No More Learning

Simplicity is not their fashion. But they
understand and respect the simplicity of our fashions. Our plain
clothing commands far more reverence than all the jewels which the most
tawdry Zemindar wears; and our plain language carries with it far more
weight than the florid diction of the most ingenious Persian scribe. The
plain language and the plain clothing are inseparably associated in the
minds of our subjects with superior knowledge, with superior energy,
with superior veracity, with all the high and commanding qualities which
erected, and which still uphold, our empire. Sir, if, as the speech of
the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control seems to
indicate, Lord Ellenborough has adopted this style on principle, if it
be his lordship's deliberate intention to mimic, in his State papers,
the Asiatic modes of thought and expression, that alone would be a
reason for recalling him. But the honourable gentlemen is mistaken in
thinking that this proclamation is in the Oriental taste. It bears no
resemblance to the very bad Oriental compositions which he has read
to us, nor to any other Oriental compositions that I ever saw. It is
neither English nor Indian. It is not original, however; and I will tell
the House where the Governor General found his models. He has apparently
been studying the rants of the French Jacobins during the period of
their ascendency, the Carmagnoles of the Convention, the proclamations
issued by the Directory and its Proconsuls: and he has been seized with
a desire to imitate those compositions. The pattern which he seems to
have especially proposed to himself is the rhodomontade in which it was
announced that the modern Gauls were marching to Rome in order to avenge
the fate of Dumnorix and Vercingetorex. Everybody remembers those lines
in which revolutionary justice is described by Mr Canning:--

"Not she in British courts who takes her stand,
The dawdling balance dangling in her hand;
But firm, erect, with keen reverted glance,
The avenging angel of regenerate France,
Who visits ancient sins on modern times,
And punishes the Pope for Caesar's crimes. "

In the same spirit and in the same style our Governor General has
proclaimed his intention to retaliate on the Mussulmans beyond the
mountains the insults which their ancestors, eight hundred years ago,
offered to the idolatry of the Hindoos. To do justice to the Jacobins,
however, I must say that they had an excuse which was wanting to the
noble lord. The revolution had made almost as great a change in literary
tastes as in political institutions. The old masters of French eloquence
had shared the fate of the old states and of the old parliaments. The
highest posts in the administration were filled by persons who had
no experience of affairs, who in the general confusion had raised
themselves by audacity and quickness of natural parts, uneducated men,
or half educated men, who had no notion that the style in which they had
heard the heroes and villains of tragedies declaim on the stage was
not the style of real warriors and statesmen. But was it for an English
gentleman, a man of distinguished abilities and cultivated mind, a man
who had sate many years in parliament, and filled some of the highest
posts in the State, to copy the productions of such a school?

But, it is said, what does it matter if the noble lord has written
a foolish rhapsody which is neither prose nor verse? Is affected
phraseology a subject for parliamentary censure? What great ruler can be
named who has not committed errors much more serious than the penning of
a few sentences of turgid nonsense? This, I admit, sounds plausible.
It is quite true that very eminent men, Lord Somers, for example, Sir
Robert Walpole, Lord Chatham and his son, all committed faults which did
much more harm than any fault of style can do. But I beg the House to
observe this, that an error which produces the most serious consequences
may not necessarily prove that the man who has committed it is not a
very wise man; and that, on the other hand, an error which directly
produces no important consequences may prove the man who has committed
it to be quite unfit for public trust. Walpole committed a ruinous
error when he yielded to the public cry for war with Spain. But,
notwithstanding that error, he was an eminently wise man. Caligula, on
the other hand, when he marched his soldiers to the beach, made them
fill their helmets with cockle-shells, and sent the shells to be placed
in the Capitol as trophies of his conquests, did no great harm to
anybody; but he surely proved that he was quite incapable of governing
an empire. Mr Pitt's expedition to Quiberon was most ill judged, and
ended in defeat and disgrace. Yet Mr Pitt was a statesman of a very high
order. On the other hand, such ukases as those by which the Emperor
Paul used to regulate the dress of the people of Petersburg, though they
caused much less misery than the slaughter at Quiberon, proved that
the Emperor Paul could not safely be trusted with power over his
fellow-creatures. One day he forbade the wearing of pantaloons. Another
day he forbade his subjects to comb their hair over their foreheads.
Then he proscribed round hats. A young Englishman, the son of a
merchant, thought to evade this decree by going about the city in a
hunting cap. Then came out an edict which made it penal to wear on the
head a round thing such as the English merchant's son wore. Now, Sir,
I say that, when I examine the substance of Lord Ellenborough's
proclamation, and consider all the consequences which that paper is
likely to produce, I am forced to say that he has committed a grave
moral and political offence. When I examine the style, I see that he
has committed an act of eccentric folly, much of the same kind with
Caligula's campaign against the cockles, and with the Emperor Paul's
ukase against round hats. Consider what an extravagant selfconfidence,
what a disdain for the examples of his great predecessors and for the
opinions of the ablest and most experienced men who are now to be found
in the Indian services, this strange document indicates. Surely it might
have occurred to Lord Ellenborough that, if this kind of eloquence had
been likely to produce a favourable impression on the minds of Asiatics,
such Governors as Warren Hastings, Mr Elphinstone, Sir Thomas Munro,
and Sir Charles Metcalfe, men who were as familiar with the language and
manners of the native population of India as any man here can be
with the language and manners of the French, would not have left the
discovery to be made by a new comer who did not know any Eastern tongue.
Surely, too, it might have occurred to the noble lord that, before he
put forth such a proclamation, he would do well to ask some person who
knew India intimately what the effect both on the Mahometans and Hindoos
was likely to be. I firmly believe that the Governor General either did
not ask advice or acted in direct opposition to advice. Mr Maddock was
with his lordship as acting Secretary. Now I know enough of Mr Maddock
to be quite certain that he never counselled the Governor General to
publish such a paper. I will pawn my life that he either was never
called upon to give an opinion, or that he gave an opinion adverse to
the course which has been taken. No Governor General who was on good
terms with the civil service would have been, I may say, permitted to
expose himself thus. Lord William Bentinck and Lord Auckland were, to be
sure, the last men in the world to think of doing such a thing as this.
But if either of those noble lords, at some unlucky moment when he was
not quite himself, when his mind was thrown off the balance by the pride
and delight of an extraordinary success, had proposed to put forth such
a proclamation, he would have been saved from committing so great a
mistake by the respectful but earnest remonstrances of those in whom
he placed confidence, and who were solicitous for his honour. From the
appearance of this proclamation, therefore, I infer that the terms on
which Lord Ellenborough is with the civil servants of the Company are
such that those servants could not venture to offer him counsel when he
most needed it.

For these reasons, Sir, I think the noble lord unfit for high public
trust. Let us, then, consider the nature of the public trust which
is now reposed in him. Are gentlemen aware that, even when he is at
Calcutta, surrounded by his councillors, his single voice can carry any
resolution concerning the executive administration against them all?
They can object: they can protest: they can record their opinions
in writing, and can require him to give in writing his reasons for
persisting in his own course: but they must then submit. On the most
important questions, on the question whether a war shall be declared,
on the question whether a treaty shall be concluded, on the question
whether the whole system of land revenue established in a great province
shall be changed, his single vote weighs down the votes of all who
sit at the Board with him. The right honourable Baronet opposite is a
powerful minister, a more powerful minister than any that we have seen
during many years. But I will venture to say that his power over the
people of England is nothing when compared with the power which the
Governor General possesses over the people of India. Such is Lord
Ellenborough's power when he is with his council, and is to some extent
held in check. But where is he now? He has given his council the slip.
He is alone. He has near him no person who is entitled and bound to
offer advice, asked or unasked: he asks no advice: and you cannot expect
men to outstep the strict line of their official duty by obtruding
advice on a superior by whom it would be ungraciously received. The
danger of having a rash and flighty Governor General is sufficiently
serious at the very best. But the danger of having such a Governor
General up the country, eight or nine hundred miles from any person who
has a right to remonstrate with him, is fearful indeed. Interests so
vast, that the most sober language in which they can be described sounds
hyperbolical, are entrusted to a single man; to a man who, whatever
his parts may be, and they are doubtless considerable, has shown an
indiscretion and temerity almost beyond belief; to a man who has been
only a few months in India; to a man who takes no counsel with those who
are well acquainted with India.

I cannot sit down without addressing myself to those Directors of the
East India Company who are present. I exhort them to consider the heavy
responsibility which rests on them. They have the power to recall Lord
Ellenborough; and I trust that they will not hesitate to exercise that
power. This is the advice of one who has been their servant, who has
served them loyally, and who is still sincerely anxious for their credit
and for the welfare of the empire of which they are the guardians. But
if, from whatever cause, they are unwilling to recall the noble lord,
then I implore them to take care that he be immediately ordered to
return to Calcutta. Who can say what new freak we may hear of by the
next mail? I am quite confident that neither the Court of Directors nor
Her Majesty's Ministers can look forward to the arrival of that mail
without great uneasiness. Therefore I say, send Lord Ellenborough back
to Calcutta. There at least he will find persons who have a right to
advise him and to expostulate with him, and who will, I doubt not, have
also the spirit to do so. It is something that he will be forced to
record his reasons for what he does. It is something that he will be
forced to hear reasons against his propositions. It is something that a
delay, though only of twenty-four hours, will be interposed between the
first conception of a wild scheme and the execution. I am afraid that
these checks will not be sufficient to prevent much evil: but they are
not absolutely nugatory. I entreat the Directors to consider in what
a position they will stand if, in consequence of their neglect, some
serious calamity should befall the country which is confided to their
care. I will only say, in conclusion, that, if there be any use in
having a Council of India, if it be not meant that the members of
Council should draw large salaries for doing nothing, if they are really
appointed for the purpose of assisting and restraining the Governor,
it is to the last degree absurd that their powers should be in abeyance
when there is a Governor who, of all the Governors that ever England
sent to the East, stands most in need both of assistance and of
restraint.

*****




THE STATE OF IRELAND. (FEBRUARY 19, 1844) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE
HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 19TH OF FEBRUARY 1844.

On the thirteenth of February 1844, Lord John Russell moved for a
Committee of the whole House to take into consideration the state of
Ireland. After a discussion of nine nights the motion was rejected by
324 votes to 225. On the fifth night of the debate the following Speech
was made.

I cannot refrain, Sir, from congratulating you and the House that I
did not catch your eye when I rose before. I should have been extremely
sorry to have prevented any Irish member from addressing the House on a
question so interesting to Ireland, but peculiarly sorry to have stood
in the way of the honourable gentleman who to-night pleaded the cause of
his country with so much force and eloquence. (Mr J. O'Brien. )

I am sorry to say that I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to follow
the advice which has been just given me by my honourable friend the
Member for Pomfret (Mr R. Milnes. ), with all the authority which, as he
has reminded us, belongs to his venerable youth. I cannot at all agree
with him in thinking that the wisest thing that we can do is to suffer
Her Majesty's Ministers to go on in their own way, seeing that the
way in which they have long been going on is an exceedingly bad one. I
support the motion of my noble friend for these plain reasons.

First, I hold that Ireland is in a most unsatisfactory, indeed in a most
dangerous, state.

Secondly, I hold that for the state in which Ireland is Her Majesty's
Ministers are in a great measure accountable, and that they have not
shown, either as legislators, or as administrators, that they are
capable of remedying the evils which they have caused.

Now, Sir, if I make out these two propositions, it will follow that
it is the constitutional right and duty of the representatives of the
nation to interfere; and I conceive that my noble friend, by moving
for a Committee of the whole House, has proposed a mode of interference
which is both parliamentary and convenient.

My first proposition, Sir, will scarcely be disputed. Both sides of the
House are fully agreed in thinking that the condition of Ireland may
well excite great anxiety and apprehension. That island, in extent about
one fourth of the United Kingdom, in population more than one-fourth,
superior probably in natural fertility to any area of equal size in
Europe, possessed of natural facilities for trade such as can nowhere
else be found in an equal extent of coast, an inexhaustible nursery of
gallant soldiers, a country far more important to the prosperity,
the strength, the dignity of this great empire than all our distant
dependencies together, than the Canadas and the West Indies added to
Southern Africa, to Australasia, to Ceylon, and to the vast dominions
of the Moguls, that island, Sir, is acknowledged by all to be so ill
affected and so turbulent that it must, in any estimate of our power,
be not added but deducted. You admit that you govern that island, not as
you govern England and Scotland, but as you govern your new conquests in
Scinde; not by means of the respect which the people feel for the laws,
but by means of bayonets, of artillery, of entrenched camps.

My first proposition, then, I take to be conceded. Ireland is in a
dangerous state. The question which remains to be considered is, whether
for the state in which Ireland is Her Majesty's Ministers are to be held
accountable.

Now, Sir, I at once admit that the distempers of Ireland must in part be
attributed to causes for which neither Her Majesty's present Ministers
nor any public men now living can justly be held accountable. I will not
trouble the House with a long dissertation on those causes. But it is
necessary, I think, to take at least a rapid glance at them: and in
order to do so, Sir, we must go back to a period not only anterior to
the birth of the statesmen who are now arrayed against each other on
the right and left of your chair, but anterior to the birth even of the
great parties of which those statesmen are the leaders; anterior to the
days when the names of Tory and Whig, of court party and country party,
of cavalier and roundhead, came into use; anterior to the existence
of those Puritans to whom the honourable Member for Shrewsbury (Mr
Disraeli. ), in a very ingenious speech, ascribed all the calamities of
Ireland.

The primary cause is, no doubt, the manner in which Ireland became
subject to the English crown. The annexation was effected by conquest,
and by conquest of a peculiar kind. It was not a conquest such as we
have been accustomed to see in modern Europe. It was not a conquest
like that which united Artois and Franche Comte to France, or Silesia
to Prussia. It was the conquest of a race by a race, such a conquest as
that which established the dominion of the Spaniard over the American
Indian, or of the Mahratta over the peasant of Guzerat or Tanjore. Of
all forms of tyranny, I believe that the worst is that of a nation over
a nation. Populations separated by seas and mountain ridges may call
each other natural enemies, may wage long wars with each other, may
recount with pride the victories which they have gained over each other,
and point to the flags, the guns, the ships which they have won from
each other. But no enmity that ever existed between such populations
approaches in bitterness the mutual enmity felt by populations which
are locally intermingled, but which have never morally and politically
amalgamated; and such were the Englishry and the Irishry. Yet it might
have been hoped that the lapse of time and the progress of civilisation
would have effaced the distinction between the oppressors and the
oppressed. Our island had suffered cruelly from the same evil. Here the
Saxon had trampled on the Celt, the Dane on the Saxon, the Norman on
Celt, Saxon, and Dane. Yet in the course of ages all the four races had
been fused together to form the great English people. A similar fusion
would probably have taken place in Ireland, but for the Reformation. The
English settlers adopted the Protestant doctrines which were received
in England. The Aborigines alone, among all the nations of the north
of Europe, adhered to the ancient faith. Thus the line of demarcation
between the two populations was deepened and widened. The old enmity
was reinforced by a new enmity stronger still. Then came those events
to which the honourable Member for Shrewsbury referred. The spirit of
liberty in England was closely allied with the spirit of Puritanism, and
was mortally hostile to the Papacy. Such men as Hampden, Vane, Milton,
Locke, though zealous generally for civil and spiritual freedom, yet
held that the Roman Catholic worship had no claim to toleration. On the
other hand, all the four kings of the House of Stuart showed far
more favour to Roman Catholics than to any class of Protestant
nonconformists. James the First at one time had some hopes of effecting
a reconciliation with the Vatican. Charles the First entered into secret
engagements to grant an indulgence to Roman Catholics. Charles the
Second was a concealed Roman Catholic. James the Second was an avowed
Roman Catholic. Consequently, through the whole of the seventeenth
century, the freedom of Ireland and the slavery of England meant the
same thing. The watchwords, the badges, the names, the places, the days,
which in the mind of an Englishman were associated with deliverance,
prosperity, national dignity, were in the mind of an Irishman associated
with bondage, ruin, and degradation. The memory of William the Third,
the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, are instances. I was much
struck by a circumstance which occurred on a day which I have every
reason to remember with gratitude and pride, the day on which I had the
high honour of being declared one of the first two members for the great
borough of Leeds. My chair was covered with orange ribands. The horses
which drew it could hardly be seen for the profusion of orange-coloured
finery with which they were adorned. Orange cockades were in all the
hats; orange favours at all the windows. And my supporters, I need
not say, were men who had, like myself, been zealous for Catholic
emancipation. I could not help remarking that the badge seemed rather
incongruous. But I was told that the friends of Catholic emancipation
in Yorkshire had always rallied under the orange banner, that orange was
the colour of Sir George Savile, who brought in that bill which caused
the No Popery riots of 1780, and that the very chair in which I sate
was the chair in which Lord Milton, now Earl Fitzwilliam, had triumphed
after the great victory which he won in 1807 over the No Popery party,
then headed by the house of Harewood. I thought how different an effect
that procession would have produced at Limerick or Cork, with what howls
of rage and hatred the Roman Catholic population of those cities
would have pursued that orange flag which, to every Roman Catholic in
Yorkshire, was the memorial of contests maintained in favour of his own
dearest rights. This circumstance, however slight, well illustrates
the singular contrast between the history of England and the history of
Ireland.

Well, Sir, twice during the seventeenth century the Irish rose up
against the English colony. Twice they were completely put down; and
twice they were severely chastised. The first rebellion was crushed by
Oliver Cromwell; the second by William the Third. Those great men did
not use their victory exactly in the same way. The policy of Cromwell
was wise, and strong, and straightforward, and cruel. It was comprised
in one word, which, as Clarendon tells us, was often in the mouths of
the Englishry of that time. That word was extirpation. The object of
Cromwell was to make Ireland thoroughly Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. If
he had lived twenty years longer he might perhaps have accomplished that
work: but he died while it was incomplete; and it died with him.
The policy of William, or to speak more correctly, of those whose
inclinations William was under the necessity of consulting, was less
able, less energetic, and, though more humane in seeming, perhaps not
more humane in reality. Extirpation was not attempted. The Irish Roman
Catholics were permitted to live, to be fruitful, to replenish the
earth: but they were doomed to be what the Helots were in Sparta, what
the Greeks were under the Ottoman, what the blacks now are at New York.
Every man of the subject caste was strictly excluded from public trust.
Take what path he might in life, he was crossed at every step by some
vexatious restriction. It was only by being obscure and inactive that
he could, on his native soil, be safe. If he aspired to be powerful
and honoured, he must begin by being an exile. If he pined for military
glory, he might gain a cross or perhaps a Marshal's staff in the
armies of France or Austria. If his vocation was to politics, he might
distinguish himself in the diplomacy of Italy or Spain. But at home he
was a mere Gibeonite, a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. The statute
book of Ireland was filled with enactments which furnish to the Roman
Catholics but too good a ground for recriminating on us when we talk
of the barbarities of Bonner and Gardiner; and the harshness of those
odious laws was aggravated by a more odious administration. For, bad as
the legislators were, the magistrates were worse still. In those evil
times originated that most unhappy hostility between landlord and
tenant, which is one of the peculiar curses of Ireland. Oppression and
turbulence reciprocally generated each other. The combination of rustic
tyrants was resisted by gangs of rustic banditti. Courts of law and
juries existed only for the benefit of the dominant sect. Those priests
who were revered by millions as their natural advisers and guardians,
as the only authorised expositors of Christian truth, as the only
authorised dispensers of the Christian sacraments, were treated by the
squires and squireens of the ruling faction as no good-natured man would
treat the vilest beggar. In this manner a century passed away. Then came
the French Revolution and the great awakening of the mind of Europe. It
would have been wonderful indeed if, when the happiest and most tranquil
nations were agitated by vague discontents and vague hopes, Ireland had
remained at rest. Jacobinism, it is true, was not a very natural ally
of the Roman Catholic religion. But common enmities produce strange
coalitions; and a strange coalition was formed. There was a third great
rising of the aboriginal population of the island against English and
Protestant ascendency. That rising was put down by the sword; and it
became the duty of those who were at the head of affairs to consider how
the victory should be used.

I shall not be suspected of being partial to the memory of Mr Pitt. But
I cannot refuse to him the praise both of wisdom and of humanity, when I
compare the plan which he formed in that hour of triumph with the plans
of those English rulers who had before him governed Ireland. Of Mr
Pitt's plan the Union was a part, an excellent and an essential part
indeed, but still only a part. We shall do great injustice both to his
head and to his heart, if we forget that he was permitted to carry
into effect only some unconnected portions of a comprehensive and
well-concerted scheme. He wished to blend, not only the parliaments, but
the nations, and to make the two islands one in interest and affection.
With that view the Roman Catholic disabilities were to be removed: the
Roman Catholic priests were to be placed in a comfortable and honourable
position; and measures were to be taken for the purpose of giving to
Roman Catholics the benefits of liberal education. In truth, Mr Pitt's
opinions on those subjects had, to a great extent, been derived from a
mind even more powerful and capacious than his own, from the mind of Mr
Burke. If the authority of these two great men had prevailed, I believe
that the Union with Ireland would now have been as secure, and as
much beyond the reach of agitation, as the Union with Scotland. The
Parliament in College Green would have been remembered as what it was,
the most tyrannical, the most venal, the most unprincipled assembly
that ever sate on the face of this earth. I do not think that, by saying
this, I can give offence to any gentleman from Ireland, however zealous
for Repeal he may be: for I only repeat the language of Wolfe Tone.
Wolfe Tone said that he had seen more deliberative assemblies than most
men; that he had seen the English Parliament, the American Congress,
the French Council of Elders and Council of Five Hundred, the Batavian
Convention; but that he had nowhere found anything like the baseness and
impudence of the scoundrels, as he called them, at Dublin. If Mr Pitt's
whole plan had been carried into execution, that infamous parliament,
that scandal to the name of parliament, would have perished unregretted;
and the last day of its existence would have been remembered by the
Roman Catholics of Ireland as the first day of their civil and religious
liberty. The great boon which he would have conferred on them would have
been gratefully received, because it could not have been ascribed to
fear, because it would have been a boon bestowed by the powerful on the
weak, by the victor on the vanquished. Unhappily, of all his projects
for the benefit of Ireland the Union alone was carried into effect; and
therefore that Union was an Union only in name. The Irish found that
they had parted with at least the name and show of independence, and
that for this sacrifice of national pride they were to receive no
compensation. The Union, which ought to have been associated in their
minds with freedom and justice, was associated only with disappointed
hopes and forfeited pledges. Yet it was not even then too late. It was
not too late in 1813. It was not too late in 1821. It was not too late
in 1825. Yes: if, even in 1825, some men who then were, as they now are,
high in the service of the crown, could have made up their minds to
do what they were forced to do four years later, that great work of
conciliation which Mr Pitt had meditated might have been accomplished.
The machinery of agitation was not yet fully organized: the Government
was under no strong pressure; and therefore concession might still
have been received with thankfulness. That opportunity was suffered to
escape; and it never returned.

In 1829, at length, concessions were made, were made largely, were made
without the conditions which Mr Pitt would undoubtedly have demanded,
and to which, if demanded by Mr Pitt, the whole body of Roman
Catholics would have eagerly assented.
But those concessions were made
reluctantly, made ungraciously, made under duress, made from the mere
dread of civil war. How then was it possible that they should produce
contentment and repose? What could be the effect of that sudden and
profuse liberality following that long and obstinate resistance to the
most reasonable demands, except to teach the Irishman that he could
obtain redress only by turbulence? Could he forget that he had been,
during eight and twenty years, supplicating Parliament for justice,
urging those unanswerable arguments which prove that the rights of
conscience ought to be held sacred, claiming the performance of promises
made by ministers and princes, and that he had supplicated, argued,
claimed the performance of promises in vain? Could he forget that two
generations of the most profound thinkers, the most brilliant wits, the
most eloquent orators, had written and spoken for him in vain? Could he
forget that the greatest statesman who took his part had paid dear for
their generosity? Mr Pitt endeavoured to redeem his pledge; and he was
driven from office. Lord Grey and Lord Grenville endeavoured to do but
a very small part of what Mr Pitt had thought right and expedient; and
they were driven from office. Mr Canning took the same side; and his
reward was to be worried to death by the party of which he was the
brightest ornament. At length, when he was gone, the Roman Catholics
began to look, not to cabinets and parliaments, but to themselves. They
displayed a formidable array of physical force, and yet kept within,
just within, the limits of the law. The consequence was that, in two
years, more than any prudent friend had ventured to demand for them was
granted to them by their enemies. Yes; within two years after Mr Canning
had been laid in the transept near us, all that he would have done, and
more than he could have done, was done by his persecutors. How was it
possible that the whole Roman Catholic population of Ireland should not
take up the notion that from England, or at least from the party which
then governed and which now governs England, nothing is to be got
by reason, by entreaty, by patient endurance, but everything by
intimidation? That tardy repentance deserved no gratitude, and obtained
none. The whole machinery of agitation was complete and in perfect
order. The leaders had tasted the pleasures of popularity; the multitude
had tasted the pleasures of excitement. Both the demagogue and his
audience felt a craving for the daily stimulant. Grievances enough
remained, God knows, to serve as pretexts for agitation: and the whole
conduct of the Government had led the sufferers to believe that by
agitation alone could any grievance be removed.

Such, Sir, is the history of the rise and progress of the disorders of
Ireland. Misgovernment, lasting without interruption from the reign
of Henry the Second to the reign of William the Fourth, has left us an
immense mass of discontent, which will, no doubt, in ordinary times,
make the task of any statesman whom the Queen may call to power
sufficiently difficult. But though this be true, it is not less true,
that the immediate causes of the extraordinary agitation which alarms us
at this moment is to be found in the misconduct of Her Majesty's present
advisers. For, Sir, though Ireland is always combustible, Ireland is not
always on fire. We must distinguish between the chronic complaints which
are to be attributed to remote causes, and the acute attack which
is brought on by recent imprudence. For though there is always a
predisposition to disease in that unhappy society, the violent paroxysms
come only at intervals. I must own that I am indebted for some of my
imagery to the right honourable Baronet the First Lord of the Treasury.
When he sate on this bench, and was only a candidate for the great place
which he now fills, he compared himself to a medical man at the bedside
of a patient. Continuing his metaphor, I may say that his prognosis, his
diagnosis, his treatment, have all been wrong. I do not deny that the
case was difficult. The sufferer was of a very ill habit of body, and
had formerly suffered many things of many physicians, and, among others,
I must say, of the right honourable Baronet himself. Still the malady
had, a very short time ago, been got under, and kept under by the
judicious use of lenitives; and there was reason to hope that if that
salutary regimen had been steadily followed, there would have been
a speedy improvement in the general health. Unhappily, the new State
hygeist chose to apply irritants which have produced a succession of
convulsive fits, each more violent than that which preceded it. To drop
the figure, it is impossible to doubt that Lord Melbourne's government
was popular with the great body of the Roman Catholics of Ireland. It is
impossible to doubt that the two Viceroys whom he sent to Ireland were
more loved and honoured by the Irish people than any Viceroys before
whom the sword of state has ever been borne. Under the late Government,
no doubt, the empire was threatened by many dangers; but, to whatever
quarter the Ministers might look with uneasy apprehension, to Ireland
they could always look with confidence. When bad men raised disturbances
here, when a Chartist rabble fired on the Queen's soldiers, numerous
regiments could, without the smallest risk, be spared from Ireland. When
a rebellion broke out in one of our colonies,--a rebellion too which it
might have been expected that the Irish would regard with favour, for it
was a rebellion of Roman Catholics against Protestant rulers,--even then
Ireland was true to the general interests of the empire, and troops were
sent from Munster and Connaught to put down insurrection in Canada. No
person will deny that if, in 1840, we had unhappily been forced
into war, and if a hostile army had landed in Bantry Bay, the whole
population of Cork and Tipperary would have risen up to defend the
throne of Her Majesty, and would have offered to the invaders a
resistance as determined as would have been offered by the men of Kent
or Norfolk. And by what means was this salutary effect produced? Not by
great legislative reforms: for, unfortunately, that Government, though
it had the will, had not the power to carry such reforms against the
sense of a strong minority in this House, and of a decided majority
of the Peers. No, Sir; this effect was produced merely by the wisdom,
justice, and humanity with which the existing law, defective as it might
be, was administered. The late Government, calumniated and thwarted at
every turn, contending against the whole influence of the Established
Church, and of the great body of the nobility and landed gentry, yet did
show a disposition to act kindly and fairly towards Ireland, and did, to
the best of its power, treat Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. If
we had been as strong as our successors in parliamentary support, if we
had been able to induce the two Houses to follow in legislation the same
principles by which we were guided in administration, the Union with
Ireland would now have been as secure from the assaults of agitators
as the Union with Scotland. But this was not to be. During six years an
opposition, formidable in numbers, formidable in ability, selected as
the especial object of the fiercest and most pertinacious attacks
those very acts of the Government which had, after centuries of mutual
animosity, half reconciled the two islands. Those Lords Lieutenant who,
in Ireland, were venerated as no preceding Lord Lieutenant had ever been
venerated, were here reviled as no preceding Lord Lieutenant had ever
been reviled. Every action, every word which was applauded by the nation
committed to their care, was here imputed to them as a crime. Every
bill framed by the advisers of the Crown for the benefit of Ireland was
either rejected or mutilated. A few Roman Catholics of distinguished
merit were appointed to situations which were indeed below their just
claims, but which were higher than any member of their Church had filled
during many generations. Two or three Roman Catholics were sworn of
the Council; one took his seat at the Board of Treasury; another at the
Board of Admiralty. There was great joy in Ireland; and no wonder.
What had been done was not much; but the ban had been taken off; the
Emancipation Act, which had been little more than a dead letter, was at
length a reality. But in England all the underlings of the great Tory
party set up a howl of rage and hatred worthy of Lord George Gordon's
No Popery mob. The right honourable Baronet now at the head of the
Treasury, with his usual prudence, abstained from joining in the cry,
and was content to listen to it, to enjoy it, and to profit by it. But
some of those who ranked next to him among the chiefs of the opposition,
did not imitate his politic reserve. One great man denounced the Irish
as aliens. Another called them minions of Popery. Those teachers of
religion to whom millions looked up with affection and reverence were
called by the Protestant press demon priests and surpliced ruffians, and
were denounced from the Protestant pulpit as pontiffs of Baal, as false
prophets who were to be slain with the sword. We were reminded that a
Queen of the chosen people had in the old time patronised the ministers
of idolatry, and that her blood had been given to the dogs. Not content
with throwing out or frittering down every law beneficial to Ireland,
not content with censuring in severe terms every act of the executive
government which gave satisfaction in Ireland, you, yes you, who now
fill the great offices of state, assumed the offensive. From obstruction
you proceeded to aggression. You brought in a bill which you called a
Bill for the Registration of Electors in Ireland. We then told you that
it was a bill for the wholesale disfranchisement of the electors
of Ireland. We then proved incontrovertibly that, under pretence of
reforming the law of procedure, you were really altering the substantive
law; that, by making it impossible for any man to vindicate his right to
vote without trouble, expense, and loss of time, you were really taking
away the votes of tens of thousands. You denied all this then. You very
coolly admit it all now. Am I to believe that you did know it as well
in 1841 as in 1844? Has one new fact been brought to light? Has one
argument been discovered which was not, three or four years ago, urged
twenty, thirty, forty times in this House? Why is it that you have,
when in power, abstained from proposing that change in the mode of
registration which, when you were out of power, you represented
as indispensable? You excuse yourselves by saying that now the
responsibilities of office are upon you. In plain words, your trick
has served its purpose. Your object,--for I will do justice to your
patriotism,--your object was not to ruin your country, but to get in;
and you are in. Such public virtue deserved such a reward, a reward
which has turned out a punishment, a reward which ought to be, while the
world lasts, a warning to unscrupulous ambition. Many causes contributed
to place you in your present situation. But the chief cause was, beyond
all doubt, the prejudice which you excited amongst the English against
the just and humane manner in which the late Ministers governed Ireland.
In your impatience for office, you called up the devil of religious
intolerance, a devil more easily evoked than dismissed. He did your
work; and he holds your bond. You once found him an useful slave: but
you have since found him a hard master. It was pleasant, no doubt, to be
applauded by high churchmen and low churchmen, by the Sheldonian Theatre
and by Exeter Hall. It was pleasant to be described as the champions
of the Protestant faith, as the men who stood up for the Gospel against
that spurious liberality which made no distinction between truth and
falsehood. It was pleasant to hear your opponents called by every
nickname that is to be found in the foul vocabulary of the Reverend
Hugh Mcneill. It was pleasant to hear that they were the allies of
Antichrist, that they were the servants of the man of sin, that they
were branded with the mark of the Beast. But when all this slander
and scurrility had raised you to power, when you found that you had
to manage millions of those who had been, year after year, constantly
insulted and defamed by yourselves and your lacqueys, your hearts began
to fail you. Now you tell us that you have none but kind and respectful
feelings towards the Irish Roman Catholics, that you wish to conciliate
them, that you wish to carry the Emancipation Act into full effect,
that nothing would give you more pleasure than to place on the bench of
justice a Roman Catholic lawyer of conservative politics, that nothing
would give you more pleasure than to place at the Board of Treasury, or
at the Board of Admiralty, some Roman Catholic gentleman of conservative
politics, distinguished by his talents for business or debate. Your only
reason, you assure us, for not promoting Roman Catholics is that all the
Roman Catholics are your enemies; and you ask whether any Minister can
be expected to promote his enemies. For my part I do not doubt that you
would willingly promote Roman Catholics: for, as I have said, I give
you full credit for not wishing to do your country more harm than is
necessary for the purpose of turning out and keeping out the Whigs.
I also fully admit that you cannot be blamed for not promoting your
enemies. But what I want to know is, how it happens that all the Roman
Catholics in the United Kingdom are your enemies. Was such a thing
ever heard of before? Here are six or seven millions of people of all
professions, of all trades, of all grades of rank, fortune, intellect,
education. Begin with the premier Peer, the Earl Marshal of the realm,
the chief of the Howards, the heir of the Mowbrays and Fitzalans, and
go down through earls, barons, baronets, lawyers, and merchants, to the
very poorest peasant that eats his potatoes without salt in Mayo; and
all these millions to a man are arrayed against the Government. How
do you explain this? Is there any natural connection between the Roman
Catholic theology and the political theories held by Whigs and by
reformers more democratical than the Whigs? Not only is there no natural
connection, but there is a natural opposition. Of all Christian sects
the Roman Catholic Church holds highest the authority of antiquity, of
tradition, of immemorial usage. Her spirit is eminently conservative,
nay, in the opinion of all Protestants, conservative to an unreasonable
and pernicious extent. A man who has been taught from childhood to
regard with horror all innovation in religion is surely less likely than
another man to be a bold innovator in politics. It is probable that a
zealous Roman Catholic, if there were no disturbing cause, would be a
Tory; and the Roman Catholics were all Tories till you persecuted them
into Whiggism and Radicalism. In the civil war, how many Roman Catholics
were there in Fairfax's army? I believe, not one. They were all under
the banner of Charles the First. When a reward of five thousand pounds
was offered for Charles the Second alive or dead, when to conceal
him was to run a most serious risk of the gallows, it was among
Roman Catholics that he found shelter. It has been the same in other
countries. When everything else in France was prostrate before the
Jacobins, the Roman Catholic peasantry of Brittany and Poitou still
stood up for the House of Bourbon. Against the gigantic power of
Napoleon, the Roman Catholic peasantry of the Tyrol maintained unaided
the cause of the House of Hapsburg. It would be easy to multiply
examples. And can we believe, in defiance of all reason and of all
history, that, if the Roman Catholics of the United Kingdom had been
tolerably well governed, they would not have been attached to the
Government? In my opinion the Tories never committed so great an error
as when they scourged away and spurned away the Roman Catholics. Mr
Burke understood this well. The sentiment which, towards the close
of his life, held the entire possession of his mind, was a horror,--a
morbid horror it at last became,--of Jacobinism, and of everything that
seemed to him to tend towards Jacobinism, and, like a great statesman
and philosopher,--for such he was even in his errors,--he perceived, and
he taught Mr Pitt to perceive, that, in the war against Jacobinism, the
Roman Catholics were the natural allies of royalty and aristocracy.
But the help of these allies was contumeliously rejected by those
politicians who make themselves ridiculous by carousing on Mr Pitt's
birthday, while they abjure all Mr Pitt's principles. The consequence
is, as you are forced to own, that there is not in the whole kingdom
a Roman Catholic of note who is your friend. Therefore, whatever your
inclinations may be, you must intrust power in Ireland to Protestants,
to Ultra-Protestants, to men who, whether they belong to Orange lodges
or not, are in spirit Orangemen. Every appointment which you make
increases the discontent of the Roman Catholics. The more discontented
they are, the less you can venture to employ them. The way in which
you treated them while you were in opposition has raised in them such a
dislike and distrust of you that you cannot carry the Emancipation Act
into effect, though, as you tell us, and as I believe, you sincerely
desire to do so. As respects the offices of which you dispose, that Act
is null and void. Of all the boons which that Act purports to bestow on
Roman Catholics they really enjoy only one, admission to Parliament: and
that they would not enjoy if you had been able three years ago to carry
your Irish Registration Bill. You have wounded national feeling: you
have wounded religious feeling: and the animosity which you have roused
shows itself in a hundred ways, some of which I abhor, some of which I
lament, but at none of which I can wonder. They are the natural effects
of insult and injury on quick and ill regulated sensibility. You, for
your own purposes, inflamed the public mind of England against Ireland;
and you have no right to be surprised by finding that the public mind
of Ireland is inflamed against England. You called a fourth part of the
people of the United Kingdom aliens: and you must not blame them for
feeling and acting like aliens. You have filled every public department
with their enemies. What then could you expect but that they would
set up against your Lord Lieutenant and your official hierarchy a more
powerful chief and a more powerful organization of their own? They
remember, and it would be strange indeed if they had forgotten, what
under the same chief, and by a similar organization, they extorted from
you in 1829; and they are determined to try whether you are bolder and
more obstinate now than then.

Such are the difficulties of this crisis. To a great extent they are
of your own making. And what have you done in order to get out of them?
Great statesmen have sometimes committed great mistakes, and yet have by
wisdom and firmness extricated themselves from the embarrassments which
those mistakes had caused. Let us see whether you are entitled to rank
among such statesmen. And first, what,--commanding, as you do, a great
majority in this and in the other House of Parliament,--what have you
done in the way of legislation? The answer is very short and simple. The
beginning and end of all your legislation for Ireland will be found in
the Arms Act of last session. You will hardly call that conciliation;
and I shall not call it coercion. It was mere petty annoyance. It
satisfied nobody. We called on you to redress the wrongs of Ireland.
Many of your own friends called on you to stifle her complaints. One
noble and learned person was so much disgusted by your remissness that
he employed his own great abilities and his own valuable time in framing
a new coercion bill for you. You were deaf alike to us and to him.
The whole fruit of your legislative wisdom was this one paltry teasing
police regulation.

Your executive administration through the whole recess has been one long
blunder. The way in which your Lord Lieutenant and his advisers acted
about the Clontarf meeting would alone justify a severe vote of censure.
The noble lord, the Secretary for the Colonies (Lord Stanley. ), has told
us that the Government did all that was possible to caution the people
against attending that meeting, and that it would be unreasonable to
censure men for not performing impossibilities. Now, Sir, the ministers
themselves acknowledge that, as early as the morning of the Friday which
preceded the day fixed for the meeting, the Lord Lieutenant determined
to put forth a proclamation against the meeting. Yet the proclamation
was not published in Dublin and the suburbs till after nightfall on
Saturday. The meeting was fixed for the Sunday morning. Will any
person have the hardihood to assert that it was impossible to have a
proclamation drawn up, printed and circulated, in twenty-four hours, nay
in six hours? It is idle to talk of the necessity of weighing well the
words of such a document. The Lord Lieutenant should have weighed well
the value of the lives of his royal mistress's subjects. Had he done so,
there can be no doubt that the proclamation might have been placarded on
every wall in and near Dublin early in the forenoon of the Saturday. The
negligence of the Government would probably have caused the loss of many
lives but for the interposition of the man whom you are persecuting.
Fortune stood your friend; and he stood your friend; and thus a
slaughter more terrible than that which took place twenty-five years ago
at Manchester was averted.

But you were incorrigible. No sooner had you, by strange good luck,
got out of one scrape, than you made haste to get into another, out of
which, as far as I can see, you have no chance of escape. You instituted
the most unwise, the most unfortunate of all state prosecutions. You
seem not to have at all known what you were doing. It appears never to
have occurred to you that there was any difference between a criminal
proceeding which was certain to fix the attention of the whole civilised
world and an ordinary qui tam action for a penalty. The evidence was
such and the law such that you were likely to get a verdict and a
judgment; and that was enough for you. Now, Sir, in such a case as this,
the probability of getting the verdict and the judgment is only a part,
and a very small part, of what a statesman ought to consider. Before you
determined to bring the most able, the most powerful, the most popular
of your opponents to the bar as a criminal, on account of the manner in
which he had opposed you, you ought to have asked yourselves whether
the decision which you expected to obtain from the tribunals would be
ratified by the voice of your own country, of foreign countries, of
posterity; whether the general opinion of mankind might not be that,
though you were legally in the right, you were morally in the wrong. It
was no common person that you were bent on punishing. About that person
I feel, I own, considerable difficulty in saying anything. He is placed
in a situation which would prevent generous enemies, which has prevented
all the members of this House, with one ignominious exception, from
assailing him acrimoniously. I will try, in speaking of him, to pay the
respect due to eminence and to misfortune without violating the respect
due to truth. I am convinced that the end which he is pursuing is not
only mischievous but unattainable: and some of the means which he has
stooped to use for the purpose of attaining that end I regard with deep
disapprobation. But it is impossible for me not to see that the place
which he holds in the estimation of his countrymen is such as no popular
leader in our history, I might perhaps say in the history of the world,
has ever attained. Nor is the interest which he inspires confined to
Ireland or to the United Kingdom. Go where you will on the Continent:
visit any coffee house: dine at any public table: embark on board of any
steamboat: enter any diligence, any railway carriage: from the moment
that your accent shows you to be an Englishman, the very first question
asked by your companions, be they what they may, physicians, advocates,
merchants, manufacturers, or what we should call yeomen, is certain to
be "What will be done with Mr O'Connell? " Look over any file of French
journals; and you will see what a space he occupies in the eyes of the
French people. It is most unfortunate, but it is a truth, and a
truth which we ought always to bear in mind, that there is among our
neighbours a feeling about the connection between England and Ireland
not very much unlike the feeling which exists here about the connection
between Russia and Poland. All the sympathies of all continental
politicians are with the Irish. We are regarded as the oppressors, and
the Irish as the oppressed. An insurrection in Ireland would have the
good wishes of a great majority of the people of Europe. And, Sir, it is
natural that it should be so. For the cause of the Irish repealers has
two different aspects, a democratic aspect, and a Roman Catholic aspect,
and is therefore regarded with favour by foreigners of almost
every shade of opinion. The extreme left,--to use the French
nomenclature,--wishes success to a great popular movement against
the throne and the aristocracy. The extreme right wishes success to a
movement headed by the bishops and priests of the true Church against a
heretical government and a heretical hierarchy. The consequence is that,
in a contest with Ireland, you will not have, out of this island,
a single well-wisher in the world. I do not say this in order to
intimidate you. But I do say that, on an occasion on which all
Christendom was watching your conduct with an unfriendly and suspicious
eye, you should have carefully avoided everything that looked like foul
play. Unhappily you were too much bent on gaining the victory; and you
have gained a victory more disgraceful and disastrous than any defeat.
Mr O'Connell has been convicted: but you cannot deny that he has been
wronged: you cannot deny that irregularities have been committed, or
that the effect of those irregularities has been to put you in a better
situation and him in a worse situation than the law contemplated. It is
admitted that names which ought to have been in the jury-list were not
there. It is admitted that all, or almost all, the names which were
wrongfully excluded were the names of Roman Catholics. As to the
number of those who were wrongfully excluded there is some dispute. An
affidavit has been produced which puts the number at twenty-seven. The
right honourable gentleman, the Recorder of Dublin, who of course puts
the number as low as he conscientiously can, admits twenty-four.
But some gentlemen maintain that this irregularity, though doubtless
blamable, cannot have had any effect on the event of the trial. What,
they ask, are twenty or twenty-seven names in seven hundred and twenty?
Why, Sir, a very simple arithmetical calculation will show that the
irregularity was of grave importance. Of the seven hundred and twenty,
forty-eight were to be selected by lot, and then reduced by alternate
striking to twelve. The forty-eighth part of seven hundred and twenty is
fifteen. If, therefore, there had been fifteen more Roman Catholics in
the jury-list, it would have been an even chance that there would have
been one Roman Catholic more among the forty-eight. If there had been
twenty-seven more Roman Catholics in the list, it would have been almost
an even chance that there would have been two Roman Catholics more among
the forty-eight. Is it impossible, is it improbable that, but for this
trick or this blunder,--I will not now inquire which,--the result of the
trial might have been different? For, remember the power which the law
gives to a single juror. He can, if his mind is fully made up, prevent
a conviction. I heard murmurs when I used the word trick.