has not been very instrumental in its propagation. You have made no way in two centuries in Ireland, while Popery is every day, and in every way, upon the advance. The Catholic religion, indigenous to the mind of Ireland, has struck its roots profoundly and widely in the belief and the affections of the people-it has grown beneath the axe, and risen in the blast-while Protestant truth, although preserved in a magnificent conservatory, at prodigious cost, pines like a sickly exotic, to which no natural vitality can be imparted, which by every diversity of expedient you have striven to force into freshness, and warm into bloom, in vain. But you may resolve, per fas aut nefas, to maintain the abuses of the church, but it is right that you should know, that among the Catholics of Ireland there exists but one opinion on the subject. You heard my honourable friend the member for Kildare-he is a gentleman of fortune and of birth, highly connected, and who has again and again refused to take the Repeal pledge. He tells you that he is thoroughly convinced that an alteration in your establishment is required. A vast body of the Protestant Irish aristocracy entertain the same sentiment; and even here, the supporters of a Conservative government cannot refrain from telling you that a revision of the church cannot be long avoided. The honourable member for Wakefield, who was one of the vice-presidents, if I remember right, at the dinner given in 1838, to the First Lord of the Treasury, at the Merchant tailors'-hall, bore his important, although reluctant, testimony to the necessity of a change. That change is said to be against principle. But what an incongruity between your theory and practice: take, as an instance, the Canada clergy and reserves. The clergy reserves were appropriated by act of parliament, by one of the fundamental laws of the colony, to the maintenance of the propagation of the Protestant religion. Before the revolt in Canada (that painful instrument of political amelioration) we were told that the clergy reserves were set apart for sacred and inviolable purposes. But the Canadian insurrection produced one good result; the Archbishop of Canterbury did no more than stipulate for change of phraseology in an act of parliament, and the Protestant lergy reserves are at this moment applied, in part, to the sustainment and the diffusion of the Catholic religion. The present Prime Minis ter, the Secretary for the Colonies, the Secretary for the Home Department, the Bishop of London, all agreed to this momentous alienation. The Bishop of Exeter alone stood by his colours-he implored, he adjured the House of Lords in vain-he called on the bishops to rememher their oaths, he pointed out the disastrous precedent which you were about to make. He was right-the inference is irresistible, the whole appropriation question is involved in the clergy reserves. But consider whether, even in your dealings with the Irish Church, you have not acted in such a way as to render your position utterly untenable. By the Church Temporalities Act you abolished Irish Church rates. thereby subtracted so much from the property of the church-you suppressed a certain number of bishoprics, why should you not suppress a corresponding number of benefices? You do not want so many bishops -how can so many parsons be required by you? But the Tithe Bill

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is a atill stronger case. In 1831 the Catholic members asked nothing more than that you should apply the surplus of church property to charity and education. They never proposed to confiscate a fourth and give it to the Irish landlords. In 1835 that proposition was made by the present Secretary-at-War, then Secretary for Ireland. To the Tories the entire merit of originating that wild and Wellingtonian measure exclusively belongs. But the gallant officer, when Secretary for Ireland, proposed a bill by which one-fourth of the tithe was confiscated and put into the coffers of the landlords-you would not alienate church property-not you; but with one blow you take away one-fourth of their tithes from the church, and surrender the precious fragment to the Protestant landlords of Ireland. Your own conduct in reference to the Education Question is the strongest illustration of your own sense of the incompetence of the Irish Church to fulfil the duties of an establishment. In England, where you have an Established Church which teaches the religion of the people, you gave up the Factory Bill; you have perpetuated ignorance, and all the vices which it engenders, rather than infringe on the sacerdotal prerogative of your establishment, which claims the tutelage of the nation's mind; while in Ireland you have stripped the church of all its privileges, and declared it to be unfit for one of its most important functions-the direction of the public mind; nay, more, the Secretary for Ireland, who now thinks it politic to offer his homage to the clergy of the Established Church, with a sincerity of panegyric commensurate, I hope, with its exaggeration, denounced that clergy for their factious opposition to the Education Board. You have thus, by your own acts, pronounced a virtual condemnation of your Establishment-that monster anomaly to which nothing in Europe is to be compared. Yes; there is one analogy ta be found to your sacerdotal institutions-there is one country in Europe in which your Irish policy has been faithfully copied. In a series of remarkable ukases the Emperor of all the Russias proclaims the eternal union between Poland and Russia, declares it to be the means of developing the great national advantages of Poland, expresses his surprise that the Poles should be so utterly insensible to his benevolence, reprobates the malcontents by whom fanciful grievances are got up, and establishes the Greek Church as an excellent bond of connexion between the two countries. Is there a single argument that can be urged in favour of the English Church in Ireland which does not apply to the establishment of the Greek Church in Poland? The fee-simple of Poland is now Russian. Property in Poland has been Tartarised, by very much the same process by which it has been Protestantised in Ireland. A Greek hierarchy will compensate for the absence of the nobility in Moscow and St. Petersburgh, and it will be eminently conducive to public usefulness, that a respectable Greek clergyman should be located, as a resident, in every parochial subdivision of Poland, with a living, in the inverse ratio of a congregation. Almost every year we have a debate in this house touching the wrongs of Poland, and an 28surance is given by the right honourable baronet that he will use his beet endeavours to procure a mitisation of the sufferings of Poland. J

have sometimes thought, that in case Lord Aberdeen should venture on any vehement expostulation, which is not, however, very likely, Count Nesselrode might ask, whether Russia had not adopted the example of England towards Ireland; whether, in Ireland, torrents of blood had not been poured out by your forefathers; whether Ireland had not been put through a process of repeated confiscation; whether the laws of Russia were more detestable than your barbarous penal code; and whether, to this day, you do not persevere in maintaining an ecclesiastical institution repugnant to the interests, utterly at variance with the creed, and abhorrent to the feelings of a vast majority of the people? Such, I think, would be the just reply of a Russian statesman to my Lord Aberdeen; and, since I have named my Lord Aberdeen, I gladly avail myself of the opportunity to express my unqualified approbation of his foreign policy. When the home office plays, in reference to Ireland, so belligerent a part, and when the Secretary of the Colonies, in speaking of Ireland," stiffens the sinews" and " summons up the blood," and, I may venture to add, imitates the action of the tiger, nothing will become my Lord Aberdeen so much as "mild behaviour and humility." Rightly did my Lord Ashburton, under his auspices, concede to America far more than America could plausibly claim.— Rightly will he relinquish the Oregon territory; rightly has he endured the intrigues of the French Cabinet in Spain; rightly did he speak of Algiers as a "fait accompli." Rightly will he abandon the treaties of 1831 and 1833, for the suppression of the slave trade; but, after all, this prudential complaisance may be ultimately of little avail; for who can rely upon the sincerity of that international friendship, which rests on no better basis than the interchange of royal civilities? Who can rely upon the stability of that throne of the Barricades, which has neither legitimacy for its foundation, nor freedom for its prop? And if it falls, how fearful the consequences that may grow out of its ruins! The First Lord of the Treasury will then have cause to revert to his speech of 1829, to which my honourable and learned friend the member for Worcester, so emphatically and so impressively adverted. The admonitions of the noble lord, the member for Sunderland, will then be deserving of regard. These topics are perilous; but I do not fear to touch them. It is my thorough conviction, that England would be able To put down any insurrectionary movement, with her gigantic force, even although maddened and frantic Ireland might be aided by calculating France. But at what a terrible cost of treasure and of life would treason be subdued! Well might the Duke of Wellington, although familiar with fields of death, express his horror at the contemplation of civil war. War in Ireland would be worse than civil. A demon would take possession of the nation's heart-every feeling of humanity would be extinguished-neither to sex nor to age would mercy be given. The country would be deluged with blood, and when that deluge had subsided, it would be a sorry consolation to a British statesman, when he gazed upon the spectacle of desolation which Ireland would then present to him, that he beheld the spires of your Established Church still standing secure amidst the desert with which they would be encom

passed. You have adjured us, in tne name of the oath which we havз sworn on the Gospel of God-I adjure you, in the name of every precept contained in that holy book-in the name of that religion which is the perfection of humanity-in the name of every obligation, divine and human, as you are men and Christians, to save my country from those evils to which I point, but to avert them, and to remember, that if you shall be the means of precipitating that country into perdition, posterity will deliver its great finding against you, and that you will not only be answerable to posterity, but responsible to that Judge, in whose presence, clothed with the blood of civil warfare, it will be more than dreadful to appear. But God forbid that these evils should ever have any other existence, except in my own affrighted imaginings, and that those visions of disaster should be embodied in reality. God grant that the men to whom the destinies of England are confided by their Sovereign, may have the virtue and the wisdom to save her from those fearful ills that so darkly and so densely lower upon her. For my own part, I do not despair of my country; I do not despair of witnessing the time when Ireland will cease to be the battle-field of faction; when our mutual acrimonies will be laid aside; when our fatal antipathies will be sacrificed to the good genius of our country. Within the few days that have elapsed since my return to England, I have seen enough to convince me, that there exists amidst a large portion of the great British community, a sentiment of kindliness and of good feeling towards Ireland. I have seen proofs that Englishmen have, with a generous promptitude, if they have felt themselves wronged, forgiven the man who may have done them wrong. That if Englishmen, noble and highminded Englishmen, do but conjecture that injustice has been done to a political antagonist, swayed by their passion for fair play, they will fly to his succour, and with an instinct of magnanimity, enthusiastically take his part. I do trust that this exalted sentiment will be appreciated by my countrymen as it ought to be; and that it may be so appreciated, and that it may lead to a perfect national reconciliation, and that both countries, instead of being bound by a mere parchment union—a mere legal ligament, which an event may snap-shall be morally, politically, and socially identified, is the ardent desire of one who has many faults, who is conscious of numerous imperfections, but who, whatever those imperfections may be, is not reckless of the interests of his country; is devotedly attached to his Sovereign; and, so far from wishing for a dismemberment of this majestic empire, offers up a prayer, as fervent as ever passed from the heart to the lips of any one of you, that the greatess of that empire may be imperishable, and that the power, and that the affluence, and that the glory, and that, above all, the liberties of England may endure for ever.

FRANCE AND MOROCCO.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, JULY 22 1844

It

ON Saturday, I informed the right honourable baronet at the head of her Majesty's government, that instead of moving for a committee to inquire how far our commercial interests were involved in the events which are passing in the Barbary states, I shall content myself with moving for papers, of which I have since given him notice. My first impression was, that the extent to which the trade of this country has been affected by the heavy imposts which have been recently laid upon the tonnage of British vessels, and the products of British industry in all the ports upon the coast of the Mediterranean, of which France has made herself the mistress, required a minute investigation; and that the effects of the ordinance, which issued on the 16th of December last, doubling the duties on English shipping, and of the augmentatia of duties upon our cottons to 30 per cent., would best be proved by the evidence, oral and documentary, which could be produced before a committee of this house; but I have heard objections raised to the form of the motion, of which I had given an intimation, and in order that a debate on the mere form should be avoided, by which the attention of the house would be in all likelihood distracted from the consideration of more momentous matter, I have thought it more advisable to move that the copies of certain documents should be laid on the table of the house, in which much of the information which I seek to obtain may be disclosed. There is another motive for the adoption of this course. is that which is least calculated to give offence to a gallant, but exceedingly susceptible people. It is not my intention (and I shall prove that it is not by the tone with which I shall treat this important subject) to say anything by which a debate, at which France could legitimately take offence, would be produced. Nothing shall fall from me, by which a pretence shall be afforded for imputing to me the more than reprehensible purpose of exciting a sentiment of animosity between two great nations, both of which are deeply concerned in the maintenance of peace, and whose collision would disturb the world. But while I am fully convinced of the importance of preserving our pacific relations with a country, whose institutions are so nobly assimilated to our own. 1 am also convinced that with a perfect absence from all irritating language, a candid statement of facts can be readily reconciled; and I think that if circumstances have occurred, or are likely to occur, by which the commercial interests of England may be seriously affected, nothing will be gained by concealing the truth, or by turning our eyes away from those objects which must sooner or later be forced upon our contemplation. On the 5th of March, 1830-I pass at once at the hazard of abruptness, which is more excusable tlian prolixity, to the facts to which I mean to advert-in 1830, on the 5th of March, Lord Aberdeen wrote a despatch to an ambassador at Paris, Lord Stuart de Rothesay, with regard to the great armament which France had pre