HC Deb 11 July 1817 vol 36 cc1373-7
Mr. Lamb

rose and spoke as follows:—

It having fallen into my hands, in the absence of those upon whom it would more naturally and properly have devolved, to make the motion, unfortunately rendered necessary by the heavy loss which this House and this country have recently sustained in Mr. Ponsonby, it would neither be doing justice to the eminence of him who is gone, nor to the situation which he filled in this House, nor would it be suitable to the peculiar circumstances of the calamity, which has deprived us of him, nor indeed could I reconcile it to the respect, the regard, and the affection, which t bore him, if I were to treat it entirely in the common form, and to content myself with placing in your hands the customary question, as upon an indifferent and ordinary occasion. Some tribute is due to the memory of the dead, and, as far as my observation goes, it is no less required to satisfy the feelings of the living,—and when I say the living, I do not mean those only who were connected with him by the ties of blood or of friendship,—I do not mean his family, his relations, his friends;—I use the expression in a wider sense; I mean the members of this House, I mean the community at large, those who knew him only as a public man by his public character and conduct, and by the share he took in the discussion of public affairs; for never upon any former occasion, frequent and melancholy as those occasions have recently been, never have I witnessed amore unequivocal and universal testimony of respect, nor a stronger expression of sincere regret and heart-felt sorrow.

With respect to the events of his life, passed as that life was in the public service and in the eye of his country, it is not my intention upon the present occasion to enter into any detail; particularly not with respect to the earlier period of his career in his native country, with the circumstances of which I must necessarily be very imperfectly acquainted. Suffice it to say that he was greatly distinguished in the Irish parliament; pre-eminently distinguished in his profession, insomuch that in the year eighteen hundred and six he was called to fill the highest judicial situation in that country, I believe I may say, with universal assent and approbation;—this was at a period when party contests ran high, when party feelings were warm, and when, therefore naturally the arrangement and distribution of offices was subjected to a very strict and severe scrutiny and investigation,—yet with regard to this appointment I do not remember to have heard a single murmur of dissatisfaction. The important duties of this station, judicial and political, during the short time for which he held it, he discharged with unquestioned ability and integrity; and when in the changes of politics he retired from it, he was very shortly after elected into this House, and placed in a situation which it would be improper in me more particularly to designate, but which all who hear me sufficiently understand. This station he filled through times of great danger, and difficulty, and embarrassment; through times which have exhibited almost every ruinous aspect and appearance that it is possible for human affairs to assume, and which were consequently fruitful in questions of the utmost difficulty and of incalculable importance.—I believe I may safely appeal to his political adversaries as well as to his political friends, whether, throughout that period, he has not uniformly conducted himself with prudence, with judgment, with temper, with candour and firmness, with an ardent love of liberty, with a thorough understanding of the British constitution, and a warm zeal for its maintenance and preservation, with an anxious desire upon all occasions to give the best counsels and to promote the real interests of his country. The manly simplicity of his character was strongly evinced by the style of his eloquence. It was plain and perspicuous; divested of all extraneous matter; entirely free from all effort or ostentation; he seemed only desirous of pressing upon the House the real point of the question, and confined himself to those topics, which appeared to him really deserving of weight and consideration. This unaffected and impressive manner, joined to the mild and temperate firmness of Iris character, gained for him both within and without these walls a well-founded popularity, and produced a general reliance both upon the soundness of his views and the sincerity of his purposes, which is often denied to more laboured and ambitious eloquence.

When we recollect the great diversity as well as the importance of the numerous questions, which have been agitated in this House during the last ten years, we shall at once feel it to be impossible, but that even those, who in general agree the most cordially, and who the most resemble each other in their opinions, must upon some points have come to opposite conclusions. In the consideration of matters of so much doubt and difficulty, the various biasses which affect the minds of men, the points of view from which they contemplate events and their results, the differences of passion, habits, tempers, pursuits, studies and impressions, will produce differences upon principle of such importance, that they can neither be sacrificed, nor reconciled, nor adjusted. It has, therefore, not unnaturally been the lot of Mr. Ponsonby at times to disagree with those, who loved and respected him, and whom he loved and respected; but, while they found themselves unable to assent to his opinion, they never failed to render ample justice to the earnest care and the thorough sincerity with which that opinion had been formed.

These few observations I have thought it proper to make, not with the vain hope of their being considered adequate to the occasion, but as a feeble mark of respect, for the purpose of gratifying my own feelings and of giving to the House an opportunity of testifying that esteem and regret which, from what I have collected in private, I know to be universally felt. The man whom we have lost, was an honour to the family from which he sprung, and to the country which produced him, fertile as that country is in distinguished characters, and in great talents civil and military. I will not say that we have lost him at a moment when the exigencies of the state could ill spare him,—I will not say that he is "alienissimo reipublicæ tempore extinctus," but I will say that he is gone at a time when the peculiar virtues which he possessed, when his temper and moderation might have been of essential advantage to the public service. His zeal for that service, and his close application to the duties imposed upon him here may not unreasonably be apprehended to have hastened the event we are deploring; and it adds not a little to the awe and solemnity of that event, that we had seen him so lately amongst us, apparently in all the vigour of health, in the full possession and exercise of his faculties, and from his not very advanced period of life, likely, as far as we could see, to retain for years to come the strength and integrity both of his body and his mind;—under these circumstances, he was struck in the midst of us by the hand of death. He never rose again from the couch to which he was borne from this place. For him we trust in the infinate mercy of God. An awful lesson it is to us who remain behind; and we shall not take the worst means of profiting by it, if we recall and recollect and seek after, and imitate the integrity of conduct, the purity of manners, and the innocence of life, which belonged to him, who has been so suddenly snatched away. I have to move you, "that you do issue your warrant to the clerk of the Crown to make out a new writ for a member to serve in this present parliament for the county of Wicklow in the room of the right hon. George Ponsonby deceased."

Lord Castlereagh

felt it his duty to add his testimony to that of the hon. gentleman who had so eloquently described the loss which the House and the country had sustained, in the person of an able and enlightened advocate in his country's cause. The sentiments which had fallen from him, and which had been so creditable and honourable to himself, had been reciprocated by every member in that House. The feelings incident to the loss of a friend or relative, were undoubtedly acute; but in the next gradation must be placed those attending the decease of a high-minded, candid, and liberal political opponent. Such was the state in which he felt him- self now placed. No man in that House, or out of it, entertained more respect for him while living, or more deeply regretted his loss when dead. It had been his fate, both in this, and the late parliament of Ireland, to be almost constantly opposed in sentiment to that right hon. gentleman; yet never had he risen in either House to oppose his propositions, or suggest to him the propriety of his moderating his zeal, without a conscious feeling that the objects he proposed, and the sentiments and arguments by which they were enforced, sprung from the most sincere intentions and the most upright heart.

Sir M. W. Ridley

felt it his duty to offer on this occasion a few words, as a testimony of respect to the memory of departed worth. The character of the deceased had been always that which had excited in his mind the highest veneration for his principles, and those talents which he so successfully exerted in the cause of his country. The military page of our history would record with gratitude and admiration the achievements and devotion of a Ponsonby in the field; while the historical records of parliament would publish to grateful posterity the self-devotion of the patriot, which prompted him to sacrifice himself to his country's cause, in one of the worst and most critical periods of our history.

A new writ was ordered accordingly.