The Sun.
London, England, 1832-01-20 00:00:00

roughs, but not limiting the time for taking the poll, or
taking it in separate places. Now I have gone through
the principal provisions of the Bill, and will leave the de-
tails for the Committee, in which they will be more pro-
perly discussed. Although I feel that his Majesty's Mi-
nisters have not shrunk from making deviations from the
principles of the English Bill when it seemed necessary to
depart from them, yet we have in no case done so, so as
to make a distinction between the interests of Ireland and
those of this country. We are far from wishing to make
any such distinction, and from supposing that those inte-
rests were at •ariance with each other. We wish, by
every possible means to cement and confirm those interests,
as I am sure it is the wish of the heart of every man in
this House who is a friend to the legislative union of the
two countries. To those views I have endeavoured to
shape the Bill which I now beg leave to bring in.
Mr. LEADER said, that there was one particular in
the Government of Ireland in which Reform was as ne•
c sisary as in any other part of the Government represen-
tation. In selecting the advisers of the Crown, it was
necessary to choose men who were acquainted with the
local interests entrusted to them, and not persons habi-
tuated solely to tie manners, the wants, and interests of
another country. The Hon. Gentleman was understood
to say, that the Secretary for Ireland was of the latter de-
scription, and that the Right Hon. Gentleman, in endea-
vouring to maintain the union of that country with Eng-
land, did not perceive that the true conservative link that
should bind the two countries would be the full and equal
representation of the people in hoth.—(Hear, bear.) He
argued that the opening of the boroughs in Ireland would
. . . .

not diminish the proper influence of the Protestant consti-
tuen •y. Bat he did not think that Ireland 30 much
demanded the opening of her close boroughs, as that her
representation should be enlarged, so as to place it on an
equal footing with that of England, in proportion to her
territory, commerce, revenue, and population. She pos-
sess ssed twenty millions of acres, and the territory of
Great Britain was no more than fifty-six millions of acres.
Her population amounted to seven millions, and the inha-
bitants of Great Britain were no more than fourteen rail-
lions. The Hon. Gentleman then went into numerous
and complicated statements, in which it was impossible to
keep pace with him accurately; and then proceeded to
sty, tia.t from all these particulars—from her houses,
population, commerce, her imports and exports, and every
thing which political economists look to in estimating the
importance of a nation, he contended that she ought to
have 161 Members, to place her representation on a

fair footing in respect to that of England. The Noble
Lord opposite, and every man around him, had as
deep an interest as he had in the welfare of Ireland.
—(1-fear, hear.) He was not one of those who at-
tached themselves to Unions, or stood up i❑ that House
to attack others for their opinions.—(Hear.) His only
wish, whenever he addressed the House, was to submit to
its judgment the opinions which he entertained himself.—
(Hear.) His object in rising now was only to show, by
arguments drawn from official statements, that Ireland was
a country too important to be slighted by the British
Parliament, and that the interests of this country were
bound up in her's.—(Hear.) He would appeal to any
Gentlesnan who had ever been connect.-1 with the Govern-
mene of Ireland, whether it had not always been the great
object of his (Mr. Leader's) exertions, to promote the re-
ciprocal good feeling of the people of both countries, and to
improve their condition?—(Hear.) There was every thing
in the present condition of Ireland to require that his
Mai.sty's Ministers should take measures for the removal
of the grievances which were loudly complained of, and to
cultivate i❑ the people of that country a feeling of attach-
ment towards this.—(Hear.) Hg thought that, i❑

•
justice, those counties which cantained a pipul ition above
two hundred and fifty thousand, ought to have three
_ _

Members. All the Irish Members who attended the
meetings in Dublin agreed that that number ought to be
required.—(Hear.) He did not complain of the able and
lucid speech of the Right Hon. Gentleman, the Secretary
for Ireland ; and he would leave his objections to that
Gen•leman's arguments until the Bill should have gone
into a Committee. For the present, he desired only to
lay before the House those statements upon which he
founded his demand for additional Members for Ireland.
In doing so, he was influenced by considerations of duty
alone, and not by any wish to embarrass the Government,
or to offend either party in that House.—(Hear.)
Mr. RUTHVEN had attended the meetings of the
Irish Members in Dublin. He attended there to receive
information as to the best manner of effectually serving his
constituents, by his exertions in that Howe. The Right
Hon. Secretary for Ireland had referred to the opinion of
the Irish Parliament, as to the proportion which Ireland
ought to have in the representation. But did not that
Right Hon. Gentleman know that the late Irish Parlia-
ment was a body which ought not to be referred to as
an authority on that subject especially? It consisted of a
roost corrupt seta men, who sold themselves, and made
the hest of the bargain, at the expence of their country's
rights and happiness. Was the opinion of that body to
he taken as a proof that Ireland ought to be content with
a one-sixth share in the representation of the empire, of
which her people constituted one-third of the population.
—(Hear, hear.) In justice to that country, she ought to
have thirty-two additional Members instead of five. The
people of Ireland looked with confidence to his Majesty's
Government for their fair share of the great gift of Par-
liamentary Reform. Through that Reform they hoped
to obtain impartial justice; and he would tell the Govern-
ment, that unless they could make the people satisfied
with the administration of the laws, and convinced that
they received impartial justice, they never would succeed
in potting an end to the agitation for a repeal of the Union.
—(Hear.) With respect to the borough system of Ire-
land, be thought it would be the highest injustice in the
Government to meddle with Old Sarum in England, if
they abstained from destroying the sixteen or eightee❑
equally rotten boroughs of Ireland. These and other
questions were, however, of too much importance to be
entered into fully on that occasion; and he should there-
fore reserve what he had to offer on them for discussion
when the Bill got into a Committee.—( Hear. )
Sir JOHN BURKE fully agreed with the data laid
down by the Hon. Member for Kilkenny (Mr. Leader),
when he required the Government to adopt the principle
of givina: additional representatives to those counties which
had 250,000 inhabitants. The Right Hon. Secretary
had, in his opinion, not dealt out that measure of justice
to the agricultural interests of Ireland which the Govern-
ment had thought it right to give to the agriculture of
England in the Bill which distributed its representatives ;
and he conjured him, therefore, to apply his candid and
liberal judgment to that portion of the question ; for he
was confident it would tend much to unite all parties in
favour of his measure. Nothing could be less politic than
to give the same number of representatives to the small
counties of Longford and Carlow, as they gave to the great
districts of Mayo and Galway. After observing that some
alterati.in should take place in the method of taking the
polls, and recommending that it should be by baronies or
districts, for the purpose of diminishing the expence, the
Hon. Member again pressed on the Government the
necessity of re-considering their plan, and making some
further concessions to the wishes of the Irish people for a
more extensive representation.

Mr. JOHN BROWNE, is the representative of Mayo,
one of the hugest counties in Ireland, took occasion to im-
plore his Right Hon. Friend to take into his consideration
the real condition of that country, and endeavour, if pos_ I
sible, to deprive the agitators of the ground of their machi-
nations. There could be no question that the dispropor-
tions of the representation which were to be removed in
England existed to a much greater extent in Ireland, and
it was not, therefore, a matter of surprise that in the pre-
sent time the people of that country saw just reason to
complain. in the county of Mayo there were 380,000
people, and yet it was to have the same number of repre-
sentatives as the smallest county in the kingdom. He
could not, therefore, avoid approving of the data of the
'Member for Kilkenny, and he hoped they would meet with
the attention they deserved.—( Hear.
Sir R. INGLIS hail heard one expression fall from the
Right Hon. Secretary (Mr. Stanley), which, he confessed,
had a tendency to 611 him with serious alarm. The Right
Hon. Gentleman, in speaking of the course he intended to
pursue with respect to the freemen of corporate towns in
Ireland, had observed, that he did not intend, as in Eng-
land, to preserve their rights to their descendants, because
it would have the effect of perpetuating the race of Pro-
testant freemen, and it was desirable to get rid of the
system under which they were created. He (Sir R.
Inglis) knew that this was the language of the Govern-
ment, and not of the Right Hon. Gentleman him.elf, be-
cause he still recollected with gratitude the speech of the
Right Hon. Gentleman in 1826 in defence of the Pro-
testant rights. As to the notice, however, of the designs of
the Government, it was peculiarly alarming, for he hoped
he would be spared any taunts of advocating bigotry,
when he expressed an opinion that the best in-
terests of England were connected with the support
of the Protestant interest in Ireland. He would not
enter into any historical details,
but he believed it was
well known that the corporations were the nuclei round
s
which those interests were tro rally. A great deal had
been said of the
of Protestants compared to
the Catholics. l'is'oniwalihneuturinbielerstood, from the very
o
ybestt
authority, that the new returns would give a proportion
three millions of Protestants (that isEpiscopaLiasnosoacinod.
Dissenters together) out of a
population of d
~.
This he believed, notwithstanding all that had been said