people? Do you not know, on Major Richardson's authority, that Bilboa would have been taken by assault? and would not the British seamen have seen from afar upon the main the Durango standard of Don Carlos floating from the castle of St. Sebastian ? Take another test, if you please it. Let me suppose this motion carried. If you carry the present motion-if you prevent any acknowledgment of the Legion-if you break the character of this force-if you withdraw the marines from the north coast of Spain (the importance and efficiency of whose services you cannot deny)--what will be the result? The courier who will convey the intelligence will convey tidings of great joy to St. Petersburgh, to Vienna, and to Berlin; and he will convey tidings of great dismay wherever men value the possession of freedom or pant for its enjoyment. It will palsy the arm of liberty in Spain. It will fill her heart with despair. A terrible revulsion will be produced; from Calpe to the Pyrenees the cry "We are betrayed by England!" will be heard; and over that nation which you will indeed have betrayed, Don Carlos will march, without an obstacle, to Madrid.

You cheer me in mockery-do you? Who are you that cheer me? Not your leaders—not the men who are placed conspicuously before me. They know, they feel, the impolicy of these rash manifestations. They profess horror at the atrocities of Don Carlos, and deprecate his triumph; but you that cheer me disclose your hearts, and exhibit the wishes by which your political conduct is determined. Cheer on— exult in the anticipated victories of despotism in Spain, and with your purpose let the people of England be made well acquainted. But, turning from you, I call upon the rest of the house, and to the British people beyond the house, to reflect upon the events which must follow the triumph of Don Carlos. Do you not know him? Do you stand in need of any illustrations of his character? What was it that befel Spain when the constitution was suppressed in 1823? Do you not think that Don Carlos will improve upon Ferdinand's example, and recollect what model was held out to him? Have we forgotten the massacre at Cadiz ? Is Riego's blood effaced from our memories ? Do you doubt that the same terrible career of remorseless, relentless vengeance will be pursued by the marble-hearted despot by whom such horrors have been already perpetrated? With whom, attended with what companionship, encompassed by what councillors, did Don Carlos land in England? Did he not dare to set his foot upon our shores with Moreno, the murderer of Boyd and Torrijos beside him? But what further evidence of his character and his propensities do we want, than his terrible Durango ordinance? I have heard it asked

of

whether it be befitting that in Spain, the theatre of so many of those exploits whose memory will be everlasting, the British flag should be lowered in discomfiture, and before mountain peasants British soldiers should give way? I feel the force of that question; but there is another which I venture to put to every man who hears me, and, among all those that hear me -above all—to the gallant officer by whom this motion has been made. I invoke the same recollections— I appeal to the same glorious remembrances; and in the name of those scenes of which he was not only a witness, but in which he bore a part, of which he carries the honourable attestation about him, I ask whether it be befitting that in Spain-that in the country whose freedom was achieved by such prodigies of English valour, where so many your fellow-soldiers, who fell beside you, lie buried—is it, I ask, befitting that in that land, consecrated, as it is, in the annals of England's glory, a terrible, remorseless, relentless despotism should be established, and that the throne which England saved should be filled by the purple tyrant whose arms have been steeped to the shoulders in the blood of your countrymen-not slain in the field of honourable combat, but when the heat of battle had passed, and its sweat had been wiped away-savagely and deliberately murdered? Their bones are bleaching on the Pyrenean snows their blood cries out; and shall we, intrusted as we are by the British people with the honour, and the just vengeance of our country-shail we, instead of flying to arms, facilitate the ascent to the throne of Spain of the guilty man by whom these outrages upon every law, divine and human, have been com mitted? Never! The people of this country are averse to wanton war; but where the honour of England is at stake, there is no consequence which they are not prepared to meet-no treasure which they are not ready to lavish-no hazard which they will not be found prompt to encounter.

N

LORD NORMANBY'S GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, APRIL 19TH, 1839.

In one opinion expressed by the learned member for Bandon (Mr. Sergeant Jackson) I entirely concur. It would be difficult, indeed, to dissent from him, when he declared his speech to be "no joke." That speech may be distinguished by ability; but, among its multifarious merits, we should look for originality in vain. I will not say that it was, so far as its topics were concerned, " tedious as a twicetold tale;" but I may venture, without any departure from good breeding, to suggest, that its principal materials were of a nature to insure, among the gentlemen behind him, untired applause for the untiring reiteration of the same charges in nearly the same form of phrase. It is fortunate for the learned gentleman that he may induge in such repetitions without the hazard of incurring any expression of weariness from his admirers. I pass from the learned gentleman to the speech of my honourable friend, the member for Finsbury,* who announced, at the opening of this evening's discussion, that he intended to move an additional amendment connected with the extension of parliamentary reform. I shall content myself with making two observations on the course which he, and some gentlemen who act with him, are disposed to take. Let me be permitted to advise them to take care lest they fall into the very signal error which was committed by the Tories in 1830. By the effects of that mistake they are still pursued, for their reconciliation, however strenuous the professions of its sincerity, is not yet complete. Let me be allowed, in the second place, to remark, that when the member for Finsbury and his associates condemn the conduct of the present ministers, with the exception of the policy pursued by them in reference to Ireland, they make a very large exception indeed. That exception includes a great segment of the empireone-third of the population of these islands—a country whose government has been attended with almost incalculable difficulties which, to preceding administrations, has been the constant occasion of embarrassment, and has shaken cabinet after cabinet to their foundationswhich, as it has already exercised a great influence over the councils of England, is likely to exercise an influence at least as great over her future fortunes which, after having occupied the attention of the legislature for many years, is, at this moment, of an importance so paramount, as

* Mr. T. Duncombe.

to exclude all other subjects from our thoughts, and to engross the solicitude of every man who takes the slightest concern in the events by which the destinies of this great nation are to be determined. When, therefore, it is observed, that the Whigs deserve no praise except for the government of Ireland-unconsciously, perhaps, but most certainly, the highest encomium is passed upon the present administration, and a merit is admitted to belong to them, by which a multitude of errors, in the eyes of true reformers, should be covered. But I turn to the amendment proposed by the member for Tamworth (Sir R. Peel). Between that exceedingly temperate amendment, and the declamation by which it has been sustained, there is a good deal of contrast. I do not advert to the speech of the right honourable baronet by whom it has been moved. That was a truly previous question speech (the amendment is the "previous question" in a periphrase): it was a speech of a precursor character, in the better sense of that significant expression. But what a discrepancy was exhibited between it and the effusions by which it was succeeded! The right honourable baronet, who can command their votes, ought to put some check on the insubordinate spirit by which the eloquence of his followers is occasionally distinguished. He ought to silence that piece of Sligo ordnance (Colonel Perceval), which is formidable in its recoil. The Recorder for Dublin, himself, exhibits in his oratory some want of discipline. The right honourable baronet, however, may rely on the votes of the learned gentleman, and the other forensic statesmen with whom he is associated. But there is a class of stanch old Tories, at whose support of the previous question I shall be surprised. I allude to the forty gentlemen, who, upon the second reading of the Irish Corporation Bill, rose against the member for Tamworth in a conscientious mutiny, and, disclaiming the control of that distinguished person, voted in direct opposition to the pledges given by him and the Duke of Wellington upon that momentous question. Will they--will the men who made themselves so conspicuous by their impracticable honesty, upon an occasion so remarkable and so recent, forego all the praise which they so lately earned from the Orangemen of Ireland, and support an amendment which, instead of negativing the original motion, eludes the question really at issue between us, and upon which the government have called for the opinion of the House of Commons? I do not think that the ministers could with propriety have taken any other course. Look at the facts. The amendment commences by referring to a most important one, from which an irresistible argument in favour of the original motion may be deduced. The Recorder for Dublin moved for a return of certain papers connected with the com

mission of crime in Ireland. He did not venture to move for an inquiry. Why, if an inquiry is, as is alleged, of absolute necessity, was it not demanded in the House of Commons? Why do the Tories move for papers in one house, and for a committee in the other? The Recorder for Dublin did not dare to make a motion by which the sense of the House of Commons should be taken: he thought it far more prudent to get up a debate, made up of unsupported asseverations against the Irish government, and with this view, speeches infinite in length, and infinitesimal in detail, were delivered by himself and the honourable and learned member for Bandon, who, with their auxiliaries, failed, however, in imparting any interest to a motion, which was to terminate without a division; many hours were expended in discussions perfectly useless, until some gentleman had compassion on the speaker, and, in the midst of the performance of what I may designate by an expression of Swift's, "a Newgate Pastoral," interrupted the proceeding, by taking notice that there were not forty members present, and then counted out the house. Thus lamely and impotently concluded this grand performance in the House of Commons. Not so in the House of Lords. There Lord Roden moves for censure in the guise of inquiry, for who can doubt that inquiry to be equivalent to censure, which originates with my Lord Roden, and which is to be conducted by Dr. Phillpotts-which has its source in the mercy of his gracious Majesty the King of Hanover, and to the direction of which the inquisitorial genius of the meek and apostolic pontiff, who keeps a small Vatican at Exeter, is to be applied? The character of the parties by whom the motion for a committee was brought forward and supported, and the constitution of the committee itself, ought to set at rest all doubt as to its objects and effect; but if any doubt could be entertained upon the subject, the limitation of the inquiry to the four years, during which Lord Normanby was chief governor of Ireland, must at once remove it. Why are the Lords' Committee to confine their investigation to the last four years? Last night the member for Pembroke told us, that an inquiry was, for many reasons, to be desired; and among others, he informed us, that he conceived that we should consider how it came to pass, that spade husbandry had succeeded in Belgium and had not succeeded in Ireland. On these grounds he, somewhat fantastically, justifies an inquiry into crime, in the House of Lords, since 1835. How miserable are the subterfuges by which gentlemen endeavour to escape from the effect of that specific limitation to the extent of the inquiry which was defined and marked out with so much care in Lord Roden's motion? The right honourable member for Tamworth cited several examples of inquiry to