The Sun.
London, England, 1832-03-09 00:00:00

1113 got 60,0001. ; and he is one of the objects of eleerno•
synary commiseration to the Committee.—(Hear, hear.)
There is evidence that by a pious fraud the clergy have
availed thetnselve of the change of currency. Mr. Dwyer
states that the people are the victims of the most horrible
oppression. Will you relieve the Church, and give no
aid to the p ople ? But you arc to raise time arrears.
Mr. Lengrishe, a clergyman, tells you that you cannot
raise them. The thing is to raise the arrears. The Lord
Lieutenant (the gallant and high-minded Anglesea) is to
he turned into a Tithe-Pt oetor- General of the Church. You
are to shift the odium of tithes from the clergy, who are to
receive the bent fit, to the Executive, which is to reap all
the detestation.—(Hear.) There will be cause and cross-
cause in the Civil Bill Court ; we shall have the King
versus time People, and in the tribunal of public opinion
you will have the P: ople versus the King. Infatuated
men, what are you doing? Look before you—you are
walking min:1101d upon the brzek of a gulf. You will
sexasperate Irel reel ; you will array the nation against you ;
then will come a general election in November ; Reform
will have thrown the close boroughs opon ; the democracy
will have bscome gigantic; then will the people have their
revenge.—(Hear.) The poisoned chalice will, in just re-
tribution, return to your own lips. It is your turn this
Session, but it will be ours the nest.—(Bear, hear.)
What are you doing? Succouring a clergy from which
you expect nothing,—affronting and irritating a nation
from which you look for much—opening the boiling foun-
tain of popular indignation—leaguing a n ition against
you by your threats of coercion. We have served and
supported you, and stood by you in many an emergency,
and have received your praise for our zeal, our vigilance,
our devotion to your interests ; but, alas ! what can we
do for you in the hurricane of popular passion, which you
are about hi raise? Our voices in your behalf will be like
whispers in a tempest ; our arms are not strong enough to
swim against the title that knows no returning ebb, and
if we attempt it we shall be swept before it. Reform, an
lelection in November, and Ireland exusperated for the sake
of certain persons of the Establishment ! Awake—you
are on a precipice, anti you must he rudely shaken to
' raise you from your perilous slumbers.—(Hear, hear.)
But he might be told that relief was offered. What re•
lief? It is a mere mockery of the national understand-
ing. Tithes are to be abolished. flow ? By providing
for them a sepulchre from which they are to arise in an
immortal resuscitation. Nay, he did not exaggerate. We
are informed that tithes are to be abolished, and noo
ft au, that the revenues of the Church are to be effectually
secured on land. What does this mean ? Is it not a
palpable contradiction? or is it not as if a judgment cre-
ditor were to say, " Sir, this judgment of mine may be
incommodious, and in order to accommodate you, I shall
oblige you by taking a mortgage, or if you prefer it, a
slice of your estate ?"—(Cheers.) Is it not so? Du you
call this relief? Relief! Pray content yourselves with a
violation of our rights, and do not offer an insult to our
ordinary sense. It is better to speak out at once. The
collection of tithes is not the question ; the amount of
tithes is not the question—John Hampden was sent to
gaol for 203.—(Cheers)—but the question is, shall the
tithes be otherwise appropriate I? I tell you that a deep
conviction has seized hold of the nation's faculties, and
taken possession of its entire heart, that Church property
is the nation's property. It is idle to tell the people that it
rests on the same right as private property, and that an
inroad upon one will afford a precedent for an invasion of
the other. This is mere phrase—gainless and empty apo-
thegms—with which we are not to be caught. I'll tell you
how matters stand. The Irish nation look back to their
history, and they find tithes originally divi led into four
parts, of which one-fourth was given to the poor, and ano-
ther fourth was given to the priest of the poor.—(Cheers.)
They find the Protestant gentry and aristocracy leagued in
1735 against the tithe of agistinent, and pronouncing
their Parliamentary anathemas against all those who
should, in violation of their ordinances, dare to pay it—
they nee the Statesmen of their House of Commons (for
once they had a House of Commons), the best and most
enlightened Irishmen, confederated against tithes—they
behold time pinnacles of the Establishment shivered by the
lightnings of Grattan's eloquenc •—they look round Eu-
rope, and they see tithes everywhere abolished—in France,
in Belgium, in Holland, in Sweden, in Norway, in Den-
mark, in Prussia. in Tuscany, in Scotland—they see in
Scotland a poor Church in a rich country, anti in Ireland
a rich Church amidst a starving people; and with these
facts he'ore them, and with the recollection fresh and
vivid of what they have themselves achieved—conscious of
what was effected by a virtuous organization—knowing
that here they hail a body of firm and dauntless advo-
cates of their rights,—they have arrived at the determination
to put to these hideous abuses, those enormous anomalies, an
immediate end.-( Hear, hoar, hear.) This may not be—
I perceive it is not—relisired by either party ; but it is the
truth. To both parties I fearlessly address myself; con-
servatists and reformers, I ape .1s to both of you ; you that
are the prompt auxiliaries of the Government in every
project of coercion—you that are to have none of the re-
sponsibility, are to reap all the advantage—(Hear, hear.)
Yani that would fain help the Ministers to their ruin,
think a little, and look back to the year 1529. What did
your great Captain do—he who was pledged almost from
ehielhood against emancipation•—he who had declared
that Ireland ought to be reconquered—he who left his
proxy against Ireland, when he went forth to fight those
battles in which English victory was achieved with Irish
blood—lie was the first to offer homage to the will of an
united people, and after having called on England to throw
away time scabbard, was the first to implore her to put by
the sword. Wherefore do I mention this ? To ask of
you (for Torit s, I speak to you) whether you think that
the Whigs ought after emancipation to act on the principle
on which you did not dare to act before it?—(Cheers.)
Reformers, I turn from ) our antagonists to you. Do you
imagine that your principles do not extend beyond a Re-
form in the House of Commons? What course did you
pursue in the conduct of this great proceeding; ? Did you
appoint a Committee? Did you refer schedule A to the
Right Hon. Member for Tamworth ? Did you name a
Committee formed of all patties (this is time phrase), to
inquire into the state of the boroughs of England, and
the constitution of the House of Commons, and to " re-
port their observations thereon ?" No—you saw that
hesitation for a moment would be ruin for ever—you
grasped at the irrevocable occasion, and you seized
and. held it. "We must content the English people."
This was your answer to every objection. If it was
urged -that the Lord Chancellor had digested a very
, different plan of Reform, you replied, and well and
nobly, it is too late—we twist content the Eng-
lish people. If it was said that Lord John Russell's hook
was at variance with Lord John Russell's Bill, still you
answered, we must content the people of England. If it
was said that the representatives of the colonies would be
excluded—that the avenues by which Pitt, and Fox, and
Burke, had obtained admission to this House would he closed
against genius—that the present system had saved the coun-
try at the Revolution, and had been concomitant a ith its
glory since, still you well and wisely answered, we must
conform to the great change and transition which has taken
place, and must content the people; and if this be true,
as it beyond all doubt is true,—if you find it necessary to
content the English people, by a Reform in the Parlia-
ment, is it perfectly unnecessary, is it matter fir consider-
ation, scepticism, and Cabinet debates, whether you must
not content the Irish people upon the Church ?—(Cheers.)
Take warning in time—what is your policy ? You have
got up a race between legislation and events; an incident
happens, straight comes an Act of Parliament ; another in-
cident arrives, behold a Committee, and another Act of
Parliament ; thus you go on, running a race with events,
• and events are sure to win it. Awake, for God's sake !to
.a sense of the condition of Ireland ; embrace her evils in one
large and comprehensive system of immediate amelioration;
let us not have (to use a phrase of such powerful homeli-
ness, uttered with such a pregnant familiarity, by lips so
touched with fire)—let us not here " a hit-by-bit Reform,"
lay not that unction to your souls—do not burn that in-
cense which self-adulation offers to itself, or not hope
conceives, nor so fir delude yourselves as to think that, by
dallying with the evils of Ireland, by procrastinations, and
putting off, and sometimes giving buffets, and sometimes
offering curresses to Ireland, you can affect her tranquillisa-
tion, and, he should rather say, that you can save the
cFor it has come to this pass ; and it
i.e—(Beat'.)
tells you this ; events—these tongue-
our prejudices aside,. to legislate not on the views
eloquent monitors--call on. you, as they pass, to
tbut on the. principles of human nature, and from
:shoofsrui:optoiwatt
butr.tyhyry
the calamities that impend upon us, to rescue that country,
which, under all changes of Government, and all vicissi-
tudes of party, appears to have been predisposed to dis-
traction, and predestined. to misrule.—(Cheers.)
111 r. WALLACE objecteito the course proposed by the
Right Hon. Secretary, because. it was impossible for the
In fair dealing, and according to the
what it
former Governments, the Right Hon.
bound to let the House know for what
opGI
aoe ut
otso
precedentsene toico ernkd
snewneo.tht
awn:.
reason it was to go into a Committee of the whole House
on a part of a question which was still under the consi-
deration of a Special Committee. He would put it, in-
deed, to the Right Hon. Gentleman, whether it was right
they should go into that Committee without knowing
what they were to he pledged to by assenting to mirth a
course? There was, indeed, enough in the history of the
practice of the House on former occasions, to demonstrate
that the Right Hon. Gentleman was not warranted i*