standai'd of 
 decision. In the case of the King against Kobinson, Lord Mansfield laid 
 it down that the court will not grant a criminal information where the 
 prosecutor is himself to blame, or wliere considerations of public policy 
 render it inexpedient. The question was connected witli an election, 
 and involved much popular passion. The words used by Lord IMans- 
 field are remarkable. " There is," he said, "bad blood enough already." 
 For that, among other reasons (but it was not the least cogent one), lie 
 refused the motion. In the present case, the political and religious 
 animosities of two poAVcrful classes of the comnuuiity are involved, 
 and I cannot refrain from asking even at the outset, whether there 
 is not already between the parties themselves, and the bodies which 
 they respectively represent, a sufficiency of " bad blood ?" The 
 grounds on which I am instructed to rely are threefold : — the pro- 
 secutor is himself to blame, and does not come into court (to use 
 the technical expression) with clean hands — the charges brought 
 against him by the defendant are substantially established — and tlie 
 subject out of which the differences between the parties has arisen 
 is of such a nature, that the court will be loath to interfere. Who 
 is the prosecutor ? What are his merits in the transaction ? Is he 
 entitled to any special interposition in his favour ? These are 
 questions which offer themselves at once to the court. He is the 
 member of a powerful family, Avith an earl and an archbishop at 
 its head, which has devoted itself, with a very ardent zeal, to the 
 scriptural education of the Irish peasantry. Among the i-emarkable, 
 
INFORMATION AGAINST iENEAS M'DONNELI,. 9 
 
 Doctor Trench has rendered liimself conspicuous. He was once a 
 soldier, and belonged to a profession whose habits are essentially dif- 
 ferent from those which are supposed to belong to his present occupa- 
 tion. His life, according to his own description of himself, does not 
 appear to have been immaculate, and if he brought no other qualifi- 
 cation to the performance of his sacred duties, he seems at least to 
 have possessed that adaptation to virtue which ought to arise from the 
 fatigue, if not the satiety of those indulgences to which he appears to 
 have been addicted. He was not only a soldier, but an adjutant, and 
 I hope I shall be pardoned for suggesting that the man, who admits that 
 he belield a woman tortured under his auspices in the barrack-yard of 
 Cork, and to have presided in his ollicial capacity over her sullerings, 
 must have acquired certain peculiarities of character not in very osten- 
 sible conformity with that vocation to which, by some very S})ccial 
 interference of Providence, must have called him in the midst of 
 wanderings of no ordinary kind. Tlie gallant and reverend plaintiff 
 became a very enthusiastic Christian, so far as mere strenuousness of 
 belief is concerned, and in the year 1818 entered into a compact with 
 the Roman Catholic parish priest, to educate the children of Catholics 
 and Protestants, without distinction of religion. They agreed that no 
 book or tisnge sIiouM be introduced at variniice witli the creed of citlier 
 sect. The priest, the llev. Mr. Laikin, however, discovered that Dr. 
 Trench had introduced a manuscript catechism of his own composition, 
 and proceeded to the school in order to remonstrate. He went, ac- 
 companied by two friars, and met the prosecutor at the entrance of tlie 
 school. The latter advanced with outstretched arms, and exclaimed, 
 "Welcome, Garret, Garret (for Garret was JMr.Larkin's christian name), 
 welcome, Garret. The llock is numerous, but the shepherds are few." 
 The result of the discussion between the priest, the friars, and the 
 archdeacon was, that the children of Catholic parents withdrew from 
 the school, and the archdeacon caused the priest of the parish to be 
 distrained for a hanging gale of rent ; but he was not deterred from the 
 prosecution of Ids favourite scheme, for he published a notice, which was 
 posted up in his own hand-writing, that none of the tenants over whom 
 he had any control had any favour to expect Avho did not send their 
 children to his school, and [irocure certiiicates from two devout ladies 
 who were mentioned in the notice. He carried this menace into effect, 
 for the tenants who obeyed his directions were liberally rewarded, while 
 upon many a wretched serf sentence was pronounced and executed, with 
 a rigour which would have done credit to any court-martial of which 
 the archdeacon ever was a member. Religion, grafted upon the mili- 
 tary genius of the archdeacon, docs not appear to have been very sue- 
 
10 INFOHMATION AGAINST .ENEAS m'dONNELL. 
 
 cessfuUy inoculated. A greal deal of misery was the result of that 
 vitiated entliusiasm, which considers the means, no matter how severe, 
 as justified by the sanctity of the object which they are intended to 
 attain. The labourers who declined to follow the ordinances of Arch- 
 deacon Trench were dismissed, and the houses of such of the occu- 
 piers of Loi'd Chmcarty's lands as manifested any conscientious con- 
 tumacy were thrown down ; their families were cast upon the world. It 
 is needless to state that this somewhat anomalous, though not very 
 uncommon mode of disseminating the tenets of the Gospel, occa- 
 sioned much affliction. The peasantry were placed in a condition truly 
 pitiable. The archdeacon threatened them with the terrors of this 
 world, and the priest with the retribution that awaited them in the 
 next. The gentry took part in the contest, and while the peasantry 
 were persecuted and oppressed, the county, which had hitherto been 
 remarkable for the concord which prevailed among all classes, pre- 
 sented the most painful scenes of religious discord. It was in this state 
 of things tliat Mr. M' Donnell arrived in the county of Galway — 
 thither he proceeded to visit his family. Dr. Coen, the Roman Catholic 
 bishop of the diocese, knowing that Mv. INI'Donnell was employed by the 
 Iloman Catholic body as their agent, requested him to attend a meet- 
 ing at Loughrea, which was convened in order to petition Lord Clan- 
 carty to put some check on the doctor's injudicious zeal. The bishop, 
 deeply afflicted by the sufferings of his flock, had himself previously 
 applied to Lord Clancarty, but in vain. A public meeting was called, 
 in the hope that a supplication to his lordship, proceeding from a nume- 
 rous and respectable assembly, on behalf of his tenantiy, would be 
 attended Avith better results. IMr. M'Donnell states, that the strongest 
 evidences of distress were displayed among the people, many of 
 whom were moved to tears. INIr. ISI'Donnell was affected by 
 what he saw and heard, and it was under the influence of the 
 impressions which were produced upon him on the occasion, 
 that he attended the meeting of the London Hibernian Bible So- 
 ciety, held upon the 16th of October, at Ballinasloe. The object of 
 this institution is stated by the prosecutor to be the dissemination 
 of the Scriptures without note or comment. None of its i-cgulations 
 were inserted in the notice, nor was any prohibition introduced into 
 it against the attendance, speaking or voting of any individuals who 
 were not members of the society. It does not appear that Lord Dunlo, 
 the chairman, or even Doctor Trench himself, or any one individual 
 who attended, with the exception of Mr. Pope and Captain Gordon, 
 belonged to the institution. Doctor Trench states, indeed, that it was 
 one of its rules, that none but members should be permitted to 
 
INl-OUMATION AGAINST ilCNKAS m'dONNELL. 11 
 
 speak ; but that rule was not only not adhered to, but was not even 
 noticed in the course of the proceeding. Mr. M'Donnell moved an 
 amendment ; he was not ])reventcd from so doing ; on the contrary, 
 the chairman actually put the amendment from the chair on the second 
 day of the meeting. The assembly was adjourned from the 10th to 
 the succeeding day, when Captain Gordon opened the discussion. Mr. 
 M'Dounell replied, and, as I have already intimated, moved an 
 amendment, and pressed the chairman to put the question. Lord 
 Dunlo observed that new matter had been introduced, and that Mr. 
 Pope should be permitted to reply. To this proposition Mr. M'Don- 
 nell assented, provided that, in case INIr. Pope Avas j)ermitted to make 
 any furtlier observations, he should be allowed to exercise the right 
 wliicli lie derived from cstablislied usage, of making tlie fnial reply. 
 On this understanding the meeting adjourned to the next day. 
 During the first two days it [cannot be pretended that there was any 
 impropriety committed by Mr. M'DoniicU, cither in speaking or in 
 moving an amendment, for his right to s])eak and vote were distinctly 
 recognized by the chaiiman, who was the organ of the meeting. It 
 appears, therefore, that ]\lr. INI'Donnell did not commit any original 
 deviation from propriety. During the first two days there were only 
 two ])olicemen stationed in the meeting, and Dr. Trench did not ac- 
 tively interfere ; but on the morning of the 12th the aspect of affairs 
 underwent a material alteration. The moment the doors were opened, 
 Dr. Trench placed himself at the entrance, and, under his dire(>-tion, a 
 number of Protestants of the loAver class, with, as it is alleged, arms 
 nndcr their great coats, were specially admitted, and stationed, by 
 the doctor's orders, in the assembly. He felt the importance of 
 carrying the day, and brought to the meeting the powers of a magis- 
 trate, the habits of a soldier, and the passions of a priest. His favourite 
 project was to be promoted ; it was of the greatest consequence, in liis 
 mind, that it should appear, that in a great assembly, lield in what may 
 be called a Roman Catholic county, the circulation of the Scriptures, 
 without note or connnent, had been publicly approved. To gain this 
 object an effort was required, and it was deemed advisable to put IMr. 
 IM'Donnell down. For tiiis pur]iose the room was filled with police, 
 who appeared to be under the doctor's ordei'S, and a large body of these 
 Irish gens-d'-anncs were stationed outside the place of meeting. The 
 archdeacon, w^ho was well accustomed to military operations, posted him- 
 self beside my Lord Dunlo, and stood with an attitude, looked with an 
 air, and spoke with an intonation of command. The debate was opened 
 by ]Mr, Pope, when IMr, IM'Donnell recalled to the chairman the re- 
 servation of his right to reply. Lord Dunlo, who during the two 
 
12 INFORMATION AGAINST iENEAS M'DONNKLL. 
 
 preceding days had permitted Mr. M'Donnell not only to speak but to 
 propose an amendment, and had actually put that amendment from the 
 chair, having received a whisper from Dr. Trench, now, for the first 
 time, informed Mr. M'Donnell that he had no right to open his lips, 
 and in place of putting tlie amendment, proposed a series of resolu- 
 tions favourable to the objects of the society, wliich lie declared to be 
 carried, and left the chair. INIr. INI'DonncU moved that the Hon. 
 Gonvillc Ffrench should take it. He was a niagistrate, the son of a 
 peer, and the person next in rank to Lord Dunlo. He advanced to 
 take the chair, when Dr. Trench, turning to the police, exclaimed, 
 " do your duty." The police were not slow in obeying his orders, and 
 rushed, with fixed bayonets, upon the people ! I stop here in the 
 narration of the facts, and call again the attention of the court to the 
 principles upon which criminal informations are granted or refused. 
 I have already referred the court to the authority of Lord Mansfield ; 
 and although it was merely in the course of argument that Lord Ers- 
 kine pronounced what may be called a commentary upon the law, 
 still, as the court decided in his client's favour, in Captain liayley's 
 case, and as the positions he lays down are indisputable, it may not 
 be intproper to (piote what was said by that great advocate, not, 
 indeed, as an authority, but because the doctrine which he lays 
 down, is clearly and succinctly expressed : — "This is not a complaint 
 in the ordinary course of law, but an application to the court to exert 
 an eccentric, extraordinary, voluntaiy jurisdiction, beyond the ordinary 
 course of justice : — a jurisdiction which I am authorized, from the 
 best authority, to say, this court will not exercise, unless the prose- 
 cutors come i)ure and unspotted ; deny, upon oath, the trutli of every 
 Avord and sentence whicb tliey complain as injinious ; lor, although 
 in common sense the matter may not be the less libellous, be- 
 cause true, yet the court will not interfere by information, for guilty 
 or even equivocal characters, but will leave them to its ordinary pro- 
 cess. If the court does not see palpable malice and falsehood on the 
 part of the defendant, and clear innocence on the part of tlie prosecu- 
 tor, it will not stir ; it will say, this may be a libel ; this may deserve 
 punishment ; but go to a grand jury, or bring your action ; all men 
 are equally entitled to the protection of the laws, but all men are not 
 equally entitled to an extraordinary interposition and protection 
 beyond the common distributive forms of justice." That what I have 
 read is law Avill scarcely be disputed. The court will inquire whether 
 the prosecutor is himself deserving of condemnation, and will look to 
 the inception of the proceedings, without attending miniitely to sub- 
 sequent details. The principle applied every day to cases of duelling, 
 
INFOUiMATION AGAINST JENEAS m'dONNEJLI.. 13 
 
 may, without any violence, be extended to cases of libel. If an indi- 
 vidual gives the first offence, no matter by what outrages he may be 
 subsequently provoked, this court will leave him to proceed by indict- 
 ment. If Dr. Trench Avas originally in the wrong — if, when under 
 the inlliicncc of liis religious passions, lie acted in sueli a manner as to 
 deserve reproof, the court will not inijuire Avhether it was excessive 
 and disproportioned to the fault committed by the prosecutor, no more 
 than it will ask whether a challenge was warranted by the offence, 
 but Avill simply in(iuire Avliether the doctor was not guilty of a very 
 signal transgression of propriety, in his conduct at Ballinasloe. I am 
 indisposed to use any coarse or contumelious phrase in his regard — I 
 will not accuse him of any directly sanguinary intent — I will not say 
 that he went armed with the Riot Act, and attended by the police, 
 in order to avail Jiimsclf of the first opportunity of letting them k)oso 
 upon a defenceless body of his fellow-citizens. But it is one question, 
 whether a purpose so detestable entered distinctly into his contempla- 
 tion, and another, whether he did not, while under the operation of 
 those fanatical opinions, which obscure the understanding, while they 
 indurate the heart, perpetrate a flagitious outrage — an act inconsis- 
 tent with the character of a clergyman, tiie principles of a Chris- 
 tian, and the good feelings of a man. Without charging him Avitli 
 a deliberate depravity, I accuse him of a wild fanaticism, which is 
 analogous to ferocity in its results — and I collect from his previous 
 habits, the motives and the passions by which he was instigated in the 
 incident which is more directly before the court. The man who, 
 in the prosecution t)f his object, had crushed the miserable pea- 
 santry subject to his dominion ; who had prostrated their hovels, 
 and, unmoved by tears, by cries, and by supplications, had, in the 
 name of God and of his Gospel, scattered desolation and despair 
 about him — the man who combined with his religious habits the ha- 
 bits of courts-martial, was, of all others, the most likely to be hurried 
 into the perpetration of what, in an archdeacon, may be called an 
 error, but, in a less venerable person, would be accounted a crime. 
 Your lordships will scarcely permit yourselves to approve (and if you 
 grant the information, you must approve) of the introduction of a 
 military force into the midst of an assembly, convened for the propa- 
 gation of the AYord of God ? A meeting of the Hibernian London 
 Society is convened — their object is to circulate the Scriptures — tliey 
 assemble to listen to two itinerant delegates from the parent branch — 
 the people are invited to attend — Mr. IM'Donnell urges his arguments 
 against a scheme offensive to the feelings, and incompatible with the 
 religion of the ])eople — during two days his right to take a share in 
 
14 INFORMATION AGAINST .^iNKAS m'dONNKLL. 
 
 the proceedings is not disputed — Lord Dunlo leaves the chair — a 
 magistrate, a gentleman of family and of fortune, and in every way 
 respectable, is called to it — there was no riot — no blow was struck — 
 no injurious exclamation was employed — no violence, nor symptom of 
 violence, appeared. The object of the meeting — the rank and cha- 
 racter of the persons assembled — everything forbade the expedient 
 to which Dr. Trench resorted ; and yet, notwithstanding the combi- 
 nation of circumstances Avhich inhibited tlie use of a military force, a 
 dignitary of the Established Church rushes forth, in the frenzy of 
 fanaticism, and calling on the police " to do their duty," precipitately 
 reads the Riot Act, the preliminary to the effusion of blood. I see 
 nothing in the whole transaction which can afford a palliation for 
 his conduct ; and notwithstanding his own protestations, it appears 
 manifest that he had determined to disperse the meeting at the point 
 of that instrument of persuasion with which he was, in his younger 
 years, professionally familiar. He carries the Riot Act to the meeting 
 — he fills it with police — admits his own peculiar supportei-s to the 
 meeting, and arrays them in a body — superintends the proceedings — 
 gives the signal — calls upon the police to advance — bids them rush 
 upon the multitude, and a scene takes place calculated to excite the 
 indignation of the people, and that of every honest man who hears the 
 details of the proceedings in this court. The police, who were sta- 
 tioned in the meeting, precipitated themselves upon the people — 
 Another body rushed up stairs, with their swords drawn and their 
 bayonets fixed. They drove the Catholics before them, and mingled 
 invectives against their religion with their ferocious exclamations. 
 The people fled ; the open windows afforded refuge to many of them, 
 and women threw themselves for safety upon the adjoining roofs. If 
 the people had resisted — if, fired with a natural resentment, they had 
 turned upon the men by whom they were so wantonly assailed — if 
 they had merged the duty of citizens in the feelings of outraged 
 human nature, what would have been the result ? The lives of 
 hundreds might have been lost — the public streets might have ran 
 with blood — a general carnage might have ensued, and the Honour- 
 able and Rev. Charles Le Poer Trench, instead of having the pre- 
 sumption to come, with hands so defiled, for a criminal information 
 into tills court, would appear at the bar of justice, and stand a trinl 
 for his life. I come now to the circumstances vmder which the 
 speech was spoken, of which Dr. Trench complains. Mr. M'Donnell, 
 after the assembly had been broken up, used every exertion to 
 tranquillize the people. A public meeting was called upon the l6tli, 
 in order to consider the propriety of presenting a memorial to the 
 
INFORMATION AGAINST JENEAS M'dONNELL. 15 
 
 Lord Lieutenant. In the interval, Dr. Trench did not procure in- 
 formations to be lodged against any one individual for a riot. He read 
 the Riot Act — he caused the police to charge the people, and yet no 
 single individual was accused by the doctor of having taken part in 
 the tumult. The lloman Catholics assembled upon the iGth, and at 
 that meeting Mr. M'Donnell spoke in the language of strong censure 
 of Dr. Trcncli. Independent of the actual outrage committed upon 
 him, the newspapers in the interest of the doctor had represented Mr. 
 M'Donnell's conduct in the most odious light. In his speech he 
 charged Dr. Trench with the insertion of an attack upon him, and 
 that allegation is not denied. But compared with the affront offered 
 to him, and to every Roman Catholic, such aspersions arc of no 
 account. This court will not grant an information against a man, who, 
 provoked by a single offensive phrase, sends a challenge. Will the 
 court grant an information against an individual who was provoked — 
 not by a contumelious expi'cssion — not by a contemptuous look — but 
 by an outrage, as exasperating as it is possible to conceive ? It is said 
 that his retaliation was disproportionate to the injury which he had 
 received, and that the charges brought against Dr. Trench were un- 
 founded. I will admit, for the sake of argument, that the charges 
 preferred against him by Mr. M'Donnell are unfounded, that he never 
 presided over tlie torture of a miserable female — that he never ap- 
 plied to a sub-sheriff for liberty to play the part of an executioner, 
 and inflict a frightful torment with his own hands — that he never 
 prostrated houses, expelled their wi'etched occupiers, and filled the 
 hearts of parents with (lcs])air and sorrow — but while, for a moment 
 and no more, I admit all this, I appeal to the principle upon which 
 this court regulates its decisions, and put this question — " Does not 
 the man who sends a hostile message act against the laws of God, and 
 the ordinances of society?" — yet, if he has received an affront — if he has 
 been designated by some ignominious appellation, no information will be 
 granted against him. Is duelling an excepted case — and will this court 
 consider the individual who seeks to take away human life, as sheltered 
 from a criminal information by the offence which he has sustained, and 
 shall the mere uttci'cr of words be the object of the sternest judicial 
 rigour ? Shall he who levels a pistol at my heart escape with im- 
 punity — and shall the man whose pen drops gall, be deprived of the 
 benefit of the same extenuation ? This court tells many a prosecutor, 
 " although your life has been aimed at — although the defendant sought 
 to wipe out the offence which you have offered to him with your 
 blood — yet, as you were originally to blame, you are not entitled to 
 favour ; other remedies are open to you, and we leave }ou to seek 
 
IG INFORMATION AGAINST .I^NKAS M'DONNKrX. 
 
 them." Consider tlien the nature and extent of the provocation which 
 Mr. M'Donnell had received, in order that you may judge whether he 
 was originally to blame. He went to a public meeting at Ballinasloe, 
 to discuss a subject in which he felt a profound interest. The pro- 
 ceedings of the Hibernian Bible Society are not exempt from the 
 cognizance of public opinion, and are liable to the strictures to which 
 even the measures of government are exposed. Whether right or 
 wrong he acted under the influence of strong impressions. He thought 
 it absurd to put a book, upon the construction of which the wisest and 
 best men have differed, into indiscriminate circulation, amongst those 
 whose minds are as obtuse as their hands are hard. He was at a loss 
 to discover the benefits that could result from a medley of religions, 
 and a miscellany of creeds. He conceived that it would be wiser 
 to allow the humble peasant to continue in the exercise of that form 
 of worship in which he was born, in which he had lived, and in 
 which it is his best hope to die. He was convinced, and he had 
 the authority of the clergy of his own church to warrant him in 
 that conviction, that the system of which Dr. Trench is the advocate, 
 is incompatible with the essential spirit of the Catholic religion. He 
 looked upon the itinerant hawkers of a new-ftmgled Christianity as the 
 emissaries of dissension, and he saw that religious rancour, and all the 
 fury of theological detestation, marked the steps of these vagabond 
 apostles wherever they appeared. With these impressions he at- 
 tended the meeting at Ballinasloe. He spoke, and liis right to 
 speak was not disputed. He was guilty of no greater oflence than that 
 of vindicating the Roman Catholic clergy from the accusations which 
 Mr. Pope and Mr. Gordon had cast upon them. He avoided all angry 
 recrimination. He did not, in answer to the charges brought agaiiist 
 the Catholic clergy, lift the veil from the abuses of the Establish- 
 ment — he did not, when the Catholic priesthood were charged Avith 
 px'ofligacy, say one word about Dr. Trench. When the calumni- 
 atoi's of his church went back to the distance of centuries for instances 
 of dei)ravity in Catholic bishops, Mr. INl'Donnell did not allude to the 
 execrable misdeeds of no very remote occurrence, on which Protes- 
 tants should reflect before they bring their charges against the i)oor 
 and unendowed clergy of the Catholic church. He did not, in dis- 
 cussing the propriety of circulating the Scriptures among all classes, 
 without distinction, inquire whether some details contained in the 
 history of a sensual people, were fit for the perusal of boyhood 
 and a virgin's meditations. He did not put any one argument, 
 or make an observation which would excite the prejudices, or alarm 
 the sensitiveness of the most enthusiastic of his hearers. He was con- 
 
INFORMATION AGAINST iENEAS m'dONNELL,. 17 
 
 loutetl with the viiidLcation of the Catholic hierarchy ami clergy from 
 the most foul ami false aspersions, and remonstrated, in the language 
 of subdued expostulation, on the evil efTects of the system which the 
 London Hibernian Society employed its emissaries to promote ; and 
 yet, for this, for no more than this, a body of infuriated police are let 
 loose upon the people. They are halloed on by this regimental divine. 
 The Roman Catholics are assailed with every species of insult and of 
 outrage, and Mr. M'Donnell himself is thrust out of the assembly, 
 amidst the shouts of Dr. Trench's myrmidons, with the grasp of 
 ruffianism on his neck, the sabre over his head, and the bayonet at his 
 back ; and shall I be told that Mr. M'Donnell received no provocation? 
 There is not a man witli a drop of manly blood in liis veins, who 
 would not be fired, and almost maddened by it. The doctor, indeed, 
 swears there Avas a riot. True it is that he did himself engender and 
 create a frightful tumult. But what evidence is there that before he 
 drew the Riot Act out of his pocket, there was any, the least symptom 
 of disturbance ? Was a blow given ? Was a menacious gesture used ? 
 Was there a threat in attitude or in words ? He does not venture to 
 suggest it. This court ought not to be satisfied with general alle- 
 gations that a riot existed, without having the precise facts and cir- 
 cumstances before it, which are the ingredients of the offence, and 
 which constitule its legal essence. 1 impeach the doctor's alhdavit 
 upon two grounds. First, that he docs not state any one fact which 
 goes to establish that there was a riot, and secondly, that he did not 
 afterwards take any proceedings against any one of the alleged rioters. 
 Was a single person arrested ? Were there informations lodged ? 
 Was any step taken by this enraged magistrate to punish tlie offence 
 which had induced him to uncage all the ferocious passions of the 
 police and set them upon the people ? I have ai'gued this case as if 
 the charges brought against the doctor were wholly unfounded, and 
 insist that the impropriety of his conduct disentitled him to a criminal 
 information. But, my Lords, Mr. M'Donnell has in his affidavit jus- 
 tified the accusations which he has preferred, and it was my duty to 
 comply with his instructions, and read not only his own affidavit, but 
 those of the numerous witnesses by whom he is corroborated. I will 
 not go so far as to say, that truth affords a complete defence, but I do 
 say that there is a manifest distinction between an indictment and an 
 information. In the fonuer, truth is no defence — but as an information 
 is entirely in the discretion of the court, the truth of the charges will 
 be taken into consideration, and will be thrown into the balance in 
 order to adjust it. 1 am free to admit, that if the accusations are 
 unfounded. Dr. Trench is most aggrieved, and justice ought to rise 
 c 
 
18 INFORMATION AGAINST jENEAS m'dONNELI,. 
 
 up in indignation in his defence. I do not say that the charges are 
 well founded — it is not my province to decide that question — hut if 
 they are, (and your lordships will weigh all the prohahilitics) you 
 will pause before you grant a favour to Dr. Trench, and decide 
 whether he is the best qualified person to superintend the morals of 
 Ballinasloe. What, then, are the charges against him? Tliey are 
 threefold. It is alleged that he is not a fit person to preside over the 
 education of youth — first, because he Avas a man of licentious habits — 
 secondly, because he has inflicted the greatest misery upon the unfor- 
 tunate peasantry under his dominion — and thirdly, that he is a man 
 of the cruel propensities, which created for him an appellation with 
 which the most shocking images of horror are associated. With re- 
 spect to the first charge, (and I again repeat that I am only arguing 
 hypothetically, and in obedience to my client's positive instructions) 
 Mr. M'Donnell has sworn that the doctoi-, since he became a clergy- 
 man, has led a most immoral life. His miscellaneous amours are set 
 forth with minuteness — and the progeny of his indulgences arc also 
 specified. Mr. M'Donnell has, indeed, given as particular details 
 of the reverend gentleman's sacerdotal frailties as your lordships 
 could require ; every thing has been done by him to remove any 
 disposition to incredulity with which charges against an archdeacon 
 ought to be received. It may be objected that these statements are 
 made upon belief. Mr. M'Donnell, however, has encountered this 
 objection ; but when I was about to read the aflidavit of an unfortunate 
 female, containing some particulars calculated to satisfy your lordships, 
 if you entertained any doubt ofthe fidelity of Mr. M'Donnell's delineations 
 of debauchery, the counsel for the archdeacon stopped me, and insisted 
 that the aifidavit was filed too late, and was not admissible. Tlio 
 court decided that it was not, and therefore I shall not even state what 
 that affidavit set forth. But I shall be permitted to say, that it does 
 strike me as extraordinaiy that the clergyman who comes into this 
 court with such ostentatious claims to sanctity, and who demands a 
 reparation for the injury done to his charactei", should seek a shelter 
 from investigation in mere forms of law, and rely upon the tardiness 
 with which the affidavit has come in, as a ground for witldiolding the 
 facts from the court. If the charges ai-e untrue, why not treat them 
 with the scorn with which conscious virtue should always encounter 
 the accusations of malignity ? The doctor enters the temple of 
 justice as proudly as he would mount the steps of his own church, 
 and with a lofty demeanour demands redress; but the moment proof is 
 offeretl ofthe charge, he shrinks into the first dark hiding-place of the 
 law where he can find a refuge. Having said thus much upon this 
 
INFORMATION AGAINST AENEAS m'dONNELL. 19 
 
 suppression of a most material affidavit, I think it an act of justice to 
 Dr. Trench to say, that the charge to which I have adverted re- 
 lates to his former life ; but, that although for many years after he 
 entered the church he persevered in those addictions which he had 
 acquired in a less ascetic profession, he has lately refonned his con- 
 duct, and allowed time to apply its moralising influence to a fiery and 
 impassioned temperament. But men of vehement characters engage 
 in the pursuit of virtue with the same excessive ardour with which they 
 obey the allurements of pleasure, and the transition in excesses is not 
 uncommon. The doctor's letters to the parish priest, asking his leave 
 to preach in the Catholic chapel, afford evidence of this. It is not 
 easy to imagine a more extraordinary composition than the following: — 
 " Dear Garret, dear fellow-servant, have we not the same Master 
 over us — oh, how long and how often have I perverted his gifts, 
 abandoned Ids works, and done despite to the spirit of his grace, and 
 truly it is high tiihe to awake out of sleep. Let us cast away the 
 works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light. I have a 
 long account to settle — an account of 20 years' standing, at which 
 time, ashisministering servant, he delivered to me his goods. Gracious 
 God ! what an awful prospect is before me, and if he hath in mercy 
 snatched me as a brand from the burning, am I still to continue the 
 same wilful, disobedient, rebellious, slothful servant as before." This 
 letter is accompanied by others in the same strain, and in one he ap- 
 plies to the aforesaid Garret Larkin, to allow him to usurp his functions 
 in the chapel, and from the altar to denounce the errors of his religion. 
 This proposition might only excite a smile, if we did not recollect tliat 
 the very man who indulged in these effusions, was invested with the 
 power of inflicting dreadful oppression. It is positively stated, that 
 the doctor posted up a notice, in his own hand-writing, and signed 
 with his name, denouncing vengeance on all those who should not 
 obey his fanatical injunctions, and send their children through that 
 process of apostacy which he had devised. He carried his menaces 
 with a frightful fidelity into execution. Look at the example of 
 Catherine Heney, for instance, who swears, that having, in obedience 
 to the parish [)ricst, refused to send her five children to the anti- 
 Catholic school kept by the doctor, she was turned out of her cabin, 
 with her starving and shivering orphans, and when her house had been 
 thrown doAvn, was obliged to seek refuge in a pig-stye, where she lay 
 upon heaps of filth in a fever, surrounded by the miserable offspring 
 for whom she Avas no longer able to procure nourishment. It may be 
 urged that she is not deserving of belief, because her evidence is 
 tainted by her poverty — but let it not be forgotten that the parish 
 
20 INFOHMATION AGAINST .TINEAS M'nONNr.I.L. 
 
 priest swears, that lie attended her when she was driven from her 
 house, and gives his conJirmation to her statement. Your lordships 
 will not say, that the affidavit of a Catholic clergjTnan of respectability- 
 is to be discredited, for no other reason than that it contains impu- 
 tations npon a Protestant archdeacon. The atUdavit of Catherine 
 Ileney is sustained by a vast number of other depositions to similar 
 instances of oppression. Dr. Coen, the Roman Catholic bishop of 
 the dioeess, has made an affidavit, in which the general conduct of the 
 archdeacon is described. He represents Dr. Trench as managing 
 and directing a barbarous and most heart-rending persecution. The 
 next charge against him is expressed in the alleged libel in the fol- 
 lowing words : " I never was charged with bringing a female to the 
 triangle." In answer he states, that he never exercised any power 
 vested in him with cruelty, and that he never did bring a female to 
 the triangle, and he proceeds to put your lordships in possession of 
 the circumstances under which he admitted that he' did preside over 
 the public military torture of a female in the barracks at Cork. — lie 
 states that he was adjutant of the Galway militia, from the year 1797 
 to the year 1799, Jvnd that he was present, in his official capacity, when 
 the sentence of a court-martial was executed upon a woman, who had 
 been detected in stealing some articles belonging to the soldiers of the 
 regiment, to the best of his recollection. To the best of his recol- 
 lection ! I do not think that he should have any very obscure or im- 
 perfect remembrance of such an incident in his life as this. It ought 
 to have been burned into his memory in coloiu's of blood, which the 
 years, which have made his head white, ought never to have effaced. 
 At that time it appears there was a great tendency to pilfering, and 
 this female propensity in the regiment it was deemed advisable to 
 scourge out. The doctor tells us, that so efficacious was the example 
 given by the flogging of a woman in the barracks, that the crime was, 
 to the best of his recollection, suppressed. She was sentenced to 
 twenty-five lashes, he says, but very few were applied. What docs he 
 call " a few ?" It would have been condescending of him to have 
 stated his notions of number, but he does not enter into that trivial 
 particular, nor does he mention the name of the commanding oflicer, 
 nor that of a single member of the court-martial ; he does, indeed, say 
 that General Lake approved of the sentence, and proceeds to pro- 
 nounce a gratuitous encomium upon the general's humanity, which, I 
 suppose, includes a latent panegyric upon his own. The woman was 
 flogged in his presence. His narration does not precisely correspond 
 with that of an eye-witness to the scene. Patrick IMuldoon, a soldier 
 of the 13th regiment, states, " that he was in it for twenty-five years, 
 
INFORMATION AGAINST jENEAS M'bONNKLL. 21 
 
 and was sergeant for seven years, and has now a pension of £35 for 
 his service ; that before he went into the line he was in the Galway 
 militia, and remembers that a woman was flogged in the barrack, 
 Avhen Archdeacon Trench was adjutant; that tiie archdeacon was the 
 only oificer that was present — that the woman was flogged for having 
 stolen a brass candlestick — that he saw the woman stripped down to 
 the waist, and flogged in tlie usual way between the shoulders," This 
 aflTidavit is corroborated by that of Edmund Melody, who says, " That 
 AVinifrcd Ilynes, the wife of a private in the regiment, was accused 
 by Richard Marmion, of having pledged two candlesticks, his property, 
 whereupon tlie said adjutant, the Hon. Charles Lc Pocr Trench, 
 ordered her to be put into the guard-house, where she remained the 
 whole niglit, and on the next morning, wlien tiie regiment was on 
 parade, said Winifred was, by order of said adjutant, brought out, 
 guarded by a file of soldiers, and in the presence of the regiment, 
 wliicli was formed into a liollow square to witness her punishment, the 
 said Winifred Hynes was tied up hands and feet to the triangles ; 
 and the said Winifred Hynes having made vehement struggles to 
 avoid being stripped naked, for tlie purpose of punishment, the said 
 adjutant went up to the drum-major, cursed and damned him for not 
 teariug ofl* hci- clothes, and in a great passion, giving liim a blow with 
 a stick, ordered the said drum-major to tear and cut them ollj upon 
 which the said drum-major, with a knife, cut open said Winifred's 
 gown, and then tore her other covering from her shoulders, down to 
 the waist, after which she received 50 lashes on the bare back from 
 two drummers, in the usual way of flogging soldiers. That during said 
 horrid exhilntion, a Mr. Davis, an oflicer in the said regiment, went 
 up to tlie said adjutant and told liim, in tlie hearing of deponent, that 
 Peter Hynes, the husliand of the said Winifred, was absolutely fainting 
 in the ranks, at seeing his wife exposed in such a manner, and begged 
 of said adjutant to allow Peter Hynes to retire to his room, upon which 
 the said adjutant answered, he might go where he i)leased, and he did 
 not care if the devil had him. Saith that after said flogging, the said 
 AVinifred, with her back stiU bleeding, was publicly drummed out of 
 the barrack yard, to the tune of ' the rogue's march.' Saith he never 
 heard, nor docs he believe, that said Winifred Hynes was tried l>y any 
 court-martial, but was punished, as aforesaid, by the sole order and 
 authority of the said adjutant, the Honourable and now the Re\ . 
 Charles Le Poer Trench, who, on account of his many severities, and 
 particularly of the said flogging of said AVinifred Hynes, was called in 
 the regiment by the name of 'skin him alive.'" I make no comment 
 for the present on the facts stated in this aflidavit, except tliai they 
 
22 INFORMATION AGAINST JENEAS m'dONNELL. 
 
 completely bear out the allegation of Mr. M'Donnell, and merely sub- 
 mit it to your consideration, whether that gentleman has, 'in this 
 transaction, at least, very greatly misrepresented this merciful teacher 
 of the word of God. But it may be said, that the conduct of Doctor 
 Trench was very essentially and amiably different, after entering into 
 holy orders — that notwithstanding the identity of person, no identity 
 of character existed between the adjutant and the archdeacon, and 
 that the doctor presented, in his subsequent demeanour, a christian and 
 interesting contrast. The following incident in the doctor's ecclesi- 
 astical life, which is stated by Mr. M'Donnell in his affidavit, throws 
 some light upon his disposition, and will enable the court to judge how 
 far he is right in his conceptions of himself, for he intimates that he 
 never was guilty of cruelty, and that he is a man of a veiy sensitive 
 and tender heart. Mr. M'Donnell states that he was informed by the 
 sub-sheriff of the county of Galway, that in the absence of the com- 
 mon executioner, when tlie sentence of whipping was to be executed 
 in the town of Loughrea upon two culprits, the archdeacon pro- 
 posed that he should take the lash into his own hands, and whip 
 the malefactoi-s through the principal streets in the town. It may, 
 perhaps, be said that the thing is incredible — that it is impossible that 
 any minister of religion should gratuitously offer to perform such an 
 ofHce. Perhaps it will be said that I liave no right to state any thing 
 upon the mere hearsay of INIr. M'Donnell. Well, be it so ; but Mr. 
 M'Nevin has made an affidavit. I repeat it — the sub-sheriff of the 
 county of Galway has sworn an affidavit in the following words : — 
 
 " Daniel M'Nevin, of Middle Gardiner-street, in the county of 
 Dublin, Esquire, maketh oath, and saith, that in the year one thousand 
 eight hundred and ten, deponent was acting sub-sheriff to Peter Blake, 
 of Corbally castle, in the county of Galway, Esquire, who .was high- 
 sheriif of said county, for said year; saith, that at the quarter sessions of 
 Louglirea, in the summer of said year, as deponent best recollects, two 
 tenants of the late Lord Clonbrock's were convicted of stealing a small 
 quantity of wool, and sentenced to be whipped, on a mai'ket-day, in 
 the town of Ballinasloe, from one extremity of said town to tlie other; 
 saith, on the day previous to the one appointed for putting the said 
 sentence into execution, deponent sent a man, accompanied by a mili- 
 tary party, for the purpose of executing said sentence, to Ballinasloe 
 aforesaid, from Loughrea, in said county, where deponent then resided, 
 but said man absconded in the course of the night out of the guard- 
 house, where he was with the prisoners, and when deponent ai'rived 
 at Ballinasloe, on the morning of the day on which the sentence was 
 to be carried into execution as aforesaid, deponent was much alarmed 
 
INFORMATION AGAINST iENEAS M'dONNELL. 23 
 
 at finding that he had not any person to perform the duty ; deponent 
 saith, he thereupon informed the prosecutor in the cause, of the man's 
 having so absconded, inasmuch as deponent saith the said prosecutor 
 liad presided with the barrister on the bench, at the sessions at which 
 the man had been so convicted and sentenced; deponent saitli, the said 
 prosecutor was very much displeased at deponent liaving informed him 
 that deponent had not then any person to flog the said prisoners, and 
 said prosecutor threatened this deponent with the consequences, alleg- 
 ing, that the said prosecutor would bring deponent's conduct in that 
 instance before the Court of King's Bench, and have deponent fined five 
 hundred pounds ; deponent saith, that thereupon deponent informed 
 said prosecutor he was ready and willing to pay any sum that could 
 in reason be demanded by any person for performing such duty, pro- 
 vided he, said pi'osecutor, who had influence in the town of Callinasloe, 
 could procure a person to do it, on which the said prosecutor proposed 
 to deponent to accompany him to the colonel of a regiment of cavalry, 
 then, quartered at Ballinasloe, who, prosecutor said, he had no doubt 
 would give a man for the purpose ; deponent saith, that accordingly 
 deponent did accompany the said prosecutor, to the colonel, when tho 
 prosecutor made the application, which said colonel indignantly refused 
 to comply with ; deponent saith, that thereupon the said prosecutor was 
 more provoked than before, and he again threatened deponent with 
 the Court of King's Bench, and the utmost rigour of the law, and de- 
 ponent being really afraid that said prosecutor Avould carry his threats 
 into execution, asked him what he could do to extricate himself from 
 the diflicult situation in which deponent was then placed, and that de- 
 ponent was willing to do any thing that could in reason be expected 
 from him, to which deponent positively saith, the said prosecutor dis- 
 tinctly replied to deponent in the words, * we Avill do the duty between 
 us; I will flog them from CulFs down to Custom-house-gap, if you will 
 flog them from that to Dr. Kell/s house ;' deponent saith, deponent 
 indignantly rejected the proposal so made to him ; deponent, with 
 the assistance of a friend, afterwards fortunately procured a person 
 to execute said sentence ; saith, the prosecutor accompanied tJiis de- 
 ponent, and walked after the car to which the criminals were tied, 
 between two files of soldiers, and deponent and said ijrosecutor had 
 proceeded a very few yards, when prosecutor found fault with the man, 
 for not inflicting the punishment with suflicieut severity; and at length 
 said prosecutor became so abusive to dei^onent on the same account, 
 that dci)onent was obliged to call in the officer commanding the mili- 
 tary attending on said occasion, to put said prosecutor out of the ranks; 
 
24 INFOKMATION AGAINST ;eNEAS m'dONNELL. 
 
 deponent furtlier saith, that deponent having been at the Earl of 
 Clancarty's some time previous to the day on which the aforesaid sen- 
 tence was to be put into execution, that deponent was invited by him, 
 the said Earl, to dine at Garbally on said day, but deponent, inconse- 
 quence of the conduct of the prosecutor, declined going to Garbally on 
 that day, as deponent could not think of dining in company with i\ 
 man who could treat him as the prosecutor had done." 
 
 Such is the aflidavit of Mr. IM'Nevin, and such is the Hon. and Rev. 
 Charles Le Poer Trench, archdeacon of Ardagh, who solicits a special 
 favor at your hands, and complains that the defendant, upon whom 
 he caused an outrage to be perpetrated, has represented him as a 
 ruthless man, whose character and whose conduct stand in frightful 
 contrast with the precepts of that gospel, of which he violates the first 
 ordinances, while he preaches its propagation. He was either serious 
 in tlie proposition made by him to Mr. M'Nevin or he was not. If 
 he intended to perform the part of a public executioner — if it was, 
 indeed, liis purpose to take tlie cat-o'-nine-tails into that hand with 
 which he distributes the saci-amental bread, and circulates the conse- 
 crated chalice, and to go through the process of bloody laceration, 
 what sort of heart must he carry in his bosom? And if he spoke in 
 jest ! what a sidyect for merriment in a minister of Christ ! Two 
 wretched men were to be flogged — they were to undergo a frightful 
 punishment, and upon their anticipated tortures, this teacher of the 
 gospel indulges in the spirit of truculent hilarity and of sanguinaiy 
 jest. But why should it be imagined that he was not serious in the 
 proposition, made to the sub-sheriff of Galway, who swears to the fact? 
 He gave proof of his sincerity in this tender of his services for the 
 acconnnodation of the sheriff, for he followed the cart, walked in 
 the procession of agony, gazed on the convulsions of the writhing 
 culprits, gloated, on their tortures, and refreshed himself with their 
 groans. Nor should we marvel at the part which was enacted by him : 
 he was the relapsed adjutant — covered with the surplice, while his 
 mind was in regimentals : there was, after all, in this transaction little 
 more than " a revival" of the emotions with which he had presided 
 over the tortures of a woman — had ordered her to be brought forth, 
 guarded by a file of soldiei's, and in the presence of the whole regiment, 
 caused her raiment to be torn from her back, and, woman as she was, 
 ordered her shift to be dragged off, until she stood naked to the waist; 
 saw her bound to the triangle — the scourge laid upon her quivering 
 
 .i\Qs\\ ^beheld her writhing and convulsive motions — heard her shrieks, 
 
 and did not cry out "hold, hold!" and now, with his hands yet 
 
INFORMATION AGAINST iENEAS m'dONNELL. 25 
 
 Stained witli the indelible and " damned spot" which the blood 
 spattered by the scourge has left upon them, he comes into this court 
 and asks for a criminal information. 
 
 My lords, you may condemn the defendant, for having, under the 
 influence of the resentful feelings, produced by the monstrous outrage 
 which was offered to him by the prosecutor, reverted to these incidents 
 in the life of Archdeacon Trench, but you are not to determine merely 
 whether the defendant is to be blamed, but whether the prosecutor has 
 purged himself of the offences imputed to him. I submit to you that 
 in the entire of the transactions out of which this prosecution has 
 arisen, Ai'chdeacon Trench has acted in such a way, that to the special 
 interference of the King's Bench he is without a claim. There is 
 another consideration wliich I venture to present to you. As it is entirely 
 matter of discretion with your lordships to grant or to Avithhold the 
 remedy for which the prosecutoi* has applied : the public interests arc 
 not to be excluded from your regard. Is it judicious of your lord- 
 ships to interfere in the contest which is now waging, not only between 
 these parties, but between two great religious factions in this country? 
 You do no wrong to the prosecutor by refusing him relief in a specific 
 form. He has still a remedy by indictment or by action. On grounds 
 of j)ublic policy, it is unwise that you should intermingle in this angry 
 contention, especially where the interposition of your lordships, instead 
 of allaying the popular passions, is calculated to excite them. Let it 
 not be said (as it Avill be said if you grant the inforaiation) that the 
 Court of King's Bench deliberately approved of the dispersion of an 
 assembly convened for the purjioscs of religion, by a military force — 
 that your lordships unnecessarily interfered in the fierce controversy 
 which is carried on with all the proverbial rancour of theological de- 
 testation, and that justice left her lofty scat to rush into the midst of a 
 polemical affray, not in order to separate the disputants, but to renovate 
 the combat. 
 
 [The Court made the conditional rule absolute, and afterwards 
 sentenced Mr. M'Donnell to 12 months' imprisonment. He was, how- 
 ever, discharged from prison by order of government some months be- 
 fore tlic expiration of the term of his sentence.] 
 
26 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 SPEECH MADE AT TOE CLAUE ELECTION rUECEDED BY AN ACCOUNT 
 
 OF THAT EVENT, WRITTEN BY MR. SHEIL IN SEPTEMBER, 1828. 
 
 The Catholics had passed a resolution to oppose the election of every 
 candidate who should not pledge himself against the Duke of "Welling- 
 ton's administration. Tliis measure lay for some time a dead letter in 
 the registry of the Association, and was gradually passing into oblivion, 
 when an incident occurred which gave it an importance far greater 
 than had originally belonged to it. Lord John Russell, flushed with 
 the victory which had been achieved in the repeal of the Test and 
 Corporation Acts, and grateful to the Duke of Wellington for the part 
 which he had taken, wrote a letter to Mr. O'Connell, in which he sug- 
 gested that the conduct of his Grace had been so fair and manly 
 towards the Dissenters, as to entitle him to their gratitude ; and that 
 they would consider the reversal of the resolution which had been 
 passed against his government, as evidence of the interest which was 
 felt in Ireland, not only in the great question peculiarly applicable to 
 that country, but in the assertion of religious freedom tlu-ough the em- 
 pire. The authority of Lord John Russell is considerable, and Mr. 
 O'Connell, under tho influence of Ids advice, proposed that the anti- 
 Wellington resolution should be withdrawn. This motion was violently 
 opposed, and Mr. O'Connell perceived that the antipathy to the Great 
 Captain was more deeply rooted than he had originally imagined. 
 After a long and tempestuous debate, he suggested an amendment, in 
 which the principle of his original motion was given up, and the Ca- 
 tholics remained pledged to their hostility to the Duke of Wellington's 
 administration. Mr. O'Connell has reason to rejoice at his failure in 
 carrying this proposition ; for if he had succeeded, no ground for op- 
 posing the return of Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald would have existed. 
 
 The promotion of that gentleman to a seat in the cabinet created a 
 vacancy in the representation of the county of Clare ; and an oppor- 
 tunity was afforded to the Roman Catholic body of proving, that the 
 resolution which had been passed against the Duke of Wellington's 
 government was not an idle vaunt, but that it could be carried in a 
 striking instance into effect. It was determined that all the power of 
 the people should be put forth. The Association looked round for a 
 candidate, and without having previously consulted him, selected 
 Major M'Namara. He is a Protestant in religion, a Catholic in poli- 
 tics, and a Milesian in descent. He was called upon to stand. Some 
 days elapsed and no answer was returned by him. The public mind 
 
CLARE ELECTION. 27 
 
 was thrown into suspense, and various conjectures went abroad as to 
 the cause of this singular omission. Some alleged that he was gone 
 to an island off the coast of Clare, where the px'oceedings of the Asso- 
 ciation had not reached him ; while others suggested that he was only 
 waiting until the clergy of the county should declare themselves more 
 unequivocally favourable to him. The latter, it was said, had evinced 
 much apathy ; and it was rumoured that Dean O'Shaughnessy, who is 
 a distant relative of Mr. Fitzgerald, had intimated a determination not 
 to support any anti-ministerial candidate. The major's silence, and 
 the doubts which were entertained with regai'd to the allegiance of 
 the priests, created a sort of panic at the Association. A meeting was 
 called, and various opinions were delivered as to the propriety of en- 
 gaging in a contest, the issue of which was considered exceedingly 
 doubtful, and in which, failure would be attended with such disastrous 
 consequences. Mr. O'Connell himself did not appear exceedingly 
 sanguine ; and Mr. Purcell O'Gorman, a native of Clare, and who 
 had a minute knowledge of the feelings of the people, expressed appre- 
 hensions. There were, however, two gentlemen, (O'Gorman Mahon 
 and Mr. Steele,) who strongly insisted that the people might be roused, 
 and that the priests were not as lukewarm as Was imagined. Upon 
 the zeal of Dean O'Shaughnessy, however, a good deal of question 
 was thrown. By a singular coincidence, just as his name was uttei'cd, 
 a gentleman entered, who, but for the peculiar locality, might have 
 been readily mistaken for a clergyman of the Established Church. 
 Between the priesthood of the two religions there are, in aspect and 
 demeanour, as well as in creed and discipline, several points of alRnity, 
 and the abstract sacerdotal character is readily perceptible in both. 
 Tlie parson, however, in his attitude and attire, presents the evidences 
 of superiority, and carries the mannerism of ascendency upon him. A 
 broad-brimmed hat, composed of the smoothest and blackest material, 
 and drawn by two silken threads into a fire-shovel configuration, a 
 felicitous adaptation of his jerkin to the symmetries of his chest and 
 shoulder, stockings of glossy silk, which displayed the happy propor- 
 tions of a swelling leg, a ruddy cheek, and a bright authoritative 
 eye, suggested, at first view, that the gentleman who had entered the 
 room while the merits of Dean O'Shaughnessy were under discussion, 
 must be a minister of the prosperous Christianity of the Established 
 Church. It was, however, no other than Dean O'Shaughnessy him- 
 self. He was received with a burst of applause, which indicated that, 
 Avhatcver surmises with respect to his fidelity had previously gone 
 out, his appearance before that tribunal was considered by the 
 assembly as a proof of his devotion to the public interest. The dean, 
 
28 CLAUE ELECTION. 
 
 liowever, made ti very sclioliistie sort of oi-ation, the gist of wliich it 
 was by no means easy to arrive at. lie denied that he had enlisted 
 himself under Mr. Fitzgerahl's banners, but at the same time studiously 
 avoided giving any sort of pledge. He did not state distinctly what 
 his opinion was with respect to the co-operation of the priests with the 
 Association ; and when he was pressed, begged to be allowed to with- 
 hold his sentiments on the subject. The Association were not, how- 
 ever, dismayed ; and it having been conjectured that the chief reason 
 for Major M'Namara having omitted to return an answer was con- 
 nected with pecuniary considerations, it was tlecided that so large a 
 sum as five tliousand pounds of the Catholic rent should be allocated 
 to the expenses of his election. O'Gorman Mahon and Mr. Steele 
 were directed to proceed at once to Clare, in order that they might 
 have a personal interview with him ; and they immediately set olf. 
 After an absence of two days, O'Gorman ISIahon returned, having left 
 his colleague behind in order to arouse the people ; and he at length 
 conveyed certain intelligence with respect to the Major's determina- 
 tion. The obligations under which his family lay to IVIr. Fitzgerald 
 were such, that he was bound in honour not to oppose him. This in- 
 fonuation produced a feeling of deep disappointment among the Ca- 
 tholic body, while the Protestant party exulted in his appai-cnt deser- 
 tion of the cause, and boasted that no gentleman of the county would 
 stoop so low as to accept of the patronage of the Association. In this 
 emergency, and when it was universally regarded as an utterly liope- 
 less attempt to oppose the cabinet minister, the public were astonished 
 by an address from Mr. O'Conncll to the freeholders of Clare, in which 
 he offered himself as a candidate, and solicited their support. 
 
 Nothing but his subsequent success could exceed the sensation wliich 
 was produced by this address, and all eyes were turned towards tlie 
 field in which so remarkable a contest was to be waged. The two 
 candidates entered the lists with signal advantages ui)on both sides. 
 Mr. O'Connell had an unparalleled popularity, which the services of 
 thirty years had secured to him. Upon the other hand, Mr. Vesey 
 Fitzgerald presented a combination of favourable circumstances, which 
 rendered the issue exceedingly difficult to calculate. His father had 
 held the office of prime sergeant at the Irish bar ; and, although in- 
 debted to the government for his promotion, had the virtuous intre- 
 pidity to vote against the Union. This example of independence had 
 rendered him a gi'cat favourite with the people. From the moment 
 that his son had obtained access to power, he had employed his exten- 
 sive influence in doing acts of kindness to the gentry of the county of 
 Clare, lie had inundated it with the ovcrllowings of ministerial 
 
CLARE ELECTION. 29 
 
 bounly. The eldest sons of the poorer gentlemen, and the younger 
 branches of the aristocracy, had been provided for through his means ; 
 and in the army, the navy, the treasury, the Four Courts, and the 
 Custom House, the proofs of his political iriendship were everywhere 
 to be found. Independently of any act of bis wliich could be referred 
 to his personal interest, and his anxiety to keep up his inllucnce in the 
 county, Mr. Fitzgerald, who is a man of a very amiable disposition, 
 had conferred many services upon his Clare constituents. Nor was it 
 to Protestants that these manifestations of favour were conflned. He 
 had laid not only the Catholic proprietors, but the Catholic priesthood, 
 under obligation. The bishop of the diocess himself, (a respectable 
 old gentleman who drives about in a gig with a mitre upon it,) is sup- 
 jjosed not to have escaped from his bounties ; and it is more than in- 
 sinuated that some droppings of ministerial manna had fallen upon 
 him. The consequence of this systematized and uniform plan of bene- 
 faction is obvious. The sense of favour was heightened by the man- 
 ners of this extensive distributor of the favours of the crown, and 
 converted the ordinary feeling of thankfulness into one of personal re- 
 gard. To this array of veiy favourable circumstances, JNIr. Fitzgerald 
 brought the additional influence arising from his recent promotion 
 to the cabinet ; which, to those Avho had former benefits to return, 
 aHin-dcd an opi)ortuuity for the exercise of that kind of prospectivo 
 gratitude which has been described to consist of a lively sense of ser- 
 vices to come. These were the comparative advantages witli which 
 the ministerial and the popular candidate engaged in this celebrated 
 contest ; and Ireland stood by to witness the encotmter. 
 
 Mr. O'Connell did not immediately set off from Dublin, but before 
 his departure several gentlemen were despatched from the association 
 in order to excite the minds of the people, and to prepare the way for 
 him. The most active and useful of the persons who were employed 
 upon this occasion, were the two gentlemen to whom I have already 
 referred, ]Mr. Steele and O'Gorman Mahon. They are both deserving 
 of special commendation. Tiie former is a Protestant of a respectable 
 fortune in the county of Clare, and who has all his life been devoted 
 to the assertion of liberal principles. In Trinity College, he was 
 amongst the foremost of the advocates of emancipation, and at that 
 early period became the intimate associate of many Roman Catholic 
 gentlemen who have since distinguished themselves in the proceedings 
 of their body. Being a man of independent circumstances, Mr. Steele 
 did not devote himself to any profession, and having a zealous and 
 active mind, looked round for occupation. The Spanish war af- 
 forded him a Held for the display of that generous enthusiasm by 
 
30 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 which he is distinguished. He joined the patriot army, and fought 
 with a desperate valour upon the batteries of the Trocadero. It was 
 only when Cadiz had surrendered, and the cause of Spain became 
 utterly ho^xiless, that Mr. Steele relinquished this noble undertaking. 
 He returned to England, surrounded by exiles from the unfortunate 
 country, for the liberation of which he had repeatedly exposed his 
 life. It was impossible for a man of so much energy of character to 
 remain in torpor ; and on his arrival in Ireland, faithful to the prin- 
 ciples by which he had been uniformly swayed, he joined the Ca- 
 tholic Association. There he delivered several enthusiastic decla- 
 mations in favour of religious liberty. Such a man, however, 
 was fitted for action as well as for harangue ; and the moment the 
 contest in Clare began, he threw himself into the combat with the 
 same alacrity with which he had rushed upon the French bayonets at 
 Cadiz. He was sei'viceable in various ways. He opened the political 
 campaign by intimating his readiness to fight any landlord Avho should 
 conceive himself to be aggrieved by an interference with his tenants. 
 This was a very impressive exordium. He then proceeded to canvass 
 for votes ; and, assisted by his intimate friend O'Gorman Mahon, 
 travelled through the country, and, both by day and night, addressed 
 the people from the altars round which they were assembled to hear 
 him. It is no exaggeration to say, that to him, and to his intrepid 
 and indefatigable confederate, the success of Mr. O'Connell is greatly 
 to be ascribed. O'Gorman Mahon is inti'oduced into this article as 
 one amongst many figures. He would deserve to stand apart in a 
 portrait. Nature has been peculiai-ly favourable to him. He has a 
 very striking physiognomy, of the Coi'sair character, which the Pi*o- 
 testant Gulnares, and the Catholic Medoras, find it equally difficult to 
 resist. His figure is tall, and he is peculiarly free and degage in all 
 his attitudes and movements. In any other liis attire would appear 
 singularly fantastical. His manners are exceedingly frank and na- 
 tural, and have a character of kindliness as well as of self-reliance 
 imprinted upon them. He is wholly free from embarrassment, 
 and carries a well-founded consciousness of his personal merit ; 
 which is, however, so well united with urbanity, that it is not in 
 the slightest degree offensive. His talents as a popular speaker 
 are considerable. He derives from external qualifications an in- 
 fluence over the multitude, which men of diminutive stature are 
 somewhat slow in obtaining. A small man is at first view regarded 
 by the great body of spectators with disrelish ; and it is only by force 
 of phrase, and by the charm of speech, that he can at length suc- 
 ceed in inducing his auditors to overlook any infelicity of configura- 
 
CLARE ELECTION. 31 
 
 tion ; but when O'Gorman ]\Ialiou throws Iiimself out before the 
 people, and, touching his wliiskex'S with one hand, brandishes the 
 other, an enthusiasm is at once produced, to whicli the fair portion of 
 the spectators loud their tender contribution. »Such a man was 
 exactly adapted to the excitement of the people of Clare ; and it must 
 be admitted that, by his indefatigable exertions, his unremitting acti- 
 vity, and his devoted zeal, he most materially assisted in the election 
 of Mr. O'Connell. While Mr. Steele and O'Gorman Mahon harangued 
 the people in one district, Mr. Lawless, who was also despatched upon 
 a similar mission, applied his faculties of excitation in another. This 
 gentleman has obtained deserved celebrity by his being abitost the 
 only individual among the Irish deputies who remonstrated against 
 the sacrifice of the rights of the forty-shilling freeholders. Ever since 
 tliat period he has been eminently popular ; and although he may 
 occasional!}', by ebullitions of ill-rcgidated but generous enthusiasm, 
 create a little merriment amongst those whose minds arc not as sus- 
 ceptible of patriotic and disinterested emotion as his o-vvn, yet the 
 conviction which is entertained of his honesty of purpose, confers upon 
 him a considerable influence. " Honest Jack Lawless" is the desig- 
 nation by which he has been known since the "wings" were in dis- 
 cussion, lie has many distinguished qualifications as a public speaker. 
 His voice is deep, round, and mellow, and is diversifieil by a great 
 variety of rich and harmonious intonation. His action is exceedingly 
 graceful and appropriate : he has a good figure, which, by a purposed 
 swell and dilation of the shoulders, and an elaborate ereetness, he 
 turns to good account ; and by dint of an easy fluency of good diction, 
 a solemn visage, an aquiline nose of no vulgar dimension, eyes glaring 
 underneath a shaggy brow with a certain fierceness of expression, a 
 quizzing-glass, which is gracefully dangled in any pauses of thought 
 or suspensions of utterance, and, above all, by a certain attitude of 
 dignity, which he assumes in the crisis of eloquence, accompanied 
 with a flinging back of his coat, which sets his periods beautifully off, 
 " Honest Jack" has become one of the most popular and eflicient 
 speakers at the Association. Shortly after Mr. Lawless had been 
 despatched, a great reinforcement to the oratorical corps was sent 
 down in the })erson of the celebrated Father Maguire, or, as he is 
 habitually designated, " Father Tom." This gentleman had been 
 for some time a parish priest in the county of Leitrira. He lived in a 
 remote parish, where his talents were unappreciated. Some accident 
 brought Mr. Pope, the itinerant controversialist, into contact with 
 him. A challenge to defend the doctrines of his religion was ten- 
 dered by the wandering disputant to the priest, and the latter at once 
 
32 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 accepted it. ]\faguire had given no prcvions proof of his abilities, 
 and the Catholic l)ody regretted the encounter. The parties met in 
 this strange duel of tlieology. The interest created by their encounter 
 was prodigious. Not only the room where their debates were carried 
 on was crowded, but the whole of Sackville-street, where it was 
 situated, was thronged with population. Pope brought to the combat 
 great fluency, and a powerful declamation. Maguire was a master of 
 scholastic logic. After several days of controversy, Pope was over- 
 thrown, and " Father Tom," as the champion of orthodoxy, became 
 the object of popular adoration. A base conspiracy was got up to 
 destroy his moral character, and by its fiiilure raised him in the aifec- 
 tion of the multitude. He had been \uider great obligations to Mr. 
 O'Connell, for liis exertions upon his trial ; and from a just sentiment 
 of gratitude, he tendered his services in Clare. His name alone was 
 of great value ; and when his coming was announced, the people 
 everywhere rushed forward to hail the vindicator of the national 
 religion. He threw fresh ingredients into the caldron, and contri- 
 buted to impart to the contest that strong religious character which 
 it is not the fault of the Association, but of the government, that 
 every contest of the kind must assume. "Father Tom" was em- 
 ployed upon a remarkable exploit. INIr. Augustine Butler, the lineal 
 descendant of the celebrated Sir Toby Butler, is a proprietor in Clare: 
 he is a liberal Protestant, but supported Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald — 
 " Father Tom" proceeded from the town of Ennis to the county 
 chapel where Mr. Butler's freeholders were assembled, in order to 
 address them ; and Mr. Butler, with an intrepidity which did him 
 credit, went forward to meet him. It was a singular encounter in the 
 house of God. The Protestant landlord called upon his freeholders 
 not to desert him. " Father Tom" rose to address them in behalf of 
 Mr. O'Connell. He is not greatly gifted with a command of deco- 
 rated phi-aseology ; but he is master of vigorous language, and has a 
 power of strong and simple reasoning, which is equally intelligible to 
 all classes. He employs the syllogism of the schools as his chief 
 weapon in argument ; but uses it with such dexterity, that his audi- 
 tors of the humblest class can follow him without being aware of the 
 technical expedient by which he masters the understanding. His manner 
 is peculiar : it is not flowery, nor declamatory, but is short, somewhat 
 abrupt, and, to use the French phrase, is " tranchant." His countenance 
 is adapted to his mind, and is expressive of the reasoning and contro- 
 versial faculties. A quick blue eye, a nose slightly turned up, a strong 
 brow, a complexion of mountain ruddiness, and thick lips, which are 
 better formed for rude disdain than for polished sarcasm, are his cha- 
 
CLARE ELECTION. 33 
 
 ractcristics. He assailed Mi-. Butler with all his powers, and o"verthrew 
 him. The topic to which he addressed himself, was one which was 
 not only calculated to move the tenants of ]\[r. Butler, but to stir Mr. 
 Butler himself. He appealed to the memory of his celebrated Catholic 
 ancestor, of which Mr. Butler is justly proud. He stated, that what 
 Sir Toby Butler had been, Mr. O'Connell was ; and he adjured him 
 not to stand up in opposition to an individual, whom he was bound to 
 sustain by a sort of hereditary obligation. His appeal carried the 
 freeholders away, and one hundred and fifty votes were secured to 
 Mr. O'Connell. Mr. Maguire was seconded in this achievement by 
 Mr. Dominick Ronayne, a barrister of the Association, of considerable 
 talents, and who not only speaks the English language with eloquence, 
 but is master of the Irish tongue ; and, throwing an educated mind 
 into tlie powerful idiom of the country, wrought with uncommon 
 power upon the passions of the people. 
 
 Mr. Sheil was employed as counsel for Mr. O'Connell before the 
 assessor ; but proceeded to the county Clare the day before the 
 election commenced. On his arrival, he understood that an exertion 
 was re([uired in the parish of Corofin, which is situate upon the estate 
 of Sir Edward O'Brien, who had given all his interest to Mr. Vesey 
 Fitzgerald. Sir Edward is the most opulent resident landlord in the 
 county. In the parish of Corofin he had no less than three hundred 
 votes ; and it was supposed that his freeholders would go with hirn. 
 Mr. Sheil determined to assail him in the citadel of his strength, and 
 proceeded upon the Sunday before the poll commenced to the chapel 
 of Corofin. Sir Edward O'Brien having learned that this agitator 
 intended this trespass upon his authority, resolved to anticipate him, 
 and set olf in his splendid equipage, drawn by four horses, to the 
 mountains in which Corofin is situated. The whole population came 
 down from their residences in the rocks, which are in the vicinity of 
 the town of Ennis, and advanced in large bands, waving green boughs, 
 and preceded by fifes and pipers, upon the road. Their landlord wasmet 
 by them on his way. They passed him by in silence, while they hailed 
 his antagonist with shouts of applause, and attended him in triumph to 
 the chapel. Sir Edward O'Brien lost his resolution at this S])ectacle ; and 
 feeling that he could have no influence in such a state of excitation, 
 instead of going to the house of Catholic worship, proceeded to the 
 church of Corofin. He left his carriage exactly opposite the doors of 
 the chapel, which is immediately contiguous, and thus reminded the 
 people of his Protestantism, by a circumstance of which, of course, 
 advantage was instantaneously taken. Mr. Sheil arrived with a vast 
 multitude of attendants at the chapel, which was crowded with a 
 1) 
 
34 CLAllE ELECTION. 
 
 people, who had flocked from all quarters ; — ^there a singular scene 
 took place. Father Murphy, the parish priest, came to the entrance of 
 the chapel dressed in his surplice. When he appeared, the multitude 
 fell back at his command, and arranged themselves on either side, so 
 as to form a lane for the reception of the agitator. Deep silence was 
 imposed upon the people by the priest, who had a voice of subterra- 
 neous thunder, and appeared to hold them in absolute dominion. 
 When Mr. Slieil had reached tlie threshold of the chapel. Father 
 Murphy stretclu d forth his hand, and Avclcomed him to the perform- 
 ance of the good work. The figure and attitude of the priest were 
 remarkable. My English reader draws his ordinary notion of a 
 Catholic clergyman from the caricatures which are contained in novels, 
 or represented in comedies upon the stage ; but the Irish priest, who has 
 lately become a politician and a scholar, has not a touch of Foigardism 
 about him; and an artist would have found in Father INIurphy rather a 
 study for the enthusiastic Macbriar, who is so powerfully delineated in 
 "Old Mortality," than a realization of the familiar notions of a clergy- 
 man of the Church of Rome. Surrounded by a dense multitude, 
 whom he had hushed into profound silence, he presented a most imposing 
 object. His form is tall, slender, and emaciated ; but was enveloped in 
 his long robes, that gave him a peculiarly sacerdotal aspect. The hand 
 which he stretched forth was ample, but worn to a skinny meagritude. 
 His face was long, sunken, and cadaverous, but was illuminated by eyes 
 blazing with all the fire of genius and the enthusiasm of religion. His 
 lank black hair fell down his temples, and eyebrows of the same colour 
 stretched in thick straight lines along a lofty forehead, and threw over 
 the whole countenance a deep shadow. The sun was shining with 
 brilliancy, and rendered his figure, attired as it was in white gar- 
 ments, more conspicuous. The scenery about him was in harmony; — 
 it was wild and desolate, and crags, with scarce a blade of verdure 
 shooting through their crevices, rose everywhere around him. The 
 interior of the chapel, at the entrance of which he stood, was visible. 
 It was a large pile of building, consisting of liare walls, rudely thrown 
 up, with a floor of clay, and at tlie extremity stood an altar made of 
 a few boards clumsily put together. 
 
 It was on the threshold of this mountain temple that the envoy of 
 the Association was hailed with a solemn greeting. The pi'iest pro- 
 ceeded to the altar, and commanded the people to abstain, during the 
 divine ceremony, from all political thinking or occupation. He recited 
 the mass with gi'eat fervency and simplicity of manner, antl with all 
 the evidences of unaffected piety. However familiar from daily re- 
 petition with the ritual, he pronounced it with a just emphasis, and 
 
CLAKE ELECTION. 35 
 
 went through the various forms which are incidental to it with sin- 
 gular propriety and grace. The people were deeply attentive; and it 
 was observable that most of them could read, for they had prayer-books 
 in their hands which they read with a quiet devotion. Mass being 
 finished, Father Murphy threw his vestments off, and, without laying 
 down the priest, assumed the politician. He addressed the people in 
 Irish, and called upon them to vote for O'Connell in the name of their 
 country and of their religion. 
 
 It was a most extraordinary and powerful display of the externals of 
 eloquence, and as far as a person unacquainted with the language could 
 form an estimate of the matter by the effects produced upon the au- 
 ditory, must have been pregnant with genuine oratory. It wiU be 
 supposed that tliia singular piicst addressed liia parishioners in tones 
 and gestures as rude as the wild dialect to wliich he was giving utte- 
 rance. His actions and attitudes were as graceful as those of an accom- 
 plished actor, and his intonations were soft, pathetic, denunciatory, and 
 conjuring, according as his theme varied, and as he had recourse to 
 different expedients to influence the people. The general character of 
 this strange harangue was impassioned and solemn, but he occasionally 
 had recourse to ridicule, and liis countenance at once adapted itself with 
 a liappy readiness to derision. The finest spirit of sarcasm gleamed over 
 his features, and shouts of laughter attended his description of a miser- 
 able Catholic who should prove recreant to the great cause, by making a 
 sacrifice of liis country to his landlord. The close of his speech was pe- 
 culiarly effective. He became inflamed by the power of his emotions, and 
 while he raised himself into the loftiest attitude to which he could 
 ascend, he laid one hand on the altar, and shook the other in the spirit 
 of almost prophetic admonition, and while his eyes blazed and seemed 
 to start from his forehead, thick drops fell down his face, and his voice 
 rolled through lips livid with passion andcovered with foam. It is almost 
 unnecessary to say that such an appeal was irresistible. The multi- 
 tude burst into shouts of acclamation, and would have been ready to 
 mount a battery roaring with cannon at his command. Two days 
 after the results were felt at the hustings ; and while Sir Edward 
 O'Brien stood aghast, Father Murphy marched into Ennis at the head 
 of his tenantry, and polled them to a man in favour of Daniel O'Con- 
 nell. But I am anticipating. 
 
 The notion wliich had gone abroad in Dublin that the jiriests 
 were lukewarm, was utterly unfounded. Witli the exception of 
 Dean O'Shaughnessy, wlio is a relative of Mr. Fitzgerald (and for 
 wliom there is perhaps much excuse), and a Father Coffey, who 
 has since been deserted by his congregation, there was scarcely 
 
36 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 a clergyman in the county who did not use his utmost influence 
 over tlie peasantry. On the day on which Mr. O'Connell arrived, 
 you met a priest in every street, who assured you that the battle 
 should be won, and pledged himself that '' the man of the people" 
 should be returned. " The man of the people" arrived in the midst 
 of the loudest acclamations. Near thirty thousand people Avcre 
 crowded into the streets of Ennis, and were unceasing in their 
 shouts. Banners were suspended from every window ; and women of 
 great beauty were everyivhere seen waving handkerchiefs with the 
 figure of the patriot stamped upon them. Processions of freeholders, 
 with their parish priests at their head, marched like troops to 
 different quarters of the city ; and it was remarkable that not a single 
 individual was intoxicated. The most perfect order and regularity 
 prevailed ; and the large bodies of police which had been collected in 
 the town stood without occupation. These were evidences of orga- 
 nization, from which it was easy to conjecture the result. 
 
 The election opened, and the court-house in which the sheriff read 
 the writ presented a new and striking scene. On the left hand of 
 the sheriff stood a cabinet minister, attended by the whole body of 
 the aristocracy of the county of Clare. Their appearance indicated at 
 once their superior rank and their profomid n\ortification. An expi-es- 
 sion of bitterness and of wounded pride was stami)cd in various modi- 
 fications of resentment upon their countenances ; while others, who 
 were in the interest of Mr. Fitzgerald, and who were small Protestant 
 proprietors, affected to look big and important, and swelled themselves 
 into gentry upon the credit of voting for the ntinister. On the right 
 hand of the sheriff stood Mr. O'Connell, with scarcely a single gentle- 
 man by his side ; for most even of the Catholic proprietors had aban- 
 doned him, and joined the ministerial candidate. But the body of 
 the court presented the power of IMr. O'Connell in a mass of deter- 
 mined peasants, amongst whom black coats and sacerdotal visages were 
 seen felicitously intermixed, outside the balustrade of the gallery on 
 the left hand of the sheriff. Before the business began, a gentleman 
 was observed on whom every eye was turned. He had indeed chosen 
 a most singular position ; for instead of sitting like the other auditors 
 on the seats in the gallery, he leaped over it, and, suspending himself 
 above the crowd, afforded what was an object of wonder to tlie great 
 body of the spectators, and of indignation to the high sherilf. The 
 attire of the individual who was thus perched in this dangerous posi- 
 tion was sulhciently strange. He had a coat of Irish tabinet, with 
 glossy trowsers of the same national material ; he wore no waist- 
 coat ; a blue shirt lined with sti'eaks of white was open at his neck ; 
 
CLARE KLECTION. 37 
 
 a broad green sash, with a medal of " tlie order of Liberators" at 
 the end of it, hung conspicuously over his breast ; and a profusion of 
 black curls, curiously festooned about his temples, shadowed a very 
 handsome and expressive countenance, a great part of which was 
 occupied by whiskers of a bushy amplitude. " Who, Sir, are you ?" 
 exclaimed the high sheriff, in a tone of imperious solemnity, which 
 he had acquired at Canton, where he had long resided in the service 
 of the East India Company, But I must pause here — and even at th6 
 hazard of breaking the regular thread of the nai-ration, I cannot re- 
 sist the temptation of describing the high sheriff. When he stood 
 up with his wand of office, the contrast between him and the aerial 
 gentleman whom he Avas addressing was to the highest degree 
 ludicrous. Of the latter some conception has already been given^ He 
 looked a chivalrous dandy, who, under the most fantastical apparel, 
 carried the spirit and intrepidity of an exceedingly fine fellow. Mr. 
 high sheriff had, at an early period of his life, left his native county 
 of Clare, and had migrated to China, where, if I may judge from his 
 manners and demeanour, he must have been in immediate communi- 
 cation with a mandarin of the first class, and made a Chinese func- 
 tionary his favourite model. I should conjecture that he must long 
 have presided over the packing of Bohea, and that some tincture of 
 that agreeable vegetable had been infused into his complexion. An 
 oriental sedatcness and gravity are spread over a countenance upon 
 which a smile seldom presumes to trespass. He gives utterance to in- 
 tonations which were originally contracted in the East, but have been 
 since melodized by his religious habits into a puritanical chant in Ire- 
 land. The Chinese language is monosyllabic, and Mr. Molony has 
 extended its character to the English tongue; for he breaks all his 
 words into separate and elaborate divisions, to each of which he be- 
 stows a due quantity of deliberate intonation. Upon arriving in Ire- 
 land he addicted himself to godliness, having previously made great 
 gains in China, and he has so contrived as to impart the cadences of 
 Wesley to the accentuation of Confucius. 
 
 Such was the aspect of the great public functionary, who, rising 
 with a [)ccullar magistcriality of altitude, and stretching forth the em- 
 blem of his power, inquired of the gentleman who was suspended from 
 the gallery who he was. — " My name is O'Gorman IMahon," was the 
 reply, delivered with a firmness which clearly showed that the person 
 who had conveyed tliis piece of intelligence thought very little of a 
 high sheriff and a great deal of O'Gorman IMahon. The sheriff had 
 been offended by the general appearance of Mr. Mahon, who had dis- 
 tracted the public attention from his own contemplation ; but he was 
 particularly iiiilalcd by observing (he insurgent symbol of" the order 
 
38 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 of Liberators" dangling at his breast. " I tell that gentleman," said 
 Mr. Molony, " to take off that badge." There was a moment's pause, 
 and then the following answer was slowly and articulately pro- 
 nounced : — " This gentleman (laying his hand on his breast) tells that 
 gentleman (pointing with the other to the sheriff), that if that gentle- 
 man presumes to touch this gentleman, that this gentleman will defend 
 himself against that gentleman, or any other gentleman, while he has 
 got the ai-m of a gentleman to protect him." This extraordinary sen- 
 tence was followed by a loud burst of applause from all parts of the 
 coui-t-house. The high sheriff looked aghast. The expression of self- 
 satisfiiction and magisterial complacency passed off of his visage, and 
 he looked utterly blank and dejected. After an interval of irresolution 
 down he sat. " The soul" of O'Gorman INIahon (to use Curran's expres- 
 sion) "walked forth in its own majesty;" he looked "redeemed, regene- 
 rated, and disenthralled." The medal of "the order of Liberators" was 
 pressed to his heart. O'Connell surveyed him with gratitude and ad- 
 miration ; and the first blow was struck, which sent dismay into the 
 heart of the party of which the sheriff was considered to be an adherent. 
 This was the opening incident of this novel drama. "When the sen- 
 sation which it had created had in some degree subsided, the business 
 of the day went on. Sir Edward O'Brien proposed Mi-. Vesey Fitz- 
 gerald as a proper person to serve in parliament. Sir Edward had 
 upon former occasions been the vehement antagonist of Mr. Fitzgerald, 
 and in one instance a regular battle had been fought between the te- 
 nantry of both parties. It was supposed that this feud had left some 
 acrimonious feelings which were not quite extinct behind, and many 
 conjectured that the zeal of Sir Edward in favour of his competitor 
 was a little feigned. This notion was confirmed by the circumstance 
 that Sir Edward O'Brien's son (the member for Ennis)* had subscribed 
 to the Catholic I'ent, was a member of the Association, and had re- 
 cently made a vigorous speech in parliament in defence of that body. 
 It is, however, probable that the feudal pride of Sir Edward O'Brien, 
 which was deeply mortified by the defection of his vassals, absorbed 
 every other feeling, and that, however indifferent he might have been 
 on Mr. Fitzgerald's account, yet that he was exceedingly irritated 
 upon liis own. lie appeared at least to be profoundly moved, and had 
 not spoken above a few minutes when tears fell from his eyes. He 
 has a strong Irish character impressed upon him. It is said that 
 he is lineally descended from Brian Boirumhe. He is squat, bluff, 
 and impassioned. An expression of good nature, rather than of 
 good humour, is mixed up with a certain rough consciousness of 
 
 •William Smith O'Brien, the present member for Limerick Ed. 
 
CLAUE ELECTION. 39 
 
 his own dignity, which in his most familiar moments he never 
 lays aside, for the Milesian predominates in his demeanour, and his 
 royal recollections wait perpetually upon him. He is a great favourite 
 with the people, who arc attached to the descendants of the ancient 
 indigenous families of the county, and Avho see in Sir Edward O'Brien 
 a good landlord, as weU as the representative of Brian Boirumhe. I was 
 not a little astonished at seeing him weep upon the hustings. It was, 
 however, observed to me, that he is given to the " melting mood," al- 
 though his tears do not fall like the gum of " the Arabian tree." In 
 the House of Commons he once produced a great effect by bursting 
 into tears, while he described the misery of the people of Clare, al- 
 though, at the same time, )iis gianarics Avero full. It was said that his 
 hustings' pathos was of the same quality, and arose from the peculiar 
 susceptibility of the lacrymatory nerves, and not from any very nice 
 fibres about the heart: still I am convinced that his emotion was ge- 
 nuine, and that he was profoundly touched. He complained that he 
 had been deserted by his tenants, although he had deserved well at 
 their hands ; and exclaimed that the country was not one fit for a gen- 
 tleman to reside in, Avhen property lost all its influence, and things were 
 brought to such a pass. The motion was seconded by Sir A. Fitzgerald 
 in a few words. Mr. Gore, a gentleman of very large estate, took 
 occasion to deliver liis opinions in favour of Mr. Fitzgerald ; and 
 O'Gorman Mahon and Mr. Steele proposed Mr. O'ConneU. It then 
 fell to the rival candidates to speak, and Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, having 
 been first put in nomination, first addressed the freeholders. He seemed 
 to me to bo about five and forty years of age, his hair being sliglitly 
 marked with a little edging of scarcely i)erccptible silver, but the care 
 with which it was distributed and arranged, showed that the cabinet 
 minister had not yet entirely dismissed his Lothario recollections. I 
 had heard, before I had even seen Mr. Fitzgerald, that he was in great 
 favour with the Calistas at Almack's ; and I was not surprised at it, 
 on a minute inspection of his aspect and deportment. It is not that 
 he is a handsome man, (though he is far from being the reverse), but 
 that there is an air of blended sweetness and assurance, of easy intre- 
 pidity and gentle gracefulness about him, which are considered to be 
 eminently winning. His countenance, though too fully circular, and 
 a little tinctured with vei'milion, is agreeable. The eyes are of bright 
 hazel, and have an ex[)ression of ever earnest frankness, which an acute 
 observer might suspect, while his mouth is fidl of a strenuous solici- 
 tude to please. The moment he rose, I perceived that he was an 
 accomplished gentleman ; and Avhen I had heard him utter a few sen- 
 tences, I Avas satisfied that he Avas a most accomplished speaker. He 
 
40 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 delivered one of the most effective and dexterous speeches which it 
 has ever been my good fortune to hear. There were evident marks 
 of deep pain and of fear to be traced in his features, which were not 
 free from the haggardness of many an anxious vigil ; but though he 
 was manifestly mortified in the extreme, he studiously refrained from 
 all exasperating sentiment or expression. lie spoke at first with a 
 graceful melancholy, rather than a tone of impassioned adjuration. He 
 intimated tliat it was rather a measure of rigoi-ous, if not unjustifiable 
 policy, to display the power of the Association in throwing an indivi- 
 dual out of parliament who had been tlie warm and uniform advocate 
 of the Catholic cause during his whole political life. He enumerated 
 the instances in which he had exerted himself in behalf of that body 
 which were now dealing witli him with such severity, and refer- 
 red to his sei-vices with regard to the college of Maynooth. The 
 part of his spepcTi which was most powerful, relatetl to his father. The 
 latter had opi^d^ed the Union, and had many claims upon the national 
 gratitude. The topic was one which required to be most delicately 
 touched, and no orator could treat it with a more exquisite nicety than 
 Mr. Fitzgerald. He became, as he advanced, and the recollection of 
 his father pressed itself more immediately upon his mind, more impas- 
 sioned. At the moment he was speaking, his father, to whom he is 
 most tenderly attached, and by whom he is most beloved, was lying 
 upon a bed from whence it was believed that he would never rise, and 
 efforts had been made to conceal from the old man the contest in which 
 his son was involved. It was impossible to mistake genuine grief, and 
 when Mr. Fitzgerald paused for an instant, and turning away, wiped 
 off the tears that came gushing into his eyes, he won the sympa- 
 thies of every one about him. Tlicre were few wlio did not give the 
 same evidence of emotion ; and when he sat down, although the great 
 majority of the audience were strongly opposed to him, and were en- 
 thusiasts in favour of the rival candidate, a loud and unanimous bui'st 
 of acclamation shook the court-house. 
 
 Mr. O'Connell rose to address the people in reply. It was manifest 
 that he considered a great exertion to be requisite in order to do away 
 the impression which his antagonist had produced. It was clear that 
 he Avas collecting all his might, to those who were acquainted with the 
 workings of his physiognomy. Mr. O'Connell bore Mr. Fitzgerald no 
 sort of personal aversion, but he determined, in this exigency, to have 
 little mercy on his feelings, and to employ all the power of vitupera- 
 tion of which he was possessed, against him. This was absolutely 
 necessary ; for if mere dexterous fencing had Ijcen resorted to by Mr. 
 O'Connell, many might liave gone away with the opinion that, after 
 
CLARE ELECTION. 41 
 
 nil, Mr. Fitzgerald had been thanklessly treated by the Catholic body. 
 It was therefore disagreeably requisite to render him, for the moment, 
 odious. Mr. O'Connell began by awakening the passions of the mul- 
 titude in an attack on Mr. Fitzgerald's allies. Mr. Gore had lauded 
 him highly. This Mr. Gore is of Cromwellian descent, and the peo- 
 ple detest the memory of the protector to this day. There is a tradition 
 (I knoAV not whether it has the least foundation) that the ancestor of this 
 gentleman's family Avas a nailor by trade in the Puritan army. Mr. 
 O'Connell, without any direct reference to the fact, used a set of meta- 
 phors, such as " striking the nail on the head," — " putting a nail into 
 a coffin," which at once recalled the associations which were attached 
 to the name of Mr. Gore ; and roars of laughter assailed that gentle- 
 man on every side. Mr. Gore has the character of being not only 
 very opulent, but of bcaiing regard to his possessions proportioned to 
 their extent. Nothing is so unpopular as prudence in Ireland; and 
 Mr. O'Connell rallied JNIr. Gore to such a point upon this head, and 
 that of his supposed origin, that the latter completely sunk under the 
 attack. lie next proceeded to INIr. Fitzgerald, and, having drawn a 
 pictui-e of the late Mr. Perceval, he turned round and asked of the 
 rival candidate, with wliat face he could call liimself their friend, when 
 the first act of his ])olitical life was to enlist himself under the banners 
 of " the bloody Perceval." This epithet (whether it be well or ill de- 
 served is not the question) was sent into the hearts of the people with a 
 force of expression, and a furious vehemence of voice, that created a 
 great sensation amongst the crowd, and turned the tide against Mr. 
 Fitzgerald. " This too," said Mr. O'Connell, " is the friend of Peel — 
 the bloody Perceval, and the candid and manly Mr. Peel — and he is 
 our friend ! and he is every body's friend ! The friend of the Catholic 
 was the friend of the bloody Perceval, and is the friend of the candid 
 and manly Mr. Peel !" 
 
 It is unnecessary to go through Mr. O'Connell's speech. It was 
 stamped with aU his powerful characteristics, and galled Mr. Fitzge- 
 rald to the core. Tliat gentleman frequently muttered an interroga- 
 tory, " Is this fair ?" when Mr. O'Connell was using some legitimate 
 sophistication against him. He seemed particularly offended when his 
 adversary said, " I never shed tears in public," which was intended as 
 a mockery of Mr. Fitzgerald's references to his father. It will be 
 thought by some sensitive persons that Mr. O'Connell was not quite 
 warranted in this harsh dealing, but he had no alternative. JMr. Fitz- 
 gerald had made a very powerful speech, and the effect was to be got 
 rid of. In such a warfare a man must not pause in the selection of 
 his weapons, and Mr. O'Connell is not the man to hesitate in the use of 
 
42 CLAttE ELECTION. 
 
 the rhetorical sabre. Nothing of any peculiar intei'cst occurred after 
 Mr. O'Connell's speech upon tlie first day. On the second the polling 
 commenced ; and on that day, in consequence of an expedient adopted 
 by Mr. Fitzgerald's committee, the parties were nearly equal. A 
 Catholic freeholder cannot, in strictness, vote at an election Avithout 
 making a certain declaration upon oath respecting his religious opinions, 
 and obtaining a certificate of his having done so from a magistrate — 
 It is usual for candidates to agree to dispense with the necessity of 
 taking this oath. It was, however, of importance to Mr. Fitzgerald 
 to delay the election ; and with that view his committee required that 
 the declaration should be taken. Mr. O'Connell's committee were un- 
 prepared for this form, and it was with the utmost difficulty that ma- 
 gistrates could be procured to attend to receive the oath. It was there- 
 fore impossible, on the first day, for Mr. O'Connell to bring his forces 
 into the field, and thus the parties appeared nearly equal. To those 
 who did not know tlie real cause of this circumstance, it appeared 
 ominous, and the O'Connellites looked sufficiently blank ; but the next 
 day every thing was remedied. The freeholders were sworn en masse. 
 They were brought into a yard inclosed within four walls. Twenty- 
 five were placed against each wall, and they simultaneously repeated 
 "the oath. Wlien one batch of swearers had been disposed of, the 
 person who administered the dccliiralioii, turned to the adjoining di- 
 vision, and despatched them. Thus he went through the quadrangle, 
 and in the course of a few minutes was able to discharge one hundred 
 patriots upon Mr. Fitzgerald. It may be said that an oath ought to 
 be moi-e solemnly administered. In reply it is only necessary to ob- 
 serve, that the declaration in question related principally to " the 
 Pretender," and Avhen *' the legislature persevere in compelling the 
 name of God to be thus taken in vain," the ritual becomes appropri- 
 ately farcical, and the manner of the thing is only adapted to the lu- 
 dicrous matter upon which it is legally requisite that Heaven should 
 be attested ! The oath which is imposed upon a Roman Catholic is a 
 violation of the first precept of the decalogue ! This species of ma- 
 chinery having been thus applied to the ai't of swearing, the eflTects upon 
 the poll soon became manifest, and Mr. O'Connell ascended to a tri- 
 umphant majority. It became clear that the landlords had lost all 
 their power, and that their struggles were utterly hopeless. Still they 
 persevered in dragging the few serfs whom they had under their con- 
 trol to the hustings, and in protracting the election. It was Mr. Fitz- 
 gerald's own wish, I believe, to abandon the contest, when its ulti- 
 mate issue was already certain ; but his friends insisted that the last 
 man whom they could command should be polled out. Thus the 
 
CLARE ELECTION. 43 
 
 election was procrastinated. In ordinary cases, the interval between 
 the first and the last day of polling is monotonous and dull ; but dur- 
 ing the Clare election so many ludicrous and extraordinary incidents 
 were every moment occurring, as to relieve any attentive observer 
 from every influence of ennui. The writer of these pages was under 
 the necessity of remaining during the day in the sheriff's booth, where 
 questions of laAV were chiefly discussed, but even here there was much 
 matter for entertainment. The sheriff afforded a perpetual fund of 
 amusement. He sat with his wand of office leaning against his shoulder, 
 and always ready for his grasp. When there was no actual business 
 going forward, he still preserved a magisterial dignity of deportment, 
 and with half-closed eycli<ls, and throwing back his head, and form- 
 ing with his chin an obtuse angle with the horizon, reproved any in- 
 dulgence in illicit mirth which might chance to pass amongst the bar. 
 The gentlemen who were pi'ofessionally engaged having discovered 
 the chief foible of the sheriff, which consisted in the most fantastical 
 notions of himself, vied with each other in playing upon this weak- 
 ness. " I feel that I address myself to the first man of the county," 
 was the usual exordium witli which every legal argument was opened. 
 The sheriff, instead of perceiving tlie sneer which involuntarily played 
 round tlic lips of the mocking sycophant, smiled with an air of Mal- 
 volio condescension, and bowed his head. Then camo some noise 
 from the adjoining booths, upon which the sheriff used to start up 
 and exclaim, " 1 declare I do not think that I am treated with proper 
 respect — verily I'll go forth and quell this tumult — I'll show them I 
 am the first man in the county, and I'll commit somebody." With 
 that " the first man in the county," with a step slightly accelerated by 
 his resentment at a supposed indignity to himself, used to proceed in 
 quest of a riot, but generally returned with a good-humoured expres- 
 sion of face, observing : — " It was only Mr. O'Connell, and I must 
 say, when I remonstrated with him he paid me proper respect. 
 He is quite a different person from what I had heard. But let 
 nobody imagine that I was afraid of him. I'd commit him, or Mr. 
 Vesey Fitzgerald, if I was not treated with proper respect ; for by 
 virtue of my office I am the first man in the county." 
 
 A young gentleman (]\Ir. Whyte) turned his talent in mimicry to a 
 very pleasant and useful account. He acted as agent to Mr. O'Connell, 
 in a booth of which the chief officer, or sheriff's deputy, as he is called, 
 Avas believed to be a partisan of Mr. Fitzgerald, and used to delay Mr. 
 O'Connell's tallies. A tumult would then ensue, and the deputy 
 would raise his voice in a menacing tone against the friends of Mr. 
 O'Connell. The high shei'iff himself had been accustomed to go to 
 
44 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 the entrance of the different booths and to corainand silence with his 
 long-drawn and dismal ejaculations. "Wlien the deputy was bearing 
 it with a high hand, Mr. Wliyte would sometimes leave the booth, and 
 standing at the outward edge of the crowd, just at the moment that 
 tlie deputy was about to commit some partisan of Mr. O'Connell, the 
 mimic would exclaim, in a death-bell voice, " Silence, IMr. Deputy, 
 you are exceedingly disorderly — silence." The deputy being enveloped 
 by the multitude, could not see the individual who thus addressed him, 
 and believing it to be the sheriff, sat down confounded at the admoni- 
 tion, while Mr. O'Connell's tally went rapidly on, and the disputed 
 vote was allowed. These vagaries enlivened occupations which in 
 their nature were sufficiently dull. But the sheriff's booth afforded 
 matter more deserving of note than his singularities. Charges of undue 
 influence were occasionally brought forward, wiiich exhibited the cha- 
 racter of the election in its strongest colours. One incident I parti- 
 cularly remember. An attorney employed by ]Mr. Fitzgerald rushed 
 in and exclaimed that a priest was terrifying the voters. This accusa- 
 tion produced a powerful effect. The counsel for ]Mr. O'Connell de- 
 fied the attorney to make out his charge. The assessor veiy properly 
 rcfpiired that tlie priest should attend ; and behold Father INIurphy of 
 Corofin ! His solemn and spectral aspect struck every body. He ad- 
 vanced with fearlessness to the bar, behind which the sheriff was seated, 
 and inquired what the charge was which had been preferred against 
 him, with a smile of ghastly derision. " You were looking at my 
 voters," cries the attorney. "But I said nothing," replied the priest, 
 " and I suppose that I am to be peraiitted to look at my parishioners." 
 " Not with such a face as that !" cried Mr. Dogherty, one of Mr. 
 Fitzgerald's counsel. This produced a loud laugh ; for, certainly, the 
 countenance of Father Murphy was fraught with no ordinary terrors. 
 " And this, then," exclaimed Mr. O'Connell's counsel, " is the charge 
 you bring against the priests. Let us see if there be an act of par- 
 liament which prescribes that a Jesuit shall wear a mask." At this 
 instant, one of the agents of Mr. O'Connell precipitated himself into 
 the room, and cried out, " Mr. Sheriff, we have no fair play — Mr. 
 Singleton is frightening his tenants — he caught hold of one of them 
 just now, and threatened vengeance against him." This accusation 
 came admirably apropos. " What !" exclaimed the advocate of Mr. 
 O'Connell, " is this to be endured ? Do we live in a free country, 
 and under a constitution ? Is a landlord to commit a battery with 
 impunity, and is a priest to be indicted for his physiognomy, and to 
 be found guilty of a look ?" Thus a valuable set-off against Father 
 Murphy's eyebrows was obtained. After a long debate, the assessor 
 
. CliAKE ELECTION. 45 
 
 decided that, if either a priest or a landlord actually interrupted the 
 poll, tliey should be indiscriminately committed ; but thought the 
 present a case only for admonition. Father Murphy was accordingly 
 restored to his physiognomical functions. The matter had been scarcely 
 disposed of, when a loud shout was heard from the multitude outside the 
 court-liouse, which Imd gathered in thousands, and yet generally ]n-c- 
 scrved a profound tranquillity. The large window in the sheriff's 
 bootli gave an opportunity of observing whatever took place in the 
 square below ; and, attracted by the tremendous uproar, every body ran 
 to see what was going on amongst the crowd. The tumult was produced 
 by the arrival of some hundred freeholders from Kilrush, with their land- 
 lord, Mr. Vandeleur, at their head. lie stood behind a carriage, and, 
 witli his hatoff, was seen vehemently addressing the tenants wlio followed 
 him. It was impossible to hear a word which he uttered ; but his 
 gesture was sufliciently significant : he stamped, and waved his hat, and 
 shook liis clenched liand. While he thus adjured them, the crowd 
 through which they were passing, assailed them with cries, " Vote for 
 your country, ])oys ! Vote for the old religion ! — Three cheers for 
 liberty ! — Down with Vesey, and hurra for O'Connell!' These 
 were the exclamations which rent the air, as they proceeded. — 
 They followed their landlord until they had reached a part of tho 
 square where Mr. O'Connell lodged, and before wliich a large platform 
 had been ei'ccted, Avhicli communicated with the window of his apart- 
 ment, and to which he could advance whenever it was necessary to 
 address the people. AVhen Mr. Vandeleur's freeholders had attained 
 this spot, Mr. O'Connell rushed forward on the platform, and lifted up 
 his arm. A tremendous shout succecdeel, and in an instant ]\Ir. Van- 
 deleur was dcsertctl by his tenants. This platform exhibited some of 
 the most remarkable scenes which were enacted in this strange drama 
 of " The Clare Election." It Avas sustained by pillars of wood, and 
 stretched out several feet from the wall to which it was attached. 
 Some twenty or thirty persons could stand upon it at the same time. 
 A large quantity of green bouglis Avere turned about it; and from the 
 sort of boAver Avhich they formed, occasional oi'atoi's addressed the peo- 
 ple during the day. Father Sheehan, a clergyman from Watcrford, who 
 had been mainly instrumental in the overthroAV of the Beresfords, dis- 
 played from this spot his popular abilities. Dr. Kenny, a AVaterford sur- 
 geon, thinking that " the times were out of joint," came " to set them 
 right." Father Maguire, Mr. LaAvless, indeed, the Avholc company of 
 orators, performed on this theatre Avith indefatigable energy. Mirth 
 and declamation, and anecdote and grotesque delineation, and mimicry, 
 Avore all blended together for the public entertainment. One of the 
 
46 CLAKE ELECTION. 
 
 most amusing and attractive topics was drawn from the adherence of 
 Father Coffey to Mr. Fitzgerald. His manners, liis habits, his dress, 
 were all selected as materials for ridicule and invective ; and puns, not 
 the less effective because they were obvious, were heaped upon his 
 name. The scorn and detestation with which he was treated by the 
 mob, clearly proved that a priest has no influence over them when he 
 attempts to run counter to their political passions. He can hurry them 
 on in the career into which tlioir own feelings impel them, but he can- 
 not tui-n them into another course. Many incidents occurred about 
 this rostrum, which, if matter did not crowd too fast upon me, I should 
 stop to detail. I have not room for a minute narration of all that was 
 interesting at this election, wliich would occupy a volume, and must 
 limit myself to one, but that a very striking circumstance. The gene- 
 rality of the orators were heard with loud and clamorous approbation ; 
 but, at a late hour one evening, and when it Avas growing rapidly dark, 
 a priest came forward on the platform, who addressed the multitude in 
 Irish. There was not a word uttered by the people. Ten thousand 
 peasants were assembled before the speaker, and a profound stillness 
 huno- over the living, but almost breathless mass. For minutes they 
 continued thus deeply attentive, and seemed to be struck with awe as 
 he proceeded. Suddenly, I saw the whole multitude kneel down, in 
 one concurrent genuflection. They were engaged in silent prayer, and 
 Avhen the priest arose (for he too liad knelt down on the platform), tliey 
 also stood up together from their orison. The movement was performed 
 with the facility of a.regimental evolution. I asked (being unacquainted 
 with the language) what it was that had occasioned this extraordinary 
 spectacle ? and was informed that the orator had stated to the people that 
 one of his own parishioners, who had voted for Mv. Fitzgerald, had just 
 died ; and he called upon the multitude to pray to God for the repose 
 of his soul, and the forgiveness of the offence wliich he had committed 
 in taking the bribery oath. Money had been his inducement to give 
 his suffrage against Mr. O'Connell. Thus it was the day passed, and it 
 was not until nearly nine o'clock that those who were actively engaged 
 in the election went to dinner. There a new scene was opened. In a 
 small room in a mean tavern, the whole body of leading patriots, coun- 
 sellors, attorneys, and agents, with divers interloping partakers of 
 election hospitality, were crammed and piled upon one another, while 
 Mr. O'Connell sat at the head of the feast almost overcome with fatigue, 
 but yet sustained by that vitality which success produces. Enonnous 
 masses were strewed upon the deal boards, at which the hungry masti- 
 cators proceeded to their operations. The more intellectual season- 
 of potations succeeded. Toasts were then proposed and speeches 
 
CLARE ELECTION. 47 
 
 pronounced, and the usual "hip, hip, hurra!" with unusual ac- 
 companiments of exultation, followed. The feats of the day were 
 then narrated : — tlie blank looks of Mr. Hickman, (Mr. Fitzge- 
 rald's confidential solicitor and conducting agent,) Avhose face had lost 
 aU its natural hilarity, and looked at the election like a full moon in a 
 storm ; and the tears of Sir Edward O'Brien, were alternately the 
 subjects of merriment. Mr. Whyte was called upon for an imitation 
 of the sheriff, when he used to ride upon an elephant at Calcutta. But 
 in the midst of this conviviality, which was heightened by the con- 
 sciousness that there was no bill to be paid by gentlemen who were 
 the guests of tlieir country, and long before any inebriating effect was 
 observable, a solemn and spectral figure used to stride in, and the same 
 deep cliurcli-yard voice wliich had previously startled my ears raised 
 its awful [)eal, wliile it exclaimed " The wolf, the wolf is on the walk. 
 Shepherds of the people, wliat do you here ? Is it meet that you 
 should sit in joyance, while the freeholders remain unprovided, and 
 temptation, in the shape of famine, is amongst them ? Arise, I say, 
 arise — the wolf, the wolf is on the walk." 
 
 Such Avas the disturbing adjuration of Father IMurphy of Coi'ofin, 
 whose enthusiastic sense of duty never deserted him, and who, Avhen 
 the feast was unfmishcd, entered like the figure of death in an Egyp- 
 tian banciuet. He walked round the room with a measured pace, 
 chasing the revellers before him, and repeating the same dismal 
 warning — " The wolf, the wolf is upon the walk !" Nothing was com- 
 parable to tlie aspect of Father Murphy upon these occasions, except 
 the physiognomy of Mr. Lawless. This gentleman, who had been 
 usefully exerting himself during the whole day, somewhat reasonably 
 expected that he sliould be permitted to enjoy the just rewards of 
 patriotism for a few hours without any nocturnal molestation. It was 
 about the time that the exliilirating influence of his eloquent chalices 
 was beginning to display itself, that the dismal cry was wont to come 
 upon him. The look of despair with which he surveyed this unre- 
 lenting foe to conviviality, was ahnost as ghastly as that of his merci- 
 less disturber ; and as, like another Tantalus, he saw the draughts of 
 pleasantness hurried away, a schoolmaster, who sat by him, and who 
 " was abroad" during the election, used to exclaim — 
 
 " A labris sitlens fugientia captat 
 
 riumina." 
 
 It was in vain to remonstrate against Father Murphy, who insisted that 
 the whole company should go forth to meet " the wolf upon the walk." 
 Upon going down stairs, the lower apartments were found thronged 
 
48 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 with freeholders and priests. To the latter had heen assigned the office 
 of providing food for such of the peasants as lived at too great dis- 
 tance from the town to return immediately home ; and each clergyman 
 was empowered to give an order to the victuallers and tavern-keepers 
 to furnish the hearer with a certain quantity of meat and beer. The 
 use of whiskey was forbidden. There were two remarkable features 
 observable in the discharge of this office. The peasant, who liad not 
 tasted food perhaps for twenty-four hours, remained in perfect patience 
 and tranquillity until liis turn ai'rived to speak "to his reverence ;" 
 and the Catholic clergy continued with unwearied assiduity, and the 
 most amiable solicitude, though themselves quite exhausted with fatigue, 
 in the performance of this necessary labour. There they stayed until 
 a late hour in the morning, and until every claimant had been con- 
 tented. It is not wonderful that such men, animated by such zeal, and 
 operating upon so grateful and so energetic a peasantry, should have 
 effiicted what they succeeded in accomplishing. The poll at lengtli 
 closed ; and, after an excellent argument delivered by the assessor, Mr. 
 Richard Keatinge, he instructed the sheriff to retm-n Mr. O'Connell aa 
 duly elected. The court-house was again crowded, as upon the first 
 day, and IMr. Fitzgerald appeared at the head of the deieated aristo- 
 cracy. They looked profoundly melancholy. Mr. Fitzgerald himself 
 did not affect to disguise the deep pain which he felt ; but preserved 
 that gracefulness and perfect good temper which had characterized him 
 during the contest, and which, at its close, disarmed liostility of all its 
 rancour. Mr. O'Connell made a speech distinguished by just feeling 
 and good taste, and begged that Mr. Fitzgerald would forgive him, if 
 lie had upon the first day given him any sort of offence. I^Ir. Fitz- 
 gei'ald came forwax"d and unaffectedly assured him, that whatever was 
 said should be forgotten. He was again hailed with universal accla- 
 mation, and delivered a speech which could not suri)ass, in good judg- 
 ment and persuasiveness, that with which he had opened the contest, 
 but was not inferior to it. He left an impression, which hereafter 
 will, in all probability, render his return for the county of Clare a 
 matter of certainty ; and, upon the other hand, I feel convinced that 
 he has himself carried away from the scene of that contention, in which 
 he sustained a defeat, but lost no honour, a conviction that not only 
 the interests of Ireland, but the safety of the empire, require that the 
 claims of seven millions of his fellow-citizens should be conceded. Mr. 
 Fitzgerald, during the pi'ogress of the election, could not refrain from 
 repeatedly intimating his astonishment at what he saw, and from in- 
 dulging in melancholy forebodings of the events, of which these inci- 
 dents are perhaps but the heralds. To do him justice, he appeared at 
 
CT.AI^E ELECTION. 49 
 
 moments uttcily to forget himself, nnd to be absorbed in the melan- 
 choly presages which pressed themselves upon him. " Where is all 
 this to end ?" was a question frequently put in his presence, and from 
 which he seemed to shrink. 
 
 At the close of the poll, Mr. Sheil spoke in the following terras : — 
 I am anxious to avail myself of this opportunity to make a repara- 
 tion to Mr. Fitzgerald. Before I had the honour of hearing that 
 gentleman, and of witnessing the conciliatory demeanour by which he 
 is distinguished, I had in another place expressed myself with regard 
 to his political conduct, in language to which I believe that Mr. Fitz- 
 gerald referred upon the first day of the election, and which was, pei*- 
 liaps, too deeply tinctured with that animosity which is almost inse- 
 parable from the passions by which this country is so unhappily 
 divided. It is but an act of justice to Mr. Fitzgerald to say, that, 
 however we may be inidcr the necessity of opposing him as a mem- 
 ber of an administration liostilc to our body, it is impossible to enter- 
 tain towards him a sentiment of individual liostility ; and I confess, 
 that, after having observed the admirable temper with which he en- 
 countered his antagonists, I cannot but regret that, before I had the 
 means of forming a just estimate of his personal character, I should 
 have indulged in remarks, in which too much acidity may have been 
 infused. The situation in which Mr. Fitzgerald was placed, was 
 peculiarly trying to his feelings. lie liad been long in possession of 
 this county. Though we considered him as an inefficient friend, we 
 were not entitled to account liim an opponent. Under these circum- 
 stances it may have appeared hai-sh, and perhaps unkind, that we shoidd 
 liave selected him as the first object for the manifestation of our power; 
 another Avould have found it difficult not to give way to the language 
 of resentment and of reproach, but so fi\r from doing so, his defence of 
 himself was as strongly marked by forbearance as it was by ability. 
 I thought it, however, not altogether impossible that before the fate 
 of this election was decided, Mr. Fitzgerald might have been merely 
 practising an expedient of wily conciliation, and that when he appeared 
 60 meek and self-controlled in the midst of a contest whicli would have 
 provoked the passions of any ordinary man, he was only stifling liis 
 resentment, in the hope that he might succeed in appeasing the violence 
 of tlie opposition with which he had to contend. But Mr. Fitzgerald, 
 in the demeanour which he has preserved to-day, after the election has 
 concluded with his defeat, has given proof that his gentleness of de- 
 portment was not aflTccted and artificial ; and, now that he has no ob- 
 ject to gain, we cannot but give him as ample credit for his sincerity, 
 as we must give him for tliat persuasive gracefulness by which his 
 . E 
 
50 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 manners are distinguished. Justly has he said that he has not lost a 
 friend in this country ; and he might have added that, so far from 
 having incurred any diminution of regard among those who were at- 
 tached to him, he has appeased to a great extent the vehemence of that 
 political enmity in which the associate of Mr. Peel was not veiy un- 
 naturally held. But, Sir, while I have thus made the acknowledgment 
 which was due to Mr. Fitzgerald, let me not disguise my own feelings 
 of legitimate, but not I hope ofiensive exultation at the result of this 
 great contest, that has attracted the attention of the English people 
 beyond all example. I am not mean enough to indulge in any contu- 
 melious vaunting over one Avho has sustained his defeat with so honour- 
 able a magnanimity. The victory which has been achieved, has been 
 obtained not so much over Mr. Fitzgerald, as over the faction with 
 which I excuse him to a great extent for having been allied. A great 
 display of power has been made by the Catholic Association, and that 
 manifestation of its influence over the national mind, I regard as not 
 only a very remarkable, but a very momentous incident. Let us con- 
 sider what has taken place, in order that we may see this singular 
 political phenomenon in its just light. It is right that we attentively 
 survey the extraordinary facts before us, in order that we may derive 
 from them the moral admonitions which they are calculated to supply. 
 What then has happened ? INIr. Fitzgerald was promoted to a place 
 in the Duke of Wellington's councils, and the representation of this 
 great county became vacant. Tlie Catholic Association determined to 
 oppose him, and at first view the undertaking seemed to be desperate. 
 Not a single Protestant gentleman could be procured to enter the lists, 
 and in the want of any other candidate, Mr. O'Connell stood forward 
 on behalf of the people. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald came into the field en- 
 compassed with the most signal advantages. His father is a gentleman 
 of large estate, and had been long and deservedly popular in Ireland. 
 Mr. Fitzgerald himself, inheriting a portion of the popular favour with 
 a favourite name, had for twenty years been placed in such immediate 
 contiguity to power, that he was enabled to circulate a large portion 
 of the influence of government through this fortunate district. There 
 is scarcely a single family of any significance among you, which does 
 not labour under Mr. Fitzgerald's obligations. At this moment it is 
 only necessary to look at him, with the array of aristocracy beside him, 
 in order to perceive upon what a high position for victory he was 
 placed. He stands encompassed by the whole gentry of the county of 
 Clare, who, as they stood by him in tlie hour of battle, come hero to 
 cover his retreat. Almost every gentleman of rank and fortune ap- 
 pears as his auxiliary : and the gentry, by their aspect at this instant, 
 
CLARE ELECTION. 61 
 
 as well as by their devotedness during the election, furnish evidence 
 that in his person their own cause was to be asserted. To this com- 
 bination of favourable circumstances — to the political friend, to the 
 accomplished gentleman, to the eloquent advocate, at the head of all 
 •the patrician opulence of the county, what did we oppose ? We op- 
 posed the power of the Catholic Association, and with that tremendous 
 engine we have beaten the cabinet minister, and the phalanx of aris- 
 tocracy by which he is surroimded, to the ground. Why do I mention 
 these things ? Is it for the purpose (God forbid that it should !) of 
 wounding the feelings or exasperating the passions of any man ? No ! 
 but in order to exhibit the almost marvellous incidents which have 
 taken place, in the light in which they ought to be regarded, and to 
 present them in all tlicir appalling magnitude. Protestants who hear 
 me, gentlemen of the county Clare, you whom I address with bold- 
 ness, perhaps, but certainly not with any purpose to give you offence, 
 let me entreat your attention. A baronet of rank and fortune, Sir 
 Edward O'Brien, has asked whether this was a condition of things to 
 •be endured; he has expatiated upon the extraordinary influence which 
 ,has been exercised in order to effect these signal residts ; and, after 
 dwelling upon many other grounds of complaint, he has with great 
 ■force inveighed against the severance which we liavc created between 
 the landlord and tenant. Let it not be imagined that 1 mean to deny 
 that we have had recourse to the expedients attributed to us; on the 
 contrary, I avow it. AVe have put a great engine into action, and ap- 
 plied the entire force of that powerful machinery which the law has 
 placed under our control. We are masters of the passions of the 
 people, and we have employed our dominion with a terrible efiect. 
 But, Sir, do you, or does any man here, imagine that we could have 
 acquired this formidable ability to sunder the strongest ties by which 
 the different classes of society are fastened, unless we found the mate- 
 rials of excitement in the state of society itself? Do you think that 
 Daniel O'Connell has himself, and by the single powers of his own 
 mind, unaided by any external co-operation, brought the country to 
 tliis great crisis of agitation ? Mr. O'Connell, with all his talents for 
 excitation, would have been utterly powerless and incapable, unless he 
 had been allied with a great conspirator against the public peace : and 
 I will tell you who that confederate is — it is the laAv of the land itself 
 that has been Mr. O'Connell's main associate, and that ought to be 
 denounced as the mighty agitator of Ireland. The rod of oppression 
 is the wand of this enchanter, and the book of his spells is the penal 
 code. Break the wand of this political Prospero, and take from him 
 the volume of his magic, and he will evoke the spirits which are 
 
52 CLARE ELECTION. 
 
 now under his control no longer. But why should I have recourse to 
 illustration which may be accounted fantastical, in order to elucidate 
 what is in itself so plain and obvious ? Protestant gentlemen, who do 
 me the honour to listen to me, look, I pi-ay you, a little dispassionately 
 at the real causes of the events which have taken place amongst you. 
 I beg of you to put aside your angry feelings for an instant, and believe 
 me that I am far from thinking that you have no good ground for re- 
 sentment. It must be most painful to the proprietors of this county 
 to be stripped in an instant of aU their influence ; to be left destitute 
 of all sort of sway over their dependants, and to see a few demagogues 
 and priests usurping their natural authority. This feeling of resent- 
 ment must be aggravated by the consciousness that they have not de- 
 served such a return from their tenants ; and as I know Sir Edward 
 O'Brien to be a truly benevolent landlord, I can well conceive that the 
 apparent ingratitude with wliich he was treated, has added to the pain 
 which every landloi'd must experience ; and I own that I was not sui'- 
 prised to see tears upon his eyelids, wliile his face was inflamed witli 
 the emotions to which it was not in human nature that he should not 
 give way. But let Sir Edward O'Brien, and his fellow-proprietors, 
 who arc gathered about him, recollect, that the facility and prompti- 
 tude with which the peasantry have thrown off" their allegiance, are 
 owing not so much to any want of just moral feeling on the part of tlie 
 people, as to the operation of causes for which the people are not to 
 blame. In no other country, except in this, would such a revolution 
 have been effected. Wherefore ? — Because in no other country are 
 the people divided by the law from their superiors, and cast into the 
 hands of a set of men, who are supplied with the means of national 
 excitement by the system of government under which we live. Surely 
 no man can believe that such an anomalous body as the Catliolic Asso- 
 ciation could exist, excepting in a community which had been alienated 
 from the state by the state itself. The discontent and the resentment 
 of seven millions of the population have generated that domestic 
 government, which sways public opinion, and uses the national pas- 
 sions as the instrmnents of its will. It would be utterly impossible, if 
 there were no exasperating distinctions amongst us, to create any ar- 
 tificial causes of discontent. Let men declaim for a century, and if 
 they have no real grievance their harangues will be empty sound and 
 idle air. But when what they tell the people is true — when they are 
 sustained by substantial facts, effects are produced, of which what has 
 taken place at this election is only an example. The whole body of 
 the people having been previously excited, the moment any incident, 
 such as this election, occurs, all the popular passions start simulta- 
 
CLARE ELECTION. 53 
 
 neously up, and bear down every obstacle before them. Do not, there- 
 fore, be surprised that the peasantry should throw of their allegiance, 
 when they are under the operation of emotions which it would be won- 
 derful if they could resist. The feeling by which they are actuated, 
 would make them not only vote against their landlord, but would make 
 them scale tlie batteries of a fortress, and mount the breach ; and, 
 gentlemen, give me leave to ask you. whether, after a due reflection 
 upon the motives by which your vassals (for so they are accounted) 
 are governed, you will be disposed to exercise any measure of severity 
 in their regard. I hear it said, that before many days go by, there 
 will be many tears shed in tlic hovels of your slaves, and that you will 
 take a terrible vengeance. I trust that you will not, when your own 
 passions shall have subsided, and your blood has had time to cool, per- 
 severe in such a cruel, and let me add, such an unjustifiable determi- 
 nation. Consider whether a great allowance should not be made for 
 the offence which they have committed. If they are under the influ- 
 ence of fanaticism, such an influence affords many circumstances of 
 extenuation : — you should forgive them, " for they know not what 
 they do." They have followed their priests to the hustings, and they 
 would follow them to the scaffold. You will ask, wherefore they should 
 prefer their priests to tlicir landlords, and have a liighor reverence for 
 the altars of their religion, than for the counter in which you calcu- 
 late your rents ? Consider a little the relation in which the priest 
 stands towards the peasant. I will take for my example an excellent 
 landlord and an excellent priest. The landlord sliall be Sir Edward 
 O'Brien, and the priest shall be IMr. Murphy of Corofin. Who is Sir 
 Edward O'Brien ? A gentleman who, from the windows of a palace, 
 looks upon possessions almost as wide as those which his ancestors be- 
 held from the summit of their feudal towers. His tenants pay him 
 their rent twice a-year, and have their land at a moderate rate. But 
 what are his claims, when put into comparison with those of IMr. Mur- 
 phy of Corofin, to the confidence, to the affection, and to the fidelity 
 of the peasants who are committed to his care ? He is not only the 
 minister of that humble altar at which their forefathers and themselves 
 were taught to kneel, but lie is their kind, their familiar, yet most res- 
 pected friend. In their difficulties and distresses they have no one 
 else to look to ; he never fails, when consulted by them, to associate 
 his sympathy with his admonition ; for their sake he is ready to en- 
 counter every hazard, and, in the performance of the perilous duties 
 incident to his sacerdotal office, he never hesitates to expose his life. 
 In a stormy night a knocking is heard at the door of the priest of Co- 
 rofin. lie is told that at the foot of the mountain a luan of guilt and 
 
54 C1.AUE ELECTION. 
 
 blood lias scarcely more than an hour to live. Will the teacher of the 
 gospel tarry because of the rain and of the wind, and wait until the 
 day shall break, when the soul of an expiring sinner can be saved, and 
 the demons that are impatient for him can still^be scared away ? He 
 goes forth in the blackness of the tempestuous midnight — he ascends 
 the liill, he traverses the morass — and faint, and cold, and dripping, 
 finds his way to the hovel where his coming is awaited ; — with what a 
 gasping of inarticulate gratitude — with what a smile of agony is he 
 welcomed ! No fear of contagion, no dread of the exhalations of mor- 
 tality, reeking from the bed of the pestilential man can appal him, but 
 kneeling down at the side of the departing culprit, and sustaining him 
 in his arms, he receives from lips impregnated with death, the whisper 
 with Avhich the heart is unloaded of its mysteries, and, raising up his 
 eyes to heaven, pronounces the ritual of absolution in the name of Him 
 of whose commission of mercy he is the befitting bearer, and whose 
 precepts he illustrates in his life and inculcates in his example. And 
 can you feel wonder and resentment that under the influence of such 
 a man as I have described to you, your dependants should have ven- 
 tured upon a violation of your mandates ? Forgive me if I venture 
 to supplicate, on behalf of your tenants, for forbearance. Pardon them, 
 in the name of one who will forgive you your offences in the same 
 measure of compassion which you will show to the trespasses of those 
 who have sinned against yourselves. Do not persecute these poor 
 people : don't throw their children upon the public road, and send 
 tliem forth to starve, to shiver, and to die. For God's sake, Mr. Fitz- 
 gerald, as you are a gentleman and a man of honour, interpose your 
 influence with your friends, and redeem your pledge. I address myself 
 personally to you. On the first day of the election you declared that 
 you would deprecate persecution, and that you were the last to wish 
 that vindictive measures should be employed. I believe you — and 
 I call upon you to redeem that pledge of mercy, to perform that great 
 moral promise. You will cover yourself with honour by so doing, in 
 the same way that you will share in the ignominy that will attend 
 upon any expedients of rigoui'. Before you leave this country to as- 
 sume your high functions, enjoin your friends with that eloquence of 
 which you are the master, to I'efrain from cruelty, and not to oppress 
 their tenants. Tell them, sir, that instead of busying themselves in the 
 worthless occupation of revenge, it is much fitter that they should take 
 the political condition of their country into their deep consideration. 
 Tell them that they should address themselves to the legislature, and 
 implore a remedy for these frightful evils. Tell them to call upon the 
 men, in whose hands the destiny of this great empire is placed, to adopt 
 
CLONMKL AGGUKGATE MEETING. 55 
 
 a system Ot peace, and to apply to Ireland the great canon of political 
 morality — pads impo7iere niorem. Let it not be imagined that any 
 measure of disfranchisement, that any additional penalty, will afford a 
 remedy. Things have been permitted to advance to a height from 
 which they cannot recede. Protestants, awake to a sense of your 
 condition. What have you seen during this election ? Enough to 
 make you feel that this is not a mere local excitation, but that seven 
 millions of Irish people are completely arrayed and organized. That 
 which you behold in Clare, you would behold, under similar circum- 
 stances, in every county in the kingdom. Did you mark our discipline, 
 our subordination, our good order, and that tranquillity, which is for- 
 midable indeed? You have seen sixty thousand men under our 
 command, and not a hand was raised, and not a forbidden word was 
 uttered in that amazing multitude. You have beheld an example of 
 our power in the almost miraculous sobriety of the people. Their lips 
 have not touched that infuriating beverage to which they are so much 
 attached, and their habitual propensity vanished at our command. 
 Is it meet and wise to leave us armed with such a dominion ? Trust 
 us not with it ; strip us of tins a])palling power ; disarray us by equa- 
 lity ; instead of angry slaves, make us contented citizens ; if you do 
 not, tremble for the result. 
 
 CLONMEL AGGREGATE MEETING. 
 
 SrKFXII MADE AT AN AGGREGATE MEETING IN CLONMKL DUUINO TIIK 
 
 ASSIZES. 
 
 The assizes held for this, the great county of Tipperary, exhibit a 
 deplorable spectacle of turbulence and of guilt. I consider it to be 
 my duty to address to this immense assembly, composed of several 
 tJmusands, and comprehending a vast body of the peasantry, some 
 well-meant advice. You are well aware that in the course which I 
 have adopted, I have not displayed a pusillanimous spirit, and that I 
 am deeply sensible of the wrongs which are inflicted upon my country. 
 What I shall say, therefore, in the shape of strong reproof, will be 
 taken in good part. I tell you undisguisedly, that although I consider 
 the government to have adopted unavailing and inapplicable means 
 for the restoration of tranquillity, yet that I look upon the crimes 
 committed amongst you with dismay. What have I not witnessed in 
 
5f) CLONMEL AC.OREGATE MEETING. 
 
 the course of the few days which the assizes have occupied ! What a 
 stain have those crimes left upon the character of your country ! Look 
 at the murder of the Sheas — look at the midnight conflagration in 
 which eighteen of your fellow-creatures perished, and tell me if there be 
 anything in the records of horror by which that accursed deed has been 
 excelled ! In that night which stands without a parallel — a cliild was 
 born in lire — transferred from the womb to flames, kindled by fiends, who 
 exulted round the furnace with whose roaring the shrieks of agony were 
 mingled ! "What must have been the pains of that deliveiy in which 
 a mother felt the infant that was clasped against her bosom consmned 
 by the fires with which she was surrounded ! The mother was found 
 dead near a tub of water, in which she had plunged her infant, and 
 the child was discovered with its skull burned olf, while the rest of the 
 limbs were preserved by the water in which the expiring parent had 
 striven in the united pains of death and child-birth to preserve it. 
 With what exclamation shall we give vent to the emotions whicli are 
 awakened by the recital of that which you tremble to hear, and which 
 there were human beings found who were not afraid to do ! We can 
 but lift up our hands to the God of justice, and ask him why he has 
 invested us "with the same forms as the wretches who did that unex- 
 ampled murder. Although accompanied by circumstances of inferior 
 terror, the recent assassination of Barry belongs to the same class of 
 o-uilt. A body of men, at the close of day, enter a peaceful habita- 
 tion, on the Sabbath, and, regardless of the cries of a frantic woman, 
 who, grasping one of the murderers, desired him "to think of God, 
 and of the blessed night, and to spare the father of her eight chil- 
 dren," dragged him fortli, and when he "oifered to give up the 
 ground tilled and untilled, if they spared him his life," answered with 
 a yell of ferocious irony, and telling him " he should have ground 
 cnouo-h," plunged their bayonets into liis heart! An awful spectacle 
 was presented on the trial of the wretched individuals who were con- 
 victed of the assassination. At one extremity of tlie bar stood a boy, 
 with a blooming face, and with down on his cheek, and at the other an 
 old man, in the close of life, with a haggard look, and a deeply fur- 
 rowed countenance, with his head covered with hoary and dishevelled 
 hair. However remote the periods of their birth, they met not, in- 
 deed, in the same grave, (for they are without a tomb,) but on the 
 same scaffold together. In describing the frightful scene, it is consol- 
 ing to find that you share with me in the unqualified detestation whicli 
 I have expressed ; and I am convinced that it is unnecessary to ad- 
 dress to you any further observation on the subject. But I must call 
 your attention to another trial — that of the Ilogans, which aflbrds a 
 
CLONMEL AGGREGATE MEETING. 57 
 
 melancholy lesson. The tiial was connected with the baneful pi-actice 
 of avenging the affronts offered to individuals, by enlisting whole 
 clans, wlio wage an actual war, and fight sanguinary battles whenever 
 they encounter. I am very far from saying that the deaths which oc- 
 cur in these bai'barous combats are to be compared with the guilt of 
 preconcerted assassination, but that they are accompanied with deep 
 criminality, there can be no question, and the system which produces 
 them is as much marked with absurdity as it is deserving of condem- 
 nation. In this county, a man wlio chances to receive a blow, instead 
 of going to a magistrate to swear informations, lodges a complaint with 
 his clan, who enter into a compact to avenge the insult — a reaction is 
 produced, and an equally extensive confederacy is formed on the other 
 side. All this results from an indisposition to resort to the law for 
 protection, for amongst you it is a point of honor not to have recourse 
 to any of the legitimate means provided for your redress. The battle 
 waged between the Ilickeys and the Hogans, in which not less than 
 five hundred men were engaged, presents in a strong liglit the conse- 
 quences of this most strange and absurd system. Some of the Hickey 
 party were slain in the field, and four of the Hogans were tried for 
 the murder ; they were found guilty of manslaughter, and are to be 
 immediately transported ; three of them are married and have fa- 
 milies, and from their wives and children are condemned to separate 
 for ever. In my mind these unhappy men have been doomed to a fate 
 stiU more disastrous than those avIio have perished on the scaffold. In 
 the calamity which has befallen Matthew Hogan, of whom most of you 
 have heard, every man in court felt a sympathy. With the exception 
 of his having made himself a party in the feuds of his clan, he has al- 
 ways conducted himself with propriety. His landlord felt for him a 
 strong regard, and exerted himself to the utmost in his behalf. He 
 never took part in deeds of nocturnal atrocity — honest, industrious, 
 mild, and kindly-natured, he was seconded by the good-will of every 
 man who was acquainted with him. His circumstances were not only 
 comparatively good, but, when taken in reference to his condition in 
 society, were almost opulent. He rather resembled an English yeo- 
 man than an Irish peasant. His appearance at the bar was in a high 
 degree impressive — tall, athletic, with a face finely formed, and wholly 
 free from any ferocity of expression, he attracted every eye, and ex- 
 cited even among his prosecutors a feeling of commiseration. He 
 formed a remarkable contrast with the ordinary class of culprits who 
 are arraigned in our public tribunals. So far from having guilt and 
 depravity stamped with want upon his countenance, its prevailing cha- 
 racter was indicative of gentleness. This man was convicted of man- 
 
58 CLONMEL AGGHEGATE mteting. 
 
 slaughter ; and when he heard the sentence of transportation for life, 
 the colour fled from his cheek — his lips were dry and ashy — his hand 
 shook, and his eyes became incapable of tears. Most of you consider 
 transportation a light evil, and it may be so to those who have no ties 
 to fasten them to their country. I can well imagine that a deportation 
 from this island, which, for most of its inhabitants, is a miserable one, 
 is to many a change greatly for the better. Although the Irish people 
 have strong local attachments, and are fond of their fathers' graves — 
 yet the fine sky and the genial climate of New Holland afford many 
 compensations. But there can be none for Matthew Hogan ; he is 
 in the prime of life — is a prosperous farmer — ^yet he must leave his 
 country for ever — he must part from all that he loves, and from all by 
 whom he is beloved : — his heart will burst in the separation. What a 
 victim do you behold in that unfortunate man of the spirit that rages 
 amongst you. Matthew Hogan will feel his calamity with more deep 
 intensity, because he is naturally sensitive and kindly natured. He 
 was proved to have saved the life of one of Ids antagonists in the 
 fury of the combat, from motives of generous commiseration. One 
 of his own kindred, in speaking to me of his fate, said, he would feel 
 it the more, because (to use the poor man's vernacular pronunciation) 
 " he was so tinder." This tenderness of nature will produce a moi"e 
 painful laceration of the heart, when he bids his family farewell for 
 ever. The prison of this town will present, on Monday next, a very 
 afflicting spectacle. Before he ascends the vehicle which is to convey 
 him for transportation to Cork, he will be allowed to take leave of his 
 wife and children. She will cling to his bosom ; and while her arms 
 are folded round his neck — while she sobs, in the agony of anguish, 
 on his breast— his children, who used to climb his knees in playful 
 emulation for his caresses **•♦»* x will not go on with 
 this distressing picture — your own emotions will complete it. The 
 pains of this poor man will not end at the threshold of his prison. He 
 will be conveyed in a vessel, freighted with affliction, across the 
 ocean, and wiU be set on the lonely and distant land from which he 
 will depart no more ; the thoughts of home will haunt him, and adhere 
 with a deadly tenacity to his heart. He will mope about in a deep 
 and settled sorrow — he will have no incentive to exertion, for he will 
 have bidden farewell to hope. The instruments of labour will hang 
 idly in his hands — he will go through his task without a consciousness 
 of what he is doing. Thus every day will go by, and at its close, his sad 
 consolation will be to stand on the shore, and fixing his eyes in that 
 direction in which he will have been taught that his country lies, if 
 not in the language, he will, at least, exclaim, in the sentiments which 
 
CLONMEL ASSIZES. 59 
 
 have been so simply and so pathetically expressed in the song of 
 
 exile : 
 
 " Erin, my country, tho' sad and forsaken, 
 
 In dreams I revisit tliy sea-beaten shore j 
 But, alas ! in far foreign lands I awaken. 
 
 And sigh for the friends that can meet me no more. 
 Where is my cabin-door, fast by the wild wood, 
 
 Sisters and sire did you weep for its fall ? 
 Where is the mother that looked on my childhood. 
 
 And where is the bosom-friend dearer than all ?" 
 
 I have dwelt, perhaps, longer than I ought to have done upon the 
 details of this poor man's misfortunes ; but my time has not been mis- 
 spent, nor have I abused your patience, if I have, in any degree, suc- 
 ceeded in making you sensible of the extent of calamity which follows 
 the indulgence of that disastrous predilection for tumult which cha- 
 racterises the mass of the population. Let not what has taken place 
 at these assizes be thrown away upon you ! I implore you for your 
 country's sake, for your own sake, to take warning from the melan- 
 choly examples which have been presented to you — give up those 
 guilty feuds wliich lead to savage bloodshed, and end in everlasting 
 exile. You will not blame me for the advice which I have oflered 
 you, and you may rest assured, that I have nothing but your interest 
 nt heart, and am actuated towards you by just and honourable motives. 
 I thought it my duty to avail myself of this opportunity, to lay before 
 you a summary of the chief incidents of which I have been a mourn- 
 ful witness at these assizes, and to conjure you, in the name of tho 
 highest and holiest obligations, to co-operate together in the repression 
 and the denunciation of the previous habits, which cast such deep dis- 
 honour upon the population of this unfortunate and guilty county. 
 
 To this speech, as immediately connected with it, is annexed an ac- 
 count of a trial which took place at Clonmel, at the Spring Assizes, 
 1828, written by Mr. Shell, and published by him in the " Sketches 
 of the Irish Bar." 
 
 I propose to myself the useful end of fixing the general attention 
 upon a state of things, which ought to lead all wise and good men to 
 the consideration of the only effectual means by which the evils which 
 result from the moral condition of the country may be remedied. 
 
 In the month of April, 1827, a gentleman of the name of ChadAvick 
 was murdered in the open day, at a place called Rath Cannon, in the 
 immediate vicinity of the old Abbey of Holycross. Mr. Chadwick 
 was the member of an influential family, and was employed as land 
 agent in collecting their rents. The person who fills this oflice in 
 
60 CliONMEL ASSIZES. 
 
 England is called " a steward ;" but in Ireland it is designated by the 
 more honourable name of a land agency. The discharge of the duties 
 of this situation must be always more or less obnoxious. In times of 
 public distress, the landlord, who is himself urged by liis own credit- 
 ors, urges his agent on, and the latter inflicts upon the tenants the ne- 
 cessities of his employer. I have heard that Mr. Chadwick was not 
 peculiarly rigorous in the exaction of rent, but he was singularly inju- 
 dicious in las demeanour towards the lower orders. He believed tliat 
 they detested him ; and possessing personal courage, bade them defi- 
 ance. He was not a man of a bad heart ; but was despotic and con- 
 tumelious in his manners to those whose hatred he returned with con- 
 tempt. It is said that he used to stand amongst a body of the peasantry, 
 and, observing that his corpulency was on the increase, was accustomed 
 to exclaim, " I think I am fattening upon your curses !" In answer to 
 these taunts, the peasants who surrounded him, and who were well ha- 
 bituated to the concealment of their fierce and terrible passions, affected 
 to laugh, and said " that his honour was mighty pleasant ; and sure, 
 his honour, God bless him, was always fond of his joke !" But while 
 they indulged in the sycophancy, which is but a mask under which 
 they are wont to hide their sanguinary detestations, they were lying 
 in wait for the occasion of revenge. Perhaps, however, they would not 
 have proceeded to the extremities to Avliich they had recourse, but for a 
 determination evinced by Mr. Chadwick to take effectual means for keep- 
 ing them in awe. He set about building a police barrack at Rath Cannon. 
 It was resolved that Mr. Chadwick should die. This decision was not 
 the result of individual vengeance. The wide confederacy into which 
 the lower orders are organised in Tipperary held council upon him, 
 and the village areopagus pronounced his sentence. It remained to 
 find an executioner. Patrick Grace, who was almost a boy, but Avas 
 distinguished by various feats of guilty courage, offered himself as a 
 volunteer in what was regarded by liim as an honourable cause. He 
 had set up in the county as a sort of knight-errant against landlords ; 
 and, in the spirit of a barbarous chivalry, proffered his gratuitous ser- 
 vices wherever what he conceived to be a wrong was to be redressed. 
 He proceeded to Rath Cannon ; and Avitliout adopting any sort of pre- 
 caution, and while the public road was ti'aversed by numerous passen- 
 gers, in the broad daylight, and just beside the barrack, in tlie con- 
 struction of which Mr. Chadwick was engaged, shot that unfortunate 
 gentleman, who fell instantly dead. This di-eadful crime produced a 
 great sensation, not only in the county where it was perpetrated, but 
 through the whole of Ireland. AVhen it was announced in Dublin, it 
 created a sort of dismay, as it evinced the spirit of atrocious intrepidity 
 
CLONMEL ASSIZES. 61 
 
 to whicli the peasantry had been roused. It was justly accounted, by 
 those who looked upon this savage assassination with most horror, as 
 furnishing evidence of the moral condition of the people, and as inti- 
 mating the consequences which might be anticipated from the ferocity 
 of the peasantry, if ever they should be let loose. Patrick Grace cal- 
 culated on impunity ; but his confidence in the power and terrors of 
 the confederacy with which he was associated was mistaken. A brave, 
 and a religious man, whose name was Philip Mara, was present at the 
 murder. He was standing beside his employer, Mr. Chadwick, and 
 saw Grace put him deliberately to deatli. Grace was well aAvare that 
 Mara had seen Iiim, but did not believe that he would dare to give 
 evidence against him. It is probable, too, that he conjectured that 
 Mara coincided witli him in his ethics of assassination, and ap- 
 plauded tlie proceeding. Mara, however, was horror-struck by 
 what lie had beheld ; and under the influence of conscientious feel- 
 ings, gave immediate information to a magistrate. Patrick Grace 
 was arrested, and tried at the summer assizes of 1827. I was not 
 present at his trial, but have heard from good authority that ho 
 displayed a fearless demeanour ; and that when he was convicted 
 upon the evidence of Philip Mara, he declared that before a year 
 sliould go by he should have vengeance in the grave. He was ordered 
 to be executed near the spot where his misdeed had been perpetrated. 
 This was a mistake, and produced an effect exactly the reverse of 
 what was contemplated. The lower orders looked upon him as a 
 martyr ; and his deportment, personal beauty, and undaunted courage, 
 rendered him an object of deep interest and sympathy upon tlic scaf- 
 fold. He was attended by a body of troops to the old Abbey of Holy- 
 cross, where not less than fifteen thousand people assembled to behold 
 him. The site of the execution rendered the spectacle a most striking one. 
 The Abbey of Ilolycross is one of the finest and most venerable monas- 
 tic ruins in Ireland. Most travellers turn from their way to survey it, 
 and leave it with a deep impression of its solemnity and grandeur. A 
 vast multitude was assembled round the scaffold. The prisoner was 
 brought forward in the midst of the profound silence of the people, 
 lie ascended and surveyed them ; and looked upon the ruins of the 
 edifice which had once been dedicated to the worship of liis religion, 
 and to the sepulchres of the dead which were strewed among its aisles, 
 and had been for ages as he was in a few minutes about to be. It 
 was not known whether he would call for vengeance from liis survi- 
 vors, or for mercy from Heaven. His kindred, his close friends, liis 
 early companions, all that he loved and all to whom he was dear, were 
 around him, and no sound, except an universal sob from his femaie re- 
 
62 CLONMEl, ASSIZES. 
 
 latives, disturbed the awful taciturnity that prevailed. At the side of 
 Patrick Grace stood the priest — tlie mild admonitor of the heart, the 
 soother of affliction, and the preceptor of forgiveness, who attended 
 him in the last office of humanity, and who proved by the result how 
 ■well he had performed it. To the disappointment of the people, 
 Patrick Grace expressed himself profoundly contrite ; and, although 
 he evinced no fear of death, at the instance of the Roman Catholic 
 -clergyman Avho attended him, implored the people to take Avarning by 
 his example. In a few moments after, he left this life. But the 
 efifect of his execution will be estimated by this remarkable incident. 
 His gloves were handed by one of his relations to an old man of the 
 .name of John Russell, as a keepsake. Russell drew them on, and de- 
 clared at the same time, that he should wear them ''till Paddy Grace 
 was revenged :" and revenged he soon afterwards was, within the time 
 which he had himself prescribed for retribution, and in a manner which 
 is as much calculated to excite astonishment at the strangeness, as de- 
 testation for the atrocity of the crime, of which I proceed to narrate 
 the details. 
 
 Philip Mara was removed by government from the country. It was 
 perfectly obvious, that if he had continued to sojourn in Tipperary, 
 his life would have been taken speedily, and at all hazards, away. It 
 .was decided that all his kindred should be exterminated. He had 
 three brothers; and the bare consanguinity with a traitor (for his 
 .crime was ti'eason in the eyes of the associates) was regarded as 
 .a sufficient offijnce to justify their immolation. If they could not 
 
 • procure his own blood for the purposes of sacrifice, it was how- 
 
 • ever something to make libation of that wliicli flowed from the 
 same source. The crimes of the Irish are derived from the same 
 
 .origin as their virtues. They have powerful domestic attachments. 
 Their love and devotion to their kindred instruct them in the 
 worst expedients of atrocity. Knowing the affection which Mara 
 had for his brothers, they found the way to his heart in the kind- 
 est instincts of humanity ; and from the consciousness of the pain 
 which the murder of " his mother's children" would inflict, determined 
 that he should endure it. It must be owned, that there is a di-eadful 
 policy in this system. The government may withdraw their witnesses 
 from the country and afford them protection ; but their wives, their 
 offspring, their parents, their brothers, sisters, nay, their remotest re- 
 -latives, cannot be secure, and the vengeance of the fei'ocious peasantrj^ 
 iif defrauded of its more immediate and natural object, will satiate itself 
 iwith some other victim. It was in conformity with these atrocious 
 -principles of revenge that the murder of the brothers of Philip 
 
CLONMEL ASSIZES. GJi 
 
 IVIara was resolved upon. Strange to tell, the whole body of the 
 peasantry in the neighbourhood of Rath Cannon, and far beyond it, 
 entered into a league, for the perpetration of this abominable crime ; 
 and while the individuals who were marked out for massacre were un- 
 conscious of what was going forward, scarcely a man, woman, or child 
 looked them in the face, who did not know that they were marked out 
 for death. They were masons by trade, and were employed in build- 
 ing the barrack at Rath Cannon, on the spot where Chadwick had 
 been assassinated, and where the funei-al of Patrick Grace (for so his 
 execution was called) had been performed. The peasantry looked iu 
 all probability with an evil eye upon eveiy man who had put his hand 
 to tliis obnoxious work ; but their main object Avas the extermination 
 of Philip ]\Tara's brothers. They were three in number — ^^Daniel, 
 Laurence, and Timothy. On the 1st of October they were at work, 
 witli an apprentice in the mason trade, at the barrack at Rath Cannon. 
 The name of this apprentice was Hickey. In tlie evening, about five 
 o'clock, they left off their work, and were returning homewards, Avhen 
 eight men with arms rushed upon them. They were fired at ; but the 
 fire-arms of the assassins were in such bad condition, that the discharge 
 of tlicir rude musketry had no effect. Laurence, Timotliy, and the 
 apprentice, fled in different directions, and escaped. Daniel JMara 
 lost his presence of mind, and instead of taking the same route as the 
 others, ran into the house of a poor widow. He was pursued by the 
 murderers, one of whom got in by a small window, while the others 
 burst tlirougli the door, and with circumstances of great savageness 
 put him to death. The intelligence of this event produced a still 
 greater sensation than the murder of Chadwick ; and was as much 
 the subject of comment as some great political incident, fraught with 
 national consequences, in the metropolis. The government lost no 
 time in issuing proclamations, offering a reward of £2000 for informa- 
 tion which should bring the assassins to justice. The magnitude of 
 the sum induced a hope that its temptation would be found irresistible 
 to poverty and destitution so great as that which prevails among tlic 
 class of ordinary malefactors. It was well known that hundreds 
 had cognizance of the offence ; and it was concluded tliat, amongst so 
 numerous a body, the tender of so large a reward could not fail to offer 
 an effectual allurement. Weeks, however, passed over without the 
 communication of intelligence of any kind. Several persons were 
 arrested on suspicion, but were afterwards discharged, as no more than 
 mere conjecture could be adduced against them. Mr. Doherty, the 
 Solicitor-General, proceeded to the county of Tipperary, in order to 
 investigate the transaction ; but for a considerable time all his scrutiny 
 
64 CLONMEL ASSIZES. 
 
 was without avail. At length, however, an individual, of the name of 
 Thomas Fitzgerald, was committed to gaol upon a charge of highway- 
 robbery, and in order to save his life, furnished evidence upon which 
 the government was enabled to pierce into the mysteries of delinquency. 
 The moment Fitzgerald unsealed his lips, a numerous horde of male- 
 factors were taken up, and farther revealments were made under the 
 influence which the love of life, and not of money, exercised over their 
 minds. The assizes came on; and on Monday, the Slst of March, 
 Patrick Lacy and John Walsh were placed at the bar, and to the in- 
 dictment for the murder of Daniel Mara pleaded not guilty. 
 
 The court presented a very imposing spectacle. The whole body of 
 the gentry of Tipperary were assembled in order to witness a trial, on 
 which the security of life and property was to depend. The box which 
 is devoted to the grand jury was thronged with the aristocracy of the 
 county, who manifested an anxiety far stx'onger than the trial of an or- 
 dinary culprit is accustomed to produce. An immense crowd of the 
 peasantry was gathered round the dock. All appeai'cd to feel a deep 
 interest in what was to take place ; but it was easy to perceive in the 
 diversity of solicitude which was expressed upon their faces, the de- 
 grees of sympathy which connected them with the prisoners at the bar. 
 The more immediate kindred of the malefactors were distinguishable 
 by their profound but still emotion, from those who were engaged in the 
 same extensive organization, and were actuated by a selfish sense that 
 their personal interests were at stake, without having their more ten- 
 der affections involved in the result. But besides the relatives and 
 confederates of the prisoners, there was a third class amongst the spec- 
 tators, in which another shade of sympathy Avas observable. These 
 were the mass of the peasantry, who had no direct concern with the 
 transaction, but whose principles and habits made them well-wishers to 
 the men who had put their lives in peril fur what was regarded as the 
 common cause. Through the crowd were dispersed a number of po- 
 licemen, whose green regimentals, high caps, and glittering bayonets, 
 made them conspicuous, and bi'ought them into contrast with the pea- 
 sants, by whom they were surrounded. On the table stood the go- 
 vernor of the gaol, with his ponderous keys, which designated his 
 office, and presented to the mind associations which aided the effect of 
 the scene. Mr. Justice Moore appeared in his red robes lined with 
 black, and intimated by his aspect that he anticipated the discharge of 
 a dreadful duty. Beside him was placed the Earl of Kingston, who 
 had come from the neighbouring county of Cork to witness the trial, 
 and whose great possessions gave him a peculiar concern in tracing to 
 their sources the disturbances, Avhich had already a formidable charac-. 
 
CLONMFX ASSIZES. 65 
 
 ter, and intimated still more terrible results. His dark and massive coun- 
 tenance, with a shaggy and wild profusion of hair, his bold imperious 
 lip, and large and deeply set eye, and his huge and vigorous frame, 
 rendered him a remarkable object, without reference to his high rank and 
 station, and to the political part which he had played in the political 
 convulsion of which it is not impossible that he may witness, although 
 he should desire to avert, the return. The prisoners at the bar stood 
 composed and firm. Lacy, the youngest, was dressed with extreme 
 care and neatness. He was a tall handsome young man, with a soft 
 and healthful colour, and a bright and tranquil eye. I was struck 
 by the unusual whiteness of his hands, which were loosely attached to 
 each other. Walsh, his fellow-prisoner and his brother in crime, was a 
 stout, short, and square-built man, with a sturdy look, in which there 
 was more fierceness than in Lacy's countenance ; yet the latter was a 
 far more guilty malefactor, and had been engaged in numerous achieve- 
 ments of the same kind, whereas Walsh bore an excellent reputation, 
 and obtained from his landlord, l\Ir. Creagh, the highest testimony to 
 his character. The Solicitor-General, Mr. Doherty, rose to state the 
 case. He appeared more deeply impressed than I have ever seen any 
 public officer, with the responsibility which had devolved upon him ; 
 and by his solemn and emphatic manner rendered a narration, which 
 was pregnant with awful facts, so impressive, that during a speech of 
 several hours' continuance he kept attention upon the watch, and 
 scarcely a noise was heard, except when some piece of evidence was 
 announced which surprised the prisoners, and made them give a slight 
 start, in which their astonishment and alarm at the extent of the infor- 
 mation of the government were expressed. They preserved their 
 composure while Mr. Doherty was detailing the evidence of Fitzgerald, 
 for they well knew that he had become what is technically called " a 
 stag," and turned informer. Neither were they greatly moved at 
 learning that another traitor of the name of Ryan was to be produced, 
 for rumours had gone abroad that he was to corroborate Fitzgerald. 
 They were well aware that the jury would require more evidence than 
 the coincidence of swearing between two accomplices could supply. 
 It is, ind(;c<l, held that one accomplice can sustain anotlicr for the pur- 
 poses of conviction, and that their concuri;ence is sufficient to warrant 
 a verdict of guilty ; still juries are in the habit of demanding some 
 better foundation for their findings, and, before they take life away, 
 exact a confirmation from some pure and unquestionable source. The 
 counsel for the prisoners participated with them in the belief that the 
 crown would not be able to produce any witnesses except accomplices, 
 and listened, therefore, to the details of the murder of Daniel Mara, 
 
 F 
 
66 CLONMEL ASSIZES. 
 
 however minute, without much apprehension for thejr clients, until 
 Mr. Doherty, turning towards the dock, and lifting up and shaking his 
 hand, pronounced the name of " Kate Costello." It smote the pri- 
 soners with dismay. At the time, however, that Mr. Doherty made 
 this announcement, he was himself uncertain, I believe, whether Kate 
 Costello would consent to give the necessary evidence ; and tliere was 
 reason to calculate upon her reluctance to make any disclosure by 
 which the lives of " her people," as the lower orders call their kindred, 
 should be affected. The statement of Mr. Doherty, which was after- 
 wards fully made out in proof, showed that a wide conspiracy had been 
 framed in order to murder Philip Mara's brothers. Fitzgerald and 
 Lacy, who did not reside in the neighbourhood of Rath Cannon, were 
 sent for by the relatives of Patrick Grace, as it was well known that 
 they were ready for the undertaking of " the job." They received 
 their instructions, and were joined by other assassins. The band pro- 
 ceeded to Rath Cannon in order to execute their purpose, but an acci- 
 dent prevented their victims from coming to the place where they 
 were expected, and the assassination was, in consequence, adjourned 
 for another week. In the interval, however, they did not relent, but, 
 on tiie contrary, a new supply of murderers was collected, and on 
 Sunday, the 30th of September, the day preceding the murder, they 
 met again in the house of a farmer, of the name of Jack Kcogh, who 
 lived beside the barrack where the Maras were at woi-k. Here they 
 were attended by Kate Costello, the fatal witness, by whom tlieir des- 
 tiny was to be sealed. In the morning of Monday, the 1st of October, 
 they proceeded to an elevation called " the Grove," a hill covered with 
 trees, in which arms had been deposited. This hill overlooked the 
 barrack where the Maras were at work. A party of conspirators 
 joined the chief assassins on ^this spot; and Kate Costello, a servant 
 and near relative of the Keoghs (wlio were engaged in the murder), 
 again attended them. She brought them food and spirits. From this 
 ambush they remained watching their prey until five o'clock in the 
 afternoon, when it was announced that the Maras were coming down 
 from the scaffolding on which they were raising tlie barrack. It ap- 
 peared that the murderers did not know the persons whose lives they 
 were to take away, and that their dress was mentioned as the means 
 of recognition. They advanced to the number of eight ; and, as I 
 have already intimated, succeeded in slaying one only of the three 
 brothers. But the most illustrative incident in the whole transaction 
 was not what took place at the murder, but a circumstance which im- 
 mediately succeeded it. The assassins, with their hands red with blood, 
 proceeded to the house of John Russell. He was a man of a decent 
 
CLONMEI. ASSIZES. 67 
 
 . aspect and demeanour, above the lower class of peasants in station and 
 habits, was not destitute of education, spoke and reasoned well, and was 
 accounted very orderly and well conducted. One would suppose 
 that he would have closed his doors against the wretches who came 
 reeking from their crime. He gave them welcome, tendered them 
 hospitality, and provided them with food. In the room where 
 they were received by this hoary delinquent, there were two indivi- 
 duals of a very different character and aspect from each other. The 
 one was a girl, Mary Russell, daughter of the proprietor of the house. 
 She was young, and of an exceedingly interesting appearance. Her 
 manners were greatly superior to those of persons of licr class, and slie 
 was delicate and gentle in her habitual conduct and demeanour. Near 
 her there sat an old woman, in the most advanced stage of life, a 
 kind of Elspeth, who from her age and relationship iwas an object of 
 respect. The moment the assassins entered, Mary Russell rushed up 
 to them, and with a vehement earnestness exclaimed, " Did you do 
 any good ?" They stated, in reply, that one of the Maras was shot ; 
 when Peg Russell (the withered hag) who sat moping in the reverie 
 of old age, till her attention was aroused by the sanguinary intelli- 
 gence, lifted her shrivelled hand, and cried out with a shrill and vehe- 
 ment bitterness, " You might as well not have killed any, since you 
 did not kill them all." Strange and dreadful condition of Ireland ! 
 The witness to a murder denounces it. lie flies the country. His 
 brothers, for his crime, are doomed to die. The whole population' con- 
 federate in their death. For weeks the conspiracy is planned, and no 
 relenting spirit interposes in their slaughterous deliberations. The 
 appointed day arrives, and the murder of an innocent man is effected, 
 while the light is still shining, and with the eye of man, which is as 
 little feared as that of God, upon them. The murderers leave the 
 spot where their fellow-creature lies weltering ; and instead of being 
 regarded as objects of execration and of horror, are chid by women 
 for their remissness in tlie work of death, and for the scantiness of the 
 blood which they had poured out. Tlius it is that in this unfortunate 
 country not only men are made barbarous, but women are unsexed, 
 and fdled 
 
 ' ' From the crown to the toe, top-full 
 
 Of direst cruelty." 
 
 These were the facts which ]\Ir. Doherty stated, and they were es- 
 tablished by the evidence. The first witness was Fitzgerald. When 
 he was called, he did not appear on the instant, for he was kept in a 
 room adjoining the court, in order tliat he might not avail himself of 
 
()8 CLONMKl. ASSIZliS. 
 
 the statement and fit his evidence to it. His testimony was of such 
 importance, and it was known that so much depended upon it, that his 
 arrival was waited for with strong expectation ; and in the interval 
 before his appearance on the table, tlie mind had leisure to form some 
 conjectural picture of what he in all likelihood was. I imagined that 
 he must be some fierce-looking, savage wretch, with baseness and per- 
 fidy, intermingled with atrocity, in his brow, and whose meanness 
 would bespeak the informer, as his ferocity would proclaim the as- 
 sassin. I was deceived. His coming was announced — -way was made 
 for him — and I saw leap upon the table, with an air of easy indiffe- 
 rence and manly familiarity, a tall, athletic young man, about two or 
 three and twenty, with a countenance as intelligent in expression and 
 symmetrical in feature, as his limbs were vigorous and well-proportioned. 
 His head was perfectly shaped, and surmounted a neck of singular 
 strength and breadth, which lay open and rose out of a chest of unusual 
 massiveness and dilation. His eyes were of deep and brilliant black, 
 full of fire and energy, intermixed with an expression of craft and 
 sagacity. They had a peculiarly watchful look, and indicated a vehe- 
 mence of character, checked and tempered by a cautious and observant 
 spirit. In his mouth, which disclosed a range of teeth of the 
 finest form and coloui% firmness and intrepidity were strongly marked. 
 His hair was short and thick, but his cheek was so fresh and fair, 
 that he scarcely seemed to have ever had any beai-d. The fellow's 
 dress was calculated to set off his figure. It left his breast almost 
 bare, and the knees of his breeches being open, a great part of his 
 muscular legs appeared without covering, as his stockings did not 
 reach to the knee. He was placed upon the chair appropriated to 
 witnesses, and turned at once to the counsel for the crown in order to 
 narrate his own achievements as well as those of his associates in de- 
 pravity. I have never seen a cooler, more precise, methodical and 
 consistent witness. He detailed every circumstance to the minutest 
 point, which had liappened during a month's time, with a singular 
 accuracy. So far from manifesting any anxiety to conceal or to excuse 
 his own guilt, he on the contrary set it forth in the blackest colours. 
 He made himself a prominent actor in the business of blood. The 
 life which he led was as strange as it was atrocious. He spent his 
 time in committing outrages at night, and during the day in exacting 
 homage from the peasantry, whom he had inspired with a deep dread of 
 hira. He walked through the county in arms, and compelled every 
 peasant to give him bed and board wherever he appeared. In the ca- 
 prices of his tyranny, lie would make persons wlio chanced to pass him, 
 kneel down and offer him reverence, while he presented his musket 
 
CLONMKL ASSIZKS. G9 
 
 at their heads. Yet he was a favourite with the populace, who par- 
 doned the outrages committed ou themselves, on account of his readi- 
 ness to avenge the affronts or the injuries which they suffered from 
 others. Villain as the fellow was, it was not the reward which tempted 
 him to betray his associates. Though £2000 had been offered by go- 
 vernment, he gave no information for several months ; and when he 
 did give it, it was to save his life, which he had forfeited by a highway 
 robbery, for which he had been arrested. He seemed exceedingly 
 anxious to impress upon the crowd, that though he was a " a stag," it 
 was not for gold that he had sold the cause. Life itself was the only bribe 
 that could seduce him from " honour," and even the temptation which 
 the insthictive passion for existence held out to him, was for a long while 
 resisUid. J\Ir. Ilatcliell cross-cxamijicd this formidable witness with 
 extraordinary skill and dexterity, but he was still unable to shake his 
 evidence. It was perfectly consistent and compact, smooth and round, 
 without any point of discrepancy on which tlie most dexterous practi- 
 tioner could lay a strong hold. Tlie most unfavourable circumstance 
 to his cross-examiner was his openness and candour. He had an in- 
 genuousness in his atrocity which defied all the ordinary expedients of 
 counsel. Most iiifoi'mers allege that they are influenced by the pure 
 love of justice to betray their accomplices. This statement goes to 
 shake tlieir credit, because they are manifestly perjured in the decla- 
 ration. Fitzgerald, however, took a very different course. He dis- 
 claimed all interest in the cause of justice, and repeatedly stated that 
 he Avouhl not liave informed, except to rescue himself from the halter 
 which was fastened round his neck. When he left the table, he im- 
 pressed every man who heard him with a conviction of not only his 
 great criminality, but his extraordinary talents. He was followed by 
 another accomplice, of the name of Ryan, who was less remarkable 
 than Fitzgerald, but whose statement was equally consistent and its 
 parts as adhesive to each other as the more important informer's. 
 They had been left in separate gaols, and had not had any communi- 
 cation, so that it could not be suggested that their evidence was the 
 result of a comparison of notes, ami of a cons])iracy against the pri- 
 soners. This Ryan also alleged tiiat he had informed merely to save 
 his life. These witnesses were succeeded by several, who deposed to 
 minute incidents which went to corroborate the informers ; but, not- 
 withstanding that a strong case had been made out by the crown, still 
 the testimony of some untainted witness to the leading fact was requi- 
 site, and the counsel for tlie prosecution felt that on Kate Costello the 
 conviction must still depend. She had not taken any participation in 
 the murder. She could not be regarded as a member of the conspi- 
 
70 CLONMEX. ASSIZES. 
 
 racy ; she was a servant in the house of old John Keogh, but not an 
 agent in the business ; and if she confirmed what the witnesses had 
 deposed to, it was obvious that a conviction would ensue ; while, upon 
 the other hand, if she was not brought forward, the want of her testi- 
 mony would produce a directly opposite result. She was called, and 
 a suspense far deeper than the expectation which had preceded the 
 evidence of Fitzgerald was apparent in every face. She did not come, 
 and was again summoned into court. Still Kate Costello did not ap- 
 pear. Repeated requisitions were sent by the Solicitor-General, but 
 without effect ; at length every one began to conjecture that she would 
 disappoint and foil the crown ; and the friends of the prisoners mur- 
 mured " that Kate Costello would not turn against her people ;" an ob- 
 vious feeling of satisfaction pervaded the crowd, and the prisoners ex- 
 hibited a propoi-tionate solicitude in which hope seemed to predominate. 
 Suddenly, however, the chamber door communicating with the room 
 where the witnesses were kept was opened, and one of the most extra- 
 ordinary figures that ever appeared in that strange theatre, an L-ish 
 court of justice, was produced. A withered, diminutive woman, who 
 was unable to support herself, and whose feet gave way at every step, 
 to which she was impelled by her attendants, was seen entering the 
 court, and tottering towards tlie table. Her face was covered, and it 
 was impossible, for some time after she had been placed on the ta- 
 ble, to trace her features ; but her hands, which were as white and 
 clammy as a corpse's, and seemed to have luidergone the first process 
 of decomposition, shook and shuddex'ed, and a thrill ran through the 
 whole of her miserable and worn-out frame. A few minutes elapsed 
 before her veil was removed ; and when it was the most ghastly face 
 which I have ever observed was disclosed. Her eyes were quite closed, 
 and the eyelids shrunken as if by the touch of death. The lips were like 
 ashes, and remained open and without movement. Her bi'eathing was 
 scarcely perceptible, and as her head lay on her shoulder, her long black 
 hair fell dishevelled, and added to the general character of disordered 
 horror which was expressed in her demeanour. Now that she was pro- 
 duced, she seemed little calculated to be of any use. Mr. Doherty re- 
 peatedly addressed himself to her, and entreated her to answer. 
 She seemed unconscious even of the sound of his voice. At length, 
 however, with the aid of water, which was applied to her mouth, and 
 thrown in repeated aspersions over her face, she was in some degree 
 restored, and was able to breathe a few words. An interval of minutes 
 elapsed between every question and answer. Her voice was so low 
 as to be scarcely audible, and was rather an inarticulate whisper, than 
 the utterance of any connecled sentence. Slie was, with a great deal 
 
C1.0NMKL ASSIZES. 71 
 
 to do, conducted by the examinei' through some of the preliminary in- 
 cidents, and at last was brought to the scene in the grove where the 
 murderers were assembled. It remained that she should recognise 
 the prisoners. Unless this were done nothing would have been ac- 
 complished. The rod with which culprits are identified was put into 
 her hand, and she was desired to stand up, to turn to the dock, and 
 to declare whether she saw in court any of the men whom she had 
 seen in the grove on the day of the murder. For a considerable 
 time she could not be got to rise from her seat ; and when she did, 
 and stood up after a great effort over herself, before she had turned 
 round, but while the rod was trembling in her hand, another extraor- 
 dinary incident took place. Walsh, one of the prisoners at the bar, 
 cried out with the most vehement gesture, — " O God ! you are going 
 to murder me !" I'll not stand here to be murdered, for I'm downright 
 murdered, God help me !" This cry, uttered by a man almost frenzied 
 with excitation, drew tlie attention of the whole court to the prisoner ; 
 and the judge inquired of him of what he complained. Walsh then 
 stated with more composure, that it was unfair, while there was nobody 
 in the dock but Lacy and himself, to desire Kate Costello to look at 
 him, for that he was marked out to her where he stood. This was a 
 very just observation, and Judge Moore innncdiately ordered that 
 other prisoners should be brought from the gaol into the dock, and that 
 Walsh should be shown to Kate Costello in the midst of a crowd. The 
 gaol was at a considerable distance, and a good deal of time was con- 
 sumed in complying with the directions of the judge. Kate Costello 
 sank down again upon her chair, and in the interval before the arrival 
 of the other prisoners we engaged in conjectures as to the likelihood 
 of Walsh being identified. She had never seen him, except at the 
 grove, and it was possible that she might not remember him. In that 
 event his life was safe. At last the other prisoners were introduced 
 into the dock. The sound of their fetters as they entered the court, and 
 the grounding of the soldiers' muskets on the pavement, echoed through 
 the court. It was now four o'clock in the morning ; the candles were 
 almost wasted to their sockets, and a dim and uncertain light was dif- 
 fused tlirough the court. Ilaggardncss sat upon the spectators, and yet 
 no weariness or exhaustion appeared. The frightful interest of the scene 
 preserved the mind from fatigue. The dock was crowded with male- 
 factors, and brought as they were in order that guilt of all kinds should 
 be confused and blended, they exhibited a most singular spectacle. 
 This assemblage of human beings laden with chains was, perhaps, more 
 melancholy from the contrast which they presented between their con- 
 dition and their aspect. Even the pale light which glimmered through 
 
72 CLONMKL, ASSIZKS. 
 
 the court did not prevent their cheeks from looking ruddy and health- 
 ful. They had been awakened in their lonely cells in order to be 
 produced, and, as they were not aware of the object of arraying them 
 together, there was some surprise mixed with fear in tlieir looks. I 
 could not help whispering to myself as I surveyed them, " what a noble 
 and fine race of men are here, and how much have they to answer for, 
 who, by degrading, have demoralised such a people !" The desire of 
 Walsh having been complied with, the witness was called upon a 
 second time to place the rod upon his head. She rose again, and 
 turned round, holding the fatal wand. Tliere was a deep silence 
 through the court ; the face of Walsh exhibited the most intense 
 anxiety, as the eyes of Kate Costello rested upon the place where he 
 stood. She appeared at first not to recognise him, and the rod hung 
 loosely in her hand. I thought, as I saw her eyes traversing the assem- 
 blage of malefactors, that she either did not know him, or would affect 
 not to remember him. At last, however, she raised the rod, and 
 stretched it forth, but before it was laid on the devoted head, a female 
 voice exclaimed, " Oh, Kate !" This cry, which issued from the crowd, 
 and was probably the exclamation of some relative of the Kcoghs, 
 whose destiny depended on that of Walsh, thrilled the witness to the 
 core. She felt the adjuration in the recesses of her being. After 
 a shudder, she collected herself again, and advanced towards the 
 dock. She raised the rod a second time, and having laid it on the 
 head of Walsh, who gave himself up as lost the moment it touched 
 him, she sank back into her cliair. The feeling which had filled the 
 heart of every spectator here found a vent, and a deep murmur was 
 heard through the whole court, mingled with sounds of stifled execra- 
 tion from the mass of the people in tlie back ground. Lacy also was 
 identified ; and here it may be said that the trial closed. Walsh, who, 
 while he entertained any hope, had been almost convulsed with agita- 
 tion, resumed his original composure. He took no farther interest in 
 the proceeding, except when his landlord gave him a high character 
 for integrity and good conduct ; and this commendation he seemed 
 rather to consider as a sort of bequest which he should leave to his 
 kindred, than as the means of saving his life. It is unnecessary almost 
 to add, that the prisoners were found guilty. 
 
 Kate Costello, whose evidence was of such importance to the crown, 
 had acted as a species of menial in the house of old John Keogh, but 
 was a near relation of her master. It is not uncommon among the 
 lower ordex's to introduce some dependant relative into tlie family, 
 who goes through tasks of usefulness which are quite free from degra- 
 dation, and is at the same time treated, to a great extent, as an equal. 
 
CLONMEl. ASSIZES. 73 
 
 Kate Costello sat down with old Jack Keogh and bis sons at their 
 meals, and was accounted one of themselves. The most implicit trust 
 was placed in her ; and on one of the assassins observing " that Kate 
 Costello could hang them all," another observed, " (bat there was no 
 fear of Kate." Nor Avould Kate ever have betrayed the men who had 
 placed their confidence in her from any mercenary motives. Fitzge- 
 rald had stated that she had been at " the Grove" in the morning of 
 the day on which the murder was committed, and that she could con- 
 fii*m his testimony. She was in consequence arrested, and was told 
 that she should be hanged unless she disclosed the truth. Terror ex- 
 torted from her the revcahnents which were turned to such account. 
 When examined as a witness on the trial of Lacy and of Walsh, her 
 agitation did not arise from any regard for them, but from her con- 
 sciousness tliat if they were convicted her own relatives and benefac- 
 tors must share in their fate. The trial of Patrick and John Keogh 
 came on upon Saturday the 5th of April, some days after the convic- 
 tion of Lacy and of Walsh, who had been executed in the interval. 
 The trial of the Kcoghs was postponed at the instance of the prisoners, 
 but it was understood that the crown had no objection to the delay, as 
 great difficulty was supposed to have arisen in persuading Kate Cos- 
 tello to give comjdction to the useful work in which she had engaged; 
 It was said that the friends of the Kcoghs had got access to her, and 
 that she had refused to come forward against " her people." It was 
 also rumoured that she had entertained an attachment for John Keogh, 
 and although he had wronged her, and she had suffered severe detri- 
 ment from their criminal connexion, that she loved him still, and 
 would not take his life away. There was, therefore, enough of doubt 
 incidental to the trial of the Keoghs to give it the interest of uncer- 
 tainty ; and, however fatal the omen which the conviction of their 
 brother conspirators held out, still it was supposed that Kate Costello 
 Avould recoil from her terrible task. The court was as much crowded 
 as it had been on the first trial, upon the morning on which the two 
 Keoghs were put at the bar. They were more immediate agents in 
 the assassination. It had been in a great measure planned, as well as 
 executed by them ; and there was a farther circumstance of aggrava- 
 tion in their having been in habits of intimacy with the deceased. 
 Their appearance struck every spectator as in strange anomaly 
 with their misdeeds. They both seemed to be farmers of the most 
 respectable class. Patrick, the younger, was perfectly well clad. 
 lie had a blue coat and white waistcoat, of the best materials 
 used by the peasantry : a black silk-handkerchief was carefully 
 knotted on his neck. lie was lower in stature, and of less athletic 
 
74 CLONMKL ASSIZES. ^ 
 
 proportions than his brother John, but had a more determined and 
 resohite physiognomy. He looked alert, quick, and active. The other 
 was of gigantic stature, and of immense width of shoulder and strength 
 of limb. He rose beyond every man in court, and towered in the dock. 
 His dress was not as neatly arranged as his brother's, and his neck was 
 without covering, whidi served to exhibit the hugeness of his propor- 
 tions. He looked in the vigour of powerful manhood. His face was 
 ruddy and blooming, and was quite destitute of all darkness and male- 
 volence of expression. There was perhaps too much fulness about the 
 lips, and some traces of savageness, as well as of voluptuousness, might 
 have been detected by a minute physiognomist in their exuberance ; 
 but the bright blue of his mild and intelligent eyes counterbalanced 
 this evil indication, The aspect of these two young men was greatly 
 calculated to excite interest ; but there was another object in court 
 which was even more deserving of attention. On the left hand of his 
 two sons, and just near the youngest of them, sat an old man, whose 
 head was covered Avith a profusion of grey hairs, and who, although 
 evidently greatly advanced in years, was of a hale and healthfid aspect. 
 I did not notice him at first, but in the course of the trial, the glare 
 which his eye gradually acquired, and the passing of all colour from 
 his cheek, as the fate of his sons grew to certainty, attracted my obser- 
 vation, and I learned on inquiiy, what I had readily conjectured, that 
 he was the father of the prisoners at the bar. He did not utter a word 
 during the fifteen or sixteen hours that he remained in attendance 
 upon the dreadful scene which was going on before him. The appear- 
 ance of Kate Costello herself, whom he had fostered, fed, and cherished, 
 scarcely seemed to move him from liis terrible tranquillity. She was, 
 as on the former occasion, the pivot of the whole case. The antici- 
 pations that she would not give evidence " against her own flesh and 
 blood" were wholly groundless, for on her second exhibition as a wit- 
 ness she enacted her part with much more firmness and determination. 
 She had before kept her eyes almost closed, but she now opened and 
 fixed them upon the counsel, and exhibited great quickness and shrewd- 
 ness in their expression, and watched the cross-examination with great 
 wariness and dexterity. I was greatly surprised at this change, and can 
 only refer it to the spirit of determination wliich lier passage of the first 
 dilUculty on the ibrmer trial had produced. The first sli])pery step in 
 blood had been taken, and she trod more firmly in taking the second. 
 Whatever may have been the cause, she certainly exhibited little com- 
 punction in bringing her cousins to justice, and laid the rod on the 
 head of her relative and supposed paramour without remorse. At an 
 early hour on Sunday morning the verdict of guilty was brought in. 
 
CLONMKL ASSIZES. 75 
 
 The prisoners at the bar received it without surprise, but turned deadly 
 pale. The change in John Keogh was more manifest, as in the 
 morning of Saturday he stood blooming with health at the bar, and 
 was now as wJiite as a shroud. The judge told tliem that as it was the 
 morning of Easter Sunday, (which is comraeraorativ^e of the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead,) he should not then pronounce sentence upon them. 
 They cried out " A long day, a long day, my lord !" and at the same 
 time begged that their bodies might be given to their father. This 
 prayer was uttered with a sound resembling the wail of an Irish fune- 
 ral, and accompanied with a most pathetic gesture. They both swung 
 themselves witli a sort of oscillation up and down, with their heads 
 thrown back, striking their hands, with the fingers half closed, against 
 their breasts, in the manner which Roman Catholics use in saying 
 " Tlie Confiteor." The reference which they made to their father 
 drew my attention to the miserable old man. Two persons, friends of 
 his, had attended him in court, and when his sons, after having been 
 found guilty, were about to be removed, he was lifted on the table, on 
 whicli he was with difficulty sustained, and was brought near to the 
 dock. He wanted to embrace Jolm Keogh, and stretched out his arms 
 towards him. The latter, whose manliness now forsook him, leaned 
 over the iron spikes to liis full length, got the old man into his bosom, 
 and while his tears ran down his face, pressed him long and closely to 
 his heart. They were, at length, separated, and the sons were re- 
 moved to the cells appointed for the condemned. The judge left the 
 bench, and the court was gradually cleared. Still the father of the 
 prisoners remained between his two attendants nearly insensible. 
 He was almost the last to depart. I followed him out. It was 
 a dark and stormy night. The wind beat full against him, and 
 made him totter as lie went along. His attendants addressed to 
 him some words of consolation connected with religion, (for these 
 people are, with all their crimes, not destitute of religious impressions,) 
 but the old man only answered them with his moans. He said nothing 
 articulate, but during all the way to the obscure cellar into wliich 
 they led him, continued moaning as he went. It was not, I trust, a 
 mere love of the excitement which arises from the contemplation of 
 scenes in which the passions are brought out, that made me watch this 
 scene of human miseiy. I may say, witliout aflectation, that I was 
 (as who would not have been ?) profoundly moved by what I saw ; 
 and when I beheld this forlorn and desolate man descend into a 
 cellar, which was lighted by a feeble candle, and saw him fall upon 
 his knees in helplessness, while his attendants gave way to sorrow, 
 I could not restrain my own tears. 
 
76 CLONMEL ASSIZES. 
 
 The scenes of misery did not stop here. Old John Russell pleaded 
 guilty. He had two sons, lads of fifteen or sixteen, and, in the hope 
 of saving them, acknowledged his crime at the bar ; " Let them," he 
 said, in the gaol where I saw him, " let them put me on the trap if 
 they like, but let them spare the boys." 
 
 I shall not proceed farther in the detail of these dreadful inci- 
 dents. There were many other trials at the assizes, in which terrible 
 disclosures of barbarity took place. For three weeks the two judges 
 were unremittingly employed in trying cases of dreadful atrocity, and 
 in almost every instance the perpetrators of crimes the most detestable, 
 were persons whose general moral conduct stood in a wonderful con- 
 trast with their isolated acts of depravity. Almost every offence was 
 connected with the great agrarian organisation which prevails through 
 the county. It must be acknowledged that, terrible as the misdeeds 
 of the Tipperary peasantry must upon all hands be admitted to be, yet, 
 in general, there was none of the meanness and turpitude observable 
 in their enormities which characterise the crimes that are disclosed at 
 an English assize. There were scai-cely any examples of murder com- 
 mitted for mere gain. It seemed to be a point of honom- with the 
 malefactors to take blood, and to s[)urn at money. Almost every of- 
 fence was committed in carrying a system into effect, and the victims 
 who were sacrificed were considered l»y tlieir inimolators as offered up, 
 upon a justifiable principle of necessary extermination. These are 
 assuredly important facts, and after having contemplated these moral 
 phenomena, it becomes a duty to inquire into the causes from which 
 these marvellous atrocities derive tlieir origin. But before I proceed to 
 suggest what I conceive to be the sources of a condition so disastrous, it 
 is not inappropriate to inquire liow long the lower orders in Ireland 
 have been habituated to these terrible practices, and to look back to 
 the period at which they may be considered to have had their origin. 
 If these crimes were of a novel character, and had a recent existence, 
 that circumstance woidd afford strong grounds for concluding that 
 temporary expedients, and the vigorous administration of the law ap- 
 plied to the suppression of local and ephemeral disturbances, would be 
 of avail. But if we find that it is not now, or within these few years, 
 that these symptoms of demoralisation have appeared, it is tlien reason- 
 able to conclude that there must be some essential vice, some radical 
 imperfection in the general system by which the coimtry is governed, 
 and it is necessary to ascertain what the extent and root of the evil is, 
 before any effectual remedy can be discovered for its cure. Tliis is a 
 subject of paramount interest, and its importance will justify the 
 writer of this article, after a detail of the extraordinary incidents 
 
CLONMF.I, ASSIZF.S. .77 
 
 wliicli he has narrated, in taking a rapid retrospect of antecedent 
 events, of which recent transactions may be reasonably accounted the 
 sequel. The first and leading feature in the disturbances and atro- 
 cities of Tipperary is, that tliey are of an old date, and have been, 
 for much more than half a century, of uninterrupted continuance. 
 Arthur Young travelled in Ireland in the years 1776, 1777, and 1778. 
 His excellent book is entitled, " A Tour in Ireland, with general 
 Observations on the Present State of that Kingdom." Although the 
 professed object of Arthur Young in visiting Ireland was to ascertain 
 the condition of its agriculture, and a great portion of his work turns 
 upon that subject, yet he has also investigated its political condition, 
 and pointed out what he conceived to be the chief evils by which the 
 country was aflHctcd, and the mode of removing them. lie adverts 
 particularly to the state of the peasantry in the South of Ireland, and 
 it is well worthy of remark that the outrages which are now in daily 
 commission, were of exactly the same character as the atrocities which 
 were perpetrated l)y the Wliiteboys (as the insurgents were called) in 
 17C0. " The AYhiteboys," says Arthur Young, in p. 75 of the quarto 
 edition, " began in Tipperary. It was a common practice with them 
 to go in parties about the country, swearing many to be true to them, 
 and forcing tliera to join by menaces, which they very often carried 
 into execution. At last they set up to be general redrcssers of griev- 
 ances — punished all obnoxious persons who advanced tlie value of 
 lands, or held farms over their head ; and, having taken the adminis- 
 tration of justice into their own hands, were not very exact in the 
 distribution of it. They forced masters to release their apprentices, 
 carried off the daughters of rich farmers, ravished them into mar- 
 riages, they levied sums of money on the middling and lower farmers, 
 in order to support their cause, in defending prosecutions against 
 them, and many of them subsisted without work, supported by these 
 prosecutions. Sometimes they committed considerable robberies, 
 breaking into houses and taking money under pretence of redressing 
 grievances. In the course of these outrages they burned several 
 houses, and destroyed the whole substance of those obnoxious to them. 
 The barbarities tliey committed were shocking. One of their usual 
 punisliments, and by no means the most severe, was taking people out 
 of their beds, carrying them naked in winter on horseback for some 
 distance, and burying them up to their chin in a hole with briers, not 
 forgetting to cut off one of their ears." Arthur Young goes on to say 
 that the government had not succeeded in discovering any radical 
 cure. It will scarcely be disputed that the Whiteboyism of 1760 cor- 
 responds with that of 1 828 ; and if, when Arthur Young wrote his 
 
78 CLONMKL ASSIZES. 
 
 valuable book, the government had not discovered any " radical cure," 
 it will scarcely be suggested that any remedy has since that time been 
 devised. From the period at which these outrages commenced, the 
 evil has continued in rapid augmentation. Every expedient which 
 legislative ingenuity could invent has been tried. All that the 
 terrors of the law could accomplisli, has been put into expe- 
 riment without avail. Special commissioners and special delegations 
 of counsel have been almost annually despatched into the disturbed 
 districts, and crime appears to liave only undergone a pruning, while 
 its roots remained untouched. Mr. Doherty is not the first Solici- 
 tor-General who has been despatched by government for the purpose 
 of awing the peasantry into their duty. The present Chief Justice 
 of the King's Bench (Charles Kendal Bushe), Avhen filling INIr. Do- 
 herty's office, was sent upon the same painful errand, and after having 
 been equally successful in procuring the conviction of malefactors, 
 and having brandished the naked sword of justice, with as puissant 
 an arm, new atrocities have almost immediately afterwards broken 
 forth, and furnished new occasions for the exercise of his command- 
 ing eloquence. It is reasonable to presume that the recent execu- 
 tions at Clonmcl will not be attended with any more permanently 
 useful consequences, and symptoms are already beginning to re-a])pear, 
 whicli may well induce an apprehension that before much time shall 
 go by, the law officers of the crown will have to go through the 
 same terrible routine of prosecution. It is said, indeed, tliat now 
 something effectual has been done, and that the gaol and the 
 gibbet there have given a lesson that will not be speedily foi'gotten. 
 How often has the same thing been said wlien the scafibld was strewed 
 with the same heaps of the dead ! IIow often have the prophets of 
 tranquillity been falsified by tlie event. If the crimes which, ever 
 since the year IY6O, have been uninterruptedly committed, and have 
 followed in such a rapid and tumultuous succession, had been only of 
 occasional occurrence, it would be reasonable to conclude that the ter- 
 roi'S of the law could repress them. But it is manifest that the system 
 of atrocity does not depend upon causes merely ephemeral, and cannot, 
 therefore, be under the operation of tempoi'ary checks. We have not 
 merely witnessed sudden inundations which, after a rapid desolation, 
 have suddenly subsided ; we behold a stream as deeji as it is dark, 
 which indicates, by its continuous current, that it is derived from an 
 unfailing fountain, and which, however augmented by the contribution 
 of other springs of bitterness, must be indebted for its main supply to 
 some abundant and distant source. Where then is the well-head to 
 be found ? Where are we to seek the origin of the evils, which are of 
 
CLONMKL ASSIZES. 79 
 
 such a character that they carry with them the clearest evidence that 
 their causes must be as enduring as themselves ? It may at first view, 
 and to any man who is not well acquainted with the moral feelings and 
 habits of the great body of the population of Ireland, seem a paradox- 
 ical proposition that the laws which alfcct the Roman Catliolics furnish 
 a clue by which, however complicated the mazes may be which con- 
 stitute the labyrinth of calamity, it will not be difficult to trace our 
 way. It may be asked, with a great appearance of plausibility (and 
 indeed it is often inquired), what possible eifect the exclusion of a few 
 Roman Catholic gentlemen from parliament, and of still fewer Roman 
 Catholic barristers from the bench, can produce in deteriorating the 
 moral liabits of the people ? This, however, is not the true view of 
 the matter. The exclusion of Roman Catholics from office is one of 
 the results of the penal code, but it is a soj)hism to suggest that it is 
 the sum total of the law itself, and that the whole of it might be re- 
 solved into that single proposition. The just mode of presenting the 
 question would be this : " What effect does the penal code produce by 
 separating the higher and the lower orders from each other ?" Before 
 I suggest any reasons of my own, it may be judicious to refer to the 
 same writer, from whom I have extracted a description of the state of 
 the peasantry, with which its present condition singularly corresponds. 
 TJie authority of Arthur Young is of great value, because his opinions 
 were not in the least degree influenced by those passions which are al- 
 most inseparable from every native of Ireland. He was an English- 
 man — had no share in the factious animosities by which this country 
 is divided — he had a cool, deliberate, and scientific mind — Avas a sober 
 thinker, and a deep scrutinizer into the frame and constitution of 
 society, and was entirely free from all tendency to extravagance in 
 speculation, either political or religious. Arthur Young's book con- 
 sists of two parts. In the first he gives a minute account of what he 
 saw in Ireland, and in the second, under a series of chapters, one of 
 which is appropriately entitled " Oppression," he states what he con- 
 ceives to be the causes of the lamentable condition of the people. 
 Having prefixed this title of " oppression" to the 29th page of the 
 second part of his book, he says, " The landlord of an Irish estate 
 inhabited by Roman Catholics, is a sort ofdesiwt, who yields obedience 
 in whatever concerns the poor to no law, but his own will. To discover 
 what the liberty of a people is, we must live amongst them, and not 
 look for it in the statutes of the realm: the language of written law may 
 be that of liberty, but the situation of the poor may speak no language 
 but that of slavery. There is too much of this contradiction in Ire- 
 land ; a long series of oppression, aided by many very ill-judged laws, 
 has brought landlords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, 
 
80 CI>ONMKL ASSIZF.S. 
 
 and their vassals into that of a most unlimited submission : speaking a 
 language that is despised, proi'essing a religion that is abhorred, and 
 being disarmed, the poor find themselves, in many cases, slaves, even 
 in the bosom of written liberty. * * * * fhe abominable dis- 
 tinction of religion, united with the oppressive conduct of the little 
 countiy gentlemen, or rather vermin of the kingdom, who were never 
 out of it, altogether bear still very heavy on the poor people, and 
 subject them to situations more mortifying than we ever behold in 
 England.'' In the next page after these preliminary observations, this 
 able writer (who said in vain fifty years ago, what since that time so 
 many eminent men have been in vain repeating) points out more im- 
 mediately the causes of the crimes committed by the peasantry, which 
 he distinctly refers to the distinctions of religion. " The proper dis- 
 tinction in all the discontents of the people is into Protestant and Ca- 
 tholic. The Whiteboys being labouring Catholics, met Avith all those 
 oppressions I have described, and would probably have continued in 
 full submission, had not very severe treatment blown up the flame of 
 resistance. The atrocious acts they were guilty of made them the 
 objects of general indignation : acts were passed for their punishment, 
 which seemed calculated for the meridian of Barbary : it is manifest that 
 the gentlemen of Ireland never thought of a radical cure, from overlook- 
 ing the real cause of the disease, which, in fact, lay in themselves, and 
 not in the wretches they doomed to the gallows. Let them change their 
 own conduct entirely, and the poor will not long riot. Treat them like 
 men, who ought to be free as yourselves : put an end to that system of 
 religious persecution, which for seventy years has divided the kingdom 
 against itself. In these two things lies the cure of insurrection — perform 
 them completely, and you will have an ailcctionate poor, instead of op- 
 pressed and discontented \'assals ; a better treatment of the poor in Ire- 
 land is a very material point to the welfare of the whole British empire. 
 Events may happen which may convince us fatally of this truth. If 
 i.ot, oppression would have broken all the spirit and resentment of 
 iiien. By what policy the government of England can, for so many 
 years, have permitted such an absurd system to be matured in Ireland, 
 is beyond the power of plain sense to discover." Arthur Young may 
 be wrong in his inference, (I do not think that he is,) but, be he right 
 or wrong, I have succeeded in establishing that he, whose evidence was 
 most dispassionate and impartial, referred the agrarian barbarities of 
 the lower orders to the oppression of the Roman Catholics. But the 
 passage which I have cited is not the strongest. The seventh section 
 of his work is entitled " Religion." After sajnng that " the domi- 
 neering aristocracy of five hundred thousand Protestants, feel the 
 sweets of having two millions of slaves," (the Roman Catholic body 
 
C1.0NMKL ASSIZES. 81 
 
 was then not one-third of what the penal code has since made it,) he 
 observes, " the disturbances of the Whiteboys, which lasted ten years, 
 (wliat would he now say of their duration ?) in spite of every exertion 
 of legal power, were, in many circumstances, very remarkable, and in 
 none more so than in the surprising intelligence among tlie insurgents, 
 wherever found. It was universal, and almost instantaneous. The 
 numerous bodies of them, at whatever distance from each other, 
 seemed animated by one zeal, and not a single instance was known, 
 in that long course of time, of a single individual betraying the cause. 
 The severest threats and the most splendid promises of reward had no 
 other effect than to draw closer the bonds which cemented a multitude 
 to all appearance so desultory. It was then evident that the iron 
 hand of oppression had been far enough from securing the obedience, 
 or crushing the spirit of the people ; and all reilecting men, who con- 
 eider the value of religious liberty, will wish it may never have that 
 effect — will trust in the wisdom of Almighty God, for teaching man 
 to respect even those prejudices of his brethi-en, that are imbibed as 
 sacred rights, even from earliest infancy ; that, by dear-bought expe- 
 rience of the futility and ruin of the attempt, the persecuting spirit 
 may cease, and toleration establish that harmony and security which 
 five score years' experience has told us, is not to be purchased at the 
 expense of humanity." 
 
 This is strong language, and was used by a man who had no con- 
 necting sympathy of interest, of religion, or of nationality with Ire- 
 land. So unequivocal an opinion, expressed by a person of such 
 authority, and wliose credit is not affected by any imaginable circum- 
 stance, must be admitted to liave great weight, even if there was a 
 difficulty in perceiving the grounds on whicli that opinion rested. But 
 there is little or none. The law divides the Protestant proprietor from 
 the Catholic tiller of the soil, and generates a feeling of tyrannical 
 domination in the one, and of hatred and distrust in the other. The 
 Irish peasant is not separated from his landlord by the ordinary demar- 
 cations of society. Another barrier is erected, and, as if the poor and 
 the rich were not already sufficiently apart, religion is raised as an 
 additional boundary between them. The operation of the feelings, 
 consequent on this division, is stronger in the county of Tipperary 
 than elsewhere. It is a peculiarly Cromwellian district, or, in other 
 words, the holy warriors of the Protector chose it as their land of 
 peculiar promise, and selected it as a favourite object of confis- 
 cation. The lower orders have good memories. There is scarce a 
 peasant who, as he passes the road, will not point to the splendid man- 
 .''ions of the aristocracy, embowered in groves, or rising upon fertile 
 
 G 
 
82 CL,0NMK1. ASSIZES. 
 
 elevations, and tell you the name of the pious Corporal, from whom 
 the present proprietors derive a title which, even at tliis day, appears 
 to be of a modern origin. These reminiscences are of a most injurious 
 tendency. But, after all, it is the system of religious separation which 
 nurtures the passions of the peasantry with these pernicious recollec- 
 tions. They are not permitted to foi-get that rrotcstantism is stamped 
 upon every institution in the country, and their own sunderance from 
 the privileged class is perpetually brought to their minds. Judges, 
 sheriffs, magistrates, crown counsel, law officers, — all are Protestant. 
 The very sight of a court of j ustice reminds them of the degradations 
 attached to their religion, by presenting them with the ocular proof of 
 the advantages and honours which belong to the legal creed. It is 
 not, therefore, wonderful that they should feel themselves a branded 
 cast ; that they should have a consciousness that they belong to a de- 
 based and inferior community ; and having no confidence in the upper 
 classes, and no reliance in the sectarian administration of the law, that 
 they should establish a code of barbarous legislation among themselves, 
 and have recourse to what Lord Bacon calls '* the wild justice" of re- 
 veno'C. A change of system would not perhaps produce immediate 
 effects upon the character of the people ; but I believe that its results 
 would be much more speedy than is generally imagined. At all events, 
 the experiment of conciliation is worth the trial. Every other expe- 
 dient has been resorted to, and has wholly tailed. It remains that the 
 legislature, after exhausting all other means of tranquillising Ireland, 
 should, upon a mere chance of success, adopt the remedy which has at 
 least the sanction of illustrious names for its recommendation. The 
 union of the two great classes of the people in Ireland, in other words, 
 the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, is in this view not only re- 
 commended by motives of policy, but of humanity ; for who that has 
 witnessed the scenes which I have (perhaps at too much length) de- 
 tailed in these pages, can fixil to feel that, if the demoralization of the 
 people arises from bad government, the men who from feelings of pai-- 
 tisanship persevere in that system of misrule, will have to render a 
 terrible account ? 
 
 [Note. — These observations were published a year before Catholic 
 emancipation was carried ; but the system of practical ascendancy 
 was long continued. Lord Normanby, the benefactor of Ireland, 
 introduced a system of government, whose object was to give effect 
 to a measure of which the principle had not been carried out. An 
 almost total cessation of crime ensued. Unfortunately, the people 
 have relapsed into the commission of outrages whose cause it is not 
 difficult to surmise.] 
 
Ri:rF,AT. or the union. 83 
 
 REPEAL OF THE UNION. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 25tH OF APRIL, 1834. 
 
 The speech just spoken by the member for the county of Wexford has 
 been received with acclamations, and if it were less able, tlie acclama- 
 tion would not, perhaps, have been less enthusiastic, or less loud. 
 Fortunate advocate, whose success depends as much at least on the 
 predilections of the tribunal, as upon the merits of the cause ! I have 
 heard my honourable friend when he exhibited fully as much eloquence 
 as upon tliis occasion, but never saw him received with such cordiality 
 at the outset, or such rapture at the termination of any of his former 
 harangues. With what clearness of exposition, with what irresistible 
 force, for example, did he demand justice for the Irish people after the 
 massacre of Newtownbarry 1 He presented a picture of that atrocious 
 transaction, compared to which, his accounts of the fatal effects of agi- 
 tation are weak and inefficient indeed. The incidents Avhich he de- 
 scribed, and the picturesque diction in which his narrative was con- 
 veyed, ought to have produced a great impression upon his auditory ; 
 yet how coldly did all that he then urged fall upon his hearers. You 
 were then frigid and apathetic ; you are now, in the highest degree, 
 susceptible and alive to the accomplishments of the member for the 
 county of Wexford. My honourable friend is now a devoted and un- 
 qualified antagonist of repeal. Was it always thus ? Did he not 
 say — that if justice was not done to Ireland on the tithe question, he 
 should, however reluctantly, become an advocate for repeal. 
 
 Mr. Lambeut. — I do not recollect having ever said so. 
 
 Mr. Sheil. — At all events, he declared that the denial of justice 
 with respect to the Irish Chui'ch, would have the effect of inducing the 
 great mass of the population to embrace repeal. Whether he spoke of 
 himself, or of the country, putting personal considerations out of view, 
 the inference is nearly tlic same. He expressed a desire when he began, 
 that the member for Dublin should be in attendance while he reviewed 
 his conduct. The wish was gratified. The member for Dublin entered 
 the house, (which the honourable member for the county of Wexford 
 never would have entered but for the member for Dublin,) and I own 
 that I did not think that he had any cause to wince under the chastise- 
 ment applied to him by the hon. member. But how, after all, are the 
 real merits of this great question affected by these resentful references 
 to incidents wliich have taken place outside this house ? Is this the 
 proper field for encounter between two honourable gentlemen ? The 
 
84 KKriiAi. ojr' Tiii: union. 
 
 member for the county of "Wexford may have been wronged ; — lan- 
 guage may have been applied to him by the member for Dublin with 
 regard to his conduct on the Coercion Bill, which deserves condem- 
 nation. I regret it ; but let him bear in mind that the obligation con- 
 ferred upon him by the member for Dublin, ought to outweigh every 
 injury. Though ho has been smitten in the face, let him remember 
 that the hand that struck him, struck his fetters off. The honourable 
 member for Wexford has adverted to the remuneration, which the 
 people of Ireland have bestowed upon the member for Dublin. He 
 should liave considered the extent of the service, before he derided the 
 reward. For thirty years the member for Dublin has toiled in the 
 cause of Ireland ; he has been mainly iustrimieutal in achieving the 
 liberty of his fellow-countrymen ; he has relinquished great emolu- 
 ments by abstracting himself from his profession, and by making a de- 
 dication of his faculties to the interests of his country : — Ireland felt 
 that it behove her to pi'ove her gratitude for that freedom, which is 
 above all price. 
 
 I turn fi'om these painful topics to the subject presented to our de- 
 liberation. Not a word has as yet been said upon the amendment. 
 Many may conceive that the original proposition ought to be rejected, 
 and yet will, I hope, pause before they adopt the sentiments contained 
 in the address. Tlie question before the house is, not merely whether 
 a committee should be granted for tlie purpose of investigating a ques- 
 tion on which the Secretary for the Treasui'y thought it not inexpe- 
 dient to deliver an harangue, of which the lengtli must be admitted to 
 be unsurpassed, but whether we shall vote an address, which not only 
 contains an approval of the Union, but states besides, that the policy 
 adopted with respect to Ireland has been judicious, wise, and just. 
 Observe what it is you are called upon to place on record ; mai'k the 
 following paragraph : — 
 
 " We humbly represent to your Majesty that the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment have taken the affarrs of Ireland into their most serious conside- 
 ration, and that various salutary laws have been enacted since the 
 Union for the advancement of the most important interests of Ireland, 
 and of the empire at large." 
 
 What other object can there be for tliis assertion, but to declare that 
 the course pursued by parliament has been such, as not to make it re- 
 quisite that any change should be adopted. Suppose that in the year 
 1 827, when Mr. Canning Avas Prime Minister, and so many members 
 of the present cabinet were associated with him, the noble lord, the 
 Paymaster of the Forces had introduced the question of parliamentary 
 reform, which Mr. Canning declared he would resist, — not " to the 
 
UErEAL OF THE UNIOX. 85 
 
 death," but to the last moment of his life, and that the Conservative 
 party had introduced an address against reform similar to this addresa 
 against repeal, would not all the arguments advanced in support of 
 this address have applied as forcihlj to that which I have hypotheti- 
 cally suggested ? The Consei'vative address against reform might 
 have run thus : — " "We, your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, 
 the Commons in parliament assembled, feel it our duty humbly to ap- 
 proach your Majesty's throne, to record, in the most solemn manner, 
 our fixed determination to maintain, luiimpaired and undisturbed, the 
 constitution of parliament — (I substitute it for ' legislative union'), 
 which we consider to be essential to the strength and stability of the 
 empire, to the continuaticc of the connexion between the two coun- 
 tries, and to tlie peace, and security, and happiness of all classes of 
 your Majesty's subjects. In expressing to your Majesty our resolution 
 to maintain the constitution inviolate, we humbly beg leave to assure 
 your majesty, that Ave sliall persevere in applying our best attention to 
 the removal of all just causes of complaint, and to the promotion of all 
 well-considered measures of improvement." 
 
 Had such an address been proposed, how would it have been de- 
 nounced? Would it not have been considered as amounting to a 
 sanction of all the jwlicy pursued by the boroughmongoring adminis- 
 trations? In that light it would, beyond doubt, have beoi represented 
 by that Whig party, which, after having passed their political lives in 
 reprobating the conduct of their opponents while they were in power, 
 call on the house to pronounce upon tlie measures of the last thirty- 
 four years an unqualified panegyric. I shall, in the course of the ob- 
 servations I mean to make, revert to this view of the amendment, 
 which I have only suggested, in order that the house might see exactly 
 what it was called on to do, and the extent of the proposition which 
 has been made by the government. I return to the original motion. 
 The member for Dublin demands a committee to inquire into the re- 
 sults of the Union, and the probable consequences of its continuance. 
 I should at once grapple with the argument derived from the alleged 
 likelihood of separation, but that it belongs to the prophetic part of 
 the case ; — it is better to deal with facts before we indulge in predic- 
 tions ; and, before we look forward, to look back. Before the year 
 1782, Ireland lay prostrate. The foot of England was upon her neck, 
 and was applied with the pressure which, in such an attitude, is habi- 
 tually employed. Why do I revert to a period so remote ? I call 
 up your ancestors in order to show you that you have preserved a re- 
 semblance to them — in the pictures of your predecessors a national 
 likeness may be traced. Between an Irish Parliament under the di- 
 
80 nKPEAL OF THE UNI(>N. 
 
 rect control of an English, and an Tuipeiial Parliament, in which Irish 
 membei's are overwhelmed by English majorities, there is some dis- 
 tinction, but not much difFei'ence to be found. Was Ireland justified 
 in demanding her independence ? Few will deny it. Yet its advo- 
 cates were aspersed with contumelies as foul as is now poured from 
 high places on the champions of repeal. 
 
 The tract of Molyneux was bui*ned by order of the British House 
 of Commons, and the office was performed by an appropriate repre- 
 sentative of the feelings of Englishmen towards the sister country. 
 This proposition was treated as a wretched absurdity, or a base expe- 
 dient. It was denounced as impracticable, events converted the im- 
 possibility into fact. When the Irish Pai'liament had achieved its 
 independence, how did it employ the noble instrument which it had so 
 gloriously won ? Free trade, the independence of the judges, the 
 Habeas Corpus Act, concessions to tlie Roman Catholics, were the 
 measures associated with independence. The Secretary to the Trea- 
 sury, Mr. Spring Rice, has cited the authority of Mr. Grattan, for the 
 purpose of shewing that Mr. Grattan condemned the proceedings of 
 the Irish Parliament from the year 1782, up to the time of the Union. 
 I could cite the authority of Mr. Grattan on the other side; but 1 
 will not occupy the time of the house with prolixities of this sort, nor 
 refer to a multitude of authorities. To one, however, I cannot refrain 
 from adverting, that of Edmund Burke, because it must weigh beyond 
 every other, in the mind of the Secretary for the Treasury, as Edmund 
 Burke considered England his adopted, and (he had good cause to do 
 so) his dearer country. It is not wonderful that Edmund liurkc 
 should have given a preference to ]<]ngland ; " where a man hath his 
 ti'casure, there also he hath his heart." 1 shall not molest the house 
 Avitli long extracts; it is enough to refer to Edmund Burke's speech 
 on conciliation with America, and to his letter to Sir Hercules Lan- 
 grishe, for glowing descriptions of the rapid and wide advances made 
 by Ii'eland after 1782. The course adopted by the government is 
 singular, — they tell us, in the first place, that all reference to events be- 
 fore the Union is inapplicable, and that our encomiums on the Irish 
 Parliament are out of place, and afterwards they themselves resort to 
 every petty anecdote connected with our parliament, and disinter from 
 oblivion every derogatory circumstance, to make out a case against us. 
 The argument is this : — the Irish Parliament was often under the in- 
 fluence of the populace — its proceedings were interrupted and con- 
 trolled, and therefore it ought not to exist. Might I not say, Crom- 
 well broke into this house, bade a rude soldier take away " this bauble" 
 on which I now lay my hand, therefore there ought not to be a House 
 
KEVEAI. OF THE UNION. 87 
 
 of Commons ! The reasoning against tlie Ii"ish Parliament is the 
 same. The Secretary for the Treasury has quoted every bad act 
 passed by the Irish — he has quoted every good one passed by an Im- 
 perial Parliament. Why did he omit any the least mention of any 
 one of the beneficial measures enacted by the parliament of his coun- 
 try? I should be justified in opening the Irish Statutes, and, going 
 through the entire of its legislation. But tliis would be a tedious pro- 
 cess. To one part only of the legislation of the Irish Parliament shall 
 I call the attention of tlie house. Many a time has it been said that 
 the Irish Parliament, left to itself, would never carry the Roman Ca- 
 tholic Question. Let us not judge by idle conjectures of what it was 
 probable it would have done, but by a reference to what it actually 
 did do. AVliat was the conduct with respect to the Roman Catholics 
 of the Irish and the English Parliaments at the same time? The 
 English Parliament made some concessions, but excluded Roman Ca- 
 tholics fiom the Universities, from corporations, from the bench of 
 magisterial justice, from grand juries, from petty juries, and from the 
 hustings. What, on the other hand, was the conduct of the Irish 
 Parliament ? It admitted Roman Catholics to the Universities, to cor- 
 porations, to the magisterial bench, to the grand jury box, to the petty 
 jury, and, above and gloriously paramount to all, it conferred upon 
 them the elective franchise — furnished the fulcrum by which Ireland 
 placed a mighty lever — gave the weapon with which the victory of 
 peace was achieved — gave that which, being conceded, the noble 
 residue of freedom coidd not be withheld. I shall, by and by, have 
 occasion to compare the conduct of the Imperial Parliament with that 
 of the Irish Parliament, Avith regard to the Catholic Question. 
 
 We are told that an Irish Parliament would be favourable to sepa- 
 ration. The object of the rebellion was separation. How did the 
 Irish Parliament act ? If it co-operated with tlie conspirators, or con- 
 nived at their project, there would be some plausibility in the sugges- 
 tion. But not only was there no party with a leaning to the insurgents, 
 but there was not a man in that iisseml)ly who did not concur in the 
 suppression of the revolt ; and it was I'emarkable that the men who 
 were most devoted to Irish independence, were equally attached to 
 connexion with this country. Never did there exist a body which 
 displayed a more genuine and enthusiastic loyalty ; and shall that great 
 fact be held in no account ? France saw in the Irish Parliament a 
 representative of the intelligence of Ireland, whose moral influence 
 co-operated with military power, and avIio rallied the nation round the 
 standard of the King, by inculcating the great principle, that allegiance 
 is but a modification of patriotism, and fidelity to our institutions a 
 
88 KErEAL OF THE UNION. 
 
 pai-t of the love of country. Pass to the Union. Of the infamy of 
 the means by Avhich it was carried, it is unnecessary to say much, he- 
 cause the fact is undisputed. But it is said — " of what consequence 
 are the means ? Factum valet." Convenient aphorism ! By a ju- 
 dicious application of this canon in the Machiavelian casuistry, there 
 is no atrocity wliich may not be turned to account. Lord Grey would 
 not — God forbid ! — have ever robbed Ireland of her legislature, but he 
 has no objection to become receiver of her spoliated rights. But let 
 us put the ethics of the question, except so far as they are connected 
 with expediency, out of the case ; yet have they no connexion with ex- 
 pediency ? The means have mingled with the effects, because they have 
 generated the feelings which would more than vitiate any good wliich 
 the Union could produce. From a source so foul, the Irish people 
 think that nothing pure can be derived. They think that no matter 
 over what time it may pass, the current can never run clear. Tliey 
 look back with detestation to the venality and the turpitude by which 
 their legislature was bartered — that which is an object of national ab- 
 horrence must be prolific of many evils, and barren of all good. Some 
 one said that a fault was worse than a crime ; a crime seldom fails to 
 be a fault. The memory of the delinquency makes it a mistake. The 
 consideration of the instrumentality by which the Union was accom- 
 plished is not irrelevant ; but let us consider the more direct and pal- 
 pable effects of the measure. They are divisible into two heads, — the 
 fiscal and political. The Secretary for the Treasuiy has appealed to 
 a great number of financial facts, to sustain the proposition that the 
 Union has produced the prosperity of Ireland. In 1790 Edmund 
 Burke published his letters on the Regicide Peace. In one of them, 
 like the Secretary for the Treasury, he combines rhetoric and arith- 
 metic together. He refers to the exports and imports, to the official 
 returns respecting tlio revenue, the customs, taxes, excise, manufac- 
 tures, and tonnage, and all the other materials of fiscal calculation. He 
 concludes that nothing is so useful as war, and calls on England to 
 fight on. But if the inference of Edmund Burke were wrong, is the 
 inference of the member for Cambridge right ? Look at Canada. Its 
 prosperity may be demonstrated. Why should not Ireland prosper 
 with a local government as well as Canada ? If you effected a 
 Union with Canada, would you not lose the country — would you keep 
 it for three years ? 
 
 The Secretary for the Treasury says, that Ireland prospers be- 
 cause she enjoys a free trade. In the event of repeal would there not 
 be a free trade ? Is it not the interest of bolli coiuitries that there 
 should not be any commercial restrictions ? Ireland consumes 
 
nsrEAL OF THE UNION. 89 
 
 £7,000,000 of your manufactures — you consume several millions of 
 her produce. How avouIcI it be your interest to restrict her trade, 
 when she affords you your best, nearest, and safest market ? Are 
 not tlie people of h^iigland clamouring for a free trade with France ? 
 Would they refuse it to Ireland? I deny — (and I know it is the sen- 
 timent of the great body of my countrymen) — that a repeal of the 
 Union would produce an abolition of the free trade between the two 
 countries. Will the Vice-President of the Board of Trade assert that 
 repeal ought to lead to a cessation of free trade between Ireland and 
 England, wlien he maintains the utility of free trade with all the 
 world. But, then, it is said that, in consequence of the Union, Ire- 
 land has the exclusive market of England. If that has hitherto been 
 tho case, liow long will you pledge yourselves that this advantage shall 
 continue? Will you pledge yourselves that the present corn laws 
 shall stand? Will the English manufacturer concur in such a pledge? 
 and if he will not, what becomes of this argument ? Place the inte- 
 grity of the empire in one scale, and a quartern loaf in the other, and 
 on which side, in tho mind of a political economist, will the prepon- 
 derancy be found ? But after all, is it here, in a debate liko this, 
 that questions so complicated are to be determined ? 
 
 Give me leave to ask of those who have heard the honourable mem- 
 ber for Dublin, and who have listened to the member for Cambridge, 
 whether the arithmetic of both parties is not a much fitter subject for 
 investigation in a committee, than for discussion, or rather retorts, 
 and derisions, and invective, and acclamation here ? Was Ireland 
 prosperous before the Union ? Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke, and a crowd of 
 other authorities, have been cited to establish it. But it may be said 
 that the antecedent prosperity of Ireland does not touch the main 
 question. If so, why did the right honourable gentleman think it 
 necessary to advert to it ? He has taken from it every quality of im- 
 pertinence, and given it relevancy and value. To one prominent 
 point in this part of the case I shall apply myself. Indeed, with re- 
 spect to finance, there is but one observation which I desire to 
 make, and in that I believe myself to be well-founded, for I am 
 borne out in it by the authority of a gentleman Avho was once Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer for Ireland — Sir John Newport ; and this 
 opinion is sustained by that of Lord Plunket. I will not trouble 
 the house by quoting their opinions at length, but I will give the 
 substance of them ; and if any one doubts the accuracy of my state- 
 ment, I can produce the passages to which I refer. Ireland, at the 
 time of the Union, was charged with the contribution of two-seven- 
 teenths to the general expenditure of the two kingdoms. Was that 
 
90 IIKPKAI- OP TlIK UNION. 
 
 fair? Sir John Newport pronounced it to be most unjust — so did 
 Lord Plunket ; but the fact goes further than their authority, for 
 it turned out that Ireland was unable to pay the share she had 
 contracted to contribute. What was the consequence ? It was ne- 
 cessary to make up the deficiency by successive loans. Where was 
 the money borrowed ? In England ; and the revenue of Ireland 
 was applied to paying the intei'cst on those loans. How many 
 millions were paid by Ireland in consequence of that injustice ? 
 Between £4,000,000 and £5,000,000 a year up to 1816. You 
 have got so much, then, of the revenue of Ireland, which you 
 ought never to have received. Has no injustice been done to 
 Ireland in this respect ? But you will tell me that you have cured all 
 this by the consolidation of the exchequers of the two countries. You 
 liave not ; because, at the time of the Union, you agi-eed that the 
 surplus revenue of Ireland should be spent in Ireland : there would 
 have been a surplus, but for the charge of two-seventeenths. You 
 consolidated the exchequers on account of the excessive charge, and 
 now the whole of our revenue comes to your exchequer. By the re- 
 turns, a clear surplus beyond our expenditure appears ; that surplus 
 you receive. 
 
 You talk of British capital flowing into Ireland — ^you might as avcU 
 talk of infusing blood into the veins, while you were opening the 
 arteries. The Secretary for Ireland says absenteeism existed before 
 the Union, Yes ; but you have aggravated the disease, and taken 
 away the cure. Do you deny that the evil has been augmented ? 
 The Secretary for the Treasury tells us that Dublin is more prospe- 
 rous. Hear the report of a committee of this house, in 1 825 : — 
 
 " Your committee feel an earnest hojx) that the peculiar situation 
 in which the city of Dublin has been placed by the Union will not be 
 lost sight of by this house. Prior to that event, ninety-eight Peers 
 and a proportionate number of wealthy Commoners inhabited the 
 same. At present the number of resident Peers does not exceed 
 twelve." 
 
 At the present moment, there are not more than two. Ninety-eight 
 resident Peers before the Union — at present two ! The report of the 
 committee contains these additional words : — 
 
 " Thus the effect of the Union has been to withdraw from Dublin 
 many of those who were likely to contribute most effectually to its 
 opulence and prosperity." 
 
 The same opinion was expressed, by Sir John Newport, on the 22nd 
 of April, 1822, in a debate in this house, in which the Right Honour- 
 able Secretary to the Treasury took part. 
 
nEPEAL OF THE UNION. 91 
 
 " Before the Union (said Sir John) the progress of taxation in Ire- 
 land liad been comparatively moderate, and I am perfectly convinced, 
 that had parliament, since the Union, pursued the course which wis- 
 dom dictated with respect to this object, it would have been precisely 
 the reverse of that which they have adopted. It is manifest that one 
 of the evils of Ireland, confessedly prominent in the list of those under 
 which she suffers, is the magnitude and number of her absentee pro- 
 prietors. By their absence the people are deprived of those to Avhom 
 they could with confidence look up." 
 
 Is the absence of the nobility and chief gentry of that country of no 
 account ? I admit that some noblemen, like the Duke of Devonshire, 
 Lords Hertford, Lansdowne, Camden, Fitzwilliam, Essex, and others, 
 must remain residents in this country. Some arrangement might be 
 ma<lo by an Irish Parliament in their regard ; but the necessity of at- 
 tending the two houses here has caused the absence of others, who 
 otherwise Avould live in Ireland. An Irish Parliament would tax 
 absenteeism. The Secretary for Ireland, the member for Stafford- 
 shire, between whom and the honourable member for Belfast, there 
 last night i)assed an interchange of parliamentary endearments, spoke 
 of a tax upon the property of Jibsentecs as amounting to confiscation. 
 Are the acts of the Irish Parliament void ? You would resent a hint 
 touching the invalidity of the Act of Union : extend to other acts the 
 benefit of your doctrine. We have acts of the Irish Parliament 
 (Richard II. and Henry VIII.), by which the proprietors of estates 
 were subject to a heavy forfeiture during their absence. This prin- 
 ciple of taxation was adoi)tcd by an English Parliament when the 
 Kings of England had dominions in France, and tlieir subjects pre- 
 ferred residence on their estates in that country. Look at the incon- 
 venience of the tax on the one hand, and the misery of the pco[)le of 
 Ireland on the other, and then tell me which ought to weigh most in 
 the consideration of the legislature. 
 
 When you expatiate on the increased prosperity of the country as 
 proved by its exports, do you forget that when converted into money, 
 it is in the palaces, the banquets and saloons of this metropolis, tliat 
 the fruits of Irish labour are expended ? What is the condition of 
 the mass of the people ? The population of Ireland has doubled since 
 the Union. Has her capital increased in the same proportion — and is 
 there not a far greater mass of misery than there was before ? " The 
 greater hajipincss of the greater number" being ajiplied as a test, in 
 what light shall we see the results of the Union to the people, the state - 
 of the people ? The exports of Ireland forsooth — go — let the right 
 
92 HEPEAL OF THE UNION. 
 
 honourablo gentleman take his stand on tlie quay of the city which he 
 once represented — let him look on whole fleets upon the Shannon, 
 freighted to the water's edge with grain, the produce of myriads of 
 acres, and with flocks and herds innumerable, depastured upon the 
 land on which heaven has rained fertility, and after he shall have con- 
 templated the spectacle on which it does the heart of an economist 
 good to rest, let him turn round and look on the starving peasantry 
 by whom all these materials for absentee splendour have been created — 
 behold the famine, the Avretchedness, and the pestilence of the Ii'ish 
 hovel, and if he have the heart to do so, let him mock at the cala- 
 mities of his country, and proceed in his demonstration of the pros- 
 perity of Ireland. The mass of the people are in a condition more 
 wretched than that of any nation in Europe ; they are worse housed, 
 worse covered, worse fed, than the basest boors in the pi'ovinces of 
 Russia ; they dwell in habitations to which your swine would not be 
 committed ; they are covered Avith rags which your beggars would 
 disdain to wear ; and not only do they never taste the flesh of the 
 animals which crowd into your markets ; but while the sweat drops 
 from their brows, they never touch the bread into which their har- 
 vests are converted. For you they toil — ^for you they delve — they 
 reclaim the bog — and drive the plough to the mountain's top for you. 
 And where does all this misery exist ? In a country teeming with ferti- 
 lity, and stamped with the beneficent intents of God. When the famine 
 of Ireland pi'cvailed — when her cries crossed the Channel, and pierced 
 your ears, and reached your hearts, the granaries of Ireland wore 
 bursting with their contents, and while a people knelt down, and 
 stretched out their hands for food, the business of deportation, the 
 absentee tribute was going on. Talk of the prosperity of Ireland I 
 Talk of the external magnificence of a poor-house, gorged with misery 
 within. I am glad that I have recollected the poor laws. "SVIierefore 
 are half this house favourable to an Irish poor law ? Is it not because 
 the people are reduced to straits at which humanity recoils ? And how 
 does your sympathy with the Ii'ish poor at one moment accord with 
 your expatiations on Ii-ish prosperity at another. But let me be just. 
 I do not accuse the Secretary for the Ti-easury of being favourable to 
 poor laws. He sees the poor laws from the Shannon, as he sees 
 repeal from the Thames. He takes a treasury view of the one, and a 
 Mount Trenchard view of the other. We propose repeal — others pro- 
 pose poor laws. What does he suggest ? What nostrum will he pro- 
 duce from the Downing-street dispensary of political empiricism ? All 
 that Ireland requires is good government? Has she been well- 
 
REPEAL OF THE UNION. 93 
 
 governed ? " Yes," says the Secretary of the Treasury. I proceed 
 to the political head of this great question. 
 
 The right honourable gentleman, on this part of the case, has spoken 
 with more than his usual talent — which is saying much ; and with 
 more than his usual earnestness — which is saying a good deal. He 
 designates himself as a West Briton. He does himself injustice, for 
 he is moi'e than English. It was said of the English colonist, that he 
 was Hiheniis Ilihcrnior. He improved upon our indigenous barbarism. 
 British civilization has produced an opposite result, in a proportionate 
 degree of refinement on the mind of the right honourable gentleman. 
 All the mud of his native Shannon has not only been washed off by 
 his ablutions in the Cam, but he comes more fresh and glossy from the 
 academic water, than those who at their birth were immersed in the 
 classic stream. But did the right honourable gentleman always see 
 the government of Ireland in the same light — or does the configura- 
 tion, and do the colours of objects, depend on the position from which 
 they are seen ? There was a time when the right honourable gen- 
 tleman saw nothing but gloom in the political horizon ; but now every 
 cloud is filled with the radiance of his imagination, and he beholds 
 nothing but brightness, gorgeousness, and gold. He has represented 
 the conduct of the Imperial rarliamcnt towards his native country as 
 wise and generous. I shall be able to prove, from the uniform tenor 
 of the right honourable gentleman's speeches in opposition, that until 
 he came into office he regarded the system by which Ireland was go- 
 verned as fraught Avith injustice. He has picked from the speeches 
 delivered by the member for Dublin every loose expression, every 
 careless phrase which he could apply to his purposes. Blame us not 
 if in this, as in other particulars, we presume to follow your example. 
 Since you rely upon the ebullitions of popular excitement at public 
 meetings, ami upon tliose thoughtless and inconsiderate declamations 
 which are thrown off in utter recklessness amidst casual gatherings of 
 the people — since you quote after-dinner orators, and rely upon the 
 rhetoric of the Corn Exchange ; permit us, on the other hand, to 
 refer to your own solemn and reiterated declarations made in your 
 legislative capacity in this house, and to exhibit the enormity of 
 the contradiction that exists between your conduct in office and 
 that which you adopted before you arrived at power. How has 
 Ireland been governed since the Union? "Whigs of 1834 — how 
 have the forebodings of the AVhigs of 1799 been fulfilled ? They 
 foretold the result of that vile exchange, that base swap by which 
 Ireland was forced to give up the entirety of her legislature for a mi- 
 serable sixth in that imperial co-partnership, and became dependant 
 
94 REPEAL OF THE UNION. 
 
 upon majorities composed of men who care little about the welfare, 
 sympathize less with the feelings, and know nothing of the interests 
 of Ireland. Let us see the evidences of British magnanimity, British 
 generosity, and British justice ? The Secretary for the Treasury has 
 gone through a variety of details to establish the undeviating benefi- 
 cence of an Imperial Legislature. Hear the language (let him listen 
 to it) uttered by himself on the 22nd of April, 1822. Thus speaks 
 the member for Limerick : — 
 
 " What was the first tribute which the Imperial Parliament of 1801 
 tendered to Ii'eland in their first notice of the situation of that country 
 after the Union ? Their first statute was the Irish Martial Law Bill." 
 
 On Wednesday the right honourable gentleman recapitulated the acts 
 which the Imperial Parliament had passed for Ireland. He went 
 through acts for lighting and paving the streets — he enlarged on the 
 achievements of pure legislation — he recounted the provisions of 
 various statutes on small subjects — but never once alluded to the 
 questions which touch the heart of the country to the core ; and en- 
 tirely forgot that, in 1822, he had exclaimed that the renewal of 
 martial law in 1801, was the first piece of legislation adopted by the 
 Imperial Parliament with respect to Ireland. But I will not do him 
 the injustice of suppressing the rest of his observations in that re- 
 markable declaration. The right honourable gentleman went on, and 
 said that the spirit in which the British Parliament legislated for Ire- 
 land had been in accordance with the principle on Avhich the act 
 establishing martial law was founded. lie added — 
 
 " In tracing the history of Irish legislation, botli before and since 
 the Union, there appeared, as it were, two streams passing througli 
 the channel of Parliament. In one flowed acts of strenuous finance, 
 or equally strong coercion — the one with great malice, the other with 
 great power. In the other channel tlie struggle was made, but made 
 in vain, to procure an examination into the state and condition of the 
 people, in the hope of discovering and applying some remedy for their 
 evils." 
 
 Will the right honourable gentleman give us a committee to examine 
 into them now ? 
 
 " It was curious (he continued), in tracing these proceedings, to 
 observe with what a singularly felicitous uniformity the channel of 
 coercion always flowed, and that of inquiry was always resisted and 
 impeded." 
 
 Thus spoke the right honourable gentleman in 1822. Now hear his 
 amendment of 1 834. See what a metamorphosis the right honourable 
 gentleman has undergone ? Peruse the address in which he sets forth 
 
riEl'EAL OF THE UNION. 95 
 
 the wisdom of British legislation, and reconcile the member for Lime- 
 rick with the Secretary for the Treasury if you can. I could quote 
 fifty speeches of the right honourable gentleman of the same character, 
 but I have not time ; let us turn from him, and in a rapid retrospect, 
 look at the policy pursued by the Imperial Parliament since the 
 Union. Not a mere hint, not an insinuation whispered by a secretary 
 into the ear of a Catholic peer at the Castle, but a pledge was given 
 (the more obligatory because it rested upon honour for its fulfilment), 
 that the Union should be followed by emancipation. How was that 
 pledge redeemed ? What evidence was afforded of the liberal and 
 enlightened spirit of the Imperial Legislature ? Panegyi'ists of the 
 Union try it by its fruits, and look to historical notorieties, as well as 
 to treasury calculations. Mr. Pitt could not carry the question — he 
 was compelled to resign. 1801, 1802, 1803 and 1804 passed by. The 
 question was not even inti'oduced ; it would have been ti-eated as re- 
 peal is to-night. Henry Grattan himself did not, until 1805, venture 
 to raise his voice in the cause of his country. At length Mr. Fox, in 
 1 805, moved for a committee. The proposition was spurned at : the 
 Whigs came in. The "no popery" howl is raised — the Catholic question 
 is left to the umpirage of a ferocious multitude, and the rights of mil- 
 lions of your fellow-subjects are trampled under foot by the infuriated 
 populace wJiich Protestantism has summoned to its aid. The Whigs 
 are driven from office — not for having proposed emancipation, but for 
 having made the humble suggestion that men who shed their blood for 
 England, should be capable of honour. The new parliament assembles. 
 Ireland asked for freedom, and slie received the Insurrection Act. In 
 1812 an ordinance issues, signed " AVeUesley Pole," from the Castle, 
 and the Catholic committee is dispersed. Mr. Saurin tries the Catholic 
 delegates and fails. He mends his hand, packs a jury, and procures a 
 conviction. The jury was packed — the panel was sent marked and 
 dotted from the Castle. Who were the loudest to proclaim, and to 
 reprobate the practice by which justice was polluted to its source? — 
 The very men who now see nothing in the government of Ireland but 
 matter for admiration, and persevere in the very com'se which they 
 had formerly held up to the execration of the country. In 1814, the 
 Insurrection Act is renewed : the Whigs hurled the thunders of their 
 eloquence against it. Would that I could here make some pause, in 
 order to lay before the house some of those masterpieces of eloquence 
 in which they held up to indignation the outrage committed on the 
 constitution. But I must hurry on ; seven years go by ; nothing is 
 done for Ireland, and yet all this while there has been a vast majority 
 of Irish members in favour of Catholic emancipation. Their remon- 
 
96 llEPEAL OF THE UNION. 
 
 sti-ances, theii* entreaties for justice were spurned and derided. By 
 whom was Ireland oppi-essed and degraded ? By whom was the penal 
 system (the parent of such a brood of evil) maintained ? Englishmen, 
 by you ! and yet, in the face of these facts, an Irishman asks you to 
 pronounce a retrospective panegyi'ic upon the fanaticism by Avhich the 
 measures of thirty years were distinguished. In 1821, George the 
 Fourth goes to Ireland ; in our loyalty he finds evidence of our felicity. 
 In 1822, Lord Wcllcsley (the i)rcsent viceroy) recommends the re- 
 newal of the InsuiTcction Act. It was consistent to send him to ad- 
 minister the coercive bill. No one was more prominent than the 
 Secretary for the Treasury in reprobating the principles on which that 
 unconstitutional proceeding was founded. In 1824, the Insurrection 
 Act was again renewed, and again the AVhigs declaimed and stormed. 
 In the interval the Catholic Association was created. By whom ? 
 Not by the Catholic gentry — not by the men who denounce repeal, 
 and repealers — but, with the aid of the people, by a man who, what- 
 ever estimate may be formed of this question in this house, has done 
 great things ; has written his name in ineffaceable permanence in the 
 recoi'ds of his country, and built himself on the liberty of Ireland a 
 monument which will never fall. The agitation and organization of 
 Ireland proceeded. In 1825, the Catholic delegates arrived in Lon- 
 don. How many of the evils that have since arisen might have been 
 prevented if the terms which were tendered by Ii'eland had not been 
 rejected. Mr. Canning comes into oihce ; gives up Catholic emanci- 
 pation, and is denounced for apostacy by Lord Grey. W\\y did Mv. 
 Canning give up that measure ? Was it from any renegade spirit ? 
 It was because he knew it was hopeless to attempt to carry the question 
 in the Imperial Parliament, " which has passed," according to the 
 Secretary of the Treasury, " so many salutary and beneficial measures 
 for the people of Ireland." We were as much at your mercy then as 
 we were before 1782. The prejudices of England were insuperable. 
 The Goderich Administration, Lansdowne, Ilerries and Co., succeeded 
 Canning. It died in its cradle. At length — (there was one Arthur 
 Wellesley, member for Trim, in the Irish House of Commons, who 
 asserted the necessity of emancipation in 1793) — at length the Duke 
 of Wellington consummated in the cabinet that renown wliich lie had 
 obtained in the field, and, with the aid of a man who did incalculable 
 services by inestimable sacrifices, gave freedom to 7,000,000 of his 
 fellow-citizens ; but with what injustice was it accompanied ? The 
 Irish Parliament bestowed upon the forty-shilling freeholders of Ire- 
 land the elective franchise. It remained foY the Imperial Parliament 
 to deprive them of the right. This proceeding was denounced as spo- 
 
IlEPEAL OF THE UNION. 97 
 
 nation. By wliom ? By Lord Brougham — by Lord Grey — the men 
 who would not commit the robbery, but who, when the Reform Bill 
 came on, refused restitution. Are not these facts ? Have I said a 
 word that is not the fact ? Andto all this what does the Secretary for 
 the Treasury reply ? At the end of almost every fourth sentence in 
 one part of his speech — (I was surprised, knowing his command of 
 language, and the copiousness of his vocabulary) — the right honoura- 
 ble gentleman exclaimed " nonsense," then he cried out " trash," and 
 afterwards " stuff." Ah, Sir, there is, in this melancholy detail, truth, 
 dismal, disastrous truth. Your delay of emancipation was fatal. If 
 you had passed the Catholic Relief Bill years before, none of the re- 
 sults which you so much lament would have been produced. You 
 were wrong ; you know it, and yet I scarce condemn you for it. I 
 blame the Union, which left the people of Ireland at the mercy of the 
 fanatical passions, by which the legislature was controlled. But the 
 Secretary for the Treasury exclaims, " If the agitators would but let 
 us alone, and allow Ireland to be tranquil." The agitators forsooth ! 
 Does he venture — ^lias he the intrepidity to speak thus ? Agitators ! 
 Against deep potations let the drunkard rail ; — at Crockford's let there 
 be homilies against the dice box ; — let every libertine lament the pro- 
 gress of licentiousness, when his Majesty's ministers deplore the influ- 
 ence of demagogues, and Whigs complain of agitation. 
 
 How did you carry Reform ? Was it not by impelling the people 
 almost to the verge of revolution ? Was there a stimulant for their 
 passions — Avas there a provocative for their excitement, to Avhich you 
 did not resort ? If you have forgotten, do you think that we shall 
 fail to remember your meetings at Edinburgh, at Paisley, at Man- 
 chester, at Birmingham ? Did not 300,000 men assemble ? Did 
 they not pass resolutions against taxes? Did they not threaten 
 to march on London ? Did not two of the cabinet ministers in- 
 dite to them epistles of gratitude and of admiration ? and do they 
 now dare — have they the audacity to speak of agitation ? Have we 
 not as good a title to demand the restitution of our parliament, as the 
 ministers to insist on the reform of this house ? Wherefore should we 
 not adopt the same means to effect it ? The member for the county of 
 Wexford has had the imprudence to talk of Catholic bishops being 
 treated with disrespect, and of excesses committed by the populace. 
 Bishops ! What, is it only in L'cland that it is a crime to assail a 
 Bishop ? And have the flames of Bristol left no reflection behind ? 
 
 I have demonstrated that at least for twenty-nine years Ireland was 
 misgoverned. Twenty-nine years of agitation, and at length justice 
 was extorted from an lujperial Parliament ? But since emancipation, 
 u 
 
98 REPEAL OF THE UNION. 
 
 since the Whigs have come into office, has all gone well ? Let us pass 
 over some smaller details — the Arms BiU, the jury packing, the exclu- 
 sion of Catholics on tithe questions, the infusion of theology into the 
 police ; let us go to great and essential incidents. I shall dwell on no 
 more than three. In your Reform Bill you adopted population as a 
 standard here ; you did not employ it in Ireland. You gave AVales, 
 with 800,000 people, three additional representatives, eight to Scotland 
 with 2,500,000, and five to Ireland with her 8,000,000. You did not 
 restoi'e the forty-shilling freeholders. You have left towns in Ireland 
 with 12,000 people without a representative ; and you have left your 
 paltry boroughs here. It was either necessary, or it was not, to pass 
 your Coercion Bill. It was either necessary, or it was not, for the op- 
 ponents of the Insurrection Act to put upon the statute-book a pre- 
 cedent for tyranny, and to supersede the tribunals of the country with 
 the legislation of the Horse-Guards, and the judicature of the barrack- 
 yard. If it was unnecessary, it was detestable and atrocious ; and if it 
 was necessary for Lord Grey to introduce a bill which passed without 
 dissent in the Lords, and which there were men who support ministers 
 who declared that they would rather die than support it in that shape ; 
 if that was necessary, by whom was the necessity created ? You have 
 had Ireland for thirty-three years under your rule — you have been 
 her absolute and undisputed masters ; and if her condition be deplor- 
 able — if atrocities have been perpetrated which call for rigorous laws, 
 are you not responsible for this disastrous state of things — and to you, 
 and to your Union, which armed you with power luilimited for good 
 or evil, is it not to be referred? So much for your coercive measure ; 
 but for its severity you made up (did you not ?) by your Tithe and 
 Church Bills, your 147th clause, and tliosc absurd and cruel experi- 
 ments — absurd in theory and cruel in result — with which you have 
 endeavoured to reconcile that most monstrous of all anomalies — a 
 Church of one religion, and almost an entire nation of another. 
 
 I turn to the member for Paisley, and other Scotchmen who appeal 
 to the results of the Scotch Union. Was such an article, as the fifth 
 article of the Act of Union, giving eternity to the Protestant Church, 
 among the terms on which Scotland gave up her legislature ? If any 
 attempt had been made to establish episcopacy by her Union — if a 
 mitred pontificate had been inflicted upon her, what would have been 
 the consequences ? She would not have for a moment endured it. 
 Her people would have risen almost to a man against such a Union — 
 to the death they would have resisted it — the country would have been 
 deluged in blood. And if at last England and episcopacy had pi-e- 
 vailed, they must have reared their altars in a desert, for Scotland 
 would have left them nothing but a wilderness for their worship. 
 
KEPEAL OF TIIE UNION. 99 
 
 I cannot sit down without adverting to two points : first, the pro- 
 bable constitution of an Irisli Parliament ; secondly, the likelihood of 
 separation. As to the first, let the Whigs recollect that, on the Re- 
 form Question, it was urged that this house would be filled by men of 
 an inferior station. It was answered, property must prevail ; where- 
 fore should it not prevail in Ireland as well as here ? Is it not mani- 
 fest that, in a little while after the repeal had been carried, the Irish 
 nation would follow the example of all other nations, and select men 
 of influence, from fortune or talents (which give a higher title to res- 
 pect), as the depositaries of the legislative trust ? Tlie qualification of 
 the Irish voter (£10 a-year rent), ought surely to secure a highly- 
 respectable representation. Besides, observe that if the evil is to take 
 place after repeal, it must take place without it. If Ireland would 
 then return 300 unworthy men, she will return 105 of the same cha- 
 racter ; and thus you entail on yourselves as great an evil as that 
 which you apprehend as a consequence of repeal. The arguments 
 which are urged against repeal, were the very same as those which 
 were pressed by Conservatives against reform. They said that a col- 
 lision would take place between Lords and Commons, and saw as 
 many calamities in that collision, as you foresee in the anticipated 
 disagreements of the Irisli and English Parliaments. No man pointed 
 out these consequences with more force than Mr. Canning — an au- 
 thority which the noble lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and 
 the President of the Board of Control, once held in some regard. But 
 was Lord Grey terrified by the phantom of revolution ? Why should 
 he expect tliat we should be dismayed by another spectre, whicli was 
 as huge and liidcous in 1800, wlien he looked at it without dismay. 
 Is the argument more valid now than it was then ? It is built on this 
 abstract proposition ; two parliaments cannot amicably co-exist. He 
 then said they could. He was not a beardless politician at that epoch ; 
 he had already proposed his great plan of Reform — he was about the 
 age of the Secretary for the Colonies — ^had reached the age of discre- 
 tion, and had passed the period at which men might be led away by a 
 juvenile enthusiasm — when the understanding may be obscured by 
 the misls wliich ai-iso from the boiling emotions of the heart. Lord 
 Grey's assertion is as valid as it was thirty-four years ago : it is one 
 of those propositions which time cannot impair. 
 
 What was then a sophism cannot grow into a reason, as into a so- 
 phism a reason cannot degenerate. Let it be borne in your minds 
 that although some of the arguments against a union were founded on 
 temporary and transient circumstances, yet others (like that grouudcd 
 on the fear of separation), were permanent, and are now just as good 
 
100 hepeal of the union. 
 
 as they were a quarter of a century ago. Tlie authority of Phmket 
 and Bushe, and Saurin, and, above all, the authority of Grattan, is ad 
 powerful as it ever was. The Secretary for the Treasury insists that 
 Grattan had changed his mind. His son has proved the contrary. He 
 read his answer in 1810, declaring that he desired the restoration of 
 the Irish Parliament. To what document was that answer a response ? 
 To an address from the grand juries of Dublin, in which they describe 
 the evils of the Union, and call on Mr. Grattan to employ his great 
 faculties in accomplishing its repeal. Mr. Grattan did not change his 
 mind. But what is the crime of the repealers ? This — that they con- 
 sider Lord Grey a good statesman, when he is old — but a better pro- 
 phet, when he was young. I blame him not for having altered his 
 opinion ; but I own myself to be surprised that he should lavish in 
 the speeches, for the utterance of which he avails himself of the royal 
 enunciation, such unqualified and almost contumelious condemnation 
 of tliose with whom he strenuously coincided when he was upwards 
 of thirty years of age. But have we no better argument than that 
 which Lord Grey so often urged against Mr. Pitt, when he reproached 
 him with a desertion of his former opinions. How stands histoiy ? It 
 is asked, when did two parliaments long co-exist in friendship ? Show 
 me an instance in which 8,000,000 of people in one island submitted 
 to a parliament^ held in another, and containing such projiortions as 
 exist in tliis assembly. The case of America is obvious ; but look to 
 two strong instances — Sweden and Norway have one King and two 
 parliaments. Since the year 1815, there has been no quarrel between 
 the legislatures. Turn to Belgium. Docs not the example bear us 
 out ? Hear an extract from the declaration of Belgian indei)endence. 
 After alleging that the Union was obtained by fraud, tlio document 
 goes on and states that — 
 
 " An enomaous debt and expenditure, the only portion which Hol- 
 land brought to us at the time of our deplorable Union — taxes ovei*- 
 whelming by their amount — laws always voted by the Dutch for 
 Holland only (and always against Belgium), represented so unequally 
 in the States-General — the seat of all important establishments iixed 
 in Holland — the most offensive partialities in the distribution of civil 
 and military employments — in a word, Belgium ti'eated as a con- 
 quered province, as a colony : everything rendered a revolution in- 
 evitable." 
 
 Do you mark this ? You were instrumental in effecting the Union 
 of Belgium and Holland. Lord Castlereagh, who carried the Irish 
 Union, I'epresented you at the Congress in which the different arrange- 
 ments with respect to Belgium and Holland were made. You have 
 
REPEAL OF THE UNION. 101 
 
 yourselves recently been parties to that separation which Belgium 
 demanded, and you assented to the grounds on which it was required. 
 All the public establishments removed to Holland ! What has become 
 of our Custom House, of our Stamp Office ? Our Royal Hospital too, 
 built by a contribution made among the Irish soldiers, raised out of 
 a sixpence which they joyfully gave to provide for them an asylum, 
 that institution, connected with our national pride, associated with our 
 best feelings of country, you, for^^the sake of some miserable saving, 
 have determined to annihilate. Take warning — ^you have made expe- 
 riments enough. Be taught not by the failures of others, but by your 
 own. Go on as you have hitherto proceeded, and you will soon find 
 the entire of Ireland united for repeal. A reference has been made 
 to the small number of signatures to petitions. If there shall be a 
 million next year, what will you say ? We are told that the Irish 
 people do not desire repeal. Are thirty-eight Irish members out of 
 one hundred and five nothing ? What other test do you demand ? The 
 last election ought to exhibit the truth. That last election verified the 
 prediction which I made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer : I went 
 
 to him when the Tithe Bill was pending in 1832 I told him what 
 
 would happen. I exclaimed, " You are on the eve of a general elec- 
 tion ; you are driving the Irish to fury by your tithe measures, and 
 the result will be, that on every hustings in the south, the standard of 
 repeal will be planted." It is said that the gentry are against repeal. 
 How fast do the gentry of every country fall into the mass of the peo- 
 ple ! Tlicy desert one by one, and the moment it is their interest, 
 they combine with the class once designated as the multitude. How 
 soon the populace becomes the people ! Let a few years go by. Ca- 
 tholic and Protestant will be reconciled — the national mind will be- 
 come one mass of hot emotion — the same disregard for the interests 
 otid feelings of Ireland will be displayed in this assembly ; and, if 
 there should be an outbreak of popular commotion here — if the predic- 
 tion of the Conservatives should be fulfilled — and if your alliance with 
 France, which is as unstable as its dynasty, should give way, you may 
 have cause to lament, when lamentation will be unavailing, that to 
 f<evcn millions of Irishmen justice was refused. 
 
102 nUSSIAN ANl> TUUKlSn TREATIF.S. 
 
 RUSSIAN AND TURKISH TREATIES. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MAUCH 17, 1834. 
 
 I SHALL endeavour, in discharging the duty I have undertaken, to 
 avoid a spirit of partisanship, which, in a question of this kind, would 
 be peculiarly out of place, and simply to pi'esent to the house tlie facta 
 wliich I conceive should induce the noble lord at the head of the 
 foreign department, to furnish the house and the public with the docu- 
 ments I seek to have produced. The motion I have risen to make is 
 this : — " That an humble address be presented to his majesty, that he 
 will be graciously pleased to give directions that there be laid before 
 this house, copies of any treaty or treaties which have been concluded 
 between the Russian and Turkish governments, since the 1st of 
 January, 1833, and which have been olhcially communicated to the 
 British Government ; together with copies of any correspondence 
 between his majesty's government and the Russian and Turkish 
 governments, relative to the said treaties." 
 
 I proceed at once to the statement of the facts, the incidents, and 
 the documents, on which I rely. I shall not take any remote period, 
 but commence at the autumn of the year 1831. In the autumn of that 
 year, the forces of the Paclia of Egypt began their march; on the 3rd 
 of December, 1831, the siege of Acre was commenced; in INIay, 1832, 
 Acre fell; Ibrahim proceeded on his march, and advanced into Syria; 
 on the 14th of June, Damascus was taken. In July, 1832, another 
 great battle was fought, and Ibrahim advanced upon Taurus ; he 
 passed it. Any one who will give the slightest examination to the 
 relative position of the two armies, must see that the success of Ibrahim 
 was inevitable. This was the state of affairs in July, 1832. "What 
 was the course adopted by Turkey ? She applied for aid to England. 
 The fact is admitted, in a speech made by the noble lord in this house 
 on the 1 1th of July, 1833. It was furtlier admitted by the noble lord, 
 that if this country liad then thouglit proper to interfere, its interference 
 would have been effectual. 
 
 Lord Palmeuston. — No. 
 
 Mr. Sheil. — It is so stated. It has also been stated, but I know not 
 whether on good authority, that the application of Turkey to this country 
 for assistance was sustained by Russia, which power is said to have inti- 
 mated her wish, or solicited, that the aid asked by Turkey should be 
 given : England refused her assistance. That fact will not be 
 questioned; it remains to be explained. It was asked at the time, 
 why assistance was not given to our ancient ally ? But the events 
 which subsequently happened, gave retrospective force to the inter- 
 
RUSSIAN AND TURKISH TREATIES. 103 
 
 rogatory ; for it is impossible not to ask, with a sentiment stronger 
 than mere curiosity, wliy it was that Turkey, when she sought our 
 assistance, was thrown upon Russia as her only resource ? The refusal 
 liaving been given, is it not a most extraordinary circumstance that 
 England sent no ambassador to Constantinople ? The war began in 
 October, 1831 ; Acre fell in May, 1832 ; Damascus, in June, 1832; 
 tlie Taurus was passed ; aid was asked from and refused by England ; 
 and yet no ambassador was sent from England ! Let the noble lord, 
 if he will have the goodness to note the questions I ask in the course 
 of my statement, tell us how it happened that the war had been con- 
 cluded two months before the English minister arrived at Constan- 
 tinople ? The battle of Koniah was fought on the 21st of September, 
 1832 ; and although this progress of Ibrahim attracted the attention 
 of Europe, it does not seem to have induced the English cabinet to 
 give any acceleration to the movements of my Lord Ponsonby. He 
 was appointed, I believe, in December, 1832; but he did not arrive in 
 Constantinople till INIay, 1833, after the battle of Koniah had been 
 fought, and application had been made by Turkey to Russia ; and, 
 indeed, aftei* — as it is stated upon authority, I believe, worthy of 
 credit, and wliich it will remain for the noble lord to confirm or con- 
 tradict — Russia had written to the sultan in tlic language of fraternal 
 or diplomatic endearment, making him a tender of the assistance of 
 Russia, whether that assistance was required by sea or by land. On 
 the l7tli of February, the French admiral, Roussin, arrived at Con- 
 stantinople, and this leads me to remark upon a circumstance deserving 
 of notice. It is this ; — that not only England, but France, had no 
 ambassador at Constantinople during the progress of the events I have 
 mentioned. The reason of France being thus situated, is said to be, 
 that General Guilleminot, who had been there as ambassador, having 
 suggested to the Porte, on the breaking out of the Polish insurrection, 
 that that was a good opportunity to repair the disasters and injuries 
 of the war which terminated in the treaty of Adrianople, Prince Pozzo 
 di Borgo applied to the French minister, Sebastiani, to have him 
 removed. I mention tliis as a kind of excuse for England, because 
 France, having only a charge (V affaires, it may bo said that we were 
 not called upon to have more than a secretary of legation. Admiral 
 Roussin having arrived on the 17th of February, he, on the 19th of 
 February, remonstrated with the tlivan, on the fatal effects to the 
 Turkish empire which must result from calling in Russia as an 
 auxiliary. On the very next day the Russian fleet appeared in 
 the Bospliorus. There was, however, no immediate disembarkation. 
 Tlie French admiral remonstrated, but the English ambassador was 
 
104 RUSSIAN AND TURKISH TREATIES. 
 
 not there to remonstrate, for Lord Ponsonby was relieving himself at 
 Naples from the fatigues of his diplomatic negotiations in Belgium. 
 An effort was made by him, however, to induce Ibrahim to retreat, 
 but all it led to was the raising a question respecting the possession 
 of Armenia. In that question. Admiral Eoussin said he would not 
 interfere, not wishing to concern himself in the domestic quarrels of 
 the parties. He accordingly retired, and 20,000 Russians encamped 
 on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. Complete possession having 
 been taken of Constantinople, Count Orloff arrived, if not before Lord 
 Ponsonby, to much better purpose ; for, whilst he seemed to be en- 
 gaged in the show and festivities of the capital, on the illuminations 
 of their seraglio, he was all the while effecting a clandestine treaty 
 with the sultan, not only without the intervention, but without the 
 knowledge of the English or Frenclx embassies. That was the treaty 
 of the 8th of July, the production of wliich I seek from the nol>le lord. 
 I have now, by a succinct narrative, brought down my statement to that 
 important period, the 8th of July, 1833, the date of the subjugation 
 of Turkey ; not I hope of the dishonour of England. When was tliat 
 treaty known by the noble lord ? I may mention, by the way, a re- 
 markable circumstance which took place in the House of Commons on 
 the 11th of July. 
 
 My honourable friend who sits besides me (the member for Coven- 
 try) moved for certain papers respecting the recent transactions be- 
 tween Russia, Turkey, and Mehemet Ali. On that occasion the noblo 
 lord opposite pronounced a speech, reflecting the highest credit on his 
 diplomatic abilities. The noble lord stated, as a reason for not producing 
 the papers, that the events to which they related could hardly be said 
 to be brought to a close, and that the documents asked for ought not 
 to be produced, till a diplomatic wind-up liad been arrived at. But 
 he expressed sentiments worthy of a proselyte of Mr. Canning, ob- 
 serving, that it was quite a mistake to suppose that England was not 
 prepared to go to war if honour and dignity required it ; mentioning, 
 at the same time, that assistance had been refused to Turkey. This 
 being on tlie 1 1th of July, the noble lord, of course, was not aware of 
 the treaty of the 8th of J uly. How did the English public become 
 acquainted with that treaty ? Or perhaps, the more proper question 
 would be — how did the noble lord become acquainted with it ? The 
 noble lord obtained his first information touching, I will not say, the 
 details and particulars, but the substance of that treaty, from a letter 
 which appeared in the Morning Herald on the 21st of August, 1833, 
 from its correspondent at Constantinoide. In this letter it was stated 
 that Count Orlotf had succeeded completely in throwing dust into the 
 
RUSSIAN AND TURKISH TREATIES. 105 
 
 eyes of the English and French ambassadors ; for that, whilst he ap- 
 peared to be absorbed in all the gaieties of the Turkish metropolis, he 
 was in reality prosecuting the deep and dark designs which Russia 
 had so long entertained ; and that on the 8th of July he had induced 
 the sultan to conclude an offensive and defensive treaty, admitting the 
 virtual surrender to Russian dominion of all the rights of Turkey. 
 
 The particulars of that treaty, beyond three articles, the writer did 
 not pretend to know ; but he added, that the next day Count Orloff 
 set off for St. Petersburgh ; that the greatest confusion and dismay 
 prevailed among the other diplomatic bodies ; and that they had de- 
 spatched couriers to their respective courts. This letter was brouglit 
 under the attention of the House of Commons on the 24th of August, 
 by tlie honourable and gallant member for Westminster ; on which 
 occasion the noble lord stated in his place, that of the treaty of the 8th 
 of July lie officially knew nothing whatever ; the only information he 
 had upon the subject being through the medium of the public journals, 
 upon whose activity he passed a just panegyric — an activity which 
 certainly, on that occasion, much surpassed that of the agents of the 
 government. The noble lord, on that occasion, admitted a second 
 time that Turkey had asked for assistance from England before ap- 
 plying for it to Russia. I have now brought myself down to the 24th 
 of August, 1833. On the 29th of August, the King delivered his 
 speech from the throne on the prorogation of parliament. With these 
 facts, or these rumours which, at all events, ultimately turned out fatal 
 facts — with all these circumstances before it — tlie cabinet advised his 
 Majesty to declare in his speech from the throne — and that si-.eech 
 must constitutionally be considered the speech of his Majesty's mi- 
 nisters-— that tbe relation between Turkey and England remained 
 undisturbed. 
 
 Let the house bear in mind that the noble lord, if he had not re- 
 ceived the despatch forwarded to him on the 9th of July, certainly 
 had had his attention called to the treaty of the 8th of July or the 
 14tli of August ; and yet persuades his colleagues to advise his Ma- 
 jesty to say on the 29th of August — 
 
 " The hostilities which had disturbed the jjcace of Turkey Jiavo 
 been terminated ; and you may be assured that my attention will be 
 carefully directed to any events which may affect the present state or 
 the future independence of that empire." 
 
 I now pass at once to the month of October in the same year. In 
 October M. La Grenee, the French charge d'affaires, addressed a 
 letter to Count Nesselrode of a most remarkable kind. Considering 
 the close junction which subsisted between the courts of St. James's 
 
106 ttUS8IAN AND TUllKISU TUEATIES. 
 
 unci the Tuilleries — a junction which I hope Btill continues — consicler- 
 ing tlie fidelity of that alliance to be mutual — it is hardly too much to 
 look upon this note as if it came from the noble lord himself, sitting in 
 Downing-street. This note of M. La Grenee was written in October, 
 but was not publislied in Paris till the 23rd of December, 1833, when 
 it came before the whole of the European public. I pray the parti- 
 cular attention of the house to this note. Our attention has lately 
 been directed to matters of domestic interest and immediate pressure ; 
 but be it remembered, that events are now going on which are fraught 
 with consequences that may affect our domestic interests as much as 
 others which only appear larger because more near. The note of M. 
 La Grenee to Count Nesselrode runs thus : — 
 
 "The undersigned Charge d' Affaires of his ]\Iajesty the King of 
 the French, has received orders to express to the cabinet of St. Peters- 
 burgh the profound affliction felt by the Fi'ench government, on learn- 
 ing the conclusion of the treaty of the 8th of July last, between his 
 Majesty the Emperor of Russia and the Grand Signior. In the 
 opinion of the King's government, this treaty assigns to tlie mutual 
 i-elations existing between the Ottoman empire and Russia a new 
 character, against which the powers of Europe have a right to protest." 
 
 To this note, Count Nesselrode replied in the following cant, offen- 
 sive, and almost contumelious language : — 
 
 " It is true that this act changes the nature of the relations between 
 Russia and the Porte, for in the room of long-continued hostilities it 
 substitutes that friendship and that confidence, in which tlie Turkish 
 government will henceforth find a guarantee for its stability and ne- 
 cessary means of defence, calculated to ensure its preservation. In 
 this conviction, and guided by the purest and most disinterested inten- 
 tions, his INIajesty the Emperor is resolved, in case of necessity, to 
 discharge fixithfuUy the obligations imposed on him by the treaty of 
 the 8th of July, thus acting as if the declaration contained in the note 
 of Monsieur La Grenee had no existence. 
 
 " St. Petersburgh, Oct. 1833." 
 
 This note is taken from the Augsburgh Gazette, to which it pur- 
 ports to have been transmitted in a letter from Paris on the 23rd of 
 December. Here let one remark be made, which will not trench on 
 the distinct classification of facts. If the Frencli government remon- 
 strated, it is to be presumed that the noble lord did not remain silent. 
 Where is his coiTCspondence ? AVas a note as affronting written in 
 ixiply, or was it even couched in more caustic phraseology, and in the 
 same stylo of contemptuous repudiation as the article in the St. Peters- 
 burgh Gazette, on the presumption of our interference in the affairs 
 
RUSSIAN AND TURKISH TREATIES. 107 
 
 of Poland? To return to dates and facts — on the 1st of January, 
 Pozzo di Borgo addressed the King of the French, and on that occa- 
 sion the accomplished Corsican pronounced on Louis Philip an eulo- 
 gium, accompanied with protestations, characteristic of both — of the 
 party who indulged in, and the party who was graciously pleased to 
 accept the hollow panegyric. Six days after, in bringing up the 
 address, M. Bignon delivered a speech, which was received with equal 
 surprise and acclamation. He denounced the conduct of Russia 
 towards Poland, and held out the aggressions upon Turkey as indica- 
 tive of that deep and settled purpose, of which he had, in his official 
 capacity, a perfect cognizance. In 1807, he said, Alexander had 
 tendered all Southern Europe to Napoleon, provided Napoleon would 
 give him what he called at once in homely, but powerful diction — the 
 key of his own house — Constantinople. That offer was refused ; the 
 consequences were foreseen by Napoleon. M. Bignon then warned 
 France to beware of the advances of Russian power in the east, and 
 denounced, Avhile he revealed her policy, and invoked his countrymen 
 to awaken to a sense of the insults offered to the dignity of France, 
 and the violation offered to her rights. To this speech, the Duke de 
 Broglie made an answer conspicuous in itself, and which his subse- 
 quent conduct rendered still more remarkable. He expressed his 
 unqualified concurrence in all that had been said, and thanked M. 
 Bignon for having given expression to the sentiments which he and 
 his colleagues entertained. On the very next day, this very man went 
 down to the chamber, and made a speech which was received with 
 astonishment by both countries. He contended that no violation of 
 treaty had taken place, expressed satisfaction with Russian policy, and 
 stated that there had been no material alteration made respecting the 
 passage of the Dardanelles. M. Thiers, in reply to M. Mauguin, said 
 nearly the same thing ; and, although La Grenee's note was yet fresh 
 in every memory, and the Duke of Broglie's approval of Bignon's 
 speech was ringing in every ear, expressed no sort of discontent at 
 any one of the incidents which had taken place. M. Thiers, however, 
 incidentally acknowledged that it was a part of the treaty, that all 
 vessels of powers at war with Russia should be excluded from the 
 passage of the Dardanelles. Our own parliament did not meet until 
 the 5th of February ; but before it assembled an accident occurred 
 which remains to be explained. The French and English fleets 
 united, proceeded to the Dardanelles, which Russia had spared no ex- 
 pense to fortify ; and, having displayed the tricolour, and " the meteor 
 flag of England," as it has been nobly called, near the spot where Sir 
 George Duckworth, when Lord Grey was Secretary for Foreign 
 
108 ttUSSIAN AND TUKKISII TREATIES. 
 
 Affairs, expended a good deal of powder without much avail, both 
 fleets sailed away, and instead of proceeding to Smyrna, gave a pre- 
 ference to a more distant and less commodious harbour, where, how- 
 ever, Russian influence was not quite so predominant as in that 
 celebrated haven. The glory of this expedition belongs to the First 
 Lord of the Admiralty ; but it is to be conjectured that the achieve- 
 ment was suggested by the genius of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. 
 But in what did it result ? That remains to be told; and, for the 
 satisfaction of that curiosity, I, this night, afford an opportunity. — 
 Parliament met on the 5th. The King's speech informed us that the 
 integrity of the Porte was, for the future, to be preserved (the sultan 
 liaving been first stripped, and then manacled,) and that his Majesty 
 continued to receive assurances which did not disturb his confidence 
 that peace would be preserved. The Duke of Wellington, in another 
 place, adverted to the treaty of Constantinople, and Lord Grey retorted 
 Adrianople upon his Grace. But in the ti'eaty of Adrianople there 
 was, at all events, nothing that infringed upon our rights as to the 
 navigation of the Black Sea ; and it is to be recollected that whatever 
 tlie First Lord of the Treasury might have said, the Secretary for 
 Foreign Affairs declared that — " while he desired peace, of war he 
 was not in the least afraid." In this house no interrogatories were 
 put. On the 24th of February the following paragraph appeai'cd in 
 The Globe, which, from its being the supposed organ of government, 
 deserves great attention, the more especially as we are left to the 
 newspapers for our intelligence. That article stated — 
 
 " Another treaty between Russia and Turkey has been concluded 
 at St. Petersburg!!, which was signed by Achmet Pacha on the 29th 
 
 of last month Enough has transpired to satisfy the most 
 
 jealous that its spirit is pacific, and indeed advantageous to the 
 Turkish empire. The Porte is relieved from the pressure of the en- 
 gagements imposed upon her at Adrianople ; and we understand that 
 the principalities, with the exception of Silistria, will shortly be 
 evacuated, and the sum exacted by tlie former treaty reduced one-third. 
 Such relaxations of positive engagements are proofs either of the 
 moderation and good sense of Russia, or of the influence which the 
 union of England and France, and the firm and concerted language 
 of those two powers, have acquired in the councils of St. Peters- 
 burgh." 
 
 Is it not reasonable that this treaty should be laid before the house ? 
 It is to be observed, that in any account of it, either in our journals or 
 in the Algemeine Zeitung, not one word is said of the passage of the 
 Dardanelles. The principalities of WaUachia and Moldavia, indeed, 
 
RUSSIAN AND TURKISH TREATIES. 109 
 
 aro to bo evacuated. That circumstance is a mere delusion ; for Wal- 
 lacliia and Moldavia are as much dependant on Russia as if they had 
 actually been transferred. Their hospodars are virtually nominated 
 by Russia ; no Turk can reside in the country ; and every appoint- 
 ment, down to that of the humblest officer, is effijcted through Russian 
 dictation. Silistria is retained — the key of the Lower Danube, com- 
 manding all Bulgaria, and a place so important, that the Greek empe- 
 rors constructed a wall there to protect their frontier, and guard 
 against the incursions of the barbarians. As to the remission of 
 money, that concession is made to an insolvent debtor ; it is not the 
 first time that Russia has adopted the same course ; the payment of a 
 tribute is of little moment from a country which is almost incorpo- 
 rated in her dominions, and will soon meet the fate of so many of 
 tlic Tm-kish i)rovinces. But how does this treaty modify or affect 
 that of the 8th of July ? It does not at all relate to it. It concerns 
 the treaty of Adrianople ; and as long as we have nothing else on 
 this question, the house is entitled to receive adequate information 
 from the government. With respect to the Dardanelles, a matter of 
 signal importance to England, — affecting her commerce, — affecting 
 not only the navigation of the Euxine, but giving Russia a control 
 over Greece and the entire Archipelago, — it may be as well to state 
 with brevity the treaties that existed between England and Turkey, 
 and those tliat existed between Russia and Turkey, previous to that 
 regarding which information is demanded. I will not go back to the 
 reign of Elizabeth. By the treaty of 1675, concluded by Sir John 
 Finch, the navigation of all the Turkish seas was secured to England. 
 In 1809, a little time after our rupture with the Porte, produced by 
 the attack on the Dardanelles, a new treaty was executed, by which 
 the passage of the Dardanelles, and the canal of Constantinople, was 
 secured to England. The 11th article provided, that in time ot peace 
 no ship of war should pass, no matter to what country it might belong. 
 In 1774, by the treaty of Kaynadgi, the passage of the Dai-danelles 
 was first secured to Russian merchant vessels. In 1780, a quarrel 
 took place respecting an armed vessel. In 1783, a new treaty was 
 entered into, and another in 1792 (that treaty by which the Crimea, 
 just like Greece, was declared independent, and then absorbed in Rus- 
 sian domination), and by both treaties the passage was secured to mer- 
 chant vessels only. 
 
 In 1800, Russia having obtained the protectorship of tlie Ionian 
 Islands (their importance we felt in 1815, not so much because we 
 desired to acquire, as to take them from a power that aimed at j)redo- 
 minance in the Mediterranean), entered into a treaty, securing the 
 
110 RUSSIAN AND TUUKISII TUKATIES. 
 
 passage to the merchant vessels of the islands. In 1812, the treaty of 
 Bucharest was signed, by which Bessarabia was given up to Russia, 
 and all former treaties respecting the Dardanelles were confirmed. In 
 1829, the treaty of Adrianople was signed, and with respect to the 
 Dardanelles, contained the following passage : — 
 
 " 7th Article. The Sublime Porte declares the passage of the Ca- 
 nal of Constantinople completely free and open to llussian merchant 
 vessels under merchant flags, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, 
 and from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea ; upon the same prin- 
 ciple the passage is declared free and open to all merchant vessels be- 
 longing to powers at peace with the Porte. The Porte declares, that 
 under no pretence whatsoever will it throw any obstacle in the way of 
 the exercise of this right, and engages, above all, never hereafter to 
 stop or detain vessels, either with cargo or in ballast, whether Rus- 
 sian, or belonging to nations with which the Porte shall not be in a 
 state of declared war." 
 
 In the manifesto, published by the Emperor Nicholas, on the 1st 
 of October, 1 829, he says : — 
 
 " The passage of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus is henceforth 
 free and open to the commerce of all the nations of the world." 
 
 Thus the stipulation was, that all nations at peace (not, be it ob- 
 served, with Russia, but with the Porte), should enjoy the right of 
 unimpeded passage ; but how has that been effected by the treaty of 
 the 8th of July ? Will it be said, that nothing was accomplished by 
 the Autocrat by that treaty ? If so, why was it signed without the 
 knowledge of our ambassador, and in a clandestine and surreptitious 
 way? What are its provisions? Do the public journals give a just 
 account of it ? Is it true, that it provides that no vessels belonging to 
 a power at war with Russia shall enjoy that right ? If so, the alter- 
 ation is palpable ; and if there be no express declaration to this effect, 
 let there be an alliance, offensive and defensive, and the Porte is 
 bound to consider every enemy of Russia as its own ; the consequence 
 is precisely the same as if the Porte surrendered to Russia the posses- 
 sion of the Dardanelles, and the last of the Sultans is the first satrap 
 of Nicholas the Great. 
 
 There does not appear to be any sound reason for withholding this 
 treaty. It has been the subject of remonstrance by Fi-ance — of debate 
 in the French Chamber — of diversified commentary in the public 
 journals. Why withhold it? There must be a strange inconsistency 
 in publishing all the enormous answers to protocols respecting Bel- 
 gium, where the transaction is as yet incomplete, and in refusing to 
 furnish anything but materials for surmise on this treaty. Ponderous 
 
nUSSlAN ANU TUUKISII TIIEATIES. Ill 
 
 folios of fruitless negotiations on the affairs of Belgium have been 
 given to the world. Let the government act upon the principle adopted 
 in that case, and give the English people the means of forming a judg- 
 ment of tlie policy which his Majesty's ministers have adopted in a 
 question where the national honour and interest are so deeply in- 
 volved. It may be said, " Trust in the minister, be sure that he will 
 not desert his duty, or acquiesce in any measure incompatible with 
 the honour of England." I should be disposed to do so, when I take 
 into account that the Secretary for Foreign Affairs was a political fol- 
 lower of INIr. Canning, who considered the interests and the honour 
 of England as so closely blended, and although the noble lord may 
 have abandoned the opinions on domestic policy which were enter- 
 tained by Mr. Canning where he was in the wrong, it is to be pre- 
 sumed that he adhered with a closer tenacity to those opinions in 
 foreign policy where Mr. Canning was in the right. But this 
 ground of confidence in the noble lord is modified, if not coun- 
 tervailed, by the recollection, that in many recent transactions he 
 has been baffled by that power which has gathered all the profligate 
 nobility of Europe together, in order to compound a cabinet of 
 Machiavellian mercenaries to maintain the cause of slavery tlirough 
 the world. Look at Belgium — look at the Russian-Dutch loan. 
 The noble lord, although guided by the Prince of Bencvento, ha8 
 lost his way in the labyrinth which Russia has prepared for him 
 and Poland. " We shall," he exclaimed, " remonstrate." We did 
 remonstrate, and despatched Lord Durham to St. Petersburgh (why 
 was not Sir Stratford Canning there ?) and what has been the result ? 
 If confidence be to be entertained in the noble lord, it must be built 
 on some firmer basis than his entertainment of the treaty of Vienna. 
 Instead of calling on the people of England to confide in him, let him 
 build his confidence in the English people. They are attached to 
 peace, but they are not afraid of war. Our fleet could blow the Rus- 
 sian navy from the ocean. England is yet a match for the Northern 
 Autocrat, and there is might enough left in her arm to shatter tlie 
 colossus that bestrides the sea by which Europe is divided from Asia, 
 and which has been accounted from time beyond record one of the 
 demarcations of the world. 
 
112 ORANGE LODGES. 
 
 ORANGE LODGES. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, AUGUST 11, 1835. 
 
 It is remarkable that the gallant colonel (Vevner), the Deputy 
 Grand Master of Ireland and Viceroy to the Duke of Cumber- 
 land, has not stated that he was ignorant of the existence of Orange 
 lodges in the army. This omission is the more deserving of notice, 
 because he was colonel of the 7 th dragoons — because he was examined 
 twice before the committee — and because the several other function- 
 aries of the Orange body have declared their utter ignorance of that 
 which they ought to have known so well. Independently of these 
 considerations, it appears by a report of the proceedings of the Eng- 
 lish Grand Lodge, that the gallant colonel was present when (the 
 Duke of Cumberland being in the chair) a resolution respecting the 
 establishment of Oi'ange lodges in the army was moved. Is it true 
 that he was present ? 
 
 Colonel Verneu. — I was never asked, in the committee, whether 
 I knew of the existence of Orange lodges in the army. I now declare 
 that I was utterly ignorant of the I'act ; and I do not remember 
 whether I was or was not present when the resolution, to which the 
 honourable gentleman adverts, was carried in the English Grand 
 Lodge. 
 
 Mr. Sheil. — How far the answer fits the question, let the house judge. 
 It appears that the gallant colonel did attend the Englisli Grand 
 Lodge, on what occasion he docs not distinctly recollect — his me- 
 mory is misty — but it would be important that he should state how 
 far the impression is coi-rect, that Orange lodges have been established 
 in the army with the sanction of the Duke of Cumberland, and by 
 virtue of resolutions, passed when the Orange Grand Lodge was 
 graced by the presence of his Royal Highness ! I turn from the gal- 
 lant colonel to the general question. At the commencement of the 
 session I charged the Conservative government with having advanced 
 Orangemen to places of high station, and having given to Orange 
 lodges answers amounting to a recognition of their public usefuless; 
 This motion was not unattended with a salutary effect ; immediately 
 after, the member for Kilkenny,* to whom the country is greatly in- 
 debted for the disclosures which he has been instrumental in producing, 
 moved the appointment of the committee. On that committee the 
 leading functionaries of the Orange body were placed. And yet it is 
 
 • Mr. Finn. 
 
OUANGE LODGES. 113 
 
 said that this committee was packed ; but let us see who were the 
 members of it : — the honourable members for Sligo and for Cavan 
 were upon it ; and there were also Mr. Jackson, Mr. Wilson Patten — 
 I suppose that lie is a Conservative — Colonel Wood, Lord Castlereagh, 
 Mr. NichoU, Sir James Graham — (I really do not know with Avhich 
 party to class him) — Colonel ConoUy, and Colonel Perceval. I do 
 not think that this selection can be said to be an unfair one, but it is 
 alleged that the mode in which the witnesses were examined was un- 
 just. The Grand Master, and the Grand Treasurer, and the Grand 
 Secretary were examined — (they are all Grand) — the order of inves- 
 tigation was altogether inverted, and the Orange party were allowed 
 to open the case themselves, and for a number of days none but Orange 
 witnesses were examined. Colonel Vcrner was twice examined — first 
 on the Vth of April, 1835, and again on the 9th of April. Then 
 came the Reverend Mortimer 0' Sullivan — certainly a very competent 
 witness to give evidence with respect to both religions, for with re- 
 gard to one he could indulge in the " Pleasures of Memory," and to 
 the other, he, doubtless, looked witli the " Pleasures of Hope ;" Mr. 
 M. O'Sullivan, the Grand Chaplain, was produced, and Avas exa- 
 mined on the 13th of April, on the 21st and 2Gth of May, and again 
 on the 27th of May : so many days expended upon theology and the 
 Reverend Mortimer O'Sullivan. Then came Mr. Swan, the Deputy 
 Grand Secretary; next came Mr. Stewart Blacker, the Assistant 
 Grand Treasurer, who was examined on the 8th, 10th, 12th, and 13th 
 of June ; next Mr. W. Ward, the solicitor of the Orange body, who 
 was produced to show that they never in any way interfered with the 
 administration of justice; then again, on the 15th of June, came Mr. 
 Mortimer O'Sullivan — ccce iterum Crispinus ! — and lastly, came Mr. 
 Hugh Baker. Yet it is alleged that there was unfair dealing in 
 the examination of witnesses, although every word of the resolu- 
 tions of the honourable member for Middlesex is founded, not upon 
 the testimony of a party adverse to Orangeism, but upon the testi- 
 mony of Orangemen supported by the journals and the records they 
 themselves produced. What appears to be the state of Ireland in re- 
 ference to the Orange institution, from the evidence adduced by 
 Orangemen themselves ? A confederacy exists, exclusively sectarian. 
 It consists of 150,000 men ; the members are initiated with a solemn 
 and mysterious ritual — they enter into a compact of religous and poli- 
 tical brotherhood — signs and pass-words are employed by them for the 
 purposes of clandestine recognition — their proceedings are regulated by 
 a code of laws, the most specific and the most minute — they are go- 
 verned by a great representative assembly called the Grand Lodge of 
 I 
 
114 ORANGE LODGES. 
 
 Ireland, consisting of delegates from every part of Ireland — the whole 
 country is divided into departments, in which lodges affiliated and 
 corresponding to each other are established — and this enormous mass 
 of organized Protestantism is in arms, wliile a Prince of the Blood, 
 not next but near the throne, is at its head ! 
 
 How has this unpai'alleled institution worked ? Let us inquire what 
 has been its effect with respect to the administration of justice and the 
 peace of the country, and ask how has it been employed as a political 
 engine for the purpose of persecution, and under what circumstances 
 and with what cognizance it has extended itself into the army ? The 
 Orange Grand Lodge have defended a series of prosecutions instituted 
 against the members of this turbulent fraternity, by the crown. An 
 Orangeman, in the streets of Dundalk, strikes a Roman Catholic dead ; 
 he is prosecuted by the crown, convicted of manslaughter, and sen- 
 tenced to two years' imprisonment. His defence was conducted by the 
 Orange body, and the Orange lodges came to a resolution to support 
 him. Certain Orange rioters at Newry were sentenced to sixteen 
 months' imprisonment by a Protestant magistrate ; to these malefac- 
 tors the Grand Orange Lodge extended their pecuniary aid, and they 
 conducted their defence. They not only defended but prosecuted. 
 Three magistrates in Cavan dispersed an Orange procession ; the 
 Grand Orange Lodge determined to institute a pi-osecution against 
 the civil authorities who had the audacity to interfere Avith them ; 
 they sent down to Cavan their solicitor, and the grand jury 
 threw out the bills. At the last Meath election a body of 200 
 Orangemen, gathered fi-om the adjacent counties, entered the town of 
 Trim. They fdl the Court-house ; a dagger is seized in the hand of 
 one of them by the High Sheriff ; they spread confusion and dismay, 
 and after having enacted their part, return to the town of Kells. Here 
 they meet a Roman Catholic, and put him to death ; they are prose- 
 cuted, and the Grand Orange Lodge, by a specific resolution, advances 
 money to conduct the defence. An Orangeman is indicted ; in the 
 jurors' box twelve Orangemen are placed ; the magisti'atcs, if the case 
 be tried at quarter sessions, are members of this fatal fi'aternity ; under 
 these circumstances, what a mockery is the administration of justice ! 
 Sir Frederick Stovin speaks of it as a subject of public ridicule and 
 contempt. But facts are better than opinions. Take the following : — 
 In a prayer-book a notice of Orange assassination is written ; Sir 
 Frederick Stovin and his subordinate, Duff, who was employed in the 
 police, had incurred the displeasure of the Orangemen of Tyrone, and 
 in the prayer-book belonging to the wife of Mr. Duff — ^left in the 
 church that she had been in the habit of attending — an Orange notice. 
 
OnANGE LODGES. 115 
 
 threatening death to Sir Frederick Stovin and to her husband, is 
 written. Almost immediately after, a meeting is called at Dungan- 
 non, at which the Lord Lieutenant of the county Tyrone attends, 
 and the Orangemen appear in considerable force, with military music, 
 and invested with their factious decorations. A scene of excitement 
 ensues — shots are discharged — a musket is levelled at Sir Frederick 
 Stovin, and the ball whistles at his ear ; and all this occurs in the 
 pacific province of Ulster. 
 
 What, the bouse will ask — atrocious as the circumstances may ap- 
 pear — what has all this to do with the administration of justice? At 
 that meeting, attended with so many incidents of a revolting charac- 
 ter, Lord Claude Hamilton was made an Orangeman — he was initiated 
 at the house of a publican of the name of Lilburne ; and immediately 
 afterwards he was made a magistrate. In this state of things, what 
 other feeling but one of dismay amongst Roman Catholics, and one 
 of impunity can exist amongst the Orange population of the country ? 
 I appeal to a fact again : At the last spring assizes for the county of 
 Armagh, three Orangemen were prosecuted for marching in a pro- 
 cession. Baron Pennefather suggested to them, with a view to a miti- 
 gation of their sentence, that they ought to express regret for having 
 violated the hiw. Did tliey intimate their contrition ? Did they de- 
 clare their determination never to commit a similar outrage on the 
 public peace again ? In open court, and in the face of the judge, these 
 audacious confederates whistled an air, called " The Protestant Boys." 
 And what was the course taken by indignant justice ? — what, do you 
 conjecture, was their sentence ? Not two years' imprisonment — not 
 one year — not six months. The learned judge tempers justice with 
 mercy, and sentences these presumptuous delinquents to an imprison- 
 ment of three weeks. The Dorchester labourers were sentenced to 
 transportation for seven years, and the Orange malefactors to an im- 
 prisonment for three weeks. But how has the Orange Society affected 
 the peace of the country ? We are told that Ulster is in a state of pro- 
 found and prosperous repose ; but by the evidence, what appears ? In 
 the broad day, on the l7th of January last, a body of Orange in- 
 cendiaiies enter a Roman Catholic village, called Anagagh, and, in 
 the face of the noon-tide sun, set fire to the houses of the Roman Ca- 
 tholic inhabitants ; they then retire to a hill, called Pinnigo, to the 
 number of near 200, form themselves in military array — Sir Frederick 
 Stovin advances at the head of the military, with a piece of artillery, 
 in order to disperse them — the magistrate, by whom he is attended, 
 declines giving an order to fire — and the Orangemen, in martial or- 
 der, and witli martial music, bidding and looking defiance, march 
 
IIG ORANGK LODGES. 
 
 away. Ami how were they armed ? With yeomanry muskets. The 
 entire yeomanry force of Ireland is, in fact, enrolled in tlie Orange 
 associations, and when a conflict ensues witli the people the conse- 
 quences are easily foreseen : witness the slaughters of whicli tliey have 
 been guilty, the blood in which they liave waded, the horrors wliich 
 they liave perpetrated : witness Ncwtownbarry ! How has the Orange 
 institution been employed as a political engine ? To their declaration 
 of allegiance a condition is attached. They engage to maintain the 
 throne, so long as by the throne Protestant ascendancy is supported. 
 They expel from their society every member who does not comply witli 
 their ordinances at elections. They issue proclamations, commanding 
 every Orangeman to petition parliament for or against si)ccilic mea- 
 sures — and they arc armed with what must bo considered formidable 
 instruments of supplication. At the close of the last year it was de- 
 termined by a cabal that L(?rd IMelbourne sliould be driven from ollice. 
 At Hillsborough 75,000 Orangemen are assembled to sustain the Con- 
 servative adventurers in their daring and desperate enterprise, and to 
 prove that they are not the remnant of a despicable faction. But will 
 it be said, " Had they not a right to do all this? Had they not the 
 advice of the King to speak out ? Had they not a right to petition 
 parliament, and address the crown — at Hillsborough ?" lie it so. 
 Gi'anting them their prerogative at Hillsborough, what have they to 
 do with Quebec ? The house seems startled with the question. It is 
 readily explained. The Orangemen of Ireland have passed resolutions 
 for the extension of their society into Upper and Lower Canada. The 
 Grand Lodge of England have appointed a Grand Secretary to visit 
 tlie Rritisli colonies of North America, with directions to commimi- 
 cate with tlie Grand Master. AV^hy is this? Upon what pretence? 
 For what purpose ? Is their object defensive ? What, in God's name, 
 have the Irish or English Orangemen to do with Lower Canada, 
 whose religion is Catholic, whose established church is Catholic, 
 whose legislature is Catholic — for eighteen out of twenty of the inha- 
 bitants are Catholics ? Are they not contented with striking the 
 baneful roots of their confederacy into the heart of the British empire, 
 but they must extend ramifications across the Atlantic, in oi'der to 
 supply the North American colonies with their poisoned fruits ? 
 
 I come to the army, the most important topic. This loyal brother- 
 hood, the guardian of peace, the promoter of tranquillity, despite of 
 the notorious rules of the Horse Guards, and in violation of every 
 principle of military discipline, have introduced into the army its 
 secret, its factious, and mutinous organization ? The fact is beyond 
 all dispute ; but there are circumstances connected with it, which are 
 
OllANGE LODGES. 1 l7 
 
 not a little i-emarkable. There is, in the code of Orange legislation, 
 an ordinance that all regiments in the army shall be considered as dis- 
 tricts. It is the 15th rule of 1824. So late as this very yeai, in the 
 Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, a warrant was granted to create a 
 lodge in the anny ; and who was in the chair ? Mr. Cromelin, the 
 Grand Master of the county of Down. This resolution and the presi- 
 dency of Mr. Cromelin on the occasion, appear in the appendix to the 
 report. But let the house mark the following resolution, " That the 
 next warrant should be granted to the 66th Regiment." Who was it 
 nioved that resolution ? No ordinary individual — a man, holding, in 
 the Orange body, the highest position, but who began his political life 
 as a FcUoAv of Trinity College, Dublin (of which the Duke of Cum- 
 berland is Chancellor), who has since figui'ed in Brunswick clubs, and 
 has exhibited, on various occasions, at public meetings in England, — 
 the llevercnd Charles Boyton, the associate of Mr. Mortimer O'Sullivan, 
 the Grand Cliaplain of the Orange Grand Lodges, and — mark it ! — the 
 chaplain to the Earl of Haddington, the late Lord Lieutenant. But 
 all the functionaries of the Orange body, despite all this, were igno- 
 rant of what Avas going on in the army. The knowledge of some peo- 
 ple is wonderful ; but not half so marvellous as the ignorance of others. 
 The next time the honourable gentleman opposite, the Grand Trea- 
 surer, Into Treasurer to the Ordnance, who was admitted, with the 
 Duke of "Wellington, a doctor of common law at Oxford, visits that 
 learned and loyal establishment, I pray of him to revive the old col- 
 lege play of " Ignoramus ;" the principal characters to be pei-formed 
 by Alexander Perceval, Henry Maxwell, and his Royal Highness the 
 Duke of Cumberland. His Royal Highness has written a letter. He 
 never heard of Orange lodges in the army — never heard of the orders 
 of 1 822 and 1 829, — of the rule of the Orange body, that every regi- 
 ment should be considered a district — of the majority of the Grand 
 Lodge having carried a resolution, on a division, to establish Orange 
 lodges in the army — of the printed book of warrants, in which the list 
 of military warrants is contained ; — neither docs his Royal Highness 
 recollect having been present when, in 1831, 1832, 1833, and 1835, 
 warrants were granted, whilst he was in the chair, to military men, 
 and actually a soldier attended as representative of his regiment. His 
 Royal Highness does not bear all this in mind, and is utterly igno- 
 rant of the introduction, into the army, of the lodges, of which he is 
 the Grand JNIaster. Heaven forbid that I should question the truth 
 of his Royal Higncss's allegation ; I fly in the midst of difficulties, 
 which might startle the belief of men of less accommodating credulity 
 than mine. Credo, quia vvjtossibile est. But, vSir, there is a consi- 
 
118 ORANGE LODGES. 
 
 deration of infinite importance connected with his Royal Highness, 
 and independent of his knowledge or his ignorance. Is it befitting 
 that any British subject should possess the power of which he has made 
 himself the master ? Is it safe, that a prince of the blood should be 
 invested with this portentous authority? He is declared, by the rules 
 of the English Grand Lodge, to be absolute and uncontrollable : he is 
 addressed with a species of prophetic greeting — "Hail, that shall 
 be king hereafter!" an aphorism of theology. If that prediction 
 shall be verified ; if, by some fatality, England shall be deprived of tlie 
 princess who is the object of her affection and of her hope — that prin- 
 cess who, if maternal virtues be hereditary, must be wise, and gentle, 
 and good — if. Sir, the Imperial Grand Master be fated to be the Sove- 
 reign of this vast empire, I trust that by 100,000 Irish Janissaries the 
 throne of Ernest the First will never be surrounded ! 
 
 One, and the most important, of all questions, remains. What are 
 the house and the government to do under the existing facts of the 
 case ? That something must be done, is manifest. You cannot tole- 
 rate this institution. If you do, what will be the result ? How will 
 the Roman Catholic soldiers feel, with whom your army is filled, who 
 have fought your battles, participated in your glory, and furnished the 
 raw material out of which the standard of victory lias been wrought ? 
 If, by your connivance, you convert this confederacy into a pattern, 
 and if a counter organization shall be formed — if we, the Irish mil- 
 lions, shall enrol ourselves in some analogous organization — if its 
 members shall be admitted with a solemn i*eligious ceremony — if the 
 obligation of a political fraternity shall be incvdcated — if signs, and 
 tests, and passwords sliall be employed — if a representative assembly, 
 consisting of deputies from every Irish county shall be held in the 
 metropolis, and subordinate lodges shall be held in every department 
 into which the country shall be subdivided, what will befal ? To the 
 vanquished, and to the victors, — woe ! The gulf of civil warfare will 
 yawn beneath the feet of Ireland, and in the abyss all her hopes will 
 be swallowed. Avert, avert the calamity, which, if I have anticipated, 
 it is only to shudder at its prospects. Save us from these terrible 
 possibilities ! Adopt a measvu'e which, by its timely application, may 
 prevent these terrific results from coming to pass. If I relied upon 
 them less, I should warn them more. I will not tell them that I ex- 
 pect — I know — that they will do their duty 
 
CUUKCU OF lilKLANU. 119 
 
 CHURCH OF IRELAND. 
 
 SPEECU IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, JULY 23, 1835. " 
 
 The honourable baronet (Sir R. Bateson) who spoke last, and who 
 designates himself as one of the representatives of the intellect of Ire- 
 land (intellect appears to be an item of Protestant monopoly), con- 
 tradicted in his peroration the bold assertion with which he began. 
 At the outset, he talked of those Irish members who dissent from him, 
 and coincide with the government, as persons of very small account ; 
 at the conclusion, he describes their great and baneful power. The 
 honourable baronet, indeed, and those with whom he is in the habit of 
 acting, have had an ample experience of the efficiency, the energy, the 
 vigilance, and the union of tliat body, which he affects to treat with 
 disregard, but to wliich, in his arguments, he offers the acknoAvledg- 
 ment of his involuntary respect. We are the majority— the great 
 majority of tlie Irisli members. Among us are men of as high station, 
 and as large possessions, as the honourable baronet: we sj^eak the 
 sentunents of the great mass of the Irish people on a question that 
 most nearly touches the interests of Ireland. If, for a series of years, 
 the mnjority of Scotcli representatives had, upon a Scotch question, 
 declared a strong and unvarying opinion, tiiere arc few who would 
 suggest that, to their opinions, no attention ought to be paid ; and 
 when, by the majority of Irish members, it is insisted that justice and 
 expediency require that a particular policy should be adopted in refe- 
 rence to a subject by which Ireland and her tranquillity are so innne- 
 diately affected, it is strange that any individual should speak with 
 disparagement of those by Avhom millions of his countrymen are re- 
 presented. I have thought it right to advert to a topic on Avhich the 
 honourable gentleman has indulged in insinuations by which our hos- 
 tility may be imbittered, but our real influence never can be impaired. 
 The measure which the government has brought forward, is founded 
 upon that principle, for the adoption of which those who know Ireland 
 best have uniformly contended, as affording the only basis on which a 
 salutary system of corrective legislation can be founded. T]iat prin- 
 ciple is now, for the first time, proposed to be embodied with distinct- 
 ness in a legislative enactment. Its germ was indeed to be found in 
 the Church Temporalities Bill, which is commonly known by the 
 name of Stanley's Act. The noble lord opposite, in the suspension 
 clause, had the merit of furnishing a most valuable precedent, and in- 
 deed (although unconscious of it) laid down the principle upon wliicli 
 this bill in a great measure rests 
 
120 CHDKCH OF IRELAND. 
 
 Lord Stanley. — No! No! 
 
 Mr. Shell. — That bill contained a clause providing for the suspen- 
 sion of benefices. 
 
 Lord Stanley. — For what purpose ? 
 
 Mr. SiiEiL. — I take not the will for the deed, but the deed for the will. 
 I care little about the purpose contemplated by the noble lord, but look 
 to the results to which his measure must lead. He provided that, in 
 certain cases, whole districts might be left without a Protestant clergy- 
 man, and that in those districts the church should have no external, 
 visible sign. No spiritual consolation, as it is called, was to be ad- 
 ministered to Protestant parishioners in the localities which were to 
 fall within the provisions of the noble lord's celebrated measure ; no 
 opportunity for conversion was to be given to the Roman Catholic in- 
 habitants. That bill went much farther than the present project ; 
 because, by the latter, a Protestant traveller, whose itinerant orthodoxy 
 chances to stand in need of spiritual aid, is to find a Protestant clergy- 
 man at hand, bound to administer to his religious need ; a stipend is to 
 that end provided : but by the bill of the noble lord all trace of Pro- 
 testantism was to be swept away, and unmolested Popery was to be 
 left in complete and undisputed possession of the ground frorti which, 
 under the auspices of the noble lord, its competitor was to be driven. 
 It concerns the house little what object the noble lord might have had 
 in view : the infei'ence from his measures is irresistible. Such pre- 
 mises are supplied by his expedients, as to afford an irresistible con- 
 clusion against the policy to which he still inconsistently and obstinately 
 adheres. Did not the right honourable baronet, the member for Cum- 
 berland,* on a former occasion, admit the force of these observations, 
 when he expressed his regret that he had ever given his assent to that 
 clause in the Church Temporalities Bill ? I wish that he were here, 
 in order that he might give upon this subject some more satisfactory 
 explanation than his noble confederate can furnish. On ordinary occa- 
 sions, it is, perhaps, sufficient that the noble lord should be present as 
 representative of his right honourable friend ; thei'C is such a unity of 
 sentiment, such a singleness of object, on the part of both those dis- 
 tinguished associates, that the opinions of the one always afford an 
 adetiuate intimation of the views of the other ; but, in the present in- 
 stance, it is not unreasonable to desire that the right honourable baro- 
 net should have condescended to be present. His speech was of such 
 a character — he has assailed his opponents in terms so unqualified — 
 that, after the delivery of a vituperative harangue, he ought to have 
 
 * Sir J. Graham. 
 
CIIUUCII OF IRELANB. 121 
 
 attended the house, and encountered the men on whose character he 
 has committed an assault. 
 
 I own that I was anxious the right honourable baronet should be 
 present, when to his historical references from Clarendon, an answer, 
 which he might liave anticipated, was to be given. That right honour- 
 able baronet, not satisfied with invoking the religious prejudices of the 
 English people, lias resorted to citations, of which the object appears 
 to be to awaken a feeling of alarm in the mind of the highest person- 
 age in tlie rcabn. Was it to produce an impression at Windsor that 
 the right honourable baronet, last night, assigned as a cause of the fall 
 of the monarchy, the abandonment, by Charles the First, of the inter- 
 ests of the church ? It was not a little amusing to hear the right 
 honourable baronet avail himself of the same expedients which were 
 employed by Mr. Croker, in his speech against reform. To what a 
 pass has an ex-reformer arrived, Avhen from Mr. Croker he borrows, 
 without acknowledgment, the arguments employed by the literary 
 leader of Conservatism, against the measure in which the right honour- 
 able baronet and the noble lord bore so conspicuous a part ! But did 
 hi not forget, when he was quoting Clarendon, and describing the 
 steps which led Charles to the fatal window in Whitehall, that the 
 noble lord opposite had given of those events a very diflerent account ; 
 and, in taking Mr. Croker to task, had uttered the following striking 
 and fervid passage ? This was Lord Stanley's language on the occa- 
 sion to which I refer: — 
 
 " At lengtli, wlien Chai-les Avanted to force episcopacy upon Scot- 
 land, &c., he was forced to call together that parliament which he had 
 for so many years endeavoured to dispense with. But they knew him 
 too well to put any trust in him. When they spoke of grievances, ho 
 spoke of subsidies ; and when they properly refused them, without 
 better security than promises, the insincerity of which they were con- 
 vinced of, he had recourse to a prompt and abrupt dissolution, and thus 
 added wanton insult to continued injury. He was soon again com- 
 pelled to call them togetlier. Again he thought to temporize, and 
 again he met the same resistance ; and his tyranny ended, as I hope 
 tyranny ever will end, in base, and timid, and degrading concession." 
 Such is tlie account given by the noble lord opposite of transactions 
 which his colleague in opposition has endeavoured to apply, in a man- 
 ner so different, in order to awaken apprehensions where, I trust, that 
 no susceptibility of impressions so erroneous will be found. But in 
 the crisis of their political fortunes, the opponents of this bill resort to 
 every means by wliich, in any quarter, excitement may be generated. 
 Here all the opponents (the strangely-combined opponents of the go- 
 
122 CHUKCH OF IttELAND. 
 
 vernment) are resolved to try their strength. No stand was made on 
 the Corporation Bill — the Conservatives had the virtue not to resist 
 what they had not the courage to propose. But on the Irish Church, 
 prejudice may be roused, fanaticism may be kindled, misrepresentation 
 may be circulated ; accordingly, round the standard of sinecurism a 
 rally is made, and an alliance — a holy one — formed between the Con- 
 servative party, whom no one can fairly blame, and the ex-Reformers, 
 the antagonists of their old friends, and the friends of their old antago- 
 nists — dealers in pious philippics and religious intrigue. To popular 
 excitement, connected with the old horror of Popery, it is manifest 
 that these luiited forces look ; but they will find that they mistake the 
 echo of their own delusions for the confii-mation of public opinion. 
 "VVliere are the petitions of the people ? Have even the Cumberland 
 yeomen stirred ? We have heard of a declaration from a fanatical 
 Scotch synod ; but from the mass of the Scotch people has any remon- 
 strance been preferred ? How did the majority of Scotch members 
 vote on the resolution on which this bill is founded ? The people of 
 tliat country look to this government with a confidence which appeals 
 to antiquated theology cannot disturb. They see that, in the short 
 period during which they held olfice, they have carried through this 
 house one of the most im[)ortant measures of reform which has ever 
 yet been propounded ; that they have carried it without the aid of the 
 members for Cumberland or Lancashire — without whom it now ap- 
 pears possible that a government really can go on ; — and seeing such 
 practical benefits already effected, they will listen with incredulity to 
 those whose zeal for religion is not a little heightened by their emo- 
 tions as ])artisan3. Out of the liouso tlieir imlicy will i'uil ; and in the 
 house the stratagem to which they have had recourse, in moving an 
 instruction, would be of little avail. The course pursued is remark- 
 able. After the second reading they oppose the principle ; and before 
 the house goes into committee, they criticise the details. In the last 
 session they resisted the Tithe Bill in the second reading, although it 
 did not include any new appropriation : this bill, besides the appropria- 
 tion clause, contains much that is condemned, and contains nothing which 
 is approved ; yet the second reading passes, not only without division, 
 but without comment. You desire to divide the bill into two parts : 
 having done so, which will you select ? You disapprove of the en- 
 tire in its aggregate form ; which of the fractions will you approve, if 
 your insti'uction should be carried ? There is not a principle, there is 
 not a detail in this bill which has not been the subject of condemna- 
 tion. The men who would subtract £25 per cent, from the revenues 
 of the clei'gy by the Tory bill, (which fell stillboin, and whose authors 
 
CHURCH OF IRELAND. 123 
 
 (lied in cliildbed), cry out against any diminution of their incomes ; 
 and the great author of the metallic currency, who has reduced rents 
 £50 per cent, insists that the church ought not to be affected by the 
 revolutions of Mark-lane. Will the renowned Cumberland political 
 economist, who would have subtracted £30 per cent, from the demands 
 of every mortgagee in the country — give to the opinion of the eminent 
 transmuter of paper into gold, the benefit of his disinterested coinci- 
 dence on this head ? Talk indeed of not reducing the compositions ! 
 If there had not been any compositions, tithes would have fallen one- 
 half. How do they stand in this countiy ? A gentleman, a consider- 
 able proprietor in Warwickshire (whose name I wiU mention to any- 
 body who desires it), told me tliat for his lay tithes, not very long ago, 
 he received upwards of £2000 a-year, and that they have since fallen 
 to £800. 
 
 It is insisted that there will be no surplus. If there be not, no prac- 
 tical harm will be done to the church ; but tlie recognition of the 
 principle wiU be a just and conciliatory tribute to the reasonable feel- 
 ings of the Irish people. But how do you make out that there will be 
 no surplus ? You expatiate on the poverty of the Irish church. 
 Why did you always refuse a committee on the subject ? It was 
 repeatedly ]iroposed by the honourable member for Middlesex. You 
 state that the revenues of the church have been exaggerated ; but 
 what test will you employ to ascertain them ? What is the amount 
 of the bishops' revenues ? You tell us that they do not exceed 
 £130,000 a-year ; but their amount really is £150,000 as returned by 
 the dignitaries themselves. Whether this ought to be conclusive I will 
 not determine ; but this I do know, that in calculating the net income, 
 the bishops have deducted agents' fees, and all expenses incidental to 
 the collection of their fortunes. The income of the Archbishop of 
 Armagh, which is now £17,000 a-ycar, will rise to £23,000 a-year, 
 by his own return, and observe, that neither this increase nor any 
 other is included in the £150,000. It is stated that the glebe lands of 
 Ireland are worth only £17,000 a-year. Even the right honourable 
 member for Tamworth has stated that Lord Althorp has underrated the 
 value of the glebe lands : there are 85,000 Irish acres. Most glebes 
 have good houses on them, and £120,000 a-year is not an exaggerated 
 estimate. But why has not a return of their value been obtained ? 
 Again, on what authority is the amouiit of ministers' money set forth ? 
 I come to a most important item, ministers' money (a tax raised on 
 every house), which illustrates the spirit of depreciation with which 
 the wealth of the church is reduced by its advocates. I hold a return 
 of the amount of the [)roperty of the minor ecclesiastical corporations: it 
 
124 CHURCH OF IRELAND. 
 
 is stated, by the return, to be £57,000 a-year. At what sum did 
 Lord Althorp, before that return was made, estimate this portion of 
 the ecclesiastical possessions ? At £2,000 a-year. But it is alleged 
 a large portion of that sura is applicable to the reparation of cathedrals. 
 Granted : but still is it not church property ? and is it not most unfair 
 to exclude it from the account ? Wliy are the surplice fees never 
 mentioned ? They are not fixed permanent property : true ; — but in 
 estimating the means of liveliliood of the clergy, we must tuke this 
 detail of sustenance into consideration. Tlius it is manifest that there 
 never has been a just and full account of church property; and if 
 there be not — the blame lies with those who have refused committees, 
 and never given us access to the true sources of information. I ven- 
 ture to say, that if to-morrow a committee were moved for on the Irish 
 church, it would be opposed by the Conservatives and their associates. 
 But the real object of the opponents of the bill, in the course which 
 they have adopted is, by running into collateral topics, to lead away 
 tlie attention of parliament from the simple question — whether the 
 resolution passed deliberately by the house should be rescinded ? — 
 That resolution has nothing to do with details. It allirmed a 
 great principle ; and the Conservatives having been Hung by that 
 resolution out of power, endeavour, by indirect means, to nul- 
 lify and render it of no avail. But to that resolution the house will 
 adhere ; and if the bill shall return from the Lords mutilated 
 in that essential particular, this house will repudiate the wretched 
 fragment. That resolution Avas passed without the report. Tlie re- 
 port gave it the strongest corroboration. It has changed the opinions 
 of the honourable member for Berkshire, wl»o has made a great sacri- 
 fice of his personal feelings, and his parliamentary attachments to his 
 duty. To the leading features in the report, and to no other, I shall 
 refer. What has become of the 3,000,000 of Protestants, of which 
 the member for the University of Oxford has so often said so much ? 
 There appear to be only 852,000 Episcopal Protestants in Ireland, and 
 even they include the Methodists, who are attached by so slender a tie 
 to the church ; they have no episcopal ordination — no imposition of 
 hands ; — (I cannot understand by Avhat medium their clergy receive 
 the Divine Spirit.) They may have the same faith, but they have 
 not the same discipline nor the same government ; and an alien priest- 
 hood will soon become a hostile one. But look to the Prebyterians. 
 In the province of Armagh (the North of Ireland), the fortress of or- 
 thodoxy, there are upwards of 600,000 Presbyterians, and there are 
 not 600,000 Episcopal Protestants. What infiirence do I draw from 
 thence ? This : that the allegation that the church is the tie between 
 
CHURCH or IRKLANn. 125 
 
 England and Ireland is fallacious. The Presbyterians are attached to 
 England ; they are hostile to the church, so says the moderator of 
 Ulster Synod, Mr. Montgomery. The conclusion is obvious : you 
 do not need the church treasure to supply the chest out of which the 
 garrison of Ireland, the Irish Protestants, are to be remunerated for 
 their mercenary allegiance. Thus far for the North : descend to other 
 districts. I shall take only one — the province of Tuam. What is its 
 ecclesiastical wealth ? The returns shew, that the episcopal revenue in 
 that pi'ovince amounts to £22,000 a-year at the least. The glebe lands, 
 prebendary revenue, and tithes, amount to at least £100,000 including 
 the first item. I believe that it is much more. This is a large sum. 
 Now comes the question — " How many Protestants are there in the 
 province?" There arc 1,100,000 Catholics; and, what will the house 
 think ?— 300,000 Protestants ?— No ; 200,000 ?— No ; one ?— No, 
 no ; only 45,000. Gracious God ! £100,000 a-year for the " spiritual 
 consolation" of 45,000 Protestants ! This is in itself most gross ; but 
 contrast makes it monstrous. Tui'n from Tuam to a neighboui-ing 
 country — not France, because there is a foolish notion that the French 
 are all infidels, and therefore no analogy can be derived from their 
 example : turn to a country just near you, where there is a great zeal 
 for religion ; a zeal which Protcstantg might regard as almost ctjuivu- 
 lent to fanaticism-i-turn to Belgium, your ally, for which you have 
 sacrificed so much — the Catholic country with a Protestant king; — 
 turn to Belgium, and what state of things do you find there ? — 
 4,000,000 of Catholics. What hierarchy suflices for that number ? One 
 archbisliop and four bishops. How much money do they receive ? 
 £17,000 a-year, by Avhich the seminaries attached to their sees, as 
 Avell as their own dignities, are sustained. The Irish Primate with 
 £23,000 a-year, and the whole Belgium hierarchy, and all their esta- 
 blislmients, with only £17,000! Pass to the priesthood. Here is the 
 Belgium budget. I have the official document. The entire church 
 establishment of Belgium does not cost more than the sum devoted to 
 the salvation of 45,000 Protestants in the province of Tuam ; and 
 mark, the duties of the Catholic clergy are infinitely more laborious. 
 The practice of confession is alone sulRcient to render the functions of 
 the Catholic priest far more onerous than those of the Protestant pas- 
 tor : yet with this small sum religion thrives in Belgium — (religion 
 never dies except of pecuniary repletion) ; while the Protestant church 
 in Ireland, with all its wealth, makes, in conversion, no sort of way. 
 How much more rational it is to appeal to the example of the Belgian 
 people than to the doctrines of a Belgian professor, and to try the Ca- 
 tholic religion by the practice of a great body of its professors, than to 
 
12G CHURCH OF IIIELANU. 
 
 determine it by ponderous volumes of exploded theology, which give 
 aliment to prejudices viler than the worms by which those tomes of 
 virulent divinity ai-e consimied. In Belgium the Protestant clergy are 
 supported by grants made by a Catholic parliament, and not only is not 
 the allowance a narrow one, but in consideration of the charges attendant 
 on the Protestant pastor, he receives a larger stipend than the lloman 
 Catholic rector. The statesmen of Exeter Hall, however, shutting out 
 these facts, would blow the dust that covers the works of Dens into the 
 eyes of the British people. Because there are abominable opinions in 
 Dens, there are to be abominable sinecures in Ireland ; because priests 
 are charged with a disposition to propagate religion with the sword, 
 parsons are to levy tithes with the bayonet ? Are you to have your 
 Kathcormacs, because we have had our autos-da-fe ? Look, I say it 
 again, to the Belgian Catholic church — its tolerance, its small cost to 
 the state, its humble and apostolic circumstances — a priesthood without 
 wealth, a liierarchy without pomp. Turn from thence to your Irish 
 church, and with the spirit of the gospel let both be compared. 
 
 I may be told that I ought not to seek in a foreign country for 
 illustration — be it so. I appeal to Scotland. The right honourable 
 bai'onct, the member for Cumberland, has invited me to cross tlio 
 border. He tells me that some Scotch synod or other has inter- 
 fered in Irish affairs. I stop not to inquire into their discretion ; 
 I stop not to ask whether they, whose ancestors revolted against 
 episcopacy, and won the enjoyment of their religion with their broad 
 swords, and established the great principle, that the church of the mi- 
 nority should not live at the cost of the majority of the people, are 
 justified in taking part with 800,000 against 7,000,000, including 
 GOOjOOO Presbyterians, who bear to the Irish Church as great a dis- 
 relish as tlie lloman Catholic Irish people. Putting these considera- 
 tions aside, I ask this plain question— How much does the Scotcli 
 church cost ? Not, certainly, £300,000 a-year. Tliere are nearly 
 2,000,000 churchmen in Scotland; they have less than £300,000 
 a-year (I really believe less) for their spii'itual wants. There are in 
 Ireland not half the number, and three times as much money is dedi- 
 cated to their salvation. If the religion of 2,000,000 churchmen in 
 Scotland costs so much, how much ought the religion of 800,000 to 
 cost in Ireland ? By what rule of proportion is that problem to be 
 solved ? But it is said that each individual Scotch clergyman receives 
 a comfortable stipend. Compare the thousands a-year payable to an 
 Irish sinecurist with the few hundreds payable to a Scotch working 
 clei'gyraan, and what inference will be deduced ? When did this 
 compassion for the poor Irish curates with large families arise ? To their 
 
criuncii OF Ireland. 127 
 
 Conservative sensibilities wlien did honourable gentlemen first begin 
 to give way ? We never heard a word against pluralities, and the 
 wretched dependence of the lower class of the Protestant priesthood 
 upon the gorged and pampered dignitaries of the Establishment, until 
 the Agitators, as they are called, denounced the enormous wealth of 
 the church, and called for retrenchment. Of new distribution not a 
 syllable Avas said, until the new appropriation was demanded, and it 
 is only to escape from the one, that in the other you now seek a tardy 
 refuge. Curates and their children might stand starving at the bi- 
 shop's gates, if the opulence of the Establishment had never been 
 assailed : it is only when that opulence is held out to public condem- 
 nation that the condition of the humbler clergy is made a topic for the 
 excitation of sympathy ; and gentlemen, habitually satirical upon the 
 riglits of the people, become pathetic upon the i)rivileges of the 
 church. Not contented with a reference to Scotland, the advocates 
 of the Irish Church, si)eaking of the amount which ought to be 
 paid to a Protestant clergyman without a flock, advert to the sum vo- 
 luntarily paid to the Catholic priest by those thousands to whom he 
 stands in the relation of pastor, adviser, guardian, protector, friend. 
 You have no right to compare them. At the bed of sickness — beside 
 the straw where agony is laid, the priest is found : from morning to 
 night, and from night to morning, he is subject to the call of the 
 meanest of his flock ; and, througli storm and darkness, through glens 
 and morasses, to the expiring peasant he is bound to make his way ; 
 nor business nor pleasure ever can supply him with an excuse for an 
 omission in his laborious and exhausting tasks ; his heart, his soul, his 
 entire existence are devoted to those whom he emphatically and ten- 
 derly calls " his people." Turn from him, and look at the sinecurist 
 of your religion, without congregation, Avithout employment, minis- 
 tering occasionally, if at all, at a deserted altar ; uttering to lonely 
 walls the diatribes against the creed of the country, having no manner 
 of effective occupation but that of eating the fruits of the earth, and 
 begetting others to do the same after him ; and then, if you dare, 
 draw from the livchhood paid of their own accord by his parisliioners 
 to the priest, the standard by which the parson ought to be compul- 
 sorily sustained. Out of what resources — from Avhat fund arc the 
 clergy, to wliom you venture to assimilate the sinecurists of the Esta- 
 blishment, furnished with the means of life ? One would imagine, from 
 your comparison, that they were maintained at the national charge — 
 by some parliamentary grant — by some sort of regium donum, at the 
 least. But Avhence is it that these i-evenues, on which you expatiate, 
 are derived ? Tlic treasury is in the nation's heart : — out of <heir own 
 
128 CHURCH OF IRELAND. 
 
 spontaneous liberality, unassisted by any contribution from the state, 
 the Catholics of Ireland have maintained their church — affording a 
 triumph to the voluntary over the compulsory principle — proving the 
 virtue of the priesthood, the gratitude of the country, and supplying 
 evidence of the noble qualities that belong to the character of the 
 Irish people. I cannot help giving way to an emotion of pride when 
 I consider what, in the midst of poverty, of circumstances the most 
 untoward, of obstacles the most deterring, we have accomplished. 
 There stands the church of the state, supported by galling imposts, 
 with enormous episcopal revenues, with wealth exceeding that of any 
 establishment in the world — and there, beside it, stands the unaided 
 church of the people. We maintain our priesthood in comfort, and 
 our hierarchy in the dignified and Christian mediocrity that, between 
 their precepts and their conduct, prevents all ottensive contrast ; while 
 to our clergy we award the stipend that becomes them. To the wor- 
 ship of our God we raise magnificent temples, wortliy of the lofty 
 recollections associated with our religion ; the sight of which fills tlie 
 ti'aveller with admiration, delights the eye of the artist, and to the 
 poor man's heart imparts delight, in the consciousness that he has as- 
 sisted the splendid edifice in its ascent by his humble contribution. 
 And when, out of our own resources, we do all this — when, paupers 
 as we are represented to be, we have thus not only given sustainment 
 but a just elevation to our ancient church, how paltry it is of Protes- 
 tantism, with its enormous I'evenues — boasting, as it does, that all the 
 aristocracy belong to it — to come here, making a poor face, and with 
 its coffers replenished with the public gold, whining and whimpering 
 about the wretched destitution to which it is about to be reduced. 
 
 1 own to you that, in considering this subject, with a view to speak 
 upon it, I had collected a great deal of materials connected with topics 
 which are not unfrequently introduced, such as the distinction between 
 individual and corporate property — the old division into four parts of 
 the chui-ch property — and I was prepared to cite various authorities 
 to establish a proposition on which schoolmen might dissertate, but with 
 which politicians have little concern. After reflecting, however, on this 
 vast question, it struck me that the interests involved were really too 
 important to be discussed with the subtlety of scholastic disputation, 
 or the musty pedantry of antiquarian research ; and that where in- 
 terests of such incalculable importance are at stake, it is our duty to 
 discuss them upon the gi'ounds of public expediency, or, I should ra- 
 ther say, of public exigency, alone, in a spirit becoming men in whose 
 hands the destinies of an empire are placed, and by whom, in such an 
 emergency, all regards independent of public usefulness ought to be 
 
CIIUUCU OF IRELAND. 129 
 
 dismissed. Abandoning all metaphysical disquisitions, I proceed not 
 to a consideration of mere expediency, but of paramount and dire ne- 
 cessity ; and I lay down a very plain proposition, and it is this — how- 
 ever harsh the truth, it must be told — it is this : — Whatever may be 
 your inclination, you have not the ability to maintain the Irish esta- 
 blishment. Why ? because the power of the Irish people has risen to 
 such a pitch, that to the mistaken interests of an impuissant minority, 
 the rights undoubted, although not undisputed, of the erroneous ma- 
 jority cannot any longer be sacrificed with impunity. What is the 
 great question into which all these matters of incidental consideration 
 really resolve themselves ? The policy upon which Ireland must be 
 governed. At first view, tlic subject seems to be a wi-ctched dispute 
 between Catholic and Pi'otestant — a miserable sectarian controversy. 
 It is no such thing ; it is the very self-same question by which cabinet 
 after cabinet has been annihilated — of which the Catholic question was 
 but one shaj)e ; — it is the struggle for complete political equality on 
 the part of the overwhelming majority upon the one hand, and for 
 political ascendancy on the part of the minority upon the other. Can 
 that ascendancy be maintained ? Look at Ireland, and at the circum- 
 stances by which the existing state of things has been produced ? I 
 should be justified in going back half a century, and in tracing the 
 growth of the popular power from its small beginnings, to the eleva- 
 tion and the extent to which it has spread and ascended. There 
 are men now living, who recollect the time when the great bulk of the 
 Irish people were reduced to a state to which serfship and helotism 
 might be justly applied. We had no property, and we could not by 
 law acquire it ; we had no intelligence, and all access to tiie sources of 
 education was denied us ; we were not only excluded from every po- 
 litical privilege, but shut out from every honourable profession. The 
 mass of the Irish people appeared to be a dull, inert heap of senseless 
 matter ; yet within it, the principles of vitality were contained. Those 
 principles were brought out by great events. America was freed ; the 
 Irish Protestant Parliament asserted its independence ; then came that 
 resuscitation of nations through an appalling process of conjuration, 
 the Revolution of France : but all this I pass rapidly by, and come to 
 events much more proximate to the time, which is within the remem- 
 brance of us all. 
 
 There are two men in this house, who, of the power of the Irish 
 people, have had. the most painful, the most dear-bought experience — 
 the members for Tamworth* and for Lancashire.f Both entered official 
 
 ♦ Sir Robert Peel. f Lord Stanley. 
 
 K 
 
130 CHURCH OF lltELAND. 
 
 lifo as Secretaries for Irclaml — both devoted themselves to ascen- 
 dancy — and both became its victims. In 1813 the member for Tam- 
 worth was appointed Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant ; and as he 
 united great capacity with great anxiety to do good, had circum- 
 stances been less unfavourable, and had he had just laws to adminis- 
 ter, how different would have been his government? But he was at- 
 tached to a party which neutralized his talents, and frustrated his 
 purposes. He could not go to the root of the evil ; and although he 
 now expresses a strong disrelish for ecclesiastical abuses, of that dis- 
 relish while he was in office he gave no very unequivocal evidence, 
 and allowed sinecures (those objects of his virtuous abhorrence) to re- 
 main undisturbed. He had, indeed, no resource, except in measures 
 of repression ; the Insurrection Act was renewed, and on the 3rd of 
 June, 1814, a proclamation was issued under his auspices, to prevent 
 the assemblages of the people. The Catholic Board was put down ; 
 not so the spirit of the people ; it was only dormant ; it never can be 
 dead. It was raised again in that celebi'ated confederacy which em- 
 braced an entire people, and made such a display of union and of 
 strength, that in 1825 it was deemed requisite by the ministry, of 
 which tlie right lionourable baronet was a member, to suppress it. 
 Vain and idle effort ! We laughed it to scorn. We returned from 
 London, where we had agreed to connect the church by money with 
 the state, provided that by liberty the state should connect itself with 
 the people. The offer Avas repudiated : — we invoked the Irish pea- 
 santry, who were armed with the elective franchise ; tliose gallant, 
 devoted, dauntless men rushed to tlie hustings with the courage and 
 devotion with which Irish soldiers, led by you (pointing to Sir II. 
 Hardinge), rushed to the breach : the holds of ascendancy were car- 
 ried ; the Beresfords were annihilated in Waterford ; the aristocracy 
 was beaten to the earth in Louth : these were, however, but the pre- 
 ludes for the great encounter. In two years after, Mr. A'^esey Fitz- 
 gerald, having vacated liis seat as member of the cabinet, stood for 
 Clare : he was opposed by the leader of the Irish people ; he was dis- 
 comfited ; the heart of Ireland thi-illed with exultation ; the national 
 sympathy became contagious ; the soldiers shouted, and threw up their 
 caps for joy upon the hills, whence they surveyed the popular ovation. 
 Astonished ]>y what they saw — appalled by what they anticipated — 
 the Duke and his distinguished colleague gave way to the power of 
 which they beheld these marvellous manifestations. But all had not 
 been accomplished ; it remained that, having won emancipation for 
 ourselves, we should secure reform for you. There was a majority 
 of English, and a majority of Scotch members against I'cform ; it was 
 
CHuncn OF Ireland. 131 
 
 achieved by tlie men whom the Irish people had poured, in a noble 
 exercise of their privileges, into this house. " We did the state some 
 service, and they know it ;" and the first to acknowledge it was the 
 noble lord the member for Lancashire ! Strange 1 that, with that 
 confession upon his lips, he should not have felt deeply conscious that 
 the power to which he had resorted as an auxiliary, might be con- 
 verted into an irresistible antagonist ; and that when, with that in- 
 cendiary eloquence of which he is the master, he was setting the pas- 
 sions of England on fire — strange, that it should never have occurred 
 to him that we should avail ourselves of his example, and that in as 
 strong and peremptory a tone as that in which he had demanded the 
 reform of the parliament, the reform of the church would be required. 
 But he had a great abhorrence for rotten boroughs, while for rotten 
 livings he entertained an equally vehement, and not very unnatural, 
 predilection. lie set up as the champion of the church, and entered 
 into a struggle with the Irish people. It was not long before he alien- 
 ated the whole Irish party, not only from himself, but from those 
 colleagues who have since been released from the incumbrance of his 
 co-operation, and between whom and Ireland, an honest, sincere, and 
 permanent reconciliation, founded upon Avise measures, and upon a 
 just sense of the honourable motives from whence they have origi- 
 nated, has been effected. 
 
 Tlie first proceeding, on the part of the noble lord, which indeed 
 affords tolerable evidence of his genius for government, was the Stanley 
 " Arms' Bill ;" this even liis^ associates scouted from the cabinet. He 
 then proceeded with his church reform, and in order to conciliate the 
 Irisli Catholics, excluded every Roman Catholic member from the 
 Titho Committee. In 1831, he gave £G0,000 to the clergy, and passed 
 a bill by which he transferred certain arrears to the Attorney-General, 
 and commenced in the inferior courts a scene of unexampled litiga- 
 tion. The profuse shedding of human blood ensued. In 1832, his 
 Tithe Bill, by which a final adjustment was to be accomplished, was 
 produced. It was instantly denounced as pregnant with the most 
 baneful consequences. Mark, Englishmen ! mark this : — At the pe- 
 riod when that bill was brought forward, the Irish Catholics did not 
 demand a reduction of tithes; there was no £1,000,000 then due; no 
 sacrifice from the clergy, no sacrifice from the country, was I'cquired. 
 All we asked was — a recognition of the principle which is, at last, 
 expressed in this bill ; and if that principle had been recognised in 
 time, how much misfortune to the actual incumbents, how much loss 
 to the English people, would have been saved! But the bill was 
 passed, in despite of reiterated admonitions, to which its projector was 
 
132 CHURCH OF IRELAN1>. 
 
 as insensible as the animal from which the scriptural illustrations of 
 deafness are derived. The people assembled to petition parliament : 
 their meetings were dispersed at the point of the bayonet, and the 
 petitioners tried and incarcerated under the verdicts of juries from 
 which Roman Catholics were excluded. The popular indignation 
 rose to the highest point, and at the general election the standard of 
 Repeal was planted upon every hustings. The Coercion Bill is passed — 
 £1,000,000 is given to the Irish clergy — the Church Temporalities 
 Bill is introduced, with a great but latent principle of improve- 
 ment — the influence of the noble lord prevails, and the 147th clause 
 is struck out; meanwhile the clergy starve. The session of 1834 is 
 opened. The letter of Lord Anglesey — (whose heart was full of the 
 love of Ireland, but whose good intentions were marred by his coad- 
 jutor in the Irish government) — is produced : it calls for a new 
 appropriation. Mr. Ward brings his motion forward — the church 
 commission is issued by Lord Grey : the noble lord — (who affects to 
 consider Lord Grey as opposed to Irish church reform, when the 
 commission stares the noble lord in the face) — i-etires from ofiice, lets 
 go a Parthian and envenomed shaft at his associates — and there he 
 now is, facing his former friends and in juxta position with his 
 former antagonists. How far he has descended or has risen in 
 public estimation, I leave to be determined by his own judgment, 
 and that of the party of which he is the leadex', which has been 
 rapidly diminishing in numbers, and has undergone, to use the 
 mathematical phrase of the member for Tamworth, "a process of 
 diminution." The government, in 1834, having been relieved from 
 the assistance of the noble lord, brings a Tithe Bill forward, which 
 would have given the clergy bread, and have gone a considerable way 
 towards an adjustment of the question. It receives the approbation 
 of a large body of the Irish representatives; it is thrown out, and the 
 clergy are left to perish by those sinister auxiliaries who support the 
 church by making martyrs of its ministers — parliament is prorogued — 
 Lord Melbourne is dismissed from the cabinet — with as little cere- 
 mony as a menial would be discharged from tlie palace. Suddenly, 
 and to himself, I believe, unexpectedly, the right honourable baronet 
 is raised to the premiership ; the fortunes of this great country are 
 placed by his Sovereign in his hands ; he arrives, declares himself the 
 champion of the church, dissolves the parliament, strains every 
 treasury nerve to return a Conservative House of Commons ; the 
 parliament of his own calling meets ; he is beaten on the speakership, 
 and does not resign ; he is defeated on the amendment, and still re- 
 tains his office ; he is discomfited upon the Irish church, and he no 
 
CHURCH OF IRELAND. 133 
 
 longer considers it compatible with his dignity, his duty, or his ho- 
 nour, to remain in place ; he surrenders the trust reposed in him by 
 liis Sovereign, and retires with disaster, but without humiliation — for 
 he fell in a contest with millions ; he had chosen a nation for his anta- 
 gonist, and it was impossible that he should not be overthrown. Far 
 be it from me to dispute the talents, the skill, the various attributes 
 for government, which he displayed : the greater the talents, the more 
 consummate the skill, the more various the attributes for government 
 of which he gave the proof — the more unquestionable the evidence of 
 that power against which lie sought to make battle, and by which he 
 was struck down. Of that power I have traced the progress — that 
 powCr, vested in millions, deputed to the great majority of Irish re- 
 presentatives, developed, not created by emancipation, confirmed by 
 reform ; nnd wliicli, so far from being attended with any likelihood 
 of decrease, is accompanied by the splendid certainty of augmenta- 
 tion : 3,000,000 have swollen since the Union to 7,000,000 — they 
 return the majority of the representatives of the country — they are led 
 on by men of unalterable determination — in intelligence and in pro- 
 perty they are making rapid advances — with Roman Catholics of higli 
 ability the bar is crowded — by them the highest law offices are fdled — 
 they are within a step of the bench of justice — if there were no fur- 
 ther change by the legislature, the advance by the people would be 
 still inevitable — the Corporation Bill (for you cannot legislate for one 
 country on different principles from those which you apply to the 
 otlier) is at hand. Can you wish, and if you wish, can you hope, 
 tliat tliis uimatural, galling, exasjM'rating ascendancy sliould be main- 
 tained ? Things cannot remain as they are — it is impossible that they 
 sliould retrograde — what expedient are you prepared to adopt ? Would 
 you re-enact the penal code, let loose Orangeism from its den ? Would 
 you drive the country into insurrection — cut down the people — avail 
 yourselves of the most horrible instrumentality that a faction, panting 
 for new confiscations, can apply — and bid the yeomanry draw forth 
 the swords, clotted with the blood of 1798, that they may be bran- 
 dislicd in massacre, and sheathed in the nation's heart ? From so 
 horrible a conception you instinctively and virtuously recoil. But, 
 shi'inking as you do from such a purpose, to what expedient will you 
 fly ? Will you dissolve the parliament ? What ! — after you have 
 already had recourse to that perilous expedient ? You thought that 
 you could manage the house of your own calling — you declared it at 
 Taraworth. Have you not too deep a stake in fame, in fortune, in 
 property, and in renown, to renew these terrible experiments ? If a 
 Conservative parliament sliould be assembled, its duration must be 
 
134 CHURCH OF IRELAND. 
 
 brief — its existence will be stormy and agitated while it lasts ; but if 
 the excited people should infuse an undue proportion of the democratic 
 element into the representation, you will have raised a spirit which 
 you will have no spell to lay, exposed an institution more valuable 
 than the church to peril ; and put, perhaps, what is more precious 
 than the mitre, to a tremendous hazard — and all for what ? For what 
 are all these risks to be incurred ? — ^for what are all these appalling 
 hazards to be run ? — for what stake is this a^vful die to be cast ? For 
 what are cabinets after cabinets to be dissolved, appeals after appeals 
 to be made to the people — the public credit to be annihilated — the 
 Lords brought into collision with the master power of the state — the 
 royal prerogative, by its repeated exercise, abridged of the reverence 
 which is due to it — the palace shaken to its foundations — and the 
 empire itself brought to the verge of that gulph to which, by causes 
 of less pressure, so many countries have been irresistibly and fatally 
 driven ? For what, into all these allVighting perils are we to rush ? 
 For what, into those terrific possibilities are we madly, desperately, 
 impiously to plunge ? For the Ix'ish church ! — the church of the mi- 
 nority, long the church of the state, never the church of the people — 
 the church on which a faction fattens, by which a nation starves — the 
 church from which no imaginable good can flow, but evil after evil in 
 such black and continuous abundance has been for centuries, and is to 
 this day, poured out — the churcli by which religion has been retarded, 
 morality has been vitiated, atrocity has been engendered ; which 
 standing armies are requisite to sustain, which has cost England mil- 
 lions of her treasure, and Ireland toxTcnts of her blood ! 
 
iniSH MUNICIPAX REFORM BILL. 135 
 
 IRISH MUNICIPAL REFORM BILL. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCU 28, 1836. 
 
 The speech of tlie honourable nnd learned gentleman (Sir W. Follett) 
 would have been an exceedingly powerful one against Catholic eman- 
 cipation, or against the extension to Ireland of parliamentary reform ; 
 but those measures having been carried, it is preposterous to rely upon 
 a policy utterly at variance with the principles on which they were 
 founded. The honourable and learned member has relied upon a con- 
 cession made by the government respecting the administration of jus- 
 tice. The appointment of the sherifls has been transferred to tho 
 crown. Tliis, said the honourable and learned member for Exeter, 
 established a distinction between England and Ireland ; — wherefore, 
 since you have made this distinction, not abolish corporations alto- 
 gether ? I answer, that the appointment of sheriffs is an incident to 
 the existence of corporate bodies, and not one of its elements, — ^that 
 Ireland does not require an exact identity in every particular, but a 
 general assimilation — that she does not ask that all the details shall be 
 tlio same, but that the principles shall be analogous : — change the ele- 
 vation of the edifice, but let the foundation of popular control remain 
 untouched. Althougli an influence will cease to be exercised by cor- 
 porations over courts of justice, yet over corporations a safe and salu- 
 tary influence will still be exercised by the people. The nomination 
 of sherifls is taken away, but much is left behind ; the care of many 
 local concerns, the guardianship of the public peace, the security and 
 convenience of public ways, the imposition of taxes, their allocation 
 and collection, and the management of corporate property. Is the 
 latter of no consequence ? Try it by this test ; the Drapers' Com- 
 j)any have estates in Londonderry ; suppose that it were proposed to 
 that company to transfer their estates to the crown, how would such a 
 suggestion be received ? How offensive, then, is the project to leave 
 to lOnglish corporations their Irish estates, and to strip Irish corpora- 
 tions of their possessions ? I acknowledge that I regard tho transfer 
 of the right to nominate sheriffs as not only a concession but a sacri- 
 fice ; and I, for one, would not acquiesce in it, if I did not feel that 
 something, nay, that much, ought to be yielded, in order to adjust those 
 questions, without the settlement of which peace in Ireland is impossi- 
 ble and prosperity hopeless ; and if, after this step towards a compro- 
 mise has been taken by the government, the bill be elsewhere rejected, 
 or there shall be substituted for it what Ireland shall repudiate, — and 
 
136 IHISII MUNICIPAL REFORM BILL. 
 
 if, by this expedient, the abuses of corporations, the vitiation of jus- 
 tice, the plunder of corporate revenues, and political profligacy shall 
 be perpetuated, — the people of England will know where the blame of 
 that scandalous continuance ought to attach, and will determine be- 
 tween the men who are anxious, as far as it is practicable, to extend 
 the benefit of British institutions, and those who, having had so long 
 and minute a congnizance of those abuses, never applied a remedy ; 
 and who, at last, when they can no longer be palliated with impunity, 
 have recourse to a mock demolition, and send up to the House of 
 Lords a project to which the Commons of England, Ireland, and 
 Scotland never can accede. 
 
 All that has been said against this bill— all that has been insidiously 
 insinuated, boldly stated, ingeniously inferred, and against " old friends 
 and colleagues" contumeliously quoted, can, into a very short and, un- 
 fortunately, familiar phrase " No Popery," be appropriately condensed. 
 It is said that if we are once armed with power, we shall become un- 
 just, arbitrary, and oppressive ; that we shall follow the example given 
 us, and that, by a Catholic combination, Protestants will be excluded 
 from corporations. It is not a little remarkable that two noble lords, 
 the members for Lancashire (North* and Southf) who have touched on 
 this topic, should, at the last election, have been proposed by Catho- 
 lics to their constituents. But it will be suggested that Catholics in 
 England and Ireland are very different. In Ireland you fear a sacer- 
 dotal ascendancy, which in England you have no reason to apprehend. 
 
 No man has enlarged more eloquently and pathetically upon this 
 topic than the honourable member for Cumberland. J This night the 
 ril'ht honourable baronet, relieved from those nautical occupations 
 from which the illustrations of his eloquence were once derived, has 
 suddenly taken to the consolations of religion, and there is reason to 
 apprehend that this quondam Whig functionary — this ex-Lord of the 
 Admiralty, has laid aside the Naval Almanac for " Fox's Martyrs." 
 I do not believe that the speeches of the Catholic priests, to which he 
 has referred, are accurately reported ; and if I did, I should consider 
 them as affording grounds for increasing the estimates, and for esta- 
 blishing a higher class of rhetoric at Maynooth. But mark the incon- 
 sistency between Conservative reasoning and assertion. We are told 
 that there is no connexion between parliamentary and municipal I'e- 
 form ; yet all the arguments against municipal elections are derived 
 from the conduct of the Catholic clergy on parliamentary elections. 
 Now, if the argument were good for anything, it would lead to the 
 
 ♦ Lord Stanley. f I-ord Egerton. J Sir James Graham. 
 
lUISH MUNICIPAL, REFORM BILL. ^ 13"? 
 
 abolition of parliamentary, not of municipal institutions. For my 
 part, I avow the interference of priests at elections, if it gratifies the 
 noble lord, the member for Lancashire, and the right honourable 
 member for Cumberland ; and, I will add, that in no instance did the 
 Catholic clergy interfere with more effect than in 1831, in order to 
 carry the Reform Bill, when those honourable gentlemen were in office ; 
 I do not, I own, recollect that on that occasion those distinguished in- 
 dividuals deprecated the sinister assistance to which the government, 
 of which they formed a part, were indebted. But how does it come 
 to pass that the Catholic priests enjoy a monopoly of their moral 
 anger ? Have not the landlords some claim to their virtuous indig- 
 nation ? They denounce what they call the tyranny of the priesthood ; 
 but when they see families turned out in hundreds from their hovels — 
 women without covering, and children without food ; — for these drove3 
 of human wretchedness, have they no commiseration ? What con- 
 nexion is there between tithes and borough-rates — between the corpo- 
 ration fund and the ensanguined treasure of the church. On a muni- 
 cipal election, I cannot conceive any one question by possibility to 
 arise on which the priesthood can take the least political, personal, or 
 any other imaginable concern. But in parliamentary elections what is 
 at stake ? The abolition of that detestable impost which has drenched 
 Ireland in blood — which has produced atrocities from which every 
 feeling of humanity, and every sentiment of religion are abhorrent, 
 and which ought to make certain religious men whom I see before me, 
 kneel down and pray to God every night, before they sleep, that for 
 llathconnac they may be forgiven. Interfere at elections! Yes: — 
 the priests achieved emancipation, and broke down the power of the 
 Beresfords in Waterford, annihilated the Fosters in Louth, and tri- 
 umphantly carried the Clare election. Led on by them, the intrepid 
 peasantry rushed to the hustings with the fearlessness with which Irish 
 soldiers precipitate themselves into the breach, drove Toryism from 
 its holds, and of the emancipation of their country planted the im- 
 movable standard. In the same noble cause they devotedly persevere. 
 Never, until the tithe question shall be justly adjusted, will the clergy 
 of Ireland intermit their ciTorts to achieve the redress of those griev- 
 ances to which the disturbed state of that country may be referred. 
 But you that talk of the Irish clergy, have you no cause to look at 
 home ? Do your priesthood never interpose in political questions ? I 
 ask the honourable member for Exeter, who has read a letter from a 
 Catholic bishop of Carlow, whether of the Bishop of Exeter he has 
 ever, peradventurc, chanced to hear ? He has referred to the Popish 
 Doctor Nolan — has he no reason to recollect the Protestant Doctor 
 
138 lUISlI MUNICIPAL KEFORM BILL. 
 
 Phillpotta ? That learned prelate I admire for his talents ; but surely 
 they do not surpass the political zeal, with which his religious emo- 
 tions are associated. All allowance should be made for the Catholic 
 bishop, by those whose cause is so materially promoted by the Protes- 
 tant prelate upon the other. But turn from Exeter to Ireland. IIa3 
 this house never heard of the Reverend Mr. Boyton ? He is the 
 founder of the Brunswick Clubs, and it was proved in evidence, before 
 the Orange committee, that ho actually moved the erection of an 
 Orange lodge in one of his Majesty's regiments. This was the indivi- 
 dual whom my Lord Haddington selected to officiate as one of the 
 chaplains at the Castle. Talk, indeed, of the Catholic clergy ! In 
 November, 1834, a meeting of the Orange Society was held in Dub- 
 lin, at which the Lord INIayor of the city of Dublin presided, and at 
 which the Reverend Mr. M'Crea recited a poem, the burden of which 
 was — 
 
 Then, put your trust in God, my boys, 
 And keep your powder dry. 
 
 I never heard the poetry of this belligerent prcdestinarian made the 
 subject of censure by those who condemn the political interposition of 
 the Catholic priesthood. Sir, I think that I can demonstrate that 
 every objection on a religious ground, so far as the church is involved, 
 to municipal i-eform in Ireland, was just as applicable to municipal 
 reform in England. It is said that corporations were established in 
 Ii-eland to maintain the Protestant interest. For what purpose were 
 the Test and Corporation Acts passed in this country ? They were 
 enacted in order to protect the episcopal interest in England, against 
 the influence of the Dissenters. They were regarded as the great 
 bulwarks of the establishment ; yet those bulwarks you surrendered in 
 1828 to the myriads of sectaries by which your church was encom- 
 passed ; to Baptists, Quakers, Socinians, Independents, Presbyterians, 
 Methodists — ^you threw open the fortresses of the establishment to all 
 the hordes, who, with the voluntary principle, are battering your 
 chui-ch to the earth ; and when we who are akin to you (for your re- 
 ligion is only Popery cut down) — when we, from whose ecclesiastical 
 escutcheon, your own, with a bar sinister, might be appropriately bor- 
 rowed — when we, I say, demand the benefit of British institutions, 
 you aiFront us with a proposition which to the Dissenters of this coun- 
 try — ^when the Test and Corporation Acts were at stake, and when 
 corporate reform was in question — not one of you, not even in the 
 House of Lords, ever dared to make. Tlie Duke of Wellington had 
 not the boldness, my Lord Lyndhui'st had not the dexterity, my Lord 
 
IRISH MUNICIPAL REFORM BILL. 139 
 
 Wincliilsea was not sufficiently excited, nor my Lord Roden suffi- 
 ciently inspired ; — it was reserved for us — it was reserved for colonial 
 dependant Ireland — for us, on whom a faction trampled, but on whom, 
 Avith God's blessing, and the aid of our determination, they shall tread 
 no more — for us it Avas reserved, that we should be told, when to the 
 interests of the thousand few the rights of the million many can no 
 longer, with common decency, be sacrificed — that both from the few 
 and from the many their national institutions should be taken away, 
 and out of the ruins of the corporations Dublin Castle should be en- 
 larged. Of the Act of Union, is not this a manifest infringement ? 
 When it is proposed in this house to reduce the sinecures of the Esta- 
 blished Church, men cry out and say that the Union is violated ; if 
 the entire of the Irish corporations be swept away, and that against 
 the will of tlie majority of the Irish members, will not the Union be 
 trampled under foot? But, it maybe said, — so, indeed, it was ob- 
 served by the learned member for Exeter, — that, before the Union, cor- 
 porations were Protestant. He forgets that by the Act of 1793, 
 Roman Catholics were made admissible to corporations by law ; but 
 that from 1793 to 1829 not a single Roman Catholic was received into 
 the Dublin corporation. In 1829 the member for Tamworth declared, 
 in his emancipation speech, that Roman Catholics should be admitted 
 to all corporate offices, and should be invested with all municipal 
 privileges ; there are accordingly two sections in his Emancipation 
 Act to that effiict. From that day to this, not a single Roman 
 Catholic has had the benefit of those clauses in the act of parlia- 
 ment. By passive resistance, a Protestant passive resistance, the 
 law has been frustrated and baflled. The riglit honourable baronet 
 gave us a key that wovdd not turn the lock ; and when British justice 
 is about to burst open the doors, he would level these institutions 
 to the earth, and bury our rights, his own act of emancipation — 
 God forbid! that I should add, his own dignity and honour — 
 under the ruins. Sir, the right honourable gentleman appears to me 
 to adhere to his old Irish policy ; and although he carried emancipation, 
 in obedience to his reason, he is acting on emancipation, in compli- 
 ance with those religious instincts which ho ought to get under his 
 control. In the course of the last session I ventured to address myself 
 to him in the language of strenuous, but most unaffiictedly respectful 
 expostulation ; I presumed to entreat of him to take a retrospect of 
 his Irish policy, and to inquire from him whether of every failing, and 
 every failure, he did not in his Irish policy find the cause ? I told 
 liim, that Ireland had a grave ready for his administration — and that 
 grave soon closed upon it. 
 
140 IRISH MUNICIPAL REFOHM BILL. 
 
 I slioulil not venture to advert to wliat I then said, but what has 
 since befallen has given to those observations a remarkable confirma- 
 tion. The moment the session of parliament terminated, the subordi- 
 nates of the right honourable baronet commenced the " No Popery" cry. 
 The result of that pious enterprise has corresponded with its deserts. 
 The parliament assembles, and at the very outset the right honourable 
 baronet tries his fortune on Irisli grounds again, by moving an amend- 
 ment, and lie is at once and signally defeated. A few days elapse and 
 he sustains a still more conspicuous discomfiture. Not in order to give 
 way to a feeling of inglorious exultation do I refer to the dissolution 
 of the Orange Society, but for the purpose of shewing the " sweet 
 uses" of which advei'sity is susceptible, and leaving out the offensive 
 epithets in the citation to point to the " precious jewel" it contains. 
 It was a vast incorporation, including 100,000 armed men, with indi- 
 viduals of the highest station among its leaders, and a prince of the 
 blood at its head. Where is it now ? Can you not derive admonition 
 from its fall ? You have seen administration after administration dis- 
 solved by the power of the Irish people : by the power of the Irish 
 people you have seen your own cabinet dashed in an instant to pieces ; 
 and now, struck to the heart, you behold your own gigantic auxiliary 
 laid low. Taught so long, but uninstructed still, wherefore, in the 
 same fatal policy, with an infixtuated pertinacity, do you disastrously 
 persevere ? You think, perhaps, that emancipation has failed. Six 
 years in a nation's life are less than as many minutes of individual 
 duration. You have not given it (what you asked for youi'self ) a fair 
 trial, and have yourself, to a certain extent, counteracted its operation. 
 At the very outset you entered into a struggle with the son of the 
 earth, who has rebounded with fresh vigour from every fall ; and, not- 
 withstanding all your experience — although injustice can'ies with it 
 the principle of self-frustration — although the poisoned chalice is sure, 
 in its inevitable circulation, to return to the lips of those by whom it 
 is commended — still, adhering to your fatal policy, and haunted by 
 your anti-0'Connellism — still, instead of rising to the height of the 
 great argument, and ascending to a point of moral and political eleva- 
 tion, from which you could see wide and far — you behold nothing but 
 objects which, by their closeness, become magnified, and have notliing 
 but the fear of O'Connell before your eyes. You do not legislate for 
 a people, but against a man. Even if I were to admit that he had 
 been occasionally hurried into excesses, for which your impolicy should 
 in reality be responsible, give me still leave to ask whether millions of 
 his fellow-countrymen, and your fellow-citizens (for such, thank God ! 
 we arc) and generations yet unborn, miist pay tiie penalty ? Granting 
 
IRISH MUNICIPAL REFORM BILL. 141 
 
 him a life as long as Ireland can pray for, and his adversaries can de- 
 precate, will he not be survived by the statute-book ? Have you made 
 him immortal as well as omnipotent ? Is .your legislation to be built 
 on considerations as transitory as the breath with which he speaks ; 
 and are structures, that should last for ages, to have no other basis 
 than the miserable antipathies by which we are distracted ? Let us 
 remember, in the discharge of the great judiciary functions that are 
 imposed upon us, that we are not the trustees of contemporary inter- 
 ests only, but of the welfare of those by whom we are to be succeeded ; 
 that our measures are in some sort testamentary, and that we bequeath 
 to posterity a blessing or a bane ; and, impressed with that high, — and 
 I do not exaggerate when I call it that holy — consciousness, let us 
 have a care lest to a sentiment of miserable })artisanship we should 
 give way. To distinctions between Catholic and Protestant let there 
 be an end. Let there be an end to national animosities as well as to 
 sectarian detestations. Perish the bad theology, which, with an im- 
 pious converse, makes God according to man's image, and with infer- 
 nal passions fills the heart of man ! Perish the bad, the narrow, the 
 pernicious sentiments, which, for the genuine love of country, institute^ 
 a feeling of despotic domination upon your part, and of provincial 
 turbulence upon ours ; — and while upon pseudo religion and pscudo 
 patriotism I [ironouncc my denunciation, live (let me be permitted to 
 pray) the spirit of philanthropic, forbearing, forgiving Christianity 
 amongst usl and, combined with it, live the lofty love of country, 
 which associates the welfare of both islands with the glory of this 
 majestic empire — which, superior to the small passions that ought 
 to be as e{)hcmeral as the incidents of which they were born, acts in 
 conformity with the imperial policy of William Pitt, and the marvel- 
 lous discovery of James Watt — sees the legislation of the one ratified 
 by the science of the other, and, of the project of the son of Chatham, 
 in the invention of the mighty mechanist, beholds the consummation. 
 
142 TITHES. 
 
 TITHES. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 2, 1836. 
 
 The right honourable baronet (Sir James Graham) has concluded a 
 speech in favour of religion and of liberty, by a citation from an Atheist 
 and a Tory. He has indulged in a dissertation upon property, whicli it 
 is to be lamented that the Cumberland yeomen did not hear, in order 
 that he may henceforth correct erroneous notions on that subject. The 
 right honourable baronet has also quoted Paley; but he has forgotten to 
 state that Paley is of opinion that the members of a government have 
 no riglit to determine what is, or is not, the true religion, but should 
 abide by the opinion of the majority of the people. He ouglit also to 
 have remembered an authority better than Paley — the Scotcli Parlia- 
 ment — which, in the act abolishing prelacy, laid down, as the great 
 reason for that celebrated proceeding, that that institution was opposed 
 to the feelings of the majority of the Scotch people. These are great 
 principles, and are woi-th far more consideration than the details of 
 the measure before the house ; it is not a question of vulgar arith- 
 metic, but of vast policy, involving those regards by Avhich Ireland 
 ought in future to be permanently and uniforndy governed. Two mea- 
 sures have been proposed ; the one by a noble lord, the Secretary for 
 Ireland,* who has won our confidence, attachment, and respect ; the 
 other by a noble lord, who was Secretary for Ireland, I and whose bio- 
 graphy constitutes a calamitous portion of the history of Ii-eland. The 
 one proposes appropriation ; the other distribution. Between which 
 should we elect ? The plan to which appropriation is an incident pro- 
 vides a surplus ; the plan which has distribution in view, leaves no 
 surplus to be applied. It is evident that the latter is framed so as to 
 avoid the creation of the surplus. But is there one ? Let the statis- 
 tics of the country be consulted. There are 000,000 Presbyterians, 
 850,000 Episcopal Protestants, and 6,G00,000 Roman Catholics. In 
 one archdiocese tliere are only 40,000 Protestants, and there are 
 1,800,000 Roman Catholics. What more need be stated, in order to 
 prove that a surplus exists, and that tlie existing system cannot be 
 maintained ? 
 
 It has been suggested by the noble lord that the inferior Protestant 
 clergy are now paid in a manner disproportioned to their merits ; for 
 my part, wherever real services are to be performed, I am not only 
 
 * Lord Morpeth. f Lord Stanley. 
 
TITHES. 143 
 
 willing, but anxious that a clergyman should be adequately rewarded ; 
 but where there is no congregation, I do not desire to see an useless 
 ecclesiastic, no matter to what religion he may be attached. But when 
 did the noble lord, who now advocates new distribution, first bethink 
 himself of the poverty of the Protestant clei'gy ? When did he first 
 give way to these feelings of commiseration in favour of the wretched 
 curate and the family depending on him for sustaiument ? He never 
 proposed any measure for their relief until the demands of millions had 
 urged this great question to the issue to which it has advanced. He 
 says he never can or will consent to it. I never expected, indeed, 
 that he would divest himself of the fatal pertinacity which charac- 
 terizes him, and which has been the source of so much calamity to the 
 country that was so long abandoned to his control. The man who 
 can, without remorse, witness the fatal results of his miserable legis- 
 lation, must indeed be incapable of penitence ; but he is mistaken in 
 supposing that his consent is necessary to the achievement of this great 
 measure. This house, vested as it is with a power which is sure to 
 prevail at last, sustained by the great body of the nation, has means 
 of persuasion which have not been tried on fonner occasions in vain. 
 Does the noble lord recollect by what expedient the cabinet of which 
 he was a member carried the Reform Bill ? — and as that measure was 
 .accomplished, its results, its inevitable results, of which this is one, 
 will by the same instrumentality be achieved. It is sufiicient to trace 
 the progress of this question, in order to see that its advances to suc- 
 cess are beyond all doubt, and that although it may be retarded, it 
 cannot be stopped. There is a class of questions which cannot retro- 
 grade, which cannot continue stationary, and which must needs go on. 
 Of this character were the Slave question, the Catholic question, and 
 the Reform question. Of this class is that which the Irish millions, 
 returning to this house a vast majority of the representatives of Ire- 
 land, never will relinquish. In the year 1824, this question was first 
 pressed to a division by the member for Middlesex. In the minority 
 the names of Hobhouse, of Rice, of Russell are to be found. They 
 saw, even then, that the concession of this right to Ireland was indis- 
 pensable for her peace. 
 
 The meml)cr for Cumberland has quoted a speech of the Secretary 
 of the Home Department in 1833 to prove that he was opposed to the 
 new appropriation ; but that speech referred to the 147th clause, and 
 to a contingent and improbable surplus in the Church Temporalities 
 Bill, and not to a surplus definite, substantial, palpable, like that 
 which will result from the contemplated measure. It may be said 
 that the noble lord, as well as the Secretary for the Home Depart- 
 ment, has been consistent. He has been, indeed, obstinate in his 
 
I'i-l TITHES. 
 
 adherence to a detail, but his general policy has been most incongru- 
 ous. The instant the reform of the parliament was proposed in Eng- 
 land, the reform of the church was with the same loud voice impera- 
 tively required in Ireland. The excitement which arose in one country 
 on the question by which it was most deeply interested, soon extended 
 itself to the other, on the gi-ievance by which it was most sensibly and 
 painfully affected. " Down," cried England, " with nomination in 
 the parliament ;" " down," cried Ireland, " with sinccurism in the 
 church ;" — " perish Gatton and Old Sarum," cried the people of this 
 country ;" " perish the abuses," answered the Irish millions, " which 
 nothing but Old Sarum and Gatton can maintain." How, indeed, 
 was it possible that the popular agitation which pervaded one country, 
 should not have been communicated to the other ? How could Ire- 
 land remain in apathetic contemplation of the great scenes which were 
 passing in this country? Yet the noble lord, who himself adminis- 
 tered to the provocation of the popular passions in England, and the 
 right honourable baronet, conceived that they could play the Gi'acchi 
 of parliamentary reform, and complain of sedition, when Ireland de- 
 manded, in the same right, the reform of the church. 
 
 When the Tithe Bill was introduced in 1832, the Irish members 
 remonstrated in vain ; the measure was passed into a law. The peo- 
 ple assembled in thousaiuls and tens of thousands to petition against 
 it. They were dispersed at the point of the bayonet, and tiieir leaders 
 arrested, convicted by packed juries, and imprisoned. The parlia- 
 ment was dissolved ; and provoked by these despotic proceedings, the 
 shout for repeal arose from every hustings. The Coercion Bill was 
 introduced, and even that melancholy measure, although intended to 
 repress the display of the popular power, contributed to advance this 
 question ; for the English members who had consented to severity, 
 determined that that severity should have justice for its companion. 
 The Church Temporalities Bill was introduced ; it swept ten bishops 
 away ; it abolished church-cess ; it provided that certain vacant be- 
 nefices need not be filled up (thus letting a great principle, indirectly, 
 in) ; but unfortunately the 147th clause, which did not, indeed, ex- 
 pressly assert appropriation, but intimated its adoption, was rejected ; 
 and so, from the measure, no tranquillizing consequences ensued. At 
 the opening of the session in 1834, a most important discussion took 
 place. It was proved that the Marquess of Anglesey had, so far back 
 as 1832, written a despatch to the cabinet, insisting on appropriation, 
 as indispensable for the settlement of Ireland ; and thus, while the 
 Irish Secretary was exclaiming against all concession, that distin- 
 guished nobleman was bearing to the necessity of this great measure 
 his incalculably important attestation ; the question thus every day 
 
TITHES. 145 
 
 gained ground. The member for St. Alban's at length gave his cele- 
 brated notice. The matter was brought to issue between the parties 
 in the cabinet, as it is at this moment between tlie two branches of 
 the legislature, and the celebrated church commission went foilh. 
 The noble lord (Lord Stanley) perceived, that if the people were 
 counted, the days of ecclesiastical abuse would be numbei'ed. He saw 
 that appropriation was involved in the inquiry that must lead to it, 
 and he resigned. He left Lord Grey behind him. What inference is 
 thence to be deduced ? If the noble lord's resignation was founded 
 on one principle, Lord Grey's retention of office must have rested 
 upon the exact reverse. Why did the noble lord refer so repeatedly, 
 last night, to Lord Grey ? What did he desire to intimate ? Against 
 any insinuation, Avliich he meant to convey, let the cliurch commission 
 issued by Lord Grey be appealed to. The IMclbourne cabinet is 
 formed — and dissolved in a moment of royal misapprehension of the 
 state of Ireland ; the right honourable member for Tamworth comes 
 in, announces the non-appropriation as the basis of his policy, is struck 
 down by the resolution moved by the noble lord, and out of the ruins 
 of his administration furnishes a new proof of the necessity of making 
 this great and paramount concession to the power by which that admi- 
 nistration was laid prostrate. Tlic Melbourne cabinet send up their 
 bill to the Lords — it is lost ; but are the government shaken, or in the 
 least degree affected by it ? No ; a resolution of the Commons annihi- 
 lates a ministry in an instant ; and to the Lords the cabinet bid defi- 
 ance. Who, then, will deem it matter of doubt by whom the victory 
 will be won, if, indeed, the two houses should unhappily be driven to 
 an encounter. Take that single fact ; do not go to remote periods or 
 questionable examples ; look at the event within your immediate re- 
 collection, at that which is passing this moment before our eyes — and 
 away with all fear on the part of the people, and with all confidence 
 on the part of their antagonists ! 
 
 The session of 1835 closes, and in Ireland events arise which exhibit 
 the fatal impolicy of the Lords in a new and remarkable light. The tithe 
 question which had before been so productive of disaster, generates a 
 series of new evils. Tiie lay association is formed in order to enforce 
 the payment of the obnoxious impost ; the heads of the Orange body 
 are among the chief directors of its proceedings. The names of 
 Roden, Farnham, and Lorton, stand conspicuous in the committee — 
 I pronounce no opinion on their motives, no censure on their proceed- 
 ings, nor do I, indeed, know to what exent the lay association has in- 
 terposed ; but this I do know, that never in the annals of litigation, 
 was such a scene as the court of Exchequer noAv presents, exhibited. 
 
14<) TITHES. 
 
 The writ of rebellion is issued ; the law-officers appear before the 
 Chief Baron and his brethren, to oppose the employment of the 
 police in the execution of these writs ; the executive is discomfited by 
 the court, and the Chief Baron becomes virtually the master of the 
 whole constabulary force. The execution of writs of rebellion is con- 
 fided of necessity, in many cases, to commissioners of the lowest 
 class, and of the most desperate character. . These miscreants enforce 
 the attendance of the police at the dead of night, break open the doors 
 of nominal rebels, whose treason consists in non-payment of tithes, 
 and incarcerate the delinquents. Is this state of things to continue ? 
 As yet, indeed, there has been no violent outrage, because the people 
 look to the settlement of the question, and entertain the strongest 
 confidence in the government; but if the question continues unadjusted, 
 and there shall appear but one mode of effecting it, I shrink, I own, 
 irom the contemplation of the consequences. It is monstrous, Sir, 
 that this condition of things should be allowed to continue, and that, 
 for the sake of an abstraction, the Conservative party should allow 
 Ireland to be exposed to the disasters which may befal us. There is 
 not a Protestant state in Europe excepting this, in which a pi'oposi- 
 tion so preposterous as that church property is inalienable is asserted. 
 The right honourable baronet referred to the condition of the Lutheran 
 and Pi-otestant Church in Prussia, adding that the cases did not apply. 
 Wliy, the opponents of popular privileges continually resort to foreign 
 example for arguments against innovation ; but when we appeal to the 
 same source, when we point to Germany, in proof tliat Catholics and 
 Protestants can live in perfect amity, that the Lutheran Church is paid 
 exactly in proportion to the labours of its clergy, and that the income 
 is regulated by the congregation ; — when we shew them there is no- 
 thing in the two religions to create hostility, if it be not hastened by 
 the law, we are told tliat the case does not apply, and that if an exam- 
 ple is to be produced, it is not from the Continent that it is to be im- 
 ported. Be it so. Let us turn to Scotland. The house will permit 
 me to read some extracts from Spottiswood's History of the Scotch 
 Church, which will set in a conspicuous light the principles upon which 
 the great ecclesiastical appropriation was settled. Spottiswood says : — 
 " In the convention kept at Edinburgh in January pi^ceding (1560) 
 a form of church policy was presented and desired to be ratified. — • 
 Because this will fall to be often mentioned, and serveth to the clear- 
 ing of many questions which were afterwai'ds agitated in the church, 
 I thought meet, word by word, here to insert the same, that the reader 
 may see what were the grounds laid down at first for the government 
 of-thc' church." 
 
TITHES. 147 
 
 After stating four other heads, the document proceeds to set forth 
 the fifth, wliich is entitled — " Concerning the provision of ministers 
 and distribution of the rents and possessions justly pertaining to the 
 church." Under this head the following passage occurs : — 
 
 " That two sorts of people must be provided for out of that which is 
 called the patrimony of the church — to wit, the poor, and teachers of 
 youth. The poor must be provided for in every parish — the poor 
 widows, the fatherless, the impotent maimed person, the aged, and 
 every one that cannot work, or such persons as are fallen by the course 
 of nature into decay, ought to be provided for." 
 
 (Page 160)— "It is necessary that care be had of the virtuous and 
 godly education of youth, therefore we judge that in every parish there 
 should bo a schoolmaster, such a one as is able at least to teach the 
 grammar and Latin tongue." 
 
 Again, in page 289 of the same work, we find that in the year 
 1578— 
 
 " Mr. Andrew Melvil held the church busied with the matter of 
 policy, which was put in form, and presented to the parliament at their 
 sitting in Striveling." 
 
 This form of church policy is entitled — " Heads and Conclusions of 
 the Church." Chapter the 9th is entitled — " Of the Patrimony of 
 the Churcli, and Distribution thereof ;" and the 9 th section runs 
 thus : — 
 
 " The canons make mention of a fourfold distribution of the patri- 
 mony of the church ; whereof one part Avas applied to the pastor, or 
 for Iiis sustentation and hospitality ; another to the ciders and deacons 
 and the whole clergy ; the third to the poor sick persons and stran- 
 gers ; and the fourth to uphold the edifice of the church, and other 
 oflicers specially extraordinary. We add hereunto schools and school- 
 masters, who ought and well may be sustained of the same goods." 
 
 Chapter the 13th has the following heading : — 
 
 " The conclusion, sliewing the utility that shall flow from this re- 
 formation in all estates." 
 
 The 5th section runs thus : — 
 
 " Finally, to the King's Majesty and estate this profit shall redound, 
 that the officers of the church being sufficiently provided, according 
 to the aforesaid distribution, the surplus may be liberally bestowed 
 for the supporting the prince's estate and the affairs of the common- 
 wealth." 
 
 At the time this form of church policy was presented, episcopacy 
 had not been abolished, but the assembly of the church passed an or- 
 dinance, that — 
 
148 TITHES. 
 
 " Bishops should not take up, for maintaining their ambition, the 
 rents, which might maintain many pastors, schools, and poor ; but 
 content themselves witli a reasonable portion for discharging their 
 office." — Spottiswood, p. 303. 
 
 The effiarts which were made to force upon Scotland an establish- 
 ment at variance with the feelings of the people are too familiar for 
 expatiation : they terminated as we all know ; and in 1689 that famous 
 net was passed, which in a few words does such great things. The 
 act is this — mark it. Englishmen, mark it ; it is full of wisdom, and 
 in the briefest compass includes the largest policy : — 
 
 "Act abolishing prelacy, July 22, 1689. "Wliereas the estates of 
 this kingdom, in their claim of right, declared that prelacy — (I leave 
 out mere verbiage) is and hath been a great and insupportable griev- 
 ance to the nation, and contrary to the inclinations of the people, &c. ; 
 and the King and Queen's ^Majesties do declare that they will settle that 
 church government in this kingdom which is most agreeable to the in- 
 clinations of the people," &c. 
 
 " Most agreeable to the inclinations of the people!" In those words 
 a solution of the happiness of Scotland is to be found. Noble and 
 enviable country ! She has won victories in civilisation. Her agri- 
 culture has climbed to the summit of those hills whose heather was 
 once red with her martyrs' blood ; the palaces of her industry ascend 
 on the banks of every frith ; her estuaries are covered with native- 
 owned vessels which bear the produce of her labour to the remotest 
 marts ; in every science that exalts and expands the mind, in every 
 art that cheers and embellishes existence, Scotland has made the most 
 important contributions to the liappiness of mankind. But, alas ! 
 when from the contemplation of the splendid spectacle which Scotland 
 exhibits, I turn to my own unfortunate country, my heart sinks, I 
 confess, within me, under a melancholy consciousness in which every 
 Irishman, no matter what may be his creed, ought to participate. — 
 But if Ireland do exhibit this fatal contrast — if, in a country that 
 ought to teem with abundance, there prevails wretchedness without 
 example — if millions of paupers are there without employment, and 
 often Avithout food or raiment — where is the fault ? Is it in the sky, 
 which showers verdure? — is it in the soil, which is surprisingly fer- 
 tile ? — or is it in the fatal course which you, the arbiters of her des- 
 tiny, have adopted ? She has for centuries belonged to England ; 
 England has used her for centuries as she has pleased. How has she 
 used her, and what has been the result ? A code of laws was in the 
 first place established, to which in the aimals of legislative atrocity 
 there is not a parallel ; and of that code — those institutes of unnatural 
 
TITHES. 149 
 
 ascendancy — the Irish Church is a remnant. But although that de- 
 testable policy was then without example, it has since been chosen as 
 a model. Well did Nicholas exclaim, when he perused the debates 
 (as I have heard) in this house, on his own frightful tyranny to 
 Poland — well did he exclaim, " Poland is Russia's Ireland." He con- 
 fiscates, as your fathers did ; he banishes, as they did ; he debases, as 
 they did ; he violates the instincts of human nature, and from the 
 parent tears the child, as they did ; and he inflicts upon a Catholic 
 people a church alien to their national habits, feelings, and belief, as 
 you do. And think you not that there are men to be found in the 
 senate of St. Petersburgh, who exclaim that the Greek Church must 
 be maintained in all its ascendancy in Poland — that it is the bond of 
 connexion between Poland and Russia — that a Greek priest, dis- 
 pensing hospitality, and holding out a salutary example by the excel- 
 lence of his moral conduct, must in every Polish village be the source 
 of improvement ?* And can you doubt that some Tartar secretary 
 for Poland is sufficiently prompt to furnish the materials for a Warsaw 
 speech, and to exclaim that a lesson must be given to Poland, and that 
 she must be taught to fear, before she can learn how to love ? You 
 all exclaim, the Russian policy is not only wicked but insane. Is 
 English policy commendable and wise ? In Heaven's name what useful 
 purpose has your gorgeous establishment ever promoted ? Last night 
 the member for Weymouth, who represents and expresses the feeling 
 of so large a portion of the religious and moral community of this 
 country — who does not love Popery, but wlio abhors tyranny — told 
 you that his conviction was that the abuses of the Protestant Churcli 
 liad been the greatest impediment to the progress of the Protestant 
 religion. You cannot hope to proselytise us through the means of the 
 establishment. You have put the experiment to the test of three cen- 
 turies. If the truth be with you it may be great, but in this instance 
 it does not sustain the aphorism — ^for it does not prevail. You have 
 tried eveiything. Penal codes, foundling hospitals, charter schools 
 (those nurseries for corporations), Kildare-street societies ; but these 
 you liavc abandoned ; and even the noble lord opposite, with all his 
 scriptural addictions — and althougli he be the author of a work on tlie 
 parables (I wonder what he says about the Pharisee) — still, so con- 
 vinced was he of the futility of all attempts at our conversion, that 
 he himself introduced that system whicli is so erroneously designated 
 by his present auxiliaries, as the " mutilation" of the AVord of God 
 But who that reflects on the subject for a moment can believe that the 
 
 • Tliis alludes to an cxprussiou used by Lord Stanley with regard to Ireland. 
 
150 TITHES. 
 
 abuses of the church can have any other effect than to array the 
 country against the system with which it is connected ? How can re- 
 ligion advance — with police, process servers, and commissioners of re- 
 bellion for its missionaries ? Recollect what arguments, or, if you 
 please, what sophisms these abuses supply to its opponents. Have 
 not the rival clergy an opportunity of asking whether it is in an acel- 
 dama that the vineyard of the Lord should be planted ? Whether 
 tliey are indeed the ministers of Christ who, while they inculcate the 
 reading of his Word, enter the field of massacre with the Gospel, as 
 an implement for swearing a distracted mother over the body of her 
 child that lies dead and stark before her.* But if in a religious point 
 of view the establishment cannot conduce to the interests of religion — 
 in a political view, what purpose does it ansAver ? It is said that it 
 cements the Union — cements the Union ! It furnishes the great ar- 
 gument against the Union — it is the most degrading incident of all 
 the incidents of degradation by which that measure was accompanied — 
 it is the yoke, the brand, the shame and the exasperation of Ireland — 
 it arrays millions of Irishmen against you, and marshals them in op- 
 position to the measure, of which you avail yourselves for the sus- 
 tainment of a monstrous army, and which you plead in bar to that re- 
 quisition for redress, which, it is not wise, because it will not be safe 
 to withhold. 
 
 * This alludes to an incident in one of the tithe massacres in Ireland. 
 
THE IRISU CHURCH. 151 
 
 THE IRISH CHURCH. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, AUGUST 2, 1836. 
 
 How few there are who look beyond to-day and have a political to- 
 morrow, who believe it possible that the abuses of t)ie Irish Church 
 can be long maintained ? The right honourable baronet, the mem- 
 ber for Tamworth, does not labour under so signal a delusion. His 
 speech to-night was an intimation of despair : he said that if the blow 
 must be struck, it should not be struck by him ; he spoke of the pros- 
 tration of those pillars, which he declared that he, for one, would not 
 contribute to overthrow. Wliat did he mean but to tell us, that upon 
 this question he would not play the part which in reference to the 
 great measure of Catholic aggrandizement he was driven by that high 
 necessity which results from a sense of duty to perform ? — that he 
 would leave it to others to do what he foresees to be ultimately inevi- 
 table — that he had already made sufficient sacrifices, and that a second 
 martyrdom to fame could not be endured! A man endowed with the 
 sagacity of the right honourable gentleman must needs feel that the 
 continued sustainmcnt of the churcli in the enjoyment of its gorgeous 
 superfluities is impossible. The only chance of preserving whatever 
 there is of any value in the church, infinitesimal as it may be, is the 
 speedy a})plication of a bold process of reform. In time — take down 
 in time the splendid pinnacles which the right honourable baronet mis- 
 takes for " the pillars" of the church — take down the golden dome, 
 which has become too ponderous and has begun to totter — take down 
 that gorgeous mass which does not belong to the Christian order, if 
 you would serve the edifice, which it endangers far more than it 
 adorns : — in the first political concussion, it will not only fall, but over- 
 whelm the altar in its ruins. 
 
 The proposition which I mean briefly to assume in this debate is as 
 simple as it is bold. Instead of entering into lialf-forensio and dcmi- 
 scholastic disquisitions upon the nature of cliurch property, I frankly 
 and fearlessly tell you, that with the power which Catholic Ireland has 
 acquired, and is rapidly acquiring, your sacerdotal predominance is 
 incompatible. Have you observed the developement of Catholic Ire- 
 land ? It is the fashion to say that the property of Ireland is almost 
 exclusively Protestant, and I acknowledge that, when you revert to 
 the military spoliations inflicted on us by your ancestors, you should 
 arrive at the conclusion that you have left us bare. It was a biting 
 sarcasm of him who siild that the history of Ireland was a continua- 
 
152 ' THE IRISH CHUUCH. 
 
 tion of rapine.* But while I admit\hat the fee-simple of Ireland is in 
 a great measure Cromwellian, I asseverate that the mass of property 
 to which political influence is attached is in the hands of the Catholic 
 middle classes. The Reform Bill has been attended in Ireland with 
 one most important I'esult, which has not been the subject of as much 
 attention as it deserves. Before that event the close boroughs of Ire- 
 land were in the hands of a few Protestant nominators, who deputed 
 their representatives, the guardians of ecclesiastical opidence to this 
 house ; a large transfer of power in this essential particular has taken 
 place : it is now vested in the Roman Catholic inhabitants of the 
 towns in Ireland which send members here. I do not think that I 
 can present the extraordinary change which has taken place in this 
 most essential regard, in a more striking light, than by giving a kind 
 of ocular demonstration, and bidding you fix your eyes on two very 
 remarkable and exceedingly interesting gentlemen, who are sitting at 
 this moment immediately opposite to each other — the one is the 
 member for the University of Oxford, and the other the member for 
 Dundalk. But although the member for Dundalk (Mr. Sharman Craw- 
 ford) never was and never will be member for the University of Oxford, 
 the other (Sir Robert Inglis), the member for the University of Ox- 
 ford, was once member for Dundalk. My Lord Roden, influenced of 
 course by no sublunary considerations, the patron before the Reform 
 Bill of the borough of Dundalk, selected the honourable baronet as 
 the most appropriate representative of his own ecclesiastical attach- 
 ments in the house. Since the Reform Bill my honourable friend 
 behind me has been chosen by the people of Dundalk as the sentinel 
 of their interests, and as the mirror in which their feelings and opi- 
 nions will be most fixithfully reflected. Look at them both — look 
 at the incarnation of plenteous Toryism upon one side, and the exem- 
 plification of somewhat spare and stern Republicanism on the other, 
 and of the effects of the Refoi-ra Bill you will behold the most striking 
 illustration. The house, I perceive, find in the contrast of the two 
 honourable gentlemen a subject of merriment, which they, who them- 
 selves participate in it, do not take in bad part: but though there may 
 be matter for mirth in the outward and visible signs of the old system 
 and of the new, you will see, upon reflection, that from the type of 
 Conservatism and the symbol of Democracy thus oftered to you in this 
 exhibition of the honourable gentlemen, most important inferences are 
 to be deduced. The boroughs of Ireland have been delivered to the 
 
 • Sir Hercules Langrislie was asked where was the best history of Ireland to 
 be found? lie said: "In the continuation o{ liupin." — Ed. 
 
THE IRISH CIIUUCII. 153 
 
 majority of tJie people ; — the influence exercised a few years ago by 
 individual Protestant patricians has been handed over to the mer- 
 chants, and traders, and mechanics, located in the towns, by whom 
 tlicir representatives are delegated to the House of Commons. You 
 must be sensible that the consequences of this great alteration are most 
 prejudicial to the ecclesiastical establishment of Ireland, and that in 
 tlie particular to which I have alluded. Catholic power has gained an 
 extraordinary augmentation. 
 
 In the Irish counties again a great preponderance of Catholic in- 
 fluence will be found, and it may be stated, without dread of contradic- 
 tion, tliat the very great majority of the representatives of Ireland are 
 returned by that community which not very long since was considered 
 to be destitute of parliamentary influence. It is worth your while to 
 look a little further into the circumstances which ought to convince 
 you that every day the Church of Ireland — that structure of ascen- 
 dancy which cannot long survive its parent — is becoming more and 
 more enfeebled, and losing the sustainraent on which it formerly re- 
 lied. The greater the advances of Ireland in prosperity, the greater 
 the expansion of trade, and the improvement in agriculture ; the more 
 Ireland sells and buys, the more ships enter her harbours ; the greater 
 the wealth the earth throws up from her bosom, the greater must bo 
 the progress of the people, as contra-distinguished to the aristocracy of 
 Ireland, and the more formidable the array of those millions by whom 
 the abatement of tJie great anomaly is required. Note an incident to 
 the state of Ireland, which may at first view escape your notice. A 
 small sect once enjoyed a monopoly of the patronage of the crown — 
 Protestantism supplied the cliannel beyond which the royal bounty, 
 issuing from the Castle, was never permitted to flow : — but now, under 
 a government, by which the principle of emancipation is carried out, 
 an indiscriminate participation takes place in the dignities and in the 
 emoluments connected with the chief departments of the state. In the 
 year 1812, the Catholics of Ireland Avere denounced as "miscreants" 
 by a Protestant Attorney-General for Ireland, and one of the " mis- 
 creants" is now Attorney-General for Ireland. My learned friend, 
 the member for Cashel (Mr. Sergeant Woulfe), who occupies the 
 highest place in his profession, is one of his Majesty's law-ofllcers ; and 
 my friend, the member for Clonmel (Mr. Ball), for talents and erudi- 
 tion is unsurpassed at the Irish bar : these eminent men are advancing 
 to the bench. In a country so situated, of whose condition these facts 
 are striking illustrations, can the Irish Church be long maintained ? 
 If Ave were seven millions of uninteUectual degi-aded serfs — a heap of 
 lielotism of our seven millions little account should be made. If 
 
154 THE IRISH CHUKCH. 
 
 the physical aspect of Ireland has undergone a great change, a still 
 more conspicuous moral alteration has taken place. Not only has 
 cultivation made its way into the morass, hut the mind of Ireland has 
 been reclaimed. With the education of the people the permanence of 
 unnatural and anti-national institutions is irreconcilable. But if edu- 
 cation has done much, agitation, the apprenticeship to liberty, has 
 done more ; although in your judgment it may have been productive of 
 many mischiefs, they are outweighed by the preponderant and counter-r 
 vailing good. Public opinion and public feeling have been created in 
 Ireland. Men of all classes have been instructed in the principles on 
 which the rights of nations depend. The humblest peasant, amidst 
 destitution the most abject, has learned to respect himself. I remember 
 when if you struck him he cowered beneath the blow ; but now lift 
 up your hand, the spirit of insulted manhood will start up in a bosom 
 covered with rags, his Celtic blood will boil, as yours would do, and 
 he will feel, and he will act, as if he had been born in this noble land 
 of yours, where the person of every citizen is sacred from affronts, and 
 from his birth he had breathed the moral atmosphere which Britons 
 are accustomed to inhale. Englishmen, we are too like you to give 
 you leave to do us wrong, and, in the name of millions of my country- 
 men, assimilated to yourselves, I demand the reduction of a great abuse 
 — the retrenchment of a monstrous sinecure — or, in other words, I de- 
 mand justice at your hands. " Justice to Ireland" is a phrase which has 
 been, I am well aware, treated as a topic for derision, but the time 
 will come, nor is it, perhaps, remote, when you will not be able to ex- 
 tract much matter for ridicule in those trite but not trivial words. 
 " Do justice to America," exclaimed the father of that man by whom 
 the Irish Union was accomplished, *' do it to-night — do it before you 
 sleep." In your National Gallery is a picture on which Lord Lynd- 
 hurst should look : it was painted by Copley, and represents the death 
 of Chatham, who did not live long after that celebrated invocation 
 was pronounced. " Do justice to America — do it to-night — do it 
 before you sleep." There wei'e men by whom that warning was 
 heard who laughed when it was uttered. Have a care lest injustice 
 to Ireland and to America may not be followed by the same results — 
 lest mournfulness may not succeed to mirth, and another page in the 
 history of England may not be writ in her heart's blood. 
 
IRISH MUNICII'AL BILL. 155 
 
 IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUAIIY 22, 1837. 
 
 The right honourable baronet (Sir James Graham) began the speech, 
 in many particulars remarkable, which he has just concluded amidst 
 the applauses of those, whose approbation, at one period of his political 
 life, he would have blushed to incur — by intimating that he was re- 
 garded as a "bigot" on this side of the house. "Wliether he deserves 
 the appellation by which he has informed us that he is designated, his 
 speech to-night affords some means of determining. I will not call 
 him a bigot — I am not disposed to use an expression in any degree 
 offensive to the right honourable baronet, but I will presume to call 
 him a convert, who exhibits all the zeal for which conversion is pro- 
 verbially conspicuous. Of that zeal we have manifestations in his 
 references to pamphlets about Spain, in his allusions to the mother of 
 Cabrera, in his remarks on the Spanish clergy, and the practice of 
 confession in the Catholic Church. I own that, when he takes in such 
 bad part the strong expressions employed in reference to the Irish 
 Church (cx{)rcssion3 employed by Protestants, and not by Roman 
 Catholics), I am surprised that he should not himself abstain from 
 observations offensive to the religious feelings of Roman Catholic 
 members of this house. The right honourable baronet has done me 
 the honour to produce an extract from a speech of mine, delivered 
 nearly two years ago at the Coburg Gardens ; and at the same time 
 expressed himself in terms of praise of the humble individual who 
 now addresses you. I can assure the right honourable baronet that I 
 feel at least as much pleasure in listening to him, as he has the good- 
 ness to say that he derives from hearing me. He has many of the 
 accomplishments attributed by Milton to a distinguished speaker in a 
 celebrated council. He is "in act most graceful and humane- — his 
 tongue drops manna." I cannot but feel pride that he should enter- 
 tain so high an opinion of me, as to induce him to peruse and collect 
 all that I say even beyond these walls. He has spent the recess, it 
 appears, in the diligent selection of such passages as he has read to- 
 night, and which I little thought, when they were uttered, that the 
 right honourable baronet would think worthy of his comments — 
 However, he owes me the return of an obligation. The last time 1 
 spoke in this house, I referred to a celebrated speech of his at Cocker- 
 mouth, in which he pronounced an eloquent invective against " a 
 recreant AVhig ;" and as he found that I was a diligent student of 
 
156 
 
 IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 
 
 those models of eloquence which the right lionourable baronet used 
 formerly to supply, in advocating the popular rights, he thought him- 
 self bound, I suppose, to repay me by the citation, whicli has, I 
 believe, produced less effect than he had anticipated. The right 
 honourable baronet also adverted to what he calls " the Lichfield 
 House compact." It is not worth while to go over the same ground, 
 after I have already proved, by reading in the house the speech which 
 has been the subject of so much remark — how much I have been mis- 
 represented ; I never said that there was a " compact ;" I did say, and 
 I repeat it, that there was *' a compact alliance." Was that the first 
 occasion on which an alliance was entered into ? Was Lichfield House 
 the only spot ever dedicated to political reconciliations ? Has the 
 right honourable baronet forgotten, or has the noble lord (Stanley) 
 who sits beside him, succeeded in dismissing from his recollection, a 
 meeting at Brookes's Club at which the Irish and English reformers 
 assembled, and, in the emergency which had taken place, agreed to 
 relinquish their differences and make a united stand against the com- 
 mon foe ? Does the noble lord forget an admirable speech (it was 
 the best post-prandial oration it was ever my good fortune to have 
 heard) delivered by a right honoui'able gentleman, who was not then 
 a noble lord, and was accompanied by a vehemence of gesture and a 
 force of intonation not a little illustrative of the emotions of the orator, 
 on his anticipated ejectment from office ? That eloquent individual, 
 whom I now see on the Tory side of the house, got up on a table, and 
 with vehement and almost appalling gesture, pronounced an invective 
 • against the Duke of Wellington, to which, in the records of vitupera- 
 tion, few parallels can be found. I shall not repeat what the noble 
 lord then said. 
 
 Lord Stanley. — You may. 
 
 Mf. Sheil No; my object is not to excite pei'sonal animosities 
 
 among new, but ardent, friends. I have no malevolent motive in advert- 
 ing to that remarkable occasion. If I have at all referred to it, it is be- 
 cause the right honourable baronet has been sufficiently indiscreet to 
 talk of Lichfield House : — let him, for the future, confine himself to the 
 recollections of Bi'ookes's, instead of selecting as the subject of his sar- 
 casms the meeting in which that reconciliation took place to which 
 Ireland is indebted for the exclusion of the noble lord opposite, and 
 his associates, from power. The right honourable baronet has been 
 guilty of another imprudence : he has charged Lord Mulgrave with 
 the promotion of Mr. Pigot to a forensic office in Dublin Castle. Mr. 
 . Pigot's offence, it seems, consists in his having been a member of the 
 Precursor Association. Does the right honourable baronet recollect 
 
IRISH MUNICIPAL IJIIX. 157 
 
 wliere lie sits in tliis house — witliAvhom he is co-operating — withwliat 
 party he and the noble lord opposite have entered into confederacy — 
 when he makes matters of this kind the groundwork of imputation ? 
 "Who were the first men selected for promotion by the Tories ? To 
 what association did they belong ? Let the right honourable baronet 
 look back, and behind him he will see the treasurer, the grand trea- 
 surer, of the Orange Association, whom the member for Tamworth 
 appointed Treasurer of the Ordnance — when his Sovereign placed him 
 at the head of the government of his country. What are the offences 
 of the National Association, when compared with the proceedings of 
 the Orange Institution ? Are our proceedings clandestine ? Are 
 figures and symbols resorted to by us ? Have wc tampered with the 
 army, as the Orange Society has been convicted by a committee of 
 tliis house of having done ? 
 
 Colonel Perceval, — I deny that the Oi'ange Society tampered 
 with the army. I admit that such warrants were issued. 
 
 Mr. SiiEiL — I will not dispute with the gallant colonel about a word. 
 If the phrase " tampered" be objected to, I will adopt any word the 
 gallant colonel will do me the favour to suggest, in order to express a 
 notorious and indisputable fact. It was proved beyond aU doubt, and 
 even beyond all controvei-sy, that the Orange Society made the utmost 
 efforts to extend itself into the army ; that a number of regimental 
 warrants were issued, and that resolutions were actually passed, at 
 meetings of the society, upon the subject. From this society, the gal- 
 lant officer, who was one of its functionaries, was selected, in order to 
 place him in the Ordnance ; and, by a curious coincidence, having 
 been treasurer of the Orange Institution, he was appointed to the 
 same fiscal office in the Ordnance, to whose treasurership he was raised. 
 How, then, can gentlemen be guilty of the imprudence of talking of 
 Mr.Pigot's appointment — (he is a gentleman conspicuous for his talents 
 and high personal character) — when their own party made, within a 
 period so recent, such an appointment as that to which I have re- 
 luctantly but unavoidably adverted. But, Sir, can we not discuss the 
 great measure of municipal reform without descending to such small 
 and transitory considerations as the selection of this or that man for 
 office ? Talk of Lord Mulgrave's government as you will, you cannot 
 deny that his administration has been, beyond all example, suc- 
 cessful. He has acted on the wise and obvious policy of adapting 
 the spirit of his government to the feelings of the numerous ma- 
 jority of that Irish nation by whom he is respected and beloved. 
 His measures have been founded on the determination to regard the 
 rights of the many, instead of consulting the factious interests of the 
 
158 IRISH MUNICII'AL BILL. 
 
 few ; and, by the just and wise system on wliich he has acted, he has 
 effected a complete reconciliation between the government and the 
 people. You speak of his liberating prisoners from gaols : — I disdain 
 even to advert, in reply, to the comments which have been made on 
 this act of clemency by men who are naturally the advocates of incar- 
 ceration. I meet these gentlemen with the broad fact, that the country 
 has, under Lord IMulgrave's government, made a great progress 
 towards that pacification which I make no doubt that, under his aus- 
 pices, Ireland will attain. Look to the county which I have the 
 honour to represent, and which has been unhappily conspicuous for 
 the disturbances of which it was once tlie scene. Mi-. Ilowley, the 
 assistant-barrister for that county — a gentleman whose authority is 
 unimpeachable, and who, by his impartial conduct, his admirable 
 temper, his knowledge, and his talents, lias won the applause of all 
 parties — states, in his charge delivered at Nenagh, that there is an 
 end to the savage combats at fairs ; and, in a return made by the 
 clerk of the crown for the county, it appears that, in every class of 
 crime, there has been, within the last year, a most extraordinary 
 diminution. Tliis surely is better evidence than the assertions nuule 
 in Tory journals, and adopted by gentlemen, whose political interests 
 are at variance Avith their amiable aspirations for the establishment of 
 order in their country. But, Sir, the most remarkable incident to 
 the administration of my Lord Mulgrave has been, its eflcct upon 
 the great political question wliich, not very long ago, produced so 
 much excitement in one country, and not a little apprehension in the 
 other. Without having recourse to coercive bills — without resortinjr 
 to a single measure of severity — by impressing the people of Ireland 
 with a conviction that he was determined to do them justice. Lord 
 Mulgrave has laid the Repeal question at rest. It is, if not dead, at 
 least deeply dormant ; and, although such a policy as that of the noble 
 lord opposite would soon awaken or resuscitate it again, as long as the 
 principles on which the government of Lord Mulgrave and of the 
 noble lord the member for Y'orkshire * is carried on, are adhered to, so 
 long you will find that the people of Ireland will remain in a relation 
 not only of amity, but of attachment, to the administration. It may 
 be asked, how the good results of the policy I have been describing 
 can affect the question before the house? TIius : — the executive has, 
 by its judicious measures, by adapting itself to the political condition 
 of the country, and by its preference of the nation to a f\\ction, com- 
 pletely succeeded. It has held out a model whicli tlie legislature 
 
 • Lord Atorpeth. 
 
IRISH MUNICirAL BILL. 159 
 
 ought to Imitate. Let the parliament enact laws in the spirit in which 
 the laws, even as they stand, have been carried into effect in Ireland. 
 Let the good of the country, instead of the monopoly of a party, 
 supply the standard by whicli parliament shall regulate its legislation ; 
 and to what the Irish Government has so nobly commenced, a perfect 
 and glorious completion will one day be given. 
 
 I turn from the consideration of those topics connected with the ex- 
 isting condition of affairs in Ireland, to the discussion of the broader 
 ground on which the question ought to be debated. I ask you to do 
 justice to Ireland. Every man in this house will probably say, that 
 he is anxious to do Ireland justice ; but what is justice to Ireland ? 
 It Avill assist us, in investigating that question, to determine, in the 
 first place, what is justice to England ? In this country the Corpo- 
 ration and Test Acts were always regarded as the muniments of the 
 church; and corporations, through their effects, as its chief buhvarks. 
 Mr. Canning was so strongly persuaded of this, that in 1827, while 
 he declared himself the advocate of emancipation, he announced his 
 firm resolve to stand by the Protestant corporations, and not to con- 
 sent to the repeal of the law which gave them their peculiar character, 
 and connected them with the establishment. Those laws were, how- 
 ever, repealed by the member for Tamworth : he could not help re- 
 pealing them ; he then began to undergo that process of soft compul- 
 sion, in submitting to which he afterwards acquired those habits of 
 useful complaisance — in which we shall furnish him with the strongest 
 motives to persevere. The Test and Corporation Acts having been 
 repealed, still, through the machinery of self-election, the body of 
 the people were deprived of the practical advantages which ought to 
 have resulted from that repeal. The reformed House of Commons 
 determined to place corporations under popular control. The Lords 
 thought it imprudent to resist. No one was found bold enough to state 
 that because a transfer of power would take place from the Tories to 
 the Reformers, therefore corporations should be abolished. Take Li- 
 verpool as an example. A transfer of influence has taken place there, 
 to such an extent that, very much to the noble lord's astonishment, 
 liis plan for the mutilation of the Word of God has been adopted in 
 the schools under the superintendence of the corporations. Let us 
 now pass to Ireland. I will admit, for the sake of argument, that 
 corporations were established to protect the Protestant Church ; they 
 would thus rest on the same ground as the Test and Corporation Acts: 
 the latter having been abandoned in England, and having been fol- 
 lowed by cori)oratc reform, the same reasons apply to the relinquish- 
 ment of the principle of exclusion in Ireland, which is utterly incom- 
 
160 IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 
 
 patible with the ground on which Catholic Emancipation was acknow- 
 ledged to have been conceded. What took place when emancipation 
 was carried ? Was it intimated that we should be excluded from cor- 
 porations ? The direct contrary was asserted. " Roman Catholics 
 (said the right honourable member for Tamworth, in the admirable 
 speech in which he acknowledged the gentle violence by which the 
 rights of Ireland were ravished from his reluctant coyness), Roman 
 Catholics shall be admitted to all corporate offices in Ireland." This 
 was strong ; but he did more. In the bill framed under his superin- 
 tendence, two clauses were introduced providing for the admission of 
 Catholics into corporations. Was the right honourable gentleman 
 sincere ? Did he intend that to the heart of Ireland, beating as it was 
 with hope, the word of promise should be kept ? AVho can doubt it ? 
 Who can believe that the right honourable baronet would be capable 
 of practising a delusion ? AVliat he did, he did unwillingly ; but he 
 did with honesty whatever he did. His act of enfranchisement was 
 baffled in this regard, and, by a combination among corporators. Ca- 
 tholics were excluded. From that day to this, not a single Roman 
 Catholic — not one — has been admitted into the corporations attached 
 to the metropolis of our country. I boldly ask the right honourable 
 baronet whether he approves of this exclusion, and of the means by 
 which it was effected ? Was it not a fraud upon us, and upon the 
 law, by which, clearly and unequivocally, admission into corporations 
 was secured to us? If it was intended that we should not have the 
 benefit of Catholic Emancipation in this particular, it ought, in com- 
 mon candour, to have been told us ; but to pass an act making us 
 admissible — to allow seven years to pass, and permit the law to bo 
 frustrated in that interval — and then, when a measure is brought for- 
 ward in order to give us the advantage of that law, to destroy corpo- 
 rations lest we should be admitted — is not consistent with English 
 fairness, with that honest dealing for which you are conspicuous, 
 nor, let me add, with the personal character of the right honourable 
 bai-onet. Ay, but the church may be injured. Why did you not think of 
 that when emancipation was being carried ? Wliy make your ai'- 
 gument in favour of the church posterior to your legislation against 
 it ? I call on the right honourable baronet, not only in the name of 
 justice to us, but in the name of his own dignity, as he would pre- 
 serve that amity with himself which results from the consciousness of 
 honest and noble dealing — I call on him to abandon his party, in 
 adherence to his pledge ; and if, between his politics and his inte- 
 grity, he must make a choice, I know that he will not hesitate, for a 
 moment, in making his election. 
 
IRISH MUNICIPAL MUA.. 101 
 
 He fears an injury to the church. This church, by which a single 
 object contemplated in a national establishment has never yet been 
 attained — tliis churcli of yours is made the burden of every speech by 
 wliich the cause of Toryism is sought to be maintained ; and to every 
 project for the improvement of tlie country, and the assertion of the 
 people's rights, is presented as an insuperable obstacle. When we 
 call on you to abolish the fatal impost which keeps the country in a 
 paroxysm of excitement, you cry out " the Church !" When we bid 
 you rescue the country from the frightful litigation which turns our 
 courts of justice into an arena for the combat of the political passions, 
 you cry out " the Church 1" And when we implore you to fulfil your 
 contract at the Union, to redeem your pledge, given with emancipa- 
 tion, to extend to us British privileges, and grant us British institu- 
 tions, you cry out, " the Church !" The two countries must have 
 the same church, and for that purpose the two countries must not 
 have tlie same corporations ! They are incompatible ; we must then 
 elect between them ; which shall we prefer — the church of one mil- 
 lion, or the corporations of seven ? What an argument do the 
 auxiliaries of the establishment advance, when they admit that the 
 sacrifice of the national rights is necessary for its sustainment. But 
 if tliis position be founded, wherefore was parliamentary reform ever 
 conceded to us ? Are we qualified to elect members of the House of 
 Commons, but unfit to elect members of the Common Council ? ..vre 
 we unworthy of being the managers of our own local concerns — while 
 here, in this great Imperial assembly, with the legislators of the 
 British empire, with tlie arbiters of the destiny of the noblest nation 
 in the world, we stand on a lofty level ? Never was there any incon- 
 sistency comparable to this ! 1 have a right to rise up here, and to 
 demand justice for my country, as representative of the second county 
 in Ireland ; and I am unworthy of being a corporator of Cashel or of 
 Clonmel. I may be told that the Tories resisted the extension of 
 parliamentary reform to Ireland, and on the very grounds on wiiich 
 they ojjposc the application of corporate reform. I must acknowledge 
 it : they did insist that the close boroughs of Ireland were intended as 
 the bulwarks of the Protestant interest ; they did contend that a Ca- 
 tholic ascendancy would be the result of a parliamentary reform ; and 
 they urged, with great zeal and strenuousness, that the demolition of 
 the Established Church would be its inevitable consequence. In wliat 
 a burst of lofty elofiuence did the noble lord, who now sits opposite, 
 refute them! "What!" he exclaimed, " deny to Ireland the bene- 
 fits of the reform you give to England — withhold from Ireland the 
 advantages which, at the Union, you pledged yourselves to grant 
 
 M 
 
1(32 IRISH SIUNICIPAI. BILl,. 
 
 her ! deny lier a community in your privileges, and an equal partici- 
 pation in your rights ! Then you may repeal the Union at once, for 
 you will render it a degrading and dishonourable compact." But I 
 do injustice to that admirable passage ; and as the noble lord may 
 have forgotten it, as his recollections may be as evanescent as his opi- 
 nions, I think it better to read what, from memory, I have imper- 
 fectly referred to. The passage will be found in the 17th volume of 
 The Mirror of Parliament, page 2288. lie begins with a panegyric 
 on the Irish members. We were agitators then, just as much as we 
 now are ; we held and professed exactly the same opinions ; we had 
 an association at full work, just as we now have ; but the noble lord 
 did not, at that time, think it judicious to appeal to passages to which 
 he has since addressed liimself. The passage runs thus : — 
 
 " We have been told that the English bill does not in any case 
 apply to Ireland, and that the circumstances of the two countries are 
 different : but I am sure that honourable gentlemen will find that the 
 principle of reform is the same, whether it is applied to England or 
 Ireland ; and if it be just here, so it must be just there. I would 
 entreat those who advocate the Conservative interests, and who con- 
 sider themselves the supporters of Protestant institutions, to look to 
 the danger to which these institutions will be exposed in Ireland by 
 withholding the privileges which this bill is to confer. If they wish 
 to give Ireland a real, solid, substantial grievance — if they Avish to 
 give some handle to excitement, and to present a solid argument for 
 the repeal of the Union — they need only show that, in the Britisli 
 House of Commons, English interests are treated in one way, and 
 Irish interests in anotlier, that in England the government rule by 
 free representation, and by the voice of the people — while in Ireland 
 that voice is stifled, and tlic people aro shut out from a fair share in 
 the choice of their representatives. I fear that, if we do not concede 
 in a spirit of fairness and justice, agitation will break out, in a man- 
 ner which it has never done before. I cannot conceive anything more 
 clear than that the present measure is only the extension of the prin- 
 ciple of the English biU to Ireland. I cannot conceive upon what 
 principle we can refuse to place both countries on an equality, and 
 make tlie same principle applicable to the election of aU members of 
 the united Legislature of the British empire." 
 
 The house has heard this passage with surprise ; and although every 
 sentence that I have read has produced a sensation, there is not, in 
 the entire, a sentiment which has called forth more astonishment than 
 the reference made to the repeal of the Union, as a result of the denial 
 of equal privileges to the English and to the Irish people. And here 
 
IHISII MUNICirAI. BILL. 163 
 
 let me turn to the right honourable member for Cumberland, and ask 
 him, what he now thinks of his expostulation with the Irish Attorney- 
 General, on his assertion that injustice would furnish an argument for 
 repeal ? Did not his noble friend, when in oiTice, when Secretary 
 for Ireland, solemnly assert the same thing ? I will read the passage 
 again — " If they wish to give Ireland a real, solid, substantial griev- 
 ance — if they wisli to give some handle to excitement, and to present 
 a solid argument for the repeal of the Union — they need only show 
 that, in the British House of Commons, English interests are treated 
 in one way, and Irish interests in another." This is nobly expressed ; 
 but, in the midst of our admiration of such fine sentiments, founded 
 on such lofty principles, and conveyed in language at once so beauti- 
 ful and 80 perspicuous, wJiat melancholy feelings, what mournful re- 
 flections arise ! Alas ! that the man who uttered what I have just 
 read, who was capable of feeling and of expressing himself thus, in 
 whom such a union of wisdom and eloquence was then exhibited — 
 alas ! that he should now be separated from his old associates, and 
 that, united to his former antagonists, he should not only act on prin- 
 ciples diametrically the reverse, but denounce his colleagues, and enter 
 with the men whom he formerly represented as the worst enemies of 
 his country into a derogatory league. But, not contented with join- 
 ing them, in the transports of his enthusiasm he has gone beyond 
 them ; and on the first night of this debate, taking up the part of a 
 prophet, when he had ceased to perform that of a statesman, he told 
 the people of Ireland, in a burst of intemperate prediction, that 
 never — no, nevei- — sliould the municipal privileges, granted to the 
 people of England, be extended to them. 
 
 Lord Stanley. — I never said so. 
 
 Mr. SiiEiL Then the noble lord has been grievously misrepresented. 
 
 I acknowledge that I was not present when he spoke, but I was told by 
 several persons that he had stated that this measure never should be 
 carried. 
 
 Lord Stanley I did not state that the measure never should l)e 
 
 carried. I did state that the people of England would not yield to 
 alarm and intimidation, and that the advocates of this measure were 
 taking the worst means to effect their object. The honourable and 
 learned gentleman confesses that he was not present when I spoke, 
 and he sliould therefore be cautious in attributing to me the opinions 
 which he has ascribed to me, in this attack which he has been making, 
 knoAving, as he does, that it is out of my power to reply. 
 
 Mr. SiiEiL. When the noble lord denies the use of certain expres- 
 sions, and disclaims the sentiment conveyed by them, I at once accede 
 
1G4 IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 
 
 to his interpretation of wliat he said, or rather meant to say. Tlie noble 
 lord observes that I am making an attack on him, knowing that he has 
 no reply. The noble lord is well aware, from experience, that, whether 
 he has a riglit to reply or not, I never have the least dread of him, 
 and that on no occasion in this house, have I ever, in the performance 
 of my duty to my country, shrunk from an encounter witli him. lie 
 calls my speech an attack on him. I am not pronouncing a personal 
 invective against the noble lord. I am not exceeding the limits of fair 
 discussion, or violating either the ordinances of good breeding or the 
 rules of this house. I am exhibiting the inconsistencies and incon- 
 gruities of the noble lord, and stripping his opinions of any value 
 which they may possess, by proving him, at a period not remote, to 
 have acted on, and to have enfoi-ced, principles directly opposite to 
 those of which he is now the intolerant advocate. This is the extent 
 of my attack on him. He will, however, pardon me for suggesting 
 to him, that, if I did assail him witli far more acrimony than I am 
 disposed to do, he is the last man in this house who ouglit to complain. 
 Who is there that shows less mercy to a political advereary ? Who is 
 so relentless in the infliction of his sarcasms, even on his old friends 
 and associates ? However, I ought not to feel much surprise that ho 
 should be so sensitive as he shows himself to be : no man fears an 
 operation so much as a surgeon, and the drummer of a regiment trem- 
 bles at the lash. But the noble lord mistakes : it is not any attack 
 from me which he has cause to apprehend ; — he bears that within his 
 own bosom which reproaches him far more than I do. But, from his 
 emotions, from his resentments, and from his consciousness, let us turn 
 to something more deserving of regard, and consider how far it is 
 probable that this measure can be successfully resisted. I wish 
 to avoid all minacious intimations, and, therefore, I will not say 
 that it must and shall be carried ; but, adopting the calmer tone of 
 deliberation, I entreat the noble lord opposite, and the house, to con- 
 sider what the probabilities are which are connected with this ques- 
 tion, and whether it is likely that the demand made by Ireland for 
 justice can be long ti'eated by any branch of the legislature with dis- 
 regard ? 
 
 I assert that Ireland, sustained as she is by the sympathies of a very 
 large portion of the people of this country, must prevail in tlie cause 
 in which her feelings are so deeply engaged, and on whose prosecution 
 she is firmly and unalterably determined. I undertake to prove this 
 proposition, and it will certainly be felt to be most important to con- 
 sider whether it be just ; for if men are once persuaded that this mea- 
 sure must ultimately be carried, they will feel that it is better to do, 
 
IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 165 
 
 at once, what must be done at last, and that discussion ought to cease 
 where necessity has begun to operate. I put the case of Ireland thus :— 
 if the Catholic millions, by their union, by their organisation, by their 
 associated power, carried their emancipation, what is the likelihood of 
 their success in the pursuit of their present objects ? If we forced the 
 right honourable member for Tamworth to yield to us (a man not only 
 of as great eloquence in debate, but of great discretion, of great influ- 
 ence, free from ebullitions of intemperance, and whose personal cha- 
 racter entitles him to the confidence of his party), shall we not now 
 overcome any obstacles which the noble lord may present to our pro- 
 gress ? Let him remember that our power is more tlian trebled, and 
 if, contending with sucli disadvantages as we had to struggle with, we 
 prevailed, — wliere are the impediments by which our career in the 
 pursuit of what remains to be achieved for the honour of our country, 
 shall be even long retarded ? It behoves the noble lord to look atten- 
 tively at Ireland. Wherever we turn our eyes, we see the national 
 power dilating, expanding, and ascending : — never did a liberated 
 nation spring on in the career that freedom throws open towards im- 
 provement with such a bound as we have — in wealth, in intelligence, 
 in high feeling, in all the great constituents of a state, we have made 
 in a few years an astonishing progress. The character of our country 
 is completely changed : we are free, and we feel as if we never had 
 been slaves. Ireland stands as erect as if she had never stooped ; 
 although she once bowed her forehead to the earth, every mark and 
 trace of her prostration have been effaced. But these are generalities — 
 these are vague and abstract vauntings, without detail. Well — if you 
 stand in need of specification, it shall be rapidly, but not inconclu- 
 sively, given. But hold : — I was going to point to the first law ollices 
 in the country, filled by Roman Catholics — I was going to point to the 
 second judicial office in Ireland filled by a Roman Catholic — I was 
 going to point to the crowds of Roman Catholics wh«, in every j)ro- 
 fession and walk of life, are winning their 'way to eminence in the 
 walks tliat lead to afiluence or to honour. But one single fact sullices 
 for my purpose : emancipation was followed by reform, and reform has 
 thrown sixty men, devoted to the interests of Ireland, into the House 
 of Commons. If the Clare election was a great incident, — if the Clare 
 election afforded evidence that emancipation could not be resisted, — 
 look at sixty of us (what are Longford and Carlow but a realisation of 
 tlie splendid intimations that Clare held out ?) — look, I say, at sixty 
 of us, — the majority, the great majority of the representatives of Ire- 
 land, — leagued and confederated by an obligation and a pledge as 
 sacred as any with which men, associated for the interests of their 
 
106 lUISlI MUNrCIl'AI. BII.I-. 
 
 countiy, were ever bound together. Thank God, we are here! I 
 remember the time when the body to which I belong were excluded 
 from all participation in the great legislative rights of which we are 
 now in the possession. I remember to have felt humiliated at the tone 
 in which I heard the cause of Ireland pleaded, when I Avas occasion- 
 ally admitted under the gallery of the House of Commons. I felt pain 
 at hearing us represented as humble suppliants for liberty, and as 
 asking freedom as if it were alms that we were soliciting. Perhaps 
 that tone was unavoidable : tliank God, it is no longer necessary or 
 appropriate. Here we are, in all regards your equals, and demanding 
 our rights as the representatives of Britons would demand their own. 
 "VVe have less eloquence, less skill, less astuteness, than the great men 
 to whom, of old, the interests of Ireland were confided : but we make 
 up for these imperfections by the moral port and national bearing that 
 become us. In mastery of diction we may be defective ; in resources 
 of argument we may be wanting ; we may not be gifted with the 
 accomplishments by which persuasion is produced : but in energy, in 
 strenuousness, in \inion, in fidelity to our country and to each other, 
 and, above all, in the undaunted and dauntless determination to enforce 
 equality for Ireland, we stand unsurpassed. This, then, is the power 
 with which the noble lord courts an encounter, foretels his own victo- 
 ries, and triumphs in their anticipation in tlie House of Commons. 
 Where are his means of discomfiting us ? To what resources does he 
 look for the accomplishment of the wonders wliicli he is to perform ? 
 Does he rely upon the excitement of the religious and national pre- 
 judices of England ; and does lie find it in his heart to resort to the 
 " no Popery" cry ? Instead of telling him what he is doing, I'll tell 
 the country what, thirty years ago, was done. In 1807, the AVhigs 
 wei'c in possession of Uowning-street, and the Tories were in possession 
 of St. James's Palace, but, without the people, the possession of St. 
 James's was of no avail. The Whigs proposed that Roman Catholics 
 should be admitted to the higher grades in the army and navy. The 
 Tories saw that their opportunity was come, and the " no Popei^y" 
 cry was raised. There existed, at that time, a great mass of prejudice 
 in England. You had conquered Ireland and enslaved her ; you 
 hated her for the wrongs that you had done her, and despised her, and 
 perhaps justly, for her endui-ance : the victim of oppression naturally 
 becomes the object of scorn : you loathed our country, and you ab- 
 horred our creed. Of this feeling, the Tories took advantage ; the 
 tocsin of fanaticism was rung ; the war-whoop of religious discord, the 
 savage yell of infuriated ignorance, resounded througli tlie country. 
 Events, that ought to have been allowed to remain burled in tlie ob- 
 
IKISII MUNICirAL DILI,. 1G7 
 
 livion of centuries, were disinterred ; every misdeed of Catholics, -when 
 Catholics and Protestants imbrued their hands alternately in blood, 
 was recalled ; — the ashes of the Smithfield fires were stirred, for sparks 
 with which the popular passions might be ignited. The re-establish- 
 ment of Popery, — the downfal of every Protestant institution,— the 
 annihilation of all liberty, civil or religious, these were the topics with 
 which crafty men, without remorse of conscience, Avorked on the popu- 
 lar delusion. At public assemblies, senators, more remarkable for 
 Protestant piety than Christian charity, delivered themselves of fero- 
 cious effusions amidst credulous and enthusiastic multitudes : — then 
 came public abuses, at which libations to the worst passions of human 
 nature were prodigally poured out. " Rally round the King, rally 
 round the church, rally round the religion of your forefathers," — these 
 were the invocations with which the English people were wrought 
 into frenzy ; and having, by these expedients, driven their antagonists 
 from office, the Tories passed, themselves, the very measure for which 
 they made their competitors the objects of their denunciation. Are 
 you playing the same game ? If you are, then shame, shame upon 
 you I I won't pronounce upon your motives : let the facts be their 
 interpreters. What is the reason that a new edition of Fox's Martyrs, 
 with hundreds of subscribers, and with the name of the Duke of Cum- 
 berland at their head, has been announced? Wherefore, from one 
 extremity of the country to the other, in every city, town, and hamlet, 
 is a perverse ingenuity employed, in order to inspire the people of this 
 country with a detestation of the religion of millions of their fellow- 
 citizens ? Why is Popery, with her racks, her tortures, and her fag- 
 gots, conjured up in order to appal the imagination of the English 
 people ? Why is perjury to our God — treason to our Sovereign — a 
 disregard of every obligation, divine and human, attributed to us ? I 
 leave you to answer those questions, and to give your answers, not 
 only to the interrogatories which thus vehemently and, I will own, 
 indignantly I put to you, but to reply to those which must be adminis- 
 tered to you, in your moments of meditation, by your own hearts. But, 
 whatever be your purpose in the religious excitement which you are 
 endeavouring to get up in this country, of this I am convinced, — that 
 the result of your expedients will correspond with their deserts, and 
 that as we have prevailed over you before, we shall again and again 
 discomfit you. Yes, we, the Irish millions, led on by men like those 
 that plead the cause of those millions in this house, must (it is impossi- 
 ble that we should not) prevail ; and I am convinced that the people 
 of England, so far from being disposed to array themselves against us, 
 despite any remains of the prejudices which arc fast passing away in 
 
168 IRISH MUNICIl'AL BILL. 
 
 this country, feel that we are entitled to the same privileges, and 
 extend to us their sympathies in this good and glorious cause. 
 
 What is that cause ? I shall rapidly tell you. You took away our 
 parliament — you took from us that parliament which, like the House of 
 Commons of this country, must have been under the control of the 
 great majority of the people of Ireland, and would not, and could not, 
 have withheld what you so long refused us. Is there a man here who 
 doubts that if the Union had not been conceded, we should have ex- 
 torted emancipation and reform from our own House of Commons ? 
 That House of Commons you bought, and paid for your bargain in 
 gold ; ay, and paid for it in the most palpable and sordid form in 
 which gold can be paid down. But, while this transaction was pend- 
 ing, you told us that all distinctions should be abolished between us, 
 and that we should become like unto yourselves. The great minister 
 of the time, by whom that unexampled sale of our legislature Avas ne- 
 gotiated, held out equality with England as the splendid equivalent 
 for the loss of our national representation ; and, with classical refer- 
 ences, elucidated the nobleness of the compact into which he had pur- 
 suaded the depositants of the rights of their countrymen to enter. — 
 The act of Union was passed, and twenty-nino years elapsed before 
 any effectual measure was taken to carry its real and substantial terms 
 into effect. At last, our enfranchisement was won by our own energy 
 and determination ; and, when it was in progress, we received assur- 
 ances that, in every respect, we should be placed on a footing with our 
 fellow-citizens ; and it was more specially announced to us, that to 
 corporations, and to all offices connected with them, we should be at 
 once admissible. Pending this engagement, a bill is passed for the 
 reform of the corporations of this country ; and in every important 
 municipal locality in England, councillors are selected by the people 
 as their representatives. This important measure having been carried 
 here, the Irish people claim an extension of the same advantages ; and 
 ground their title on the Union, on Emancipation, on Reform, and on 
 the great principle of perfect equality between the two countries, on 
 which the security of one countiy and the prosperity of both must 
 depend. This demand, on the part of Ireland, is rejected ; and that, 
 which to England no one was bold enough to deny, from Ireland you 
 are determined, and you announce it, to withhold. Is this justice? 
 You will say that it is, and I should be surprised if you did not say 
 so. I should be surprised, indeed, if, while you are doing us wrong, 
 you did not profess your solicitude to do us justice. From the day on 
 which Strongbow set his foot upon the shore of Ireland, Englishmen 
 were never wanting in protestations of their deep anxiety to do us jus^ 
 
IRISH MUNICH' AL BILL. 169 
 
 tice : — even Strafford, tlie deserter of the people's cause — the renegade 
 Wentworth, who gave evidence in Ireland of the spirit of instinctive 
 tyranny which predominated in his character — even Strafford, while 
 he trampled upon our riglits, and trod upon the heart of the country, 
 protested his solicitude to do justice to Ireland. What marvel is it, 
 then, that gentlemen opposite should deal in such vehement protesta- 
 tions ? There is, however, one man, of great abilities, not a mem- 
 ber of this house, but whose talents and whose boldness have placed him 
 in the topmost place in his party — who, disdaining all imposture, and 
 thinking it the best course to appeal directly to the religious and na- 
 tional antipathies of the people of this country — abandoning all re- 
 serve, nnd Hinging off the slender veil by which his political associates 
 affect to cover, although they cannot hide, their motives — distinctly 
 and audaciously tells the Irish people that they arc not entitled to the 
 same privileges as Englishmen ; and pronounces them, in any parti- 
 cular which could enter his minute enumeration of the circumstances 
 by which fellow-citizenship is created, in race, identity, and religion — 
 to be aliens— to be aliens in race — to be aliens in country — to be aliens 
 in religion.* Aliens ! good God ! was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, 
 in the House of Lords, and did ho not start up and exclaim, " Hold 1 
 I have seen the aliens do their duty" ? The Duke of Wellington is 
 not a man of an excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too 
 martial to be easily moved ; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexi- 
 bility, I cannot help thinking that when he heard his Roman Ca- 
 tholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase 
 as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate 
 could supply — I cannot help tliinking that he ought to have recollected 
 the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his re- 
 nown. " The battles, sieges, fortunes that he has passed," ought to 
 have come back upon him. He ought to have remembered that, from 
 the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius 
 which has placed him foroniost in the annals of modern warfare, down 
 
 * Lord Lyndhurst was sitthig under the gallery during Mr. Shell's spceclu 
 Mr. Shcil looked and shook his head indignantly at him at this part of his 
 speech. The effect produced was remarkable. The whole house turned towards 
 Lord Lyndhurst, and the shouts of the ministerialists, encountered by the ve- 
 hement outcries of the Conservatives, continued for minutes. 
 
 The Times next morning observed: "A scene of the Corn-Exchange character 
 occurred in the course of Mr. Shed's speech, when referring to the expressions 
 said to have been used by Lord Lyiidhurst with respect to 'aliens.' The honour- 
 able member for Tipperary turned towards the benches allotted to the peers, 
 where Lord Lyndhurst was sitting. This was the signal for the most infuriate 
 yelling from the ministerial benches." — Times, February 23, 1837. 
 
lYO . IRISH MUNICIPAL BILL. 
 
 to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name imperish- 
 able — from Assaye to Waterloo — the Irish soldiers, with whom your 
 armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with 
 Avhich his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the 
 arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that 
 never reeled in the shock of war befoi'e ? What desperate valour 
 climbed the steeps and filled the moats at Badajos ? All his victories 
 should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory — Vimiera, 
 Badajos, Salamanca, Albuera, Toulouse, and, last of all, the great- 
 est Tell me, for you were there — I appeal to the gallant soldier 
 
 before me (Sir Henry Hardinge,) from whose opinions I differ, but 
 who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast ; — tell me, 
 for you must needs remember — on that day when the destinies of man- 
 kind were trembling in the balance — while death fell in showers — 
 tvlien the artillery of France was levelled with a precision of the most 
 deadly science — when her legions, incited by the voice, and inspired 
 by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the 
 onset — tell me if, for an instant, when, to hesitate for an instant was 
 to be lost, the " aliens" blenched ? And when at length the moment 
 for the last and decisive movement had arrived, and the valour which 
 had so long been wisely checked, was at last let loose — when, with 
 words familiar, but immortal, the great captain commanded the great 
 assault — tell me, if Catholic Ireland, with less heroic valour than the 
 natives of this your own glorious country, precipitated herself upon the 
 foe ? The blood of England, Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in tlio 
 same stream, and drenched the same field. AVhen the chill morning 
 dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together; — in the same deep pit 
 their bodies were deposited — the green corn of spring is now breaking 
 from their commingled dust — the dew falls from heaven upon their union 
 in the grave. Partakers in every peril — in the glory shall we not be 
 permitted to participate ; and sliall we be told, as a requital, that we 
 are estranged from the noble counti*y for whose salvation our life-blood 
 was poured out ? 
 
CIVIL WAR IN SPAIN. iVl 
 
 CIVIL WAR IN vSPAIN. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, APRIL, 18, 1837. 
 
 If tlie learned member (Mr. Grove Price) had been born in Spain, 
 he ouglit to have been returned to the Cortes, as representative of La 
 Mancha ! What a strange anomaly will enthusiasm produce in even an 
 accomplished mind ! Despite his habitual horror for Popery, I ques- 
 tion whether he docs not regard the Inquisition as a venerable Con- 
 servative institution ; and wliether, in the event of the triumph of 
 Don Carlos, he would not gladly journey across the Pyrenees, in 
 order to witness the burning of the Quadruple Treaty at an auto dafe. 
 The military and political character of the gallant member by whom 
 this motion was brought forward gives it a peculiar interest. As a* 
 soldier, his opinions, when unbiassed, are of the highest value. And 
 the part he plays as a politician is so conspicuous, that it is not unrea- 
 sonable to conjecture that this motion is part of a combined plan of 
 operations, by which a very important position is to be carried by the 
 gallant olhccr. But an additional interest is given to this question by 
 the admixture of military with civil accomplishments. The motion 
 was seconded by a profound, but unemployed diplomast. Sir T. Can- 
 ning ; an eminent negotiator, once in the confidence of the ^VTiigs, 
 and now not undeserving Tory trust. There is a practical antithesis 
 in the riglit honourable gentleman ; for while for the Emperor Ni- 
 cholas he has no strong personal relish, he is not without some pro- 
 pensity to the adoption of a Sclavonic policy at Madrid. I like to do 
 justice ; and I trust the right honourable gentleman will forgive me 
 if I say, having heard him designate the noble lord (Lord Palmerston) 
 as his " noble friend," I should think that the right honourable 
 gentleman must have laboured under a very strong and painful sense 
 of public duty, when he took a part so prominent in assailing the 
 measures of his noble — and I believe he has found him his faithful — 
 friend. If that speech had been made under ordinary circumstances, 
 perhaps no great consequence might have attached to it. But there 
 is yet another view in which this motion is most important ; it is an 
 announcement of the policy intended to be pursued by the Tories upon 
 their anticipated advent to power. The right honourable member for 
 Tamworth has recently intimated that he will, although with great 
 reluctance, submit to the infliction of power ; and he has also inti- 
 mated that he would endeavour to manage a House of Commons better 
 than Lord Melbourne (lie says) can manage the House of Peers — and 
 
172 CIVIl'"\VAU in SPAIN. 
 
 give this house an opportunity of atoning for that parricidal blow by 
 which liis official existence was suddenly abridged. It is as well that 
 we should be apprised that the victory of Conservatism in St. James's 
 will be followed by the triumph of Carlisra at Madrid. 
 
 I pass to the Quadruple Treaty. The decision of the house, upon 
 this subject, must turn upon the general construction of the treaty, 
 and the course pursued by the govei'nment. Let me examine both. 
 "What standard shall we adopt in interpreting the treaty ? Not a 
 mere literal one — we are to consider the circumstances under which 
 the treaty was entered into, its objects, and the means by which they 
 are to be accomplished. What was the object of that Quadruple 
 Alliance ? The pacification of the Peninsula; the expulsion of Carlos 
 from Spain, and of Miguel from Portugal ; the securing free institu- 
 tion's to the one, and the permanent ejection of Carlos from the throne 
 of the other. Any fair man, Avho looks at the events which took 
 place at that period, must come to this conclusion. It may be asked, 
 what concern have we with Spain ? I answer by asking, what con- 
 cern has Russia with Spain ? What have Austria and Prussia to do 
 with Spain ? And if despots feel their interests so deeply involved 
 in the form of government which she assumes, shall it be said that the 
 people of this country ought to be indilferent to the extension of tlie 
 principles from which England derives her power and her virtue ? 
 But, putting considerations aside which may be regarded as vague 
 and indefinite, look back a little at events which have happened within 
 a few years, and we sliall see how material it is to sustain Britisli in- 
 terests in the Peninsula, in order to countervail the great northern 
 confederacy which is leagued against us. We shall see the conse- 
 quences of neglecting liberty in Spain. In 1 820 the constitution was 
 proclaimed — at the council of the Congress at Verona, it was deter- 
 mined by Russia that it should be crushed. In 1823, under the 
 influence, and swayed by the councils, of the autocrat, the Duke 
 d'Angouleme marched into Spain. It is notorious that he obtained 
 possession of Spain as the trustee for Alexander, and was a mere 
 instrument in the hands of the Czar. The ascendancy of Russia 
 was established, and she took advantage of her predominance over 
 France : being sure that her dependant, bribed by the gift of Spain 
 into acquiescence, would not join us, she fell on Tui-key, crossed the 
 Balkan, in 1829, extorted the Treaty of Adrianople, and laid the 
 Sultan so utterly prostrate, that England, in 1830, could not lift him 
 into independence and dignity again. This is the simple narrative of 
 incidents of which we yet feel the results: the transactions in the 
 East were, beyond doubt, influenced by our original supineness ; ftud 
 
CIVIL WAK IN SPAIN. 173 
 
 it is the duty of British ministers to endeavour to repair these errors, 
 and to regain an influence through liberal institutions in the Pe- 
 ninsula. 
 
 Thus I account for the policy by whicli the Quadruple Treaty was 
 dictated, and with a view to which it ought to be interpreted and 
 enforced. Look now at the more immediate circumstances under 
 which it was framed. Don Carlos and Don Miguel were both in 
 Portugal in April, 1834. If Don Carlos should recover the throne of 
 Spain, it was obvious that Don Miguel would recover that of Portu- 
 gal. "VVe were bound, under treaties, to protect Portugal, and thus 
 the entire Peninsula was embraced in the treaty. Instead, then, of 
 wasting time in cavils about particular passages in the treaty, let us see 
 wliat was doing and wliat ouglit to liavc been done under the treaty. 
 The Duke of "Wellington gave it a complete ratification. He ordered 
 50,000 muskets to be sent to the Basque provinces. For what pur- 
 pose ? I call on the gentlemen opposite, who cry out so vehemently 
 for justice to Navarre — I call on those who tell us that the Basques 
 are fighting for their immemorial rights, and who protest that we 
 ought not to interfere in the struggle, to tell me for what purpose the 
 Duke of Wellington sent 50,000 bayonets to Spain ? And if it was 
 no violation of tlie treaty, nor inconsistent with our political obliga- 
 tions, to employ bayonets against tlie Basques, how have the govern- 
 ment offended against the principles by which British statesmen ought 
 to be swayed, in allowing British subjects to use the weapons which it 
 is admitted the Duke of Wellington transmitted to the Peninsula ? 
 There is no distinction between the transmission of arms and the 
 authorisation of British subjects to enter the service of Spain ; and 
 they indulge in mere factitious sensibility who contend that the 
 Basques, after having associated their cause with an avowed despot, 
 are engaged in a struggle which entitles them to the sympathies of 
 Great Britain. The constitution gives the Basques the same privi- 
 leges as are awarded to other Spaniards : it places all Spaniards upon 
 a level ; and the Basques are not contending for a participation in the 
 rights of citizens, but for an exemption from their liabilities. 
 
 I come to the order in council. Let it not be supposed that our 
 government volunteered in granting permission to British subjects to 
 enter into the Spanish service. On the 7th of May, the Spanish 
 ministry applied to us for co-operation. It was feared that direct 
 intervention would alarm the sensitiveness of Castilian pride. In 
 1819, the Foreign Enlistment Act was passed ; but a power was re- 
 served to the crown to suspend its operation. It was clear that cir- 
 cumstances were anticipated under which it might be deemed judicious 
 
174 CIVIL WAR IN SPAIN. 
 
 that foreign enlistment should be allowed. It was thought, in 1823, 
 by the Whigs, that though circumstances had arisen at that juncture, 
 and that a good moral effect would bo produced by repealing the act, 
 and thus signifying the interest we took in the liberties of Spain — (I 
 may incidentally observe that the noble lord the member for Lanca- 
 shire voted for the repeal of the act ; how ho will vote to-niglit it is 
 not for me to anticipate) — the application to which I have referred 
 having been made to the Whig government for assistance, it was 
 thought that the wisest course would be to issue the order in council. 
 Let us see how far that proceeding, which was, beyond all doubt, in 
 conformity with the spirit of the treaty, has been justified, in point of 
 policy, by events. Three charges have been brought against the 
 Legion ; and insubordination, inhumanity, and want of disciplined 
 intrepidity in action, have been attributed to them. With respect to 
 disorganisation, it existed to a considei'able extent; but it ought to be 
 recollected tliat, even in the best armies, it will, under peculiar cir- 
 cumstances, unfortunately arise. AVas not the retreat of the Duke of 
 Wellington, after his defeat at Burgos, attended with a lamentable 
 loss of discipline, for which the Duke of AVellington is not in the 
 slightest degree responsible ? And how can it be wondered at, that 
 such levies as composed the Auxiliary Legion should, in the midst of 
 hardships, certainly not occasioned by themselves, have been deficient 
 in subordination ? 
 
 With respect to the excesses into which the Legion had been be- 
 trayed, let it be remembered that, although they were not justifiable, 
 they were not unprovoked. They gave no quarter, and they received 
 none; to the merciless they showed no mercy; and I question whether 
 the gallant officer opposite, at the head of the best troops in the ser- 
 vice, could, notwithstanding all his habits of control, restrain his men 
 from vengeance, if they saw their fellow-soldiers lying butchered and 
 mutilated with every incident of the most degrading ignominy before 
 them. But from every participation in these offences against huma- 
 nity, General Evans is entirely free. No order of a vindictive 
 character was ever issued by him. And if a single officer, under tlie 
 influence of excited passion, let his feelings burst forth in an ebullition 
 of reprehensible resentment, and that fiict is stated in an anonymous 
 publication, how unjust it is to charge the entire British Legion with 
 that want of humanity which has been imputed to them. But while 
 the gallant officer is thus at once vehement and pathetic in reprobating 
 the excesses of retaliation, what will he say of the atrocious Durango 
 decree, by which murder in cold blood Avas enjoined by Don Carlos ? 
 The Tories will of course condemn him ; but, while they condemn 
 
CIVIL WAR IN SPAIN. 175 
 
 him, they recommend measures of wliich the effect will be to plant the 
 crown of Spain upon his head. With respect to the last charge — the 
 want of valour — it cannot be denied that a portion of our troops gave 
 way. But I believe that most troops, excepting those which have 
 acquired a veteran stability, are occasionally subject, in a moment of 
 surprise, to such moral disasters as, in the instance referred to, befel 
 the Auxiliary Legion. Having admitted the occurrence of this de- 
 plorable incident, give me leave to ask whether it is not, in some 
 degree, countervailed by those examples of high courage which, in 
 many other instances, the Legion have furnished ? Was it quite 
 legitimate to expatiate with so much force upon a single calamity, and 
 to omit the mention of those achievements for which the Legion de- 
 serve no ordinary })raisc ? The S[)anish Cortes and Government 
 thanked General Evans after the battle of St. Sebastian ; the French 
 general expressed his warmest commendations ; and I shall, I hope, 
 be pardoned for suggesting that an incident which, to a French sol- 
 dier, afforded matter for congratulation, ought, in the mind of the 
 gallant officer opposite, to have, in some sort, counterbalanced the un- 
 fortunate transaction upon wliich tlie gallant officer lias so strongly 
 dilated. 
 
 I pass to the second branch of tlic motion of the gallant officer. — 
 Nothing can be worse, it seems, than the failure of the Legion, 
 excepting the success of the marines. The gallant officer would 
 withdraw the Legion because, as he erroneously conceives, they have 
 failed ; and would withhold the assistance of the marines because 
 they have succeeded! This is exceedingly anomalous. Let it be 
 observed that it is not upon any large ground of public policy that 
 he recommends that the marines should be removed from the field 
 in which they have won laurels that have borne precious fruit. He 
 dwells entirely upon the nature of the service to wliich he con- 
 ceives that these fine ti'oops ought to be confined, and insists that 
 it is only upon the ocean they should be permitted to serve their 
 country. I answer the gallant officer by a reference to their motto. 
 " Per mare, per terrain" sets all discussion upon this part of the 
 question at rest. Read the treaty with a view to the interests of your 
 country, and not to the speculations of your party, and you will rid 
 yourselves of miserable dissertations on mere words and phrases, and 
 arrive at the just and lofty sense of this great quadruple compact. 
 
 It is alleged that the measures of the government have not produced 
 any good results. Try that allegation by tliis test. If those measures 
 had not been adopted — if the Auxiliary Legion and the marines had 
 not given their co-operation, what would have befallen the Spanish 
 
na CIVIL WAR IN Sl'ATN. 
 
 people ? Do you not know, on Major Richardson's authority, that 
 Bilboa would have been taken by assault ? and would not the British 
 seamen have seen from afar upon the main the Durango standard of 
 Don Carlos floating from the castle of St. Sebastian ? Take another 
 test, if you please it. Let me suppose this motion carried. If you 
 carry the present motion — if you prevent any acknowledgment of the 
 Legion — if you break the character of this force — if you withdi'aw the 
 marines from the north coast of Spain (the importance and efliciency 
 of whose services you cannot deny) — what will be the result ? The 
 courier who will convey the intelligence will convey tidings of great 
 joy to St. Petersburgh, to Vienna, and to Berlin ; and he will convey 
 tidings of great dismay wherever men value the possession of freedom 
 or pant for its enjoyment. It will palsy the arm of liberty in Spain. 
 It will fill her heart with despair. A terrible revulsion will be pro- 
 duced ; from Calpe to the Pyrenees the cry " We are betrayed by 
 England!" will be heard; and over that nation wliich you will in- 
 deed have betrayed, Don Carlos will march, without an obstacle, to 
 Madrid. 
 
 You cheer me in mockery — do you ? Wlio are you that cheer me ? 
 Not your leaders — not the men who are placed conspicuously before 
 me. They know, they feel, the impolicy of these rash manifestations. 
 'J'hoy profess horror at the atrocities of Don Cailos, and dc[)recate his 
 triumph ; but you that cheer me disclose your liearts, and exhibit the 
 wishes by which your political conduct is determined. Cheer on — 
 exult in the anticipated victories of despotism in Spain, and with your 
 pui-pose let the people of England be made well acquainted. But, 
 turning from you, I call upon the rest of the house, and to the British 
 people beyond the house, to reflect upon the events which must follow 
 the triumph of Don Carlos. Do you not know him ? Do you stand 
 in need of any illustrations of his character ? What was it that befel 
 Spain when the constitution was suppressed in 1823 ? Do you not 
 think that Don Carlos will improve upon Ferdinand's example, and 
 recollect what model was held out to him ? Have we forgotten the 
 massacre at Cadiz ? Is Riego's blood effaced from our memories ? 
 Do you doubt that the same terrible career of remorseless, relentless 
 vengeance will be pursued by the marble-hearted despot by whom 
 such horrors have been already perpetrated ? With whom, attended 
 with what companionship, encompassed by what councillors, did Don 
 Carlos land in England ? Did he not dare to set his foot upon our 
 shores with Moreno, the murdei'er of Boyd and Torrijos beside him ? 
 But what further evidence of his character and his propensities do we 
 want, than his terrible Durango ordinance ? I have heard it asked 
 
CIVIL WAR IN SPAIN. 177 
 
 whether it be befitting that in Spain, the theatre of so many of those 
 exploits whose memory will be everlasting, the British flag should be 
 lowered in discomfiture, and before mountain peasants British soldiers 
 should give Avay ? I feel the force of that question ; but there is 
 another which I venture to put to every man who hears me, and, 
 among all those that hear me — above all — to the gallant officer by 
 whom this motion has been made. I invoke the same recollections — 
 I appeal to the same glorious remembrances; and in the name of those 
 scenes of which he was not only a witness, but in which he bore a 
 part, of which he carries the honourable attestation about him, I ask 
 whether it be befitting that in Spain — that in the country whose free- 
 dom was achieved by such prodigies of English valour, where so many 
 of your fellow-soldiers, who fell beside you, lie buried — is it, 1 ask, 
 befitting that in that land, consecrated, as it is, in the annals of Eng- 
 land's glory, a terrible, remorseless, relentless despotism should be 
 established, and that the throne which England saved should be filled 
 by the purple tyrant whose arms have been steeped to the shoulders 
 in the blood of your countrymen — not slain in the field of honourable 
 combat, but when the heat of battle had passed, and its sweat had 
 been wijicd away — savagely and deliberately murdered ? Their bones 
 are bleaching on the Pyi'enean snows — their blood cries out ; and shall 
 we, intrusted as we are by the British people with the honour, and 
 the just vengeance of our country — shall we, instead of flying to arms, 
 facilitate the ascent to the throne of Spain of the guilty man by whom 
 these outrages upon every law, divine and human, have been com 
 mitted ? Never ! The people of this country arc averse to wanton 
 war ; but where the honour of England is at stake, there is no conse- 
 quence which they are not prepared to meet — no treasure which they 
 are not ready to lavish — no hazard which they will not be found 
 prompt to encounter. 
 
178 LOUD NORMANBy'S GOVKRNMENT or IRELAND. 
 
 LORD NORMANBY'S GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ArUIL IQtU, 1839. 
 
 In one opinion expressed by the learned member for Bandon (Mr. 
 Sergeant Jackson) I entirely concur. It would be difficult, indeed, 
 to dissent from him, when lie declared his speech to be " no joke." 
 That speech may be distinguished by ability ; but, among its multifa- 
 rious merits, we should look for originality in vain. I will not say 
 that it was, so far as its topics were concerned, " tedious as a twice- 
 told tale ;" but I may venture, without any departure from good breed- 
 ing, to suggest, that its principal materials were of a nature to insure, 
 among the gentlemen behind him, untired applause for the untiring 
 reiteration of the same charges in nearly the same form of phrase. 
 It is fortunate for the learned gentleman that he may induge in such 
 repetitions without the hazard of incurring any expression of weariness 
 from his admirers. I pass from the learned gentleman to the speech of 
 my honourable friend, the member for Finsbury,* who announced, at 
 the opening of this evening's discussion, that he intended to move an 
 additional amendment connected with the extension of parliamentary 
 reform. I shall content myself with making two observations on the 
 course which he, and some gentlemen who act with him, are disposed 
 to take. Let me be permitted to advise them to take care lest they 
 fall into the very signal error which was committed by the Tories in 
 1 830. By the effects of that mistake they are still pursued, for their 
 reconciliation, however strenuous the professions of its sincerity, is not 
 ' yet complete. Let me be allowed, in the second place, to remark, 
 that when the member for Finsbury and his associates condemn the 
 conduct of the present ministers, with the exception of the policy pur- 
 sued by them in reference to Ireland, they make a very large excep- 
 tion indeed. That exception includes a great segment of the empire — 
 one-third of the population of these islands — a country whose govern- 
 ment has been attended with almost incalculable difficulties — which, to 
 preceding administrations, has been the constant occasion of embar- 
 rassment, and has shaken cabinet after cabinet to their foundations — 
 which, as it has already exercised a great influence over the councils of 
 England, is likely to exercise an influence at least as great over her future 
 fortunes — which, after having occupied the attention of the legislature 
 for many years, is, at this moment, of an importance so paramount, as 
 
 * Mr. T. Duncombe. 
 
LORD NORMANBy's GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. 179 
 
 to exclude all other subjects from our thoughts, and to engross the 
 solicitude of every man who takes the slightest concern in the events 
 by which the destinies of this great nation are to be determined. 
 "When, therefore, it is observed, that the Whigs deserve no praise ex- 
 cept for tlie government of Ireland — unconsciously, perhaps, but most 
 certainly, the highest encomium is passed upon the present administra- 
 tion, and a merit is admitted to belong to them, by which a multitude of 
 errors, in the eyes of true reformers, should be covered. But I turn 
 to the amendment proposed by the member for Tamworth (Sir R. 
 Peel). Between that exceedingly temperate amendment, and the 
 declamation by which it has been sustained, there is a good deal of 
 contrast. I do not advert to the speech of the right honourable ba- 
 ronet by whom it has been moved. That was a truly previous ques- 
 tion speech (the amendment is the " previous question" in a peri- 
 plirase) : it was a speech of a precursor character, in the better sense 
 of that significant expression. But what a discrepancy was exhibited 
 between it and the effusions by which it was succeeded ! The right 
 honourable baronet, who can command their votes, ought to put some 
 clicck on the insubordinate spirit by which the eloquence of his fol- 
 lowers is occasionally distingxiished. He ought to silence that piece 
 of Sligo ordnance (Colonel Perceval), which is formidable in its recoil. 
 The Recorder for Dublin, himself, exhibits in his oratory some want of 
 discipline. The right Jionourable baronet, however, may rely on the 
 votes of the learned gentleman, and the other forensic statesmen with 
 wliom he is associated. But there is a class of stanch old Tories, at 
 whose support of the previous question I shall be surprised. I allude 
 to the forty gentlemen, who, upon the second reading of the Irish Cor- 
 poration Bill, rose against the member for Tamworth in a conscien- 
 tious mutiny, and, disclaiming the control of that distinguished person, 
 voted in direct opposition to the pledges given by him and the Duke 
 of Wellington upon that momentous question. Will they — will tlie 
 men who made themselves so conspicuous by their impracticable ho- 
 nesty, upon an occasion so remarkable and so recent, forego all the 
 praise which they so lately earned from the Orangemen of Ireland, and 
 support an amendment which, instead of negativing the original mo- 
 tion, eludes the question really at issue between us, and upon which 
 the government have called for the opinion of the House of Commons? 
 I do not think that the ministers could with propriety have taken any 
 other course. Look at the facts. The amendment commences by 
 referring to a most important one, from which an irresistible argument 
 in favour of the original motion may be deduced. The Recorder for 
 Dublin moved for a return of certain papers connected with the com- 
 
180 LOUD normanuy's goveunment of iheland. 
 
 mission of crime in Ireland. He did not venture to move for an in- 
 quiry. Why, if an inquiry is, as is alleged, of absolute necessity, was 
 it not demanded in the House of Commons ? Why do the Tories 
 move for papers in one house, and for a committee in tlie other ? The 
 Recorder for Dublin did not dare to make a motion by which the 
 sense of the House of Commons should be taken : he thought it far 
 more prudent to get up a debate, made up of unsupported asseverations 
 against the Irish government, and with this view, speeches infinite in 
 'length, and infinitesimal in detail, were delivered by himself and the 
 honourable and learned member for Bandon, who, with their auxilia- 
 ries, failed, however, in imparting any interest to a motion, which was 
 to terminate without a division ; many hours were expended in dis- 
 cussions perfectly useless, until some gentleman had compassion on the 
 speaker, and, in the midst of the performance of what I may desig- 
 nate by an expression of Swift's, " a Newgate Pastoral," interrupted 
 the proceeding, by taking notice that there were not forty members 
 present, and then counted out the house. Thus lamely and im- 
 potently concluded this grand performance in the House of Com- 
 mons. Not so in the House of Lords. There Lord Hoden moves 
 for censure in the guise of inquiry, for who can doubt that inquiry to 
 be equivalent to censure, which originates with my Lord lloden, and 
 which is to be conducted by Dr. Phillpotts — which has its source in the 
 mercy of his gracious Majesty the King of Hanover, and to the direc- 
 tion of which the inquisitorial genius of the meek and apostolic pontiff, 
 who keeps a small Vatican at Exeter, is to be applied ? The character 
 of the parties by whom the motion for a committee was brought for- 
 ward and supported, and the constitution of the committee itself, ought 
 to set at rest all doubt as to its objects and effect ; but if any doubt 
 could be entertained upon the subject, the limitation of the in(iuiry to 
 the four years, during wiiich Lord Normanby was chief governor of 
 Ireland, must at once remove it. Why are the Lords' Committee to 
 confine their investigation to the last four years ? Last night the 
 member for Pembroke told us, that an inquiry was, for many reasons, 
 to be desired ; and among others, he informed us, that he conceived 
 that we should consider how it came to pass, that spade husbandry Imd 
 succeeded in Belgium and had not succeeded in Ireland. On these 
 grounds he, somewhat fantastically, justifies an inquiry into crime, in 
 the House of Lords, since 1835. How miserable are the subterfuges 
 by which gentlemen endeavour to escape from the effect of that spe- 
 cific limitation to the extent of the inquiry which was defined and 
 marked out with so much care in Lord Roden's motion ? The right 
 honourable member for Tamworth cited several examples of inquiry to 
 
LORD NORMANBy's GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. 181 
 
 prove that inquiry did not imply condemnation ; but did he show an 
 instance of one founded on charges against a minister, and limited to 
 the period during which that minister was in office ? Suppose that, 
 after he had left Ireland in 1818, a member of the House of Commons 
 had stated all the atrocities that were perpetrated when he was secre- 
 tary to the Lord Lieutenant — had described the system pursued for 
 many years by a government unequivocally Tory — had expatiated 
 upon the exclusion of all Catholics from the places to which they were 
 admissible — upon the mode in which justice was administered — upon 
 the construction of the jury under Mr. Saurin's auspices, on Sheridan's 
 trial, and other details of a kindred character, and had then moved for 
 an inquiry into the state of crime since the year 1812 (when his go- 
 vernment commenced), would the right honourable baronet have called 
 it a mere inquiry, and designated it, as he now designates that proceed- 
 ing in the other House of Parliament ? But it has been said, there 
 will be a collision with the House of Lords if the original motion is 
 carried ; we have been referred to a precedent so far back as the year 
 1703 ; and the right honourable baronet read a passage from Burnet, 
 which 1 admit was most effective. 
 
 Lord Stanley Hear, hear, hear! 
 
 Mr. SiiEiL — The noble lord (Lord Stanley) cries " Hear, hear!" 
 Does the noble lord, who cries " Hear, hear !" when I say that the 
 passage from Burnet was most effective, forget the transaction to which 
 he was himself a party in 1833 ? The object of Lord Roden's motion 
 is the inculpation of Lord Normanby ; just as, in 1833, the object of 
 the Duke of Wellington was the inculpation of the Whig Secretary for 
 Foreign Affairs, when he moved for an address, praying that the crown 
 would enforce our neutrality with Portugal. What did the Whig 
 cabinet do ? It called for a counter vote from this house, and the 
 ministers acknowledged that a collision with the Lords was implied. 
 Why did not the member for Tamworth touch on that proceeding ? 
 Was it because he remembered how the cabinet was composed ? or did 
 he leave it to the noble lord opposite, and the right honourable baro- 
 net, to explain the matter as well as the swamping of the House of 
 Lords agreed to by the cabinet of 1831 ? But the noble lord, tlie 
 member for Stroud* did not rely on the precedent as emphatically as he 
 might have done : perhaps he wished to spare the feelings of the mem- 
 ber for Lancashire, his noble and exceedingly inveterate friend. I per- 
 ceive that the noble lord the member for Lancashire and the member for 
 Pembroke are exchanging looks and whispers across the member for 
 
 * Lord J. Russell. 
 
182 liORD NOUMANBy's government of IRELAND. 
 
 Tamworth, who is placed between them, and seem not to recollect the 
 fact to which I am alluding. With the pleasures, of which memory is 
 the source, I shall feel very great gratification in supplying them. On 
 the 3rd of June, 1 833, the Duke of Wellington moved and carried an 
 address, pi-aying the crown to enforce neutrality with Portugal. On 
 the 6th of June, a motion was made in this house, declaratory of con- 
 fidence in his Majesty's ministers in respect to their foreign policy. 
 The government called on this house for a counter vote, and acknow- 
 ledged, that a collision with the Lords was implied in the proceeding, 
 to the adoption of which they had invited the House of Commons. All 
 that has been said in reference to collision in this debate was insisted 
 upon with as much strenuousness as is now employed in deprecating a 
 collision with the other House of Parliament. The motion was car- 
 ried by a very large majority, and was supported by every member of 
 the cabinet in the House of Commons. Who were the members of the 
 cabinet in 1 833 ? I was, I own, not a little surprised when I saw the 
 noble Lord, the member for North Lancashire, immediately before the 
 debate commenced, advance to the table with some solemnity of de- 
 portment, and heard him read with good emphasis, but, by no means, 
 good discretion, a petition from Rochdale, touching the evils of colli- 
 sion with the House of Lords. The noble Lord was himself a mem- 
 ber of the cabinet, when, in 1833, tliis house, at the instance of the 
 government, pronounced a virtual condemnation of the proceeding 
 suggested by the Duke of Wellington, and adopted by the other House 
 of Parliament. To tlie censure of one house the confidence of the 
 other was opposed. IJut I ought not, pei-haps, to dwell on this instance 
 of inconsistency, on the part of the noble lord, when I recollect a fact 
 far more important, wliich was revealed by the Secretary of the Homo 
 Department, who ought to write a history of the Grey administration. 
 The disclosure is calculated to throw a strong light upon the character 
 of some of the leading public men in this country. Few could have 
 conjectui'cd that such a measure could have been seriously contem- 
 plated, when we consider the language now habitually employed by 
 them in reference to the House of Lords. Wliat ! the whole cabinet, 
 in 1831, with one exception, agreed to swamp (that was the phrase) — 
 yes, to swamp the House of Lords. I like the word " swamp ;" it is 
 nautical. You laugh, because it is associated with Greenwich ; you 
 ought to laugh because it is connected with the Admiralty, and revives 
 all the recollections of a celebrated image, derived by one of the right 
 honourable swampers opposite, from the sinking of the Royal George. 
 Having disposed of the argument grounded on the evils which, it is 
 alleged, are likely to result fiom a collision between the two Houses 
 
LOUD NORMANlli's GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. 183 
 
 of Parliament, I come to the consideration of the substantial merits of 
 the proposition made by the noble member for Stroud, in which we 
 are called upon to express our distinct approval of the policy upon 
 wliicli Lord Normanby's government was carried on. How should 
 that question be discussed ? How will history hereafter treat it ? 
 When the time for impartial adjudication shall have arrived, and the 
 liistorian shall revert to the events on which we are now about to pro- 
 nounce a judgment, from which our own feelings, interests, and pas- 
 sions, cannot be wholly excluded, what are the chief incidents in Lord 
 Normanby's administration, on which the sentence of those by whom 
 we shall be succeeded will be founded ? I do not think that, in the 
 opinion expressed by the many gentlemen upon the other side of the 
 house, history will concur ; I am convinced that history will not dwell 
 on the topics which they have selected, for the purpose of vituperative 
 expatiation. Will history — will " the philosophy which teaches by 
 example" consider it to be consistent with the dignity or the useful- 
 ness of its lofty purpose to descend to the minute particulars of elabo- 
 rate investigation, into which the antagonists of my Lord Normanby 
 have not thouglit it unworthy to enter ? The appointment of consta- 
 bles of police ; the entrance, by a back door, effected by the Lord 
 Lieutenant into the court-house at Sligo ; the adventures of Tom 
 Gallagher, or of Nora Crcina, on which the learned sergeant who 
 spoke last has dwelt so pathetically, will not be deemed fitting matter 
 for commemoration, when the principles on which Lord Normanby 
 carried on the government of Ireland, and the results to which his 
 policy must inevitably lead, shall be discussed by those who will here- 
 after have to find upon those momentous subjects their final and un- 
 biassed verdict. Condemn Lord Normanby, if you choose ; but when 
 you condemn him, let your sentence rest upon some nobler ground of 
 imputation than, in this debate, has been urged against him. From 
 such details as they have chosen to establish their case, his worst ad- 
 versaries should have turned away, and should have disdained, against 
 such a man, in such a cause, and before such a tribunal, to prefer the 
 charges which, of the accusers and of the accused, were equally un- 
 worthy. Charge Lord Normanby, if you please, with an abandonment 
 of that policy by which Ireland was ruled so long, by the men who 
 regarded that policy as the only means of preserving what is called 
 British connexion and Protestant interests ; charge him with having 
 preferred the conciliation of an entire people, to the mercenary sustain- 
 ment of a decayed and impuissant faction ; charge him with having 
 grounded his administration upon a scheme of government subversive 
 of that party which was held so long to be the garrison of the country. 
 
184 LOKD NORMANBY's government of IRELAND. 
 
 These are accusations worthy of him, and of you : but you should not 
 stoop to a miserable criticism upon the appointment of subordinate 
 officers in the police, and of stipendiary magistrates, whose only offence 
 is to be found in their consanguinity with the member for Dublin ; 
 upon the alleged liberation of men charged with larcenies and assaults, 
 without a strict compliance with technical formalities ; upon the ab- 
 sence from levees of discontented barristers ; upon the invitations of 
 Agitators to the viceregal convivialities, and other matters of an ana- 
 logous character, which the impugners of Lord Normanby's govern- 
 ment ought to have felt it unbecoming of them to have made the sub- 
 ject of their acrimonious but frivolous inculpation. No, Sir ; it is not 
 thus that they ought to have sustained their virtual impeachment of the 
 man who, having completely succeeded in Jamaica, and discomfited 
 the planter faction, in preparing the way for the enfranchisement of 
 his fellow-men, undertook the government of Ireland with a determina- 
 tion to carry the emancipation of his fellow-citizens into full effect ; — 
 who, by adhering to that noble and salutary determination, secured 
 the confidence and the attachment of the immense majority of the peo- 
 ple whom his sovereign, with a special expression of her just reliance, 
 had recommitted to his care ; — who, although the entire suppression 
 of all political excitement was rendered impracticable, by the obsti- 
 nate adherence of his antagonists to a policy no longer applicable to 
 the condition of the country, succeeded in divesting it of its most for- 
 midable characteristics ; who won for the government with wliich he 
 was connected the undeviating support of two-thirds of the mem- 
 bers who are delegated by Ireland to this house ; — and who, after four 
 years of unparalleled popularity, having been transferred to the go- 
 vernment of those colonies for Avhose pacification he has displayed the 
 highest aptitude, carries away with him the noblest of all rewards, in 
 the proud and thrilling consciousness of having most assuredly deserved, 
 as he has, beyond all doubt, obtained, the lasting gratitude of the Irish 
 people. 
 
 These, Sir, appear to me to be the most conspicuous incidents in 
 the government of Lord Normanby, and I think them far more worthy 
 of consideration than the details into which the opponents of the mo- 
 tion before the house have thought proper to enter ; yet, to such of 
 those details as are of any moment, I deem it riglit to advert. First, 
 let me refer to the patronage of the crown. With respect to the 
 church, the right honourable member for Tamworth confesses that 
 Lord Normanby deserves unqualified praise. But, in this acknow- 
 ledgment, does he not make a most signal and large admission ? Lord 
 Normanby and tlie Whiga were charged with aiming at the total sub- 
 
LORD NORMANBy's GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. 185 
 
 version of the church. Had they entertained such a purpose, would 
 they not have betrayed it to its enemies, and garrisoned it with traitors 
 to its cause ? But what did Lord Normanby do ? He selected men of 
 the highest character, and the most unexceptionable conduct, to fill 
 every ecclesiastical dignity at his disposal. It is enough to refer to 
 his last appointment, that of Dr. Tonson, who, in his address to his 
 clergy, informs them that it is to Lord Normanby, alone, that he is 
 indebted for his elevation. Hear another fact. Lord Normanby pro- 
 moted thirty-seven curates : they had no other claim but that which 
 their piety and their poverty gave them to his consideration. But on 
 the use of this branch of Lord Normanby's patronage it is unneces- 
 sary that I should say more, because the member for Tamworth, in 
 moving the amendment, distinctly and unequivocally declared that 
 Lord Normanby deserved great praise for tho course which he had 
 followed in reference to the church. Wliat a contrast did the right 
 lionourable member for Pembroke afford to the right honourable mem- 
 ber for Tamworth ! The latter, who during his whole life has been 
 opposed to the men now in power, frankly and generously bestowed 
 upon Lord Normanby his warm panegyric in one essential depart- 
 ment of his administration ; while the member for Pembroke, who 
 told us, last night, that he had for years been associated with the 
 present ministers, and bound to them by the tics of j)ersonal regard, 
 pronounced upon them one continuous invective, unrelieved by a 
 single sentiment or expression in which a lingering kindness to his 
 former colleagues were evinced. 
 
 But if the right honourable baronet withheld praise where it was 
 due, his censure ought, at least, to have been fair. Was that cen- 
 sure fair, when, last night, he spoke of the appointments in the po- 
 lice ? He said rriuch of the resignation of Colonel Shaw Kennedy. 
 But why did he not, at the same time, mention that Colonel Mac- 
 gregor, who, if he has any politics, is a Conservative, was named to 
 succeed him ; and why did it not occur to him to state that, out of 
 the four provincial inspectors, three were Protestants, selected for 
 their personal qualiflcations, without the slightest regard to party ob- 
 jects ? I will not waste time by going through the various instances 
 in which Lord Norinanby is accused of having misapplied luB pa- 
 tronage. The truth is, that the men who call themselves "the Pro- 
 testants of Ireland," considered an exclusive enjoyment of the 
 patronage of the crown as a sort of ancient Protestant prerogative ; 
 and when they saw an office of any kind given away to an emanci- 
 pated Catholic, they charged Lord Normanby with a violation of their 
 vested rights. So little sympathy, however, will, 1 am sure, be felt 
 
^86 LORD NORMANBY's government of IRELAND. 
 
 in this house for the party to wlioni Lord Normanby did not give the 
 opportunity of being ungrateful, that I pass over everything that has 
 been said upon this subject, with the exception of what has been urged 
 with regard to the appointment of the present Irish Solicitor-General, 
 when he was promoted, two years ago, to the office of counsel to 
 the Castle. It is objected, that he belonged to a society formed for 
 the advancement of corporate reform. The society was not a secret 
 one — it was not exclusive — it resorted to no signs of mysterious recog- 
 nition — no declaration of conditional allegiance to the Sovereign 
 and of unconditional allegiance to the Grand Master, was imposed 
 upon the initiated ; and I do not believe, whatever may have been 
 its other demerits, that by that society, warrants to the army, 
 signed with the name of " Ernest," were ever issued. The member 
 for Tamworth read a long extract from a newspaper, called the Sligo 
 Champion, describing Lord Normanby's progress in Sligo, and his 
 entrance, by a postern door, into the Court-house. As he has read a 
 Wliig newspaper, I shall read an extract from a Tory one — not a 
 provincial newspaper, but the gazette of Toryism in Ireland — the 
 Evening Mail. The Evening Mail, of the 31st of December, 1835, 
 contains the following article : — 
 
 " When the new administration conferred upon Lord Roden the 
 high and distinguished office of Steward of his Majesty's Houseliold, 
 they offered a compliment to private worth, and paid a deference to 
 public integrity ; and it was fitting that from such a cabinet, and to 
 such a man, the one should be tendered and the other yielded. But, 
 independently of everything due to the noble individual — and no one 
 is entitled to higher honour or greater consideration — there was a party 
 in this country, at whose head Lord Roden had been placed, who hud 
 reason to expect, if not a right to claim, that the personage so ho- 
 noured by them should not be forgotten or neglected by a ministry 
 which has been placed in its present position through their agency 
 and instrumentality. That party is composed of the Protestants of 
 Ireland. Sir Robert Peel has done his duty. He has recognised the 
 claim by a nomination of our acknowledged leader to the very highest 
 situation in his Majesty's household." 
 
 Go, after this, and complain of Lord Ileadfort, and INIr. Pigot ! 
 Of the very remarkable appointment to which the paragraph which I 
 have just read refers, I could say much, but that I have no desire to 
 expatiate upon it, in the spirit of acrimonious amplification. I excuse 
 the member for Tamworth : indeed, I believe that he could not avoid 
 the course which he adopted. Pie could not help promoting the men 
 who had sustained him, although they Averc exceedingly obnoxious to 
 
LORD NORMANBy's GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. 187 
 
 the great majority of the Irish people ; but if he comes into office to- 
 morrow, will he not have the same painful necessities imposed upon 
 him ? He will not be able to escape from the difficulties resulting 
 from tlie support Avith which he is encumbered ; he must make ap- 
 pointments of a character simihir to that to which I have just re- 
 ferred. Let him not, however, blame us if, in these appointments, 
 we see evidence of the spirit in which his Irish government must be 
 conducted. He may speak as he will of an impartial administration 
 of justice, and an impartial system of government ; but through what 
 instrumentality is it to be carried on ? No man has ever more stre- 
 nuously asserted, that between men and measures no distinction should 
 be made. The fact is, every man is a measure — every appointment is 
 an indication of policy. Who are to be your men ? We know who 
 they were before, and we know into what excesses, in tlieir exulta- 
 tion, the Orange party were betrayed ? And can you be surprised, 
 that we should look with dismay at the restoration to power of a party, 
 of whose spirit we have had an experience so unhappy ? Accordingly, 
 through all Ireland there prevails an excitement almost unparalleled, 
 not because we bear an antipathy to the member for Tamworth, but 
 because we know that our country will be the victim of the exigencies 
 to which he will be reduced. 
 
 The next charge to which I shall refer, relates to the administration 
 of justice. Sir Michael O'Loghlen, when Irish Attorney-General, 
 made two important changes ; he ordered that juries should not be 
 packed, and he appointed local solicitors. Sir Michael O'Loghlen is 
 an admirable judge ; all parties concur in Iiis praise ; he is not likely 
 to have been guilty of any very reprehensible proceeding as Attorney- 
 General. Do English gentlemen think that juries ought to be packed, 
 and that men should be set aside on account of their politics or their 
 religion ? An itinerant crown solicitor goes down twice a year to the 
 assizes of a county, in which he does not reside ; the panel is 
 called ; and is he, from mere whim^ or in a freak of authoritative 
 caprice, to order respectable men, who have come, pursuant to a 
 summons, a distance, perhaps, of forty miles, to be put aside ? Why, 
 Sir, the member for Tamworth ought to be the last man in this house 
 to advocate such a practice ; for his Juries Bill in this country was 
 introduced, among other purposes, to prevent the packing of juries in 
 criminal cases in this country. Sir Michael O'Loghlen did no more 
 than act in conformity with its spirit in Ii'eland. With respect to the 
 appointment of local crown solicitors at sessions, no measure has been 
 more useful ; and if Mr. Howley, the assistant-barrister of Tipperary, 
 has won from men of all sides the most unqualified encomium — if his 
 
188 LOKD NORMANBY's GOVEUNMENT of IRELAND. 
 
 talents, his temper, his discrimination, his patience, and every other 
 judicial quality, have been the theme of panegyric ; and if he has put 
 down, as he has done, the class of crime falling within his jurisdic- 
 tion in Tipperary ; it is right that I should add, that he told me and 
 authorised me to state, "that he derived the most essential assistance 
 from the local solicitor, Mr. Cahill, a gentleman of great abilities and 
 of the highest character, who was appointed under Lord Normanby's 
 government. Sir, the reference to the state of Tipperary leads me to 
 a painful and melancholy topic. I must admit, it is impossible, in- 
 deed, to deny, that great crimes have been committed in many parts 
 of Ireland. But are they to be attributed to Lord Normanby's go- 
 vernment ? Throughout the whole country, at every Tory gather- 
 ing, at every festival — which, of rancour and bad feeling and anti- 
 Christian hatred are indeed Conservative, but to all kindly sentiment 
 and all charity are fatal indeed — in every Tory newspaper and periodi- 
 cal in the country, it has been studiously and perseveringly insisted, 
 that to Lord Normanby's government every crime in Ireland is to be 
 referred ; and although it is notorious that, under Tory governments, 
 when a policy, diametrically the reverse of Lord Noi'manby's, was 
 adopted, crimes as appalling were perpetrated — witness Wild Goose 
 Lodge — witness the murder of the Sheas — (to a cottage in which 
 eighteen human beings were assembled, fire was applied in the dead 
 of the night, and before the day had dawned, men, women, children — 
 all had perished !) — still, the people of this country have been, to a 
 certain extent, persuaded that to the government of Lord Normanby 
 every atrocity is to be attributed, and to think that there exists a 
 design to murder every Protestant proprietor — nay, that there lias 
 been established a sort of " secret tribunal," of which the peasants 
 are the executioners, the priests the judges, and that the representa- 
 tive of his Sovereign presided in that " red land" over the judicature 
 of blood. To the propagation of this belief, men have lent them- 
 selves, who should have known better ; and the inquiry in the House 
 of Lords, limited to Lord Normanby's government, and founded upon 
 attacks directed against him, is calculated to strengthen an impression 
 which is of all others the most unfounded, and which has party ob- 
 jects, beyond all doubt, in view. Sir, it is the duty of this house to 
 counteract an impression so injurious, and which is likely to lead to 
 consequences the most pernicious. It is not my intention to enter into 
 any inquiry, founded on the numerous authorities which might be 
 cited on the subject, of the causes of the long-continued perpetration 
 of crime in Ireland. I shall content myself with one ; and I refer to 
 it solely because it exhibits a singular coincidence of opinion, at the 
 
LORD NOUMANBy's GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. 189 
 
 distance of three hundred years, between two Englishmen, oflScially 
 employed in Ireland. Repeated allusion has been made, in the course 
 of this debate, to the letter addressed by Mr. Drummond to the magis- 
 trates of the county of Tipperary. I hold in my hand a volume of the 
 State Papers of the year 1535. Brabazon, writing to Cromwell in that 
 year, says, that the crimes of the lower orders arise exclusively from the 
 cruelty and extortion of the proprietors of the soil. He adds, that a just 
 government would soon raise Ireland to a level in civilization with 
 this country. From that remote time, it would be easy to present to the 
 house a series of authorities reaching down to the present day, in 
 which a singular concurrence in that sentiment would be found ; but 
 citations in this house are not calculated to excite much attention ; 
 and, indeed, upon the causes of our calamitous criminality, such cita- 
 tions are superfluous. Instead of its being wonderful that, in Ire- 
 land, disastrous outrage should have prevailed so long, it would be 
 astonishing if it had been otherwise. If any other country had been 
 governed as you have governed us, would not the results have been 
 the same as are presented to you by the island which has been so long 
 subject to your dominion, and for whose guilt, as well as for whose 
 misfortunes, it ought to occur to you that you should be held respon- 
 sible ? Take any country you please — take the country, for exam- 
 ple, of the honourable gentleman opposite, the member for Kilmai'- 
 nock, wlio is taking notes of what I am uttering, with a view, I 
 suppose, to reply to me. I will furnish him with materials for a 
 reply, by inquiring from him, and every other Scotch gentleman who 
 does me the honour to attend to me, what would have been the fate 
 of their country, if the same policy had been pursued in its regard 
 as was adopted towards the unfortunate island whose condition, so- 
 cial, moral, and political, affords you so much ground for lamentation. 
 If Scotland (which has made a progress so signal in prosperity of 
 all kinds — and which, with so many claims to praise, possesses, in 
 what Burns has nobly called her "virtuous populace," the chief title 
 to admiration) — if Scotland, I say, had been portioned out by the 
 sword of military rapine among merciless adventurers — if, after the 
 work of robbery was done, a code for the debasement of the Presby- 
 terian population had been enacted — if the Presbyterians of Scotland 
 had not only been despoiled of property, but deprived of all power to 
 acquire it — if they had been shut out of every honourable employ- 
 ment, and debarred from every creditable pursuit — if they had been 
 spoliated of every political franchise, deprived of education, and re- 
 duced to a state of vassalage, compared to which feudal serfship woidd 
 be one of dignity and of honour — and if all these legislative atrocities 
 
190 LOKD NOKMANBY's GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. 
 
 had been perpetrated under tlie pretence of maintaining an Episcopal 
 establishment amongst a degraded Calvinistic people, have you a 
 doubt — has any Scotchman a doubt — has the member for Kilmarnock 
 (he is the only representative of a Scotch burgh who takes part against 
 us) — ^has even the member for Kilmarnock a doubt that, even long 
 after that system liad been partially abolished, Scotland would present 
 the same spectacle as Ireland now exhibits, and to Tory orators would 
 afford as wide and desolate a field for their mournful expatiation. In- 
 quire, forsooth, into the state of Ireland since 1835! Since 1835! 
 No, Sir ; but from the day on which, to rapacity, to cruelty, to de- 
 gi'adation, to the oppression by which the wise are maddened, our 
 wi'etched island was surrendered. From tliat day to this liour let your 
 inquiry be extended ; and, when that inquiry shall have terminated, 
 you will learn that it is not at the door of Lord Normanby that Irish 
 ati'ocities are to be laid, but that they should be deposited at your 
 fathers* graves ; and that their guilt, in a long inheritance of sin, 
 should descend upon you. It is in the history — in every page of the 
 history — of Ireland, that the causes of her excesses are to be sought ; 
 and, whoever shall read that history, with the spirit in which it ought 
 to be perused, will cry " Shame !" upon the men wlio avail themselves 
 of the crimes inevitably incidental to the condition of the people, in 
 order to raise a clamour against the government, to rouse the religious 
 passions of this country, and to turn the old " No Popery" cry to a 
 political account. But that they should resort to it, I should not feel 
 surprise. No 1 I, when I bear in mind how often the detestation which 
 Englishmen are ta\ight to bear to the religion of England, in some of 
 its best and noblest times, has been converted to a depraved instru- 
 mentality — how often the wildest fanaticism has been the auxiliaiy of 
 the foulest faction — that, many and many a year ago, upon the murder 
 of Godfrey, the Popish plot was got up — that, upon the attestation 
 of villains the most worthless of mankind, the people of England were 
 persuaded that the Irish Protestants were to be massacred, and that 
 the Irish Papists were to invade this country, in order to establish 
 Popery in England — that, under the influence of a sanguinary panic, 
 your forefathers were hurried into excesses the most frightful — that 
 the courts of justice were turned into arenas of human butchery, in 
 which juroi's and judges vied with each other in their appetite for 
 blood — that wretched priests, to whom the murder of every Protestant 
 was attributed, were dragged fi-om the hiding holes where they 
 cowered for safety, and savagely disembowelled — that the best and 
 noblest of all the land perished with protestations of their inno- 
 cence, to which posterity has done a tardy justice, quivering upon 
 
LORD NOnMANBY's GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. 191 
 
 their dying lips — and that all these atrocities were perpetrated 
 under the excitement created by that base cabal, of which Ashley 
 Cooper, who had been Lord Chancellor (an Atheist, affecting 
 to be a bigot), played so prominent a part — when I bear in mind, 
 that again at a period less remote, when the first repeal of the 
 worst part of the penal code Avas proposed, the same base cry was 
 raised, and an association called the " Protestant" was formed, which 
 Edmund Burke represents to have been composed of as unprincipled 
 impostors as ever in the degraded name of religion trafiicked on the 
 credulity of mankind ; when I remember, that, at a period more 
 proximate, in the memory of most of us, in 1807, when the Whigs 
 proposed that your Catholic fellow-countrymen should be eligible to 
 places of honour in the naval and military pi'ofessions, again, for fac- 
 tious purposes, that same cry was raised — that, when there was no 
 Lord Normanby — when there was in Ireland no political agitation — 
 when of O'Connell nothing had been heard — yet, upon Ireland, and 
 the religion of her people, and the ministers of that religion, the 
 same odious calumnies were cast, and we were held up, as a nation of 
 idolators, of blasphemers, and of perjurers, to the execration of the 
 English people — and that all this was done by the very party who, in 
 eight years afterwards, themselves proposed and carried the very mea- 
 sure which has been made the instrument of all this abominable ex- 
 citement ; how, when I remember all this, can I feel surprise that 
 for the same bad purposes, men should be found capable of resorting 
 to the same base expedients ; and that, to the same execrable pas- 
 sions, they should address the same infernal invocation ? And what 
 was the state of England, when, to recover possession of oflice, the 
 Tories of 1807 raised their "No Popery" cry? You stood upon the 
 verge of a tremendous peril: the great conqueror was in his full career 
 of victory ; and, had he landed an army on the Irish shore, little 
 short of miracle could have saved us. But now, we are at profound 
 peace ; now, nothing is to be apprehended ; now, the Orangemen of 
 Ireland can trample on us with impunity, and on the neck of the Irish 
 people the foot of Rodenism may with impunity be planted. Ha 1 be 
 not too sure of that ! And, that you may not be too sure of it, let 
 us, for a moment, consider who are the Irish people. The noble lord 
 the member for Stroud, on the first night of this debate, read a pas- 
 sage from Edmund Burke, in which it is stated, that the Irish Catho- 
 lics had been reduced to a mere populace, without property, education, 
 or power. And, if we were still what we once were, then, indeed, 
 to our old Orange masters we might again with impunity be given up. 
 But a prodigious change has befallen in our condition — a change 
 
192 LOUD NOUMANBY's government of IRELAND. 
 
 greater, perhaps, than any of which in the annals of any people any 
 example can be found. Who, then, are the Irish people ? They are 
 those mighty masses, who, gradually recovering and emerging from 
 the effects of conquest, of rapine, and of oppression, brought to bear 
 against a tyranny, once deemed as irresistible as it was remorseless, 
 the resources, which nothing but a cause just beyond all others in the 
 sight of Heaven, and the deepest consciousness of the heart of man, 
 could supply ; and after a struggle, of which the tame should be as 
 imperishable as the results are everlasting, by dint of indefatigable 
 energy, of indissoluble union, and of undaunted and indomitable de- 
 termination, won from their antagonists their irrevocable freedom ; 
 who, following up that noble event in a spirit not unworthy of it, be- 
 came the auxiliaries of their British fellow-citizens, in another great 
 achievement — and now, demanding equality or its only alternative, and 
 putting in for that equality a justly imperative requisition, stand be- 
 fore you in one vast array, in which, with increasing numbers, in- 
 creasing wealth, increasing intelligence, and increasing and consoli- 
 dated power, are associated, and offer to your most solemn thoughts, 
 a series of reflections, which sho\dd teach you to beware of collision 
 with the Irish people. You talk to us of collision with the Lords ; of 
 collision with millions of your fellow-citizens beware ; beware of col- 
 lision with those millions, to whom a power has been imparted, which 
 in your hearts you know you can never recal. If the member for 
 Tamworth, on the first night of this debate, cautioned us with any 
 truth to beware of " entrance in a quarrel," with how much more 
 justice should he himself be warned to avoid a contention with those 
 of whose prowess he has already had an experience so instructive ! 
 Such a contention would not be wise. What do I say, wise ? it would 
 not be safe, and its consequences might be disastrous beyond what it 
 may be prudential to point out. It is not to Ireland alone that those 
 consequences would be confined ; they would extend far beyond her ; 
 and every British interest would be affected by them. " We are at 
 war," exclaims the Duke of Wellington, " in America and in Asia." 
 If we are at war in America, this is not the time to hand Ireland over 
 to the rule of that party, who, between Catholics and Protestants, 
 between Irishmen and Englishmen, would draw " the boundary line." 
 We are indeed at war in Asia, and disclosures have recently been 
 made respecting the views and feelings of Russia in regard to this 
 country, which must convince us that the peace of Europe is moi*e 
 than insecure. With respect to France, is it not manifest that, if 
 the Tories had been in office two months ago, and had acted on the 
 principles which they profess in opposition, we should have been 
 
LORD NORMANBY's GOVERNMENT OF IREI>AN1). 193 
 
 hurried into a war Avith France by the blockade of Mexico ? Algiers 
 remains as a ground of difference ; and, independently of these consi- 
 derations, France itself is in a state so volcanic — a concussion, and an 
 eruption are so probable — that upon any permanent alliance with that 
 country it would be rashness to rely. 
 
 This, then, is not the time — this is not the befitting time — in the 
 Iieart of the British empire, amidst two-thirds of the population of 
 these islands — in place of that sentiment of impassioned allegiance 
 which Lord Normanby succeeded in creating, to substitute a feeling 
 of deep, resentful, and perilous discontent ; to convert Ireland into a 
 source of your weakness, from a bulwark of your strength ; to make 
 her an item in the calculations of your antagonists, and to the external 
 risks by wliicli we are oncomj)assed, to superadd this fearful domestic 
 hazard. These are refiections which will not be lightly dismissed by 
 you, if to the modern name, by which your party desires to be desig- 
 nated, you have any claim ; if, to the real interests of this country, 
 to the integrity of this vast dominion, and to the safety of Ireland, a 
 principle truly Conservative is to be applied : but if it shall be other- 
 wise — if, blinded by party — if, of everything, except the gratification 
 of factious passions, and of antipathies national and religious, you shall 
 be regardless, and you shall give no lieed to the dangers consequent 
 upon their indulgence — it only remains for me to pray (and in the 
 deepest sincerity of my heart that prayer is offered up) that you may 
 not live to lament, that to the admonitory intimations given you, by 
 the events which are passing around you, you were insensible, when 
 your regrets will be embittered by the consciousness, that repentance 
 will have become useless, and remorse will be without avail. 
 
194 LOUT) Stanley's inisii uegistkation uiix. 
 
 LORD STANLEY'S IRISH REGISTRATION BILL. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 10, 1840. 
 
 The argument of the noble lord is at variance with the statement 
 with which he commenced his speech. He began by stating, that the 
 first clause in liis bill would not operate as a disfranchisement of voters 
 already registered, but he afterwards proceeded to advocate the prin- 
 ciple of disfranchisement, from the consciousness that the first clause 
 was founded upon it. He insisted, that a multitude of claimants had 
 found their way by illegitimate means upon the registry, and that by 
 a process of re-investigation, introduced into this bill, those claimants 
 ought to be deprived of the privilege which the registry had conferred. 
 This is disfranchisement to all intents and purposes. Tlie cla»'oe pro- 
 posed by my noble friend, the Secretary for Ireland, is, I admit, at 
 utter variance with the clause so strenuously supported by the noble 
 lord, and which, indeed, constitutes the essence of his bill. The noble 
 lord disfi'anchises upon grounds antecedent to the registry, wliile the 
 Secretary for Ireland confines the revision to matter which has arisen 
 subsequent to the registry. For the imperfections incidental to the 
 Irish system of registration — and to what system of registration are 
 not imperfections incidental ? the amendment proposed by the Secre- 
 tary for Ireland affords a commensurate remedy. Vested rights — 
 rights obtained through the means provided by the law for their acqui- 
 sition, and which are therefore vested, are secured by the amendment, 
 while, at the same time, care is taken, that where those rights in j)oint 
 of fact have ceased to exist, the loss of the qualification shall operate 
 as a defeasance, and of the mere form of registry no fraudulent use 
 shall be made. The names of tliose who have died or become insol- 
 vent, or who have parted with tlieir interest, are to be struck off the 
 registry, and as outstanding certificates may be employed as the means 
 of personation, the whole system of certificates is to be abolished. The 
 noble lord calls, by way of retort, the abolition of the certificates a dis- 
 franchisement. Certificates are but the evidence of the title to vote. 
 The title itself is not affected by the change of tlie evidence, and the 
 Solicitor-General's proposition does no more than substitute a different 
 proof less liable to exception, by which, however, the right to be proved 
 is not in the slightest degree affected. This misrepresentation upon 
 the part of the noble lord is very inconsistent Avith those professions of 
 fairness in which the noble lord so frequently and so strenuously in- 
 dvdges, from a consciousness, I fear, that those professions are not 
 
Loni) Stanley's Irish registration bill. 195 
 
 wholly uncalled for upon the part of the noble lord. The clearance of 
 the registry of all those who have forfeited their title since the regis- 
 try by means of an annual revision, ought to satisfy those who do not 
 look for anything beyond the correction of the abuses which we ought 
 to be solicitous to remove. But it is urged by the noble lord, that 
 crowds, who never possessed the qualification have found admission 
 to the registry. If this were true — if their allegations were well 
 foimded who to the abuses of the Irish registry are so sensitively alive, 
 but who to the fabrication of fictitious votes, who to the profligacy, the 
 corruption, the briljcry, tlie debauch, the perjury, and its more infa- 
 mous subornation which prevail at your own elections, are pliilosophi- 
 cally insensible, and give to Ireland tlie exclusive advantage of their 
 virtuous, but not wholly disinterested indignation — if, I say, their alle- 
 gations were well founded, and practices so corrupt had been employed 
 for tlie purpose of giving an undue preponderance to the popular party, 
 it is obvious that the constituency would be enormous. The country 
 would swarm with spurious voters, and herds of wretched serfs would 
 be driven at every election to the hustings under the terror of what 
 the noble lord, with his usual happiness of conciliatory phrase, was 
 pleased to designate as "excommunication." But what is the state of 
 the constituency of Ireland, and how do the statistical returns laid 
 upon tlie table of this house sustain the statements of the noble lord, 
 who, not contented with revision, insists upon re-investigation, insists 
 upon an appeal to the judge of assize, and all those complicated impe- 
 diments to the extension of the elective franchise, whicb, in the spirit 
 of cf^^isistent " obstruction," the noble lord, with an ingenuity so per- 
 verse, has so elaborately devised ? The noble lord is a proprietor in 
 the county of Tipperary. lie corresponds with the agents of Conser- 
 vative clubs in that county, and he has been entrusted with several 
 petitions, not indeed very numerously signed, from the county which 
 I have the honour to represent, in which it was stated, that " thou- 
 sands" had been improperly admitted upon the registry. What then 
 is the constituency of the county of Tipperary ? That county is of 
 great extent, remarkable for its fertility; it is studded with large and 
 thriving towns, and its population exceeds 400,000. You will say, 
 you will of course conjecture, that under such circumstances the con- 
 stituency of the county Tipperary must amount to 10,000. No. Well, 
 to 8000 ? No. To 6000 ? No. To 5000 ? Not 5000 ? To 4000 ? 
 Not to 4000. Well, then, to 3000 ? With the aid of sacerdotal anathe- 
 mas, and secular imprecation, we must needs have, at all events, raised 
 our practical voting constituency. At the last general election, the 
 contest lasted for five dg^ys in the county of Tipperary. The county 
 
196 LORD Stanley's irish registration bill, 
 
 was polled out, and the numbers who voted did not amount to 2400. 
 And hei'c let me advert to a letter stated by the noble lord to have 
 been written to him by the agent of the Tipperary Conservative As- 
 sociation, containing a narrative respecting two tenants of Mr. Fau- 
 cett. The noble lord does not know INIr. Kernan, his correspondent — 
 never saw him in his life — never heard of him before, and yet he pro- 
 duces a letter written by that gentleman, as a ground for disfran- 
 chising the constituency of Ireland. This is indeed a strong proceeding. 
 He would sentence Ireland to a deprivation of her rights on the evi- 
 dence of a mere letter which would not be received upon the trial of 
 the meanest case in the meanest court of judicature in the kingdom. 
 I have received a letter from a very respectable gentleman, Mr. Michael 
 Meagher, distinctly contradicting the statements of INIr. Kernan. Mr. 
 Meagher says : — 
 
 " About a fortnight back, my attention was called to a report of a 
 speech purporting to have been delivered by Lord Stanley in his place 
 in the House of Commons, on the 18th ult., relative to his bill on the 
 Irish elective franchise. In a portion of that speech he is reported to 
 have stated, that he received a letter from a Mr. Kernan, registry 
 agent for the Conservatives of North Tipperary, wherein, amongst 
 other things, it was alleged that ' a tenant of JMr. Faucett, over eighty 
 years of age, held a farm, out of which he registered in 1 832 — that in 
 1834 he gave up the farm to Mr. Faucett from his inability to hold the 
 same — that Mr. Faucett gave him an acre of land free to live on — that 
 at the election of 1837, this old man of eighty years of age was drag- 
 ged to the hustings at Clonmel, and there made to vote for Sheil and 
 Cave, notwithstanding his being warned by liis landlord not to do so, 
 as he knew his title was extinct.' Further, he (Lord Stanley) is re- 
 ported to have stated, from the same information, that ' another tenant 
 of Mr. Faucett, named Roger INIeara, registered in 1832 — was mur- 
 dered in 1837 — was placed on the list of applicants for registry in 
 January, 1840, and that the agent produced his (IMeara's) former cer- 
 tificate of 1832 — swore that he received it from said Meara for the 
 purpose of having him re-registered, and actually got him registered 
 on that occasion before Mr. Ilowley, assistant-barrister.' The first 
 statement is false, inasmuch as Mr. Faucett has but four freeholders 
 on his entire estate, and those held a lease before he (Mr. Faucett) 
 purchased the property, which lease is still in existence ; the same 
 freeholders still hold the same farm and franchise — none of them are 
 either eighty, seventy, sixty, or fifty years of age — no tenant has 
 surrendei-ed his farm to Mr. Faucett ; for, to do that gentleman jus- 
 tice, he does not i-ender any tenant imable to pay rent. As I was one 
 
LOni) STANLEY'S IllISH REGISTRATION BILL. 
 
 197 
 
 of the persons who conducted the freeholders from this county to Clon- 
 Tuel at the aforesaid election, I solemnly declare that there was no 
 tenant of Mr. Faucett's of that age, who went to the hustmgs ; the 
 only tenants of his that went were the four herein-mentioned, aiid hey 
 had, and still have, a bona fide interest in their farms to entitle them 
 to the franchise. With regard to Roger Meara, it is true he regis- 
 tered in 1832 ; it is true he was murdered in 1837 ; it is also equally 
 true that his name was on the list of applicants for registry m January, 
 1840, for this reason-the person who is registry agent for the liberals 
 in North Tipperary, being unable to ascertain all the persons who 
 were either dead or disentitled to re-register, served notice for all per- 
 sons on the former registry list in this division; thereby giving an 
 opportunity to every person legally entitled to come forward and re- 
 rerristcr. Roger Mcara's name, through that means, appeared on the 
 list of applicants in January, 1840 ; but as to the agent producing his 
 (Meara's) certificate, that I distinctly deny. I was the only person 
 who held the certificates of the persons from the division where Meara 
 did live. It is untrue that Meara was either registered in 1840 as 
 stated by him, or attempted to be registered either by ""^o^' ;^"y ^'^'^^ 
 person. I will put the matter at rest by challenging Mr. Kernan to 
 show Roger Meara's name on the new list of registered persons for 
 1840, or any list but that of 1832." 
 
 Here then, is a direct contradiction of the assertions— the unsup- 
 ported assertions-of a man whom tlie noble lord never saw in all his 
 life of whom he knows nothing but that he is the agent to a Conser- 
 vative association in the county of Tipperary. It requires some intre- 
 pidity to rest such a bill upon testimony of this kind. But since gi^at 
 iuiportance is attached to the letters of Conservative functionaries, 
 what wiU the noble lord say to the circular issued by the agent to the 
 Conservative club, in the county of Cork, which has been read and of 
 which the authenticity has not been disputed in this house ? That 
 letter enjoins the importance of stripping the tenantry of lay landlords 
 of the elective franchise. But since 1 am speaking of the county of 
 Cork, what, let me ask, is the constituency of that great county ? 1 he 
 population exceeds 700,000; the constituency does not amount to 
 4 000. The same disproportion between the constituency and the re- 
 p'l-esentation prevails in every other district in Ireland Let statistics 
 be compared with the statements of the noble lord; let statistics, in 
 which there is no faction, no baflled ambition, no spirit of rancorous 
 conversion, be compared with the evidence with which the nob e lord 
 endeavours to sustain his case. If his assertions be well founded_it 
 the noble lord do not labour under tlic most egregious misconceptions- 
 
198 LORD Stanley's irisii kegistration bill. 
 
 the registry of Ireland would present an enormous constituency ; but 
 the direct reverse is the fact. The constituency is miserably small ; 
 but small as it is, it has been too large for your purposes, small as it 
 is, your projects have been defeated, your aspirations have been 
 thwarted, and the country has been saved by it from your dominion. 
 It must be reduced to dimensions more in conformity with your views, 
 and accordingly, by the very first clause in your bill, one-half of the 
 registered constituency is to be disfranchised by the operation of that 
 clause, thus : — A farmer, call him for the sake of distinctness, John 
 Morissy, lives forty miles from Cork: on the 1st of October, 1836, 
 John Morissy served notice to register ; he attended at the sessions on 
 the 20th ; his lease was produced, he underwent a strict scrutiny, and 
 after a full investigation Avas duly registered : his right ig vested, and 
 he voted at the last general election in the exercise of that right. The 
 bill of the noble lord with the clause in debate passes. John IMorissy's 
 landlord objects to his retention on the registry. He is compelled to 
 go through the same vexatious process as before, and is registered 
 again. His landlord appeals against tlie registry ; for three months 
 no decision can be had, and, in the interval, to the relation of landlord 
 and tenant, that of appellant and respondent is superadded. At 
 length the judges of assize arrive, and John Morissy leaves his 
 fields, his plough, his harrow, and sets oil" for Cork. He reaches the 
 court-house, after a journey of forty miles, and has the advantage of 
 Avitnessing the trials of some ejectments for non-payment of rent, from 
 which valuable intimations arc derived by him. At length his appeal 
 is called on, counsel are employed against him by Mr. Nettles, the 
 agent to the Conservative Club, and the case is powerfully stated by 
 some learned sergeant with a minacious aspect, and ultra-forensic 
 faculties of intimidation. His own landlord is produced as a witness 
 against him, and after a fierce political struggle, the learned judge 
 strikes him off the registry ; and availing himself of the power Avith 
 Avhich he is specially invested by the noble lord, mulcts him in costs, 
 and sends him home without a shilling in his pocket as an example to 
 all refractory tenants, and an exemplification of the advantages which 
 the noble lord, our very peculiar benefactor, is determined to inflict 
 upon the Irish people. It is fortunate, I think, that in the first clause 
 of this bill so much of its Avorst matter is condensed, for an opportunity 
 is given at the outset to those Avho voted for going into a committee to 
 repair any mistake into Avhich, under a conscientious, but recent sense 
 of duty, they may liave been unAvittingly betrayed. In the assault com- 
 mitted upon the existing registry they will hardly concur. It Avas a 
 strong measure to disfranchise the forty-shilling freeholders — to the 
 
LORD Stanley's irisu iiegistration bill. • 199 
 
 last it was resisted by Lord Grey ; not even for the sake of emanci- 
 pation would he sacrifice the rights of those by whom the most impe- 
 rative argument for emancipation had been supplied. But for what 
 purpose is this new infringement upon principle to be perpetrated ? 
 For a purpose in reference to which he must indeed be a sceptic, by 
 whom tlie slightest doubt is entertained. Protestations, indeed, in 
 sufficient abundance are made by the promoters of this measure ; that 
 they look to nothing more than the suppression of the abuses at which 
 their moral sense revolts. At abuses their moral sense does not always 
 so readily take alarm ; witness the Irish corporations, for whose pecu- 
 lations and whose frauds, by so many shifts and expedients, a discre- 
 ditable impunity has been so long procured. But it is sufficient to 
 look across tliat table to estimate the value of tlie clause which the 
 noble lord has placed in the outset of his bill. If the motives by which 
 this project is dictated were ostensibly the most pure and the most 
 disinterested, by the general policy of the noble lord the specific pro- 
 position should still be fairly tried. To tlie gift, however specious, an 
 apprehension of the donor should be extended ; but in this instance, 
 the object of the noble lord is not only undisguised, but a veil of the 
 flimsiest texture is scarce cast upon it. Who, that looks back to the 
 incidents fresh in the recollection of every one of us, can entertain the 
 least question relative to the purposes of this measure? In 1835, it 
 was avowed that tlie Tory party looked to the divisions that prevailed 
 between the Whigs and the Irish members as a means of carrying on 
 what was termed by a great misnomer a Conservative government. 
 Had those divisions still subsisted, I do not think that so lynx-eyed a 
 vigilance would have been displayed in detecting the abuses of the Irish 
 registry. In 1837, on the accession of her Majesty to the throne, a 
 general election took place, and eight additional members were re- 
 turned by the Irish popular party. It became indispensable for the 
 purposes of Toryism that the phalanx by which the ministers were 
 supported should be broken up. There existed at that time a tribunal 
 for the trial of election petitions, whose proceedings were of the most 
 censurable character. It did great credit to tlie member for Tamworth 
 that he contributed to the abolition of that tribunal in 1 839 ; but of 
 that which he contributed to abolish in 1839, the Tory party availed 
 themselves in 1837. The Spottiswood conspiracy was formed, and 
 large sums were levied, in order, through the instrumentality of that 
 profligate tribunal, that the representatives of the people of Ireland 
 should be expelled from the House of Commons. That proceeding, 
 bad as it was, found its most strenuous advocates among the champions 
 • of this measure. Tlie men who expatiated so pathetically upon the 
 
200 Loiiu Stanley's ikisu kegistration bill. 
 
 abuses of the Irish registry, turned that scandalous system of adjudi- 
 cation to account. Wlio that looks back to that transaction can doubt 
 that the blow which was aimed at the representation, is now directed 
 against the constituency ? During the last recess the labours of tlie 
 Conservative press were devoted to the impeachment of the £10 con- 
 stituency. On the 19th of December last it was officially announced 
 in the great Conservative journal tliat this measure would be brought 
 forward. The session commences — the honourable baronet, the mem- 
 ber for Devonshire, moves his celebrated resolution. In the debate 
 that ensued/ the most offensive distinctions were taken between the 
 English and the Irish members — the spirit, the animus of this project 
 was made manifest. That the men by whom, or on whose behalf such 
 sentiments were uttered, should support a measure of disfranchisement 
 like this, is natural and consistent ; but it is most unnatural and most 
 inconsistent that any man calling himself a Reformer should co-ope- 
 rate in such an enterprise, and should become the auxiliary of a man 
 who, upon every Irish question, is utterly destitute of the slightest 
 claim upon the confidence of parliament, who was told by Lord Althorp 
 to his face, in the face of the house and of the country, that his admi- 
 nistration of Ireland had been a lamentable failure — who has since that 
 time, by the extent of his political transitions, acquired a new title to 
 the disrelish of one country, and to the distrust of both — who deals for 
 ever in extremes — was ready to swamp the Loi'ds when he was a 
 Whig, and is ready to swamp the people wlien lie lias turned Tory — 
 lauded the Irish members to the skies in 1832, wlien it suited liis pur- 
 pose, and would now slap the door of the House of Commons in their 
 faces ; and of sill the traits in the political character of the noble lord, 
 of all the incidents to liis political conduct tlio most to be lamented — 
 who, after having denounced "an expiring faction," and held them up 
 to public scorn, now leagues himself with that bad Irish party which 
 he represented as miserable, and which is not the less deserving of the 
 designation which he thought it not unmeet to employ in their regard, 
 because he has combined with them for the achievement of their per- 
 nicious projects, and has so far forgotten the principles which ought to 
 have descended to him as an inheritance, as to prostitute his talents for 
 the attainment of purposes to which every beating of his heart must at 
 this moment tell him that they ought never to have been applied ; and 
 is this the man — is it to such a man that the delicate and difficult, and 
 almost perilous task of legislating for Ireland ought to be confided — is 
 this the man to whom we are to surrender the franchise of the country, 
 upon which he inflicted calamities so fearful, and which was driven 
 almost to insurrection by his misrule ? See what in the course of a 
 
1.0R1) Stanley's irish registration bill. 201 
 
 few weeks he has accomplished. The country was at rest — political 
 excitement had subsided — that wise policy to which last year this 
 house bore an attestation so signal, liad produced the most salutary 
 fruits. No public meetings were held, the tithe question had been 
 adjusted, and the veryname of a measure, to Englishmen of all others 
 the most obnoxious, was scarcely uttered. A general calmpre vailed. 
 Suddenly the noble lord bursts like a hurricane upon us. The ele- 
 ments of confusion are at once let loose, and the country is swept 
 back into that tempestuous agitation from which we deemed ourselves 
 secure. Stop, while there is yet time — stop the noble lord in his ca- 
 reer of mischief, or the consequences may be irretrievable. You may 
 gain a temporary triumpli ; you may rob us of the fruits of that eman- 
 cipation wliich the itinerant incendiaries invite you openly and directly 
 to rescind ; but your victories will be dearly purchased. Of Ireland — 
 of organised, confederated, discontented Ireland, beware ; beware of 
 that country which you ought to have been instructed by experience, 
 fearful, if not humiliating, not to hold in disregard. Twelve months 
 have scarcely passed since the member for Tamworth declared 
 that Ireland presented to him his greatest dilTiculty, "Will that diffi- 
 culty be diminished by the sinister co-operation of his noble and ex- 
 ceedingly formidable friend ? Persevere in that policy by which this 
 measure had been prompted, and Ireland will soon be in a condition 
 more fearful than that which preceded emancipation. You will enter 
 again into an encounter with that gigantic agitation by which you were 
 before discomfited, and by which (for its power is treble) you Avill be 
 again overtlirown ; for all the consequences that will ensue from tlie 
 excitement which you will have wantonly engendered, you will be re- 
 sponsible : you will be responsible for tlie calamities wliich will gush 
 in, in abundance so disastrous, from the sources of bitterness which 
 you will have unsealed. If Ireland shall be arrested in the march of 
 improvement in which she has been under a AVhig government rapidly 
 advancing — if Ireland shall be thrown back fifty years — if the value of 
 property shall be impaired — if the security of property shall be sliakcn 
 — if political animosities shall be embittered — if religious detestations 
 shall become more rabid and more envenomed — if the mind of Ireland 
 shall become one heated mass, ready to catch fire at a single spark ; 
 for all this you will be responsible. And do not think that it is to 
 Ireland that the evil effects of your impolicy will be confined. If in 
 this country the fell spirit of democracy which lately appeared amongst 
 you shall be resuscitated, I do not think that to your Irish garrison 
 (for what will your army be but a garrison ?) you can with confidence 
 look for succour. There is reason, too, to apprehend that the state of 
 
202 LORD Stanley's irish registration bill. 
 
 Ireland may affect you in your foreign relations— that England will 
 not maintain the post and dignity that become her — that foreign cabi- 
 nets may take advantage of our intestine dissensions to exact from us 
 humiliating conditions — and that thus, to the maintenance of Protes- 
 tant ascendancy in a distracted province, you will sacrifice the ascen- 
 dancy of England through the world. It is of that ascendancy, that 
 better, nobler, and more exalted ascendancy, that I am the advocate ; 
 and it is because I am so, because I am as devoted to the maintenance 
 of the glory, the "honour, and the power of this great country, as if I 
 were born among yourselves, and from my birth had breathed no other 
 uir than you have — it is for this that I am solicitous that you should 
 not relinquish one of the noblest means of its sustainment, and that I 
 warn you not to hazard the affections, the warm, devoted, enthusiastic 
 affections of millions of high-minded and high-hearted men ; but to 
 preserve, in a spirit of wise conservation, the great moral bulwark 
 which you find in those affections — which does not form an item in 
 your estimates, which is so cheap that it costs nothing but justice, and 
 which, as long as you shall retain, so long, against every' evil that may 
 befal you, your empire will be impregnably secure. 
 
THE SUGAR DUTIES. 203 
 
 THE SUGAR DUTIES. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MAY 18, 1841. 
 
 The department with which I have the honour to be connected, 
 (the Board of Trade) will afford me a justification for interfering in 
 this debate ; it has been protracted beyond the ordinary period of the 
 duration of our debates, but not to a period incommensurate with the 
 importance — the incalculable importance, of a subject upon which, in 
 the exercise of their appellate jurisdiction, the people of England 
 must ultimately decide. I shall not trespass upon the indulgence of 
 those who surround me, or upon tlie forbearance of those to whom I 
 am opposed, at any inappropriate length. I shall confine myself to the 
 resolution of the noble lord, and do my best to avoid the example of 
 those who have wandered far away from it, and who have indulged in 
 dissertations not more mysterious to their auditors than to themselves. 
 I shall. Sir, in the first instance, address myself to that branch of the 
 question in reference to which, the people of England, the virtuous 
 and humane people of England, feel a deep and a most honourable 
 concern. If, Sir, to the progress of the slave-trade, by an exorbitant 
 differential duty between colonial and foreign sugar, any effectual im- 
 pediment were interposed — if, notwithstanding that exorbitant differ- 
 ential duty, the slave-trade were not successful to an extent which has 
 been stated, with too much justice, in the course of this debate, to 
 cast a stain upon Christian IOuroi)c — if to slave-grown sugar every port 
 upon the Continent were not thrown widely and indiscriminately 
 open — if with the produce of slave-labour in many forms, coffee, 
 cotton, tobacco, our own markets were not glutted — if we were not 
 ourselves the importers, the refiners, and the re-exporters of siave- 
 grown sugar to the Continent, ay, and to ovir own colonial posses- 
 sions, to an enormous annual amount, I am free to confess that with 
 regard to the propriety of making a reduction of a differential duty, 
 thus supposed for a moment, for the purposes of humanity as well as 
 of monopoly, to be effectual, I should be disposed to entertain a doubt. 
 But, Sir, when I consider that in checking the progress of the slave- 
 trade, the safeguard of monopoly is utterly without avail — when I 
 consider that the differential duty, which keeps the price of sugar up, 
 does not keep the price of human beings down — when I consider that 
 without casting upon a barbarous traffic any, the slightest impediment, 
 the differential duty lias the effect of impairing the public revenue, 
 and, by enhancing tlic cost of one of the necessaries of life, of ira- 
 
204 THE SUGAR DUTIES. 
 
 posing upon the luimbler classes of the community, a grievous charge — 
 when I consider that the differential duty confers no substantial benefit 
 upon any class of the community, excepting upon those benevolent 
 monopolists whose sensibilities are not unprompted by their profits, 
 and who, to the emotions of a lucrative philanthropy, find it as easy, 
 as it is convenient, whenever a purpose, personal or political is to be 
 promoted, to give way — I am at a loss, I own, to discover any just 
 motive for giving sustainmcnt to a monopoly fraught with so much 
 multifarious evil, or for supporting the resolution of the noble lord. 
 That resolution is conceived in a spirit of such obvious partisanship 
 that I cannot withhold the expression of my surprise that my right 
 honoui'able and most distinguished friend, the member for the Tower 
 Hamlets, should have considered it to be consistent with his unaifected 
 abhorrence of slavery (for his abhorrence of slavery is unaflected) to 
 give it his support. It does not require his sagacity, forensic, judicial, 
 and senatorial, to perceive that this resolution is little else than a sort 
 of previous question in disguise ; it contains no pledge against the 
 future introduction of slave-grown sugar— it is transitory and epheme- 
 ral ; it provides a ready retreat fi-om the high ground which the new, 
 I should rather say, the novel associates of my riglit honourable friend 
 in the cause of freedom, have so vauntingly taken iip, and while it 
 states, that the House of Commons is not prcparotl (no — not yet pre- 
 pared) to recognise the introduction of slave-grown sugar, it intimates 
 that under happier auspices, through that preparatory process, the 
 House of Commons may be prevailed upon to pass. How little 
 does this resolution, dexterous, adroit, and almost crafty, accord with 
 the frank, the ingenuous, and, in the cause of virtue, the ardent and 
 impassioned character of my riglit honourable friend. If any doubt 
 could be entertained regarding the object and the eil'ect of such a re- 
 solution, it would be removed by the speech of the noble lord, the 
 member for North Lancashire, who declared again and again, that for 
 the present a great experiment ought not to be disturbed. Surely this 
 ought to convince my right honourable friend, who will forgive me, I 
 feel convinced, if I am bold enough to tell him that in supporting a 
 resolution, couched in such phraseology as this is, he is almost as incon- 
 sistent as those incongruous sentimentalists l>y whom, provided it be 
 not pi'esented in a saccharine form, the produce of slave-labour is un- 
 scrupulously consumed. But fi'om personal and innocuous inconsis- 
 tencies, let me pass to the anomalies, which are incidental to our fiscal 
 system. Last year we imported upwards of 28 million pounds of slave 
 coffee, of which upwards of 14 millions were slave-grown. The noble 
 lord the member for Lancashire, struggling with this overcoming fact. 
 
THE SUGAR DUTIES. 
 
 205 
 
 suggested that to the supply of the coffee-market our colonies were 
 not adequate. The noble lord seems to think that the encouragement 
 of the slave-trade is matter of mercantile expediency, and that on the 
 price-current our philanthropy ought to depend, and our markets 
 should be opened or shut to slave-groAvn produce as they rose or fell. 
 It is quite true that Avhen the duty upon coffee was high — was 1*. Vrf. 
 per pound— the consumption was so inconsiderable that the colonies 
 supplied us with all the coffee which we required ; but when the duty 
 was lowered, the consumption increased to an extent which, Avithout 
 exaggeration, may be designated as enormous. It is Avorth A\diile to 
 look Avith some minuteness into the effect Avliich the diminution of 
 duty produced upon the importation of coffee. The folloAving table is 
 remarkable. 
 
 COFFEE TAXATION AND CONSUMPTION. 
 
 
 Quantity re- 
 
 Kate of 
 
 Net 
 revenue. 
 
 Years. 
 
 tained for home 
 consumption. 
 
 duty 
 per lb. 
 
 
 lbs. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 £ 
 
 1807 
 
 1,170,104 
 
 1 U 
 
 161,245 
 
 1812 
 
 8,118,734 
 
 7 
 
 255,184 
 
 1821 
 
 7,99.3,010 
 
 1 
 
 407,544 
 
 18.31 
 
 21,842,204 
 
 G 
 
 559,431 
 
 1840 
 
 28,723,735 
 
 6 
 
 922,862 
 
 From this table it is manifest, that by the reduction of duty an 
 enormous augmentation in the importation of coiFee was j)rrjduced. 
 In 1807, when the duty was 1*. ^d. no more than 1,170,164 pounds 
 of coffee were imported, the revenue Avas no more tlian £161,245 ; and 
 when the duty Avas reduced, the importation of coffee rose to the vast 
 amount of 28,723,735 pounds of coffee, and the revenue produced Avas 
 £922,862. I repeat, that of this vast mass of coffee, more than 1 4 million 
 pounds Avere slave-grown. But this anomaly, great as it is, is little 
 Avhen compared Avith the monstrous incongruity of receiving slave- 
 groAvn sugar in bond, of refining and exporting it, and at the same 
 time, of excluding it from the home market, where, upon its con- 
 sumption, a duty might be raised. In 1840 Ave imported upAvards of 
 eight hundred thousand hundred- Aveight of slave-grown sugar — it Avas 
 refined and exported. What revenue was raised upon it ? Not a 
 single shilling, Avhile all the expenses incidental to the bonding system 
 were incurred in its regard. By no one could such a system be sus- 
 tained, except by the noble lord the member for North Lancashire, by 
 whom an elaborate vindication of these anomalies was fearlessly un- 
 
'20G TUE SUGAR DUTIES. 
 
 dertaken. I shall not attempt to follow the noble lord through the 
 various and exceedingly irrelevant topics with which his speech was 
 made up, but I think it right to disabuse the country of any erroneous 
 impressions which, in reference to the opinions of Mr. Huskisson, the 
 noble lord laboured to produce. Tlie noble lord told us that he was a 
 disciple of Mr. Huskisson, and took upon himself to set his opinions 
 forth. Never was there a more egregious misrepresentation. After 
 hearing the noble lord, I turned to a more authorised source of informa- 
 tion — the speeches of Mr. Huskisson — and I found that, in the account 
 given of the sentiments of that illustrious man, his disciple was most 
 singularly mistaken. In the year 1830, in the montli of March, !RIr. 
 Huskisson made two speeches ; one was delivered by him on the l6th 
 of March, in a debate on the state of the country ; the other on the 
 25 th of March, upon a motion of Mr. Poulett Thompson. On the 
 iGtli of March, Mr. Huskisson said: — 
 
 " Our Corn-laws, however expedient to prevent other evils in the 
 present state of the country, are in themselves a burden and a re- 
 straint upon its manufiicturing and commercial industry. Whilst the 
 products of that industry must descend to a level of the general mai'ket 
 of the world, the producers, so far as food is concerned, are debarred 
 from that level." 
 
 But, Sii", in a subsequent but proximate debate, Mr. Huskisson ex- 
 pressed himself in a manner still more unequivocal. I shall read his 
 exact words. They are to be found in page 555 of the third volume 
 of his speeches. Those words ai'e these : — 
 
 "It was (he said) his unalterable conviction that we could not 
 uphold the Corn-laws now in existence, together with the present sys- 
 tem of taxation, and at tlio same time, increase tlio national prosperity 
 and preserve public contentment. That those laws might be repealed 
 without affecting the landed interest, whilst, at the same time, the 
 distress of the people might be relieved, he never had any doubt what- 
 ever. A general feeling prevailed, that some change must be effected, 
 and that speedily. Nor were there any individuals more thoroughly 
 persuaded of it than those who moved in the humbler walks of 
 life."* 
 
 Such was the language of Mr. Huskisson in 1830, language ex- 
 pressive of opinions very different from those which the noble lord, 
 who told us that he was his disciple (who could have conjectured it?) 
 had ascribed to him. In 1830 Mr. Huskisson had been liberated from 
 the tranmiels of the Tory party ; he had abandoned that party to 
 
 * See also Hansard, vol. 23. New Series, pp. 602, 816. 
 
THE SUGAR DUTIES. 207 
 
 which the noble lord is united now, and had thrown off the shackles 
 which the noble lord has now put on. Sir, I pass from the noble lord 
 to the monopoly which he sustains. I support what is commonly 
 called, the West-India interest. There are West-Indians, I rejoice 
 to say, who, of the mode of promoting the prosperity of our colonies, 
 entertain a just appreciation. On the 11th of February last, a meet- 
 ing was held in Trinidad of the chief proprietors and agriculturists. 
 Mr. Burnley was in the chair. He spoke as follows (I quote from a 
 Trinidad paper) : — 
 
 " I shall hail with pleasure the day when every monopoly and re- 
 striction can, advantageously for tlie rest of the empire, be done away 
 with. Thank God ! wc arc now emancipated as well as our labour- 
 ers ; and we can walk abroad, bold and erect, and claim the benefit 
 of the freest principles ; and if we are honestly and fairly allowed to 
 trade with all the world without restriction, we fear no competition 
 from any quarter in the colonial market of the mother-country ; and 
 when that is effected, the agriculture of Trinidad will successfully 
 compete with that of every other country depending upon slave- 
 labour." 
 
 These are wise and liberal opmions, but in these opinions, it is but just 
 to say, that West-Indians, in this country at least, do not generally 
 coincide. For my own part, I should be much dis])oscd to make al- 
 lowance for the feelings of the West-Indian proprietors, if they did 
 not affect sentiment, if they did not talk of slavery and of its horrors 
 (what right have they to talk of it ?) and if they contented themselves 
 with stating the circumstances which constitute the alleged hardship of 
 their case. Their case is this — their slaves were emancipated in 1833, 
 and for the loss which they sustained, they consider themselves to be 
 entitled, in the shape of exclusive privileges, to compensation. This 
 is a plain statement, and the answer is also plain — England paid a 
 ransom, which almost dazzles the imagination, and she is entitled to 
 a receipt in full. No, answers the member for Newark, whose motion 
 is insatiable, and who cries out, like the horse-leech's daughter, " More, 
 more." The member for Newark insists that the West-India planters 
 were entitled not only to twenty millions, but to countless millions 
 beyond that sum. Ho acknowledged, that since 1833, in addition to 
 the twenty millions, the West-Indians had received, at least, ten mil- 
 lions in the fox-m of a protective duty. This admission is most im- 
 portant. But the member for Newark is mistaken in sujiposing the 
 sum paid to the West-Indies, in the form of protection, to be so 
 small as ten millions, in addition to the twenty which was paid them. 
 I inquired of ray friend Mr. M'Grcgor, the Secretary of the Board 
 
208 
 
 THE SUGAR DUTIES. 
 
 of Trade, how far the member for Newark was correct, and he, who 
 is distinguished for accuracy as well as for surpassing talent, told me 
 that the West-Indies had received upwards of nineteen millions, in 
 addition to the twenty millions already paid tliem. He gave me the 
 following table : — 
 
 Years. 
 
 Quantity 
 consumed. 
 
 Difference 
 of price. 
 
 Amount of tax 
 
 or premium to 
 
 West-India 
 
 Interest. 
 
 1834 
 1835 
 1836 
 1837 
 1838 
 1839 
 1840 
 
 4,154,411 
 4,421,145 
 3,922,901 
 4,349,053 
 4,418,334 
 4,171,938 
 3,764,710 
 
 £ s. d. 
 6 2 
 6 
 13 
 13 4 
 12 5 
 
 17 1 
 
 1 7 7 
 
 £ 
 1,280,943 
 1,326,343 
 2,549,885 
 2,679,934 
 2,743,048 
 3,471,151 
 5,192,161 
 
 Total t£ 
 
 IX since abolitic 
 
 )n. . . . 
 
 . 19,243,465 
 
 The house hates vulgarities of all kinds, and of all vulgar things, 
 liates vulgar arithmetic the most ; but on this occasion some indul- 
 gence for figures ought to be manifested, and the table wliich I have 
 produced ought to be examined, when to the West-India i)lanters we 
 are invoked to extend our commiseration. But mark, these West- 
 Indians are not contented with that they have already got ; they insist 
 upon a permanent tax upon the English people. I contend. Sir, that 
 a perpetuation of monopoly was no part of the contract made with the 
 West-India planters. The noble lord the member for Lancashire, who 
 told us, that as the organ of the Whig government (the organ of the 
 Whig government ! !) he introduced the Emancipation Act, has not 
 suggested that the continuance of monopoly was any part of the con- 
 tract. If it were, upon what principle could the equalisation of the 
 duties on East and West-Indian sugar and rum have been sus- 
 tained ? When that equalisation was proposed, the unfortunate West- 
 Indians made out precisely the same case as they make out at present. 
 They told us that the West-Indies were in a state of transition, that 
 a great experiment ought not to be disturbed, that East-India 
 sugar was the produce of slave-labour, that it was produced from dates 
 at a very inferior cost. With what scorn were these expostulations 
 received by the representatives of the East-Indian interest in the House 
 of Commons ! How indignant they were at the remotest, and the most 
 delicate reference to Hill Coolies and to slaves ; and with what im- 
 
THE SUGAR DUTIES. 209 
 
 passioned force my honourable friend, the member for Beverley, de- 
 nounced the effrontery of the men, who with twenty millions in their 
 coffers, to a continuance of their monopoly had the audacity to put in 
 a claim ; but now — now, Sir, that these East-Indians have got a share 
 in the privileges against which they inveighed so vehemently : now 
 that they are embraced in the monopoly which they represented as so 
 detestable, they who have made no sacrifice, by whom no loss of any 
 kind has been sustained, whose slaves have not been emancipated ; 
 they forsooth, have the unparalleled intrepidity to turn round, and, 
 uniting themselves with those very West-Indians of Avhom they were 
 before the fierce antagonists, talk to us of the expediency of sustain- 
 ing the colonial interests, while of the interests of the people of Eng- 
 land they are utterly forgetful, and think nothing of the sacrifice 
 which an exorbitant protection, even upon their own admission, of 
 necessity involves. The resolution adverts to sacrifices : yes, much 
 has indeed been sacrificed, but you are not contented ; you require 
 that an annvial tribute shall be offered to monopoly, and to eusui'e its 
 punctual payment, you insist that, instead of recruiting the revenue 
 by a just apportionment of existing duties, new burdens shall be im- 
 posed upon the people. This proceeding will, most assuredly, be at- 
 tended with evils far greater than any which can by possibility arise 
 from reducing the duties upon sugar, fi'om introducing it into a larger 
 consumption, and thus producing that accession to the revenue which, 
 if we may judge from the parallel case of coffee, must necessarily en- 
 sue. If such consequences followed from the reduction of the duty 
 upon coffee as I have proved to have been derived from it ; from the 
 reduction of the duty upon sugar, whose admixture with coffee is in- 
 dispensable, and of which the use is so multifarious, analogous results 
 must follow. Independently of this fiscal advantage, a two-fold be- 
 nefit must accrue to the great mass of the community. In the first 
 place, we cheapen one of the necessaries of life, and in the next place 
 it is obvious that if we take more of the produce of other countries, 
 other countries must take more of the produce of our own ; to that 
 extent the manufacturers of England must be promoted, and to that 
 extent the employment of our operatives must be encouraged. To 
 their sufferings, the Tories everywhere I hope, at the hustings I am 
 sure, are alive ; but when the obvious means of alleviation are pro- 
 posed, they sacrifice the interests of that vast class of the community 
 for which so much commiseration is possessed by them, to the main- 
 tenance of that too narrow commercial system, by which, if we adhere 
 to it, consequences the most pernicious will be entailed upon us. We 
 are met upon the Continent by retaliatory tariffs. Of our discovei'ies 
 p 
 
210 THE SUGAK DUTIES. 
 
 in mechanics, of our finest and most powerful machines, of the advan- 
 tages of which we were once in the exclusive enjoyment, our foreign 
 competitors are now possessed ; to other markets, to markets in the 
 countries, in which manufactures do not exist, and in which it will be 
 our fault if they shall arise, the eyes of every British statesman ought 
 to be intently turned ; and, above all, to that splendid mart wluch is 
 opened to us, in the young and prosperous empire of Brazil. I am 
 astonished that any man should speak of our commercial relations 
 with that rapidly progressing country in the language of depreciation. 
 Before his constituents, such language would not be adopted by the 
 noble lord, the member for Liverpool ; he would not, before his 
 constituents ventm-e to insinuate that he considered the renewal of the 
 treaty with Brazil as a matter of small amount ; or if he did, and 
 looked from the hustings to the harbour of that great city which he 
 has the honour to represent, in many a noble ship, of all his falla- 
 cies he would behold the refutation. But how can we reasonably 
 expect that the Brazilians will make concessions to us, if to them we 
 refuse to make any concessions ; and if the Parliament of England is 
 not prepared (to adopt the phraseology of your resolution) to take the 
 produce of Brazil, have we not reason to apprehend that the Parlia- 
 ment of Brazil will be unprepared to take the produce of England ? 
 And, even with reference to the slave-trade, is it not likely that we 
 shall accomplish far more by treaty, enforced Jis treaties ought to be, 
 than by any fiscal regulations which it is possible to devise ? One of 
 the evils resulting from these fiscal regulations is this : — the people of 
 England are taught to rely upon them as the means of restraining the 
 slave-trade, instead of adopting the measures by which that important 
 object might be obtained. Meetings are held, harangues are delivered, 
 admirable resolutions are passed, and the work of abomination all tho 
 while goes on. Of a great and powerful country, expedients, so un- 
 availing as our differential duties have been proved to be, are unwor- 
 thy, and Avhen England stands forward in the cause of humanity, it is 
 not from the Custom-house that her weapons should be supplied. 
 Despite your differential duty, the slave-trade is infiimously prosperous 
 — the monster consumes his thousand victims a day. There is not a 
 creek upon the slave-coast in which the barks engaged in that atrocious 
 traffic do not lie in wait ; and even while I speak — while we sit in 
 coiincil here — across that ocean which Englishmen are accustomed to 
 call their own — across that ocean which has been most nobly called 
 "your home upon the deep" — how many a slave-bark, freighted with 
 woe, despite your differential duty, holds on with impunity her swift 
 and unimpeded way, while you, with the evidence, the incontrovertible 
 
THE SUGAR DUTEES. 211 
 
 evidence before you, of the futility — the utter and most scandalous 
 futility of your differential duty for the accomplishment of any one 
 purpose by wliich the interest of humanity, as distinct from those of 
 monopoly, can be promoted — ^instead of calling upon England, to put 
 forth her might, and invoking her to employ the only efficient means 
 by which this horrible traffic in our fellow-creatures can be put down, 
 expatiate upon the blessings of monopoly ; descant upon 63^., and 
 36^., and 24^., and propound resolutions for the sustainment of that 
 fiscal anomaly, by which (and you know it,) to the atrocities of the 
 slave-trade not the slightest obstacle isjpresented, while to our revenues 
 the deepest detriment is done. The embarrassments with which 
 every minister of this country, whether he be Whig or Tory, will 
 have to contend for many a day, will be augmented, by which a de- 
 privation of one of the commonest commodities of life wiU be inflicted 
 upon the lower classes, by which industry will be paralysed, the 
 employment of our suffering and pining operatives wiU be abridged, 
 our commercial relations with one of our best allies will be endangered, 
 and we shall run the risk of closing, perhaps for ever, a field of almost 
 boundless enterprise upon the commercial genius of the English 
 people. 
 
212 CORN LAWS. 
 
 CORN LAWS. 
 
 SFE£CH IN TIIE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCH 9, 1842. 
 
 I CERTAINLY am Surprised tliat the right honourable gentleman who 
 has just sat down, and who is so remarkable for perspicuity, should have 
 mistaken the observation of the noble lord (Viscount Howick,) who 
 is so remarkable for his perspicuity. The right honourable baronet 
 has misconceived what the noble lord advanced, and he seems to me 
 to have omitted that part of the speech which is most deserving of 
 attention. Among the observations of the noble lord, I was struck 
 with one which appeared to me particularly deserving of attention. 
 The noble lord designated the measure of the right honourable baro- 
 net as the precursor of ulterior measures. The noble lord stated it was 
 obvious that the right honourable baronet cannot stop here, and that 
 either he or some other minister must ultimately abandon this protec- 
 tion. To that observation no remark has been made by the right 
 honourable gentleman. Whether he agrees in that remark, or did 
 not agree, it is not for me to determine. I think that the observation 
 of the noble lord deserves the most serious consideration. The right 
 honourable baronet is about to tamper with the law which regulates 
 the price of provisions. It has been well said by Edmund Burke, in 
 his excellent thoughts on scarcity, " that to tamper with the laws 
 regulating the price of provisions, is at all times dangerous," but when 
 you do tamper with these laws — when you do more — when you do 
 yield to public opinion, you ought, at least, to see that you are acting 
 satisfactorily to some great party. You are about to take the first 
 step, and that an important step, in the course of innovation. You 
 are about to take a step which does not satisfy all parties, even on 
 your own side. The Duke of Buckingham, at least, feels a strong 
 objection to it. When that change is proposed, he, who was not in 
 the cabinet of 1839, ceased to be in the cabinet of 1842. Might he 
 venture to say, " Honi soit qui mal y pense ?" When you are about to 
 make a change which is thought material by your own supporters, it is 
 a matter of much regret and of some surprise, that you do not at once 
 that which you or some one else must do at last. You still adhere to the 
 vicious principle of the present system, of which pei-petual uncertainty 
 is the conspicuous essence. You still adhere to the sliding-scale. You 
 adhere to the principle that affords incentives, and that affords oppor- 
 tunities for fraudulent combinations. You still adhere to the principle 
 
CORN LAWS. 213 
 
 wliicli substitutes the spirit of rash adventure for the spirit of legitimate 
 commercial speculation. You apply the principle of a sliding-scale to 
 corn alone — ^you apply it to no other article of human food. Colonial 
 coffee and colonial sugar are protected by fixed duties. It is said that 
 the sugar duties are about to undergo'a change. It is rumoured that 
 the apprehensions which were^so lately entertained as to the indirect 
 sanction you would give to the slave-trade begin| to subside. Do you 
 mean to apply the principle of the sliding-scale to coffee and to sugar ? 
 If you did so, if you passed a law declaring that the duty upon Brazilian 
 sugar and upon Havannah sugar shall depend upon the average price 
 of East India and of West India sugar, I will ask the right honour- 
 able gentleman, the Vice-President of the Board of Trade, whose 
 peculiar care this would be, whether such a law would not inflict a 
 great practical injury on the growers of coffee and the growers of sugar 
 in the Brazils ? I do not feel surprised that the agriculturists of this 
 country do not adopt the opinions — the extreme opinions as they are 
 considered by many — of Mr. Adam Smith, and Mr. Huskisson in 
 his latter days, that the very measures intended for the protection of 
 the agricultural interests are in fact deleterious to them ; but it does 
 appear to me strange that the advice of so decided a friend of protec- 
 tion as Mr. M'CuUoch sliould not have more weight with the agricul- 
 turists. Mr. M'CuUoch says that a fluctuating scale of duty adds an 
 artificial variation to the inevitable natural variations of the seasons, 
 and inflicts as much injury upon the farmers as upon the traders. Is 
 this a sound principle ? Let us examine how the sliding-scale works 
 now, to see how it will work under the proposed changes. The sliding- 
 scale in one single year, in the year 1835, shifted thirty-five times — 
 it underwent thirty-five different changes. On the 19th of July, in 
 1838, the duty was 20*. 8d. ; on the 13th of September, the duty was 
 1*.; in the week ending October 11th, it was again 20*. 8d.; and, be- 
 fore the end of December, it again descended to 1*. In the year 1840, 
 the lowest duty was 2*. 8d. ; it remained so for one week, and in five 
 weeks afterwards it was 20*. 8d. In the year 1840, on the l7th Sep- 
 tember, it was only 1*. ; in the next week, it was 2,?. 8d. ; it rose to 
 16*. 8c?. the next week; to 20s .Sd.; and on the 14th October it 
 reached 22*. 8d. It appears to me that this system, or anything like 
 this system, must produce injury to the agriculturists, and that the 
 farmers suffer equally with other classes, from that which they believe 
 to be their safeguard. But, says the right honourable baronet, " the 
 new plan which I propose, and the machinery which I introduce, 
 will obviate many of the objections of the present law. I introduce rests. 
 
214 COUN LAWS. 
 
 which will baffle the fraudulent working of the averages." It is true 
 that you lower the duty, but you leave a duty ranging between 20*. and 
 Is. You therefore leave ample opportunity for working the averages — 
 you leave every chance for having a glut of corn at a time when it can be 
 contemplated this long duty will arrive. It has been urged, and I admit 
 the force of the objection, that in times of scarcity it will be veiy diffi- 
 cult to maintain a fixed duty. I will meet that objection, and I will 
 answer it by a reference to Mr. M'Culloch. He says that if the ports 
 are constantly open, if there is a regular trade in corn at a fixed duty, 
 the supply would be perpetual ; and that if there be a fixed duty we 
 shall take away the chance of a great scarcity. I admit the force of 
 the objection ; but where there is a choice of evils — where we have to 
 make our election between difficulties, I would confide in a fixed duty 
 to be brought under the consideration of parliament, rather than sur- 
 render the averages to the jobbers of Mark-lane. Whatever may be 
 the opinions as to a fixed duty or the effect upon the commercial and 
 manufacturing interests of this country, there is no doubt during the 
 last four years millions of quarters of corn have been imported, and 
 yet we have no trade. Trade is barter — trade is the excliange of one 
 commodity for another. When our demand for corn is dcsultoiy, the 
 demand for our manufactures cannot be permanent. If there were a 
 free trade in corn, foreign countries would not pass laws intended to 
 exclude our manuftictures ; they would not do as they now did — they 
 would not pass retaliatory tariffs to protect their own domestic ma- 
 nufactures. It is not the agriculturists of this country, it is not the 
 independent yeoman, it is not the fixrmer who expends his capital 
 upon his land, it is not the man who dreads competition from foreign 
 markets, but it is those in possession of the secrets of our mechanism — 
 it is those who emulate us in industry and begin to rival us in skill, 
 that your corn laws afford protection. It will hardly be contended, 
 that the countries from which during the last four years we have 
 drawn our supplies of corn, have taken the manufactures of this 
 country in return in anything like a commensurate quantity. It ap- 
 pears, from a return laid upon the table of the house, that the number 
 of English vessels which entei*ed the Baltic in ballast in the year 1839 
 was 1100 — not laden with your manufactures, but wholly in ballast. 
 Look at the returns also before the house of the number of vessels 
 which entered the port of Dantzic in 1 838, distinguishing those which 
 were laden and those in ballast. In 1838 there were 413 English ves- 
 sels entering the port of Dantzic in ballast ; and in the same year 417 
 vessels left the port of Dantzic laden with corn. This proves undeni- 
 
CORN LAWS. 215 
 
 ably that when you now take corn from foreign countries your own 
 manufactures are not taken in return. Wliat effect has this system 
 upon your currency — upon that metallic currency which the right ho- 
 nourable gentleman had established, and over which he ought to watch 
 with peculiar care ? It seems to me to be impossible to establish a 
 metallic currency, and to continue a system of laws such as those which 
 exist. Corn must be paid for in bullion ; the exchange is against us ; 
 the circulation is checked, and the inevitable result is a panic. I beg 
 to call the attention of the house to the language of Mr. Huskisson in 
 1821, with reference to this view of the subject. In the famous re- 
 port of 1 82 1 , the words which I shall read were applied by him to the 
 existing system of corn laws — that of 1815. The words of Mr. Hus- 
 kisson are as applicable to the existing system of the right honourable 
 baronet as if they were yesterday specifically composed to meet it. 
 These are the words of Mr. Huskisson : — 
 
 " The inconvenient operation of the present corn laws, which ap- 
 pears to be less the consequence of the foreign corn brought into the 
 country on the average of years than the manner in which the grain 
 is introduced, is not confined to great fluctuation in price, and conse- 
 quent embarrassment both to the grower and consumer, for the occa 
 eional prohibition has also a direct tendency to contract the extent of 
 our commercial dealings with other states, and to excite in the rulers 
 of those states a spirit of permanent exclusion against the manufac- 
 tures of this country. In this conflict, the exclusion is injurious to 
 both. The two parties, however, are not upon an equal footing. On 
 our part, the prohibition must yield to the wants of the people ; on 
 the otJier side, there is no such overruling necessity, and inasmuch as 
 the reciprocity of demand is the foundation of all means of payment, a 
 large and sudden influx of corn might, under these circumstances, 
 create a temporary derangement in the course of exchange, the effect 
 of which, after the resvunption of cash payments, might lead to a drain 
 of specie from the bank, the contraction of the circulation, a panic 
 among the public banks, and a public dearth, as experienced in for- 
 mer years of scarcity." 
 
 That was written by Mr. Huskisson in 1821, two years after the 
 bill was passed which is rendered memorable by the association with 
 it of the name of the right honourable baronet at the head of her ma- 
 jesty's government. I am not one of those who are disposed to quarrel 
 with the measure of the right honourable baronet. I think that it 
 evidenced the possession of great moral courage in the right honourable 
 baronet to effect and carry out such a measure. But it is said, do not 
 
21C coaN 1.AWS. 
 
 make such a change in the relation of the agriculturist of this country 
 as the alteration of the corn law would effect ; do not rush upon a step 
 which will occasion such a revolution in the position of the property of 
 the agricultural interests of England. But, by the measure of 1819, 
 the right honourable baronet changed every contract in the kingdom — 
 he altered the relation of landlord and tenant, the relation of debtor 
 and creditor, and of every class in the country ; he instituted a new 
 order of things, to the results of which, the celebrated and learned 
 author of " Corn and Currency" has so well alluded. But the right 
 honourable baronet was not then a minister of the crown ; his solicitude 
 for the interests of his country were unbiassed by any anxiety for the 
 maintenance of his party. I wish he could now act with the same 
 moral intrepidity, and heedless of all intimations given to him in ano- 
 ther place, and would make the amendment which the country de- 
 mands, in a spirit worthy of an Englishman, and would aiford relief to 
 the operatives of the country more effectual than any to be found in 
 an acknowledgment, however eloquent, of their wretchedness, or in 
 any unprofitable commiseration. It is said that the corn laws are not 
 connected with the distress of the country — the existence of any dis- 
 tress is denied. The existence of it has been proved, and now I come 
 to this part of the case. For my own part, when I find the corn laws 
 affect the trade of this country — when I find the corn laws affect the 
 manufactures of this country — the employment of the people — I find 
 in them an adequate cause of that public distress which exists, and an 
 adequate cause of that legitimate effect is, I think, fairly ascertained. 
 If something effectual is not done in parliament — in a parliament in 
 which the landed interests are said to have such an influence — I am 
 afraid that the people of this country will be disposed to turn with i-e- 
 sentful importunity from the mere expression of our sympathy, and 
 will adopt a more stringent mode of proceeding ; and as they have been 
 led to believe that the poor law was not enacted from any profound 
 solicitude for the poor, so they will think that the corn laws are re- 
 tained from an exclusive regard to the feelings and interests of the rich. 
 And I must say that it would be hard indeed for this house to turn 
 from the supplications for relief; it would be hard if, while we by our 
 legislation affect the employment of the people, and induce the ope- 
 ratives of this country to ask for an asylum in those domiciles of woe 
 which are provided for them, we refuse to afford them the means of 
 supporting themselves in a manner becoming their ancient character 
 and position. If charity is to be withheld, let not work, at all events, 
 be refused. The people of England do not ask for charity, they do not 
 
CORN LAWS. 217 
 
 go on their knees to ask any eleemosynary contributions ; they ask for 
 bread to produce work ; for work to produce bread ; they ask not for 
 cheap bread indeed, but for more — they ask for the means of earning 
 bread, whether it be cheap or costly. They call on us to strike off those 
 fetters which cramp the industry of the country, and in doing so they 
 •wish us to consult, not merely their interest, but our own. I en- 
 tirely agree in the sentiments which I have heard expressed by an 
 honourable and learned member to-night, that the agricultural and 
 commercial interests of the country are not distinct. So far from 
 their being distinct — so far from their being at variance and conflic- 
 ting with each other, they are the same. Trade depends upon agricul- 
 ture, agriculture depends upon trade. I am sure my honourable friend 
 the member for Stockport, when he looks upon the splendid picture 
 which the rural scenery of England presents, would draw from its 
 contemplation one of the highest pleasures. I am sure the right ho- 
 nourable gentleman the member for Kent, a native English gentleman, 
 must see in the very smoke with which oiu* cities are enveloped from 
 their furnaces, intimations of the means by which the agricultural 
 interest is advanced, and the greatness of the country is achieved. 
 No, Sir, the commercial and agricultural interests of England are not 
 distinct. But if they were — if it was necessary to make a distinction 
 between them — if in giving sustainment to both it is necessary to make 
 a sacrifice of either, I should be disposed to say that the maintenance 
 of the commerce of England ought, in the mind of every Englishman 
 deserving the name, to be the object of paramount consideration. It is 
 not, after all, by agriculture that this country is so distinguished ; for 
 what is this but a speck upon the scene ? It is not to agriculture — 
 it is not to the extent or fertility of our soil — it is not to any rare skill in 
 calling forth the products of the earth. No ; it is the spirit of com- 
 mercial enterprise by which Englishmen are distinguished from any 
 other nation on the face of the earth. It is the indomitable perseve- 
 rance in the glorious pursuit of our boundless traffic, by which every 
 difficulty has been overcome, and every obstacle sunnounted. It is to 
 tlie unwearied energies of the country, to its amazing industry, to its 
 untiring zeal, to the marvellous skill with which it has filled the earth 
 with the products of its labour — it is this commerce, which has ex- 
 tended its influence to the boundaries of the earth — it is to these 
 glorious causes that England is indebted for its prominence among the 
 nations of the earth. Against our trade it was that our mighty adver- 
 sary directed his principal attempts. He, however, failed. Let us 
 have a care lest we effect by our policy what Napoleon Avas unable to 
 
218 'COUN LAWS. 
 
 accomplish ; let us have a care lest by an obstinate adherence to a 
 system which so many enlightened men, men not more enlightened 
 than impartial, have condemned as the source of so much mischief; 
 which has already produced so much calamity, and threatens us with, 
 perhaps, stiU greater injury ; which contracts our commerce, which 
 exposes our monetary system to perpetual disturbance, which reduces 
 our operatives to a state of the most unhappy destitution ; let us, too, 
 have a care lest, by a pernicious adherence to that fatal system, we do 
 not entail evils upon our country for which your talents, if you were 
 the brightest, your wisdom if you were the wisest, and your virtues if 
 you were the most high-minded minister to whom the care of England 
 was ever entrusted, would be unable to find a cure. 
 
INCOME TAX. 219 
 
 INCOME TAX. 
 
 SPEECH ON THE INCOME TAX, APRU. 8, 1842. 
 
 If for the sustainment of the honour and the interests of England an 
 income tax were required, I make no doubt that the people of this 
 country would at once submit to it, and follow with promptitude, the 
 example which our gracious Sovereign has spontaneously and magna- 
 nimously given ; but of this generous example, the minister should be 
 slow to take advantage, and should avoid with peculiar care, any ex- 
 aggerated description of the perils or of the embarrassments of the 
 country, in order to produce an acquiescence in a tax of all others the 
 most convenient to the minister, but the most harassing and vexatious 
 to the people. Does the condition of England, does the state of her 
 finances, do existing difficulties, do impending perils, make the im- 
 position of a tax so odious, matter of inevitable need ? That ques- 
 tion will be put ere many months shall have passed, by that portion of 
 the community in which political power is deposited, and upon the an- 
 swer to that question, the stability of the government will depend, when 
 the merits of the minister shall be tried by some better test than the 
 acclamations of heated partisans, and shall be determined by the re- 
 sults to which his legislation will conduct us. The right honourable 
 baronet has little to apprehend, during the passage of his bill through 
 the parliament. He told us, that he was ready to take the course 
 which he had adopted in 1835. But I cannot help thinking that his 
 magnanimity is misplaced ; his public virtue will not be put to a trial 
 80 severe. Although it may seem paradoxical to say so, his difficul- 
 ties will be the result of his success, and his will be one of those 
 victories, which it requires less ability to win than to follow up. When 
 the income-tax shall have been in actual operation — when a theory in 
 the parliament shall have become a burden upon the people — when 
 schedule D shall have been made fearfully intelligible — when this tax 
 shall have been charged, to use a phrase familiar in debates on the 
 Irish Registration Bill, upon the " beneficial interest" which a man 
 has in all his earnings, and no allowance shall have been made as 
 against this impost, for food, for fire, for raiment, for the roof over 
 an English tradesman's head — when the privacy of so many English- 
 men shall have been invaded by the inquisitors, who are to be at- 
 tached to your new fiscal tribunal- — ^when a scrutiny shall have been 
 instituted into the affiiirs of every man, whom your commissioners, 
 original, additional or special, shall conjecture to have gained £150 
 
220 INCOME TAX. 
 
 in a single year — when all the pain and all the humiliation incidental 
 to this tax shall have been felt, then, I feel persuaded that the people 
 of this country will inquire whether this tax would not have been 
 avoided, or whether the right honourable baronet did not take advan- 
 tage of a majority, hot from the struggle of recent election, to inflict 
 a tax, for which neither the present condition, nor the future prospects 
 of England, afforded a justification. I have little doubt, that the people 
 of England will think that the right honourable baronet was mistaken 
 in his view of the public embarrassments, that he over-rated the exi- 
 gencies of the hour, and that for the imposition of a tax so unjust, so 
 inquisitorial and so immoral, he should have forfeited the confidence of 
 the country. It is alleged by the right honourable baronet, that an 
 income tax is indispensable for the purpose of repairing a two-fold de- 
 ficiency — that which already exists, and that which a great commer- 
 cial experiment will involve. To create an additional deficiency in 
 order to repair it by an income tax, to inflict a new wound in order to 
 apply a favourite cure, is more than tentative, and if my right honour- 
 able friend, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, had made a propo- 
 sition like this, he would have been regarded as an empiric of the 
 most adventurous kind. But it is the good fortune of the riglit lio- 
 nourable baronet, that his supporters entertain in his regard that sort 
 of confidence, which Waller has happily described in his celebrated 
 address to a great pi'ojector : — ( 
 
 " Still as you rise, tlie state, exalted too. 
 Feels no disorder when 'tis clianged by you." 
 
 I am one of those, however, Avho do not tliink that the experiment 
 of the right honourable baronet is of such value, that lor the sake of 
 indulging him in it, the country should submit to the calamity of an 
 income tax. The tarifi', by which the deficiency of £1,200,000 is to 
 be at once created, is not such a masterpiece, as to induce us to ac- 
 quiesce in such an imposition as he declares to be necessary for his 
 great undertaking. He begins by sacrificing £600,000 of the timber 
 duties. Why should he abolish the duties on Canadian timber ? Sir 
 Henry Parnell, whose authority he quotes, and for whom he enter- 
 tains great respect, ever since his celebrated motion on the civil-list 
 in 1830, does not suggest that the duties on Canadian timber should 
 be given up. Mr. M'Gregor, the Secretary to the Board of Trade, 
 a man of great talent, knowledge, and experience, whose evidence 
 was so important before the Import Duty Committee ; who resided a 
 considerable time in Canada, and who has written a valuable work on 
 the subject, does not recommend that the duty on Canadian timber 
 
INCOME TAX. 
 
 221 
 
 should be wholly relinquished, but that it should be reduced from 
 lOs. to 7*. 6d, It is known to every body, that there is a species of 
 Canadian timber, which we cannot dispense with, yellow pine for ex- 
 ample, which is employed for a variety of purposes, to which Baltic 
 timber is not applicable. It must come into this country, and to re- 
 linquish the revenue that would be derived from it, is a most impru- 
 dent proceeding. The course adopted with regard to the sugar duties is 
 most censurable. When the enormous sum of £20,000,000 was given 
 to the West-India planters, there was no stipulation that their mono- 
 poly should be preserved, and accordingly the duties on East-India and 
 West-India sugar were soon after equalised. The duties on East- 
 India and West- India rum were recently placed on a level. The 
 present Chancellor of the Exchequer, the champion of the West- 
 India interest, expostulated in vain. His eloquence appears to be 
 more influential in the cabinet, than it was last year in the House of 
 Commons. As long as there existed an inequality of duty in East- 
 India and West-India produce, the East and West Indians were strong 
 antagonists; but the duties having been equalised, they formed a 
 junction in favour of monopoly ; the government here entered into 
 their views, and have consulted their interests at the expense of the 
 whole British community. The Import Duties Committee entered into 
 a very minute and most important consideration of the effects that 
 would follow from a reduction of the duties on foreign sugar. Those 
 duties are enormous ; they amount to the sum of 63*. per cwt., while 
 the duty on colonial sugar is only 24*. It was proved before the Im- 
 port Duty Committee, by witnesses, whose judgment is unimpeachable, 
 that as the reduction of the duty on coffee produced a great increase of 
 consumption and of revenue, the reduction of the duty on sugar 
 would have the same effect ; that to cheapen one of the necessaries of 
 life would be of essential utility to the humbler classes ; that sugar 
 would be employed in various ways in which on account of its cost, it 
 is not now used ; that our commercial relations with the Brazils would 
 be most advantageously extended and confirmed; and that the demand 
 for our manufactures would be considerably increased, and that an im- 
 pulse would be given to the operative industry of the country. Mr. 
 M'Gregor stated, that the revenue might be increased by so large a 
 sum as £3,000,000, by a judicious alteration of the sugar duties. To 
 that alteration the right honourable baronet prefers an income tax; 
 and, among other objections to a change in the sugar duties, mforms 
 us that he does not desire to give an impulse to slave labour. Yet, 
 by a strange contradiction, he reduces the duty on foreign coffee, the 
 produce of slave labour, and he permits Brazilian and Cuba sugar to 
 
222 INCOME TAX. 
 
 be refined in England, and to be exported for consumption in those 
 very colonies in which slavery has been suppressed. His tariiF is in 
 these particulars most essentially imperfect. In the case of such a 
 tariff, the evils of an income tax ought not to be inflicted, and if any 
 substantial argument can be adduced in favour of so odious a measure, 
 it is in the existing deficiency that we must endeavour to discover it. 
 That a deficiency exists must be admitted and deplored, but those who 
 are disposed to pronounce an unmeasured censure upon the Whig go- 
 vernment, as the occasion of that deficiency, ought to bear in mind, 
 that from 1830 to 1836, the Whigs reduced taxes to the amount of 
 £6,000,000, and that notwithstanding that great reduction, there was 
 a surplus of revenue in that time of upwards of £6,000,000, so that 
 no actual augmentation of the national debt has taken place under the 
 Whig ministry. It was imagined, that the Tories had reduced the 
 taxes to such an extent, before the accession of the Whigs, that no 
 opportunity would be afforded to their successors of diminishing the 
 public burdens. I am very far from denying that the Tories deserve 
 great praise for having, independently of the income tax, abolished 
 seventeen or eighteen millions of other taxes, but it seems extraordi- 
 nary that when his predecessors began by repealing the income tax, 
 and then proceeded to remit other taxes to a vast amount, the right 
 honourable baronet should invert the order of proceeding, and as if 
 the income tax were of all taxes the least onerous, the most popular 
 and the most just, he should make it the object of predilection, and 
 select it as the basis of his whole system of finance. What is the 
 history of this income tax, which the right honourable baronet prefers 
 to every other impost ? It was proposed by Mr. Pitt, in whose gi- 
 gantic footsteps the right honourable baronet, so far as taxation is con- 
 cerned, seems disposed to tread, in the midst of a great emei'gency. — 
 The rights, liberties, institutions of England — the existence, the life 
 of England, were at stake. But Mr. Pitt did not, in enforcing the 
 necessity of having recourse to an income tax, deliver a speech so 
 elaborate as the right honourable gentleman to the patriotism of Eng- 
 lishmen, he did not address any enthusiastic adjunction. No Avonder 
 the funds at fifty-two, the mutiny at the Nore, a rebellion in Ireland, 
 disaster abroad, treason at home, the armies of the French republic 
 every where victorious — these topics did not require any eloquence to 
 set them off. Accordingly the income tax was adopted in 1798 with- 
 out a dissentient voice, but four years after, as soon as the peace of 
 Amiens had been concluded, Mr. Addington went down to the House 
 of Commons, and declared that, as the income tax was a war tax, and 
 ought to be reserved for the greatest emergencies, it gave him the ut- 
 
INCOME TAX. 223 
 
 most satisfaction to be able to announce that it should be forthwith re- 
 pealed. But Sir Francis Burdett was not contented with this intima- 
 tion, for on the 12th of April, in the same year, he said, that he was 
 not satisfied that that tax should merely be repealed, but that some 
 declaration should be placed on the records of parliament with respect 
 to it, that should ever afterwards stigmatise it as an infamous measure. 
 The lionourable baronet added, 
 
 " The income tax has created an inquisitorial power of the most 
 partial, offensive, and cruel nature. The whole transactions of a life 
 may be inquired into, family affairs laid open, and an Englishman, like 
 a culprit, summoned to attend commissioners, compelled to wait like 
 a lacquey in their anti-chamber from day to day until they are ready 
 to institute their inquisition into his property ; put to his oath, after 
 all perhaps disbelieved, surcharged, and stigmatised as perjured, 
 without any redress from, or appeal to a jury of his country. And it 
 is worth remarking, too, that a little before the introduction of this 
 unprincipled scheme of plunder, the law of perjury was altered, and 
 the punislunent made transportation to Botany Bay. Sir, the repeal 
 of this tax is not a sufficient remedy for its infamy ; its principle must 
 be stigmatised and branded." 
 
 I do not quote tliis language because I attach any particular value to 
 tlie opinions of the honourable baronet, but because this language is 
 expressive of the public sentiment in 1 802, of which at that time the 
 honoiu'able baronet was a vindicator. Hostilities having been re- 
 commenced, it became necessary to resort again to this calamitous im- 
 post. Disaster followed upon disaster, and in 1806, when, in the 
 battle of Austerlitz, Austria liad been struck down, when Prussia and 
 Russia had been humbled to the dust, when to the progress of the 
 great conqueror no obstacle seemed to be interposed — let the condition 
 of England in IBOG and in 1842 be compared — it became necessary to 
 exact the income tax with still greater rigour, and that machinery was 
 framed which the right honourable baronet has selected as his model. 
 The right honourable baronet has adverted to some of the provisions 
 in the biU introduced by Lord Henry Petty, but he omitted any re- 
 ference to the concluding, and, in my mind, conclusive clause : — 
 
 " And be it further enacted, that this act shall commence and take 
 effect from and after the 5th day of April, 1806, and, together with 
 the duties therein contained, shall continue in force during the present 
 war, and until the 6th day of April next after the ratification of a 
 definitive treaty of peace, and no longer." 
 
 Dm-ing ten years England had ample experience of the fearful evils 
 of this most obnoxious impost — of those evils the right honourable 
 
224 INCOME TAX. 
 
 baronet spoke somewhat lightly ; and such language was employed in 
 reference to tliis tax, that it seems sufficiently clear that if once the 
 blister is applied it will become perpetual, and the more it draws the 
 more closely it will adhere. We have been told that there is no tax, 
 indeed, which is not attended with inconvenience ; that no fair man 
 can reasonably object to a disclosure of liis circumstances, and that 
 the people of this country are too moral to yield to the pernicious in- 
 fluences with whicli it is supposed tliat an income taX will be attended. 
 With such showy plausibilities is the medicament, the bitter medica- 
 ment, gilded by the adroit experimentalist by whom it is compounded. 
 The impressions connected with the income tax are not so vivid as 
 they were twenty-six years ago ; but there remains on record, and set 
 forth in the history of parliament, sufficient evidence to prove with 
 what feelings of deep loathing the income tax was regarded by the 
 great mass of the English people. Is it mere imagination to suggest 
 that this tax is unjust, inquisitorial, and immoral ? Did it not, while 
 in operation, teem with evil ? Was it not fertile of falsehood and of 
 fraud ? Was not the scrutiny which is inseparable from it an object of 
 execration, and through the length and breadth of the land was not a 
 cry raised for its repeal, as if it were one of the greatest calamities 
 which could be inflicted on the country? Are the statements set forth 
 in the remarkable petition of the bankers, merchants, and traders of 
 London, in 1816, against this tax, mere invention ? That petition 
 was presented by Sir William Curtis, a man devoted to the Tory 
 party, but who denounced the income tax, and said that it was a 
 monstrous breach of faith to continue it after the war had ceased. 
 Sir James Shaw stated that he had attended the meeting, at which 
 22,000 of the citizens of London had assembled, and that the income 
 tax had been unanimously reprobated, Mr. Baring, the greatest mer- 
 chant in the greatest mercantile country in the world (you have lately 
 given evidence of your reliance on his judgment and his sagacity), 
 concurred in the unqualified condemnation of the income tax. Mr. 
 Wilberforce, who had the morals of England so much at heart, pro- 
 nounced a strong censure on this baneful impost. But in reading the 
 speeches delivered in 1816, against the income tax, I was not struck 
 by any one of them more than by that of a man well acquainted with 
 the interests of all classes of Englishmen, and to whom the right 
 honourable baronet must look back with a feeling of affectionate venera- 
 tion — I allude to the late Sir Robert Peel. He said that it was utterly 
 absurd to imagine that the income tax, which pressed upon the middle 
 classes, did not affect the humbler classes of the community; and headded, 
 that an income tax, in his judgment, was the very worst — ay, the 
 
INCOME TAX. 225. 
 
 very worst, Avhicli could be proposed. Such were the men by whom the 
 continuance of the income tax was opposed. By whom was it sup- 
 ported ? By Mr. Vansittart and Lord Castlereagh. But Lord Castle- 
 rcagh had a far more powerful case than the right honourable baronet. 
 England had borrowed one hundred millions in the two preceding 
 years ; the repeal of the income tax would necessitate a loan of twelve 
 millions for the then current year, and eight millions after. The 
 country had not recovered from the fearful struggle from which it had 
 come exhausted and breathless — the effects of the war had not passed 
 away, and imder these circumstances Lord Castlereagh appealed to 
 the country, to make a sacrifice for two years longer, and to make 
 one last eflbrt for the sustainnient of the public credit. To his invo- 
 cation the House of Commons were insensible, and it will be strange 
 indeed, if in a reformed parliament — in a parliament whose reform he 
 to the last opi)osed — tlio member for Tamworth sliould acliieve that 
 wjiicli in an unreformcd parliament, with all his influence and all his 
 plausibility, Lord Castlereagh was not able to accomplish. The mo- 
 tion for a continuance of the income tax was lost by a majority of 
 thirty-seven. It was repealed, and in the succeeding years, uj) to the 
 present period — independently of the income tax — twenty-three mil- 
 lions of taxes were remitted. In tliat enormous mass cannot the right 
 honourable baronet find some means of recruiting the finances of liis 
 country, without resorting to so fatal an expedient ? He does not 
 choose, it is said, to renew those taxes which Avould press upon the 
 comforts of the poor, whose " ignorant impatience of taxation" it is no 
 longer judicious to provoke. It is almost unnecessary to suggest that, 
 as the late Sir llobert Peel observed, tlie tax which presses upon the 
 middle classes must aU'ect all those below them ; but how does the 
 right honourable baronet reconcile with his sympathy for the poor tlic 
 maintenance of the great colonial interests, while so many thousands 
 of poor operatives, cutters of corks, makers of shoes, gloves, bonnets, 
 are sacrificed to the genius of free trade with so relentless a rigour ? 
 Let the interests of the poor be consulted, but by some means less in- 
 equitable than an income tax. AVhat can be more unjust than to lay 
 the same tax upon the intellect of one man, and upon tlie acres of 
 another ? Look at the proprietor of great territorial })ossessions, en- 
 compassed with every advantage by which existence can be cheered, 
 and life can be prolonged, in the daily enjoyment of the most health- 
 ful exercise, free from all mental pain, and exempt from every dis- 
 comfort, excepting that which arises (to use a phrase of Edmund 
 Burke) "from the laborious lassitude of having nothing to do," secure 
 of the permanent retention of his estates, and of transmitting to his 
 Q 
 
'226 INCOME TAX. 
 
 progeny the splendid mansion and extensive domains, which through 
 a long succession have come down to him. Turn from him to the 
 professional man, who is engaged from morning till night, and from 
 night almost till the break of day, in the exhausting occupations from 
 which hia precarious subsistence is derived ; mark, not only the toil, 
 the incessant toil which it is his destiny to suifer, but the wear and 
 tear of the feelings and of the faculties which he must needs undergo, 
 the despondency, the faintness of heart which at the approach of the 
 slightest ailment must come upon him, the sense of insecurity by which 
 he must perpetually be haunted, the apprehension, the consuming 
 solicitude that must beset him, lest by the gradual decay of his facul- 
 ties, or the sudden loss of health, he may be deprived of the means of 
 earning his livelihood, and those who are inestimably dearer to him 
 than himself, may be reduced to destitution. Look, I say, at these 
 two men, of whom I liave presented to you no exaggerated deline- 
 ation, and then do you — you, who are yourselves the inheritors of 
 large possessions — you, who are born to affluence — you, who havo 
 never known a care of to-morrow — do you " who live at home at 
 ease," and know so little of dangers and the storms of adversity — do 
 you, I say, declare whether it be just, whether it be fair, whether it 
 be humane, that upon both these men, and in the same proportion, the 
 same impost should be inflicted. Shall we levy the same contribution 
 on a man with £10,000 a-year, and upon officers in the army and 
 navy, poor clergymen who endeavour to educate their children as the 
 children of gentlemen should be brought up, widows with misera- 
 ble jointures, tradesmen, artisans, small retailers who eke out a sub- 
 sistence fi'om the petty business to which, for sixteen or seventeen 
 hours out of the four-and-tweniy, they are devoted ? Is it right to 
 tax them as you do the great patricians of the land, and to force them 
 to discover upon oath what perhaps it most deeply concerns their just 
 and legitimate pride that they should conceal ? What can be more 
 fearful, more humiliating, tlian to make a confession of adversity — to let 
 a set of heartless functionaries into the secrets of calamity, and to lay 
 misfortune bare? The commissioners are empowered to examine upon 
 oath, and to repudiate the testimony which a man gives in his own 
 favour. To what immoral results must this practice lead ? It has 
 been suggested, that under our existing system, oaths must frequently 
 be administered, and that there is a good deal of swearing in the Ex- 
 cise. True ; but is it judicious to extend through every ramification 
 of society the spirit of the Excise, and to get up a struggle between 
 the interests and the conscience of every man who is to be charged 
 with this baneful impost? The people of England are moral, but 
 
INCOMK TAX. 227 
 
 they have cause to pray, that into temptation they may not be led. This 
 tax is an immoral one ; and, as I have heard in this house, when the 
 rights and franchises of my countrymen were in question, a vehement 
 denunciation against " viUanous perjury," I trust that to the Irish 
 hustings your abhorrence of perjury will not be confined ; that to its 
 perpetration you will not supply incentives ; that as you are not, I 
 hope, Pharisees in religion, you will not prove remorseless Publicans 
 in finance ; and that you will not send forth a band of tax-gatherers 
 through the kingdom, and arm them with the Gospel, that they may 
 put the conscience of every honest man to the question ; while to 
 every prevaricator, every shuffler, every equivocator, every perjurer, 
 an itrq>tniiry, j)roportioned to his utter destitution of all principle, is 
 scandalously secured. I am not in speaking thus, guilty of any 
 the least exaggeration of the evils of the income tax, for I find' a 
 warrant for every word that I have uttered in the reiterated state- 
 ments contained in hundreds of petitions which in 1816 were 
 piled upon the table of the House of Commons, and of these state- 
 ments no contradiction was ever yet attempted. The evils of the 
 income tax are so monstrous, that it is almost impossible to heighten 
 them — tliey set liyberbole at defiance. But, at all events, of no ex- 
 ftggeration could any man in inveighing against the evils of the income 
 tax be possibly guilty, comparable to the exaggeration into which the 
 right honourable baronet allowed himself to be betrayed, when he 
 indulged in a description so eloquent, but so highly colouredj, of the 
 disasters of his country. Remarkable as his speech was for a surplus 
 of ability, it was not more conspicuous for talent than for the very 
 exaggerated terms in which he permitted himself to describe the diffi- 
 culties and dangers of England. If, Sir, at the close of that speech, 
 some one, who had lived in sequestration from the world, and for the 
 last five or six years had not heard of the events which have passed 
 within that period, had chanced to have entered this house, he would, 
 I think, have been tempted to exclaim — appalled by the right honour- 
 able baronet's magnificent peroration — " Good God, what has hap- 
 pened ! Is England brought to the verge of ruin ? Has one greater 
 than Napoleon — of whom Napoleon was but the precursor — appeared ? 
 Is the world in arms against England ? Have her fleets been sunk in 
 tlie ocean, and, with Wellington at their head, have those legions that 
 were once deemed invincible, at last given way ?" What would be 
 his surprise at hearing that the repose of Europe was undisturbed, 
 that her Majesty had declared that she continued to receive assurances 
 of the most friendly dispositions from all princes and states, that all 
 the great powers had signed a Common treaty for the preservation of 
 
228 INCOME TAX. 
 
 the dominions of the Porte, and for the maintenance of peace ; and 
 that not very long ago another right honourable baronet, the Secretary 
 for the Home Department, had taken upon himself to state, as evi- 
 dence of the influence of a Conservative government in promoting 
 peace, that the French minister had agreed to reduce the navy of 
 France, and that wherever our eyes were turned prospects of cloud- 
 less felicity were disclosed. What ! when a purpose is to be gained, 
 shall one minister announce, that under Tory auspices, the peace of 
 Europe is secure ; and when money is to be got, is another minister, 
 or rather the master of the ministers, to talk of the cannon, whose 
 sound has not yet reached our ears, and to strike terror into the heart 
 of the country with vague and appalling intimations ! Contrast the 
 speech of the right honourable baronet on the income tax with that 
 which he delivered on the corn laws. The distresses of the country 
 were then, forsooth, transitory and evanescent — they arose from bad 
 harvests, and the temporary diiUculties of America ; and in the re- 
 sources of England, in her energy and elastic power, his confidence 
 was unabated. I concur with him, and, thank God, that we are not 
 come to such a pass, that the right honourable baronet is justified in 
 insisting upon the adoption of an impost, which liitherto (except in 
 the midst of the most disastrous warfare) no minister of England, ex- 
 cept himself, has had the boldness to propose — which is fraught with 
 such multifarious mischiefs, that the instant her great adversary had 
 been subdued, England declared that she would no longer bear it — 
 which, in its working, is admitted by its advocates to be most cruelly 
 unjust — which establishes an inquisition almost as abominable as a re- 
 ligious one — which multiplies oaths — makes as familiar as mere house- 
 hold words that awful attestation by which, as we speak the truth, we 
 call on. God to help us — converts the Gospel into a mere implement of 
 finance — prostitutes to purposes the 'most villifying that sacred book, 
 which it is your boast that beyond all Christian nations you hold in 
 reverence — which awards a premium to falsehood, and inflicts a pe- 
 nalty on truth — from which honesty cannot escape, and by which 
 fraud cannot be caught, and which, of all the imposts which it is pos- 
 sible for a perverse ingenuity to devise, is the most pi-ejudicial to the 
 interests, offensive to the feelings, abhorrent to the religious senti- 
 ments, and revolting to the moral sense of the English people. 
 
J'ACTOllY UIM.. 221) 
 
 FACTORY BILL. 
 
 SPEECU IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE EDUCATION CLAUSE, 
 
 MAY 18, 1843. 
 
 The Roman Catholic population of this country is already so con- 
 siderable, the Irish immigration into the factory districts is so great, 
 that being a member of that Church, to which there exists in this 
 country a tendency to revert, I think myself not unauthorised to take 
 part in a discussion, with which tlie merits of the Factory Bill arc so 
 intimately connected. I frankly acknowledge, that considering the 
 dillicullica witli which the government have to contend in reference to 
 all questions relating to the Roman Catliolic religion, a concession by 
 no means unimportant has been made to us. It is not rendered im- 
 perative on Catholic children to read and to learn the authorised ver- 
 sion of the Scriptures, as we entertain the opinion that the sacred 
 writings ought not to be used as a school book, that the rudiments of 
 literature ought not to be taught through its intervention, that an ir- 
 reverent familiarity witli holy writ may lead to its degradation ; 
 that the perusal of the Bible, unaccompanied with that interpretation 
 which oTir Church lias from the earliest foundation of Christianity, as 
 we conceive, put upon passages which are either obscure or doubtful, 
 is not judicious, and that the unqualified exercise of the right of 
 private judgment must conduce to error ; as we hold besides, that facts 
 are recorded in the history of an exceedingly carnal people, which it 
 can answer no useful purpose to bring within the cognizance of child- 
 hood, and from which modesty should instinctively turn away — these, 
 I say, being our sentiments upon a question of much controversy, 
 thougli differing from our view, you have been sufficiently just to 
 make allowance for what you consider to be our mistake in this regard; 
 and notwithstanding that in this country there prevails a very opposite 
 opinion, although it has been made a point of Protestant honour, that 
 without distinction of age, of sex, or circumstance, the sacred writings 
 shall every where, and by every body, be indiscriminately perused, 
 you have taken our conscientious difficulties into account, and have 
 not insisted that against the will of Roman Catholic parents, their 
 children shall be subjected to the compulsory acquisition of elementary 
 knowledge through the medium of holy writ. That concession 
 having been made, I own, that bearing in mind the incalculable im- 
 portance of applying a remedy to the evils which result from the ig- 
 norance which is submitted to prevail in the factory districts, I felt 
 
230 FACTORY BILL. 
 
 that the measure proposed by her Majesty's government ought not to 
 be resisted on any light and trivial ground, that it ought not to be 
 made the subject of a mere political or sectarian struggle, and that a 
 perverse ingenuity in devising arguments against it, ought not to be 
 indulged. I asked myself wliether there was any real practical evil 
 to be apprehended by those who are not in communion with the es- 
 tablishment, and I was anxious, if possible, that my own judgment 
 should yield an acquiescence to the reasons which were urged in favour 
 of the scheme propounded in its ameliorated form, by the right ho- 
 nourable baronet. It is matter to me of unatlected regret, that after 
 giving the plan the best consideration in my power, I have not been 
 able to arrive at a conclusion favourable to the measure ; for while I 
 am aware that the professors of my religion are exempt from the ne- 
 cessity of receiving instruction, in the sacred writings, in a form to 
 which they object, I feel, in the first place, that an unnecessary and 
 therefore illegitimate predominance was given to the church, and that it 
 was my duty to look to the government plan, not merely with refer- 
 ence to the manner in which my own individual religion was affected, 
 but to the general usefulness of the scheme, to its compatibility with 
 the principles of religious liberty, the maintenance of wliicli is as im- 
 portant as the diffusion of knowledge. Not only is the board con- 
 stituted in such a way as to deprive Dissenters, although a majority of 
 the rate-payers, of their just share of influence, but the master of the 
 school, by whom the Scriptures are to be taught, must be, ex necessi- 
 tate, a member of the church. Now, if it be right tliat Catholics 
 should be exempted from the necessity of reading the Scriptures at 
 all, it is just that Dissenters should be exempted from instruction 
 through the medium of an episcopal delegate, in the Scriptures, of 
 which the exposition is confided to him. The right lionourable baronet 
 took a distinction between expounding and interpreting, but it is of 
 a character so subtile that no ordinary casuist could have struck upon 
 it. Not only is an ascendency given to the church against which a 
 not unnatural pride on the part of Dissenters revolts, but opportunities 
 of proselytism, the more dangerous because the better disguised, are 
 afforded. The more accomplished, the more skilful, the more zealous 
 the churchman is, the more likely he will be to avail himself of the 
 facilities with which he will be obviously supplied. Would the right 
 honourable baronet permit an adroit, persuasive Catholic to teach the 
 Scriptures to a child in whose orthodoxy he felt a concern ? I very 
 much doubt it. lie should, therefore, excuse Dissenters for objecting 
 to the influence with which men will be endowed in public schools, 
 whose dogmas are almost as much at variance with those of Dissenters 
 
FACTOUY «ILl» 231 
 
 as the doctrines of the Church of Rome. Putting all considerations 
 of the progress which has been made by the dogmas of men who, to 
 tlie honour of Dr. Pusey, are designated by a reference to his name, 
 there is so signal a difference between the opinions of Dissenters and 
 those of genuine Churchmen upon the doctrine of succession, and the 
 power of the priesthood founded on the Scriptures, that if there were 
 nothing else, it would afford a reason for objection. The Bishop of 
 Exeter, who is not, I believe, as yet attached to the Oxonian school 
 of Theology, has, in his charge, claimed prerogatives and powers as 
 great as any to which the most absolute prelate of the ancient church 
 could put in his title. If even to the assumptions of that conspicuous 
 PontilT a Dissenter might reasonably object, the spread of Puscyism 
 must awaken an a fortiori fear. It is notorious that although the 
 external aspect of the church remains superficially the same, it has 
 undergone a great internal change. Men of distinguished talent, of 
 exemplary lives, of great learning and piety, have from motives the 
 best and purest, made an eloquent announcement of opinions, in more 
 strict conformity with the tenets of the Catholic Church than with the 
 principles of the Reformation. Those opinions have been adopted by 
 laymen highly born and bred, remarkable for their proficiency in li- 
 terature, for the gracefulness of their minds, and their persuasive 
 manners. The new, or rather the revived doctrines have made great 
 way among the clergy, who have begun to display the zeal, the energy, 
 the devotedness and enthusiasm by which the missionaries of that church 
 to which they have approximated, are distinguished. As yet these 
 tenets have perhaps made no considerable progress among the mass of 
 the people, but for the people tliose tenets possess great allurements. 
 If Protestantism, says Madame de Stael, appeals to the understand- 
 ing, Catholicism, addresses itself to the heart. How largely have the 
 Puseyites borrowed from that portion of our religious system, whose 
 truth exalts, consoles — which raises us above the sphere of ordinary 
 tliinking, chases despair from anguish, restores to us " the loved, the 
 lost, the distant and the dead," pours into minds the most deeply hurt 
 the most healing balm, ministers to the loftiest hope, and awakens 
 those imaginings, Avhich, to use the Miltonian phrase, " bring^ all 
 heaven before our eyes." Aware of the attractiveness of our tenets, 
 those who regard them as a delusion, not unnaturally conceive that 
 against these allurements, more than ordinary caution is necessary, 
 and tremble at the influence which may be exercised with so much faci- 
 lity at a period of life when the first and the most permanent impressions 
 are confessedly made in the inculcation of doctrines for which they 
 conceive that no scriptural sanction can be adduced. It may be said 
 
232 I'ACTUHV UlLL. 
 
 that their apprehensions are ill founded, and that care will be taken 
 by the prime minister that no heterodox ecclesiastic shall be raised to 
 the episcopal dignity ; but, Sir, we must bear in mind that proof is 
 almost every day allorded us of the appositeness of Lord North's re- 
 mark, that " the first thing a bishop does is to forget his maker." — 
 Witness Dr. Daly, who was named a bishop in Ireland the other day, 
 and immediately after poured out an anathema against the government 
 scheme of education in Ireland, liut even with regard to the prime 
 minister's nomination, what security have the Dissenters got, beyond 
 such intimations as a cheer affords ? Among the supporters of the 
 right honourable baronet, are there not men distinguished by their 
 talents, with more than a leaning to the new theology ? Nay, was not 
 Lord Morpeth himself sternly reproved on one remarkable occasion 
 for railing at the Oxonian Professors, by a distinguished gentleman, 
 who is favourable to freedom in trade, but a monopolist of truth ? — 
 And if it be thought that I ought not to refer to an incident so remote, 
 and before the honourable gentleman was in office, let me be permit^ 
 ted to ask, whether not many nights ago, there were not remonstran- 
 ces addi'essed to the member for Kent of a very significant sort, by 
 gentlemen whom the cheering of the Prime Minister did not deter 
 from a confession of their creed ? The fact is, it is hard to know who 
 is, or who is not a Puseyite. I have even heard it made a question 
 whether the representative of Oxford himself does not to a certain ex- 
 tent, and more especially on the eve of a dissolution sympathise with 
 the divines, by whom so great and just an influence is enjoyed in the 
 learned localities where their talents and their devotion are pre-eminently 
 displayed. I have heard it said that he must have a most dillicult card, 
 which few but himself could play; for my part, 1 do not believe that he is 
 a Protestant in one college, and a pseudo Cutiiolic in another ; I do not 
 believe that he adopts any of those amenities for which a celebrated 
 order in the Catholic Church, distinguished by their genius and eru- 
 dition, are supposed to have had recourse for the advancement of truth : 
 my opinion is, that while he adheres to the principles of genuine Pro- 
 testantism, he is forgiven on his canvass for the sake of certain asso- 
 ciations with Popery, which are irresistibly suggested by the honourable 
 baronet. But whatever may be the religious predilections of the re- 
 presentative of Oxford, of the inclinations of Oxford itself there can 
 be little doubt. Can we wonder then that the Dissenters should ob- 
 ject to a surrender of their schools to the church, when the church 
 itself derives its own instruction from what Dissenters consider a con- 
 taminated source? It is from these considerations that the fears of 
 the Dissenters originate, and to those considerations we must ascribe 
 
FACTORY BILL. 233 
 
 the extraordinary excitement which has been manifested through the 
 country, and the enormous mass of petitions with which your table has 
 been loaded. The church-rate agitation was not comparable in its 
 fervour, to that which we have lately witnessed. The Dissenters Avere 
 far more disposed to give you up their money than their creed. Be- 
 sides the payment of church-rates is an abuse which the law has long 
 sanctioned, which time has consecrated, and which, if not venerable, 
 is at all events hoary : but in the present instance you propose an inno- 
 vation against the liberty of conscience, and utterly at variance with 
 the spirit of modern legislation. This is a relapse into intolerance. 
 Before the repeal of tlie Test and Corporation Acts, it might Imvc 
 been reasonable enough — no it would never have been reasonable, — 
 but it would have been consistent enough to have claimed this exclu- 
 siveness for the church : — but now it is anomalous indeed. The Tory 
 party resisted the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act as long as they 
 could : at length in 1 828 the right honourable baronet at the head of her 
 Majesty's government gave way, and passed a measure which was the 
 precursor of emancipation. Having passed that measure, why does he 
 upon a collateral question adhere to a policy wholly inconsistent with 
 it ? But on tlie ]>art of the Home Secretary, the incongruity is still 
 more glaring. lie was not driven into the repeal of the Test and 
 Corporation Acts : he supported the noble lord on his first introduc- 
 tion of the bill. You will tell me, perhaps, that the Test and Corpo- 
 ■ ration Act has notliing to do with this bill. I answer that the great 
 principle on wliich it was founded, of removing every obstruction 
 which religious differences had created, is in direct antagonism to the 
 basis of your scheme, and that it is most absurd that Dissenters should 
 be admissible to this house, to every office of dignity and of influence 
 under the croAvn, to the highest place in the cabinet itself, and yet 
 should be excluded from all influence in those schools which are to be 
 sustained by rates raised from those very Dissenters, upon whom this 
 most oflensive disqualification is to be inflicted. The schools are local, 
 are to be supported by a local rate and not a national fund — the dis- 
 trict, not the state, is to be taxed for their maintenance ; is it not 
 monstrous, then, tliat in those localities where these Dissenters consti- 
 tute a majority, they should be made the object of this wanton legis- 
 lative aifront? You don't pursue this course in Ireland — why ? Because 
 the majority of the people are Catholic. But in the districts where 
 local schools are to be supported with local imposts, the majority are, 
 in many instances. Dissenters. The church, therefore, cannot insist 
 that in right of their general tutelage of the national mind, they 
 arc entitled to the control which is given them by this bill ; and I am 
 
234 FACTORY BILL. 
 
 at a loss to discover what they couceive it will profit them to exercise 
 a power so invidious as that which they are now seeking to obtain. 
 What have tliey to dread from the imaginary influence of dissent in 
 the schools which it is proposed to establish ? Let them consider the 
 bulwarks by which the church, in reference to national instruction, is 
 already sustained, and let them dismiss their fears of any evil effect 
 which these schools can have on its stability. Is not Cambridge, is 
 not Oxfoi-d theirs ? In Durham have they not gained an university ? 
 Are not all the great seminaries in which the gentry of this aristocratic 
 country are educated, in their keeping ? Have they not a direct mas- 
 terdom over almost every place of public instruction, where the men, 
 who are to will the destinies of England receive the elements of in- 
 struction ? Do not a vast body of the middle classes draw their first 
 intellectual nutriment from the bosom of the church, and can you turn 
 your eyes to any part of this great kingdom, in which you do not find 
 the church already exercising an influence over education, which it is 
 impossible to distrust ? With these vast advantages is not the church 
 contented, but must she needs, after having herself most reprehensibly 
 neglected the education of the poor, when a measure is proposed to 
 rescue the infant operative from the degradation and the depravity of 
 ignorance, is she to come forward with her pretensions, and claim, as 
 a matter of ecclesiastical prerogative, the instruction of the factory 
 infants, on whom she never cast a thought away before ? What has 
 the church to dread ? Has she reason to tremble at the influence of 
 dissent among the lower classes of the manufacturing popidation ? If 
 in the possession of the truth, wherefore does she not manifest the se- 
 curity which the consciousness of its possession should inspire ? If 
 built upon a rock, why should she dread that the gates of Gehenna 
 shall prevail against her, and as slie has retained so much of the old 
 religion (the Amei'icans call England the old country, you should call 
 the Catholic, the old religion), as she has retained so much of its doc- 
 trines, and prefers the title of Anglo-Catholic to any other designation, 
 why does she not copy her great predecessor in that attribute, which 
 a convert from your establishment, and one of the greatest ornaments 
 of your literature, so well ascribed to her ? — 
 
 " Without unspotted, innocent within, 
 She feared no danger, for she knew no sin." 
 
 If there be any danger which she has cause to apprehend, it is that 
 which must result from the hostility which she will produce among all 
 classes of Dissenters by the unjust assumption of authority, who will, 
 beyond all question, be arrayed against her, if she has the misfortune 
 
FACTORY BILL. 235 
 
 to succeed in her unjustifiable pretensions. She will embody and 
 array together aU those sects which have now no common bond of 
 union, and even among the Wesleyans, who are supposed to adhere to 
 her by some sort of ligament or other, she will produce an antipathy 
 which it is most unwise to create. I have often heard the Wesleyan 
 Methodists made the theme of Conservative panegyric. The most 
 distinguished Tories, especially at the eve of a general election, have 
 been lavish in their encomiums on this powerful body : what a mistake 
 it is to enter into a quarrel with them upon what is a mere point of 
 punctilio with the church ? Instead of trespassing upon their rights, 
 why does not the cJiurch follow their example, and become their 
 honourable competitor in the work of education ? If it be of impor- 
 tance that the lower orders should cling to the church, has not the 
 church some better expedient for the retention of its adherents than 
 the invasion of religious fi-eedom ? Monopolies in religion are like all 
 other monopolies — they retard improvement. It will do no harm to 
 put the Church upon the necessity of exertion, and teach her that in- 
 stead of relying on any unjust predominance, she should resort to more 
 legitimate endeavours, to secure an honourable influence among the 
 humbler classes of tlie people. It is by piety, by benevolence, by 
 zeal, by meekness, and by humility, by the association in the primi- 
 tive doctrine of primitive practice, that an influence most useful to 
 the country and most honourable to the establishment will be extended. 
 Let tlie church herself with the opportunities, incalculably great, which 
 her aflluence aflbrds her — let her prelates — be distinguished for munifi- 
 cence : let them look on tin; noble structures which the bishops of the 
 olden time have left as monuments of their pious disinterestedness 
 through the length and width of all the land ; let them in raising many 
 a great moral edifice emulate that generous example : let her priests 
 become the associates, the friends, the auxiliaries, the protectors, the 
 consolers of the afilicted, the humble, and the poor ; let them not only 
 by their persuasiveness, allure to brighter worlds, but let theni by 
 their example " lead the way." Let religion be recommended by 
 the practice of the church, and in the Christian assemblage of per- 
 suasive virtues let the Protestant Propaganda be found ; but let not 
 the church, from a sacerdotal passion for ascendency, from a love 
 of clerical predominance, thwart the great work of education, and 
 incur the awful responsibility of becoming instrumental in the pro- 
 pagation of all the vices, which ignorance has spawned upon the 
 country. At the conclusion of the very remarkable speech in 
 which the Secretary for the Home Department introduced the mea- 
 sure which was so ably propounded by him, he called on us to " raise 
 
236 FACTOllY UILL. 
 
 up our hearts," and to rise above all lowly prejudice in the achievement 
 of a great moral purpose. It is to the church itself that tliis " sursum 
 corda," this invocation, taken from the ancient ritual of Catholicism, 
 should be addressed ; he should alijure the body over which ho exer- 
 cises so great and natural an influence, and for which he lias made 
 great sacrifices, to ascend above every inferior consideration, and to 
 regard the instruction of the people as paramount to every other ob- 
 ject. The right honourable baronet has again and again protested his 
 strong anxiety to render his measure acceptable to the great mass of 
 the community, and to introduce such modifications as should meet all 
 just objections. I trust that his professions may be realized, and as 
 he told us that he would send forth his bill in the hope that it would 
 receive the public sanction and indicate that the " waters of strife had 
 subsided," let me be permitted to hope that he will associate with that 
 image another incident connected with the primeval history of man- 
 kind, and bear in mind that every colour was united in distinctness 
 without predominance, that token of peace which God set in the cloud, 
 as a covenant of his I'cconciliation with the world. 
 
IRISH ARMS BILL. 
 
 237 
 
 IRISH ARMS BILL. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MAY 19, 1843. 
 
 If I were convinced tliat the Arms Bill, even in its present most ob- 
 noxious shape, was necessary for the. repression of crime, I should 
 reluctantly indeed, but strenuously, sustain it ; but of its utter ineffi- 
 ciency for the attainment of that legitimate purpose, in which it is 
 obligatory upon us all to concur, I am thoroughly persuaded. It is 
 not to the want of an Arms Bill, such as this, it is to the imperfect, I 
 am almost justified in calling it the impotent administration of justice, 
 that the atrpcitics, by whicli certain districts in Ireland are unfortu- 
 nately characterised, are to be ascribed. In the county of Tippcrary 
 the prosecutions at the assizes are begun, conducted, and terminated 
 in such a manner as to secure impunity to crime. How has it come 
 to pass, that the offences which fall Avithin the jurisdiction of the 
 assistant-barrister, and are prosecuted by the local solicitor, have so 
 signally diminished ? I attribute that remarkable decrease to two 
 causes; first, to the high judicial qualities, the talent, the firmness, 
 the impartiality which has won the confidence of all parties, by which 
 Mr. Ilowley, the assistant-barrister, is distinguished ; and in the next 
 place, to the signal usefulness of the local solicitor for the crown (Mr. 
 Cahill), who unites with great ability a perfect knowledge of the 
 country ; has the best opportunities of ascertaining every incident 
 connected Avith the cases in which he is concerned ; is well ac(iuaintcd 
 with the character of every witness for the prosecution and the de- 
 fence ; never puts innocence in peril ; and never permits ruffianism 
 to escape. But while minor violations of the law are prosecuted with 
 so much effiact, what course is taken at the assizes ? I beg most 
 distinctly to state that nothing can be more remote from my intention 
 than to speak in the language of personal depreciation of Mr. Kemmis, 
 the crown solicitor for the Leinster circuit, or to suggest that a local 
 solicitor should be employed in his place, Avithout adding, that he 
 should receive for any loss he may sustain the most ample compensa- 
 tion. But granting him to possess the highest professional qualifica- 
 tions, I have no hesitation at the same time in stating that the business 
 of the crown cannot be efficiently carried on by a legal absentee, who 
 knoAvs nothing of the county, is utterly ignorant of the witnesses 
 produced for or against the crown, is utterly unable, not from any 
 want of capacity, but from his position, to suggest or advise the means 
 by Avhich truth can be substantiated, and falsehood can be confuted, is 
 
238 IRISH ARMS BILL. 
 
 hurried from one assize town to another, and must get up his briefs 
 with inevitable pi-ecipitation, for the information of counsel, who are 
 opposed by the most skilful advocates, aided by a local solicitor for the 
 defence, by whom every imaginable expedient for the frustration of 
 the crown is employed. It is obvious that, under this system, you 
 give to crime advantages incalculably great. Another suggestion I 
 shall, from a sense of duty — from my solicitude for the public tran- 
 quillity — venture to make. You resort to informers, and you pay 
 them largely for their corrupt contribution to the enforcement of the 
 law, but to honest witnesses adequate protection is not given. Some 
 years ago the house of a person of the name of Crawford Avas attacked, 
 and he was beaten almost to death. He was afraid to prosecute. He 
 lived in my neighbourhood. I obtained from the government an un- 
 dertaking that he and his family should be sent to one of the colonies, 
 and should be provided for. He was prevailed on to prosecute, and 
 justice was done, and a most useful example made. If you will pledge 
 yourselves to protect the witnesses for the crown, by enabling them to 
 emigrate, and by compensating them for the loss of their country, you 
 will effect much more than by the unconstitutional proceeding which 
 I ain nwarc your high partisans invite you to adopt. It would be far 
 more befitting in the landed proprietors to attend at the assizes, and 
 perform their duty on criminal trials, than to call for a violation of a 
 great public right. If thei'e is a special commission got up with pa- 
 rade, and attended by the Attorney-General, with a retinue of counsel, 
 the chief gentlemen of the county do not think it inconsistent with 
 their dignity to act on the petty jury ; but at the assizes, though the 
 crimes to be prosecuted are of the same class, the juries are wholly 
 different. The petty jury is considered an ungenteel and low con- 
 cern ; the balance in which human life is trembling is committed to 
 coarser and less aristocratic sustainments, and complaints ai'e after- 
 wards made of the constitution of juries by the very men who vote it, 
 what they call, in their familiar parlance, " a bore" to attend. There 
 is nothing which I more strongly deprecate than the setting aside of 
 juries by the crown, except for the clearest and most indisputable 
 reasons, but, on the other hand, I do think that the attendance of 
 Roman Catholics and Protestants, of station and influence, on the cri- 
 minal jury, should be enforced, and that, if necessary, fines of £500 or 
 £600 shoidd be imposed upon them. The utmost care should of 
 course be taken that the juries should not be exclusive, and that no 
 ground for imputation should be afforded ; but that precaution being 
 adopted, it is clear that the verdicts found by that class of men, whe- 
 ther of acquittal or of condemnation, would meet the general sanction. 
 
IRISH ARMS BILL. 239 
 
 I am very well aware that the gentry of the country will be very 
 adverse to this proposition ; but they should bear in mind how large 
 a stake they have in the tranquillity of the country, which will be far 
 better promoted by these means than by an Arms Bill, which will 
 take from honest men the means of defence, and will not deprive the 
 turbulent and the lawless of the means of aggression. When murder 
 becomes lucrative, it is not easy to deprive the assassin of the tools of 
 his profitable trade. If you could succeed in depriving him of his 
 more noisy implements of death, you would but teach him to substi- 
 tute a" more silent but not less efficacious weapon : but you cannot 
 frame a law which he will not readily evade. The wretch who is not 
 appalled at murder, will not tremble at an Arras Bill — your penalties 
 of ten or twenty pounds will be scorned by men who put existence into 
 habitual i)eril. These are among my reasons 'for thinking that the 
 Arms Bill will not be in any degree conducive to the purpose it has 
 ostensibly in view, while by its enactment, without obtaining any 
 countervailing benefit, you commit a manifest trespass upon one of the 
 chief constitutional rights which the bill, deriving its designation from 
 those rights, has received. But my main objection to this bill is 
 founded upon the distinction which it establishes between England 
 and Ireland. ** Repeal the Union — restore the Heptarchy 1" Thus 
 exclaimed George Canning, and stam{)cd on the floor of this house as 
 he gave utterance to a comparison in absurdity, which has been often 
 cited. But that exclamation may be turned to an account, different 
 from that to which it is applied. Restore the heptarchy — repeal the 
 union. Good. But take up the map of I'ingland, and mark the sub- 
 divisions into which this your noble island was once distributed, and 
 then suppose that in this assembly of wise men — this Imperial Parlia- 
 ment — you were to ordain that there should be one law in what once 
 was the kingdom of Kent, and another in what once was the kingdom 
 of Mercia — that in Essex there should be one municipal franchise, 
 and in Sussex there should be another ; that among the East Angles 
 there should be one parliamentary franchise, and in Wessex tliere 
 should be another ; and that while through the rest of the island the 
 Bill of Rights should be regarded as the inviolate and inviolable 
 charter of British liberty, in the kingdom of Northumberland, an 
 Arms Bill, by which the elementarj' principles of British freedom 
 should be set at nought, should be enacted — would you not say that 
 the restoration of the heptarchy could scarcely be more preposte- 
 rous ? What a mockery it is, what an offence it is to our feelings, 
 what an insult to the understanding it is to expatiate upon the ad- 
 vantages of the union, and bid us rejoice that we are admitted to the 
 
240 IRISH ARMS BILL. 
 
 great imperial copartnership in power, while you are every day 
 making the most odious distinctions between the two countries, esta- 
 blishing discriminating riglits which are infinitely woi-se than discri- 
 minating duties, and furnishing the champions of repeal with pre- 
 tences more than plausible, for insisting that if for England and 
 Ireland different laws are requisite, for Ireland and for ]Cngland 
 different lawgivers are required. IMy chief, my great objection to 
 this measure is, tliat it is founded upon the fatal policy to wliich 
 Englishmen have so long adhered, and from which it is so difficult to 
 detach them, of treating Ireland as a mere provincial appurtenance, 
 instead of regarding her as part and parcel of the realm. You are 
 influenced by a kind of instinct of domination, Avhich it requires no 
 ordinary effoxt of your reason to overcome. I do not think that by 
 Englishmen an Arms Bill like tins would be endured. That obser- 
 vation does not rest on mere conjecture ; in the year 1819 tliis coun- 
 try was in a most perilous condition. It appeared from a report made 
 by a secret committee of which the present Lord Derby was the 
 chairman, that large bodies of men were trained to the use of arms in 
 the dead of the night, in sequestered places ; that a revolutionary 
 movement, to be accomplished by disciplined insurrection, was con- 
 templated, and that revolt was organised for war. In this state of 
 things an English Arms Bill, one of the Six Acts, was proposed. 
 Lord Castlereagh was then tlie leader of the House of Commons, but 
 although he had served his apprenticesliip in Ireland — although he had 
 dissected in Ireland befoi-e he attempted to operate in England ; and 
 althougli his hand was peculiarly steady, and he was admitted on all 
 hands not to be destitute of determination, still he did not think it 
 prudent to propose for England such a bill as for Ireland you have 
 thought it judicious to introduce. There is tiie English Arms Bill of 
 I8I9. It is comprised in a single page, look at it; the ocular com- 
 parison will not be inappropriate ; here is the Irish Arms Bill, a 
 whole volume of coercion, in whicli tyranny is elaborated in every 
 possible diversity of form which it was possible to impart to it. In 
 the English Arms Bill no penalty Avhatcver was inflicted for the pos- 
 session of arms : in your Arms Bill, an Irishman can be trans[)ortcd 
 for seven years for having arms in his possession. But although 
 the English Ai-ms Bill was moderate when compared witli the 
 Irish, yet Lord Grey denounced it in the House of Lords.* In 
 the House of Commons, Mr. Heni-y Brougham exclaimed: "Am 
 I an Englishman ? for I begin to doubt it, when measures so utterly 
 
 * Mr. Sheil read Lord Grey's protest against one of the Six Acts in 1819. 
 
IKISII ARMS BILL. 241 
 
 abhorrent from tlie first principles of British liberty are auda- 
 ciously propounded to us?" That great orator then proceeded to 
 offer up an asjiiration that the people would rise up in a simultaneous 
 revolt and sweep away the government by which a great sacrilege 
 upon the constitution had been perpetrated. What would he have 
 said — how would Lord Castlercagh have been blasted by the lightning 
 and appalled by the thunder of his eloquence if a bill had been brought 
 forward, luider which the blacksmiths of England should be licensed, 
 under which the registry of arras was made dependant on a bench 
 of capricious magisterial partisans, under which an Englishman 
 might be transported for seven years, for exercising tlie privilege 
 secured to him by the Bill of Kights ; and every pistol, gun, and 
 blunderbuss was to be put through that process of branding, the very 
 motion of which, in 1831, made by the noble lord opposite, the Secre- 
 tary for tlio Colonies, the then Secretary for Ireland, produced an 
 outburst of indignation. It is said that this biU has nothing new. 
 That is a mistake — it contains many novelties in despotism, many 
 curiosities in domination. My friend the member for Rochdale has 
 pointed them out. But supposing that everything was old in this bill, 
 does not your defence rest on a perseverance in oppression, on that 
 fatal tenacity with which you cling to a system, to wliich your expe- 
 rience should tell you that it is folly to adhere ? This bill, it was 
 observed by the noble lord the Secretary for Ireland, was found, in 
 1807, in the portfolio of the Whig Secretary. The Whigs had pre- 
 pared a measure of coercion and of relief. The Tories turned them 
 out on the measure of relief, and of the measure of coei'cion took a 
 Conservative care. The Secretary for Ireland stated that the first 
 Arms Bill was introduced in 1807 by Sir Arthur AYcUesley. Sir 
 Arthur Wellesley ! The transition which has taken place from Sir 
 Arthur Wellesley — from the official of Dublin Castle to the warrior, 
 by whose fame the world is filled — is not greater than the transition 
 of the country which gave him birth, from enslaved and degraded to 
 enfranchised and liberated Ireland, who has grown too gigantic for 
 your chains, and dilated to dimensions, which your fetters will no 
 longer fit. But although the project of an Arms Bill was unfortu- 
 nately found in the Whig portfolio, that measure was condemned at 
 the time by some of the most distinguished members of that great 
 party. Hear what Sir vSamuel Romilly says of the measure in his 
 diary. In sjieaking of the Insurrection Act and the Arms Bill, 
 which he regarded as near akin, he says (vol. 6, p. 214) : 
 
 " The measure appeared to me so impolitic, so unjust, and likely to 
 produce so much mischief, that I deteraiined, if any person divided 
 
242 lUISU ARMS BILL. 
 
 the house, to vote against it. I did not speak against the bill : that it 
 Avould pass, whatever might be said against it, I could not doubt ; and 
 therefore thought that to state my objections against it, could have no 
 other effect, than to increase the mischief, which I wished to prevent. 
 What triumphant arguments will this bill, and that which is depend- 
 ing in the house for preventing the people having arms, furnish the 
 disaffected Avith in Ireland ? What laws more tyrannical could they 
 have to dread, if the French yoke were imposed on them ? To adopt 
 such a measure at a moment like the present, appeal's to me to be 
 little short of madness. Unfortunately the measure had been in the 
 contemplation of the late ministry. They had left a draft of the bill 
 in the Secretary of State's office, and tliey were now ashamed to 
 oppose, what some of themselves had thought of proposing. The 
 Attorney and Solicitor of Ireland had approved of the bill, but 
 Pigot and myself had never heard that such a matter was in agita- 
 tion, till it was brought into the house, by the present ministers." 
 
 Such was the opinion of Sir Samuel Romilly : in the judgment of 
 the majority of this house, as it is at present constituted, that opinion 
 may have no weight, but I am able to I'cfer to the authority of a dis- 
 tinguished statesman, who is at this moment in the full fruition of the 
 confidence of parliament. That eminent pei'son stated that — 
 
 " Tlie speaker asked what was the melancholy fact ? That scai'cely 
 one year had at any period elapsed since the Union during which 
 Ireland was governed by the ordinary course of law; that in 1800 
 we found the Habeas Corpus Act suspended, and an act for the sup- 
 pression of rebellion in foixe ; that in 1801 it was continued; in 1802 
 it expired; in 1803 disturbances occurred, and Lord Kilwarden was 
 murdered by a savage mob; that in 1804 the act was renewed; in 
 1806 disorders arose, and the Insurrection Act was introduced in 
 consequence; in 1810 and 1815 the Insurrection Act was renewed; 
 and in 1825 an act was passed for the suppression of dangerous asso- 
 ciations, and particularly of the Catholic Association ; in 1826 the 
 act was continued, and in 1827 it expired ; and after this enumeration 
 of acts of impolicy and injustice, he asked, ' Shall this state of things 
 continue without an effort to remedy it ?' " 
 
 Who was it that spoke these Avords ? Were they spoken by Henry 
 Brougham ? Were they spoken by Lord John Russell ? No : — the 
 man that gave uttei'ance to these words was no less a person than the 
 First Lord of the Treasury,* the ruler in some sort of this great and 
 majestic empire ; it was by him that the policy, with which this very 
 
 ♦ Sir R. reel. 
 
inlSH ARMS BILL. 243 
 
 measure is connected, was virtuously and vehemently denounced. The 
 speech to which I have referred was spoken in 1829, before Catholic 
 Emancipation was actually passed, it was, indeed, the speech in which 
 the whole plan of emancipation was propounded. But if the policy, 
 thus strenuously condemned by the Prime Minister, was deserving of 
 censure before the great measure of Catholic enfranchisement, is it not 
 in the highest degree incongruous, is it not indeed monstrous on the 
 part of the government, of which that right honourable gentleman is 
 the head, to propound the very measure which had been the object of 
 his almost unqualified condemnation. But I shall be told that the pre- 
 dictions made by the Roman Catholic leaders have been falsified, and 
 that they have themselves done their utmost to prevent the fulfilment 
 of their prophecies. [Hear, hear.] You say "hear, hear ;" but your 
 derisive cheering is inappropriate. If Roman Catholic Emancipation 
 had been carried, when the Catholic clergy could have been connected 
 by what Mr. O'Connell called a golden link, with the state, those pre- 
 dictions would, in all likelihood, have been fulfilled, but when you 
 yourselves permitted emancipation to be, I will not say extorted, but 
 won from you by the means, through which it was obtained, what re- 
 sults would you have reasonably anticipated, but those, to which you 
 have yourselves most essentially contributed ? IIow could you expect 
 that 7,000,000 of your fellow-citizens could by possibility acquiesce 
 in an institution, against which reason and justice concurrently revolt ? 
 How could it be expected that after emancipation, when England was 
 agitated by the Reform question, Ireland should remain passive and 
 apathetic, and should not demand a redress of tliosc grievances, which 
 pressed upon her far more heavily than any abuse connected with your 
 former parliamentary system ? And now, when from morn till night, 
 and from night tiU morn, Englishmen cry out that the Union must be 
 maintained, how can any one of you imagine that we shall not insist 
 that the principles upon which the Union was founded, should be car- 
 ried into effect, and that all odious distinctions between the two coun- 
 tries shall be abolished ? You think that the rei)calcrs of Ireland are 
 conspicuously in the wrong; are you sure that you are yourselves 
 conspicuously in tlie right? Passing over the questions connected 
 with the Established Church, questions which are dormant, but not 
 dead, and which I liave not the slightest doubt that your impolicy will 
 revive, I ask you, whether in the course pursued in the Municipal 
 Bill you have evinced a just desire to place England and Ireland upon 
 a level ? Was the language employed by the noble and learned lord, 
 who has the conscience of the Sovereign in his keeping, and which is 
 fresh in the ipemory of the Irish people, calculated to reconcile us 
 
244 laisu AiiMs bill. 
 
 to the legislative dominion of this country ? You withheld the Mu- 
 nicipal Bill as long as with safety you could deny it to us, and when 
 at last you were forced to yield, you still adhered to your old habit of 
 distinction — you created a different franchise for the two countries, 
 and although you gained nothing whatever for your party in the result, 
 and were completely baffled, as I told you you would beyond all doubt 
 be, you left in the Municipal Bill an envenomed sting behind. But 
 let us turn to the other instances, in which your dispositions towards 
 Ireland are too faithfully exemplified. Let us turn to the registration 
 of votes, from the registration of arms. Wliere is your Registration 
 Bill ? I am putting to you the question whicli, three years ago, was 
 put again and again to the Whig Government by their antagonists. 
 " Where is the Registration Bill ?" cried Mr. Baron Lefroy. " "Wliere 
 is the Registration Bill ?" cried Mr. Jackson, now a judge of the 
 Common Pleas. " Wliere is the Registration Bill ?" cried Mr. Litton, 
 now a Master in Chancery. But more loudly and more vehemently than 
 all the rest, " Where, where is the Registration Bill ?" cried the noble 
 lord the Secretary for the Colonies. Not a month, not a week, not a 
 day, was to be lost in the judgment of the anxiously impatient lord. 
 The Whigs brought in a bill, and gave a liberal definition of the fran- 
 chise ; their object was to establish a constituency commensurate witli 
 the wealth, and the intelligence, and in some degree with the numbers of 
 the Irish people. The measure was defeated; and the noble lord who was 
 possessed at the time with a passion for legislating for the Irish people, 
 provided a bill at the close of 1841, by which the independence of the 
 people of Ireland would have been totally unprotected, and of which 
 the bare proposal has done more to advance the cause of Repeal than 
 all the speeches which the member for Cork* had ever delivered upon 
 the subject. Parliament was dissolved, a new parliament was elected, 
 and a Tory ministry was the result. As soon as the Tories were 
 fully installed in office, it was but natural to ask them the question 
 which they had put so often, "Where is the Registration Bill?" 
 Some vague intimation was given that the government would bring 
 forward a measure in the course of the session. In the course of the 
 session the Longford committee excluded Mr. White from parliament, 
 but at the same time reported, that the law was so doubtful, liad led to 
 more contrary decisions, and had been the subject of so much conten- 
 tion among the Irish judges, that it was incumbent on the government 
 to settle the question, and to bring in a declaratory act ; still nothing 
 was done in 1842. At the commencement of the present session, the 
 Secretary for the Home Department was asked what he meant to do, 
 
 • Mr. O'Connell. 
 
IHISII ARMS BILL. 245 
 
 in reference to the Registration Bill, the eternal Registration Bill ? 
 He answered, " Oh, we will first proceed with the English Registration 
 Bill." But for the English Registration Bill there was no urgent ne- 
 cessity — there was no pretence whatever for giving the English pre- 
 cedence over the Irish measure. Well, the English Registration Bill 
 is hrought in and passed, and then the question is renewed, "where is 
 the Irish Registration Bill ?" And to that question what reply was 
 given ? Oh, we must first bring in the Irish Arms Bill. Thus, not- 
 withstanding the reiterated demand for the Irish Registration Bill 
 made by the Tories themselves when out of office, notwithstanding the 
 report of the Longford Election Committee, notwithstanding the re- 
 peated engagements to bring the measure forward, not only is not 
 that measure produced, but to the Arms Bill, to this outrage upon the 
 just principles of liberty, the bill declaratory of the parliamentary 
 franchise of the people of Ireland is postponed. And on what ground 
 has this precedence of the Arms Bill been maintained ? wherefore is it 
 that everything is to be postponed to an Arms Bill ? The Secretary 
 for Ireland tells us, that order must be asserted, before freedom is con- 
 ferred, that crime must be repressed, and that the " thirst for Arms," 
 that was his expression, must be repressed. The thirst for arras ! 
 There is another thirst, for which you have taken care to provide. Have 
 you, who profess yourselves to be guardians of the national morality, 
 manifested an uniform and undeviating solicitude for the virtue of the 
 people over Avhom you are appointed to watch ? Despite of every 
 remonsti'ance, notwithstanding the most earnest expostulation, did you 
 not persist in the enactment of a financial measure, which has given 
 the strongest stimulant to crime, and has already produced some of 
 the most deleterious effects which, it was foretold, would be inevitably 
 derived from it. You know full well, that the most frightful crimes 
 which have been perpetrated in Ireland, have had their origin in those 
 habitsof intoxication, which the Evangelist of Temperance, if I may so 
 call him, had so effectually restrained, until the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer had determined to counteract his noble efforts. Every pri- 
 vate still is a hot-spring, from which atrocity gushes up, and supplies 
 those draughts of fire, Avith which ferocious men madden themselves to 
 murder, and drive away every sentiment of humanity and of remorse, 
 and surrender themselves to the demon that takes possession of their 
 hearts. And yet you talk to us of the necessity of suppressing crime being 
 paramount to every other consideration, and of the " thirst for arms," 
 and deal in all that false sentimentality, with which the real purpose 
 by which you are actuated, is so thinly and imperfectly disguised. It 
 is not wonderful that when such is the spirit in Avhich you legislalc for 
 
246 iKisii AUMS niLh. 
 
 Ireland, that the people of Ireland, weary of and disgusted with your 
 unfairness and incapacity, should demand the restitution of their par- 
 liament, and insist upon the right of governing themselves. And how 
 has the First Lord of the Treasury met the requisition for self-govern- 
 ment, which the Irish people had preferred to him ? He came down 
 to the house with a well meditated reply to the question put to him by 
 the noble lord (Lord Jocelyn), and referring to the answer of King 
 William the Fourth, in which that monarch expressed himself opposed 
 to the Repeal of the Union, stated her Majesty's coincidence with 
 that opinion ; but omitted the conciliatory assurances with wliich that 
 opinion was accompanied. I am very far from believing that the 
 right honourable baronet, as has been imputed to him, intended by a 
 reference to his Sovereign, to produce any refrigeration in the feelings 
 of warm attachment which the people of Ireland entertain towards 
 their beloved Sovereign ; I think, that as he appealed in the name of 
 the parliament to their fears, he appealed in the name of their Sove- 
 reign to the aiFections of the Irish people. For my own part, as long 
 as I shall be permitted to refer to a document which has become a part 
 of history, I never shall object to any reference to the opinions of my 
 Sovereign with regard to Ireland. I hold in my hand a letter written 
 by Lord John Russell to Lord Normanby, by the command of his So- 
 vereign, on her accession to the throne. That letter is in the following 
 words : — 
 
 " Whitehall, July 18, 1837. 
 
 " My Lord — In confiding again to your /Excellency the important 
 charge of administering the affairs of Ireland in her Majesty's name, 
 the Queen has commanded me to express to your Excellency her Ma- 
 jesty's entire approbation of your past conduct, and her desire that you 
 should continue to be guided by the same principles on which you 
 have hitherto acted. 
 
 " The Queen willingly recognises in her Irish subjects a spirit of 
 loyalty and devotion to her person and government. 
 
 " Her Majesty is desirous to see them in the full enjoyment of that 
 civil and political equality which, by a recent statute, they are fully 
 entitled to, and her Majesty is persuaded that when invidious distinc- 
 tions are altogether obliterated, her throne will be more secure and her 
 people more truly united. 
 
 " The Queen has seen with satisfaction the tranquillity which has 
 lately prevailed in Ireland, and has learned with pleasure that the 
 general habits of the people are in a state of progressive improvement 
 arising from their confidence in the just administration of the power 
 of government. 
 
IRISH ARMS BILL. 247 
 
 " I am commanded by her Majesty to express to you her Majesty's 
 cordial wishes for the continued success of your administration ; and 
 your Excellency may be assured that your efforts will meet with firm 
 support from her Majesty. 
 
 " The Queen further desires that you will assure her Irish subjects 
 of her impartial protection. 
 
 " John Rdssell." 
 
 Such was the language dictated by the young Queen of England to 
 her minister. She had read the history of Ireland — she had perused 
 (and in the perusal was not, I am sure, unmoved) the narrative of 
 oppression and woe ; she knew that for great wrongs a great compen- 
 Bation was 'due to us ; she felt^more'than joy at witnessing the blessed 
 fruits which had resulted from the first experiment injustice, and she 
 charged her minister to express her deep solicitude for the welfare of 
 the people of Ireland. Never did a sovereign impose upon a minister 
 a more pleasurable office. With what admiration, with what a senti- 
 ment of respectful and reverential admiration must he have looked 
 upon that young and imperial lady, when, in the fine morning of her 
 life, and in the dawn of her resplendent royalty, he beheld her with the 
 most brilliant diadem in the world glittering upon her smooth and 
 unrufllcd forehead, with her countenance beaming with dignified emo- 
 tion, and heard her, with that voice which seems to have been given 
 to her for tlie utterance of no other language than that of gentleness 
 and of mercy, giving expression to her affectionate and lofty sympathy 
 for an unfortunate, but a brave, a chivalrous, and for her enthusias- 
 tically loyal and unalteral)ly devoted people. How different a spec- 
 tacle does Ireland now present from that whicli it then pi'csented to 
 the contemplation of her sovereign ! She cannot be insensible to the 
 change. In return for your stern advice to your sovereign, did you 
 not receive a reciprocal admonition ; and did she not tell you, or did 
 not your own conscience tell you to look on Ireland, and to compare 
 her condition under a Whig and Conservative administration. But it 
 is not with Whig policy alone that your policy should be compared ; 
 your own policy in a country more fortunate than ours furnishes al- 
 most an appropriate matter of adjuration. Why do you tell me, in the 
 name of common consistency and plain sense, whei'efore do you ado])t 
 in Canada a policy so utterly opposite from that which in Ireland it is 
 your and our misfortune that you should pursue ? From a system so 
 diametrically opposed, how can the same results be expected to follow ? 
 In Canada, under the old colonial rule, there prevailed a strong ad- 
 diction to democracy, a leaning towards the great republic in their vi- 
 
248 IHISU AUMS UlLL. 
 
 cinage, a deep hatred of England, and a spirit which broke at last into 
 a sanguinary and exceedingly costly rebellion. You had the sound 
 feeling and the sound sense to open your eyes at last to the series of 
 mistakes, which successive governments had committed with regard to 
 Canada ; your policy was not only changed but revolutionized ; you 
 abandoned the " family compact ;" you placed the government in 
 sympathy Avith the people, and you raised to office men who had been 
 pursued to the death, and conferred honours upon those to whom de- 
 capitation, had they been arrested, would at one period have been 
 awarded. The result has been what all wise men had anticipated and 
 what all good men had desii'cd. In a late debate I heard the Prime 
 Minister expatiate upon the necessity of dealing in reference to Ca- 
 nada, in the most liberal and conciliatory spirit, and when I heard 
 him, I could not refrain from exclaiming : " Oh ! that for Ireland, 
 for unhappy Ireland — Oh ! that for my country, he would feel as he 
 does towards Canada, and in its regard act the same generous part !" 
 That prayer which rose involuntarily from my lips, I now — yes, I 
 now venture to address to you. The part which in Canada you 
 have had the wisdom and the virtue to act, have in Ireland, (but oh ! 
 without a civil war !) have the virtue and the wisdom to follow. Rid, 
 rid yourself in Ireland of " the family compact." Banish Orangeisra 
 fi'om the Castle ; piit yourselves into contact in place of putting your- 
 selves into collision with the people ; reform the Protestant Church j 
 conciliate the Catholic priesthood ; disarm us, but not of the weapons 
 against which this measure is directed — strip us of that triple panoply 
 with which he who hath his quarrel just is invested — do this, and if 
 you will do this, you will do far more for the tranquillization of Ireland, 
 for the consolidation of the empire, and for your own renown, than if 
 you were by arms bills and by coercion acts, and by a whole chain of 
 despotic enactments, to succeed in inflicting upon Ireland, that bad, 
 that false, that deceptive, that desolate tranquillity which the history 
 of the world, which all the philosophy that teaches by example, which 
 the experience of every British statesman, which, above all, your own 
 experience should teach you, is sure to be followed by calamities 
 greater than any by which it was preceded. 
 
VOTE BY BALLOT. 249 
 
 r 
 
 VOTE BY BALLOT. 
 
 SrEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 21, 1843. 
 
 It is more than difficult to give freshness and originality to the sub- 
 ject whicli has been introduced with so much ability by my honourable 
 friend,* and if it were incumbent on those who take a share in its dis- 
 cussion to impart to it that sort of interest which arises from specula- 
 tions equally novel and refined, I should not have ventured to inter 
 pose ; but so far from thinking that the ballot offers an appropriate 
 occasion for a display of tliat dexterity in disputation, from which, if 
 some entertainment, little instruction can be derived, I feci persuaded 
 that a great and simple cause must be damaged far more than it can 
 be promoted by any subtlety of disquisition which may be indulged in 
 its sustainment. Where manifest abuses exist — abuses not only ca- 
 pable of proof, but of which the evidence amounts to demonstration, 
 and arguments founded on indisputable facts can be so readily adduced, 
 political metaphysics ought to be avoided. It is far wiser, in place of 
 straining for ingenuities in favour of the ballot, to revert to those 
 reasons Avhich long-continued evils have long presented to us, and as 
 it is by repeated appeals to their sense of justice, that the opinion of 
 the people of this country is ultimately influenced, as the ballot is to 
 be carried in the same way in which all the great changes of which 
 we have been the witnesses have been accomplished, and as in those 
 signal instances it was necessary again and again, and session after 
 session, to urge the same obvious motives for the measures which were 
 pressed with a strenuous reiteration upon the parliament and the coun- 
 try ; so in this important discussion, the circumstance that an argu- 
 ment has been advanced, or a striking fact has been stated before, 
 furnishes no just reason for not again insisting upon it. I do not, 
 therefore, hesitate to revert in the outset, although it may have been 
 already mentioned, to what took place in reference to the ballot when 
 the Reform Bill was originally propounded. I attach great importance 
 to the facts which ought to put an end to the dispute regarding what 
 is called the finality of the Reform Bill, in reference to the question 
 before the house. The noble lord, the member for London, has been, 
 I think, a good deal misrepresented on this head ; for some among his 
 supporters have naturally conjectured that he regarded the Reform 
 Bill as a monument where he should " set up his everlasting rest." — 
 But I for one never understood the noble lord to have spoken hi the 
 
 • Mr. Grotc. 
 
250 VOTE BY UALLOT. 
 
 sense ascribed to him. I admit, tliat if the members of Earl Grey's 
 government had entered into an agreement, that not only no ulterior 
 alteration of the franchise should be ever supported by them, but that, 
 in reference to the mode of exercising it, no change sliould ever be 
 proposed, that compact, no matter how preposterous, might be plau- 
 sibly relied upon, against those who were parties to it — against any 
 further movement upon their part, it might be pleaded as an estoppel ; 
 but it can be proved, by evidence beyond dispute, that as far as the 
 ballot is concerned, no such bargain as has been imputed to the Whig 
 government was ever thought of; the direct contrary of what has 
 been so frequently insinuated is the truth. A committee of five dis- 
 tinguished men, all of them more or less conspicuous for agitation in 
 the cause of reform, was named by the government to draw up a plan 
 of reform. A scheme Avas accordingly framed by them, and the vote 
 by ballot formed a part of it. The measure of which the noble lord 
 approved in 1831 cannot be of that immoral and debasing character 
 which its antagonists have sometimes represented it to be. IMy more 
 immediate purpose, however, in referring to a fact announced by the 
 noble lord himself, is to introduce with greater effect the declaration 
 made by the noble lord on moving to bring in the Reform Bill, in 
 March, 1841. The report in favour of the ballot was not adopted, 
 but it was agreed that upon the question no decision should be formed 
 one way or the other, and tliat the Reform Bill should be laid before the 
 house without pi'ejudice to the future adoption of the ballot. This 
 was unequivocally declared by the noble lord in his celebrated speech 
 on moving that bill, which, on account of his great services to the 
 cause of freedom, was so appropriately confided to him. I cannot 
 conceive how, after such a declaration, made under such circum- 
 stances by the noble lord, in language as clear as the English tongue 
 can supply, there can be any doubt as to the question of fact, namely, 
 that the Reform Bill was not in any way to affect the question of bal- 
 lot. But in the progress of that bill what befel ? AVhen the Chandos 
 clause was proposed, Lord Althorp resisted it, declared it to be con- 
 trary to the spirit of the Reform Bill, and said that it would furnish 
 a strong argument for the ballot. Thus, it appears, that before the 
 Reform Bill was brought forward, the ballot was proposed by certain 
 members of the government. When the Reform Bill was brought 
 forward there was an express reservation in favour of the right of 
 thereafter proposing the ballot, and during the discussion of the mea- 
 sure the leader of the House of Commons deliberately stated that a 
 principle had been grafted on the measure, which altered its character 
 and afforded good grounds for demanding the ballot. Let us follow 
 the biU to the House of Lords. Lord Grey made this most important 
 
VOTE BY BALLOT. 251 
 
 Statement : — He said that the agricultural interest had already been 
 greatly strengthened by the Reform Bill ; that the Chandos clause 
 confeiTed on that interest an accession of influence which was excessive 
 and undue, and that that clause, not originally contemplated by the 
 ministiy, would furnish strong reasons for the ballot. "Well might 
 Lord Grey have said so. He had, in devising the Reform Bill, ad- 
 hered to his plan of reform brought forward in 1782, and cut the 
 counties of England into sections. This had, it is manifest, the direct 
 tendency to augment the agricultural interest, and to strengthen the 
 influence of individuals in tlie locahties where their property was si- 
 tuated. Lord Grey, however, did not intend that tenants at wiU, 
 •whose subserviency is implied by their designation, should be invested 
 with the franchise ; and when he found that this vast addition Avas 
 made to the local power of the landed gentry in every county in Eng- 
 land, he saw, with his habitual pei'spicacity, that the abuse of that 
 power, thus unexpectedly augmented, would lead to a demand for 
 that mode of exercising the franchise by which that power should be 
 reduced to its proper limits. Lord Grey foretold that the landed in- 
 terest would acquire, by the Reform Bill thus altered, an injurious 
 power. Let us turn from the prediction to its fulfilment, and from 
 the most illustrious prophet of the consequences of the Chandos clause, 
 to a most distinguished witness to its effects. If an ordinary man had 
 stated in the House of Commons that the result of the Reform Bill 
 was, that when the opinions of a few great proprietors in the section 
 of an English county were known, it was fortunately easy to foresee 
 the inevitable result of the election — that statement would, from its 
 important truth, have attracted notice ; but when one of the leading 
 members of Loi'd Grey's administration — when one of the men who 
 had been most conspicuous in advocating the cause of reform in the 
 House of Commons, and whose eloquence was only surpassed by his 
 spirit of fearless adventure in going all lengths for its attainment — 
 when the noble lord the member for Lancashire announced with an 
 anomalous triumph, that the counties of England had fallen into the 
 hands of a few nominators, and that, in fact, the spirit of the old 
 close borough system had been extended to the chief agricultural di- 
 visions of Engand, no wonder that an admission made by that emi- 
 nent person, who thus made an involuntary contribution to the cause 
 of reform, from which he had seceded, should have produced a great 
 and lasting sensation through the entire country. In his address to 
 the electors of London, the noble lord who represents it, referred to 
 that admission of the noble lord the member for Lancashire, and dwelt 
 upon the state of things in the English counties, which he described. 
 
252 VOTE UY UALLOT. 
 
 I confess that when I read the address of my noble friend, I could 
 not lielp exclaiming, " Now Lord John must come round to the ballot." 
 Perhaps I was too sanguine, but if to the ballot he has not come round, 
 what remedy is he prepared to apply to the evil, in evidence of which he 
 has thus cited the noble lord ? What is to be done ? If nothing is to be 
 done, why was the disastrous truth set forth so conspicuously and pro- 
 minently in the letter of the noble lord ? Why exhibit the disease ? 
 Why disclose the foul distemper? why conceal the gangrene in the very 
 vitals of our system, unless you are prepared to adopt the only etficient re- 
 medy for its cure ? I do think that after this admission, to insist upon the 
 fact that there exists an undue influence which it is necessary to control in 
 this country, is almost superfluous. It has been more than once confessed 
 by the right honourable baronet the member for Tamworth, that intimi- 
 dation was carried to a most criminal extent. I recollect that in 1837 
 it was imputed to him that he had used coercion over his dependants 
 at Tamworth, and that with a most honourable indignation he repu- 
 diated the charge, and demanded a retractation, which he obtained. I 
 have heard him say in this house, and I believe him, that he abhorred 
 intimidation. What will lie do for its repression ? You are anxious, 
 honestly anxious, to put a stop to bribery ; you liave given proof of 
 your honourable solicitude in this regard ; and in this useful and ho- 
 nourable wish you have incurred the censures of men, who are more 
 anxious to extend the church, than the morality of which the church 
 should furnish the example. But is bribery to be corrected, and 
 is intimidation to be left unchecked and' unrestrained ? The 
 right honourable baronet observed that his party were not inter- 
 ested in supporting bribery. Passing by the reasons, let me ask, arc 
 his party interested in maintaining intimidation ? You will answer — 
 No. Well, will you do something to put a stop to it ? You will say, 
 perhaps, that the ballot will not do it. Let us consider whether it will 
 or not, and let us at the same time consider the objections in a social 
 and moral point of view, which are urged against it. The ballot will 
 not secure secrecy. This objection to its inefficiency as a protection, 
 is very much at variance with the allegations of its efficacy, as an in- 
 strimient of fraud. But by the ballot why should not secrecy be se- 
 cured ? Wlien applied to the purposes of social life, in our clubs, and 
 in various institutions, it gives concealment. I have inquired most 
 particularly into the working of the ballot under Ilobhouse's Act in 
 the parish of St. James, and I am assured that those who desire to 
 conceal their votes can do so if they please. The majority of the 
 Itouseholdcrs in that parish give their open parliamentary votes for the 
 Tory candidates, and their secret parochial vote for the Whig candi- 
 
VOTE BY BALLOT. 253 
 
 dates ; and I tliis evening presented a most important petition from 
 that parisli in favour of the ballot. Pass to other countries — ^France 
 for example. It is not pretended that the ballot does not meet the 
 object for which it was devised. It is suggested that men who voted 
 bj ballot would betray themselves by their rash disclosures : I do not 
 think that secrets, which might well be designated " secrets of the 
 })rison-house," from the consequences to which they would lead, would 
 be told. But landlords would act on a conjecture — I cannot think so 
 ill of them. The open vote in defiance of a proprietor is regarded as 
 an insult ; the secret vote could hardly be construed into an affront. 
 Under the vote by ballot men would not be stimulated to vengeance 
 by their political associates ; they would not be cheered and hallooed 
 on in the work of devastation ; and I feel convinced, that under our 
 present system, much of the cruelty that is inflicted, arises from the 
 urgency with which men are invoked by their confederates to make 
 examples of the wretches who dare to resist their will — to turn a whole 
 family out upon the road upon a mere guess would be a frightful pro- 
 ceeding, and one to which few would be sufficiently remorseless to re- 
 sort. But, Sir, the I'cal, the only substantial objection to the ballot, 
 is grounded on the diminution of the influence which property ought 
 to possess. The legitimate influence of property is one thing, and its 
 despotism is another. I do not think that that rightful influence would 
 be materially impaired. There is in every country, but especially in 
 these countries, where the aristocratic principle prevails so much 
 through all gradations of social life, a natural deference to station and 
 authority, and a tendency in all classes to acquiesce in the wishes of 
 those who stand in a relative superiority in their regard. A man may 
 render himself odious by his misdeeds, and denude himself of the sway 
 which property confers ; such a man would have no weight, nor ought 
 he to have it, over his dependants. A violation of the duties of pro- 
 perty might incur a forfeiture of its rights, but I cannot bring myself 
 to believe that a good man, who sought his own happiness in the diffu- 
 sion of felicity, would not exercise over the objects of his bounty the 
 influence with which his virtues ought to be attended. His depen- 
 dants would resort to him for counsel and for guidance ; his exan)ple 
 would furnisli the light by which their way would be directed, and he 
 would himself enjoy from the consciousness of that authority — derived 
 from minds so lofty and so pure — a far higlier pleasure than he could 
 find in the exercise of a stern and arbitrary domination. But sup- 
 posing that the influence of property would be to a certain extent 
 diminished by the ballot, are you sure that the influence of property 
 has not been pushed so far . beyond its due limits, as to endanger 
 
254 VOTE BY BALLOT. 
 
 itself by the excess to which it has already reached ? Before the Re- 
 form BUI, the nomination system was carried so far, and had created 
 such an oligarchical interest in the state, that to save the state itself a 
 change was indispensable. In the course of the ten years which have 
 elapsed since the Reform Bill, how many boroughs have fallen into the 
 hands of individual proprietors, and what formidable abuses arise from 
 the preponderance of large properties in small divisions of intersected 
 counties'. li^veiy day the evil will increase, and every day the de- 
 mand for a redress of this signal grievance will become more loud and 
 imperative ; the feeling of the parliament, elected under peculiar cir- 
 cumstances, and in a moment of re-action, wiU be at variance with the 
 feeling of the people ; the tide, having ebbed to the lowest mark, will 
 flow back again, and sweep away the baiTiers that were intended to 
 restrain it. If something be not done by those who ought to derive a 
 warning from the past, and beware of the influences of transitory suc- 
 cess in producing a vain and self-deceptive exultation, do not in time 
 adopt the measures requisite to correct abuses proved and indisputable, 
 the next requisition for a change, which shall be made, perhaps by an 
 excited people, will be f;ir more formidable than that which we pro- 
 pose, and may lead to consequences by which the worst prognostica- 
 tions may be realised. One, and one only remaining objection to the 
 ballot remains to be noticed. It is said that the morals of the people 
 would be affected by clandestine voting — that it would conduce to the 
 propagation of the most pernicious habits — that falsehood and dissimu- 
 lation would be its natural results — men would make promises which 
 they had no intention of keeping, and suspicion and mistrust would 
 arise where confidence and reliance now happily prevail. I am per- 
 suaded that promises spontaneously made, flowing from a free and 
 imbiassed volition, would be observed under the ballot as faithfully 
 as they now are ; and with regard to promises purchased from cor- 
 ruption or wrung from fear, they belong to that class of engagements 
 of whose inchoate depravity the profligate performance is the infamous 
 consummation. I am well aware that, generally speaking, citations 
 from the writers of antiquity are little applicable to our system of 
 government and our code of morality ; the opinions of men who lived 
 upward of 2,000 years ago have little weight, but there is a passage 
 with reference to the moral of the ballot, in a speech of the great 
 Athenian, which I have never seen quoted, so forcible and so true, 
 that I shall be excused for adverting to it : — 
 
 " If," says Demosthenes, in his speech on the false embassy, address- 
 ing an assembly of five hundred judges, who were to vote by ballot, 
 " if there be any man here sufficiently imfortunate to have been be- 
 
VOTE BY BALLOT. 255 
 
 trayed into a corrupt engagement to vote against his conscience and 
 his country, let liini bear in mind that to the fulfilment of that pro- 
 mise he is not bound — that those with whom he has entered into that 
 profligate undertaking .will have no cognizance of its performance, but 
 that there is a divinity above us who will take cognizance of his 
 thoughts, and know whether he shall have fulfilled that duty to his 
 country which is paramount to every other obligation ; your vote is 
 secret, you have nothing to apprehend, for safety is secured to you by 
 the wisest regulation which your lawgivers ever yet laid down." 
 
 To all times and to all countries, the principle thus powerfully ex- 
 pressed is appropriate. A dishonourable contract is void, and to the 
 discharge of a great trust impunity should be secured. The franchise, 
 you often tell us, is a trust granted, but for whom ? If for the pro- 
 prietor of the soil, if for the benefit of the landlord, if it is in him in- 
 deed that the beneficial interest is vested, by all means let the vote be 
 public, and let the real owner of the vote have the fullest opportunity 
 of knowing with what fidelity the ofiices of servitude have been per- 
 formed ; but if the franchise is a trust for the benefit of the commu- 
 nity, and if the publicity of its exercise conduces to its violation, then, 
 in the name of common consistency, do not insist upon our adherence 
 to that system of voting, by which the object you have, or ought to 
 have, most of all at heart, is so manifestly counteracted, nor dwell 
 upon the deception which may be practised through the ballot between 
 those Avho make these false promises, and those who have no right to 
 demand them, while to the fraud upon the country practised under the 
 system of open voting you seem so reckless. I am a good deal struck 
 •with the vast importance which is attached by certain gentlemen to the 
 public morals at one moment, and their comparative indiflerence at 
 another. When the ballot is in question they exclaim, " Good God I 
 shall we introduce into England a system of voting by which duplicity 
 and dissimulation, and all the base results that follow from them shall 
 be propagated amongst us?" But let the great Conservative leader 
 propose a measure which he himself acknowledged to be conducive to 
 falsehood and to perjury, and most debasing in its ojierations, their 
 horror of these immoralities all at once subsides, and they seek a re- 
 fuge from their own consciousness of the inevitable consequences of 
 their proceedings, in the old sophism of authority, that proverbial plea, 
 to which power has a tendency so irrepressible, whenever it is its con- 
 venience to have recourse. But there are political as well as fiscal 
 exigencies, and of the favourite plea of her antagonist, let freedom be 
 permitted to avail herself. The ballot has its evils, but it is justified 
 by necessity, and great as these evils may be, they are more than 
 
25(J VOTE UY BALLOT. 
 
 countervailed by tlie abuses which are incident to our existing system. 
 I am free to acknowledge, that if the public exercise of the franchise 
 were accompanied by that freedom, of which the noble etymology of 
 the word gives us the intimation, I should infinitely prefer the system 
 of open voting, which is more congenial with your habits. I own that 
 an Englishman, who advances with a firm step and a high indepen- 
 dent bearing to the hustings, and in the face of his country, gives his 
 honest independent vote for the man in whose public virtue, in whose 
 personal integrity, in whose capacity to serve the state he places an 
 implicit confidence, and if his confidence by his vote gives the public 
 an honourable proof, does present to me, advocate of the ballot as I 
 am, a fine spectacle. Yes, some statesman, for example, the hereditary 
 proprietor of some segment of a mountain, recluinaed by the industrious 
 man from whom it has come down to him, exempt from all tribute, 
 and every incident of dependancy, some Cumberland statesman, whose 
 spirit is as free and liberal as the air which he inhales, whose heart 
 beats high with the consciousness of the high trust reposed in him, and 
 of the moral responsibility which attaches to its performance, does 
 present to me, in the uncontrolled and unshackled exercise of the great 
 prerogative of the people, an object to which my admiration is promptly 
 and sincerely given. But turn from Cumberland and its statesmen, 
 to the mournful realities which ax'e offered to you in the land from 
 which I come, and look at the £10 voter who luxs had the misfortune 
 to pass througli the registration court, and who receives from his land- 
 lord a summons to attend the hustings, and in a contest between a 
 Liberal and a Tory candidate, to give his vote on one side, all his 
 feelings (feelings like your own) all his national predilections, all hia 
 religious emotions, all his personal affections, are enlisted : — perhaps 
 on one side he sees a man whom he has long been accustomed to re- 
 gard as the deliverer of his country — whom he looks upon as the 
 champion of his creed and of his priesthood — of the land in which he 
 was born, and for which, if there wex'e need, he would be prompt to 
 die — his eye fills, and his heart grows big, and prayers break from his 
 lips as he beholds him ; and on the other side — the side on which he 
 is called upon to vote — he beholds some champion of that stern ascen- 
 dency by which his country had long been trodden under foot, by 
 whom his religion had long been vilified, its ministers had long been 
 covered with opprobrium, and the class to which he belongs has long 
 been treated with contumely and disdain ; for such a man he is called 
 upon, under a penalty the most fearful, with impending ruin, to give 
 his false and miserable suffrage ; trembling, shrinking, cowering, afraid 
 to look his friends and kinsmen in the face, he ascends the hustings, as 
 
VOTE BY BALLOT. 257 
 
 if it were the scaffold of his conscience, and, with a voice almost in- 
 articulate with emotion, stammers out, when asked for vvhom he 
 Votes — not the name of him whom he loves, and prizes, and honours — . 
 but of the man whom he detests, loathes, abhors ; for him it is, it is in 
 his favour, that he exercises the great trust, the sanctity of which re- 
 quires that it should be exercised in the face of the world ; for him it is, 
 it is in his favour, that he gives utterance to that which, to all intents 
 and purposes, is a rank and odious falsehood ; but perhaps he resists, 
 perhaps, under the influence of some sentiment, half-religious, half- 
 heroic, looking martyrdom in the face, he revolts against the horri- 
 ble tyranny that you would rivet on him, and he votes, wi-etch 
 that lie is, in conformity with tlio dictates of his conscience, and 
 what he believes to be the ordinance of his religion. Alas for 
 liiml a month or two go by, and all that he has in the world 
 is seized ; the beast that gives him milk, the horse that drags his 
 plough, the table of his scanty meal, the bed where anguish, and po- 
 verty, and oppression were sometimes forgotten — all, all are taken 
 from him, and with Providence for his guide, but with God, I hope, for 
 his avenger, he goes forth with his. wife and children upon the world. 
 And this, this is the system which you, and you, but I hope not you 
 (turning to Lord John Russell) are prepared to maintain ! This is the 
 system under which what is called a great trust is performed in tho 
 eyes of the country ; this is the system under which, by the exercise 
 of the great prerogative of freemen, open and undisguised, every 
 British citizen invested with the franchise should feel himself exalted ! 
 Oh, fie upon this mockery 1 and if I cannot say fie upon them, what shall 
 I say of the men who, with these things of a constant and perpetual oc- 
 currence staring them in the face, talk to us of the immorality of the 
 ballot, and tell us, forsooth, that it is an un-English proceeding. Un- 
 English ! I know the value of that expressive and powerful word. I 
 know the great attributes by Avhich the people of this country are 
 distinguished, and of the phrase which expresses the reverse of these 
 habits, I can appreciate the full and potent signification. Fraud is 
 indeed un-English, and dissimulation, and deception, and duplicity, 
 and double-dealing, and promise-bi-eaking, all, every vice akin to 
 these vile things, arc indeed un-English ; but tyranny, base, abomi- 
 nable tyranny, is un-English ; hard-hearted persecution of poor fana- 
 tic wretches, is un-English ; crouching fear on one side, and ferocious 
 menace and relentless savageness upon the other, are un-Englisli ! 
 Of your existing system of voting these are the consequences ; and to 
 these evils, monstrous as they are, you owe it to your national cha- 
 racter, to truth, to justice, to every consideration, political, social, 
 s * 
 
258 VOTK UV BALLOT. 
 
 religious, moral, at once to provide the cure. What shall it be? 
 Public opinion ! Public opinion ! We have been hearing of it this long 
 time — this many a day we have been hearing of public opinion. In 
 tlie last ten years and upwards, whenever the ballot has been brought 
 forward, we have been told, that for corruption, for intimidation, for 
 everything, public opinion would supply the cure — that marvellous 
 and wonder-working principle, that sedative of the passions, that mi- 
 nister to the diseases of the mind, that alterative of the heart, was 
 to extinguish cupidity, was to coerce ambition, allay the fears of the 
 slave, mitigate the ferocity of the tyrant, and over all the imperfec- 
 tions of our nature to extend its soft and salutary sway. Well, how 
 has it worked ? Public opinion, so far as bribery is concerned, is given 
 up ; few, except the members for the University of Oxford and the 
 University of Dublin, those amiable gentlemen, among whose virtues 
 a peculiar indulgence for parliamentary frailties are conspicuous, 
 would recommend that Soutliampton and Belfast, and the rest of the 
 delinquent boroughs, should be consigned to public opinion. But if 
 for bribery public opinion has lost all its sanative operation, is it, in 
 the name of common consistency, for intimidation, that this specific 
 is to be reserved ? Upon bribery, of the two, public opinion would 
 have the greater influence. To bribery there is attached some sort of 
 discredit ; but intimidation is not only openly practised, but ostenta- 
 tiously avowed. Men do not deny, but take pride in it ; they applaud 
 themselves, too, for the wholesome severity which they have exer- 
 cised, and the salutary examples they have made. So far, indeed, is 
 the principle of intimidation carried, that a regular theory of coercion 
 has been established, and the great patricians of the land compress 
 their notions of their privileges into a phrase, to lay down the dogmas 
 of despotism in some trite saying, and, in some familiar sentence, to 
 propound tlie aphorisms of domination. When these doctrines are 
 unrecanted in language, and in conduct are uni'ecalled — when such 
 doctrines are defended, vindicated, and applauded — ^when they are 
 acted upon to an extent so vast that it is almost diflicult to suggest 
 where they have not been applied — how long, how much longer, are 
 we to look to public opinion as the corrective of those evils, which, 
 without the application of some more potent remedy, it is al- 
 most an imposture to deploi-e ? Show me a remedy beside the ballot, 
 and I will at once accede to it. Show me any other means by which 
 the tenants of your estates and the retailers of your commerce, and 
 all those whose dependance is so multifariously diversified, can be 
 protected — show me any other means by which a few men of property, 
 confederated in the segment of a divided county, shall be frustrated 
 
VOTE BY BALLOT. 259 
 
 in conspiring to return your fractional county members — show me any 
 other means by which this new scheme of nomination shall be baffled 
 and defeated — show me any otlier means by wliich a few leading 
 gentlemen in the vicinage of almost every agricultural borough shall 
 be foiled in their dictation to those small tradesmen whose vote and 
 interest are demanded in all the forms of peremptory solicitation. 
 Show me this and I give up the ballot. But if you cannot show me 
 this — for the sake of your country, for the sake of your high fame ; 
 upon every motive, personal and public ; from every consideration, 
 national and individual — pause before you repudiate the means, the 
 only means, by which the spirit of coercion now carried into a system 
 shall be restrained, by which the enjoyment of the franchise shall 
 be associated with the will, by which the country shall be saved from 
 all the suffering, the affliction, and the debasement with wliich a 
 general election is now attended ; and without which, to a state of 
 things most calamitous and most degrading, there is not a glimpse 
 of hope, not a chance the most remote, that the slightest palliative 
 will be applied. , 
 
260 TllIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 THE IRISH STATE TRIALS. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE COURT OF QUEEN's BENCH, IN IRELAND, IN THE 
 CASE OF THE QUEEN V. DANIEL o'cONNELL, JOHN o'cONNELL, AND 
 OTHERS, IN DEFENCE OF MR. JOHN o'cONNELL. 
 
 I AM counsel for Mr. John O'Connell. The importance of tliis case 
 is not susceptible of exaggeration, and I do not speak in the language 
 of hyperbole when I say that the attention of the empire is directed 
 to the spot in which we are assembled. How great is the trust re- 
 posed in you — how great is the task which I have undertaken to per- 
 form ? Conscious of its magnitude, I have risen to address you, not 
 unmoved, but undismayed ; no — not unmoved — for at this moment 
 how many incidents of my own political life come back upon me, 
 when I look upon my great political benefactor, my deliverer, and 
 my friend ; but of the emotion by which I acknowledge myself to be 
 profoundly stirred, although I will not permit myself to be subdued 
 by it, solicitude forms no part. I have great reliance upon you — upon the 
 ascendancy of principle over prejudice in your minds ; and I am not en- 
 tirely without reliance upon myself. I do not speak in the language of 
 vain-glorious self-complacency when I say this. I know that I am sur- 
 rounded by men infinitely superior to me in every forensic, and in al- 
 most every intellectual qualification. My confidence is derived, not from 
 any overweening estimate of my own faculties, but from a thorough con- 
 viction of the innocence of my client. I know, and I appear in some 
 sort not only as an advocate but a witness before you. I know him to 
 be innocent of the misdeeds laid to his charge. The same blood flows 
 through their veins — the same feelings circulate through their hearts : 
 the son and the father are in all political regards the same, and with 
 the father I have toiled in no dishonourable companionship for more 
 than half my life in that great work, which it is his chief praise that it 
 was conceived in the spirit of peace — that in the spirit of peace it 
 was carried out — and that in the spirit of peace it was brought by him 
 to its glorious consummation. I am acquainted with every feature of 
 his character, with his thoughts, hopes, fears, aspirations. I have — 
 if I may venture to say — a full cognizance of every pulsation of his 
 heart. I know — I am sure as that I am a living man — that from the 
 sanguinary misdeeds imputed to him, he shrinks with abhorrence. It 
 is this persuasion — profound, impassioned — and I trust that it will 
 prove contagious — which will sustain me in the midst of the exhaustion 
 incidental to this lengthened trial ; will enable me to overcome the 
 
TEIAL OF O'CONNELL. 261 
 
 illness under which I am at this moment labouring ; will raise me to 
 the height of this great argument, and lift me to a level with the lofty 
 topics which I shall have occasion to treat in resisting a prosecution, 
 to which in the annals of criminal jurisprudence in this country no 
 parallel can be found. Gentlemen, the Attorney-Genei'al, in a state- 
 ment of eleven or twelve hours' duration, read a long series of extracts 
 from speeches and publications, extending over a period of nearly 
 nine months. At the termination of every passage which was cited 
 by him, he gave utterance to expressions of strong resentment against 
 the men by whom sentiments so noxious were circulated, in language 
 most envenomed. If, gentlemen of the jury, his anger was not si- 
 mulated ; if his indignation was not merely official ; if he spoke as he 
 felt, liow does it come to pass that no single step was over taken by 
 him for the pui-pose of arresting the progress of an evil represented 
 by him to be so calamitous ? He told you that the country Avas tra- 
 versed by incendiaries who set fire to the passions of the people ; the 
 whole fabric of society, according to the Attorney- General, for the 
 last nine months has been in a blaze ; wherefore then did he stand 
 with folded arms to gaze at the conflagration ? Where were the Castle 
 fire-engines — where was the indictment — and of ex officio informa- 
 tion, what had become ? Is there not too much reason to think 
 that a project was formed, or rather that a plot was concocted, to 
 decoy the traversers, and that a connivance, amounting almost to 
 sanction, was deliberately adopted as a part of the policy of the go- 
 vernment, in order to betray the traversers into indiscretions of which 
 advantage was, in due time, to be taken ? I have heard it said that 
 it was criminal to tell the people to " bide their time ;" * but is the 
 government to " bide its time," in order to turn popular excitement 
 to account ? The public prosecutor who gives an indirect encourage- 
 ment to agitation, in order that he may afterwards more effectually 
 fall upon it, bears some moral affinity to the informer, who provokes 
 the crime from whose denunciation his ignominious livelihood is de- 
 rived. Has the Attorney-General adopted a course worthy of his 
 
 great office worthy of the ostensible head of the Irish bar, and the 
 
 representative of its intellect in the House of Commons ? Is it be- 
 fitting that the successor of Saurin, and of Plunket, who should " keep 
 watch and ward" from his high station over the public safety, should 
 descend to the performance of functions worthy only of a commissary 
 of the French police ; and in place of being the sentinel, should be- 
 come the " Artful Dodger" of the state ? But what, you may ask, 
 could be the motive of the right honourable gentleman for pursuing 
 ♦ One of the songs of the Nation is entitled "Bide your tune." 
 
2G2 TRIAL, OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 tlie course he lias adopted, and for wliicli no explanation has been 
 attempted by him ? He could not have obtained any advantage 
 signally serviceable to his party by prosecuting Mr. Duffy, or Dr. 
 Gray, for strong articles in their newspapers ; or by prosecuting 
 Mr. Steele or Mr. Tierney, for attending unlawful assemblies. — 
 He did not fish with lines — if I may avail myself of an illustration de- 
 rived from the habits of my constituents at Dungarvan — but cast a 
 wide and nicely constructed trammel-net, in order that by a kind of 
 miraculous catch he might take the great agitator-leviathan himself, a 
 member of parliament — Mr. Steele, three editors of newspapers, and 
 a pair of priests, in one stupendous haul together. But there was 
 another object still more important to be gained. Had the Attorney- 
 General prosecuted individuals for the use of violent language, or for 
 attending unlawful meetings, each individual would have been held 
 responsible for his own acts ; but in a prosecution for conspiracy, which 
 is open to every one of the objections applicable to constructive treason, 
 the acts and the speeches of one man are given in evidence against 
 another, although the latter may have been at the distance of a hun- 
 dred miles when the circumstances used against him as evidence, and 
 of which he had no sort of cognizance, took place. By prosecuting 
 Mr. O'Connell for a conspiracy, the Attoniey-General treats him 
 exactly as if he were the editor of the Nation, the editor of the 
 Freeman, and the editor of the Pilot. Indeed, if five or six other 
 editors of newspapers in the country had been joined as traver- 
 sers, for every line in their newspapers INIr. O'Connell would be 
 held responsible. There is one English gentleman, I believe, upon 
 that jury. If a prosecution for a conspiracy were instituted against 
 the Anti-Corn Law League in England, would he not think it very 
 hard indeed that Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright should be held answer- 
 able for every article in the Chronicle, in the Globe, and in the Sun? 
 How large a portion of the case of the crown depends upon this im- 
 plication of Mr. O'Connell with three Dublin newspapers ? He is 
 accused of conspiring with men who certainly never conspired with 
 each other. For those who know anything of newspapers are aware 
 that they are mercantile speculations — the property in them is held by 
 shares — and that the very circumstance of their being engaged in the 
 same politics alienate the proprietors from each othei\ They pay their 
 addresses to the same mistress, and cordially detest each other. I 
 remember to have heard Mr. Barnes, the celebrated editor of the 
 Times newspaper, once ask Mr. Rogers what manner of man was a 
 Mr. Tomkins ? to which Mi'. Rogers replied, " he was a dull dog, who 
 read the Morning Herald." Let us turn for a moment from the re- 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 263 
 
 peal to the anti-repeal party. You would smile, I think, at the sug- 
 gestion that Mr. Murray Mansfield* and Mr. Remmy Sheehan| should 
 enter into a conspiracy together. Those gentlemen would be them- 
 selves astonished at the imputation. Suppose them to be both mem- 
 bers of the Conservative Association : would that cii'cumstance be suf- 
 ficient to sustain, in the judgment of men of plain sense, the charge 
 of conspiracy upon them? Gentlemen, the relation in which Mr. 
 Duffy, Mr. Barrett, and Dr. Gray stood to the Repeal Association, 
 is exactly the same as that in which Mr. Staunton, the proprietor of 
 the Weekly Register, stood towards the Catholic Association. He 
 was paid for his advertisements, and his newspaper contained eman- 
 cipation news, and was sent to those who desired to receive it. ]Mr. 
 Staunton is now a member of the Repeal Association ; he will tell 
 you tliat his connexion with that body is precisely of the same charac- 
 ter as that wliich existed with the celebrated body to which I have 
 referred ; he will prove to you, that over his paper Mr. O'ConncU 
 exercises no sort of control, and that all that is done by him in refe- 
 rence to his paper, is the result of his own free and unbiassed wiU. The 
 speeclies made at the Association and public meetings were reported by 
 liim in the same manner as in the other public journals ; he is not a 
 conspirator ; the government have not treated him as such. Why ? 
 Because there were no poems in his paper like " The Memory of the 
 Dead," J which, although in direct opposition to the feelings of Mr. 
 O'Connell, and which he had frequently expressed, is now used in 
 evidence against him. Gentlemen, I have said enough to you to 
 show how formidable is this doctrine of conspiracy — of legal conspi- 
 racy — which is so far removed from aU notions of actual conspiracy, 
 to show you further how cautious you ought to be in finding eight of 
 your fellow-citizens guilty of that charge. The defendants are in- 
 dicted for conspiracy, and for nothing else. No counts are inserted 
 for attending unlawful assemblies. The Attorney-General wants a 
 conviction for a conspiracy, and nothing else. He has deviated 
 in these particulars from English usage. In indictments for a con- 
 spiracy, counts for attending unlawful assemblies are in England 
 uniformly introduced. English juries have almost uniformly ma- 
 nifested an aversion to find men guilty of a conspiracy. Take 
 Henry Hunt's case as an example. When that case was tried 
 England was in a perilous condition. It had been proved before a 
 secret committee of the House of Commons, of which the present 
 
 * The proprietor of the Evening Packet. 
 
 I The proprietor of the Evening Mail. Both high Conservatives. 
 
 X This song was set out at full in the iiulictnicut. 
 
264 TRIAL, OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 Earl of Derby, the father of Lord Stanley, was the chairman, that 
 large bodies of men were disciplined at night in the neighbourhood 
 of Manchester, and made familiar with the use of arms. An exten- 
 sive organization existed. Vast public assemblies were held, accom- 
 panied with every revolutionary incident in furtherance of a revolu- 
 tionaiy object — yet, an English jury wouhl not find Henry Hunt 
 guilty of a conspiracy, but found him guilty, on the fourth count of 
 the indictment, for attending an unlawful assembly. Some of the 
 Chartists were not found guilty of a conspiracy, but were found guilty 
 upon counts from which the word " conspiracy" is left out. Gentle- 
 men, the promises of Mr. Pitt, when the Union was carried, have 
 not been fulfilled — the prospects presented by him in his magnificent 
 declamation have not been realised ; but, if in so many other regards 
 we have sustained a most grievous disappointment — if English capi- 
 tal has not adventured here — if Englishmen have pi'efei'red sinking 
 their fortunes in the rocks of Mexico rather than embark them in 
 speculations connected with this fine but unfortunate country — ^yet, 
 from the Union let one advantage be at all events derived : Let Eng- 
 lish feelings — let English principles — let English love of justice — let 
 English horror of oppression — let English detestation of foul play — 
 let English loathing of constructive crime, find its way amongst us ! 
 But, thank God, it is not to England that I am driven exclusively to 
 refer for a salutary example of the aversion of twelve honest men 
 to prosecutions for conspiracy. You remember the prosecution of 
 Forbes, and of Handwich, and other Orangemen of an inferior class, 
 under Lord Wellesley's administration ; they were guilty of a riot in 
 the theatre, but they were charged with having entered into a great 
 political confederacy to upset Lord AVellesley's government, and to 
 associate him with the " exports of Ireland." The Protestant feeling of 
 Ireland rose — addresses were poured in from almost every district in the 
 country, remonstrating against a proceeding which was repi'esented as 
 hostile to the liberties of the country, and as a great stretch of the prero- 
 gative of the crown. The jury did their duty, and refused to convict the 
 traversers. The Irish Catholics at that time, heated by feelings of par- 
 tizanship, were rash enough to wish for a conviction. Fatal mistake ! 
 A precedent would have been created, which would soon have been 
 converted into practice against themselves. Gentlemen, we are liv- 
 ing in times of strange political vicissitude. God forbid that I should 
 ever live to see the time — (for I hate to see ascendancy of every kind) — 
 God forbid that I should ever live to see the time, or that our children 
 should ever live to see the time, Avhen there shall be arrayed four Ca- 
 tholic judges at a trial at bar upon that bench, when the entire of the 
 government bar who shall be engaged in a public prosecution shall be 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 266 
 
 Roman Catholic ; and when a Catholic crown solicitor shall strike 
 eleven Protestants from the special jury list, and leave twelve Roman 
 Catholics in that box. I reassert it, and exclaim again, in all the sin- 
 cerity of my heart, that I pray that such a spectacle never shall be ex- 
 hibited in this the first criminal court in the land. I know full well 
 the irrepressible tendency of the power to abuse. We have witnessed 
 strange things, and strange things we may yet behold. It is the duty, 
 the solemn duty — it is the interest, the paramount interest — of eveiy 
 one of us, before and above everything else, to secure the great foun- 
 dations of liberty — in which we all have an equal concern — from in- 
 vasion, and to guard against the creation of a precedent which may 
 enable some future Attorney-General to convert the Queen's Bench 
 into a star-chamber, and commit a further inroad upon the principles 
 of tlie constitution. Gentlemen, it is my intention to show you that 
 my client is not guilty of any of the conspiracies charged in the in- 
 dictment ; and in doing so I shall have occasion to advert to the several 
 proceedings that have been adopted by the government, and to the 
 evidence that has been laid before you. But before I proceed to that 
 head of the division which I have traced out for myself, I shall show 
 you what the object of my client really was ; I sliall show you that that 
 object was a legal one, and tliat it wns by legal means that he endea- 
 voured to attain it. The Attorney-General, in a speech of consider- 
 able length— but not longer than the greatness of the occasion amply 
 justified — adverted to a great number of diversified topics, quoted the 
 speeches of Sir Robert Peel and of Lord John Russell — adverted to the 
 report of the secret committee of the House of Lords in 1797, and 
 referred to the great era of Irish parliamentary independence, 1782. 
 That he should have been so multifarious and discursive, I do not 
 complain. In a case of this incalculable importance we should look for 
 light wherever it can be found. I shall go somewhat farther than the 
 year 1782 ; but do not imagine that I mean to enter into any length- 
 ened narrative or elaborate expatiation. Long tracts of time may be 
 swiftly traversed. I do not think that any writer has given a more 
 accurate or more interesting account of the first struggle of Ireland 
 for the assertion of her rights than Sir Walter Scott. lie was a Tory. 
 He was bred and born, perhaps, in some disrelish for Ireland ; but 
 when he came amongst us, his opinions underwent a material altera- 
 tion. The man who could spealc of Scotland in those noble lines 
 which were cited in the course of this trial, with so much passionate 
 attachment, made a just allowance for those who felt for the land of 
 their birth the same just emotion. Li his life of Swift, he says, 
 Molyneux, the friend of Locke and of liberty, published in 1698, 
 " The case of Ireland being bound by act of parliament in England, 
 
2GG TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 " Stated," in wliich he showed with great force, " that the right of le- 
 " gislation, of which England made so oppressive a use, was neither 
 "justifiable by the plea of conquest, purchase, or precedent, and was 
 " only submitted to from incapacity of effectual resistance. The temper 
 " of the English House of Commons did not brook these remonstrances. 
 " It was unanimously voted that these bold and pernicious assertions 
 " were calculated to shake the subordination and dependance of Ireland, 
 " as united and annexed for ever to the crown of England, and the vote 
 " of the house was followed by an address to the Queen, complaining 
 " that although the woollen trade was the staple manufacture of England, 
 " overwhich herlegislation was accustomed to watch with the utmost care, 
 " yet Ireland, which was dependant upon and pi'otected by England, 
 " not contented with the linen manufacture, the liberty whereof was in- 
 *' dulged to her, presumed also to apply her credit and capital to the 
 " weaving of her own wool and woollen cloths, to the great detriment of 
 " England. Not a voice was raised in the British House of Commons to 
 "contradict maxims equally impolitic and tyrannical. In acting upon 
 " these commercial restrictions, wrong was heaped upon wrong, and 
 " insult was added to injury — with this advantage on the side of the ag- 
 "gressors, that they could intimidate the people of Ii'cland into silence 
 " by raising, to drown every complaint, the cry of ' rebel' and ' Jaco- 
 " bite.' " When Swift came to Ireland in 1714 he at first devoted him- 
 self to literary occupations ; but at length his indignation was aroused 
 by the monstrous wrongs which were inflicted upon his country. He 
 was so excited by the injustice which he abhorred, that he could not 
 forbear exclaiming to his friend Delany, " Do not the villanies of men 
 eat into your flesh?" In 1720 he published a proposal for the use of 
 Irish manufacture, and was charged with having endeavoured to 
 create hostility between different classes of his Majesty's subjects, one 
 of the charges preferred in this very indictment. At that time the 
 judges were dependant upon the crown. They did not possess that 
 " fixity of tenure" which is a security for their public viitue. They 
 are now no longer, thank God, " tenants at will." They may be mis- 
 taken — they may be blinded by strong emotions — but corrupt they 
 cannot be. The circumstances detailed in the following passage in the 
 life of Swift could not by possibility occur in modern times. " The 
 storm which Swift had driven was not long in bursting. It was in- 
 timated to Lord Chief Justice AVliitshed by a person in great office" 
 (this, if I remember right, was the expression used by Mr. Ross, in 
 reference to a great unknown, who sent him here) " that Swift's 
 pamphlet was published for the purpose of setting tlie two kingdoms 
 at variance ; and it was recommended that the printer should be pro- 
 secuted with the uttermost rigour. Whitshed was not a person to 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 2G7 
 
 neglect such a hint, and the arguments of government were so suc- 
 cessful that the grand juries of the county and city presented the 
 dean's pamphlet as a seditious, factious, and virulent libel. Waters, 
 the printer, was seized and forced to give great bail ; but, upon his 
 trial, the jury, though some pains had been bestowed in selecting 
 them, brought him in not guUty ; and it was not until they were worn 
 out by the Lord Chief Justice, who detained them eleven hours, and 
 sent them nine times to reconsider their verdict, that they, at length, 
 reluctantly left the matter in his hands, by a special verdict ; but the 
 measures of Whitshed were too violent to be of service to the go- 
 vernment ; men's minds revolted against his iniquitous conduct." — 
 Sir Walter Scott then proceeds to give an account of the famous 
 Drapicr's Letters. After speaking of the first three Sir Walter Scott 
 says, " It was now obvious, from the temper of Ireland, that the true 
 point of difference between the two countries might safely be brought 
 before the public. In the Drapicr's fourth letter, accordingly, Swift 
 boldly treated of the royal prerogative, of the almost exclusive em- 
 ployment of natives of England in places of trust and emolument in 
 Ireland ; of the dependance of that kingdom upon England, and the 
 power assumed, contrary to truth, reason, and justice, of binding 
 licr by tlic laws of a parliament in which slie had no representation." 
 And, gentlemen, is it a question too bold of me to ask, whether if 
 Ireland have no effective representation — if the wishes and feelings of 
 the representatives of Ireland upon Irish questions are held to be of 
 no account — if the Irish representation is utterly merged in the Eng- 
 lish, and the minister docs not, by a judicious policy, endeavour to 
 counteract it — as he might, in the opinion of many men, effectually 
 do — is not the practical result exactly the same as if Ireland had not 
 a single representative in parliament ? Gentlemen, Swift addressed 
 the people of Ireland upon this great topic, in language as strong as 
 any that Daniel O'Connell has employed. " The remedy," he says, 
 " is wholly in your own hands. » * * By the laws of God, of 
 nations, and of your country, you are, and ought to be, as free a 
 people as your brethren in England." " This tract," says Sir Walter 
 Scott, " pressed at once upon the real merits of the question at issue, 
 and the alarm was instantly taken by the English government, the 
 necessity of supporting whose domination devolved upon Carterer, 
 who was just landed, and accordingly a proclamation was issued of- 
 fering £300 reward for the discovery of the author of the Drapicr's 
 fourth letter, described as a wicked and malicious pamphlet, contain- 
 ing several seditious and scandalous passages, highly reflecting upon 
 his Majesty and his ministers, and tending to alienate the affections of 
 
268 TUIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 his good subjects in England and Ireland from each other." Sir 
 Walter, after mentioning one or two interesting anecdotes, says — 
 " When the bill against the printer of the Drapier's Letters was about 
 to be presented to the grand jury, Swift addressed to that body a 
 paper entitled ' Seasonable Advice,' exhorting them to remember the 
 story of the Leyone mode by which the wolves were placed with tho 
 sheep on condition of parting with their shepherds and mastitis, after 
 which they ravaged the flock at pleasure." A few spirited verses, 
 addressed to the citizens at large, and enforcing similar topics, are 
 subscribed by the Drapier's initials, and are doubtless Swift's own 
 composition, alluding to the charge that he had gone too far in leav- 
 ing the discussion of Wood's project, to treat of the alleged dependance 
 of Ireland. He concludes in these lines — 
 
 " If then, oppression has not quite subdued 
 
 At once your prudence and your gratitude — 
 
 If you yourselves conspire not your xuidoing — 
 
 And don't deserve, and won't bring down your ruin — 
 
 If yet to virtue you have some pretence — 
 
 If yet 3'ou are not lost to common sense. 
 
 Assist your patriots in your own defence ; 
 
 Tliat stupid cant, " he went too far," despise, 
 
 And know that to be brave is to be wise ; 
 
 Think how he struggled for your liberty. 
 
 And give him freedom while yourselves are free." 
 
 At the same time was circulated the memorable and apt quotation 
 from Scripture, by a Quaker (I do not know, gentlemen, whether his 
 name was Robinson, but it ought to have been) — "And the people 
 said unto Saul, shall Jonathan die who hath wrought thy great salva- 
 tion in Israel ? God forbid ! As the Lord liveth there shall not one 
 hair of his head fall to the ground, for he hath wrought with God this 
 day ; so the people rescued Jonathan and he died not." Thus ad- 
 monished by verse, law, and Scripture, the grand-jury assembled. It 
 was in vain that the Lord Chief Justice Whitshed, who had denounced 
 the dean's former tract as seditious, and procured a verdict against 
 the prisoner, exerted himself upon a similar occasion. Tlie hour for 
 intimidation was passed. Sir Walter Scott, after detailing instances 
 of the violence of Whitshed, and describing the rest of the dean's 
 letters, says — " Thus victoriously terminated the first grand struggle 
 for the independence of Ireland. The eyes of the kingdom were now 
 moved with one consent upon the man by whose unbending fortitude 
 and pre-eminent talent this triumph was accomplished. The^Drapier's 
 head became a sign ; his portrait was engraved, worn upon handker- 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 269 
 
 chiefs, struck upon medals, and displayed in every possible manner as 
 the Liberator of Ireland." WeU miglit that epithet " grand," be ap- 
 plied to the first great struggle of the people of Ireland by that immortal 
 Scotchman, who was himself so " grand of soul," and who of mental 
 loftiness, as well as of the magnificence of extei'nal nature, had a per- 
 ception so fine — and well might our own Grattan, who was so great and 
 60 good, in referring to his own achievement in 1782, address to the 
 spirit of Swift and to the spirit of Molyneux his enthusiastic invoca- 
 tion — and may not I, in such a cause as this, without irreverence, 
 offer up my prayer, that of the spirit by which the soul of Henry 
 Grattan was itself inflamed, every remnant in the bosoms of my coun- 
 trymen may not be extinguished. A prosecution was not instituted 
 against the great conspirators of 1782. The English minister had 
 been taught in the struggles between England and her colonies a lesson 
 from adversity, that school-mistress, the only one from whom ministers 
 ever learn anything — who charges so much blood, so much gold, and 
 such torrents of tears, for her instructions. In reading the history of 
 that time, and in tracing the gradual descent of England from the tone 
 of despotic dictation to the reluctant acknowledgment of disaster, and 
 to the ignominious confession of defeat, how many painful considera- 
 tions arc presented to \is ! If in time — if the English minister in time 
 had listened to the eloquent warnings of Chatham, or to the still more 
 oracular admonitions of Edmund Burke, what a world of woe would 
 have been avoided ! By some fatality, England was first demented, 
 and then was lost. Her repentance followed her perdition. The 
 colonics were lost ; but Ireland was saved by the timely recognition 
 of the great principle on which her independence was founded. No 
 Attorney-General was found bold enough to prosecute Flood and 
 Grattan for a conspiracy. With what scorn would twelve Irishmen 
 have repudiated the presumptuous functionary by whom such an en- 
 terprise should Jiave been attempted. Irishmen then felt that they 
 had a counti-y ; they acted under the influence of that instinct of 
 nationality, which, for his providential purposes, the author of nature 
 has implanted in us. "VVe were then a nation — we were not broken 
 into fragments by those dissensions by Avhich we are at once enfeebled 
 and degraded. If we were eight millions of Protestants (and, heaven 
 forgive me, there are moments when, looking at the wrongs done to 
 my country, I have been betrayed into the guilty desire that Ave all 
 were) ; but, if we were eight millions of Protestants, should we be 
 used as. we are ? Should we see every office of dignity and emolu- 
 ment in this country filled by the natives of the sister island ? Should 
 we see the just expenditure requisite for the improvement of our 
 
270 TRIAL OP O'CONNELL. 
 
 country denied ? Should we see the quit and crown rents of Ireland 
 applied to the improvement of Charing- Cross or of Windsor Castle ? 
 Should we submit to the odious distinctions between Englishmen and 
 Irishmen introduced into almost every act of legislation ? Should we 
 bear with an Arms Bill, by which the Bill of Rights is set at nought? 
 Should we brook the misapplication of a Poor Law ? Should we 
 allow the parliament to proceed as if we had not a voice in the 
 legislature ? Should we submit to our present inadequate repre- 
 sentation? Should we allow a new tariff to be introduced, with- 
 out giving us the slightest equivalent for the manifest loss we have 
 sustained ? And should we not peremptorily require that the Impe- 
 rial Parliament should hold a periodical sessions for the transaction of 
 Irish business in the metropolis of a powerful, and, as it then would 
 be, an undivided country? But we are prevented by our wretched 
 religious distinctions from co-operating for a single object, by wliich 
 the honour and substantial interests of our country can be promoted. 
 Fatal, disastrous, detestable distinctions! Detestable, because they 
 are not only repugnant to the genuine spirit of Cliristianity, and sub- 
 stitute for the cliarities of religion the rancorous antipathies of sect ; 
 but because they practically reduce us to a colonial dependancy, make 
 the union a name, substitute for a real union a tie of parchment which 
 an event might sunder — convert a nation into an appurtenance, make 
 us the footstool of the minister, the scorn of England, and the com- 
 miseration of the world. Ireland is the only country in Europe in 
 which abominable distinctions between Protestant and Catholic are 
 permitted to continue. In Germany, wlierc Luther translated the 
 Scriptures; in France, where Calvin wrote the Institutes; ay, in 
 the land of the Dragonados and the St. Bartholomews ; in the land 
 from whence the forefatliers of one of tlie judicial functionaries of this 
 court, and the first ministerial oflicer of the court, were barbarously 
 driven — the mutual wrongs done by Catholic and Protestant are for- 
 given and forgotten, while we, madmen that we are, arrayed by that 
 fell fanaticism which, driven from every other country in Europe, has 
 found a refuge here, precipitate ourselves upon each other in those 
 encounters of sectarian ferocity in which our country, bleeding and 
 lacerated, is trodden under foot. We convert the island, that ought to 
 be one of the most fortunate in the sea, into a receptacle of degrada- 
 tion and of suffering ; counteract the designs of Providence, and enter 
 into a conspiracy for the frustration of the beneficent designs of God. 
 (Great applause and clapping of hands in court for some minutes.) 
 
 Chief Justice. — If public feeling is exhibited again in tins man- 
 ner, or if the proceedings of the court are again interrupted, I must 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELI-. 271 
 
 order the galleries to be cleared. (Addressing Mr. Shell) — I am sore, 
 Mr. Shell, you do not wish it yourself. 
 
 Mr. Sheil. — There is nothing I deprecate more, my lord ; for it is 
 not by such means that the minds of the jury are to be convinced. 
 
 CninF JusTicK Certainly not. 
 
 Mr. Sheil. — I am much obliged to your lordship for interrupting 
 me, as it has given me a few moments' rest. 
 
 Chief Justice — Whenever you feel exhausted, sit down and rest. 
 
 The right honourable gentleman thanked his lordship and resumed 
 his address. It is indisputable that Ireland made a progress marvel- 
 lously rapid in the career of improvement which freedom had thrown 
 open to her ; she ran so fast that England was afraid of being over- 
 taken. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas concurred in stating that no country 
 had over advanced witli more rapidity than Ireland. Her commerce 
 and manufactures doubled ; the plough climbed to the top of the 
 mountain, and found its way into the centre of the morass. This 
 city grew into one of the noblest capitals of the world — wealth, and 
 rank, and genius, and eloquence, and every intellectual accomplish- 
 ment, and all the attributes by which men's minds are exalted, refined, 
 and embellished, were gathered here. The memorials of our prospe- 
 rity remain. Of that prosperity architecture has left us its magnificent 
 attestation. Tiiis temple, dedicated to justice, stands among the 
 witnesses, silent and solemn, of the glory of Ireland, to which I may 
 appeal. It is seen from afar off. It rises high above the smoke and 
 din of this populous city ; be it the type of that moral elevation, over 
 every contaminating influence, to which every man who is engaged 
 in the sacred administration of justice ought to ascend ! The penal 
 laws were enacted by slaves and relaxed by freemen. The Protes- 
 tants of Ireland had been contented to kneel to England upon the 
 Catholic's neck. They rose to a nobler attitude, and we were per- 
 mitted to get up. In 1782, the Protestants of Ireland who had 
 acquired political rights, communicated civil privileges to their fellow- 
 subjects. In 1793 they granted us the elective franchise — a word of 
 illustrious etymology. There can be no doubt that the final adjustment 
 of the Catholic question upon terms satisfactory to both parties would 
 have been effected, and without putting the country to that process of 
 fearful agitation tlu-ough which it has passed, if the rebellion of 1798, 
 so repeatedly, and with a sincerity so unaffected, denounced by Mr. 
 O'ConncU, had not marred the hopes of the country and essentially 
 contributed to the Union. Mr. Pitt borrowed his plan of the Union 
 from that great soldier to whom the gentry of this country are under 
 obligations so essential. It must be acknowledged, however, that 
 
272 TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 they make up by the fervour of their loyalty for the republican origin 
 of their estates. Oliver Cromwell first devised the Union. He re- 
 turned 400 members for England, 30 for Scotland, and as many for 
 this country ; a report of the debates in that singular assembly was 
 preserved by Thomas Burton, who kept a diary, and is stated in that 
 book which I hold in my hand to have been a member in the parlia- 
 ments of Oliver and Richard Cromwell, from 1650 to 1G59. It was 
 published a few years ago from a MS. in the British Museum. The 
 members from Ireland were English soldiers, who had acquired 
 estates in Ireland. You would suppose that they were cordially wel- 
 comed by their English associates, for they were Englishmen, bred 
 and born ; and they had very materially contributed to the tranquilli- 
 zation of Ireland. I hope I use the most delicate and least offensive 
 term. I acknowledge that I had anticipated as much before I read 
 the book. What was my surprise when I found that these deputies 
 from Ireland were considered to be in some sort contaminated by the 
 air which they had breathed in this country, and that they were most 
 uncourteously treated by the English members. A gentleman whose 
 name ought to have been Copley,* says, " These men are foreigners." 
 The following is the speech : — " Mr. Gewen said, it is not for the 
 honour of the English nation for foreigners to come and have power 
 in this nation. They are but provinces at best." Doctor Clarges 
 says, on behalf of Ireland, page 114, " They (the Irish) were united 
 with you, and have always had an equal right with you. He that was 
 king of England was king of Ireland or lord. If you give not a 
 right to sit here, you must in justice let them have a parliament at 
 home. How safe that will be, I question. Those that sit for them 
 arc not Irish teagucs ; but faithful persons." Mr. Gewen again ob- 
 serves — " It were better both for England and for Ii-eland that they 
 had parliaments of their own. It is neither safe, just, nor honourable 
 to admit them. Let them rather have a parliament of their own." 
 Mr. Antie observes — " If you speak as to the convenience in relation 
 to England, much more is to be said why those who serve for Scotland 
 should sit here. It is one continent, and elections are easier deter- 
 mined ; but Ii'eland differs. It is much fitter for them to have par- 
 liaments of their own. That was the old constitution. It will be 
 difficult to change it, and dangerous for Ireland. They are under an 
 impossibility of redress. * * * Their grievances can never be re- 
 dressed. Elections can never be intermixed. Though they were but 
 a province, there were courts of justice and parliaments as fi-ee as here. 
 * * * I pray that they may have soon to hear their grievances in 
 
 • The family name of Lord Lyiidhurst. 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 273 
 
 their own nation, seeing that they cannot have them heard liere." Sir 
 Thomas Stanley observes : — " I am not to speak for Ireland hut for 
 the English in Ireland. * * * * The members for Ireland and 
 the electors are all Englishmen, who naturally claim to have votes in 
 making laws by which they must be governed ; they have fought your 
 battles, obtained and preserved your interests, designed by the famous 
 long parliament, obtained by blood, and sought for by prayer solemnly." 
 You may ask of me, wherefore is it I make these references ? I 
 answer, because the institvitions of a country may change ; the govern- 
 ment may, in its form, undergo essential modifications ; but the basis 
 of the national character, like its language, remains the same, and to 
 this very day there prevails in the feelings of Englishmen towards 
 this country what I have ventured to call elsewhere — the instinct of 
 domination. Towards the Protestants of Ireland, when the Papists 
 were ground to powder, the very same feeling prevailed, of wliich we 
 see manifestations to this hour. The question is not one between Ca- 
 tholic and Protestant ; but is between the greater country and the 
 smaller, which the former country endeavours to keep under an igno- 
 minious control. The Union was carried by corruption and by fear. 
 The shrieks of the rebellion still echoed in the nation's ear. The habeas 
 corpus net was suspended, and martial law had been proclaimed ; the 
 country was in a state of siege ; the minister had a rod of steel for the 
 people ; and a purse of countless gold for the senator. But in the 
 midst of that parliamentary profligacy, at which even Sir Robert AVal- 
 pole would have been astonished, the genius of the country remained 
 incorruptible — Grattan, Curran, and the rest of those famous men, 
 whose names cast so bright a light upon this, the brightest part of our 
 history, never for a moment yielded to a sordid or ignoble impulse. 
 All the distinguished men of the bar were faithful to their country. 
 Sir Jonah Barrington, in his History of the Rise and Fall of the Irish 
 Nation, has quoted the speeches of the most eminent men of our pro- 
 fession ; amongst which those of Mr. Goold, who argued the question 
 of right with equal eloquence and subtlety, Mr. Joy, Mr. Plunket, Mr. 
 Bushe, and Mr. Saurin, are conspicuous. Lord Plunket denied the 
 right of parliament to destroy itself. Mr. Saurin appealed to the 
 authority of Mr. Locke. The same course was taken by Mr. Bushe, 
 whom we have lost so lately — Bushe, whom it was impossible for 
 those by whom the noblest eloquence was justly prized, not to admire — 
 whom it was impossible for those by whom the purest worth was 
 justly estimated, not to reverence — and whom it was impossible for 
 those by whom a most generous and exalted nature could be appre- 
 ciated, not to love. The Attorney- General has stated that the opi- 
 
274 TRIAL OF C»'C0NNKI.L, 
 
 nions of tlicsc oniinent persons, deliv^ercd at the time of tlie Uniorty 
 ought to be held in no account. Wliat reason did he give for not at- 
 taching any vahie to the authority of ]\tr. Saurin ? He said !Mr. 
 Saurin expressed his opinions in mere debate. So that the most im- 
 portant principles, solemnly laid down in parliamentary debate are to 
 be regarded as little better than mere forensic asseveration. I can 
 now account for some speeches which I heard in the IIouso of Com- 
 mons regarding the education question. I think, however, that if such 
 doctrines be propounded in the House of Commons itself, they would 
 be listened to with surprise. You have heard, gentlemen, in the 
 course of this trial, something of the morality of war, and also some- 
 thing of the morality of rebellion, which the right honourable gentle- 
 man was pleased to substitute as a synonjTiic for war ; but of the 
 morality of parliament, I trust you will not form an estimate from the 
 specimen presented to you by her Majesty's Attorney- General. But 
 these opinions, Mr, Attorney-General observed, were expressed before 
 the act of parliament was passed. Surely the truth of great prin- 
 ciples does not depend upon an act of parliament. They are not for 
 an age, but for all time. They arc immutable and imperishable. They 
 are immortal as the mind of man, iiu'a])ableof decomjuisition or decay. 
 The question before you is not whether these principles are well or ill 
 founded, but you must take the f\ict of their having been inculcated 
 into your consideration, where you have to determine the intent of the 
 men upon whose motives you have to adjudicate. The great authority 
 to which the traversers appeal gives them a right to a political tole- 
 ration upon your part, and should induce you to tliink that even if they 
 were led astray, they were led astray by the authority of men with 
 whom surely it is no discredit to coincide. But whatever we may 
 think of the abstract validity of the Union, you must bear in mind 
 that Mr. O'Connell has again and again stated, that the Union being- 
 law, must, as long as it remains law, be submitted to ; and all his 
 positions regarding the validity of the Union have no other object 
 than the constitutional incitement of the people to adopt the most 
 effectual means through which the law itself may be repealed or 
 modified. The Union was a bargain and sale — as a sale it was pro- 
 fligate, and the bargain was a bad one — for better terms might 
 have been obtained, and may be still obtained, if you do not be- 
 come the auxiliaries of the Attorney-General. Two-thirds of the 
 Irish Parliament were suppressed. Not a single English member 
 was abstracted ; and there can be no doubt we stood immediately 
 after the Union in such a relation towards the English members, that 
 we became completely nullified in the House of Commons. But, 
 gentlemen, one could, perhaps, be reconciled to the terms of the 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 275 
 
 Union, bad as they were, if the results of tlie Union had been benefi- 
 cial to this country. We are told by some that our manufactures and 
 our agricultural produce has greatly augmented ; but what is the con- 
 dition of tiie great bulk of the people of the country? which is, after 
 all, the consideration that, with Christian statesmen, ought to weigh 
 tlie most The greatest happiness of the greatest number is a Ben- 
 thamite antithesis; but there is a great deal of Christianity con- 
 densed in it. "When travellers from France, from Germany, from 
 America arrive in this country, and contemplate the frightful spec- 
 tacle presented by the misery of the people, although previously pre- 
 pared by descriptions of the national misery, they stand aghast at 
 what they see, but what they could not have imagined. Wliy is this ? 
 If we look at other countries and find the people in a miserable con- 
 dition we attribute the fault to the government. Are we in Ireland to 
 attribute it to the soil, to the climate, or to some evil genius who exer- 
 cises a sinister influence over our destinies? The fault, as it appears 
 to me, is entirely in that system of policy which has been pm'sued by 
 the Imperial Parliament, and for which the Union is to be condemned. 
 Let me see, gentlemen, whether I can make out my case. I shall go 
 through the leading facts witli great celerity ; but in such a case as 
 this I sliould not apprehend the imputation of being wantonly prolix. 
 Your „time is, indeed, most valuable, but the interests at stake are 
 inestimably precious ; and time wiU be scarce noted by you when you 
 bear in mind that the effects of yoiu: verdict will be felt when gene- 
 rations have passed away — when every heart that now throbs in this 
 great assembly shall have ceased to palpitate — when the contentions 
 by which we were once agitated shall touch us no further } and all of 
 us. Catholic and Protestant, Whig and Tory, lladical and Repealer, 
 and Conservative, shall have been gathered where all at last lie down 
 in peace together. The first measures adopted by the Imperial Par- 
 liament were a continuation of martial law, and an extended suspen- 
 sion of the habeas corpus act. Mr. Pitt was honestly anxious to carry 
 Catholic Emancipation, and to make at the same time a provision for 
 the Roman Catholic clergy. You may — some of you may— perhaps, 
 think that Catholic Emancipation ought never to have been carried ; 
 but if it was to be carried, how much wiser would it have been to have 
 settled it forty-four years ago, and without putting the country through 
 that ordeal of excitement through which the Imperial Parliament, by 
 the procrastination of justice, forced it to pass. Mr. Pitt, by trans- 
 ferring the Catholic Question fi-om the Irish to the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment, destroyed his own administration, and furnished a proof that, in 
 place of being able to place Ireland under the protection of his great 
 
270 THTAI. OF o'cONNELIi. 
 
 genius, lie placed her under the control of the strong religious preju- 
 dices of the English people. Mr. Pitt returned to the first place in 
 the ministry without, however, being able to make any stipulations for 
 the fulfilment of his own engagements, or the realization of the policy 
 which he felt to be indispensable for the peace of Ireland. The 
 Roman Catholic Question was brought forward in 1805, and was lost 
 in an Imperial House of Commons. Mr. Pitt died of the battle of 
 Austerlitz, and was succeeded by the Whigs. They proposed a mea- 
 sure which the Tories, who drove them out on the " No Popery" cry, 
 caiTied in 1816, and who then introduced the new doctrine, that the 
 usefulness of public measures is to be tried far less by the principles on 
 which they were founded, than by the parties by which they were ac- 
 complished. The expulsion of the AVliigs from office in 1 806, may, in 
 your judgment, have been a fortunate proceeding ; but fortunate or 
 unfortunate, it furnishes another proof that the government of Ireland 
 had been made over, not so nuicli to the parliament as to the great 
 mass of the people by whom that parliament is held under control. The 
 Tories found in the portfolio of the Wliigs two measures ; a draft bill 
 for Catholic Emancipation, which the Duke of Wellington, then Sir 
 Artluir AVelleslcy, tlie Secretary fov Ireland, Hung into the fu-e ; and 
 an Arms Bill, to which clauses have been recently added, which even 
 Mr. Shaw declared were " wantonly severe." You may conceive that 
 an Arms Bill, with all its molestations, may be required ; but it is 
 beyond question that, in the year 1819, when England was on the 
 verge of a rebellion, no such bill was ever propounded by the British 
 ministry ; and granting, for a moment, for the sake of argument, that 
 some such bill is requisite, how scandalously must a country have been 
 governed for almost lialf a century, if this outrage upon the Bill of 
 Rights be required ! Having passed the Arms Bill and the Insurrec- 
 tion Act, its appropriate adjiuict, tlie Imperial Parliament proceeded 
 to reduce the allowance to JNIaynooth. There is but one opinion re- 
 garding Maynooth, that it should be totally suppressed, or largely and 
 munificently endowed, and that an education should be given to the 
 Roman Catholic clergy, such as a body exercising such vast influence 
 ought to receive. There are some who think that it were better that 
 the Catholic clergy were educated in France. I do not wish to see a 
 Gallo-IIibernian church in Ireland. Parisian manners may be ac- 
 quired at the cost of Irish morality, and I own that I am too much 
 attached to my Sovereign, and to the connexion of my country Avith 
 England, to desix'e that conductors of Fi'cnch ambition, that instru- 
 ments of Fi'cnch entei'prise, that agents of French intrigue, should be 
 located in every parochial sub-division of the country. State to an 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 277 
 
 English Conservative the importance of opening a career for intellec- 
 tual exertion, by holding out prizes to genius at Maynooth, and he 
 will say it is all true ; but the English government are unable to carry 
 the measure. Wliy ? Because the religious objections of the people 
 of England are in the way. Another of the results of the Legislative 
 Union, in 1810, a.decade since the Union had elapsed, the country was 
 in a miserable condition — its destitution, its degradation, were uni- 
 versally felt, and by none more than the Protestants of Dublin. A 
 requisition was addi-esscd to the High Sheriff of the city, signed by 
 men of the greatest weight and consideration amongst us. A meeting 
 was called ; Sir James Riddle was in the chair. At that meeting Mr. 
 O'Connell attended. He had in 1800 made his first speech against the 
 Union, and in 1810 ho camo forward to denounce that measure. The 
 speech delivered by him on that occasion was precisely similar to those 
 numerous and most powerful harangues which have been read to you. 
 He is represented in 1844 by her Majesty's Attorney-General as influ- 
 enced by the most guilty and the most unworthy motives. The people 
 are to be arrayed, in order that at a signal they may rise, and that a 
 sanguinary republic should be established, of which Daniel O'Connell 
 is^to be the head. If these are the objects in 1844, what were the 
 objects in 1810 ? The same arguments, the same topics of declama- 
 tion, the same vehement adjurations, are employed. Gentlemen of the 
 jury, that speech will be read to you ; I entreat of you to take it into 
 your box — to compare it with the speeches I'ead on behalf of the crown, 
 and by that comparison to determine the course which you ought to 
 take when the liberty of your fellow-subject is to depend upon your 
 judgment. I am too wearied at present to read that speech ; but, with 
 the permission of the court, I will call on Mr. Ford to read it. 
 
 Chief Justice Certainly. 
 
 Judge Perrin. — Where did the meeting at which that speech was 
 spoken take place ? 
 
 Mr. Sheil At the Royal Exchange. 
 
 Mr. Ford then read the following speech : — 
 
 " Mr. O'Connell declared that he offered himself to the meeting with 
 unfeigned dillidence. He was unable to do justice to his feelings, on 
 the great national subject on which they had met. He felt too much 
 of personal anxiety to allow him to arrange in anything like order, the 
 many topics which rushed upon his mind, now, that after ten years of 
 silence and torpor. Irishmen again began to recollect their enslaved 
 country. It was a melancholy period, those ten years, a period in 
 which Ireland saw her artificers starved — her tradesmen begging — her 
 merchants become bankrupts — her gcutiy banished — her nobility de- 
 
278 TUIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 graded. Within that period domestic turbulence broke from day to 
 day into open violence and murder. Religious dissensions were aggra- 
 vated and embittered. Credit and commerce were annihilated — tax- 
 ation augmented in amount and in vexation. Besides the ' hangings 
 off' of the ordinary assizes, we had been disgraced by the necessity 
 that existed for holding two special commissions of death, and had 
 been degraded by one rebellion — and to crown all, we were at length 
 insulted by being told of our growing prosperity. This was not the 
 painting of imagination — it borrowed nothing from fancy. It was, 
 alas I the plain representation of the facts that had occurred. The 
 picture in sober colours of the real state of his ill-fated country. 
 There was not a man present but must be convinced that he did not 
 exaggerate a single fact. There was not a man present but must 
 know that more misery existed than he had described. Such being 
 the history of the first ten years of the Union, it would not be difficult 
 to convince any unprejudiced man that all those calamities had sprung 
 from tUat measure ; Ireland was favoured by Providence with a fertile 
 soil, an excellent situation for commerce, intersected by navigable 
 rivers, indented at every side with safe and commodious hai-bours, 
 blessed with a fruitful soil, and with a vigorous, hardy, generous, and 
 brave population ; how did it happen, then, that the noble qualities of 
 the Irish people were perverted ? that the order of Providence was 
 disturbed, and its blessings worse than neglected ? The fiital cause 
 was obvious — it was the Union. That those deplorable effects would 
 follow from that accursed measure was propliesied. Before the Act 
 of Union passed, it had been already proved that the trade of the 
 country and its credit must fail as capital was drawn from it — that 
 turbulence and violence would increase Avhen the gentry were re- 
 moved to reside in another country — -that the taxes should increase 
 in the same proportion as the people became unable to pay them ! 
 But neither the arguments nor the prophetic fears have ended with 
 our present evils. It has also been demonstrated, that as long as the 
 Union continues so long must our evils accumulate. The nature of 
 that measure, and the experience of facts which we have now had, 
 leave no doubt of the truth of what has been asserted respecting the 
 future ; but, if there be any still uncredulous, he can only be of those 
 who will not submit their reason to authority. To such persons the 
 authority of Mr. Foster, his Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 for Ireland, would probably be conclusive, and Mr. Foster has assured 
 us that final ruin to our country must be the consequence of the 
 Union. I will not dwell, Mr. Sheriff, on the miseries of my country ; 
 I {j,m disgusted with the wretchedness the Union has produced, and I 
 
TllIAL, OF O CONNELL. 279 
 
 do not dare to trust myself with the contemplation of the accumulation 
 of sorrow that must overwhelm the land if the Union be not repealed. 
 1 beg to call the attention of the meeting to another part of the sub- 
 ject. The Union, Sir, was a violation of our national and inherent 
 riglits : a flagrant injustice. The representatives whom we had elected 
 for tlie short period of eight years had no authority to dispose of their 
 country for ever. It cannot be pretended that any direct or express 
 authority to that effect was given to them, and. the nature of their dele- 
 gation excludes all idea of their having any such by implication. They 
 were the servants of the nation, empowered to consult for its good ; 
 not its masters to tralfic and dispose of it at their fantasy or for their 
 profit. I deny that tlie nation itself had a right to barter its indepen- 
 dence, or to commit ])olitical suicide ; but when our servants destroyed 
 our existence as a nation, they added to the baseness of assassination 
 nil the guilt of high treason. The reasoning upon which those opinions 
 are founded is sufliciently obvious. They require no sanction from 
 the authority of any name ; neither do I pretend to give them any 
 weight by declaring them to be conscientiously my own ; but if you 
 want authority to induce the conviction that the Union had injustice 
 for its principle, and a crime for its basis, I appeal to that of liis Ma- 
 jesty's j)rcscnt Attorney- General, Mr. Saurin, who in his place in the 
 Irish Parliament pledged his character as a lawyer and a statesman, 
 tliat the Union nuist be a violation of every moral principle, and that 
 it was a mere question of prudence whether it should not be resisted 
 by force. I also appeal to the opinions of the late Lord High Chan- 
 cellor of Ireland, Mr. George Ponsonby, of the present Solicitor-Gene- 
 ral, Mr. Bushe, and of tliat splendid lawyer, Mr, Plunket. The Union 
 was therefore a manifest injustice; and it continues to be unjust at 
 this day ; it was a crime, and must be still criminal, unless it shall be 
 ludicrously stated, that crime, like wine, improves by old age, and that 
 time mollifies injustice into innocence. You may smile at the sujipo- 
 sition, but in sober sadness you must be convinced that we daily suffer 
 injustice; that every succeeding day adds only another sin to the cata- 
 logue of British vice ; and that if the Union continues it will only 
 make the crime hereditary and injustice perpetual. We have been 
 robbed, my countrymen, most foully robbed, of our birthright, of our 
 independence ; may it not be permitted us mournfully to ask how this 
 consummation of evil was perfected ? For it was not in any disastrous 
 battle that our liberties were struck down ; no foreign invader had de- 
 spoiled the land ; we have not forfeited our country by any crimes ; 
 neither did we lose it by any domestic insurrection ; no, tlie rebellion 
 was completely put down before flie Union was accomplished ; tlic 
 
280 TKIAL, OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 Irish militia and the Irish yeomanry had put it down. How, then, 
 have we become enshaved ? Alas ! England, that ought to have been 
 to us a sister and a friend — England, whom Ave had loved, and fought 
 and bled for — England, whom we have protected, and Avhom we do 
 protect — England, at a period when, out of 100,000 of the seamen in 
 her service, 70,000 were Irish, England stole upon us like a thief 
 in the night, and robbed us of the precious gem of our liberty, she 
 stole from us * that which in nought enriched her, but made us poor 
 indeed.' Reflect then, my friends, on the means employed to effect 
 this disastrous measure. I do not speak of the meaner instruments of 
 bribery and corruption. "We all know that everything was put to 
 sale — nothing profane or sacred was omitted in the union mart. Offices 
 in the revenue, commands in the army and navy, the sacred ermine of 
 justice, and the holy altars of God, were all profaned and polluted as 
 the rewards of union services. By a vote in favour of the Union, 
 ignorance, incapacity, and profligacy obtained certain promotion ; and 
 our ill-fated, but beloved country, was degraded to her utmost limits 
 before she was transfixed in slavery. But I do not intend to detain 
 you in the contemplation of those vulgar means of parliamentary suc- 
 cess — they are within the daily routine of official management ; nei- 
 ther will I direct your attention to the frightful recollection of that 
 avowed fact, which is now part of history, that the rebellion itself was 
 fomented and encouraged in order to facilitate the Union. Even the 
 rebellion was an accidental and a secondary cause — the real cause of 
 the Union lay deeper, but it is quite obvious — it is to be found at once 
 in the religious dissensions which the enemies of Ireland have created, 
 and continued, and seek to perpetuate amongst themselves, by telling 
 us off, and separating us into wretched sections and miserable sub- 
 divisions ; they separated the Protestant from the Catholic, and the 
 Presbyterian from both ; they revived every antiquated cause of do- 
 mestic animosity, and invented new pretexts of rancoui* ; but, above 
 all, my countrymen, they belied and calumniated us to each other ; 
 they falsely declared that we hated each other ; and they continued 
 to repeat that assertion until we came to believe it ; they succeeded 
 in producing all the madness of party and religious distinctions ; and 
 whilst we were lost in the stupor of insanity, they plundered us of 
 our country, and left us to recover at our leisure from the horrid de- 
 lusion into which we had been so artfully conducted. Such then were 
 the means by which the Union was effectuated. It has stripped us 
 of commei'ce and wealth — it has degraded us, and deprived us not 
 only of our station as a nation, but even of the name of our country — 
 we are governed by foreigners — foreigners make our laws — for were 
 
TIJIAL OF O'CONNELL. 281 
 
 Ihe hundred members who nominally represent Ireland in what is 
 called the Imperial Parliament — were they really our representatives, 
 what influence could they, although unbought and unanimous, have 
 over the 558 English and Scotch members? But what is the 
 fact ? Why, that out of the hundred, such as they are, that sit for 
 tJiis country, more than one-fifth know nothing of us, and are un- 
 known to us. What, for example, do we know of Andrew Strahan, 
 printer to the king ? What can Henry Martin, barrister-at-law, 
 care for the rights and liberties of Irishmen ? Some of us may, 
 perhaps, for our misfortunes, have been compelled to read a ver- 
 bose pamphlet of James Stevens, but who knows anything of one 
 Crile, one Ilughan, one Cackin, or of a dozen more whose names 
 I could mention, only because I have discovered them for the pur- 
 pose of speaking to you about them ? What sympathy can we, in 
 our suiferings, expect from those men ? what solicitude for our inte- 
 rests ? what are they to Ireland, or Ireland to them ? No, Mr. She- 
 riff, we are not represented ; we have no effectual share in the legis- 
 lation ; the thing is a mere mockery ; neitlier is the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment competent to legislate lor us : it is too unwieldy a machine to 
 legislate with discernment for England alone ; but with respect to Ire- 
 land, it has all the additional inconveniences that arise from want of 
 interest and total ignorance. Sir, wlien I talk of the utter ignorance 
 in Irish affairs of the members of the Irish Parliament, I do not 
 exaggerate or misstate ; the ministers themselves are in absolute dark- 
 ness with respect to this country. I undertake to demonstrate it. 
 Sir, they have presumed to speak of tlie growing prosperity of Ii-e- 
 land ; I know them to be vile and profligate ; I cannot be suspected 
 of flattering them ; yet, vile as they are, I do not believe that they 
 could have had tlic audacity to insert in the speech, supposed to be 
 spoken by his Majesty, that expression, had they known that, in fact, 
 Ireland was in abject and increasing poverty. Sir, they were con- 
 tent to take their information from a pensioned Frenchman, a being 
 styled Sir Francis D'lvernois, who, in one of the pamphlets which it 
 is his trade to write, has proved by excellent samples of vulgar arith- 
 metic, that manufactures are flourishing, our commerce extending, 
 and our felicity consummate. When you detect the ministers them- 
 selves in such gross ignorance as, upon such authority, to place an 
 insulting falsehood as it were in the mouth of our revered sovereign, 
 what think you can be the fitness of the minor imps of legislation to 
 make laws for Ireland ? Indeed, the recent plans of taxation suffi- 
 ciently evince how incompetent the present scheme of parliament is to 
 legislate for Ireland. Had we an Irish parliament, it is impossible to 
 
282 TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 conceive that they would have adopted taxes at once oppressive and 
 unproductive ; ruinous to the country, and useless to the crown. No, 
 Sir, an Irish Parliament, acquainted with the state of the country, 
 and individually interested to tax proper objects, would have, even in 
 this season of distress, no difficulty in raising the necessary supplies. 
 The loyalty and good sense of the Irish nation would aid them ; and 
 we should not, as now, perceive taxation unproductive of money, but 
 abundantly fertile in discontent. Thei*e is another subject that pecu- 
 liarly requires the attention of the legislature ; but it is one which can 
 be managed only by a resident and domestic parliament — it includes 
 everything that relates to those strange and portentous disturbances 
 which, fi'om time to time, affright and desolate the fairest districts of 
 the island. It is a delicate difficult subject, and one that would re- 
 quire the most minute knowledge of the causes that produce those 
 disturbances, and would demand all the attention and care of men, 
 whose individual safety was connected with the discovery of a proper 
 remedy. I do not wish to calculate the extent of evil that may be 
 dreaded from the outrages I allude to, if our country shall continue in 
 the hands of foreign empirics and pretenders ; but it is clear to a de- 
 monstration that no man can be attached to his King and country who 
 does not avow the necessity of submitting the control of this political 
 evil to the only competent tribunal — an Irish Parliament. The ills of 
 this awful moment are confined to our domestic complaints and cala- 
 mities. The great enemy of the liberty of the world extends his 
 influence and his power from the Frozen Ocean to the Straits of 
 Gibraltai*. He threatens us with invasion from the tliousand ports of 
 his vast empii'o ; how is it possible to I'csist him with an impoverished, 
 divided, and dispirited empire ? If then you are loyal to your excel- 
 lent ]Monarch — if you are attached to the last relic of political freedom, 
 can you hesitate to join in endeavouring to procure the remedy for all 
 your calamities — the sure protection against all the threats of your 
 enemy — the repeal of the Union. Yes, restore to Irishmen their 
 country, and you may defy the invader's force ; give back to Ireland 
 her hardy and brave population, and you have nothing to dread from 
 foreign power. It is useless to detain the meeting longer, in detail- 
 ing the miseries that the Union has produced, or in pointing out the 
 necessity that exists for its repeal. I have never met any man who 
 did not deplore this fatal measure which had despoiled his country ; 
 nor do I believe there is a single individual in the island who could be 
 found even to pretend approbation of that measure. I would be glad 
 to see the face of the man, or rather of the beast, who could dare to say 
 he thought the Union wise or good — for the being who could say sq 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 283 
 
 must be devoid of all the feelings that distinguish humanity. With 
 the knowledge that such were the sentiments of the universal Irish 
 nation, how does it happen that the Union has lasted for ten years ? 
 The solution of the question is easy — the Union continued only be- 
 cause we despaired of its repeal. Upon this despair alone has it con- 
 tinued — yet what could be more absurd than such despair ? If the 
 Irish sentiment be but once known — if the voice of six millions bo 
 raised from Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway — if the men most re- 
 markable for their loyalty to their King and attacliment to constitu- 
 tional liberty, will come forward as the leaders of the public voice, 
 the nation would, in an hour, grow too great for the chains that now 
 shackle you, and the Union must be repealed without commotion and 
 without difficulty. Let the most timid amongst us compare the pre- 
 sent probability of repealing the Union with the prospect that in the 
 year 1795 existed of that measure being ever bi'ought about. Who 
 in 1*795 thought an Union possible ? Pitt dared to attempt it, and he 
 succeeded; it only requires the resolution to attempt its repeal ; in 
 fact, it requires only to entertain the hope of repealing it, to make it 
 impossible that the Union should continue ; but that pleasing hope 
 could never exist, whilst the infernal dissensions on the score of reli- 
 gion were kept up. The Protestant alone could not expect to liberate 
 his country — the lloman Catholic alone could not do it — neither could 
 the Presbyterian — but amalgamate the three into the Irishman, and 
 the Union is repealed. Learn discretion from your enemies — they 
 have crushed your country by fomenting religious discord, serve her 
 by abandoning it for ever. Let each man give up his share of the 
 mischief ; let each man forsake every feeling of rancour ; I say 
 not this to barter with you, my countrymen. I require no equivalent 
 from you ; whatever course you shall take, my mind is fixed. I tram- 
 ple under foot the Catholic claims, if they can interfei'e with the re- 
 peal ; I abandon all wish for emancipation, if it delays the repeal. 
 Nay, were Mr. Percival to-morrow to offer me the repeal of the Union 
 upon the terms of re-enacting the penal code, I declare from my heart, 
 and in the presence of my God, that I would most cheerfully embrace 
 his offer. Let us then, my beloved countrymen, sacrifice our wicked 
 and groundless animosities on the altar of our country ; let that spirit, 
 which heretofore emanating from Dungannon spread all over the 
 island, and gave light and liberty to the land, be again cherished 
 amongst us — let us rally round the standard of old Ireland, and wo 
 shall easily procure that greatest of political blessings, an Irish King, 
 an Irish House of Lords, and an Irish House of Commons." 
 
 Mr. SiiEiL then continued Gentlemen, you have heard that speech 
 
 read from beginning to end, because that speech conveys the same 
 
284 TKIAL OF O'CONNELL,. 
 
 sentiments, the same feelings, and inculcates the same great principles, 
 ahnost in the very same language, as we find employed by Mr. O'Con- 
 nell in 1843 and 1844. That long series of speeches and of writings 
 produced by Mr. O'Connell within the last nine months, are no more 
 than an expansion of the speech of 1810. Was he a conspirator in 
 1810? If so, he was engaged in a conspiracy with Sir Robert 
 Shaw, who took the chair when the high sheriiF left it, and declared 
 that it was the boast of his life that he had opposed the Union, and 
 that he persevered in the same sentiments ; and will a man in 
 1844 be accounted guilty of a crime verging on treason, because 
 he has repeated the opinions which he entertained when the shade 
 of an imputation did not rest upon him ? This is a consideration 
 to which, I am sure, you will think that too much importance can- 
 not be attached. At that aggregate meeting, including so large a 
 portion of the Protestant inhabitants of this town, with the high 
 sheriff of the Dublin corporation in the chair, a series of resolutions 
 were passed against the Union. It was determined that petitions 
 should be presented to parliament, and that they should be entrusted 
 to Sir Robert Shaw and to Mr. Grattan. Sir Robert Shaw, in his 
 answer, stated that he had opposed the Union in parliament, and that 
 his opinions were unaltered. The following is the answer of Mr. 
 Grattan, and that answer affords a proof of the falsehood of an allega- 
 tion often made, that a great change of opinion had taken place in the 
 mind of that illustrious man with respect to the Legislative Union : — 
 
 " Gentlemen — I have the honour to receive an address presented 
 by your committee, and an expression of their wishes that I should 
 present certain petitions and support the repeal of an act entitled the 
 Act of Union ; and your committee adds, that it speaks with the 
 authority of my constituency, the freemen and freeholders of the city 
 of Dublin. I beg to assure your committee, and through them my 
 much-beloved and much-respected constituents, that I shall accede to 
 their px'oposition. I shall present their petitions, and shall support 
 the Repeal of the Act of Union with that decided attachment to our 
 connexion with Great Britain, and to that hai-mony between the two 
 countries, without which the connexion cannot last. I do not impair 
 either, as I apprehend, when I assure you I shall support the Repeal 
 of the Act of Union. You will please to observe, that a proposition 
 of that sort, in parliament, to be either prudent or possible, must wait 
 till it is called for and backed by the nation. AVhen proposed I shall 
 then — as at all times I hope I shall — prove myself an Irishman, and 
 that Irishman whose first and last passion was his native country. 
 
 " IIenuy Gkaxtan." 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNXIX. 285 
 
 " Backed by tlie nation." Mark that phrase. It occurs again and 
 again in the speeches of Mr. O'Connell. Mr. O'Connell again and 
 again declares that unless backed by the nation nothing can be accom- 
 plished by him. And if it be a crime to apply all the resources of his 
 intellect, with an indefatigable energy, and an indomitable perseve- 
 rance to the attainment of that object by the means described by Mr. 
 Grattan in the phrase, *' backed by the nation," then is the son of 
 Daniel O'Connell guilty. It will be strange, indeed, if in the opinion 
 of twelve men of plain sense and of sound feeling, it should be deemed 
 a crime to seek the attainment of repeal by the only instrumen- 
 tality by which Mr. Grattan said it could be effected. What is the 
 meaning of " backed by the nation ?" What is the nation ? We 
 say, the Irish Catholics, the enormous majority of tlie people, are the 
 nation. You say the Irish Protestants, who have the property of the 
 country, Avho are in the exclusive enjoyment of great intellectual ad- 
 vantages, and who arc united, organised, and determined, are the Irish 
 nation. The Irish Catholics and the Irish Protestants are both in 
 the wrong. Neither constitute the Irish nation. Both do ; and it was 
 the sustainment of both that Mr. Grattan considered to be indispensa- 
 ble to make the proposition in parliament either prudent or possible. 
 That just object — the combination of all classes and of all parties in 
 this country — Mr. O'Connell has laboured to attain. You may think 
 that he has laboured, and will labour in vain, to attain it ; but you 
 cannot consider it criminal to toil for its accomplishment ; and if you 
 conceive that that was his object and the object of his son — or if you 
 have a reasonable doubt upon the subject, you are bound to acquit 
 him. In 1812 Mr. Percival lost his life, and efforts were made to 
 construct a cabinet favourable to emancipation ; the project failed, 
 and a state prosecution against the Catholic Board was resolved on. 
 Mr. Burrowes was the counsel for the defendants, and at the outset 
 of his speech he boldly adverted to the fact that not a single Roman 
 Catholic was upon the jury. He said — " I confess, gentlemen, I was 
 astonished to find that no Roman Catholic was suffered to enter the 
 box, when it is well known that they equal, if not exceed, Protestant 
 persons upon other occasions ; and when the question relates to privi- 
 leges of which they claim a participation, and you possess a monopoly. 
 I was astonished to see twenty-tAvo Protestant persons, of the highest 
 respectability, set aside by the arbitrary veto of the crown, without 
 any alleged insufficiency, upon the sole demerit of suspected liberality. 
 I was astonished to find a juror pressed into that box who did not 
 deny that he was a sworn Orangeman, and another who was about to 
 admit, until he was silenced, that he had prejudged the cause. Those 
 
286 fRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 occurrences, at the first aspect of them, filled me witli unqualified ii.c-' 
 spair. I do not say that the crown lawyers have had any concern in 
 this revolting process, but I will say that they ought to have interfered 
 in counteracting a selection w^hich has insulted some of the most loyal 
 men of this city, and must disparage any verdict which may be thus 
 pi'ocured. But, gentlemen, upon a nearer view of the subject, I re- 
 linquish the despair by which I was actuated. I rest my hopes upon 
 your known integrity, your deep interest in the welfare of the country, 
 and the very disgust which yourselves must feel at the manner and 
 motive of your array. You did not press forward into that jury 
 box — ^you did not seek the exclusion, the total exclusion of any Roman 
 Catholic — you, no doubt, would anxiously desire an intermixture of 
 some of those enlightened Roman Catholics " whom the Attorney- 
 General declared he was certain he could convince, but whom he has 
 not ventured to address in that box. The painful responsibility cast 
 upon you is not of your own wishing, and I persuade myself you will, 
 on due reflection, feel more indisposed to those who court and influence 
 your prejudices, and would involve you in an act of deep responsibility, 
 ■without that fair intermixture of opposite feelings and interest, which, by 
 inviting discussion, and balancing allections, woidd promise a moderate 
 and respected decision, than towards me, who openly attack your pre- 
 judices, and strive to arm your consciences against them. You know 
 as well as I do that prejudice is a deadly enemy to fair investigation — •■ 
 that it has neither eyes nor ears for justice — that it hears and sees 
 everything on one side — that to refute it is to exasperate it ; and that, 
 when it predominates, accusation is received as evidence, and calumny 
 produces conviction." It might at first appear likely that a Pro- 
 testant jury would take an address so bold in bad part; but they 
 gave Ml'. Burrowes credit for his manly frankness, and they acquitted 
 the traversers. Tlie crown resorted to a second prosecution ; means 
 more effectual were adopted, and a conviction was obtained. Mr. 
 Saurin did not deny that the Roman Catholics had been excluded. — 
 He was of opinion that Protestant ascendency should every where pre- 
 vail, and not least in those public tribunals which arc armed with so 
 much authority, and exercise so much influence over the fortunes of 
 the state. I did not blame Mr. Saurin. He acted, in all likelihood, 
 conscientiously, and whatever were his faults, duplicity was certainly 
 not amongst the number. I saw him in the height of his power and in 
 his fall ; he was meek in his prosperity, and in his adverse fortune he 
 was serene. The lustre of adversity shone in his smile ; for his faults, 
 such as they were, his name, in an almost inevitable inheritance of an- 
 tipathy, furnishes an excuse. How much more commendable was his 
 
TRIAT. OF O'CONNELI,. 287 
 
 comluct and the conduct of the government of the day, than if they 
 had been profuse of professions they never meant to realise, and had 
 offered an insult to tlic understanding as well as a gross wrong to the 
 rights of the Irish people ; and yet I shall not be surprised if, not- 
 withstanding all that lias happened, the same cant of impartiality shall 
 be persevered in, and that we shall hear the same protestations of so- 
 licitude to make no distinction between Catholics and Protestants in 
 all departments, but more especially in the administration of the law. 
 The screen falls — " the little French milliner" is disclosed — " by all 
 that is horrible. Lady Teazle ;" yet Joseph preserves his self-posses- 
 sion, and deals in sentiment to tlie last. But if, after all that has be- 
 fallen, my Lord Eliot shall continue to deal in sentimentality in the 
 House of Commons, the exclamation of Sir Peter Teazle, " Oh, 
 damn your sentiment 1" will break in upon him on every side. The 
 government, as I told you, in 1812, succeeded in their state prosecu- 
 tion. What good for the country was effected by it ? "Was the Ca- 
 tholic question put down, or did a verdict facilitate the government of 
 Mr. Peel, who was soon after appointed Secretary for Ireland ? He 
 was an Irish member. You are surprised at the intimation. He was 
 returned for the borough of Cashel, where a very small, but a very 
 discriminating constituency, were made sensible of his surpassing 
 merits. It has been remarked that young statesmen who arc de- 
 stined to operate upon England, are first sent to dissect in this coun- 
 try. Mr. Peel had a fine hand and admirable instruments, and he 
 certainly gave proof that he would give the least possible pain in any 
 amputations which he might afterwards have to perform. lie was de- 
 corous — he avoided the language of wanton insult — endeavoured to 
 give us the advantages of a mild despotism, and " dwelt in decencies 
 for ever." Yet was his Irish government, and he must have felt it, 
 an utter failure — he must have seen, even then, the irresistible argu- 
 ments in favour of Catholic Emancipation ; but he had not the moral 
 intrepidity to break from his party, and to do at once what he was 
 compelled to do afterwards. The Insurrection Act was renewed, the 
 disturbances of the country were not diminished, and Ireland con- 
 tinued to rca]) the bitter fruits of imperial legislation. A new policy 
 was tried after Mr. Peel had i)rocecded to England, and the notable 
 expedient Avas adopted of counteracting the Secretary with the Lord 
 Lieutenant, and the Lord Lieutenant with the Secretary. We had 
 Grant against Talbot, and Wellesley against Goulburn. It is almost 
 unnecessary to say, that a government carried on upon such a prin- 
 ciple Avas incapable of good. The Roman Catholics of Ireland had 
 been led from time to time to entertain the hope that something would 
 
288 TRIAL OF O'CONNEI-L. 
 
 be done for their relief. Their eyes were opened at last by the disin- 
 genuous dealing of George IV., who only smothered his laughter with 
 the handkerchief with which he affected to dry his eyes ; and Daniel 
 O'Connell, feeling that liberty could never be achieved by going 
 through the miserable routine of supplication, founded the celebrated 
 society, by which results so great were almost immediately produced — 
 the Catholic Association was created by him. He constructed a gi- 
 gantic engine by Avhich public opinion was to be woi'ked — he formed 
 with singular skill the smallest wheels of his complicated machinery, 
 and he put it into motion by that continuous current of eloquence 
 which gushed with an abundance so astonishing, as if from a hot well, 
 from his soul. A vast organization of the Catholic millions was ac- 
 complished ; the Catholic aristocracy — ^the middle classes — the entire 
 of the clergy were enrolled in this celebrated confederacy. The go- 
 vernment became alarmed, and in 1825 a bill was brought in for the 
 suppression of this famous league. Mr. O'Connell proceeded to Lon- 
 don and tendered the most extensive concessions to the government. 
 An offer was made to associate the Catholic Church with the state. 
 If the Catholic question had been adjusted in 1825, and upon the 
 terms proposed, it is obvious that the fearful agitation that disturbed 
 the country during the four succeeding years would have been avoided. 
 Not only were the offers rejected, but the bill for the suppression of 
 the Catholic Association was carried. It was, however, laughed to 
 scorn, and proved utterly inoperative. The energy of Mr. O'Connell 
 now redoubled. The peasantry were tauglit to feel that the elective 
 franchise was not a trust vested in the tenant for the benefit of the 
 landlord. A great agrarian revolt took place, accompanied, beyond 
 all doubt, with great evils, for which, however, those by whom jus- 
 tice was so long delayed, are to be held responsible ; the Beresfords 
 were overthrown in Waterford ; in Louth the Foresters received a 
 mortal blow ; and at length the great Clare election gave demonstration 
 of a moral power, whose existence had scarcely been conjectured. I 
 remember to have seen the late Lord Fitzgerald — an accomplished and 
 enlightened man — looking with astonishment at the vast and living 
 mass which he beheld from a window of a room in the court-house 
 where that extraordinary contest was carried on. There was sixty 
 thousand men beneath him — sober, silent, fierce. lie saw that some- 
 thing far more important than his return to parliament was at stake. — 
 Catholic Emancipation was accomplished ; and here I shall put two 
 questions. The first is this — Do you think that up to the 13th of 
 April, 1829, the day on which the royal assent was given to the Ca- 
 tholic Relief Bill, the system of government instituted and carried on, 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNKLL. 281) 
 
 under the auspices of an Imperial Parliament, was so wise, so just, so 
 salutary, so fraught with advantages to this country — so conducive to 
 its tranquillization and to the developement of its vast resources — that 
 for nine-and-twenty years the Union ought to have been regarded as 
 a great legislative blessing to this country ? The second question I 
 shall put to you is this — Does it not occur to you that if the present 
 indictment for a conspiracy can be sustained, an indictment for a con- 
 spiracy might have been just as reasonably preferred against the men 
 who had associated themselves for the attainment of Catholic Eman- 
 cipation ? There is not a count in this indictment Avhich, by the sub- 
 stitution of " Catholic Emancipation" for *' Repeal" might not have 
 been made applicable to the great struggle of the Irish Catholics in 
 1828 and 1829. Money was collected by the Catholic Association — 
 In America, and more especially in Canada, strong sympathy for 
 Catholic Ireland was expressed. In tlie Cliambcr of Deputies, M. 
 Chateaubriand advertctl to the state of Ireland in the language of mi- 
 nacious intimation. Enormous assemblages were held in the south of 
 Ireland, but more especially in the county of Kilkenny. vSpeeches 
 were delivered by ]\Ir. O' Council and by others, fully as inflammatory as 
 any which have been read to you. What would have been thought of 
 an indictment for a conspiracy against Mr. O'Connell, against the 
 Evening Post, the Freeman's Journal, the Morning Register, Dr. 
 Doyle, and my friend, Tom Steele, wlio was at that time, as he is 
 now, a knight-errant animated by a noble chivalry against oppression 
 in every form ? Would it not have been deemed a monstrous thing 
 to have read a very exciting article in three Roman Catholic news- 
 papers, against the men by whom perhaps they never had been perused ? 
 Such a thing was never thought of. There were, indeed, prosecutions. 
 The individual who now addresses you was prosecuted for a speech on 
 the expedition of AVolfe Tone. The bills were found ; but Mr. Can- 
 ning declared in the cabinet that there was not a single line in the 
 speech, which, if spoken in the House of Commons, would have 
 justified a call for order, and he denounced the prosecution as utterly 
 unjust. The prosecution was accordingly abandoned. But, gentle- 
 men, if I had been prosecuted for a conspiracy, and held responsible, 
 not for my own speeches, but for those of others, in how different and 
 how helpless a position should I have been placed ? Have a care how 
 you make a precedent in favour of such an indictment. During the 
 last nine months, the Attorney-General had ample opportunities, if 
 his own statement be well founded, of instituting prosecutions against 
 individuals for what they themselves had written or done. In this 
 proceeding, whose tardiness indicates its intent, you will not, I feel 
 u 
 
290 TRIAL OF O'CONNBLL. 
 
 confident, become his auxiliaries. A Coercion Bill, if the repeal of 
 the Union is to be put down, would be preferable, for it operates as a 
 temporary suspension of liberty, but the effects of a verdict are per- 
 manently deleterious. The doctrine of conspiracy may be applied to 
 every combination of every kind. It is directed against the Repeal 
 Association to-day ; it may be levelled against the Corn-law League 
 to-morrow. In one word, every political society, no matter how di- 
 versified their objects, or how different their constitution, is within its 
 reach. The Catholic question having been considered, the Tories 
 were put out by a conspiracy formed amongst themselves. The Whigs 
 come in and the Reform Bill is carried — how ? A hundred and fifty 
 thousand men assemble at Birmingham, and threaten to advance on 
 London ; a resolution not to pay taxes is passed, and applauded by 
 Lord Fitzwilliam. Lord John Russell and Lord Althorpe became the 
 correspondents of the Bimningham Union. Cumber is reduced to 
 ashes ; Bristol is on fire ; the peers resist, and the AVhig cabinet with 
 one voice exclaims, " Swamp the House of Lords !" And who are 
 the men — the bold, audacious men — conspirators, indeed ! — who em- 
 barked in an enterprise so fearful, and which could be only accom- 
 plished by such fearful means ? You will answer. Lord Grey. Yes. 
 Lord John Russell ? To be sure. Lord Althorpe ? No doubt about 
 it. But is our list exhausted ? Do you remember Mr. Ilatchell ask- 
 ing Mr. Ross, " Pray, Mr. Ross, have you any acquaintance with Sir 
 James Graham ?" It is not wonderful that the Attorney-General 
 should have started up and thrown his buckler over the Secretary of 
 the Home Department. Sir James Graham has Ireland under his 
 control. From the Home Office this prosecution directly emanates. — 
 Gamblers denounce dice — drunkards denounce debauch — against im- 
 moralities let wenchers rail. When Graham indicts for agitation his 
 change of opinion may, for aught I know, be serious, nor have I from 
 motives of partisanship the slightest desire, especially behind his back, 
 to assail him ; I will even go so far as to admit that his conversion may 
 have been disinterested ; but I do say that he is, of all men, the last 
 under whose auspices a prosecution of this character ought to be car- 
 ried on. The Reform Bill becomes the law of the land — the parlia- 
 ment is dissolved, and a new parliament is summoned and called to- 
 gether under the Reform Bill — and the very first measure adopted in 
 that reform parliament is a Coercion Bill for Ireland. The Attorney- 
 General read a speech of Lord John Russell's in favour of coercion. 
 He omitted to read the numerous speeches subsequently made by that 
 tioble person, in which his mistake with respect to Ireland is honour- 
 ably confessed. Gentlemen, I shall not go through the events of the 
 last ten years in detail. It is sufficient to point out to you the various 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 291 
 
 questions by which this unfortunate country has been successively con- 
 vulsed. The Church Question. The Tithe Question. The Munici- 
 pal Bill. The Registration Bill. These questions, with their diver- 
 sified ramifications, have not left us one moment's rest. Cabinets have 
 been destroyed by thenr. The great parties in the state have fought 
 for them. Ireland has supplied the fatal field for the encounter of con- 
 tending parties. No single measure for the substantial and permanent 
 amelioration of the country has been adopted ; and here we are, at the 
 opening of a new session of parliament, with a poor-rate on our estates, 
 a depreciating tariff in our markets, and a state prosecution in her 
 Majesty's Court of Queen's Bench. Such, gentlemen, are the results 
 of the system of policy adopted in that Imperial Parliament whose 
 wisdom and whose beneficence have been made the theme for such 
 lavish panegyric. Gentlemen, I do not know your political opinions. 
 I do not know that there is any one man among you favourable to the 
 Repeal of tlie Union ; but if every one of you are fearful of that 
 measure becoming ultimately the occasion of a dismemberment of the 
 empire, still its discussion may not be useless. If the councils of the 
 state were governed by no other considerations than those which are 
 founded upon obvious justice ; or if measures were to be carried by 
 syllogisms, and government was a mere matter of dialectics, then all 
 great assemblages of the people should, of course, be deprecated, and 
 every exciting adjuration addressed to the passions of the people 
 should be strenuously reproved. But it is not by ratiocination that a 
 redress of grievances can be obtained. The agitator must sometimes 
 follow the example of the diplomatist, who asks for what is impossible, 
 in order that what is possible may be obtained. It must strike the 
 least observant that when the government complains most vehemently 
 of demagogue audacity, their resentment is the precursor of their con- 
 Cessions. Take, as an example, the landlord and tenant commission, 
 which there are some Conservatives who think will disturb the foun- 
 dations of property, and against which Lord Brougham addressed his 
 admonitory deprecation to Sir Robert Peel. For my own part, I think 
 it may lead to results greater than were contemplated ; for it appears 
 to me to have been chiefly intended as a means of diverting public 
 attention from the consideration of the other great grievances of the 
 country.* The main source of all these grievances, I am convinced, is 
 to be found in the colonial policy pursued with regard to this country. 
 The Union never has been carried into effect. If it had, Ireland 
 
 ♦ The apprehensjons of the Conservatives and the expectations of the right 
 honourable gentleman are both set at rest by the appearance of the Report of 
 the Commission Ed. 
 
292 TRIAL OF O'CONNELI,. 
 
 would not be a miserable dependant in the great imperial family. The 
 Attorney-General expressed great indignation at the motto at Mul- 
 laghraast — " Nine millions of people cannot be dragged at the tail of 
 any nation on earth." That sentiment is taken from a paragraph in 
 the Morning Chronicle newspaper, and I have no hesitation in say- 
 ing that I at once adopt it. To mere numbers, without intelligence, 
 organization, or public spirit, I for one attach no value. But a great 
 developement of the moral powers of Ireland has taken place. Instruc- 
 tion is universally diffused. The elements of literature, through which 
 political sentiment is indirectly circulated, are taught by the state. Ire- 
 land has, if I may so speak, undergone a species of transformation. By 
 one who had seen her half a century ago, she would be scarcely recognized. 
 The simultaneous, the miraculous abandonment of those habits to 
 which Irishmen were once fatally addicted, at the exhortation of an 
 humble friar, is a strong indication of what might be done by a good 
 government with so fine a peoi>le. Witliout saying that the tempe- 
 rance movement affords a proof of the facility with which the national 
 enthusiasm can be organized and directed, I think it is one among the 
 many circumstances which should induce us to think that we have 
 come to such a pass in this country that some great measure for its 
 security and for its happiness are required. I perceive the great lite- 
 rary organ of the Whig party has recently suggested many bold mea- 
 sures, which it represents as necessary for Ireland. There are nume- 
 rous difficulties connected with some of the propositions to which I 
 refer ; but there is one which I consider to be as practicable as it is 
 plain and just. It is recommended that the Imperial Parliament should 
 sit at certain intervals in this great city.* I cannot see any sound ob- 
 jection in the Imperitil rarliament assembling in the month of October, 
 for the discharge of Irish business alone, and that all imperial ques- 
 tions should be reserved until tlie London session commenced, as it now 
 does in the month of Februar)^ The public departments, it is true, 
 are all located in London ; but during tlie Irish session a reference to 
 those departments would not be required. Such a session might be 
 inconvenient to English members ; but the Repeal agitation and a 
 state prosecution, like the present, are attended with inconveniences 
 far greater than any which English members in crossing the Irish 
 Channel would encounter. Tiie advantages which would accrue from 
 the realization of this project are of no ordinary kind. The intercourse 
 of the two countries would be augmented to a great extent — their 
 
 * This proposition was made in the Dublin Corporation by Dr. ^Maunsell, a 
 Conservative gentleman of considerable acquirements, but the learned doctor's 
 motion was left unseconded Ed. 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 293 
 
 feelings would be identified — national prejudices would be recipro- 
 cally laid aside. An English domestication would take place. Instead 
 of lending money upon Irish mortgages, Englishmen would buy lands 
 in Ireland and live upon tlicm. The absentee drain would be dimi- 
 nished. The value of property would be very nearly doubled. Great 
 public works would be undertaken ; and the natural endowments 
 of the country would be turned to account. This city would appear 
 in renovated splendour. Your streets would be shaken by the roll of 
 the gorgeous equipages in Avhich the first nobles of the country would 
 be borne to the senate house, from Avhich the money changers should 
 be driven. The mansions of the aristocracy would blaze with that 
 useful luxury which ministers to the gratification of the affluent, and 
 to the omi)loymcnt and tlic comforts of the poor. The Sovereign her- 
 self would not deem the seat of her parliament unworthy of her resi- 
 dence. The frippery of the viceregal court would be swept away. 
 "VVe should look upon royalty itself, and not upon the tinsel image ; 
 we should behold the Queen of England, of Ireland, and of Scotland 
 in all the pomp of lier imperial if^gality, with a diadem — the finest 
 diadem in the world — glittering upon her brow, while her countenance 
 beamed with the expression of that sentiment which becomes the 
 throned monarch better than the crown. We should see her accom- 
 I)anied by the prince of whom it is the highest praise to say that he 
 has proved himself to be not unworthy of her. We should see her 
 encompassed by all the circumstances that associate endearment with 
 respect. We should not only behold the Queen, but the mother and 
 the wife, and see her from the highest station on which a human 
 being could be placed, presenting to her subjects the finest model of 
 every conjugal and maternal virtue. I am not speaking in the lan- 
 guage of a factitious enthusiasm when I speak thus. I am sure that 
 tliis project is not only feasible, but easy. If the people of this country 
 Avere to combine in demanding it, a demand so just and reasonable 
 could not be long refused. It is not subject to any one of the objections 
 which attach to the Ilepeal Question. No rupture of the two parlia- 
 inents — no dismemberment of the empire is to be apprehended. Let 
 Irishmen unite in putting forth a requisition for a purp(5se which the 
 minister avouM not only find expedient, but inevitable. But if you, 
 gentlemen, shall not only not assist in an undertaking so reasonable 
 and so safe, but shall assist the Attorney-General in crushing the men 
 wdio hUve had the boldness to complain of the grievances of their coun- 
 try, you Avill lay Ireland prostrate. Every effort for her amelioration 
 Avill be idle. Every remonstrance Avill not only be treated with disre- 
 gard, but witli dis<lain ; and, for the next twenty years, Ave may as 
 
294 TRIAL OV O'CONNELL. 
 
 well relinquish every hope for our country. Gentlemen, you may 
 strike agitation dumb — you may make millions of mutes ; but beware 
 of that dreary silence, whose gloomy taciturnity is only significant of 
 the determination of its fearful purpose. Beware of producing a slate 
 of things which may eventuate in those incidents of horror whicli every 
 good man will pray God to avert, and which will be lamented by those 
 who contribute to their occurrence, when repentance, like that of those 
 who are for ever doomed, shall be unavailing, and contrition shall be 
 in vain. Gentlemen of the jury, I do not deny that strong speeches 
 have been made by my client, and by the rest of the traversers ; but I 
 deny that those speeches, when taken altogether, bear the interpretation 
 put upon them. To this subject I shall revert. At present I entreat 
 you to consider whether the speeches of Mr. John O'Connell are of a 
 more exciting and inflammatory character than those which are 
 spoken in almost every popular assembly, whether it be ^Vliig, Ra- 
 dical, or Conservative. Mr. John O'Connell proposed the health of 
 the Queen in language of enthusiastic loyalty at Mullaghmast, and 
 added that the speech delivered by the Queen was the speech of the 
 ministers, and could not be justly considered as the emanation of her 
 own unbiassed mind. This is, beyond all question, constitutional 
 doctrine ; although the Attorney-General took a most especial care 
 not to mention this ; indeed he made an ultra-forensic endeavour to 
 convey to you the impression that the traversers had spoken of her 
 Majesty in the language of personal disrespect. He was hurried away 
 so far by an unfortunate impetuosity as to start up during the trial and 
 say that her Majesty had been spoken of as a fishwoman. For this most 
 gross misrepresentation there is not the slightest shadow of foundation. 
 In every speech in which any allusion to the Queen was made, the 
 most profound deference was expressed for the Sovereign, who enjoys 
 the unaltered and unalterable confidence of her Irish people. !lMr. John 
 O'Connell may have used strong expressions, but he is not indicted for 
 them. He is indicted for a conspiracy, and for nothing else. And even 
 if he were indicted for these strong expressions, in the uniform habit of 
 Englishmen in their public discussions, he would find a justification. 
 You, probably, have read some of the speeches made at the meetings of 
 the Anti-Corn Law League. They were fully as violent as the Repeal 
 harangues. The aristocracy is denounced as "selfish," "sordid," and 
 •' base-hearted." A total overthrow of the existing order of society 
 is foretold ; references are made to the French Revolution ; and the 
 great proprietors of the country are warned to beware. But the Anti- 
 Corn Law League, it may be said, is u Radical institution. How is 
 it the Tories themselves, when under the infiucDcc of partizanship, 
 
TRIAL. OF O'CONNEJLL. 295 
 
 expressed themselves in reference to the Sovereign herself? You can- 
 not have forgotten the contumelies heaped upon the head of the Queen 
 upon the resignation, in 1839, of Sir Robert Peel. I wiU not, genUe- 
 men, disgust you by a more distinct reference to those traitorous dia- 
 tribes, in which even clergymen took part. It is better we should 
 inquire how it is that gentlemen connected with these very prosecu- 
 tions have thought it decorous to comport themselves when their own 
 passions were excited. The name of the Right Honourable Frederick 
 Shaw is attached to the proclamation. I hold in my hand the perora- 
 tion of a speech delivered by that gentleman, and reported in the 
 Evening Mail : — " The government might make what regulation it 
 pleased ; but he trusted the people knew their duty too well to submit 
 to its enactments. It miglit degrade our mitres ; it might deprive us 
 of our properties ; but if the government dared to lay its hand on the 
 Bible, then we must come to an issue. It will cover it with our 
 bodies. My friends, will you permit your brethren to call out to you 
 in vain ? In the name of my country and my country's God, I will 
 appeal from a British House of Commons to a British people. My 
 countrymen woidd obey the laws so long as they were properly admi- 
 nistered ; but if it were sought to lay sacrilegious hands on the Bible, 
 to tear the standard of the living God, and to raise a mutilated one in 
 its stead, then it would be no time to halt between two opinions — then, 
 in every hill and every valley would resound the rallying cry of ' To 
 your tents, Israel !' " I won't ask the Attorney-General for Ii-eland 
 what he thinks of this, because this speech refers to a subject some- 
 what embarrassing to him ; and what his opinions arc, upon the Edu- 
 cation Board, it is not very easy to conjecture ; but I may venture to 
 ask the Solicitor-General, who is himself a commissioner of the Edu- 
 cation Board, whether Daniel O'Connell, in his whole course of agita- 
 tion, ever uttered a speech half so inflammatory as this ? With re- 
 spect to Mr. Sergeant Warren, he, I suppose, agrees in every word of 
 it, and only laments that, after so much sound and fury, the Recorder 
 of Dublin is the steadfast supporter of the government, by whom all 
 the misdeeds tlms eloquently denounced have been subsequently com- 
 mitted. Gentlemen, I find in the Evening Packet of the 24th of 
 January, 1837, an account of a great Protestant meeting which took 
 place at the Mansion House, where all the great representatives of the 
 Conservative interest in this country were assembled. Some very 
 strong speeches, indeed, were made at that meeting. The Eai'l of 
 Charleville said, "Well, gentlemen, you have a rebellious parliament; 
 you have a Lord Lieutenant the slave and minion of a rebellious par- 
 liament." That s])eccli was heard by the Right Honourable Thomas 
 
296 TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 Berry Cusack Smith, Did he remonstrate against the use of language 
 so unqualified ? Not at all. He got up and made a speech, in Avhich he 
 stated that he was sorry to find "that Roman Catholic members of par- 
 liament paid so little regard to their oaths." When the right honourable 
 gentleman had such impressions, I cannot feel surprised that care should 
 have been taken to exclude every Roman Catholic from the jury-box. 
 Let him not misapprehend me. I do not refer to his language in the 
 spirit of resentment. Resentment is not the feeling which the conduct 
 of the right honourable gentleman is calculated to produce. The right 
 honourable gentleman has expressed great indignation at the references 
 made at MuUaghmast to transactions from which the veil of oblivion 
 ought not to be withdrawn. He said, and justly enough, that men 
 should not grope in the annals of their country for the purpose of dis- 
 interring those events whose resuscitation can but appal and scare us. 
 But how does the right honourable gentleman reconcile that position 
 with his having been himself a party to a resolution passed at the 
 meeting of which I am speaking, in which it is stated that the condition 
 of the Protestants of Ireland is almost as alarming as it was in the 
 year 1641, when events took place from whose recollection we ought 
 to turn with horror and dismay. I referred you, gentlemen, to speeches. 
 Permit me now to refer you to the great monster meetings which have 
 taken place in assertion of the rights of the Protestants of Ireland. 
 Mark, I do not complain of those meetings. I do not complain tliat 
 75,000 men should have assembled and moved in order of battle ; but 
 I do complain that the men who look upon those assemblages with so 
 much indulgence, when the purposes of their own party were to be 
 promoted, denounced, as treasonable, assemblies in which no such de- 
 monstration of organised and perfectly disciplined physical force was 
 made. The first meeting of tlie monster character to whicli I shall 
 refer is the great Cavan meeting, where twenty thousand men assem- 
 bled imder such circumstances of such deep impressiveness, as to ren- 
 der them equivalent in practical eftect to five times that number of such 
 a peasantry as attended the Repeal demonstration. The following in- 
 cident is illustrative : — The Rev. Marcus Beresford stood up, and, 
 after a speech in his accustomed vein, said — " I see amongst us a good 
 and honest man, from the county Monaghan, who rendered conside- 
 rable service, by routing Mr. John Lawless from Ballibay — I mean 
 Mr. Samuel Gray (cheers) ; and were I a poet I should introduce him 
 to you by a couplet — 
 
 Here is Mr. Samuel Gray 
 
 Tlie Protestant hero of Ballybay. 
 
 (Cheers and laughter.) 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 297 
 
 He is a good, honest, straightforward Protestant — as glad to see the 
 Protestants of Cavan as they are to see him."* Mr. Samuel Gray, 
 who appears to have been transported by the reception given him by 
 his Protestant brethren, then came forward, and was received with 
 loud cheers. He said " he was a very humble individual, and could 
 only claim the merit of being a sincere and consistent Protestant. He 
 knew the Orangemen of JNIonaghan well — they were all prepared, and 
 in the hour of danger would be ready to assist their brethren (cheers). 
 As long as the spirit of the Protestants of Ulster remained unbroken — 
 as long as they stuck together heart and hand — so long may they defy 
 Mr. O'Connell, aided by a Whig government to put them doAvn 
 (cheers). Should the storm arise a signal would be sulHcient to bring 
 him and the Orangemen of Monaghan to the assistance of tlieir 
 brethren." But let us now proceed to the picturesque account given 
 of the Hillsborough meeting, celebrated in the annals of Protestant 
 agitation, by the Eveyiing Mail : — " At an early hour of the morning 
 (some of them, indeed, over night) the great landed proprietors of the 
 county repaired to the different points on their respective estates at 
 which it had been previously agreed they should meet their tenants, 
 and march then at their head to the general place of assemblage, so 
 that the area in front of the hustings did not present a very crowded 
 appearance, until the men arrived in large masses, each having the 
 pride of marching, border fashion, shoulder by shoulder, beside his 
 neighbour and brother, with Avhom he was ready to sacrifice life in de- 
 fence of his country and religion. Shortly after eleven o'clock, a tre- 
 mendous shout from the town announced the approach of the first 
 party. They were from Moira, and were headed by the Reverend 
 Holt Waring, who was drawn by the i)Coplc. A flag, the union-jack, 
 was hoisted at Mr. E. Reilly's, as the signal of their arrival. In a few 
 moments they were seen descending the steep hill from the town, and 
 approaching the place of meeting in a close, dark, and dense mass, 
 comprising certainly not less than twenty thousand persons. Having 
 escorted Mr. Waring to the foot of the platform they received his 
 thanks, expressed in warm and energetic language, and having given 
 three cheers, deployed round and took the position assigned them. 
 * # * * Amongst those who marched at the head of the largest 
 battalion, if we may use the expression, were the Marquisses of Lon- 
 donderry and Downshire ; Lord Clanwilliam, Sir Robert Bateson, 
 Colonel Forde, Colonel Blacker, Lord Castlereagh, and Lord Roden. 
 The latter had fifteen thousand men in his followers. They marched 
 
 * lie lias, since this eulogium was pronounced, been tried for murder and 
 
 sentenced to transportation for a felony one degree less heinous. — Ei>. 
 
298 TKIAL OF O'CONNELI.. 
 
 from Dromorc, At twelve o'clock the scene was the most imposing 
 that fancy could conceive, or that language possesses the power of de- 
 picting. The spectacle was grand, unique, sublime. There certainly 
 could pot have been, upon the most moderate computation, less than 
 seventy-five thousand persons present, exclusive of the thousands who 
 filled tliQ town, or thronged to absolute impediment all the adjacent 
 roads and avenues." From that description, gentlemen, I turn to a 
 resolution passed by the Irish Orangemen on the 12tli November, 
 1834, and which I find in the appendix to the report from the select 
 committee on Orange lodges : — "And, lastly, we would beg to call the 
 attention of the Grand Lodge, and through them return our heartfelt 
 thanks and congratulations to our brethren through the various parts 
 of Ireland, who, in the meetings of three thousand in Dublin, four 
 thousand at Bandon, thirty thousand in Cavan, and seventy-five thou- 
 sand at Hillsborough, by their strength of numbers, the rank, the re- 
 spectability, and orderly conduct of their attendance — the manly and 
 eloquent expression of every Christian and loyal sentiment, vindicated 
 so nobly the character of our institution against the aspersion thrown 
 on it, as the ' paltry remnant of a faction.' " That phrase, gentlemen, 
 is one which Lord Stanley, in one of his wayward moods, was pleased 
 to apply to the Oi'angemen of Ireland. Gentlemen, in the pait of the 
 report which I have read to you, there are some remarkable entries 
 relating to a subject of which you have heard a good deal from the 
 Attorney-General ; and although I deviate, I am aware, from the order 
 of topics, which I had prescribed to myself, yet, finding in the book 
 before me matter which seems to me to be exceedingly pertinent to that 
 topic, I shall now advert to it. Gentlemen, the entries to which I am 
 alluding are these : — " 15th February, 1833, William Scott, iGth com- 
 pany Royal Sappers and Miners. That the committee would most wil- 
 lingly forward all documents connected with the Orange system to any 
 confidential persons in Ballymona, as prudence would not permit the 
 printed documents should be forwarded direct to our military brethren." 
 " 1st January, 1834 — Resolved, that warrant 1592 be granted to 
 Joseph Mins, of the 1st Royals." " l7tli December, 1829, moved by 
 the Rev. Charles Boyton, seconded by Edward Cottingham, that the 
 next warrant number be issued to the 66th regiment, and that the 
 Quebec brethren be directed to send in a correct return, in order that 
 new warrants may be issued." Gentlemen, I refer you to these reso- 
 lutions with no other view than to show you what proceedings men 
 ■vvho conspii-e to establish an influence over the army naturally adopt. 
 If it was the object of the traversers to seduce the army from their 
 allegiance, would not expedients have been adopted very different from 
 
TRIAL. OF O'CONNELL. 299 
 
 those imputed to the defendants ? Would not repeal societies have 
 been formed ? Would not a clandestine correspondence have taken 
 place with the " military brethren ?" Would not money have been 
 distributed to the soldiery? Would not the propagators of mutiny 
 have been located in the public-houses frequented by soldiery? 
 Would not Roman Catholic priests who attend at the military hospi- 
 tals, have been charged to instil repeal principles into the soldier's ear ? 
 Docs anything of this kind appear to have been done ? A letter writ- 
 ten by the Rev. Mr. Power — a AYaterford priest, who is not made a, 
 defendant — who is not to be punished for his letter — is given in evi- 
 dence against my client, although he is as innocent of its composition 
 as the foreman of your jury. When that letter appeared in the Nation 
 neAvspaper, wliy Avas not an ex officio information filed against the 
 Rev. Mr. Power, whose manuscript would most certainly have been 
 given up ? But that Avould not have answered the purpose of the 
 Attorney-General, wliose object it was to ensnare. The Attorney- 
 Genei'al has not suggested a reason, or glanced at a pretence for not 
 liaving indicted Father Power. He read his letter from tlie beginning 
 to the termination. He told you that it was written by a priest — that 
 his name was to it. He docs not prosecute the priest — he does not 
 prosecute the paper, but reserves it for the conspiracy on which his 
 official renown is to be founded. What, gentlemen, has been the 
 coui-se adopted by the government in those prosecutions ? Sir Ed- 
 ward Sugden begins by dismissing some of the most respectable magis- 
 trates of the countiy, on account of something or other that was said 
 in the House of Commons, and because ** the meetings gave a tendency 
 to outrage." The direct contrary has been proved by every one of 
 the witnesses for the crown, and Mr. Ross, the clandestine sub-inspec- 
 tor of the Home-Office, in the very last words of his examination, 
 stated that he saw no tendency to outrage whatsoever* Lord Cotten- 
 ham declared in the House of Lords, that the proceeding of the Lord 
 Chancellor was utterly unconstitutional. Let me be permitted, gen- 
 tlemen, to contrast the proceedings adopted by tlie Lord Chancellor of 
 Ireland with the doctrines laid down in the charge of Mr. Baron Al- 
 derson, in his charge to the grand jury, delivered at the Monmouth 
 summer assizes, 1839. It is reported in 9th Carrington and Payne, 
 page 95 : — '* There is no doubt that the people of this country have a 
 perfect right to meet for the purpose of stating what one, or even what 
 they, consider to be their grievances ; but in order to transmit that 
 right unimpaired to posterity, it is necessary that it should be regu- 
 lated by law and restrained by reason. Therefore, let them meet if 
 they will in open day, peaceably and quietly ; and they would do wisely, 
 
300 TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 when they meet, to do so under the sanction of the constituted autho- 
 rities of the country. To meet under irresponsible presidency is a 
 dangerous thing. Nevertheless, if when they do meet under that irre- 
 sponsible presidency they conduct themselves with peace, tranquillity, 
 and order, they will, perhaps, lose their time, but nothing else. They 
 will not put other people into alarm, terror, and consternation. They 
 will probably in the end come to the conclusion, that they have acted 
 foolishly ; but the constitution of this country did not, God be thanked, 
 punish persons who mean to do that which was right, in a peaceable 
 and orderly manner, and who are only in error in the views which 
 they have taken on some subject of political interest." Has a single 
 respectable gentleman of station, and rank, and living in the vicinity 
 of the place where any of those meetings were held, been pi-oduced to 
 state to you that they were the source of apprehension in tlie neigh- 
 bourhood ? Has any man been produced to you who stated that they 
 had even a tendency to outrage ? Not one. 
 
 (Mr. Sheil was interrupted at this period of his address by an inti- 
 mation that the jury wished to retire for refreshment.) 
 
 Mr. Sheil, when their lordships returned into court, resumed as 
 follows : — I have already called attention to the fact that none of the 
 gentry of the country were brought forward to state what the cha- 
 racter of these meetings was. All the official persons examined — 
 among whom were several of the high constables of the various 
 districts — concurred in stating that there was no violation of the 
 peace at any of them. Indeed, the assertion of the Attorney- 
 General was, that the peace was kept — kept with the malevo- 
 lent intention of enabling the whole population to rise at a given 
 time, and establish a republic, of which JNIr. O'Connell was to be the 
 head. Forty-one of these meetings were held — all of the same cha- 
 racter — and at length a proclamation was determined on and issued 
 for the purpose of putting a stop to the Clontarf meeting. You have 
 heard the remarks of Mr. O'Connell, in reference to the course adopted 
 towards that meeting, and to me they appear extremely reasonable. 
 Notice of that meeting had been given for three weeks, yet the pro- 
 clamation was not publislied until the day before that on which it was 
 to have taken place. Mr. O'Connell did not charge the government, 
 when acting in this way, and delaying its measures till the last mo- 
 ment, with being capable of such an atrocious and destructive attempt 
 on the lives of the people, as might have been perpetrated by sending 
 the army amongst an unarmed populace, if the meeting had taken 
 place. Such an event might luive taken place ; and it is to be re- 
 gretted that a more timely warning, one that would have removed all 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 301 
 
 doubt and uncertainty, was not given. I pass this consideration by, 
 and come to another point. It is a usual practice — a rule, in fact — 
 that when a privy council is to assemble, summonses are directed to 
 be issued to all privy councillors being within the vicinity of the city 
 of Dublin. On this occasion such summonses were not issued. I am 
 given to understand that Chief Baron Brady, who is in the habit of 
 attending at councils, was not summoned. The Right Honourable 
 Anthony Richard Blake, a Roman Catholic gentleman, who was ap- 
 pointed Chief Remembrancer of the Exchequer under a Tory adminis- 
 tration — the intimate friend of the Marquis Wellesley — a man who had 
 never appeared in public assemblies, or interfered in the proceedings of 
 public meetings — a man who had never uttered an inflammatory lia- 
 rangue in l)is life — that gentleman did not receive a summons. I will 
 make no comment on this omission of the government on this occasion, 
 but such undoubtedly is the fact. I have told you who did not receive 
 summonses, and I shall proceed to state who did receive them. The 
 Recorder of the city of Dublin — by whom the jury list was to be re- 
 vised — he received a summons. In his department it was that an 
 event most untoward, as respects the traversers, befel. It was sug- 
 gested in this court that the jury list possibly might have been mutilated 
 or decimated — for decimation it was — by an accident — perhaps by a 
 rat, as was suggested by one of the court. I am far from suggesting 
 tliat there was any intentional foul play in this decimation, but that a 
 large portion of the list was omitted is beyond a doubt. I state the 
 fact and make no comment on it. "Well, an application was made for 
 the names of the witnesses on the back of the document, on behalf of 
 the traversers. One of the judges declared he thought it matter of 
 right ; another of the judges intimated his opinion that it would be 
 advisable for the crown to furnish the list within a reasonable time. 
 From that day to this the list has never been given. The list of 
 jurors is di'awn by ballot : there are eleven Catholics upon it. They 
 are struck off. The trial comes on. A challenge is put in to the 
 array, iipon the ground that one-tenth, or very nearly one-tenth of the 
 jury list was suppressed. One of the court expresses an opinion that 
 the challenge is a good one. His brethren diflfer from him; but 
 when in a trial at bar, at the instance of the crown, one of the judges 
 gives an intimation so unequivocal as to the construction of the 
 jury list, perhaps it would have been more advisable for the crown to 
 have discharged the order for a special jury, and to have directed 
 the high sheriff of the city to have returned a panel. I mention 
 these incidents, gentlemen, in order that your feeling that the tra- 
 versers have been deprived of some of those contingent benefits 
 
302 TUIAL OK o'cONNTiLL. 
 
 given them by the law, should give them an equivalent for any 
 loss which they may have sustained in your anxious performance of your 
 sacred duty. At length, in the midst of profound silence, the Attor- 
 ney-General states the case for the crown, and consumes eleven houra 
 in doing so. I was astonished at his brevity, for the pleading on 
 which his speech was founded is the very Behemoth of indict- 
 ments, which, as you see, " upheaves its vastness" on that table. — 
 Nothing comparable in the bigness of its gigantic dimensions has ever 
 yet been seen. The indictment in Hardy's case, whose trial lasted 
 ten or eleven days, does not exceed three or four pages ; but this in- 
 dictment requires an effort of physical force to lift it up. Combined 
 with this indictment was a tremendous bill of particulars in keeping 
 with it. Gentlemen, the Attorney-General, as I have already ob- 
 served to you at the outset of these observations, denounced the tra- 
 versers at the close of almost every sentence that was uttered by him ; 
 but it struck me that it was only in reference to two of these charges 
 that he broke forth in a burst of genuine and truly impassioned indig- 
 nation. The first of those charges was — a conspiracy to diminish the 
 business of a court of law. How well the great Lord Chatham 
 exclaimed — I renieinbcr to have read it somewhere but 1 forget 
 where — " Shake the whole constitution to the centre, and the lawyer 
 will sit tranquil in his cabinet ; but touch a single thread in the cob- 
 webs of Westminster-hall, and the exasperated spider crawls out in 
 its defence." The second great hit of the right honourable gentleman 
 Was made when he charged Mr. O'Connell with a deplorable ignorance 
 of law, in stating certain prerogatives of the crown. With respect, 
 gentlemen, to the arbitration courts, the Society of Friends are as 
 liable to an indictment for conspiracy as the defendants. The regula- 
 tions under which the Quaker arbitration system is carried on will be 
 laid before you ; and the opinions of Lord lirougham, who has always 
 been the strenuous advocate of the arbitration system, will, I am sure, 
 have their due weight upon you. With regard to Mr. O'Connell's 
 alleged mistake respecting the power of the ci'own to issue writs — 
 what is it, after all, but a project for swamping the House of Com- 
 mons, analogous to that of Sir James Graham and my Lord Stanley 
 for swamping the House of Lords ? The plain truth is this — the 
 Sovereign has the abstract right to create new boroughs. But the 
 exercise of that right might be regarded as inconsistent with the 
 principles of the constitution. Lord Denman and one of his late Ma- 
 jesty's law advisers in the House of Commons distinctly asserted the 
 right to issue writs ; and although that opinion was reprehended by 
 Sir Charles Wetherell, I believe that of its being strict law there can 
 
TRIAL. OF o'CONNELL. 303 
 
 be little doubt. But the real question between the Attorndy-Genei-al 
 and the traversers, and the only one to which you will be disposed to 
 pay much regard, was raised by the Attorney-General when he said 
 that there existed d, dangerous conspiracy, of which the object was to 
 prepare the great body of the peoide to rise at a signal and to erect 
 a sanguinary republic, of which Daniel O'ConneU should be the head. 
 Gentlemen, how do men proceed Avho engage in a guilty enterprise of 
 this kind ? They bind each other by solemn oaths. They are sworn 
 to secrecy, to silence, to deeds, or to death. They associate supersti- 
 tion with atrocity, and heaven is invoked by them to ratify the cove- 
 nants of hell. They fix a day, an hour, and hold their assemblages 
 in the midst of darkness and of solitude, and verify the exclamation 
 of the conspirator, in the language of the great observer of oui' na- 
 ture : — ' 
 
 "Oh, Conspiracy, 
 
 Where wilt tliou find a cavern dark enough 
 
 To hide thy monstrous visage ?" 
 
 How have the repeal conspirators proceeded ? Every one of their as- 
 semblages have been open to the pubUc. For a shilling, all they said, 
 or did, or thought, were known to the government. Everything was 
 laid bare and naked to the public eye ; they stripped their minds in 
 the public gaze. No oaths, no declaration, no initiation, no form of 
 any kind was resorted to. They did not even act together. Mr. Duffy, 
 proprietor of the Nation, did not attend a single meeting in the 
 country. My client attended only three ; Mr. Tierney, the priest, attended 
 no more than one. It would have been more manly on the part of the 
 Attorney-General to have indicted Dr. Iliggins oi* Dr. Cantwell, or, 
 as he was pleased to designate them, Bishop Higgins and Bishop Cant- 
 well. Well, why did he not catch a bishop— if not Cantwell, at all 
 events Higgins ? For three months we heard nothing but " Higgins, 
 Higgins, n'iggins." The Times was redolent of Higging ; sometimes 
 he 'was Lord°Higgins, then he waS Priest Higgins, afterwards Mr. 
 Higgins. But wherefore is not this i^edoubted Higgins indicted, of 
 Why did you not assail the gre^t John of Tuam himself ? He Would 
 not have shrunk from your pci'sccution, but, with his mitre on his 
 head and his crozicr in his hand, he would have walked in his ponti- 
 fical vestments into gaol, and smiled disdainfully upoU you. But you 
 did not dare to attack liim, but fell on a poor Monaghan priest, who 
 only attended ohe meeting, and only made One speech about the 
 " Yellow Ford," for which you should not include him in a conspi- 
 racy, but should make him professor of rhetoric at Maynooth. Gen- 
 tlemen, an enormous mass of speeches delivered by Mr. O'CbnneU 
 
304 ' TRIAL OF o'connt:ll. 
 
 within the last nine montlis lias been laid before you. I think, how- 
 ever, you will come to the conclusion that they are nothing more than 
 a repetition of the opinions which he expressed in 1810 ; and when 
 you come to consider them in detail, you will, I am sure, be con- 
 vinced that these speeches were not merely interspersed with refe- 
 rences to peace and order, with a view to escape from the law, but 
 that there runs, through the entire mass of thought that came from 
 the mind of Mr. O'Connell a pervading love of order, and an unaf- 
 fected sentiment of abhorrence for the employment of any other than 
 loyal, constitutional, and pacific means for the attainment of his ob- 
 ject. He attaches fully as much importance to the means as to the 
 end. He declares that he would not purchase the repeal of the Union 
 at the cost of one drop of blood. He announces that the moment the 
 government calls upon him to disperse his meetings, these meetings 
 shall be dispersed. He does but ask " the Irish nation to back him ;" 
 for from that backing he anticipates the only success to which, as a 
 good subject, as a good citizen, and as a good Christian, he could 
 aspire. But if, gentlemen, it be suggested that in popular harangues 
 obedience to the laws and submission to authority are easily simulated, 
 I think I may fearlessly assert that of the charges preferred against 
 him his life alfords the refutation, A man cannot wear the mask of 
 loyalty for forty-four years ; however skilfully constructed, the vizor 
 will sometimes drop off, and the natural truculonce of the conspirator 
 must be disclosed. You may have heard many references made to 
 the year 1798, and several stanzas of a long poem have been read to 
 you, in order to fasten them on Mr. O'Connell. It was in 1798 that 
 the celebrated man was called to the bar, who was destined to play a 
 part so conspicuous on the theatre of the world. He was in the bloom 
 of youth — in the full fiush of life — the blood bounded in his veins, and 
 in a frame full of vigour was embodied an equally elastic and athletic 
 mind. He was in that season of life, when men are most disposed to 
 high and daring adventure. He had come from those rocks and moun- 
 tains, of which a description so striking has appeared in the reports of 
 the speeches, which have been read to you. He had listened, as he 
 says, to the great Atlantic, whose surge rolls unbroken from the coast 
 of Labrador. He carried enthusiasm to i-omance ; and of the impres- 
 sions which great events are calculated to make upon minds like his, 
 he was peculiarly susceptible. He was unwedded. He had given no 
 hostages to the state. The conservative affections had not tied their 
 ligaments, tender, but indissoluble about his heart. There was at 
 that time an enterprise on foot ; guilty, and deeply guilty, indeed, 
 but not wholly hopeless. The peaks that overhung the Bay of Bantry 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNKL,!,. 305 
 
 are dimly visible from Iveragh. What part was taken in that dark 
 adventure by this conspirator of sixty-nine ? Curran was suspected — 
 Grattan was suspected. Both were designated as traitors unimpeached ; 
 but on the name of Daniel O'Connell a conjecture never lighted. And 
 can you bring yourselves to believe tliat the man who turned with 
 abhorrence from the conjuration of 1798 would now, in an old age, 
 which he himself has called not premature, engage in an insane under- 
 taking, in which his own life, and the lives of those who are dearer 
 to him than himself, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of his 
 countrymen, would, beyond all doubt, be sacrificed ? Can you bring 
 yourselves to believe that he would blast the laurels, which it is his 
 boast that he has won without the efiusion of blood — that he would 
 drench the land of his birth, of his aifections, and of his redemption, 
 in a deluge of profitless massacre, and that he would lay prostrate 
 that great moral monument, which he has raised so high that it is 
 visible from the remotest region of the world ? What he was in 1798 
 he is in 1844. Do you believe that the man who aimed at a revolu- 
 tion would repudiate French assistance, and denounce the present 
 dynasty of France ? Do you think that the man who aimed at revo- 
 lution, would hold forth to the detestation of the world, the infamous 
 slavery by which the great Transatlantic republic, to her everlasting 
 shame, permits herself to be degraded ? Or, to come nearer home, do 
 you think that the man who aimed at revolution, would have indig- 
 nantly repudiated the proffered junction with the English Chartists? 
 Had a combination been effected between the Chartists and the Re- 
 pealers it would have been moi'e than formidable. At the head of that 
 combination in England was Mr. Feargus O'Connor, once the asso- 
 ciate and friend of Daniel O'Connell. The entire of the lower oi-ders 
 in the North of England were enrolled in a powerful organization. 
 A league between the Repealers and the Chartists might have been 
 at once effected. Chartism uses its utmost and most clandestine efforts 
 to find its way into this country. O'Connell detects and crushes it. 
 Of the charges preferred against him, am I not right when I exclaim 
 that his life contains the refutation ? To the charge that Mr. O'Con- 
 nell and his son conspired to excite animosity amongst her Majesty's 
 subjects, the last observation that I have made to you is more pecu- 
 liarly applicable. Gentlemen, Mr. O'Connell and his co-religionists 
 have been made the objects of the fiercest and the coarsest vitupera- 
 tion ; and yet I defy the most acute and diligent scrutiny of the entire 
 of the speeches put before you, to detect a single expression — one soli- 
 tary phrase — Avhich reflects in the remotest degree upon the Protestant 
 religion. He has left all the contumely heaped upon the form of 
 
 X 
 
306 TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 Christianity which he professes utterly unheeded, and the Protestant 
 Operative Society has not provoked a retort ; and every angry dispu- 
 tant has, without any interposition on his part, been permitted to rush 
 in " where angels fear to tread." The religion of IMr. O'Connell 
 teaches him two things — charity towards those who dissent from him 
 in doctrine, and forgiveness of those who do him wrong. You recol- 
 lect (it is from such incidents that we are enabled to judge of the cha- 
 racters and feelings of men) — ^you remember to have heard in the 
 course of the evidence frequent reference made to Sir Bradley King. 
 The unfortunate man had been deprived of his office, and aU compen- 
 sation was denied him. He used to stand in the lobby of the House 
 of Commons, the most desolate and hopeless looking man I ever saw. 
 The only one of his old friends that stuck to him was Baron Lefroy. 
 But Baron Lefroy had no interest with tlwj government. Mr. O'Con- 
 nell saw Bradley King, and took pity on him. Bradley King had 
 been his fierce political, almost his personal antagonist. Mr. O'Con- 
 nell went to Lord Althorpe, and obtained for Bradley King the com- 
 pensation which had been refused him. I remembered having read a 
 most striking letter addressed by , Sir Abraham Bi-adley King to Mr. 
 O'Connell, and asked hirn for it. Ho could not at lirst put his hand 
 upon it ; but, while looking for it, he mentioned that soon after the 
 death of the old Dublin alderman an officer entered his study, and 
 told him that he was the son-in-law of Sir Abraham, who had, a short 
 time before his death, called him to his bedside and said — " When I 
 shall have been buried, go to Daniel O'Connell, and tell him that the 
 last prayer of a grateful man was offiired up for him, and that I im- 
 plored heaven to avert every peril from his head." Mr. O'Connell 
 found the letter — you will allow me to read it: — 
 
 " liiirrctfs Hotel, Spring Gardens, 4lh Aug. 1832. 
 
 " My dear Sin — The anxious wish for a satisfactory termination 
 of my cause, which your continued and ixnwearied effiDrts for it have 
 ever indicated, is at length accomplished ; the vote of compensation 
 passed last night. 
 
 " To Mr. Lefroy and yourself am I indebted for putting the case in 
 the right light to my Lord Althorpe, and for his lordship's consequent 
 candid and straightforward act, in giving me my just dues, and thus 
 restoring myself and family to competence, ease, and happiness. 
 
 " To you. Sir, to whom I was early and long politically opposed — 
 to you, who nobly forgetting this continued dilference of opinion, and 
 who, rejecting eveiy idea of party feeling or party spirit, thought 
 only of my distress, and sped to succour and support me, how can I 
 
TRIAL OF O'CONNEI.L. 307 
 
 express my gratitude ? I cannot attempt it. The reward, I feel, is 
 to be found only in your own breast, and 1 assure myself that the ge- 
 nerous feelings of a noble mind will cheer you on to that prosperity 
 and happiness which a discriminating Providence holds out to those 
 who protect the helpless, and sustain the falling. 
 
 " For such reward and happiness to you and yours my prayers shall 
 be offered fervently, while the remainder of my days, passing, Itrust, 
 in tranquillity, by a complete retirement from public life, and in the 
 bosom of my family, will constantly present to me the grateful recol- 
 lection of one to whom I am mainly indebted for so desirable a closing 
 of my life. Believe me, my dear Sir, with the greatest respect and 
 truth, your faithful servant, 
 
 " Abraham Bradley King. 
 
 " To Diuiicl O'Conncll, Esq., M.r." 
 
 You may deprive him of liberty — you may shut him out from the 
 face of nature — ^you may inter him in a dungeon, to which a ray of the 
 sun never yet descended ; but you never will take away from him the 
 consciousness of having done a good and a noble action, and of being 
 entitled to kneel down every night he sleeps, and to address to his 
 Creator the divinest portion of our Redeemer's prayer. The man to 
 whom that letter was addressed, and the son of tlie man to whom that 
 letter was addressed, are not guilty of the sanguinary intents which 
 have been ascribed to them, and of this they " put themselves upon 
 their country." Rescue that phrase from its technicalities — ^let it no 
 longer be a fictitious one ; if we have lost our representation in the 
 parliament, let us behold it in the jui-y box, and that you participate 
 in the feelings of millions of your countrymen let your verdict afford 
 a proof. But it is not to Ireland that the aching solicitude with which 
 the result of this trial is intently watched will be confined. There is 
 not a great city in Europe in which, upon the day when the great in- 
 telligence shall be expected to arrive, men will not stop each other in 
 the public way, and inquire whether twelve men upon their oaths have 
 doomed to incai'ceration the man who gave liberty to Ireland ? What- 
 ever may be your adjudication he is prepared to meet it. He knows 
 that the eyes of the world are upon him — and that posterity — whether 
 in a gaol or out of it — will look back to him with admiration ; he is 
 almost indifferent to what may bcfal him, and is far more solicitous for 
 others at this moment than for himself. But I — at tlie commencement 
 of what I have said to you — I told you that I was not unmoved, and 
 that many incidents of my political life, the strange alternations of 
 fortune through which I have passed, had come back upon me. But 
 now the bare possibility at which I have glanced, has, I acknowledge, 
 
308 TRIAL OF O'CONNELL. 
 
 almost unmanned me. Shall I, who stretch out to you in behalf of 
 the son the hand whose fetters the father has struck off, live to cast 
 my eyes upon that domicile of sorrow, in the vicinity of this great 
 metropolis, and say, " 'Tis there they have immured the Liberator of 
 Ireland with his fondest and best beloved child ?" No ! it shall never 
 be ! You will not consign him to the spot to which the Attorney- 
 General invites you to surrender him. When the spring shall have 
 come again, and the winter shall have passed — ^when the spring shall 
 have come again, it is not through the windows of a prison-house that 
 the father of such a son, and the son of such a father, shall look upon 
 those green hills on which the eyes of many a captive have gazed so 
 wistfully in vain, but in their own mountain home again they shall 
 listen to the murmurs of the great Atlantic ; they shall go forth and 
 inhale the freshness of the morning air together ; " they shall be free 
 of mountain solitudes ;" they will be encompassed with the loftiest 
 images of libei'ty upon every side ; and if time shall have stolen its 
 suppleness from the father's knee, or impaired the firmness of his tread, 
 he shall lean on the child of her that watches over him from heaven, 
 and shall look out from some high place far and wide into the island 
 whose greatness and whose glory shall be for ever associated with his 
 name. In your love of justice — in your love of Ireland — in your 
 love of honesty and fair play — I place my confidence. I ask you for 
 an acquittal, not only for the sake of your country, but for your own. 
 Upon the day when this trial shall have been bi'ought to a termination, 
 when, amidst the hush of public expectancy, in answer to the solemn 
 interrogatory which shall be put to you by the officer of the court, 
 you shall answer, " Not guilty," with what a transport will that glo- 
 rious negative be welcomed ! How will you be blest, adored, wor- 
 shipped ; and when retiring from this scene of excitement and of 
 passion, you shall return to your own tranquil homes, how pleasurably 
 will you look upon your children, in the consciousness that you will 
 have left them a patrimony of peace by impressing upon the British 
 cabinet, that some other measure besides a state prosecution is neces- 
 sary for the pacification of your country ! 
 
THE IRISH STATE TRIALS. 309 
 
 THE IRISH STATE TRIALS. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 22, 1844. 
 
 I DID not rise last night at the conclusion of the speech of the Attor- 
 ney-General for Ireland, for two reasons. The first was, that that 
 speech did not terminate until nearly twelve, and I despaired of en- 
 gaging the attention of the house at so late an hour ; in the next place, 
 I was anxious tliat the right honourable and learned gentleman should 
 afford mc an opportunity of looking at the report of the case in which 
 I was engaged fifteen years ago, to which he has thouglit it judicious 
 to advert. 1 wished to look at tliat report for the purpose of vindi- 
 cating myself from what I regard as a very serious charge. I applied to 
 the right lionourable gentleman for the report, and he had the goodness 
 at once to give it to me. This house must have been under the impi-es- 
 sion that I packed a jury, and that it was exclusively Roman Catholic. 
 The house must have thought, that I exercised the prerogative vested 
 in me by the crown, with the sanction of the law officers, for the pur- 
 pose of placing in the jury-box twelve men, my own co-religionists, 
 and tlic co-rcligionists of the person for whose death the prosecution 
 was instituted. The riglit honourable gentleman said that he was 
 present on that occasion ; I think he will admit the trutli of ray asser- 
 tion, that of my conduct in the course of that prosecution the attorney 
 and counsel for the prisoner did not complain, and the i-cgular counsel 
 for the crown did not intimate that any fault was to be found with my 
 conduct. In order to obtain a mixed jury, I was under the necessity, 
 as the prisoner challenged every Catholic, to set aside Protestants, 
 until I could obtain the religious combination which I desired to effect. 
 It may be said that I gave the Catholics a majority of one on the jury ; 
 but when you recollect that unanimity was required for a conviction, 
 you will at once perceive that a preponderance of one was of no conse- 
 quence. If the Irish Attorney-General had followed my example in 
 the state prosecutions, and out of the common panel had allowed five 
 Catholics to remain on the jury, we should not have impeaclied liis 
 verdict. The Attorney-General has brought against me a very serious 
 charge — he said that where a man was on his trial for his life, I acted 
 a most censurable part. His book refutes him. I find in it a report 
 of my speech ; and in order to prove that I did not hunt down the 
 defendant with a bloodhound sagacity I hope I shall be forgiven if I 
 read one or two passages, which will show the house the spirit in which 
 the prosecution was conducted. I hope the liousc will listen to this 
 
310 THE IRISH STATK TUIALS. 
 
 self-vindication, if not with interest at least with indulgence ; and I 
 must say, that I never saw an occasion on which that feeling of the 
 House of Commons was more strongly manifested than it had been 
 last night, in listening to a speech of the I'ight honourable and learned 
 gentleman, distinguished for ability, and, let me add, for moral cou- 
 rage. The following is the commencement of the speech made by me 
 in the case to which the Attorney-General refers : — 
 
 " I am counsel in a case which the gentlemen to whom the Attorney- 
 General habitually confides the enforcement of the law have permitted 
 me, at the instance of the persons interested in the prosecution, to con- 
 duct. I trust that I shall not abuse the license which has been afforded 
 me. I feel that I am invested with a triple trust. The first is that which 
 I owe my client, for whom I do not ask for vengeance, but for that re- 
 tribution for which the instincts of nature make in the bosom of a parent 
 their strong and abnost sacred call. My client is the mother of the boy 
 for whose death the prisoner at the bar stands arraigned. I owe the next 
 duty to Mr. Pearse himself. If I am asked in what particular I am 
 bound to him, I answer that I cannot avoid entertaining for him that 
 sentunent of commiseration which every well-minded man will extend 
 to one who may be really innocent of a crime, the imputation of which 
 is itself a misfortune ; and I do assure you (he will pennit me, I hope, 
 to extend the assux*ance to himself), that it is with melancholy that I 
 raise my eyes and see him occupying the place where guilt and misery 
 are accustomed to stand. To him I owe it as an obligation that I should 
 not abuse the advantage of delivering a statement to which his counsel 
 cannot reply. The scriptural injunction inscribed above that seat of 
 justice, admonishes me that I ought not to make any appeal to your 
 passions against a man whose mouth is closed, and to whose counsel 
 the i-ight of speaking, by an eciually cruel and fantastic anomaly, is 
 refused by the law. " Aperi os tuum, inuto" is written there in golden 
 characters, not only to suggest to your lordship the duty of a judicial 
 interposition on behalf of the silent, but also to warn the advocate not 
 to avail himself in any merciless spirit of his forensic prerogative against 
 the man whom the law has stricken dumb. I shall make it superfluous 
 on the part of his counsel to produce evidence in favour of his cha- 
 racter — he is a man of worth and honour, and until the fatal event for 
 which he stands indicted, has borne a reputation for peculiar kind- 
 ness of heart." 
 
 After stating the facts I concluded thus : — 
 
 " At the outset of my statement I expressed myself in praise of the 
 defendant, and, as I advance to a conclusion, I pause for an instant to 
 reiterate my panegyric. He has been, I repeat it, up to the time of this 
 
THE IBISU STATE TRIALS. 311 
 
 incident, a liumane and well-conducted man. Let him have the full 
 benefit of this commendation. If it shall appear that under circum- 
 stances which constituted a necessity, and in obedience to the instinct 
 of self-preservation he exclaimed ' fire !' then I am the very first to call 
 on you to acquit him." 
 
 Tliis is not the language of a man actuated by the fierce zeal of a 
 relentless prosecutor ; I think it far less vehement than the charges of 
 judges which we occasionally hear in Ireland. At the conclusion of 
 the evidence, I told the judge that I thought that no case for charging 
 the defendant with murder had been made out. I do think that the 
 Attorney-General, in reverting to a trial which took place fifteen 
 years ago, has not acted with ingenuousness, and I am convinced that 
 in the opinion of the house I have freed myself from the imputation 
 that 1 did not exercise the prerogative of the crown Avith the intent 
 attributed to me ; and if the right honourable gentleman had followed 
 the example which I gave him on that occasion — if, in the constitu- 
 tion of the jury in Dublin, he had taken care that there should be five 
 Roman Catliolics and seven Protestants upon it — nay, if he had al- 
 lowed even two, or one Roman Catholic upon that jury, I think he 
 would have taken not only a more merciful but a more judicious course 
 than that which ho did adopt. The jury that sat in Dublin on the 
 late trial Avas composed of twelve Protestants, and the house has not 
 yet been apprised of some cii'cumstances connected with their selection. 
 Eight of those jurors voted against Mr. O'Connell at the several elec- 
 tions at which that honourable gentleman was candidate for the city of 
 Dublin. I do not mean to say that they had not a most perfect right 
 to do so, or that because they had voted against Jiim they ought of ne- 
 cessity to have been set aside by the crown, or that they were unfit to 
 exercise the duties of jurors in his case ; but we have first the fact of 
 every Roman Catholic on the jury list being set aside, and then we 
 have a jury of persons admittedly hostile to him selected. There was 
 a controversy last night respecting Mr. Thompson. A doubt was en- 
 tertained as to the fact whether he had seconded a resolution at a cor- 
 poration meeting. I believe the fact is now beyond all doubt. The 
 resolution was to this effect : — '* That this meeting will support and 
 maintain, by eveiy means in its power, the Legislative Union between 
 Great Britain and Ireland." There was another gentleman of more 
 marked politics — Mr. Faulkner. It will be found in Saunders's News 
 Letter of the 14th of February, 1840, that at a meeting of Pi'otestants, 
 convened by the Lord Mayor in pursuance of a resolution of the Com- 
 mon Council, and held in the King's Room at the Mansion House, a 
 Mr. Jones is reported to have said — " I call on the meeting by eveiy 
 
312 THE IRISH STATE TKIALS. 
 
 consideration to stand by their principles, and, above all, to maintain 
 the Protestant ascendency in church and state," and then followed 
 loud and long-continued cheering, with shouts of " no surrender," and 
 " one cheer more." Mr. Faulkner, who was one of the jury, proposed 
 the third resolution, and that resolution was this — " That this meeting 
 views with deep alarm the bill introduced into parliament which pro- 
 poses to interfere with the municipal corporations of Ireland, and which 
 transfers tlie rights of Protestants to the Roman Catholic party in Ire- 
 land." And on another occasion, in a speech of his, reported in Saun- 
 ders's Neios Letter of the 13th of April, and also in the Evening Mail, 
 Mr. Faidkner called upon the meeting to uphold the Protestant ascen- 
 dency in church and state, and gave the charter toast. Some friend 
 asked what was the charter toast ? and I\Ir. Faulkner said, " I mean 
 the glorious and immortal memory of the great and good King Wil- 
 liam." That gentleman ought to have been struck off. I think the 
 house, when it considers the facts of the case — when it looks to the 
 variety of the circumstances connected with the case, will consider these 
 facts to be material in detennining whether the jury were legitimately 
 selected ? Mr. O'Connell might have begun his speech to the jury in 
 the words of the unfortunate Lewis : " I look forjudges, but I behold 
 none but accusers here." I turn to the circumstances connected with 
 the prosecution: the Attorney- General has overlooked many incidents 
 which he ought to have stated and which he ought to have known 
 would not be kept back. You have obtained what you regard as a 
 victory over the leader of the Catholic people. That victory has been 
 obtained by you through the instrumentality of a Protestant jury. If 
 it was fairly won, I am free to acknowledge that it is not unnaturally 
 followed by that ministerial ovation in which the Secretary for the Co- 
 lonies and the Secretary for the Home Department have not thought it 
 indecorous to indulge ; but if that victory has been unfairly won — if, 
 while you adhere to the forms of law, you have violated the principles 
 of justice ; if a plot was concocted at the Home Othce, and executed 
 in the Queen's Bench ; if, by an ostensible acquiescence in monster 
 meetings for nine months, you have decoyed your antagonists into your 
 toils ; if foully or fortuitously (and whether fortuitously or foully the 
 result is the same) a considerable fraction of the jury list had been 
 suppressed ; if you have tried the Liberator of the Irish Catholics with 
 a jury of exasperated Protestants ; if justice is not only suspected, but 
 comes tainted and contaminated from her impui-e contact with autho- 
 rity — then, not only have you not a just cause for exultation, but your 
 successes are of that sinister kind which are as fatal to the victors as 
 to the vanquished — which will tarnish you with an ineftaceable dis- 
 
THE IRISH STATE TRIALS- 
 
 SIS 
 
 •credit, and will be followed at last by a retribution, slow indeed, but, 
 !liowever tardy, inevitably sure. I have presented a double hypothesis 
 %o the house. Let us see to which of the alternatives the facts ought 
 to be applied. I shall be permitted, in the first instance, to refer to an 
 observation made by the Secretary for Ireland in reference to myself. 
 The noble lord said : — 
 
 " He must now advert to something which had fallen from a mem- 
 ber of that house out of doors regarding Chief Baron Brady, and Mr. 
 Anthony Blake. It had been observed by Mr. Shell, that an insult 
 had been offered to the Catholics of Ireland, because those gentlemen 
 had not been summoned to a meeting of the council. He believed 
 Chief Baron Brady was a Trotestant. But let that pass. He took on 
 himself the responsibility of not summoning those gentlemen to the 
 council. He thought that the measure determined on was the deUbe- 
 rate act of government, and he did not, therefore, think it proper to 
 ask the opinion of political opponents." 
 
 What I said was this : " A circumstance occurred connected with 
 the proclamation which is not undeserving of note. It has always 
 been the usage in this country (Ireland) to summon every member of 
 the Privy Council. Upon this occasion the Chief Baron, although 
 living in tlie neighbourhood of Dublin, was not summoned, and Mr. 
 Blake, a Roman Catholic, who lives in Dublin, was not summoned. 
 He was appointed to the office of Chief Remembrancer by a Tory 
 government. He had been the intimate friend of Lord Wellesley, a 
 great Conservative statesman. He had never taken any part in any 
 violent proceedings, but he was not summoned upon this occasion, 
 although summoned upon every other, to the Privy Council; wlule 
 the Recorder of the city of Dublin, by whom the jury list was to be 
 revised, and in whose department an accident of a most untoward kind 
 had happened, was summoned to the council whence the proclamation 
 went forth." That was what I said, and I take advantage of this op- 
 portunity to add, that if Mr. Blake had been at the Privy Council on 
 Friday, he would have urged his associates not to delay the posting of 
 the proclamation until Saturday, but would have told them, that, 
 without any long recitals, immediate notice should be given to the 
 people of the determination of the government. Notice of the Clon- 
 tarf meeting was given for three weeks. It was to have been held 
 upon Sunday. On the preceding Friday the council assembled. On 
 that day the proclamation ought to have been prepared and posted. It 
 did not appear until Saturday afternoon, and the country is indebted 
 to Mr. O'Connell, if upon an unarmed multitude an excited soldiery 
 
314 THE IRISH STATE TKIALS. 
 
 was not let loose. The proclamation was obeyed. With that obedi- 
 ence you ought to have been contented. The monster meetings were 
 at an end ; but you had previously determined to prosecute for a con- 
 spiracy, and for that purpose you lay in wait for nine months, and 
 that you did the proclamation itself affords a proof. The proclamation 
 recites — 
 
 " Whereas meetings of large numbers of persons have been already 
 held in diiferent parts of Ireland, under the like pretence, at several 
 of which meetings, language of a seditious and inflammatory nature 
 has been addressed to the persons there assembled, calculated and in- 
 tended to excite disaffection in the minds of her Majesty's subjects, 
 and to bring into haired and contempt, the government and constitu- 
 tion of the country, as by law established : and whereas, at some of 
 the said meetings, such seditious and inflammatory language has been 
 used by persons," &c. 
 
 If this statement be true, wliy did you not long before indict the 
 individuals by whom those seditious speeches were delivered ? Why 
 did you not prosecute the newspapers by which inflammatory para- 
 graphs had been almost daily published, for a period of nine months ? 
 The motive was obvious. It was your pui-pose — ^your deliberate and 
 long meditated purpose, to make Mr. O'Connell responsible for 
 harangues wliich he had never spoken, and for publications which he 
 had never read. I content myself witli giving a single instance, wliich 
 will afford, however, a perfect exemplification of the whole character 
 of your proceedings. A Catliolic priest published an article in tho 
 Pilot newspaper, upon " The Duty of a Soldier." lie signed his 
 name, James Power, to that article. lie was never prosecuted — he 
 was never threatened ; he has escaped with perfect impunity ; but that 
 article was given in evidence against Daniel O'Connell, by whom it 
 does not appear that it was even ever seen. Such a proceeding never 
 was instituted in this country — such a proceeding, I trust in God, 
 never wiU be instituted in this country — for Englishmen would not 
 endure it ; and this very discussion will tend to awaken them to a 
 sense of the peril to which they are themselves exposed. Does not the 
 question at once present itself to everybody, if that seditious language 
 was employed for so long a period as nine months, wliy did you not 
 prosecute it before ? Why did you not prosecute such an article as 
 this which I hold in my hand, and which was published so far back as 
 the 1st of April, 1843. You might have proceeded by criminal infor- 
 mation or indictment, for the publication of a poem in the Nation 
 newspaper, on which her Majesty's Attorney-General entered into a 
 
THE IRISH STATE TRIALS. 315 
 
 somewhat lengthened expatiation in addressing the jury, and declared 
 it to be a poem of a most inflammatory character, I allude to verses 
 entitled, " The Memory of the Dead." 
 
 ' ' Who fears to speak of Ninety-eight ? 
 
 Who blushes at tlie name ? 
 When cowards mock the patriot's fate, 
 
 Who hangs liis head for shame ? 
 lie's all a knave, or lialf a slave, 
 
 Who slights his country thus ; 
 But a true man, like you, man, 
 
 Will fill your glass with us. 
 
 " We drink the memory of the brave. 
 
 The faithful and the few — 
 Some lie far off beyond the wave. 
 
 Some deep in Ireland too ; 
 All — all are gone — but still lives on 
 
 The fame of those who died ; 
 All true men, like you, men, 
 
 Remember them with pride. 
 
 " Some on the shores of distant lands 
 
 Their weary hearts have laid. 
 And by the stranger's heedless hands 
 
 Their lonely graves were made. 
 But though their clay be far away 
 
 Beyond the Atlantic foam — 
 In true men, like you, men. 
 
 Their spirit's still at home. 
 
 " The dust of some is Irish earth ; 
 
 Among their own they rest ; 
 And the same laud that gave them birth 
 
 Has caught them to her breast ; 
 And we will pray that from their clay 
 
 Full many a race may start 
 Of true men, like you, men, 
 
 To act as brave a part; 
 
 '• They rose in dark and evil days 
 
 To right their native land ; 
 They kindled here a living blaze 
 
 That notliing shall withstand. • 
 Alas I that Might can vanquish Right — 
 
 They fell and passed away ; 
 But true men, like you, men, 
 
 Are plenty licre to-day. 
 
 " Then here's their memory — may it be 
 
 For us a guiding light. 
 To cheer our strife for liberty, 
 
 Aud teach us to unite. 
 
316 TUE IlllSII STATE TKIALS. 
 
 Tlirough good and ill, be Ireland's still, 
 
 Though sad as their's your fate ; 
 And true men, be you, men, 
 
 Like those of Ninety-eight." 
 
 No man in the court, who heard this poem recited by the right ho- 
 nourable gentleman in the most emphatic manner, will deny that it 
 produced a great effect on the jury. The Attorney-General stated, 
 that this was but a single specimen of the entire volume, and that it 
 very much exceeded in violence the productions of the same character 
 in the year 1797- If the description is true, this poem having been 
 published on the 1st of April, and a series of compositions, in prose 
 and verse, of the same kind, having appeared for several successive 
 months, does not every man who hears me ask, why it was that pro- 
 ceedings were not taken for the punishment of the persons by whom 
 such articles were published, and for the prevention of offences to 
 which such evil effects were attributed. My answer is this — ^you had 
 determined to prosecute for a conspiracy, and you connived at meet- 
 ings and publications of this class. You allowed these papers to pro- 
 ceed in their career, to run a race in sedition, and to establish a com- 
 plete system for tlie excitement of the public. You did not prosecute 
 the authors of the articles, or their publishers, at the time they were 
 published. You afterwards joined in the defence the editors of three 
 newspapers, and you gave in evidence against Mr. O'Connell every 
 article published in 1843. Was that a legitimate proceeding? Has 
 there been a precedent in this country of such a proceeding ? Has 
 there been an instance of a man indicted for a conspiracy, being joined 
 with these editors of newspapers, and of the articles of those newspa- 
 pers being given in evidence against him ? You might tell me that 
 the mode of proceeding was legitimate, if there were no other mode of 
 punishing the editors of those newspapers. But was there no other 
 mode ? Could not those publications have been stopped ? Could not 
 the channels by which sedition was circulated through the country 
 have been closed up ? Therefore, we charge you with having stood 
 by — (I adopt the expression of the Attorney-General) with having 
 stood by, and with having, if not encouraged, at least permitted very 
 strong proceedings to be adopted by the popular party ; when you 
 thought your purpose had been obtained, you then fell on the man 
 whom you had inclosed within your toils. I come now to the obser- 
 vations of the Attorney-General regarding Mr. Bond Hughes, and I 
 confess myself to be not a little surprised at them. He said that Mr. 
 Bond Hughes had been denounced as a pcijurer, and spoke of us as if 
 we had painted him in colours as black as those in which Roman Ca- 
 tholic members of Parliament are occasionally held up to the public 
 
THE IRISH STATE TRIALS. 317 
 
 detestation ; but he kept back the fact that Mr. Bond Hughes did 
 make two signal mistakes in his information, and which he himself 
 acknowledged to be mistakes, which before Mr. Bond Hughes was 
 examined did produce no ordinary excitement. Not one word did the 
 Attorney-General say in reference to a most remarkable incident in 
 these trials. The facts stand thus : — Mr. Bond Hughes had sworn in 
 his information that he had seen Mr. Barrett at two meetings in Dub- 
 lin. It was of the utmost importance to the crown to fix Barrett, in 
 order to implicate him with Mr. O'Connell. Mr. Bond Hughes sees 
 Mr. Barrett at Judge Burton's chambers, and turning to Mr. Ray,* 
 the chief clerk of the Crown Solicitor, infonns Mr. Ray that he was 
 mistaken with respect to Mr. Barrett, and that he had not seen him at 
 the Dublin meetings. He suggests to Mr. Ray that something should 
 be done to correct his misai)prchension. Ray says nothing. Bond 
 Hughes then applies to the Crown Solicitor himself, to Mi*. Kemmis, 
 and represents to him the painful predicament in which he is placed ; 
 Mr. Kemmis says nothing. Bond Hughes accompanies Mr. Kemmis 
 to his house, and no rectification of that signal mistake is made. Mr. 
 Bond Hughes stated all this at the trial, which the Attorney-General, 
 although he went into exceedingly minute details, entirely forgot to 
 mention. It is quite true that Mr. O'Connell at the trial acquitted 
 Mr. Bond Hughes, but I leave it to the house to determine how far 
 Mr. Kemmis should be relieved from blar&e. But lest you should 
 think I am varnishing, or impeaching wantonly, the character of this 
 immaculate Crown- Solicitor — you who charge us with tampering with 
 Mr. Magrath, a man at this moment in the employment of the Re- 
 corder — I will read to you the statement of Mr. Bond Hughes, of 
 which the Attorney-General said not a word, because, I suppose, he 
 thought it not at all relevant. Probably he supposed it to be a work 
 of supererogation to set the public right with respect to any unfortu- 
 nate misapprehension of Mr. Bond Hughes. The following is the 
 evidence he gave : — 
 
 " Turn to Monday, the 9th of October — I mean the meeting in 
 Abbey-street. Can you enumerate the persons present of the traver- 
 sers ? — There were present Mr. John O'Connell, Mr. Daniel O'Connell, 
 Mr. Steele, the Rev. Mr. Tyrrell, Dr. Gray, Mr. Duffy, and Mr, 
 Ray. 
 
 " Then Mr. Barrett was not amongst them ? — He was not. 
 
 " Then I presume you did not see at that meeting Mr. Barrett ? — 
 No. I made a mistake in saying he was there. 
 
 " You made that mistake on a previous day, not this day ? — I made 
 
 * Clerk of Mr. Kemmis. 
 
318 THE IRISH STATE TIUALS. 
 
 the mistake on the occasion I refer to, and I corrected it as soon as I 
 possibly could. 
 
 " Then Mr. Barrett was not present ? He did not deliver a speech 
 upon the occasion ? — Pie did not. 
 
 " The Solicitor-General has not asked you about a dinner at the 
 Rotunda. Were you there in your capacity as a reporter ? — I was. 
 
 " I believe then I may assume as a fact that Mr. Barrett was not at 
 that dinner ? — No, he was not there. 
 
 " Of course he made no speech at the dinner ? — No, he did not. 
 Somebody else made a speech for him ? — I was misinformed. 
 
 " You mistook some one else for Mr. Barrett on the second occa- 
 sion ? — I did, and I corrected the error as soon as I possibly could. 
 
 "I think you stated, in answer to a question, that in justice to 
 yourself, you felt it your duty to cori'ect the mistake at the earliest 
 period you could ? — Yes. 
 
 " Were you at the house of Judge Burton when the informations 
 were to be sworn ? — I was. 
 
 " Did you see Mr. Barrett there ? — I did. 
 
 " Did you, on that occasion, depose to the informations ? — No ; I 
 did that on a prior occasion. I had sworn to tlio uihdavits, and I 
 made an amended affidavit on the second occasion. 
 
 " Did I understand you to say tliat you corrected that mistake about 
 Mr. Barrett on a subsequent occasion ? — I did not. 
 
 " Were you present at the occasion when Mr. Barrett was held to 
 bail upon the informations previously sworn against him ? — I was. 
 
 " And you saw him subscribe the recognizances ? — I did. 
 
 *' Did you then and there correct the mistake ? — I did, on the instant. 
 
 " Oh, I mean as to the name of Barrett ? — Yes ; I told Mr. Ray 
 and Mr. Kemmis. 
 
 " Were they there attending on the ])art of the crown ? — Yes ; 
 they were. 
 
 "Did you speak to Mr. Kemmis on the subject? — No; he was en- 
 gaged taking the informations, but immediately after we got out of 
 the room I communicated it to Mr. Ray. 
 
 " Let us have no mistake here. I suppose you do not mean Mr. 
 Ray, one of the traversers ? — No ; I mean Mr. Ray, the managing 
 clerk of Mr. Kemmis. 
 
 " And did you, before you left the house of the judge, apprize these 
 two persons of the mistake ? — I did, as we were leaving the house. I 
 said I had a doubt about Mr. Barrett. 
 
 " When did you say that ? — I said it when we were leaving the 
 judge's chamber. 
 
 " What did Mr. Kemmis say ? — I spoke chiefly to Mr. Ray. 
 
THE miSII STATE TRIALS. 319 
 
 " What did Mr. Kemmis say ? — I do not recollect. 
 "How far was it from the judge's house? — As we were going 
 through Kildare-street. 
 
 " Before you came to Mr. Kemmis's house ? — Yes. 
 " Cannot you recollect what Mr. Kemmis said on that occasion ? — 
 I cannot. 
 
 " Did he say it was too late to correct the mistake ? — He did not. 
 " Did he make no observation ? — I do not remember. 
 " And there it was left ? — There it was left. 
 
 " Now you mentioned the matter to Mr. Ray. Was it in Judge 
 Burton's chamber ? — It was in the passage, as we were leaving the 
 room. 
 
 " Mr. Barrett was then in tho house ? — He was : we all left about 
 the same time. 
 
 " What did you say ? — That I had been mistaken with regard to 
 Mr. Barrett, and I doubted whether he had been at the Rotunda or 
 Calvert's Theatre ; that I had heard his name mentioned, but was 
 mistaken as to his identity. 
 
 " What did Mr. Ray say ? — I do not remember what he said. 
 " Very extraordinary that you should not recollect what was said 
 on so important an occasion. Did not Mr. Ray return ? — No. 
 
 " And no further steps were taken by you ? — I thought when I had 
 put them in possession of the mistake, that I had done all that was 
 necessary. I did not think the question of identity would have been 
 left to me. 
 
 " You had no doubt about the mistake ? — I was satisfied as soon as 
 I saw him, that he was not the person. 
 
 " How long was it after the mistake about Mr. Tierney that the 
 mistake was corrected ? — In about three days afterwards. 
 
 " That was merely a mistake about the christian name ? — Yes. 
 " The other mistake remained uncorrected. Did you apprize Mr. 
 Barrett of it ? — No ; I thought I had done all that was necessary 
 when I had apprized the officers of the crown of it." 
 
 Great stress is laid by the Attorney-General on the sworn and un- 
 sworn statements of Mr. Kemmis. He told the Attorney-General tliis, 
 and he told the Attorney-General that, but he did not rectify the 
 errors in Mr. Bond Hughes' affidavit. Now, I think the house must 
 wonder that a person like the Crown- Solicitor should have been guilty 
 of a sin of omission such as I have described ; and in the next place, 
 what is more extraordinary, I think the house must be not merely sur- 
 prised, but astonished, that the Attorney-General when he made it a 
 matter of accusation against Mr. O'Connell that Bond Hughes was the 
 
320 TIIi: IlllSU STATK TIUALS. 
 
 subject of imputation, and had been calumniated, did not state that 
 Bond Hughes had been mistaken, and had actually supplicated the 
 Crown- Solicitor to rescue him from his difficulty. I wonder if Mr. 
 Kemmis mentioned it to the Attorney- General himself? Did he so, 
 or did he not ? Oh, last night you thought, that the Attorney-Ge- 
 neral had made out a triumphant case. [Loud cheers from the 
 opposition, met by counter cheers from the other side.] Do you con- 
 sider this a fitting matter for exultation ? [Conservative cheers re- 
 newed.] I must say, I cannot enter into your peculiar views, or 
 appreciate the excellence of Tory ethics. [Loud opposition cheering.] 
 If these things be to you " tidings of great joy," I should be loath to 
 disturb your self-complacency. I pass from a topic upon which I 
 have said enough. No further comments are required ; but let it be 
 remembered, that those gentlemen who chai'ge us with the corruption 
 of INIr. IMagrath, who sought — to use a rather vulgar phrase — to turn 
 the tables upon us by a somewhat clumsy expedient — have themselves in 
 the transaction I have mentioned, adopted the course I have described, 
 and respecting which it is unnecessary for me to say one word more. 
 But to proceed to the other facts of the case : — The bills are found. 
 The names of the witnesses on the back of the indictment are de- 
 manded by the defendant, that was a reasonable demand. In this 
 country, united with Ireland — and I hope you will extend to Ireland 
 the same principles and habits of liberty by which you are governed — 
 in this country the practice has uniforndy been to furnisli the names 
 of the witnesses on the back of the indictment. Am I not right ? The 
 honourable and learned Attorney- General for England will do me the 
 favour to correct me if I am mistaken. The honourable and learned 
 gentleman intimates by gesture, that it is the practice in this country. 
 We applied for the names of the witnesses ; we received a peremptory 
 refusal. You asked for a trial at bar, you wished to have four judges. 
 One of those judges was Mr. Justice Perrin. AYiien it was conve- 
 nient, the right honourable and learned Attorney-General relied upon 
 the unanimity of the court, but when they disagreed he barely 
 glanced at it. 
 
 Attorney-General (for Ireland.) — The judges were unanimous 
 in their judgment. 
 
 Mr. Sheil. — They allowed the Chief Justice to charge the jury ; 
 they concurred with the Chief Justice in his view of the law. But do 
 you not think any attention is to be paid to their dissent ? If from 
 their harmony you deduce consequences so valuable, from their discord 
 are not some inferences also to' be drawn ? It is the practice to give 
 the names of the witnesses in England. Judge Perrin declared that 
 
THE IRISH STATK TKIAI.S. 321 
 
 he tliouglit that in Ireland also it was a matter of right to give those 
 names. That was a solemn decision upon the point. Judge Burton, 
 an Englishman, with some remnant left of the feeling for which his 
 countrymen are distinguished, said, he thought that although it was 
 not a mutter of right, it would be ju<licious on the part of the crown 
 to givej^ the names. Mr. Whiteside, the eloquent counsel for Mr. 
 O'Connell, at the conclusion of the case made a most reasonable sug- 
 gestion. The Attorney-General resisted it, on the ground that it 
 would introduce a new practice. I think that the right honourable 
 and learned Attorney- General, when he went into all those minute 
 details of that part of the case yesterday, would have done right had 
 he mentioned the opinion of Mr. Justi(;e Burton, the decision of Mr. 
 .1 usticc Perrin, and the oiler made by Mr. Whiteside on behalf of the 
 defendant. Let the house bear in mind, and let the country bear in mind, 
 that an application never resisted in this country — admitted by the 
 honourable and learned Attorney-General for England to be always 
 granted as a matter of right — was by her Majesty's Attorney- General 
 for li-eland, God knows for what reason, peremptorily rejected. ' I 
 admit that the right honourable and learned Attorney-General agreed 
 to the postponement of the trial upon two grounds — the first, that time 
 was required to prepare a proper defence, as it obviously was when it 
 was remembered evidence had to be given regarding forty-one meet- 
 ings on behalf of the crown ; and on the second ground, that there 
 were but twenty five Catholics upon the panel for 1843, while it Avas 
 perfectly manifest tliat a much larger number of Catholic jurors ought 
 to have been iqwn the special jury list. But I d(Miy that the court 
 refused the application. My imi)ression, on the contrary, was, that 
 the court determined to grant the application. It was obvious that 
 one of the judges at least was so disposed. But let me not be mistaken. 
 I do not mean to say that that was distinctly stated by the court; what 
 I say is this — Judge Burton expressed his astonishment that there were 
 only twenty-five Catholics on the jury list, and when that surprise was 
 expressed, the Attorney-General, having against him an irresistible 
 case, agreed to the postponement of tlie trial, with the view to give 
 the parties time to prepare their defence, a course he could not avoid, 
 and also in order that the case shouhl not be tried before a most er- 
 roneous panel. I do not wish to deny the merit of the right honour- 
 able and learned Attorney-General ; but had he insisted upon going 
 at once to trial with a panel admitted to be utterly imperfect, and de- 
 nounced by the right honourable and learned Recorder himself as most 
 imperfect, surely an imputation would then have rested upon him far 
 stronger than that which at this moment attaches to him, and, in my 
 
 Y 
 
322 THE imSU STATE TUIALS. 
 
 opinion, not without reason. I come to the suppression of a portion 
 of the jury list. It is right that the house should be apprised that 
 counsel were employed on behalf of the Repeal party and on behalf of 
 the Conservative party, when the Recorder was going through the 
 parochial lists, and that every name was a subject of as much conten- 
 tion as a vote at an election. The Recorder's court became the arena 
 of the fiercest political contention. But I will begin by declaring that 
 in the adjudication of the parochial lists the Recorder acted with the 
 most perfect fairness, and I have no hesitation in saying that I believe 
 he would rather that his right hand should wither than use it in an 
 infamous mutilation of the jury list. I entirely acquit him of impurity 
 of motive. But, having made this statement, he will forgive me for 
 saying that I do think it was his duty to have personally superintended 
 the ultimate formation of the jury list, and if he had superintended it 
 the mutilation of tlie jury list would not have taken place. lie com- 
 plained that he had been made the object of the vulgar abuse of hired 
 counsel. He once belonged to the band of mercenaries himself, and 
 might have spared the observation. But I do not think it either vulgar 
 or vituperative to state that it would have been better if he had re- 
 mained in Dublin id'tcr his judicial duty had terminated, and when 
 his ministerial duty had conuuenced. I admit as an excuse, almost as 
 a justification, that he had great inducement to proceed to England ; 
 for the Evening Mail, the recorder of great public events, did not 
 omit to watch the movements of the right honourable gentleman, and 
 stated, under the head of " Fashionable Intelligence," that the right 
 honourable gentleman, having left Ingestre, proceeded to the residence 
 of that distinguished statesman, who in all likelihood was anxious to 
 consult the Recorder on the proposed augmentation of the grant to the 
 Education Boai'd. And, may I be permitted to add, parenthetically, 
 that upon tlic subject of education in Ireland a judicious taciturnity 
 has been observed by the right honourable gentleman. No one will 
 suspect that the right honourable gentleman connived at, or had the 
 slightest cognizance of any misdeeds which may have taken place in 
 the transcription of the jury list. I entirely and cheerfully acquit the 
 Attorney-General of every sort of moral imputation, but circum- 
 stances did take place in reference to this list, upon wliich INIr. Justice 
 Perrin remai-ked in open court, that there were grounds for appre- 
 hending that something had occurred which was Avorse than accident. 
 Mr. Kemmis made an affidavit in reply, but he did not contradict the 
 fact. There never was an affidavit in reply to that of Mr. Mahony 
 respecting the fact, although other affidavits were subsequently made, and 
 ftmple opportunity for contradiction was affi^rded. What is the case 
 
THR iniSII STATE THIALS. 323 
 
 made out against us by the other side ? But the Attorney-General 
 more than insinuates, because Mr. Magrath is a Catholic, the tra- 
 versers, or some underlings connected with them, tampered with him. 
 That is the charge made, without a possibility of sustaining it. Does 
 tlie Recorder assent to this assault on the character of a person still in 
 his employment ? How frontless and how preposterous is the imputa- 
 tation ! Does any one believe, or can any one, by the utmost stretch 
 of credulity, bring himself to believe, that the defendants would sub- 
 tract a list of one parish, containing fifteen Catholic names, in order 
 that not one of them might be called on tlie jury? Yet that is the 
 insinuation made by her Majesty's Attorney-General for Ireland. Is 
 this a fair mode of proceeding ? AVhcn the Attorney-General makes 
 a charge of this kind lie ought to invest it with plausibility ; but the 
 Attorney-General forgot that the defendants put the very charge in 
 issue in their challenge ; wliy did he not venture to controvert it ? — 
 We are charged with corrupting a public officer whose livelihood de- 
 pended upon good faith in the performance of his duties — for what ? 
 For the purpose of removing Roman Catholics from a panel to try 
 Roman Catholics ? Is tliat plausible ? Could such assertion be re- 
 ceived by acclamation, except by gentlemen who had been affected by 
 the eloquence of the right honourable and learned gentleman. The 
 speech itself, indeed, of the right honourable and learned gentleman 
 I was disposed to cheer, but when I found that cheers were raised for 
 a man who was blasting the character of another, I was astonished 
 botli at the want of just feeling on the part of the Attorney-General, 
 and that such an accusation, destitute of proof, without plausibility, 
 should be received with acclamations by a British assembly. What 
 took place when the discovery was made of these missing names — I do 
 not care whether they were sixty, or twenty-four, or twenty-seven? The 
 noble lord opposite very justly says they were balloted for, and selected 
 by chance. That may be a good or a bad principle, but the chances 
 should be equal on both sides. The judge in Rabelais had a dice-box, 
 and threw for the plaintiff and defendant ; but he did not load the dice. 
 You remember the old practice in the Ilotise of Commons of ballot- 
 ing, when the names of members were put in glasses. Suppose in 
 such a case, the names of twenty-seven Tories were left out. Of 
 course, honourable members, bound by their oaths, would be as in- 
 capable of doing anything unjust or improper as a Protestant jury, 
 but what would the Tories say in such a case ? Would they not say, 
 give us a new ballot ? Put the twenty-seven names back. But 
 whether the jury list was lost, or whether it was stolen, there are two 
 facts connected with it of no ordinary moment. When the jurors' 
 
324 Tilt; IRISH STATIC TRIALS. 
 
 list was applied f'oi' to the Recorder by tlie traversers, lie expressed 
 his anxiety to give it, if the crown would consent to his doing so. lie 
 toldns that he sent the clerk of the peace to the crown solicitor, to ascer- 
 tain whether the crown would consent to that which the Recorder him- 
 self thought most reasonable and just. The crown refused. The second 
 fact is of the same character. An application Avas made to the sheriff 
 for the list, and the crown refused to consent. What was the rcsidt ? 
 That till the very last moment, the traversers' attorneys had no know- 
 ledge of the state of the jurors' book. A motion is made to quash 
 the panel. An affidavit is sworn stating that twenty-seven Catholics 
 were omitted. The Solicitor-General makes an alfidavit, and does 
 not deny the fact. Judge Perrin declares that in his opinion, there is 
 ground for strong suspicion that foul dealing had been practised. An 
 offer is made by the traversers to luvve the names restored to the panel. 
 The crown refused to agree. An offer is tlien made, and it clearly 
 might have been done by consent, to have a new ballot, to put the 
 omitted names into tlie ballot box, and that offer is also refused. The 
 consent would have bound botli parties, and that which tlie law con- 
 templated would have been accompdished. The Attorney-CJeneral, 
 notwithstanding that he professed to detail everything that liad hap- 
 pened with the most scrupulous exactness, did not say a syllable about 
 the challenge to the array. He talked of I'earse's case, and Lord 
 Hawarden's case, and fifty other cases, but not a word about tlie chal- 
 lenge ; and for a very good reason, that J udge Perrin declared the 
 challenge to be good, and the panel to be void. A challenge tor the 
 array takes place, and it is alleged in the challenge, and put in issue, 
 that sixty names had been omitted from the jury list, and that the 
 omission was fraudulent and corrupt. That fact the crown refused to 
 try. The following are the words of part of the challenge: — 
 
 "And the said defendant further says, that a certain paper writing, 
 purporting to be a general list, made out from such several lists so cor- 
 rected, allowed and signed as aforesaid, was illegally and fraudulently 
 made out, for the purpose and with the intent of prejudicing the said 
 defendant in this cause." 
 
 What reason has the Attorney-General given for not joining issue 
 on that important allegation — an allegation sustained by Judge Perrin's 
 previous unequivocal expression of his opinion ? It might have been 
 tried at once by the officer of the court, but a demurrer was preferred. 
 Now mark what happens. We put at issue two facts — the loss of the 
 names, most material — the fraud, still more. Was it not the duty of 
 the crown, under these circumstances, to have joined issue with us ? 
 If they had joined issue, there would have been an end to our objec- 
 
THE IRISH STATK TRIALS. 325 
 
 tion ; and if the point had been decided against them, tlien, of course, 
 the panel must have been altered, or some steps adopted. How did 
 the court decide ? Was the court unanimous ? Mr. Justice Perrin, 
 who introduced the act into Ireland, which belonged to the Reform 
 code of the riglit honourable Ijaronet opposite — Mr. Justice Perrin, 
 who knew the object of the act — who was familiar with all its de- 
 tails — by whom its machinery, so to speak, had been in part altered 
 and adapted — Mr. Justice Perrin decided that the challenge was good. 
 But government went to trial, one of the judges having declared that 
 the source from Avhich justice flowed had been corrupted. A learned 
 friend suggests to me that a demurrer always admits the fact, but I 
 Avill be candid on that sul)jcct. A demurrer admits the fact, for the 
 ])urpose of argument only. I did not dwell upon that point because 
 it was in some sort a legal Action. I went to what was much more 
 substantial. Tlie crown had the opportunity of ascertaining a fact of 
 the utmost materiality ; the crown shrunk from that investigation. — 
 You then went on with the case with the protest of one of the judges 
 against you, and a verdict you have obtained, by the intervention of a 
 jiny condemned by one of the judges who sat in tliat court. If all of 
 the judges were unanimous as to tlie abstract law, as stated by the 
 Lord Cliief fJustice, they were not unajiimous as to the verdict, because 
 one of the judges condemned the panel whicli was the foundation of 
 the verdict, and if the panel be shaken, the entire superstruction 
 raised upon it must, of course, fall too. I come now to another por- 
 tion of this case — the striking-olF of Roman Catholics from the jury. 
 But I see I am occupying the attention of the house at too great a 
 length ; but it is a case of paramount importance. It is a case in 
 which I was counsel, and, of course, took a very warm interest in 
 
 it it would be strange if I did not — and I believe I am, to a certain 
 
 extent, better acquainted with the facts than others can b6, and I con- 
 scientiously believe 1 have not stated anything that departs in the 
 slightest degree from the facts. AVith respect to the striking-olF of the 
 Jioman Catliolics, it is said by Mr. Kemmis that there were ten on 
 the list of forty-eight jurors. Now, eight of those ten I at once 
 admit were i)roi)erly struck oiF. I cannot for a moment pretend that 
 eight members of the Repeal Association, or persons who were sub- 
 scribers to its funds, ouglit to have been retained on the jury. I 
 could no more contend for it than that you shoidd contend that Mr. 
 SherilF Faulkener should have been upon the jury. But tliere were 
 two names struck olF wlio were Roman Catholics, but who were 
 neither members of the Repeal Association, nor subscribers to the 
 Rei)cal fund. IMark the adidavit of Mr. Kemmis; put it in the dis- 
 
326 THE IIIISII STATE TRIALS. 
 
 junctive — he believes that tlie ten persons struck off the list wei"e 
 either membei's of tlie Repeiil Association, or had subscribed to its 
 funds. Henrick is a Roman Catholic ; what course has been taken 
 about Henrick ? The noble lord the Secretary of State for the Co- 
 lonies, who appears to know more about this part of the case than the 
 Irish Attorney-General, told us that Henrick was considered to be a 
 Pi'otestant, and a Conservative. Who told hiiu so ? 
 
 Lord Eliot. — Mr. Kemmis. 
 
 Mr. Sheil. — Mr. Kemmis did not swear it. It never was mentioned 
 until this debate had commenced. You start a new case or new pre- 
 text every moment, and that new pretext is grounded on nothing better 
 than an asseveration of his belief by the Crown-Solicitor regarding a 
 fact, in reference to which he was most egregiously mistaken. Henrick 
 was not a member of the Repeal Association. He never subscribed to 
 the Repeal rent. He is a Roman Catholic. It is sworn that he is. I 
 requested my honourable friend, the member for the county of Wex- 
 ford, when this matter was in agitation, and who was acquainted with 
 Henrick, to ask him two questions : first, whether he was a Roman 
 Catholic ; and next, whether he was a member of the Repeal Asso- 
 ciation, or a subscriber to the Repeal fund ? The answer was, that he 
 was a Roman Catliolic — that he was not a member of tlie Repeal As- 
 sociation, and that he had never subscribed to its fund. But you now 
 make a new case, and say that you thought he was a Protestant, and 
 a Conservative. Come to the case of Michael Dunne. You do not 
 pretend that Dunne was either a member of the Repeal Association, 
 or a subscriber to its funds. But you believed that he might have 
 signed a requisition for a Repeal meeting, though even that allegation 
 is not positively made. But is there no distinction between being a 
 Rej)ealer and being a member of the Association ? Is there no dis- 
 tinction belween being an advocate of free-trade and a member of tlie 
 Anti-Corn-law League ? If Mr. Cobden, and IMr. Bright, and ]\Ir. 
 Villiers, and the Globe newspaper, and the Morning Chronicle, were 
 indicted to-morrow for a conspiracy, would the crown be justified in 
 setting aside, as a juror, every man who had signed a requisition in 
 favour of fi*ee-trade, or had signed a requisition in favour of the re- 
 peal of the Corn-laws? Or suppose that in 1831 the Tories had come 
 into office, and had indicted the Whigs for conspiring to carry Reform 
 by intimidation, for corresponding with the Birmingham Union, and 
 for " swamping the House of Lords," would there be no distinction 
 made, in empannelling a jury to ti-y those revolutionary delinquents, 
 between an advocate of reform, and a member of that seditious as- 
 sociation commonly called Bi'ooks's Club, in which I had once the 
 
THE IRISH STATE TRIALS. 327 
 
 good fortune of hearing a most eloquent speech delivered aj^iiinst the 
 Duke of Wellington by a great orator, who, mounted upon a table 
 through whose planks he almost stamped, poured out an incendiary 
 Jiarangue, amidst enthusiastic acclamation and rapturous applause. — 
 But let us go back to the jury. The panel was bad, and was so de- 
 clared by the judges. You adopted the course requiring that every 
 Roman Catholic should be struck off the list. Would it not have 
 been wise if the crown had given its consent that some lloman Catholic 
 should be left on the list ? I deny that if the crown had consented toi 
 the formation of a new panel there would have been any objection on 
 the part of the traversers ; and in that case, if the traversers after- 
 wai-ds attempted to controvert the verdict, they would clearly have 
 been stoj)pcd by their own proceedings. But suppose no consent had 
 been given, was there not another expedient that might have been 
 adopted ? Could not the rule for the special jury have been dis- 
 charged ? The sheriif for the city of Dublin is a gentleman of the 
 highest respectability — Mr. Latouche. When the Municipal Bill was 
 passing, you took the appointment of the sheriffs from the corporation. 
 You left that appointment to the corporations in England. You did 
 not take the appointment from cities here ; but when you came to deal 
 v/ith us, you took the appointment of the sheriff from cities, and 
 vested it in tlic crown ; because you said that if tlie new corporations 
 aj»pointed the sheriffs, they would be just as bad as the old. I do not 
 say whether the course you took was right or wrong ; but when the 
 crown assumed the right of appointing the sheriff, they might most 
 safely and wisely Jiave left to tlic shcrHf the appointment of the jury 
 in this case. You u.se the words " common jury," an expression, 
 generally speaking, which means men selected from the inferior classes. 
 Now, the jury that tried this case were, comparatively speaking, taken 
 from the inferior classes. There were on it Protestant grocers, Pro- 
 testant piano-forte tuners, and Protestant tanners. Perhaps it would 
 have been better if persons of a higher class had been selected ; but I 
 must admit, that there is one advantage in making the middle classes 
 the depositaries of political power, and that the middle classes are 
 animated with as high a sense of honour and of duty as the first pa- 
 tricians in the land. I should never quarrel with the jury if they had 
 not been composed of political antagonists. An expression was used 
 by my right honourable friend the member for the city of Edinburgh, 
 which has strongly excited the ire of the Attorney-General for Ire- 
 land. My right honourable friend had said that if there had been a 
 conunon jury the Attorney-General for Ireland would not have dared 
 to set by the Uoinan Cntholics, whose names might be on the list. To 
 
328 THE IKISU STATE THIALS. 
 
 this the Attorney-General for Irehmcl has replied, " I would liave 
 dared !" and certainly no one can deny his intrepidity. But what my 
 right honourable friend meant was this — that the crown, controlled by 
 public opinion — controlled, if not in Ireland, at least in this country 
 by public opinion, acting under the coercion of British sentiment, 
 Avonid not have ventured upon an act at once so cnli)ablc, and so im- 
 prudent, as to strike otf names of the highest respectability because 
 they were Roman Catholics, Therefore, if you were sincere in tlie 
 manifestation of your desire that the Koman Catholics should be 
 capable of acting on that jury, you had a very obvious mode of car- 
 rying your purpose into effect and of realising that desii'e ; for when 
 you found the mistake on the panel by all the Roman Catholics 
 being excluded, you might have got a common jury, and in that case 
 the verdict would have been unimpeachable, and all the controversy 
 which lias taken place, .ind all its consequences, and all the natural 
 and inevitable irritation, might have been avoided. Under these cir- 
 cumstances, is it wonderful, that in Ireland great excitement should 
 have taken place ? Is it astonishing, that the Roman Catholics of 
 Ireland should liave felt indignant to a man on the subject ? — 
 Is it wonderful that great public meetings should have taken 
 place in every district of the countiy, to take the subject into 
 consideration ? Were these meetings called by factious men ? At 
 the head of them stood Lord Kenmare, one of tlie advocates of the 
 Union — a man of large possessions, of very ancient birtli, and a man 
 highly allied in this country. That nobleman felt tluit these proceed- 
 ings were an insult offered to him ; he, therefore, not for the purposes 
 of partizanship, not to gratify any political passion, not from any pre- 
 dilection in favour of JMr. O'Connell, signs a requisition to call a pub- 
 lic meeting to complain of the course jnu'sued by the crown. There 
 was another circumstance whicli gave an additional poignancy to the 
 feelings of the Roman Catholics ; that circumstance was tliis, and as 
 the Attorney-General for Ireland thought it judicious on his part to 
 advert to the course I pursued on a trial at Carrick-on-Suir — he will 
 excuse me if I refer to something which concerns himself, and to an 
 occasion on which he made himself most conspicuous in Ireland. I 
 do not mention this for the purpose of malevolence — I bear no ill-will 
 to tlie right honourable gentleman — I have no motive for ill-will — he 
 never did me wrong ; and that that right honourable gentleman should 
 have imagined tliat a conspiracy was formed against him at the bar, 
 for the purpose of wounding his feelings, and injuring his prospects, 
 was a most unfortunate hall uci nation on his part. I beg, on my ho- 
 nour, to assure him that no such intent ion was ever entertained. 
 
THE IKISIl STATK TKIALS. 329 
 
 But he is a public inati, and considering that in the management of 
 the important duties it has imposed upon him, he did not exhibit any 
 great delicacy towards others, he must expect, that when his political 
 antagonists scrutinize his motives and his conduct, they will ask what 
 manner of man this must have been, and wliat course has he pursued? 
 lie last niglit alluded to my conduct at a trial which took place many 
 years ago ; and he said, also, that he was sorry for what he had said 
 at the meeting which he attended in 1837. As being contrite, he is 
 to be forgiven. But when the Roman Catholics of Ireland come to 
 compare the couj-sc pursued by the Attorney-General, at the late trial 
 in Dublin, with the opinions he had previously expressed — it was 
 impossible that their suspicion should not be confirmed, that unfair 
 dealings were pracdscd in their regai'd. The house is already aware 
 of the course })iu-SMed by the right liononrublc gentlema)i upon the 
 Education Question — a ({uestion upon which the llecorder of Dublin 
 took care to spare his right honourable friend, when he endeavoured 
 to escape from it. But the right honourable gentleman had distin- 
 guished himself still more upon anotlier question. In the year 1837, 
 a great Protestant meeting was held in Dnblin — speeches and resolu- 
 tions of the most violent cliaracter were made and passed at that meet- 
 ing. One of the barristers who took part in those proceedings has 
 been made Master in Chancery ; two of them have been made Judges, 
 Lefroy and Jackson ; and the right honourable gentleman himself has 
 been made Attorney-General by a government which professes to 
 govern Ireland without reference to party. At that meeting a reso- 
 lution was passed dc(;laring that the Protestants of Ireland were in as 
 perilous a condition now, as they were in 1G41, Avhen the most fright- 
 ful massacres of Protestants are said to have taken place. But what 
 did the right honourable gentleman say at that meeting ? He said 
 that Roman Catholics in Parliament had no regard to their oaths. 
 That declaration, censurable as it was, was more manly than if he had 
 dealt in insidious hints and despicable insinuations. But, surely, when 
 the public functionary by whom that language was uttered caused ten 
 Roman Catholics to be struck off from the special jury, it was impos- 
 sible not to connect that proceeding with his former conduct^ — it was 
 impossible not to attribute it to tlie most offensive motives. Meetings 
 took place in almost every district in Ireland, and even the Roman 
 Catholics of England were stirred into resentment. They are, to a 
 man, opposed to the repeal of the Union. But this outrage to the 
 feelings of every Roman Catliolic in the empire they could not endure. 
 AVhen tlie First Lord of the Treasury came into office. Lord Shrews- 
 bury addressed a letter to Mr. O'Connell, calling on him to support 
 
330 TUE IIJISU STATE TIUALS. 
 
 the present administration. But the blood of the Talbots has caught 
 fire — the first earl in England denounces the gross affront oftered to 
 the religion of that community of which he is an ornament. The 
 following letter was written by Lord Shrewsbury to Lord Camoys, on 
 the occasion of the latter noble lord presiding at a meeting of Eng- 
 lish Catholics in the metropolis : — 
 
 " Alton Towers, Feb. 6, 1844. 
 
 " My bear Loud — I regret extremely that circumstances will not 
 allow me to attend the meeting over which you are to preside to- 
 raoiTow, as I was anxious for an opportunity of expressing my indig- 
 nation, in common with yourself and many otliers, at the fresh insult 
 offered to the whole Catholic population of these kingdoms, by the 
 conduct of the law officers of the crown in the preliminary proceed- 
 ings on the interesting and important trials now taking place in Dub- 
 lin. The Catliolics appear to have been struck off the panel en masse, 
 upon the ground that they were all Ivepealers ; but while this fact is 
 asserted on the one side, it is stoutly denied upon the other. In the 
 absence of any positive evidence on the point, we are, I think, fully 
 justified in the inference tliat, whether Repealers or not, no Catholic 
 would have been allowed to sit upon that jury, seeing that such deter- 
 mination would have been in perfect keeping with what has hitherto 
 been the fixed policy of the present government in Ireland, to exclude 
 Catholics from all share in the administration of public affairs, and 
 while professing to do equal justice to all, refusing them eveiy grace 
 and right enjoyed by their Protestant fellow-subjects. The excep- 
 tions are too trifling even to form the shadow of an argument. 
 
 " But even presuming that the facts are upon their side, does it 
 evince a spirit of justice in the government to discard every man who 
 was known to be favourable to Kepeal, and at the same time to leave 
 upon tlie panel many who were notoriously Anti-Repealers, und who 
 are now actually sitting in judgment upon the traversers? In either 
 case, then, the first principles of justice have been violated, and a 
 gross insult offered to the people of Ireland ; and I am sorry that I 
 have only been able to mark my reprobation of such conduct by sign- 
 ing the requisition for a meeting to express our common feelings upon 
 the subject. 
 
 " I remain, my dear lord, 
 
 " A'"ery truly and faithfully yours, 
 
 " SnitEwsBuuy. 
 
 " To the Lord Camoys." 
 
 Is not the fact itself a monstrous one, that in a great Catholic coun- 
 try, in the greatest State prosecution that has ever been instituted in 
 
THE IRISH STATE TRIALS. 331 
 
 that country, the Liberator of that country should be tried by an ex- 
 clusive jury, marslialled in antagonism against him ? Strip the case 
 of all those details upon Avhich there has been so much controversy, 
 look at that bare naked fact, and say whether it can be reconciled with 
 the great principles of Catholic Emancipation ? As far as trial by 
 jury is concerned. Catholic Emancipation is repealed, and repealed in 
 a spirit as preposterous as it is unjust. We are admitted to the Bench 
 of Justice — that Bench of Justice which was adorned by a Catholic 
 Chief Baron and a Catholic Master of the Rolls ; we are admitted to 
 the Imperial Senate, which I have at this moment the honour of 
 addressing ; we arc admitted to the Treasury Board, to the Board of 
 Admiralty, to the Board of Trade ; we are admitted to the Privy 
 Council. But, admitted to the Bench, and admitted to the Parlia- 
 ment, and admitted to the Treasury, to the Admiralty, to the Board 
 of Trade, and to tlie Privy Council, we are driven from the Jury — 
 we are ignominiously driven from the jury box, where a refuge has 
 been supplied to that Protestant ascendency which you have re- 
 invested with all the most odious attributes of its most detestable 
 domination. And yet the noble lord the Secretary for Ireland tells 
 us that he is anxious for the impartial administration of justice! At 
 the last London election Mr. Baring was asked, by a formidable in- 
 terrogator, whether he was favourable to free trade ? lie answered 
 that he was favourable to free trade in the abstract. But when he 
 was asked whether he would vote for the repeal of the sliding 
 scale, he said that was quite another question. And so it is with 
 the noble lord. lie is favourable to impartial justice in the ab- 
 stract. Ask him to admit a Roman Catholic as a juror upon a state 
 prosecution, and he exclaims, " Oh, that is quite another thing." I 
 must, however, admit, that I believe the noble lord to have erred from 
 a certain infirmity of purpose, which, although lamentable, is not so 
 reprehensible as the Yorkshire yeomanry authoritativeness, and the 
 Fermanagh fanaticism of my Lord de Grey. There is in Dublin a 
 society called the Protestant Operative Association. It exhibits in its 
 characters the results of Conservative policy in Ireland. That Asso- 
 ciation presented an address to Lord do Grey immediately after the 
 proclamation had been issued. In that address it stated that " the 
 sacrifice of the IMass is a blitsphcmous fable, and that a system of 
 idolatry unhappily prevails in our country." It submits to the Lord 
 Lieutenant that " we want in Ireland laws which shall have the effect 
 of al)olishing Popery." It calls for the suppression of the College of 
 Maynooth ; the address, in short, is in keeping with another address 
 from the same society in Avhich the Catholic religion is designated as a 
 
3:{2 THE IRISH STATE TllIAl.S. 
 
 " GoJ-ilishonoiiring, Cluist-blasplieming, and a Bible-denying super- 
 stition, whose climax is gross idolatry." I'opery is called " the master- 
 piece of Satan." It states " there are idolaters upon the bench — idola- 
 ters on the judgment-seat." They conclude witli a panegyric on the 
 honourable memberfor Knaresborough, whose arrival in Dublin theyan- 
 nounce as an event to be gladly anticipated by all IrishProtestants. The 
 other day lie read a speecli attributed to nie ; 1 accpiit him of all blame, 
 but that speech was not made by me, but by a person of the same 
 name, resident in Thomas-street, Dublin. In the Annual Register 
 the speech is given to me by mistake. This Protestant Operative As- 
 sociation, this natural product of your sacerdotal institution's, having 
 addressed the Lord Lieutenant in reference to the proclamation, what 
 answer did he give ? Did he denounce — did he reprove contumely so 
 wanton and so unprovoked ? Did he, as the representative of his 
 Sovereign, Avho charged him when he went to Ireland to govern the 
 country with impartiality, and expressed to him her tender solicitude 
 for the welfare of her Irish people, express the slightest condemnation 
 of the atrocious language which had been employed in reference to tlie 
 religion of seven-eighths of the inhabitants of Ireland ? No Sir. — IJut 
 in liis answer to the congratulations of these conspii-ators against the 
 first principles of Cliristian charity, he expresses his "warm acknow- 
 ledgments for the honours which they have conferred upon him, in the 
 expression of their thanks for his conduct on a late occasion." Does 
 the First Loi'd of the Treasury approve of this proceeding on the i)art 
 of his " Lord Deputy of Ireland ?" The Secretary for the Home De- 
 partment considers it as indiscreet, but as to the Secretary for the 
 Colonies, as he, in all likelihood, sympathises Avith the Protestant 
 Operative Association, I beg to hand him their address to Lord de Orey, 
 as it will furnish admirable materials for his next " No Popery" speech. 
 The moral effect of the verdict will not be enhanced by the conduct 
 of Lord de Grey, or by the speeches of the Secretary for the Colonies, 
 or the Secretary for tlie Home Department. That right honourable 
 gentleman spoke of " convicted conspirators" not being able to upset 
 the Established Church. Even if your verdict had been legitimately 
 obtained, you should abstain from such expressions. You should not 
 give way to this inglorious exultation. You are an Englishman, and 
 you ought not to hit a man when he is down. As to the noble lord 
 the Secretary for the Colonies, he never fails to apply a provocative 
 to our resentments, and to verify what my friend Mr. Fonblanque 
 says of his orations — " Every one of them is a blister of shining flies." 
 I am surprised that the First Lord of the Treasury, knowing, as he 
 must know, that so hot a horse is likely to bolt, allowed him to be 
 
THE IRISH STATK TRIAI.S. 333 
 
 entered for the i-ace. lie ought, at all events, if the noble lord was 
 determined to speak, to have suggested to him, that as his government 
 of Ireland had not been peculiarly successful, to avoid the topics which 
 are most likely to add to the national irritation ; he ought to have ad- 
 monished him not to make such a speecli as in Canada would be likely 
 to jiroduce great irritation amongst the large Catholic community of 
 that important colony. Perhaps the Prime Minister did give him 
 some such Avarning, and probably, like the Irish Attorney-General, 
 he promised to put a restraint on himself, and to extend his Conser- 
 vative habits to his temper. But once on his legs, all his good reso- 
 lutions were forgotten, and he could not deny himself the luxury of 
 offering every Catholic in the house an aifront in the [>harisaical 
 Jiomily which he delivered on the oath taken by Catholics in par- 
 liament. He read the oath — read it in italics — he read it ahnost as 
 well as the Chief Justice read the speech of Daniel O'Connell. lie 
 begged of us to examine our consciences, and to consider the awful 
 obligation which Avas imposed upon us. In giving us a lecture on 
 perjury, he does not mean to offend us. Be it so ; but suppose that in 
 the spirit of retaliatory gratitude, I were to give him a lecture on an 
 offence of far inferior culpability, on political apostacy, and were to 
 say — " ]\[y lord, I do not mean to offend you, but I entreat you not to 
 give way to the acrimonious feelings by which tergiversation is habitu- 
 ally characterized ; don't play the fierce and vindictive renegade, for 
 the sake of men with whom the partner of your conversion declared 
 that it would be in the last degree discreditable to consort, and remem- 
 ber that ' sons clumcfer' is the motto attached to your illustrious name." 
 I very much f[uestion whether the noble lord would consider these 
 amiable suggestions as giving me any very peculiar title to his thanks. 
 But there was something even more remarkable than his advice in re- 
 ference to the Catholic oath in the speech of the noble lord. He was 
 exceedingly indignant at the reflections on the Chief Justice in refe- 
 rence to whom delicacy forbids me saying anything, as he was " coun- 
 sel on the other side," and insisted that a judge of the land ought not 
 to be made the subject of criticism in this house ; yet when he was a 
 Whig Cabinet ]\linistcr he did not exhibit this virtuous squeamish- 
 ness, but thought Baron Smith, the father of the Irish Attorney-Gene- 
 ral, would give capital sport in a committee of the House of Commons. 
 He proposed an inquiry into the conduct of Baron Smith — ran inquiry 
 into the accuracy of the charge of IMr. Baron Smith. 
 
 Lord Stanley. — No, I didn't. 
 
 Mr. Sheil, — Didn't you ? 
 
 Lord Stanley No, I didn't. 
 
334 TlllC IKISa STATK TKIALS. 
 
 Mr. SiiEiL. — What ! No vote of censure ? 
 
 Lord Stanley. — No. 
 
 Mr. Sheil. — No motion for a committee ? 
 
 Lord Stanley. — No. 
 
 Mr. Sheil Then, wliat was it? There was a motion I know 
 
 made in this house for a committee to inquire into the conduct of Mr. 
 Baron Smith in charging the grand jury. 
 
 Lord Stanley. — No. 
 
 Mr. Sheil. — Yes, but there was. The Secretary for the Home 
 Department perhaps can tell me, because he voted against the noble 
 lord. The Secretaxy for the Home Department was shocked at such 
 a proceeding, and my Lord Monteagle, whose nerves are better now, 
 was shocked too. Upon that occasion the noble loi'd (Lord Stanley), 
 and the Secretary for the Home Department were divided ; there was 
 then only one star in Gemini. But let me turn from the noble lord, 
 whose conduct and whose advice we hold in the estimate which they 
 deserve, to tlie country to which he once said that he would give a les- 
 son — and inquire how it is that you intend that the government of 
 Ireland, for the future, shall be carried on. Ireland is not to be ruled 
 by force. Indeed! It is to bo ruled througli Protestant j\u-ors, and 
 Protestant charges, and Protestant gaolers ; but Protestant juroi's, and 
 Protestant charges, and Protestant gaolers, require that Protestant 
 bayonets should sustain them, and that, with the discretion of the 
 Home Oflice, the energy of the Horse Guards must be combined. 
 But let me come to your specific measures. You have issued a 
 landlord and tenant commission, composed exclusively of proprietors. 
 You did not place upon it a Catholic bishop, or any other eminent 
 ecclesiastic, having an intimate acquaintance with the sulferings of the 
 poor. These commissioners are to fill iq) three or four folios of evi- 
 dence, to prove to us, what every one of us already knows. The 
 Home Secretary tells us, that he is inclined to render the landlord's 
 remedy more compendious ; but he ought to remember that ]\Ir. 
 Lynch, the Master in Chancery, who is thoroughly acquainted with 
 Ireland, a first-rate lawyer, and an excellent man, who has managed 
 his own property with the most humane concern for his tenants, 
 thought the remedy of the quarter-sessions preferable to an ejectment 
 in the superior courts, because the costs in the superior courts are 
 overwhelming, and the tenant purchases a little delay at a price 
 utterly ruinous, and which deprives him of all chance of redeeming 
 his land. The right honourable gentleman also informed us that he 
 had a Registration Bill in his thought ; I admit that the government 
 are entithxl to large praise for having thrown the Secretary of the 
 
THK iniSII STATE TUIAI-S. 335 
 
 Colonies overboard ; but why does not the right honourable gentleman 
 inform us of his plan ? lie will cut down the franchise with one 
 hand, and extend it with the other ; but how will he extend it? By 
 the Chandos' clause : that is, he will discourage the granting of long 
 leases, and he will ci-eate a mass of vassalage in times of tranquillity, 
 and in seasons of political excitement he will create an open revolt, by 
 which the whole country will be distracted. But what does he mean 
 shall be done with regard to the Catholic Church and the Protestant 
 Church — with regard to the church with a congregation and without 
 a revenue, and the churcli with a revenue and without a congregation ? 
 Will lie grant glebe leases to the Catholic clergy, will he build Catholic 
 houses of worsliip, will he augment Maynooth ? On these subjects 
 the government arc silent, but it is intimated that with the revenues 
 of the establishment no sacrilegious innovation shall be permitted to 
 interfere, and tliat the Established Church shall be maintained in the 
 plenitude of its possessions, in a country in which two-thirds of the 
 Irish members are returned by Roman Catholics, in which Roman 
 Catholics are masters of all the Corporations in the south of Ireland, 
 in wliich every day tlie Catholic millions are making a wonderful 
 progress in wealth, in industry, in intelligence, in pei'sonal self-res- 
 pect, and in individual determination. And why is the churcli to be 
 maintained in its superfluous temporalities? Because we are told 
 that it is founded in Christian Protestant truth. Be it so ; but permit 
 me to inquire on which side of the Tweed in Great Britain Protestant 
 truth is to be found? On the northern bank it is impersonated in the 
 member for Perth — in the member for Oxford on the south. It is 
 Calvinistic in the north, Armenian in the south ; it is dressed in a 
 black gown and a white band in the north ; in the south it is episco- 
 pally enthroned, mitred and crosiered, and arrayed in all the pomp of 
 pontifical attire. On the north it betrays its affinity to Geneva ; on 
 the south it exhibits a strong family resemblance to that Babylonian 
 lady, toward whom, under the auspices of Doctor Pusey, its filial 
 affection is beginning to return. If I shall ever be disposed to recant 
 the errors Avhicli have now continued for 1800 years, in order that, 
 being permitted to assail the Irish Church from without, I may, as a 
 Protestant, undermine it from within, perhaps the Secretary for the 
 Home Department, who is a borderer, Avill tell me on which bank of 
 the Tweed the truth is to be discovered. But wherever it is to be 
 found, it must be admitted that the Irish Church has not been very 
 instrumental in its propagation. You have made no way in two cen- 
 turies in Ireland, while Popery is every day, and in every way, upon 
 the advance. The Catholic religion, indigenous to the mind of Ire- 
 
33G TIIK IKISII STATIC TKIAI.S. 
 
 land, has struck its roots profoundly and widely in the belief and the 
 affections of the people — it has grown beneath the axe, and risen in 
 the blast — while Protestant truth, although preserved in a magnificent 
 conservatory, at prodigious cost, pines like a sickly exotic, to which 
 no natural vitality can be imparted, which by every diversity of ex- 
 pedient you have striven to force into freshness, and warm into bloom, 
 in vain. IJut you may resolve, j)er fas aid ncfas, to maintain the 
 abuses of the cliurch, but it is right that you should know, that among 
 the Catholics of Ireland there exists but one opinion on the subject. 
 You heard my honourable friend the member for Kildare — he is a 
 gentleman of fortune and of birth, highly connected, and who has 
 again and again refused to take the Repeal pledge. He tells you that 
 he is thoroughly convinced that an alteration in your establishment is 
 required. A vast body of the Pi'otestant Irish aristocracy entertain 
 the same sentiment ; and even here, the supporters of a Conservative 
 •government cannot refrain from telling you that a revision of the 
 chui'cli cannot be long avoided. The honourable member for Wakefield, 
 who was one of the vice-presidents, if I remember right, at the dinner 
 given in 1838 to the First Lord of the Treasury, at the Merchant 
 Tailors'-hall, bore his important, although reluctant, testimony to the 
 necessity of a change. That change is said to be against principle. 
 But what an incongruity between your theory and practice : take, as 
 an instance, the Canada clergy and reserves. The clergy reserves 
 were appropriated by act of parliament, by one of the fundamental 
 laws of the colony, to the maintenance of the propagation of the Pro- 
 testant religion. IJefore the revolt in Canada (that painful instrument 
 of political amelioration) we were told that tlie clergy reserves were 
 set a|>art for sacred and invicdable |)ur[)oses. Hut the Canadian in- 
 surrection produced one good result; the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 did no more than stipulate for a change of phraseology in an act of 
 parliament, and the Protestant clergy reserves are at this moment 
 applied, in part, to the sustainment and the diffusion of the Catholic 
 religion. The present Prime IMinister, the Secretary for the Colonies, 
 the Secretary for the Home Department, the Bishop of London, all 
 agreed to this momentous alienation. The Bishop of Exeter alone 
 stood by his coloui-s — he iniplored, he adjured the House of Lords in 
 vain — he called on the bishops to remember their oaths, he pointed 
 out the disastrous precedent which you were about to make. He was 
 right — the infei'cnce is irresistible, the whole appropriation question is 
 involved in the clergy reserves. But consider whethei', even in your 
 dealings with the Irish Church, you have not acted in such a way as 
 to render your position utterly untenable. By the Church Temporali- 
 
THK iniSH STATE TUIALS. 337 
 
 ties Act you abolished Irish Church rates. You thereby subtracted 
 so much from the property of the church — ^you suppressed a certain 
 number of bishoprics, why should you not suppress a corresponding 
 number of benefices ? You do not want so many bishops — how can 
 80 many parsons be required by you ? But the Tithe Bill is a still 
 stronger case. In 1831 the Catholic members asked nothing more 
 than that you should apply the surplus of church property to charity 
 and education. They never proposed to confiscate a fourth and give 
 it to the Irish landlords. In 1835 that proposition was made by the 
 present Secretary-at-War, tlieu Secretary for Ireland. To the Tories 
 the entire merit of originating that wild and Wellingtonian measure 
 exclusively belongs. But the gallant officer, when Secretary for 
 Ireland, proposed a bill by which one-fourth of the tithe was confiscated 
 and put into the coffers of the landlords — you would not alienate church 
 property — not you ; but with one blow you take away one-fourth of 
 their tithes from the cliurch, and surrender the precious fragment to 
 the Protestant landlords of Ireland. Your own conduct in reference 
 to the Education Question is the strongest illustration of your own 
 sense of tlic incompetence of the Irish Church to fulfil the duties of 
 an establisliincnt. In England, where you have an Established Church 
 which teaches the religion of the people, you gave up the Factory Bill ; 
 you have perpetuated ignorance, and all tlie vices which it engenders, 
 rather than infringe on the sacerdotal prerogatives of your establishment, 
 which claims the tutelage of the nation's mind; while in Ireland you have 
 stripped the churcli of aU its privileges, and declared it to be unfit for 
 one of its most important functions — the direction of the public mind ; 
 nay, more, the Secretary for Ireland, who now thinks it politic to offer 
 his homage to the clergy of the Established Church, with a sincerity of 
 panegyric commensurate, I hope, with its exaggeration, denounced that 
 clergy for their factious opposition to the Education Board. You have 
 thus, by your own acts, pronounced a virtual condemnation of your 
 Establishment — that monster anomaly to which nothing in Europe is 
 to be compared. Yes ; there is one analogy to be found to your sacer- 
 dotal institutions — there is one country in Europe in which your Irish 
 policy has been faithfully copied. In a series of remarkable ukases 
 the Emperor of aU the Russias proclaims the eternal union between 
 Poland and Russia, declares it to be the means of developing the great 
 national advantages of Poland, expresses his surprise that the Poles 
 should be so utterly insensible to his benevolence, reprobates the mal- 
 contents l)y whom fanciful grievances are got up, and establishes the 
 Greek Church as an excellent bond of connexion between the two 
 countries. Is tlicre a single argument that can be urged in favour of 
 z 
 
338 THE IKISII STATE TRIALS. 
 
 the English Church in Ireland which does not apply to the establish- 
 ment of the Greek Church m Poland ? The fee-simple of Poland is 
 now Russian. Property in Poland has been Tartarised, by very much 
 the same process by which it has been Protestantised in Ireland. A 
 Greek hierarchy will compensate for the absence of the nobility in 
 Moscow and St. Petersburg, and it will be eminently conducive to 
 public usefulness, that a respectable Greek clergyman should be located, 
 as a resident, in every parochial subdivision of Poland, with a living, 
 in the inverse ratio of a congregation. Almost every year we have a 
 debate in this house touching the wrongs of Poland, and an assurance 
 is given by the right honourable baronet that he will use his best en- 
 deavours to procure a mitigation of the sufferings of Poland. I have 
 sometimes thought, that in case Lord Aberdeen should venture on any 
 vehement expostulation, which is not, however, very likely, Count 
 Nesselrode might ask, whether Russia had not adopted the example of 
 England towards Ireland ; whether, in Ireland, torrents of blood had 
 not been poured out by your forefathers ; whether Ireland had not 
 been put through a process of repeated confiscation ; whether the laws 
 of Russia were more detestable than your barbarous penal code ; and 
 whether, to this day, you do not persevere in maintaining nn ecclesi- 
 astical institution repugnant to the interests, utterly at variance with 
 the creed, and abhorrent to the feelings of the vast majority of the 
 people ? Such, I think, would be the just reply of a Russian statesman 
 to my Lord Aberdeen ; and, since I have named my Lord Aberdeen, 
 I gladly avail myself of the oppoi'tunity to expi-ess my unqualified ap- 
 probation of his foreign policy. When the home ofhce plays, in refe- 
 rence to Ireland, so bel^igerant a part, and when the Secretary of the 
 Colonies, in speaking of Ireland, " stifiens the sinews" and " sum- 
 mons up the blood," and, I may venture to add, imitates the action 
 of the tiger, nothing will become my Lord Aberdeen so much as 
 " mild behaviour and humility." Rightly did my Lord Ashburton, 
 under his auspices, concede to America far more than America could 
 plausibly claim. Rightly will he relinquish the Oregon territory; 
 rightly has he endui-ed the intrigues of the French Cabinet in 
 Spain ; rightly did he speak of Algiers as a ^^ fait accompli." 
 Rightly will he abandon the treaties of 1831 and 1833, for the 
 suppression of the slave trade ; but, after all, this prudential com- 
 plaisance may be ultimately of little avail ; for who can rely upon 
 the sincerity of that international friendship,- which rests on no better 
 basis than the interchange of royal civilities ? Who can rely upon 
 the stability of that throne of the Barricades, which has neither legi- 
 timacy for its foimdation, nor freedom for its prop ? And if it falls. 
 
THE IRISH STATE TRIALS. 339 
 
 how fearful tlie consequences that may grow out of its ruins ! The 
 First Lord of the Treasury will then have cause to revert to his speech 
 of 1829, to which my honourable and learned friend, the member for 
 Worcester, so emphatically and so impressively adverted. The admo- 
 nitions of the noble lord, the member for Sunderland, will then be 
 deserving of regard. These topics are perilous ; but I do not fear to 
 touch them. It is my thorough conviction, that England would be 
 able to put down any insurrectionary movement, with her gigantic 
 force, even although maddened and frantic Ireland might be aided by 
 calculating France. But at what a terrible cost of treasure and of 
 life would treason be subdued! "Well might the Duke of Wellington, 
 although familiar with fields of death, express his horror at the con- 
 templation of civil war. War in Ireland would be worse than civil. 
 A demon would take possession of the nation's heart — every feeling of 
 humanity would be extinguished — neither to sex nor to age would mercy 
 be given. The country would bo deluged with blood, and when that 
 deluge had subsided, it would be a sorry consolation to a British 
 statesman, when he gazed upon the spectacle of desolation which Ire- 
 land would then present to him, that he beheld the spires of your Es- 
 tablished Church still standing secure amidst the desert with which 
 they would be encompassed. You have adjured us, in the name of 
 the oath which we have sworn on the Gospel of God — I adjure 
 you, in the name of every precept contained in that holy book — in 
 the name of that religion which is the perfection of humanity — in 
 the name of every obligation, divine and human, as you are men and 
 Christians, to save my country from those evils to which I point, but 
 to avert them, and to remember, that if you shall be the means of pre- 
 cipitating that country into perdition, posterity will deliver its great 
 finding against you, and that you will not only be answerable to poste- 
 rity, but responsible to that Judge, in whose presence, clothed with the 
 blood of civil warfare, it will be more than dreadful to appear. But 
 God forbid that these evils should ever have any other existence, ex- 
 cept in my own affrighted imaginings, and that those visions of dis- 
 aster should be embodied in reality. God grant that the men to whom 
 the destinies of England are confided by their Sovereign, may have 
 the virtue and the wisdom to save her from those fearful ills that so 
 darkly and so densely lower upon her. For my own part, I do not 
 despair of my country ; I do not despair of witnessing the time when 
 Ireland will cease to be the battle-field of faction ; when our mutual 
 acrimonies will be laid aside ; when our fatal antipathies will be sacri- 
 ficed to the good genius of our country. Within the few days that 
 have elapsed since my return to England, I have seen enough to con- 
 
340 THE lUISII STATE TBIALS. 
 
 vince me, that there exists amidst a large portion of the great British 
 community, a sentiment of kindliness and of good feeling towards Ire- 
 land. I have seen proofs that Englishmen have, with a generous 
 promptitude, if they have felt themselves wronged, forgiven the man 
 who may have done them wrong. That if Englishmen, nohle and 
 high-minded Englishmen, do but conjecture that injustice has been 
 done to a political antagonist, swayed by their passion for fair play, 
 they will fly to his succour, and, with an instinct of magnanimity, en- ' 
 thusiastically take his part. I do trust that this exalted sentiment will 
 be appreciated by my countrymen as it ought to be ; and that it may 
 be so appreciated, and that it may lead to a perfect national reconci- 
 liation, and that both countries, instead of being bound by a mere 
 parchment union — a mere legal ligament, which an event may snap — 
 shall be morally, politically, and socially identified, is the ardent desire 
 of one who has many faults, who is conscious of numerous imperfec- 
 tions, but who, whatever those imperfections may be, is not reckless 
 of the interests of his country; is devotedly attached to his Sovereign; 
 and, so far from wishing for a dismemberment of this majestic empire, 
 offers up a prayer, as fervent as ever passed from the heart to the lips 
 of any one of you, that the greatness of that empire may be imperish- 
 able, and that the power, and that the affluence, and that the glory» 
 and that, above all, the liberties of England may endure for ever. 
 
FRANCE AND MOKOCCO. 341 
 
 FRANCE AND MOROCCO. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, JULY 22, 1844. 
 
 On Saturday, I informed the right honourable baronet at the head of 
 her Majesty's government, that instead of moving for a committee 
 to inquire how far our commercial interests were involved in the 
 events which are passing in the Barbary states, I shall content my- 
 self with moving for papers, of which I have since given him no- 
 tice. My first impression was, that the extent to which the trade of 
 this country has been affected by the heavy imposts which have been 
 recently laid upon the tonnage of British vessels, and the products of 
 British industry in all the ports upon the coast of the Mediterranean, 
 of which France has made herself the mistress, required a minute 
 investigation ; and that the effects of the ordinance, which issued on 
 the 16th of December last, doubling the duties on English shipping, 
 and of the augmentation of duties upon our cottons to 30 per cent., 
 would best be proved by the evidence, oral and documentary, which 
 could be produced before a committee of this house ; but I have heard 
 objections raised to the form of the motion, of which I had given an 
 intimation, and in order that a debate on the mere form should be 
 avoided, by which the attention of the house would be in all likeli- 
 hood distracted from the consideration of more momentous matter, I 
 have thought it more advisable to move that the copies of certain do- 
 cuments should be laid on the table of the house, in which much of 
 the information which I seek to obtain may be disclosed. There is 
 another motive for the adoption of this course. It is that which is 
 least calculated to give offence to a gallant, but exceedingly suscep- 
 tible people. It is not my intention (and I shall prove that it is not 
 by the tone with which I shall treat this important subject) to say 
 anything by which a debate, at which France could legitimately take 
 offence, would be produced. Nothing shall fall from mc, by which a 
 pretence shaU bciafforded for imputing to me the more than reprehen- 
 sible purpose of exciting a sentiment of animosity between two great 
 nations, both of which are deeply concerned in the maintenance of 
 peace, and whose collision would disturb the world. But while I am 
 fully convinced of the importance of preserving our pacific relations 
 with a country, whose institutions are so nobly assimilated to our 
 own, I am also convinced that with a perfect absence fiom all irri- 
 tating language, a candid statement of facts can be readily recon- 
 
342 " FRANCE AND MOROCCO. 
 
 ciled ; and I think that if circumstances have occurred, or are likely 
 to occur, by which the commercial interests of England may be se- 
 riously affected, nothing will be gained by concealing the truth, or by 
 turning our eyes away from those objects which must sooner or later 
 be forced upon our contemplation. On the 5th of March, 1830 — 
 I pass at once at the hazard of abruptness, which is more excusable 
 than prolixity, to the facts to which I mean to advert — in 1830, on 
 the 5th of March, Lord Aberdeen wrote a despatch to an ambassador 
 at Paris, Lord Stuart de Rothesay, with regard to the great arma- 
 ment which France had prepared for the invasion of Algiers. That 
 despatch contains views the most just, expressed in a most prudential 
 and conciliatory spirit ; indeed, the entire of the official correspon- 
 dence of Lord Aberdeen in 1830 is remarkable for a most striking 
 contrast between the soundness of his judgment and a certain infir- 
 mity of purpose, owing to which he omitted to obtain from France 
 the assurances, of the necessity of which he appears to have been 
 himself most fully convinced. Lord Aberdeen appears to have been 
 perfectly aware that it was of the utmost consequence to get from the 
 French government a pledge that the occupation of Algiers should 
 not be permanent, and to have felt that our commercial and maritime, 
 and thex-efore our political interests, wei'e deeply at stake, in the 
 events to which the French expedition would give rise. The whole 
 correspondence is a curious specimen of diplomacy, in which, upon 
 one hand, a plain Englishman asks that a pledge should be given in 
 plain language, and, on the other hand, a French minister, polished 
 and well lubricated, escapes in sinuous diplomacy from his grasp. 
 Those portions of the correspondence which are illustrative of the 
 present position of affairs I shall select, taking care not to read any- 
 thing which is not appropriate and interesting. On the 5th of March, 
 1830, Lord Abei'deen writes — 
 
 " My Lord — The extensive scale of the preparations for the expe- 
 dition against Algiers, and the declaration in the speech of his Most 
 Christian IVLajesty upon this subject, have naturally engaged the at- 
 tention of his Majesty's government. Your Excellency is already 
 aware of the sincere desire which his Majesty entertains that the inju- 
 ries and affronts which have been endured by the King of France 
 from the Regency of Algiers may be duly avenged, and that his Most 
 Christian IMajesty may exact the most signal reparation from this 
 barbarous state ; but the formidable force about to be embarked, and 
 the intimation in the speech to which I have alluded, appear to indi- 
 cate an intention of effecting the entire destruction of the Regency, 
 rather than the infliction of chastisement. This probable change in 
 
FRANCE AND MOROCCO. 343 
 
 tlie condition of a territory so important, from its geographical posi- 
 tion, cannot be regarded by his Majesty's government without much 
 interest, and it renders some explanation of the intentions of the 
 French government still more desirable. I have communicated these 
 sentiments to the Duke de Laval, and have received from his Excel- 
 lency the most positive assurances of the entirely disinterested views 
 of the cabinet of the Tuileries in the future disposal of the state of 
 Algiers. Notwithstanding his Excellency has promised to write 
 to his government in order to obtain the means of making an 
 official communication, I have thought it right to instruct you to 
 bring tlic subject >indcr the notice of M. dc Polignac. It is probable 
 tluit the Frencli minister may be desirous of aflbrding all the explana- 
 tion we can desire. The intimate union and concert existing between 
 the two countries give us reason to expect that we shall receive the 
 full confidence of the French government in a matter touching the 
 interests of both, and which in its results may be productive of the 
 most important effects upon the commercial and maritime relations of 
 the Mediterranean states." 
 
 Prince Polignac, to whom the contents of this despatch were com- 
 municated on the 12th of March, 1830, wrote to the Duke de Laval 
 n long despatch, in wliich he says nothing bordcrijig upon an under- 
 standing beyond this statement : — 
 
 " The King, whose views on this grave question are quite disin- 
 terested, will consult with his allies, in order to determine what 
 should be the new order of things." 
 
 Lord Aberdeen saw at once that this communication was most in- 
 definite, and was not in the least binding, and on the 23rd of March, 
 1830, he wrote — 
 
 " Whatever may be the means which shall be found necessary to 
 secure the objects of the expedition, the French government ought, 
 at least, to have no difficulty in renouncing all views of territorial 
 possession or aggrandizement. * * * * Monsieur de Polignac 
 is doubtless aware of the great importance of the Barbary states, and 
 of the degree of influence which, in the hands of a more enlightened 
 government, they could not fail to exercise over the commerce and 
 maritime interests of the Mediterranean powers." 
 
 Lord Stuart de Rothesay made several efibrts to obtain a positive 
 assurance, but failed. On the 21st of April, 1830, Lord Aberdeen 
 writes as follows : — 
 
 " Is it unreasonable to expect from the French government some- 
 thing more than a general assurance of disinterestedness, and an 
 engagement to consult their allies, before tlie future fate of the re- 
 
344 FRANCE AND MOUOCCO. 
 
 gency shall be finally decided ? A French army, the most numerous, 
 it is believed, that has ever crossed the sea, is to undertake the con- 
 quest of a territory which, from its geographical position, has always 
 been considered of the highest importance ; no man can look without 
 anxiety at the issue of an enterprise, the ultimate objects of which are 
 so uncertain and so undefined. * * * * If we could so far 
 Ibrget what is due to our Sovereign and to ourselves as to rest satisfied 
 with vague explanations, in a matter so deeply allecting the interests 
 of British commerce, as well as the political relations of the Mediter- 
 ranean states, it is certain that the people of this country would not 
 hesitate to pronounce the most unequivocal condemnation of our 
 conduct." 
 
 How applicable are these observations to what is passing at this 
 moment on the coast of Africa, and on the frontier of Morocco, and 
 how justified is a member of the British Parliament in the expression 
 of a hope that Lord Aberdeen has been more successful, in 1844, 
 in extracting an engagement from M. Guizot, than he was in 1830 in 
 eliciting it from the unfortunate statesman who succeeded in battling 
 liim, and from whom no written engagement could be procured. Two 
 months were passed in correspondence, yet nothing was attained in 
 the form of a distinct stipulation. On the 4th of May, 1830, Lord 
 Aberdeen wrote to Lord Stuart de Rothesay : — 
 
 " Monsieur de Polignac expresses a hope that our expectations may 
 not be so unreasonable, as to urge him to declarations which must 
 prove injurious to the government of his INfost Christian ^Majesty. If 
 the projects of the French cabinet be as pure and disinterested as is 
 asserted by Monsieur de Polignac, he can have no real difficulty in 
 giving us the most entire satisfaction. A concise and simple decla- 
 ration could not answer the purpose better, but it would appear to be 
 more natural than the course which your Excellency states that the 
 French minister has been commanded by his Most Christian Majesty 
 to adopt ; to envelope in such reasoning, and to mingle considerations 
 of national dignity and punctilio, with the statement of intentions 
 such as I have mentioned, appears less calculated to produce convic- 
 tion, and to convey the impression of sincerity and frankness." 
 
 Lord Stuart de Rothesay, of course, communicated these well- 
 founded complaints to the French ministry ; but the latter, instead of 
 writing a plain promise, such as Lord Aberdeen asked on the 1 2th of 
 May, 1 830, wrote to the Duke de Laval what I perused with some 
 amusement as a specimen of evasions, which it required some disre- 
 spect for Lord Aberdeen to have attempted, lie says that the lleet 
 was about to sail, and adds — 
 
FRANCE AND MOROCCO. 
 
 345 
 
 " His Majesty from that moment, namely, the conquest of Algiers, 
 ought to give an assurance to his allies, that he will present himself to 
 those deliberations, ready to furnish all explanations which they might 
 still desire, disposed to take into consideration all rights and all in- 
 terests," and so on. After this despatch had been written, a remarkable 
 incident occurred. The Sultan had directed Tahir Pacha to proceed to 
 Algiers, in order to adjust the differences with France. The French 
 squadron would not permit Tahir Pacha to land, and he was forced to 
 go to Toulon, where he was detained. Lord Stuart de Rothesay 
 
 writes " At Toulon he will be, without doubt, detained in quarantine, 
 
 and if he intends coming to Paris he may possibly not reach Algiers 
 till long after it shall be too late to take part in the negotiations which 
 are likely to follow the capture of the place." 
 
 Algiers was taken on the 5th of July, 1830. The French general 
 told the French that the stars mingled with the lights which they had 
 kindled on the brow of Blount Atlas, and on the 16th of July, Lord 
 Stuart de Rothesay wrote to Lord Aberdeen that he had waited on 
 Prince Polignac to congratulate him, in the conviction that he would 
 keep faith with his court. His Excellency answered, " by declaring 
 his readiness to repeat his former assurances," and in a few days after, 
 he was a prisoner in Ilam ; Cliarlcs the Tenth, who could not learn 
 anything even from the misfortunes of the Comte d'Artois, was driven 
 from his dominions and from his country, and from the Barricades.— 
 There arose a throne, which the Duke of Wellington and Lord Aber- 
 deen hastened to recognise as the legitimate result of the national 
 will. But is it not wonderful that the new government was recog- 
 nised by England, Avithout any sort of stipulation in reference to 
 Algiers ? Lord Aberdeen had not obtained any specific engagement 
 from Prince Polignac. He acknowledged himself, he was fully aware 
 of the vast importance of the results which must follow the permanent 
 occupation of Algiers and her three provinces by France, and yet it 
 does not appear that when Louis Phillipe was recognised by the Tory 
 government, they made a single observation in reference to Algiers. 
 The Tory government remained in office for four months after the 
 French had taken possession of Algiers, and after they had pushed 
 their acquisitions into the adjoining territory, and yet Lord Aberdeen 
 had no observation to make. The Whigs, finding the French army 
 in possession of Algiers, and not being able to refer to any engage- 
 ment, took no steps one way or other, and stood passively by. I pass 
 from 1830 to 1841, avoiding any detail of the means pursued by the 
 French to secure their conquest, and thinking it unnecessary to say 
 anything upon the expedients by which civilization had been extended, 
 
346 FUANCE AND MOUOCCO. 
 
 and Christianity has been diffused, by those peculiar propagators of 
 the faitli. In 1841, Lord Aberdeen had been scarce a few weeks in 
 office, when the Count de St. Auluire engaged him in a conversation 
 upon Algiers, to which Lord Aberdeen attached no importance, but 
 which the French ambassador turned very promptly to account. The 
 King of the French introduced into his speech, made on the 15th of 
 December, a statement that he had taken means to secure the posses- 
 sions of France from all external complication, a paragraph which 
 remained unintelligible, until M. Guizot, as a proof of the influence 
 of France over the Tory government, stated the conversation which 
 had taken place with Lord Aberdeen. I read the speech of M. Guizot 
 in the journal Des Debuts, and I inquired from the First Lord of the 
 Treasury whether the conversation of Lord Aberdeen had been cor- 
 rectly reported by the Count de St. Aulaire. The right honourable 
 gentleman said that the report was substantially correct, except that 
 Lord Aberdeen denied that he had said that he had no objection to 
 make. Lord Aberdeen himself stated the conversation was acciden- 
 tal, and on the 28th of January, 1842, wrote a despatch to Lord 
 Cowley, in which he denied his having stated that he had no objection 
 to the French retention of Algiers. This despatch was communicated 
 to LEonsieur de Guizot. IMonsieur Guizot made no observations on 
 the subject, but I cannot help thinking that the course subsequently 
 adopted by the French government was influenced in no small degree 
 by the imputed declaration of Lord Aberdeen. The French govern- 
 ment issued an ordinance on the 16th of December, 1843, imposing 
 a duty of four francs a ton on our shipping, and 30 per cent, on our 
 cottons. Wliat has been the result ? I beg to call attention to the 
 following leltcr, which appeared in the !/Vmt'A- ol" J uly 18. It was 
 written by their own correspondent, and is dated at Oran, July G : — 
 
 *' The commercial system lately adopted here by the government 
 has completely shut out British commerce from this port. Formerly 
 several British vessels came here, but no more now, except with 
 coals, are expected. The port duties on all foreign vessels are four 
 francs per ton. French vessels rarely pay anything, Sardinian ves- 
 sels are favoured by treaty, and pay only two francs per ton, Eng- 
 lish cotton manufactures, which paid last year only 15 per cent., now 
 pay more than 30, which amounts to exclusion." 
 
 Who is there that hears these facts who will say that the subject 
 which I have submitted to the attention of the house is one of which 
 the consideration ought to be avoided ? The fulfilment of all Lord 
 Aberdeen's propositions in 1830 is found in the fiscal exclusion of 
 English manufactures. A blow has been aimed, not at the honour of 
 
FRANCE AND MOKOCCO. 347 
 
 England, but at her industry ; and tliose who laugh all the idealism 
 of national dignity to scorn, the utilitarians of politics, must, in this 
 prohibition, find a cause, not only to regret the past, but to look with 
 solicitude to the future. The proceedings adopted with reference to 
 Morocco cannot, in a commercial view, be regarded with indifference. 
 They have commenced, like the expedition to Algiers. A squadron 
 has proceeded to the coast, which is only divided by the distance 
 which a cannon shot could almost traverse from Gibraltar, with 
 12,000 men. The French army has invaded Morocco, and 
 France demands not only the expulsion of the valiant Abdel- 
 Kader, the hero of the desert, but an indemnity and a guarantee. 
 Morocco may soon fall under the protection of France ; and if it does, 
 the results to your commerce arc obvious. Mr. Macgrcgor, in his 
 recent and very admirable work on the commerce of this country, has 
 given the statistics of our trade with Morocco. We alinost monopo- 
 lize the market of a country inhabited by 8,000,000 of people. Are 
 we not entitled, imder these circumstances, to ask of Lord Aberdeen 
 what course he has followed, and to call on the minister to lay on the 
 table of the house any engagement entered into by France in refer- 
 ence to the state with which we are allied, and which it is so much 
 our interest to save from the domination of a power of whose acqui- 
 sitive tendencies some evidence has been afforded ? To Morocco the 
 French protective system will be beyond all doubt extended, whenever 
 Morocco is annexed to Algiers. In this state of things it is not un- 
 natural that we should inquire, first, what explanations have been 
 given and demanded, and in the next place what force her Majesty's 
 government have had the precaution to assemble in the Mediterranean ? 
 With regard to the first, as Lord Aberdeen appears not to have ob- 
 tained any very satisfactory engagement in reference to Algiers, we 
 ought to have proof aflbrded us that some stronger security for Mo- 
 rocco has been given ; and with respect to the second, the govern- 
 ment are bound to show that for any emergency which may arise, they 
 are not unprepared. What should be the amount of our naval force ? 
 It is my good fortune to be able to refer to two very high authorities, 
 the Duke of Wellington, and the right honourable baronet, with re- 
 gard to the inexpediency of leaving England destitute of that force on 
 which not only her strength, but her existence, depends. In August, 
 1838, the Duke of Wellington declared that "his great object in 
 speaking at all was to impress upon their lordships and upon the 
 government, and upon the country, the absolute necessity of having 
 a strong naval force in all parts of the world." What was our naval 
 force in 1838, which the duke considered insufficient? Ships of tlie 
 
348 
 
 rnANCE AND MOUOCCO. 
 
 line, 18 ; frigates, 29 ; sloops, 39 ; brigs, 39 ; steamers, 22. In 1839, 
 on the 1 1th of March, the i-ight honourable gentleman, the First Lord 
 of the Treasury, made a most remarkable speech on the navy esti- 
 mates, in which he complained that our government had not sent a 
 equadron to the Coast of Mexico when St. Juna de Ulloa was attacked 
 by tlie French. He reproached the government with having omitted 
 to assemble a great naval force at the point where events of signal 
 magnitude were likely to arise. He insisted that the Whig govern- 
 ment had permitted the naval power of England to decline, and laid 
 it down as a rule that we should have a large fleet ready for imme- 
 diate employment, and for the protection of our own shores, as well 
 as for the exhibition of our power in remoter seas. Let us see what 
 naval force the right honourable gentleman thinks sufficient, when he 
 is in office, and Avhen events are casting shadows before them by which 
 the Mediterranean is darkened. Here is a tabular statement of our 
 Force in 1841 and 1844 :— 
 
 Skips in Coimnission on \st July, 1841, and \st July, 1844. 
 
 1st July, 1841. 
 
 Ships of the Line . . . 2G 
 
 Frigates 36 
 
 Sloops 40 
 
 Brigs 39 
 
 Armed Steamers . . . . 22 
 
 Foreign Mail Steamers . . 14 
 
 Foreign Mail Briers ... 22 
 
 1st July, 1844 
 
 Ships of the Line . 
 
 Frigates 
 
 Sloops 
 
 Brigs 
 
 Armed Steamers . . 
 Foreign INIail Packets 
 Foreign IMail Brigs . 
 
 9 
 32 
 31 
 24 
 32 
 4 
 6 
 
 Let us now look to the distribution of the force in reference to the 
 Mediterranean in both those years : — 
 
 Distribution of Force. 
 
 Mediterranean, 1841. 
 
 Ships of the Line . . . 
 
 Frigates 
 
 Sloops 
 
 Brigs 
 
 Armed Steamers .... 
 Mail Packets 
 
 Total 
 
 17 
 7 
 4 
 3 
 9 
 4 
 
 44 
 
 Mediterranean, 1844. 
 
 Ships of the Line . . 
 
 Frigates 
 
 Sloops 
 
 Biigs 
 
 Armed Steamers . . . 
 Mail Packets .... 
 
 Total 
 
 1 
 4 
 3 
 
 6 
 4 
 
 18 
 
 One ship of the line in the Mediterranean ! And for this utter ne- 
 glect of British interest — for this most discreditable helplessness to 
 which we are reduced in that sea, where the fate of empires has been 
 so often, and will be again, determined, what is the excuse ? I read 
 
FRANCE AND MOROCCO. 349 
 
 the statement of the First Lord of the Admiralty with astonishment, 
 that our naval force was employed on the coast of Ireland, and could 
 not be spared for the Mediterranean. Is not tliis a most lamentable 
 admission ? A man who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and who 
 is First Lord of the Admiralty, over whom the Orange flag was un- 
 furled in one country, and to whom the honour of the union -jack is 
 confided in the other, openly in the face of the parliament, of the 
 country, and of the world, announces that the honour of England is to 
 be perilled, in order that Ireland should be kept down. Do not ima- 
 gine that I condemn you for having a large force in Ireland ; you have 
 made it indispensable by your misrule, and a further augmentation of 
 that force will be, whenever you shall be at war, required — that I 
 complain of. Wliat I most profoundly lament is, the policy by whicli 
 you have exposed the country to the most fearful peril ; when you 
 could, by means so obvious and so easy, convert Ireland, now a source 
 of weakness, into a monument of your strength ; and in the affections 
 of a loyal and devoted people, by common justice, raise up a bulwark 
 of your empire infinitely better than any which Richmond Peniten- 
 tiaries can afford. But let me not permit myself to depart from Al- 
 giers to Ireland, although the First Lord of the Admiralty has asso- 
 ciated them together ; let me revert to and resume the topics Avliich 
 will appear to be more immediately connected with the motion with 
 which I mean to conclude. I have traced the circumstances under 
 which the French possessions in Africa were acquired ; I have shown 
 how completely our government were bafilcd when the expedition first 
 landed in Algiers ; I have shown the effects upon our commerce of 
 the extension to Algiers of the principles of French colonisation ; I 
 have adverted to the aggressive proceedings adopted with regard to 
 Morocco, and to the miserable impuissance to which our navy has been 
 reduced ; and as I began I conclude. I stated at the outset of what I 
 said, or meant to say, that I shoxdd studiously take care not to say 
 anything at which Frenchmen the most sensitive could reasonably 
 complain. I hope that I have kept my promise ; I was anxious to do so. 
 I look upon the French as a most noble people. I regard the present 
 Prime Minister of France as a man of surpassing abilities, and among 
 men of high intellectual stature, as standing pre-eminent. The King 
 of the French is one of the most remarkable men whom his country, 
 fertile in greatness, has produced. He has proved that the uses of 
 adversity are sweet, and with a diadem upon his head, has preserved 
 that jewel which adversity is said to bear — a precious one — and finer 
 than the brightest brilliant that glitters in his crown. But, however 
 we may be disposed to admire the people of France, and the minister 
 
350 I'HANCE AND MOItOCCO. 
 
 and the King of the French, we must Lear in mind, that between 
 France and England there exists, and there has always existed a feel- 
 ing of competition, which should induce us to look for the proof of cor- 
 dial friendship to something more substantial than mere professions of 
 amity, however prodigally bestowed. My noble friend, the late Secre- 
 tary for Foreign Aifairs, was said to have alienated France ; at all 
 events, he did not lower England. But in what regard have his suc- 
 cessors in oflice succeeded in obtaining from France anything beyond 
 those phrases of diplomatic endearment which we should be taught by 
 what is passing to appreciate at their real value. What have you got 
 from France since you have come into office ? A commercial treaty 
 Las not been signed — no single advantage for the trade of England ha3 
 been secured. Your predominance in Spain is gone ; the Escurial is 
 but an appurtenance to the Tuileries ; and upon the coast of Africa, 
 whence Spain is commanded, before the armies and the armaments of 
 France the influence of England has vanished. Talk as you will of 
 the friendly feelings of France, and of the better understanding that 
 prevails between the two countries than existed before you came into 
 office, that you have gained a single point, either political or commer- 
 cial, I think you will find it difficult to establish. Sir, I beg leave to 
 move 
 
 "For copies of the ordinance of the iGth of December, imposing 
 increased duties on our shipping and manufactures, and a return of 
 the amount of our naval force in the Mediterranean on the 1st of 
 July, 1844." 
 
ADJOURNMENT OF THE nousi;. 351 
 
 ADJOURNMENT. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 9tH AUGUST, ON THE 
 MOTION THAT THE HOUSE SHOULD ADJOURN TO THE 5tH OF 
 SEPTEMBER. 
 
 Instead of the customary prorogation by the Queen, the adjournment 
 of tlie lionsc is pro[)osc(l by the first minister of the crown, in order 
 that the opinions of the judges in the case of Mr. O'Connell may be 
 delivered before the next session, and to prevent the hazard of a great 
 injustice being done. It is felt by everybody that it would be mon- 
 strous that Mr. O'Connell should be kept in gaol for six months, and 
 that he should afterwards be discharged upon the ground that he ought 
 not to have been originally imprisoned. The case is conceived to be 
 one of so much importance and so much difficulty, that a deviation 
 from parliamentary usage is proposed by the Prime IMinister, and on 
 the 5th of September parliament is to assemble again. If the decision 
 shall be in favour of Mr. O'Connell — if the judges shall think that the 
 jury was improperly composed, and that the challenge to the array 
 should have been allowed, Mr. O'Connell will be discharged. For 
 this proceeding the government do not claim any credit, for by an 
 opposite course the general censure of tlie country would be incurred. 
 But surely the government have, by the step which they are now 
 adopting, made the most important practical admission. ' They have, 
 by an irresistible implication, acknowledged that the detention of Mr. 
 O'Connell pending the question whether he ought to have been im- 
 prisoned at all, ought to be deeply lamented by themselves. Mr. O'Con- 
 nell was imprisoned on the 30th of May. If he is discharged on the 30th 
 of August, because the sentence was illegal — that will be the feeling of 
 both countries — how great will be the astonishment of the one, how 
 vehement the indignation of the other ? It ought, then, to be matter 
 of the most solemn deliberation with the government, whether instead 
 of waiting to ascertain whether the lawyers shall have succeeded in 
 picking the lock of the Bichmond Penitentiary, it would not be far 
 wiser to throw open the doors of the prison-house at once, and to give 
 back his freedom to the man whom under circumstances so peculiar 
 you have deprived of his liberty. These are facts admitted upon all 
 sides, facts beyond dispute, almost any one of which ought to have 
 induced the government to terminate the period of Mr. O'Connell's 
 
352 ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE. 
 
 imprisonment. The suppression of the lists in the Recorder's Court — 
 the refusal of the crown to join issue on the averment of fraud — the 
 solemn opinion of one of the judges at a trial at bar that the panel was 
 illegajiy and wrongfully concocted — the exclusion of every Catholic 
 from the jury, by which the leader of a great Catholic people was 
 tried and convicted — these are circumstances which ought to induce 
 the government to give up a verdict thus illegitimately obtained, and 
 to whicli it is tlie consummation of impolicy that you should so pertina- 
 ciously adhere. You have yourselves, unconscious of what you were 
 doing, furnished in a very recent proceeding, one of the strongest 
 arguments against your verdict which it would be possible to suggest. 
 You have admitted, that it would be most unjust that a commission 
 for the administration of charitable bequests should be exclusively 
 Protestants, and you have provided that out of the ten individuals 
 to be selected as a committee, five at least shall be Catholics. AYhat 
 an inference is afforded by this special provision in your recent bill, 
 which you represent as an act of common justice to the people of 
 Ireland ? If the charitable bequests of Ireland are not any longer to 
 be administered by a Protestant board, is it not an outrage to common 
 sense and common justice, that the great leader of a Catholic people 
 should have been tried by a jury from which every one of his co-reli- 
 gionists was excluded by the crown, and was, in fact, composed of 
 men who had rendered themselves conspicuous by the vehemence of 
 their political and religious feelings ? No other fact to condemn your 
 verdict in the opinion of all unimpassioned men, no other fact is want- 
 ing to justify my noble friend the member for London in his deliberate 
 declaration that INIr. O'Connell had not been fairly tried. The House 
 of Commons has not ratified that declaration, but the present Prime 
 Minister ought to look to something besides the House of Commons, 
 and that for his own sake, for the sake of his fame hereafter, he ought 
 at once to assent to the liberation of a man tried under his own Jury 
 Act, under an act introduced by himself, and which has been con- 
 verted into an instrumentality so utterly abhorrent from the purposes 
 for which it was devised. The right honourable gentleman is one of 
 those by whom fame is estimated at its proper value, and who can 
 appreciate renown. You pass every day by the statue of George 
 Canning — every day you look at Westminster Abbey — to tlie judg- 
 ment of posterity you cannot be insensible. Of what will be hereafter 
 said, in reference to the great events which are passing, that you can 
 be reckless, no man shall persuade me to believe. Does it not then 
 occur to you that of your conduct in reference to your great Irish 
 
ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE. 353 
 
 antagonist history will not approve ? The time will come when your 
 merits will not be determined by the numbers whicli issue from the 
 old lobby or from the new, but by another and more impartial reckon- 
 ing; and when that time shall have arrived, and when it shall be told 
 that Daniel O'Connell at almost the outset of your political career 
 rushed against you into the lists of political encounter — that after 
 nearly twenty years of a fearful struggle he extorted the freedom of 
 his country from your reluctant consciousness that it coxdd no longer 
 be withheld; tbat, finding you unwilling to complete your achievement 
 and to carry out the lofty principle on which it was founded, he con- 
 tinued in antagonism to your party, and demanded that the institutions 
 of Ireland slioidd be remotlellcd and adapted to the great change which 
 had been accomplished ; that, after a long exclusion from office, you 
 came back to [»owcr, and that instead of availing yourself of the op- 
 portunity which was afforded you of winning the hearts of millions of 
 Irishmen, you preferred the support of a faction to the sustainment of 
 a people ; that you selected the men to whom Ireland was most anti- 
 pathetic as the objects of yoiu* favour ; and that when goaded by many 
 wrongs and exasperated by afironts, your old political foe demanded 
 the restoration of her legislature to Ireland, you empannelled a juiyof 
 twelve Protestants for liis conviction ; that despite the protest of one 
 of the first judges of the land, you tln-cw him into prison, and when 
 an inquiry was demanded into the machinery by which your jury was 
 manufactured, you shrank fi'om investigation, and left your adversary 
 in the prison-house to which, at the age of seventy, he had been con- 
 signed ; do you not think — does not your own heart inform you, that 
 history, in whose tribunal juries are not packed — history, the recorder 
 whose lists are not lost, stern, inflexible, impartial historj', upon this 
 series of calamitous proceedings Avill pronounce her condemnation ? 
 It is in your power, it is yet within your power, to give to history 
 something nobler to tell — to commit to it the better office of telling, 
 that having the magnanimity to confess yourself to have been mistaken, 
 rescuing yourself from the trammels of vindictiveness, animated by 
 the feelings by which the minister of the greatest Sovereign and the 
 noblest empire in the world should be inspired, you disdained the 
 luxuries of vengeance, you did not wait for the tardy adjudication of 
 the men by whom it is acknowledged that difficulties are entertained, 
 but winning, by a generous action, a victory over your adversary, and 
 over yourself, you gave back his freedom to the man to whom millions 
 are indebted for their liberty — you acquired a title to their confidence 
 by the only possible reparation you can make for the great injustice 
 2 A 
 
:}5 I AD.IOURNMKNT OF TIIK IIOUSK. 
 
 you have done to tlie Irish people. If this measure were adopted by 
 the right honourable gentleman, if the wound could be healed by the 
 hand which inflicted it, Ireland would be made susceptible of the 
 ameliorations which we are assured by tlie government that they have 
 in view. But Daniel O'Connell is detained in the prison to which he 
 ouglit never to have been eonnnitted. What advantage have you 
 obtained — what benefit can you expect ever to secure — from the im- 
 prisonment of Daniel O'Connell ? His si»irit is as much abroad as if 
 he stood on the theatre of JNIullaglunast, and tens of thousands were 
 gathered at his call. His mind still agitates the great mass, and with 
 the mighty millions is still blended and commingled. After the ver- 
 dict (it is a remarkable fact) the Repeal rent suddenly fell, and after 
 the execution of the sentence, it rose four-fold. You have imprisoned 
 three proprietors of newspapers, and yet the press, undeterred by your 
 verdict, is more exciting and more intrepid than ever. The Nation 
 newspaper, distinguislied by the rare eloquence with which it is 
 written, circulates more than 1 1,000 copies a week — that most re- 
 markable publication circulates in every hamlet of the country, and 
 ministers the strongest stinudants to the high spirit of nationality 
 which it has made il. its chief object lo awaken. The Catholic clci'gy 
 are, almost to a man, against you. In Dublin a great and well-orga- 
 nized association, which no law can reach, holds its weekly meetings ; 
 and, although not elected by the pcoi)le, must be admitted to be a 
 faithful representative of the national feelings. AVliat, then, have you 
 gained by the imprisonment of Daniel O'Connell ? what other has 
 been the result of that rash measure, excepting the creation of a deep 
 feeling of hostility to the English government, which, if it is any time 
 most injudicious — it is, under the existing circumstances of the coun- 
 try, most perih)us to ])rovoke ! There are those who tell you that 
 Ireland is tranquil ; but I, who know Ireland well — wiio have had a 
 long and painful experience in Irish agitation, who have, however, 
 near at heart the peace and security of the country, and who have 
 taken no part, direct or indirect, in the recent excitement of that 
 countr)'- — I, anxious only that my admonition should have the ef- 
 fect of inducing you to adopt a wiser course, tell you, that however 
 ostensibly tranquil, Ireland is not safe. There can be no doubt that 
 your comi)etitors ior the masterdom of Europe, who have begun to 
 think that they could dispute your supremacy upon the ocean, have 
 assumed a tone which they never would have adopted if they did not 
 calculate upon the internal debility of England, and upon the weak- 
 ness resulting from the alienation of Ireland. You have adopted a 
 
ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE. 355 
 
 tone at last which becomes this great country, and have declared that 
 a reparation for the outrage offered to a British subject would be re- 
 quired ; but, having adopted this tone, it becomes you to secure your- 
 selves against every hazard, and to marshal the people of Ireland in 
 your cause. The higher the position you have taken, the stronger the 
 bidwarks with which you should encompass it, and you may rest 
 assured that you will find a muniment in the affections of the Irish 
 people far better than the martello towers in the Bay of Bantry can 
 supply. 
 
35G INCOME TAX. 
 
 INCOME TAX. 
 
 SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IQtH FEBRUARY, 1845, ON MR. 
 roebuck's motion to extend it TO IRELAND. 
 
 Sir, my honourable friend (he will permit me to reciprocate the phrase 
 of parliamentary endearment) has often expressed his solicitude for 
 Ireland, but as the dismal agriculturists, by whom that locality is 
 occupied in this house, which in the vocabulary of an American may 
 be designated as " the bench of repentance," have reason to offer up a 
 prayer that heaven should save them fi'om their friends, in that pro- 
 verbial ejaculation Irishmen have cause to coincide. My honourable 
 friend is determined to give us, in the form of an income tax, the 
 benefit of British institutions — a benefit analogous to that which we 
 derive from the English church. My honourable friend has thought 
 it judicious to advert to many Irish members in language of exceed- 
 ingly unqualified and exceedingly improvoked condemnation. I do 
 not agree with tliem in the view which they adopt, because I consider 
 it to be wiser to attend in parliament and to do my utmost to obtain 
 redress for the grievances of my country ; but if my honourable friend 
 will reflect a little, he will see that his censure of Mr. O'Connell and 
 his associates is most undeserved. The case they make is this, — they 
 insist, and with melancholy truth, that year after year they have en- 
 deavoured to obtain justice for their country, and that all their efforts 
 have been vain ; that the Irish members are swamped and overwhelmed 
 by a great and prejudiced English majority ; that Ireland has not an 
 adequate representation in this house ; that while AYales sends 33 mem- 
 bers to parliament, with a population of 700,000, the great county of 
 Cork, with 800,000, returns only five; that wliile towns in Juigland, 
 with a population of 2,000 or 3,000, return two members, there are 
 towns in Ireland, Carrick-on-Suir and Thurles, for example, with a 
 population of 12,000 each, wliich do not return a single representative ; 
 that the elective francliise of the two countries is not the same, and 
 that Ireland has a miserable constituency, because you deny her a fair 
 registration bill. This is the justification of my Irish parliamentary 
 friends, who conceive that a bitter parliamentary experience affords a 
 warrant for their secession. The member for Bath has often ex- 
 pressed a coincidence with the views of Irish members in refe- 
 rence to the denial of justice in these important regards, and when 
 these men remain in their own country, he surely ought not to 
 visit them with such unmeasured reprobation. I do not coincide 
 
INCOME TAX. 357 
 
 in the view which tliey have adopted respecting the policy of 
 staying away ; but, while I state this, I cannot forbear from adding, 
 that there is more than plausibility in the suggestion that it is better 
 to array the people of Ireland, and form them into a vast and united 
 mass, in order that by a pressure from without, the minister may 
 be induced to afford redress where redress is so much required, 
 than to deliver themselves of speeches in this house which will not be 
 followed by any practical advantage to the country. I have thought 
 myself bound to state thus much on behalf of men of whose love of 
 country I have seen such proof, and I turn to the proposition of 
 the honourable gentleman. My friend, the member for Kendal, 
 wishes the income tax to be perpetual ; my friend the member for 
 Bath wishes it to be universal. " Eternity !" cries out the one ; " in- 
 finity !" exclaims the other. The member for Bath would spread the 
 perpetual blister over the whole imperial frame. But not the whole of 
 the blister, because Avhile schedule D and all the other schedules are 
 fastened upon England, he w^ould put schedule A only upon my impo- 
 verished and emaciated coiuitry. He is in this particular singularly 
 inconsistent. My honourable friend has adverted to a recommendation 
 I presumed to give him. I ventured, indeed, to tell him that he might 
 usefully avail himself of the interval which should elapse between 
 Tuesday morning and Wednesday night in order to peruse with atten- 
 tion the speech of Edmund Burke upon the conciliation of America. 
 I do admit that in my judgment that speech might have been pe- 
 rused by my honourable friend with signal benefit to himself, be- 
 cause there are contained in it many most salutaiy admonitions, given 
 by that great and prophetic statesman with an almost unparalleled 
 eloquence. Bright as was his imagination, and although subjects the 
 most obscure were illuminated and became transparent in the blaze of 
 his fancy, yet his philosophy Avas as profound as his poAver of illustra- 
 tion was astonishing, and his wisdom was not the less oracular for the 
 magnificent embellishment of the temple — the gorgeousness of the 
 shrine from which his predictions were pronounced. IVTy honourable 
 friend has intimated that 1 meant more in spenking of Edmund Burke 
 and of America than 1 expressed. I was sulliciently intelligible, and 
 do not shrink from the construction which my honourable friend has 
 put upon the reference, which he thinks it adventurous on my ])art to 
 have made. But I might have referred the member for Bath to the 
 authority of another great statesman — the distinguished advocate of 
 Lower Canada and its Assembly in this house. Of that eminent per- 
 son the member for Bath may think Innnbly, but everybody else must 
 form the highest estimate of him. Jn the speeches ul' the cliampioii of 
 
358 INCOME TAX. 
 
 Lower Canada, principles will be found which it were well if the mem- 
 ber for Bath were to apply practically to Ireland. He warned the 
 government not to lay their hands on the revenue of Lower Canada — 
 I warn him not to attempt to extort from Ireland a revenue which 
 she cannot afford, and which we ought not to be compelled to pay. No 
 minister by whom an income tax has ever yet been proposed ever 
 thought it possible to extend it to Ireland. Before the Union, Mr. 
 Pitt, although lie had fatal proofs of tlie ignominious complaisance of 
 the Irish Parliament, which surrendered itself at last in a moment of 
 fatal and weak compliance, never availed himself of his influence, and 
 of those seductive means at his disposal, to induce the Irish Parliament 
 to impose an income tax upon Ireland. After the Union the income 
 tax was repealed at the peace of Amiens, because it was held to be a 
 war tax — a tax to be reserved for danger — a tax sacred to public peril, 
 and to which, excepting in a season of great emergency, no minister 
 was justified in resorting. The tax was, however, renewed when the 
 war broke out(again,land the terrific struggle with Napoleon was re- 
 newed. Yet in the midst of the exigences of England the income 
 tax was not extended to Ireland. It was renewed by J\Ir. Fox, by Mr. 
 Perceval, by Lord Liverpool, yet by no one of those ministers was the 
 income tax extended to Ireland ; and wlien the right honourable ba- 
 ronet became Prime IMinister, and propounded his projects of fiscal 
 innovation, he explicitly declared that this grievous impost should not 
 be inflicted upon the sister island. I do not rely upon the fact that 
 there is no machinery in Ireland adapted to its exaction. The impo- 
 sition of an income tax upon Ireland would be unjust, and what is 
 unfortunately of still more importance in the estimate of public men, 
 Avould be in the last degree impolitic and unsafe. The income tax in 
 Ireland would be most inequitable. Before the Union Ireland had a 
 surplus revenue expended in Ireland, and the country flourished. You 
 induced us to enter with you into a ruinous co-partnership, of which 
 you have had all the profits, while we have deeply participated in 
 the loss. The impolicy of England plunged her into debt, of whose 
 load we are compelled to bear a part ; had we remained in the enjoy- 
 ment of our legislative independence, of your ruinous expenditure we 
 should not be the victims. It is most unfair that you should now call 
 on us, after all the detriment which we have already suflered, to bear 
 a portion of the vast cost incidental to this experiment. You drain us 
 through the absentee system — an inevitable attendant on the Union — 
 of millions of money, which, instead of circulating through Ireland, 
 swell the overflowings of the deep and broad Pactolus of British opu- 
 lence. You have transferred all our public establishments to tliis 
 
INCOME TAX. 359 
 
 feingte point of imperial centralization ; the revenue wliicli Ireland 
 yields is expended not in Ireland, but here ; and of this evil I cannot 
 present to you a more striking exemplification than in appealing to 
 the fact that the crown-rents and quit-rents of Ireland have been laid 
 out on the splendours of Windsor Castle, and the embellishment of this 
 vast metropolis. I may parenthetically suggest to the head of the 
 government, that in the quit-rents and crown-rents of Ireland he has 
 a fund at hand with which his projects in reference to education can 
 be readily and largely accomplished. When from Ireland you already 
 take so much, it would be most unjust that you shoidd endeavour to ex- 
 tract still more. l>iit, if (ho proposition be most unjust, it is still more 
 unwise. If Swil't, with AVood's halfpence was able to do so much,* what 
 would not the man of whom Swift was tlio precursor be able to achieve 
 with the income tax ? The pressure of the income tax would cause Ca- 
 tholicism, Protestantism, and Calvinism to coalesce into one vast com- 
 pact of discontent. Who can doubt that the member for Donegal, the 
 instant the income tax was extended to Ireland, would burst into a 
 Repealer, and enrol himself among the burning patriots of the Con- 
 ciliation Hall? In 1782 the Protestants and Catholics of Ireland ex- 
 torted tiie independence of the Parliament of Ireland ; and there are 
 those who )»ot only hope, but believe, that before they die the resto- 
 ration of that parliament in its inde})cndence may be extorted from you. 
 Have a care then how you deal rashly with Ireland. Do not, for the 
 
 * ])r. Johnson, in Jiis "Life of Swift," says: "He delivered Ireland from 
 plunder and oppression, and showed tliat wit confederated witli trutli, liad such 
 force as authority was unable to resist. He said truly of himself, ' that Ireland 
 was his debtor.' It was from the time that he first began to patronize the Irish, 
 that they may date their riches and prosperity. lie taught them first to know 
 their own interest, their weight, and their strength, and gave them spirit to 
 assert that equality with their fellow-subjects, to which they have been ever 
 since making vigorous advances ; and to claim those rights which they have at 
 last established. Nor can they be charged with ingratitude to their benefactor; 
 for they revered him as a guardian, and obeyed him as a dictator." 
 
 The author of " The Sketch of the State of Ireland, Past and Present," pub- 
 lished in 1810, says of Swift: " In this gloom one luminary arose, and Ireland 
 worsliij)ped it with IVrsian idolatry: her true patri((t, her first, almost her last. 
 Sagacious and intrepid — he said, he dared ; — above suspicion, he was trusted ; — 
 above envy, he was beloved'; — above rivalry, he was obeyed. His wisdom was 
 practical and prophetic — remedial for the present, •warning for the future : he 
 first taught Ireland that she might become a nation, and England that she must 
 cease to be a despot. But he was a churchman : his gown impeded his course, 
 and entangled his efforts : — guiding a senate, or heading an army, he had been 
 a Cromwell. As it was, he served Ireland by his courage, improved her by his 
 authority, adorned her by his letters, and exalted her by his fame." 
 
360 INCOME TAX. 
 
 sake of a small accession to the revenue, do us an injustice, and a signal 
 detriment to yourselves. There are other means of obtaining a revenue 
 from Ireland besides an income 'tax. There is an alchymy in good 
 government. By doing pei'fect justice you can largely save, and saving 
 is equivalent to gain. Justice is a good housewife. My honourable 
 and frugal friend, the member for JNIontrose, has often told you that 
 you can, by adopting a soiuid policy in Ireland, effect a great reduc- 
 tion, and reduce your army to a force comparatively small. lie has 
 often said, that as in Scotland 2,000 men are quite sufficient, the army 
 in Ireland might be reduced in the same proportion. On Friday last, 
 indeed, my honourable friend in his enthusiasm forgot his old topics, 
 and almost forgot himself. He said nothing of retrenchment, nothing 
 of the economy of justice to Ireland. Although politically as vigilant 
 in keeping watch over the public treasure as the dragon by which the 
 golden fleece was said of old to be guarded, my honourable friend 
 yielded to the " magic arts" and to the eloquent enchantments of the 
 fascinating financier. But now that he is recovered from the spell, I 
 trust that he will take the same view as I do in reference to the 
 facility with which a large revenue could be obtained from a country 
 whose resources, through misrule, remain undeveloped. If you will 
 but endeavour to adapt your institutions to Ireland, instead of labouring 
 to adapt Ireland to your institutions — in that antithesis you will find 
 that a great deal of truth is condensed — if, I repeat, instead of adapt- 
 ing Ireland to your institutions, you do but try to adapt your institu- 
 tions to Ireland — if, instead of inflicting a temporaiy tranquillity, you 
 confer a perpetual peace, you will obtain from Ireland a revenue far 
 exceeding anything which, by the torture of this inquisitorial imposi- 
 tion, it would be possible for you to obtain. Peace, true peace — peace 
 founded upon justice, and equality, and national contentment, has an 
 enriching, as well as a civilizing and ameliorating, attribute. Peace 
 will pay you large import duties — peace will consume in abundance 
 sugar, and coffee, and tea, and every article on which a charge will 
 remain — peace will draw from the earth twice its oi'dinary return, and 
 while it shall give you more food, will take more of your manufactures 
 in return — peace will enlarge and give security to that market which 
 is already the best you possess — peace will open a wider field to your 
 laborious industry and your commercial enterprise ; and for every 
 benefit you confer upon us, for every indulgence you shall show us, for 
 every gift you bestow, with an usury incalculably profitable, by peace 
 you will be repaid. 
 
FOST-OFFICE ESPIONAGE. 361 
 
 POST-OFFICE ESPIONAGE. 
 
 SPEECU IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, APRIL. 1, 1845, ON MOVING A 
 RESOLUTION REGARDING THE LETTERS OF JOSEPH MAZZINI, 
 WHICH HAD BEEN OPENED BY THE WARRANT OF SIR JAMES 
 GRAHAM, ONE OF HER MAJESTy's SECRETARIES OF STATE. 
 
 I HAVE risen in order to move tlie resolution of which I gave notice 
 before the Easter recess. I submit it in the following terms : — 
 
 " Resolved, That this house has learned with regret that, with a 
 view to the prevention of a political movement in Italy, and more 
 especially in the Papal States, tlie letters of a foreigner, Avhich had 
 no relation to the maintenance of the internal tranquillity of tlie 
 United Kingdom, should have been opened under a warrant bearing 
 date the 1st of March, and cancelled on the 3rd of June, 1844, and 
 that the information obtained by such means should have been com- 
 municated to a foreign power." 
 
 Let me be permitted in the first instance to correct a misconception. 
 It is not my purpose to make the fatalities which happened in Cala- 
 bria the grounds of imputation. I believe every word which has been 
 stated by Lord Aberdeen. In this country — this veracious country, 
 in whicli the spirit of truth is pre-eminent, if a minister of the Crown, 
 no matter to what party he may appertain, rises in his place in either 
 House of Parliament, and cither witli respect to what he has done, or 
 what he has not done, makes a solemn asseveration, with an instinc- 
 tive promptitude he is instantaneously believed ; and if in the case of 
 every man who is in the enjoyment of the official confidence of his 
 Sovereign this remark holds good, how much more applicable it is to 
 a statesman, with honour so unimpeached, with honour so unimpeach- 
 able, as the Earl of Aberdeen. I will not deny that it has been to me 
 the occasion of some surprise, that with the letters of Emilio and of 
 Attilio Bandiera before his eyes, letters written at Corfu, and relating 
 to the intended descent upon the Calabrian coast — with such means 
 of knowledge — with so much light about him. Lord Aberdeen should 
 have been in ignorance so complete ; but his statement — the simple 
 statement of a man of such indisputable truthfulness — outweighs every 
 other consideration, and to any conjecture injurious to Lord Aberdeen 
 I will not permit myself to give way ; but the actual descent upon 
 Calabria, and the prospective movement in the Papal Slates, arc dis- 
 tinct. Tlie scaffolds of Coscnza and of IJologna are unconnected. 
 
362 
 
 POST-OFFICE ESPIONAGE. 
 
 Lord Aberdeen has cleared himself with regard to any perfidy prac- 
 tised towards the Bandieras, but the Post-office intervention with regard 
 to the movement in the ecclesiastical territories has with the Calabrian 
 catastrophe little to do. This distinction has been lost sight of in the 
 course of the Post-office discussions. Indeed, the public attention was 
 a good deal engi-ossed by the parliamentary encounter between the 
 Secretary for the Home Department and his old and valuable friend. 
 By a singular combination of bravery and of ability, the member for 
 Finsbury has obtained a series of successes of the most signal kind. 
 I cannot help thinking, however, that more plausibilities may be 
 pleaded for the opening of the lettei's of a member of parliament than 
 for breaking the seals of letters written to a foreigner, who had no 
 English confederates, who had raised no money in England, who had 
 not made any shipment of arms, who had not enrolled any auxiliary 
 legion, and wliosc letters related to transactions with which tlie in- 
 ternal tranquillity of England is wholly unconnected. The Duncombe 
 is not as strong as the IMazzini case. What is the case of Joseph 
 Mazzini ? He is an exile in a cause once deemed to be a most noble 
 one. In 1814 England called on Italy to rise. The English govern- 
 ment (it then suited their jjurpotic) invoked the Venetian, and the 
 Genoese, and the Tuscan, and the Ivoinan, and the Calabrian to com- 
 bine for the liberation of their countiy. Proclamations (I have one 
 of them before me,) were issued, in which sentiments were expressed 
 for which Mazzini is an exile, and for which the Bandieras died. — 
 Botta, the Italian historian, tells us that Lord William Bcntinck and 
 Sir Ilobert Wilson, acting by the authority of the English govern- 
 ment, caused a banner to be unfurled, on which was inscribed " The 
 Independence of Italy," and two hands were represented clasped 
 together, as a symbol of the union in which all Italians were invited 
 by the English government to combine. How badly have we acted 
 towards Italy ! When our purpose had been served, after having 
 administered these j)rovocatives — after having drugged Italy with 
 provocatives, we turned suddenly round — we surrendered Italy to a 
 domination worse than that of Napoleon, and transferred to Austria 
 the iron crown. But the spirit of nationality did not expire ; it re- 
 mained, and a long time, dormant, but it Avas not dead. After the 
 Revolution in France of 1830, and the Kevolution in England in 
 1831, a reform of abuses — of proved abuses — was demanded in the 
 ecclesiastical states. It was denied, and an insurrection was the con- 
 sequence. It was suppressed, and IMazzini, who Avas engaged in it, 
 was compelled to lly fiom Italy, bearing the love of Italy, the malady 
 
rOST-OFFICE ESnONAGE. 363 
 
 of exile, in his heart. Louis Blanc, in his history of the ten years, 
 gives an account of the incidents which took place in the struggle 
 between the Papal government and its subjects, to which I will not 
 minutely refer, because he may not be regarded as an impartial 
 writer ; but in the appendix to the third volume of his work, a docu- 
 ment is to be found of a most remarkable kind. Lord Palmerston 
 had directed Sir Hamilton Seymour, who belonged to the legation at 
 Florence, to proceed to Rome with a view, in concert with the repre- 
 sentatives of the four great powers, to induce the Papal government 
 to adopt such reforms as would prevent any popular outbreak, from 
 which consequences ])i-ejudicial to the peace of Italy might be appre- 
 hended. The utmost eiforts were made by Lord Palmerston not to 
 crush tliG just ellbrts made by Italians for tlio reform of great abuses, 
 but to induce tlic government, by a timely concession, to prevent any 
 popular commotion. Sir Hamilton vSeymour was employed by Lord 
 Palmerston for this purpose. He writes the following letter to the 
 delegates of the four powers, which is, I think, most deserving of 
 attention : — 
 
 "Rome, September 7. 
 " The undersigned has the honour to inform your excellency that 
 he has received orders from his court to quit Rome, and to return to 
 his post at Florence. The undersigned is also instructed briefly to 
 express to your excellency the motives which have induced the Eng- 
 lish government to send him to Rome, and also the reasons for wliich 
 he is about to quit that city. The English government has no direct 
 interest in the concerns of the Roman States, and has never thought 
 of interfering in them. It was invited by the cabinets of France and 
 of Austria to take part in the negotiations at Rome, and it yielded to 
 the entreaties of both those cabinets, in the hope that their good 
 offices, when combined, would lead to the amicable solution of the 
 discussions between the Pope and liis subjects, and thus avoid the 
 danger of war in Europe. The ambassadors of Prussia and of Russia 
 at Rome, having subsc(piently taken jnirt in these negotiations, the 
 ambassadors of the five powers were not long in discovering tlie chief 
 vices of the Roman administration, and the remedies Avhich they re- 
 quired. In May, 1831, they laid before the Papal government a 
 memoir suggesting reforms, which they unanimously declared to be 
 indispensable for the permanent tranquillity of the Roman States, and 
 which the English government considered to be founded in justice 
 and in reason. More than fourteen months have elapsed, and not one 
 of their recommendations has been adopted or executed by the Papal 
 
364 rosT-oFFicE espionage. 
 
 government. The edicts, even, -which have been prepared or pub- 
 lislied, and whicli announce that some of these recommendations ai-e 
 about to be carried into effect, differ essentially from the measures 
 specified in the memoir. The consequence of this state of things has 
 been such as might be expected. The Papal government not having 
 done anything to allay the popular discontent, it has augmented, and 
 has been increased by the disappointment of the hopes Avhich had been 
 awakened by the negotiations at Rome. Thus the efforts made for 
 more than a year by the five powers to re-establish tranquillity in the 
 Roman states have been made in vain. The hope of seeing the popu- 
 lation voluntarily submitting to the Sovereign power is not stronger 
 than it was at the commencement of these negotiations. The court 
 of Rome appears to rely upon the temporary presence of foreign 
 troops, and upon the co-operation which it expects from a corps of 
 Swiss, for the maintenance of order. But foreign occupation cannot 
 be indefinitely prolonged, and it does not appear that a corps of Swiss, 
 such as the Papal finances could siqiport, would be sufficient to con- 
 trol a discontented population. Even if tranquillity could be restored 
 by these means, it could not be expected that it would be durable, and 
 would besides never accomplish the objects entertained by the English 
 government in taking part in the negotiations. Under these circum- 
 stances, tlie undersigned lias received orders from his government to 
 declare that his government no longer entertains any hope of success, 
 and that the presence of the undersigned at Rome no longer having 
 any object, he has been instructed to resume his post at Florence. — 
 The undersigned is besides directed to express the regret which he 
 profoundly feels at not having been able for a year and a half to do 
 any thing for the re-cstablisliment of tranquillity in Italy. The 
 English government foresees tliat if there be a perseverance in the 
 present course new troubles will break out in the Roman States of a 
 still more serious nature, and of which the consequences will at last 
 become dangerous to the peace of Eiu-ope. If these anticipations shall 
 be unhappily fulfilled, England will at all events be free from all 
 responsibility for the calamities which will be occasioned by the re- 
 sistance offered to the wise and urgent counsels given by the English 
 
 cabinet. 
 
 "G. II. Sevmour." 
 
 Such is the view taken by Sir Hamilton Seymour of the abuses ex- 
 isting in the Papal states. It may appear singular tliat I, a Roman 
 Catholic, should think it judicious to advert to the subject. I distin- 
 
POST-OFFICE ESPIONAGE. 365 
 
 guish between the Italian potentate and the spiritual head of the 
 Catholic church — I see in the pope, as pope, the supreme pontiff of 
 Christendom, the successor of St. Peter in an uninterrupted aposto- 
 lical lineage ; — I sec in the pope the supreme authority in the govern- 
 ment of the church invested with holy prerogatives, which for the 
 execution of his ofllcc are indispensably required. Upon questions of 
 })urc, unmixed spirituality I bow without hesitation to the decision of 
 the pope ; but, wlien I pass from the pontiff to the prince, I cannot 
 be insensible to those temporal abuses, to which the despatch of Sir 
 Hamilton Seymour called the attention of the four powers ; — abuses 
 for whicli the pope himself is far less responsible than the fallible 
 Italian ministers by whom he is surrounded. Neither will I disguise 
 ray apprehension tliat the Roman cabinet with a vicAv to political pur- 
 poses — Avith a vicAV more especially to the conciliation of England, may 
 be occasionally induced to recommend to his Holiness certain compli- 
 ances of which a recent example has been perhaps afforded. But to 
 return to Sir Hamilton Seymour : his despatch reflects, I think, great 
 honour upon Lord Palmcrston ; the merit, however, is not undivided, 
 for it belongs in part to the right honourable baronet the Secretary of 
 State for the Home Department, himself a member of the Reform 
 Cabinet, witli whose concurrence it is indisputable that this course 
 was adopted. When the right honourable gentleinan signed a warrant 
 for the opening of Mazzini's letters, did he revert to that document, 
 and did he suggest to the Austrian or the Roman court the adoption 
 of the salutary ameliorations by which alone the tranquillity of Italy 
 can be secured ? The prediction of Sir Hamilton Seymour was ful- 
 fdlcd. The Romagna was in a state of almost perpetual disturbance ; 
 all redress of grievances was refused ; and at lengtli, in 1844, a con- 
 juration for an insurrectionary movement was formed. The Austrian 
 and Roman Governments were apprised of it, and a communication 
 was made, from what the committee call a high quarter, to the English 
 ministry. The Secretary for tlie Home Department signed a warrant 
 on the 1st of March for the opening of INlazzini's letters. The follow- 
 ing words of Lord Aberdeen are remarkable. He said, on the 28th 
 of February : " Your lordships are already aware that that warrant 
 was not issued by me or at my desire." This statement is most sin- 
 gular. Lord Aberdeen, the foreign minister, upon a question so grave 
 as the exercise of such a })rerogativc, expressed no wish "that it should 
 be resorted to." The matter aj)parently at least fell within his exclu- 
 sive cognizance. He was to determine how far the peace of Europe 
 was affected. Lord Aberdeen goes on and says : " In saying this, 
 
'M)G VOST-OFFICE ESPIONAGE. 
 
 however, the house must not miderstancl that I am the least prepared 
 to censure the issue of that warrant. I am quite prepared, as well as 
 every other member of the government, to share the full I'esponsibility 
 of that proceeding. I only wish the fact to be accurately stated." 
 Now, Sir, this is clearly the language of indirect repudiation. It is 
 true that Lord Aberdeen became an accessary after the fact, but he did 
 not take the initiative. We all know what sharing responsibility 
 means. Each member of the cabinet takes his quota, and in the divi- 
 sion the burden is supposed to be lightened. iJiit wherefore did Lord 
 Aberdeen state that it was not at his desire that this proceeding was 
 adopted ? What had the domestic minister — the minister of the in- 
 terior, to do with the subject ? I have a curiosity — the noble lord the 
 chairman of the committee will probably call it prurient — in an emi- 
 nent degree the " curiosa felicitas" is possessed by him ; but I have 
 a curiosity to know, why the Secretary for the Home department took 
 on himself this very painful office ? Is it that, although the temporal 
 dominions of the pope are connected exclusively with Lord Aber- 
 deen's department, an exceedingly interesting and agitated portion of 
 the spiritual dominions of his Holiness is within the more immediate 
 surveillance of the Home Secretary ? But whatever was the cause 
 regarding which the committee, who leave a good deal to the imagina- 
 tion, say nothing, it is certain that for three months IMazzini's letters 
 were opened, and folded again, and resealed, and delivered to liim just 
 as if nothing at all had happened. My honourable friend the member for 
 Finsbury brought the case before the House of Commons ; at first he 
 was received with all the authoritativeness of office — he was surveyed 
 by the Home Secretary with a lofty taciturnity. But the Prime INIi- 
 nister soon saw that public opinion ran with my honourable friend, 
 and granted a committee. I pass over all that has been said about the 
 constitution of the committee ; there was not a lawyer amongst them, 
 although they were charged to inquire into the state of the law. They 
 were not a jury of inquisitors. No, not one of them was fit to act as 
 a commissioner on the income tax ; but it must be acknowledged that 
 they are men of great intelligence, and of the highest worth and ho- 
 nour. I cannot, however, conceive how they have involved Mazzini's 
 case in so much mystery. They tell us that they cannot tell us all. 
 Why not ? We are informed tliat a communication came from a 
 " high quarter." Was it from Mr. Petre, at Rome ? We are told 
 that a communication was made to a foreign power. What foreign 
 power ? The committee state, that the information deduced from the 
 letters — strange expression ! — deduced from the lettei's, was commu- 
 
POST-OFFICE ESPIONAGE. 367 
 
 nicated to a foreign power, but did not implicate any person within the 
 reach of that foreign power. But it might have implicated some person 
 within the reach of another foreign power to whom the information 
 might be given at second hand. The conspirators at Bologna were not 
 within the I'eacli of Austria, but they were within the reach of 
 Rome. But suppose that I abandon that suggestion, give me leave 
 to ask how could the committee know that the information would 
 not indirectly tend to criminate individuals ? Some details must 
 have been given ; no name, but a place, a time, will suggest a name. 
 Give a hint to a Bow-street officer, put liim on the scent, and how 
 much will be traced out by him ! But what are the ablest attaches 
 of tlic Home Olfice — what are the most skilful among the retinue of 
 the riglit lionoin-able gentleman, to the Bologna police ? Put an 
 Italian bloodliound on the track ; let him but smell the veslige of a 
 Liberal, and with a sanguinary instinct lie will scent his victim to the 
 death. But, whatever be tlie opinion of the committee, there are 
 two facts beyond doubt ; first, that the Italian newspapers boasted that 
 Mazzini was under the peculiar surveillance of the Knglish police ; 
 and, secondly, that six weeks after the letters were opened six men 
 were put to death for political offences at Bologna. Of the blood shed 
 in Calabria you are wholly innocent, and I trust tliat with the blood 
 shed at Bologna the hands of no British minister are aspersed. Sir, 
 this proceeding is Avithout a precedent. The first minister of the 
 crown stated that the government had only done what their predeces- 
 sors had done. Which of your predecessors communicated to a foreign 
 government tlie information deduced from letters ? My noble friend 
 never did so. lie did, indeed, interfere in afiairs of Portugal and of 
 Spain, but never by these means. He never got information from a 
 Miguelitc or a Carlist letter, and transmitted it to Lisbon or Madrid. 
 He sent Sir De Lacy Evans to St. Sebastian, Avho arrested the career 
 of Carlist victory. He did interfei'c, but it was against despotism that 
 he interposed. He interfered at Rome, but it was not with a view to 
 the maintenance of the Conservative institutions which you have 
 taken under your protection. Yours is the praise (the merit of origi- 
 nality is all your own) of having been the first to stretch the statute of 
 Anne, founded on a statute passed during the commonwealtli, into an 
 instrumentality of tliis kind. You might have found in the history of 
 the commonwealth something with regard to Italy more deserving of 
 your imitation. At the hazard of exposing the peace of Europe, 
 your republican forefathers made Sardinia quail, and rescued a portion 
 of Iier subjects from the persecution of wliich they Avcre the victims ; 
 
368 POST-OFFICE ESnONAGE. 
 
 and if all England was animated by the sentiment to Avhich the greatest 
 writer in your language has given an immortal expression — if 200 
 years ago your republican predecessors were fired by the fearless pas- 
 sion for religious freedom, is it fitting that their descendants should 
 not only be insensible to the cause of civil liberty, but that they 
 should become the auxiliaries of despotism, that they should lend an 
 aid so sinister to crush the men who have aspired to be as you are, 
 and tliat, by an instrumentality so deplorable, they should do their 
 utmost to aid in the oppression of a country in whose frecdoni those 
 who are in the enjoyment of true liberty can never be unconcerned ? 
 Where is the man who has ever looked on Italy — that beautiful Italy, 
 to whose peculiar loveliness her calamities have been so justly as- 
 cribed, in that fiimous sonnet of which your own Byron has com- 
 posed so noble a translation ; where is the man who has any ac- 
 quaintance with the history of that celebrated people, and more espe- 
 cially with the annals of those glorious republics, by which the 
 models of your own municipal institutions were supplied ; where 
 is the man who knows how much Italy has accomplished for the per- 
 fection of every art, and the advancement of every science — how 
 much has been achieved by Italy, not only in the embellishment of 
 the human mind, but in its expansion and elevation ; where is he 
 whom Galileo has ever helped to look farther into heaven ; or, who 
 has been appalled, or thrilled, or enchanted, by those masterpieces in 
 literature, writ in the most melodious language in the world, by which 
 the wonders of antiquity have been emulated, if, indeed, in some 
 instances they have not been surpassed, or, to speak of objects more 
 immediately within the cognizance of us all — where, I will venture to 
 ask, is the man who has ever traversed the repository of art, in the 
 centre of your own metropolis, and beheld its walls glowing with the 
 attestations to the supremacy of Italian genius, — who has not mourned 
 over the fall of unfortunate Italy, and for her restoration to liberty 
 and to glory, and for her resumption of the place which she ought to 
 occupy amongst the nations of the earth, has not offered up a prayer ? 
 You think, perhaps, that I have in a moment of excitement into 
 which I have permitted myself to be betrayed, forgotten the facts of 
 ray case. I have not. I go back to the post-office and to the home 
 department, and I ask what is the palliation for this proceeding ? I 
 will give it from the answer given by the prime minister to a question 
 put by the member for Pontefract. Your extenuation is this — not 
 that the inhabitants of Romagna have not monstrous grievances to 
 complain of — no sucli tiling ; but this — if there be an outbreak in 
 Romagna, the Austrian army will march into the Papal States — if the 
 
roST-OFFICE ESPIONAGK. 369 
 
 Austrian army march into the Papal States, the French will send 
 troops to Ancona — if the French send troops to Ancona there may 
 be a collision — if there be a collision there may be a war between 
 Austria and France — if there be a war between Austria and France 
 there may be a general continental war — if there be a continental 
 war England may be involved in it, and therefore, but not at the de- 
 sire of Lord Aberdeen, you opened JNIazzini's letters, and acted on 
 the most approved principles of continental espionage. The word is 
 strong — is it inappropriate ? If you had employed a spy in the house 
 of Mazzini, and had every word uttered in his convivial hours, at his 
 table, or even at his bed-side, reported to you, that would be es- 
 pionage. Between that case of hypothetical debasement and what has 
 actually befallen, the best casuist in an Italian university could never 
 distinguish. Are we, in order to avoid the hazards of Avar, to do 
 that which is in the last degree discreditable? You would not, in 
 order to avoid the certainty of war, submit to dishonour. AVhen an 
 Englishman was wronged in a remote island in the Pacific, you an- 
 nounced that the insult should be repaired, or else ; and if you 
 
 were prepared in that instance to incur the certainty of war, and to 
 rush into an encounter, the shock of which would have shaken the 
 world, should you, to avoid the hazards of war, founded on a scries 
 of suppositions, perpetrate an act of self-degradation ? There are in- 
 cidents to this case which afford a wan-ant for that strong expression. 
 If you had sent for Mazzini — if you had told him that you knew 
 what he was about — if you had informed him that you were reading 
 his letters — the offence would not have been so grievous ; but his 
 letters were closed again — with an ignominious dexterity they were 
 refolded, and they were resealed, and it is not an exaggeration to say 
 that the honour of this countiy was tarnished by every drop of that 
 molten wax with which an imtruth was impressed upon them. Is 
 there any clause in the statutes of Anne, and of William, and of 
 Victoria by which this fraud is Avarranted ? There have been ques- 
 tions raised as to Avhcther a separate Avarrant is requisite for eveiy 
 separate letter. But there is no proviso in the act legalizing this 
 sleight of hand, this Avorse than thimble-rig proceeding. I have not 
 entered, and I Avill not enter, into any legal disquisitions ; it is to the 
 policy, the dignity, the truthfulness of this transaction that my re- 
 solution is directed. It Avill no doubt be said that the committee — 
 men of great Avorth and high integrity, and singular discrimination — : 
 have reported in favour of the government. I admit their worth, 
 their integrity, and their discrimination, but I deny that they have 
 2« 
 
370 POST-OFFICE ESPIONAOii. 
 
 reported in your favour. They avoid, cautiously avoid, finding a 
 justification, giving an approval of your conduct. They say that they 
 see no reason to doubt the goodness of your motives. Your motives ! 
 There is an aphorism touching good intentions to which it were a de- 
 viation from good breeding too distinctly to refer ; but it is not for your 
 good intentions that you were made a minister by the Queen, or tliat 
 you are retained as a minister by the House of Commons. The question 
 is not Avhether your intentions are good or bad, but whether you have 
 acted as became the great position of an English minister, named by 
 an English sovereign, and administering a great trust for the high- 
 minded English people. I think that you have not ; and it is because 
 I think so, that I propose a resolution in which I have set down facts 
 beyond doubt and beyond dispute, and with facts beyond doubt and 
 dispute I have associated an expression of sorrow in which I trust 
 this house will participate. 
 
COLLSGE OF MAYNOOTU. 37 1 
 
 COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTH. 
 
 SPEECH MADE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS APRIL 4, 1845, ON SIR 
 ROBERT peel's MOTION FOR LIBERTY TO BRING IN A BILL TO 
 AMEND THE ACTS RELATING TO THE COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTH. 
 
 I RISE to move the acljournment [loud cries of "go on," "no, no"]. 
 The hour is so late that I shall hardly be able to proceed [go on, go 
 on]. I must, I see, obey the injunctions of the house, and therefore 
 I shall go on as well as I am able. It were unjust on the part of any 
 Irish Catholic to withhold a tribute of unqualified panegyric from the 
 great measure proposed by the right honourable gentleman, and from 
 the spii-it in which it is propounded. He can have no motive but the 
 honourable one of doing service to both countries ; and he will, I 
 trust, secure the gratitude of the one, and, notwithstanding a tem- 
 porary clamour, his objects will, ere long, be justly estimated by the 
 other. The grant to Maynooth is large. The substitution of a per- 
 manent legislative endowment for an annual parliamentary donation, 
 is attended with two advantages ; first, the periodical recurrence of a 
 discussion in which religious antipathies find a vent will be avoided. 
 Gentlemen with strong theological addictions, must henceforth seek 
 relief in a celebrated spot of pious gathering in tlie Strand, and must 
 avail themselves of that exceedingly commodious, and far more ap- 
 propriate medium of evacuation. In this regard, the proposition of 
 the right honourable gentleman is most commendable ; but it is still 
 more important that fixity of tenure should be given by an act of 
 parliament to a great Catholic establishment. Maynooth is converted 
 into an institution, and is placed on the same footing, as the rest of 
 your national incorporations. You are taking a step in a right direc- 
 tion. You are advancing in a career of which you have left the 
 starting-post far behind, and of which the goal, perliaps, is not far 
 distant. You must not take the Catholic clergy into your pay, but 
 you can take the Catholic Church under your care. You can build 
 liouses of worship, and grant glebe houses, upon a secure and irre- 
 vocable title. The perfect independence of the Catholic clergy is in- 
 dispensable. A stipend at pleasure, and which the crown could call 
 back, would be odious. An honourable relation — a relation honour- 
 able to both — may be established between the Catholic Church and 
 the state, but you must never think of exacting from that cliurch an 
 ignominious complaisance. I am well aware that tliere exists in this 
 country great objections to Maynooth, but those objections are in a 
 
372 COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTIL 
 
 great part connected with defects, of which the correction is not diffi- 
 cult : those defects, indeed, arise in a great degree from the niggard 
 spirit in which you have doled out a wretched pittance to Maynooth, 
 utterly incommensurate with its wants. I am not astonished that a 
 Scotch volunteer should entertain an antipathy to Maynooth ; but it 
 is matter to me of some surprise that it should be an object of anti- 
 pathy to an ]<]nglish Conservative in the true sense of a phrase often 
 misapplied. Maynooth was founded in a great measui-e at the sug- 
 gestion of the apostle of order, the great Edmund Burke. Let lum be 
 assured that he has made great progress in the art of governing Ire- 
 land, by whom the works of Edmund Burke are perused with admi- 
 ration. That sagacious man saw that it was not the interest of Pro- 
 testant England that the priesthood of Catholic Ireland should be 
 educated in France : he thought that evils could arise from a French 
 and Irish ecclesiastical fraternization : he did not wish that French 
 principles should be imported into every Irish parish, and he de- 
 nounced the introduction of a Gallo-IIibernian establishment into Ire- 
 land. Edmund Burke was of opinion that the Irish Catholic priest- 
 hood should be educated by the state for the state. It has been 
 sometimes observed that the Irish ])riest of the old regime had, by his 
 continental education, acquired a deportment of a superior kind. I 
 believe this notion is, to a great degree, a mistaken one. There were, 
 of course, several ecclesiastics of the old school, of accomplished man- 
 ners ; but Fai-quhar, the Irish dramatist, who knew his countrjinen, 
 repi'csents Foigard as a graduate of the University of Lovain. The 
 priests of INIaynooth ai'e not the coarse-minded men which they have 
 been represented to be ; many of them are superior to the dignitaries 
 of your own establishment ; but we do not want fine gentlemen for 
 the hard services of the Irish Catholic church. I have heard it ob- 
 served that the deportment of the Irish Catholic priesthood has occa- 
 sioned the alienation of the Irish Protestant proprietors. That alie- 
 nation, however, has its origin in political far more than in social 
 causes. As long as the priest was subservient at the hustings, he was 
 welcome in the drawing-room. The separation of the gentry and the 
 priesthood arises from a succession of political struggles — from the 
 Catholic question, from tlie tithe question, from the municipal ques- 
 tion, from the registi'ation ciuestion — a question of which tlic settle- 
 ment cannot be final, unless it be just. Give the Catholic priest and 
 the Irish Protestant proprietor a common interest in maintaining the 
 institutions of their country, and their reconciliation will be inmiediate 
 and complete ; indeed, the oidy danger to be appreliended is, that 
 their alliance may become too unqualified and too compact. I con- 
 
COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTII. 373 
 
 ceive it to be clear that the maintenance of Maynooth is matter of 
 contract — of contract, to be explained in the spirit of legislative equity, 
 and not of scholastic disputation. Maynooth is sustained by two sta- 
 tutes which preceded the Union, ratified by forty-five years of annual 
 grant. If it be matter of contract, the question at once arises whether 
 the sum hitherto voted is adequate to the purposes for which it is de- 
 signed. That question is to be tried, by considering the extraordinary 
 change which the country haa undergone — a change to be always kept 
 in mind by those who consider the principles upon which the govern- 
 ment of Ireland is to be carried on. I do not know of any instance 
 of so great a national metamorphosis. Popidation is doiddod, but the 
 increase of population does not afford a just measure of the astonishing 
 moral and political transition through which the country has passed. 
 When Maynooth was founded, there were not more than two or three 
 Catholic barristers in Ireland. We have seen a Catholic Chief Baron, 
 a Catholic Master of the Rolls, and four Roman Catholics holding 
 the high office of Attorney-General in Ireland. When Maynootli 
 was founded, no Roman Catholic was admissible to parliament. The 
 majority of Irish members are now returned by Roman Catholic con- 
 stituencies. When Maynooth was founded, there was not a single 
 Roman Catholic in an Irish corporation. We have now the prepon- 
 derance in almost every corporation in the country. When May- 
 nooth was founded, the great mass of the people were destitute of the 
 elements of education, and now you can scarce meet a peasant upon a 
 public road, who cannot read, and write, and count ; and men who 
 read, and write, and count, cannot fail to think. Under these circum- 
 stances of marvellous mutation, is the Catholic priest to remain sta- 
 tionary in instruction ? And in the great revolution through which the 
 country is revolving, shall not the Catholic Church be carried on with 
 it ? If it be clear that the augmented grant to Maynooth is just, it 
 seems to me to be equally clear that it is in the highest degree expe- 
 dient. It will be essentially beneficial to Ireland, and whatever is 
 beneficial to one country must be serviceable to the other. Great 
 ability will be allured into Maynooth — gold for genius has a magne- 
 tic power. The professorships of Maynooth will be filled by men of 
 great talents, and great erudition. A general improvement will be 
 the necessary result. Locate in every parish an educated Catholic 
 priest, whose mind has undergone the process of literary refinement, 
 and you will accomplish much in the work of national amelioration. 
 But the advantages resulting from this measure are so obvious, that it 
 is perhaps better tliat I should address myself to the objections which 
 are pressed against it. It is said that Catholics and Protestants are to 
 
374 COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTIL 
 
 be educated together. With respect to the hxity, that observation is, 
 perhaps, a just one; but in every country in Europe, men destined 
 for the Catholic Church are educated in ecclesiastical seminaries, and 
 educated apart. The strictest discipline, habits of subordination almost 
 passive, and a total abstinence from sensual indulgence of every kind 
 are indispensable amongst those who are educated for the priesthood of 
 the Catholic Church. Four years passed in Trinity College, Dublin, 
 would constitute a bad apprenticeship for the confessional. The Ca- 
 tholic priesthood are now not only pure, but imsuspected, and where 
 interests of such importance are at stake, no empirical experiments 
 should be tried. It has been alleged that at Maynooth students of 
 very humble parentage ai-e gathered in a mass of unmixed rusticity, 
 and each individual contributes his quota of contamination. It is a 
 great mistake to imagine that the students of INIaynooth are men of 
 such low origin. It is to the middle classes that they generally belong, 
 as is stated in the document read to-night by the right honourable 
 baronet, and which emanated fi*om the Catholic' bishops of Ireland. 
 For my part, I am not anxious to see the younger sons of the Catholic 
 gentry enter in large numbers into the Catholic Church. The duties 
 of a Roman Catholic priest are so severe, that men cradled in luxuries 
 are scarcely fit for their discharge. It ought to be borne in mind that 
 some of the greatest ornaments of the Catholic Church have always 
 come from Avhat I might call the Apostolic order. The Catholic 
 Church has a sort of ennobling influence, and the consciousness of 
 spiritual authority often imparts dignity to those who are not highly 
 born. How often in the olden time did the mitred plebeian stand erect 
 before the Norman baron, and in the cause of the serf and of the pea- 
 sant, with the crosier turn aside the lance. It is the boast of your 
 own Anglo-Catholic pontificate that some of the greatest of your di- 
 vines liave risen from the humblest gradations to the highest episcopal 
 dignities. A man as lowly born as Wolsey may, under your reformed 
 system, become the Archbishop of Canterbury, and take precedence 
 of men who to the conquest of England trace back their descent. 
 
 It has been suggested that it is unreasonable to put the people of this 
 country to the cost of educating the priesthood of Ireland ; and my 
 honourable friend the member for Sheffield has intimated an in- 
 tention to postpone the additional grant to Maynooth, until a fund 
 to be derived by some posterior ari'angement, from the super- 
 fluities of the Irish Protestant Church, shall have been created. 
 I have the utmost value for the opinions of my honourable friend, 
 and listen to all he says, upon this or any other subject, with the 
 most unaffected respect ; but he will permit me to observe, that 
 
COLLEGE OF MATNOOTH. 375 
 
 it would not be reasonable, to procrastinate a measure so obviously 
 equitable, as he will be the fii'st to admit this to be, and he ought 
 not to insist upon the delay of what he knows to be justice to 
 one church, until he shall have succeeded in inflicting what he con- 
 siders to be injustice upon the other. Even if the sum proposed to 
 be granted were five-fold, what the minister recommends you to con- 
 cede, there is so much true economy in the results of wise legislation, 
 that your very love of saving should induce you to act with libera- 
 lity to Ireland. Are not lectures at Maynooth cheaper than state 
 prosecutions ? Are not professors less costly than Crown Solicitors ? 
 Is not a large standing army, and a great constabulary force, more 
 expensive than the moral police with whicli, by the pi'iesthood of 
 Ireland, you can be thriftily and efficaciously supplied ? The last 
 objection to which I shall advert is the familiar one, that you ought 
 not to become contributary to the propagation of what you take upon 
 yourselves, with some assumption of infallibility, to be the untruth. 
 It should be remembered by those who make this objection, that prin- 
 cipal is entirely independent of amount. If to grant £26,000 is a 
 mortal sin — to grant £9,000, even in the opinion of an Oxonian 
 casuist, ought not to be considered as a venial offence. The same 
 observation applies to all tlic contributions annually mado for the 
 maintenance of the Catholic Church in our colonial dependencies, and 
 to which the First Lord of the Treasury referred with so much dis- 
 tinctness. But, independently of these considerations, is it not most 
 injudicious, and what is far worse, is it not most Anti-Christian 
 to tell seven millions of your fellow-citizens that their religion 
 is idolatrous, and their creed is but an avenue to perdition ? 
 For my part, I hear these unchristian impunities with Christian for- 
 bearance ; I do not permit my equanimity to be disturbed, by what I 
 consider to be the bad argument, and the profane scurrilities which 
 are directed against the Catholic religion. When I consider the 
 grounds upon which that religion rests — when I see its doctrines 
 coeval with the foundation of Christianity, and maintained by the 
 authority of the fathers who have written, and the martyrs who have 
 died for their sustainment — when I see that for so many centuries 
 the faith of the Catholic Church has by a wonderful apostolical suc- 
 cession been preserved unbroken — when I see heresy after heresy 
 decay, while the Catholic Church remains immutable and predomi- 
 nant, fulfilling the prediction, that no unearthly power of evil shall 
 prevail against it — when I see it rising in providential resuscitation 
 in those countries, in which it was supposed to have been so deeply 
 interred, thai, excepting by some interposition more than h 
 
 hum' 
 
376 COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTII. 
 
 it could not be raised to life and to light again — when I see it making 
 its uniform, its irresistible advances in a progress which so many 
 circumstances concur, in inducing me to believe to be mysteriously 
 preordained — when I see it spreading itself to the remotest regions of 
 the world, undivided, universal, and eternal — ^it is not with a feeling 
 of resentment that I listen to the contumelious imputations which are 
 cast by rash men upon the Catholic religion. I will even add, that it 
 is with a sentiment often described as one " akin to love," that I hear 
 well-meaning men who set up a claim to personal infallibility, indulge 
 in denunciations of tliat faith, which, even upon their own admis- 
 sion, was professed by some of the loftiest minded and loftiest hearted 
 christians, by whose virtues a lustre is cast, not only upon the church 
 in whose doctrines they believed, but upon the nature of man, which 
 they exalted and adorned. I could retaliate if I thought it worth 
 while or befitting to do so. I could readily refer to circumstances 
 connected with the history of the Reformation in this country, Avith 
 as much poignancy as is too frequently displayed by those who make 
 the Catholic Church the subject of their most unjust and unreflecting 
 vituperation. But I have no disposition to wound the sensitiveness of 
 any man that hears me ; and, indeed, so far from entertaining any 
 hostility to the Established Church in England, I am free to acknow- 
 ledge that it is in many particulars so identified with the more an- 
 cient and universal church, it has produced men so eminent for their 
 virtue, for tlieir eloquence, and for their sincerity, and it is distin- 
 guished, except where its revenues are concerned, by a spirit so to- 
 lerant, I will not withhold from it the humble but honest tribute of 
 my individual commendation. AYhile, liowevcr, I distinctly state that 
 I feel far less anger than I feel sorrow, at the coarse invectives di- 
 rected against the Catholic religion, and entertain emotions not un- 
 allied to pity towards those Avho are suHiciently fanatical to indulge in 
 them ; let me be pennitted to add, that I think that every assault upon 
 the character of the Catholic religion ought to be strenuously depre- 
 cated, because Christianity itself is wounded through its sides, and 
 by those who assail the religion professed by the majority of Chris- 
 tians, it ought to be most seriously considered, whether they are not 
 in reality supplying sophistications to those guilty men who labour in 
 the propagation of infidelity, those messengers of desolation by wliom 
 hope is blasted, and wliom every man who believes in revealed truth 
 in any form, ought to concur in denouncing as the harbingers of des- 
 pair, and are almost as much the enemies of man as those 
 
 "Ministers, 
 
 Wherever, in their sightless substances 
 
 They tend on mortal thoughts." 
 
COIiLEGE OF MAYNOOTH. 
 
 377 
 
 I repeat it^the man who denounces the Catholic religion as an ido- 
 latry, incurs the frightful hazard of teaching other men to inquire 
 whether the Christian religion itself is not a fable. But, even sup- 
 posing the Catholic religion to be a tissue of errors, it is clear that 
 you cannot convert us by abusing us. The Catholic Church in Ire- 
 land is " an accomplished fact ;" you cannot get rid of it. You cannot 
 uproot it ; but you may give a useful direction to its branches ; and 
 if I may so say, by training them along the legalised institutions of 
 the country, make it productive of what you yourselves would be dis- 
 posed to acknowledge to be useful fruit. You must take Ireland as it 
 is, and you must adapt your policy to the condition of the people, and 
 not to your own peculiar religious feelings. A statesman has no right 
 to found his legislation upon his theology ; and the policy by which Ire- 
 land should be governed is entirely different from that which the an- 
 tagonists of Maynooth recommend to the adoption of the first minister 
 of the crown. What is the policy worthy of the man by whom the 
 great ofiice of prime minister is held, in this the greatest country in 
 the world ? In the very position which he occupies an answer to 
 that question is to be found. How great is the height to which the 
 chief minister of England is exalted ! From that height nothing 
 little sliould be discernible. Everything diminutive should vanish. 
 Nothing but the large, the lofty, and the noble, should be secn.-- 
 Wlicn from that surpassing elevation whence the British empire is 
 disclosed to him, he turns his eyes to the island which is immediately 
 contiguous to your own, what should he behold ? Not, most assuredly, 
 the church or the chapel, or the conventicle— not a miserable arena 
 for scholastic controversy— not an appropriate field in which the Pro- 
 testant and the Catholic, and the Calvinist shoiUd engage in a theo- 
 logical conflict, and trample upon every precept of the gospel, in their 
 fierce and Anti-Christian encounter. Shall I venture to tell you what he 
 shouldbehold— whatBacon— what Spenser and Bacon beheld more than 
 two centuries before him—what Pitt, what Burke, and Fox belield in 
 later time;?— one of tlic finest islands in the ocean, peopled by millions of 
 men, bold, and brave, and chivalrous— whose very imperfections are 
 akin to virtue, and who are capable of the noblest amelioration— an 
 island blessed with a fortunate climate, a soil inexhaustibly fertile, a 
 point of contact between the Old World and the New— an island to 
 which Providence lias been lavish in its bounty, and from the de- 
 velopment of whose incalculable resources an incalculable benefit 
 might be conferred upon the empire ; and by the statesmen by whom 
 that great work shall be accomplished an imperishable fame shall be 
 2 c 
 
378 COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTU. 
 
 obtained. And if such be the spectacle which Ireland presents to his 
 contemplation — in the contemplation of such a spectacle, what emo- 
 tions should he experience, what desires should he derive from it, and 
 with what aspirations should his heart be lifted up ? Should he think 
 — should he for one moment give himself leave to think — of making 
 such a country subservient to the indulgence of any sectarian preju- 
 dice, or of any religious predilection. To assert the purposes of Pro- 
 vidence, to carry out the designs of which, wherever we turn our 
 eyes, we behold the magnificent manifestations — to repair the misrule 
 of centuries — to pour balm into a nation's heart — to efface pernicious 
 recollections — to awaken salubrious hopes — to banish a splendid phan- 
 tom — to substitute a glorious and attainable reality — to induce P2ng- 
 land to do justice to Ireland, and to make Ireland appreciate the 
 justice of England, and thus to give an everlasting stability to this 
 great and majestic empire — these are the objects to which a man should 
 direct his whole heart and his entire soul, who feels conscious of the 
 sacred trust reposed in him by his sovereign, and that God has given 
 him the high capacity to fulfil it ; inspired by that elevating sense of 
 the noblest of all duties, and the high determination which he ought 
 to bring to its performance, he should turn with a disdainful smile 
 from the men who associate their politics with their polemics — who 
 deduce the narrow maxims of their government from the dogmas of 
 their presumptuous divinity — whose principles, if carried out to the 
 conclusions to which they irresistibly tend, would lead you back to tlie 
 restoration of that fatal ascendancy, of which we have already had an 
 experience so calamitous — and he should be prepared to fling the seals 
 of ofhce to the winds rather than permit himself to be stopped, or even 
 to be retarded, in the completion of that work, of which the founda- 
 tion has been laid, of which the structure has been in part erected, 
 with which every consideration that can address itself to his heart and 
 his undei'standing should induce him to proceed, and of which a per- 
 petual honour will attend the consummation. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 " These Songs are of that vigorous and bold character wliich is sure to grasp 
 tlie enthusiastic feelings of a nation under popular excitement." — Dublin Review. 
 
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 * * * The Nation has published a great many short poetical pieces, some 
 
 of them of considerable beauty of language and imagery ; but all, we regret to } 
 
 say, exhibiting the deadliest rancour," &c Quarterly lleview. ■ 
 
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 effusions of Koerner." — Sun. 
 
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 tive press in Ireland. It is a genuine and gigantic representation of its vast 
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