The Sun.
London, England, 1836-03-29 00:00:00

to the Catholic priesthood in Carlow, surely there is very
remarkable evidence as to the body of Protestant clergy in
Devonshire. But turn to Ireland. Do the clergy of the
Established Church never interpose ? Has this House never
heard of the Rev. Mr. Boyton ? He is a man of great abilities,
with the most distinguished qualifications for popular excite-
ment. He may be regarded as the founder of the Brunswick
Clubs, and as having been mainly instrumental in producing
the strong Protestant feeling in Ireland. That Rev. Gen-
tleman was a chaplain of the Orange Society ; it is proved
in evidence before the Orange Committee, that he actually
moved the creation of an Orange Lodge in one of his Ma-
jesty's Regiments. Well, this was the individual whom my
Lord Haddington selected to officiate as one of his chaplains
at the !Castle. Talk, indeed, of the Catholic clergy ! In
November, 1834, a meeting of the Orange Society was held
in Dublin, at which the Lord Mayor of the city of Dublin
presided, and at which the Rev. Mr. M`Crea recited a
poem, the burden of which was—
" Then put your trust in God, my boys,
And keep your powder dry ! "
Show me any of our prose equal to his poetry. I forbear
from making any comments on it, and shall but observe that
although it has often been mentioned in this House, I never
heard it made the subject of Conservative condemnation. Sir,
I think that I can demonstrate that every objection on a reli-
gious ground, so far as the Church is involved, to municipal
reform in Ireland, was just as applicable to municipal reform
in England. It is said that Corporations were established in
Ireland to maintain the Protestant interest. For what pur-
pose were the Test and Corporation Acts passed in this coun-
try ? They were enacted in order to protect the Episcopal in-
terest in England against the influence and energy of the
Dissenters. They were regarded as the great bulwarks of the
Establishment ; yet those bulwarks you surrendered in 1828
to the myriads of sectaries by which your Church was encom-
passed : to Baptists, Quakers, Socinians, Independents, Pres-
byterians, Methodists—you threw open the fortresses of the
Establishment to all the hordes, who, with the voluntary prin-
ciple, are battering your Church to the earth ; and when we,
who are akin to you (for your religion is only Popery cut
down)—when we, from whose ecclesiastical escutcheon your
own, with a bar sinister, might be appropriately borrowed—
when we, I say, demand the benefit of British institutions, you
affront us with a proposition which, to the Dissenters of this
country—when the Test and Corporation Acts were at stake,
and when Corporation reform was in question—not one of you,
not even in the House of Lords, ever dared to make. The
Duke of Wellington had not the boldness, my Lord Lynd-
hurst had not the dexterity, my Lord Winchilsea was not
sufficiently excited, nor my Lord Roden sufficiently in-
spired—it was reserved for us—it was reserved for colonial
dependent Ireland, for us, on whom a faction trampled,
but on whom, with God's blessing, and the aid of our deter-
mination, they shall tread no more—for us, it was reserved
that we should be told, when to the interests of the thousand
few the rights of the million many can no longer with com-
mon decency be sacrificed—that both from the few and from
the many their national institutions should be taken away, and
out of the ruins of the Corporations Dublin Castle should be
enlarged. Of the Act of Union is not this a manifest infringe-
ment ? When it is proposed in this House to reduce the
sinecures of the Established Church, men- cry out and say that
the Union is violated; if the entire of the Irish Corporations
are swept away, and that against the will of the majority of the
Irish Members, will not the Union be trampled under foot ?
But, it may be said, so indeed it was observed by the Learned
Member for Exeter, that before the Union Corporations were
Protestant. He forgets that by the Act of 1793, Roman Ca-
tholics were made admissible to Corporations by law, but that
from 1793 to 1829, not a single Catholic was received into the
Dublin Corporation. In 1829, the Member for Tamworth de-
clared in his emancipation speech that Roman Catholics should
be admitted to all Corporate offices, and should be invested
with all municipal privileges ; there are accordingly two sec-
tions in his Emancipation Act to that effect. From that day
to this, not a single Roman Catholic has had the benefit of
those cloaks in the Act of Parliament. By passive resistance,
a Protestant passive resistance, the law has been frustrated and
baffled. The Right Hon. Baronet gave us a key that would
not turn the lock ; and when British justice is about to
burst open the doors, he would level the institutions to the
earth, and bury our rights, his own Act of Emancipation—
(God forbid that I should add, his dignity and good faith)—
under the ruins. Sir, the Hon. Gentleman appears to me to
adhere to his old Irish policy, and although he carried emanci-
pation in obedience to his reason, he is acting on emancipa-
tion, in compliance with those religious instincts which he
ought to get under his control. In the course of the last ses-
sion I ventured to address myself to him in the language of
strenuous, but most unaffectedly respectful expostulation. I
presumed to entreat of him to take a retrospect of his Irish
policy, and to inquire from him whether of every failing, and
every failure, he did not in his Irish policy find the cause. I
told him that Ireland had a grave ready for his Administration,
and that grave soon closed upon it. I should not venture to
advert to what I then said, but what has since befallen has
given to those observations a remarkable confirmation. The
moment the session of Parliament terminated, the subordi-
nates of the Right Honourable Baronet commenced the
" No Popery" cry. The result of that pious enterprise
has corresponded with its deserts.—( Hear, hear.) The
Parliament assembles, and at the very outset the Right Hon.
Baronet tries his fortune on Irish ground again, by moving an
amendment, and he is at once and signally defeated. A few
days elapse, and he sustains a still more conspicuous dis-
comfiture. Not in order to give way to a feeling
of inglorious exultation do I refer to the dissolution of the
Orange Society, but for the purpose of showing the " sweet
uses" of which adversity is susceptible, and leaving out the
offensive epithets in the citation to point to the " bright and
precious jewel" it contains. It was a vast and most powerful
incorporation, including a hundred thousand armed men, with
individuals of the highest station among its leaders, and a
Prince of the blood at its head. Where is it now ? Can you
not derive admonition from its fall? You have seen Admi-
nistration after Administration dissolved by the power of the
Irish people : by the' power of the Irish people you have
seen your own Cabinet dashed in an instant to pieces, and
now, struck to the heart, you behold your own gigantic
auxiliary laid low. Taught so long, but uninstructed still,
wherefore, in the same fatal policy, with an infatuated perti-
nacity do you disastrously persevere ? You think, perhaps,
that emancipation has failed. Six years in a nation's life are
less than as many minutes of individual duration. You have
not given it, what you asked for yourself, a fair trial, and
have yourself, to a certain extent, counteracted its operation.
At the very outset you entered into a struggle with the son
of the earth, " who has rebounded with fresh vigour from
every fall," and, notwithstanding all your experience—although
injustice carries with it the principle of self-frustration--
although the poisoned chalice is sure in its inevitable circulation
to return to the lips of those by whom it is compounded—
still, adhering to your fatal policy and haunted by your anti-
O'Connellism—still, instead of rising to the height of the great
arguments, and ascending to a point of moral and political
elevation from which you could see wide and far—you be-
hold nothing but the objects which by their closeness be-
come magnified, and have nothing but the fear of O'Connell
before your eyes. You do not legislate for a people, but
against a man. Even if I were to admit that he had been oc-
casionally hurried into excesses, for which your impolicy
should in reality be responsible, give me still leave to ask
whether millions of his fellow-countrymen, and your fellow-
citizens (for such, thank God, we are), and generations yet
unborn, must pay the penalty ? Granting him a life as long
as Ireland can pray, and his adversaries can deprecate, will
he not be survived by the statute book ? Have you made
him immortal as well as omnipotent? Is your legislation
to be built on considerations transitory as the breath with
which he speaks, and are structures which should last for
ages to have no better basis than the miserable antipathies by
which we are distracted ? Let us remember, in the discharge
of the great judiciary functions that are imposed upon its that
we are not only the trustees of great contemporary interests,
but of the welfare of those by whom we are to be succeeded ;
that our measures are in some sort testamentary, and that we
bequeath to posterity a blessing or a bane ; and, impressed
with that high, and I do not exaggerate when I call it that
holy consciousness, let us have a care lest to a sentiment of
miserable partisanship we should give way. To distinctions
between Catholic and Protestant, let there be an end. Let
there be an end to national animosities, as well as to sectarian
detestation. Perish the bad theology that inverts the Scrip-
tures, makes God according to man's image, and with infernal
passions fills the heart of man k perish the bad nationality
that substitutes for the genuine love of country a feeling of
despotic domination upon your part, and of provincial turbu-
lence upon ours; and while on spurious religion and spurious
notoriety I pronounce my denunciation, live, let me be per-
mitted to add, the spirit of genuine philanthropic forbearing
and forgiving Christianity amongst us ; and combined with it
live the exalted patriotism, which to the welfare of a great
people, and the glory of this majestic empire, of all its wishes
makes the dedication, which superior to the wretched passions
that ought to be short-lived as the passing incidents of which
they were born, acts in conformity with the imperial policy of
William Pitt, and the results of the vast invention of James
Watt, sees the legislation of the one ratified by the science of
the other, in the discovery of the mighty mechanist, who made
the Irish Channel like the Tweed, of the project of the son of
Chatham beholds the consummation.
Mr. S. WORTL Y rose to rescue himself from the ana
themes of the Hon. and Learned Member for Tipperary when
lie asserted that all the arguments on his side of the House
turned on "No Popery." He renounced the imputation. He
had been the advocate of Catholic Emancipation, because he
believed that it was an act of strict justice; and he had always
acknowledged the necessity of corporate reform in England,
and supported it with all his power. If he did not accede,
therefore, to the measure before the House, it was not be-
cause he was actuated by sectarian principles or a desire to do
aught except justice to Ireland, but because the circumstances
of the two countries were so widely different. He acceded to
the whole principle of the Bill as far as regarded the abolition
of the Corporations, but he could go no farther. He should
not attempt to answer the speech of the Hon. and Learned
Member for Tipperary, but he would ask the House were
there no indications in it of party spirit, or any observations
savouring of a hope of retaliation ? The speech of the Hon.
Member for Tipperary was evidently spoken for the purpose
of sowing dissension, and his reference to the report of the
Intimidation Committee might be taken in illustration of the
fact. He had taken the liberty of connecting the name of Dr.
Philpotts with the evidence given before that Committee; but
be (Mr. S. Wortley) was, confident that the name of Dr.
Philpotts did not once occur in the entire Report. The Hon.
Member should bo more cautious.
Mr. SHE IL—I did not say so. I did not mention the name
of Dr. Philpotts in connection with that Committee.
Mr. S. WORTLE Y continued. He deprecated the prin-
ciple of the Bill as a partial and impolitic transfer of power
from the few to the many, far different from the legitimate
extension of powers recognised by the Constitution to all
classed in the great measure a 1819. He would characterise