meetings half or one-third so numerous as the meetings of the Birmingham Political Union? With one exception, he had never heard a word which could be construed as threatening language. But, at all events, whatever interpretation might be put upon words, he defied any man to show him an example of anything of the kind; and yet the Government suppressed all those meetings. He would ask the hon. gentleman who had seconded this Address, with a degree of modesty which he had always observed to accompany talent, what he thought of suppressing meetings which assembled, too numerously perhaps, for he was not an advocate of too large assemblages of the people—but at which no breach of the peace occurred, and which separated quietly, as soon as they had accomplished the object for which they had met ? More power the hon. gentleman wanted, but if the hon. gentleman knew as much of Ireland as he did, the hon. gentleman would be a greater agitator than he was. Although he knew it was in many cases absurd to say, post hoc, propter hoc, yet it was an undoubted fact, that whenever agitation ceased in Ireland, crime had extended itself-and that whenever agitation was extended, crime had ceased. Some great and crying grievances in Ireland remained to be enumerated. Was the Vestry Case no grievance? Was it no grievance that seventy-five Protestants in a parish should have the power of punishing, by taxation, 12,000 Catholics? Was it no grievance that the Catholic inhabitants of a parish ten miles from Waterford, in which Lord Duncannon was the only Protestant resident, should be thus treated? Was it no grievance that the vestry might impose upon the Catholic parishioners whatever tax it pleased, for the Communion wine and other purposes? He would mention a flagrant instance of this imposition. In the parish of St. Andrew, in Dublin, the Protestant inhabitants voted £300 to the two curates in addition to their salary. This was in direct contradiction to the law, and as no person could appeal against the assessment without giving securities to the amount of £100, two gentlemen gave the necessary securities, and brought forward an appeal, which was tried in the King's Bench, and the assessment was quashed; of course it would be supposed there was an end of the matter. No such thing. The costs of resisting the appeal were charged upon the parish, and the £300 were re-voted again. As the

party who appealed was obliged to pay his own costs, and as the costs of resisting the appeal were charged upon the parish, the parish very wisely thought it best to submit quietly to the imposition, and not to contest the matter further. Was that no grievance? Was there any other country in the world where there would be no redress for it? Before the Government asked for more force let them remedy that evil. Why should the Catholics pay for the sacramental elements and other articles for the worship of the Protestants? Why should they pay for the building and repair of Protestant churches? There was a parish called Cappado, in the neighbourhood of Dublin, where there was but one Protestant; and a church was forced upon him in spite of himself, at the expense of the Catholics, although the Protestant presented two petitions to that House, stating that his Catholic neighbours and himself were on excellent terms, and that he had a pew at Maynooth church, which was near enough, and there was no necessity for a new church. Such were the acts which his Majesty's Government required additional powers to enforce. Let them first do justice. Why should the Catholics be compelled to pay Protestant clergy? Why should the Catholics be compelled to build Protestant churches? Before the ascendency of the Protestants in Ireland, there was a superabundance of churches in that country, but the Protestants had sold them, or let them go to ruin; and now they called upon the Catholics to repair the consequences of their neglect and misconduct. Was there any agitation equal to this? Look at the temporalities of the Church, and say if anything could be more monstrous, if any effect of agitation could be so pernicious as this system? The living of the brother-in-law of Earl Grey had been estimated to bring in nearly £30,000 annually; there were 96,000 acres of ground belonging to it. Was this paid by members of the Church of England? No; the Presbyterian and the Catholic -worshippers in a different form-were compelled, by this most monstrous system, to pay this divine. They were 8,000,000 Catholics, and there were 1,000,000 of Protestants; at least it was said so. Well, there might be 1,000,000, but he did not believe it. Was it to be borne that they were thus to be treated? What he wanted to know was this-was the Church to be cut down? They were agitators, it was said, but their agitation was of a clear character-it was of a different

sort from that which was the real source of the distress and the insubordination, and the what-not. He did not know that it was distinguished by two epaulettes, or by troops to cut down the people. Force was the cry. This had ever been the Government conduct. For forty years, let it be remembered, force had been increasingly talked of to Scotland; but Scotch broadswords were unsheathed-Scotchmen knew their rights -they rallied-they united-they struggled-and they succeeded. He did not ask for supremacy; he wanted no supremacy then, and if talked of hereafter, he would resist it; but he did strongly contend against the present unfair and harassing system, and insisted on its abolition. The Irish wanted that tithes should be extinguished, as the Government had said they should be. He knew they afterwards added that they did not mean it, but he wanted them to do what they said. He wished to know whether tithes were to continue, or whether any mitigation was to take place? Was it to be a '74, or a rasé? Were the Catholics to continue to pay the bishops and clergy whom they never saw? There was no weapon for agitation like this grievance. The Government treated the Catholics worse than the Turks treated the Greeks. The Turks even, cruel and harsh as they were, despised such oppression towards the Greeks; they never insisted on their support of the Mahometan faith. The ministers, however, of England were worse than the Turks. He meant to detain the House a little longer on the subject of absenteeism. When speaking of crime, he wished they would look to absenteeism-to the rents that were constantly going out of the country. Would they litigate that? He would tell them they could not. Did ministers wish to push them on to a servile war; would they compel them, with the devotion of a Falkland, to join criminals because greater criminals were arrayed against them? They called out "force." Why not begin? Why not postpone the threat, and do justice to Ireland; and then, if agitation continued, if insubordination showed itself in midnight plunder and outrage, call out for "force." Wait for thistry it, and then, if it failed, take the excuse, and he would support the cry. He wanted nothing but justice for Ireland, and justice this country had never rendered to her. The Speech which had been delivered had a prototype in one in the

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reign of Elizabeth, when Raleigh slaughtered the garrison of Merbick. The cry for power had ever been the cry of the Government of this country, and under it were committed those English crimes which were written in the blood of Ireland. Strafford, the prototype of the right hon. gentleman, acted no otherwise; he confiscated the property of two entire provinces in Ireland, and when Juries refused to convict, he sent them for two years into Dublin Castle. In the reign of James II, 8,000,000 acres of land were forfeited in defending the right of his father. In the present day the same part was acted the scene was somewhat changed-the actors were different-but their conduct was substantially the same. There was no real amelioration-no change, nor any intended, as was proved in that Address which he had designated as bloody and brutal. What he wanted was, a General Committee, that that Address might be duly considered and discussed line by line. If that were really a Reformed House— if justice to Ireland was really their object, they would not refuse it. Justice had not been done to Ireland by the Reform Bill. He strongly doubted if he had acted rightly in supporting so strenuously the English Bill. He had received hints from several quarters upon the subject. But he had supported it, and that unflinchingly. Ireland, in her Bill, was not used anything like so well as England. The blunders were solely attributable to Government. The Duke of Wellington took away the franchise; the ministers found that injustice when they came into office, and they sanctioned it. It was no idle motive which made him anxious to introduce so many of his family into that House. He too well knew the incurable ignorance which there prevailed on the real state and wants of his country, and he was determined to tell them trumpettongued to all. The number of Repealers returned would at least give the Government some insight into the sentiments of the people on that subject. He wanted a Committee of that House-he declared that that declaration of war against the people of Ireland should be modified. Let the ministers give them a strong and emphatic declaration of intended justice to Ireland-and if then they applied for force, he would support them. But the Speech promised nothing. There were still several points untouched, there were the prosecutions, to which he would not then advert, and twenty other

topics on which he could say much, but he would abandon the intention. He knew he spoke in vain-he felt he made appeals which would fall unheeded on their ears. He should now know of what that Reformed House was composed-he should see the high and independent members for England voting for " more power." It was of no use his pleading before a Reformed Parliament in behalf of Ireland-it was vain to lift up his voice in her cause-for he was sure his answer would be a laugh at himself and a laugh at his country. Were then the grievances of Ireland not real? It was well known they were real, heavy, and intolerable; and if so, was it not the duty of the Government to redress them? He would defy anyone who had heard his words-who had taken notice of his statements-to instance one case in which he had aggravated a grievance; and he would defy anyone to find a people, look where he might, who had agitated, or who had been guilty of midnight outrage, of insubordination, and reckless crime, without real grievances. He had done-he thanked the House for the patience with which they had listened to him-they were the last hope, the last refuge of his country. To them he could only look for relief from the autocracy of the right hon. gentleman; from that "hoc volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas" to which his country was subjected. Whether Government was to be administered by the right hon. gentleman alone-whether all was to continue to be concentrated in his self-sufficiency-they must decide. Seven years of misrule had been endured by Ireland-Government had been carried on on no other plan than that of Tamerlane; and the most outrageous cruelties had been inflicted on a prostrate people. For himself, he laboured under one calamity-that of a supposed personal hostility to the right hon. gentleman opposite. Had he-could he have any such feeling towards him? They had never come together, and no such feeling was in existence. Heaven knew that he had no personal motive. There was no pursuit of his in which the right hon. gentleman did or could, or, he presumed, would wish, to impede him. He spoke of him merely as the enemy of Ireland. He looked at the accumulation of crime-at the quantity of blood increasing as it flowed in his unhappy country, and he still found that right hon. gentleman, the Lord of the Ascendent, dictating to the ministry the measures to be pursued. These