The Sun.
London, England, 1845-04-12 00:00:00

tut etwilrimmt would lay down for the step they
'wen ;sow about to take?_( Hear, hear.) The Right Hen.
Baronet had stated to the House that, in reference to
this proposition, one of three courses was open to him to adopt. ;
Now ha (Mr. D'lsraeli) never yet heard the Right Hon.
Baronet bring forward any measure of importance in that
House that he did not make the very same statement.—
(Great laughter.) He had never yet heard the Right Hon.
Baronet, upon such occasions, declare that those three courses
were not open to him—(Continued laughter)—and, looking at '
the position of the Right Hon. Baronet, he (Mr. D'lsraeli)
should say he was right.—(Laughter.) Those three courses '
appeared to him (Mr. D'lsraeli) to be—first, the course the
Right Hon. Baronet had not been following—(Laughter)—
secondly, the course he was following—(Laughter)—and,
thirdly, the one he ought to have been following.—(Loud
laughter.) Rut then there was a fourth course—a course that
the House might follow—namely, to adopt this proposition, and
then rescind it.—(Loud laughter.) The Right Hon. Baronet
had stated, as he always did, that he always acted upon prece-
dent ; and no matter how great or important the measure was,
he invariably fell back upon his small precedents.—(Laughter.)
He always tested the merits of the steam-engine by going back
to the little incident of the tea-kettle—(Laughter)—or some
such small matter, and then he contended that the House had
admitted the principle.—( Hear. ) Now he (Mr. D'lsraeli)
denied this, because at first this was but a temporary grant, and
now it was sought to make it a permanent ene.—( Hear. )
But now, with regard to the speech of the Right Hon. Gen- '
tleman (Mr. Gladstone), it appeared to him (Mr. D'lsraeli)
that the Right Hon. Gentleman's argument was to the effect
that circumstances had subverted principles.—( Hear, and
laughter.) He (Mr. D'lsraeli) up to this time looked upon
the Right Honourable Gentleman as the very chivalry of
principle, and, therefore, it was not expected that he would
have been the one to give this small change of circumstances
for principle. —(Laughter.) But, these circumstances had not
changed slew the time of Mr. Perceval, and how astounded at
this change would not the ghost of that gentleman be, if he
had a ghost.—( Laughter.) Look at the position of the Church
in Scotland and in Ireland, and would it then be contended
that they had a constitution of Church and State ?—( Hear. )
Such a thing had been boasted of at a public dinner, but it was
well known that it did not exist.—( Laughter and cheers.)
Mr. Perceval and Lord Liverpool stated that the Established
Church in Scotland was a model of ecclesiastical government,
because it gave them no trouble. —(Laughter. ) It was now
rent in twain • they had two churches—aye; they had three
churches in gcotland; because now there was a free church.
What was the question before them ? If they were going to
apply that principle to all sections of sectarianism, to all sec-
tions of dissent that existed in the three kingdoms, he should
like to know when they were to stop. It became a great ques-
. tion, what they were to do. He had that confidence in the
Church, that be believed that its connexion with the State
was of little importance and of great injury. It did not rest
upon the endowment of the State ; if it were left to itself, it
would not shrink from the contest, and he believed that in Ire-
land at this present moment, if it were a question whether the
Church were to be disconnected with the State, or another
church endowed, the Protestants would say, " Disconnect us
from the State, and do not endow another church." If they
placed connexion between churches and the State, were they
bound to take a pantheistic principle, and to say, no matter
what were the opinions of the majority, let them go to Down-
ing-street, and they would be provided for. Were they pre-
pared to with that superfine pretence of sympathy with the
Roman Catholic population of Ireland ? He could conceive
nothing more foreign to the customs, manners, and convictions
of the people of this country, than to place a surveillance
over their priests and their religious ceremonies.
He denied that the Church in England had been
the creature of the State, and if any Minister or
powerful resident in Downing-street were to try to place
a surveillance over it, he was certain that the people
of England would not submit to it. Could he believe that the
people of Ireland would endure it ? That was the principal
reason ; it was so vast and so cogent. Why, under any other
circumstances, he would oppose this Bill. This Bill had been
—he would not say- in a sinister manner—but in a manner
which must have taken the country and the majority of this
House by surprise, brought in ; it would confirm, or rather in-
t) o !flee, for he would not say they existed before, principles than
which nothing could be more prejudicial or more hateful to
the people of England. He had other reasons for opposing the
Bill. He opposed it from the manner in which it had been
brought in, and on account of the men who had brought it
forward.—(Cheers, and a laugh.) He should be perfectly
ready to meet that cheer, and that solitary laugh. He opposed
it because he did not agree wi,h the principle of endowment;
and he objected to the Bill because he did not
think that the Gentlemen who at present occupied
the Treasury benches were morally entitled to bring it for-
ward ; and because it embodied principles against which those
Gentlemen, when in the Opposition, signally struggled
(Cheers from both sides of the House.) When he remembered
all their votes and speeches about education—when he remem-
bered their discussions and the appropriation clause—( Cheers)
—he could not think that because Gentlemen cross the House
by opposing a certain tenour of policy, which they ought to
support, they should have the privilege of saying to them,
" Look to our merits, and, for Heaven's sake, support us." Let
them come to the discussion whether the consideration of
party ought to influence the consideration of this House. Let
them put an end to this misconception—let them meet it at
once, and let it not be the position of every gentleman at his
side of the House, who stated his candid opinion, that he should
be accused of open rebellion, by a Minister who was not, when
on the other side of the House, distinguished for open
rebellion, hut for covert muriny.—( Hear, hear.) If they
objected to a Parliamentary Government, they had
at least a case, since that Parliamentary Government
had done what Rome in its worst days never did—it mortgaged
industry to protect property—(Cheers)--for there never were
a people harder worked and worse paid. He objected to that
measure because it was supported and brought forward by those
who, on former occasions, had opposed such measures. The
Honourable Gentleman then expressed his surprise that, though.
the Opposition had reason to agree with the contents of the
measure, they should have supported it when they saw the sur-
reptitious manner in which it was brought forward. Suppose
the Bill had been introduced by the Noble Lord opposite, there
would at least have been a constitutional opposition—they
would have had a discussion, and might have pronounced
an opinion which would have carried their measure. They had
now no opinion—they had a Government who were carrying
their measures by organisation. They had a Minister who
would call their observations personal; but they bad a right
to draw their inferences, which he thought legitimate, and
could not be determined in a fair discussion. He did not know
what the House might think of the stopping of Parliamentary
di cussions in that way ; it had been tried in another House,
which was there called "the other place."—( Laughter.) He re-
collected when they used to toast that other place with three
times three and nine times nine, when the independence of
the other place was their toast ; but where was the independ-
ence of that other place now ?_( Laughter and cheers.) It
was not Radicalism, or the revolutionary spirit of the
nineteenth century that had resigned that other place to its illus-
trious insignificance—it was the Conservatism of their Ministry.
Would they recommend it to a Parliamentary Committee? Would
they follow the usage of another place ? Would they convert
another place into a guard-room, and the House of Commons
into a vestry ? Would they thus pass this Bill for Maynooth
—and as the Member for Newark had said, violate every im-
portant principle, and entrap all public feeling and natural
sentiment? Would they thus descry every distinctive prin-
ciples? Would they thus be misled by a cress so deeply low
and so adroitly accomplished? The instances were a strange
opposition, a most contrasting likeness. The had now the
giant to Maynooth instead of the Irish Registration Bill.—
( Hear, hear, and great laughter.) Would they thus sup-
port the Hon. Gentleman in his position, and thus after
four years' experience of lowering the effect of the influence
and destroying the power of working with that constitutional
body, a working Opposition. What was the conduct which
they, the Conservative party, had experienced after four years
of trial, but one of deception and betrayal. But they had this
night come to a crisis—a crisis in which they were to test whe-
ther the country was to be ruled by a popular Government or
a Parliamentary Administration, or whether they were at
once to do away with that wholesome check—a constitutional
opposition. What had they but, according to the land phrase
in Ireland, a great Parliamentary middle man ?—( Great
laughter.) They all knew what a middle man was—he
was one who bamboozled one party and plundered the other.
One who having attained a position to which he was never
entitled, cried out let us have no more Parliamentary questions
but permanency, of tenure.—( Hear, and laughter.) He should
like to have a Commission to inquire into the tenure on which
Downing •street was held, for he much feared that many of the
condi:ions had never been complied with, and that some of the
covenants of the lease had never been fulfilled.—( Great
cheering.) He hoped that he should not be answered by
Hansard. He, for his part, was astonished that Hon. Gentle-
men were so fund of referring to the authority of Hansard.
He knew that Hansard was a great authority, but what did one
obtain by looking over the pages of Hansard for thirty years,
yea, even for more than thirty years, of an eminent career, in
order to discuss rightly the principles of experienced statesmen
on such grants as those raised by the question of May
? What did one see by looking over only a
quarter of a century, or more, of even one's own
speeches but dreary pages of interminable talk and weary
wastes of inane superficiality. What but a lamentable record
of pledges broken and budgets blown up—( Great laughter)—
throughout which he could not trace nought but which was
' vain in its object and tortuous in its course—where not one
happy thought or one generous emotion was to be traced,
but all presented the very Dunciad of politics where the whole
system was evidently one of a course of hypocrisy by which that
House had been misled ; where all that was matter for conduct
was fallacious in its view and Machiavelian in its principle.
The very hum-drum hocus-pocus of party manoeuvre. Some-
thing that would hardly illustrate the conduct of a gentleman
who had left the Cabinet for a reason which as yet had never
been given, and who would in all probability return
to it for a reason that was equally obscure. This night
that system was to be brought to the test, and he trusted that
the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland would not accept the
gift from the hand that was polluted by the hand that presented
it. This was no question of mere political economy ; and he hoped
that it would meet their hostility as it did with his. He
entertained no hostility to the grounds on which this grant was
to be made • he did not object to the endowment of Roman
Catholic colleges ; but he would not thus insult them. How
were Sectarian Colleges in England supported, and in many
of them greater revenues were derived than those proposed for
the Roman Catholic Colleges, and which were placed in pre-
cisely the same circumstances—why, in the sympathy of their
co-religionists. But in this measure he trusted that the Right
Hon. Baronet would not find the same flattering sup
port—the same solace in feeling which had hitherto"
supported him from the benches behind; that he would not find
his Parliamentary tactics so available for his individual pur-
poses, and that he would not be backed by the chorus behind
him. The Hon. Gentleman said that this was a meagre grant,
and the Gentleman on the left cheered him, and said that it
was—in truth it was, a meagre grant. For what was the
w dif-
ference to the Roman Catholic priesthood? If they
be served at all, they should be served with something were
to
bet-
ter than the difference between 23,000/. and 28,0001. isms_
thing better than the difference of two in a bed and three.
What did they gain by a review of the last quarter of a cen-
fury ? The Roman Catholic gentlemen would find nothing but
a bleak prospect of fruitless hopes, and promises unfulfilled.
They had come to the fatal state of a disregard of all public
claims, and to a sacrifice of all personal principle. He did not
despair of having the support of the Whigs, for he believed
that they were alive to the impulses of hereditary duty, consti-
tutional impulse, and honourable convictions. He did not
despair of the support of the Noble Lord opposite (Lord J.
Russell), whose principles bad always exhibited the honesty,
and whose intellect had always evinced his fitness
for becoming the successor of his great prototype--
Mr. Fox ; and he did not think that, if the Noble
Lord were in Mr. Fox's position, that if he held
his position, and was laden with his responsibilities, that he
would be content to be dragged for three years at the trium-
phal car of one who was his inferior in apprehension as he was
in honour—one who had conquered him by no fair means of
• coati t, and who was his superior—if superior at all—only
in t tactics of chicanery and art. He bad always admired
his ga nt spirit, and he trusted that he would resist as he
hopediatways would the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and the
whole of'the Whig', in repudiating the grant to Maynooth from
such nuwisrthy bands.—(Cheers.) He trusted that the people
of Entd would see that personal convenience was not national
honotiK hat cunning was not caution, and that habitual per.
fidtwits,ebot high policy of state. The practice of duplicity was
'to its close. This was no question of constitutional.
patson, and he trusted that it would be decided by the term-
Ration of this dynasty of dissension, official despotism, and Par-
liamentary
imposture.