ADJOURNMENT.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH AUGUST, ON THE MOTION THAT THE HOUSE SHOULD ADJOURN TO THE 5TH OF

SEPTEMBER.

INSTEAD of the customary prorogation by the Queen, the adjournment of the house is proposed by the first minister of the crown, in order that the opinions of the judges in the case of Mr. O'Connell may be delivered before the next session, and to prevent the hazard of a great injustice being done. It is felt by everybody that it would be monstrous that Mr. O'Connell should be kept in gaol for six months, and that he should afterwards be discharged upon the ground that he ought not to have been originally imprisoned. The case is conceived to be one of so much importance and so much difficulty, that a deviation from parliamentary usage is proposed by the Prime Minister, and on the 5th of September parliament is to assemble again. If the decision shall be in favour of Mr. O'Connell-if the judges shall think that the jury was improperly composed, and that the challenge to the array should have been allowed, Mr. O'Connell will be discharged. For this proceeding the government do not claim any credit, for by an opposite course the general censure of the country would be incurred. But surely the government have, by the step which they are now adopting, made the most important practical admission. They have, by an irresistible implication, acknowledged that the detention of Mr. O'Connell pending the question whether he ought to have been imprisoned at all, ought to be deeply lamented by themselves. Mr. O'Connell was imprisoned on the 30th of May. If he is discharged on the 30th of August, because the sentence was illegal-that will be the feeling of both countries how great will be the astonishment of the one, how vehement the indignation of the other? It ought, then, to be matter of the most solemn deliberation with the government, whether instead of waiting to ascertain whether the lawyers shall have succeeded in picking the lock of the Richmond Penitentiary, it would not be far wiser to throw open the doors of the prison-house at once, and to give back his freedom to the man whom under circumstances so peculiar you have deprived of his liberty. These are facts admitted upon all sides, facts beyond dispute, almost any one of which ought to have induced the government to terminate the period of Mr. O'Connell's

imprisonment. The suppression of the lists in the Recorder's Courtthe refusal of the crown to join issue on the averment of fraud—the solemn opinion of one of the judges at a trial at bar that the panel was illegally and wrongfully concocted the exclusion of every Catholic from the jury, by which the leader of a great Catholic people was tried and convicted-these are circumstances which ought to induce the government to give up a verdict thus illegitimately obtained, and to which it is the consummation of impolicy that you should so perținaciously adhere. You have yourselves, unconscious of what you were doing, furnished in a very recent proceeding, one of the strongest arguments against your verdict which it would be possible to suggest. You have admitted, that it would be most unjust that a commission for the administration of charitable bequests should be exclusively Protestants, and you have provided that out of the ten individuals to be selected as a committee, five at least shall be Catholics. What an inference is afforded by this special provision in your recent bill, which you represent as an act of common justice to the people of Ireland? If the charitable bequests of Ireland are not any longer to be administered by a Protestant board, is it not an outrage to common sense and common justice, that the great leader of a Catholic people should have been tried by a jury from which every one of his co-religionists was excluded by the crown, and was, in fact, composed of men who had rendered themselves conspicuous by the vehemence of their political and religious feelings? No other fact to condemn your verdict in the opinion of all unimpassioned men, no other fact is wanting to justify my noble friend the member for London in his deliberate declaration that Mr. O'Connell had not been fairly tried. The House of Commons has not ratified that declaration, but the present Prime Minister ought to look to something besides the House of Commons, and that for his own sake, for the sake of his fame hereafter, he ought at once to assent to the liberation of a man tried under his own Jury Act, under an act introduced by himself, and which has been converted into an instrumentality so utterly abhorrent from the purposes for which it was devised. The right honourable gentleman is one of those by whom fame is estimated at its proper value, and who can appreciate renown. You pass every day by the statue of George Canning every day you look at Westminster Abbey-to the judgment of posterity you cannot be insensible. Of what will be hereafter said, in reference to the great events which are passing, that you can be reckless, no man shall persuade me to believe. Does it not then occur to you that of your conduct in reference to your great Irish

antagonist history will not approve? The time will come when your merits will not be determined by the numbers which issue from the old lobby or from the new, but by another and more impartial reckoning; and when that time shall have arrived, and when it shall be told that Daniel O'Connell at almost the outset of your political career rushed against you into the lists of political encounter-that after nearly twenty years of a fearful struggle he extorted the freedom of his country from your reluctant consciousness that it could no longer be withheld; that, finding you unwilling to complete your achievement and to carry out the lofty principle on which it was founded, he continued in antagonism to your party, and demanded that the institutions of Ireland should be remodelled and adapted to the great change which had been accomplished; that, after a long exclusion from office, you came back to power, and that instead of availing yourself of the opportunity which was afforded you of winning the hearts of millions of Irishmen, you preferred the support of a faction to the sustainment of a people; that you selected the men to whom Ireland was most antipathetic as the objects of your favour; and that when goaded by many wrongs and exasperated by affronts, your old political foe demanded the restoration of her legislature to Ireland, you empannelled a jury of twelve Protestants for his conviction; that despite the protest of one of the first judges of the land, you threw him into prison, and when an inquiry was demanded into the machinery by which your jury was manufactured, you shrank from investigation, and left your adversary in the prison-house to which, at the age of seventy, he had been consigned; do you not think-does not your own heart inform you, that history, in whose tribunal juries are not packed-history, the recorder whose lists are not lost, stern, inflexible, impartial history, upon this series of calamitous proceedings will pronounce her condemnation ? It is in your power, it is yet within your power, to give to history something nobler to tell-to commit to it the better office of telling, that having the magnanimity to confess yourself to have been mistaken, rescuing yourself from the trammels of vindictiveness, animated by the feelings by which the minister of the greatest Sovereign and the noblest empire in the world should be inspired, you disdained the luxuries of vengeance, you did not wait for the tardy adjudication of the men by whom it is acknowledged that difficulties are entertained, but winning, by a generous action, a victory over your adversary, and over yourself, you gave back his freedom to the man to whom millions are indebted for their liberty-you acquired a title to their confidence by the only possible reparation you can make for the great injustice

you have done to the Irish people. If this measure were adopted by the right honourable gentleman, if the wound could be healed by the hand which inflicted it, Ireland would be made susceptible of the ameliorations which we are assured by the government that they have in view. But Daniel O'Connell is detained in the prison to which he ought never to have been committed. What advantage have you obtained--what benefit can you expect ever to secure-from the imprisonment of Daniel O'Connell ? His spirit is as much abroad as if he stood on the theatre of Mullaghmast, and tens of thousands were gathered at his call. His mind still agitates the great mass, and with the mighty millions is still blended and commingled. After the verdict (it is a remarkable fact) the Repeal rent suddenly fell, and after the execution of the sentence, it rose four-fold. You have imprisoned three proprietors of newspapers, and yet the press, undeterred by your verdict, is more exciting and more intrepid than ever. The Nation newspaper, distinguished by the rare eloquence with which it is written, circulates more than 11,000 copies a week-that most remarkable publication circulates in every hamlet of the country, and ministers the strongest stimulants to the high spirit of nationality which it has made it its chief object to awaken. The Catholic clergy are, almost to a man, against you. In Dublin a great and well-organized association, which no law can reach, holds its weekly meetings; and, although not elected by the people, must be admitted to be a faithful representative of the national feelings. What, then, have you gained by the imprisonment of Daniel O'Connell? what other has been the result of that rash measure, excepting the creation of a deep feeling of hostility to the English government, which, if it is any time most injudicious—it is, under the existing circumstances of the country, most perilous to provoke! There are those who tell you that Ireland is tranquil; but I, 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, in the recent excitement of that country-I, anxious only that my admonition should have the effect of inducing you to adopt a wiser course, tell 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.