HC Deb 11 April 1848 vol 98 cc178-222

MR. JOHN O'CONNELL: Sir, I rise to address the House, deeply, and, I trust, most fully impressed with the importance of the question I have to lay before them, as well as of the tremendous difficulties I have to contend with in so doing. Its importance, combined with the feebleness of its advocate, constitutes, of course, my main difficulty. But I have a host of others in the adverse prepossessions with which I have to contend—prepossessions personal and political, or, perhaps, I might better say, national. With regard to the first class of these adverse prepossessions, Sir, I am conscious that if the magnitude of the subject on which I am about to enter, does not of itself influence those who are to be my opponents, not to embarrass its consideration with other matters, any deprecatory remarks of mine could have but little effect, even were I disposed to make them. All that I shall say on this point is, that I shall endeavour to avoid anything either now, or, if permitted to reply, at the close of the debate, which, even in self-defence, might serve to keep up irritation, and prevent the decision of the House being come to in a calm, a reasoning, and a considerate spirit. With regard to the political, or, as I have called them, national prepossessions, against which I have to contend, I respect them while I deprecate them. It is most natural—nay, it is most creditable, that the natives of a country which has attained such foremost rank amongst the nations of the earth, should oppose themselves to any measure which may appear to them to injure that pre-eminence. I will not dwell upon what may be attributed, in the opposition I am about to receive, to that love of power, which is among the strongest instincts of the human heart. I prefer to give entire credit for that love of country and honest national pride, against which I would be the last to say a word—inasmuch as they are the sentiments which I most heartily desire to see universally prevalent in Ireland. It will be my endeavour to prove that which is the most deep conviction of my mind, or otherwise I should not be making this Motion here to-night—that while the measure I have to propose must be of enormous benefit to Ireland, it can in no degree injure, but, on the contrary, must serve materially and permanently the interests of Great Britain herself, and add to and confirm the strength, the prosperity, and the glory of the united empire. I am here to-night to give expression to the desire entertained by millions of the people of Ireland for the restoration to them of the right of making in their own native Parliament at home the laws by which they are to be governed. I will not delay the House with any lengthened reference to known facts, to prove that which I think cannot be disputed—that the large majority of the Irish nation are openly and avowedly devoted to the object I have just now enunciated. During the agitation for Catholic Emancipation, the late Mr. O'Connell had much experience of the strength of the popular desire for Repeal; and it was with considerable difficulty he was able to confine the agitation to the former object, the attainment of which he believed to be a useful preliminary to the latter. There has been at different times much reproach thrown upon him in England for not ceasing his agitation with the success of 1829. I will not stop now to discuss whether the measure of that year has or has not been carried out in the spirit with which it was professedly brought forward—namely, the spirit of entire social and political equality, to be practically carried out, and not to be confined to a little beyond the mere letter of the law. I will not canvass what I believe to have been the constant and disastrous policy of reaction, which, I fear, has been acted on covertly, but more or less actively, by the successive Governments we have seen since the passing of the Catholic Relief Act; nor the consequent necessity of agitation to check that reaction. But I will say, that had Mr. O'Connell, after that measure, stopped short, and refused to agitate for Repeal, the people would have gone on without him, and have given themselves up to the guidance of men who had nothing of his love of order, his anxiety for the assertion and maintenance of the rights of all classes, and his determination to uphold the laws and the constitution. The confession of the Ministers in the House of Commons in 1833, attests the strength which the Repeal agitation had already attained in that year: a decisive proof that notwithstanding the falling away of the richer classes, who had now open to them the prices of their particular ambition, the great body of the Irish people were devoted to the ulterior object—the restoration of the Irish Parliament. In 1834, Mr. O'Connell was compelled to bring the question of Repeal, as he thought, prematurely, before the House, which then decided it by a large majority—at the same time adopting a pledge, concurred in immediately by the Lords, and ratified by the assent of the Crown, that though Repeal would not be granted, justice should be done to Ireland in all other particulars. Mr. O'Connell resolved that it should not afterwards be laid at his door, that by perseverance in Repeal agitation he had prevented that substantial justice in minor matters being done to Ireland, to which the three estates of the realm were then so solemnly pledged; and accordingly he made six years' experiment of abating the cry for Repeal. So strong was the sentiment of Repeal in the people's hearts, that, rightful and necessary as was the step he thus took, it yet caused to him an abatement of popular confidence, which he never fully recovered to the day of his death, and which for a time after he renewed the agitation for Repeal in 1840, prevented his efforts from being as generally responded to as had, until then, always been the case. At length in 1843 he induced the people of Ireland to make that great peaceful demonstration of their will which has never been equalled in true grandeur and sublimity by any movement of a people before recorded in history. The mad and criminal conduct of a few persons, whose real designs were unknown to him until too late, interfered with and marred the due effect of that demonstration; but it had at any rate established the fact that the overwhelming majority of the people of Ireland were in favour of Repeal. Internal divisions resulting at last in secession and open hostility among sections of Repealers, and then the distracting effects of the calamity with which Ireland has been visited, and under which she is still suffering, have operated during the last three years to prevent demonstrations of the same magnitude; but the very fact that the agitation has lasted through all these discouraging effects—that the popular Association, which was the centre of that agitation, has subsisted, and yet subsists, notwithstanding all divisions, secessions, distress, distractions, and notwithstanding the loss of him who founded it, and in whom the people reposed a confidence such as never yet was given and never again will be given to any other man; proves even stronger than would the revival of the monster meetings themselves, how deep, strong, and enduring is the desire for Repeal. The Bill, Sir, which I this night ask leave to lay upon the table, as the first step towards meeting this desire of the people of a kingdom forming one-third of this empire, was drawn up by the late Mr. O'Connell, and consists of between twenty and thirty clauses, repealing the Act of Union, and enacting the restoration in their full powers of the two Houses of the Irish Parliament. I should have had to ask for a Committee of the whole House in case the Bill had gone into any of the details of international arrangements that may be considered necessary in the event of Repeal. If for these purposes the form of an international treaty be required to be gone through, as in the case of the Union, the Bill I hold in my hand in no way impedes, but rather facilitates, such a step. It proposes to reconstitute the Irish Parliament, in order that the Irish nation should be upon an equality with you in treating. We should have our own separate Parliament to treat on our parts, as the Repeal of the Union by this Bill would give you yours for the same purpose. On the other hand, if by reason of your superior power you shall insist on arranging the basis of Repeal in the United Parliament, this Bill in no way interferes with you, but can lie on the table until the arrangements are finally settled; and must then be passed either separately or combined with the Bill that shall embody those arrangements. I state this in order that no mere technical objection shall be interposed to prevent the House from giving at once a proof to the people of Ireland that there is a disposition really and earnestly to consider their demands. In support of those demands, Sir, I am here to arraign the existing state of things with regard to legislation—that is to say, the system of legislation by an United Parliament, as unjust, injurious, and therefore most unwise. It is unjust to Ireland. It commenced in injustice—it has been maintained in injustice—it exists in injustice to Ireland. The Irish nation was no party to the Union. That this was the ease needs no words of Mine to prove, when I have the testimony to read to the House of two noblemen whose declarations upon the subject cannot but be considered of weight. I quote my Lord Plunkett, in the first instance. Speak- ing in one of the debates on the Union, he thus expressed himself with regard to the manner in which it was sought to be enacted:— At a moment when our country is filled with British troops—whilst the Habeas Corpus Act is suspended—whilst trials by courts-martial are carrying on in many parts of the kingdom—while the people are made to believe that they have no right to meet and to deliberate—and whilst the people are palsied by their fears—at the moment when we are distracted by internal dissensions—dissensions kept alive as the pretext of our subjugation, and the instrument of our future thraldom—such is the time in which the Union is proposed. I, in the most express terms, deny the competency of Parliament to do this act. I warn you, do not dare to lay your hands upon the constitution. I tell you, if, circumstanced as you arc, you pass this Act, it will be a NULLITY, and that no man in Ireland will be bound to obey it. I MAKE THIS ASSERTION DELIBERATELY, I repeat it, and call on any man who hears me, to take down my words. You have not been elected for this purpose—you have been appointed to make laws, not legislatures. You are appointed to act under the constitution, not to destroy it. You are appointed to exercise the functions of legislators, and not to transfer them; and if you do so, your act is a dissolution of the Government; you resolve society into original elements. and no man in the land is bound to obey you. The late Earl Grey thus spoke in the debate on the same measure in the English Parliament:— If the Parliament of Ireland was left to itself untempted, unawed, unintimidated, it would, without hesitation, have rejected the resolutions. There are 300 Members in all, and 120 of these strenuously opposed the measure, amongst whom were two-thirds of the county Members, the representatives of the city of Dublin, and almost all the towns which it is proposed shall send Members to the Imperial Parliament; 162 voted in favour of the Union; of these 116 were placemen, some of whom were English generals on the staff, without a foot of ground in Ireland, and completely dependent upon Government. [...] Let us reflect upon the Acts which have been used since last Sessions of the Irish Parliament to pack a majority in the House of Commons. All persons holding offices under Government, even the most intimate friends of the Minister, if they hesitated to vote as directed, were stripped of all their employments. Even this step was found ineffectual, and other arts were had recourse to, which, though I cannot name in this place, all will easily conjecture. A Bill framed for preserving the purity of Parliament was likewise abused, and no less than sixty-three seats were vacated by their holders having received nominal offices. [...]Twenty-seven counties have petitioned against the measure (the Union). The petition from the county Down is signed by upwards of 17,000 respectable independent men, and all the others are in a similar proportion. Dublin petitioned under the great seal of the city, and each of the corporations in it followed the example. Drogheda petitioned against the Union, and almost every other town in the kingdom in like manner testified its disapprobation. Those in favour of the measure, possessing great influence in the country, obtained a few counter petitions; yet, though the petition from the county Down was signed by 17,000, the counter petition was signed only by 415. Though there were 707,000 who had signed petitions against the measure, the total number of those who declared themselves in favour of it did not exceed 3,000; and many even of these only prayed that the measure might be discussed. If the facts I state are true—and I challenge any one to falsify them—could a nation in more direct terms express its disapprobation of a political measure, than Ireland has of a Legislative Union with Great Britain? In fact, the nation is nearly unanimous; and this great majority is composed not of fanatics, bigots, or Jacobins, but of the most respectable of every class in the community. I have quoted, I think, enough to prove the Union commenced in injustice to Ireland, inasmuch as the voice of the nation was suppressed, or where heard was raised against it: the Parliament was bribed and packed. I will not delay with the details of the foul and filthy corruption that was practised—the making of nearly forty peers, of twelve bishops, of nine judges, besides a cloud of admirals and generals, as well as of numerous civil appointments; and where none of these availed, the direct money bribes (8,000l.) to procure votes for the Union. Neither will I go into the details of the horrors of the rebellion, fomented for the purpose of carrying the Union. It is sufficient for my case at present that the Parliament that sold the country was not elected with any knowledge, on the part of the constituents, that it was to meddle with the constitution of their country, and therefore with no assent or instructions from them—that it was also a bribed and packed Parliament—and that in so far as constitutional expression of the popular will was allowed to the people, they protested against the Union. The next injustice of the Legislative Union was the inadequacy of representation that it gave in the Imperial Parliament. Upon this point I am not disposed to insist much at this moment, lest it should be imagined that I am in any way suggesting an alternative which would content the people of Ireland, and make them abandon Repeal. I shall therefore say no more, at least at present, than that Lord Castlereagh himself, even by his own calculations—unfair towards us as they were—was obliged to allow that we ought to have 109 representatives, and he gave us but 100. I come, Sir, to the point as to the existing and subsisting injustice to Ireland of the Union. It mainly consists in this—that we are deprived of the means of influencing the legislation and administration of our affairs, which the constitution recognises as the people's right. The seat of Government is too far away from us for our voices to be heard, of our opinion to have weight. I need not refer for proof of this to anything beyond the admissions so frequently made in this House itself. I can appeal to the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth, and to the noble Lord at the head of the Government. Both have at various times noted and lamented the fact, that concession to Ireland was always delayed too long, and given too grudgingly. Both have declared that Ireland ought to be placed upon an equality with England in all rights and privileges short of the Repeal of the Union; and yet neither, notwithstanding their repeated terms of office, have been able to carry out their own declarations, owing to the dread of opposition here. Ireland is still much inferior in Parliamentary franchises, and in municipal powers and privileges, to say nothing of the monstrous anomaly of having a most burthensome Establishment, for the support of the religion of a small minority among her people. Sir, we have petitioned a hundred times on these subjects, until at last our people are beginning to despair of petitioning, and we have met no relief—and why not? Because this House is surrounded and acted upon by English opinion alone, and is preoccupied with English interests. Demonstrations of opinion in England, that had not one half the importance and concentration of such demonstrations in Ireland, have at once been attended to, while we have been neglected. I need instance only what took place within the last month. The noble Lord declared he required, for the necessities of Government an addition to the income-tax. A few articles appeared in some of the newspapers against his demand. Some three or four meetings were held, not particularly numerously attended, and at once the noble Lord, or his Colleague, the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared for him, that they would bow to the opinion of the country, and withdraw the project, and I think they did right; but I do not think they ought to confine to England alone their promptness of concession to opinion. The opinion of Ireland also should be conceded to; but owing to the remoteness of the seat of Government it is not allowed equal weight. If you are still opposed to Repeal of the Union, but at last disposed, in some measure, to perform your promises and do us justice in minor matters, why not introduce at once a prompt and liberal measure of increased franchises for us, and an addition to the number of Irish Members—such addition to be on the combined or separate bases of comparative population and taxation liabilities? If you combine these bases you get as follows: The separate taxation of Great Britain is 12,000,000l. only out of the 53,000,000l. of imperial revenue—that is to say, less than one-fourth of the same. The Irish taxation liabilities, therefore, are to the British at least as three to four; population is as one to three. Required proportion, four to seven; which would give Great Britain 419 Members, and Ireland 239 Members. Comparative population, if taken alone, would show Ireland entitled to at least 220 Members; and if the respective taxation liabilities were alone considered, she should have 282 Members out of the 658. I throw out this short calculation to show you how unjust is our present restriction to 105 Members; but by no means as advocating the remedy of this injustice as a substitute for Repeal, as to which I, for one, cannot, and, if I could, never would, make any compromise. The injustice of the Union is again felt by us in money matters. I shall have to speak again on this point of my case, and shall therefore confine myself to some very brief remarks at present. The Union Act established fiscal arrangements which, in 1816, were revised, confessedly and declared, because of their injustice and hardship to Ireland. A new arrangement was then made, which has not, in the thirty-one years gone by since then, abated the amount of exaction from Ireland; but the direct effect of which is, that every penny of our revenue which remains over after paying the reduced charges of the State in Ireland, is drained away from us and poured into the English Exchequer. Thus we have up to last year, sent away an aggregate of upwards of twenty-seven millions, while we have not received—even including the grants in the times of our greatest distresses—more than seven and a half millions, leaving a balance of drain, as I must call it, from us, of twenty millions. The Parliamentary paper that proves these facts has been laid on the table within the last few days, and is in fact but a repetition of previous documents. Of these twenty millions, far the greater part should have been left in Ireland, to be there expended upon imperial purposes, such as the maintenance in our harbours of a large division of the fleet, and various other ways which I need not now stop to indicate. To a country suffering so much from the drains of absenteeism, this most legitimate expenditure would have been of singular value. I come now, Sir, to the injurious effects of the Union. I shall trouble the House with as few details as possible on this point. I do not expect that we shall have any one bold enough to boast on this occasion of the prosperity of a country which is reduced down to such a depth of misery and pauperism as is the case with unfortunate Ireland at the present moment. I will read to the House some authentic testimony as to her condition under her free Parliament up to 1800, and her condition at various periods since. The Earl of Clare, a Minister of 1800, and one of the Irish artificers and advocates of the Legislative Union, confessed that— No nation on the face of the habitable globe had advanced in cultivation, in agriculture, in manufactures, with the same rapidity as had Ireland since 1782. Lord Plunkett, late Lord Chancellor for Ireland, declared at the same that— The revenues of Ireland, her trade and commerce, were thriving beyond the hope or example of any other country to her extent—within a few years advancing with a rapidity astonishing even to herself. The bankers of Dublin, in 1798, and the merchants of Dublin, in 1799, bore equal testimony to the rapidly growing prosperity of Ireland subsequent to 1782; and a Committee of the Imperial Parliament that sat in 1804 embodied similar acknowledgments in their report. A Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to inquire into the state of the Irish poor in 1823, reported that— A large portion of the people of Ireland lived in a state of misery of which no conception could be formed. In some parts of the country one-half were without employment; in others the proportion was still greater. A similar Committee, in 1830, reported that from one-fifth to one-fourth of the entire population were in destitution. A Royal Commission for the same object reported, in 1834, that 2,384,000—more than one-fourth of the Irish people—were then in destitution. The census report of 1841 announced the same sad tale as to more than 40 per cent of the combined rural and town population. Four years later Her Majesty's Commission, under the Earl of Devon, reported that the people of Ireland were —"badly fed, badly housed, badly clothed, and badly paid for their labour—that it would be impossible to describe adequately the sufferings and privations which they endured; that a bed or a blanket was a rare luxury; that nearly everywhere a pig and a manure heap were the only property; and that the Irish population endured greater sufferings than the people of any other country in Europe."> When Lord Devon made his report, the worst was thought to have been reached; but, alas! there was a lower depth still into which poor Ireland was doomed to fall. Since then a million of our poor people have perished of starvation; another quarter of a million have been driven to emigrate in such misery that more than 20 per cent of them have died on the passage or immediately after arrival; and nearly four millions of these yet living at home had, last summer, to be supported by gratuitous relief. Who shall say how many of those poor wretches have perished since the cessation of that relief, and how many are daily wasting away from the face of the earth? Oh, Sir, whatever argument shall be brought against me, I do trust, at any rate, that we shall not have the always fallacious, but now the most insulting and mocking argument, that Ireland has prospered since the Union. Prospered—with a needy and absentee aristocracy—a beggared gentry, ruined manufactures, struggling and embarrassed commerce, small dealers bankrupt in the towns, farmers broken in the country, and a starving and perishing population! I directly and immediately trace to the Union, not to the potato rot of course, the disasters which it has here caused. The peasant was reduced to the potato, because the excessive rents and the scanty and insufficient wages of his labour left him not the means of providing better food. The potato he raised himself; and its capability of nourishment is known to exceed all other crops as three to one. What caused these heavy rents, and this deficiency of adequate employment and wages? The excessive competition for land, by which the tenant was at the mercy of the landlord—as, if he did not offer a ruinous price, another would. The same competition overstocked the labour market; and what produced this excessive competition? Simply the absence in Ireland of nearly all other means of living, save by holding of land. Manufactures had declined and decayed, and could no longer bear their part in furnishing employment, and giving thereby means of maintenance to any considerable portion of the population. And what was the cause of their decline and decay? Simply the drain of capital from Ireland by absentees, by remittances of revenue and other outgoings. Where a sum exceeding in amount the annual revenue that Ireland is able to pay by taxes is drained away in absentee remittances and other outgoings, it is as impossible that the remaining capital of the country can circulate healthfully, as that there can be health and strength in the human body when there is a drain of blood from it. Finally, what caused absenteeism? Simply, the want of a Parliament at home, which would give a reason and an inducement to residence. As I have spoken of the outgoings of Ireland, it may be well that I should draw attention to them here, in order that their extent may be, in some measure, known. I will state also the other side of the account; and we shall see which way the balance lies:—

Absentee rents £5,000,000
Payments on loans and mortgages,&c., at least 2,500,000
For manufactured goods, which we no longer make ourselves 9,500,000
Crown and quit rents, unacknowledged revenue and revenue remitances 750,000
———
Total outgoings £17,750,000
Value of linen and remnants of other manufactures £3,500,000
Other exports 9,000,000
———
Total incomings £12,500,000
Which leaves an excess of outgoings amounting to at least 5,250,000l. With regard to imports and exports, it should be remarked that the former consisted of articles which if made at home, as they were in a great measure before the Union, would give abundant employment; whereas, the exports being chiefly of cattle and corn, employed comparatively little labour in their production, and were, besides, exported from a starving people. Surely that could not be a healthy state of things, in which food was exported, and the people left in want of the necessaries of life. Upon this branch of my subject, I need, I believe, say little more, as the facts speak for themselves. There is, however, one significant index of the poverty of Ireland, which should not be omitted: I mean the small increase of her revenue since the Union, notwithstanding the large increase of taxation:—
1802 £36,925,000 £3,545,000
1846 54,700,000 4,900,000
Now, how stand matters as to relief, and imposition of taxation?

RELIEF OF TAXATION. IMPOSITION OF TAXATION.
Great Britain. Ireland. Great Britain. Ireland.
£. £. £. £.
From 1800 up to 1815 (inclusive) 30,000,000 4,450,000
From 1815 up to 1845 (inclusive) 47,114,574 2,664,090 10,620,000 1,060,000
——— ——— ——— ———
Totals up to 1846…… 51,500,000 2,900,000 40,620,000 5,510,000

It will thus be seen that if the increase of Irish revenue were small, it was not by reason of Ireland having been much favoured in taxation matters as compared with Great Britain. But striking as was the return I have read, it does not reveal fully the extent of the effort the Imperial Parliament has made to screw up the Irish revenue. The following testimonies bear on this point:— For several years Ireland has advanced in permanent taxation more rapidly than Great Britain itself, notwithstanding the immense exertions of the latter country, including the extraordinary and war taxes—the permanent revenue of Great Britain having increased from the year 1801 in the proportion of sixteen one-half to ten—the whole revenue of Great Britain, including war taxes, as twenty-one one-fourth to ten—and the revenues of Ireland in the proportion of twenty-three to ten. But in the twenty-four years referred to your Committee, the increase of Irish revenue has been in the proportion of forty-six three-fourths to ten. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, the Irish Chancelcellor of the Exchequer, 1816— You contracted with Ireland," said he, "for an expenditure she could not meet—your own share you could not meet, but by sacrifices unexampled by exertions, the tension of which only England could have borne. Ireland had been led to hope he expenditure would have been less than before she was united to you. In the fifteen years preceding the Union it amounted to 41,000,000l.; but in the fifteen years of Union it swelled to the enormous amount of 148,000,000l. The increase of her revenue would have more than discharged without the aid of loans and expenditure greater than that of the fifteen years which preceded 1801. The Marquess of Lansdowne, in a speech on the state of Ireland in 1822, complained that the increase of the Irish taxation since the Union was so excessive as to destroy revenue. He said, that in 1807 the revenue amounted to 4,378,241l.; but that between that year and 1815 new taxes were imposed, from which an additional income of 3,376,000l. was anticipated, but that the result was an absolute diminution of income, the revenue, in 1821, having been 533,000l. under its amount in 1807. Mr. Poulet Thompson, on the 20th of March, 1830, in moving for a Select Committee to inquire into the expediency of making a revision of the taxes, quoted the foregoing, and said that the case thus "established, in the instance of Ireland, was written in characters too legible not to serve as a guide to future financiers, and was one which ought to bring shame on the memory of its authors." I think I have shown, Sir, that the small increase of onr revenue since 1800 has not been attributable to want of effort on your part to screw it up, and that I am therefore fully entitled to claim it as a proof of the poverty of the country after forty-eight years of your boasted imperial legislation. Recollect that out of the thirty-four or thirty-five millions of annual revenue, your separate taxation is only thirteen and a half millions, which leaves about forty-two millions as the product of taxes equally heavy in both countries. Now of this we pay by the equal taxes, say five millions, while you pay thirty-seven millions. The difference is not caused by heavier rates, for the rates are entirely equal as regards items of taxation, which produce these sums. What, then, is the real reason of the disparity? Simply this, that being so poor we are not able to consume taxed articles in the same proportion, as respects our comparative population, as you are as respects yours. Our population is one-third of yours. If we were equally rich with you, our consumption of articles equally taxed in both countries would be in about the same proportion, and the case then would stand thus, namely —Great Britain 37,000,000l.; Ireland 12,660,000l. But our present poverty prevents us paying more than five millions; therefore, by reason of your refusing to restore to us the means of upraising the condition of our country, you deprive the empire of nearly eight millions of annual revenue, which could be had without one additional tax. I know, with regard to any point that may be attempted to be made as to your paying separate taxation, even to the extent of twelve millions, let me remind you that in arranging the articles of Union it was declared that no union could be formed, with any degree of common justice and common honesty, that did not keep Ireland free from the annual charge of your debt, previously contracted. The amount of annual charge on this score as compared with Ireland, I shall now give, as also the amount of the principals of both debts; and further, the respective amounts sixteen years later, when the financial arrangements of the Union were altered, for the declared reason that they had been proved unjust and grievous to Ireland:—

GREAT BRITAIN. IRELAND.
Debt. Annual Charge. Debt. Annual Charge.
5th January 1801 £450,504,984 £17,718,851 £28,545,134 £1,244,463
5th January 1817 734,522,104 28,238,416 112,704,773 4,104,514*
Now, I first remark upon the foregoing, that the excess of the charge of your ante- * Parliamentary Paper, 35 of 1819, 2nd Session. Union debt over that of ours was, in 1800, fifteen millions annually: and the separate taxation you pay is little more than twelve millions. The grievousness of the financial arrangement of the Union is shown by the table I have given; they having caused the Irish debt to increase nearly three hundred per cent in the fifteen years, while the British debt increased only sixty per cent. I shall not delay the House with the numerous quotations I could give from the admissions made in the House of Commons in 1816, and the report of the Finance Committee, which recommended the change then made in the unjust financial arrangements I have spoken of. The nature and effect of the change then made is, however, of importance. It professed to relieve Ireland of the heavy and growing charge of her particular debt thus unjustly aggravated; but at the same time it did away with all safeguards given her by the Union Act against being held responsible to the last penny for every charge that was on Great Britain; so that this change, commonly known as the consolidation of the Exchequers of the two countries, pledged Ireland thenceforth, and for ever, to the utmost of her ability—to the last penny that could be screwed out of her—to contribute to the debt of Great Britain, put her in the impossibility, until that debt should be paid off, of devoting any surplus of her revenue, if it were to increase a hundred-fold, to any but British purposes. Now, Sir, this common and unlimited liability of Ireland was in direct violation of the Act of Union, which provided in Article 7 that she should not—as in common honesty and fairness she ought not—to be subjected to such common liability until her circumstances should be so much improved as to admit of her contributing indiscriminately with Great Britain by equal taxes—a circumstance the very absence of which was deplored by the Minister who passed the Consolidation Act. Instead of passing the latter, he should have revised and made lighter to Ireland the unjust and grievous financial arrangements of the Union, and postponed, until better times at least, the wholesale mortgage of Ireland which was effected by the Consolidation Act. Its consequences in detail would too much lengthen out the review I am taking of all the injustices inflicted on us by and since the Union. I shall, therefore, confine myself to saying, that on reference to the successive volumes of the annual finance accounts since 1816, and going through the necessary calculations, hon. Members will find that the great pretence of the Consolidation Act—namely, that it would lighten the exactions from Ireland, which were declared to have been found unjust and excessive, has not been realised, as the Union proportions of contribution have in practice been maintained, instead of being reduced; and, in fact and truth, every penny, as I said before, that could be got out of Ireland has been taken from her. If she has been able to pay the Union proportion of contribution, which, previous to 1816, ran her so heavily into debt, it is because the expenditure of the United Kingdom has diminished one half since then; but whether it be large or small, the Consolidation Act has so mortgaged Ireland for all England's liabilities, that whatever surplus of Irish revenue over the reduced Government expenditure in Ireland there may be at any time—if it be ten pounds, or ten hundred thousand pounds—if it were ten millions—every penny should go to England. I have before cited testimonies to show that every possible effort has been made to tax us, and abandoned only because found unproductive. The assessed taxes of Ireland are a clear proof of this, as they were finally abandoned in 1822, avowedly because failing of production. Taking the whole amount realised by them, it will be found that the entire relief given in this way to Ireland, by reductions in 1818, and total repeal in 1823, was 536,000l.; whereas the reductions and repeals of assessed taxes in Great Britain were to the amount of 5,170,000l., as may be seen on reference to a Parliamentary return of 1842. The right hon. Member for Tamworth confessed Ireland's inability to give any profitable return by an income-tax when he was bringing in that measure; and one of the taxes which he then imposed upon her by way of substitution he had the following year to repeal, because of its unproductiveness. Long as I have had to dwell upon those subjects, Sir, I feel I have by no means said all that there could be said, and that my inevitable omissions will he readily seized upon, and attributed, not to my anxiety for the convenience of the House, but to other reasons. I think, however, that a fair and candid review of what I have advanced on these two points, the injustice and injuriousness of the Union to Ireland, will be found amply sufficient to prove my case. I shall have presently to show you briefly. but, I trust, plainly, that the Union is injurious to you. I now come, Sir, to my third point, namely — that the Union is unwise. I think it so, first and chiefly, because it keeps the people of Ireland in perpetual discontent and poverty, thus morally and physically incapacitating them to be that support in the difficulties and dangers of the empire, and that bulwark against the chances of foreign invasion, which they would be if their affections were conciliated by kind and equitable treatment, and the strength and energies of their country reinvigorated by the stoppage of her wasting drains, and the healthful and active circulation at home of her restored capital. If her people should be mad enough (which, indeed, whatever may be the case in a few localities, I do not believe), to allow themselves to be incited to insurrection, you will, doubtless, put them down; but with what waste of blood, and treasure, and with what storing up of future and ever-recurring insecurity and peril! Blood never well consolidates the edifice of freedom; but neither is it a lasting cement for oppression. And I must tell you, so bitter, burning, and so deep is the inveteracy of feeling which your ill treatment, your slights, your oppressions, have created for you in Ireland, that you must resolve upon a worse than Elizabethan or Cromwellian policy for Ireland, or upon one of generous and entire concession. No middle course remains; and if you do resolve upon the Cromwellian policy, sit you down first and count the cost; and make up your mind to that cost beforehand. Why, at this moment what heavy expenses have you not added to the ordinary outgoings of the State by reason of your neglect and ill treatment of Ireland? You have had to collect rents for landlords by the use of soldiery and police; and you will have to do so again and again. You have had, and still have, to collect rates by the same means; and even those means will fail of profitable result. Cases have been mentioned to me in the West of Ireland, where the potato pot—the only remaining article of furniture in the cabins of the wretched ratepayers, and even the damp straw on which they lay at night, have been carried off by the collector, with his escort of thirty soldiers and police. Do you think of the cost of all this? Have you no recollections of a sum of arrears of tithe amounting, I believe, to 12,000l., costing you 27,000l. in military and police expenses? And if this is to go on, as go on it must, aye, and become every month more and more aggravated in grievousness; how will you ever be able to effect reductions in that general expenditure of the State, of which you so heavily complain? These, I do submit, are considerations deeply worthy of your most serious attention. Weigh them well before you finally decide. On the one hand, with the Union discontent, ruinous and ever-increasing expense, and danger to both countries; on the other, conciliated affections, increased and increasing revenues, and peace, strength, and prosperity to the empire. I showed you before how the revenues of the State would be most certainly increased, even without one additional tax, if by repealing the Union you checked the drain of capital from Ireland, and left it to fructify at home. I showed you how our present poverty leaves us able to consume so small a proportion of excisable and customable articles on which the duties are the same in both countries—that the respective payments of both countries on those equally taxed articles are as nine to one, instead of as three to one—and I drew the fair conclusion that as we improved in prosperity, our additional consumption of those articles would raise our payments to the latter proportion, and thus give you seven or eight millions more of money annually toward a the purposes of the State, without a single additional tax; and of course our restored prosperity would then enable us to bear the burden of an income-tax if the necessities of the empire required it. But the Repeal of the Union would not only increase the general resources by the renovated prosperity of Ireland, but would actually diminish the expenditure. For instance, the army expenses of Ireland average more than a million in the year. The police expenses of all kinds, occasioned and aggravated by the discontents of the country, must, if we take into consideration the multitude of informations, prosecutions, and the pay and support of informers and detectives, come to something like half a million. Upon these items alone, a certain reduction could be made if you did justice to Ireland. I do not hesitate to say that nearly a million might be economised on these, to say nothing of other reductions. In fact, I do believe you would find Ireland a mine of wealth, instead of a drain and drag upon you, if you would but at last try the experiment of treating her with kindness and with justice, instead of with suspicion, con- tempt, coercion, and severity. It would be wise, then, for you to repeal this Union, which exists but on parchment, and which is, in truth, the only obstacle to a real and lasting union between the two countries. It would be just also as it is wise, for Ireland has as much right to an independent local Parliament as you have yourselves. The great authority of Sir Edward Coke can be cited to the fact that Henry II. made a free and unfettered grant of Parliaments to Ireland. Henry III. granted Magna Charta in precisely the same terms as the English grant. I need not go into this point at any length; but I will say that throughout her history you will find Ireland's claim to a separate and independent Parliament constantly asserted and contended for through every difficulty, until in 1782 you had finally to acknowledge it, and in 1783 you confirmed the acknowledgment by the following Act, of which I shall read you the title and one clause:— 23 GEO. III. c. 28. An Act for preventing and removing all Doubts which have arisen or might arise, concerning the exclusive Rights of the Parliament and Courts of Ireland in matters of Legislation and Judicature, and to prevent Appeals being heard in Great Britain: 'Be it enacted, That the right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by His Majesty and the Parliament of that kingdom in all cases whatever, and to have all actions and suits at law or in equity which may be instituted in that kingdom, decided in His Majesty's courts therein, finally and without appeal from thence, shall be and is hereby declared to be established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable.' The words 'for ever' in the foregoing clause, were on special motion adopted instead of 'for the future,' being considered more comprehensive and decided. But I shall be answered that there are two—and the most important—points which I have not yet touched upon, namely, first, whether it would not be manifestly and indisputably an injury to ourselves to get back a Parliament which was avowedly so corrupt as was the Irish Parliament that passed the Union; and a long recital of previous profligate acts will be thrown in our teeth. On this first point I answer at once, Sir, and most unhesitatingly, that if it it were possible at this time of day, at this period of the advance of liberal ideas and the power of opinion, to reconstitute the boroughmongering and sectarian Parliament of Ireland, we, although naturally enough demanding to know why Ireland should be deprived of the benefit of the progress of reform, would prefer even that corrupt, narrow-based, and boroughmongering Parliament of Irishmen, to remaining in the condition in which we are. I am perfectly confident that the sentiment which the late Mr. O'Connell uttered in his first public speech, in the year 1800, that sooner than consent to the Union the Catholics of Ireland would readily resume their chains, and throw themselves on the mercy of their Protestant fellow-countrymen, is still felt. And they might well trust to that mercy; for in twenty years up to 1795 the Irish Protestant Parliament had passed no less than four distinct Emancipation Acts; whereas, although the concluding Act of Catholic Emancipation was held out as a bribe at the time of the Union, twenty-nine years passed before the promise given of its enactment was realised; and then most ungraciously and grudgingly. And again, Sir, the good deeds of the Irish Parliament should not be forgotten when its sins are remembered. They steadily resisted attempts made at six different periods from 1690 to 1754, on the part of the British Minister, to interfere with and destroy their constitutional control over the supplies and disposable revenue of Ireland. I can quote testimony given in this House in the year 1785, by Lord North, as to their conduct on one of those occasions, and the reasons then actuating them:— The grants of the Irish Parliament, in Charles the Second's time, were so liberal (in return for his confirming the Cromwellian settlers in their acquisitions) that the King had no necessity for calling another Parliament in Ireland during his whole reign. The Irish felt the error they had committed in thus rendering the Crown independent; and the hereditary revenue soon became an object of jealousy, not to say of detestation, to the people. The debt contracted at the Revolution afforded them an opportunity of proving this: in providing for the payment of that debt, they laid on additional duties of customs and excise, but they would not impose them for more than two years, in order that the Crown should be under the necessity of calling the Parliament together again, before the expiration of the two years. This policy had the desired effect, and the Commons have persevered in it from that day to this, with a difference of late, that the Session being annual, the grants of money are only from one year to another. The hereditary revenue had, since the Revolution, been a subject of jealousy and terror to the Parliament, insomuch that so far from endeavouring to improve it, they never missed an opportunity to throw charges upon it, to bear it down: however, in 1751, there was in the Exchequer of Ireland a surplus of 400,000l. This, instead of being matter of joy, was the cause of general consternation throughout the kingdom: it was Shared the Crown was become so rich, that it could pay off the debt that was then on the nation, and having no farther occasion for the annual grants, would call no more Parliaments. There was a question in that year of disposing of this surplus of 400,000l.; and a Bill was brought into Parliament for that purpose. The preamble was to this effect: 'Whereas His Majesty has signified his consent, that the susplus now in the exchequer, &c. be disposed of,' &c. The zealous patriots took fire at the word 'consent,' though it had been inserted in two other acts before that on similar occasions: they said the King had a right to give Ms assent to that Bill as well as to any other; but that he had no right to give his consent; which latter term implied, that the subject could not be so much as discussed, or made the substance of a Bill, without the previous consent of the Crown, as in the case of private grants. This was the ground of a great struggle in the Commons, where the most formidable opposition ever known in Ireland, was made against this word 'consent:' the opposition triumphed. By this bold conduct of the Irish Parliament the surplus revenue was saved, and applied to the liquidation of debt. The debt was thus paid off in 1754; and another surplus accruing, they hastened to dispose of that, lest it should be swept away from them, and thus Parliaments rendered unnecessary. From the severe commercial restrictions and most injurious trade and navigation laws which Great Britain maintained against Ireland at that time, the internal commerce and enterprise of Ireland was languishing. Actuated by, no doubt, false ideas of political economy, the Irish Parliament sought to stimulate both by grants and bounties. It was a very mistaken policy, and naturally greatly abused in its development; but the original idea of it was honest and even patriotic. If they had not so spent the money, it would have been used by the British Minister against themselves, by enabling him to dispense with calling them together annually. I have said so much, Sir, to put in a right view the conduct of the Irish Parliament at a period about which there are so many calumnies; and I only remark, in addition, that I have never heard that any Englishman advocated the abrogation of the English Parliament because of its gross corruption under Sir Robert Walpole and some of his predecessors and successors. It is a bad argument in logic to reason from the abuse against the use; and it is reasoning ad absurdum to say that because we once had a corrupt Parliament, we always should have one of that description. I leave, therefore, the defence of the Irish Parliament but with these two remarks more—that in 1768 it voluntarily limited its own existence to eight years; giving up the privilege of sitting during the lifetime of the reigning monarch; and secondly, that very Irish Parliament, which it is the fashion so much to revile, repelled foreign invasion from the Irish shores, and crushed domestic rebellion, while at the same time assisting England in her foreign wars by large subsidies, which ran the Irish debt from 2,250,000l. in 1792, up to 28,500,000l. in 1800, or rather more than 1,200l. per cent. The second point of objection yet remaining to be answered by me, with regard to the restoration of an Irish Parliament, I take to be this, viz., the chances of disagreement between the respective Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland. On this I shall first quote the opinion of one, who, in Ireland at least, is yet held to be an authority on constitutional points. Mr. Foster, Speaker of the Irish Parliament, thus dealt with this objection when it was urged as a reason for the Union:— Theory, and theory alone, says, that the separate Parliaments may disagree. But there is no one argument you can apply as showing a consequent necessity of consolidating them, that will not apply much stronger for the consolidation of the two Houses in each; and the same arguments will all further apply, with equal strength, to consolidate the two Houses with the King, for fear of the national concerns being impeded by disagreement. Thus your arguments will end in the absurdity, that you must consolidate the three estates of each kingdom into one, for fear of a difference of opinion between them, arising from the exercise of their free judgments; that you must abandon the glorious constitution of a mixed Government which you now enjoy, and adopt that of a single monarch, or single power, wherever it may rest, either in a monarch, an oligarchy, or a republic. But practice, which is a more steady guide than theory, tells you the reverse. In points of peace and war, the Irish Parliament has never, even during centuries, differed in opinion with the British; though its power to do so has ever been as unlimited, and equally free, before as since the constitution of 1782. No! interest is a sure guide to nations; and it never was, nor ever can be, the interest of the smaller number to differ from the larger—of the weaker to differ from the more powerful, on such a matter; and it is no rash prediction to say, that good sense, and even necessity, must soon reconcile the differing body, if unfortunately such an instance should occur. But if we look into the principles of the British constitution, we shall find there abundant reason not only to reject arguments of such a theory as would consolidate the Legislatures, but even not to adopt such measures were it practicable. That constitution was not the work of one man, or of one age: it has gradually softened down in the course of centuries into that perfection we now have—more by the collision of circumstances, than by the efforts of human wisdom or foresight. That collision has imperceptibly formed a balance in its constituent parts, which, by the power of mutual checks, keeps each within its bounds, and preserves the whole in its true perfection. That balancing check is the true principle to which it owes its preservation—destroy it, and the whole is gone! Is it wrong, then, to look for similar good effects from the same balancing principle in the connexion between the Legislatures of the two islands, as in the connexion between the component parts of each Legislature? As to the Regency difference, although I maintain that the Irish Parliament took a more constitutional view of that question than the English, inasmuch as the natural heir to the Throne, in ease of physical death, was the fittest person to occupy it in the case of the moral death of George the Third's insanity; yet this Bill, which I ask leave to introduce to-night, contains a distinct clause for leaving the appointment of Regent with the English Parliament. However, that is a matter that could be best discussed and arranged in Committee. The most important questions may be shortly stated, as those of peace and war, which involve the question of the financial contributions of Ireland in either case; also arrangements as to matters of trade, foreign and domestic. The spread of the principles of free trade will, I believe, greatly help to solve all difficulties on the latter score. We are not desirous, no more than you are yourselves, to retrograde in civilisation; and I say confidently that I do believe that matters of trade would therefore be found the very easiest of arrangement. With regard to war, the prerogative of the Sovereign should remain untouched, and to the Sovereign alone would remain the power and the right of declaring or concluding war. The Irish Parliament should not, indeed, be deprived of its constitutional and inalienable right to limit the annual supplies or cause a rising; but even if it pushed its rights so far as to refuse the Minister a contribution towards the active expenses of a war, it should be held bound to the entire defence of Ireland, and the absolute and entire cessation of all relations with the enemy of England so long as the war lasted. These are matters which should be adjusted by international treaty, just as was done—in form at least—at the period of the Union. As to the proportion in which Ireland should contribute towards imperial expenses, whether in war or peace, the international treaty that I contemplate, would, as in the case of the Treaty of Union, arrange that matter, providing periods of revision of the arrangement, in the same way as was also done in the case of the Treaty of Union. Ireland, rejoiced at the restoration of her own Parliament, would be found no niggard in her money engagements and deal- ings with you; and thus you would speedily share with her the full benefit of her restored prosperity. There is no such solecism in the counsels of Divine Providence, as that the legitimate prosperity of one country can be of injury to another. The wealth and prosperity of Ireland would eminently benefit you. It would do so directly by the economy that could be practised in the government of that country, once you had by kindness and justice won over the people of Ireland to the support of your Government there. And there would also be the immediate benefit of an increase of Irish revenue—an increase steadily and certainly progressive, according as by the increase of their means, more and more of her population became consumers of taxed articles. I don't think I exaggerate when I say, that the first year of Repeal would not pass over our heads before you would experience these benefits to the amount of at least a million of money; and that before seven years were gone by, that amount would be tenfold increased. As to manufactures, Ireland should, for a considerable period, supply herself from England, and, in some branches of manufacture she should do so permanently. And her restored prosperity at home would check at once, and before long entirely put an end, to that increasing deluge of pauper immigration from Ireland, which is so grievously injuring the prosperity of your manufacturing towns, and so enormously aggravating your poor-rates. This is a point particularly worth your attention; for, depend upon it, that, grievous as you find the influx of Irish paupers at present, you will find it ten times worse ere long, if Ireland continue to decline as she is doing under the Union. Not all the police regulations, the quarantines, the deportation systems you can devise, will check it. You may as well hope to keep the tide from rushing up your river. Nothing can check it but that better state of things in Ireland, which must immediately result from the stoppage of the wasting money drains from Ireland. I tell you, then, that the choice before you this night is, the continuance of the Union, with the continuance and constant aggravation of most bitter discontents — hostility that bides its time; poverty, expense, and loss to the empire, and an ever increasing deluge of Irish pauperism into your cities and towns—or else the Repeal of that Union, with an immediate reconcilement between the two nations—a feeling of mutual friend- ship and mutual necessity, entire security against domestic treason, and foreign invasion, increasing and abounding resources newly opened for the empire, relief to your poor-rates, comfort to your artisans, and prosperity to your manufactures. Do not deceive yourselves. Bad as is the present condition of affairs in Ireland, it will be far worse ere long. You have made one tolerably successful collection of poor-rates. Your next may not be so good. You will find ratepayers broken down into ratereceivers—bankrupt traders, and a ruined gentry. And in the coming shock of nations, you, persevering in the unjust, injurious, and therefore most unwise, denial of her Parliament to Ireland, will have your foreign efforts crippled and restrained by the large army that you must keep at home to restrain the madness and despair of the destitute and starving Irish people. Be just, be wise, be generous in time. Let it not be said that when every other aggrieved people in Europe are feeling the benefits of the great movement for freedom that is now being made all over Europe, Ireland alone is doomed to remain in misery and degradation. Misery you cannot deny that she is in, and degradation it most certainly is to have her affairs managed for her, or rather neglected and mismanaged by the Parliament of another country. We never will be—we never can be—content that this should endure. We know and we acknowledge no inferiority to you, of any species or description, save the inferiority of wealth and strength, occasioned by your injustice. We are not born with any brand of Cain upon our brows to mark that we shall be the serfs of any other nation on the face of the globe. Our Ireland is as dear to us as your England is to you; and as you would rather die than give up or abandon the least one of your country's natural and inalienable rights, so are we determined to the last to struggle for the restoration to our country of the greatest and highest right of all, that of legislating for herself. On this we can make no abatement—on this we can come to no compromise. You but protract the struggle, if concession be not complete. You declare against the best interests of the empire if you refuse the concession. You establish that empire for ever on the immoveable basis of conciliated affections and united hearts of the people of the two countries, then really united, if you concede while concession can have grace. You rejoice over the recovered liberty of foreign nations—you deliberately contem- plate the time when your own colonies will have outgrown dependency, and when it will be for the interest of the mother country to give them more extensive powers of self-government than have hitherto been entrusted to them. Act in the same spirit with Ireland. The liberty you have yet given to her is the liberty to complain, to remonstrate, and to starve. Give her now the liberty to redress the dangerous evils of her social and political condition, to take on herself the charge and support of her own people, and to be a powerful member of the empire, instead of a difficulty, a weakness, and a danger. For the seven centuries that you have governed her, she has been to you a burden and a reproach, because of your injustices and your tyrannies. At this period of the advance of civilisation it is due to your own character that there ahould be a change; and that a firm and lasting peace, founded upon justice and equality, and an enduring and most beneficent mutual alliance should be established between us. This you can effect by giving us our own Parliament, our great, our inalienable, our indestructible right. Do this, then, generously; do it at once, and so shall you secure that, whatever the changes in Europe—whatever may happen to other countries, these two friendly sister nations, united under one Crown, and one firm, fast, and enduring allegiance to the Throne, shall go on steadily and uninterruptedly in peace, in order, and in certainty, to our common prosperity, and we shall at last give truth and meaning to the quotation with which, at the Union, our degradation was mocked:— ——Paribus se legibus ambæ Invictæ gentes æterna in fœdera mittant.

SIR W. SOMERVILLE rose with considerable regret to oppose the Motion of his hon. Friend, for it was always a matter of regret to him when he found himself compelled to oppose any Motion which he felt convinced had engaged largely the sympathies of the Irish people. This was not a time to conceal the truth, and he admitted that he himself was a living instance of the feeling to which he had referred; and when he made that avowal, it was also a matter of personal pride to himself to say that, had it not been for the personal regard and affection which an Irish constituency entertained towards him, he should not now have been a Member of that House. He made this avowal candidly, because he believed that neither at present nor at any time was anything to be gained by concealing the honest truth. However, in opposing the introduction of the Bill of his hon. Friend, he had the consolation to think that he was only pursuing a course which be had ever pursued. He had always opposed any Motion for the repeal of the legislative Union between the two countries, because ho had always considered that the repeal of that Union would be detrimental to Irish interests and Irish interests principally. It was not his intention to discuss the long array of figures which his hon. Friend had produced before the House, nor should he advert to the method by which the legislative Union was carried. He really thought that the time had gone for discussing that point. The people of Ireland, if they were happy and contented —if their condition were such as he should wish it to be—would never throw away a moment's thought on the way in which the Union was carried; but it was a fallacy to hold that the legislative Union had deprived the Irish people of that prosperity which, it was asserted, they enjoyed before the Union. His hon. Friend had described the condition of Ireland before the Union as one of contentment, and prosperity as regarded commerce and trade, and had said that the artisans were in employment, and, in short, that Ireland was a picture of prosperity. He thought that a greater fallacy than that had never been given utterance to in that House. Great as at the present time was the state of poverty and destitution in Ireland, he believed that before the Union it was as great, if not greater, than it was, he would not say at the existing moment, because the country was now suffering under a great calamity, the result of the visitation of Providence; but at any other time since the legislative Union. The right hon. Gentleman here referred to a publication entitled Facts for the Repealers, with the view of showing the condition of the artisans and labourers of Ireland between 1780 and 1800, when the Union was enacted; by which it appeared that during that period various petitions were presented to the Irish Parliament from Cork, Wexford, Wicklow, Dublin, and different other parts of Ireland, setting forth the distress of the manufacturers and artisans, and of the persons engaged in the woollen, silk, and linen trades. In those petitions he found a statement of distress such as was not to be found to have existed in an increased degree at any time since the period of the Union. With reference to the condition of the poor, too, he thought that if there was any matter in which the independent Parliament of Ireland was to blame, it was in that of the utter and total neglect of the Irish poor, from which the country was now suffering, and was likely, he feared, to suffer many years. He held that the prosperity of a country ought to be based on the comfort of the poor; but it was only within the last few years that this truth began to be sufficiently impressed upon the minds of Members of that House; and it was not until the last year that any efficient legislative measures were adopted. He opposed the repeal of the legislative Union because he believed that repeal would be politically and socially detrimental to the interests of Ireland. His notion of a repeal of the Union was directly opposite to that entertained by his hon. Friend. The hon. Gentleman had said that the union of the two countries had reduced Ireland to the state of a province. His (Sir W. Somerville's) notion was, that if the Union were repealed, he would at once, as an Irishman, become a provincialist. His hon. Friend had said that every Irishman who came into that House was a slave—a serf. The hon. Gentleman put himself forward as the representative of the Irish people; he talked of "we, the Irish," as if no other hon. Members of that House had the feelings, the affections, or the pride of Irishmen. He (Sir W. Somerville) could only say that he felt himself no serf in that House; he felt himself no slave. He was an humble individual, but he felt himself as independent a Member of that House as any English Gentleman; and his notion was that a repeal of the legislative Union would transfer him, from being a Member of that Imperial Legislature, into a Member of the Irish Provincial Parliament. The hon. Gentleman had said that an Irish Parliament would not be an independent Parliament and in that sentiment he (Sir W. Somerville) entirely concurred. It would not be an independent Parliament. Was the Irish Parliament before the Union an independent Parliament? No; the mode in which the machine was then set to work, was by the most gross and boundless corruption. If this was to continue to be the case, the result would be that their provincialism would become intolerable. The hon. Gentleman opposite, and those by whom he was supported, if they obtained an independent legislature, would be compelled either to take steps to reunite themselves to the English Parliament again, or they would be forced, in justice to themselves, and in order to fulfil their own prophecies, to agitate for complete independence. They would then be obliged to bring forward the same arguments they were now using for the repeal of the Union in favour of a complete separation between the two countries; a fresh career of agitation would have to be commenced, the minds of the people would be excited afresh, disappointment would but envenom their feelings, and by the consequent turmoil and agitation the prosperity of Ireland would be indefinitely postponed. These were some of his (Sir W. Somerville's) principal objections to the repeal of the Union; and it was unnecessary to enlarge upon these matters, because they were the salient points upon which the whole question turned. He believed, as he had said before, that by the repeal of the Union they would degrade Ireland from imperialism to provincialism; that the supporters of repeal would be disappointed in the effect of their own measure; and that they would be obliged to commence their agitation de novo. But he entertained still stronger objections to repeal on social grounds. Even supposing such a measure to be desirable, was this, he asked, a moment when it would be possible to carry it into effect? Was this the time, when Ireland was reeling under the effects of two years of famine, that she could come forward and declare that she was able to stand alone? when she could take upon herself all the functions of Government; when she could pay an Army, a Navy, a police force; when she could maintain her poor, and when she could meet those other burdens, in bearing which she was now assisted by this country? Great fault had been found with the Government, both for what they had done and what they had left undone, during the last year; but, he would ask, could the Irish Parliament have done half as much as the English Parliament had done, under similar circumstances? Had the Irish Parliament ever done half as much in times of famine and distress? Why, what did the Irish Parliament do during the famine of 1748, when an enormous number of people perished? They did nothing more than this —they passed an Act for the more speedy recovery of [...]. He asked again, then, was it at such a moment of distress as the present that hon. Gentlemen opposite would propose to bring about so important a change? He believed that, if they were successful, they would only aggravate the miseries of Ireland; they would find themselves unable to support their own poor; and they would be unable to meet those expenses which were necessary for carrying on the legitimate functions of Government. He (Sir W. Somerville) was far from denying the present wretched social condition of Ireland; but he considered that that condition was mainly attributable to the two successive years of famine she had just encountered. He was ready to maintain that, until that dreadful famine occurred, Ireland had been making rapid and progressive strides in prosperity. He defied any man who had not visited Ireland for the last ten years to make a tour of that country now without being struck by the marked change for the better which had taken place. Agriculture had improved; the farmers were more comfortable; and if any class was to be excepted from the general prosperity it was the unfortunate labouring class, who appeared at all times, and under all circumstances, to have been neglected. The condition of that unfortunate class had always created the difficulty of the Government of Ireland, and formed the difficulty of the Government now. Great blame had been cast upon the Government for their supineness in bringing forward remedial measures for Ireland. Now, though he did not undervalue the importance of any political reforms that might be just and necessary, yet he thought, considering the destitution which had prevailed in Ireland during the past year, that the consideration of such subjects might be safely laid aside for the present. The Bill which had been introduced by the Government for amending the law of landlord and tenant had given rise to much animadversion; and the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. S. Crawford) had said that that measure had excited great discontent in the north of Ireland, and especially among the tenant-farmers of Ulster. He (Sir W. Somerville) was the last man in that House to propose an interference with the tenant-right of the people of Ulster; he admired their independence, and he would he sorry to do anything that might be prejudicial to their interests; but he thought it would not be difficult in any measure which might receive the sanction of the House to devise some plan for securing the privileges of that invaluable body of men. He believed, however, that any one who attempted to legalise the tenant-right of Ulster would not be conferring a benefit on the tenant-farmers of that district; and he hoped it would not be thought that in anything he had done, he had had the slightest intention to undermine that right, or to interfere with the benefits it had conferred on that portion of the country. He was anxious to make this explanation, because he had seen with deep pain that a misapprehension of his views on this subject prevailed in Ulster; and he hoped it would be distinctly understood that it was not his wish or intention to interfere with the invaluable right which existed in that district of Ireland. It had been said that the supposed attempt to interfere with the right of the Ulster tenant-farmers had indisposed them to the connexion between this country and Ireland. He (Sir W. Somerville) did not believe a word of that statement. Such a statement might have been made as a bait to the people of Ulster to oppose the Union; but he (Sir W. Somerville) believed it would be found impossible to attempt to disturb the Union on any such fallacious pretext. Among the grievances of which the Irish people justly complained was that of absenteeism. He did not deny the evils of that system; but it was not unnatural that men should go where they were happy, comfortable, and safe. He did not wish to say anything of an irritating character; but he might state that he had had an opportunity of testing practically the sincerity of his hon. Friend (Mr. M. O'Connell) on this absentee question. He (Sir W. Somerville) had lately been engaged in a very severe contest for the borough he had the honour to represent (Drogheda); and on that occasion the interest of the hon. Gentleman, and of the association which he represented, was brought into the field against him. The hon. Member for Tralee personally went down to Drogheda to assist in opposing him. Now, what did the House think was a chief recommendation of the Gentleman who was his (Sir W. Somerville's) opponent on that occasion? Why, simply that he was an absentee. In his address to the people of Drogheda that Gentleman used these words:— My residence in London would enable me to be of constant use to my constituents. When so much was said of absenteesim, he thought it rather hard that the Gentleman who opposed him in the interest of those who denounced absentees should take his stand on such ground. He thought that was not a very practical proof of the way in which absenteeism was discouraged by the body of which his hon. Friend was a member. The situation of the country was calculated to excite much uneasiness in reference to the subject of Repeal. There was no people, he believed, for whom republican institutions would be so ill suited. But he had every hope the present storm would blow over. His belief was, that there was in Ireland more loyalty, more sound policy, more determination to uphold the law, the constitution, and the connexion between the two countries, than was generally supposed by many Gentlemen in that House. He had every hope that the peace of the country would be preserved. The hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. O'Brien) had threatened that they would confiscate his property. The hon. Gentleman said that the property of every person who did not join him (Mr. O'Brien) in his present career would be confiscated. Was he (Sir W. Somerville) not at liberty to hold opinions of his own as well as his hon. Friend? If he thought the separation of the two countries would reduce Ireland to a province, had he not a right to express that opinion? Was his property to be confiscated because he held that opinion? Was his hon. Friend serious in holding such language? Did he consider the mischief which might ensue, and the alarm such threats were raising in the public mind? The hon. Gentleman might confiscate his property in Ireland; but he (Sir W. Somerville) had this gratifying reflection, that he did not think the poor people who were dependent on him there would thank the hon. Gentleman in the least. He (Sir W. Somerville) had always been an advocate for the Irish people. He had always joined his fellow-countrymen in every effort to obtain freedom, to extend their franchises, and to place them on an equal footing with the people of this country. There was a time when to follow such a course involved considerable sacrifices. That day was gone. Public opinion had taken another course. He could not join in that agitation which had been set on foot; for as he had hitherto been so should he be now. He was prepared, as he had ever been, to assist in securing for his fellow-countrymen every further privilege which the people of this country enjoyed, and that to the fullest extent. Entertaining these views—no matter what he had to go through; no matter with what he might be threatened—he should act an honest and conscientious part, even if what was threatened should happen; and he hoped his hon. Friend would not be able to carry his threat into execution. He hoped—for such was his intention—that he had not used a single word to give pain. His feelings towards his countrymen should always be those of amity, and his endeavours to secure their interests should always be marked by the same devotion. He had not said one word of Imperial interests. He was anxious to take his stand purely on the interests of Ireland. He thought the repeal of the Union would be prejudicial to Ireland. Why should they forego all the advantages which they might enjoy under it? Having aided this country in the extension of the empire, in the acquisition of colonies, in raising the British empire to the prosperity which it now enjoyed, why should they now voluntarily come forward and close the door against all those advantages in which they could claim a share? To such a measure as a repeal of the Union he could not give his consent; and if it were a question of life and death to the two countries, he felt himself on that very account compelled to say "No!" to the Motion of his hon. Friend.

MAJOR BLACKALL could not support the Motion, which was indeed proposed at a most inauspicious moment. The proposition he had himself made secured all the advantages of a separate legislation, without incurring the dangers of separation from this country. That proposition was, that Parliament should meet a certain number of months in Dublin to dispose of Irish business. Hon. Gentlemen were obliged to conic here and expend their incomes; why should there not be some reciprocity? The expense of bringing over witnesses from Ireland for examination before Railway and Election Committees would be diminished were his suggestion adopted. As an instance of the want of attention in that House to Irish questions, he might state that on a late occasion, when a Motion was made for an inquiry of a very important kind connected with the well-being of the Irish people, not more than twenty English Members were present during the debate; while on the division, however, they did not fail to be present, and the Motion was defeated by a large majority. He did not expect to have a large amount of support on the present occasion; but be hoped that the seed he had sown would grow, and ultimately be pro- ductive of a beneficial result. He would move as an Amendment— That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying Her to convene the Imperial Parliament in future, for a certain number of months in each year, in Dublin, for the dispatch of Irish business.

MR. MAURICE O'CONNELL did not rise to address himself to the arguments of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, as every thing he had said could be urged with greater force in favour of the original Motion, than for the miserable succedaneum he had proposed. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland, while speaking of absenteeism, had referred to an address put forward by the Gentleman who opposed him at the last election in Drogheda; and if the right hon. Gentleman had read the whole of the address, instead of a part only, he would not have complained of it. He (Mr. M. O'Connell) introduced Mr. L. Murray, the gentleman who opposed the right hon. Secretary, to Drogheda, having been requested by the electors of that borough to assist them in getting a Repealer. They wished to have, if possible, a gentleman resident in Ireland, but a Repealer; and certainly in his address the candidate stated that he thought his residence in London would be beneficial to their commercial interests; but if the address had been read in its entierty by the right hon. Gentleman, it would have been seen that he came forward as a Repealer. It was on that ground he received the support of so many electors. The right hon. Baronet had only a majority of 3; and he believed that had a scrutiny been gone into he would not now be sitting for the borough of Drogheda. He understood the right hon. Baronet to say that it was only within these few years that attention had been paid in that House to the interests of Ireland. The same argument had been put forward in 1834, by a Gentleman who now had a seat in the other House of Parliament. The Irish Members were then not only promised that the House would pay more attention to the wants of Ireland, but they received a promise which was absolutely most equal to a legislative act, that every possible benefit should be conferred on that country. They had waited for fourteen years for the fulfilment of that promise; and he would ask whether there was an Irish or English representative in the House who would say that the promise had been kept? The right hon. Baronet said that one of his objections was that, if Repeal were granted, Ireland might turn Imperialism into provincialism. But what benefit had Ireland derived from living under Imperialism? What did lie or his countrymen care for a name? Our colonies were happy and prosperous with their own domestic legislatures; and why should not Ireland be so also? Then the right hon. Baronet objected to the time at which this Motion was brought forward; but surely the time to make concessions was when the people were suffering and had some grievances to be remedied. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of what was done last year for the relief of famine and distress in Ireland, for which he was grateful; but still he would say that it was nothing more than a partial restitution of what was taken from Ireland and spent in England; and if there had been an Irish Legislature in Ireland they would have so managed their resources that the famine would not have affected the country as it had done. If, instead of sending chymists to inquire into the causes of the potato disease, the peasantry of Ireland had been supplied with some potato seed, he was sure that the crop of last year would have been more than sufficient for the exigencies of the country. He begged the House to pause and consider deliberately before they rejected this Motion. The right hon. Baronet (Sir W. Somerville) had deprecated violence and outrage in Ireland. There was no man who deprecated any such proceedings more than he (Mr. M. O'Connell) did. He could say, without fear of contradiction, that no man in his humble sphere had exerted himself more than he had to prevent legitimate agitation breaking out into violent language or anything like anarchy. He prayed the House to consider what was the present condition of Ireland. From his own knowledge it was such as as to fill any one who valued the peace of that country with the utmost anxiety. The sentiment now pervading the minds of the people amounted to this—that they would make this their last appeal to the British Legislature; and if it should prove to be made in vain, they would then make a final appeal to Her Majesty; and should that also be equally without any beneficial result, then he begged to inform the House, not by way of threat, but as a solemn warning, that it was their intention to wait for the most favourable opportunity, when, by one united effort, they might successfully achieve the object of their most ar- dent wishes—a total separation from this country. He was not the advocate for any such course; on the contrary, he deprecated it; but he felt it to be his bounden duty to apprise the Government that such was the disposition of the people of Ireland on this important subject. The course which the Lord Lieutenant was now pursuing in that country, however much he might be lauded here, tended more and more every day to alienate the minds of all classes in Ireland from him; and his (Mr. M. O'Connell's) conviction was, that if Her Majesty's Government and the Legislature did not concede to and conciliate the Irish people, the consequences ultimately would be perilous to themselves, dangerous to Ireland, and probably perpetually detrimental to the interests of the empire at large. He conjured them, therefore, not lightly to reject this appeal, but at all events to entertain it and give to those who were anxious to preserve peace, law, and order in that country, some ground for hope that they would comply with the wishes and demands of the Irish people. The circumstances relating to the manufacturing of pikes, and the facts that had transpired which connected the chief commissioner of police with the parties implicated in that manufacture, had created a very great sensation in Ireland, and had excited strong feelings against the Government. Many persons who were formerly bitter opponents of Repeal had been converted to that cause by the apprehensions they entertained in consequence of what appeared to them to be a revival of the odious spy system on the part of the Government. He would advert to another point. There was at present a large military force concentrated in Dublin; and what, he asked, was the daily experience of the people of Dublin as to that force? Regiment after regiment marched into that city, and regiment after regiment marched out of it again to some distant part of the country, after staying there for the space of only a few days. The Government, no doubt, imagined that the people were not aware of the reason of these movements; but, whether rightly or not, he could not say, yet it certainly was rumoured, and indeed confidently reported, that the reason of these frequent changes was that the Government had found that the cause of Repeal was spreading amongst the ranks of the Army itself. ["Oh, oh!"] Of course, he expected those cries; but would the House permit him to relate to them a fact? He (Mr. M. O'Connell)left Dublin last night: in the course of yesterday a gentleman—a man in business in the city of Dublin—stated to him (Mr. M. O'Connell) the following occurrence, of which he (the narrator) was an eyewitness:—It should be known that the Linen-hall of Dublin —formerly the emporium of the chief trade of that city—was now occupied as a military barracks. The gentleman lived in the neighbourhood, and the windows of his house commanded a view of the barrack-yard. At the present moment two battalions were stationed there. On Sunday evening last (and the truth of this his informant, who witnessed the scene, was ready to support upon oath) the greater portion of those two battalions were engaged in battle amongst themselves in the barrack-yard. The conflicting parties were Repealers and Non-Repealers—and they made those words their battle-cry. The contest lasted until the commander of the troops himself came down and put an end to the fight. Upon the same night, in the open street, opposite what was Holmes's Hotel, upon the quay in Dublin, a battle of the same description was fought between soldiers, and some of the combatants were flung into the river. He (Mr. M. O'Connell) mentioned these things to warn the Government not to be too obstinate, or to run the risk of scenes which all must deprecate. He was no follower of Mr. Mitchell; nor did he ever advise the people to make pikes or to procure arms; his own agitation had always been temperate and within the bounds of the constitution; but he felt it right to warn the House of the consequences of persevering blindly, madly, in refusing to make concessions.

VISCOUNT MORPETH: Though I feel that anything which I have to offer upon this question can hardly call for any extended or elaborate speech, especially at this period of the night, yet the long period during which I filled the office in which I am so worthily succeeded by my right hon. Friend in connexion with the Government of Ireland—the strong interest which I have ever felt in all that concerns the destiny and the welfare of that country—and the claims upon my gratitude which all that there befell me must indisputably rivet—give me reason to hope that the House will bear with me for offering a few observations upon the present occasion. There is one consideration which, as it seems to me, ought to guide very much of our views and our course upon the present subject. I should deeply deplore the repeal of the legislative Union, on account of the consequences which I think it would entail upon Great Britain and upon the empire at large; and indeed, I would ask, who could view, as substituted for our present daily, hourly intercourse of persons and interchange of commodities between every port of the one country and every port of the other—an intercourse and interchange which every new discovery of the age—steamboats, railways, the electric telegraph—tends incalculably to multiply and reproduce—who could view without regret or apprehension, substituted for such an intercourse and interchange, the establishment of jealous regulations, perhaps of hostile tariffs, possibly of total prohibitions, possibly of defensive preparations, possibly of hostile aggressions, or, as was not obscurely hinted to us in the speech made last night by an hon. Member, an adverse republic upon either side of the channels which separate us from our two neighbours—an adverse republic both in France and in Ireland—or a republic in Ireland attracting by turns the sympathising counsels if not the armed assistance of the republics of France and of the United States? But, Sir, I proceed to say, that disastrous as such a separation of these sister countries might be to the unity, to the tranquillity, even to the safety of the glorious country to which we belong, yet (I speak in my heart's inmost conviction), whatever the consequences might be, if I could really believe that the repeal of the Union would be attended with benefit to Ireland itself—if I thought that it could abate in any material degree the amount of suffering and misery which does with fearful variety prevail within the borders of that country—if I thought it could give her any permanent security for rest, for tranquillity, and for contentment—whether I could be a party to snapping the bonds, and to decreeing the final separation, I will not take upon myself to say; but I feel that I could hardly stand up here and express my opinions, and give my vote for the forced maintenance of the Union. I do all this with a willing and a ready conscience, because I believe that the repeal of the legislative Union, while it would be disastrous to the united empire, would especially be grievous and burdensome and fatal to the best interests and permanent repose of Ireland. Sir, there are two dark pervading features of gloom, which the whole past history of Ireland, and I fear I may say with equal truth its present aspect, offer to our consideration—the sufferings of her poor, anti the dissensions of her inhabitants. With respect to the sufferings of the poor, I need not refer to authentic documents, to official reports, to statistical calculations, to prove that melancholy fact. Any one who has known Ireland, who has lived in it, who has seen it, even in its best neighbourhoods, and in its happiest periods, must be himself sufficiently aware of the fact. It has been dwelt upon by the hon. Gentleman (Mr. J. O'Connell) to-night, and he has made it one of the chief foundations of his argument for urging the necessity of the repeal of the Union. That distress, always great in degree, always wide in extent, has been tremendously increased by the dearth and famine which have prevailed for the last two years. I do not propose to enter into any discussion as to the manner in which that dearth and famine have been met. I do not attempt to raise the question whether the Exchequer of England and the charity of England could have done more. There are no bounds to charity, and no limits to self-denial; and possibly our national and individual virtues may not have sounded the depths of either. Least of all would I encourage the language of querulous complaint about our not meeting with an adequate expression of gratitude from the Irish people. We cannot expect people who are still miserable to be very forward in the expression of gratitude; and that is the very last result about which a person or a nation, conscious that they were only attempting to exert themselves for the benefit of their fellows or their species, would desire to be solicitous. Still the fact does remain, that from the Exchequer of England within the last two years some 10,000,000l. have been contributed directly to meet the suffering condition of the Irish people; and I ask, to what other quarter, to what other country, in similar circumstances, if they should ever again unhappily arise, would Ireland, when her own resources failed her, when her own reservoirs of supply were exhausted—where else would she look for the pitying ear or the helping hand? If she discard us, if she voluntarily choose and have power to enforce this separation, then if she establish herself as an alien to this country, as a spy at our side, as a sore in our very vitals, it could not, by the nature of things, be expected that she should find among us either the same disposition, or probably the same means, to come forward for her relief. Would she resort to France? We were told that an offer was made to supply her with 50,000 men. I believe the ambassadors who went over there would have found it very difficult to raise a levy of 50,000l. instead. Then the hon. Member for the county of Limerick boasted of the million of dollars promised from America; but the dollars only exist in promise as yet, and though these promises are very likely to be made during the halcyon hours of fortune, I doubt whether, if England and Ireland were permanently separated, Irishmen would find their new allies so ready to come forward with that tangible practicable assistance which the sister country has always liberally afforded them. At this moment—I believe it has not been mentioned in any of the organs of daily intelligence in Ireland—this country, against which it is endeavoured to raise up such unfounded jealousies, and such constant feelings of irritation—these churlish Saxons are actually feeding about 200,000 of the destitute children of Ireland. Does it not seem a little preposterous that at this very time such constant and persevering efforts are being made to induce the parents of these children to join in a chorus of hate against the very land which was supporting their offspring? I know that the distress to which I am referring as a strong reason why Ireland should not cast off the connexion of a rich and I will add a generous country, is always attempted to be traced, by the hon. Member for Limerick and others, to the operation of the legislative Union; but I think that those persons have entirely failed to show how the separation of a poor country from a richer can add to the substantial wealth of the former. Allusion has been made to the entire decay of Irish manufactures as having produced a ruinous competition for land; but I doubt how far the repeal of the Union —how far the separation of the two countries would encourage the introduction of capital into Ireland, which I take to be the necessary preliminary to the establishment of manufactures. Another of the gloomy features in the condition of Ireland to which I have alluded, is exhibited in the dissensions of different races, creeds, and parties. It is undoubtedly true that the Imperial Government—the representatives of the English Crown—may at some periods have seemed to side with one or other of the contending parties—may occasionally have exhibited an orange or a green bias—and even have momentarily appeared to aggravate opposing tendencies; but I am firmly convinced that, on the whole, and in the long run, the Imperial Administration has had the effect of neutralising and softening animosities, and of acting as a barrier against which opposing currents have spent their forces and tried in vain to overleap the bounds and overflow the land; and I believe that if we were to take away that which letteth—to use a biblical word—the adverse tides would but gather—would soon increase in violence, and become more turbulent and unrestrained than they have ever been before. The hon. Member for Limerick talked to us last night of the present circumstances of Sicily; but the state of society to which he alluded in Ireland does not exist in Sicily. The state of society in that country is very homogeneous; there is scarcely any difference in races, and certainly no diversity of creeds, and, therefore, I doubt whether the attempted analogy between Great Britain and Naples can be fairly sustained. But it is not only among opposing creeds and diverging parties that I think the ameliorating influence of the British Government has been found, in times past, eminently beneficial. That which distinguishes the present movement—the cotemporary convulsion of the whole political world —from similar occurrences at former periods, is that it relates more to social than political questions—that it is more connected with internal laws than external relations of communities and States. If I may make the observation without presumption, I think that it is much more a question of the organisation of labour, and the connexion of capital and wages, which at present embarrasses the position and complicates the prospects of Prussia and France, than any armed movement of Austria and Russia. I will not take upon myself to be the judge of the character or conduct of Irish landlords. I know that they have inherited great difficulties, and have to cope with many disadvantages; and for that reason, probably, are to be found amongst them some of the brightest and some of the worst specimens of their class. Still, if we look at the present condition of Ireland —if we consider the doctrines disseminated and the spirit aroused there—if we bear in mind the announcement made last night by the hon. Member for Limerick, that in the coming struggle property will be en- tirely powerless—I think that Irish landlords have reason to be convinced that in the event of the moderating and restraining influence of the Imperial Administration and English Government being swept away, an impulse would be given to the wildest schemes and most subversive doctrines, and that property itself would run the risk of being left a hopeless wreck amongst the heaving billows which surround it. I am far from wishing it to be construed that I assume the present state of Ireland with respect to its laws—with respect to its social regulations—with respect to its economical condition, to be anything like what it should be, or what I wish it to be. During the whole period which I have been allowed to pass in public life, from the first words I uttered in this House on seconding a Motion for the repeal of Roman Catholic disabilities—through the whole period of my tenure of office in Ireland, I have never shown myself reluctant to innovate on what I found in existence, or to reform established institutions. I was a party to alterations in the laws respecting the Church, and respecting municipal corporations — in the laws respecting the poor—in the laws respecting grand juries; and, in common with my noble relative, the Member for Lynn, I was the originator of a proposition for putting the large lines of railway in Ireland under Government superintendence. But, far from being satisfied with my own handywork—far from being content with what Government has been able to do, with respect to almost every one of these subjects—I have left an express declaration on record that the alterations which have been already effected must be looked upon as imperfect and incomplete; and consequently I, for one—and I can speak in the name of my Colleagues—shall always be ready to approach all or any one of these questions with an honest desire to do whatever is possible, consistently with justice and the best interests of Ireland. There are other questions which perhaps more immediately affect the social condition and economy of the country, amongst which may be numbered the relations of landlords and tenants, the sale of encumbered estates, and a practical alteration of the poor-law. When the hon. Member complains of the military and police being employed in the collection of rates, he should bear in mind, that unless the collection of rates be enforced, there will exist no means of saving the people from starvation. I hope that in time we shall succeed in arriving at a satisfactory solution of the questions relating to Ireland which at present occupy the attention of Parliament and the Government. I shall leave my noble Friend at the head of the Government—who no doubt will address the House before this debate finally concludes—to state the views and intentions which he entertains respecting the future course of legislation for Ireland. I only know that all my noble Friend can do he is prepared and ready to do. Of all the subjects which at present press on the attention, and indeed, I may say, entirely engross the time of the Government and Parliament, I know that there are none the consideration of which my noble Friend would less willingly postpone than those which relate to the welfare of Ireland. I was much struck the other day by an observation in a foreign newspaper, which was elicted by the visit of the hon. Member for Limerick and his co-ambassadors in Paris. The paper I allude to is the Journal des Debats, which stated with good reason that what Ireland wanted was not repeal nor revolution, but regeneration. Echoing and adopting that sentiment, it is far from my intention to pass a wholesale denunciation on the character or conduct of the Irish people. They have many attractive and many brilliant qualities; and I remember incurring a great deal of personal unpopularity during one of my canvasses in Yorkshire, because I had ventured to say what I am willing to repeat, because I believe it to be true, that I found among the Irish people less of habits of theft among the men, and a greater prevalence of chastity in the women, especially of the labouring classes, than is to be met with in England. If my countrymen and countrywomen dispute that allegation, I can only say let them prove me to be in the wrong. But when so many harsh things have been so constantly said, and I fear very often justly said against the Irish, I will not refrain from openly saying what I think, with equal justice, may be said in their favour. I also think that they show some superiority in their kindness towards each other, and towards the suffering and destitute, as well as signal patience and resignation under intense privations. I have been very much struck with the accounts which I have received from America of the really munificent contributions which the Irish emigrants only recently arrived there are constantly sending over to the poor relatives that they have left in their old homes. But, while I pay what I think is but a just tribute to the real merits and virtues of the Irish people, I do not shut my eyes to their failings; and, without expatiating on many of these, which may not occur naturally at the time of our present discussion, I certainly think that to attain that regeneration which the French journalist thinks is so necessary for them, they must try to acquire more of the Saxon qualities of activity and industry. But there is nothing in their character and habits to make us despond as to the results, no more than when we see the wide tracts of mountain and bog which cover such large portions of the surface of the country, need we doubt that if a proper amount of capital and skill and industry were applied to their cultivation, these very unproductive and desolate wastes might become the sites of bounteous harvests and of thriving homesteads. So no more need we doubt that if kindly influences and healthy sympathies and sound education are applied to the cultivation of the moral waste, and of the passion-blighted spots which disfigure a portion of the fair moral creation, there would be also corresponding crops of promise, and fruits of abundance, to bless this most benignant husbandry. I remember having been told in America that the person who made the most successful settler was the Irishman planted between a Scotchman and a Yankee, for he found his native ardour and impetuosity on the one hand sobered into caution by the prudence of the Scotchman, while, on the other hand, he was incited into activity by the go-a-headedness of the American. Sir, l will not now seek longer to occupy your time farther than to observe that I feel sure that what the Members of the Government, what the Members of the Parliament, what all the inhabitants of the United Kingdom most desire, is to see their Irish brethren, one and all, partakers of the same rights and associates in the same glories as themselves. And let me ask you to what field of our national credit, and fame, and glory can we look, without seeing that those same Irish brethren have been at all times successful and honoured, and even more than proportionate contributors? I need not mention the masters of eloquence within the memories of many among us in this House who have been furnished by Ireland. The names of Burke, and Sheridan, and Canning, and Grattan, and Plunkett, and O'Connell, will occur to all. And we still retain what we derived from thence, the laurel of Wellington, and the lyre of Moore? Does not every field of discovery—does not every exploit of science and every achievement of art—show us the identity of our pursuits, and forbid the scheme of our separation? I will only further say, in allusion to—I will not call it the threat—which fell from the hon. Member for the county of Limerick (Mr. Smith O'Brien) last night, that if we did embark in a contest with Ireland, and if we did deny them their demands, the result would be a successful revolution on their side—that they would be triumphant in the struggle. Now, among all the convulsions of States, among all the shocks of dynasties that are going on around us, far be it from me to calculate on what side success might incline. The arbitration of success must belong to Him who sits in the circle of the heavens, and who regulates all on earth as He chooses; but what I say is, that though the line of success may not be clear, the line of duty is clear. And when I know that there are in Ireland men sincerely attached to the connexion with this country —sincerely loyal to the Crown, and sincerely desirous to share the destinies and the greatness of England, and to mix their lot, for weal and for woe, with us—when I know that these men are looking up for countenance, and guidance, and protection to this House—and when I feel persuaded that their cause is the cause of truth and of right, and that it is the cause which I believe to be essential, not only to the permanent greatness of England, but to the real happiness of Ireland—these men, these firm adherents of the British Government and Crown, I feel we cannot and we will not abandon.

Debate adjourned.

House adjourned at a quarter to One o'clock.