standard of Repeal was planted upon every hustings. The Coercion Bill is passed-£1,000,000 is given to the Irish clergy-the church Tem. poralities Bill is introduced, with a great but latent principle of improvement—the influence of the noble lord prevails, and the 147th clause is struck out; meanwhile the clergy starve. The session of 1834 is opened. The letter of Lord Anglesey (whose heart was full of the love of Ireland, but whose good intentions were marred by his coadjutor in the Irish government)-is produced: it calls for a new appropriation. Mr. Ward brings his motion forward-the church commission is issued by Lord Grey: the noble lord-(who affects to consider Lord Grey as opposed to Irish church reform, when the commission stares the noble lord in the face)-retires from office, lets go a Parthian and envenomed shaft at his associates-and there he now is, facing his former friends and in juxta-position with his former antagonists. How far he has descended or has risen in public estimation, I leave to be determined by his own judgment and that of the party of which he is the leader, which has been rapidly diminishing in numbers, and has undergone, to use the mathemetical phrase of the member for Tamworth, "a process of diminution." The government, in 1834, having been relieved from the assistance of the noble lord, brings a Tithe Bill forward, which would have given the clergy bread, and have gone a considerable way towards an adjustment of the question. It receives the approbation of a large body of the Irish representatives; it is thrown out, and the clergy are left to perish by those sinister auxiliaries who support the church by making martyrs of its ministers-parliament is prorogued-Lord Melbourne is dismissed from the cabinet with as little ceremony as a menial would be discharged from the palace. Suddenly, and to himself, I believe, unexpectedly, the right honourable baronet is raised to the premiership; the fortunes of this great country are placed by his sovereign in his hands; he arrives, declares himself the champion of the church, dissolves the parliament, strains every treasury nerve to return a Conservative House of Commons; the parliament of his own calling meets; he is beaten on the speakership, and does not resign; he is defeated on the amendment, and still retains his office; he is discomfited upon the Irish church, and he no longer considers it compatible with his dignity, his duty, or his honour, to remain in place; he surrenders the trust reposed in him by his Sovereign, and retires with disaster, but without humiliation-for he fell in a contest with millions; he had chosen a nation for his antagonist, and it was impossible that he should not be overthrown. Far be it from me to dispute the talents, the skill, the various attributes for government, which he displayed; the greater the talents, the more consummate the skill, the more various the attributes for government of which he gave the proof-the more unquestionable the evidence of that power against which he sought to make battle, and by which he was struck down. Of that power I have traced the progress-that power, vested in millions, deputed to the great majority of Irish representatives, developed, not created by emancipation, confirmed by reform, and which, so far from being attended with any likelihood of decrease, 's accompanied by the splendid certainty of augmentation: 3,000,000 have swollen since the Union to 7 000 000-they return the majority of the representatives of the country-they are led on by men of unalterable determination-in intelligence and in property they are making rapid advances-with Roman Catholics of high ability the bar is crowded -by them the highest law offices are filled-they are within a step of the bench of justice-if there were no further change by the legislature, the advance of the people would be still inevitable-the Corporation Bill (for you cannot legislate for one country on different principles from those which you apply to the other) is at hand. Can you wish, and if you wish, can you hope, that this unnatural, galling, exasperating ascendancy should be maintained? Things cannot remain as they are-it is impossible that they should retrograde-what expedient are you prepared to adopt? Would you re-enact the penal code, let loose Orangeism from its den? Would you drive the country into insurrection-cut down the people-avail yourselves of the most horrible instrumentality that a faction, panting for new confiscations, can apply-and bid the yeomanry draw forth the swords, clotted with the blood of 1798, that they may be brandished in massacre, and sheathed in the nation's heart. From so horrible a conception you instinctively and virtuously recoil. But, shrinking as you do from such a purpose, to what expedient will you fly? Will you dissolve the parliament What!-after you have already had recourse to that perilous expedient? You thought that you could manage the house of your own calling-you declared it at Tamworth. Have you not too deep a stake in fame, in fortune, in property, and in renown, to renew these terrible experiments? If a Conservative parliament should be assembled, its duration must be brief -its existence will be stormy and agitated while it lasts; but if the excited people should infuse an undue proportion of the democratic element into the representation, you will have raised a spirit which you will have no spell to lay, exposed an institution more valuable than the church to peril; and put, perhaps, what is more precious than the mitre, to a tremendous hazard-and all for what? For what are all these risks to be incurred?-for what are all these appalling hazards to be run ?— for what stake is this awful die to be cast? For what are cabinets after cabinets to be dissolved, appeals after appeals to be made to the people-the public credit to be annihilated-the lords brought into collision with the master power of the state-the royal prerogative, by its repeated exercise, abridged of the reverence which is due to it-the palace shaken to its foundations-and the empire itself brought to the verge of that gulf to which, by causes of less pressure, so many countries have been irresistibly and fatally driven? For what, into all these affrighting perils are we to rush? For what, into those terrific possibilites are we madly, desperately, impiously to plunge? For the Irish church!-the church of the minority, long the church of the state, never the church of the people-the church on which a faction fattens, by which a nation starves-the church from which no imaginable good can flow, but evil after evil in such black and continuous abundance has been for centuries, and is to this day, poured out-the church by which religion has been retarded, morality has been vitiated, atrocity has been engendered; which standing armies are requisite to sustain, which has Cost England millions of her treasure, and Ireland torrents of her blood. IRISH MUNICIPAL REFORM BILL. SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS; MARCH 28, 1836. THE speech of the honourable and learned gentleman (Sir W. Follett) would have been an exceedingly powerful one against Catholic emancipation, or against the extension to Ireland of parliamentary reform but those measures having been carried, it is preposterous to rely upon a policy utterly at variance with the principles on which they were founded. The honourable and learned member has relied upon a concession made by the government respecting the administration of justice. The appointment of the sheriffs has been transferred to the crown. This, said the honourable and learned member for Exeter, established a distinction between England and Ireland; wherefore, since you have made this distinction, not abolish corporations altogether? I answer, that the appointment of sheriffs is an incident to the existence of corporate bodies, and not one of its elements,-that Ireland does not require an exact identity in every particular, but a general assimilation -that she does not ask that all the details shall be the same, but that the principles shall be analogous ;-change the elevation of the edifice, but let the foundation of popular control remain untouched. Although an influence will cease to be exercised by corporations over courts of justice, yet over corporations a safe and salutary influence will still be exercised by the people. The nomination of sheriffs is taken away, but much is left behind; the care of many local concerns, the guardianship of the public peace, the security and convenience of public ways, the imposition of taxes, their allocation and collection, and the management of corporate property. Is the latter of no consequence? Try it by this test; the Drapers' Company have estates in Londonderry; suppose that it were proposed to that company to transfer their estates to the crown, how would such a suggestion be received? How offensive, then, is the project to leave to English corporations their Irish estates, and to strip Irish corporations of their possessions? I acknowledge that I regard the transfer of the right to nominate sheriffs as not only a concession but a sacrifice; and I, for one, would not acquiesce in it, if I did not feel that something, nay, that much, ought to be yielded, în order to adjust those questions, without the settlement of which peace in Ireland is impossible and prosperity hopeless; and if, after this step towards a compromise has been taken by the government, the bill be elsewhere rejected, or there shall be substituted for it what Ireland shall repudiate, and if, by this expedient, the abuses of corporations, the vitiation of justice, the plunder of corporate revenues, and political profligacy shall be perpetuated, the people of England will know where the blame of that scandalous continuance ought to attach, and will deterruine between the men who are anxious, as far as it is practicable, to extend the benefit of British institutions, and those who, having had so long and minute a cognizance of those abuses, never applied a remedy; and who, at last, when they can no longer be palliated with impunity, have recourse to a mock demolition, and send up to the House of Lord: a project to which the Commons of England, Ireland, and Scotlanc never can accede. All that has been said against this bill-all that has been insidiously insinuated, boldly stated, ingeniously inferred, and against "old friends and colleagues" contumeliously quoted, can, into a very short and unfortunately, familiar phrase "No Popery," be appropriately condensed. It is said that if we are once armed with power, we shall become unjust, arbitrary, and oppressive; that we shall follow the example given us, and that, by a Catholic combination, Protestants will be excluded from corporations. It is not a little remarkable that two noble lords, the members for Lancashire (North* and South) who have touched on this topic, should, at the last election, have been proposed by Catholics to their constituents. But it will be suggested that Catholics in England and Ireland are very different. In Ireland you fear a sacerdotal ascendancy, which in England you have no reason to apprehend. No man has enlarged more eloquently and pathetically upon this topic than the honourable member for Cumberland. This night the right honourable baronet, relieved from those nautical occupations from which the illustrations of his eloquence were once derived, has suddenly taken to the consolations of religion, and there is reason to apprehend that this quondam Whig functionary-this ex-Lord of the Admiralty, has laid aside the Naval Almanac for "Fox's Martyrs." I do not believe that the speeches of the Catholic priests to which he has referred, are accurately reported; and if I did, I should consider them as affording grounds for increasing the estimates, and for establishing a higher class of rhetoric at Maynooth. But mark the inconsistency between Conservative reasoning and assertion. We are told that there is no connexion between parliamentary and municipal reform; yet all the arguments against municipal elections are derived from the conduct of the Catholic clergy on parliamentary elections. Now, if the argument were good for anything, it would lead to the abolition of parliamentary, not of municipal institutions. For my part, I avow the interference of priests at elections, if it gratifies the noble lord, the member for Lancashire, and the right honourable member for Cumberland; and, I will add, that in no instance did the Catholic clergy interfere with more effect than in 1831, in order to carry the Reform Bill, when those honourable gentlemen were in office; I do not, I own, recollect that on that occasion those distinguished individuals deprecated the sinister assistance to which the government, of which they formed a part, were indebted. But how does it come to pass that the Catholic priests enjoy a monopoly of their moral anger? Have not the landlords some claim to their virtuous indignation? They denounce what they call the tyranny of the priesthood; but when they see families turned out in hundreds from their hovels-women without covering, and children without food;— for these droves of human wretchedness, have they no commiseration ? • Lord Stanley † Lord Egerton. Sir James Graham. What connexion is there between tithes and borough-rates-between the corporation fund and the ensanguined treasure of the church? On a municipal election, I cannot conceive any one question by possibility to arise on which the priesthood can take the least political, personal, or any other imaginable concern. But in parliamentary elections what is at stake? The abolition of that detestable impost which has drenched Ireland in blood-which has produced atrocities from which every feeling of humanity, and every sentiment of religion are abhorrent, and which ought to make certain religious men whom I see before me, kneel down and pray to God every night, before they sleep, that for Rathcormac they may be forgiven. Interfere at elections! Yes:-the priests achieved emancipation, and broke down the power of the Beresfords in Waterford, annihilated the Fosters in Louth, and triumphantly carried the Clare election. Led on by them, the intrepid peasantry rushed to the hustings with the fearlessness with which Irish soldiers precipitate themselves into the breach, drove Toryism from its holds, and of the emancipation of their country planted the immovable standard. In the same noble cause they devotedly persevere. Never, until the tithe question shall be justly adjusted, will the clergy of Ireland intermit their efforts to achieve the redress of those grievances to which the disturbed state of that country may be referred. But you that talk of the Irish clergy, have you no cause to look at home? Do your priesthood never interpose in political questions? I ask the honourable member for Exeter, who has read a letter from a Catholic bishop of Carlow, whether of the Bishop of Exeter, he has ever, peradventure, chanced to hear? He has referred to the Popish Doctor Nolan-has he no reason to recollect the Protestant Doctor Phillpotts? That learned prelate I admire for his talents; but surely they do not surpass the political zeal, with which his religious emotions are associated. All allowance should be made for the Catholic bishop, by those whose cause is so materially promoted by the Protestant prelate upon the other. But turn from Exeter to Ireland. Has this house never heard of the Reverend Mr. Boyton? He is the founder of the Brunswick Clubs, and it was proved in evidence, before the Orange committee, that he actually moved the erection of an Orange lodge in one of his Majesty's regiments. This was the individual whom my Lord Haddington selected to officiate as one of the chaplains at the Castle. Talk, indeed, of the Catholic clergy In November, 1834, a meeting of the Orange Society was held in Dublin, at which the Lord Mayor of the city of Dublin presided, and at which the Reverend Mr. M'Crea recited a poem, the burden of which was Then, put your trust in God, my boys, never neard the poetry of this belligerent predestinarian made the ubject of censure by those who condemn the political interposition of he Catholic priesthood. Sir, I think that I can demonstrate that every objection on a religious ground, so far as the church is involved, to municipal reform in Ireland, was just as applicable to municipal reform In England. It is said that corporations were established in Ireland to |