vernment, last Session, in every debate relating to Ireland, he could not conceive the reasons which had induced them to have recourse to measures of coercion during the present Session. He attributed the disturbances of Ireland to the existence of the penal laws, which, though nominally, had not been practically repealed. The misrule of England had been the cause of the misery of Ireland, and the misery of Ireland was the fertile ource of its offences and crimes. Ireland would be a stumbling-block to every Administration until the axe was laid to "its tree of discontent," and nothing nourished that tree of discontent so much as the sinecures in the Established Church. Lord Newport opposed the Bill. Mr. C. Buller spoke at some length against it, but expressed in strong terms his sense of the injustice of the charges which had been raked up against Sir R. Peel by Lord G. Bentinck and Mr. Disraeli, contending that those odious charges, instead of sinking him in public estimation, had only rallied the feeling of the country strongly in his favour. Next to the injustice of making those accusations at all, was the injustice of making them without even a shadow of proof to sustain them. He hoped, however, that out of the state of feeling exhibited on the Protection benches, there might arise a better spirit of legislation for Ireland. Mr. Spooner supported the Bill, not, however, upon the ground of confidence in Her Majesty's Ministers, but upon the statements which had been laid upon the table. Mr. Sheil remarked that necessity was sometimes the plea of a good Government, but of a bad Government it was the worst pretence. That in the present case it was a pretence, and not an argument, he undertook that evening to prove. He also undertook to show that the criminalities of Ireland were the result of that moral distemperament which arose from its misgovernment; and in that part of his task he should have to animadvert on the policy which Sir R. Peel had pursued towards Ireland. He had often made such animadversions; but in so doing he hoped that he had never forgotten that it was to Sir R. Peel he owed the privilege of pronouncing that condemnation in Parliament; and as, when he was in his high and palmy state as the head of the Conservative party, he had endeavoured to avoid the use of wantonly offensive expressions, so now, when his fortune appeared to have undergone some temporary change, it should be his (Mr. Sheil's) care that the language of strong animadversion should be entirely dissociated from personal disrespect. For he hoped that the Premier, who had just displayed the courageous virtue of dashing the sliding scale to pieces, would yet have the felicity of making a recantation of his Irish heresies. He believed that when the Roman Catholic question was adjusted, it was the determination of Sir R. Peel to carry out its principles, had he remained in office; but, during the time in which he had been in opposition, he had done his worst to obstruct the Whigs in carrying out that measure, and in ameliorating the condition of Ireland. Witness his conduct on the two questions of Municipal Reform and of the Irish Registration. Sir R. Peel had lately declared his intention to amend the Acts which he had formerly obstructed; but what a satire was that on his previous proceedings! As soon as he came doctrines of free trade, he must repeat that the noble lord and his friends had been but sudden converts. Let any man read Mr. Labouchere's speech on proposing the Sugar Duties in 1840, and he would see that the demarcation between free-labour sugar and slave-labour sugar was as strongly laid down in that speech as ever it had been by Her Majesty's present Government. As to free trade in corn, not long before his abandonment of office, Lord Melbourne had declared it to be downright insanity; but a change of opinion suddenly came over his lordship and the members of his cabinet, and at a particular moment, when power was fast departing from their hands. There was this difference between the policy of Sir R. Peel and of Lord Melbourne. Sir R. Peel asserted the principles of free trade, and thereby sacrificed his influence, and it might be his office; whereas Lord Melbourne asserted them in order to gain influence and retain power thereby. Such being the case, retractation of his former censures was impossible, though if those censures had been conveyed with too much bitterness he was sorry for it. He declared that it was the intention of the Government to adhere to the curfew clauses, and not to recede from them on any account, in case the second reading of the Bill should be carried. He implored the House to consider the serious consequences which were likely to ensue next winter in case this Bill should be rejected. Those who doubted of its necessity ought to resist it; but those who were satisfied of that necessity ought to give it their cordial support, independent of any confidence they might or might not have in Her Majesty's Government, and not reject it on account of any other secondary considerations. Mr. Labouchere commented on the singular fact, that Sir J. Graham should have ventured to give the House a lesson on consistency, and he denied that he had ever drawn the line of demarcation to which Sir J. Graham had referred between free-labour sugar and slavelabour sugar. He was grateful to Sir R. Peel for the Corn Bill, but could not on that account grant him a complete control over the liberties of Ireland. Mr. Stafford O'Brien said that whatever might be thought of this as a curfew Bill, there were reasons for concluding that it would be a welcome curfew to the existing Administration. It would extinguish lights in a domestic hearth, from which confidence was entirely excluded; and those who voted against it would only be enacting the part of a friendly Iris, "Quæ luctantem animam nexosque resolveret artus." In the county in which he resided in Ireland, he could not as a magistrate recommend the enforcement of the clause which punished men for being out of their houses between sunset and sunrise; for the peasantry, who travelled with their wares from Galway to Limerick, were obliged to be on the road all night in order to reach Limerick market early in the morning. Mr. Hume congratulated the House on the great change of opinion which had taken place of late years with regard to Coercion Bills; for in former times the opponents to them had never mustered more than eighty-nine upon any division. Considering the conciliatory expressions used by the members of the Go vernment, last Session, in every debate relating to Ireland, he could not conceive the reasons which had induced them to have recourse to measures of coercion during the present Session. He attributed the disturbances of Ireland to the existence of the penal laws, which, though nominally, had not been practically repealed. The misrule of England had been the cause of the misery of Ireland, and the misery of Ireland was the fertile ource of its offences and crimes. Ireland would be a stumbling-block to every Administration until the axe was laid to "its tree of discontent," and nothing nourished that tree of discontent so much as the sinecures in the Established Church. Lord Newport opposed the Bill. Mr. C. Buller spoke at some length against it, but expressed in strong terms his sense of the injustice of the charges which had been raked up against Sir R. Peel by Lord G. Bentinck and Mr. Disraeli, contending that those odious charges, instead of sinking him in public estimation, had only rallied the feeling of the country strongly in his favour. Next to the injustice of making those accusations at all, was the injustice of making them without even a shadow of proof to sustain them. He hoped, however, that out of the state of feeling exhibited on the Protection benches, there might arise a better spirit of legislation for Ireland. Mr. Spooner supported the Bill, not, however, upon the ground of confidence in Her Majesty's Ministers, but upon the statements which had been laid upon the table. Mr. Sheil remarked that necessity was sometimes the plea of a good Government, but of a bad Government it was the worst pretence. That in the present case it was a pretence, and not an argument, he undertook that evening to prove. He also undertook to show that the criminalities of Ireland were the result of that moral distemperament which arose from its misgovernment; and in that part of his task he should have to animadvert on the policy which Sir R. Peel had pursued towards Ireland. He had often made such animadversions; but in so doing he hoped that he had never forgotten that it was to Sir R. Peel he owed the privilege of pronouncing that condemnation in Parliament; and as, when he was in his high and palmy state as the head of the Conservative party, he had endeavoured to avoid the use of wantonly offensive expressions, so now, when his fortune appeared to have undergone some temporary change, it should be his (Mr. Sheil's) care that the language of strong animadversion should be entirely dissociated from personal disrespect. For he hoped that the Premier, who had just displayed the courageous virtue of dashing the sliding scale to pieces, would yet have the felicity of making a recantation of his Irish heresies. He believed that when the Roman Catholic question was adjusted, it was the determination of Sir R. Peel to carry out its principles, had he remained in office; but, during the time in which he had been in opposition, he had done his worst to obstruct the Whigs in carrying out that measure, and in ameliorating the condition of Ireland. Witness his conduct on the two questions of Municipal Reform and of the Irish Registration. Sir R. Peel had lately declared his intention to amend the Acts which he had formerly obstructed; but what a satire was that on his previous proceedings! As soon as he came into power, he flung aside those instruments of molestation; but he had nevertheless left the law on both questions in a state of ambiguity; and, now that the country was on the eve of a general election, he proffered it a Coercion instead of a Registration Bill. Having come into power, he found himself surrounded by difficulties of his own creation. There was the expression about "aliens" used by Lord Lyndhurst, respecting which he would not say a word at present, as he understood that Lord Lyndhurst had relapsed into Serjeant Copley. Then there was the fatal step of raising the most violent partisans of Orange politics in Parliament to seats on the judicial bench. Sir R. Peel had endeavoured, by his sayings, to counteract his doings; yet, between his sayings and doings, there was an antithesis amounting to contradiction; and thus, whilst he weakened the attachment of his friends, he did not succeed in gaining the affection of his opponents. The consequence was that the whole of Ireland went into opposition. Agitation recommenced with redoubled force. The Repeal magistrates were dismissed. Then followed the monster meetings, the monster indictment, and the monster trial, wherein the world beheld with amazement the Liberator of Catholic Ireland tried by Protestant grocers and Protestant tallow-chandlers, under the auspices of the man who had introduced a most admirable Jury Act for the people of England. All this, too, crowned by the decision of the Lord Chief Justice of England, who gave back the Liberator to the embraces of his grateful countrymen, and converted the portal of his prison into an arch of triumph. How could they wonder, then, that when justice had thus committed suicide, the events to which he had been referring should have affected all classes in Ireland from the highest to the lowest, and that, when the atmosphere was full of contagion, the hut of the peasant had not escaped infection? It was not a change of the constitution which was necessary to save the commonwealth; but to save the constitution and the commonwealth along with it, a change of policy was imperatively required. With Normanby, Morpeth, Drummond, Wolfe, and O'Loghlin, in the Government of Ireland, the Administration was in sympathy with the people; and the result was peace, social and political. The amount of crime decreased, and the number of prædial outrages regularly diminished, and the result would be the same now, if their policy were adopted. Turning, then, to the merits of the Bill before the House, he called upon the Government to explain why, if they considered it to be indispensable, and were of opinion that murder could not be arrested without it, they had not convened Parliament early in November, especially as they were then aware that two other great questions must be introduced simultaneously with it? He then proceeded to contend that no case had been made out either for this Bill, which was to last for three years, or for the original Bill, which was to have been perpetual. That Bill Ministers had been obliged to abandon; but their animus had been displayed, and the guilt of volition was in that case almost as great as that of perpetration. In conclusion, he argued that this Bill was not fitted for a nation like Ireland, and that it would stimulate that agitation which Ministers dreaded so much, but which they had done so little to repress. The alteration which the repeal of the Corn Laws would produce in the condition of Ireland ought to render them particularly cautious in the measures which they adopted, for, though the repeal of the Corn Laws would undoubtedly be beneficial to that country in the long run, its first effect would be to expel many a Cromwellian from his mortgaged estate, and they ought to take every means in their power to prevent such men, who had hitherto been their allies, from swelling the ranks of the partisans of repeal. The Solicitor-General defended the Bill at great length. The Marquis of Chandos could not concur with the party with which he had lately been acting, in opposing this Bill; on the contrary, he felt himself called upon to support it as necessary to the repression of crime and the maintenance of law and justice. His belief was, that but for the repeal of the Corn Law this Bill would have been carried by the very parties who were now so anxious to oppose it. Mr. Adderley also commented with some severity on the conduct of Members on the Protectionist side who at tacked this Bill solely for the purpose of obtaining a revenge on the Government which had carried the repeal of the Corn Laws. Mr. Newdegate said he conscientiously opposed this Bill because he would not place the power which it conferred in the hands of a Government in which he had no confidence. Major Beresford supported the same view. He deemed the Bill unjust and irritating to Ireland. Lord Ingestre declared his intention not to vote at all upon the Bill. Mr. Cobden wished to say a few words as to the spirit of the vote which he was about to give. Lord G. Bentinck had said that every honest man ought to join to do summary justice upon the traitor, however much he might love the treason. Then, this was not a vote on the Coercion Bill, but a vote of no confidence in the Government. Now, he repudiated such an unjust construction on the vote he was about to give. He should be acting against popular opinion, if he gave any such vote; for the measure which Sir R. Peel had introduced was the most popular that any Minister could have proposed. Sir R. Peel had stated that he would stand or fall by the Bill. With that determination he had nothing to do; but he would not, like the noble lord, stultify himself by voting black to be white to serve a particular purpose. It would be hopeless to keep Sir R. Peel in by a single vote, for it was quite evident that the House would soon be put to the test again by the noble lord and his friends. But before long the state of parties in that House would receive a solution. from out of doors. We could not go on with three parties in the House-we must only have two; and there was nothing he should regret more than to see Sir R. Peel forced back to the rearward party of the gangway. There was no distinction in the country now between those who followed Lord J. Russell and those who gave in their adherence to the right hon. Baronet. If that fusion had taken place out of doors, and if the rank and file had already fraternized, the battle between the chiefs must be abandoned, and a fusion must take place in that House. If Sir R. Peel should now retire from |