Sitting of 23 March 1846

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS. — 1°. Indemnity; Customs Duties.
PETITIONS PRESENTED. By Mr. Sharman Crawford, from Inhabitants of the Borough of Rochdale, for the Total
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and Immediate Repeal of the Corn Laws.—By Mr. Du Pre and Mr. Rashleigh, from an immense number of places in Bucks and Cornwall, against the proposed Government Measure respecting Customs and Corn Importation.—By Sir Robert Peel, from Bankers, Merchants, and Manufacturers, of Manchester and Liverpool, for a Speedy Adjustment of the proposed Measure respecting Customs and Corn Importation.—From Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council of the Royal Burgh of Forres, for Repeal of Inventory Duty—By Mr. James Morrison, from Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council of the Burgh of Inverness, in favour of Burghs (Scotland) Bill.—By Admiral Dundas, from Builders and Householders of the Town and Parish of Woolwich, for Repeal or Alteration of the Metropolitan Buildings Act.—By Mr. James Morrison, from Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council of the Royal Burgh of Nairne, for Alteration of Prisons (Scotland) Act.

AMALGAMATION OF RAILWAYS.
MR. J. W. PATTENmoved, pursuant to notice—
"That a Select Committee be appointed to consider how far, and under what regulations, the further Amalgamation of Railways would be consistent with a due regard to the commercial and general interests of the Country."
In making this Motion, he was influenced by no undue jealousy of railway promoters; on the contrary, he believed that railway companies generally, so far from deserving the jealousy or censure of that House for any of their arrangements, were a most liberal body of men, and were entitled to the greatest praise for the anxiety they had shown to meet the wishes of the public. It was not his object either to disparage the amalgamation of railways in general, believing that, under proper restrictions and regulations, those amalgamations might be rendered not only not injurious, but, in some instances, more beneficial to the promoters, and at the same time conducive to the general interests of the public. But the extent to which it was now proposed to carry railway amalgamations was such that, in his opinion, and in the opinion of the Members forming the Committee on which he had acted, it was highly desirable the House should be in possession of more accurate information and more enlightened opinion as to the result of these amalgamations, before it proceeded finally and irrevocably to commit itself to the step now proposed. There were now before the House no less than thirty-three Amalgamation Bills, comprising a great proportion of the railway communication of this country; and if these lines and their ramifications were carefully looked into, it would be found that they extended almost from one end of the country to the other, both in length and breadth. Some of these were separate Bills, which might be supposed only the particular district in which

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it was proposed they should operate; but in some of these instances, two—sometimes three, and, in one or two instances, five or six—separate companies were proposed to be placed under one management, whereby the competition would be diminished on which the public had heretofore had to rely as a security for reasonable rates for traffic, and for commercial intercourse between one part of the country and another. Many of these Bills were likely to be opposed; and with reference to such, it would be possible to obtain sufficient and accurate information as to their general bearings upon the country. Others were not opposed, and to them public attention had not been drawn; for the public attention was more drawn just now towards new railway projects than to these Amalgamation Bills, which, not having to go through the same Standing Orders, were apt to pass through the House before the parties affected by them were at all aware of the effect they would have upon commerce. Not only in railways was this taking place, but in canals: he hold in his hand a list of canals which it was proposed to amalgamate with railways. The object of this was most manifest; the old system of carriage, water carriage, had been found to be so inconvenient a competitor with railways, that it had become absolutely necessary for the one to buy up the other, and for the two to be amalgamated under one company. He did not say that this was necessarily an evil, for he knew of instances where it had been conducive to the public interests for railways and canals to be united; at the same time, it required the most careful examination before the House permitted such things to take place. It was quite obvious that a canal would not be bought up by a railway, nor a railway by canal, unless with a view to the increase of profits, by raising the rates of carriage on one or the other. Such was the importance of this question, that if the House did not place proper restrictions and regulations on these companies, there would very soon be a connected link of communication from one end of the country to the other, which would for ever put a stop to competition. There was now a Bill before the House, which, when looked into, appeared to establish a connected link from Scotland to the city of London in one direction, and from Scotland to Bristol in the other, almost all under the same control. And it was quite clear that, unless provision was made in these Bills, giving other parties the power
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of running on these lines, or taking advantage of them in some other way, it would be almost useless for Parliament to authorize a company to make a competing line; in fact, it, would be almost impossible for a company to raise sufficient capital for such a purpose. This was sufficient to prove to the House that the system of amalgamation, as now going on, should be closely and carefully watched. Then came the question, how this could be most efficiently done? It had appeared to the Committee, of whom he had the honour to be Chairman, that in one of two ways alone could this be effected—either by leaving these Bills to be dealt with by the Group Committees, or by referring them to a Select Committee. The objection to the Group Committees was, that they could only get the necessary information in those cases where the amalgamations were opposed; without obtaining power from the House, they could not compel the production of papers and witnesses; and many railway companies would consider it unfair to saddle them with the expense of witnesses not necessary for their particular cases. If the hon. Member the Chairman of the Committee of Selection could have formed a Group Committee of Members who would have carried with them the confidence of the House on a question of such importance, and power had been given them to send for papers and witnesses, he, for one, should have been perfectly satisfied. At the same time, that would be an unusual mode of dealing. Then came the question, whether the subject was one that could properly be referred to the Committee moved for by the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Morrison). To this he should not object, provided the hon. Member for Inverness would consent to take the subject of amalgamations into consideration at the commencement of the sittings of his Committee; because it was extremely important that no unjust delay should take place. But if these Bills could not come on while towards the middle or the end of that Committee's proceedings, it might occasion their being put off for this Session. Therefore, by the advice of the Committee on which he had the honour to serve, he had given notice of the present Motion. The chief object of the Committee was to obtain from those parts of the country chiefly interested in those amalgamations that information which the House was not yet in possession of. It was true the House was in possession of

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information which it had most sadly neglected, and not treated with the deference it deserved—the Report of the Board of Trade of last Session, which was well worthy the consideration of every Committee of the House. Had the Committees of last Session paid a little more attention to that Report, they would have done their duty more effectually to the public; he knew instances where neglect of attention to the recommendations of that Report had involved very serious consequences to the parties. The House had not thought fit last Session to attend to that Report, and had passed measures in direct contravention of it; and there was no reason to believe that the House had changed its mind. It was, therefore, chiefly on these considerations, and believing that the House was in want of further information, that he brought forward his Motion.
MR. ENTWISLEsaid, it appeared to him highly desirable that some rule should be laid down by the House, in order that railway companies might know, before their application to Parliament, on what grounds they were to proceed in order that their measures might pass. It would be found on investigation that the acts of amalgamation proposed were, in many instances—he might almost say, most of them—of a purely defensive character. He was sure that, if such a Committee were formed, the principles laid down by them would be not only beneficial to the companies interested in the different amalgamations, but also to the country generally. He would most cordially support the Motion of the hon. Member for North Lancashire.
SIR G. CLERKsaid, that the question to which the Member for North Lancashire called the attention of the House was one of paramount importance, because, as was said in a discussion arising out of the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, unless they were now prepared to take certain precautions against the abuse of those powers which Government granted to railway companies, in the course of a few years they would find all means of communication vested in the hands of certain companies who would be placed beyond the control of the Legislature. But he confessed that though he thought it desirable that a Committee should be formed for the purpose of laying down certain principles of railway legislation, yet he did not gather from the speech of his hon. Friend what appeared to him (Sir G. Clerk) to be the object of the investigation
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of the proposed Select Committee. If the Select Committee should lay down certain general rules under which they would permit certain railway companies to amalgamate, and stated certain circumstances under which they would not allow them to do so, he (Sir G. Clerk) thought that they would be doing little more than giving their particular sanction to the principles laid down in the Twenty-first Report of the Board of Trade last year. If that was the object of his hon. Friend, it would be extremely desirable. After having done that, and after having adopted the principles laid down in the Report of the Board of Trade, they could not throw any objection to the amalgamation of lines having the same interests; but when the lines were not identified, and where the interests of the companies who projected them were opposed to each other, and where a company would be induced, under the fear of competition, to combine with another for the purpose of self-defence, in order to maintain a monopoly with the existing company, and to rivet that monopoly closer, it was quite clear that in such a case the interests of that company and the interests of the public might be at variance. His great difficulty was the manner in which these general rules, after being laid down, should be applied in each individual case. It would depend on the peculiar circumstances of each case. He was afraid that his hon. Friend would only be able to get over the first part of his object, namely, to call the attention of the House to the recommendation of the Board of Trade last year. He (Sir G. Clerk) hoped that, before whatever tribunal the decision of each individual case should come, that tribunal would look with extreme jealously to all those proposals of amalgamation, because it was impossible, in the present state of railway speculation, to know what might be the effect of those amalgamations some years hence. He thought that the objection of the Board of Trade was a just and a sound one, namely, the inconvenience that would arise from a premature decision on the proposed amalgamations. One advantage would arise from a postponement of the decision on the proposed amalgamations, for there were many modes in which an amalgamation might take place by private arrangement, which did not involve that necessary degree of permanence which arose from Parliamentary sanction. He therefore hoped that, after a Committee should

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be appointed to act upon the principles established by the Select Committee, they would look with extreme jealousy to those proposals. The Board of Trade pointed out strong objections to extensive amalgamations last year. Their recommendations were carried into effect, and their suggestions as to the great public inconvenience that might arise from extensive amalgamations had their due weight. If the House did not not believe that the Committee, which was moved for by the hon. Member for Inverness, would have under its consideration a sufficiently wide field of inquiry, he thought that this subject might be very fairly submitted to them. But, considering the number of questions which they had to deal with, he was inclined to support the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire.
MR. F. T. BARINGagreed with the right hon. Baronet that this subject was one, no doubt, of great difficulty and importance. The question, however, embraced two points: first, how they ought to lay down rules for the present Session; and, secondly, how they ought to provide for future cases. He doubted, with regard to Railway Bills now before the House, whether another proposition would not provide a better plan, namely, that of selecting a Committee of five, to whom all Amalgamation Bills should be referred, and giving them the power, in cases of unopposed Bills, of sending for witnesses, and of communicating with the Board of Trade. If the Committee now moved for were appointed, the House would perhaps get no Report this Session, or at best a very hurried Report, which could be of no present use. The right hon. Baronet (Sir G. Clerk) had said, that the Report of the Board of Trade last year had not been sufficiently attended to by the House. That very Report stated, as to laying down general rules for amalgamation, that "nothing could be more difficult than to lay down any general principles by which all amalgamations should be regulated." They would have the same uncertainty now; and he was afraid they could not settle the rules for amalgamation until they had settled the general principles of railway legislation. If they were prepared to rely upon the principle of competition alone, then following that one principle, they must reject all amalgamations; for if they allowed amalgamation at all, they violated the principle of competition. But if they reserved some power
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of Ministerial interference, adopting something of the French system, they need not be so jealous. He thought the Amalgamation Committee would report that it was impossible to lay down any general rules till they got the Report of the other Committee. His impression was, that the appointment of Committees, and the attempt to legislate through Committees, would produce inefficient legislation; and that it was proper to compel the Government to take this as well as other subjects under their consideration, and to bring forward measures for regulating railway legislation upon their own responsibility as a Government. Till then they would have only inefficient legislation upon this subject. It was natural that the Government should prefer to devolve this duty upon Committees of this House, rather than take it upon themselves, as it was a very awkward subject to deal with; but he believed that until the House determined that Government should undertake, it, they would get only inefficient legislation. He did not object to the Committee, but he should have preferred the other course.
SIR R. PEELsaid, the right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that Her Majesty's Government had neglected the great subject of railway legislation. [Mr. BARING: No, no!] He thought that the House ought to share this reproach with the Government. He only wished that hon. Members would read the able Report on this subject made by the Committee of the Board of Trade last year. The Board laid down certain principles, which they considered proper to be applied to cases of amalgamation brought before Parliament, admitting that there were cases in which it might be for the public advantage that they should be relaxed; and there was no doubt there were cases in which amalgamation, under proper conditions, would be for the advantage of the public, as well as of the railway companies. The recommendations of the Board of Trade, however, were not acceded to by the House; and he only asked the House to share the reproach of the present state of things with the Government. The House was actually jealous of the interference of the Government; the House overruled, in many cases, the decisions of the Board of Trade, and it would perceive in this a reason why Her Majesty's Government wished that the interference of the Executive should be called for by a decision of the House of Commons as necessary for the public interests,

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rather than it should, a second time, interfere on its own Motion. He could not help thinking that there was some difficulty in adopting the proposition of his hon. Friend (Mr. W. Patten). The House had adopted the Motion of the hon. Member for Inverness; and if they had another Committee to consider the principles of amalgamation, he feared they might have different reports from each, and a conflict of opinions. They had adopted a proposition with respect to railways that had termini within the city of London and the metropolis, to reserve them for a separate inquiry by a Commission appointed by the Crown; and perhaps it might not be inexpedient to pursue a similar course here, by appointing a Committee not a Commission, on the subject of amalgamation, so far as regarded Bills now presented; that a Committee should be appointed to consider, not the principles of amalgamation generally, but a Special Committee to consider Bills now introduced, in which amalgamation is proposed, and to suggest such general principles as seemed most applicable to such cases. This would not bring the Committee into conflict with the Committees of the hon. Member for Inverness; and he feared that, unless a distinct line were drawn between the Committee now moved for and that of the hon. Member for Inverness, there might be a conflict of opinion, which would involve the House in great difficulty.
MR. F. MAULEwished to call the attention of the House to a difficulty which existed. The Committee moved for by his hon. Friend (Mr. Patten), and the one appointed on the Motion of the Member for Inverness, ought to be kept distinct, and the report of the one ought not to interfere with that of the other. The difficulty which he saw was, that the opinions of the Committee now moved for might clash with those of the Group Committees, who were to decide on the proposed amalgamations. In his opinion the Committee of his hon. Friend should lay down certain rules of amalgamation, and the Group Committees would consider the proposals subject to those rules. From what he had seen of the Amalgamation Bills before the House this present Session, it appeared to him quite clear that all further progress in them should be suspended until the House should come to some defined determination.
VISCOUNT EBRINGTONsaid, that they ought to recollect that amalgamation was a voluntary act, and that there was nothing
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to hinder companies from amalgamating before the House came to a determination. The question of amalgamation depended on a principle of the appropriation of fixed capital embarked in railways, or on the principle of taking some security against monopoly. The hon. Member for Lancashire complained that no attention was paid to the Report of the Committee last year; but would the hon. Member allow him to remind the hon. Member that he was the first to surrender the Report? Other hon. Members were greatly impressed with the weight and importance that attached to it, and thought that the Government ought to give it their serious attention. He thought the most complete surrender of the Reports of the Board of Trade, and of the noble Lord who had displayed so much ability in drawing them up, had proceeded from Her Majesty's Government. The blame of not attending to the Report of the Board of Trade should not be thrown on the House generally, when the Government were the first to throw over the laborious and very able investigations of that body.
SIR R. PEELsaid, the noble Lord was labouring under a great mistake in supposing that the Government had interfered with respect to any Private Bill. When it became a question whether the Government, as a Government, should interfere with a Private Bill, although it had been recommended by a Committee, and had received the sanction of the Board of Trade, he should be sorry to see such interference. But when there was a question between the promoters of two Bills before Parliament, and the opinion of the Board of Trade itself was to be supported, he remembered coming down to support the decision of the Board of Trade.
VISCOUNT EBRINGTONalluded to an early discussion which took place at the commencement of the Session.
MR. H. HINDEwould have liked to have seen the weight of the Government displayed more energetically in favour of the recommendations of the Board of Trade, which he thought were made with great judgment and discretion. He thought that the suggestion which had been just thrown out by the right hon. Baronet would remove a great many of the objections which he had entertained to the proposition of his hon. Friend the Member for North Lancashire; but he considered it would be a still greater improvement if the proposed Committee were made to perform

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the functions of the Committees on the several Bills. He thought it would be a hardship to call upon parties to make out their case before the Preliminary Committee, and then oblige them to do the same thing over again before another tribunal. There would be a double investigation, and a double expense, and the parties would have just cause of complaint.
SIR G. GREYthought the Government ought not to interfere in ordinary cases with a private Bill. If rules were laid down for the amalgamation of Private Bills by the Board of Trade, he was sure that the House would be disposed to support such rules, and have its Committees guided by them. It would be well to have rules laid down for the purpose of securing uniformity. If a general principle was laid down and sanctioned by the House, the Committees would have little difficulty in acting upon it. If there was a preliminary Committee which performed its functions as the Board of Trade did last year, that Committee might take a view of all the Amalgamation Bills, and say whether they could not come within general rules. If that was done, there would be no necessity for discussion on the second reading; and he hoped the inquiries of the Committee would be limited to some particular object.
MR. PAKINGTON, as a Member of the Classification Committee, begged to say that the object of that Committee, in bringing the matter before the House, was to call its attention to the magnitude of the subject. The question of amalgamation was one of the most important connected with the whole railway subject, especially as the present proposed amalgamations exceeded in extent anything of the kind proposed before, for there were no less than thirty-three Amalgamation Bills. He was quite willing to adopt the course recommended by the right hon. Baronet.
MR. P. M. STEWARTthought the Amalgamation Bills should be grouped together, and a competent Committee of five appointed, who should determine on the merits of the Bills, instead of subjecting the Amalgamation Bills to a second and remote trial hereafter. He would suggest that all the Amalgamation Bills should be extracted from the groups in which they had been placed, and that one group should be made of them, which should be referred to the Committee he had just suggested, who should go into the merits and demerits of these Amalgamation Bills, and
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decide their fate by making a Report to the House.
MR. MORRISONthought that a railway which came before Parliament, and proposed an amalgamation with another, should, to a certain extent, be treated as a new line, and Parliament should impose any conditions it thought proper for the security and benefit of the public. Some general regulations should be applied to all railways; amongst others uniformity of fares for passengers, and of charges for the carriage of goods, &c. He considered that Parliament had a right to deal with amalgamations as it thought fit, and to impose upon them whatever new conditions it thought proper.
MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, that the question before the House was, how were they to deal with those Amalgamation Bills which were before the House during the present Session? He confessed, after the discussion which had taken place, that he agreed with his right hon. Friend the Member for Devonport, that the House had better not appoint any Committee to consider that question; the question respecting amalgamations generally was one of importance, and, for his own part, he was inclined to think that railroads, like other things, were likely to be managed better on a great scale than otherwise. But that was not the question. The question was, how they were to deal with the amalgamations actually before the House in the present Session of Parliament? He thought they could not have a safer guide than the principles laid down in the Report presented to the House two Sessions ago. He would prefer leaving the matter in the hands of the Government to those of the House.
MR. T. DUNCOMBEthought that some principles should be laid down for the guidance of Committees with respect to amalgamations. There were two kinds of amalgamations—those which were made for the public interest, and those which were made for private benefit. With respect to the latter, the House ought to interpose. Supposing, for instance, that the London and Birmingham, or the Eastern Counties Company, were to buy up the London and York, if it were made, that would be no amalgamation for the benefit of the public, but the giving a monopoly to whoever had the longest purse.
The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, that he agreed with the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down. It

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was difficult to lay down any general rules for the guidance of Committees with respect to Amalgamation Bills. He considered that it would have been better on the whole if the House had adhered to the rules laid down by the Board of Trade; but as the House had not adopted the views of the Board of Trade, it was the more necessary that the House should take the initiative in the matter. It might be for the public advantage in some cases that a short line should be amalgamated with a great line; but in other cases an amalgamation of a short line with an original line might be only to confirm a permanent monopoly. The course which appeared best to him was to appoint a Committee, in which the House would have confidence, to lay down general rules for the guidance of all Committees with respect to Amalgamation Bills. He did not think that such a Committee would interfere with the Committee of the hon. Member for Inverness.
MR. HUMEwould suggest that no more amalgamations should be permitted till the Committee had made its Report. He did not think that any mischief could be done by adopting such a course, but, on the contrary, great benefit might accrue from it. He thought they might be in the hands of a few monopolists sooner than they were aware of.
MR. COLLETTsaid, that the result of the amalgamation of the London and Birmingham and the Grand Junction Companies had been an immediate reduction of fares, which proved to be beneficial to all parties. He thought that the principle of amalgamation should be encouraged. He did not think there was any danger of monopoly, because railway directors now found it their interest to adopt the system of low fares.
LORD H. VANEthought that the adoption of the suggestion of the hon. Member for Montrose would be of the greatest advantage. When they saw railway companies possessing so much money that they would be likely to command the communication of the country, the House ought to be cautious how they sanctioned those Amalgamation Bills. He did not see how any evils could result from postponing Amalgamation Bills, even for the present Session.
MR. W. PATTENsaid, that he had endeavoured to alter the terms of his Motion, so as to meet what he collected from the discussion to be the general feeling of
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the House. The words of the amended Motion were—
"That a Select Committee be appointed to consider the principle of amalgamation as applied to the Railway and Canal Bills, now under the consideration of Parliament."
Amended Motion agreed to.

BUENOS AYRES AND MONTE VIDEO.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid: I wish to ask a question of the right hon. Baronet of which I gave him notice, and it relates to a subject of very considerable importance to the commercial interests of this country—the state of our relations with the Republic of Buenos Ayres. We all know that for a considerable period British commerce has received great interruption in the River Plate, first by the war carried on between the Buenos Ayres Government and that of Monte Video, and lately in consequence of the measures taken by the British Government to put an end to that war. Transactions have taken place there of a very warlike description. The language of the Government, when asked upon this matter in Parliament, has been the language of peace; but the acts of our authorities there have certainly been acts of war. First of all, there has been established a maritime blockade; next there has been the landing of British troops upon the Argentine territory, and the storming of towns; then there has been the capture of Argentine vessels and the advertisement of them for sale as prizes taken in war. There has also been, I believe, an advertisement issued for the hire of shipping, to remove, at the public expense, from Buenos Ayres to the Cape of Good Hope, British subjects who had settled at Buenos Ayres relying on the faith of the existing treaties between the two countries. I apprehend that none of these transactions have arisen out of any demand made by the British Government for redress from Buenos Ayres for injuries done to British subjects or British property in violation of any treaty; and I also apprehend that our interference between Monte Video and Buenos Ayres is not the result of any guarantee we have given to Monte Video by treaty, nor the fulfilment of any obligation arising out of any treaty offensive and defensive concluded between this country and Monte Video. The only reason alleged in Parliament for this interference of the British Government, has been a desire to put an end to the war, which was thought

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injurious to British interests. I will not go into that matter now. My question relates simply to the state of our relations with Buenos Ayres. I wish to know—and it is of importance to the commercial interests of the country that it should be explained—whether we are now at war with Buenos Ayres or not? If we are, it is fitting that the Government should communicate the fact to Parliament, and through Parliament to the country. If we are not at war with Buenos Ayres, and if there still exists between us and Buenos Ayres relations of peace, then what I would ask is, whether those belligerent acts committed in the River Plato by the British authorities were the result of instructions from the British Government at home, and, therefore, were sanctioned beforehand by our Government; or, if not so sanctioned beforehand, whether they have been approved by the British Government since the Government became acquainted with them? There has been laid on the Table of the House copies of the instructions sent to Mr. Ouseley; but I am obliged to confess that having read those instructions, I am unable to make out whether Mr. Ouseley and our military and naval authorities in the River Plate are or are not borne out by those instructions in the course which they have pursued. I ask, therefore, whether we are at war or at peace with Buenos Ayres; and, if we are at war with Buenos Ayres, why that fact has not been communicated? But if we are at peace with Buenos Ayres, then, I wish to know how those acts of war on the spot are to be reconciled with our pacific relations, and whether they have been approved of by Her Majesty's Government? I might add, that the inquiry is naturally suggested by the well-known aversion which Her Majesty's Government have to a little war, and by their great repugnance to any interference, without absolute necessity, in the affairs of other States.
SIR R. PEEL: Sir, I trust the noble Lord and the House will feel that no formal notice having been given upon this subject, it is much better I should limit myself, as far as I possibly can, to the questions of the noble Lord, than that I should provoke any discussion upon the state of our relations with Buenos Ayres and Monte Video. I propose, therefore, to avoid argument upon the subject, and to confine myself to the questions which the noble Lord was good enough to intimate he would put to me. I need scarcely
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remind him that it has been with great reluctance Her Majesty's Government has consented to any interference of a forcible nature in the affairs of Buenos Ayres and Monte Video; that for some years we were much pressed upon this subject, and that it was not until the evil had become almost intolerable that the Government took any course partaking of the character of a forcible proceeding. The House will bear in mind that it was at our mediation in the year 1828, that the independence of Monte Video was established. Brazil consented to that independence, and was a party to the Convention by which that independence was established. The circumstance of its independence being established on our mediation certainly gives no claim nor right to Monte Video to insist that we should guarantee that independence by force; but naturally, as that independence was established on our mediation, it gives us a peculiar interest in the maintenance of it; and the interests of this country are also, upon general considerations, very materially involved in the maintenance of the independence of the eastern part of the territory—the Republic of Uruguay. In the latter end of 1844, the Brazilian Government, which was a more immediate party to the Convention of 1828, represented to the Government of this country and to that of France, that the continuance of this war upon the shores of the River Plate was detrimental to the interests of all commercial countries; and Brazil earnestly intreated that a fresh effort should be made on the part of France and this country, and that they would interpose for the purpose of restoring tranquillity, and maintaining the independence of Monte Video. Efforts had frequently been made in preceding years; and I think, in the year 1841, the noble Lord himself offered the mediation of this country to the two contending Powers, and that offer was accepted by Monte Video, and rejected by Buenos Ayres. France and England again made a joint offer of this nature; and again it was accepted by Monte Video, and rejected by Buenos Ayres. The war has now continued six or seven years; and under the pressure of almost intolerable evils, this country and France, acting together in the most cordial union, determined to make an attempt to bring about peace between the two countries, and to secure the independence of Monte Video. They had no other object in view further than the restoration of peace, and each country disclaimed, with the utmost

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sincerity, any desire to get any peculiar advantages for itself; and, as to getting any accession of territory, that of course was out of the question. The simple object was to interfere for the interests of humanity, and for the purpose of protecting the independence of Monte Video, and restoring that tranquillity which, greatly to the prejudice of peaceful commerce, had been interrupted for a period of six or seven years. They, therefore, sent a special mission. England and France, acting in concurrence, sent a special mission to these two countries, again tendering their interference, and again recommending to each the restoration of tranquillity, and the termination of hostilities, and offering their joint mediation for that purpose. The directions to the Ministers of the two countries were to exhaust every effort of amicable intercession with these two Governments, in order to effect the object in view. Their proposals were again, for the third or fourth time, accepted by Monte Video, and rejected by Buenos Ayres; but the two Governments had determined that, in the event of the rejection of amicable interference, they would then use forcible interference for the purpose of bringing about the termination of those hostilities. At the instance of the noble Lord, I presented, in the early part of the Session, the instructions which had been given by my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to Mr. Ouseley, our Representative in that country, and the instructions given by the Government of France to their Representative were in conformity with those given by my noble Friend to the British Representative. I should state that the Papers I produced included two despatches from Lord Aberdeen, dated the 20th of February and the 5th of November, and that these included the whole of the instructions which had been given up to the 5th of November. There were no other instructions given having reference either to negotiations, or to forcible interference, which was contemplated as possibly necessary in the event of the failure of amicable interference. The noble Lord will observe from these two letters what were the instructions upon which the Representatives of the two Governments were acting up to the 5th November. These were the circumstances under which first offers of amicable mediation were made to the two Powers; and the noble Lord will see what were the circumstances under which, on the rejection of these offers,
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there was to be a qualified forcible intervention. I now propose to answer the questions of the noble Lord. First, are we now at war with Buenos Ayres? I consider that we are not. There has been no declaration of war. There is a blockade ordered by these instructions of certain ports in the River Plate belonging to Buenos Ayres; but I do not consider that the fact of the establishment of that blockade necessarily implies a state of war. The noble Lord will recollect that at that period when this country interfered with two other European Powers, for the purpose of effecting a separation of Greece from Turkey, and establishing the independence of Greece, there was a blockade of some of the ports of the Turkish Empire; and in that case we were not at war with Turkey. I am speaking now of the blockade of certain ports; and the fact of such blockade no more implies a state of war with Buenos Ayres than the blockade in the former case implied a war with Turkey. The noble Lord must also recollect the circumstance of the blockade of the Scheldt in 1831 instituted by the Government of which the noble Lord was a Member. There was at that time no declaration of war with Holland; vessels were seized as in the present case; and the forcible interference between Holland and Belgium was not considered tantamount to war. According to the instructions given them there has been a blockade established of certain ports of Buenos Ayres, and the seizure and occupation of an island in the River Plate, called Martin Garcia, as necessary to the progress of the operations. The noble Lord will observe that the instructions given to the Representatives of the two countries were, after the rejection of the offers of amicable interference, to establish a blockade of those ports which was most likely to compel the withdrawal of the Argentine forces under General Oribe from the territory of Monte Video, and to impede the hostile operations carried on by General Rosas against Monte Video; and in the event of further operations being necessary, to blockade Buenos Ayres itself. Those instructions were sanctioned; and that blockade has taken place. So far, then, for the first question of the noble Lord. Then the noble Lord asks, whether the operations of a hostile character on the banks of the River Parana have received the sanction of Her Majesty's Government? I have already stated that no other instructions were issued to the Representatives of

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the two countries than those contained in the Papers laid on the Table, and, strange as it may seem, there has not yet been received a full and satisfactory explanation of the motives which led to that expedition that was sent up the Parana, and that led to a conflict with the forces of Buenos Ayres. I am bound to state that an expedition of that kind was not contemplated in the instructions given by Her Majesty's Government. The noble Lord, then, will not expect me to say anything more than that there was no previous sanction of that expedition in those instructions; and certainly such an expedition was not contemplated by Her Majesty's Government. With respect to the sale of prizes, I apprehend that point refers to the sale of vessels that were taken in the attempt to break the blockade. The admiral reports that the cargoes of those vessels were of a very perishable nature, and that he had not a sufficient number of men to spare to take them to a place of safe custody, and that it was the better for all parties to proceed to the sale of those vessels and their cargoes; that he did therefore do so; and that he kept the proceeds of the sale in charge for Her Majesty's Government. Then, with regard to the removal of some British subjects, I think the noble Lord labours under an erroneous impression with regard to that transaction. It is true that some subjects of Her Majesty, residing at Buenos Ayres, who were alarmed for their personal security, left Buenos Ayres and came to Monte Video. Being in great distress, they applied to our Minister there, Mr. Ouseley, for his protection and assistance: but their removal was entirely voluntary on their part. Mr. Ouseley attempted to find employment for them in Monte Video, and made an appeal to Her Majesty's subjects there to provide temporary employment for them, as far as possible; but as many of them were agriculturists, and Monte Video was then in a state of siege, this was found to be impossible. Mr. Ouseley, therefore, thought it would be for their advantage to remove them, some to the Cape, and some to the Falkland islands; but this was done with perfect consent and good-will on their part. I believe I have now answered the noble Lord's questions, as far as I can without entering upon a discussion which would not be advantageous for the public interest.
LORD J. RUSSELLdid not wish to enter upon a general discussion on this subject;
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but he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would, as soon as possible, afford them further information respecting it. Like his noble Friend, he did not understand in what manner Mr. Ouseley was to act, what answer he got when he arrived in the neighbourhood of Buenos Ayres, or what terms had been actually proposed to the Government of Buenos Ayres, and had been refused by that Government. The right hon. Gentleman said we were not at war, and undoubtedly a blockade did not constitute war. But he believed ships had been taken and ordered for sale, and, as the right hon. Gentleman stated, these were belligerent operations, and such as he thought would require some Order in Council to justify the admiral who had so acted. With respect to the British troops engaged in the expedition. Lord Aberdeen's instructions were, that they were not to be disembarked or to engage in any operations beyond what were requisite for the occupation of a particular island, "or for the security of the combined forces, or the success of the expedition." That was a large authority, and it was proper the House should know in what respect the military operations were, necessary.
SIR R. H. INGLISsaid, he had two other questions to ask on the same subject. About two centuries ago the Dutch sailed up the Medway, much in the same manner in which Her Majesty's fleet sailed up the River Plate. He would ask, whether that was considered war? Subsequently another fleet, being the combined squadrons of Russia, France, and England, blockaded anotherfort, entered another harbour, and destroyed, another fleet—namely, the fleet of Turkey. Was that considered war? He could see no distinction between these cases. Would it satisfy the friends of peace to say that we were not at war, when ships were taken, and many lives lost in the gallant achievements of Captain Hotham and his friend Captain Hope? Would it satisfy the Quakers to be told that, when all the circumstances of war occurred, as at Navarino and in the Medway, when there was so much loss of human life, and the capture of an enemy's ships, this was all done, and yet that we were in a state of profound peace? He was at a loss to know what was war, if this was not.
SIR R. PEEL: The records of the year 1827 will show that the action fought at Navarino did not constitute war between Turkey

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and England. I understood the noble Lord to ask whether there had been any declaration of war between Buenos Ayres and England, and whether we were at war or at peace with that country. My reply was, that a blockade had been established, in virtue of the instructions given to the British Minister; that a blockade did not necessarily amount to a state of war; and that, speaking of the international relations of the two countries, we are not at war with Buenos Ayres. It is impossible to deny that whatever responsibility attaches to the late operations, rests with Her Majesty's Government and with their Representative, Mr. Ouseley; and that the gallant officers, sailors, and marines engaged in the expedition, are entitled to all the credit of their bravery, whatever may be thought of the policy of the instructions of the Government. I share in that admiration of the gallantry and spirit of the combined forces which has been already expressed; and I also look with great satisfaction upon the cordial union which existed between the two serrvices. I am not prepared at present to enter upon the present state of our relations with Buenos Ayres. There may be an amicable adjustment of the questions at issue, and peace may be restored. I am not prepared to lay any Papers upon the Table at present; but as soon as any information can be communicated to the House, I shall be happy to lay it before them.
Subject at an end.

CUSTOMS AND CORN IMPORTATION REPORT.
The Order of the Day for the Second Reading of the Corn Importation Bill was then read.
SIR R. PEEL: Sir, I have two petitions to present to the House; one from Liverpool, in which the petitioners state that the commercial interests of the country are materially prejudiced by the delay of the Legislature in pronouncing a decision in regard to the commercial measures now before them. I am assured that no petition ever left Liverpool more respectably signed; that it received the signatures of the leading men of all political parties; and that some of them are those of gentlemen who have been opposed to our measures, but who now give in their adhesion to the proposals of the Government. The petition received in the course of a few hours 414 signatures of the leading gentlemen in Liverpool. Every banking-house
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in Liverpool, I am told, but with three exceptions, has signed it; the managing directors of two of these being out of town. About 214 merchants and shipowners, and 190 brokers, have signed. The petition, which states that the petitioners, having the most extensive experience, find that nearly every branch of trade is paralysed by the delay in carrying the measures of the Government. It further states—
"That your petitioners, while they disclaim all interference with due deliberation in matters of such vast importance, would humbly pray that an end may be put to their suspense by passing into a law, as speedily as possible, the measures proposed by Her Majesty's Government, and which your petitioners verily believe will prove highly beneficial to the interests of this vast commercial Empire."
The other petition is from Manchester. This received its signatures in twenty-four hours, and has 1,122 signatures attached to it. It is signed by all the bankers in Manchester, and by fifty-five members of the town-council. It is also signed by most of the large houses engaged in the manufacturing and spinning trade, in the machine-making in the country trade, and in the East and West Indian, Canadian, United States, German, Russian, and Mediterranean trades. I am informed that the amount of capital represented by the houses who have signed this petition is 30,000,000 l. and that the number of persons employed by them is 120,000. The petitioners state that—
"In common with the entire manufacturing and commercial interests of the country, they have observed with the liveliest satisfaction the wise and comprehensive measures introduced by Her Majesty's Government—measures which will tend greatly to benefit this densely-populated district."
The petitioners, therefore, pray the House
"To put an end to the doubt and uncertainty now existing, and to prevent the occurrence of commercial disasters which may seriously cripple the industry and resources of the country, by immediately passing into a law the Customs and Corn Importation Act."
On the Question that the Bill be now read a Second Time,
MR. E. YORKEsaid, he might well have been deterred by the difficulty of this subject from taking such a prominent part in it; but he was warned by the petition which he held in his hand, signed as it had been by an immense number of his most influential constituents interested in agriculture, not as he had heretofore done, to give a silent vote upon the question, lest the truth of the opinion he held, as to the

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principle of protection, should be brought into doubt, and the sincerity of the professions he had made be suspected. His intention was to move, that this Bill be read a second time that day six months. If hon. Gentlemen on his side the House felt as he did, he would entreat them not to be deterred by what had taken place, but that every form of the House should be used, every rule which the forms of Parliament suggested, should be adopted in order to defeat this measure. In approaching this subject he must say, that he preferred experience to conjecture—that which they knew to that which they were taught. He thought that a matter of such deep importance to the people of this country as the providing them with a cheap supply of food should not be treated as matter of hypothetical speculation. If one link of their speculations should fail—if one postulate should not answer their anticipations—if the deductions which they drew should be scarcity and famine, instead of plenty, they would have committed a grievous error, which a life of repentance, however sincere, could not sufficiently atone for. He rejected the Bill because it was a step taken to overturn a principle which had hitherto been recognized invariably by the people of this country as identified with its best interests—because issue had been joined with regard to it on a late occasion with the antagonist party in the State when that principle was recognized and adopted by a large majority of the constituency—who returned a majority of their representatives in favour of that principle—and made those who now sat on the Treasury bench, the organs or conservators of it. He objected to the Bill, because it was intended to repeal law which was based upon that principle of protection, and which its authors proclaimed to be intended to give the people, irrespective of class interest—independent of the remunerative price to the farmers—the first necessaries of life at a cheap rate. He found that the price which now obtained in this country, and which had obtained for some time, was precisely that which was calculated by the right hon. Baronet as the price that marked abundance and sufficiency, instead of scarcity; and he believed that so great was the skill and enterprise of the people of this country, that the present law, if it had not been interfered with, would in a short time have repealed itself, to the great advantage of this country. But they were told that this law was an
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error—that the time of repentance was now come, and that the recantation of this error was the only thing that was necessary for the prosperity of this nation. But was it possible, he would ask, that that could be an error in 1846, which was denied to be so in 1842? Was that to be called an error, in a time of great commercial prosperity and general contentment, which was denied to be so in a period of great manufacturing depression? If the result of this measure in 1842 were sedition and discontent, why did they not then attempt to conciliate the affections of the people, by giving up this obnoxious law? It had been stated, in the course of these debates, that no apprehensions were entertained by the agricultural body. Now, he represented a district which was entirely and purely agricultural, and, from his position having had on many occasions to defend the political honour of the right hon. Gentleman—which he did with as much zeal as he would have defended his own private integrity—he had been placed at issue, on more occasions than one, with the body which he represented; and he knew pretty well what their sentiments were on this occasion. The district he represented was about twenty miles in extent, with about 300,000 acres, which was originally one vast morass, inhabited by the winged denizens of the moor and by lawless men; but now it was a happy and fertile district, being one of the greatest corn-growing districts in the kingdom, as authentic returns would show. To obtain this agricultural eminence they had to contend with great natural disadvantages, both by land and water; and to surmount these difficulties, he was informed that not less than five millions sterling had been laid out upon the land. That amount had been laid out in the faith that protection would be continued. But for that the lands would never have been cultivated. He urged this particularly with a view to show that the charge of laziness and indolence brought against the agricultural body was not an honest nor a fair charge. Even now the annual expenditure upon that land was about 80,000 l., the local taxes for that purpose varying from 3s. to 20 s. in the pound. This was not done to enhance the value of the land—it was done for the sake of security, for there was not a moment in which the waters of the district might not inundate them, and destroy not only the hopes of the agriculturist, but all the benefits which were at present conferred

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upon the country through the civilization and cultivation of the district. He had received several letters upon this subject from men practically acquainted with the subject, with which he must trouble the House, in order to show how the measure would affect them if the prices were reduced, which he could show would be the case, not perhaps this year or the next, because the employment of railways had placed an increased consumption of food within every man's reach; but when this enormous demand for labour was withdrawn, and the labour market had returned to its former level, then the trial of this measure would come, and it would be for them and for the world to judge whether it were successful. One gentleman with whom he was well acquainted, said, that the effect of this measure would be to reduce rents one half, and that it would destroy the tenants' capital to the extent of two-thirds. It was difficult to say how it would operate upon labour, as the drainage of the district must be maintained; but it would certainly be reduced to the extent of one-third. Another gentleman mentioned that he knew a farmer in the district who intended to drain a large portion of his farm this year; but he had stopped when he heard of Sir Robert Peel's propositions, as he was quite certain that if those measures passed, the outlay would not be repaid. That farmer considered there would be no alteration of prices this year, though he did not believe there was such a deficiency as was apprehended; but if the harvest of next year should be an average one, the price of wheat would be 40 s. to 45 s. per quarter, labourers' wages would be reduced 2s. a week, and many would be altogether thrown out of employment. To show that there was great ground for apprehending a fall in the price of wheat, he might state that a gentleman who was well known in Gloucestershire, had recently mentioned that he had imported a quantity of white wheat from Odessa, which, after all expenses were paid, stood him in 37 s. a quarter. Now, it was impossible for British agriculturists to compete with such prices as these. He found, from calculations made some years ago, when wheat was 56 s. a quarter, that the cost of manual labour which entered into the growth of a quarter of wheat, from the time it was sown till it was brought to market, was 17 s. 2d. a quarter. With regard to the burdens on land, he might state that he
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had received a letter from a gentleman, who had transferred his capital from this country to France, that he had obtained land as good as the generality of our northern soils; and that, under the four-course system, he found that the burdens on that land were only 21 s. 6d. per acre. Now, it was well known that the burdens on land in this country amounted to 60 s. per acre. He would ask, then, how was it possible for either landlord or tenant to farm his land under a system of unrestricted competition, when there was so much difference between this country and neighbouring ones? It had been asked what good had the farmers derived from protection? He thought what he had already stated was a sufficient answer to that question. But he recollected well, that in 1822 Dantzic wheat was selling at 30 s. a quarter. The British farmer was, at that time, in a state of deep distress; but it was the protection against the introduction of this and other wheat that saved him from utter and entire ruin. In a pamphlet which was published by a gentleman whom he knew very well—one of the most practical farmers in the country—it was stated that the loss a farmer, on a farm of 400 acres, would sustain by protection was 347 l. 12 s. 8d., while his loss by free trade would be 826 l. 9s. 3d., making a gain in favour of protection of 478 l. 16 s. 7d. a year. He had other calculations from other farmers, to the same effect; one of them in particular, showing that he would lose, by the proposed measure, about 95 l. more than his entire rent, for which Sir Robert Peel offered, by way of compensation, about 1d. an acre. It had also been shown that the rate of mortality was greater at a time of a low price of corn than at other periods. Pauperism had been found, beyond the slightest possible doubt, to increase during a season of low prices. Mr. Tooke had also shown the effect of periods of low prices to have been inimical to property. Nor was it alone the records of modern times that showed this effect; for, in the records of the British Museum, in the Papers of Sir Simond D'Ewes, of the date of 1641, the same evils were spoken of. As regarded the operation of the intended measure, what he would ask, was the effect it was supposed it would produce? Was the measure intended to produce high prices or low prices? The intended object surely could not be the production of a high price, because that would not suit the views of

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the manufacturers. Still he had a right to conclude that the Ministry desired high prices, because their arguments went to support that point. Relaxation, they said, had shown an increase of price. They had quoted articles where relaxation of duty had caused the rise of price; but he could not avoid noticing that the Ministers, while quoting these articles, had most carefully abstained from naming corn, and had only noticed those articles which were capable of being manufactured. Now, if the Ministerial argument was correct, it should stand thus—that the relaxation of price tended to make articles dear, and that total removal tended to make them dear also. If the argument were applied to corn, the House would see the nature of the change that must follow, that was, if the argument were correct. But it was said, the aim of the change was to obtain a moderate price; but the answer to that would be found in the operation of the present law, which produced moderate prices. Therefore, the alteration of that law was not required; and, indeed, many hon. Members of that House had placed the whole question in its proper light. The hon. Member for Birmingham had said that protection had considerably supported labour. But he could quote another authority likely to be heard on one side of the House at least, no less a man than Earl Fitzwilliam, a great agriculturist; and the opinion of the noble Lord was, that without protection the farmer would be ruined and the labourer starved. He (Mr. Yorke) should scarcely have thought it necessary to extend his observations; but as much of the introduction of the present measures might be attributable to a moneyed combination out of that House, he wished to say he should be ready to resist the attacks of that body as much as possible, and give his opposition to the measure of Corn Law repeal. He would refer to the feelings of the poor with respect to the anticipated measure. Did hon. Members of the House find themselves acquainted with the feelings of the poorer classes? Many persons held the opinion, that nothing was to be dreaded from the feelings of the labourer. If such was the opinion, hon. Gentlemen were highly mistaken. On that question—the question of the feeling of the labourers—he had received a communication from a poor, but intelligent man, who said that in the neighbourhood from which he wrote, there was not a village in which the people
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were not ready to assert, by brute force, if necessary, their right to taste of the fruits of their own labour; and he added that every village in the vicinity was ripe for outrage at the first reduction of wages. The working classes, be it remembered, were well tutored by the press—by such papers as the Dispatch, and other publications of a similar nature. He assured the House that great apprehensions existed in the agricultural districts as to the effects of this measure; and he held the right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury bench responsible for occasioning those apprehensions. It was too much for the right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel) to say, that he confessed his share in that responsibility, and to plead that such a confession should shield him from punishment. This was the first time he (Mr. Yorke) had ever heard that a confession of guilt was an indemnity against punishment. It was true that the fact of confession was often taken into consideration by a Judge, and, combined with proof of previous good character, afforded a reason for mitigation of punishment; but this was the first time he had heard that a confession of guilt was a ground of exemption from punishment; and certainly the arbiter elegantiarum of the criminal law of this country ought to be the last person to introduce such a principle. He did not hesitate to say that, if this experiment should fail, Her Majesty's Ministers would be exposed to the heavy and severe denunciation of those whom they had betrayed. A measure of this enormous change should not be allowed to become law without a searching investigation. Bad as the change would be on agriculture generally, what, he would inquire, would be the effect on the titheowner, whose income had been fixed upon the price of corn some years since. Look also at other relations. The Property Tax assessment reached 200,000,000 l.; but this taxation had not been properly or fairly distributed. A fairer distribution, therefore, should be made of the burdens of this tax. All should bear taxation, and bear it equally, and, reminded by proceedings which sometimes took place in a locality in the county he represented, he would say, if the House would permit him, that the nation should be handicapped, and the burdens it had to bear be placed on those who were able to bear them, in order that all might start fairly upon the great national race they were appointed to run. The whole fiscal regulations should be changed if the present

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measure passed, and abundant reasons existed for a sweeping change of this character. A well-known public writer, Mr. John Macgregor, stated, that the Excise law, as it stood, might be changed for the good of the nation at large, as also the poor and other laws now pressing so heavily on the community. He would not therefore give his support to the measure of the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government without a complete remodelling of taxation. When the noble Lord (Lord J. Russell) the Member for the city of London, in 1829, first brought forward his plan of a fixed duty, the right hon. Baronet the Secretary of State for the Home Department, referring to the Tithe Commutation Act, told the noble Lord that if, when he passed that Act, he had any intention of altering the basis on which it was framed, he was guilty of a gross fraud on the public. And now, adopting the same language, he would tell Her Majesty's Ministers, if, in 1842, when the Corn Bill of that year was passed, they had any intention of altering the basis on which it was framed—and he had come to the conclusion that they had all along been arguing against their convictions—they were guilty of a gross fraud on the country. He wished hon. Gentlemen opposite joy of their new allies on the Treasury benches. They would use them for the purpose of striking this one blow, and when struck they would discard them, having no trust in the metal of which they were composed. The right hon. Baronet the First Lord of the Treasury looked to posterity for indemnity, and no doubt the pen of the faithful historian would do him justice. The historian would say of him, that, gifted with great natural and possessing many acquired powers, notwithstanding some slight deviation in former years from the straight course of political wisdom, he was again trusted on account of his professions by a great party, whom he again deceived. He would say that he stood alone against the party he had betrayed;—
"He stood alone amidst his band,
Without one trusting heart or hand."
In conclusion, he begged to move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.
SIR J. Y. BULLERhoped the House would not think he was intruding on its time, if, on the present occasion, he occupied it for a few minutes. In the year 1842, he supported the proposals of the Government, and he had done so because he had felt that it was for the advantage of
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the country; and he had believed that those interests which had been then affected, would not again be subjected to change. Certainly he had presumed that no further alteration would take place while the right hon. Baronet continued in office. When he had heard of further alterations, he had deeply deprecated them. He felt the greatest disappointment that further change should have been meditated, nor had he yet recovered from his disappointment, though taking the course he intended to take. The hon. Member who had just addressed the House, had stated that the constituencies of the country feared the prospect of change. He assured the House that such was the state of feeling in the district which he had had the honour to represent. The measure would create a great alteration in the management of estates and farms. Many would suffer. He did not mean to say that farmers who held large tracts of land were men likely to feel distress, because they were men of capital, and perhaps by the aid of skill and industry would occupy nearly the same position after the expiration of three years as at present. If landed proprietors did not suffer, they would only avoid it by a change in the management of their estates, and by keeping down their outgoings to a very low degree. One of the largest expenses on an estate was the keeping of farming buildings in repair. This, however, could not be followed if this measure passed into a law. One effect of the change would be to make small farms great. It would not be attended by any good result to say that men ejected from a farm could go to the manufacturing districts and there earn their bread. To change the occupation of the mind or body, even in the time of youth, was difficult; but to force a man to do so at forty years of age was but to deliver him over to misfortune and misery. But why had the measure been introduced? It was not because trade had declined. He looked for a reason, and he found it had been stated that a partial destruction of the food of the Irish people had taken place. It would have tended better to have cured a temporary difficulty had the ports been opened, and corn admitted to feed the people, than counselling the introduction of a measure the full effect of which would not be fully felt for some years. The titheowners would be injured, and the agriculturists would be injured; the measure would be fraught with injury,

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while to the people of Ireland it would afford no effectual relief.
MR. M'GEACHYcould not shelter himself under the wing of that most extraordinary doctrine which had been laid down by the noble Lord the Member for Liverpool, a doctrine mischievous in proportion to the respectability and weight of the quarter from which it had proceeded. Surely it was as individuals that they were responsible, and not as Members of any one sect or party. It might be true that every man in England who had sat in Her Majesty's Councils as a Cabinet Minister, with scarcely an exception, was now agreed as to the impolicy of continuing the existing Corn Laws. Still that would be no justification of his vote in favour of this measure, unless he were himself convinced, as convinced he was, that the measure was in itself both politic and just. In the exercise of an unfettered and dispassionate judgment, and with an earnest and most anxious desire to arrive at a just conclusion upon the subject, he approached the consideration of this important question. Having voted for those alterations in the Tariff which were equally with the present measures of the Government objected to by the protectionist party, and having seen the good effects produced by those alterations, he confessed that he thought there was every encouragement to proceed in the same course, and to attend to that recommendation in the Speech from the Throne which was directly controverted by the Amendment now before the House. The question was not merely of importance in its commercial hearings—a light in which it was too exclusively regarded by the hon. Member for Durham and his associates, but, now that it had been involuntarily proposed to that House by the present Ministry, of still greater importance in its political bearing. It was necessary to look at the question in both points of view; and first for the political part of the case, the importance of which he frankly admitted could not be overrated. In a free country, there was no evil so great, in his opinion, as a loss of confidence on the part of the people in public men. Were there any, he would ask, amongst those who declaimed so noisily on these topics now, who had ever reconsidered a vote, or rescinded a decision, in order to maintain in office a Minister who, as they deemed, would guarantee the maintenance of the existing Corn Laws? He never supported the Minister in the moment of his power
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when he thought him wrong, and that was a strong reason why he should not withhold his support from him now, in the moment of his weakness, when he thought him right. His belief was, that instead of a loss of confidence in public men, a fair and calm consideration of the course which had been taken during the last few months would, when the heat of party had subsided, go far to raise the character of public men, and to rekindle once more feelings of confidence in the integrity of statesmen. What were the simple facts of the case? Impressed with the belief that, with an impending scarcity in Ireland, and in the general circumstances of the country, some prompt remedy and some important alterations in our commercial policy were indispensable, the First Minister of the Crown took a step which was, in his judgment, worthy of the responsibilities of his office, and worthy of the Minister of a great country. On the 1st of November, 1845, he recommended to his Colleagues the opening of the ports for the admission of foreign grain. In that proposal the Cabinet did not agree, and the consequence was, the resignation of the Ministry. The difficulty of dealing with the Corn Laws might have been evaded by throwing up office in the first instance; but this, with the prospect of impending scarcity in Ireland, the right hon. Gentleman honourably declined, until he had tried the expedient of the opening of the ports with his own Cabinet. Having failed in this, he resigned office. He gave no opinion as to a successor. But to use his own words—
"I thought it unfair and dishonourable, under the impression that the noble Lord the Member for London would be the Minister, not to take those steps which I thought would diminish his embarrassments."
On the 6th of December the Ministry resigned; on the 8th of December the right hon. Gentleman wrote a letter to Her Majesty—
—"offering the assurance of his perfect readiness to support, if proposed by others, those measures which he had himself deemed necessary"—
And he further added, with a solicitude for the public service most worthy of imitation—
"That with regard to any increased estimates which the position of the country might render necessary, he would assume any degree of responsibility, present or retrospective, which could fairly attach to him."
Those who could take a dispassionate view of the case, and would endeavour to place themselves in the position of the right hon.

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Baronet—a position encompassed with enormous difficulties—on the 1st of November, 1845, would not pass any harsh judgment upon the course pursued by him on that occasion. It was mighty easy to be statesmen after the fact—to magnify the claims of party above the interests of the country; but he thought he was perfectly justified in saying that, with his views of impending scarcity in Ireland, and of the advantages to be derived from a change of policy to the Empire at large, whatever might have been the seeming consistency of a proposal to maintain the existing Corn Laws, that proposal would have been the real treachery which you imputed to him, because he had thought it for their interests and for the interests of all to relieve them from the odium of stipulating for those restrictions in such a moment of pressure. There was but one point in the conduct of the political leaders on this question which he viewed with regret, and that was the somewhat unfair position which the noble Lord the Member for London, and the Whig party generally, had assumed for themselves during the course of these debates. They must remember that they were themselves protectionists up to a very late period, as well as those who sat on the other side of the House. But now, what were the alternatives proposed by the opponents of the Government? Their first proposal was a dissolution of the present Parliament. Now, this was a very good subject for declamation, and he had heard of it before. Why, he recollected that when the Government brought in their Bill for the endowment of the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth in the last Session of Parliament, just the same language was held as to the violation of pledges. Such a precedent once set would lead to the most dangerous consequences. What would be the practical results? Would such a course insure the calm, dispassionate, deliberate adjustment of conflicting claims on this or any other important question? Why, the result would be this, that you would have the country governed one year by Exeterhall and the Anti-Maynooth Conference Committee, and the next by No. 17, Old Bond-street, and the Central Protection Society and its affiliated branches. Both to the electors and the elected the evil tendency of such a system would become more clearly apparent from the present embarrassment of many representatives and of many constituencies. Public men in England
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would henceforth be content to pledge themselves to do their duty, according to their view of the merits of every question as it was proposed for their consideration; and the electors would remember the advice of a great statesman, no mean authority on questions of constitutional right—Mr. Burke, who declared, that—
"They are not under a false show of liberty, but in truth to exercise an unnatural, inverted domination, tyrannically to exact from those who officiate in the State, not an entire devotion to their interests, which is their right, but an abject submission to their occasional will, extinguishing thereby, in all those who serve them, all moral principle, all sense of dignity, all use of judgment, all consistency of character, whilst, by the very same process, they give themselves up, a proper, a suitable, but a most contemptible prey to the servile ambition of popular sycophants, or courtly flatterers."
There was one resignation which had been both offered and accepted on the present occasion, which furnished a deplorable commentary on the justice of that view. If one man more than another in that House had shown an entire devotion to the public interest—to the cause of the suffering and helpless, wherever they were to be found, that man was the noble Lord (Lord Ashley) who for so many years represented the county of Dorset in Parliament. That noble Lord stood in no need of praise; his name would long live in the best affections of his countrymen; but that cause would hardly commend itself to the hearts of the people of England (and he thanked God that he did not feel it to be his duty to defend it) which involved in its maintenance the exclusion of such a man as Lord Ashley from Parliament. The other alternative proposed by the opponents of the Government was a compromise apparently in the shape of a fixed duty. Now, that appeared to him the most curious expedient for getting out of a difficulty that ever entered the mind of man. Why, the proposal of a fixed duty on corn by the Conservative party would involve precisely the greatest amount of political dishonesty that could by possibility be brought to bear upon the question. Why, this was precisely the point and pith of their contest with the Whig party at the election of 1841, so far as that contest turned upon the question of the Corn Laws, the merits of the sliding-scale as against the fixed duty. How could they, having deliberately made choice of the sliding-scale, now that that scale had slid from under them—how could they with common decency come forward now and propose a fixed duty when

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that measure was repudiated by its own parents? Where was the man to be found who would boldly come forward and propose to the country the formation of an Administration on the basis of a permanent fixed duty on the importation of foreign corn? The protectionist party complained of the tortuous and ambiguous policy of the right hon. Gentleman. Now, he asked them what was their own?
"—Mutato nomine, de te
Fabula narratur."
Was there any man among them bold enough to stand by the sliding-scale? Would they support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Pontefract? The strongest arguments in favour of some change in our present policy was to be drawn from the social position of the country under the existing laws, and more especially from the condition of those for whose especial benefit it was said those laws ought to be maintained. The attack and the defence of the Corn Laws now rested alike on zeal for the good of the poor, and on an enlightened regard for the interests of the great body of the people. It was to be regretted that, in these days, the science of political economy, most important as it was, had come to be confounded too much with the science of government, that more comprehensive science which an eminent writer had so well described in saying—
"We may lay it down that the popular counsel given in our days to Governments is continually to favour the development of industry; it is to this point that we are now to make all our studies converge. But, according to our views, it is to higher objects that Government should direct its aims; it is upon the whole of what constitutes the national well-being; it is upon the relations, upon the proportions which ought to exist between different conditions, between different classes of citizens, in order that they may mutually aid each other, that all may supply the wants the one of the other; that all may unite hope to the feeling of security; that all, in short, may be enabled, by the development of their energies, to enjoy activity in calm."
Now, a good law must surely have produced good effects on the condition of the labourer. We allowed the state of the manufacturing operative to be precarious, that it must still remain such, after they had made this alteration in the Corn Laws; but those who were answerable for his condition were now tenfold more answerable from the tone adopted in the Anti-Corn-Law agitation; they asked them to assent to an alteration of these laws; and, if evil should ensue, they would make them heavily responsible by the projected alteration
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in the law of settlement for such contingent evil. He did not say—for he did not believe—that the Corn Law had produced the existing state of things; but could that law be defended by a reference to the state of the agricultural labourers? The extreme lowness of their wages, the difficulty of living, were so notorious as to make it a common expression, "It is a wonder how they live;" and so it was; and so it was also in 1789 with the peasantry of France, as any one might see who would consult the instructive pages of Arthur Young upon the subject. They knew what occurred in the one case: was it patriotic, or wise, or statesmanlike, to shut our eyes to the possible consequences of our own neglect in the other? He would notice one circumstance, which made a deep and lasting impression on his mind. In the month of July, 1844, the then Bishop of Ely addressed a letter to his clergy, in which he said—
"The accounts received of incendiary fires in Suffolk are so alarming that I feel it my duty to call the attention of the clergy of my diocese in that county to this distressing state of things. At one of the late fires in Suffolk, it is reported that there were great crowds of women and children who jeered the men who were laudably engaged in working the engines; and, as the different parts of the roof gave way, and the flames burst forth with greater violence, they showed their gratification by loud cheering. I am sure that this communication will be read with great sorrow by every conscientious parish priest, and will prove to him the necessity for increased exertions to check this flagrant wickedness."
Now, whatever difference of opinion might exist as to the cause, no doubt existed as to the fact of this awful occurrence.
"Causa latet—vis est notissima."
Since he had read that letter, nothing but his feelings of deference to the knowledge of the right hon. Gentleman on questions of commercial policy would ever have extracted from him a vote in favour of maintaining the existing Corn Laws. He must be a bold man indeed, who would now, in the teeth of such a fact as that—and it was not an isolated fact—and in the teeth of the unanimous assent of all the loading statesmen of England, maintain a system of laws for the special benefit of the agricultural peasantry, which, to say the very least, had co-existed with such a state of things as that described in the letter quoted from the Prelate who, only eighteen months ago, presided over the diocese of Ely. It was a most fallacious argument to adduce, that the state of the poor in this country was no worse than it was in other countries. The real question was, what was their relative

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position with reference to the rich? Had they advanced in their comforts in proportion to the advances made by the classes above them? When the inequalities of social condition in a nation became too great, all history taught but one fearful lesson as to the result. It was very easy to talk of our Constitution as a territorial Constitution; yet the men who now talked most loudly of the rights of electors were, in many cases, the very men who had degraded that most important class—the tenant farmers of England—into the mere political tools of their party purposes. And he confessed, that in coming to a conclusion upon that question, the old Spanish proverb had had considerable weight with him,—"Show me your friends, and I will tell you what you are;" and when he looked to the friends of the Government on the present occasion, what did he find? Was my Lord Talbot, for example, resident amongst the undrained lands and the agricultural helots of the county of Buckingham? Or were many other enlightened agriculturists, who supported these measures, answerable for the condition of Sussex, where a large farmer told a friend of his (Mr. M'Geachy's) the other day, as they were looking at a field in which there was a lamentable preponderance of thistles over turnips, "that he must own he had been very unfortunate in his turnips this year, but that for his part he never saw any harm come of thistles?" It only remained for him to express his earnest hope that, when that measure had passed, they should proceed to other measures calculated to meet the wants of the great mass of the people, their moral and intellectual, as well as their physical wants; and, looking at the state of some of our great manufacturing towns, he thought that there was now a noble opportunity for employing that enormous fund of the Anti-Corn-Law League, now likely to be useless for the purposes for which it was raised, in erecting some peaceful trophy of their victory, and for identifying the names of their leaders, not with the remembrance of a temporary and evanescent and most questionable agitation, but with some permanent establishments for the relief of the poor, the destitute, and the oppressed. For these and other reasons he had come, after full and earnest thought upon the subject, to the conclusion that it was the course most consistent with the duty he owed to the constituency he represented, with the duty he owed to the great interests of the country,
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and with that duty which he owed to his own personal honour, to give his cordial and earnest support to the measures now proposed by Her Majesty's Government; convinced as he was that they were measures which would tend to promote the general welfare of all classes of the community, and place the future greatness and prosperity of this Empire upon the one sole foundation upon which that greatness and that prosperity could securely rest — namely, the loyal affections of a contented and confiding people.
MR. PACKEobserved, that the hon. Member who had last addressed the House expressed a hope with respect to the appropriation of the funds of the Anti-Corn-Law League. He, however, believed that those funds had been raised for the purpose of agitation, and that they never would be applied to any other purpose. Much as he admired the tact and ability of the right hon. Baronet the First Lord of the Treasury, and often as he had supported him upon the other side of the House, and frequently upon this (the Ministerial) side of the House, yet he was compelled to say he had not as yet heard a single argument adduced in favour of a repeal of the Corn Laws. The present state of Ireland had been alluded to as a reason for the proposal of the present measure affecting corn; but he, for one, declared that he could see no connection between a remedy for the distresses of the people of Ireland, and the total repeal of the Corn Laws on the 1st day of February, 1849. The right hon. Baronet had maintained that another powerful argument in favour of free trade was to be found in the national prosperity that had existed for the past three years under the system of relaxed duties. The hon. Member who had just sat down also remarked, that the consequences of such relaxation had been so encouraging that he was prepared to record his vote in favour of still further reductions. Why, did not the hon. Member know that the prosperity of the past three years had been in consequence of that very protection which it was now sought to abolish? Nevertheless, that prosperity was adduced as an argument in favour of free trade. This prosperity had likewise been brought about by the prosperous harvest, and the increased production of the land under an improved system of agriculture. But if the law of 1842 was now to be altered, faith would be broken with the farmers, who had invested their capital believing that protection would be

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extended to the produce of their industry. When they were told that they might improve their land, and thus obtain great benefit from the measures of free trade, he must say, that they might be pushed too far, and that they could not improve their land by the same process as they improved their manufacturing system. When the noble Lord the Member for London visited Glasgow, he told his auditory there that the right hon. Baronet had treated the agricultural party with great unkindness, for he had left them to speak for themselves. But he thought, when that noble Lord went back to Glasgow, he would be able to tell them that the agricultural party, both by the number and the excellence of their speeches, had defended themselves pretty well. But he agreed with the noble Lord that the right hon. Gentleman had treated his supporters with great unkindness. If he had told his supporters last December what he was going to do, they would not have committed themselves so much as they did, and certain hon. Friends of his would not have lost their seats in this House if they had known the views of the right hon. Baronet. They had been often told that they ought not to refer to old speeches, as these were altogether beside the question. Now it was very well for hon. Gentlemen opposite to complain of their finding fault with Government for having deserted them; but he should be glad to know if the hon. Member for Stockport, or the hon. Member for Durham, were to get up and declare that they had been converted to the cause of protection, would not Covent Garden ring with astonishment and indignation? The election of South Nottingham, and the rejection of Lord Lincoln, was one proof of the feelings of the agriculturists towards the Government. Another was the meeting which was held at Loughborough, on the borders of South Notts, where strong resolutions were passed, and much indignation expressed by the agriculturists at the measures proposed by Government. If a general election were to take place, there would be the greatest possible distrust of the Government and of all public men whatever. He objected to the measure, because as yet he had heard no reason for its adoption; and he believed its effect would be seriously and vitally injurious to the best interests of the country. He objected to it, secondly, because it was a breach of faith with the constituencies of the Empire—and above all, he objected to it because,
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in the words of a late Member of the Cabinet—a nobleman who was not only noble by birth, but noble by his political character, he objected to it because he could not support the Government without a violation of his consistency and honour.
MR. FOX MAULEhoped the House would allow him to make a few observations upon this question. He did so from feeling it was right that those who were connected solely with the landed property of the country, and who had nothing else to look to, ought to state the grounds upon which they supported the proposition of Her Majesty's Government. He could not say of that proposition that it had his entire and cordial approval, because it did not go to the extent he wished it to proceed. It fell short of that which he considered requisite to remedy the difficulties it was proposed to meet; but nevertheless, such as it was, he for one accepted it with gratitude, and he should endeavour to give it his most cordial support. He had listened to the hon. Gentleman who proposed the Amendment, and he confessed he felt some difficulty in accounting for the statement he had made with reference to the feelings this measure had created, not only in the breasts of landlords, but in the breasts of farmers and agricultural labourers on this side the Tweed. It had been his duty, ever since the measure had been proposed, to investigate the feelings which existed towards it in that country and among that class to which he more immediately belonged; and he had no hesitation in publicly declaring that the result of that investigation had been this—not only was there no panic among the landlords, or among the farmers, but in spite of all that had been said, agricultural arrangements were proceeding with an increased activity from day to day. He would state to the House, in reference to the observations which had fallen from the other side, a practical example of that which he had mentioned. When this proposition was first made, a document was laid before a public meeting emanating from one to whom, however he might have sometimes differed upon the means he took to advocate this question, he had no hesitation in saying the country was under a very deep debt of gratitude for his exertions. He meant the hon. Member for Stockport. The letter which that hon. Gentleman addressed to the farmers of the kingdom, shortly after this measure was proposed, had been widely canvassed in his

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county, at many of the largest markets there; and within ten days after the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government had developed his measures, the farmers, who he would not say were in the first instance anxious for them, but after having seen and heard the arguments in their support in that letter, they came to the conclusion, that instead of being put off for three years, their interests would have been best consulted had the abolition of the Corn Laws taken place at once. Such was his own conclusion; and he must say, that he looked with regret upon the proposed measure of the Government, because it contained provisions for maintaining the present Corn Laws for a further period of three years; and he also looked with regret upon the time which had already intervened since the right hon. Gentleman had proposed this measure, and which he feared must yet intervene before even the measure of the right hon. Gentleman could be carried into effect. He could not but remember that on the 1st of November last the right hon. Gentleman had proposed, on account of the apprehended scarcity both in Ireland and in this country, to open the ports for the free admission of foreign grain. We had now arrived at nearly the end of March, and still there was no decided prospect of even the partial remedy of Her Majesty's Government being carried through that House of Parliament. He certainly had anticipated, and had hoped, before that House should separate for the Easter recess, that the measure would at any rate have passed that tribunal; but he regretted to think that, during the next week, they were to have mixed up with that debate another subject of the deepest importance to a neighbouring country; and the experience which he had had of Irish debates, forbad him to hope that the present measure would be read a third time in that House before the Easter recess. Under all the circumstances, he could not anticipate that before the end of May at least, any advantage could be expected to accrue from it. He could not find fault with the length of time which the discussion of that subject had already occupied; for every one had a right fully to speak upon so important a subject, particularly if he felt that his interests were affected. The landlords had stated that it was a question in which they were deeply concerned. He (Mr. F. Maule) must say he believed that in his county the interests of the landlords would be as safe after this measure should
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become law, as they were at present; and he not only believed that the alarm which they expressed now was groundless, but he was surprised at the conduct of many of those who had, if he might use the expression, the very groundlessness of it under their own immediate eyes. He knew one noble Lord who had withdrawn his proxy from the Government, and had given it to the noble Duke who led the protectionist party in another place; and yet he knew at the same time that ten days after the right hon. Baronet had made his proposal known to the country, the noble Lord had let two farms upon his own property at an increased rental. He stated the fact, because one fact was worth a bushel of arguments. One farm was renewed for a period of nineteen years. Previously the rent was 480 l. a year. Ten days after the right hon. Baronet's proposal was made known, a rent was offered for the ensuing nineteen years of 570 l. per annum; being an increase of 90 l. a year. Hitherto the rent had been paid half in grain and half in money; the whole increase of rent was conditioned to be paid exclusively in money. The other farm was let within a few days afterwards. He was not acquainted with the precise details; but he was within the mark when he stated that it had been let at an increased rent of 20 per cent. He had consulted nearly the whole of the land agents in the large county of Perth, and they could not inform him of one single instance within their knowledge where the lease of a farm having expired, the offers on it had not risen, and the increased offers had not been accepted by the landlords. He observed that a few days ago a petition had been presented in another place from the county of Haddington, against the proposed measures of the Government; and yet he knew that so far from having been depressed in value, a farm in that county had not many days ago been let upon a new lease at the enormous price of five guineas an acre. These facts concurred to make him think that if the whole agricultural interest of Scotland were fairly to consider the proposed measures, the result would be that they would look forward to the issue of the principles of free trade as to one which would enable them to stand in a much improved condition with reference to the other classes of the community. He looked upon those measures of Her Majesty's Government as calculated to sooth and calm the feelings of irritation which might exist in our own community;

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but he looked also upon those measures of commercial freedom, as calculated to reach to a far greater extent, and to secure peace between nations and throughout the world. Let them look to America, and he would ask to what did they attribute the changed tone of America? He attributed it, first, to the calm and dignified manner in which all parties in this country had treated the subject in dispute; but he equally ascribed it to those measures of freedom of trade and commercial liberty which had emanated from Her Majesty's Government, and which he was sure would be found by all parties, whether extended to America or to any other country on the face of the globe, to be their best security for peace, whilst they would eventually secure to this country an abundant supply of all articles which entered into the food and conduced to the comfort of the people.
MR. CHOLMONDELEY, in venturing to offer to the House a very few remarks upon the important question which now occupied its attention, might perhaps be permitted to allude for one moment to a subject to which an hon. Member had referred; the allusion was to a subject which he had had no intention of introducing—a dissolution of Parliament upon this question. There might be many grave objections urged against such a course; but still he could not but think, in spite of those objections, that such a course would have been most safe and most advisable. He might be told that it would be unconstitutional and dangerous — that the House of Commons stood to the country in precisely the same relative position as an individual Member stood to his constituents, and that the same considerations which would prevent the Representative from consulting his constituents as to a particular vote, ought to withhold the House from appealing to the country on this particular question. All this he had no doubt was theoretically true; but how did the matter stand when we came to practical results? He thought it might be fairly illustrated by one particular case—the case of the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government. On one memorable occasion the right hon. Gentleman had felt it necessary to resign his trust into the hands of those who had committed it to him. He had told the House the other night that he then thought he had taken a wrong course. That might have been the case constitutionally; but did the right hon. Gentleman wish what he had done undone? He
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thought not. He had done it because he felt that honour and conscience required it; and for yielding to those dictates he was sure neither an individual Member nor that House would ever lose credit with the country. He thought that by the same dictates of honour and conscience the House was, even at this late period, bound to give the country an opportunity of pronouncing upon a measure which was so important to every one in the country. Surely if this measure was to become the law of the land, the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government would count his numbers with greater satisfaction, when he felt that he could not be accused of taking the country by surprise; and that the majority which enabled him to carry this measure was a majority (which he denied the present would be) which spoke the sense of the country. Having said thus much on this point, he might now perhaps be allowed to state in a very few sentences the reasons why with much regret he now found himself in opposition to the Government. He must say that he saw nothing in the state of the case, and heard nothing in the arguments which had been advanced, to change the opinions which he had always entertained on this subject. He might be met with statements of distress, famine, and pestilence in Ireland, and asked if such matters were to be treated with levity. He did not believe that there was in this country any general feeling of indifference to the state of Ireland. But admitting even to their utmost extent the statements of present misfortune, and, going still further, admitting all the expected calamity, he still thought that the Irish emergency might have been met at a less price than that of a total revolution of the whole agricultural interest, as well as the whole home and foreign trade of the country. When he said revolution, he used the word in its literal sense, a turning over, an absolute alteration, for such it was; it was an absolute revolution for good or for evil: he trusted it might be for good; but suppose it were for evil—suppose the present measure, instead of relieving Irish misery, were but to superadd English to Irish distress—in what a position should we feel ourselves? And be it remembered that this measure, offering in case of failure so terrible an alternative, was brought forward, not at a moment of great national distress, of great depression of trade; it was not brought forward at an emergency when to avoid the certainty of impending

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ruin they must embrace the alternative of great possible calamity; on the contrary, it was proposed to them at a period of (with one exception) almost unexampled national prosperity; and with regard to that one exception, with regard to the Irish emergency, it surely would have been better met by the right hon. Baronet's original proposition of opening the ports. He knew that the proposition had once been negatived in the Cabinet; but he could not but think that the powers of persuasion of the right hon. Baronet, which had induced the Cabinet to co-operate in the larger measure, would have enabled him to carry the smaller; and as far as Ireland was concerned, that smaller measure, the temporary opening of the ports, would have afforded more effectual or more immediate relief, putting out of the question the inexpediency of meeting a temporary evil by a permanent enactment. And, as to the difficulty alluded to by the right hon. Baronet of closing the ports again after "the sweets of the absence of protection" had once been tasted, surely that was the most conclusive argument that could be adduced in favour of such a measure; for the degree to which "the sweets of the absence of protection" received the approval or disapproval of the country in general, would furnish the strongest possible justification of the abolition, or reason for the continuance, of the present system of Corn Laws. So much for the state of the case. With respect to arguments, he had promised not to detain the House; and after the lengthened discussion that had taken place, he was not presumptuous enough to suppose that he could offer anything new upon the subject; but there was one point on which he wished to say a single word. In the course of his speech, the right hon. Baronet had endeavoured to prove that a low price of food and high wages went hand in hand, and adduced the last three years in support of his assertion; but the right hon. Gentleman totally passed over the fact, that, during the last three years there had been a cause in operation which, however beneficial, could not be considered as permanent, and, consequently, was not admissible into a calculation of that nature. He alluded to the immense number of railroads in process of construction. These produced an immense artificial and temporary demand for labour, and consequent increase in the rate of wages; whilst good harvests had produced a comparatively low price of food; both great blessings to the
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country, but neither of which could be counted on as permanent ones. He had, he must own, great confidence in the sagacity of the right hon. Gentleman; and he was also sure that the right hon. Gentleman had not brought forward any measure of the expediency of which he was not convinced. He was ready to admit, too, that, as far as the right hon. Gentleman had gone, his measures had worked well for the country. He trusted the results of the present measures might be good, for he liked to look at the bright side of every question. At the same time he could not but see that human nature was fallible. The right hon. Gentleman might be right; but then he might be wrong, and that, too, upon a matter of vital importance. With the exception of Irish distress, he believed the country to be in a state of great prosperity. Then, ought they to run this risk, and expose the country to a great danger? He had, he repeated, great confidence in the right hon. Baronet's sagacity, and on ordinary occasions would strain a point, or sacrifice an opinion, to support him; but he could not but feel that this was an enormous experiment; uncalled for by present emergencies; tried, not at a period of great national distress, but at a moment of almost unexampled national prosperity—an experiment that might, and he trusted would be, successful; but one whose failure would be so disastrous, that he could not undertake the responsibility of being one of those who helped to make this measure the law of the land. He trusted that in the few remarks he had ventured to make to the House, he had abstained entirely from all personalities, which had unfortunately prevailed but too much in these debates. A great cry had been got up, more out of that House than in it, against the right hon. Gentleman at the head of Her Majesty's Government. In this cry he did not participate, for, he said, that if ever there was a man who gave unequivocal proof of his sincerity, by his sacrifices, in bringing forward measures that he believed to be for the good of the country, it was the right hon. Gentleman. He could understand changing—honestly changing his opinion, and openly avowing that change; but that which he did not understand was men thinking one way and voting another. This, he said, was the real mischief—this it was that went far to destroy the bonds of union between the representative and his constituents—this it

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was which really destroyed the public confidence in public men. If were to do this—if we were thus to
"— play fast and loose with faith,
And make unconstant children of ourselves,"
it would do more real mischief to the country, than all the Bills that ever were introduced into Parliament.
MR. H. VERNONsaid, that if, as it had been argued, Parliament was not in a state competent to judge of this measure, it was the duty of the House to address Her Majesty, praying Her to dissolve the Parliament; and if such an Amendment had been moved instead of that the Bill be read a second time that day six months, it would have been more consonant with the views expressed by hon. Gentlemen. He himself stood in a position of some peculiarity; for he was obnoxious to those shafts to which hon. Members were exposed who had heretofore been ranged on the side of protection, and who had felt compelled, by an imperative sense of duty, to take another course—a course which was not the most congenial to his sentiments, nor most accordant with his foregone conclusions. He had come down to the House the other night in the hope that a 5s. fixed duty would have found advocates in many hon. Gentlemen on the opposite benches. He had always considered that a moderate fixed duty was the best for the agriculturists; but he had been compelled, like all public men, to act with a great body: it was no use to take up an "insulated" position when there was a vast number of important questions which attached a man to his party. Undoubtedly, in early life, he had never attached himself to the party of the First Lord of the Treasury; and he had not become his supporter till in 1836 he had seen the necessity of joining his standard; and, ever since, he had admired the wisdom and integrity of his course. The right hon. Baronet knew that he had never asked and had never received a favour from him—[Sir R. PERL: Hear]—but he had given the right hon. Baronet his best support. With regard to the general question, he frankly stated, that for the last twenty years he had been of opinion that a 5s. duty would not throw any great impediment in the way of the interests of commerce, and would not injure the prosperity of the country, whilst it would stop the evils of speculation, and give, if not a protection, an assistance to the agriculturists; but he had always felt a difficulty, as a representative of an agricultural
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district, in reconciling his wish to defer to his constituents with the interests of the country. A fixed duty was not now attainable, and in supporting the present proposal he was under the conviction that he should suffer a loss of from five to ten per cent in his rents. He did not hold that the protection which gave him this was a bane to agriculture; but if there were any truth in political economy it would prove ultimately to be a landlord's and not a tenant's question; and he felt bound to vote for the real interests of the poor, and for what would promote the industry of the country, and, ultimately, its prosperity, notwithstanding any private injury done to his own interests. He must say, also, that throughout America he had found but one feeling among the friends of peace, who said that if we would only interest, by prosperity, the Western States of America, which were invulnerable to our arms, and inaccessible to our commerce—for we had already the interests of the Eastern States in our favour—we should do more to promote the peace of America than all the concessions we should make in the Oregon or elsewhere. He had received a letter from a very intelligent merchant at Boston, who said that the effect of the proposed alteration in the Tariff would be that England would completely fortify herself against all competition in manufactures. Again, it was not the experience of the three prosperous years of 1843, 1844, and 1845, but the experience of the three famine years of 1840, 1841, and 1842, that had convinced the right hon. Baronet of the inutility of the sliding-scale; and it was upon those grounds he should support the second reading of this Bill.
CAPTAIN BERKELEYsaid, that he had entered that House believing that the Corn Laws, as they were then constituted, were for the good of the country, though he had always voted with the hon. Member for Wolverhampton for an inquiry into them, as he conceived that such an inquiry was just and right. However, when he found that the noble Lord whose political opinions had generally guided his own, united with the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who, he might say, was one of the greatest statesmen of his time, for one purpose, in which neither of them, especially the right hon. Gentleman, could have any personal interest, he, as a practical man, without pretending to understand, as some hon. Gentleman opposite had pretended to understand, political economy, felt himself

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bound to give way to the right hon. Baronet, and to vote in favour of this Bill.
SIR R. H. INGLISsaid, that the hon. and gallant Officer (Hon. Capt. Berkeley), who preceded him, had by his political life in general, and by one memorable vote in particular, entitled himself to respect in all his other Parliamentary proceedings, for earnestness and sincerity, even where he did not carry conviction to his hearers. As to his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Vernon), who preceded the gallant Officer, he (Sir R. H. Inglis) would not follow his speech further than to say, that one more full of the personal confessions of a public man, of the private narrative of his travels, of an eloge on his own high-minded principles and consistency, he had never heard. For the condescension with which he obviously regarded the weakness of those with whom he was now differing, in this section of the House, they all doubtless felt as grateful as they ought; but he would not let off his hon. and learned Friend without one parting observation. He had referred largely to his political life; but the date of his conversion to those views which now, so much to his own satisfaction, authorized him to lecture these benches, was not earlier than the 11th June last year; for, on the preceding day, namely, on the 10th June, 1845, he found his hon. and learned Friend most stoutly denying, in opposition to the hon. and consistent Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. Villiers) that the Corn Law does restrict the supply of food, or that it is prejudicial to the welfare of the country, especially of the working classes, or that it ought to be abolished. When he saw the name of Mr. Granville Vernon in the memorable list of the majority of 254, nine months ago, he felt that that hon. Member was not the person who was entitled to taunt with weakness those who retained their own and his last year's opinions. Then as to his hon. Friend the Member for Honiton, who had addressed the House with so much earnestness and so much ability, he must deny his right also to be an authority in the matter; since he also, though from his speech it might have been thought that he was one who had always held his present opinions, and was thereby entitled to give lectures to others upon them, was one of the new converts, whose name appeared in the same memorable list in last year's division against the repeal of the Corn Laws. Now, as to his right hon. Friend the Member for the county of Perth (Mr. F. Maule), to whom
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that disability did not apply, he had unintentionally omitted a most important element in the statements which he had made respecting the increased rent given for farms in that county within the last few days or weeks, as if such increase proved the confidence of the parties in the measures of Her Majesty's Government, and that agriculture was to flourish even more without protection than with it. The facts proved no such thing. The leases were leases for nineteen years, granted in the period of the greatest depression, and renewed, when renewed, in reference to the current value of all things. On the general subject of the night, after a debate of eighteen days, he was not presumptuous enough to think that on the nineteenth evening he could introduce any new matter; but still there were three or four points to which, though he had been a tolerably regular listener, he did not think that sufficient attention had been paid. They were these: first, the expense of the experiment now under consideration; secondly, the injustice of that experiment as related to one of the great interests of the country, he meant that which was connected with tithe rent-charge; thirdly, the injustice of the measure to the general agriculture of the country in the measure of compensation not being contemporaneous; and, fourthly, admitting, what he denied, the extent of the existing distress, the utter inapplicability of the proposed remedy to meet that distress. On the first point, he did not think that it had been made sufficiently prominent in the debates, that the cost of the present measure, "that enormous experiment," as his hon. Friend the Member for Honiton had called it, was probably not less than 1,500,000 l. of yearly revenue. In the account ordered by the House to be printed on the 6th of February last, it appeared that a sum of 357,203 l. would, on the 1st of February, 1849, be permanently lost, as duties on corn to the yearly receipts of the Exchequer; there was a further sum of 55,879 l. as duties on other articles absolutely repealed: so much for positive loss. Then there was a positive outlay of above 500,000 l. sterling annually, in the shape of compensatory boons to the agricultural interests—some, for saving the counties the expense of hanging a criminal — some, 20,000 l. in one item—some, 30,000 l. in another. But besides this loss and this outlay, there was the risk of enormous reductions on the existing duties on the articles

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which were to be admitted at lower rates. The aggregate thus risked was 2,326,105. Now, he would take one item only, that of spirits. Foreign spirits were now admitted at a duty of 1l. 2s. 10 d. per gallon; henceforth they were to be admitted at 15 s. per gallon. Either the consumption of foreign spirits would remain the same, in which case the revenue would lose 413,791 l. every year; or it would rise, according to the diminished price, and, in that case, you would gain the same duty by having distributed more than half a million of ardent foreign spirits throughout the country, increasing the temptations to crime, as well as disturbing many of the existing commercial interests of the people. The second point to which he wished briefly to direct the attention of the House, was the gross injustice of the measure as related to the owner of tithe-rent-charge. His hon. Friend who seconded the Amendment (Sir J. Y. Buller) had with great force and effect impressed this point on the House. He would not weary the House by referring, except passingly, to the measure for the commutation of tithes, which became law only some seven or eight years ago. At the time he stated that, without entering into the question of the divine right of tithes, nothing was clearer than that tithes were the oldest legal property in England. That property the owners did not desire to exchange for any other. Without their request, and against their interest, the Legislature compelled the surrender of this property in exchange for the present rent-charge. A bargain is a bargain whether made with a man in a black coat, or with a man in a blue coat. That bargain you made with the tithe-owner. You told him, that, instead of having the first interest in the soil of England, whether cultivated or uncultivated, whenever it might be brought to bear produce, he should have hereafter, in reference to that land only which at the date of the compact was under cultivation, a certain number of bushels of wheat, at a price varying according to the average of a certain number of preceding years; that wheat being a protected article, protected by the laws for the encouragement of native industry and native produce. What is the case now? You introduce a measure, without the consent of the tithe rent-charge owner, which is, according to your own showing, to diminish the value of that which you have given him, in exchange for an absolute right over all the lands of
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England. The owners of the other interests in those lands may possibly—though he (Sir R. H. Inglis) thought not with any certainty—hereafter, at the distance of some years, and with an amount of intermediate misery which has not hitherto been described in these debates, be enabled to recover rents equal, perhaps, to those at present. We have learnt now to produce meat by the plough; the application of science to agriculture has enabled the farmer by his green crops to provide food for cattle, to a degree unknown even fifty years ago; and by the conversion of arable to pasture lands, the actual revenue to the lord may possibly be as great a few years hence as now. But there is one class of proprietors for whom no such resource is open. They are irrevocably bound to receive an unvarying quantity of one article of produce at a lower and a lower price. Is not the object of your measure to ensure lower price? If it be not, and if such be not the result, you have needlessly disturbed all the social and domestic interests of the country; if it be, and if it succeed, you have perpetrated a gross injustice not merely on an unprotected class, but on that very class which, on the faith of your own laws, within the last eight years, you have compelled to exchange their old security on the broad lands of England for a bargain which you are yourselves the first to violate. On the third point, he (Sir R. H. Inglis) would be very brief. He was, in fact, hardly able, as the House would perceive, to make himself heard. He referred to the injustice done to the landed interest, not merely by the measure itself, but by the delay of the measures which ought contemporaneously to have been brought before the House. It was possible that the measure now on the Table might become law; while the compensatory measures, however inefficient they were for actual relief, might not even be proposed. He repeated that he did not much value them: he thought that the transfer of some large portion of the poor's rate to the Consolidated Fund would have been a far greater relief to the landed interest, while it would distribute the burden more equally, as it ought. His fourth point was, the utter inapplicability of the proposed measure to the relief of the evil which it professed to meet. There was no more connexion between them than, according to the popular version of the old saying, there was between Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands, He fully admitted that his

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right hon. Friend at the head of the Government was perfectly sincere in his present course. He could have no conceivable motive for it except such sincerity. He was to govern England on his own principles, and not on those of any other man: on his own honest convictions to-day, not on those which he might have held with equal honesty yesterday. But, while he admitted this most fully, he could not repeat, what he had stated on a former occasion, that exactly in proportion as he acquitted his right hon. Friend as a man, he must depreciate him as a statesman—all whose opinions on commercial policy must have been wrong for the thirty-five years of his past public life, if his opinions for the last three months were right. Though he did not think that a case had been made out for opening the ports in November last, that at least was, in point of time, a remedy more near to the disease than the measure now in progress. A famine is threatened in Ireland this spring; and you meet it by a measure which is to take effect on the 1st February, 1849. His right hon. Friend (Sir R. Peel) said on this day month, that the climax of the distress would be three months onward. How is scarcity to be cured or relieved in Ireland three months hence, by importing corn duty-free three years since? Upon every ground he concurred with the Amendment moved, in a speech of such talent, by his hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Yorke), though he did not quite follow him in some of the latter allusions in that speech. He retained his old convictions in favour of his own country, and of the duty of protecting the interests of England, rather than of encouraging those of Poland or Russia. He was not of that school who looked with equal regard or equal indifference to all other countries and to his own—
"—Whose impartial view,
Thy interests, Britain, ranks with thine, Peru."
He felt persuaded, that the great change now meditated on one interest would materially affect others, which ought to be equally dear: and believing that it would not remedy even the local and temporary evil upon which it was professed to be grounded, he cordially concurred in its rejection.
MR. CHILDERSgave his approbation to the present measure, under the conviction that the price of corn in this country would not be at all reduced by a system of free trade. A return which was prepared at the Foreign Office last year, proved, on the authority of our Consuls, that the price of bread in England was as low as in any part of the world. It was a fact that bread in London was chaper than in Ostend and Antwerp, and that the steamers plying between England and Belgium invariably laid in their stock of bread in London. The price of inferior bread at Dantzic was 2½d. per lb., at Warsaw 3¼d., at Hamburg 2¼d., Amsterdam 3¼d. At Odessa bread was 2¾d. per lb., though corn was only 28 s. a quarter, and in each of those cases bread in London was lower in price per lb. Marseilles was comparatively near Odessa, and drew a great quantity of corn from that port; and yet it was a singular fact, corn in Marseilles was at times dearer than in England. Why, then, should we be afraid of the effects of free trade? The right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government had declared "that there was a remarkable tendency apart from all legislation, to a decline in the price of wheat in this country," Now this was a proposition opposed to his view. The right hon. Baronet had quoted in support of the argument the average prices during periods of five years each, fom 1800 to 1830; but there was a fallacy in this argument. The right hon. Baronet had left the question of the currency entirely out of consideration. When the currency assumed a natural and healthy condition, the prices rose. From 1825 to 1830, for instance, the price was 56 s. 7d.; but from 1830 to 1835, the average was 57 s. 11 d. Wool, and other articles, fluctuated in the same way, and ultimately the same results were produced. He also anticipated great benefit from free trade, by opening the ports of other nations. He felt assured that our good example would be everywhere followed, and that an extension of peace and civilization would be the consequence.
Debate adjourned.
House adjourned at half-past Twelve o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—2a. Fever (Ireland); Insolvent Debtors (India); Consolidated Fund.
Reported. Print Works.
3a. and passed. Fever (Ireland); Metropolitan Buildings.
PETITIONS PRESENTED. From Guardians of the Midleton Union, for Alteration of Poor Law (Ireland) Act in respect to the Repayment of Money advanced for the Building of Workhouses.—By Lord Denman, from William Green, now confined in the Queen's Prison, Southwark, for Alteration of Law respecting Imprisonment for Debt.—By Lord Redesdale, from Board of Guardians of the Tiverton Union, for Alteration of Poor Laws Amendment Act in regard to the Law of Settlement and Rating.—From Solicitors of East Ripon, against the Real Property Deeds Registration Bill.—From the Wardens and Society of the Mystery of the Art of the Leathersellers of the City of London, praying to be exempted from the Operation of the Charitable Trusts Bill.

STATE OF IRELAND.
EARL GREYthen rose to bring forward his Motion on the State of Ireland. The
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noble Lord spoke nearly as follows:—My Lords, in rising to submit to your Lordships the Motion of which I have given notice, I feel that I am, in the first instance, bound to apologize to your Lordships for having taken upon myself the task of bringing under your consideration a subject of such extreme difficulty and importance, to which I am painfully conscious how little I shall be able to do justice. The only excuse I can offer for what must appear such great presumption is, that I found no other noble Lord willing to undertake a task which I thought absolutely to be performed, even though it should be by one not better qualified for it than myself. The measures that have lately been brought before your Lordships with respect to Ireland are, in my judgment, of such a character as to impose upon the House the necessity of taking the earliest opportunity, after having given its assent to them, of declaring by a solemn vote that those measures by themselves are altogether inadequate to the case of Ireland—that they cannot possibly be expected to cure the social evils by which Ireland has so long been afflicted, and that they are only to be justified upon the supposition that they are intended for nothing more than to give time for the application of other and more effectual remedies. It is the object of the Motion I am about to submit to your Lordships to call upon this House to express that opinion. I most earnestly wish the task of asking you to do so had fallen into other and worthier hands; but as that has not been the case, I have only to entreat your Lordships' indulgence for the imperfect manner in which I am aware I shall perform this duty. In bringing this subject under your Lordships' notice, unfortunately there is but little need for me to dwell upon the unhappy condition of Ireland. You have already heard too much of it on much higher authority than mine. The noble Earl opposite, in bringing forward on behalf of Her Majesty's Government the different measures that have been proposed with respect to Ireland, has disclosed to us a state of society which it is indeed awful to contemplate; a state of society in which there is no security for life or property; a state of society in which the usual wretchedness of the population has been so aggravated by the partial failure of the potato crop, that famine and pestilence must stalk through the land, unless those measures which Parliament has adopted

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to counteract those evils should fortunately arrest their progress. This is the state of things described by Her Majesty's Government; and unhappily this is no accidental, no extraordinary, no unlooked-for calamity. It is but an aggravation, and perhaps no very great aggravation, of the habitual condition of Ireland. The evils of that unhappy country are not accidental, not temporary, but chronic and habitual. The state of Ireland is one which is notorious. We know the ordinary condition of that country to be one both of lawlessness and wretchedness. It is so described by every competent authority. There is not an intelligent foreigner coming to our shores, who turns his attention to the state of Ireland, but who bears back with him such a description. Ireland is the one weak place in the solid fabric of British power—Ireland is the one deep (I had almost said ineffaceable) blot upon the brightness of British honour. Ireland is our disgrace. It is the reproach, the standing disgrace, of this country, that Ireland remains in the condition she is. It is so regarded throughout the whole civilized world. To ourselves we may palliate it if we will, and disguise the truth; but we cannot conceal it from others. There is not, as I have said, a foreigner—no matter whence he comes, be it from France, Russia, Germany, or America—there is no native of any foreign country different as their forms of government may be, who visits Ireland, and who on his return does not congratulate himself that he sees nothing comparable with the condition of that country at home. If such be the state of things, how then does it arise, and what is its cause? My Lords, it is only by misgovernment that such evils could have been produced: the mere fact that Ireland is in so deplorable and wretched a condition saves whole volumes of argument, and is of itself a complete and irrefutable proof of the misgovernment to which she has been subjected. Nor can we lay to our souls the "flattering unction" that this misgovernment was only of ancient date, and has not been our doing. It is not enough in our own excuse to say, "No wonder this state of things exists: the Government of Ireland before the Union was the most ingeniously bad that was ever contrived in the face of the world; it was the Government of a corrupt minority, sustained by the superior power of this great country in oppressing and tyrannizing over the great body of the nation;
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such a system of government could not fail to leave behind it a train of fearful evils from which we are still suffering at the present day." To a certain extent, no doubt, this is true. No man has a stronger opinion than I regarding the iniquitous system of misgovernment in Ireland prior to the Union. But the Union is not an event of yesterday. It is nearly half a century since that measure passed. For nearly fifty years, now, Ireland has been under the immediate control of the Imperial Parliament. Since it has been so, a whole generation has grown up, and is now passing away to be replaced by another; and in that time, I ask you, what impression has been made upon the evils of Ireland? It is true some good has been done. I gladly acknowledge that many useful measures have been adopted, which have, I hope, contributed in some respects to the improvement of Ireland; but none of these measures have gone to the root of the social disease to which Ireland is a prey; in the worst symptoms of which no amelioration whatever can be observed: the wretchedness and misery of the population have experienced no abatement. Upon that point I can quote high authority. I find that the Commission presided over by a noble Earl, whom I do not now see in his place (the Earl of Devon), reported the year before last, that "improvement was indeed beginning to take place in agriculture; but there had been no corresponding advance in the condition and comforts of the labouring classes." By the Report of that Commission we are informed, that the agricultural labourers are still suffering the greatest privations and hardships, and still depend upon casual and precarious employment for their subsistence; that they are badly fed, badly clothed, badly housed, and badly paid for their labour; and the Commissioners conclude this part of their Report by saying—
"We cannot forbear expressing our strong sense of the patient endurance which the labouring classes have generally exhibited under sufferings greater, we believe, than the people of any other country have ever endured."
This is an authentic statement, and comes from a Commission appointed only the other day to inquire into the state of the people of Ireland. It is a Report describing the state of things in that country before the failure of the potato crop, and the Commissioners tell you that the sufferings of the great mass of the people of that country are greater than those of

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the population of any other country in Europe. This is indeed a fearful statement, coming from such authority. But there is another symptom of the condition of Ireland, which seems to me even more alarming than the prevalence of distress—I mean the the general alienation of the whole mass of the nation from the institutions under which they live, and the existence in their minds of a strong deep feeling of hostility to the form of government under which they are placed. This feeling, which is the worst feature in the case, seems to be rather gaining strength than to be diminishing. I am led to that opinion by what I heard two years ago fall from the Secretary of State for the Home Department in the House of Commons. I heard that right hon. Gentleman—and it was a statement which made a deep impression upon me—I heard the right hon. Gentleman, in answer to a speech made by a noble Friend of mine, distinctly admit that we had military occupation of Ireland, but that in no other sense could it be said to be governed; that it was occupied by troops, not governed like England. Such was the admission of the Secretary of State for the Home Department. And now, my Lords, I ask you, is that a state of things which ought to continue? And I ask is not such a state of things, so clearly established by authorities so high and indisputable, a good ground for inferring that there is something wrong in the policy which has been hitherto pursued towards Ireland; and that some measures different in character, and more effectual than those we have been in the habit of trusting to, are necessary to meet the exigency? That is the only inference which appears to me to follow from the premises universally admitted. I cannot understand how any man with the use of his reason could arrive at a different conclusion. I say, then, some change is absolutely necessary; we are bound to endeavour to apply some remedy to the evils of Ireland more efficient than any which have yet been attempted. This necessity, however, does not appear to be recognised by Her Majesty's Government. Her Majesty's Government propose only to go on with measures such as those we have tried over and over again—measures which have allowed all the evils of Ireland to go on, as I have shown, and rather to get worse than better. They propose doggedly to pursue the old and beaten track. How, then, can they expect that it should lead to any but the accustomed termination?
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Two words, "money" and "coercion," seem to describe the whole policy of the Government. We have never been sparing of either: both have been tried over and over again; and we see in the state of Ireland the most convincing proof that by themselves they hold out no hope of success. Shall I be told, then, that improvement in that country is impracticable—that the causes of the unhappy condition of Ireland are either undiscoverable, or else of such a nature as to be beyond our power to cure them? Such an assertion, I should say, is a libel at once upon Providence and upon human nature. I, for my part, utterly disbelieve in the possibility of such a state of things existing in any country, unless through great faults on the part of the rulers. Is there anything in the nature of Ireland or of her people that can warrant a different view of the case? Undoubtedly not. So far as regards the nature of the country, Ireland has been gifted by Providence with a soil of surpassing fertility, with great mineral wealth, with a climate mild and genial. In her large extent of coast and numerous harbours—her great natural facilities for internal navigation—in her command of water power, she has great natural resources, and every requisite for commercial greatness. The natural resources of Ireland are not only great, but unusually great. Then, as to her people. When they are removed from Ireland — when they are taken away from the pernicious influences by which they seem there to be surrounded, the men of Ireland have shown themselves capable of everything that is good and great. We see them in our Colonies—we see them in America, in various countries of Europe, distinguishing themselves in every pursuit of industry, and every branch of art. So little is it true that they are incapable of regular industry, that in this country many of the employments imposing the severest labour are chiefly in their hands. In the county with which I am connected, we have been in the habit of seeing every year large numbers of Irishmen come over as reapers during harvest, many of them from Donegal, and other districts, where the greatest wretchedness and misery prevail. What is the character of those men? We have always found them grateful beyond measure for good treatment; tractable, industrious, cheerful, and gay—in some respects, no doubt, thoughtless, and easily excited; but, on the other hand, exhibiting,

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upon the whole, a degree of prudence and forethought not often seen in men of their rank in life and amount of education—living in the most economical manner when in work, and saving their hard earnings in order that they may pay their rents when they get home. This is the character of the people of Ireland in England; and I say with such a people and such a country, is it not clear that the fault must be with their rulers if lawlessness and wretchedness prevail amongst them? My Lords, I cannot doubt it to be so, and therefore I never can for a moment believe in its being impossible for Parliament to interfere with effect to improve the condition of Ireland. I am not, indeed, such a visionary as to expect that evils of such long standing, and so inveterate, can be removed in a moment. I know too well that this is utterly impossible; but of this I am persuaded, that if we will seriously, and with earnestness and singleness of purpose, apply ourselves to that great task — if, without regard to preconceived opinions or dearly cherished prejudices, we will honestly and fairly set ourselves to find out and to do what can be done for the benefit of Ireland, we shall discover measures, the adoption of which will soon give evidence by their happy effect that we are on the right track, and on the road to improvement, and which will, in due time, leave Ireland for generations to follow us in the condition of a prosperous, happy, well-ordered community. I say this is in our power if we do our duty; if Parliament discharges as it ought the great task devolved upon it, we may safely rely in humble confidence on the blessing of Providence on our honest endeavours. The fault which I am disposed to find with the measures of Her Majesty's Government lies much more in what they do not do, than in what they do; it is much more that their measures are inadequate, than that they are altogether erroneous in themselves. I think the objects which Her Majesty's Government have in view are good objects; I find fault with the means they propose to adopt. I think those means are insufficient, and in some particular points ill adapted to the end they have in view. If I rightly comprehend the policy of the Government, it is this. They consider that the great evils of Ireland are, first, the absence of security for life and property; and next, the absence of due encouragement for industry, and of a sufficient demand for honest labour at adequate wages. I conceive
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these are the two great points to which the efforts of Government are directed; they wish to increase employment, they wish to promote security; and they consider that these two evils are closely and intimately connected together. I have no doubt that so far Government are perfectly right. I think it is impossible attentively to consider the state of Ireland without seeing how very closely these two symptoms in her condition, if I may so call them, are connected together—so closely, that it is really almost difficult to say which is cause and which is effect. If we look to the natural resources of Ireland, and the means she has of rewarding industry, if duly applied, I am tempted to say that nothing but the want of security can account for the fact that her natural resources have not been better developed, and that there industry is not better rewarded. On the other hand, if you look to the wretchedness and poverty of the people—their entire dependence for subsistence on the land—and the manner in which predial outrages are connected with their dread of losing their only certain means of subsistence—it seems impossible to deny that poverty and wretchedness have much to do with the existing insecurity of life and property. Each of these evils tend to aggravate the other; and I believe no remedy you can attempt to apply to the situation of Ireland will be effective, unless you, at one and the same time, apply yourselves to both giving employment to the people, and correcting that insecurity which prevents private capital from affording employment. These are the objects which I understand Government to have in view, and so far I think them perfectly right. I think, also, that what they do with a view to remedy the immediate and pressing want of employment is right in itself and sufficient. In that respect it might probably be difficult to do more than Government purposes. I believe that the measures they have adopted by grants and loans, for providing artificially, if I may say so, extended employment to meet the present distress of Ireland, are, on the whole judicious and well considered. I have no fault whatever to find with those measures, either as to their nature or adequacy, so far as they go; in this respect it would, I believe, be difficult to do more. But we must never forget, in assenting to measures of this description, that the permanent employment of the people must, after all, be the result of the spontaneous operation of private enterprise

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and private capital. No country can be in a wholesome condition where the population depend for employment on measures artificially brought forward by the Government. As a temporary resource to meet the immediate and pressing want that exists, I admit it is quite proper that such measures should be attempted; but when we are looking to the permanent improvement of the country, to that which is to be its habitual condition, then I say that employment directly afforded at the cost and under the superintendence of Government, is utterly and entirely inadequate. It will accomplish no real improvement, unless, while we provide that temporary and artificial employment, we encourage private capital and enterprise to step in and take up the work of providing natural and permanent employment. But we cannot expect this to happen; we cannot expect to see private industry and enterprise flourishing and prosperous, until peace and security are established on some better foundation than laws arming the Executive Government with almost arbitrary power. It is utterly impossible, if quiet is only maintained in Ireland by laws of this description, that private industry and enterprise can take root in that country. The very existence of those laws, even if they have the effect of repressing outrage and preventing the commission of crime, prevents that feeling of security in the minds of men which is no less essential for commercial and industrial improvement than actual safety. Such laws also interfere with that liberty of action which is the very lifeblood of commercial enterprise. Do you suppose that men can embark in great enterprises of industry and commerce where they cannot venture outside their own houses after dark, unless at the risk of being transported? It is utterly impossible. Until you can establish security on some better foundation, and make it compatible with a return to the ordinary law and constitution, restricting the Executive Government to its constitutional powers—till you can do that, you have done nothing. And this it is which accounts for the failure of your past liberality to Ireland in the way of public works; for do not flatter yourselves that you are doing anything new by making grants and loans for public works. Since the Union, enormous sums have been contributed in this manner; and what has been the result? I am afraid that no inconsiderable proportion of the money has
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been jobbed away in extravagant expenditure. But I hope that of late years this has been the case to a far less extent; and that a large proportion of the money has been well and usefully applied. Still, what is the result? You have executed considerable public works; as far as they go they are useful; but they have failed in giving that impetus you expected to private industry and enterprise; they have failed in calling into activity the internal resources of Ireland. The reason of that failure is, in my opinion, obvious; it is because you have not yet succeeded in establishing security, together with the restriction of the Executive Government to the ordinary powers of the law. I say, therefore, that one great object your Lordships ought to have in view is to establish good order on an effective basis, and under mild enactments, without having recourse to temporary laws of this severe and arbitrary character. Then I come to the inquiry—is there anything in the measures of Government which can give us a hope that they will be attended with this result? Is there anything in what they propose to us which we can even expect will have the effect of re-establishing order without the necessity of strong powers being entrusted to the Executive? It is with deep concern I am obliged to say, I know of nothing they have done, or intend to do, which holds out to us any such prospect. In those measures I can see nothing which gives even the faintest hope that when the temporary Bill lately passed by your Lordships shall have received the sanction of the Legislature, and shall have run its term—I see nothing that can give us hope that, in October, 1849, we shall have peace and security without a renewal of measures of so arbitrary and despotic a character. What, my Lords, is the cause of its being so often necessary in Ireland to have recourse to laws of this sort? Why is it that the ordinary law is in that island utterly powerless to protect the peaceable subject, and to maintain good order? I believe every person who has at all attended to the situation of Ireland will at once say that the reason for this is, that, unhappily, the whole body of the population are adverse to the administration of the law. In a well-ordered community, the law, I may say, is self enforced. It is not merely the officers of Government—not merely those who are specially employed in administering the law and maintaining good order, who are

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peace officers, but every member of the community. Here, if there is an infringement of the law, every man, however humble, is ready to join in repressing it. In Ireland, on the contrary, the population is everywhere united in a general combination to resist and thwart the endeavours of those whose duty it is to enforce the law. Compare what happens in England and Ireland, when some great crime has been committed. In this country, if a murder has been committed, and the culprit has escaped, and is known, he can hide himself nowhere: every one is on the alert to assist in the detection of the murderer; the newspapers carry his description to the remotest corners; wherever he goes, a hundred jealous eyes are scrutinizing every unknown face; every stranger to whom the slightest suspicion attaches is at once stopped, and brought before a magistrate; and it seldom happens that among those stopped the real culprit does not fall into the hands of justice. But what happens in Ireland? When a murder is committed, the population do not interfere to seize the murderer and bring him to justice: on the contrary, their sole object is to screen and protect him. The greatest disgrace which can attach to an Irish peasant, in the eyes of his fellows, is to be supposed to have given the slightest assistance, directly or indirectly, to the enforcement of the law. The character of an informer is one which it is worth as much as a man's life to acquire. And what is the Irish definition of an informer? It is not what we mean in England. Here, when we speak against an informer as an odious character, we mean a man who for the gain of the penalty goes and lays an information against a person guilty of an infraction of the law, very often one of a perfectly venial and insignificant description. In England, an informer is thus a man who endeavours to get a not very creditable livelihood by the faults or offences of his neighbours. But in Ireland an informer is any man who dares to give information of any kind as to the commission of a crime. We were told the other night by a noble Earl opposite (the Earl of St. Germans) that this danger from giving evidence applied even to the son or wife of a man inhumanly murdered, of a man who might have been dragged out of his bed in the dead of night, and barbarously murdered by a band of hired assassins. Though it may be the wife, son, or brother of the victim who ventures to tell what he knows, and to describe
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the persons, or give the names of the criminals, yet the party venturing to do this, is, in the Irish definition of the term, an informer; and though a person labour under the strongest provocation, he cannot give evidence without consequent risk to life and limb—so much so, that I believe it has been the practice in Ireland in former years, and probably it has not yet been quite discontinued, that when a man gives evidence on the part of the Crown, in cases of murder or some other atrocious crime, and when the verdict of the jury has been obtained, the Crown is obliged to defray the expense of enabling the man to emigrate to the Colonies, because his life is in danger. This is the real reason of the difficulty of enforcing the law in Ireland. It is because the great body of the people are banded to resist it, and instead of co-operating with the administrators of the law, they only endeavour to screen and assist those who violate it. Their sympathy is not with the murdered, but with the murderer; and so far is this carried, that the murderer is actually a privileged character in Ireland. In favour of the murderer, even that jealousy of a stranger coming into a district to which he does not belong to seek for work, which is generally so strong, is suspended; and I believe there are well-authenticated instances of men, wishing to find employment at a distance from their native districts, actually pretending to have committed a murder, and to be trying to escape the search of the officers of the law, in order that they might be permitted, unmolested by the population, to seek for work in a district to which they did not belong. If I am not much mistaken, I have heard a former Secretary for Ireland describe well-authenticated instances of this kind as having existed. My Lords, I think it is sufficiently established that the temper and disposition of the people in Ireland is not to assist, but to thwart, the administration of the law. Until that temper is altered, it is in vain to multiply Coercion Bills; it is quite impossible that by such means you can establish real security. The object must be to change their disposition. I ask you, my Lords, has the Coercion Bill any tendency to do so? Are the severe provisions which we are compelled to adopt when endeavouring to repress crime, while the population continue animated by the spirit I have endeavoured to describe—are those severe provisions calculated to reconcile the people to the law, and bring them to look upon its

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ministers as their friends instead of their enemies? I think no man will maintain such a proposition. It is a resource too much like the dram of the drunkard, in the fits of intolerable depression which succeed his excesses. He knows that a fresh excess will give him temporary relief, and to that temporary relief he flies, though it is certain to be followed by a return, with increased severity, of all his painful sensations. I believe the effects of these severe laws are precisely of the same sort. They may repress, perhaps, for a moment, the commission of crime; but they have no tendency to take away the spirit which really creates the difficulty of efficiently administering the law without extraordinary powers. This is the conclusion as to the effect which these coercive measures are calculated to produce, to which I think we should be led by reasoning on the subject; but it is also confirmed by experience. Have not measures of severity been tried long enough, and without much reserve as to the degree of severity employed? I find in a speech made by the right hon. Gentleman now at the head of the Government, so long ago as 1829, in introducing to the House the measure he then proposed for the relief of the Roman Catholics from civil disabilities, that he gave this history of the measures of severity which had then been adopted in Ireland:—
"In 1800, we find the Habeas Corpus Act suspended, and the Act for the Suppression of Rebellion in force. In 1801 they were continued. In 1802, I believe they expired. In 1803, the insurrection for which Emmett suffered broke out. Lord Kilwarden was murdered by a savage mob; and both Acts of Parliament were renewed. In 1804 they were continued. In 1806 the west and south of Ireland were in a state of insubordination, which was with difficulty repressed by the severest enforcement of the ordinary law. In 1807, in consequence chiefly of the disorders that had prevailed in 1806, the Act called the Insurrection Act was introduced. It gave power to the Lord Lieutenant to place any district by proclamation out of the pale of the ordinary law—it suspended trial by jury—and made it a transportable offence to be out of doors from sunset to sunrise. In 1807 this Act continued in force, and in 1808, 1809, and to the close of the Session of 1810. In 1814, the Insurrection Act was renewed; it was continued in 1815, 1816, and 1817. In 1822 it was again revived, and continued during the years 1823, 1824, and 1825. In 1825, the temporary Act intended for the suppression of dangerous associations, and especially the Roman Catholic Association, was passed. It continued during 1826 and 1827, and expired in 1828. The year 1829 has arrived, and with it the demand for a new Act to suppress the Roman Catholic Association."
My Lords, I might continue this painful history. Only four years after the time
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when the right hon. Gentleman the present First Minister thus spoke, it was again found necessary to introduce a measure of the severest kind, which in the greater part of its provisions was renewed in the year 1834, and expired, I think, only four or five years ago. Again, in the year 1846, we are called upon to renew it. Such, my Lords, is the result which experience shows to have been obtained by mere severity. Such is the prospect we have, if we confine our efforts to merely repressing, by stern and rigorous measures, the commission of crime — such is the prospect we have of restoring real security to Ireland. I contend, then, that we must look further; we must look to the root of the evil, and we must see whether it is not possible to change the temper of the Irish population, to effect a reconciliation between them and their rulers, to make them the friends instead of the opponents of the administrators of the law. This, I say, is the object to which our efforts ought to be directed; and I say, if those efforts are honestly directed to its accomplishment, I believe it is one not beyond our reach to attain. It is true, the task is a most difficult one. You have to erase from the minds of the Irish people the deep impression left by long ages of misgovernment, and to convince them that their rulers have both the will and the power to serve them, and to promote their happiness and prosperity. This is what you have to accomplish; and I shall endeavour to show what to that end should be the nature of the means employed. In the first place, then, in order to convince the people that the law really exists for their benefit, you must amend it, both in its provisions and its administration, for I believe both are defective. I am persuaded that the law as it now exists in Ireland is inadequate to secure to the poor man, who cannot afford the cost of litigation, that justice to which he has a right. I believe it is more particularly so inadequate in those parts of the law which relate to the tenure of real property. This is a subject of extreme difficulty and extreme importance, owing to the state of society in Ireland. As has been observed very recently by the Minister of the Crown who is more particularly responsible for the peace of Ireland, the Home Secretary, the state of the law, and the opinions of the people in respect to the tenancy and occupation of land, are at the root of the disorders by which the country is afflicted. I believe that the law as it

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now exists requires, and is susceptible of, improvement. I believe that the most frightful injustice can and does take place under it. I think it was only the other night a noble Marquess, not now present, asked my noble Friend the noble Earl (the Earl of St. Germans) opposite, whether Government had received any information as to the truth of certain circumstances stated to have taken place in one of the western counties of Ireland—Roscommon—a statement than which, if true, no man can conceive anything more horrible—three or four hundred families being driven from the homes they had occupied for years, absolutely without resource, and left to starve or perish. I trust that statement was incorrect; I hope and believe that the paragraph in the newspapers to which the noble Marquess very properly called the attention of the Government, did not state the real facts of the case; but, whether it did or not, I believe that this is undeniable, that the clearance of estates has taken place in Ireland to a great extent, and in a manner utterly impossible to reconcile to our ideas of real justice and real humanity. I think it is contrary to what every man's feeling must tell him to be right and just, that when, whether by the fault of the actual owner or his predecessor—I care not how—a large population has been suffered to grow up on a particular district of land, they should, when a lease falls in, be driven off in wretchedness and misery. That such things should be possible, I think, is a disgrace to a civilized country. We have it on the authority of the Commissioners who lately inquired into this subject, that the practice which prevails in regard to paying for permanent improvements of the land, such as draining and building—and they have, I fear, been but of small importance—is very different to that which obtains in England; the cost in Ireland being nowhere borne by the landlord, but by the tenant. We are also told that, by the law as it now stands, it happens, though I hope not very often, that when an industrious man has spent two or three years in improving a small allotment of ground, and has thus given a new value to it, depending upon it for the subsistence of himself and family, he can be, and at the pleasure of the landlord sometimes is, turned out to starve on the wide world. Can these things be? Is it possible they should exist, and not create a strong feeling of exasperation in the minds of the peasantry? Another abuse,
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not uncommon in Ireland, arises from the practice of subletting, which prevails in that country very extensively; it sometimes happens that when an industrious man, having a small allotment, has fairly and honestly paid for the land he occupies to his immediate superior, and that superior fails to pay the rent to his superior, the poor man who holds the plot of ground is liable to have his property seized and sold before his eyes, to satisfy the claim of the head landlord. [A cry of "No, no!"] My noble and learned Friend near me tells me that it is the law both in England and Ireland. It is true; but in England the practice of subletting does not prevail in this manner, and it does not work the same practical injustice as in Ireland. I say it is notorious that acts of the most cruel and dire injustice have been done under this state of the law. A noble Friend of mine told me a case which had come under his own notice, where a poor man took a small piece of land in conacre, paying 9l. for half an acre, on which he grow a crop of potatoes which were to afford subsistence to himself and family, probably till the succeeding crop. This rent, which here appears so extravagant, is the common price of land taken as conacre in the county of Waterford. The man had thus paid for his potatoes; but his immediate superior was in arrear to his landlord; his landlord put in a distress, seized the growing crop, which was the only dependence of the poor man and his family, and actually refused to tell the unhappy peasant, whose ripening crop was thus snatched from his possession, what was the amount for which the distress was put in. I am told the peasant committed an assault upon his keeper, for the mere purpose of bringing the case before a noble Friend of mine, in whose justice he had confidence; but who, when the case came before him, found that the state of the law was such that no redress was in his power, though it appeared to him, as it must to your Lordships, and every man of ordinary feeling, a case of the most cruel oppression and injustice. My Lords, the first step you have to take towards bringing about a better state of things in Ireland, is to correct those provisions of the existing law under which such injustice has been wrought. The subject is, I know, one of extreme difficulty and delicacy; and, I am concerned to say, I think that difficulty has been infinitely aggravated by the most unfortunate and imprudent course which Her Majesty's Government have pursued

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in regard to it. At the conclusion of the Session of 1843, a Bill for establishing what has been termed fixity of tenure was brought into the other House of Parliament by Mr. Sharman Crawford. Leave was given to bring in the Bill without opposition: when it came to a second reading, in the course of the discussion which took place, the Prime Minister pointed out some obvious defects in the Bill; but at the same time stated, that the subject was one which Her Majesty's Government felt to be of great importance, and that their attention would be given to it. Upon that statement Mr. Sharman Crawford consented not to press the second reading, and the Bill was thrown out without a division. At the commencement of the following Session, Her Majesty was advised formally to announce in Her Speech from the Throne that she had thought fit to appoint a Commission for inquiring into this subject; and a few days after (on the 13th of February, 1844), in a debate in the Commons, on the Motion of Lord J. Russell, for a Committee of the whole House on the state of Ireland, the Secretary for the Home Department, adverting to the issue of the Commission, expressed his hope that before the termination of that Session it would be in the power of Her Majesty's Government to introduce some measure on the subject. I took the liberty at the time of expressing my great apprehensions that Government were taking an imprudent and unnecessary course. I said I thought the issue of such a Commission, the circumstances under which it originated, and the fact that it was formally announced in the Speech from the Throne, were calculated to create very unfounded and exaggerated expectations in the minds of the people of Ireland on a subject on which, of all others, it was most dangerous to agitate their minds by expectations not to be realized. I said at the same time, that I thought the real state of the law and its workings might have been ascertained by Government without the issue of a formal Commission; that they might have obtained all the necessary information by private consultation with the ablest lawyers of the country, and the country gentlemen who were best acquainted with the practical operation of the law; and that with such assistance a measure might have been matured and brought forward. But I further said, that for Her Majesty's Government, while in ignorance whether any improvement was practicable or not — whether they might
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not find the complexity of the law so great as to obstruct any improvement that would give satisfaction—to issue a Commission in the manner they had, was the most dangerous and imprudent course which it was possible for a Government to adopt, and would, I feared, be followed by very unfortunate results. That anticipation, I am sorry to say, has been more than realized: from all the information I can obtain as to what is now going on in Ireland, I believe the present great increase of agrarian outrages is in no slight degree traceable to the issue of that Commission, without its being promptly followed by the adoption of any practical measure. I believe you have created in the minds of the peasantry of that country an impression that they are to be the owners instead of the occupiers of the land. I believe that any reform you may now make will give far less satisfaction than even a much less reform would have done if effected two years sooner, with less parade, and less flourish of trumpets. I do not charge the Government with having done this wilfully—I do not charge them with the deep guilt of having endeavoured to stave off a difficult and embarrassing question by the appointment of that Commission, and by bringing forward the abortive measure founded on it, which fell to the ground without attack, because its own friends could not support it; I do not, I say, charge the Government with having been wilfully guilty of such a dereliction of their duty; but in the face of this House and of the country, I do charge them with having been guilty of the most unpardonable imprudence in the manner in which they have dealt with this subject. My Lords, I must add, that what they have done now renders the necessity of a reform of the laws affecting real property in Ireland more pressing than ever. Not a day—not an hour—ought to be lost in devising such a measure, and bringing it before Parliament. In framing that measure, you must be prepared to go to considerable lengths, and to act—not in the spirit of mere technical lawyers, but with the comprehensive views of statesmen; you must look to the principles of the public good, on which the law of real property is founded, and not to conventional and technical notions as to the practice of that law. A reform conceived in that spirit is absolutely necessary; and I trust Her Majesty's Government will do their duty, and bring some such measure forward with the least possible delay. But,

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my Lords, it is not sufficient that the mere letter of the law as it affects real property in Ireland should be reformed and improved—it is not enough to amend its mere provisions. You must look to its administration also. A noble Friend of mine on the other side of the House, told me that when I quoted the saying of a great authority, that "in Ireland there was one law for the rich, and another for the poor," I had not given the whole of the sentence; and that what had really been said was, that "there is one law for the poor, and another for the rich—and both equally ill-administered." My Lords, I firmly believe that this was most true when it was said: I hope that a considerable improvement in the administration of the law has been effected of late years; but I cannot help expressing my fears that since 1841 there has been again rather a change for the worse in that respect. The information I have received leads me to apprehend that since that year the law has been so administered as to give less real confidence and satisfaction to the people of Ireland than before. One cause of this has been the nature of your appointments to the Bench. You have placed on the bench of justice eager and virulent partisans. I believe these appointments are greatly calculated to check the confidence of the Irish people in the equal adminstration of justice. I am informed also that the practice, which between 1835 and 1841 had been abolished, of excluding men from juries on account of their religion, has been to some extent revived since the latter year. I hope, if such is not the case, that the assertion will be denied, because anything more objectionable or more improper I cannot conceive. I deliberately say, my Lords, that, in my opinion, it would be less objectionable to suspend trial by jury altogether than to continue such a practice. I believe that it is better to have no jury at all than a partisan jury; and I say, if the Government have revived that practice, they have incurred a great and fearful responsibility. But a reform in the law itself, and in its adminstration, is not all that is required. You must look still further, and do much more, if you really hope for your efforts to be successful. There is another consideration that cannot be overlooked in viewing this question. I never can believe the law will be cheerfully obeyed so long as the Parliament by which it is enacted, and the Government by which it is enforced, are objects
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of hostility and suspicion, instead of respect and confidence. To have the law cheerfully obeyed, to make it really effective, it is indispensable that the people should look to their rulers with feelings of a very different kind. My Lords, I know that in what I am now going to argue, the general opinion is against me. We have often been told, upon what must be considered high authority, that there is no connection whatever between the agrarian outrages on the one hand, and discontent and the Repeal agitation on the other. I confess that all the consideration I have given to this matter—and I have taken much pains in considering it—have impressed on my mind a strong conviction that those who tell us so labour under a great mistake. There are, no doubt, more immediate and exciting causes of agrarian outrages; but that their prevalence is closely connected with the existence of the Repeal agitation, is, to my mind at least, a clear and obvious fact. My Lords, in the first place, there is at all events this connexion between them, that the prevalence of agitation, and the open display of a spirit of discontent, are altogether fatal to our hopes of permanent improvement from the spread of industry and manufactures. While such a state of things exists, capital will never flow into that country. Commercial industry will never take root or flourish, whilst political agitation is as rife as it has been. As, therefore, the poverty and distress of the population are admitted to be the immediate cause of agrarian outrages, and these exist in consequence of the want of employment; agitation, as it prevents the influx of that capital by which alone distress and poverty can be removed, and the want of employment supplied, clearly must be considered to be, if not the cause, at all events closely connected with the continuance of agrarian outrages. But this is not all: it seems to me you cannot expect that political discontent can prevail throughout the country without its tending to exasperate and keep alive the feeling of hostility to the law, and to those whose duty it is to enforce the law, which has been shown to be at the bottom of that dreadful state of society now existing in Ireland. The enforcement of the law is, after all, the main duty of Government: it is that by which alone it is known to the great body of the people. Do you then suppose it possible that the population should be successfully taught to hate and

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despise their rulers, and at the same time should obey cheerfully the laws which it is the business of those rulers to make and to enforce? It is utterly irrational to expect such a result. If you consider for a moment the character of the disturbances which are so unhappily prevalent, you cannot fail to perceive how entirely they proceed from a feeling of hostility to the law, and to those whose duty it is to enforce the law, which it is impossible to regard as unconnected with political discontent. Those crimes—of which another has this week been added to the frightful catalogue so recently laid before your Lordships, another magistrate having been shot but a few clays back, close to one of the large towns in the south of Ireland—those crimes are not, as in this country, the acts of individuals inspired by the desire of plunder, or for the gratification of passion. No! Irish crimes and outrages are of an entirely different character. They are the work of combinations and secret societies—they are the means adopted to enforce obedience to the regulations which midnight legislators think proper to make for their own objects. Is not the inference clear, when you know those crimes are committed for the purpose of enforcing obedience to certain regulations which the people think necessary to their interests—that, if the law were in harmony with the feelings of the people—if the rules laid down by it for the decision of their disputes were consistent with their ideas of justice, and were impartially and fairly applied, the people would soon learn to prefer appealing to the regular and constituted tribunals of the country rather than to those instituted by the midnight legislators, who enforce their regulations by such barbarous and sanguinary means? If you had the people with you, you would cut off the motive to those crimes. I say, my Lords, the very fact of the desperate and misguided fidelity with which the people obey their self-constituted legislators, shows the readiness there is in the Irish character to yield obedience when they can be brought to believe their rulers really do take an interest in their welfare and happiness. As Captain Rock and his officers were obeyed, so were the Repeal magistrates and Repeal judges till you put them down. Though those self-assumed magistrates had no power to enforce their decisions, so well were they obeyed, that you, my Lords, thought — and, in my opinion, rightly
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thought—the fact one of the very worst symptoms in the state of Ireland. Those persons were taking on themselves all that belonged to the regular Government: they were usurping the functions and the duties of the authorized Government and its officers. No doubt that was a fearful state of things; but, again, I ask you, does not the fact that they were so readily obeyed, when armed with no legal power to enforce their decisions, show that where the Irish people can be made to attach themselves, they are naturally obedient and amenable to control. Any consideration of those circumstances seems to me to lead to the inference that in order to make the law as it exists in Ireland effectual, you must gain the attachment of the people. Political agitation is the cause of discontent. Where those in whose hands authority now rests are regarded with hatred and suspicion, the law will continue to be practically powerless and inefficient; and so long as such feelings are entertained towards the Government, you cannot hope to see a well-ordered state of society. If, my Lords, I have made out this part of my case, and satisfied you that the Repeal agitation and political discontent are closely and intimately connected with the prevalence of those outrages—what conclusion are we to draw? Shall I be told by noble Lords opposite, the inference is, you ought to put down the Repeal Association, and by a series of severe laws to repress agitation and civil discontent? If this be the remedy you suggest, I hope you will remember before you adopt it that this experiment has been already tried in former times, and not, as I think, with that degree of success which should encourage us to repeat it. You can only repress agitation and the outward expression of discontent by severe laws, which are repugnant to the whole genius and spirit of our Constitution, and which must greatly interfere, if not altogether abrogate, what is so justly regarded by all Englishmen as the sacred right of publicly discussing public measures. It is only by laws of such a character you can put down agitation by force. But remember, my Lords, the unhappy tendency of laws of this kind is to alienate from your Government all the Irishmen—constituting as I hope and believe a still numerous body—who understand and value constitutional liberty, and have hitherto hold aloof from the Repeal agitation. To adopt such a measure is to drive into the ranks of your opponents

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such men as those; and you gain but little if you repress agitation by means which exasperate the feeling of hostility to our existing institutions, which is really dangerous, and cause it to extend to thousands not before infected by it. My Lords, I think you must look to something more effectual than such laws. You cannot gain men's hearts by force. You must win them back to you by justice. You cannot compel them to render a cheerful obedience. I know that I shall hear the answer from the noble Lords opposite that we have so often heard before. When we argue that it is necessary to win them to you, we are told it is impossible. We are assured the desires of the Irish people are set on Repeal: nothing less, it is urged, will satisfy them, and this it is impossible to grant. This, it most certainly is, my Lords, impossible to grant. There is not a Member of your Lordships' House who would be more firmly prepared to resist a Repeal of the Union than myself. But on the other hand, I am persuaded that discontent never prevails throughout a country unless there exist some good grounds for it, and unless there is some substantial foundation for it in the existence of real grievances, though the sufferers may be and often are greatly mistaken as to the nature of the evils of which they have to complain, and still more as to what is the fitting remedy. But though a people may often be in error in what they ask, and labour under a mistake as to what ought to be done, I believe it is seldom that redress of their real grievances fails to prove a remedy for their discontent. I think there is a strong proof of this in the analogous case of Scotland. Soon after the Union of that country with England there was almost as great discontent on the subject as is now prevailing in Ireland—with this difference, that it was very much more hopeful, and that the opponents of the Union were much more likely to carry their object than those who support the agitation in Ireland. The subject was taken up by a very powerful party, and brought forward in Parliament. In the year 1713, a Motion was made in your Lordships' House, for leave to bring in a Bill to dissolve the Union. How did the House deal with it? Did they reject it by such an overwhelming majority as the other House exhibited when a similar proposition was made with respect to Ireland—with such a majority as might be
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expected in your Lordships' House, where I believe there could not be found a noble Lord to propose it? No! they divided, and there appeared 54 Peers for the Motion, and 54 against it, the majority by which it was rejected consisting of four proxies—the proxies being 13 for, and 17 against the Motion. I say, then, the discontent existing in Scotland was encouraged by a much more rational hope of success; but the Parliament most wisely and most happily, instead of granting what was so unwisely asked, set itself to endeavour to remove the feeling of discontent in another way. Scotland was governed on a principle of equal justice with England—a just and equal Government was granted to her; and under its influence all desire for a dissolution of the Union vanished, and I believe that at the present day you would not find in Scotland one advocate for such a measure. Let us, my Lords, try the same remedy in Ireland. You cannot grant Repeal,' tis true; but let us try the effect of legislating for Ireland as an Irish Parliament fairly representing the mass of the Irish people might be expected to do. Let the laws and measures which we adopt for Ireland be such as Ireland would adopt for herself. Let us take the wise course recommended by the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of St. David's) in the course of the debate on the Maynooth grant last year, and I am persuaded that in a few years you will see its happy result. I cannot deny to myself the satisfaction of reading to your Lordships a passage from the speech of that right rev. Prelate, which I have perused with delight and instruction:—
"I consider it as the fulfilment of a great and solemn duty. It is the fulfilment of an obligation, which I conceive we contracted when we assumed the dominion of Ireland, namely, that we would give to that country the same amount of benefit as it would have received from an independent domestic Legislature really representing the wants, the feelings, and the wishes of the Irish people, with the single exception and qualification of excluding anything which would tend to the disruption of the Union, and the dismemberment of the Empire."*
To that opinion, my Lords, I most cordially subscribe. I believe it points out to you the only means by which you can obtain real security, and by which alone you can hope to give peace and prosperity to Ireland. Let me ask you, my Lords, have you hitherto governed Ireland in this spirit? Is there any noble Lord in this House who will
* Hansard's Debates, vol. lsxxi. p. 93.

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say so? I ask you, my Lords, would an Irish Parliament, fairly representing the great mass of the nation, have delayed Catholic Emancipation till 1829? Would such a Parliament have legislated as you did on the subject of corporate reform? Would it have acted as you did with reference to the registration of voters, and above all on the subject of tithes and of the Church. This is the test to which you ought to bring your acts; and if they will not stand its application, you are clearly in the wrong. And this, my Lords, brings me to that part of my subject which is, I am aware, by far the most dangerous and difficult portion of the ground on which I have to tread: I must come now to that awful and momentous question—the state of the Irish Church; and I have to ask you whether you think an Irish Parliament fairly representing the nation would have dealt as we have dealt with this question of the Church, when you recollect that until lately you refused to permit any amendment to be made in the mode of collecting tithe—that up to this moment you still persevere in devoting to the sole and exclusive benefit of a minority of the population the great endowments intended for the benefit of the whole. I am aware of the little sympathy I am likely to meet with among your Lordships in discussing this question; but I am convinced that it lies at the bottom of the whole subject. It was admitted to do so by the right hon. Secretary for the Home Department in 1844; and it meets you still at every turn in your attempts to govern and legislate for Ireland. My Lords, it is a question which cannot be avoided or eluded, which you must look fairly in the face, and be prepared to deal with if you wish to give peace to Ireland. Consider what is the real state of the Irish Church. We all know that the property which now constitutes her endowment was originally granted to the Catholic Church, for the purpose of instructing the mass of the community in the Christian faith—in that form of Christian faith in which alone they will accept instruction. But by the superior power of this country it has been diverted from that purpose, and is now applied, not to the instruction of the great body of the people, but to the instruction of a very small minority. The noble Earl opposite who was very lately Secretary for Ireland (Lord St. Germans) stated last year that the property of the Irish Church was rather better than 600,000 l. a year,
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and that the whole of this vast income was applied to the exclusive benefit of between 700,000 and 800,000 persons, who were about one-eighth of the population. And the noble Duke (the Duke of Wellington) told the House, that of the 8,500,000 people, for whose benefit that magnificent endowment was intended, seven-eighths were Catholics, for whom it did nothing. But more than this, my Lords, not satisfied with that revenue, my noble Friend (Lord Monteagle) stated that there had been granted, since the Union, from the public purse, by Parliament to the Established Church, not less than 595,000 l.
LORD MONTEAGLE: More than that.
EARL GREY: My noble Friend says the sum is much larger. Now, my Lords, in order that you may feel the real importance of these facts, you must remember that the adherents of the Irish Church consist chiefly of the wealthy classes, for whose religious instruction there exists the magnificent endowment to which I have referred; and, in addition to this, large grants have been made by Parliament. At the same time there is the Presbyterian body, about equal in numbers to the Established Church, to whom Parliament has also made large grants, although they are Dissenters quite as much as the Catholics. But to the Catholics, though they constitute the great mass of the population, and by far the poorest part of it, including in their number almost the entire peasantry of the southern part of the kingdom, to whose miserably destitute condition I have already adverted, you have given no assistance whatever: they have been compelled to build their own chapels, to pay their own clergy, and, except the miserable and paltry grant for the education of their clergy, which, at length, last year you were ashamed of, and increased, you have done no one thing to assist them. I ask your Lordships if this is a state of things which is likely to satisfy the Irish people? I beg you to reflect upon the striking contrast presented in the greater part of Ireland by the Catholic and Protestant places of worship every Sunday. To the Protestant church you may see going the Protestant landlord and one or two of his Protestant servants, where they occupy a mere corner of a well-built, well-repaired, and comfortable building, in which, for their exclusive benefit, the services are performed by a well-educated, well-paid functionary. On the other hand, on the same day, and hard by, you may see the

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great mass of the population, those whose industry gives value to the property whence the tithe-rent charge is derived, those for whose benefit the magnificent endowments of the Irish Church were originally intended, but from whom they were wrested by violence and wrong—you will see these men going to a miserable, ill-repaired, insufficient chapel, inadequate to contain the numbers who throng to worship within its walls—so inadequate that one-half of the congregation are kneeling on the damp ground around the doors, while the solemn services of religion are administered within: the priest who officiates, and to whom they are indebted for all the spiritual instruction and assistance they receive, having no income or means of subsistence, but the inadequate contributions which, from their wretched poverty, they are able to spare for him. This is a spectacle which, Sunday after Sunday, and year after year, is to be seen in the south of Ireland; and is it to be thought that human nature can submit to the existence of such a state of things, and not feel it to be an injury and wrong? Is it possible that the Irish people can look at such a state of things without reflecting upon what are their real rights, and without its producing a deep and rankling sense of injustice in their minds? But that is by no means the worst part of the case: more remains behind. I firmly believe that if what I have now described had been all of which the Irish Catholics have to complain—if the Legislature had contented themselves with wresting the property from the Catholic to endow the Protestant Church, and had treated the people in other respects with common justice and common, humanity in bygone times, they would never have aroused this deep sense of injustice. But that has not been the case. In spite of all the warnings that have been given, in spite of every remonstrance, the Protestant Established Church has been only known and felt by the Irish people, during more than a century and a half, as being the cause of oppression and misery to the great mass of the people. I know that I am using strong words; but I do not think them stronger than the case warrants. To begin with the tithe system. The tithe system as it existed in Ireland was, in my opinion, the most atrocious and iniquitous system of oppression that ever existed in any country. If it had been for the payment of a clergy to whom the people were as deeply attached as human nature
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would allow them to be, still this system would have been a yoke which the people could not possibly have borne without complaint. But it was a yoke fixed upon the Irish people for the sake of the Protestant Church; and, what was more, for fear of a small diminution of the pecuniary means of the Church, even the slightest mitigation of the evil in the means of collecting it, was refused. In the years 1787–88, the tithe system was denounced in the burning eloquence of Mr. Grattan before the Irish House of Commons. He described it as an enormous load, which no people could bear with patience: he asked for no diminution of the property of the Church; he only asked that the revenues she enjoyed should be fixed at their real legal amount, and should be collected in such a manner as to relieve the people from an intolerable oppression. This moderate demand was refused, and the refusal drew from him a speech of indignant eloquence. He described the tithe system as the great cause of discontent and disturbance, and said, "The most sanguinary laws on your Statute-book are Tithe Bills—the Whiteboy Act is a Tithe Bill—the Riot Act is a Tithe Bill." Speaking of the heads of the Church, whose resistance had mainly contributed to defeat his efforts for the relief of the people, he said, "The bishops rejected a Lease Bill, and have almost uniformly resisted every Bill which tended to the improvement of the country, if, by the remotest possibility, their body could be in the smallest degree prejudiced in the most insignificant of its least warrantable pretensions." He remonstrated with them in words which few would now be bold enough to use, but which I may quote as the words of Mr. Grattan, and told them that they legislated as if they thought that "Christ could not prevail upon earth, unless he were taken by the hand by Mammon." This was his indignant remonstrance to the heads of the Church, who prevented any reform in the tithe system. That was in 1777 and 1778, and it was not till 1822 that the monstrous system was exposed, and some partial alleviation permitted. It was not until ten years later that another measure, still very imperfect, was brought forward by the noble Lord opposite (Lord Stanley); and it was not till a later period still, when the people had taken the matter into their own hands, and when they had practically succeeded in refusing payment, it was only then that in the mode of collecting the revenue a real

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and efficient reform was introduced. Do you think it was calculated to endear the Church of Ireland to the people, to find that their dearest interests were sacrificed to the mere pecuniary interests of the clergy which the heads of the Church, as Christians and as Christian prelates, should have taught the people by their example and their preaching to hold as of no importance when compared with the preservation of peace and concord? Was this likely to reconcile them to the original and crying injustice of the transfer of a magnificent endowment from the nation at large, to a mere section of the community? But, more than this, the safety of the Church was made the reason for enacting and maintaining the most ingenious and detestable system of oppression that ever existed. It was for the safety of the Protestant Establishment that the atrocious system of penal laws was devised and carried into effect. It was for the safety of the Church Establishment, that year after year this House rejected the measure of Catholic Emancipation up to 1829. That measure was rejected on the alleged ground that the passing of emancipation would endanger the Church. For the interest of that Church you achieved an ill-omened and disastrous triumph, when on this pretext you succeeded so long in your opposition to popular rights, and by so resisting the just claims and rights of the people, you burned into their minds, as though it were with a hot iron, a deep hatred of the Establishment. If in the year when Grattan so eloquently denounced the injustice of the Irish tithe system, the Legislature had conceded Catholic Emancipation, and substituted a better mode of collecting tithes for the oppressive laws which were so long and obstinately maintained, the Establishment might have existed for ages to come; but instead of this, the friends of the Establishment in the Legislature achieved, as I have said, an ill-omened victory, and refused all redress of the grievances so justly complained of until it was extorted from them by terror—until the continuance of oppression had created an agitation which you could no longer control—until you were obliged to yield to force what you had so long refused to justice. My Lords, it was the obstinate adherence to this policy which has, I believe, sealed the fate of the Protestant Establishment. But, my Lords, as if that were not enough, even after Emancipation, was carried, for the same reason—the same unhappy
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reason, the safety of the Establishment—you rendered that just measure in a great degree a dead letter. You still continued to treat the Roman Catholics with suspicion and doubt—you refused those equal rights to that part of the kingdom which you accorded to other classes of Her Majesty's subjects. In the debates on the Registration Bill—in those on the Corporation Bill (I remember them well, for I have had to answer such arguments over and over again), the ground on which the extension of English measures to Ireland was refused, by the very persons who now hold the reins of power, was still the safety of the Establishment. My Lords, can you, after having pursued such a course, wonder that the feeling is deep rooted in the minds of Irishmen that the Establishment must be altered, or there will be no such thing as content and peaceful submission to Government? We must judge of their feelings by what our own would be under the same circumstances. I have asked more than once, but in vain, a question which I will now repeat, and to which I do hope that I shall obtain an answer now, especially from the right reverend Bench; as to them I have a right to look as the representatives of the Church. What I want to know is, what would our feelings be in such a situation as that in which the Irish are placed? And is it consistent with that divine precept which is at the very foundation of our religion, "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you," that you should ask the Irish people to submit to that state of things which I have endea voured, imperfectly and inadequately to describe to you, unless you can honestly say that we ourselves, if placed in a similar situation should be content to bear it? Can we say this? Let me only imagine the case our own. Suppose the relations of the two countries to each other had been reversed, and that Ireland had exceeded England in wealth, power, and strength: suppose we had been the conquered country, and that the Imperial Parliament sat in Dublin; and suppose that it insisted on maintaining an Irish Catholic Establishment here: suppose there was an endowment originally intended for the instruction of the people in the holy religion which we profess, and that that endowment had been wrested, by the superior power of an Imperial Parliament from its intended purpose, and applied to the maintenance of a Catholic Establishment where there were no Catholics, or but an insignificant number as compared

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to the Protestant population of the country: suppose further, that the safety of this Establishment had been made the reason or pretence for subjecting us to ages of the direst and severest oppression; I say, suppose we stood in that situation, and I ask you how long should we submit to it? I cannot answer for others, but I can for myself—not one hour longer than I was forced to do so. To such a badge of slavery, not only being unjust in itself at the present time, but as the mark of past slavery and oppression, would I not submit one hour longer than I was compelled. My Lords, I have no doubt this is the feeling which rankles at the bottom of the Irish heart. They would be more or less than men if it were not so. I know and have heard it said, that the payment of the Protestant Church is not now the practical grievance that weighs most oppressively upon the people, and of which they most complain. This is very possible; it is not always the deepest feelings of which most is said. But if you wish to know what the feelings of the Irish people really are on this point, you must listen to their representatives. I heard almost with awe the declaration made in the calmest and coolest, and yet the most decided manner, by an hon. Friend of mine, a Catholic Member of Parliament. "If you are determined," said he, "to make no alteration as to the Irish Church, you must give up all idea of governing Ireland except by military force." I felt, if in my hon. Friend's situation, those would be my feelings, and therefore, I believed him when he stated them to be his. This is a state of things which sooner or later you must consider. My Lords, I have another authority I can quote on the subject. In the debate last year on the Maynooth grant, a right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of London) who is not now in his place, though he was here at the commencement of the evening, said—
"There could be no doubt that the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland were taught to regard the English Government as foreigners … The Roman Catholic child had books put into his hands in which the English were spoken of as spoilers of his Church and usurpers, and those principles were disseminated through the breadth and length of the land by the Education Societies."*
My Lords, this was the statement of the right rev. Prelate. I firmly believe it to be strictly in accordance with the truth.
* Hansard, vol lxxx. p. 1202.
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But if the right rev. Prelate were himself in the situation of the Roman Catholic priesthood, would his feelings and conduct be very different from what he describes to be theirs? If, in the See of London, a Catholic Establishment had usurped those revenues which he tells us most truly are at present inadequate for the supply of Protestant religious wants, and applied them to the benefit of a Catholic clergy without congregations, or with congregations, of Catholic units where there were thousands of Protestants? If he, as a Protestant bishop, were treated as an inferior, and compelled to take a lower place in society, and to gain a precarious subsistence from an impoverished and distressed congregation, while an intrusive prelate of the rival Church was in the enjoyment of rank and affluence; if he saw his flock most inadequately provided with religious instruction, while at the same time there were ample endowments for the spread of his religion diverted to a purpose for which they were never intended, and employed to maintain in splendour the Catholic hierarchy and clergy; I want to know whether, under these circumstances, he thinks that we should have a right to expect that he as the Protestant bishop should teach the Protestant child to be well affected to the State, and to assent tamely, and with "bondman's key," to such a state of things as perfectly just and proper? I think we all of us, that know anything of human nature, or of the character of the right rev. Prelate, should expect his conduct and language to be different. I certainly should not blame him for it if it were so—far from it. I say it would be absurd to expect, while human nature remains what it is, that he under the circumstances I have supposed should rest satisfied, or teach others to be contented, with a state of things so contrary to our notions of justice. I say then you must—however it may run counter to your feelings or your long-cherished prejudices—look this state of things in the face. As the noble Duke (the Duke of Wellington) told you last Session, you must as practical legislators and statesmen deal with the fact, that a large proportion of the Irish people are Roman Catholics. The noble Duke said most truly and most forcibly, that—
"The population of Ireland numbered probably 8,500,000, of which about seven-eighths are to be considered as Roman Catholics. … We cannot avoid their being Roman Catholics, and we must find We means of providing them with ecclesiastics capable of administering to them the

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rites of the Roman Catholic Church. It is desirable to elevate the character of those ecclesiastics."*
This argument goes a great deal farther than the endowment of Maynooth. "It is most desirable to raise the character of these ecclesiastics;" and to that end I believe it to be necessary to give them some independent means of subsistence, without an appeal for contributions to their congregations. My Lords, I have now—I feel how inadequately — described what seems to me a monstrous injustice. I do not mean to enter into particulars as to the means by which that injustice ought to be corrected. It is undoubtedly a subject of extreme difficulty. That man must have indeed overweening confidence who, without the information which no individual Member can obtain, and without the assistance essential to such a task, can say he is prepared to give even an outline of a measure which he would be prepared confidently to recommend, as calculated to be satisfactory on this subject. All I can say is this — the principle I insist on is, a perfect equality of treatment between Protestant and Catholic: that no superior measure of favour shall be shown by the State to one class over the other. What you do for one, you should also do for the rival Church. My Lords, there are various modes of arriving at this result. Some propose that the whole endowment should be taken away from the Church as existing interests fall in, and should be applied to what is called secular education. I confess I should greatly grieve if any such measure were adopted. I, for one, am no admirer of the voluntary system. I believe it to be a bad one. I believe it to be of great importance that a fund should be set apart for the maintenance of the ministers of religion, whose province it is to teach the people, in such forms as they will accept, the great truths of Christianity; therefore, I should deeply grieve if the whole endowment were taken away for secular education. But, though I am most anxious to see this property made really available for the spiritual instruction of the people, and though I should deeply grieve if the endowments of the Irish Church were diverted from this purpose, to which in my judgment it ought properly to be devoted, still even that plan I should consider to be better than the present arrangement, which, as has been justly said, combines all the disadvantages of the
* Hansard, vol. lxxx. p. 1166.
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voluntary system with all the disadvantages of a State Church; for you have in it all the disadvantages of the voluntary system, as far as regards the want of adequate provision for the religious instruction of the body of the people, and more than all the disadvantages of an Established Church, as regards the invidious distinction involved in making such provision for only one denomination of Christians. But, on the whole, I hope we shall not see this plan carried into effect. I hope we shall not be driven to what I should consider a last alternative, only less objectionable than leaving things as they are. There is another plan, by which it has been proposed that the Roman Catholic Church should be made the Established Church of Ireland; that as the Protestant Episcopal Church is the Established Church of England, and the Presbyterian Church the Established Church of Scotland, being in each case the churches of the majority of the people, so the Roman Catholic Church, on the same principle, should be made the established church in the greater part of Ireland. That plan comes to us with high authority. It is the plan of a man whose character I admire and revere more than that of any man who has lived in our times, I mean the late Dr. Arnold; and I have no hesitation in saying that it is deeply to be regretted that that is not the arrangement in existence. I regret that the Protestant Church was ever made the Established Church of Ireland; it was a great and fatal mistake, which I wish had never been committed. But I own I have some doubt whether, in the actual state of things, we should remedy the evil by returning to a Catholic Establishment. Another proposal which was last year made by a noble Friend of mine on the other side of the House (Lord Wicklow), was to tax the landed property of Ireland for the payment of the Catholic clergy. I think that proposition perfectly just and reasonable as far as it goes, and I hope some day to see it adopted. But I think that by itself this would be insufficient, and that to make such a measure effectual, you must add to it an arrangement for taking away, as existing interests fall in, some part of the property now held by the Established Church in Ireland. I remember that, last year, a noble Lord, then in Her Majesty's Household (Lord Hardwicke), asked whether it was not true that in Ireland there were 150 parishes in which the rent-charge amounted to

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58,000 l. for the support of the Church, and in which there was no Protestant inhabitant? I believe the answer he received confirmed substantially the accuracy of his statement. Now, my Lords, I have no hesitation in saying that this state of things cannot continue. I have no hesitation in saying that, as existing interests fell in, such portions of the superfluous property of the Protestant Church ought to be diverted to the purpose of religious instruction of such a character, and reaching them through such a channel, that the Roman Catholics would consent to avail themselves of it. I know the objection has often been made, "The Catholics now claim no assistance. The time is gone by for such a course. Some years ago they would have accepted our bounty, but they will do so no longer." I confess I am very incredulous as to these assertions. I believe that if assistance were given them in a proper manner, under suitable provisions, the distribution of the funds, and all the arrangements to be made, being committed to their own authorities, they would accept it readily. I am aware, indeed, that the country can no longer obtain all the advantages from such a measure that would have been obtained if the assistance had been given long since; for no longer, either directly or indirectly, will the Roman Catholics yield to the State the remotest control over the appointment of their clergy. Formerly, such a power would have been readily granted; but you, unluckily, lost the opportunity; and I believe it would be the height of madness, in the present state of things, to attempt to obtain such a control. I believe also the clergy would receive no assistance in the form of a direct payment of their stipends from any officers of the Government, although in 1825 they were ready to do so. But an unhappy error was committed by the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government, who resisted the wise proposal of a noble Friend of mine (Lord F. Egerton), and prevented in that year Catholic Emancipation from being carried, coupled with the grant of a provision for their clergy. I believe, had his influence been thrown into the other scale — into the scale of justice instead of resistance—that at that time Catholic Emancipation would have been granted, and that he more than any one man is responsible for the delay. It is now too late, however, to repair the blunder that was then committed. But I still think the
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Roman Catholics would take a grant, if it were in the shape of a certain annual sum to be administered by Roman Catholic authority, and applicable, at their discretion, to the building of glebe houses and chapels, and also, in cases where they might think it advisable, in providing stipends for the priests of poor congregations. I believe if a measure were passed of large and generous disinterestedness, not excluding stipends to the clergy, it would soon come into operation. I shall not go farther into details which it is unnecessary now to discuss. All I ask upon this question of the Church property is, that if you endow one Church, you will endow both. But there is another matter not less important than the question of endowment. You must give the Catholic clergy an equality also in social rank and position. You must recognise the Catholic hierarchy even more distinctly than in the Catholic Bequests Bill. Let them take their proper place and station in society — that station to which, as the chief of the pastors and clergy, who as a body are distinguished for their piety and earnest promotion of the welfare of the people, they are justly entitled. I carry my view on this subject so far as to wish to see the prelates of the Roman Catholic Church take their places in this House on the Episcopal bench; and most earnestly do I wish that we had now an opportunity of obtaining the advice and assistance, on questions relating to Ireland, of those who are united to the Catholic population by such intimate ties, who could explain their feelings and their wants, and the best mode of conciliating them. That any danger can follow from admitting to your Lordships' House an equal number of Irish Roman Catholic prelates with the prelates of the Irish Church who sit here, I for one cannot imagine. It is impossible, I think, that four Roman Catholic prelates can lead away your Lordships, constituted as the majority of your Lordships' House is. I know that the policy I am now advocating for Ireland is opposed by great difficulties. I am prepared to meet with little sympathy and support from your Lordships' House. I am prepared to find that the Address to Her Majesty I am about to move, will be rejected by an overwhelming majority; but I entertain an unshaken confidence that many years will not elapse before the policy I now recommend will, in its substantial features, be adopted by Parliament, and become the law of the land. From the

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time I have been in public life, I have had ample reasons for believing that every cause resting on the solid foundation of truth and justice is sure ultimately to prevail. When I first came into Parliament, nothing could be more discouraging than the state of the question of Catholic Emancipation. It seemed to have gone back instead of having progressed. A new Parliament had just been chosen which rejected the measure which a former House consented to. In 1827, the first year I sat in Parliament, nothing was more discouraging than the state of the Catholic question; but in two years the great measure of Emancipation became the law of the land. At the same time, the question of free trade, and especially free trade in corn, was looked upon as altogether hopeless. We who wished to apply to our commercial regulations the principles upon which philosophers in their closets had long been agreed, found ourselves treated as visionaries, hardly worthy of a serious answer; and if we attempted to make even a cautious approach towards giving a practical effect to our principles, we found ourselves supported by some dozen or twenty Members. Such was the state of things in 1827; and yet in the nineteen years which have since elapsed, I have lived to see the question of free trade in corn steadily, year by year, advancing, till it is now on the eve of a final settlement; for, if, unfortunately, its triumph should still be retarded, it obviously can only be so for a very short time; its ultimate fate is clear, and we are within sight of the goal. And so the doing justice to Ireland in this matter of the Irish Church, though it may be resisted for a time, will ultimately be sanctioned. I see many symptoms that such an end is approaching. I see it in the debates of last year: I have already quoted the speech of the noble Duke opposite (the Duke of Wellington) last year, which goes much farther than a sanction of the Maynooth Bill. I see evidence of progress in this fact, amongst others, that those who advocate justice to Ireland undergo no change of opinion, but every now and then there are significant changes on the other side. We see hon. Members of the other House who came into Parliament with very different views, giving their adhesion to these opinions. But, above all, we know what is the tone of private conversation. I am sure all your Lordships will admit—even those who differ most from me—that the tone of private conversation is, that the Irish
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Church is an anomaly which should never have existed in a civilized country, and that the difficulty now is, to see how to get rid of the disadvantages of a system which should never have been created, and to carry a reform most earnestly to be desired. It is true such remarks are usually followed up by an argument that nothing can be done; we often hear such language as this: "However desirable this measure may be, yet the prejudices of the people of England, and more particularly of the people of Scotland, upon this subject, are too powerful to be overcome; and that it would be unwise to rouse them by stirring the question. I confess that to use language of this kind, and to act on such principles as these, seems to me to be unworthy of men of true courage and honesty. If a measure is right, then it is right it should be proposed, however adverse it may be to public opinion. It is only by being proposed and discussed, that public opinion can be reconciled to it. It is this conviction which has induced me now to trespass with this argument on your Lordships' attention. I must add, that to use such language as I have quoted is in the highest degree unjust towards our countrymen. I know that they have strong prejudices upon this subject; but I also know that the language of reason and justice is never addressed to them in vain. If they go wrong, it will be the fault of those who ought to direct them to go right, but fail to do so. If those whose province it is to take a lead in public affairs—those to whom the nation has learned to look up for advice and guidance where its interests are at stake—if those who stand in this high and responsible station, either from a want of discernment as to what is necessary to be done, or from a want of courage to avow unpopular opinions, and a fear of injuring their personal position by stemming the current of public feeling—if such men from such motives shrink from advocating what they ought to know to be the right course, and condescend to flatter the prejudices and passions of the people, it may be long before those prejudices are dissipated, and too late for the safety of the Empire, before the necessity of doing justice to Ireland is recognised by Parliament; and fearful will be the responsibility incurred by those to whom so fatal a postponement of what must come at last, will be attributable. But, my Lords, I would fain hope for better things. I would fain hope that the events of 1829 and 1846

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may be a lesson to those upon whom so much depends, and teach them to beware of again being so blind to coming events, or so disingenuous as the result has proved them to have been in 1825 and 1841; and that they will not, for a third time, place themselves in that most painful, of all situations—that of being compelled to make a choice between betraying the vital interests of their country in a great emergency, or else incurring the just reproach of having deceived their confiding followers, and themselves carried the very measures, in resistance to which they had been the foremost and ablest champions. I hope we shall not again see so unhappy a spectacle; but that, having well considered the state of Ireland, they will apply more effective remedies than hitherto to her social evils. In the Address, which I now conclude by moving, I do not call on you to express any particular opinion as to any particular measure. I feel it would not be right in me to do so. I do not stand here with sufficient authority to give me any right to demand your decision upon such questions; but I have thought myself bound fully, fairly, and honestly to tell you my conscientious, deliberate, long-matured, and openly-avowed opinion, which I have entertained and expressed since the first moment of my entrance into public life. I have thought it my duty to do this; but in the Address I do not call on your Lordships to express any opinion as to any individual measure. If you have other remedies better calculated, let them be propounded and discussed. If convinced of their utility, I shall be most happy to support them: no effort on my part shall be wanting to give them a full and fair consideration. But this is what I call on you to do, to agree to a solemn Address to Her Majesty, expressing your conviction that Ireland cannot be left as she now is, and that something or other must be done. If the remedies I propose be wrong, let others be adopted; but we cannot, if we have the slightest regard for the best interests of the Empire, continue to palter with the state of things in that country as we have done. I am convinced that a great crisis is at hand in the history of this country and Ireland. In its present state that country cannot possibly long continue: it must get worse, or it must get better. There is one way—and I firmly believe only one way—of appeasing the Repeal agitation, of allaying discontent, of gradually restoring order
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and tranquillity to a most disorganized and unhappy state of society; and at the same time ensuring the security of the British Empire. There is one, and but one way of doing this, and that is not by granting the Repeal of the Union, but by following the advice of the right rev. Prelate whom I have already quoted; that you should "legislate for Ireland, as an Irish Parliament, fairly representing the wants and wishes of the country, would be expected to legislate." Adopt that plain simple principle: act upon it at once fairly, honestly, and consistently, and I am convinced you cannot go wrong. Reject it, and you will have nothing but a miserable succession, on the one hand, of destitution and wretchedness, heightened by every accidental failure of the potato crop, into absolute famine and pestilence, insufficiently warded off by the interference of Parliament, and large grants from the public purse; and, on the other, of a recurrence of outrages imperfectly repressed by severe and arbitrary laws; until at last you bring about a fearful catastrophe, fatal to the power and glory, and perhaps to the existence, of the British Empire. My Lords, this is what you have to consider; and I ask you to pledge yourselves to do what in you lies to avert the fearful result I have attempted to describe, by agreeing to the Address I now propose. The noble Lord concluded by reading the following Address:—
"That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, humbly to submit to Her Majesty, that this House, in compliance with the recommendation in Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech from the Throne, has taken into consideration the frequency with which the crime of deliberate assassination has of late been committed in Ireland; and that we hope that the adoption of measures calculated to give increased security to life, and to bring to justice the perpetrators of so dreadful a crime, may be the result of our labours. That we have also given our sanction to the measures proposed to us for relieving the distress occasioned in that part of the United Kingdom by the loss of a large part of the potato crop of last season. That having thus attended to what appear to be the most pressing exigencies of the actual condition of Ireland, we think it right humbly to represent to Her Majesty, that Parliament has repeatedly found it necessary to make provision, by temporary measures, for difficulties with reference to that country, similar in character to those which have now demanded our attention, grants having on various occasions been made for the relief of the Irish people from the apprehended miseries of famine; and the Executive Government in Ireland having also from time to time been armed with extraordinary powers for the repression of crime. That we observe with deep concern, that the necessity which has now again

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arisen for measures of this description proves that their adoption heretofore has failed in eradicating the evils against which they were directed; and that the progress which might reasonably have been hoped for, has not yet been made in remedying the social disorders of Ireland. That we are impressed with the conviction that under these circumstances, merely to grant pecuniary assistance for the relief of present distress, and to pass severe laws for the detection and punishment of crimes, cannot be considered as fulfilling the duties of the Imperial Parliament towards Ireland; but that measures ought without further delay to be adopted, for the purpose of effecting a real and permanent improvement in the condition of this part of Her Majesty's dominions. That to this end, it should be the aim of Her Majesty's Government and of Parliament, by giving to the Irish people confidence in the equal administration of justice, to obtain their co-operation in the enforcement of the law; and, by remedying real grievances, to allay the spirit of discontent to which the prevalence of outrages and violence is to be traced. That without the co-operation of the people, the enforcement of the law must ever be uncertain and unsatisfactory; and while the spirit of discontent continues to prevail, no system of repression, however severe, can be expected to prevent its breaking out from time to time in acts of outrage. That a change in the temper and disposition of the people, brought about by an improvement in the laws, and in the mode in which they are administered, is therefore required for the establishment, upon a solid foundation, of the good order and security indispensably necessary for the development of the industry of the nation, and of the improvement of its great natural resources, whereby alone the periodical recurrence of insubordination and distress can effectually be guarded against. Humbly, therefore, to assure Her Majesty that we shall be ready to co-operate with Her Majesty in the adoption of measures having for their object to allay the discontent and conciliate the affections of the Irish people, in the earnest hope that by the blessing of Divine Providence, peace and prosperity may thus be established in Ireland."
The Motion having been put,
The DUKE of WELLINGTON: My Lords, it is not my intention to follow the noble Earl through all of his able speech. Much of it is founded in fact, unfortunately; but to some of it I am enabled to give an answer. I do not think it necessary to enter into that portion of his speech which related to the nomination of a Commission by Government to inquire into the state of property in Ireland, and to the measures which have been adopted in consequence of that Commission, further than to say that I suppose the noble Earl will admit that on the occasion of that nomination my right hon. Friend in another place never stated, in proposing the Commission, that he intended in any manner to admit the justice or propriety of the Motion under consideration at the time—I mean that relating to fixity of tenure.
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But the part of the noble Earl's speech to which I shall confine myself is that which immediately relates to the Address he has moved. My Lords, similar addresses have been presented frequently of late. At the commencement of this and of the last Session a desire was expressed by Parliament to co-operate with Her Majesty and Her Majesty's Government in any measure which could tend to the prosperity of Ireland. But, my Lords, it is impossible for me to concur in the Address now moved, considering not only its expressions, but the speech in which the noble Earl brought it forward; a speech—the latter part in particular—which shows that he intends to found upon the Address a series of measures which must end in the extinction of the Church of England in Ireland. The noble Earl has spoken throughout, in his consideration of this part of the question, as though it were an open question—as though Parliament had done nothing on the subject—as though it were a question on which a measure could be adopted without the smallest difficulty, without any breach of former arrangements and former compacts. My Lords, if ever there was a point which was made a subject of compact by Act of Parliament, it is the maintenance of the Church of England in Ireland. It is an institution which the two Parliaments at the time of the Union resolved should be perpetual: they styled its preservation, in the article in which it was most particularly mentioned, a fundamental part of the engagement. The noble Earl says, "I do not desire you to repeal the Union; but that which I do desire of you is, that you should adopt my Address"—an Address, my Lords, which I tell you, will lead to the pulling down of the Church of England in Ireland—of depriving that Church of its possessions—and which must end in the repeal of that very Treaty of Union which the noble Lord states he is not desirous should be conceded. My Lords, the Irish Parliament was a body capable of legislating on this subject; competent to frame and agree to this Treaty. That Parliament entered on the consideration of the question under the auspices of the Government of George III. They had the power of either agreeing to or dissenting from the Act of Union; and they stipulated for the Sixth Article, by which it was provided that the two Churches of England and Ireland were to be united for ever, and to be governed by the same laws. You cannot replace the Irish nation or the

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Irish Parliament in the situation in which they stood at the time that the compact was signed; and I say that you cannot depart from the compact without a positive breach of engagement. I say, then, you have not a case before you for the accomplishment of this object—you cannot make the arrangement proposed; and I therefore recommend to your Lordships not to agree to the Address moved by the noble Earl. My Lords, undoubtedly measures must be adopted calculated to benefit Ireland; and this and the other House of Parliament ought in every case to adopt measures of legislation for the benefit of Ireland, whenever the interests of that country come under consideration. And, my Lords, I must say, that Parliament has done its duty in the matter. I believe—and the noble Lord will not deny it—I believe that there never was a country which has so advanced in improvement of all description as has Ireland in the years which have elapsed since the Union. I will not go into details—others more able to do so will follow me; but it is quite remarkable that in every way—in trade, in commerce, in shipping, in revenue, in customs, in excise—in everything the increase has been enormous. True, the noble Lord said, in the early part of his speech, that foreigners who travelled in Ireland expatiated on the misery which they witnessed there. My Lords, true there are great poverty and great misery in Ireland, as there are in other countries; but yet, my Lords, in Ireland there are vast capitals and great riches. Ireland is at this moment setting an example to the world which could be imitated in very few countries in Europe—I mean that she is laying out millions at this moment in the construction of railways at the expense of private individuals. It is very true that railways are in the course of being constructed in other countries in Europe. But how? At the expense of the Government, not out of the capital of private individuals. In this country, of course, the same thing is being done as in Ireland; but, excepting these two nations, there is not in the whole world one railroad which has not been constructed, or is not in the course of being constructed, at the expense of the public treasury. Now, my Lords, I don't much care whether this capital in Ireland be the property of Irishmen, or whether it has been borrowed in this country and sent across St. George's Channel on the credit of Irishmen. If it be the property of Irishmen, as I hope it
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is, then that expense, my Lords, demonstrates the improvement that has taken place in that country; an improvement for which the noble Lord ought to give Parliament, and those who govern Ireland, some credit. On the other hand, if it be the property of Englishmen and sent to Ireland, at least it shows that there is some credit in Ireland, and that men have lately more confidence in the restoration and continued existence of peace than the noble Earl appears to have. My Lords, I hope they may not be disappointed; and I am sure that the Government will do all in their power that the measures which they will introduce may be calculated to give satisfaction to the country, and to ensure the public tranquillity. Now, my Lords, I must say I think there is evidence that the noble Lord is mistaken in respect to the alleged great dislike entertained by the Irish towards the English Church Establishment in Ireland. My Lords, it is a most remarkable circumstance, but it is a fact which you will become convinced of by looking through the records of Parliament, that, after the English and Irish Parliaments had been endeavouring in vain to discover a mode of enabling the Roman Catholics to testify their allegiance, they struck out of the oath of supremacy all reference to Catholic doctrines, such as transubstantiation and everything else; but that part of the oath which referred to the property of the Church, to the revenues of the Church itself, was inserted on the petitions of the Roman Catholics themselves. Those petitions, commencing in 1805, and going on from that time, in 1806 up to 1826, and so on to the period of the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, showed that the people felt no desire to deprive the Church of its property, or to injure in any manner the privileges in the possession of the Church; that all, in fact, they desired was the removal of civil disabilities, and the privilege of standing on the same footing as their fellow subjects in the eye of the law and the Government. I say, therefore, that it is not very probable that there should have arisen a total change of sentiment on that subject. In the mean time, it is very true that some people may look after the property of the Church as other men do after property of all descriptions; but if there be one thing more certain than another, it is that the insertion of the words to which I have referred, in the declarations or oaths which must, by the law of the land, be now taken by any person

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who claims an advantage under that law; if there be anything more true than another, it is that the insertion of these words was suggested by the Roman Catholics themselves. Now, I have stated that this institution of the Church in Ireland at the time of the Union, and the maintenance of that Church, were matters of compact from which the House cannot depart. But I go further and say, that there is no one principle in the Constitution of this country in favour of the determined maintenance of which so many solemn declarations have been made, as in respect to this principle, the preservation of the Protestant Church of England in Ireland. At the coronation this principle is declared. It was declared in the Act of 1828—the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. It was declared again in 1829 in the Catholic Relief Act; and on every occasion on which any concession of privilege was made to the Roman Catholics, it was declared again. I repeat, therefore, that we have it not in our power to change this principle, so uniformly acted upon, so repeatedly declared, of preserving the Church of England in Ireland. My Lords, I go a little further; and I believe I can state other reasons against the course which the noble Earl proposes to take. I saw some years ago—three years ago—a petition from the Peers of Ireland, complaining of the discontented state of the people. They mentioned, it is true, amongst a number of causes, this very subject, the existence of a Church Establishment. But, my Lords, they mentioned other causes of discontent. They said, that the relative proportion of Members of Parliament from Ireland and from England, taking into account the populations of Ireland and of England, was not what it ought to be. Is the noble Lord prepared to concede that? With reference to the Municipal Corporation Act, they maintained that the qualification had been placed higher in Ireland than it ought to have been, or than it was in the English Corporation Reform Act, especially considering the state of property in Ireland. They maintained also that the number of Irish Roman Catholic Judges was not that which could be fairly claimed for the Irish Bench. Now, for my part, I have always understood that Judges were always selected from those most capable of performing the duties of the judicial office. I believe such is the case in this country; I believe that this is the course pursued in Ireland; and I do not know that the Irish Judges
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are deficient in those qualities which render the judicial character respected. These were some of the grievances stated by the noblemen in question who signed the petition from Charlemont-house. Is the noble Lord prepared to turn these grievances into an Act of Parliament? But whatever these grievances may be, I think I can show you from what has passed heretofore, that the most ample concessions on the part of Parliament will not put an end to that which is the cause of the mischief—I mean the agitation, the perpetual agitation, for Repeal of the Union, or for any other measure, whether it be the extinction of tithes, or the demolition of church rates, or whatever may be the prevailing cry of the moment—I think I can show your Lordships, from the examples of what has passed in former years, that there is no concession you can have which will not be followed by additional agitation and consequent additional discontent. My Lords, a great measure of concession was passed in 1829. What happened? The law was passed in the month of April, 1829. In the month of June, 1829, the great agitator was in the county of Clare, urging the people there to combine for repeal, and to struggle for civil, as they had struggled for religious liberty. Well, from thence he went to Dublin, and commenced there a system of agitation in the month of December, 1829, which he continued through the year 1830, and up to the month of January, 1831, under different forms and circumstances, and in different parts of the country, until at last my noble and gallant Friend the then Lord Lieutenant, and the noble Lord the then Secretary for Ireland (Lord Stanley) issued a proclamation, under the Association Act, by which they put an end to this description of agitation. But, my Lords, observe that this fresh agitation on the subject of tithes and church rates, and repeal of the Union, commenced on the very morrow of the passing of the Catholic Relief Bill. Well, my Lords, after this measure, after these proclamations, the agitation recommenced for the suppression of tithes and church rates; and it was thought expedient, and very properly in my opinion, to put an end to church rates in Ireland, and to find other means of providing for the expenses which had been formerly paid from that fund. Hardly was that change accomplished, when the agitation recommenced on tithes, and then the Government were under the necessity of introducing a Coercion Bill; and I beg to refer

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the noble Earl to the opinion of the noble Lord who was then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Wellesley, a nobleman who had some knowledge of public affairs, who stated solemnly in a despatch laid on the Table of this House, that he desired that His Majesty's Government would attend particularly to the connection which he invariably found to prevail between agitation for Repeal, and for abolition of tithes, and popular discontent and agrarian outrage—that they followed each other as cause and consequence invariably. I beg your Lordships to observe this, to observe what is passing around us, and then to say whether or no you feel disposed to make the concessions called for by the noble Earl. Having this fact before your faces, and having every reason to be satisfied that the moment you make that concession, agitation will recommence for some other object, the obtaining of the properties of individuals, or any other similar purpose, you may be as well satisfied that that agitation will give fresh ground for discontent, and cause a portion of the people to commit new agrarian outrages. Well, my Lords, after the Coercion Bill of 1833, another was passed in 1834, not so stringent in its provisions, and limited to a twelvemonth's duration; and it was succeeded by a measure in 1835, which was still less efficient, but which was passed for five years, terminating in the year 1840. There was, I believe, some little cessation of agitation in 1835 and 1836, owing, it is supposed, to some political arrangements made here in London. But, my Lords, that apparent tranquillity did not last long. The agitation for Repeal was continued under different forms during 1837, 1838, 1839, and 1840, until at last in that year the meetings of great bodies—the monster meetings commenced. Those were continued through 1841, 1842, and down to November, 1843, when they were put down by proclamation of the Lord Lieutenant. My Lords, during all this time there was no want of measures of conciliation. The tithe arrangement was brought to a complete conclusion: the Tithe Bill was passed, and every measure adopted which could tend to the prosperity of Ireland—Parliament acting on all those occasions as though it were an Irish Parliament, legislating only for the benefit of the Irish people. But, my Lords, this system of agitation still continued, and monster meetings were assembled which could be got the better of at last only by military force. Such,
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my Lords, is the history of the effects of concession. I do not mean to say that it was not right to concede on all these points. I only ask you whether you choose to concede on this occasion—in the face of facts which no man can deny—in the face of the compact which binds you to preserve the United Church of England and Ireland in the latter country. My Lords, I will confess that I think I have not put the question of the preservation of the Church of England in Ireland on such high grounds as those on which I might have put it as a religious establishment. My Lords, we enjoy the advantage under the influence of this establishment, of possessing a people with as strong a sense of religion, and as great respect for religion, as exists in any other country in the world. We have besides the advantage of universal toleration. Every system of religion is tolerated in this country: and, above all, we have the advantage of religious peace. These are three great Christian advantages, which I think are the great objects of a religious establishment, and I entreat your Lordships not to incur the risk of losing any of them by consenting to any such measures as those proposed by the noble Earl. My Lords, it is true that though we have religious peace, there are great political differences of opinion among the different sects which exist in this country. This, my Lords, is the consequence of our political state of existence. Every separate body in this country has considerable political power, and it is the object of all these sects and classes to increase their political power: they are acting constantly under the direction of their ministers or others who may lead them; they are anxious to increase their political strength, and they enter into political contests with their rivals. But, my Lords, will the concessions which the noble Earl proposes to make, put an end to these political rivalities among these contending sects? These sects will remain, and of course these rivalities will remain, and their contests for political power will be continued; but, my Lords, I am afraid that religious peace will not remain. We shall no longer have facilities for settling such questions as the marriage question, which was brought before this House some years ago, and other questions which have arisen, and have been settled, but which cannot be settled elsewhere. Look at Germany, at France, and at Spain, and you will find that these questions cannot be settled there. But

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suppose, my Lords, you can secure religious peace; what becomes of toleration under this Catholic establishment, without which, I say, that this country could not go on for a moment? Under these circumstances, considering that you are bound by a compact to maintain in Ireland the United Church of England and Ireland, considering the great religious Christian advantages you derive from the existence of the Church of England—advantages enjoyed by the Roman Catholics and Presbyterians equally with ourselves—I entreat your Lordships, by your rejection of this address, to avoid giving ground for your belief that you have any intention to adopt the measure suggested by the noble Earl.
EARL FORTESCUEsaid, that the noble Duke had based his opposition to the Motion rather on the arguments of the noble Earl, than on the terms of the Address itself, or on the occasion on which it was brought forward. He must say for himself that it was because he concurred with the views which his noble Friend the noble Earl had expressed, that he gave his support to his Motion. He had given a hesitating and reluctant assent to the third reading of an arbitrary measure which had lately passed their Lordships' House; and he had done so, not because he by any means approved all the enactments of that Bill, or felt any confidence in the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland, who was believed to have framed it, but because it appeared to him, after the statement of the noble Earl (the Earl of St. Germans) of the amount of crime and outrage committed in Ireland, that some strong measure was necessary, and because, looking at the character of the noble Lord entrusted with the chief government of Ireland, of the noble Earl (Earl St. Germans) who brought it forward, and at the character of his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for that country (Mr. Greene), he hoped that the powers so liberally given by the Bill would be sparingly and temperately exercised. But he thought that when a measure had been passed which denied a man the commonest right of the subject, the right of free egress and ingress to his home at any time, Parliament was bound to accompany such a measure with some assurance that they would look into the causes which had produced such a state of things in that country as to make that law necessary. Under the circumstances in which Ireland was placed, it was their duty not merely to pass measures to repress outrages, but to
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put an end to the causes from which such outrages arose; and it was to that, and that only, that the present Address proposed to pledge the House. The noble Duke had objected to the Address, because in the speech which his noble Friend had made, he had expressed his opinion that a great reform was necessary in the Established Church in Ireland. In that sentiment of his noble Friend's, he (Earl Fortescue) cordially concurred. He cordially agreed with him in the opinion which he had expressed, that they would never have perfect contentment in Ireland until the Church of the great body of the people was placed in all respects on an equal footing with that which was called the Established Church—the Church of a very small minority of the people. He concurred also in the wish that they might one day see the heads of that Church taking their share in the counsels of the State in that House of Parliament; and they might rely upon it that not only would it be considered a great boon by the people of Ireland, but that it would be a great advantage to have such an accession of Members to that House, who could give them much useful information, and make many valuable suggestions in legislating for Ireland. The noble Duke had spoken in glowing terms of the improvements which had taken place in the general state of that country. The misfortune, however, was, that this improvement had not extended in a corresponding degree to the lower and poorer classes of society; and it was the want of these improvements among them which rendered them so liable to be made the instruments of agitation and violence. He must say that he thought the great and predominant evil of Ireland was to be found in the circumstances attending, not merely the relation of landlord and tenant, but the tenure and possession of land in Ireland. The conduct of the Anti-Corn-Law League in this country had been blamed; but, without attempting to defend all that might have been said or done by members of that body, he thought that the League had done a great deal of good, and that the country was under a great obligation to them, not on the ground of their having purchased and conferred fictitious titles to property for the purpose of qualifying voters at elections—because that they denied having done—but because they had induced persons who had saved a little money to invest their small savings in land, and thereby acquire an interest in the soil. If the League had assisted such persons

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in getting rid of the difficulties which the technicalities of the law imposed upon those who desired to acquire a qualification, he, for one, must say that he thought the country—ay, and the landowners too—ought to be very much obliged to them. It would be very advantageous if the same thing were done in Ireland, because there was at present a total want in that country of those small landowners so numerous in England, who in themselves united the relations of landlord and tenant. He recollected that when the Emancipation Act was passed, and when the rights of the so-called 40 s. freeholders were very properly abolished, he had suggested that it would be very desirable if the right of voting were continued to persons holding land in fee-simple of the value of 40 s. a year. He was told, however, that no such thing existed in Ireland, and therefore, that he might save himself the trouble of making the suggestion. Why was that so? He surely could not be told that there did not exist among any portion of the middle classes in Ireland sufficient capital to purchase small landed property in that country. The fact was, that Irish landed property was in general so much encumbered that it was almost impossible to sell it as, in England in small parcels; and that was, he believed, the reason why there was no such thing as small freeholds in Ireland. He hoped, however, that some measure would be introduced which would put the 40 s. freeholder in England and the 40 s. freeholder in Ireland on the same footing. He hoped, also, that some measure (he could not say exactly similar to that introduced by his noble Friend last year), would be brought forward to secure compensation for improvements to tenants who were evicted from their holdings. He believed that the tenure of land was, directly or indirectly, at the bottom of the outrages by which Ireland had been disturbed, though they might be aggravated by other causes. At the same time he was quite sure that their Lordships would not restore contentment to Ireland unless they assimilated the law in Ireland to that which obtained in this country, and placed all classes in that respect on an equal footing. For instance, the qualification for the municipal franchise was higher in Ireland than in this country, and it ought to be the same in both. The noble Duke had stated that all the concessions which had been made to Ireland had only produced fresh agitation. It should be recollected, however, that
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all the concessions which had been made to Ireland had only been the fruit of agitation; and it was not to be expected, therefore, that after this lesson had been taught them, the people of that country would believe that quiet and good conduct was likely to be productive of advantage to them. Catholic Emancipation was conceded to the agitation which was carried on by the Catholic Association; the mitigation of the tithe evil was the result of tumult and of agitation. Such would continue to be the state of things until their Lordships legislated in a spirit which would give the people of Ireland more confidence in the laws, and remove every just cause of agitation, by putting them in all respects upon an equality with their English fellow subjects. If their Lordships acted in that spirit both as respected Church and State, they would, in his opinion, at once and effectually, put down agitation among the people of Ireland, who were certainly not ungrateful for kindness; but if, contrary to all reasonable calculation, they unhappily failed in this benevolent object, they would then unite every friend of peace and good order throughout every part of the United Empire, in support of any measures of security which they might then find it necessary to adopt.
LORD BROUGHAMcertainly would not have presented himself to the House upon this occasion, so lately as it was that their Lordships had discussed Irish affairs, had it not been for one or two allusions made in the very able, and, generally speaking, temperate speech of the noble Earl who had submitted the Motion to the House. He was bound to take notice of those allusions, in justice to the case and in fairness towards the Government. To these topics he would refer by and by. Most of the facts to which the noble Earl had called the attention of the House in his speech were, unhappily, too true. Most part of his statement of the amount of distress—of the evil administration of many private affairs—of the misery which prevailed among a large portion of the people of Ireland—of the fearful outrages upon life and property which had, whether as the result of that misery or of other causes, defaced that country, scared the Government from its propriety, and forced it to have recourse to a measure of severe coercion, abridging not merely the political but the natural rights of the subject—all these facts were too true, and indeed were not matter of controversy; they had been all admitted

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in the course of the discussion on the late coercive measure. But, unhappily, these things had root far deeper than any misgovernment of the present day, or any political agitation of the present day, though perhaps they were not altogether unconnected with political agitation. They, unhappily, had their root deeply planted and widely spread in the social condition of the Irish people in respect of their enjoyment of landed property, and their exclusive addiction to agricultural pursuits. But was the remedy so easy? Their Lordships could not interfere with the rights of property, the most sacred of all rights, on which society itself depended, the corner-stone of the whole social edifice—the line of demarcation which separated the savage from the civilized state of society. They must, in all they said and did, and in all they meditated to do, start from this first principle; and no man who claimed the name, not only of a statesman, but of a rational being—of a person of common sense and ordinary reflection—could entertain for one moment a doubt, or could allow to pass over the surface of his imagination a shadow of doubt, upon that fundamental principle. But then he found that there were speculators, and practical speculators too, who not only suffered to pass across their imagination the abstract idea that property might be interfered with; but who so far carried that idea into execution as an object of their desire, or used it for the purpose of deluding their dupes in their own country—ignorant men as compared with them, but hardly more thoughtless and unreflecting than they—as to propound Bills on the subject in Parliament, of which he had heard for the first time that night. He could hardly have believed it possible that in the middle of the 19th century, and in a British House of Commons, there should have been propounded what was called by the gentle and euphonious term of fixity of tenure, but which meant thereby an Act of Parliament to rob the owner of land of his property, and to confer it on the occupant his tenant. What cared he for the condition, if the tenant was to have the property in spite of the owner, that he was to have it on the payment of a perpetual rent? That was as much an interference with property—as much a desecration of the sacred right of property, on which all society rested—as if they openly robbed the owner. He could only account for such a Bill not meeting with an indignant rejection at once, by the accident that the
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matter might have been thought so perfectly absurd and extravagant in itself as to carry its refutation along with it. At all events, it was brought forward about the middle of August, a time when long discussions were to be deprecated, and Government therefore thought it best, he supposed, to get rid of the Bill, mentioning, at the same time, that they meant to appoint a Commission of Inquiry; though he happened to know that that Commission was contemplated before. It was unfortunate that any doubt should have existed as to what was intended by that Commission, which had as much to do with fixity of tenure, in the sense of robbing the landlord on behalf of the tenant, as with robbing the tenant on behalf of the landlord. It was to be lamented that in any part of the United Empire there should exist such a state of things as had gradually grown up in Ireland, and that matters there were otherwise than in this country with respect to the management of property. His noble Friend had well illustrated this circumstance, and he would give another illustration. What did their Lordships think of an estate of between 15,000 l. and 20,000 l. a year, on which there were about 1,300 or 1,400 head tenants, and about 3,000 under-tenants, the highest of whom paid 40 l. or 50 l. a year, the great bulk from 10 l. to 20 l., and many paid so low as 10 s., 12 s., and 15 s.? Another circumstance to which his noble Friend had alluded as calculated to create alarm and indignation was, the casting out of their possessions at one time a great number of those small holders. This happened in consequence of the desire on the part of the landlord to have his land better cultivated by persons who could bring to that cultivation the advantage of capital and skill; and it certainly would be a great hardship to the landlord in Ireland if he had not the free and entire power, as by law he unquestionably had, to dismiss the small holders, and consolidate the farms with the view to improvement, as had been done in Scotland to a great extent, as the noble Duke on the cross-benches well knew. Still he should be loth to believe that an example such as that mentioned by a noble Marquess the other evening, but which immediately met with a satisfactory contradiction, was extensively followed—namely, the turning out of scores of persons from their holdings as soon as their leases expired. Undoubtedly it was the landlord's right to do so if he pleased; and

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if he abstained, he conferred a favour, and was doing an act of kindness. If, on the other hand, he chose to stand on his right, the tenants must be taught, by the strong arm of the law, that they had no power to oppose or resist. Such was the law of the land, and property would be valueless and capital would no longer be invested in the cultivation of land, if it were not acknowledged that it was the landlord's undoubted, indefeasible, and most sacred right to deal with his property as he list. His opinion undoubtedly was, that their Lordships began at the right end when, considering the state of outrages existing in Ireland, they passed a coercive measure to put down those outrages. The first lesson to be taught the deluded people of that country was, that they must obey the law, and that all their agitators and all their evil counsel lors—be they laymen or priests—could not succeed in urging them to resist the law, or to persist in outrage, without their finding that they must meet with the condign punishment which attended criminal acts. With regard to providing remedial measures for the grievances of which the noble Earl complained, he had alluded to them in so general a manner that their Lordships were left as far away as ever from the consideration of any practical means of putting an end to those evils which in his speech he so strongly described; and he was sure that all their Lordships joined him in deploring those evils. There was but one portion of his speech in which the noble Earl brought forward a specific ground of complaint. For instance, he had complained of a long course of misgovernment in Ireland, and complained of grievances which had been inflicted by that long course of misgovernment, and which they all lamented; but the noble Earl, when alluding to some of those evils, spoke of things which happened many years ago, so long ago that they might be said to have occurred before the experience of the present generation, and which were no doubt the fruitful sources of evil; but when the noble Earl described that misgovernment, he did not follow up his description by prescribing any practical means for remedying the evils. The noble Earl alluded to one specific grievance in Ireland, namely, the anomalous state in which the religious sects were balanced, or rather not balanced, in point of numbers and property; but he stated that the Catholics would have cheerfully submitted to that disposition of the
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property with regard to the relative numbers of the religious sects, if it had not been for one grievance in connexion with the payment of tithes to the Established Church, namely, the mode of collecting them, which mode was so unbearable as to become in their minds the master grievance, and to cause them to entertain a more violent feeling of opposition to this impost. He had no wish to deny the grievances which that collection might have produced; but he recollected that in 1832 he introduced, with his noble Friend opposite, (Lord Stanley), a Bill, which his noble Friend had been connected with executively, and that Bill put an end altogether to the former mode of collecting tithes. So that he took it, a tithe proctor was a thing in rerum naturæ, not to be found in Ireland at the present day; that it was, as Lord Plunkett had said on another occasion, as difficult now to meet with one of them in the country as to meet with an ostrich. The tithe was not now collected in the manner which was formerly complained of by the Roman Catholics as so severe a grievance, and to which the noble Earl alluded—it was paid now by a rent-charge—paid by the landlord, and not by the occupying tenant; and therefore the evils and sufferings which had been endured from the mode of collecting the tithe ought to be struck at one dash of the pen from the list of grievances of which the noble Earl complained. He would direct their Lordships' attention particularly to the more specific and precise grievances complained of by the noble Earl; and he would show that they were such that the blame could not be laid upon this or that Administration, but rather more properly to the state of society in Ireland. One of those had reference to the administration of justice in Ireland, and the other to the balance of the churches and sects. With respect to the administration of justice in Ireland, it was a subject to which he had given much consideration, and which he had carefully examined. It might be in the recollection of many of his noble Friends that, in 1823, when he had a seat in the other House of Parliament, he presented a petition from Ireland, complaining earnestly of the grievances under which the people at that, time laboured in consequence of the maladministration of justice in that country, it was a painful duty for him (Lord Brougham) to go through all the instances, and afterwards to expose them to the House, which showed that justice had not

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been properly administered in that country; that the complaint of the maladministration of justice in the petition which he presented was founded on a real grievance; and that it was no clamour, no popular outcry or vague charge, such as he should show it was at present. It was a fact well known in the history of Ireland, that every species of expedient was resorted to in order to carry the great and wholesome and invaluable measure of the Union into law; and one of those expedients led to a great abuse of judicial patronage—the most delicate and responsible description of patronage with which the Government was invested. In consequence of this, certain learned persons—or rather, he should say, certain persons more or less learned, were promoted to the Bench—all of them learned by courtesy, but some of them learned in fact as well as courtesy—and those Judges who were appointed at that period were known afterwards by the name of "Union Judges"—a name now recollected as only a matter of history; but as post hoc ergo propter hoc was sometimes a sound maxim in logic, it was argued by many, that as those Judges had been appointed at the time of the Union, they had also been appointed in consequence of the Union; and if he were called on to point out Judges appointed in Ireland who had given the greatest satisfaction to all, who had conferred honour upon those who appointed them, and who had obtained the confidence of those around them, he should not point to some of those Judges as filling that character. During their time the administration of justice had been very political, and some judicial charges had been delivered which evinced strong political and even factious bias on the Bench. But that was all over long ago, and things were now altogether changed in this respect. In consequence of the notice which the noble Earl had given, he (Lord Brougham) within the last three days read over the statement which he made in the other House on the occasion to which he had before alluded (in 1823). He read the exact passages as he had spoken them, and he could assure their Lordships that he found no single ground of complaint which he then urged still continuing to exist. It had been stated to their Lordships that of late years certain political appointments had been made—that political partisans had been selected for promotion. The question, however, was not whether the Judge who had been
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selected had been a political partisan when at the Bar, and whether he was a political partisan before he was elevated to the Bench—not whether he was given to factious courses before his elevation—the question was, what had he done since his elevation? The question was, had he thrown off with the gown which he had worn as a barrister the character of a partisan, or was he still, after his elevation to the Bench, political—had he retained his party feelings where party feelings should never enter, or continued to be a partisan when he occupied a position where factious feeling should never come? On his gown, as a barrister, he had a right to carry the badge of faction, and it would not soil him; but the ermine should be free from any such stain. Was it to be said, if a man of any particular party or political opinions were elevated to the Bench, that he was therefore a political Judge? If that were so, it would be highly objectionable; but if it were not, what did it signify? It had been said, indeed, that the appointments to which allusion had been made by the noble Earl, had been unfavourably viewed by the people of Ireland; and in answer to that argument, he (Lord Brougham) would remark that he divided the people of Ireland into two classes, one half, and more than one-half, disapproved of the appointments, and one-half and more, approved of them. [Alaugh.] He had fallen into a mistake, but the statement of the noble Earl was so long it was enough to cause him to believe that it consisted of more than two halves, and therefore led to his mistake. The appointments were highly approved of by one party in Ireland, and disapproved of by others. But, good lack! if they waited till all the people in Ireland approved of judicial appointments, there would be no use in Coercion Bills, for there would be no Judges to administer the law. What were the appointments which had been made of late years in Ireland? There was Mr. Devonsher Jackson, and there was Mr. Serjeant Lefroy, men whom he only named to honour, for more able, learned, and upright Judges could not be found; and be it recollected that he did not speak as a partisan, for he differed from those Judges in the political opinions which they held before their elevation; they were honourable and just men, and totally incapable of exhibiting, as Judges, any political or party bias. Then, during the Melbourne Administration, Mr. O'Loghlen, a Roman Catholic, and Mr.

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Perrin, a Protestant, were elevated to the Bench; and subsequently Mr. Ball, Mr. Wolfe, and Mr. Brady were appointed, every one of them having been before their elevation politicians and party men more or less, and they were all upright and able men on the Bench. He should also mention Judge Crampton and Mr. Blackburne, the latter of whom, although differing in politics from the Whig Government, had been appointed Attorney General during the viceroyalty of Lord Anglesea in Ireland. It would be better to have men who had never been politicians or party men; but the difficulty was not to get such men to lay aside their political feelings after their appointment to the Bench, but in getting people to believe that they had done so; for it had been truly said that justice ought not only to be pure but unsuspected. Those appointments showed that the choice of Judges from among men who had been politicians was not the fault of any Administration, but was the result of absolute necessity, which arose in consequence of all the Bar in Ireland being more or less engaged in politics, and more or less political partisans. They should therefore go on selecting from one party or another until a third party sprung up in Ireland—a third party, the want of which Lord Plunkett had said was the greatest curse of that country, and then at that remote day they might be enabled to select Judges who were not attached to either of the parties in Ireland. It had been the same in Scotland. Fifty years ago, in Scotland, every one at the Bar was either of the Hanoverian or Jacobite party; it behoved every man to be a party man, to be either for King George, or King James; and every one who was promoted to the Bench was accordingly selected from one or the other party. But that time was gone by; and either from the greater lights of the present age, the greater liberality of opinion which prevailed, and, above all, the utter hopelessness of the cause of the Jacobites, it was altogether forgotten. So long as there were two great parties in Ireland, a Catholic and a Protestant party—but, indeed, the distinction of party was not confined to Ireland, for in England we had Conservatives and Liberals, or he preferred the old names of Whig and Tory—so long would they find barristers belonging to one party or another. The Irish Judges who at present filled the Bench were men of great learning, wisdom, and ability; and he would state to their Lordships that the
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writs of error and appeals which came before them in that House from Ireland showed such an amount of learning and ability on the part of the Irish Judges, that it would be impossible to speak too highly of it. The fault was not in any particular Administration, but in the social state of Ireland, where there were seven millions of Catholics, and only one million of Protestants. Then it was stated that there was an ecclesiastical grievance. By an act of violence, it was said, the Legislature took away from the Catholics the property of the Catholic Church, and gave it to the Protestant Church. But that property was given for Christian and religious uses; and as the kind of forms and discipline through which religion should be taught were matters of human rather than divine ordinance, it became the right, and not only the right but the duty, of Parliament to make such arrangements as should cause the religion of the State to be taught through the means of that property. That was the case; it had produced a most anomalous state of things, the greatest anomaly in ecclesiastical history; he admitted it was a great evil; he would go the length of saying it was the master evil in the state of Ireland. The emoluments of a Church well endowed were received by the pastors of 600,000 or 700,000 of the people; the rest of the inhabitants, 6,000,000 or 7,000,000, having to pay their priests for spiritual services. That was a great evil, and a grievous anomaly. But, when he came to deal with it, then he felt the force of the noble Earl's remarks on the difficulty of the case; he heartily agreed with him that it was difficult, excessively difficult, and he would add, so difficult that he thought it impossible. How could they deal with it? What the noble Earl proposed was only a palliative; it would never be tried, but if it should be tried, he predicted it would fail most signally; the palliative would be rejected by everybody, lay as well as clerical, with indignation. The true remedy was of another description; the people ought not to be left to pay for their own religious instruction: the State should pay the Roman Catholic clergy. He would not entertain that question at present further than to say, that though it was stated the Catholic clergy would not receive that payment, he would stake his life upon it they would. If they did not, they would find it much more difficult afterwards to get their payment from the people; and,

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partly from a love of connecting themselves with the Government and the Treasury, and partly from the increased difficulty of getting a regular payment from the people, depend on it they would sooner or later accept it, perhaps not in the first quarter, but certainly by the end of the second. With respect to the subject of challenging Catholics who were summoned on a jury, he asserted they were not challenged quasi Catholics; but if men were liable to other objections then they might be set aside, even though they were Catholics, and that, he would assert, was the case with respect to those Catholics who had been set aside. He could, however, suppose a case in which it would be a very fair ground of challenge to a person that he was a Roman Catholic. If a murder was committed—if a question arose which involved the subject of Catholic and Protestant—if the question were involved of favour towards a Catholic charged with an offence, or doing justice against him where the question was Catholic—it might then be supposed that in such a case the ends of justice might not be best answered by the case being tried by a Catholic jury. The noble Earl had called their attention to the case of foreigners tried for offences by mixed juries: but it was incorrect to say that they were to be tried by a jury composed of half their own countrymen and half of Englishmen—they might be tried by a jury consisting one half of foreigners and one half of Englishmen—so that a Frenchman might be tried by a jury half of Spaniards and half of Englishmen. The conclusion, he feared, to which their Lordships must come, was that of the evils which afflicted Ireland, by far the greater proportion lay beyond the reach of a legal remedy—that the remedy would consist in a great degree of the advance of civilization and refinement; of the strict and impartial execution of the law; firmness and vigour on the part of the Executive Government—a Government which would refuse to barter and traffic with agitators—who would adopt as high a tone as any men deserving the name of Ministers or the name of a Cabinet ought to hold towards those who offended against the law—and who would refuse to barter or compromise with such legal offenders, whether they were individuals or associations—but who would discharge their duties as Ministers of the Crown regardless of all attacks, whether from agitators or Catholic priests, It was to a fair discharge of duty, without partiality, but with vigour, that he looked
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for the first impulse towards a healthier state of things. Then God forbid that any ameliorations of the law should be withheld! He was about to introduce a Bill for extending to mortgages and leases the provisions of an Act by which the difficulties in the conveyance of land were now greatly removed in this country. Why not extend those provisions to Ireland? His noble Friend had spoken of the law as expensive in Ireland. The law in England was ten times more expensive. Ireland had some admirable institutions, such as the Assistant Barristers' Court; and cheap law was so much the lot of Ireland, that it was usual for people here to point to the state of that country as a reason for not making the law cheap here. It gave him, at all times, very great pain to argue in favour of coercion, and still greater pain to be compelled to state that for existing evils—great grievances—he could see no legislative remedies except those of a distant and indirect nature. But those evils would be aggravated if their Lordships gave their high countenance to clamours which existed out of doors as to the pure administration of justice; if they lent themselves to the jobbing arts of one person, and the malpractices of another; if they made themselves accomplices of one half the mischiefs that arose; and he, for one, was not able to acquit the political agitators of all participation in the agrarian disturbances, for he had read speeches made at meetings by priests and others which went indirectly to suggest attacks on the landed interest; not saying that property has its duties as well as its rights, which, like the right of resistance, was very wholesome, as remarked by Mr. Fox, to be remembered by kings, but very dangerous to be remembered by subjects; was very wholesome to be borne in mind by landlords, but very dangerous to be ventilated among a disturbed population of tenants under them. He believed that property had its duties, and he believed also that the landlords of Ireland faithfully and honestly discharged them; but their right was a right of perfect obligation and a legal one, whilst their duty was one of imperfect obligation, as moralists call it. If he saw a poor woman starving with a baby in her arms, and he refused to give her a shilling to relieve her distress, he should deserve to be called a hard-hearted man; but the law said that she should not take the shilling from him, as he had a legal right to keep it. That was

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the case of the Irish landlords, and he hoped that they would always to continue to discharge, as he believed they now discharged, not only their perfect duties, but those of imperfect obligation, charitably, kindly, and affectionately.
EARL FITZWILLIAMsaid, that he thought the House and the country were indebted to the noble Earl who had brought forward this Motion. Ireland was a country of which Englishmen were exceedingly ignorant. It was a mirror in which England did not very well wish to look, but from which she ought not to shrink, although she might not see anything reflected there which would cause her to exult. England might see in that mirror much cause of regret and much cause of shame; and although at present those charges could be made with less justice, yet it could not be said that England even now looked with perfect justice upon Ireland. One most important part of the noble Earl's speech related to the Church of Ireland. On a former occasion he (Earl Fitzwilliam) had ventured to state his opinion that the Legislature must deal with that Church. The noble and learned Lord who had just sat down, stated that the subject was one of difficulty; indeed, he appeared to think it was impossible; and the noble Duke went even further, and talked of an eternal compact made by which the Churches of England and Ireland were for ever established in that country. The noble Duke would allow him to suggest that the words "for ever" were words which legislators ought to be very cautious in using. This generation had no right to disinherit their posterity of the exercise of their full legislative functions; any more than their predecessors had a right to deprive the present legislators of their functions. He ventured to think, on the contrary, that they had received the right of legislating freely from their progenitors, and that they should transmit that right with equal freedom to their posterity. As the "Imperial" Parliament, they had a full right to deal with that question as seemed to them meet and just. Would their Lordships establish an eternal anomaly in Ireland, as the noble and learned Lord had called the Church of that country? He should look with great regret to any portion of the land of Ireland being deprived of a Protestant Church and Protestant ministration; but that should not prevent them dealing with the question. He confessed he did not clearly understand the nature of the course which his noble Friend proposed to adopt. Did
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he mean to take out of the pockets of the people of England money raised by way of taxation for the payment of the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland? He (Earl Fitzwilliam) trusted that he never should see such an attempt made. Let their Lordships see what it would be doing. It would be making the Catholic clergy of Ireland a stipendiary priesthood. As a Protestant he should never think of proposing such a measure; if he were a Catholic he should never accept it. He should like to see the Protestant and Catholic priesthood placed on a similar footing; and that was the only condition on which they could with propriety or ought to be placed. There was no other footing on which they could be satisfactorily disposed, but that in which one could not look down upon the other as an inferior, or on the other as a superior. But their Lordships might depend upon it that the question should be deal with; and if it were not dealt with fairly and shortly, they would have other questions arising of still more awful interest to the two countries—of still more serious and awful interest to the landholders of Ireland. His noble Friend to the left (Lord Brougham) had made a speech which would, doubtless, be very acceptable to the landed proprietors of Ireland. He (Earl Fitzwilliam) could well imagine a Chancellor of the time of Edward III. presenting a petition from the villeins of that day asking a Parliament of the Plantagenets to give them "fixity of tenure;" but what would such a Chancellor think now, could he be but resuscitated, to see the villeins of those days, who held their land by just such a precarious tenure as the cottier tenants of Ireland at the present time hold theirs—could he but see the descendants of those villeins now, in the reign of the sixth Sovereign of the House of Brunswick, holding their lands by a tenure of copyhold, a tenure as good as that by which any one of their Lordships held their estates? It was of course well known that everything that was said in that House was sent elsewhere; but he was desirous of addressing himself, not abroad, but to their Lordships: and it was to their Lordships only he spoke when he requested them not to induce the cottier tenants of Ireland to look too sharply into the rights by which landed property was held. The first thing which he was desirous of doing was, to lay the foundation of a better order of things in love and in the affectionate gratitude of the people. Let them in that spirit look to the great questions with which

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they had to deal. And, with respect to the Church question, where was the difficulty to be found which should prevent them addressing themselves to its consideration? Was it to be found in the prejudices and bigotry of England? Or should they go farther north, and look to the prejudices and bigotry of Scotland? Was it the Presbyterianism of Scotland that refused to listen to any interference with the Church Establishment of Ireland? What struggles had been made by England to establish Episcopacy in Scotland, and how successfully had those attempts been resisted! Was it correct that England had failed to establish Episcopacy in Scotland in despite of the feelings and opinions of the great majority of the people? Was there a single one of their Lordships who would venture to rise in his place and say that it was? or would any one of their Lordships, on the other hand—and he would address himself particularly to his noble Friend the leader of the Presbyterian Church party in that House (Lord Kinnaird); would his noble Friend, or any of the Scottish Peers, assert that it was wrong to establish the Presbyterian Church in Scotland instead of the Church of England? If their Lordships would not venture to sustain either of those propositions, would they still assert that it would be wrong to establish the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland? If it were right to have established Presbyterianism in Scotland, why would it be wrong to establish Catholicity in Ireland? Was that which was right and justice in Scotland, wrong and injustice when transferred to Ireland? But with regard to the Church property, it had been bequeathed, and it belonged not to any particular sect, but to the Church of Christ. He denied that it belonged to the Church of England by right. He denied that it belonged of right to the Roman Catholic Church. It had been made to belong to the Church of England by Act of Parliament. But was that Act of Parliament in itself right? That property should be applied in the true spirit of charity, to the uses of all the people, and not to the exclusive use or benefit of any particular sect; and that their Lordships would shortly be obliged to deal with the question he was satisfied. But his noble Friend had said that he would put down agitation in Ireland. Put down agitation! Why, how had anything been ever gained by Ireland except by agitation? How had Roman Catholic Emancipation been extorted from the noble Duke opposite except
1408
by agitation? His noble Friend knew very well that Ireland owed every amelioration in her condition to agitation. The expression "put down agitation in Ireland," meant "put down every means of obtaining anything for the improvement of the condition of Ireland." The only mode by which the agitation at present existing in Ireland could be put down, would be by legislating for Ireland as an Irish Parliament would legislate. Not as a restoration of the old Irish Parliament would act, for the Irish aristocracy had no community of feeling with the people. They had not grown up out of the people of Ireland, but had been imposed upon them; and to say that a restoration of the old Irish Parliament would do good for the country was absurd. There was no more perfect specimen of an oligarchy than that Parliament presented.
LORD BROUGHAMexplained some points in his speech; and said he could inform the noble Earl (Earl Fitzwilliam) that if he so admired the fixity of tenure principle, by which the villeins had become proprietors, he had only to allow his tenants in the county Wicklow to hold for forty years without demanding any rent from them, and they would be proprietors to his noble Friend's heart's content.
The MARQUESS of CLANRICARDEshould not have thought of taking any part in the debate, or of occupying their Lordships' time at that late hour, but that he unfortunately differed from his noble Friend on many of the reasons which he had given in support of the Motion which he (the Marqness of Clanricarde) should support also, but for different reasons. And in the first place, he begged leave to assure the noble Duke opposite that he was mistaken in the assertion he had made regarding the petition to which he had alluded. He (the Marquess of Clanricarde) had never signed his name to any petition that prayed for the overthrow of the Protestant Church in Ireland, or set it forth as one of the principal grievances of the country. He could not, of course, answer for individual opinions; but, speaking generally, the noble Lords who had signed the petition referred to by the noble Duke, were not persons who entertained such an opinion. The Protestant Church had been put forward so frequently, that it had become at length associated in the minds of the people of Ireland with the idea of a monstrous abuse, and with much that was unpopular. It was said that the Established Church in Ireland was at the bottom of all the difficulties

1409
of the country. He did not agree in that opinion; and his noble Friend who had quoted his illustrious countryman, Grattan, ought to have remembered that that great man had always avowed his determination to maintain the Protestant Church in its integrity, and had expressly declared that determination upon every occasion which he proposed Catholic Emancipation. The evidence of Mr. O'Connell himself, before Parliamentary Committees, was to the effect that he never desired or contemplated the destruction of the Protestant Church. But "the Church" did not signify the clergy merely. It meant the great body of the people. And if the establishment could be shown to be out of all proportion to the communicants, he, and he believed all his Friends around him, would be ready to consider the reduction of that establishment, and the reform of any abuses which might have crept into it. As an Irish resident, he was competent to form an opinion upon one part of the subject. He had had an opportunity of seeing the effects of the voluntary system carried to its greatest extent; and he could say that it was the very worst description of system for the support of the clergy; and he would willingly pay his proportion if a tax for the support of the Catholic clergy, were a plan devised by which that object could be attained. He would deem it money very well laid out, and he would think it a very cheap purchase of peace, and of an improved condition of society. But their Lordships would see that they could never pay the Catholic clergy without their own consent, nor without the consent of the Catholic people of Ireland. Those of their Lordships who were acquainted with the Roman Catholic and Protestant religions, as they existed relatively in Ireland, would also see the difficulty of dealing with the question upon another point. The chief portion of the revenues of the Catholic clergy was raised by means of resembling what were called "surplice fees" in the Protestant Church. Now, they had thought fit to permit and to encourage the collection of surplus fees in the Established Church, so that they still existed in addition to the fixed revenues. Again, the taking of the property from the Protestant Church and handing it over to the Catholic, would not obviate the difficulty; for if one half the revenues were so transferred, it would leave the objection still that the division was not in fair proportion,
1410
and that the Catholics should get at least seven-eighths. But, still, he thought, that they should look to the temporalities of the Protestant Church in Ireland, and lop off such proportion of its extra wealth and useless revenues as should appear excessive to the great body of the people. No man in his senses could fail to regret the present position of the Church, and something should be done to remedy its position without destroying it; for he (the Marquess of Clanricarde) could not consent to any measure for its destruction. He thought that the necessity had arisen for the Imperial Parliament to interfere, and force the Ministers into taking measures for the amelioration of the condition of the people of Ireland. He was sorry to have heard the noble Duke speaking in such cheerful tones of the state of Ireland. Why, had they not just passed a Coercion Bill for that country upon the most meagre grounds that ever were put forward by a Minister? Upon previous Occasions, when such extraordinary measures were called for, it had been the custom to lay Papers, containing voluminous reports, upon the Table, and upon their contents discussions had been raised. It could not be expected that such measures would be granted upon the mere parole evidence of a Minister. But on the present occasion there was no such evidence brought forward; and why? Because the facts of the present emergency were open and palpable to all; so open and so palpable that every one knew them. They also had agreed to pass sudden and extraordinary measures for the relief of poverty, without calling for proofs further than those facts that were palpable to all. But more than that remained to be done. They saw the Queen's Government denuded of all authority. They saw the Queen's Representative in Ireland virtually reduced to the condition of a mere superintendent of police. They saw the Repeal Association, on the other hand, supported by the entire people, led by men of great learning, ability, and untiring energy; connected, too, with the clergy of the people; having its own organs and officers, and in full possession of the public mind. That was the relative position of the Government as regarded one party in the country. On the other hand, there was the great body of Protestants in the north of Ireland. The Government had certainly not secured their confidence. Nor was the state of things in any respect in Ireland such as to reflect credit on the Government.

1411
The present Ministers were responsible for this state of things. The country was in a very different state when the present Government received it from the hands of its predecessor. He referred to the charges of the Judges in 1842, to show that the country was then in a state of perfect tranquillity. He really did not wonder at the attachment of the people to the idea of Repeal, when he considered the way they had been treated of late years, as for instance in respect to the electoral franchise, and to municipal corporations. As his noble Friend (Earl Grey) had reminded their Lordships, the creed and polities of the people had been injudiciously urged as a reason for not giving the people the same franchise as in England. It had been said, that if the Irish people had the same franchise as in England, they would have Roman Catholic and Radical Mayors and Aldermen in all the large towns. Well, he would like to know why they should not have Roman Catholic and Radical Mayors in all the corporations if the people happened to be of that creed and of those opinions? In 1841, Sir R. Peel taunted the Whig Government with not having brought in a Registration Bill; and yet here they were near Easter, in 1846, without any thing being done upon that, or any other matter by the right hon. Baronet's own Government, except to state that after some matters were disposed of, they intended to introduce some measure on the subject. The present Administration had appointed a Commission to inquire into the state of landlord and tenant in Ireland—a step which he considered one of the most mischievous that had ever been taken by an undecided, vacillating feeble Government. But having appointed such a Commission, he thought that when they got the Report, the least the Government could have done was to have founded some measure upon it. There was no doubt that the minds of the people of Ireland had become greatly alienated from the Imperial Parliament; and he considered that much of the blame of this lay at the door of the present Government. His noble Friend (Earl Grey) had alluded to the judicial appointments of the Government. This, he was aware, was a very delicate subject; but after what his noble Friend had stated, he could not help saying that these appointments had been most unfortunate. His noble and learned Friend (Lord Brougham) said, that Government could not help men being partisans. Perhaps they could not; but they could watch
1412
the conduct of men who were extremely violent and conspicuous and offensive to the great body of their fellow countrymen, and could avoid appointing such persons to administer the laws of the country. Noble Lords opposite had found great fault with a noble Friend of his for having offered a seat on the judicial Bench to Mr. O'Connell; and therefore had no right to rely upon it as a precedent, which it was not as it referred solely to an Equity Court. No one objected to the appointment of a person like Sir E. Sugden to a judicial office, even though a party man; but when a person who conspicuously sided with a party in the country, and who joined in declarations against the religion of the people, so strong as to imply that individuals of this prevailing religion were not easily and readily to be believed on their oath; when such a person was exalted to preside over the criminal tribunals of the country, it could not fail to give the mass of the population a distrust of these tribunals. The circumstances connected with the late State trials, was another source of discontent among the people. His noble and learned Friend (Lord Brougham) had said that he could easily imagine a case where it would be justifiable to exclude a person from a jury on account of his being a Catholic He (Lord Clanricarde) could not concur in this opinion. He thought that such a system was altogether indefensible. The condition of the country had been stated that night in very strong terms; but he believed it had not at all been exaggerated—he meant in regard to its political aspect. He believed that the state of Irish politics had never been fraught with so much danger to the integrity of the Empire as at this very moment. He had had conversations with those who were old enough to remember the period of 1798, and the year before that memorable and unfortunate year; and he believed from what he had heard, that at that disastrous period there was no such danger to be apprehended as at this moment, when there was a spirit of deep-rooted discontent abroad which it would be necessary to take the most energetic steps to deal with. He thought it was high time that Parliament should determine not to leave Government to provide in any way they pleased for the peace and prosperity of that country, and therefore he gave his hearty assent to the Motion of his noble Friend.
The DUKE of WELLINGTONrose, and said he had never presented a petition in

1413
which the Irish Church had been denominated a grievance, as seemed to be imputed to him by the noble Lord.
The MARQUESS of WESTMEATHsaid, there were one or two statements in the speech of the noble Earl (Earl Grey) which required some explanation before they could be allowed to go forth as deserving of credit. He had stated that one Irish landlord received as high as 18 l. an acre for conacre land. But the noble Earl ought to have explained what conacre land was. Conacre land was land highly manured and seeded; and, besides, an Irish acre was larger than an English acre in the proportion of eight to five. He (Lord Westmeath) had heard of some conacre land as high as 9l. and 12 l. an acre, and in one instance, in Tipperary, as high as 13 l., but he had never himself seen any so high. He thought it was invidious of the noble Earl to throw out that the Irish landlords let their land at that price, without, at the same time, explaining what conacre was. The fact was, in his opinion, that nothing could be more unfortunate for an Irish landlord than to have his land let in conacre. Another point to which the noble Earl referred, was the maladministration of justice in Ireland, and the appointments of judges, alluding to the usefulness of the magistracy, for that he must have meant when he spoke of the superior respect that the Irish people had for the Repeal courts as compared to the lawful tribunals. That absurdity of the Repeal courts was now over; and he must say that he never knew a poor man go before one of them except from fear and compulsion. As to the assertions of the noble Earl and the noble Marquess near him of the extreme discontent of the Irish with the Imperial Government, he denied its existence. The people of Ireland had in their hearts no such feeling. The Repeal agitation, and other agitations which had been going for a length of time, had done all that industry and perseverance and talent could do to alienate the feelings of the people from this country; and he was sorry to see a noble Peer of this country endeavouring to impose on their Lordships and the country, from intelligence he had received, which he (the Marquess of Westmeath) thought was very worthless, the idea that the feeling of dissatisfaction did exist among the people of Ireland. As an Irish Representative Peer, he felt it his duty to assert that the Irish people were not so discontented at heart. There was a press maintained
1414
in that country for the purpose of sedition. It was maintained by large sums of money, and circulated gratis, and it lost no opportunity of exasperating the people against the Saxon; but the heart of the Irish people, he was convinced, was sound; he was convinced that they were attached to the English connexion, that they were desirous of obeying the law, and that they would always show that obedience to the law when the Government was strong enough to protect them.
The DUKE of RICHMONDsaid, that after what the noble Earl had said with respect to the Irish Church, it was quite impossible for him to vote with the noble Earl; but he was anxious that it should not be thought that, in voting against the noble Earl, he was expressing any confidence in the Government: he did not feel that confidence, and, what was more, he never again should entertain that confidence in those who he thought had treated most ill the interests to which he was attached.
The MARQUESS of LONDONDERRYsaid, that admitting a great part of the noble Earl's argument to be strong, and what he concurred in, yet, when he found, towards the end of the noble Earl's speech, what was the real object of his Address, he thought the noble Earl had better have concluded by moving an Address to Her Majesty to reform the Irish Church. But if that reform were carried as the noble Earl wished, there would no longer be any security for the estates of the landed proprietors. He should like to know, if the noble Earl were to carry his project into execution, and he (the Marquess of Londonderry) were to lose his Irish estates in consequence, whether he would give him his Howick estate as a compensation? The noble Earl had said that he would not shrink from upholding the Union; but how would the overthrow of the Established Church be compatible with the maintenance of the Union? If they abandoned the Church of Ireland, they would commit a breach of the engagement entered into between the people of Ireland and the people of England at the Union. He (the Marquess of Londonderry) had a strong feeling with regard to the improper evictions and ejectments that had taken place in Ireland. Something, he thought, ought to be done to place some restriction on the practice. It would be a very great improvement if the great non-resident proprietors of Ireland would occasionally go

1415
there and stay three or four months or so, and see for themselves into the real state of things, and that justice was done their tenantry. If they would only go amongst that people, whom he must call a grateful, obedient, and affectionate people, and live amongst them, he was sure that the country would be different from what it is, and very far from wanting those laws which, Session after Session, they were bringing in. He would mention one anecdote illustrative of what he had said. He knew a noble lady, who had a large estate of 3,000 l. or 4,000 l. a year, in one of the northern counties of Ireland. She had an agent who thought it necessary to eject from fifty to sixty persons who were greatly in arrear from the estate. She was advised to send over money, and lay it out to make these poor people comfortable, and see whether that would not do good. She took that advice, and sent over money to make their habitations comfortable, and gave them clothing and fuel, and built them pig-houses, and in three or four years the tenantry presented a totally different aspect, and the arrear, which was very considerable, was nearly all paid off. He would tell the noble Earl, as an Irishman who had lived much in Ireland, that if ever Parliament attempted to destroy the Protestant Church of Ireland, they would hardly do it without a return of the scenes of 1798.
The EARL of ST. GERMANSwould crave the attention of the House but for a very few moments. The objections he had felt to the proposition of the noble Earl had not been removed by the speeches he had heard. The noble Earl made this Motion distinctly on the ground that he meant to follow it up by some measure tending to the spoliation of the Irish Protestant Church. He was not about to follow the noble Earl into the wide field over which he had travelled. He had touched on the subjects of agrarian outrages, the administration of justice, the Established Church, the Landlord and Tenant Commission, and what was called fixity of tenure—subjects any one of them of such magnitude as to discuss it would occupy the greater part of an evening. He should not be doing justice to any of these subjects if he were to follow the noble Earl into all he had said upon them. The noble Earl had said that the Landlord and Tenant Commission was an ill-advised and ill-conducted Commission. He entirely differed with the noble Earl, and he would
1416
say that any one who took up the Report of that Commission, would, if he read it attentively, have a greater knowledge of Ireland than he could possibly acquire from any other source. In the observations which the noble Earl made on agrarian outrages in the south of Ireland, he connected them, as he (the Earl of St. Germans) understood him, with political grievances; but if that were the case, the same causes would produce the same effects elsewhere; and why then did they not find the same agrarian outrages in the northern and midland counties of Ireland that took place in the south? With respect to the tenure of land, the Government had last Session felt that the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland were not in a satisfactory state, and they did lay before their Lordships a Bill for the purpose of remedying the defects of the system; but it was not possible, owing to the late period of the Session, to give it due consideration. Now, however, they had a measure in preparation, which he trusted would be found, while it respected the rights of the landlords, to secure to the occupying tenant the benefit of improvements and everything to which he might be found to be fully entitled. With respect to what the noble Earl had said of the Judges, he was convinced there was no greater confidence placed in any men in Ireland, than in those to whom the noble Earl and other noble Lords opposite had alluded. He was bound in justice to say, that they were guided in their proceedings by the purest motives; and since their elevation to the Bench no men could have discharged their high functions with greater impartiality; and how much soever some of them might have been conscientiously opposed to Catholic emancipation, no man ever for a moment supposed that they allowed any religious feeling to influence them in the exercise of their duties. There were, indeed, no men in Ireland whose judgments were entitled to greater respect than Judges Lefroy and Jackson. As to the Church question, he agreed with what had fallen from the noble Duke near him (the Duke of Wellington), and dissented totally from the noble Earl opposite as to the obligation to maintain the integrity of the Protestant Church in Ireland. There could be no doubt that a compact was entered into at the period of the Union for the permanent preservation of the Established Church in Ireland. The noble Earl had adverted to the case of Scotland.

1417
But the noble Earl should have recollected that at the time of the Union with Scotland, the Presbyterian religion was the established religion of the country, and that the Parliament of England treated with the Parliament of Scotland as a co-ordinate power. So with regard to Ireland. The Protestant religion at the time of the Union was the established religion of the country, and the Parliament of Ireland entered into an agreement with that of England permanently to maintain the Established Church in Ireland. It had all along been stated by the leaders of the Roman Catholics that they had no desire to injure that Church; and he felt satisfied that if the people of this country had not put faith in the declarations made by the Roman Catholic leaders to that effect, neither the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government, nor the noble Duke near him, would have been able to carry the Roman Catholic Relief Bill. He maintained, therefore, that they had no right to violate a compact of this nature, unless they could make out a case of paramount and overwhelming necessity for so doing. The noble Earl had failed to make out such a case. He did not agree with the noble Earl in believing that the Church in Ireland was the cause of heartburning and discontent in that country. [Earl GREY: Hear.] The noble Earl met his assertion with a derisive cheer; but his acquaintance with the people of Ireland did not lead him to the conclusion that the Roman Catholics desired to possess the temporalities of the Established Church in that country. He said so on the best authority—on that of the Roman Catholic prelates themselves. He could not help observing that very great misapprehension and exaggeration prevailed respecting the temporalities of the Irish Church. It did not exceed 600,000 l. or 650,000 l. a year; there were 1,400 beneficed clergymen, and about 700 curates in Ireland; so that, dividing the temporalities by the number of clergymen, there was not to every incumbent a larger salary than 300 l. a year. Absenteeism was one of the grievances of Ireland, and he could not help believing that the withdrawing from that country such a well-educated body of men as the Protestant clergy would be a much greater mischief to Ireland, than apportioning part of their income to the support of the Roman Catholic clergy. Though the Roman Catholics had declared their willingness to cut down the temporalities of the Established Church, they had always refused
1418
to participate in those temporalities. But while the Government refused to lay their hands on the possessions of the Established Church, they had not neglected the real interests of the Roman Catholic Church. He might refer to the healing measures which had been passed for the relief of Ireland, to show that Government did not disregard the wants of the Irish people. They had done everything in their power to bring instruction to the door of the poor; and he was happy to inform the House that a great increase of education had taken place in Ireland during the last years. The number of schools had increased by 273, and the number of children, 37,000. They were about to establish model schools; and he need not remind the House of the Colleges which had been established to secure for the middle classes the benefits of a sound education. He had much pleasure in reading to their Lordships a letter which had been received from Mr. Macdonnell, the resident Commissioner of Education, in reference to these Colleges and the recent appointments, which he was sure would be regarded as highly satisfactory. The statement of Mr. Macdonnell was, that the appointments of the Presidents of those Colleges by Lord Heytesbury were "the best and most honest appointments ever made in Ireland." Such testimony was most honourable to the noble Lord who was at the head of the Government in Ireland. He had much satisfaction also in informing the House that the increased grant to the College of Maynooth had been received with the most grateful feelings, and that much good, in producing kindly sentiments towards this country, had resulted from the measure. He had called their attention to these few points to show that Government had not been unmindful of the actual wants of their Catholic fellow subjects, but were disposed to adopt every possible meams to promote their moral and social well-being. He could not venture to hope, that in the present state of the public mind justice would be done to the efforts now making by Government to promote the welfare of the people of Ireland; but he trusted the day was not distant when the mists of prejudice and passion would so far pass away that justice would be done to his right hon. Friend at the head of the Government, and that his Administration would yet be regarded as having laboured not without success to promote the permanent good of the people.
EARL GREYreplied: He said he was

1419
desirous to explain one or two matters on which it appeared he had been misunderstood. In reference to the subject of the conacre letting of land, he stated that it was not the amount of rent of which he complained, although it did appear to him to be enormous; but the grievance to which he called attention was, that where the occupier had paid his rent, and the person from whom he held had neglected to pay his rent to the person above him again—that the unfortunate occupier was liable to have the very potatoes he had reared for the support of himself and family taken from him for the rent he had no right to pay, as well as to be turned out of the land altogether; which was a state of things that he considered ought to be altered. His noble Friend who sat near him had also charged him with desiring the overthrow of the Established Church; but he would appeal to the noble Lords who heard him, whether he had made use of a single remark to that effect. He was as attached to the Protestant religion as any noble Lord in that House, and he was anxious for its extension; but there was a great difference, he said, between the religion and the Church Establishment. He considered that a portion of the endowments of the Establishment should be appropriated to teach the people of Ireland that religion to which they belonged. He hoped that he had made himself understood, and that he would not be again charged with having wished to effect the overthrow of the Established Church.
On the Question, their Lordships divided:—Contents 17; Non-contents 61: Majority 44.

List of the CONTENTS.

MARQUESSES.

Morley

Anglesey

Suffolk

Conyngham

Clanricarde.

VISCOUNT.

EARLS.

Torrington.

Auckland

BARONS.

Besborough

Campbell

Clarendon

Carrington.

Fitzwilliam.

Cottenham

Fortescue

Foley

Grey

Lilford

House adjourned.