CENTRAL ITALIAN STATES.—IRISH BUSINESS.—OBSERVATIONS. (Hansard, 30 March 1860)

§ MR. HENNESSY

said, that to put himself in order he should move that the House at its rising do adjourn to Monday next. He did so because he wished to make a statement to the House as well as to ask a question. The question related to the annexation of the States of Central Italy to Sardinia; and he begged to call the attention of the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs to a despatch which appeared amongst the official correspondence on Italian Affairs, and which he had received from Earl Cowley, dated the 5th of February. In that despatch Lord Cowley gave an account of a conversation which he had had with M. Thouvenel, the Foreign Minister of France, in which the latter stated that, "if Her Majesty's Government were ready to admit that the annexation of the Central States of Italy to Sardinia should depend on the consent of the Great Powers, the Emperor would subscribe to the same rule as regards Savoy and refrain from annexing that country, unless he had obtained the consent of the Great Powers. The principle in fact was the same in both cases." To this Lord Cowley replied, with the sanction and approval of Her Majesty's Government, that there was a distinction between the two cases, and that the British Government could not agree to the proposed Congress. It will thus be seen that M. Thouvenel threw upon the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs the onus of the annexation of Savoy and Nice to France. With that brief explanation he wished to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Government had advised Her Majesty to recognize the annexation of Bologna, Tuscany, Modena, and Parma, to the kingdom of Sardinia; and if so, whether he was prepared to state the reasons which had induced the Government to tender such advice to Her Majesty? He should now pass to another subject. Those who were familiar with the records of the House must know that at the close of each 1618 Session their proceedings became embarrassed and complicated, chiefly by the accumulation of Irish business. The late Government had adopted the prudent course of taking a large quantity of the Irish business early in the Session, and the Irish Members very naturally expected that the Chief Secretary for Ireland would follow that example; but so far from doing so, the right hon. Gentleman opposite might be said to have treated the Irish business with unexampled contempt. Until half-past twelve of the previous night, the Chief Secretary for Ireland had laid before the House only one Bill of any importance relative to Ireland, and that (the Reform Bill) was a purely political measure. There were various social matters in which the people of Ireland took an interest, such as the Poor Laws, Medical Charities, Re-formatory Schools, Agricultural Improvements, and sanitary arrangements; but the right hon. Gentleman had entirely neglected the social wants of the country. As a set-off for neglecting the social interests of the people the Chief Secretary brought in a Reform Bill. It might be interesting to the House to know, that only four petitions were, presented in favour of the Irish Reform Bill. The first was presented by the right hon. Gentleman himself, and was signed by one person only. The second, also presented by the right hon. Gentleman, was likewise signed by one person only and that one person an Irish Peer. [Cries of "Name, name."] The name of the solitary petitioner was Lord Monck. The third petition was from the students of the Queen's University, signed by 185 of those gentlemen, praying for the representation of that institution in Parliament; and the fourth petition—the strangest fact of all—was the first petition presented over again, no doubt through mistake, by the hon. Member for Kildare. Great agitation prevailed in Ireland on the subject of education, the poor laws, and other non-political matters, but no attempt to legislate was made. Indeed, the subject of education had been very much complicated by the conduct of the Attorney General for Ireland. It was hardly twelve months since that right hon. Gentleman appeared before the altar of a Catholic chapel in Cork, and in the presence of four bishops in their robes, solemnly denounced the system of mixed education. The Government, on the other hand, were pledged to the principle of mixed education, and the people of Ire- 1619 land did not know what to think, seeing the discrepancy between the sentiments of the Government and of their Attorney General. But there was no excuse whatever for the neglect of the poor-law question. The present Poor Law system was destroying the people of Ireland. He (Mr. Hennessy) would urgently urge the Government not to continue the powers of the Commission, but to establish in Ireland the English system of extensive out-door relief. It was not long since the extraordinary scandal was exhibited of the Irish Poor Law Board being brought into the Court of Queen's Bench and prosecuted by a Catholic chaplain, when the Judges of that court decided in favour of the plaintiff, and against the Government. In spite of that decision the Government had taken no steps to remedy the evil complained of by the chaplain. They were all familiar with the distressing and disgraceful stories about the removal of Irish poor from England. A debate took place on that subject a few nights ago, in which the Attorney General took no part; nor when he (Mr. Hennessy) made a Motion on the subject of the Bailey borough Union was either the Attorney General or the Chief Secretary for Ireland present. A very wholesome lesson had been read to the Government last night on the subject of Irish tenant right. The Chief Secretary's measure was condemned on all hands. If the right hon. Gentleman had looked at what had been done by his predecessors in 1852, he might have produced a much more satisfactory Bill. There were other matters which the Chief Secretary for Ireland had neglected, and he (Mr. Hennessy) wished to give him a fair opportunity of informing the House what steps he intended to take. The English Registrar General complained for instance that the vital statistics of the British islands were in a worse position than those of any other country, simply because of the neglect of the statistics of diseases and mortality in Ireland. In conclusion he was bound to bear testimony to the courtesy and attention of the right hon. Gentleman; but he was also compelled to add that those qualities could not make amends for his inevitable ignorance of Ireland and the Irish people. The right hon. Gentleman was a distinguished Member of that House; but when he went to Dublin he was surrounded by a clique of place-hunters who shut him out from the Irish people, and effectually prevented him from 1620 learning anything of their real habits, temperament, or wants. The right hon. Gentleman was as little able to cope with the diplomacy of that clique as the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary was to encounter the diplomacy of Vienna or of Paris. He begged to move that the House at its rising do adjourn to Monday next.