any one sub-division, may be kept in check by the presence of other classes who do not share in them. Then, and not till then, can Ireland enjoy a permanent and sure tranquillity.

Even, when this shall have taken place, there will still remain, in the opposing interests of Catholics and Protestants, an almost insurmountable obstacle to the quiet of the country. The Catholics can never, unless they altogether forget the spirit of their religion, see with patience a Protestant church in possession of the honours and emoluments attached to a national ecclesiastical establishment. Nor will this difficulty be in any degree overcome by opening to them the avenues to political power. Such an act of indulgence or of justice, at the same time that it increases their power, must inflame their desire to elevate their own church on the ruins of heresy. The advancement of the upper

classes of the Roman Catholic laity to political privileges will not exalt their clergy; the priesthood will in that case feel only the more deeply their inferiority to the Protestants; and their embittered spirit will be communicated to the lower orders, who will then be less firmly knit to their gentry than at present. The gradual destruction of the Catholic superstition can alone close for ever the wounds of Ireland. That event, if it shall ever happen, can be brought about only very slowly; but whatever system of policy, whether of emancipation or of exclusion, is likely to contribute the most effectually to it, that system is the best for the empire and for mankind.

In the meantime, all that can be done is, to remove as much as possible every local cause of discontent, and to enforce by civil and military power the rigid ob servance of the laws.

perty of my loyal and peaceable subjects; and it will be for your immediate consideration whether the existing laws are sufficient for this purpose.

"Notwithstanding this serious. interruption of public tranquillity, I have the satisfaction of believing that my presence in Ireland has been productive of very beneficial effects; and all descriptions of my people may confidently rely upon the just and equal administration of the laws, and upon my paternal solicitude for their welfare.

"Gentlemen of the House

of Commons,

"It is very gratifying to me to be able to inform you, that during the last year the revenue has exceeded that of the preceding, and appears to be in a course of progressive improvement.

"I have directed the estimates of the current year to be laid before you. They have been framed with every attention to economy which the circumstances of the country will permit; and it will be satisfactory to you to learn, that I have been able to make a large reduction in our annual expenditure, particularly in our naval and military establishments.

"My Lords and Gentlemen; "I have the greatest pleasure in acquainting you, that a considerable improvement has taken place, in the course of the last year, in the commerce and manufactures of the United Kingdom, and that I can now state them to be, in their important branches, in a very flourishing condition.

"I must at the same time deeply regret the depressed state of the agricultural interest.

"The condition of an interest so essentially connected with the prosperity of the country will, of VOL. LXIV.

course, attract your early attention; and I have the fullest reliance on your wisdom in the consideration of this important subject.

"I am persuaded, that in whatever measures you may adopt, you will bear constantly in mind, that in the maintenance of our public credit all the best interests of this kingdom are equally involved; and that it is by a steady adherence to that principle that we have attained, and can alone expect to preserve, our high station amongst the nations of the world.".

The Speaker having retired from the bar, and his majesty having withdrawn, the Lords adjourned.

On the same afternoon, they met again; when lord Roden moved, and lord Walsingham seconded, an address re-echoing the substance of the speech. It was agreed to without either division or debate. Lord Lansdown, indeed, spoke at some length, but his remarks were desultory, and were brought forward rather in illustration of the speech, and as reasons for not opposing the address, than in contradiction to either the one or the other. He admitted that our trade was flourishing; but its prosperity, he conceived, arose in a great measure from our increased intercourse with South America; and it was yet uncertain, whether our mercantile speculations in that quarter, would be ultimately advantageous. Though he was pleased with the professions of economy, which the speech contained, he reminded ministers that they were now adopting the maxims, which had been so long urged upon them in vain by him and his friends. He expatiated at considerable length on the distress

[C]

of the agricultural interest, and on the Irish disturbances; ascribing the latter in a great measure to the system of misgovernment, to which Ireland had been for ages subject; and with respect to the former, ridiculing and reprobating a plan for advancing Exchequer bills as a loan to the farmers, on which lord Liverpool, just before the meeting of parliament, had taken the opinion of the principal merchants and bankers of London.

Lord Liverpool, in a very moderate speech, adverted to the various topics on which lord Lansdown had touched, and gave them the proper colouring and hue. In speaking of Ireland, he observed, that it was a singular circumstance, that in the disturbed districts, where the laws were daily transgressed, no hostility was manifested towards his majesty's government. The Irish, indeed, amid all their discontents and excesses, had never quarrelled with the government as a government; nor did religion enter largely into the motives or pretexts of their outrages.

A similar address was moved in the Commons by Mr. R. Clive, and seconded by Mr. W. Duncombe. There it excited a keen discussion. Sir Francis Burdett moved as an amendment, that the consideration of the speech should be deferred till the following Thursday. It was, he said, the practice of our forefathers to deliberate before they resolved, to understand before they voted; and they held it no disrespect to the throne to postpone until a subsequent day, the consideration of the speech that had just been delivered from it. They thus knew the topics which it contained, and those which it omitted; and were enabled to make up their

minds both upon the one and upon the other. After the Revolution, that usage was dispensed with; yet still some courtesy continued to be observed towards parliament by the ministers of the day, which, perhaps, secured the practical benefits of the exploded system. The royal speech was read over night in the cock-pit to such members as chose to attend; and its contents found their way into the morning, or at least into the evening, papers of the day, before the houses were convened: : so that all who felt an interest on the subject could honestly arrive at a decision. Of late years even this courtesy had not been observed, and the House of Commons, year after year, was expected to come to an instantaneous vote of approbation of all that the minister thought fit to put into the mouth of the sovereign. His mind, he confessed, was neither sufficiently quick, nor sufficiently capacious to be competent to this duty. Not having the power of divination, or the faculty of conjecturing, with any degree of certainty, what would be the nature of the king's speech, he could not be prepared with an amendment ready cut and dried for the occasion. The consequence, therefore, was, either that the vote of the House became a mere formal compliment, pledging no man, or that parliament was taken by surprise, and required to give its sweeping and instantaneous approbation of that which, under other circumstances, it would be disposed to object to. In the first case, the address was not of the slightest value; and, in the last, after a great deal of talk about conciliation and unanimity, the House was entrapped and cajoled into an apparent but insincere acquiescence.

Under such circumstances, an interval of one day was not too much, before the House ought to be called upon for a decision. The speech, he added, so far as he could collect it, was by no means such a full and satisfactory statement as the country had a right to expect; we laboured under grievances of all kinds; we had not merely agricultural distresses to complain of, but many violations of the law and constitution, of more importance than even the sufferings of the landed interest. Were all these to be passed over without notice? As to economy, the speech made very praiseworthy general professions; but ministers had always been liberal of these; they ought now to have pointed out, how and when they would carry their promises into effect.

ters.

The disturbances in Ireland were, of course, ascribed to minis'Ireland," said the hon. baronet, "has been driven to acts of desperate retaliation; and that unhappy people have been reduced to so deplorable a condition, that they are now ready to run the hazard of any personal infliction, for the sake of a moment's respite." Surely, it might have occurred to him, that it must be a singular sort of distress and poverty, which collected hundreds of well-mounted, wellequipped farmers, and impelled them to plunder whole districts, not to get food or clothes, but to procure arms and ammunition. The footpad may be allowed to plead poverty and hunger as a palliation for his crime; but such an excuse is more than ridiculous in the mouth of the highwayman, who scours the road on a mettlesome steed.

amendment; and in support of it, urged the example of the French chamber of deputies, which took time to consider of a reply to the king's speech, and had recently shown, that they dared dissent from the sentiments contained in it.

Lord Londonderry contended, that the amendment proceeded altogether upon a mistaken view of the effect of the address. If the address were understood as implying, that parliament, by agreeing to it, would be pledged to support certain opinions and sentiments on the topics to which it referred; then the hon. baronet should have moved, not that the consideration of the speech should be adjourned till Thursday, but that it should be postponed for three or four months, for that period would scarcely be sufficient for the mature consideration of all the subjects adverted to in the speech-alluding, as it did, to our foreign policy, to revenue, tó expenditure, to retrenchment, to commerce, to manufactures, and above all, to the state of the agricultural interest. He, therefore, was of opinion that the hon. bart. had taken a false view of the time requisite to consider the speech from the throne, if it were deemed necessary in the reply to enter into these various and highly important points; and he conceived that he did not at all prejudice the public interest, by recommending the immediate adoption of the address as a measure which did not pledge gentlemen to any particular opinion, and which left the subjects before enumerated to be discussed in their natural and ordinary

course.