No More Learning

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. Am I not
justified in feeling a doubt which it is quite evident that Mr Justice
Perrin feels? He is reported to have said,--and I take the report of
newspapers favourable to the Government,--he is reported to have said
that there had been great carelessness, great neglect of duty, that
there were circumstances which raised grave suspicion, and that he was
not prepared to say that the irregularity was accidental. The noble lord
the Secretary for the Colonies has admonished us to pay respect to the
judges. I am sure that I pay the greatest respect to everything that
falls from Mr Justice Perrin. He must know much better than I, much
better than any Englishman, what artifices are likely to be employed by
Irish functionaries for the purpose of packing a jury; and he tells us
that he is not satisfied that this irregularity was the effect of mere
inadvertence. But, says the right honourable Baronet, the Secretary for
the Home Department, "I am not responsible for this irregularity. " Most
true: and nobody holds the right honourable Baronet responsible for it.
But he goes on to say, "I lament this irregularity most sincerely: for
I believe that it has raised a prejudice against the administration of
justice. " Exactly so. That is just what I say. I say that a prejudice
has been created against the administration of justice. I say that
a taint of suspicion has been thrown on the verdict which you have
obtained. And I ask whether it is right and decent in you to avail
yourselves of a verdict on which such a taint has been thrown? The only
wise, the only honourable course open to you was to say, "A mistake has
been committed: that mistake has given us an unfair advantage; and of
that advantage we will not make use. " Unhappily, the time when you might
have taken this course, and might thus to a great extent have repaired
your former errors, has been suffered to elapse.

Well, you had forty-eight names taken by lot from this mutilated
jury-list: and then came the striking. You struck out all the Roman
Catholic names: and you give us your reasons for striking out these
names, reasons which I do not think it worth while to examine. The real
question which you should have considered was this: Can a great issue
between two hostile religions,--for such the issue was,--be tried in a
manner above all suspicion by a jury composed exclusively of men of one
of those religions? I know that in striking out the Roman Catholics
you did nothing that was not according to technical rules. But my great
charge against you is that you have looked on this whole case in a
technical point of view, that you have been attorneys when you should
have been statesmen. The letter of the law was doubtless with you; but
not the noble spirit of the law. The jury de medietate linguae is of
immemorial antiquity among us. Suppose that a Dutch sailor at Wapping is
accused of stabbing an Englishman in a brawl. The fate of the culprit is
decided by a mixed body, by six Englishmen and six Dutchmen. Such were
the securities which the wisdom and justice of our ancestors gave to
aliens. You are ready enough to call Mr O'Connell an alien when it
serves your purposes to do so. You are ready enough to inflict on the
Irish Roman Catholic all the evils of alienage. But the one privilege,
the one advantage of alienage, you deny him. In a case which of all
cases most require a jury de medietate, in a case which sprang out of
the mutual hostility of races and sects, you pack a jury all of one
race and all of one sect. Why, if you were determined to go on with this
unhappy prosecution, not have a common jury? There was no difficulty
in having such a jury; and among the jurors might have been some
respectable Roman Catholics who were not members of the Repeal
Association. A verdict of Not Guilty from such a jury would have done
you infinitely less harm than the verdict of Guilty which you have
succeeded in obtaining. Yes, you have obtained a verdict of Guilty;
but you have obtained that verdict from twelve men brought together by
illegal means, and selected in such a manner that their decision can
inspire no confidence. You have obtained that verdict by the help of a
Chief Justice of whose charge I can hardly trust myself to speak. To do
him right, however, I will say that his charge was not, as it has been
called, unprecedented; for it bears a very close resemblance to some
charges which may be found in the state trials of the reign of Charles
the Second. However, with this jury-list, with this jury, with this
judge, you have a verdict. And what have you gained by it? Have you
pacified Ireland? No doubt there is just at the present moment an
apparent tranquillity; but it is a tranquillity more alarming than
turbulence. The Irish will be quiet till you begin to put the sentence
of imprisonment into execution, because, feeling the deepest interest in
the fate of their persecuted Tribune, they will do nothing that can be
prejudicial to him. But will they be quiet when the door of a gaol has
been closed on him? Is it possible to believe that an agitator, whom
they adored while his agitation was a source of profit to him, will lose
his hold on their affections by being a martyr in what they consider as
their cause? If I, who am strongly attached to the Union, who believe
that the Repeal of the Union would be fatal to the empire, and who think
Mr O'Connell's conduct highly reprehensible, cannot conscientiously say
that he has had a fair trial, if the prosecutors themselves are forced
to own that things have happened which have excited a prejudice against
the verdict and the judgment, what must be the feelings of the people of
Ireland, who believe not merely that he is guiltless, but that he is the
best friend that they ever had? He will no longer be able to harangue
them: but his wrongs will stir their blood more than his eloquence ever
did; nor will he in confinement be able to exercise that influence which
has so often restrained them, even in their most excited mood, from
proceeding to acts of violence.

Turn where we will, the prospect is gloomy; and that which of all things
most disturbs me is this, that your experience, sharp as it has been,
does not seem to have made you wiser. All that I have been able to
collect from your declarations leads me to apprehend that, while you
continue to hold power, the future will be of a piece with the past. As
to your executive administration, you hold out no hope that it will
be other than it has been. If we look back, your only remedies for the
disorders of Ireland have been an impolitic state prosecution, an unfair
state trial, barracks and soldiers. If we look forward, you promise
us no remedies but an unjust sentence, the harsh execution of that
sentence, more barracks and more soldiers.

You do indeed try to hold out hopes of one or two legislative reforms
beneficial to Ireland; but these hopes, I am afraid, will prove
delusive. You hint that you have prepared a Registration bill, of which
the effect will be to extend the elective franchise. What the provisions
of that bill may be we do not know. But this we know, that the matter
is one about which it is utterly impossible for you to do anything that
shall be at once honourable to yourselves and useful to the country.
Before we see your plan, we can say with perfect confidence that it must
either destroy the last remnant of the representative system in Ireland,
or the last remnant of your own character for consistency.

About the much agitated question of land tenure you acknowledge that
you have at present nothing to propose. We are to have a report, but you
cannot tell us when.

The Irish Church, as at present constituted and endowed, you are fully
determined to uphold. On some future occasion, I hope to be able to
explain at large my views on that subject. To-night I have exhausted
my own strength, and I have exhausted also, I am afraid, the kind
indulgence of the House. I will therefore only advert very briefly to
some things which have been said about the Church in the course of the
present debate.

Several gentlemen opposite have spoken of the religious discord which is
the curse of Ireland in language which does them honour; and I am only
sorry that we are not to have their votes as well as their speeches.
But from the Treasury bench we have heard nothing but this, that the
Established Church is there, and that there it must and shall remain. As
to the speech of the noble lord the Secretary for the Colonies, really
when we hear such a pitiable defence of a great institution from a
man of such eminent abilities, what inference can we draw but that the
institution is altogether indefensible? The noble lord tells us that the
Roman Catholics, in 1757, when they were asking to be relieved from the
penal laws, and in 1792, when they were asking to be relieved from civil
disabilities, professed to be quite willing that the Established Church
should retain its endowments. What is it to us, Sir, whether they did or
not? If you can prove this Church to be a good institution, of course
it ought to be maintained. But do you mean to say that a bad institution
ought to be maintained because some people who have been many years in
their graves said that they did not complain of it? What if the Roman
Catholics of the present generation hold a different language on
this subject from the Roman Catholics of the last generation? Is this
inconsistency, which appears to shock the noble lord, anything but the
natural and inevitable progress of all reform? People who are oppressed,
and who have no hope of obtaining entire justice, beg to be relieved
from the most galling part of what they suffer. They assure the
oppressor that if he will only relax a little of his severity they shall
be quite content; and perhaps, at the time, they believe that they shall
be content. But are expressions of this sort, are mere supplications
uttered under duress, to estop every person who utters them, and all
his posterity to the end of time, from asking for entire justice? Am I
debarred from trying to recover property of which I have been robbed,
because, when the robber's pistol was at my breast, I begged him to take
everything that I had and to spare my life? The noble lord knows
well that, while the slave trade existed, the great men who exerted
themselves to put an end to that trade disclaimed all thought of
emancipating the negroes. In those days, Mr Pitt, Mr Fox, Lord
Grenville, Lord Grey, and even my dear and honoured friend of whom I can
never speak without emotion, Mr Wilberforce, always said that it was a
calumny to accuse them of intending to liberate the black population of
the sugar islands. In 1807 the present Duke of Northumberland, then
Lord Percy, in the generous enthusiasm of youth, rose to propose in
this House the abolition of slavery. Mr Wilberforce interposed, nay, I
believe, almost pulled Lord Percy down. Nevertheless in 1833 the
noble lord the Secretary for the Colonies brought in a bill to abolish
slavery. Suppose that when he resumed his seat, after making that most
eloquent speech in which he explained his plan to us, some West Indian
planter had risen, and had said that in 1792, in 1796, in 1807, all the
leading philanthropists had solemnly declared that they had no intention
of emancipating the negroes; would not the noble lord have answered that
nothing that had been said by anybody in 1792 or 1807 could bind us not
to do what was right in 1833?

This is not the only point on which the noble lord's speech is quite at
variance with his own conduct. He appeals to the fifth article of the
Treaty of Union. He says that, if we touch the revenues and privileges
of the Established Church, we shall violate that article; and to violate
an article of the Treaty of Union is, it seems, a breach of public faith
of which he cannot bear to think. But, Sir, why is the fifth article
to be held more sacred than the fourth, which fixes the number of Irish
members who are to sit in this House? The fourth article, we all
know, has been altered. And who brought in the bill which altered that
article? The noble lord himself.

Then the noble lord adverts to the oath taken by Roman Catholic members
of this House. They bind themselves, he says, not to use their power
for the purpose of injuring the Established Church. I am sorry that the
noble lord is not at this moment in the House. Had he been here I should
have made some remarks which I now refrain from making on one or two
expressions which fell from him. But, Sir, let us allow to his argument
all the weight which he can himself claim for it. What does it prove?
Not that the Established Church of Ireland is a good institution; not
that it ought to be maintained; but merely this, that, when we are about
to divide on the question whether it shall be maintained, the Roman
Catholic members ought to walk away to the library. The oath which they
have taken is nothing to me and to the other Protestant members who have
not taken it. Suppose then our Roman Catholic friends withdrawn. Suppose
that we, the six hundred and twenty or thirty Protestant members remain
in the House. Then there is an end of this argument about the oath. Will
the noble lord then be able to give us any reason for maintaining the
Church of Ireland on the present footing?

I hope, Sir, that the right honourable Baronet the first Lord of the
Treasury will not deal with this subject as his colleagues have dealt
with it. We have a right to expect that a man of his capacity, placed
at the head of government, will attempt to defend the Irish Church in
a manly and rational way. I would beg him to consider these
questions:--For what ends do Established Churches exist? Does the
Established Church of Ireland accomplish those ends or any one of those
ends? Can an Established Church which has no hold on the hearts of the
body of the people be otherwise than useless, or worse than useless? Has
the Established Church of Ireland any hold on the hearts of the body
of the people?
Has it been successful in making proselytes? Has it been
what the Established Church of England has been with justice called,
what the Established Church of Scotland was once with at least equal
justice called, the poor man's Church? Has it trained the great body
of the people to virtue, consoled them in affliction, commanded their
reverence, attached them to itself and to the State? Show that these
questions can be answered in the affirmative; and you will have
made, what I am sure has never yet been made, a good defence of the
Established Church of Ireland. But it is mere mockery to bring us
quotations from forgotten speeches, and from mouldy petitions presented
to George the Second at a time when the penal laws were still in full
force.

And now, Sir, I must stop. I have said enough to justify the vote which
I shall give in favour of the motion of my noble friend. I have shown,
unless I deceive myself, that the extraordinary disorders which now
alarm us in Ireland have been produced by the fatal policy of the
Government. I have shown that the mode in which the Government is now
dealing with those disorders is far more likely to inflame than to allay
them. While this system lasts, Ireland can never be tranquil; and till
Ireland is tranquil, England can never hold her proper place among the
nations of the world. To the dignity, to the strength, to the safety of
this great country, internal peace is indispensably necessary. In every
negotiation, whether with France on the right of search, or with America
on the line of boundary, the fact that Ireland is discontented is
uppermost in the minds of the diplomatists on both sides, making the
representative of the British Crown timorous, and making his adversary
bold. And no wonder. This is indeed a great and splendid empire, well
provided with the means both of annoyance and of defence. England can do
many things which are beyond the power of any other nation in the world.
She has dictated peace to China. She rules Caffraria and Australasia.
She could again sweep from the ocean all commerce but her own. She could
again blockade every port from the Baltic to the Adriatic. She is able
to guard her vast Indian dominions against all hostility by land or
sea. But in this gigantic body there is one vulnerable spot near to the
heart. At that spot forty-six years ago a blow was aimed which narrowly
missed, and which, if it had not missed, might have been deadly. The
government and the legislature, each in its own sphere, is deeply
responsible for the continuance of a state of things which is fraught
with danger to the State. From my share of that responsibility I shall
clear myself by the vote which I am about to give; and I trust that the
number and the respectability of those in whose company I shall go into
the lobby will be such as to convince the Roman Catholics of Ireland
that they need not yet relinquish all hope of obtaining relief from the
wisdom and justice of an Imperial Parliament.

*****




DISSENTERS' CHAPELS BILL. (JUNE 6, 1844) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE
OF COMMONS ON THE 6TH OF JUNE 1844.

An attempt having been made to deprive certain dissenting congregations
of property which they had long enjoyed, on the ground that they did not
hold the same religious opinions that had been held by the purchasers
from whom they derived their title to that property, the Government of
Sir Robert Peel brought in a bill fixing a time of limitation in such
cases. The time fixed was twenty-five years.

The bill, having passed the Lords, came down to the House of Commons.
On the sixth of June 1844, the second reading was moved by the Attorney
General, Sir William Follett. Sir Robert Inglis, Member for the
University of Oxford, moved that the bill should be read a second time
that day six months: and the amendment was seconded by Mr Plumptre,
Member for Kent. Early in the debate the following Speech was made.

The second reading was carried by 307 votes to 117.

If, Sir, I should unhappily fail in preserving that tone in which the
question before us ought to be debated, it will assuredly not be for
want either of an example or of a warning. The honourable and learned
Member who moved the second reading has furnished me with a model which
I cannot too closely imitate; and from the honourable Member for Kent,
if I can learn nothing else, I may at least learn what temper and what
style I ought most carefully to avoid.

I was very desirous, Sir, to catch your eye, not because I was so
presumptuous as to hope that I should be able to add much to the
powerful and luminous argument of the honourable and learned gentleman
who has, to our great joy, again appeared among us to-night; but because
I thought it desirable that, at an early period in the debate, some
person whose seat is on this side of the House, some person strongly
opposed to the policy of the present Government, should say, what I
now say with all my heart, that this is a bill highly honourable to
the Government, a bill framed on the soundest principles, and evidently
introduced from the best and purest motives. This praise is a tribute
due to Her Majesty's Ministers; and I have great pleasure in paying it.

I have great pleasure also in bearing my testimony to the humanity, the
moderation, and the decorum with which my honourable friend the Member
for the University of Oxford has expressed his sentiments. I must
particularly applaud the resolution which he announced, and to which he
strictly adhered, of treating this question as a question of meum and
tuum, and not as a question of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. With him it is
possible to reason. But how am I to reason with the honourable Member
for Kent, who has made a speech without one fact, one argument, one
shadow of an argument, a speech made up of nothing but vituperation? I
grieve to say that the same bitterness of theological animosity which
characterised that speech may be discerned in too many of the petitions
with which, as he boasts, our table has been heaped day after day. The
honourable Member complains that those petitions have not been treated
with proper respect. Sir, they have been treated with much more respect
than they deserved. He asks why we are to suppose that the petitioners
are not competent to form a judgment on this question? My answer is,
that they have certified their incompetence under their own hands. They
have, with scarcely one exception, treated this question as a question
of divinity, though it is purely a question of property: and when I see
men treat a question of property as if it were a question of divinity, I
am certain that, however numerous they may be, their opinion is entitled
to no consideration. If the persons whom this bill is meant to relieve
are orthodox, that is no reason for our plundering anybody else in
order to enrich them. If they are heretics, that is no reason for our
plundering them in order to enrich others. I should not think myself
justified in supporting this bill, if I could not with truth declare
that, whatever sect had been in possession of these chapels, my conduct
would have been precisely the same. I have no peculiar sympathy with
Unitarians. If these people, instead of being Unitarians, had been Roman
Catholics, or Wesleyan Methodists, or General Baptists, or Particular
Baptists, or members of the Old Secession Church of Scotland, or members
of the Free Church of Scotland, I should speak as I now speak, and vote
as I now mean to vote.

Sir, the whole dispute is about the second clause of this bill. I can
hardly conceive that any gentleman will vote against the bill on account
of the error in the marginal note on the third clause. To the first
clause my honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford
said, if I understood him rightly, that he had no objection; and indeed
a man of his integrity and benevolence could hardly say less after
listening to the lucid and powerful argument of the Attorney General. It
is therefore on the second clause that the whole question turns.

The second clause, Sir, rests on a principle simple, well-known, and
most important to the welfare of all classes of the community. That
principle is this, that prescription is a good title to property, that
there ought to be a time of limitation, after which a possessor,
in whatever way his possession may have originated, must not be
dispossessed. Till very lately, Sir, I could not have imagined that,
in any assembly of reasonable, civilised, of educated men, it could be
necessary for me to stand up in defence of that principle. I should have
thought it as much a waste of the public time to make a speech on such
a subject as to make a speech against burning witches, against trying
writs of right by wager of battle, or against requiring a culprit to
prove his innocence by walking over red-hot ploughshares. But I find
that I was in error. Certain sages, lately assembled in conclave at
Exeter Hall, have done me the honour to communicate to me the fruits of
their profound meditations on the science of legislation. They have,
it seems, passed a resolution declaring that the principle, which I had
supposed that no man out of Bedlam would ever question, is an untenable
principle, and altogether unworthy of a British Parliament. They have
been pleased to add, that the present Government cannot, without gross
inconsistency, call on Parliament to pass a statute of limitation.
And why? Will the House believe it? Because the present Government has
appointed two new Vice Chancellors.

Really, Sir, I do not know whether the opponents of this bill shine
more as logicians or as jurists. Standing here as the advocate of
prescription, I ought not to forget that prescriptive right of talking
nonsense which gentlemen who stand on the platform of Exeter Hall are
undoubtedly entitled to claim. But, though I recognise the right, I
cannot but think that it may be abused, and that it has been abused on
the present occasion. One thing at least is clear, that, if Exeter Hall
be in the right, all the masters of political philosophy, all the great
legislators, all the systems of law by which men are and have been
governed in all civilised countries, from the earliest times, must be
in the wrong. How indeed can any society prosper, or even exist, without
the aid of this untenable principle, this principle unworthy of a
British legislature? This principle was found in the Athenian law. This
principle was found in the Roman law. This principle was found in the
laws of all those nations of which the jurisprudence was derived from
Rome. This principle was found in the law administered by the Parliament
of Paris; and, when that Parliament and the law which it administered
had been swept away by the revolution, this principle reappeared in
the Code Napoleon. Go westward, and you find this principle recognised
beyond the Mississippi. Go eastward, and you find it recognised beyond
the Indus, in countries which never heard the name of Justinian, in
countries to which no translation of the Pandects ever found its way.
Look into our own laws, and you will see that the principle, which is
now designated as unworthy of Parliament, has guided Parliament ever
since Parliament existed. Our first statute of limitation was enacted
at Merton, by men some of whom had borne a part in extorting the Great
Charter and the Forest Charter from King John. From that time to this
it has been the study of a succession of great lawyers and statesmen to
make the limitation more and more stringent. The Crown and the Church
indeed were long exempted from the general rule. But experience fully
proved that every such exemption was an evil; and a remedy was at last
applied. Sir George Savile, the model of English country gentlemen, was
the author of the Act which barred the claims of the Crown. That eminent
magistrate, the late Lord Tenterden, was the author of the Act which
barred the claims of the Church. Now, Sir, how is it possible to believe
that the Barons, whose seals are upon our Great Charter, would
have perfectly agreed with the great jurists who framed the Code of
Justinian, with the great jurists who framed the Code of Napoleon, with
the most learned English lawyers of the nineteenth century, and with the
Pundits of Benares, unless there had been some strong and clear reason
which necessarily led men of sense in every age and country to the same
conclusion? Nor is it difficult to see what the reason was. For it is
evident that the principle which silly and ignorant fanatics have called
untenable is essential to the institution of property, and that, if you
take away that principle, you will produce evils resembling those which
would be produced by a general confiscation. Imagine what would follow
if the maxims of Exeter Hall were introduced into Westminster Hall.
Imagine a state of things in which one of us should be liable to be sued
on a bill of exchange indorsed by his grandfather in 1760. Imagine a
man possessed of an estate and manor house which had descended to him
through ten or twelve generations of ancestors, and yet liable to be
ejected because some flaw had been detected in a deed executed three
hundred years ago, in the reign of Henry the Eighth. Why, Sir, should
we not all cry out that it would be better to live under the rule of
a Turkish Pasha than under such a system. Is it not plain that the
enforcing of an obsolete right is the inflicting of a wrong? Is it
not plain that, but for our statutes of limitation, a lawsuit would be
merely a grave, methodical robbery? I am ashamed to argue a point so
clear.

And if this be the general rule, why should the case which we are
now considering be an exception to that rule? I have done my best
to understand why. I have read much bad oratory, and many foolish
petitions. I have heard with attention the reasons of my honourable
friend the Member for the University of Oxford; and I should have heard
the reasons of the honourable Member for Kent, if there had been any to
hear. Every argument by which my honourable friend the Member for the
University of Oxford tried to convince us that this case is an exception
to the general rule, will be found on examination to be an argument
against the general rule itself. He says that the possession which we
propose to sanction was originally a wrongful possession. Why, Sir, all
the statutes of limitation that ever were made sanction possession which
was originally wrongful. It is for the protection of possessors who are
not in condition to prove that their possession was originally rightful
that statutes of limitation are passed. Then my honourable friend
says that this is an ex post facto law. Why, Sir, so are all our great
statutes of limitation. Look at the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235;
at the Statute of Westminster, passed in 1275; at the Statute of James
the First, passed in 1623; at Sir George Savile's Act, passed in the
last century; at Lord Tenterden's Act, passed in our own time. Every one
of those Acts was retrospective. Every one of them barred claims arising
out of past transactions. Nor was any objection ever raised to what
was so evidently just and wise, till bigotry and chicanery formed that
disgraceful league against which we are now contending. But, it is said,
it is unreasonable to grant a boon to men because they have been many
years doing wrong. The length of the time during which they have enjoyed
property not rightfully their own, is an aggravation of the injury which
they have committed, and is so far from being a reason for letting them
enjoy that property for ever, that it is rather a reason for compelling
them to make prompt restitution. With this childish sophistry the
petitions on our table are filled. Is it possible that any man can be
so dull as not to perceive that, if this be a reason, it is a reason
against all our statutes of limitation? I do a greater wrong to my
tailor if I withhold payment of his bill during six years than if I
withhold payment only during two years. Yet the law says that at the
end of two years he may bring an action and force me to pay him with
interest, but that after the lapse of six years he cannot force me to
pay him at all. It is much harder that a family should be kept out of
its hereditary estate during five generations than during five days.
But if you are kept out of your estate five days you have your action of
ejectment; and, after the lapse of five generations, you have no remedy.
I say, therefore, with confidence, that every argument which has been
urged against this bill is an argument against the great principle of
prescription. I go further, and I say that, if there be any case which,
in an especial manner, calls for the application of the principle of
prescription, this is that case. For the Unitarian congregations have
laid out so much on these little spots of ground that it is impossible
to take the soil from them without taking from them property which is of
much greater value than the mere soil, and which is indisputably their
own. This is not the case of a possessor who has been during many years,
receiving great emoluments from land to which he had not a good title.
It is the case of a possessor who has, from resources which were
undoubtedly his own, expended on the land much more than it was
originally worth. Even in the former case, it has been the policy of all
wise lawgivers to fix a time of limitation. A fortiori, therefore, there
ought to be a time of limitation in the latter case.

And here, Sir, I cannot help asking gentlemen to compare the petitions
for this bill with the petitions against it. Never was there such a
contrast. The petitions against the bill are filled with cant, rant,
scolding, scraps of bad sermons. The petitions in favour of the bill
set forth in the simplest manner great practical grievances. Take, for
instance, the case of Cirencester. The meeting house there was built in
1730. It is certain that the Unitarian doctrines were taught there as
early as 1742. That was only twelve years after the chapel had been
founded. Many of the original subscribers must have been living. Many
of the present congregation are lineal descendants of the original
subscribers. Large sums have from time to time been laid out in
repairing, enlarging, and embellishing the edifice; and yet there are
people who think it just and reasonable that this congregation should,
after the lapse of more than a century, be turned out. At Norwich,
again, a great dissenting meeting house was opened in 1688. It is not
easy to say how soon Anti-Trinitarian doctrines were taught there. The
change of sentiment in the congregation seems to have been gradual: but
it is quite certain that, in 1754, ninety years ago, both pastor and
flock were decidedly Unitarian. Round the chapel is a cemetery filled
with the monuments of eminent Unitarians. Attached to the chapel are a
schoolhouse and a library, built and fitted up by Unitarians. And now
the occupants find that their title is disputed. They cannot venture to
build; they cannot venture to repair; and they are anxiously awaiting
our decision. I do not know that I have cited the strongest cases. I
am giving you the ordinary history of these edifices. Go to Manchester.
Unitarianism has been taught there at least seventy years in a chapel
on which the Unitarians have expended large sums. Go to Leeds. Four
thousand pounds have been subscribed for the repairing of the Unitarian
chapel there, the chapel where, near eighty years ago, Priestly, the
great Doctor of the sect, officiated. But these four thousand pounds are
lying idle. Not a pew can be repaired till it is known whether this bill
will become law. Go to Maidstone. There Unitarian doctrines have been
taught during at least seventy years; and seven hundred pounds have
recently been laid out by the congregation in repairing the chapel.
Go to Exeter. It matters not where you go. But go to Exeter. There
Unitarian doctrines have been preached more than eighty years; and two
thousand pounds have been laid out on the chapel. It is the same
at Coventry, at Bath, at Yarmouth, everywhere. And will a British
Parliament rob the possessors of these buildings? I can use no other
word. How should we feel if it were proposed to deprive any other class
of men of land held during so long a time, and improved at so large a
cost? And, if this property should be transferred to those who covet it,
what would they gain in comparison with what the present occupants would
lose? The pulpit of Priestley, the pulpit of Lardner, are objects
of reverence to congregations which hold the tenets of Priestley and
Lardner. To the intruders those pulpits will be nothing; nay, worse than
nothing; memorials of heresiarchs. Within these chapels and all around
them are the tablets which the pious affection of four generations
has placed over the remains of dear mothers and sisters, wives and
daughters, of eloquent preachers, of learned theological writers. To
the Unitarian, the building which contains these memorials is a hallowed
building. To the intruder it is of no more value than any other room
in which he can find a bench to sit on and a roof to cover him. If,
therefore, we throw out this bill, we do not merely rob one set of
people in order to make a present to another set. That would be bad
enough. But we rob the Unitarians of that which they regard as a most
precious treasure; of that which is endeared to them by the strongest
religious and the strongest domestic associations; of that which cannot
be wrenched from them without inflicting on them the bitterest pain and
humiliation. To the Trinitarians we give that which can to them be of
little or no value except as a trophy of a most inglorious victory won
in a most unjust war.

But, Sir, an imputation of fraud has been thrown on the Unitarians;
not, indeed, here, but in many other places, and in one place of which
I would always wish to speak with respect. The Unitarians, it has
been said, knew that the original founders of these chapels were
Trinitarians; and to use, for the purpose of propagating Unitarian
doctrine, a building erected for the purpose of propagating Trinitarian
doctrine was grossly dishonest. One very eminent person (The Bishop
of London. ) has gone so far as to maintain that the Unitarians cannot
pretend to any prescription of more than sixty-three years; and he
proves his point thus:--Till the year 1779, he says, no dissenting
teacher was within the protection of the Toleration Act unless he
subscribed those articles of the Church of England which affirm
the Athanasian doctrine. It is evident that no honest Unitarian can
subscribe those articles. The inference is, that the persons who
preached in these chapels down to the year 1779 must have been either
Trinitarians or rogues. Now, Sir, I believe that they were neither
Trinitarians nor rogues; and I cannot help suspecting that the great
prelate who brought this charge against them is not so well read in the
history of the nonconformist sects as in the history of that Church of
which he is an ornament. The truth is that, long before the year 1779,
the clause of the Toleration Act which required dissenting ministers
to subscribe thirty-five or thirty-six of our thirty-nine articles
had almost become obsolete. Indeed, that clause had never been rigidly
enforced. From the very first there were some dissenting ministers who
refused to subscribe, and yet continued to preach. Calany was one; and
he was not molested. And if this could be done in the year in which the
Toleration Act passed, we may easily believe that, at a later period,
the law would not have been very strictly observed. New brooms, as
the vulgar proverb tells us, sweep clean; and no statute is so rigidly
enforced as a statute just made. But, Sir, so long ago as the year 1711,
the provisions of the Toleration Act on this subject were modified. In
that year the Whigs, in order to humour Lord Nottingham, with whom
they had coalesced against Lord Oxford, consented to let the Occasional
Conformity Bill pass; but they insisted on inserting in the bill a
clause which was meant to propitiate the dissenters. By this clause
it was enacted that, if an information were laid against a dissenting
minister for having omitted to subscribe the articles, the defendant
might, by subscribing at any stage of the proceedings anterior to
the judgment, defeat the information, and throw all the costs on the
informer. The House will easily believe that, when such was the state of
the law, informers were not numerous. Indeed, during the discussions of
1773, it was distinctly affirmed, both in Parliament and in manifestoes
put forth by the dissenting body, that the majority of nonconformist
ministers then living had never subscribed. All arguments, therefore,
grounded on the insincerity which has been rashly imputed to the
Unitarians of former generations, fall at once to the ground.

But, it is said, the persons who, in the reigns of James the Second, of
William the Third, and of Anne, first established these chapels, held
the doctrine of the Trinity; and therefore, when, at a later period, the
preachers and congregations departed from the doctrine of the Trinity,
they ought to have departed from the chapels too. The honourable and
learned gentleman, the Attorney General, has refuted this argument so
ably that he has scarcely left anything for me to say about it. It is
well-known that the change which, soon after the Revolution, began to
take place in the opinions of a section of the old Puritan body, was a
gradual, an almost imperceptible change. The principle of the English
Presbyterians was to have no confession of faith and no form of prayer.
Their trust deeds contained no accurate theological definitions.
Nonsubscription was in truth the very bond which held them together.
What, then, could be more natural than that, Sunday by Sunday,
the sermons should have become less and less like those of the old
Calvinistic divines, that the doctrine of the Trinity should have been
less and less frequently mentioned, that at last it should have ceased
to be mentioned, and that thus, in the course of years, preachers and
hearers should, by insensible degrees, have become first Arians, then,
perhaps, Socinians. I know that this explanation has been treated
with disdain by people profoundly ignorant of the history of English
nonconformity. I see that my right honourable friend near me (Mr Fox
Maule. ) does not assent to it. Will he permit me to refer him to an
analogous case with which he cannot but be well acquainted? No person
in the House is more versed than he in the ecclesiastical history of
Scotland; and he will, I am sure, admit that some of the doctrines now
professed by the Scotch sects which sprang from the secessions of 1733
and 1760 are such as the seceders of 1733 and the seceders of 1760 would
have regarded with horror.