voke! There are those who tell you that Ireland is tranqui; but L who know Ireland well-who have had a long and painful experience in Irish agitation, who have, however, near at heart the peace and security of the country, and who have taken no part, direct or indirect, n the recent excitement of that country-I, anxious only that my admoition should have the effect of inducing you to adopt a wiser course, ell you, that however ostensibly tranquil, Ireland is not safe. There can be no doubt that your competitors for the masterdom of Europe, who have begun to think that they could dispute your supremacy upon the ocean, have assumed a tone which they never would have adopted if they did not calculate upon the internal debility of England, and upon the weakness resulting from the alienation of Ireland. You have adopted a tone at last which becomes this great country, and have declared that a reparation for the outrage offered to a British subject would be required; but, having adopted this tone, it becomes you to secure yourselves against every hazard, and to marshal the people of Ireland in your cause. The higher the position you have taken, the stronger the bulwarks with which you should encompass it, and you may rest assured that you will find a muniment in the affections of the Irish people far better than the martello towers in the Bay of Bantry can supply.

INCOME TAX.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 19TH FEBRUARY, 1845, ON MR. ROEBUCK'S MOTION TO EXTEND IT TO IRELAND.

SIR, my honourable friend (he will permit me to reciprocate the phrase of parliamentary endearment) has often expressed his solicitude for Ireland, but as the dismal agriculturists, by whom that locality is Dccupied in this house, which in the vocabulary of an American may be designated as "the bench of repentance," have reason to offer up prayer that heaven should save them from their friends, in that proverbial ejaculation Irishmen have cause to coincide. My honourable friend is determined to give us, in the form of an income tax, the benefit of British institutions-a benefit analogous to that which we derive from the English church. My honourable friend has thought it judicious to advert to many Irish members in language of exceedingly unqualified and exceedingly unprovoked condemnation I do not agree with them in the view which they adopt, because I consider it to be wiser to attend in parliament and to do my utmost to obtain redress for the grievances of my country; but if my honourable friend will reflect a little, he will see that his censure of Mr. O'Connell and his associates is most undeserved. The case they make is this, they insist, and with melancholy truth, that year after year they have endeavoured to obtain justice for their country, and that all their efforts have been vain; that the Irish members are swamped and overwhelmed by a great and prejudiced English majority; that Ireland has not an adequate representation in this house; that while Wales sends 33 members to parliament, with a population of 700,000, the great county of Cork, with 800,000, returns only five; that while towns in England, with a population of 2,000 or 3,000, return_two members, there are towns in Ireland, Carrick-on-Suir and Thurles, for example, with a population of 12,000 each, which do not return a single representative; that the elective franchise of the two countries is not the same, and that Ireland has a miserable constituency, because you deny her a fair registration bill. This is the justification of my Irish parliamentary friends, who conceive that a bitter parliamentary experience affords a warrant for their secession. The member for Bath has often expressed a coincidence with the views of Irish members in reference to the denial of justice in these important reg irds, and when these men remain in their own country, he surely ought not to visit them with such unmeasured reprobation. I do not coincide in the view which they have adopted respecting the policy of staying away; but, while I state this, I cannot forbear from adding, that there is more than plausibility in the suggestion that it is better to array the people of Ireland, and form them into a vast and united mass, in order that by a pressure from without, the minister may be induced to affors redress where redress is so much required, than to deliver themselves of speeches in this house which will not be followed by any practical

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advantage to the country. I have thought myself bound to state thus much on behalf of men of whose love of country I have seen such proof, and I turn to the proposition of the honourable gentleman. My friend, the member for Kendal, wishes the income tax to be perpetual; my friend the member for Bath wishes it to be universal. "Eternity!" cries out the one; "infinity!" exclaims the other. The member for Bath would spread the perpetual blister over the whole imperial frame. But not the whole of the blister, because while schedule D and all the other schedules are fastened upon England, he would put schedule Å only upon my impoverished and emaciated country. He is in this particular singularly inconsistent. My honourable friend has adverted to a recommendation I presumed to give him. I ventured, indeed, to tell him that he might usefully avail himself of the interval which should elapse between Tuesday morning and Wednesday night, in order to peruse with attention the speech of Edmund Burke upon the conciliation of America. I do admit that in my judgment that speech might have been perused by my honourable friend with signal benefit to himself, because there are contained in it many most salutary admonitions, given by that great and prophetic statesman with an almost unparalleled eloquence. Bright as was his imagination, and although subjects the most obscure were illuminated and became transparent in the blaze of his fancy, yet his philosophy was as profound as his power of illustration was astonishing, and his wisdom was not the less oracular for the magnificent embellishment of the temple-the gorgeousness of the shrine from which his predictions were pronounced. My honourable friend has intimated that I meant more in speaking of Edmund Burke and of America than I expressed I was sufficiently intelligible, and do not shrink from the construction which my honourable friend has put upon the reference, which he thinks it adventurous on my part to have made. But I might have referred the member for Bath to the authority of another great statesman-the distinguished advocate of Lower Canada and its Assembly in this house. Of that eminent person the member for Bath may think humbly, but everybody else must form the highest estimate of him. In the speeches of the champion of Lower Canada, principles will be found which it were well if the member for Bath were to apply practically to Ireland. He warned the government not to lay their hands on the revence of Lower Carada- 1 warn him not to attempt to extort from Ireland a revenue which she cannot afford, and which we ought not to be compelled to pay. No minister by whom an income tax has ever been yet proposed ever thought it possible to extend it to Ireland. Before the Union, Mr. Pitt, although he had fatal proofs of the ignominious complaisance çi the Irish Parliament, which surrendered itself at last in a moment of fatal and weak compliance, never availed himself of his influence, and of those seductive means at his disposal, to induce the Irish Parliament to impose an income tax upon Ireland. After the Union the income tax was repealed at the peace of Amiens, because it was held to be a war tax-a tax to be reserved for danger-a tax sacred to public peril, and to which, excepting in a season of great emergency, no minister

was justified in resorting. The tax was, however, renewed wher the war broke out again, and the terrific struggle with Napoleon was renewed. Yet in the midst of the exigencies of England the income tax was not extended to Ireland. It was renewed by Mr. Fox, by Mr. Perceval, by Lord Liverpool, yet by no one of those ministers was the income tax extended to Ireland; and when the right honourable baronet became Prime Minister, and propounded his projects of fiscal inno vation, he explicitly declared that this grievous impost should not be inflicted upon the sister island. I do not rely upon the fact that there is no machinery in Ireland adapted to its exaction. The imposition of an income tax upon Ireland would be unjust, and what is unfortunately of still more importance in the estimate of public men, would be in the last degree impolitic and unsafe. The income tax in Ireland would be most inequitable. Before the Union Ireland had a surplus revenue expended in Ireland, and the country flourished. You induced us to enter with you into a ruinous co-partnership, of which you have had all the profits, while we have deeply participated in the loss. The impolicy of England plunged her into debt, of whose load we are compelled to bear a part; had we remained in the enjoyment of our legislative independence, of your ruinous expenditure we should not be the victims. It is most unfair that you should now call on us, after all the detriment which we have already suffered, to bear a portion of the vast cost incidental to this experiment You drain us through the absentee system-an inevitable attendant on the Union-of millions of money, which, instead of circulating through Ireland, swell the overflowings of the deep and broad Pactolus of British opulence. You have transferred all our public establishments to this single point of imperial centralization; the revenue which Ireland fields is expended not in Ireland, but here; and of this evil I cannot present to you a more striking exemplification than in appealing to the fact that the crown-rents and quit-rents of Ireland have been laid out on the splendours of Windsor Castle, and the embellishment of this vast metropolis. I may parenthetically suggest to the head of the government, that in the quit-rents and crown-rents of Ireland he has a fund at hand with which his projects in reference to education can be readily and largely accomplished. When frota Ireland you already taxe so much, it would be most unjust that you should endeavour to extract still more. But, if the proposition be most unjust, it is still nore unwise. If Swift, with Wood's halfpence was able to do so much,*

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* Dr. Johnson, in his "Life of Swift," says: "He delivered Ireland from plunder and oppression, and showed that wit confederated with truth, had such force as authority was unable to resist. He said truly of himself, that Ireland was his debtor." It was-from the time that he first began to patronise the Irish, that they may date their riches and prosperity. He taught them first to know their own interest, their weight, and their strength, and gave them spirit to assert that equality with their fellow-subjects, to which they have been ever since making vigorous advances; and to claim those rights which they have at last established. Nor can they be charged with ingratitude to their benefactor; for they revered him as a guardian, and obeyed him as a dictator."

The Author of "The Sketch of the State of Ireland, Past and Present," published m

what would not the man of whom Swift was the precursor be able to achieve with the income tax? The pressure of the income tax would cause Catholicism, Protestantism, and Calvinism to coalesce into one vast compact of discontent. Who can doubt that the member for Donegal, the instant the income tax was extended to Ireland, would burst into a Repealer, and enrol himself among the burning patriots of the Concilia tion Hall? In 1782 the Protestants and Catholics of Ireland extorted the independence of the Parliament of Ireland; and there are those who not only hope, but believe, that before they die the restoration of that parliament in its independence may be extorted from you. Have a care then how you deal rashly with Ireland. Do not, for the sake of a small accession to the revenue, do us an injustice, and a signal detriment to yourselves. There are other means of obtaining a revenue from Ireland besides an income tax. There is an alchymy in good government. By doing perfect justice you can largely save, and saving is equivalent to gain. Justice is a good housewife. My honourable and frugal friend, the member for Montrose, has often told you that you can, by adopting a sound policy in Ireland, effect a great reduction, and reduce your army to a force comparatively small. He has often said, that as in Scotland 2,000 men are quite sufficient, the army in Ireland might be reduced in the same proportion. On Friday last, indeed, my honourable friend in his enthusiasm forgot his old topics, and almost forgot himself. He said nothing of retrenchment, nothing of the economy of justice to Ireland. Although politically as vigilant in keeping watch over the public treasure as the dragon by which the golden fleece was said of old to be guarded, my honourable friend yielded to the "magic arts" and to the eloquent enchantments of the fascinating financier. But now that he is recovered from the spell, I trust that he will take the same view as I do in reference to the facility with which a large revenue could be obtained from a country whose resources, through misrule, remain undeveloped. If you will but endeavour to adapt your institutions to Ireland, instead of labouring to adapt Ireland to your institutions-in that antithesis you will find that a great deal of truth is condensed-if, I repeat, instead of adapt ing Ireland to your institutions, you do but try to adapt your institu tions to Ireland-if, instead of inflicting a temporary tranquillity, you confer a perpetual peace, you will obtain from Ireland a revenue far exceeding anything which, by the torture of this inquisitorial imposi

1810, says of Swift: "In this gloom one luminary arose, and Ireland worshipped it with Persian idolatry: her true patriot, her first, almost her last. Sagacious and intrepid - he said, he dared-above suspicion, he was trusted;-above envy, he was beloved;-above rivalry, he was obeyed. His wisdom was practical and prophetic-remedial for the present varning for the future: he first taught Ireland that she might become a nation, and Lng and that she must cease to be a despot. But he was a churchman: his gown impeded h course, and entangled his efforts-guiding a senate, or heading an army, he had been 3 Cromwell. As it was, he served Ireland by his courage, improved her by bis authority strued ber by his letters, and exalted her by his fame.