whom he knows nothing but that he is the agent to a Conservative association in the county of Tipperary. It requires some intrepidity to rest such a bill upon testimony of this kind. But since great importance

is attached to the letters of Conservative functionaries, what will the noble lord say to the circular issued by the agent to the Conservative club, in the county of Cork, which has been read, and of which the authenticity has not been disputed in this house? That letter enjoins the importance of stripping the tenantry of lay landlords of the elective franchise. But since I am speaking of the county of Cork, what, let we ask, is the constituency of that great county? The population exceeds 700,000; the constituency does not amount to 4000. The same disproportion between the constituency and the representation prevails in every other district in Ireland. Let statistics be compared with the statements of the noble lord; let statistics, in which there is no faction, no baffled ambition, no spirit of rancorous conversion, be compared with the evidence with which the noble lord endeavours to sustain his case. If his assertions be well founded-if the noble lord do not labour under the most egregious misconceptions-the registry of Ireland would present an enormous constituency; but the direct reverse is the fact. The constituency is miserably small; but small as it is, it has been too large for your purposes, small as it is, your projects have been defeated, your aspirations have been thwarted, and the country has been saved by it from your dominion. It must be reduced to dimensons more in conformity with your views, and accordingly. by the very first clause in your bill, one-half of the registered constituency is to be disfranchised by the operation of that clause, thus :-A farmer, call him for the sake of distinctness, John Morrisy, lives forty miles from Cork: on the 1st of October, 1836, John Morissy served notice to register; he attended at the sessions on the 20th; his lease was produced, he underwent a strict scrutiny, and after a full investigation was duly registered his right is vested, and he voted at the last general election in the exercise of that right. The bill of the noble lord with the clause in debate passes. John Morissy's landlord objects to his retention on the registry. He is compelled to go through the same vexatious process as before, and is registered again. His landlord appeals against the registry; for three months no decision can be had, and, in the interval, to the relation of landlord and tenant, that of appellant and respondent is superadded. At length the judges of assize arrive, and Jolin Morissy leaves his fields, his plough, his harrow, and sets off for Cork. He reaches the court-house, after a journey of forty miles, and has the advantage of witnessing the trials of some ejectments for non-payment of rent, from which valuable intimations are derived by him. At length his appeal is called on, counsel are employed against him by Mr. Nettles the agent to the Conservative Club, and the case is powerfully stated by some learned sergeant with a minacious aspect, and ultra-forensic faculties of intimidation. His own landlord is produced as a witness against him, and after a fierce political struggle, the learned judge strikes him off the registry; and availing himself of the power with which he is specially invested by the noble lord, mulets him in costa,

and sends him home without a shilling in his pocket as an example to all refractory tenants, and an exemplification of the advantages which the noble lord, our very peculiar benefactor, is determined to inflict upon the Irish people. It is fortunate, I think, that in the first clause of this bill so much of its worst matter is condensed, for an opportunity is given at the outset to those who voted for going into a committee to repair any mistake into which, under a conscientious, but recent sense of duty, they may have been unwittingly betrayed. In the assault committed upon the existing registry they will hardly concur. It was a strong measure to disfranchise the forty-shilling freeholders-to the last it was resisted by Lord Grey; not even for the sake of emancipation would he sacrifice the rights of those by whom the most imperative argument for emancipation had been supplied. But for what purpose is this new infringement upon principle to be perpetrated? For a purpose in reference to which he must indeed be a sceptic, by whom the slightest doubt is entertained. Protestations, indeed, in sufficient abundance are made by the promoters of this measure; that they look to nothing more than the suppression of the abuses at which their moral sense revolts. At abuses their moral sense does not always so readily take alarm; witness the Irish corporations, for whose peculations and whose frauds, by so many shifts and expedients, a discreditable impunity has been so long procured. But it is sufficient to look across that table to estimate the value of the clause which the noble lord has placed in the outset of his bill. If the motives by which this project is dictated were ostensibly the most pure and the most disinterested, by the general policy of the noble lord the specific proposition should still be fairly tried. To the gift, however specious, an apprehension of the donor should be extended; but in this instance, the object of the noble lord is not only undisguised, but a veil of the flimsiest texture is scarce cast upon it. Who, that looks back to the incidents fresh in the recollection of every one of us, can entertain the least question relative to the purposes of this measure? In 1835, it was avowed that the Tory party looked to the divisions that prevailed between the Whigs and the Irish members as a means of carrying on what was termed by a great misnomer a Conservative government. Had those divisions still subsisted, I do not think that so lynx-eyed a vigilance would have been displayed in detecting the abuses of the Irish registry. In 1837, on the accession of her Majesty to the throne, a general election took place, and eight additional members were returned by the Irish popular party. It became indispensable for the purposes of Toryism that the phalanx by which the ministers were supported should be broken up. There existed at that time a tribunal for the trial of election petitions, whose proceedings were of the most censurable character. It did great credit to the member for Tamworth that he contributed to the abolition of that tribunal in 1839; but of that which he contributed to abolish in 1839, the Tory Darty availed themselves in 1837. The Spottiswood conspiracy was formed, and large sums were levied, in order, through the instrumentality of that profligate tribunal, that the representatives of the people of Ireland should be expelled from the House of Commons. That pro

ceeding, bad as it was, found its most strenuous advocates among the champions of this measure. The men who expatiated so pathetically upon the abuses of the Irish registry, turned that scandalous system of adjudication to account. Who that looks back to that transaction can doubt that the blow which was aimed at the representation, is now directed against the constituency? During the last recess the labours of the Conservative press were devoted to the impeachment of the £10 constituency. On the 19th of December last it was officially announced in the great Conservative journal that this measure would be brought forward. The session commences-the honourable baronet, the member for Devonshire, moves his celebrated resolution. In the debate that ensued, the most offensive distinctions were taken between the English and the Irish members-the spirit, the animus of this project was made manifest. That the men by whom, or on whose behalf such sentiments were uttered, should support a measure of disfranchisement like this, is natural and consistent; but it is most unnatural and most inconsistent that any man calling himself a Reformer should co-operate in such an enterprise, and should become the auxiliary of a man who, upon every Irish question, is utterly destitute of the slightest claim upon the confidence of parliament, who was told by Lord Althorp to his face, in the face of the house and of the country, that his administration of Ireland had been a lamentable failure-who has since that time, by the extent of his political transitions, acquired a new title to the disrelish of one country, and to the distrust of both-who deals for ever in extremes -was ready to swamp the Lords when he was a Whig, and is ready to swamp the people when he has turned a Tory-lauded the Irish members to the skies in 1832, when it suited his purpose, and would now slap the door of the House of Commons in their faces; and of all the traits in the political character of the noble lord, of all the incidents to his political conduct the most to be lamented—who, after having denounce:i an expiring faction," and held them up to public scorn, now leagues himself with that bad Irish party which he represented as miserable, and which is not the less deserving of the designation which he thought it not unmeet to employ in their regard, because he has combined with them for the achievement of their pernicious projects, and has so far forgotten the principles which ought to have descended to him as an inheritance, as to prostitute his talents for the atttainment of purposes to which every beating of his heart must at this moment tell him that they ought never to have been applied; and is this the man- is it to such a man that the delicate and difficult, and almost perilous task of legislating for Ireland ought to be confided—is this the man to whom we are to surrender the franchise of the country, upon which he inflicted calamities so fearful, and which was driven almost to insurrection by his misrule? See what in the course of a few weeks he has accomplished. The country was at rest-political excitement had subsided-that wise policy to which last year this house bore an attestation so signal, had produced the most salutary fruits. No public meetings were heid, the tithe question had been adjusted, and the very name of a measure, to Englishmen of all others the most obnoxious, was scarcely uttered. A general

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calm prevailed. Suddenly the noble lord bursts like a hurricane upon us. The elements of confusion are at once let loose, and the country is swept back into that tempestuous agitation from which we deemed ourselves secure. Stop, while there is yet time-stop the noble lord in his career of mischief, or the consequences may be irretrievable. You may gain a temporary triumph; you may rob us of the fruits of that emancipation which the itinerant incendiaries invite you openly and directly to rescind; but your victories will be dearly purchased. Of Ireland-of organized, confederated, discontented' Ireland, beware; beware of that country which you ought to have been instructed by experience fearful, if not humiliating, not to hold in disregard. Twelve months have scarcely passed since the member for Tamworth declared that Ireland presented to him his greatest difficulty. Will that difficulty be diminished by the sinister co-operation of his noble and exceedingly formidable friend? Persevere in that policy by which this measure had been prompted, and Ireland will soon be in a condition more fearful than that which preceded emancipation. You will enter again into an encounter with that gigantic agitation by which you were before discomfited, and by which (for its power is treble) you will be again overthrown; for all the consequences that will ensue from the excitement which you will have wantonly engendered, you will be responsible: you will be responsible for the calamities which will gush in, in abundance so disastrous, from the sources of bitterness which you will have unsealed. If Ireland shall be arrested in the march of improvement in which she has been under a Whig government rapidly advancing-if Ireland shall be thrown back fifty years-if the value of property shall be impairedit the security of property shall be shaken-if political animosities shall be embittered-if religious detestations shall become more rabid and more envenomed-if the mind of Ireland shall become one heated mass, ready to catch fire at a single spark; for all this you will be responsible. And do not think that it is to Ireland that the evil effects of your impolicy will be confined. If in this country the fell spirit of democracy which lately appeared amongst you shall be resuscitated, I do not think that to your Irish garrison (for what will your army be but a garrison ?) you can with confidence look for succour. There is reason too, to apprehend that the state of Ireland may affect you in your foreign relations---that England will not maintain the post and dignity that become her-that foreign cabinets may take advantage of our intestine dissensions to exact from us humiliating conditions-and that thus, to the maintenance of Protestant ascendancy in a distracted province, you will sacrifice the ascendancy of England through the world. It is of that ascendancy, that better, nobler, and more exalted ascendancy, that I am the advocate; and it is because I am so, because I am as devoted to the maintenance of the glory, the honour, and the power of this great country, as if I were born among yourselves, and from my birth had breathed no other air than you have-it is for this that I am solicitous that you should not relinquish one of the noblest means of its sustainment, and that I warn you not to hazard the affections, the warm, devoted, enthusiastic affections of millions of high-minded and high-hearted men ; but to preserve,

in a spirit of wise conservation, the great moral bulwark which you find in those affections-which does not form an item in your estimates, which is so cheap that it costs nothing but justice, and which, as long as you shall retain, so long, against every evil that may befal you, your empire will be impregnably secure.

THE SUGAR DUTIES.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MAY 18, 1841.

THE department with which I have the honour to be connected (the Board of Trade) will afford me a justification for interfering in this debate; it has been protracted beyond the ordinary period of the duration of our debates, but not to a period incommensurate with the importance the incalculable importance, of a subject upon which, in the exercise of their appellate jurisdiction, the people of England must ultimately decide. I shall not trespass upon the indulgence of those who surround me, or upon the forbearance of those to whom I am opposed, at any inappropriate length. I shall confine myself to the resolution of the noble lord, and do my best to avoid the example of those who have wandered far away from it, and who have indulged in dissertations not more mysterious to their auditors than to themselves. I shall, Sir, in the first instance, address myself to that branch of the question in reference to which, the people of England, the virtuous and humane people of England, feel a deep and a most honourable concern. If, Sir, to the progress of the slave-trade, by an exorbitant differential duty between colonial and foreign sugar, any effectual impediment were interposed-if, notwithstanding that exorbitant differential duty, the slave-trade were not successful ic an extent which has been stated, with too much justice, in the course of this debate, to cast a stain upon Christian Europe-if to slave-grown sugar every port upon the Continent were not thrown widely and indiscriminately open-if with the produce of slave-labour in many forms, coffee, cotton, tobacco, our own markets were not glutted— if we were not ourselves the importers, the refiners, and the re-exporters of slave-grown sugar to the Continent, ay, and to our own colonial possessions, to an enormous annual amount, I am free to confess that with regard to the propriety of making a reduction of a differential duty, thus supposed for a moment, for the purposes of humanity as well as of monopoly, to be effectual, I should be disposed to entertain a doubt But, Sir, when I consider that in checking the progress of the slave