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he carried emancipation, in obedience to his reason, he is acting on erjancipation, in compliance with those religious instincts which he ought to get under his control. In the course of the last session I ventured to address myself to him in the language of strenuous, but most unaffectedly respectful expostulation; I presumed to entreat of him to take a retrospect of his Irish policy, and to inquire from him whether of every failing, and every failure, he did not in his Irish policy find the cause? I told him that Ireland had a grave ready for his administration-and that grave soon closed upon it.

I should not venture to advert to what I then said, but what has since befallen has given to those observations a remarkable confirmation. The moment the session of parliament terminated, the subordinates of the right honourable baronet commenced the "No Popery" cry. The result of that pious enterprise has corresponded with its deserts. The parliament assembles, and at the very outset the right honourable baronet tries his fortune on Irish grounds again, by moving an amendment, and he is at once and signally defeated. A few days clapse and he sustains a still more conspicuous discomfiture. Not in order to give way to a feeling of inglorious exultation do I refer to the dissolution of the Orange Society, but for the purpose of showing the "sweet uses" of which adversity is susceptible, and leaving out the offensive epithets in the citation to point to the "precious jewel" it contains. It was a vast incorporation, including 100,000 armed men, with individuals of the highest station among its leaders, and a prince of the blood at its head. Where is it now? Can you not derive admonition from its fall? You have seen administration after administration dissolved by the power of the Irish people; by the power of the Irish people you have seen your own cabinet dashed in an instant to pieces; and now, struck to the heart, you behold your own gigantic auxiliary laid low. Taught so long, but uninstructed still, wherefore, in the same fatal policy, with an infatuated pertinacity, do you disastrously persevere You think, perhaps, that emancipation has failed. Six years in a nation's life are less than as many minutes of individual duration. You have not given it (what you asked for yourself) a fair trial, and have self, to a certain extent, counteracted its operation. At the very outset you entered into a struggle with the son of the earth, who has rebounded with fresh vigour from every fall; and, notwithstanding all your experience-although injustice carries with it the principle of selffrustration-although the poisoned chalice is sure, in its inevitable circulation, to return to the lips of those by whom it is commended—still; adhering to your fatal policy, and haunted by your anti-O'Connellis -still, instead of rising to the height of the great argument, and ascending to a point of moral and political elevation, from which you could see wide and far-you behold nothing but objects which, by their closeness, become magnified, and have nothing but the fear of O'Connell before your eyes. You do not legislate for a people, but against a Even if I were to admit that he had been occasionally hurried into excesses, for which your impolicy should in reality be responsible, give me still leave to ask whether millions of his fellow-countrymen,

man.

your

and your fellow-citizens (for such, thank God! we are) and generations yet unborn, must pay the penalty? Granting him a life as long as Ireland can pray for, and his adversaries can deprecate, will he not be survived by the statute book? Have you made him immortal as well as omnipotent Is your legislation to be built on considerations as transitory as the breath with which he speaks; and are structures that should last for ages, to have no other basis than the miserable antipathies by which we are distracted? Let us remember, in the discharge of the great judiciary functions that are imposed upon us, that we are not the trustees of contemporary interests only, but of the welfare of those by whom we are to be succeeded; that our measures are in some sort testamentary, and that we bequeath to posterity a blessing or a bane; and, impressed with that high,—and I do not exaggerate when I call it that holy-consciousness, let us have a care lest to a sentiment of miserable partisanship we should give way. To distinctions between Catholic and Protestant let there be an end. Let there be an end to national animosities as well as to sectarian detestations. Perish the bad theology, which, with an impious converse, makes God according to nan's image, and with infernal passions fills the heart of man! Perish the bad, the narrow, the pernicious sentiments, which for the genuine love of country, institutes a feeling of despotic domination upon your part, and of provincial turbulence upon ours ;-and while upon pseudo religion and pseudo patriotism I pronounce my denunciation, live (let me be permitted to pray) the spirit of philanthropic, forbearing, forgiving Christianity amongst us! and, combined with it, live the lofty love of country, which associates the welfare of both islands with the glory of this majestic empire—which, superior to the small passions that ought to be as ephemeral as the incidents of which they were born, acts in conformity with the imperial policy of William Pitt, and the marvellous discovery of James Watt-sees the legislation of the one ratified by the science of the other, and of the project of the son of Chatham, in the invention of the mighty mechanist, beholds the consummation.

TITHES.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 2, 1836.

THE right honourable baronet (Sir James Graham) has concluded a speech in favour of religion and of liberty, by a citation from an Atheist and a Tory. He has indulged in a dissertation upon property, which it is to be lamented that the Cumberland yeomen did not hear, in order that he may henceforth correct erroneous notions on that subject. The right honourable baronet has also quoted Paley; but he has forgotten to state that Paley is of opinion that the members of a government have no right to determine what is, or is not, the true religion, but should abide by the opinion of the majority of the people. He ought also to have remembered an authority better than Paley-the Scotch Parlia ment--which, in the act abolishing prelacy, laid down, as the great reason for that celebrated proceeding, that that institution was opposed to the feelings of the majority of the Scotch people. These are great principles, and are worth far more consideration than the details of the measure before the house; it is not a question of vulgar arithmetic, but of vast policy, involving those regards by which Ireland ought in future to be permanently and uniformly governed. Two measures have been proposed, the one by a noble lord, the Secretary for Ireland,* who has won our confidence, attachment, and respect; the other by a noble lord who was Secretary for Ireland, and whose biography constitutes a calamitous portion of the history of Ireland. The one proposes appropriation; the other distribution. Between which should we elect? The plan to which appropriation is an incident provides a surplus; the plan which has distribution in view, leaves no surplus to be applied. It is evident that the latter is framed so as to avoid the creation of the surplus. But is there one? Let the statistics of the country be consulted. There are 600,000 Presbyterians, 850,000 Episcopal Protestants, and 6,600,000 Roman Catholics. In one archdiocese there are only 40,000 Protestants, and there are 1,800,000 Roman Catholics. need be stated, in order to prove that a surplus exists, and that the existing system cannot be maintained?

What more

It has been suggested by the noble lord that the inferior Protestant clergy are now paid in a manner disproportioned to their merits; for my part, wherever real services are to be performed, I am not only willing, but anxious that a clergyman should be adequately rewarded; but where there is no congregation, I do not desire to see an useless ecclesiastic, no matter to what religion he may be attached. But when did the noble lord, who now advocates new distribution, first bethink himself of the poverty of the Protestant clergy? When did he first give way to these feelings of commiseration in favour of the wretched curate and the family depending on him for sustainment? He never proposed any measure for their relief, until the demands of millions had urged

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this great question to the issue to which it has advanced. He says he never can or will consent to it. I never expected, indeed, that he would divest himself of the fatal pertinacity which characterizes him, and which has been the source of so much calamity to the country that was so long abandoned to his control. The man who can, without remorse, witness the fatal results of his miserable legislation, must indeed be incapable of penitence; but he is mistaken in supposing that his consent is necessary to the achievement of this great measure. This house, vested as it is with a power which is sure to prevail at last, sustained by the great body of the nation, has means of persuasion which have not been tried on former occasions in vain. Does the noble lord recollect by what expedient the cabinet of which he was a member carried the Reform Bill?-and as that measure was accomplished, its results, its inevitable results, of which this is one, will by the same instrumentality be achieved. It is sufficient to trace the progress of this question, in order to see that its advances to success are beyond all doubt, and that although it may be retarded, it cannot be stopped. There is a class of questions which cannot retrograde, which cannot continue stationary, and which must needs go on. Of this character were the Slave ques tion, the Catholic question, and the Reform question. Of this class is that which the Irish millions, returning to this house a vast majority of the representatives of Ireland, never will relinquish. In the year 1824, this question was first pressed to a division by the member for Middlesex. In the minority the names of Hobhouse, of Rice, of Russell are to be found. They saw, even then, that the concession of this right to Ireland was indispensable for her peace.

The member for Cumberland has quoted a speech of the Secretary of the Home Department in 1833, to prove that he was opposed to the new appropriation; but that speech referred to the 147th clause, and to a contingent and improbable surpius n the Church Temporalities Bill, and not to a surplus definite, substantial, palpable, like that which will result from the contemplated measure. It may be said that the noble lord, as well as the Secretary for the Home Department, has been consistent. He has been, indeed, obstinate in his adherence to a detail, but his general policy has been most incongruous. The instant the

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reform of the parliament was proposed in England, the reform of the church was with the same loud voice imperatively required in Ireland. The excitement which arose in one country on the question by which it was most deeply interested, soon extended itself to the other, on the grievance by which it was most sensibly and painfully affected. "Down," cried England," with nomination in the parliament;""down," cried Ireland, with sinecurism in the church ;"-" perish Gatton and Old Barum," cried the people of this country; "perish the abuses," answered the Irish millions, "which nothing but Old Sarum and Gatton can maintain." How, indeed, was it possible that the popular agitation which pervaded one country, should not have been communicated to the other? How could Ireland remain in apathetic contemplation of the great scenes which were passing in this country? Yet the noble lord, who himself administered to the provocation of the popular passions in England, and

he right honourable baronet, conceived that they could play the Gracchi of parliamentary reform, and complain of sedition, when Ireland demanded. in the same right, the reform of the church.

When the Tithe Bill was introduced in 1832, the Irish members remonstrated in vain; the measure was passed into a law. The people assembled in thousands and tens of thousands to petition against it. They were dispersed at the point of the bayonet, and their leaders arrested, convicted by packed juries, and imprisoned. The parliament was dissolved; and provoked by these despotic proceedings, the shout for repeal arose from every hustings. The Coercion Bill was introduced, and even that melancholy measure, although intended to repress the display of the popular power, contributed to advance this question; for the English members who had consented to severity, determined that that severity should have justice for its companion. The Church Temporalities Bill was introduced; it swept ten bishops away; it abolished church-cess; it provided that certain vacant benefices need not be filled up (thus letting a great principle, indirectly, in); but unfortunately the 147th clause, which did not, indeed, expressly assert appropriation, but intimated its adoption, was rejected; and so, from the measure, no tranquillizing consequences ensued. At the opening of the session in 1834, a most important discussion took place. It was proved that the Marquess of Anglesey had, so far back as 1832, written a despatch to the cabinet, insisting on appropriation, as indispensable for the settlement of Ireland; and thus, while the Irish Secretary was exclaiming against all concession, that distinguished nobleman was bearing to the necessity of this great measure his incalculably important attestation; the question thus every day gained ground. The member for St. Alban's at length gave his celebrated notice. The matter was brought to issue between the parties in the cabinet, as it is at this moment between the two branches of the legislature, and the celebrated church commission went forth. The noble lord (Lord Stanley) perceived, that if the people were counted, the days of ecclesiastical abuse would be numbered. He saw that appropriation was involved in the inquiry that must lead to it, and he resigned. He left Lord Grey behind him. What inference is thence to be deduced? If the noble lord's resignation was founded on one principle, Lord Grey's retention of office must have rested upon the exact reverse. Why did the noble lord refer so repeatedly, last night, to Lord Grey? What did he desire to intimate? Against any insinuation, which he meant to convey, let the church commission issued by Lord Grey be appealed to. The Melbourne cabinet is formed—and dissolved in a moment of royal misapprehension of the state of Ireland; the right honourable member for Tamworth comes in, announces the non-appropriation as the basis of his policy, is struck down by the resolution moved by the noble lord, and out of the ruins of his administration furnishes a new proof of the necessity of making this great and paramount concession to the power by which that administration was laid prostrate. The Melbourne cabinet send up their bill to the Lords--it is lost; but are the government shaken, or in the least degree affected by it? No; a resolution of the Commons annihilates a ministry in

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