roused the indignation, and naturally excited the alarm, of those Irish members whose political importance was dependent on the absence of public tranquillity. The address, therefore, which re-echoed the sentiments of the speech, was vehemently opposed. So soon as it had been moved by lord Ormelie, who had succeeded sir George Murray in the representation of Perthshire, and seconded by Mr. Marshall, one of the members for the new borough of Leeds, Mr. O'Connell began his attack on what he called "a bloody, brutal, unconstitutional address." It was, he said, nothing more than he had expected-a declaration of civil war-such a declaration as this country had once put forth to America, but from which this country had reaped only discomfiture and disgrace. After seven centuries of oppression, there was still to be a call for blood in Ireland. If, after so long a lapse of time, during which Ireland had been subject to England, a territory so blessed by Providence, but so cursed by man, was still in a state of wretchedness and misery, the governors alone were to blame, It was true that crime had increased; but why had it increased? The mover of the address had ascribed it to agitation; but he, and the other friends of ministers, seemed to have forgotten, that it was only last year they themselves had been reproached as agitators, exciting the people to support changes and innovations which the people did not desire. The increase of crime in Ireland had been occasioned, not by agitation, but by misgovernment; not by words, but by deeds. It was proved by the parliamentary reports of committees, that the crimes were per

petrated by the lowest class of the community, and had no connection with any feeling of a political nature. Nay, he would defy any person to point out a time when there was political agitation in Ireland, that was not comparatively free from crime. At no period had Whiteboyism been more abundant than in 1821 and 1822, when the system had almost assumed the character of open insurrection. There was then no political agitation, for the Catholics, relying on the supposed sentiments of George IV., especially after his visit to Ireland, abstained from agitating the question of emancipation. Yet there were eleven counties proclaimed under the insurrection act, and seven more were about to be placed in the same situation. But when the Catholic association was formed, and the principle of agitation had been in full force for ten months, disturbance ceased, and every county in Ireland was quieted. What became of the argument founded on agitation when it was thus proved, that crimes ceased when agitation prevailed?. Seven centuries of misgovernment had taught the Irisha shrewd, calculating, and observant people, -to understand the signs of the times; and when they saw any prospect, however remote, of effecting a beneficial change for their country, they seized it with avidity, and it absorbed every other sentiment. Increase of crime had always followed, and always would follow, increase of force. Never had there been such a prosecuting government as the present. They had prosecuted the press, the people, and even the priests; but had done nothing to restore tranquillity to the country. So long as Ireland had grievances to complain of, he

would agitate to redress them. This was what Englishmen had done to achieve reform; and he, following the same course, would agitate as long as he had the power, and found it necessary to use it. An unreformed parliament had passed two acts relative to Ireland, which even an Algerine government would not have sanctioned. A reformed parliament, it appeared, was now to be called on to pass another, to put an end to agitation; but he would tell them, it would be many and many a day before they could frame and carry an act to effect that object. When the Irish had so many grounds of complaint, had they not a right to agitate? In the first place, look at the magistracy. Suppose a magistracy were established here professing a religion different from that of the people at large-armed with arbitrary power having authority to inflict fine and imprisonment and against the members of which it was hopeless to seek redress,-what feelings would such a state of things generate? In Ireland, since the union, so many forms had been introduced in the law, that he defied any man, however injured, to maintain an action successfully against a magistrate. That the magistracy of Ireland was on a bad footing, was admitted by ministers themselves. When they came into power, he and others had called for a revision of the magistracy. The answer then given was, that, six months after the late King's death, the commissions of all the magistrates in Ireland would have to be renewed, and the government would then take care that proper persons should be put into the commission of the peace. That renewal of the com

none but

missions had since taken place; and he should like to know what improper persons had been excluded from the commission of the peace ? He could, on the contrary, enumer ate instances of improper persons that had been left in it, and left in it, too, upon party motives, and for partisan views and objects. The power of the magistracy in Ireland, as regarded the lower classes, was omnipotent, especially since the introduction of the petty sessions; and they exercised that power with most complete impunity. In order to attach responsibility to the exercise of power, you must isolate that power; but the magistrates at the petty sessions in Ireland, by acting together and in a bulk, rendered the exercise of their power entirely irresponsible. The publicity of their proceedings at petty sessions was salutary; but then their combination together rendered it impossible for the poor man to obtain redress for the injustice which he might suffer at their hands; and, with the aid of the Trespass Act, it was in their power to inflict grievous injustice upon the lower orders. A great deal was said of the crimes that were committed in Ireland; but such crimes were, in most instances, to be traced to the injustice inflicted upon the poor, through the means of such acts of parliament as that he had just referred to; they were the wild justice of revenge to which the poor were driven, when all other modes of obtaining redress failed them. Since the commencement of lord Anglesey's administration in Ireland there had been 34 stipendiary magistrates acting in that country; of these 34, lord Anglesey had nominated 26, and, in such a country as Ireland, the

large majority of its inhabitants Catholic, especial care was taken that not a single Catholic should be amongst those 26 stipendiary magistrates. There were 32 subinspectors of police in Ireland; he did not know how many of them had been appointed by the present administration; but this he did know, that there was not a single Catholic amongst them. There were five inspectors-general of police, and there was not a Catholic amongst them. With such facts before them, could they be surprised at the present situation of Ireland? With such real grievances affecting the people of that country, where was the necessity of attributing its disturbed and discontented state to the efforts of agitators? Another grievance was, a total want of confidence in the administration of justice by the bench. For the last 30 years the enemies of liberty and of Ireland had been in power. They had filled up the judicial situations with their own political supporters and partisans. Persons had been made judges in Ireland for no other reason than because they had voted for the legislative union, and with no other qualification to fit them for the office. During 20 years, promotion at the Irish bar had been withheld from any man that signed a petition in favour of Catholic emancipation. But when the persons which such a system had promoted to the bench retired from it, and when men of business and professional eminence were placed upon it, it was thought that justice would at length be properly administered in Ireland. He was sorry to say, that such anticipations had not been fulfilled. He was willing to

make every allowance-he was not for going too far-but Europe and European civilization should be made aware of the fact, that there existed no confidence in the adininistration of justice in Ireland. It was inconsistent with that unsullied purity which ought to belong to the judicial character that judges should have their families quartered upon the public purse, and that, as regularly as the quarter came round, their applications should be made to the treasury for payment. The manner of appointing juries was another grievance. The power assumed by the crown of setting aside jurors, placed the selection of juries, whenever it pleased, entirely in its hands. The grand jury system was another monstrous abuse. The power possessed of imposing taxes by that self-appointed body was immense-a body, the majority of which generally consisted of the agents of absentees. It was well known in Ireland, that there were good roads in the neighbourhood of grand jurors' residences, while it was generally the reverse elsewhere. The taxation imposed by that body reached the amount of 940,000l. a-year, the sixteenth part of the entire landed revenue of Ireland, and 1s. 5d. on the entire rental of the country. It was in the hands of such menmen connected with one party in Ireland, that such enormous power was vested; it was from amongst that body that sheriffs were generally selected; and there was but one Catholic sheriff appointed in the present year. No man ought to be taxed, unless through his representatives; and, upon that ground, he would contend that the office of grand juror should be

made elective. Corporations constituted another great grievance in Ireland. They possessed enormous and unjust monopolies. The reform bill had, no doubt, done much to remedy the abuses of corporations, but to reach the root of the evil they must go still deeper. The corporation of Cork, for instance, was a close corporation, possessed a revenue of 70,000l. a-year. The bigotry and intolerance of those corporations were well known. Though Catholics had been for years admissible to them, few had been admitted in Cork, and none had ever been allowed to discharge the duties of any of its officers. The corporation of Dublin, too, continued a close monopoly, from which Catholics were systematically excluded. They might taunt Catholics with their intolerance and bigotry; but he would defy them to produce any such instances of either in a Catholic assembly under a Catholic constitutional government. True it was that, in Catholic states, where the church was wedded to the state, the natural offspring were intolerance and exclusion; but under Catholic liberal governments no such intolerance as that exhibited by the corporation of Dublin was to be found, into which corporation, though Catholics had been admissible for 40 years, not one had been admitted; bigotry thus proving itself superior to law and Parliament. Then came the tithes. All the Irish Catholics wanted was, freedom in religious matters; they wanted no supremacy; but they did insist on the extinction of tithes. Were they still to pay 22 bishops, and innumerable other churchmen, for services which they did not require? It was the government

itself that commenced the agitation with regard to the tithe system, by endeavouring to put down the public meetings on that subject, and that, too, by means of a construction of the law of conspiracy which would never have been tolerated in England. Much had been said of the dangerous and alarming character of tithe meetings, and of the numbers of which they consisted. Were they more numerous in any instance than the great meeting at Birmingham? Was there more menacing language used on such occasions than had been known in other cases? He denied that there was. He defied any one to bring a charge of the kind, save perhaps in a single instance. What was to be expected, when all redress was refused? All the crimes which were now committed in Ireland, could, in justice, be laid at the door only of the Whigs. The Whigs had always proved the bitterest enemies of Ireland. It was the Whigs that violated the treaty of Limerick. The Whigs of the present day were only treading in the steps of the same party that had gone before them. The Whigs, by the course they were now pursuing, adopted, and rendered themselves answerable, for all the crimes which should take place in Ireland. Let them but do justice to Irelandlet them put down the cry for a repeal of the union, by showing that it was unnecessary-let them show by deeds, and not by words, that they meant well to that wretched country. Why did they not propose such measures, instead of calling on the first reformed parliament for more bayonets and more guns-for the cannon and the musket-in order to crush

the people of Ireland to the earth? They had called out the Orange yeomanry of the north of Ireland. The consequence was, that the Catholics of the north of Ireland had also armed themselves; and though that part of the country appeared to be quiet, it was only a sleeping volcano. It was quiet because the Orange yeomanry knew that the Catholics had got arms, and a further cause was because the yeomanry were favourable to repeal. Disorder and discontent were spreading. Louth might be specially named as the seat of both. The people were not taking up arms, but they were procuring them. Government might go on with their present system; but to what would it lead? Was there any force in a king's speech to silence the voice, to overrule the demands, of the abused Irish peasantry? They might try the effect of Algerine acts; but he warned them of the consequences that would follow such a course. Having denounced Mr. Secretary Stanley as the worst enemy of Ireland, Mr. O'Connell concluded by moving an amendment, that the house do now resolve itself into a committee of the whole house, to consider of the address to his Majesty.

Mr. Stanley said, he had expected from Mr. O'Connell some attempt, at least, to discuss what he had carefully abstained from approaching the necessity and effects of the great object of his agitation, the repeal of the union. The King's speech had placed the legislative union or separation of the two countries, at issue. Mr. O'Connell had been in the habit of representing the repeal as the one and only mode of redressing the

grievances of Ireland, and had promised the people of Ireland that, before June twelve months, there would be an Irish parliament sitting in College-green. Every syllable which he had spoken

every imflammatory harangue by which he had stirred up the passions of a too easily excited people, whilst he fallaciously allowed the words conciliation and peace to drop from his lips, had tended to create in the people of Ireland this feeling-that, as long as they were subjected to the foreign yoke, there was no hope of alleviation of what he was pleased to call their grievances-no amelioration of what he designated their degraded state, and that, in repeal alone, and in the throwing off of the bonds of the Saxons, any improvement of the condition of Ireland could be hoped for. The government now told him, before the assembled people of Great Britain and Ireland, that his panacea was one which, with all the power of government, and with, he believed, the cordial assent of the people (without which the government could do nothing), should be resisted to the death. They called upon him to meet them; they affirmed their proposition, and they challenged him to negative it. Instead of doing so, he had made a speech, addressed less to those within than to those without the walls of that house, containing the usual declamation relative to the indifference with which the affairs of Ireland were treated by the house

declamation which never received a more convincing refutation than by the patience with which the house had listened to the whole of his observations. He had accused the government of injustice to