have been judged by his hon. friend the member for Lincoln. He believed the Reform Bill to be a remedy which might be easily applied for the removal of the greater portion of the evils complained of by the hon. and learned member for Dublin. He believed that the project for the repeal of the Union was a mere delusion; nay, more, he believed that, in the manner in which it was proposed, it was an impossibility. He believed also that, if it were practicable, there was no part of the empire to which it would be so fatally ruinous as to Ireland itself. The expressions which he used on the occasion alluded to by the hon. member for Lincoln, and which he did not shrink from, imputed much, perhaps nine-tenths, of the grievances and ills which afflicted the country previous to the passing of the Reform Bill, to the misgovernment consequent upon a withholding of that beneficial measure. But it should be recollected, in applying his language to the case of Ireland, that he did not, therefore, argue that the breaches of the law to which these consequences of misgovernment led should go unpunished. When he said that in his mind the burnings and destruction of agricultural produce which disgraced so many portions of England were mainly owing to the then Ministers turning a deaf ear to the people's cry for reform, he did not at the same time contend that the incendiaries and the lawless disturbers of social order should not be hanged or otherwise punished. Then, though he earnestly deplored the probable results of rejecting the Reform Bill, he did not assert that the outrages and excesses committed under the name of that rejection should pass with impunity-that for the Bristol rioters, for example, the sword of justice should not be unsheathed-but he would defend the consistency of his language, on that and the present occasion, out of the mouth of the learned member for Dublin himself.

That learned gentleman told the House yesterday that the coercers might goad by their harsh policy some of the least prudent, least thinking multitude, into a general war against property and order, but that then he should be found in the ranks of the Executive in resisting the outrages and punishing the guilty. The learned gentleman, it was true, said that he would thus join the ranks of the Government as the lesser of two great

evils-that while he aided it, he would abuse and execrate it as the parent source of all the mischief-but still he would be found in its ranks. If, therefore, the learned gentleman did not deem himself inconsistent when aiding, in the case he put, to check the lawless consequences of grievances which he called upon the House to remedy, he was at least as little obnoxious to a similar charge by his hon. friend the member for Lincoln. The hon. gentleman and he agreed in ascribing to misgovernment the real parentage of the grievances which had led, or might lead, to acts inconsistent with social order; and both of them agreed that, while the grievances should be remedied, the violation of the law should be punished.

The only difference between them was one of time—that was, when the law should be enforced against its transgressors. He agreed with the learned gentleman that Ireland presented many grievances which demanded a remedy from the Legislature. He, for one, would do his best to redress those grievances. He would go further, and declare he would not belong, for a moment, to any Government to which that redress should be a matter of unnecessary delay. But because he was thus ready to redress the grievances of Ireland, was he, in the mean time, to see the law outraged-nay, despised, by a furious and misguided multitude? Talk of the distribution of Church property in a country in which no property was respected, and were they to be told that, to enforce the law against the robber, and the murderer, and the incendiary, was to drive an injured people into civil war? Did they who talked thus wildly recollect the present deplorable state of Ireland? Did they recollect that, in one county alone, according to the authority of the right hon. Secretary for Ireland, not less than sixty murders, or attempts at murder, had been perpetrated in comparatively a few weeks, and not less than six hundred burglaries, or attempts at burglary? Why, this was far worse than civil war. A loss of life and property equal to the sacking of three or four towns! Civil war, indeed! He declared solemnly that he would rather live in the midst of any civil wars he had ever read of, than live in some parts of Ireland at this time. Much rather would he have lived on the line of the Pretender's march at Carlisle or at Preston, than now live

in some of the districts of Ireland in which burglary and murder were the nightly occupations. In point of fact, to threaten civil war was only to threaten that which was now suffered, for Ireland was in a state of civil war. And yet, to endeavour to put an end to such a disgraceful scene of anarchy and strife was, forsooth, "brutally" to coerce Ireland. He repeated that the civil war had long since begun, and, if not checked, must end in the ruin of the empire.

In the course of the remarks with which he had thus troubled the House, he had avoided all allusion to those irritating topics connected with the vituperations which the hon. and learned member for Dublin had, more than once, thought it fitting to pour out against the party now in office. That party would spare itself the task of reproaching him with conduct, to say the least, savouring of ingratitude. The hon. and learned gentleman might be assured that his abuse was not a bit more stinging to those against whom it was directed, than that which was so lavishly bestowed upon them by those who so long withheld from him and his Catholic brethren their political rights, and who were now allied with him in hostility against those very persons who were ever the earnest and uncompromising advocates of those rights. He might be assured that the high-minded men who braved the "No Popery" cry in all its fury, were not likely to be scared by a cry for the repeal of the Union.

As attached to that party known by the name of "the Whigs," it was not for him to speak of their claims upon the favour of an enlightened public. The time would come when history would do them justice, and would show, among other things not unworthy of commendation, 'how much they had done and suffered for Ireland; it would show that, in 1807, they left office because they could not knock off the political fetters of their Catholic fellow-subjects; and that, for the same sacred cause, they remained upwards of twenty years out of office, though more than once it was within their grasp, braving at the same time the frowns of the court and the hisses of the multitude. Yes, for the Catholics they renounced power and place, without obtaining in return the poor reward of a fleeting popularity. These were men, in those days of "No

Popery" triumph, who might, by uttering one little word against the Catholics-nay, in some places, by merely not saying a little word in favour of them-have been returned by numerous constituencies to a seat in the Legislature; but who, sooner than utter that little word, contrary to their well-founded convictions of right and justice, were not only excluded from Parliament, but from all those places of honour and trust which are coveted by every high-minded English gentleman! The Whigs retired from public life, but their honour was unsullied. The clamour, therefore, which the hon. and learned member for Dublin was endeavouring to excite against Earl Grey's Government could not be of much moment, compared with that which Earl Grey had already withstood in order to place the learned gentleman where he sat.

Though a comparatively young member of the Whig party, he could take it upon him to speak their sentiments on this head. He therefore could tell the hon. and learned gentleman that the same spirit and moral courage which sustained the Whigs, when out of office, in their conflict with bad laws, would sustain them in office in their conflict with the enemies of good laws. They were not deterred by clamour from making the learned gentleman not less than a British subject; he might be assured they would never suffer him to be more. In saying this, he believed that he was speaking the sentiments of many thousands. He was proud to say that he stood there, for the first time, the representative of a new, a great, and a flourishing community,* who conceived that, at the present time, the service of the people was not incompatible with that of the Crown; and who had sent him there, charged (as the words of his Majesty's writ expressed it) "to do and consent to such things as should be proposed in the great council of the kingdom." In their name, therefore, he hereby gave his full assent to that part of the address wherein the House declared its resolution to maintain, by the help of God, the connexion between England and Ireland inviolate, and to intrust to the Sovereign such powers as might be necessary for the security of property, for the maintenance of order, and for preserving, entire, the integrity of the empire.

* This referred to his election for Leeds, one of the new reform constituencies.

DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND.

FEB. 28, 1833.

On Lord Althorp's Motion for the First Reading of the Bill for the Suppression of Disturbances (Ireland).

He confessed that the apprehensions entertained by the hon. and learned gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Sheil) did not appear to him to be in any degree well-grounded; nor did he think that the speech of that hon and learned gentleman, however much it had been cheered at that side of the House, would at all weaken the lasting impression made by the admirable address delivered by his right hon. friend (Mr. Stanley) yesterday evening. That speech had produced an impression which he was convinced would not easily be removed from the minds of those who heard it. The hon. and learned gentleman had told them that that speech, great as he admitted it to be, owed much of its force to the prepossessions of the majority in that House. According to the hon. and learned gentleman, it would appear that English members were eager to find an excuse for exposing Ireland to the operation of this measure. For himself, and for those who concurred with him in opinion as to the necessity of the measure, he begged most distinctly and positively to repudiate the charge. That Englishmen were anxious for some excuse to put their fellow-subjects of Ireland out of the pale of the Constitution, was, he must, in justice to himself and other English members, say, altogether unfounded. For his own part, he had never risen in that House under more painful feelings than those which now oppressed him. He had never thought that it would have become necessary for him to stand up and defend the sus

* Mr. Stanley, as Irish Secretary, in a speech of remarkable length, and of equally remarkable ability, had brought forward a long series of authorities in proof of the necessity that existed for the proposed measure. In the course of this address he had quoted some passages from ballads sung in the streets of Kilkenny, in proof of the violence and brutality of the disposition of the Irish people. Mr. Sheil complained of this quotation being thus applied; and it is to his observations in reference to it that Mr, Macaulay alludes on page 142.