SPEECH ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW IN IRELAND. HOUSE OF COMMONS-JUNE 26, 1823. I HAVE never, Sir, risen to address this House under a feeling of greater anxiety than upon the present occasion. When I recollect the vast ability on both sides of the House, which has, at different times, been employed upon subjects intimately connected with the prayer of this petition, and the multitude of persons in Ireland who are earnestly looking to the result of the discussion; when I consider even the strength of the case committed to my charge; and more than all, when I survey the present state of the sister kingdom -it may well be supposed that I feel somewhat overawed at contemplating the task which I have deemed it my duty to undertake. The petitioners themselves have rendered the performance of it incalculably more difficult; for, whereas, when the Catholic question was discussed, the affairs of Ireland, and the intolerant and injudicious scheme of policy long pursued there, had been constant matters of debate, and had been handled by the ablest men, in every different form in which they could be shaped by talents and ingenuity; and whereas the great desideratum now is, to supply an answer to the question, "What is the practical effect of that * Mr. Brougham had, on a former day, presented the Petition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, complaining of Unequal Administration of the Law, and he this night began his Speech by having it entered as read. system?"-to solve this difficulty, "How do the penal laws operate in Ireland, not merely upon individuals of rank excluded from the higher offices of the state, but upon all classes from the loftiest to the lowest?”—and whereas the petitioners, in the very title of their representation of grievance, complained of " inequality in the administration of the law," yet they, who of all others, are able to give the best information-to afford the clearest solution-to stop the mouth of such as maintain that there is no practical evil, by showing that justice is not equally administered, and by giving facts in detail the petitioners, intimately acquainted with the merits of their own case, deeply feeling the grievances under which they labour, and having daily and hourly experience of the consequences of the present system, have nevertheless omitted all statement of particulars, and have confined themselves merely to general declarations. I make this a ground of complaint, certainly not from myself against the petitioners, but from myself on their behalf, because they thus send me into court, as it were briefless, where I am required to answer all objections, without being furnished by them with the means of answering any. I am thus reduced to one of two alternatives-either I must undertake the hopeless task of again going over the ground repeatedly trodden by the greatest men; or I must attempt, what is perhaps yet more hopeless, to supply the defects in the case that has been intrusted to my hands. I take the cause of the oversight to be this-the petitioners do not give the House credit for knowing so little of the present state of Ireland; they assume that the House knows what it does not know-that it is aware of facts which might be proved at the bar, to show that justice is not equally administered to all classes in Ireland. When parties enter a court of justice in this country (for in this country they happily are courts of justice), rich and poor are treated with the same impartiality. The law, thank God, is administered equally to both. But the petitioners, feeling, and well knowing the existence of the melancholy facts on which they rely, no more thought of introducing them into their statement, than any petitioner in this kingdom would take upon himself to explain and expound the purity of our own judicial system. A petitioner in this country would never dream of telling the House that juries are not packed-that judges are decorous, and never sacrifice the rights of parties to a ribald joke -that Chancellors hold even the balance of justice between Protestants and Catholics, Episcopalians and Dissenters—that here the keeper of the Great Seal will never think of striking a gentleman out of the commission of the peace, because he is a sectary, as has been done in Ireland-the keeper of the Great Seal there, admitting that in so doing he had been guilty of an act of gross injustice, and yet eight years afterwards repeating it. In England, in administering the law to a creditor against his debtor, we should never think of inquiring, whether he is or is not able to bribe an under-sheriff. In England the King's writ runs into all parts of every county. Here there is no detached corner, no land of Goshen, where some little tyrant dares to raise his flag in defiance to the orders of his liege lord the King. Our courts are open to the poorest suppliant; and however humble or unprotected, he has an equal chance with his titled adversary; nay, though he were even addicted to sectarian opinions, instead of paying his devotions in the cathedral. The reverse of all this obtains in Ireland; and it is so well known there, that the Irish who daily feel the evil never think of describing its details. The petitioners are in themselves a most important class, and they represent many thousands; for the petition would have been signed by tens of thousands, had a few more days been allowed. The signatures already obtained are from persons of commanding influence, who speak the sense of six millions of his |