fathers are buried, pronounce upon those who have lain there for many hundred years a fearful and appalling sentence, - yes, call what I regard as the truth not only an error, but a sin, to which mercy shall not be extended,—all this I will bear, to all this I will submit, nay, at all this I will but smile, but do not tell me that I am in heart and creed a slave! That, my countrymen cannot brook! In their own bosoms they carry the high consciousness that never was imputation more foully false, or more detestably calumnious!

106. IRISH ALIENS AND ENGLISH VICTORIES.-Sheil.

This brilliant appeal - one of the most eloquent in the annals of British oratory-is from Sheil's Speech on the Irish Municipal Bill, in the House of Commons, February 224, 1837. The episode was called forth by an unfortunate expression which Lord Lyndhurst had employed, some time before, in the House of Lords, in alluding to the Irish as "aliens, in blood and religion.” During Sheil's speech, his Lordship was sitting under the gallery; and it is recorded that Sheil shook his head indignantly at him, as he spoke. The effect upon the House was very marked. Nearly all the members turned towards Lord Lyndhurst; and the shouts of the Ministerialists, encountered by the vehement outcries of the Conservatives, continued for some minutes. The latter half of this speech demands great rapidity of utterance in the delivery.

I SHOULD be surprised, indeed, if, while you are doing us wrong, you did not profess your solicitude to do us justice. From the day on which Strongbow set his foot upon the shore of Ireland, Englishmen were never wanting in protestations of their deep anxiety to do us justice; -even Strafford, the deserter of the People's cause, the renegade Wentworth, who gave evidence in Ireland of the spirit of instinctive tyranny which predominated in his character, even Strafford, while

he trampled upon our rights, and trod upon the heart of the country, protested his solicitude to do justice to Ireland! What marvel is it, then, that Gentlemen opposite should deal in such vehement protestations? There is, however, one man, of great abilities, - not a member of this House, but whose talents and whose boldness have placed him in the topmost place in his party, who, disdaining all imposture, and thinking it the best course to appeal directly to the religious and national antipathies of the People of this country, abandoning all reserve, and flinging off the slender veil by which his political associates affect to cover, although they cannot hide, their motives, - distinctly and audaciously tells the Irish People that they are not entitled to the same privileges as Englishmen; and pronounces them, in any particular which could enter his minute enumeration of the circumstances by which fellow-citizenship is created, in race, identity and religion, to be aliens; to be aliens in race, to be aliens in country, to be aliens in religion! Aliens! good God! was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, in the House of Lords, — and did he not start up and exclaim, "HOLD! I HAVE SEEN THE ALIENS DO THEIR DUTY!" The Duke of Wellington is not a man of an excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking that, when he heard his Roman Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate could supply, I cannot help thinking that he

ought to have recollected the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. "The battles, sieges, fortunes that he has passed," ought to have come back upon him. He ought to have remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name imperishable,- - from Assaye to Waterloo, -the Irish soldiers, with whom your armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiéra through the phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled the moats at Badajos?* All his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory, Vimiéra, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuéra, Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest

me,

Tell

for you were there, I appeal to the gallant soldier before me (Sir Henry Hardinge), from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast; - tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, while death fell in showers, when the artillery of France was levelled with a precision of the most deadly science, when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset, tell me if, for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the "aliens" blenched? And when, at length, the moment for the last and decided movement had arrived, and the valor which had so long been wisely checked was, at last, let loose, - when, with words familiar, but immortal, the great captain commanded the great assault, tell me if Catholic Ireland with less heroic valor than the natives of this your own glorious country precipitated herself upon the foe? The blood of England, Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same stream, and drenched the same field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together; — in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from Heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not be permitted to participate; and shall we be told, as a requital, that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out?

107. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF IRELAND. — Id.

I LAY down a very plain proposition, and it is this, however harsh the truth, it must be told,—it is this: Whatever may be your inclination, you have not the ability to maintain the Irish establishAt first view, the subject seems to be a wretched dispute

ment.

*Pronounced Ba-dah-yhōs.

a miserable sectarian controversy.

It is no such thing; it is the struggle for complete political equality on the part of the overwhelming majority upon the one hand, and for political ascendency on the part of the minority on the other. Can that ascendency be maintained? Taught so long, but uninstructed still, wherefore, in the same fatal policy, with an infatuated pertinacity, do you disastrously persevere? Can you wish, and, if you wish, can you hope, that this unnatural, galling, exasperating ascendency should be maintained? Things cannot remain as they are. To what expedient will you fly? Would you drive the country into insurrection, cut down the People, and bid the yeomanry draw forth the swords clotted with the blood of 1798, that they may be brandished in massacre, and sheathed in the Nation's heart? For what, into these terrific possibilities, are we madly, desperately, impiously, to plunge? For the Irish Church! - the Church of the minority, long the Church of the State, never the Church of the People; the Church on which a faction fattens, by which a Nation starves; the Church from which no imaginable good can flow, but evil after evil, in such black and continuous abundance, has been for centuries, and is to this day, poured out; the Church by which religion has been retarded, morality has been vitiated, atrocity has been engendered; which standing armies are requisite to sustain, which has cost England millions of her treasure, and Ireland torrents of her blood!

To distinctions between Catholic and Protestant let there be an end. Let there be an end to national animosities, as well as to sectarian detestations. Perish the bad theology, which, with an impious converse, makes God according to man's image, and with infernal passions fills the heart of man! Perish the bad, the narrow, the pernicious sentiment, which, for the genuine love of country, institutes a feeling of despotic domination upon your part, and of provincial turbulence upon ours!

108. THE REPEAL OF THE UNION, 1834. —— Id.

THE population of Ireland has doubled since the Union. What is the condition of the mass of the People? Has her capital increased in the same proportion? Behold the famine, the wretchedness and pestilence, of the Irish hovel, and, if you have the heart to do so, mock at the calamities of the country, and proceed in your demonstrations of the prosperity of Ireland. The mass of the People are in a condition more wretched than that of any Nation in Europe; they are worse housed, worse covered, worse fed, than the basest boors in the provinces of Russia; they dwell in habitations to which your swine would not be committed; they are covered with rags which your beggars would disdain to wear; and not only do they never taste the flesh of the animals which crowd into your markets, but,

while the sweat drops from their brows, they never touch the bread into which their harvests are converted. For you they toil, for you they delve; they reclaim the bog, and drive the plough to the mountain's top, for you. And where does all this misery exist? In a country teeming with fertility, and stamped with the beneficent intents of God! When the famine of Ireland prevailed, — when her cries crossed the Channel, and pierced your ears, and reached your hearts, the granaries of Ireland were bursting with their contents; and, while a People knelt down and stretched out their hands for food, the business of deportation, the absentee tribute, was going on! Talk of the prosperity of Ireland! Talk of the external magnificence of a poor-house, gorged with misery within!

But the Secretary for the Treasury exclaims: "If the agitators would but let us alone, and allow Ireland to be tranquil!"- The agitators, forsooth! Does he venture- has he the intrepidity-to speak thus? Agitators! Against deep potations let the drunkard rail; at Crockford's let there be homilies against the dice-box; let every libertine lament the progress of licentiousness, when his Majesty's ministers deplore the influence of demagogues, and Whigs complain of agitation! How did you carry the Reform? Was it not by impelling the People almost to the verge of revolution? Was there a stimulant for their passions, was there a provocative for their excitement, to which you did not resort? If you have forgotten, do you think that we shall fail to remember your meetings at Edinburgh, at Paisley, at Manchester, at Birmingham? Did not three hundred thousand men assemble? Did they not pass resolutions against taxes? Did they not threaten to march on London? Did not two of the cabinet ministers indite to them epistles of gratitude and of admiration? and do they now dare-have they the audacity to speak of agitation? Have we not as good a title to demand the restitution of our Parliament, as the ministers to insist on the reform of this House?

109. ENGLAND'S MISRULE OF IRELAND. — Id.

If in Ireland, a country that ought to teem with abundance, there prevails wretchedness without example, if millions of paupers are there without employment, and often without food or raiment, where is the fault? Is it in the sky, which showers verdure? - is it in the soil, which is surprisingly fertile? -or is it in the fatal course which you, the arbiters of her destiny, have adopted? She has for centuries belonged to England. England has used her for centuries as she has pleased. How has she used her, and what has been the result? A code of laws was in the first place established, to which, in the annals of legislative atrocity, there is not a parallel; and of that code— those institutes of unnatural ascendency the Irish Church is a remnant. In Heaven's name, what useful purpose has your gorgeous Establishment ever promoted? You cannot hope to proselytize us

through its means. You have put the experiment to the test of three centuries. You have tried everything. If the truth be with you, it may be great; but in this instance it does not sustain the aphorism for it does not prevail. If, in a religious point of view, the Establishment cannot conduce to the interests of religion, what purpose does it answer? It is said that it cements the Union-cements the Union! It furnishes the great argument against the Union; it is the most degrading incident of all the incidents of degradation by which that measure was accompanied; it is the yoke, the brand, the shame and the exasperation, of Ireland!

Public opinion and public feeling have been created in Ireland. Men of all classes have been instructed in the principles on which the rights of Nations depend. The humblest peasant, amidst destitution the most abject, has learned to respect himself. I remember when, if you struck him, he cowered beneath the blow; but now, lift up your hand, the spirit of insulted manhood will start up in a bosom covered with rags, his Celtic blood will boil as yours would do, and he will feel, and he will act, as if he had been born where the person of every citizen is sacred from affronts, and from his birth had breathed the moral atmosphere which you are accustomed to inhale. In the name of millions of my countrymen, assimilated to yourselves, I demand the reduction of a great abuse, the retrenchment of a monstrous sinecure,-I demand justice at your hands! "Justice to Ireland" is a phrase which has been, I am well aware, treated as a topic for derision; but the time will come, -nor is it, perhaps, remote,when you will not be able to extract much matter for ridicule from those trite but not trivial words. "Do justice to America," exclaimed the father of that man by whom the Irish Union was accomplished; "do it to-night, do it before you sleep." In your National Gallery is a picture on which Lord Lyndhurst should look: it was painted by Copley, and represents the death of Chatham, who did not live long after the celebrated invocation was pronounced. "Do justice to America, do it to-night, do it before you sleep!" There were men by whom that warning was heard who laughed when it was uttered. Have a care lest injustice to Ireland and to America may not be followed by the same results, lest mournfulness may not succeed to mirth, and another page in the history of England may not be writ in her heart's blood!

110. CIVIL WAR THE GREATEST NATIONAL EVIL, 1829.-Lord Palmerston.

THEN come we to the last remedy, civil war. Some gentlemen say that, sooner or later, we must fight for it, and the sword must decide. They tell us that, if blood were but shed in Ireland, Catholic emancipation might be avoided. Sir, when honorable members shall

* Lord Lyndhurst's father. John Singleton Copley was born in Boston, Massachusetts, 1738, and died in 1815. Many of his best paintings are in the United States, and are much esteemed.