which no freeholds can be created, are just as minutely divided as the rest*; while in England, where political influence is fully as much valued as in Ireland, the land is generally let in large farms why? because there are farmers possessed of sufficient capital to occupy them; and because it is in general of much more importance to a landlord that his lands should be cultivated by persons of capital and intelligence, than that he should gain a few votes, by means which are equally open to the opposite party, if they are willing to make the same sacrifice. We, therefore, do not claim for the proposed bill, the merit of giving to Ireland a "sturdy and independent yeo"manry+;" we bound its pretensions to those of diminishing, in some small degree, the power of the aristocracy, and putting an end to a great amount of perjury. Though, even for these purposes, we are much inclined, with Mr. Leslie Foster and Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, to think that it did not take a range sufficiently wide, and that to produce any very sensible improvement, the disfranchisement ought to have extended to freeholders in fee, as well as to freeholders for lives. In the debates on this question, it may be remarked, that the extremes both of Toryism and of Whiggism were found on one side, and the more moderate of both parties on the other. This anomaly appears to us to have naturally arisen out of the circumstances of the case. The thorough-goers on both sides, in their opposition to this measure, will be found to have been perfectly consistent with themselves; while the more moderate have on this occasion made a sacrifice of party principles, from an honest desire to promote the public good. Every Englishman who knows any thing of the manner in which the legislature of his own country is formed, knows perfectly well that the great mass of the electors, though they have somewhat more of the form, have as little of the reality See the evidence of Col Currey, (p. 304); of Major-Gen. Bourke, (p. 318); and of Mr. Rochfort, (p. 437), before the Commons' Committee of 1825; the evidence of Mr. Blacker, (p. 78); of Justice Day, (p. 264); of Mr. Macarty, (p. 320); of Mr. Simpson, (p. 406); of Mr. Lawler, (p. 442); and of Dr. Church, (p. 450), before the Commons' Committee of 1824. Mr. Leslie Foster, indeed, is of a different opinion: see his evidence before the Lords' Committee of 1825, p 81. + Mr. Plunkett, ante, p. 200. of a free choice, as their degraded bre thren, the forty shilling freeholders of Ireland. If all the English electors were disfranchised, who dare not vote but according to the bidding of their landlords, or customers, go few would be left that there would be no semblance of a popular choice, and the real amount of the aristocratic power would be made universally apparent. This would not suit either section of the aristocracy: neither the stronger section, who are now the absolute masters of the government, nor the weaker section, who hope to become the stronger, and by that means to become the masters of the government in their turn. In confirmation of the above remark, so far as it affects the Whig party, it may be observed that the various plans which have been proposed by that party for putting the election of Members of Parliament upon a different footing, have been of a nature to add to the aristocratic power, not to diminish it: and to add to it, too, in the very manner to which the principle of the Irish freeholders' bill is most directly bostile, viz. by giving the franchise to a set of electors who are irre. sistibly under aristocratic controul. One of these plans is to take away the franchise from the electors of the rotten boroughs who do exercise a free choice, though from their small number they are interested in making a bad one, and to give an additional representation to the county electors, who are almost all of them under the absolute command of their landlords, and who are the very same class of electors whom the Irish freeholders' bill would disfranchise. Another of their plans, is to extend the elective franchise to copyholders; who would be every where under exactly the same influence as the freeholders. The more consistent, therefore, and clear-sighted among the Whigs, perceived that it was impossible for them to give their support to this measure, without departing from the principles on which they had constantly acted, and to which they were determined to adhere. Mr. Lambton's declaration, then, that he would oppose Catholic emancipation in order to frustrate this measure, appears to us perfectly consistent, and, on his own principles, proper. The consistent Tories had exactly the same interest in opposing the measure, as the consistent Whigs: they were also actuated by the general hostility to change; and several (Mr. Goulburn for instance) who approved of the measure, opposed it with the view of thwarting Catholic emancipation. Some persons have wondered that such men as Mr. Bankes should stand forward on this occasion as the champions of popular rights: but to us it appears nothing surprising, that a man who has been all his life a determined opponent of all innovation, should oppose it on this occasion as on any other. If we have succeeded in laying open the springs of action which impelled both classes of opponents to say and do what they said and did against the bill, the reader will be able to make the application to the different speeches without our assistance, and we should have quitted the subject had there not been one passage in the speech of Mr. Brougham, which appears to us to call for particular animadversion. We cannot see in what manner a knowledge of the circumstance, that the political economists were intolerant, or had dogmatical notions, conduced to the forming a right decision on the subject of Irish freeholds; but the irrelevancy of this accusation is the least of the faults, with which it is justly chargeable. If, by the term "political economists," Mr. Brougham intended to designate any particular individuals, we would recommend him,-before he again vituperates the cultivators of a science, the first principles of which it would do him no harm to study, to consult Lindley Murray's English Grammar, from which he will learn the difference between nouns proper and appellative, and will be taught to avoid confounding classes with individuals. But if he include under the expression " political economists," all or most of those who have made the cultivation of that science their particular pursuit, we have not heard of any act which has emanated from these persons as a body; and we imagine that Mr. Malthus must have been somewhat surprised to find himself represented by his "valued friend" as having been "held up to public among whom he probably esteems himself to be not one of the least considerable. It strikes us, too, as rather odd, that the act of "holding a man up to "public ridicule" should be regarded as proof of " a spirit similar to the religious We do not allude to the bitter complaint which he made, oddly enough, of the want of information, when there is probably no subject relative to Ireland, in respect to which the information was equally complete; nor to the still odder" ridicule," by a class of philosophers, reason that he gave for suffering the Irish freeholders to continue perjuring themselves, because officers in the army, members of parliament, and bishops, perjured themselves too; nor even to the excellent definition which he gave of the "natural "influence of property," when he defined" persecutions of other times." Religious it to consist in driving Englishmen by threats to go to the poll and utter a deliberate falsehood, enforcing that falsehood by the ceremony of an oath, to put a candidate into parliament of whom they knew nothing; of which influence he added that he did not complain, and that it must exist every where*. The only part of his speech which we have it in view to touch upon, is the unprovoked attack, which he went out of his way to make, upon "the political economists." persecutors have been wont to resort to tortures of a keener description than public ridicule: and is Mr. Malthus the first person who has been held up to ridicule for a " merely speculative" opinion? To be serious, it is astonishing, that a man like Mr. Brougham should either be ignorant himself, or should count upon so extraordinary a degree of ignorance on the part of his audience, as to impute intolerance to the political economists: a class of men who are by nothing more distinguished, than by the mildness and "They were told by a class of men, who had urbanity with which their warmest discarried their dogmatical notions almost as far, cussions have been carried on: a mildand with a spirit similar to the religious perse-ness till then unknown in the history cutions of other times-he meant the political economists, who had held up a valued friend of his, Mr. Malthus, to public ridicule, only because he differed from Mr. Ricardo on a mere metaphysical, not a practical point-that they ought to pass this measure,' &c. &c. Ante, p. 193. * Ante, p. 193. of controversy; and forming a most strik ing contrast with the bitterness and animosity which have characterized the disputes not merely of politicians and theologians, contending for power over the bodies or souls of mankind, but even of the professors of purely abstract science, for example the mathematicians: who in their controversies with one another, or with those who have impugned any of their doctrines, have on several occasions displayed even more than ordinary arrogance, petulance, and ill-temper. He who was ignorant of all this, or knowing it could charge the political economists with dogmatism and intolerance, must have merely taken up the first bad name which occurred to him, and without for a moment considering whether it was applicable or not, flung it at the heads of those whom he had a mind to assail. We have not left ourselves space to comment at much length upon the two remaining discussions on the Catholic question. The subject was much more thoroughly sifted in these two debates than in the foregoing: we allude particularly to the speeches of Mr. Horace Twiss and Lord Harrowby, by both of whom the only argument was put forward which really goes to the bottom of the question, namely, that, for any mischievous purpose, the Catholics would not gain one particle of power by emancipation. Mr. Charles Grant was, as usual, honest and manly. The opponents of the Catholics begged the question against them, in all the old, and a variety of new ways: but their speeches were in every material feature so like those of their predecessors, that we need not waste any words upon them. The only speech deserving of notice on that side of the question was the speech of the Bishop of Chester: and this not so much from the merits or demerits of its arguments as from the lengths to which the right reverend prelate was hurried by the clerical esprit de corps, and the cavalier manner in which he treated all classes in Ireland, except the priesthood of the church, "a priest"hood," (including, we suppose, the Honorable and Venerable Archdeacon Trench, and the Rev. Mr. Morrett of Skibbereen*) "which in the moral desolation of Ire * See the evidence of Lord Carbery (p. 603) before the Commons' Committee of 1825; of Mr. Blacker (p. 60, 61); and the Rev. Michael Collins pp. 375-7), before the Commons' Committees of 1824; and of Mr. O'Driscol (p. 233) before the Lords' Committee of 1824. See more particularly the evidence of Mr. Macdonell, before the Commons' Committee of 1825, (pp. 759, 760), and the whole. For further information concerning the Oasis, see the evidence of Major Warburton (p. 147) before the Commons' Committee of 1824. " land, remained the Oasis of the desert, "and gave to the eye some points on which "it could rest with pleasuret." It was ludicrous enough too, to hear a man who is pocketing thousands a year by his opinions, and who has nothing to fear from a strict adherence to them but removal from a lower grade of emolument and grandeur to a higher, spout mock-heroics, and talk of martyrdom. Hitherto what we have been mainly considering, in the different speeches, has been their arguments. The occasion now calls for another sort of remark. In private life, no maxim, that has human conduct for its subject, is more universally assented to than the paramount importance of an inviolable adherence to truth. To charge a man with a disregard to truth is justly considered as the most flagrant insult which can be put upon him: and the state of mind which characterizes an habitual liar, as one with which no good or great quality can easily coexist. It has however been long ago observed by Addison, that party lies are in a great measure exempt from this stigma; and that men who would sooner die than be guilty of the slightest violation of truth for their individual advantage, are ready, for the benefit of their party, to put forth assertions which they not only know to be false, but which they know cannot, in the common course of things, be believed by any body for more than a few days. Whether matters have altered in this respect, since the days of Addison, is what we do not pretend to determine. Thus much, however, will, it is believed, be found to be borne out by a considerable body of modern experience: that what would be a falsehood anywhere else, is a justifiable piece of rhetorical artifice in the House of Commons; and that gentlemen, in all other respects of the most unblemished honour, and quite incapable of saying or doing any thing which is generally regarded as dishonorable, are in the daily habit of making assertions in Parliament, which would infallibly lead an indifferent auditor to suppose that the convenience of an assertion for their purposes was a circumstance much more regarded by them than its truth. It will be for the reader to judge, whe+ Ante, p. 240. SUCH CASES OF SUCCESSFUL INJUSTICE "EXISTING except in the heated imagina"tions of those who had fabricated them." ther the assertions which we are now about Mr. North: "Mr. Cobbett, who to quote, belong to the class of assertions "within the last two months had beconie which we have just mentioned, or not. "the oracle of the Catholics, had desired We will deal fairly by him and them;" them to make out a list of the eases in we will lay before him,-together with "which justice had been denied, or in the assertions, if not the proofs, at least" which oppression and violence had rean indication of the proofs, which lead us "ceived a sanction from the law. The Cawithout hesitation to pronounce them un-"tholics, however, had drawn out no founded. It is possible that the gentlemen "such list, BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT; NO to whom they are ascribed, may have been misrepresented by the reporters; if so, they are bound in justice to the public and to themselves, to disavow them. It is also, in the case of some of these Mr. Goulburn: "It had been said gentlemen, just possible, that they may not "that there was one law for the rich have known positively that the assertions " and another for the poor in Ireland. If were unfounded, but only, not known" that meant that there was a denial of them to be true. We shall be extremely "justice to the poor man, HE BEGGED TO glad to find that the gentlemen have been DENY THE FACT. With respect to ma misrepresented. We bear them no ill will ; "gistrates, he would assert, and he deon the contrary, we have for some of"fied contradiction, that THERE WAS NO them individually great respect. In the SUCH THING AS A DISPOSITION AMONG code of party ethics, the stain may not THEM TO TAKE BRIBES for the adminisbe a very black one; but we confess it is "tration of justice to the poors." one from which we would gladly see them freed. To the above list, it is with great pain we add the following passage; which, however, is so vague and intangible that it can hardly be said to contain an assertion at all, consequently not a false assertion. Mr. Doherty: "Frequent allusions "had been made to the partial adminis"tration of justice in Ireland. Now he "would say, and the experience of some years entitled him to say it, that the "Catholics of Ireland enjoyed the fullest "and fairest administration of justice. He "affirmed, without fear of contradiction" "from any Irish member, that THE COURTS Mr. Brownlow: "The Protestant "gentlemen of Ireland, in the relations of parents, landords, and magistrates, FOL"LOWED The PRECEPTS OF THEIR RE LIGION, By studying the GOOD OF ALL "COMMITTED TO THEIR CHARGE, in a manner not to be surpassed by a similar body of men in any country." The following assertion belongs to the same class: 66 OF JUSTICE WERE EQUALLY OPEN TO THE RICH AND THE POOR, without distinction" "of religious sentiments*. The same gentleman: "As far as "the experience of seventeen years' at- The Earl of Roden: "The situa"tendance on the Irish circuit enabled him" tion of the peasantry of Ireland bad, he "to judge, THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUS"conceived, been very much misrepre"sented. NO SET OF PEOPLE ENJOYED "TICE IN IRELAND WAS PERFECTLY pure. "He repeated that the administration of 'justice in Ireland was perfectly pure, that 66 THE RIGHTS OF THE POOR MAN WERE EQUALLY RESPECTED WITH THOSE OF THE '' should have been confirmed in their opposition, from seeing the vile, selfish, and tyrannical pur poses to which it has been made subservient in the hands of arrogant and oppressive magistrates; and lest they should have formed their opinions from the abuse rather than the use of this sala 66 RICH, and that no distinction whatever "was made between Catholic and Pro-tary law. Teach him, if he continue in the "testant t.' commission of the peace, that he must learn to administer the law in its true meaning, and not, as in the present case, torture it into an instrument of caprice or malevolence." We quote from the speech of Mr. Spring Rice, ante, p. 127. See also, in the same speech, the energetic language of Chief Justice Bushe; language imputing to the Irish magistracy as a body, a degree of wickedness, beyond what any person in a lower station would have dared to lay to their charge. § Ante, p. 128 + Ante, p. 87. THE (Before the Lords' Committee of 1825.) "C MORE AMPLY THE BENEFITS OF We shall not attempt to do what volumes would not do effectually, to present the reader with the original of this delightful picture: but we can at least tell him what to read. If he will R. v. Mr. Leslie Foster, pp. 55, [60], 65. Mr. Doherty, 91, 94, [95]. Mr. O'Connell, [130], 131, 134, [135]. Major Gen. Bourke, 173, 176, [178], 180. Mr. Abbott, [196, 197, 198]. Henry Cooke, 217. Sir John Newport 288. Mr. Barrington, 305. Earl of Kingston, [437, 439]. Archdeacon Trench, [447]. Mr. Justice Day, [524, 526, 527, [528, 529]. Mr. Dominick (Before the Lords' Committee of 1821.) Major Willcocks, pp. 54, 55. Major Warburton, [79]. Major Powell, 109. Mr. Nimmo, [131, 132, 159, 163, [165], 179. Mr. Becher, 134, [137], 139. The Duke of Leinster, 204. Mr. Macarty, 219. The Marquis of Westmeath, 228, 229, 230, 231. Mr. O'Driscol, [233, 234].. peruse those passages in the Evidence before the Committees to which we are about to refer him, he will form some conception of the purity of the adminis-Browne, 588. tration of justice in Ireland (we are not speaking of the superior courts), both in other respects, and in regard to the taking of bribes; of the benefits which no set of people enjoy more amply than the peasantry of Ireland, to wit, those of the British constitution; and of the manner in which the Protestant gentlemen of Ireland follow the precepts of their religion, by studying, in the character of landlords and magistrates, and we will add, grand jurors, the good of all committed to him read from beginning to end the eviBut, infinitely more than all these, let their charge. We have inclosed our re-dence of Mr. Macdonnell, of Ballinasloe, ferences to the most important passages within brackets. The authority of any one of these witnesses may be cavilled at; but we recommend to the reader to count them. (Before the Commons' Committee of 1825.) Mr. O'Connell, pp. 51, 55, 56, [60, 61]. Col. Currey, 297, [312]. Major Gen. Bourke, 324, [325], 326, 327, 330, [336], 339, [340]. Rev. John Keily, 397. Rev. Thomas Costello, [417], 418. Mr. Rochfort, 446, 448, [449]. Mr. Kelly, 521, [522, 526]. Mr. Barrington, 578. Lord Carbery, [603]. Mr. Currie, [634]. Mr. Godley, 741. (Before the Commons' Committee of 1824.) Mr. Blacker, pp. [60, 61]. Major Wilcocks, 101, [109], 113. Major Warburton, 164. Mr. Becher, [183, 184, 185]. Mr Leslie Foster, 242. Mr. Justice Day, [253, 257, 258, 259, 264]. Mr. Newenham, 306. Mr. Macarty, [328, 329, 332.] Rev. Michael Collins, 335, 336, [337, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377]. Mr. O'Driscol, 381, 383, 384, 385, 396]. Dr. Elmore, [417]. Dr. Church, 424, [429, 430]. Mr. Lawler, 441, 442, 443. * Ante, p. 147. before the Commons' Committee of 1825: that part of it which relates to magistrutes, that part of it which relates to grand juries, that part of it which relates to illegal tolls, and other illegal charges, He will find there-it is not safe to tell and that part of it which relates to tithes. him what he will find: let him read for himself. Among the minor proceedings of the last session relative to Ireland, none are of sufficient importance to require notice, with the exception of Mr. Hume's motion concerning the Irish church, and the debate to which it gave rise As this was only a motion for inquiry, we are not called upon to give any opinion on the expediency of a revision of the Church Establishment of Ireland: a large subject, and one upon which we shall have other opportunities of stating our opinions, at greater length than our limits would have enabled us, on the present occasion, to afford. We shall content ourselves, then, with an examination of the grounds, on which the House resolved, that there was no need of inquiry. The only speaker against the motion (Mr. Peel said but a few words) was Mr. Canning. His arguments were two. One was, that a revision of the Irish Church Establishment was contrary to the Union: |