socth! Does he venture-has he the intrepidity to speak thus? Agitators! Against deep potations let the drunkard rail;-at Crockford's let there be homilies against the dice box ;-let every libertine lament the progress of licentiousness, when his Majesty's ministers deplore the influence of demagogues, and Whigs complain of agitation.

How did you carry Reform? Was it not by impelling the people almost to the verge of revolution? Was there a stimulant for their passions was there a provocative for their excitement, to which you did not resort? If you have forgotten, do you think that we shall fail to remember your meetings at Edinburgh, at Paisley, at Manchester, at Birmingham? Did not 300,000 men assemble? Did they not pass resolutions against taxes? Did they not threaten to march on London? Did not two of the cabinet ministers indite to tnem epistles of gratitude and of admiration? and do they now dare-have they the audacity to speak of agitation? Have we not as good a title to demand the restitution of our parliament, as the ministers to insist on the reform of this house? Wherefore should we not adopt the same means to effect it? The member for the county of Wexford has had the imprudence to talk of Catholic bishops being treated with disrespect, and of excesses committed by the populace. Bishops! What, is it only in Ireland that it is a crime to assail a bishop? And have the flames of Bristol left no reflection behind?

I have demonstrated that at least for twenty-nine years Ireland was misgoverned. Twenty-nine years of agitation, and at length justice was extorted from an Imperial Parliament? But since emancipation, since the Whigs have come into office, has all gone well? Let us pass over some smaller details-the Arms Bill, the jury packing, the exclusion of Catholics on tithe questions, the infusion of theology into the police; let us go to great and essential incidents. I shall dwell on no more than three. In your Reform Bill you adopted population as a standard here; you did not employ it in Ireland. You gave Wales, with 800,000 people, three additional representatives, eight to Scotland with 2,500,000, and five to Ireland with her 8,000,000. You did not restore the forty-shilling freeholders. You have left towns in Ireland with 12,000 people without a representative; and you have left your paltry boroughs here. It was either necessary, or it was not, to pass your Coercion Bill. It was either necessary, or it was not, for the opponents of the Insurrection Act to put upon the statute-book a precedent for tyranny, and to supersede the tribunals of the country with the legislation of the Horse-Guards, and the judicature of the barrackyard. If it was unnecessary, it was detestable and atrocious; and if it was necessary for Lord Grey to introduce a bill which passed without dissent in the Lords, and which there were men who support ministers who declared that they would rather die than support it in that shape; if that was necessary, by whom was the necessity created? You have had Ireland for thirty-three years under your rule-you have been her absolute and undisputed masters; and if her condition be deplorableif atrocities have been perpetrated which call for rigorous laws, are you not responsable for this disastrous state of things-and to you, and to

your Union, which armed you with power unlimited for good or evil, is it not to be referred? So much for your coercive measure; but for its severity you made up (did you not :) by your Tithe and Church Bils, your 147th clause, and those absurd and cruel experiments—absurd in theory and cruel in result-with which you have endeavoured to reconcile that most monstrous of all anomalies a Church of one religion, and almost an entire nation of another.

I turn to the member for Paisley, and other Scotchmen who appeal to the results of the Scotch Union. Was such an article, as the fifth article of the Act of Union, giving eternity to the Protestant Church, among the terms on which Scotland gave up her legislature ? If any attempt had been made to establish episcopacy by her Union-if a mitred pontificate had been inflicted upon her, what would have been the consequences? She would not have for a moment endured it. Her people would have risen almost to a man against such a Union-to the death they would have resisted it-the country would have been deluged in blood. And if at last England and episcopacy had prevailed, they must have reared their altars in a desert, for Scotland would have left them nothing but a wilderness for their worship.

I cannot sit down without adverting to two points: first, the probable constitution of an Irish Parliament; secondly, the likelihood of separation. As to the first, let the Whigs recollect that, on the Reform Question, it was urged that this house would be filled by men of an inferior station. It was answered, property must prevail; wherefore should it not prevail in Ireland as well as here? Is it not manifest that, in a little while after the repeal had been carried, the Irish nation would follow the example of all other nations, and select men of influence, from fortune or talents (which give a higher title to respect), as the depositaries of the legislative trust? The qualification of the Irish voter (£10 a-year rent), ought surely to secure a highly respectable. representation. Besides, observe that if the evil is to take place after repeal, it must take place without it. If Ireland would then return 300 unworthy men, she will return 105 of the same character; and thus you entail on yourselves as great an evil as that which you apprehend as a consequence of repeal. The arguments which are urged against repeal, were the very same as those which were pressed by Conservatives against reform. They said that a collision would take place between Lords and Commons, and saw as many calamities in that collision, as you foresee in the anticipated disagreements of the Irish and English Parliaments. No man pointed out these consequences with more force than Mr. Canning-an authority which the noble lo. & the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and the President of the Board of Control, once held in some regard. But was Lord Grey terrified by the phantom of revolution? Why shouid he expect that we should be dis mayed by another spectre, which was as huge and hideous im 1800, when he looked at it without dismay. Is the argument more valid now than it was then? It is built on this abstract proposition; two parlia ments cannot amicably co-exist. He then said they could. He was not a beardless politician at that epoch; he had already proposed his great

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plan of Reform-ne was about the age of the Secretary for the Colonies had reached the age of discretion, and had passed the period at which men might be led away by a juvenile enthusiasm-when the understanding may be obscured by the mists which arise from the boiling emotions of the heart. Lord Grey's assertion is as valid as it was thirty-four years ago: it is one of those propositions which time cannot impair. What was then a sophism cannot grow into a reason, as into a sophism reason cannot degenerate. Let it be borne in your minds that although some of the arguments against a union were founded on temporary and transient circumstances, yet others (like that grounded on the fear of separation), were permanent, and are now just as good as they were a quarter of a century ago. The authority of Plunket and Bushe, and Saurin, and, above all, the authority of Grattan, is as powerful as it ever was. The Secretary for the Treasury insists that Grattan had changed his mind. His son has proved the contrary. He read his answer in 1810, declaring that he desired the restoration of the Irish Parliament. To what document was that answer a response? To an address from the grand juries of Dublin, in which they describe the evils of the Union, and call on Mr. Grattan to employ his great faculties in accomplishing its repeal. Mr. Grattan did not change his mind. But what is the crime of the repealers? This that they consider Lord Grey a good statesman, when he is old-but a better prophet, when he was young. I blame him not for having altered his opinion; but I own myself to be surprised that he should lavish in the speeches, for the utterance of which he avails himself of the royal enunciation, such unqualified and almost contumelious condemnation of those with whom he strenuously coincided when he was upwards of thirty years of age. But have we no better argument than that which Lord Grey so often urged against Mr. Pitt, when he reproached him with a desertion of his former opinions. How stands history? It is asked, when did two parlia ments long co-exist in friendship? Show me an instance in which 8,000,000 of people in one island submitted to a parliament held in another, and containing such proportions as exist in this assembly. The case of America is obvious; but look to two strong instances -Sweden and Norway have one King and two parliaments. Since the year 1815, there has been no quarrel between the legislatures. Turn to Belgium Does not the example bear us out? Hear an extract from the declara tion of Belgian independence. After alleging that the Union was obtained by fraud, the document goes on and states that—

"An enormous debt and expenditure, the only portion which Holland brought to us at the time of our deplorable Union-taxes overwhelming by their amount-laws always voted by the Dutch for Holland only (and always against Belgium), represented so unequally in the States-General-the seat of all important establishments fixed in Hol land-tue most offensive partialities in the distribution of civil and military employments-in a word, Belgium treated as a conquered province, as any everything rendered a revolution inevitable."

Do you mark this? You were instrumental in affecting the Union of Belgium and Holland Lord Castlereagh, who carried the Irish

Union, represented you at the Congress in which the different arrange. ments with respect to Belgium and Holland were made. You have yourselves recently been parties to that separation which Belgium demanded, and you assented to the grounds on which it was required. All the public establishments removed to Holland! What has become of our Custom House, of our Stamp Office? Our Royal Hospital too, built by a contribution made among the Irish soldiers, raised out of a sixpence which they joyfully gave to provide for them an asylum, that institution, connected with our national pride, associated with our best feelings of country, you, for the sake of some miserable saving, have determined to annihilate. Take warning—you have made experiments enough. Be taught not by the failures of others, but by your own. Go on as you have hitherto proceeded, and you will soon find the entire of Ireland united for repeal. A reference has been made to the small number of signatures to petitions. If there shall be a million next year, what will you say? We are told that the Irish people do not desire repeal. Are thirty-eight Irish members out of one hundred and five nothing? What other test do you demand? The last election ought to exhibit the truth. That last election verified the prediction which I made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer : I went to him when the Tithe Bill was pending in 1832.-I told him what would happen. I exclaimed, "You are on the eve of a general election; you are driving the Irish to fury by your tithe measures, and the result will be, that on every hustings in the south, the standard of repeal will be planted' It is said that the gentry are against repeal. How fast do the gentry of every country fall into the mass of the people! They desert one by one, and the moment it is their interest, they combine with the class once designated as the multitude. How soon the populace becomes he people! Let a few years go by, Catholic and Protestant will be reconciled-the national mind will become one mass of hot emotion— the same disregard for the interests and feelings of Ireland will be displayed in this assembly; and, if there should be an outbreak of popular commotion here-if the prediction of the Conservatives should be fulfilled-and if your alliance with France, which is as unstable as its dynasty, should give way, you may have cause to lament, when lamentation will be unavailing, that to seven millions of Irishmen justice was refused.

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RUSSIAN AND TURKISH TREATIES.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCH 17, 1834.

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SHALL endeavour, in discharging the duty I have undertaken, to avoid spirit of partisanship, which, in a question of this kind, would be peculiarly out of place, and simply to present to the house the facts which I conceive should induce the noble lord at the head of the foreign department, to furnish the house and the public with the documents I seek to have produced. The motion I have risen to make is this:"That an humble address be presented to his majesty, that he will be graciously pleased to give directions that there be laid before this house, copies of any treaty or treaties which have been concluded between the Russian and Turkish governments, since the 1st of January, 1833, and which have been officially communicated to the British government; together with copies of any correspondence between his majesty's government and the Russian and Turkish governments, relative to the said treaties."

I proceed at once to the statement of the facts, the incidents, and the documents, on which I rely. I shall not take any remote period, but commence at the autumn of the year 1831. In the autumn of that year, the forces of the Pacha of Egypt began their march; on the 3rd of December, 1831, the siege of Acre was commenced; in May, 1832, Acre fell; Ibrahim proceeded on his march, and advanced into Syria; on the 14th of June, Damascus was taken. In July, 1832, another great battle was fought, and Ibrahim advanced upon Taurus; he passed it. Any one who will give the slightest examination to the relative position of the two armies, must see that the success of Ibrahim was inevitable. This was the state of affairs in July, 1832. What was the course adopted by Turkey? She applied for aid to England. The fact is admitted, in a speech made by the noble lord in this house on the 11th of July, 1833. It was further admitted by the noble lord, that if this country had then thought proper to interfere, its interference would have been effectual.

Lord PALMERSTON.—No.

Mr. SHEIL.-It is so stated. It has also been stated, but I know not whether on good authority, that the application of Turkey to this count for assistance was sustained by Russia, which power is said to have inti mated her wish, or solicited, that the aid asked by Turkey should be given. England refused her assistance. That fact will not be questioned; it remains to be explained. It was asked at the time, why assistance was not given to our ancient ally? But the events which subsequently happened, gave retrospective force to the interrogatory; for it is impossible not to ask, with a sentiment stronger than mere curiosity, why it was that Turkey, when she sought our assistance, was thrown upon Russia as her only resource? The refusal having been given, is it not a most extraordinary circumstance that England sent no ambas sudor to Constantinople? The war began in October, 1831: Acre feil