The Sun.
London, England, 1831-01-28 00:00:00

DINATION THAT THE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN GUILTY OF

I will tell you, that they are talking in England of a crisis
in Ireland. My friends, there will be no crisis here.—
(Hear.) We have waited for thirty years under the
Union—we have but two years more to endure it, if the
people but take my advice. The people have been right
hitherto—not the least violence has been committed
by them. In England there has been no legiti-
mate agitation, and England is in a bLze from
one end to the other. Special Commissions have been

sot there, they have hanged a certain nunalier of avreteliee,
and yet the moment the Judges leave the counties where they
have been presiding, the tires have been bl zing again.
Ireland is peaceable and tranquil, but it is said many have
been guilty of clime. What is it? They have dared to
think of repealing the Union. The Marquis of Anglesea
says that " Ireland and England must stand or fall toge-
ther." lam quite ready that they should stand, but I bar
the fall.—(Laughter.)—l tun exceedingly anxious that
England should be prosperous, and that we should enjoy
that prosperity along with her. But what is the present
situation of Ireland ? She is like the Marquis's war
charger, saddled, and bridled, and curbed. England is
mounted upon her, and there is the Marquis of Anglesea
on his pillion behind.—(Laugher.)—lt is quite true, in.
deed, if the poor brute, Ireland, fell, the people of Eng-
land should fall along with her.—(Hear, hear.)—The
Union we now have is one of this kind, " Head I win,
harp you lase."—(Much laughter.)--It is one in which,
if there be losses, we have two-thirds of them, and if there
be profits, we get none at all of them.—(Hear.)—But
what I want is that there shall be a fair partnership be-
tween England and Ireland--one in which we shall have
an equal share of the profits, and the losses also.—(Hear,
hear. )—But our crime is, that we are looking for a repeal
of the Union. Do you know what Judge Jebb says of the
Union, which it is now thought a crime in us to seek for
its repeal.—(Hear, hear.)—The rest of my speech shall
be taken up by reading passages from a pamphlet against
the Union, written by Judge Jebb, in reply to one fa-
vourable to it. I will show you what be thinks of
the way the Union was carried. He says—" That tile
feelings of the country would be affected, that its pride,
and perhaps its vengeance, would be roused by the bare
mention of the surrender of its Legislature, theauthorof that
publication seems to be apprised,and therefore wisely enough
bespeaks a cool, and calm discussion, to which he well
knew the nature of his subject little entitled him. The
author of the following p igen heartily concurs in depre-
cating both passion and force. It is with calm and dig-
nified resolution that he trusts the nation will meet this
injurious insult, and be hopes that it is not by fora tl e
Minister will attempt to accomplish his project. But that
some suspicion should be entertained on the latter ground,
is no way surprising, front the extraordinary circum-
stances under which the proposition is made. The ra-
tion panting and breathless after the horrors and agonit
of a bloody rebellion, animosities, religious and civil, still
distracting us—a most formidable army b till and necessa-
sarily kept up—great discretionary powers as necessarily
stil exercised by the executive Magistrate—under cir.
cunistances such as these, who will venture to express in
the honest terms of virtuous indignation his opinion on
the annihilation of our Parliament ? Who will ven-
ture to speak the language with which a few years back
the degrading project would hare been received? The
terror of the triangles and the gallows may perhaps
operate as forcibly as the arguments of the Secretary."—
(Cheers.) This is the opinion of Judge Jebb for you
respecting the Union—the Union carried by " the ter-
ror of the triangles and the gallows"—the Union which
we want to have repealed. Judge Jebb, I thank you for that.
—(Cheers.) I will now read for you the picture which he
gives of the country should the Union take place :—" But
it is the sincere conviction of my mind that the proposed
Union, the inflicting so deep a wound in our n ttional pride,
the death of our Parliament,the reducing a powerful growing
kingdom to a small and petty member of the empire, will
multiply and invigorate the friends of the French connec-
tion, and dishearten, disgust, alienate, and diminish the
friends to the British interest. Who are they whose pride
and consequence will be most humbled? the loyal and
spirited yeomen and gentry, who have fought and bled in
support of our Constitution as it now stands. Who will
leave the country, or swell the list of absentees—a conse-
quence which the advocate for Union admits ? the wretched
corrupt rabble, with the profligate conspirators, or the
loyal and powerful nobility and gentry ? fire-and-twenty'
of the principal nobility. Eighty or ninety of the first
gentlemen, necessarily withdrawn to attend Parliament;
add to these all who may be attracted by interest, or se-
duced by pleasure, or sickened at the deserted streets of
Dublin—every one, in short, who could command, re-
claim, or soothe a wretched peasantry, will be lost to Ire-
land, and the kingdom must become one vast barrack, for
military force will be the only one left to keep down our
corrupt and licentious people. In this situation, will
British capital, British merchants, British manu-
facturers, desert their secure, warm, comfortable
establishments, to settle among a humiliated, degraded,
and discontented people?"—(Hear, hear, and cheers.)
I shall read one or two paragraphs more for you, and then
show you how poor an agitator I am, when compared
with Richard Jebb.—(Laughter.) He goes on to observe
with respect to the Union, " But whichever follows, wile-
ther the Catholics are gratified, or not—the effects will be
the same—bitter and lasting animosity. Are they refused
because " the test acts cannot be repealed," or on the
principle of:arithmetical justice ? To the intolerance of Irish
Proteatants will they attribute it. Are all disabilities re-
moved ? to the policy ofi the British Minister, and the ge-
nerosity of a British Parliament, tail) they consider them-
elaes indebted, while the Irish Protestants will feel them-
selves made the sport of ministerial convenience, and will
complain of the breach of that grand condition, on which
they surrendered their independence. In either case the
Machiavelian policy will be pursued, of preventing Ireland
' becoming too powerful to be governed—but " religious
discontent, jalousies and disturbances, conspiracies, in-
.surreetions, and perhaps rebellions,' will still di-grace us."
I have but one passage more to read for you ; it is this,
" Tice monstrous and inhuman doctrine has been broached,
that advantage should be taken of the passions that agi-
tate and distract the minds of men, that necessarily agitate
and distract them at the close of a widely extended rebel-
lion—that the intolerance of the Orangeman, the resent-
ment of the excluded Catholic, the humiliation of the
rebel seduced or repentant, the terror of the loyalist, and
the despairing apathy of the reformist, afford an opportn-
nity not to be lost,
of effecting a revolatioa whose merits