many various ways--poetry, philosophy, history, eloquence, wit, skilful
portraiture of life and manners? I confidently therefore call on the
Committee to take my plan in preference to the plan of my noble friend.
I have shown that the protection which he proposes to give to letters is
unequal, and unequal in the worst way. I have shown that his plan is to
give protection to books in inverse proportion to their merit. I shall
move when we come to the third clause of the bill to omit the words
"twenty-five years," and in a subsequent part of the same clause I
shall move to substitute for the words "twenty-eight years" the words
"forty-two years." I earnestly hope that the Committee will adopt these
amendments; and I feel the firmest conviction that my noble friend's
bill, so amended, will confer a great boon on men of letters with the
smallest possible inconvenience to the public.

*****

THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER. (MAY 3, 1842) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE THIRD OF MAY 1842.

On the second of May 1842, Mr Thomas Duncombe, Member for Finsbury,
presented a petition, very numerously signed, of which the prayer was as
follows:

"Your petitioners, therefore, exercising their just constitutional
right, demand that your Honourable House, to remedy the many gross
and manifest evils of which your petitioners complain, do immediately,
without alteration, deduction, or addition, pass into a law the document
entitled the People's Charter."

On the following day Mr Thomas Duncombe moved that the petitioners
should be heard by themselves or their Counsel at the Bar of the House.
The following Speech was made in opposition to the motion.

The motion was rejected by 287 votes to 49.

Mr Speaker,--I was particularly desirous to catch your eye this evening,
because, when the motion of the honourable Member of Rochdale (Mr
Sharman Crawford.) was under discussion, I was unable to be in my place.
I understand that, on that occasion, the absence of some members of
the late Government was noticed in severe terms, and was attributed to
discreditable motives. As for myself, Sir, I was prevented from coming
down to the House by illness: a noble friend of mine, to whom particular
allusion was made, was detained elsewhere by pure accident; and I am
convinced that no member of the late administration was withheld by any
unworthy feeling from avowing his opinions. My own opinions I could have
no motive for disguising. They have been frequently avowed, and avowed
before audiences which were not likely to regard them with much favour.

I should wish, Sir, to say what I have to say in the temperate tone
which has with so much propriety been preserved by the right honourable
Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department (Sir James Graham.);
but, if I should use any warm expression, I trust that the House will
attribute it to the strength of my convictions and to my solicitude
for the public interests. No person who knows me will, I am quite sure,
suspect me of regarding the hundreds of thousands who have signed the
petition which we are now considering, with any other feeling than
cordial goodwill.

Sir, I cannot conscientiously assent to this motion. And yet I must
admit that the honourable Member for Finsbury (Mr Thomas Duncombe.) has
framed it with considerable skill. He has done his best to obtain the
support of all those timid and interested politicians who think much
more about the security of their seats than about the security of their
country. It would be very convenient to me to give a silent vote with
him. I should then have it in my power to say to the Chartists of
Edinburgh, "When your petition was before the House I was on your side:
I was for giving you a full hearing." I should at the same time be able
to assure my Conservative constituents that I never had supported and
never would support the Charter. But, Sir, though this course would be
very convenient, it is one which my sense of duty will not suffer me
to take. When questions of private right are before us, we hear, and
we ought to hear, the arguments of the parties interested in those
questions. But it has never been, and surely it ought not to be, our
practice to grant a hearing to persons who petition for or against a law
in which they have no other interest than that which is common between
them and the whole nation. Of the many who petitioned against slavery,
against the Roman Catholic claims, against the corn laws, none was
suffered to harangue us at the bar in support of his views. If in the
present case we depart from a general rule which everybody must admit to
be a very wholesome one, what inference can reasonably be drawn from
our conduct, except this, that we think the petition which we are now
considering entitled to extraordinary respect, and that we have not
fully made up our minds to refuse what the petitioners ask? Now, Sir, I
have fully made up my mind to resist to the last the change which they
urge us to make in the constitution of the kingdom. I therefore think
that I should act disingenuously if I gave my voice for calling in
orators whose eloquence, I am certain, will make no alteration in my
opinion. I think too that if, after voting for hearing the petitioners,
I should then vote against granting their prayer, I should give them
just ground for accusing me of having first encouraged and then deserted
them. That accusation, at least, they shall never bring against me.

The honourable Member for Westminster (Mr Leader.) has expressed a
hope that the language of the petition will not be subjected to severe
criticism. If he means literary criticism, I entirely agree with him.
The style of this composition is safe from any censure of mine; but the
substance it is absolutely necessary that we should closely examine.
What the petitioners demand is this, that we do forthwith pass what is
called the People's Charter into a law without alteration, diminution,
or addition. This is the prayer in support of which the honourable
Member for Finsbury would have us hear an argument at the bar. Is it
then reasonable to say, as some gentlemen have said, that, in voting for
the honourable Member's motion, they mean to vote merely for an inquiry
into the causes of the public distress? If any gentleman thinks that an
inquiry into the causes of the public distress would be useful, let him
move for such an inquiry. I will not oppose it. But this petition does
not tell us to inquire. It tells us that we are not to inquire. It
directs us to pass a certain law word for word, and to pass it without
the smallest delay.

I shall, Sir, notwithstanding the request or command of the petitioners,
venture to exercise my right of free speech on the subject of the
People's Charter. There is, among the six points of the Charter, one for
which I have voted. There is another of which I decidedly approve. There
are others as to which, though I do not agree with the petitioners, I
could go some way to meet them. In fact, there is only one of the six
points on which I am diametrically opposed to them: but unfortunately
that point happens to be infinitely the most important of the six.

One of the six points is the ballot. I have voted for the ballot; and I
have seen no reason to change my opinion on that subject.

Another point is the abolition of the pecuniary qualification for
members of this House. On that point I cordially agree with the
petitioners. You have established a sufficient pecuniary qualification
for the elector; and it therefore seems to me quite superfluous to
require a pecuniary qualification from the representative. Everybody
knows that many English members have only fictitious qualifications, and
that the members for Scotch cities and boroughs are not required to
have any qualification at all. It is surely absurd to admit the
representatives of Edinburgh and Glasgow without any qualification, and
at the same time to require the representative of Finsbury or Marylebone
to possess a qualification or the semblance of one. If the qualification
really be a security for respectability, let that security be
demanded from us who sit here for Scotch towns. If, as I believe, the
qualification is no security at all, why should we require it from
anybody? It is no part of the old constitution of the realm. It was
first established in the reign of Anne. It was established by a bad
parliament for a bad purpose. It was, in fact, part of a course of
legislation which, if it had not been happily interrupted, would have
ended in the repeal of the Toleration Act and of the Act of Settlement.

The Chartists demand annual parliaments. There, certainly, I differ from
them; but I might, perhaps, be willing to consent to some compromise. I
differ from them also as to the expediency of paying the representatives
of the people, and of dividing the country into electoral districts.
But I do not consider these matters as vital. The kingdom might, I
acknowledge, be free, great, and happy, though the members of this house
received salaries, and though the present boundaries of counties and
boroughs were superseded by new lines of demarcation. These, Sir,
are subordinate questions. I do not of course mean that they are not
important. But they are subordinate when compared with that question
which still remains to be considered. The essence of the Charter is
universal suffrage. If you withhold that, it matters not very much what
else you grant. If you grant that, it matters not at all what else you
withhold. If you grant that, the country is lost.

I have no blind attachment to ancient usages. I altogether disclaim what
has been nicknamed the doctrine of finality. I have said enough to-night
to show that I do not consider the settlement made by the Reform Bill
as one which can last for ever. I certainly do think that an extensive
change in the polity of a nation must be attended with serious evils.
Still those evils may be overbalanced by advantages: and I am perfectly
ready, in every case, to weigh the evils against the advantages, and to
judge as well as I can which scale preponderates. I am bound by no tie
to oppose any reform which I think likely to promote the public good. I
will go so far as to say that I do not quite agree with those who think
that they have proved the People's Charter to be absurd when they have
proved that it is incompatible with the existence of the throne and
of the peerage. For, though I am a faithful and loyal subject of Her
Majesty, and though I sincerely wish to see the House of Lords powerful
and respected, I cannot consider either monarchy or aristocracy as the
ends of government. They are only means. Nations have flourished without
hereditary sovereigns or assemblies of nobles; and, though I should be
very sorry to see England a republic, I do not doubt that she might, as
a republic, enjoy prosperity, tranquillity, and high consideration.
The dread and aversion with which I regard universal suffrage would be
greatly diminished, if I could believe that the worst effect which it
would produce would be to give us an elective first magistrate and a
senate instead of a Queen and a House of Peers. My firm conviction is
that, in our country, universal suffrage is incompatible, not with this
or that form of government, but with all forms of government, and with
everything for the sake of which forms of government exist; that it is
incompatible with property, and that it is consequently incompatible
with civilisation.

It is not necessary for me in this place to go through the arguments
which prove beyond dispute that on the security of property civilisation
depends; that, where property is insecure, no climate however delicious,
no soil however fertile, no conveniences for trade and navigation, no
natural endowments of body or of mind, can prevent a nation from sinking
into barbarism; that where, on the other hand, men are protected in
the enjoyment of what has been created by their industry and laid up
by their self-denial, society will advance in arts and in wealth
notwithstanding the sterility of the earth and the inclemency of the
air, notwithstanding heavy taxes and destructive wars. Those persons who
say that England has been greatly misgoverned, that her legislation is
defective, that her wealth has been squandered in unjust and impolitic
contests with America and with France, do in fact bear the strongest
testimony to the truth of my doctrine. For that our country has made and
is making great progress in all that contributes to the material comfort
of man is indisputable. If that progress cannot be ascribed to
the wisdom of the Government, to what can we ascribe it but to the
diligence, the energy, the thrift of individuals? And to what can we
ascribe that diligence, that energy, that thrift, except to the security
which property has during many generations enjoyed here? Such is the
power of this great principle that, even in the last war, the most
costly war, beyond all comparison, that ever was waged in this world,
the Government could not lavish wealth so fast as the productive classes
created it.

If it be admitted that on the institution of property the wellbeing
of society depends, it follows surely that it would be madness to give
supreme power in the state to a class which would not be likely to
respect that institution. And, if this be conceded, it seems to me to
follow that it would be madness to grant the prayer of this petition. I
entertain no hope that, if we place the government of the kingdom in the
hands of the majority of the males of one-and-twenty told by the head,
the institution of property will be respected. If I am asked why I
entertain no such hope, I answer, because the hundreds of thousands of
males of twenty-one who have signed this petition tell me to entertain
no such hope; because they tell me that, if I trust them with power, the
first use which they will make of it will be to plunder every man in the
kingdom who has a good coat on his back and a good roof over his head.
God forbid that I should put an unfair construction on their language!
I will read their own words. This petition, be it remembered, is an
authoritative declaration of the wishes of those who, if the Charter
ever becomes law, will return the great majority of the House of
Commons; and these are their words: "Your petitioners complain, that
they are enormously taxed to pay the interest of what is called the
national debt, a debt amounting at present to eight hundred millions,
being only a portion of the enormous amount expended in cruel and
expensive wars for the suppression of all liberty by men not authorised
by the people, and who consequently had no right to tax posterity
for the outrages committed by them upon mankind." If these words mean
anything, they mean that the present generation is not bound to pay the
public debt incurred by our rulers in past times, and that a national
bankruptcy would be both just and politic. For my part, I believe it to
be impossible to make any distinction between the right of a fundholder
to his dividends and the right of a landowner to his rents. And, to do
the petitioners justice, I must say that they seem to be much of the
same mind. They are for dealing with fundholder and landowner alike.
They tell us that nothing will "unshackle labour from its misery, until
the people possess that power under which all monopoly and oppression
must cease; and your petitioners respectfully mention the existing
monopolies of the suffrage, of paper money, of machinery, of land, of
the public press, of religion, of the means of travelling and transit,
and a host of other evils too numerous to mention, all arising from
class legislation." Absurd as this hubbub of words is, part of it is
intelligible enough. What can the monopoly of land mean, except property
in land? The only monopoly of land which exists in England is this, that
nobody can sell an acre of land which does not belong to him. And what
can the monopoly of machinery mean but property in machinery? Another
monopoly which is to cease is the monopoly of the means of travelling.
In other words all the canal property and railway property in the
kingdom is to be confiscated. What other sense do the words bear? And
these are only specimens of the reforms which, in the language of the
petition, are to unshackle labour from its misery. There remains,
it seems, a host of similar monopolies too numerous to mention; the
monopoly I presume, which a draper has of his own stock of cloth; the
monopoly which a hatter has of his own stock of hats; the monopoly
which we all have of our furniture, bedding, and clothes. In short, the
petitioners ask you to give them power in order that they may not leave
a man of a hundred a year in the realm.

I am far from wishing to throw any blame on the ignorant crowds which
have flocked to the tables where this petition was exhibited. Nothing
is more natural than that the labouring people should be deceived by the
arts of such men as the author of this absurd and wicked composition.
We ourselves, with all our advantages of education, are often very
credulous, very impatient, very shortsighted, when we are tried by
pecuniary distress or bodily pain. We often resort to means of immediate
relief which, as Reason tells us, if we would listen to her, are certain
to aggravate our sufferings. Men of great abilities and knowledge have
ruined their estates and their constitutions in this way. How then
can we wonder that men less instructed than ourselves, and tried by
privations such as we have never known, should be easily misled
by mountebanks who promise impossibilities? Imagine a well-meaning
laborious mechanic, fondly attached to his wife and children. Bad times
come. He sees the wife whom he loves grow thinner and paler every day.
His little ones cry for bread, and he has none to give them. Then come
the professional agitators, the tempters, and tell him that there is
enough and more than enough for everybody, and that he has too little
only because landed gentlemen, fundholders, bankers, manufacturers,
railway proprietors, shopkeepers have too much. Is it strange that the
poor man should be deluded, and should eagerly sign such a petition as
this? The inequality with which wealth is distributed forces itself
on everybody's notice. It is at once perceived by the eye. The reasons
which irrefragably prove this inequality to be necessary to the
wellbeing of all classes are not equally obvious. Our honest working man
has not received such an education as enables him to understand that the
utmost distress that he has ever known is prosperity when compared with
the distress which he would have to endure if there were a single month
of general anarchy and plunder. But you say, it is not the fault of the
labourer that he is not well educated. Most true. It is not his fault.
But, though he has no share in the fault, he will, if you are foolish
enough to give him supreme power in the state, have a very large share
of the punishment. You say that, if the Government had not culpably
omitted to establish a good system of public instruction, the
petitioners would have been fit for the elective franchise. But is that
a reason for giving them the franchise when their own petition proves
that they are not fit for it; when they give us fair notice that, if we
let them have it, they will use it to our ruin and their own? It is not
necessary now to inquire whether, with universal education, we could
safely have universal suffrage. What we are asked to do is to give
universal suffrage before there is universal education. Have I any
unkind feeling towards these poor people? No more than I have to a
sick friend who implores me to give him a glass of iced water which the
physician has forbidden. No more than a humane collector in India has
to those poor peasants who in a season of scarcity crowd round the
granaries and beg with tears and piteous gestures that the doors may be
opened and the rice distributed. I would not give the draught of water,
because I know that it would be poison. I would not give up the keys of
the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn a scarcity
into a famine. And in the same way I would not yield to the importunity
of multitudes who, exasperated by suffering and blinded by ignorance,
demand with wild vehemence the liberty to destroy themselves.

But it is said, You must not attach so much importance to this petition.
It is very foolish, no doubt, and disgraceful to the author, be he who
he may. But you must not suppose that those who signed it approve of
it. They have merely put their names or their marks without weighing the
sense of the document which they subscribed. Surely, Sir, of all reasons
that ever were given for receiving a petition with peculiar honours, the
strangest is that it expresses sentiments diametrically opposed to
the real sentiments of those who have signed it. And it is a not less
strange reason for giving men supreme power in a state that they sign
political manifestoes of the highest importance without taking the
trouble to know what the contents are. But how is it possible for us to
believe that, if the petitioners had the power which they demand,
they would not use it as they threaten? During a long course of years,
numerous speakers and writers, some of them ignorant, others dishonest,
have been constantly representing the Government as able to do, and
bound to do, things which no Government can, without great injury to the
country, attempt to do. Every man of sense knows that the people support
the Government. But the doctrine of the Chartist philosophers is that it
is the business of the Government to support the people. It is supposed
by many that our rulers possess, somewhere or other, an inexhaustible
storehouse of all the necessaries and conveniences of life, and, from
mere hardheartedness, refuse to distribute the contents of this magazine
among the poor. We have all of us read speeches and tracts in which it
seemed to be taken for granted that we who sit here have the power of
working miracles, of sending a shower of manna on the West Riding,
of striking the earth and furnishing all the towns of Lancashire with
abundance of pure water, of feeding all the cotton-spinners and weavers
who are out of work with five loaves and two fishes. There is not a
working man who has not heard harangues and read newspapers in which
these follies are taught. And do you believe that as soon as you give
the working men absolute and irresistible power they will forget all
this? Yes, Sir, absolute and irresistible power. The Charter would
give them no less. In every constituent body throughout the empire
the working men will, if we grant the prayer of this petition, be an
irresistible majority. In every constituent body capital will be placed
at the feet of labour; knowledge will be borne down by ignorance; and is
it possible to doubt what the result must be? The honourable Member for
Bath and the honourable Member for Rochdale are now considered as very
democratic members of Parliament. They would occupy a very different
position in a House of Commons elected by universal suffrage, if they
succeeded in obtaining seats. They would, I believe, honestly oppose
every attempt to rob the public creditor. They would manfully say,
"Justice and the public good require that this sum of thirty millions
a year should be paid;" and they would immediately be reviled as
aristocrats, monopolists, oppressors of the poor, defenders of old
abuses. And as to land, is it possible to believe that the millions who
have been so long and loudly told that the land is their estate, and is
wrongfully kept from them, should not, when they have supreme power, use
that power to enforce what they think their rights? What could follow
but one vast spoliation? One vast spoliation! That would be bad enough.
That would be the greatest calamity that ever fell on our country. Yet
would that a single vast spoliation were the worst! No, Sir; in the
lowest deep there would be a lower deep. The first spoliation would not
be the last. How could it? All the causes which had produced the first
spoliation would still operate. They would operate more powerfully than
before. The distress would be far greater than before. The fences which
now protect property would all have been broken through, levelled, swept
away. The new proprietors would have no title to show to anything that
they held except recent robbery. With what face then could they complain
of being robbed? What would be the end of these things? Our experience,
God be praised, does not enable us to predict it with certainty. We can
only guess. My guess is that we should see something more horrible than
can be imagined--something like the siege of Jerusalem on a far larger
scale. There would be many millions of human beings, crowded in a narrow
space, deprived of all those resources which alone had made it possible
for them to exist in so narrow a space; trade gone; manufactures gone;
credit gone. What could they do but fight for the mere sustenance
of nature, and tear each other to pieces till famine, and pestilence
following in the train of famine, came to turn the terrible commotion
into a more terrible repose? The best event, the very best event, that I
can anticipate,--and what must the state of things be, if an Englishman
and a Whig calls such an event the very best?--the very best event,
I say, that I can anticipate is that out of the confusion a strong
military despotism may arise, and that the sword, firmly grasped by some
rough hand, may give a sort of protection to the miserable wreck of all
that immense prosperity and glory. But, as to the noble institutions
under which our country has made such progress in liberty, in wealth,
in knowledge, in arts, do not deceive yourselves into the belief that
we should ever see them again. We should never see them again. We should
not deserve to see them. All those nations which envy our greatness
would insult our downfall, a downfall which would be all our own work;
and the history of our calamities would be told thus: England had
institutions which, though imperfect, yet contained within themselves
the means of remedying every imperfection; those institutions her
legislators wantonly and madly threw away; nor could they urge in their
excuse even the wretched plea that they were deceived by false promises;
for, in the very petition with the prayer of which they were weak enough
to comply, they were told, in the plainest terms, that public ruin would
be the effect of their compliance.

Thinking thus, Sir, I will oppose, with every faculty which God has
given me, every motion which directly or indirectly tends to the
granting of universal suffrage. This motion I think, tends that way.
If any gentleman here is prepared to vote for universal suffrage with a
full view of all the consequences of universal suffrage as they are set
forth in this petition, he acts with perfect consistency in voting for
this motion. But, I must say, I heard with some surprise the honourable
baronet the Member for Leicester (Sir John Easthope.) say that, though
he utterly disapproves of the petition, though he thinks of it just as
I do, he wishes the petitioners to be heard at the bar in explanation
of their opinions. I conceive that their opinions are quite sufficiently
explained already; and to such opinions I am not disposed to pay any
extraordinary mark of respect. I shall give a clear and conscientious
vote against the motion of the honourable Member for Finsbury; and I
conceive that the petitioners will have much less reason to complain
of my open hostility than of the conduct of the honourable Member, who
tries to propitiate them by consenting to hear their oratory, but has
fully made up his mind not to comply with their demands.

*****

THE GATES OF SOMNAUTH. (MARCH 9, 1843) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE
OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF MARCH 1843.

On the ninth of March 1843, Mr Vernon Smith, Member for Northampton,
made the following motion:

"That this House, having regard to the high and important functions
of the Governor General of India, the mixed character of the native
population, and the recent measures of the Court of Directors for
discontinuing any seeming sanction to idolatry in India, is of opinion
that the conduct of Lord Ellenborough in issuing the General Orders of
the sixteenth of November 1842, and in addressing the letter of the same
date to all the chiefs, princes, and people of India, respecting the
restoration of the gates of a temple to Somnauth, is unwise, indecorous,
and reprehensible."

Mr Emerson Tennent, Secretary of the Board of Control, opposed the
motion. In reply to him the following Speech was made.

The motion was rejected by 242 votes to 157.

Mr Speaker,--If the practice of the honourable gentleman, the Secretary
of the Board of Control, had been in accordance with his precepts, if he
had not, after exhorting us to confine ourselves strictly to the subject
before us, rambled far from that subject, I should have refrained from
all digression. For and truth there is abundance to be said touching
both the substance and the style of this Proclamation. I cannot,
however, leave the honourable gentleman's peroration entirely unnoticed.
But I assure him that I do not mean to wander from the question before
us to any great distance or for any long time.

I cannot but wonder, Sir, that he who has, on this, as on former
occasions, exhibited so much ability and acuteness, should have gravely
represented it as a ground of complaint, that my right honourable
friend the Member for Northampton has made this motion in the Governor
General's absence. Does the honourable gentleman mean that this House
is to be interdicted from ever considering in what manner Her Majesty's
Asiatic subjects, a hundred millions in number, are governed? And how
can we consider how they are governed without considering the conduct
of him who is governing them? And how can we consider the conduct of him
who is governing them, except in his absence? For my own part, I can say
for myself, and I may, I doubt not, say for my right honourable friend
the Member for Northampton, that we both of us wish, with all our hearts
and souls, that we were discussing this question in the presence of
Lord Ellenborough. Would to heaven, Sir, for the sake of the credit of
England, and of the interests of India, that the noble lord were at this
moment under our gallery! But, Sir, if there be any Governor who has
no right to complain of remarks made on him in his absence, it is that
Governor who, forgetting all official decorum, forgetting how important
it is that, while the individuals who serve the State are changed, the
State should preserve its identity, inserted in a public proclamation
reflections on his predecessor, a predecessor of whom, on the present
occasion, I will only say that his conduct had deserved a very different
return. I am confident that no enemy of Lord Auckland, if Lord Auckland
has an enemy in the House, will deny that, whatever faults he may
have committed, he was faultless with respect to Lord Ellenborough. No
brother could have laboured more assiduously for the interests and
the honour of a brother than Lord Auckland laboured to facilitate Lord
Ellenborough's arduous task, to prepare for Lord Ellenborough the
means of obtaining success and glory. And what was the requital? A
proclamation by Lord Ellenborough, stigmatising the conduct of Lord
Auckland. And, Sir, since the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the
Board of Control has thought fit to divert the debate from its proper
course, I will venture to request that he, or the honourable director
who sits behind him (Sir James Hogg.), will vouchsafe to give us some
explanations on an important point to which allusion has been made.
Lord Ellenborough has been accused of having publicly announced that our
troops were about to evacuate Afghanistan before he had ascertained that
our captive countrymen and countrywomen had been restored to liberty.
This accusation, which is certainly a serious one, the honourable
gentleman, the Secretary of the Board of Control, pronounces to be a
mere calumny. Now, Sir, the proclamation which announces the withdrawing
of the troops bears date the first of October 1842. What I wish to know
is, whether any member of the Government, or of the Court of Directors,
will venture to affirm that on the first of October 1842, the Governor
General knew that the prisoners had been set at liberty? I believe that
no member either of the Government or of the Court of Directors will
venture to affirm any such thing. It seems certain that on the first
of October the Governor General could not know that the prisoners were
safe. Nevertheless, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board
of Control assures us that, when the proclamation was drawn up, the
Governor General did know that the prisoners were safe. What is the
inevitable consequence? It is this, that the date is a false date, that
the proclamation was written after the first of October, and antedated?
And for what reason was it antedated? I am almost ashamed to tell
the House what I believe to have been the reason. I believe that Lord
Ellenborough affixed the false date of the first of October to his
proclamation because Lord Auckland's manifesto against Afghanistan was
dated on the first of October. I believe that Lord Ellenborough wished
to make the contrast between his own success and his predecessor's
failure more striking, and that for the sake of this paltry, this
childish, triumph, he antedated his proclamation, and made it appear to
all Europe and all Asia that the English Government was indifferent
to the fate of Englishmen and Englishwomen who were in a miserable
captivity. If this be so, and I shall be surprised to hear any person
deny that it is so, I must say that by this single act, by writing those
words, the first of October, the Governor General proved himself to be a
man of an ill-regulated mind, a man unfit for high public trust.

I might, Sir, if I chose to follow the example of the honourable
gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, advert to many other
matters. I might call the attention of the House to the systematic
manner in which the Governor General has exerted himself to lower
the character and to break the spirit of that civil service on the
respectability and efficiency of which chiefly depends the happiness of
a hundred millions of human beings. I might say much about the financial
committee which he appointed in the hope of finding out blunders of his
predecessor, but which at last found out no blunders except his own.
But the question before us demands our attention. That question has two
sides, a serious and a ludicrous side. Let us look first at the serious
side. Sir, I disclaim in the strongest manner all intention of raising
any fanatical outcry or of lending aid to any fanatical project. I would
very much rather be the victim of fanaticism than its tool. If Lord
Ellenborough were called in question for having given an impartial
protection to the professors of different religions, or for restraining
unjustifiable excesses into which Christian missionaries might have been
hurried by their zeal, I would, widely as I have always differed from
him in politics, have stood up in his defence, though I had stood up
alone. But the charge against Lord Ellenborough is that he has insulted
the religion of his own country and the religion of millions of the
Queen's Asiatic subjects in order to pay honour to an idol. And this the
right honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control calls a
trivial charge. Sir, I think it a very grave charge. Her Majesty is the
ruler of a larger heathen population than the world ever saw collected
under the sceptre of a Christian sovereign since the days of the Emperor
Theodosius. What the conduct of rulers in such circumstances ought to be
is one of the most important moral questions, one of the most important
political questions, that it is possible to conceive. There are subject
to the British rule in Asia a hundred millions of people who do not
profess the Christian faith. The Mahometans are a minority: but their
importance is much more than proportioned to their number: for they are
an united, a zealous, an ambitious, a warlike class. The great majority
of the population of India consists of idolaters, blindly attached
to doctrines and rites which, considered merely with reference to the
temporal interests of mankind, are in the highest degree pernicious. In
no part of the world has a religion ever existed more unfavourable to
the moral and intellectual health of our race. The Brahminical mythology
is so absurd that it necessarily debases every mind which receives it
as truth; and with this absurd mythology is bound up an absurd system of
physics, an absurd geography, an absurd astronomy. Nor is this form
of Paganism more favourable to art than to science. Through the whole
Hindoo Pantheon you will look in vain for anything resembling those
beautiful and majestic forms which stood in the shrines of ancient
Greece. All is hideous, and grotesque, and ignoble. As this superstition
is of all superstitions the most irrational, and of all superstitions
the most inelegant, so is it of all superstitions the most immoral.
Emblems of vice are objects of public worship. Acts of vice are acts of
public worship. The courtesans are as much a part of the establishment
of the temple, as much ministers of the god, as the priests. Crimes
against life, crimes against property, are not only permitted but
enjoined by this odious theology. But for our interference human victims
would still be offered to the Ganges, and the widow would still be laid
on the pile with the corpse of her husband, and burned alive by her own
children. It is by the command and under the especial protection of one
of the most powerful goddesses that the Thugs join themselves to the
unsuspecting traveller, make friends with him, slip the noose round his
neck, plunge their knives in his eyes, hide him in the earth, and divide
his money and baggage. I have read many examinations of Thugs; and I
particularly remember an altercation which took place between two
of those wretches in the presence of an English officer. One Thug
reproached the other for having been so irreligious as to spare the life
of a traveller when the omens indicated that their patroness required
a victim. "How could you let him go? How can you expect the goddess
to protect us if you disobey her commands? That is one of your North
country heresies." Now, Sir, it is a difficult matter to determine
in what way Christian rulers ought to deal with such superstitions as
these. We might have acted as the Spaniards acted in the New World. We
might have attempted to introduce our own religion by force. We might
have sent missionaries among the natives at the public charge. We might
have held out hopes of public employment to converts, and have imposed
civil disabilities on Mahometans and Pagans. But we did none of these
things; and herein we judged wisely. Our duty, as rulers, was to
preserve strict neutrality on all questions merely religious: and I
am not aware that we have ever swerved from strict neutrality for the
purpose of making proselytes to our own faith. But we have, I am
sorry to say, sometimes deviated from the right path in the opposite
direction. Some Englishmen, who have held high office in India, seem to
have thought that the only religion which was not entitled to toleration
and to respect was Christianity. They regarded every Christian
missionary with extreme jealousy and disdain; and they suffered the
most atrocious crimes, if enjoined by the Hindoo superstition, to be
perpetrated in open day. It is lamentable to think how long after our
power was firmly established in Bengal, we, grossly neglecting the first
and plainest duty of the civil magistrate, suffered the practices of
infanticide and Suttee to continue unchecked. We decorated the temples
of the false gods. We provided the dancing girls. We gilded and painted
the images to which our ignorant subjects bowed down. We repaired and
embellished the car under the wheels of which crazy devotees flung
themselves at every festival to be crushed to death. We sent guards of
honour to escort pilgrims to the places of worship. We actually made
oblations at the shrines of idols. All this was considered, and is
still considered, by some prejudiced Anglo-Indians of the old school, as
profound policy. I believe that there never was so shallow, so senseless
a policy. We gained nothing by it. We lowered ourselves in the eyes of
those whom we meant to flatter. We led them to believe that we attached
no importance to the difference between Christianity and heathenism.
Yet how vast that difference is! I altogether abstain from alluding to
topics which belong to divines. I speak merely as a politician anxious
for the morality and the temporal well-being of society. And, so
speaking, I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry, and to
discountenance that religion which has done so much to promote justice,
and mercy, and freedom, and arts, and sciences, and good government, and
domestic happiness, which has struck off the chains of the slave, which
has mitigated the horrors of war, which has raised women from servants
and playthings into companions and friends, is to commit high treason
against humanity and civilisation.

Gradually a better system was introduced. A great man whom we have
lately lost, Lord Wellesley, led the way. He prohibited the immolation
of female children; and this was the most unquestionable of all his
titles to the gratitude of his country. In the year 1813 Parliament
gave new facilities to persons who were desirous to proceed to India
as missionaries. Lord William Bentinck abolished the Suttee. Shortly
afterwards the Home Government sent out to Calcutta the important and
valuable despatch to which reference has been repeatedly made in the
course of this discussion. That despatch Lord Glenelg wrote,--I was then
at the Board of Control, and can attest the fact,--with his own hand.
One paragraph, the sixty-second, is of the highest moment. I know that
paragraph so well that I could repeat it word for word. It contains in
short compass an entire code of regulations for the guidance of British
functionaries in matters relating to the idolatry of India. The orders
of the Home Government were express, that the arrangements of the
temples should be left entirely to the natives. A certain discretion
was of course left to the local authorities as to the time and manner
of dissolving that connection which had long existed between the English
Government and the Brahminical superstition. But the principle was laid
down in the clearest manner. This was in February 1833. In the year 1838
another despatch was sent, which referred to the sixty-second paragraph
in Lord Glenelg's despatch, and enjoined the Indian Government to
observe the rules contained in that paragraph. Again, in the year 1841,
precise orders were sent out on the same subject, orders which Lord
Ellenborough seems to me to have studied carefully for the express
purpose of disobeying them point by point, and in the most direct
manner. You murmur: but only look at the orders of the Directors and at
the proclamation of the Governor General. The orders are, distinctly and
positively, that the British authorities in India shall have nothing
to do with the temples of the natives, shall make no presents to those
temples, shall not decorate those temples, shall not pay any military
honour to those temples. Now, Sir, the first charge which I bring
against Lord Ellenborough is, that he has been guilty of an act of gross
disobedience, that he has done that which was forbidden in the strongest
terms by those from whom his power is derived. The Home Government says,
Do not interfere in the concerns of heathen temples. Is it denied that
Lord Ellenborough has interfered in the concerns of a heathen temple?
The Home Government says, Make no presents to heathen temples. Is
it denied that Lord Ellenborough has proclaimed to all the world his
intention to make a present to a heathen temple? The Home Government
says, Do not decorate heathen temples. Is it denied that Lord
Ellenborough has proclaimed to all the world his intention to decorate
a heathen temple? The Home Government says, Do not send troops to do
honour to heathen temples. Is it denied that Lord Ellenborough sent a
body of troops to escort these gates to a heathen temple? To be sure,
the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control tries to
get rid of this part of the case in rather a whimsical manner. He says
that it is impossible to believe that, by sending troops to escort the
gates, Lord Ellenborough can have meant to pay any mark of respect to
an idol. And why? Because, says the honourable gentleman, the Court of
Directors had given positive orders that troops should not be employed
to pay marks of respect to idols. Why, Sir, undoubtedly, if it is to be
taken for granted that Lord Ellenborough is a perfect man, if all our
reasonings are to proceed on the supposition that he cannot do wrong,
then I admit the force of the honourable gentleman's argument. But it
seems to me a strange and dangerous thing to infer a man's innocence
merely from the flagrancy of his guilt. It is certain that the Home
authorities ordered the Governor General not to employ the troops in the
service of a temple. It is certain that Lord Ellenborough employed the
troops to escort a trophy, an oblation, which he sent to the restored
temple of Somnauth. Yes, the restored temple of Somnauth. Those are his
lordship's words. They have given rise to some discussion, and seem not
to be understood by everybody in the same sense. We all know that this
temple is an ruins. I am confident that Lord Ellenborough knew it to be
in ruins, and that his intention was to rebuild it at the public charge.
That is the obvious meaning of his words. But, as this meaning is so
monstrous that nobody here can venture to defend it, his friends pretend
that he believed the temple to have been already restored, and that he
had no thought of being himself the restorer. How can I believe this?
How can I believe that, when he issued this proclamation, he knew
nothing about the state of the temple to which he proposed to make an
offering of such importance? He evidently knew that it had once been in
ruins; or he would not have called it the restored temple. Why am I to
suppose that he imagined it to have been rebuilt? He had people about
him who knew it well, and who could have told him that it was in ruins
still. To say that he was not aware that it was in ruins is to say that
he put forth his proclamation without taking the trouble to ask a single
question of those who were close at hand and were perfectly competent to
give him information. Why, Sir, this defence is itself an accusation. I
defy the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control, I
defy all human ingenuity, to get his lordship clear off from both the
horns of this dilemma. Either way, he richly deserves a parliamentary
censure. Either he published this proclamation in the recklessness of
utter ignorance without making the smallest inquiry; or else he, an
English and a Christian Governor, meant to build a temple to a heathen
god at the public charge, in direct defiance of the commands of his
official superiors. Turn and twist the matter which way you will, you
can make nothing else of it. The stain is like the stain of Blue Beard's
key, in the nursery tale. As soon as you have scoured one side clean,
the spot comes out on the other.

So much for the first charge, the charge of disobedience. It is fully
made out: but it is not the heaviest charge which I bring against Lord
Ellenborough. I charge him with having done that which, even if it had
not been, as it was, strictly forbidden by the Home authorities, it
would still have been a high crime to do. He ought to have known,
without any instructions from home, that it was his duty not to take
part in disputes among the false religions of the East; that it was his
duty, in his official character, to show no marked preference for any of
those religions, and to offer no marked insult to any. But, Sir, he has
paid unseemly homage to one of those religions; he has grossly insulted
another; and he has selected as the object of his homage the very worst
and most degrading of those religions, and as the object of his insults
the best and purest of them. The homage was paid to Lingamism. The
insult was offered to Mahometanism. Lingamism is not merely idolatry,
but idolatry in its most pernicious form. The honourable gentleman the
Secretary of the Board of Control seemed to think that he had achieved
a great victory when he had made out that his lordship's devotions had
been paid, not to Vishnu, but to Siva. Sir, Vishnu is the preserving
Deity of the Hindoo Mythology; Siva is the destroying Deity; and, as far
as I have any preference for one of your Governor General's gods over
another, I confess that my own tastes would lead me to prefer the
preserving to the destroying power. Yes, Sir; the temple of Somnauth
was sacred to Siva; and the honourable gentleman cannot but know by what
emblem Siva is represented, and with what rites he is adored. I will say
no more. The Governor General, Sir, is in some degree protected by the
very magnitude of his offence. I am ashamed to name those things
to which he is not ashamed to pay public reverence. This god of
destruction, whose images and whose worship it would be a violation of
decency to describe, is selected as the object of homage. As the object
of insult is selected a religion which has borrowed much of its theology
and much of its morality from Christianity, a religion which in the
midst of Polytheism teaches the unity of God, and, in the midst of
idolatry, strictly proscribes the worship of images. The duty of our
Government is, as I said, to take no part in the disputes between
Mahometans and idolaters. But, if our Government does take a part, there
cannot be a doubt that Mahometanism is entitled to the preference. Lord
Ellenborough is of a different opinion. He takes away the gates from a
Mahometan mosque, and solemnly offers them as a gift to a Pagan temple.
Morally, this is a crime. Politically, it is a blunder. Nobody who knows
anything of the Mahometans of India can doubt that this affront to their
faith will excite their fiercest indignation. Their susceptibility on
such points is extreme. Some of the most serious disasters that have
ever befallen us in India have been caused by that susceptibility.
Remember what happened at Vellore in 1806, and more recently at
Bangalore. The mutiny of Vellore was caused by a slight shown to the
Mahometan turban; the mutiny of Bangalore, by disrespect said to have
been shown to a Mahometan place of worship. If a Governor General had
been induced by his zeal for Christianity to offer any affront to a
mosque held in high veneration by Mussulmans, I should think that he had
been guilty of indiscretion such as proved him to be unfit for his
post. But to affront a mosque of peculiar dignity, not from zeal for
Christianity, but for the sake of this loathsome god of destruction, is
nothing short of madness. Some temporary popularity Lord Ellenborough
may no doubt gain in some quarters. I hear, and I can well believe, that
some bigoted Hindoos have hailed this proclamation with delight, and
have begun to entertain a hope that the British Government is about to
take their worship under its peculiar protection. But how long will that
hope last? I presume that the right honourable Baronet the First Lord of
the Treasury does not mean to suffer India to be governed on Brahminical
principles. I presume that he will not allow the public revenue to be
expended in rebuilding temples, adorning idols, and hiring courtesans.
I have no doubt that there is already on the way to India such an
admonition as will prevent Lord Ellenborough from persisting in the
course on which he has entered. The consequence will be that the
exultation of the Brahmins will end in mortification and anger. See
then of what a complication of faults the Governor General is guilty.
In order to curry favour with the Hindoos he has offered an inexpiable
insult to the Mahometans; and now, in order to quiet the English, he
is forced to disappoint and disgust the Hindoos. But, apart from the
irritating effect which these transactions must produce on every part of
the native population, is it no evil to have this continual wavering and
changing? This is not the only case in which Lord Ellenborough has, with
great pomp, announced intentions which he has not been able to carry
into effect. It is his Lordship's habit. He put forth a notification
that his Durbar was to be honoured by the presence of Dost Mahomed.
Then came a notification that Dost Mahomed would not make his appearance
there. In the proclamation which we are now considering his lordship
announced to all the princes of India his resolution to set up these
gates at Somnauth. The gates, it is now universally admitted, will
not be set up there. All India will see that the Governor General has
changed his mind. The change may be imputed to mere fickleness and
levity. It may be imputed to the disapprobation with which his conduct
has been regarded here. In either case he appears in a light in which it
is much to be deplored that a Governor General should appear.

So much for the serious side of this business; and now for the ludicrous
side. Even in our mirth, however, there is sadness; for it is no light
thing that he who represents the British nation in India should be a
jest to the people of India. We have sometimes sent them governors whom
they loved, and sometimes governors whom they feared; but they never
before had a governor at whom they laughed. Now, however, they laugh;
and how can we blame them for laughing, when all Europe and all America
are laughing too? You see, Sir, that the gentlemen opposite cannot keep
their countenances. And no wonder. Was such a State paper ever seen in
our language before? And what is the plea set up for all this bombast?
Why, the honourable gentleman the Secretary of the Board of Control
brings down to the House some translations of Persian letters from
native princes. Such letters, as everybody knows, are written in a most
absurd and turgid style. The honourable gentleman forces us to hear
a good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the
secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes and
hyperboles, Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in the same sort
of eloquence? The honourable gentleman might as well ask why Lord
Ellenborough should not sit cross-legged, why he should not let his
beard grow to his waist, why he should not wear a turban, why he should
not hang trinkets all about his person, why he should not ride about
Calcutta on a horse jingling with bells and glittering with false
pearls. The native princes do these things; and why should not he? Why,
Sir, simply because he is not a native prince, but an English Governor
General. When the people of India see a Nabob or a Rajah in all his
gaudy finery, they bow to him with a certain respect. They know that
the splendour of his garb indicates superior rank and wealth. But if Sir
Charles Metcalfe had so bedizened himself, they would have thought
that he was out of his wits. They are not such fools as the honourable
gentleman takes them for. 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. 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