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crisis, but when I am minister and Fenianism is so subdued, it is made the principal argument for a revolution?

Well, what was the second element of the right honourable gentleman? He said there was a startling and dangerous emigration from the country. I never liked the emigration from Ireland. I have deplored it.. But the emigration from Ireland has lasted now for a considerable number of years, during most of which the right honourable gentleman was a leading minister of the Crown, and yet he never said that in consequence of that emigra150 tion the state of Ireland was critical. And now when I have the honour to be a minister of the Crown, and view still with anxiety the emigration from that country, though I have the satisfaction of seeing that it is reduced, the right honourable gentleman says this also is an element in the crisis of Ireland.

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Then, Sir, another element of the right honourable gentleman was education. 160 am not aware that the education of the Irish people during the two short years we have sat upon this bench has created the Irish crisis... As for the fourth cause of the crisis, I should have thought that, having passed a Reform Bill last year, that was a reason why we should have lost no time in passing a Reform Bill for Ireland. Instead of doing that we are to acknowledge a crisis. .]

Sir, I do not think there is an Irish 170 crisis. But I say, and I have said it very often, that the condition of Ireland is, on the whole, not entirely satisfactory. But is the condition of the Irish people now worse than it was before the Union? ... Is

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it not true that the working population are at this moment in the enjoyment of a higher rate of wages, and consequently in a higher state of social enjoyment, than at any previous period of their history?

Sir, the whole thing, this wide-spread discontent, this constant disaffection, and the perilous position of the Church in Ireland, is explained by the fact, the recent discovery, that though the evils of Ireland are not materially increased, there are moral evils, there are sentimental evils to be redressed.

Well, Sir, I am not the man to despise a sentimental grievance. I think he takes a very contracted view of life and of human 190 nature who despises the sentimental grievances of a nation. . . . Now, what are those sentimental grievances of the Irish people? I am not conscious that I have ever been deficient in sympathy for the Irish people. . . . But I must say nothing surprises me more than the general conduct of the Irish people on this subject of sentimental grievances. They are a race who are certainly among the bravest of

the brave, most ingenious, witty, very imaginative, and therefore very sanguine; but for 200 them to go about the world announcing that they are a conquered race, does appear to me the most extraordinary thing in the world. It is the conquerors from whom we should learn the fact; for it is not the conquered who should go about the world and announce their shame and humiliation.

Then we are told that the Church in Ireland is a badge of this conquest. Well, Sir, I will not go into the question as to the origin of the 210 Irish Church. I hope that nothing shall induce me to enter into a controversy as to whether St Patrick was a Protestant or not. But I ask this plain question from this conquered race-who attain an eminent position in every country where wars are successful— why is the Church of Ireland more a badge of conquest to the Roman Catholics of that country than the Church of England is to the Dissenters? . . . If there is any difference, 220 the feelings of the English Dissenter ought to be more bitter than those of the Roman Catholic. That is, therefore, another point, so far as sentimental grievances are concerned, of which I really do hope we shall hear no

more.

I say that it is not right to disestablish the Irish Church; and of this I am quite certain, that it never can be right to argue that question on an assumed and fallacious crisis, 230 which any man who has any knowledge of life knows has no existence.

Whether the policy is right or wrong is another question; but do not let the House misconceive the crisis which has arrived. Well, then, we come to the question of England. No man can have watched what has taken place in this country during the last ten years without being prepared, if he be of a thoughtful mind, for the crisis of 240 this country. I repeat it, . . the crisis of England is now fast arriving. High Church Ritualists and the Irish followers of the Pope have been long in secret combination, and are now in open confederacy. (Laughter.)

Yes, but it is a fact. It is confessed by those who attempted to prevent this combination, to mitigate the occurrence, to avoid the conjuncture which we always felt would be most dangerous to the country. They have 250 combined to destroy that great blessing of conciliation which both parties in the State for the last quarter of a century have laboured to effect. I am perfectly aware of the great difficulties that we have to encounter. I know the almost superhuman power of this combination. They have their hand almost upon the realm of England. Under the guise of

has been to inculcate that wisdom and policy, which are the parents of the government of Great Britain, forbid this jealous eye over her subjects; and that, on the contrary, they cry aloud in the language of the poet, adverted to by Lord Chatham on the memorable subject of America, unfortunately without effect

Be to their faults a little blind,
Be to their virtues very kind,
Let all their thoughts be unconfined,
And clap your padlock on the mind.

Engage the people by their affections,convince their reason,-and they will be loyal from the only principle that can make loyalty sincere, vigorous, or rational,-a conviction that it is their truest interest, and that their government is for their good. Constraint is the natural parent of resistance, and a pregnant proof that reason is not on the side of those who use it. You must all remember Lucian's pleasant story: Jupiter and a countryman were

walking together, conversing with great freedom and familiarity upon the subject of heaven and earth. The countryman listened with attention and acquiescence, while Jupiter strove only to convince him; but happening to hint a doubt, Jupiter turned hastily round and threatened him with his thunder. 'Ah, ah!' says the countryman, 'now, Jupiter, I know that you are wrong; you are always wrong when you appeal to your thunder.'

This is the case with me-I can reason with the people of England, but I cannot fight against the thunder of authority.

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Gentlemen, this is my defence for free opinions. With regard to myself, I am, and 100 always have been, obedient and affectionate to the law-to that rule of action, as long as I exist, I shall ever give my voice and my conduct; but I shall ever do as I have done to-day, maintain the dignity of my high profession, and perform, as I understand them, all its important duties. .

You have now two wars before you, of which you must choose one, for both you cannot support. The war against America has been hitherto carried on against her alone, unassisted by any ally; notwithstanding she stood alone, you have been obliged uniformly to increase your exertions, and to push your efforts to the extent of your power, without being able to bring it to any favourable issue; you have exerted all your strength hitherto without effect, and you cannot now divide a force found already inadequate to its object. My opinion is for withdrawing your forces from America entirely, for a defensive war you never can think of; a defensive war would ruin this nation at any time and in any circumstances; an offensive war is pointed out as proper for this country; our situation points it out, and the spirit of the nation impels us to attack rather than defence. Attack France, then, for she is your object: the nature of the war with her is quite different; the war against America is against your own countrymen, that against France is against your inveterate enemy and rival. . . Every stroke against France is of advantage to you; the more you lower her

scale, the more your own rises, and the more the Americans will be detached from her as useless to them. Even your victories over America are favourable to France, from what 30 they must cost you in men and money; your victories over France will be felt by her ally. America must be conquered in France; France never can be conquered in America.

The war of the Americans is a war of passion; it is of such a nature as to be supported by the most powerful virtues, love of liberty and of country, and at the same time by those passions in the human heart which give courage, strength, and perseverance to man; the spirit of revenge for the injuries you have done them, of retaliation for the hardships inflicted on them and of opposition to the unjust powers you would have exercised over them. Everything combines to animate them to this war, and such a war is without end; for whatever obstinacy enthusiasm ever inspired man with, you will now have to contend with in America. No matter what gives birth to that enthusiasm, whether the name of religion or of liberty, the effects are the same: it inspires a spirit that is unconquerable, and solicitous to undergo diffi

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culties and dangers; and as long as there is a man in America, so long will you have him against you in the field.

The war of France is of another sort. The war of France is a war of interest; it was interest that first induced her to engage in it, and it is by that same interest that she will measure its continuance. Turn your face at once against her, attack her wherever she is exposed, crush her commerce wherever you can, make her feel heavy and immediate distress throughout the nation, and the people will soon cry out to their Government.

She will find the having entered into this business a bad bargain, and you will force her to desert an ally that brings so much trouble and distress, and the advantages of whose alliance may never take effect.

What, sir, is become of the ancient spirit of this nation? Where is that national spirit that ever did honour to this country? Have the present ministers exhausted that, too, with almost the last shilling of your money? Are they not ashamed of the temporising conduct

they have used towards France? ... But look, again, how Holland is spoken of to-day: even in your correspondence with her your littleness appears:

pauper et exul uterque

projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba.

From this you may judge of your situation; from this you may know what a state you are reduced to. How will the French party in Holland exult over you, and grow strong? She will never continue your ally while you meanly crouch to France, and dare not stir in your own defence; nor is it extraordinary that she should not, while the present ministers 9 remain in place. No power in Europe is so blind; none stupid enough to ally itself with weakness, to become partner in bankruptcy, to unite with obstinacy, absurdity, and imbecility. For these reasons, Sir, I am against the address upon your table, and most heartily concur in the amendment of my right honourable friend.

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THE honourable gentleman charges me with abandoning that cause, which, he says, in terms of flattery, I had once so successfully asserted. I tell him, in reply, that if he were to search the history of my life, he would find that the period of it, in which I struggled most for the real, substantial cause of liberty, is this very moment that I am addressing you. Freedom, according to my conception of it, consists in the safe and sacred possession of a man's property, governed by laws defined and certain; with many personal privileges, natural, civil, and religious, which he cannot surrender without ruin to himself; and of which to be deprived by any other power, is despotism. This bill, instead of subverting, is destined to give stability to these principles; instead of narrowing the basis of freedom, it tends to enlarge it; instead of suppressing, its object is to infuse and circulate the spirit of liberty.

What is the most odious species of tyranny? Precisely that which this bill is meant to annihilate. That a handful of men, free themselves, should execute the most base and abominable despotism over millions of their fellow-creatures; that innocence should be the victim of oppression; that industry should toil for rapine; that the harmless labourer should sweat, not

for his own benefit, but for the luxury and rapacity of tyrannic depredation; in a word, that thirty million of men, gifted by Providence with the ordinary endowments of humanity, should groan under a system of despotism unmatched in all the histories of the world.

What is the end of all government? Certainly the happiness of the governed. Others may hold other opinions; but this is mine, and I proclaim it. What are we to think of a government, whose good fortune is supposed to spring from the calamities of its subjects, whose aggrandisement grows out of the miseries of mankind? This is the kind of government exercised under the East India Company upon the natives of Indostan; and the subversion of that infamous government is the main object of the bill in question.

But in the progress of accomplishing this end, it is objected that the charter of the Company should not be violated; and upon this point, Sir, I shall deliver my opinion without disguise. 50 A charter is a trust to one or more persons for some given benefit. If this trust be abused, if the benefit be not obtained, and its failure arises from palpable guilt, or (what in this case is full as bad) from palpable ignorance or mismanagement, will any man gravely say, that

trust should not be resumed, and delivered to other hands, more especially in the case of the East India Company, whose manner of executing this trust, whose laxity and languor produced, and tend to produce consequences diametrically opposite to the ends of confiding that trust, and of the institution for which it was granted? I beg of gentlemen to be aware of the lengths to which their arguments upon the intangibility of this charter may be carried. Every syllable virtually impeaches the establishment by which we sit in this House, in the enjoyment of this freedom, and of every other blessing of our government. These kind of arguments are batteries against the main pillar of the British Constitution. . . . Those who condemn the present bill as a violation of the chartered rights of the East India Company, condemn, on the same ground, I say again, the Revolution, as a violation of the chartered rights of King James II. He, with as much reason, might have claimed the property of dominion; but what was the language of the people?

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'No, you have no property in dominion; dominion was vested in you, as it is in every chief magistrate, for the benefit of the community to be governed; it was a sacred trust delegated by compact; you have abused that trust; you have exercised dominion for the purposes of vexation and tyranny-not of comfort, protection, and good order; and we therefore resume the power which was originally ours; we recur to the first principles of all government, the way of the many: and it is our will that you shall no longer abuse your dominion.' The case is the same with the East India Company's government over a territory, as it has been said by my honourable friend (Mr Burke), of 280,000 square miles in extent, nearly equal to all Christian Europe, and containing thirty million of the human race. It matters not whether dominion arises from conquest, or from compact. Conquest gives no right to the conqueror to be a tyrant; 100 and it is no violation of right to abolish the authority which is misused.

I HAVE spoken of myself very often in the course of what I have said this night, and must speak still more frequently in the course of what I have to say; the House will see this awkward task is rendered indispensable, infinitely more having been said concerning me, during the debate, than concerning the question, which is the proper subject of agitation. The right honourable gentleman (Mr Pitt) says, that nothing ever happened to give him an ill impression of my character, or to prevent a mutual confidence. He says rightly; there have been interchanges of civility, and amicable habits between us, in which I trust I have given him no cause to complain. But after pronouncing a brilliant eulogy on me and my capacity to serve the country, the right honourable gentleman considers me at the same time the most dangerous man in the kingdom.

The right honourable gentleman could not for one night pass by the coalition, yet I think he might have chosen a fitter time to express his indignation against the noble lord (North) than the present moment.

An attack upon the noble lord in his presence would bear a more liberal colour; and the cause of his absence now would surely rather disarm than irritate a generous enemy. There are distinctions in hatred, and the direst foes upon such occasions moderate their aversion. The coali

tion is, however, a fruitful topic, and the power of traducing it, which the weakest and meanest creatures in the country enjoy and exercise, is of course equally vested in men of rank and parts, though every man of parts and rank would not be apt to participate in the privilege.

An honourable gentleman under the gallery (Mr Martin), to whom an abuse of the coalition seems a sort of luxury, wishes that a starling were at the right hand of the Chair to cry out, 'disgraceful coalition!' Sir, upon this subject I shall say but a few words. The calamitous situation of this country required an administration whose stability could give it a tone of firmness with foreign nations, and promise some hope of restoring the faded glories of the country. Such an administration could not be formed without some junction of parties; and if former differences were to be an insurmountable barrier to union, no chance of salvation remained for the country; as it is well known, that four public men could not be found, who had not, at one time or other, taken opposite sides in politics. The great cause of difference between us and the noble lord in the blue riband no longer existed; his personal character stood high; and thinking it safer to trust him than those who had before deceived us, we preferred to unite with the noble lord.

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