lic Association, and gave it Ireland for a portion. What power is that? Justice denied rights withheld-wrongs perpetrated—the force which common injuries lends to millions-the wickedness of using the sacred trust of Government as a means of indulging private capricethe idiotcy of treating Englishmen like the children of the South Sea Islands-the phrenzy of believing, or making believe, that the adults of the nineteenth century can be led like children, or driven like barbarians! This it is that has conjured up the strange sights at which we now stand aghast! And shall we persist in the fatal error of combatting the giant progeny, instead of extirpating the execrable parent? Good God! Will men never learn wisdom even from their own experience? Will they never believe, till it be too late, that the surest way to prevent immoderate desires being formed, aye, and unjust demands enforced, is to grant, in due season, the moderate requests of justice?

You stand, my Lords, on the brink of a great event you are in the crisis of a whole nation's hopes and fears. An awful importance hangs over your decision. Pause, ere you plunge! There may not be any retreat! It behoves you to shape your conduct by the mighty occasion. They tell you not to be afraid of per

sonal consequences in discharging your duty. I too would ask you to banish all fears; but, above all, that most mischievous, most despicable fear, the fear of being thought afraid. If you won't take counsel from me, take example from the statesmanlike conduct of the Noble Duke, while you also look back, as you may, with satisfaction upon your own. He was told, and you were told, that the impatience of Ireland for equality of civil rights was partial, the clamour transient, likely to pass away with its temporary occasion, and that yielding to it would be conceding to intimidation. I recollect hearing this topic urged within this Hall in July, 1828; less regularly I heard it than I have now done, for I belonged not to your number-but I heard it urged in the self-same terms. The burthen of the cry was-It is no time for concession; the people are turbulent, and the Association dangerous. That summer passed, and the ferment subsided not. Autumn came, and brought not the precious fruit of peace,-on the contrary, all Ireland was convulsed with the unprecedented conflict which returned the great chief of the Catholics to sit in a Protestant Parliament. Winter bound the earth in chains; but it controlled not the popular fury, whose surge, more deafening than the tempest, lashed

* The Duke of Wellington.

the frail bulwarks of law founded upon injustice. Spring came-but no etherial mildness was its harbinger, or followed in its train,-the Catholics became stronger by every month's delay, displayed a deadlier resolution, and proclaimed their wrongs in a tone of louder defiance than before. And what course did you, at this moment of greatest excitement, and peril, and menace, deem it most fitting to pursue? Eight months before you had been told how unworthy it would be to yield when men clamoured and threatened. No change had happened in the interval, save that the clamours were become far more deafening, and the threats, beyond comparison, more overbearing. What, nevertheless, did your Lordships do? Your dutyfor you despised the cuckoo-note of the season, "not be intimidated." You granted all that the Irish demanded, and you saved your country. Was there in April a single argument advanced, which had not held good in July? None, absolutely none, except the new height to which the dangers of longer delay had risen, and the increased vehemence with which justice was demanded-and yet the appeal to your pride, which had prevailed in July, was in vain made in April, and you wisely and patriotically granted what was asked, and ran the risk of being supposed to yield through fear.

But the history of the Catholic Claims conveys another important lesson. Though in right, and policy, and justice, the measure of relief could not be too ample, half as much as was received with little gratitude, when so late wrung from you, would have been hailed twenty years before with delight; and even the July preceding, the measure would have been received as a boon freely given, which, I fear, was taken with but sullen satisfaction in April, as a right long withheld. Yet, blessed be God, the debt of justice, though tardily, was at length paid, and the Noble Duke won by it civic honours which rival his warlike achievements in lasting brightness-than which there can be no higher praise. What, if he had still listened to the topics of intimidation and inconsistency which had scared his predecessors? He might have proved his obstinacy, and Ireland would have been the sacrifice.

Apply now this lesson of recent history,-I may say of our own experience, to the measure before us. We stand in a truly critical position. If we reject the Bill, through fear of being thought to be intimidated, we may lead the life of retirement and quiet, but the hearts of the millions of our fellow-citizens are gone for ever; their affections are estranged; we, and our order,

and its privileges, are the objects of the people's hatred, as the only obstacles which stand between them and the gratification of their most passionate desire. The whole body of the Aristocracy must expect to share this fate, and be exposed to feelings such as these. For I hear it constantly said, that the Bill is rejected by all the Aristocracy. Favour, and a good number of supporters, our adversaries allow it has among the people; the Ministers, too, are for it; but the Aristocracy, say they, is strenuously opposed to it. I broadly deny this silly, thoughtless assertion. What! My Lords, the Aristocracy set themselves in a mass against the people-they who sprang from the people-are inseparably connected with the people—are supported by the people-are the natural chiefs of the people? They set themselves against the people, for whom Peers are ennobled - Bishops consecrated-Kings anointed-the people, to serve whom Parliament itself has an existence, and the Monarchy and all its institutions are constituted, and without whom none of them could exist for an hour? The assertion of unreflecting men is too monstrous to be enduredas a Member of this House, I deny it with indignation. I repel it with scorn, as a calumny upon us all, And yet are there those who even within these walls speak of the Bill, augmenting

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