would entitle them to profitable settlements on four-acre allotments. The scheme broke down, and with it broke down its author's intellect. His insanity displayed itself in a number of strange freaks in the House of Commons and its immediate precincts. He was confined, by order of the House, in one of its apartments for some days. During that period the newspapers gave constant accounts of his condition and his actions. From one of those accounts I take the following: "He still indulges in rapid, rambling aberrations; reciting to his attendants snatches of what he states to be his own poetical compositions-uttering now and then an éloge on the late Sir Robert Peel, abruptly broken off to descant on the disasters of an old woman and her pig in the bogs of Ballinhassig—of a stud of some twenty long-tailed black horses his brother kept in Ireland-all whimsically interwoven with such canticles as are heard at the Coal-Hole, or by the recital of a litany interlarded with tears on the failure of the unfortunate land-scheme." The exhibition was at once grotesque and melancholy. We discern among the shattered fragments of his once strong intellect, faint traces of the facetious humour which in his better days had rendered him an entertaining_companion. He was removed to the asylum kept by Dr. Tuke, at Chiswick, and thence, in 1855, to lodgings at Notting Hill Terrace, where he died on the 31st of August in that year, in the sixtieth year of his age. The Chartists of London gave him a grand public funeral. He was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. His admirers at Nottingham have erected a statue to his memory. O'Connell preserved the Irish Repealers from the alliance with the Chartists which Feargus wanted to effect. O'Connell had no confidence in the leaders, and he condemned the unfair and intolerant policy repeatedly practised by their party, of violently obstructing all meetings held for any other political object than the attainment of the Charter. CHAPTER XVI. IRISH POLICY OF THE FIRST REFORMED PARLIAMENT. If she indeed be Justice, who drives on, SOUTHEY. WE have been constantly told to expect vast benefits for Ireland from the English Legislature, consequent on the "A Brutal and Bloody Speech." 163 extension of the Parliamentary franchise. We have been told, in like manner, to expect great benefits for Ireland from the Reform Bills of 1831. Our experience of that period does not encourage us to entertain sanguine hopes of any good from that source. The proceedings of the first reformed Parliament furnished a conclusive answer to those Irish Whig-Liberals who opposed Repeal on the plea that Reform in the English Legislature would supersede the necessity for domestic legislation for Ireland. The Irish agitation in 1831-2 was not opposed by the Whig Government so long as it could be considered auxiliary to the English agitation for Reform. But as soon as the triumph of Reform was certain, and the Irish agitators were no longer required to subserve English purposes, prosecutions were threatened. Lord Anglesea proclaimed down meetings; and the Sailor-King was instructed by his Ministers in 1833 to express from the throne his "surprise" and "indignation " at the efforts of the Irish to obtain a restoration of their national Legislature, of which they had been deprived by a system of Machiavelian fraud and diabolic crime. O'Connell denounced the King's speech as 66 a brutal and bloody speech-a declaration of war against Ireland." The address, echoing the speech, was of course carried by an enormous majority. The Coercion Bill, for restricting the people of Ireland from meeting to petition Parliament, was shortly afterwards introduced. There was a very full muster of Irish and English members on the night of its introduction. Expectation was strongly excited; it had been announced that disclosures of an appalling nature would be made to justify its enactment. Lord Althorp (afterwards Earl Spencer) opened the case for the Government, His delivery was heavy, hesitating, and unimpressive. laboured under a disadvantage which, in an impartial assembly, would have been fatal—namely, that of requiring implicit belief in a tale of Irish outrages and horrors, in which the names of the informers were to a great extent suppressed. The House was called on to ground coercive legislation upon unauthenticated charges; and the pretext for withholding the authentication was, that to publish the names of the informers would expose them to personal outrage from their lawless neighbours. He The House was perfectly ready to ground coercive legislation for Ireland upon anonymous information. It was not nice as to pretexts. It was boldly alleged that prædial outrage was the result of political agitation, and that in order to put down the former the latter should be suppressed. Any other origin of prædial outrages than political agitation appeared to be ignored by the friends of coercion. Lord Althorp's speech was a failure. O'Connell left the House immediately on its conclusion and remained for some time in the lobby, offering triumphant congratulations to all the anti-coercion members whom he met, on the wretched exhibition of his lordship. "Did you ever hear anything more miserable? Why, the Government have literally got no case at all. Bad as the House is, it will be impossible to get them to pass the Bill on such statements. Hurrah!" Thus did the Great Dan cheer the members of the Tail and his friends in general, expressing in the most sanguine terms his conviction that the Government must be defeated. By-and-by Mr. Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby) rose. He enjoyed one great advantage he had an audience strongly predisposed in his favour. But in other respects he laboured under difficulties. He had, in fact, to repair Lord Althorp's failure. He had to restate a series of allegations which had fallen, feeble and dull, from the incompetent lips of the blundering leader. And well did he perform his task. Before he had spoken for five minutes the attention of friend and foe alike was riveted in admiration of the orator's abilities. Clear, rapid, and animated, he scathed the Liberals with the fire of his sarcasm, and combated their arguments with his showy and plausible parliamentary logic. The natural graces of his unconstrained and easy action, the vivid glances of his eagle eye, the air of bold and well-sustained defiance which no one could better assume, greatly enhanced the effect of his eloquence. He had gathered up some of the unconsidered sayings of his Irish antagonists, and paraded them before the House with wicked ingenuity as indicative of seditious intentions. He closed with a ferocious invective against O'Connell personally, and sat down amidst thunders of Whig and Tory plaudits. Well did he merit the cheers of his party. The rickety and misshapen bantling of Lord Althorp was moulded by the plastic powers of Mr. Stanley into showy proportions and apparent strength. The Bill was obstinately contested. Mr. O'Connell led the opposition, and displayed all the qualities of a great parliamentary debater. An Irish Conservative exclaimed to me with astonishment as the House adjourned one night: "How stoutly Dan battles it out among these English!" Lord Campbell's Experience of Anti-Irish Feeling. 165 O'Connell had, in the course of the evening, thus concluded a fiery invective against the Whigs: "You have brains of lead, and hearts of stone, and fangs of iron!" He displayed inimitable tact and dexterity in defence, promptitude and vigour in assault, and knocked about Whigs and Tories with an easy exercise of strength which astonished the members who had not previously witnessed such a brilliant display of his abilities. Despite the opposition of the friends of Ireland, the Bill finally passed, and the Constitutional privileges that yet remained to the Irish people were temporarily invaded— ostensibly to check prædial disturbance, but in reality to thwart the agitation for Repeal. Mr. Stanley had boasted that he would make his Government feared before it should be loved. He did not make it either feared or loved; he only succeeded in making it hated. The crime thus committed against Ireland was aggravated by the fact that it emanated from the English Reformers in the full flush and heyday of their triumph. The first use the friends of English liberty made of their great victory was to crush the Constitutional freedom of their Irish fellow-subjects. What a pregnant lesson to Irishmen ! What a practical commentary on the doctrine of Imperial identification! Lord Campbell, "who," says Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, "associated with Englishmen of every rank in succession during his slow ascent from the position of a writer of paragraphs for the daily papers to be Lord Chancellor of England," accounts for his party promoting the Coercion Bill without incurring unpopularity among the people of England in the following manner: "They were probably tranquillised by recollecting how essentially Ireland is hated by the English nation, and what a lenient view is taken of any measure which tends to degrade the mass of the Irish population.” * Lord Campbell thus attests the contemporaneous existence of that inveterate anti-Irish sentiment among his countrymen, of which we in Ireland have had seven centuries' experience. Mr. Gladstone, in one of his speeches, expressed a desire to attach us to Great Britain "by the silken bonds of love." His past financial operations did not encourage Irish confidence in his friendship. He had greatly over-estimated our taxable capacity-he had mercilessly increased our taxation * "Life of Lord Campbell," vol. ii. p. 27; cited by Sir C. G. Duffy in "Four Years of Irish History," p. 51. fifty-two per cent., and given a stimulant to the exodus by draining the country of the means that ought to circulate at home for the sustentation of our people. In fiscal affairs he has shown himself our unscrupulous foe; but he has given expression to the sentiment that Ireland, in all matters purely local, should be ruled in accordance with the feelings and principles of the Irish people. He now seems to be sincerely desirous to atone for all past errors by restoring to the Irish nation their ancient possession of a resident Parliament. If he can succeed in this noble and statesmanlike policy, and if his measure of Home Rule shall contain a just arrangement of the fiscal difficulty, he will have proved himself a real benefactor to Ireland, entitled to enduring national gratitude. It may be observed that on the 18th of March, 1846, Sir James Graham made the following remarkable statement: "I think," said Sir James, "it is our bounden duty, in legislating for Ireland, not to legislate with regard to English feelings, English prejudices, and still less with reference to English law, which has long obtained the sanction of usage in this country. But we are bound to consult Irish feelings, Irish habits, Irish laws, as they have existed for centuries, though they may be at variance with the provisions found in the English statute book."* Sir James spoke these words under the pressure of O'Connell's agitation. Mr. Gladstone now attempts to give practical effect to the principle they announced. CHAPTER XVII. RESULTS OF THE COERCION ACT OF 1833. They came in the morning, scoffing and scorning, That betrayed our Saviour to the wicked Jews." Rockite Song. WHEN the Coercion Act was passed by the first Reformed Parliament, the Repealers were angry, but not depressed. If agitation was suspended for a season, its objects and pur, poses survived with undiminished vitality and vigour in the affections of the people. Affairs, however, wore a very dreary * Report in Morning Chronicle, 19th March, 1846. |