the representatives of the country-they are led on by men of unaiterable determination-in intelligence and in property they are making rapid advances-with Roman Catholics of high ability the bar is crowded -by them the highest law offices are filled-they are within a step of the bench of justice-if there were no further change by the legislature, the advance of the people would be still inevitable-the Corporation Bill (for you cannot legislate for one country on different principles from those which you apply to the other) is at hand. Can you wish, and if you wish, can you hope, that this unnatural, galling, exasperating ascendancy should be maintained? Things cannot remain as they are—it is impossible that they should retrograde-what expedient are you prepared to adopt? Would you re-enact the penal code, let loose Orangeism from its den? Would you drive the country into insurrection-cut down the people-avail yourselves of the most horrible instrumentality that a faction, panting for new confiscations, can apply-and bid the yeomanry draw forth the swords, clotted with the blood of 1798, that they may be brandished in massacre, and sheathed in the nation's heart. From so horrible a conception you instinctively and virtuously recoil. But, shrinking as you do from such a purpose, to what expedient will you fly? Will you dissolve the parliament What! after you have already had recourse to that perilous expedient? You thought that you could manage the house of your own calling- you declared it at Tamworth. Have you not too deep a stake in fame, in fortune, in property, and in renown, to renew these terrible experiments? If a Conservative parliament should be assembled, its duration must be brief -its existence will be stormy and agitated while it lasts; but if the excited people should infuse an undue proportion of the democratic element into the representation, you will have raised a spirit which you will` have no spell to lay, exposed an institution more valuable than the 'church to peril; and put, perhaps, what is more precious than the mitre, to a tremendous hazard-and all for what? For what are all these risks to be incurred?-for what are all these appalling hazards to be run?-for what stake is this awful die to be cast? For what are cabinets after cabinets to be dissolved, appeals after appeals to be made to the people-the public credit to be annihilated-the lords brought into collision with the master power of the state-the royal prerogative, by its repeated exercise, abridged of the reverence which is due to it--the palace shaken to its foundations--and the empire itself brought to the verge of that gulf to which, by causes of less pressure, so many countries have been irresistibly and fatally driven? For what, into all these affrighting perils are we to rush: For what, into those terrific possibilites are we madly, desperately, impiously to plunge? For the Irish church!-the church of the minority, long the church of the state, never the church of the people-the church on which a faction fattens, by which a nation starves-the church from which no imaginable good can flow, but evil after evil in such black and continuous abundance has been for centuries, and is to this day, poured out-the church by which religion has been retarded, morality has been vitiated, atrocity has been engendered; which standing armies are requisite to sustain, which has Cost England millions of her treasure, and Ireland torrents of her blood. IRISH MUNICIPAL REFORM BILL. SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCH 28, 1836. THE speech of the honourable and learned gentleman (Sir W. Follett) would have been an exceedingly powerful one against Catholic emancipation, or against the extension to Ireland of parliamentary reform but those measures having been carried, it is preposterous to rely upon a policy utterly at variance with the principles on which they were founded. The honourable and learned member has relied upon a concession made by the government respecting the admmistration of justice. The appointment of the sheriff's has been transferred to the crown. This, said the honourable and learned member for Exeter, established a distinction between England and Ireland ;-wherefore, since you have made this distinction, not abolish corporations altogether I answer, that the appointment of sheriffs is an incident to the existence of corporate bodies, and not one of its elements,-that Ireland does not require an exact identity in every particular, but a general assimilation -that she does not ask that all the details shall be the same, but that the principles shall be analogous ;-change the elevation of the edifice, but let the foundation of popular control remain untouched. Although an influence will cease to be exercised by corporations over courts of justice, yet over corporations a safe and salutary influence will still be exercised by the people. The nomination of sheriffs is taken away, but much is left behind; the care of many local concerns, the guardianship of the public peace, the security and convenience of public ways, the imposition of taxes, their allocation and collection, and the management of corporate property. Is the latter of no consequence? Try it by this test; the Drapers' Company have estates in Londonderry; suppose that it were proposed to that company to transfer their estates to the crown, how would such a suggestion be received? How offensive, then, is the project to leave to English corporations their Irish estates, and to strip Irish corporations of their possessions? I acknowledge that I regard the transfer of the right to nominate sheriffs as not only a concession but a sacrifice; and I, for one, would not acquiesce in it, if I did not feel that something, nay, that much, ought to be yielded, in order to adjust those questions, without the settlement of which peace in Ireland is impossible and prosperity hopeless; and if, after this step towards a compromise has been taken by the government, the bill be elsewhere rejected, or there shall be substituted for it what Ireland shall repudiate, and if, by this expedient, the abuses of corporations, the vitiation of justice, the plunder of corporate revenues, and political profligacy shall be perpetuated, the people of England will know where the blame of that scandalous continuance ought to attach, and will deternuine between the men who are anxious, as far as it is practicable, to extend the benefit of British institutions, and those who, having had so long and minute a cognizance of those abuses, never applied a remedy; and who, at last, wher they can no longer be palliated with impunity, have recourse to a mock demolition, and send up to the House of Lora a project to which the Commons of England, Ireland, and Scotland never can accede. All that has been said against this bill-all that has been insidiously insinuated, boldly stated, ingeniously inferred, and against "old friends and colleagues" contumeliously quoted, can, into a very short and unfortunately, familiar phrase "No Popery," be appropriately coudensed. It is said that if we are once armed with power, we shall become unjust, arbitrary, and oppressive; that we shall follow the example given us, and that, by a Catholic combination, Protestants will be excluded from corporations. It is not a little remarkable that two noble lords, the members for Lancashire (North and South) who have touched on this topic, should, at the last election, have been proposed by Catholics to their constituents. But it will be suggested that Catholics in England and Ireland are very different. In Ireland you fear a sacerdotal ascendancy, which in England you have no reason to apprehend. No man has enlarged more eloquently and pathetically upon this topic than the honourable member for Cumberland. This night the right honourable baronet, relieved from those nautical occupations from which the illustrations of his eloquence were once derived, has suddenly taken to the consolations of religion, and there is reason to apprehend that this quondam Whig functionary-this ex-Lord of the Admiralty, has laid aside the Naval Almanac for "Fox's Martyrs." I do not believe that the speeches of the Catholic priests to which he has referred, are accurately reported; and if I did, I should consider them as affording grounds for increasing the estimates, and for establishing a higher class of rhetoric at Maynooth. But mark the inconsistency between Conservative reasoning and assertion. We are told that there is no connexion between parliamentary and municipal reform; yet all the arguments against municipal elections are derived from the conduct of the Catholic clergy on parliamentary elections. Now, if the argument were good for anything, it would lead to the abolition of parliamentary, not of municipal institutions. For my part, I avow the interference of priests at elections, if it gratifies the noble lord, the member for Lancashire, and the right honourable member for Cumberland; and, I will add, that in no instance did the Catholic clergy interfere with more effect than in 1831, in order to carry the Reform Bill, when those honourable gentlemen were in office; I do not, I own, recollect that on that occasion those distinguished individuals deprecated the sinister assistance to which the government, of which they formed a part, were indebted. But how does it come to pass that the Catholic priests enjoy a mono.. poly of their moral anger? Have not the landlords some claim to their virtuous indignation? They denounce what they call the tyranny of the priesthood; but when they see families turned out in hundreds from their hovels-women without covering, and children without food;for these droves of human wretchedness, have they no commiseration? Lord Stanley † Lord Egerton. Sir James Graham. In the What connexion is there between tithes and borough-rates-between the corporation fund and the ensanguined treasure of the church? On a municipal election, I cannot conceive any one question by possibility to arise on which the priesthood can take the least political, personai, or any other imaginable concern. But in parliamentary elections what is at stake? The abolition of that detestable impost which has drenched Ireland in blood-which has produced atrocities from which every feeling of humanity, and every sentiment of religion are abhorrent, and which ought to make certain religious men whom I see before me, kneci down and pray to God every night, before they sleep, that for Rathcer. mac they may be forgiven. Interfere at elections! Yes:-the priests achieved emancipation, and broke down the power of the Beresfords in Waterford, annihilated the Fosters in Louth, and triumphantly carried the Clare election. Led on by them, the intrepid peasantry rushed to the hustings with the fearlessness with which Irish soldiers precipitate themselves into the breach, drove Toryism from its holds, and of the emancipation of their country planted the immovable standard. same noble cause they devotedly persevere. Never, until the tithe question shall be justly adjusted, will the clergy of Ireland intermit their efforts to achieve the redress of those grievances to which the disturbed state of that country may be referred. But you that talk of the Irish clergy, have you no cause to look at home? Do your priesthood never interpose in political questions? I ask the honourable member for Exeter, who has read a letter from a Catholic bishop of Carlow, whether of the Bishop of Exeter, he has ever, peradventure, chanced to hear? He has referred to the Popish Doctor Nolan-has he no reason to recollect the Protestant Doctor Phillpotts? That learned prelate admire for his talents; but surely they do not surpass the political zea', with which his religious emotions are associated. All allowance should be made for the Catholic bishop, by those whose cause is so materially promoted by the Protestant prelate upon the other. But turn from Exeter to Ireland. Has this house never heard of the Reverend Mr. Boytou? He is the founder of the Brunswick Clubs, and it was proved in evidence, before the Orange committee, that he actually moved the crection of an Orange lodge in one of his Majesty's regiments. This was the individual whom my Lord Haddington selected to officiate as one of the chaplains at the Castle. Talk, indeed, of the Catholic clergy. In November, 1834, a meeting of the Orange Society was held in Du lin, at which the Lord Mayor of the city of Dublin presided, and at which the Reverend Mr. M'Crea recited a poem, the burden of which was Then, put your trust in God, my boys, never neard the poetry of this belligerent predestinarian made the subject of censure by those who condemn the political interposition of the Catholic priesthood. Sir, I think that I can demonstrate that every objection on a religious ground, so far as the church is involved, to municipal reform in Ireland, was just as applicable to municipal reform in England. It is said that corporations were established in reload te maintain the Protestant interest. For what purpose were the Test and Corporation Acts passed in this country? They were enacted in order to protect the episcopal interest in England, agamst the influence of the Dissenters. They were regarded as the great bulwarks of the establishment; yet those bulwarks you surrendered in 1828 to the myriads of sectaries by which your church was encompassed; to Baptists, Quakers, Socinians, Independents, Presbyterians, Methodists-you threw open the fortresses of the establishment to all the hordes, who, with the voluntary principle, are battering your church to the earth; and when we who are akin to you (for your religion is only Popery cut down)— when we, from whose ecclesiastical escutcheon, your own, with a bar sinister, might be appropriately borrowed-when we, I say, demand the benefit of British institutions, you affront us with a proposition which to the Dissenters of this country-when the Test and Corporation Acts were at stake, and when corporate reform was in question-not one of you, not even in the House of Lords ever dared to make. The Duke of Wellington had not the boldness, my Lord Lyndhurst had not the dexterity, my Lord Winchilsea was not sufficiently excited, nor my Lord Roden sufficiently inspired;-it was reserved for us-it was reserved for colonial dependent Ireland-for us, on whom a faction trampled. but on whom, with God's blessing, and the aid of our determination, they shall tread no more-for us it was reserved, that we should be told, when to the interests of the thousand few the rights of the million many can no longer, with common decency, be sacrificed-that both from the few and from the many their national institutions should be taken away, and out of the ruins of the corporations Dublin Castle should be enlarged. Of the Act of Union, is not this a manifest infringement? When it is proposed in this house to reduce the sinecures of the Established Church, men cry out and say that the Union is violated; if the entire of the Irish corporations be swept away, and that against the will of the majority of the Irish members, will not the Union be trampled under foot? But it may be said,―so, indeed, it was observed by the learned member for Exeter,-that before the Union, corporations were Protestant. He forgets that by the Act of 1793, Roman Catholics were made admissible to corporations by law; but that from 1793 to 1829 not a single Roman Catholic was received into the Dublin corporation. In 1829 the member for Tamworth declared, in his emancipation speech, that Roman Catholics should be admitted to all corporate offices, and should be invested with all municipal privileges; there are accordingly two sections in his Emancipation Act to that effect. From that day to this, not a single Roman Catholic has had the benefit of those clauses in the act of parliament. By passive resistance, a Protestant passive resistance, the law has been frustrated and baffled. The right honourable baronet gave us a key that would not turn the lock; and when British justice is about to burst open the doors, he would level these institutions to the earth, and bury our rights, his own act of emancipation-God forbid! that I should add, his own dignity and honour-under the ruins. Sir, the right honourable genfieman appears to me to adhere to his old Irish policy; and although |