teeism. The Secretary for Ireland, the member for Staffordshire, between whom and the honourable member for Belfast, there last night passed an interchange of parliamentary endearments, spoke of a tax upon the property of absentees as amounting to confiscation. Are the acts of the Irish Parliament void? You would resent a hint touching the invalidity of the Act of Union: extend to other acts the benefit of your doctrine. We have acts of the Irish Parliament (Richard II and Henry VIII.), by which the proprietors of estates were subject to a heavy forfeiture during their absence. This principle of taxation was adopted by an English Parliament when the kings of England had dominions in France, and their subjects preferred residence on their estates in that country. Look at the inconvenience of the tax on the one hand, and the misery of the people of Ireland on the other, and the tell me which ought to weigh most in the consideration of the legislature.

When you expatiate on the increased pro-perity of the country as proved by its exports, do you forget that when converted into money, it is in the palaces, the banquets and saloons of this metropolis, that the fruits of Irish labour are expended? What is the condition of the mass of the people? The population of Ireland has doubled since the Union. Has her capital increased in the same proportion-and is there not a far greater mass of misery than there was before? "The greater happiness of the greater number" being applied as a test, in what light shall we see the results of the Union to the people, the state of the people? The exports of Ireland, forsooth-go-let the right honourable gentleman take his stand on the quay of the city which he once represented let him look on whole fleets upon the Shannon, freighted to the water's edge with grain, the produce of myriads of acres, and with flocks and herds innumerable, depastured upon the land on which heaven has rained fertility, and after he shall have contemplated the spectacle on which it does the heart of an economist good to rest, let him turn round and look on the starving peasantry by whom all these materials for absentee splendour have been created-behold the famine, the wretchedness. and the pestilence of the Irish hovel, and if he have the heart to do so, let him mock at the calamities of his country, and proceed in his demonstration of the prosperity of Ireland. The mass of the people are in a condition more wretched than that of any nation in Europe; they are worse housed, worse covered, worse fed than the basest boors in the provinces of Russia; they dwell in habitations to which your swine would not be committed; they are covered with rags which your beggars would disdain to wear; and not only do they never taste the flesh of the animals which crowd into your markets, and while the sweat drops from their brows, they never touch the bread into which their harvests are converted. For you they toil-for you they delve—they reclaim the bog--and drive the plough to the mountain' op for you. And where does all this misery exist? In a country teeming with fertility, and stamped with the beneficent intents of God. When the famine of Ireland prevailed-when her cries crossed the Channel, and pierced your ears, and reached your hearts, the granaries

of Ireland were bursting with their contents, and while a people knelt down, and stretched out their hands for food, the business of deportation, the absentee tribute was going on. Talk of the prosperity of Ireland! Talk of the external magnificence of a poorhouse, gorged with misery within. I am glad that I have recollected the poor laws. Wherefore are half this house favourable to an Irish poor law? Is it not because the people are reduced to straits at which humanity recoils? And how does your sympathy with the Irish poor at one moment accord with your expatiations on Irish prosperity at another. But let me be just. I do not accuse the Secretary for the Treasury of being favourable to poor laws. He sees the poor laws from the Shannon, as he sees repeal from the Thames. He takes a treasury view of the one, and a Mount Trenchard view of the other. We propose repeal-others propose poor laws. What does he suggest? What nostrum will he produce from the Downing-street dispensary of political empiricism? All that Ireland requires is good government? Has she been well governed? Yes," says the Secretary of the Treasury. I proceed to the political head of this great question.

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The right honourable gentleman, on this part of the case, has spoken with more than his usual talent-which is saying much;, and with more than his usual earnestness-which is saying a good deal. He designates himself as a West Briton. He does himself injustice, for he is more than English. It was said of the English colonist, that he was Hibernis Hibernior. He improved upon our indigenous barbarism. British civilization has produced an opposite result, in a proportionate degree of refinement on the mind of the right honourable gentleman. All the mud of his native Shannon has not only been washed off by his ablutions in the Cam, but he comes more fresh and glossy from the academic water, than those who at their birth were immersed in the classic stream. But did the right honourable gentleman always see the government or Ireland in the same light-or does the configuration, and do the colours of objects, depend on the position from which they are seen? There was a time when the right honourable gentleman saw nothing but gloom in the political horizon; but now every cloud is filled with the radiance of his imagination, and he beholds nothing but brightness, gorgeousness, and gold. He has represented the conduct of the Imperial Parliament towards his native country as wise and generous. I shall be able to prove, from the uniform tenor of the right honourable gentleman's speeches in opposition, that until he came into office he regarded the system by which Ireland was governed as fraught with injustice. He has picked from the speeches delivered by the member for Dublin every loose expression, every careless phrase which he could apply to his purDoses. Blame us not if in this, as in other particulars, we presume to follow your example. Since you rely upon the ebullitions of popular excitement at public meetings, and upon those thoughtless and inconsiderate declamations which are thrown off in utter recklessness amidst casual gatherings of the people-since you quote after-dinner orators, and rely upon the rhetoric of the Corn Exchange; permit us, on the other hand, to refer to your own solemn and reiterated declarations

made in your legislative capacity in this house, and to exhibit the enormity of the contradiction that exists between your conduct in office and that which you adopted before you arrived at power. How has Ireland heen governed since the Union? Whigs of 1834-how have the forebodings of the Whigs of 1799 been fulfilled? They foretold the result of that vile exchange, that base swap by which Ireland was forced to give up the entirety of her legislature for a miserable sixth in that imperial co-partnership, and became dependant upon majorities composed of men who care little about the welfare, sympathize less with the feelings, and know nothing of the interests of Ireland. Let us see the evidences of British magnanimity, British generosity, and British justice? The Secretary for the Treasury has gone through a variety of details to estab ish the undeviating beneficence of an Imperial Legislature. Hear the language (let him listen to it) uttered by himself on the 22nd of April, 1322. Thus speaks the member for Limerick :

"What was the first tribute which the mperial Parliament of 1801 tendered to Ireland in their first. otice of the situation of that country after the Union? Their first statute was the Irish Martial Law Bill."

On Wednesday the right honourable gentleman recapitulated the acts which the Imperial Parliament had passed for Ireland. He went through acts for lighting and paving the streets-he enlarged on the achievements of pure legislation he recounted the provisions of various statutes on small subjects-but never once alluded to the questions which touch the heart of the country to the core; and entirely forgot that, in 1822, he had exclaimed that the renewal of martial law in 1801, was the first piece of legislation adopted by the Imperial Parliament with respect to Ireland. But I will not do him the injustice of suppressing the rest of his observations in that remarkable declaration. The right honourable gentleman went on, and said that the spirit in which the British Parliament legislated for Ireland had been in accordance with the principle on which the act establishing martial law was founded. lie added

In tracing the history of Irish legislation, both before and since the Union, there appeared as it were, two streams passing through the channel of Parliament In one flowed acts of strenuous finance, or equally strong coercion-the one with great malice, the other with great power. In the other channel the struggle was made, but made in vain, to procure an examination into the state and condition of the people, in the hope of discovering and applying some remedy for their evils." Will the right honourable gentleman give us a committee to examine into them now?

"It was curious (he continued), in tracing these proceedings, to observe with what a singularly felicitous uniformity the channel of coercion always flowed, and that of inquiry was always resisted and impeded."

Thus spoke the right honourable gentleman in 1822. Now hear his amendment of 1834. See what a metamorphosis the right honourable gentleman has undergone? Peruse the address in which he sets forth the wisdom of British legislation, reconcile the member for

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I could quote fifty

riek with the Secretary for the Treasury if you can. speeches of the right honourable gentleman of the same character, but I have not time; let us turn from him, and in a rapid retrospect, look st the policy pursued by the Imperial Parliament since the Union. Not a mere hint, not an insinuation whispered by a secretary into the ear of a Catholic peer at the Castle, but a pledge was given (the more obligatory because it rested upon honour for its fulfilment), that the Union should be followed by emancipation. How was that pledge redeemed? What evidence was afforded of the liberal and enlightened spirit of the Imperial Legislature? Panegyrists of the Union try it by its fruits, and look to historical notorieties, as well as to treasury calculations. Mr. Pitt could not carry the question-he was compelled to resign. 1801, 1802, 1803 and 1804 passed by. The question was not even introduced; it would have been treated as repeal is to-night Henry Grattan himself did not, until 1805, venture to raise his voice in the cause of his country. At length Mr. Fox, in 1805, moved for a committee. The proposition was spurned at: the Whigs came in. The no popery" howl is raised—the Catholic question is left to the umpirage of a ferocious multitude, and the rights of millions of your fellowsubjects are trampled under foot by the infuriated populace which Protestantism has summoned to its aid. The Whigs are driven from office -not for having proposed emancipation, but for having made the humble suggestion that men who shed their blood for England, should be capable of honour. The new parliament assembles. Ireland asked for freedom, and she received the Insurrection Act. In 1812 an ordinance issues, signed "Wellesley Pole," from the Castle, and the Catholic committee is dispersed. Mr. Saurin tries the Catholic delegates and fails. He mends his hand, packs a jury, and procures a conviction. The jury was packed the panel was sent marked and dotted from the Castle. Who were the loudest to proclaim, and to reprobate the practice by which justice was polluted to its source? The very men who now see nothing in the government of Ireland but matter for admiration, and persevere in the very course which they had formerly held up to the execration of the country. In 1814, the Insurrection Act is renewed: the Whigs hurled the thunders of their eloquence against it. Would that I could here make some pause, in order to lay before the house some of those masterpieces of eloquence in which they held up to indignation the outrage committed on the constitution. But I must hurry on; seven years go by; nothing is done for Ireland, and yet all this while there has been a vast majority of Irish members in favour of Catholic emancipation. Their remonstrances, their entreaties for justite were spurned and derided. By whom was Ireland oppressed and degraded? By whom was the penal system (the parent of such a brood of evil) maintained? Englishmen, by you! aud yet, in the face of these facts, an Irishman asks you to pronounce a retrospective panegyric upon the fanaticism by which the measures of thirty years were distinguished In 1821, George the Fourth goes to Ireland; in our loyalty he finds evidence of our felicity. In 1822, Lord Wellesley (the present viceroy, recommends the renewal of the Insurrection Act. It was consistent a

send him to administer the coercive bill. No one was more prominent than the Secretary for the Treasury in reprobating the principles on which that unconstitutional proceeding was founded. In 1824, the Insurrection Act was again renewed, and again the Whigs declaimed and stormed. In the interval the Catholic Association was created. By whom? Not by the Catholic gentry-not by the men who denounce repeal and repealers-but, with the aid of the people, by a man who, whatever estimate may be formed of this question in this house, has done great things; has written his name in ineffaceable permanence in the records of his country, and built himself on the liberty of Ireland a monument which will never fall. The agitation and organization of Ireland proceeded. In 1825, the Catholic delegates arrived in London. How many of the evils that have since arisen might have been prevented if the terms which were tendered by Ireland had not been rejected. Mr. Canning comes into office; gives up Catholic emancipation, and is denounced for apostacy by Lord Grey. Why did Mr. Canning give up that measure? Was it from any renegade spirit? It was because he knew it was hopeless to attempt to carry the question in the Imperial Parliament, "which has passed," according to the Secretary of the Treasury," so many salutary and beneficial measures for the people of Ireland." We were as much at your mercy then as we were before 1782. The prejudices of England were insuperable. The Goderich Administration, Lansdowne, Herries and Co., succeeded Canning. It died in its cradle. At length (there was one Arthur Wellesley, member for Trim, in the Irish House of Commons, who asserted the necessity of emancipation in 1793)—at length the Duke of Wellington consummated in the cabinet that renown which he had obtained in the field, and, with the aid of a man who did incalculable services by inestimable sacrifices, gave freedom to 7,000,000 of his fellow-citizens; but with what injustice was it accompanied? The Irish Parliament bestowed upon the forty-shilling freeholders of Ireland the elective franchise. It remained for the Imperial Parliament to deprive them of the right. This proceeding was denounced as spoliation. By whom? By Lord Brougham-by Lord Grey-the men who would not commit the rob bery, but who, when the Reform Bill came on, refused restitution. Are not these facts? Have I said a word that is not the fact? And to all this what does the Secretary for the Treasury reply? At the end of almost every fourth sentence in one part of his speech—(I was surprised, knowing his command of language, and the copiousness of his vocabulary) the right honourable gentleman exclaimed "nonsense," then he cried out " trash," and afterwards "stuff." Ah, Sir, there is, in this melancholy detail, truth, dismal, disastrous truth. Your delay of emancipation was fatal. If you had passed the Catholic Relief Bill years before, none of the results which you so much lament would have been produced. You were wrong; you know it, and yet I scarce condemn you for it. I blame the Union, which left the people of Ireland at the nercy of the fanatical passions, by which the legislature was controlled. But the Secretary for the Treasury exclaims, "If the agitators would but let us alone, and allow Ireland to be tranquil." The agitators, for