dependence of her parliament. Her boasted liberty could not even ensure to Ireland the blessings of domestic tranquillity. Internal dissensions were arrayed not unfrequently in the horrors and ferocities of civil war; and while enjoying free trade, unrestricted agriculture, and her own constitutional parliament, Irish discontent kept pace with the growth of Irish prosperity, discord increased with wealth, and conspiracy and rebellion sprang up with national improvement. To preserve a connection between countries so unequal in power and resources as were England and Ireland, it was necessary to sacrifice, in some degree, the independence of the weaker of the two; and this very circumstance, producing irritation, distrust, and impatience of all control, led Ireland to submit only so long as her spirit was unformed and her resources undeveloped. All bands of union had consequently proved uncertain securities for the permanence of connexion between the two countries, till an incorporate union was adopted by both in the year 1799.

And now recurred the question, had this union realized the intended object? Every statement, which could be viewed as authority, afforded the fullest evidence, that, during the last thirty years, the prosperity of Ireland had been unprecedented-her shipping had been doubled, her imports and exports proportionally increased, her cotton trade created; and the source of all this prosperity was to be found in British connextion, and a participation of British liberty and wealth. That the union had not succeeded in producing unbroken tranquillity in Ireland was to be ascribed to the

dominion of priestcraft and the delusion of demagogues. The professed object of repeal was to render Ireland an independent nation; but that could never be attained, if there was any specific meaning attached to the terms used. She was to be invested with no new discretionary powers in matters of peace or war; disobedience to the commands of England in such an emergency would immediately and inevitably lead to separation and subjection. She was to have no control over the services of the army or the navy, while she was to bear her proportion of the expenses of both countries; her parliament was not to be allowed to legislate concerning intercourse with Great Britain and the Colonies, and still less could she be permitted to interfere with the affairs, or control the revenues, of the Irish church; and having thus no authority in matters of peace and war, in arrangements, colonial, commercial, or ecclesiastical, the Irish peasantry, ignorant as they were, would speedily discover the delusive nature of the present measure as aiming at something called a " federal connection" between the two countries, which, in its nature and purposes, was to him utterly unintelligible. Such alliances had ever been found to cherish jealousies and hostile competition, and to favour the designs of internal enemies. It had always been through independent Ireland that attacks had been made on the liberty of England. Holland, Germany, and Switzerland had, each in its turn, felt the insufficiency of federal alliance against external aggression. If Ireland dissolved the union, subjection to England was her only alternative.

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interests of Britain, in relation to other European powers, demanded that Ireland, if not her friend, should be her dependant. In short, the union was sound in its nature, and beneficial in its results; repeal he considered impracticable, and the simple agitation of such a question fraught at once with mischief and delusion. Admitting that the union had been originally carried by atrocities and corruption, the iniquity of the object was not established by asserting the iniquity of the means. It was to the diffusion of domestic tranquillity and the suppression of agitation that Ireland must look for the return of national prosperity and comfort. Internal dissensions alone had disturbed the tranquillity and retarded the improvement of that country, the union of which with England was essential to the stability of the empire.

Mr. F. O'Connor denounced the amendment as arbitrary in its nature, and calculated to make the house of Commons pledge itself against the consideration of this question. The union, however, it could not be concealed, had already injured, and would continue to prove prejudicial to, the interests of Ireland. The increase of her exports and imports afforded no proof of her growing prosperity, for her exports were articles of food, and her imports consisted only of those things which the decline of her manufactures had rendered her unable to produce. Cattle were exported, because it was found impossible to rear profitably live stock for home consumption, and the exportation of the necessaries of life could not be taken as a proof of the increasing wealth of a country. The annihilation of trade and agriculture, the

poverty and misery which pervaded every district of the island, were merely the results of the union. The large proprietors, who were absentees, could neither know nor mitigate the wretchedness which they did not see. Land had fallen to less than onethird of the value which it bore at the period of the union. The petitions from all quarters of Ireland for a repeal proved, at least, that the people of that country considered the measure essential to their prosperity. They desired neither French connexion nor popish ascendancy; but if the measures of the English parliament continued to be what they had hitherto been towards Ireland, revolution on her part would be legalized and rebellion would become a virtue. In everything around him, he found reason to believe, that neither the one country, nor the other could be happy, while the union continued.

Ireland was

Mr. Littleton condemned the inflammatory language addressed by Mr. O'Connell to the ignorant population of Ireland, and the delusive hopes which he taught them to cherish in regard to the blessings to be enjoyed under a domestic legislature. to be regenerated; a tax of seventyfive per cent was to be imposed on absentees; and his expedient for carrying capital into Ireland was, that the proprietor of an estate in that country was to be declared incapable of holding property elsewhere. If the people of Ireland were to be taught such doctrines and deluded by such extravagant opinions as these, the bond of property, which was the strong link between England and Ireland, would be destroyed, and the separation of the two countries would

ere long, be a more practicable scheme. The plan contemplated by the motion before the house would eventually render such a separation inevitable; and the language, by which the doctrine of repeal was enforced, while it disgusted every intelligent man, might ultimately prove dangerous among the ignorant and unwary. No spectacle could be more contemptible than that of a body of men assuming the title of a deliberative assembly, and quaking, at the same time, under the terror of an armed constituency. Besides, the profligacy of the Irish government, acting in connexion with the Irish house of Commons, exceeded all belief. The pension list, prior to the union, amounted to 85,000l.; lucrative places were bought and sold; the hereditary revenues of the crown were prostituted to the most unworthy purposes; and the spirit of corruption pervaded every department of the public service. There was no knowledge of the principles of government, and no respect for political purity; and these evils, which were formerly connected with the existence, would undoubtedly be revived with the re-establishment, of a domestic legislature. The very agitation of the question was hostile to the social happiness and progressive improvement of Ireland; and the respectable classes of both countries ought to support government in their endeavours to

At the dedication of a Roman Catholic chapel at Kildare, Mr. O'Connell used these words ;-"Why, if the parliament were sitting in Dublin, and your representatives doing wrong, you could take your short sticks in your bands some fine morning, and go up and tell them to vote honestly and rightly."

maintain the institutions of the empire.

Mr. Barron, in supporting the original motion, ascribed all the evils of absenteeism, the ruin of the fisheries, the decline of one species of manufacture and the total disappearance of another, a diminution in the means of employment, and a fall in the wages of labour, to the baneful influence of the union. He complained, likewise, of an undue proportion of the common debt of the kingdom having been assigned to Ireland, and of her taxes having been unduly increased. He pronounced the dread of Catholic ascendancy to be visionary, so long as the three estates of the realm were essentially Protestant; and separation, he thought, would never be contemplated by Ireland, so long as she found England the most favourable market in which to purchase manufactures on the one hand, and dispose of her own agricultural produce on the other. Interest would bind the two countries much more closely together than any system of legislation.

Mr. Ruthven said, that looking at the numerical force of the Irish people, and their dependence on the generosity of England for any degree of prosperity which they enjoyed, it was not surprising that there should be a demand for repeal. Ireland ought to possess as a right what she had hitherto received as a boon. She demanded a federal union on equal and independent terms, which would prove a source of tranquillity to both countries.

Sir D. K. Sanford could not accede to the motion till two points were established, viz. that Ireland had enjoyed prosperity before the union, and, ad

mitting that the union had impeded her advancing welfare, that this was the proper time for making the experiment of repeal. No evils had resulted to Scotland from absenteeism, because the people were submissive to the authority of the law, and exempted from the influence of political agitation. Scotland afforded a proof of the advantages which a poor country might derive from being closely connected with a rich one. He would oppose the measure, because he believed it to be pregnant with evils to both countries.

Mr. Grattan said, that admitting the union to have been a contract, England had failed to fulfil the terms of it. The laws of England, for instance, had not been extended to Ireland, although the latter had contributed to pay the debt, and fight the battles of the United Kingdom. The history of British connexion with Ireland was written in blood; hopes had been blighted, and promises had been broken. The value of property in Ireland had fallen since the union; and official returns proved that her trade and revenue had proportionally suffered deterioration. He had no doubt that a repeal of the union would promote the permanency of a connexion with Great Britain, which was essential to the safety and wellbeing of both countries.

Mr. Lambert was of opinion, that something more distinct and decisive ought to have been submitted to the house than merely a resolution to inquire into the means by which the union had been accomplished, and the probable effects of its continuance. This mode of proceeding could no more lead to any practical result, than the appointment of a com

mittee to inquire into the circumstances attending the original invasion of Ireland. There had not been one-twentieth of the expected number of signatures to petitions for repeal, a deficiency which proved at once the total indifference of the Irish people to this measure. Instead of the misery which had formerly prevailed, rapid improvements had, during the last thirty years, pervaded all the departments of civilized life in Ireland. If there were two independent legislatures, jealousies and collisions would be the inevitable consequences. And how could the Irish parliament, in the event of a difference of opinion, resist the will of England? or, conscious of not having the power of resistance, how could she submit to be merely the instrument of registering the edicts of an assembly, of which she pretended to be perfectly independent. The first measure, in all probability, of an Irish parliament would be the imposition of prohibitory duties on every article imported from England; and this being, of course, met in England by similar duties on all agricultural produce imported from Ireland, the latter would be thrown upon her home consumption without money to pay for it. England would be supplied from the other markets of Europe, and Ireland would be left to prosper on the "great, glorious, and free" principle of Mr. O'Connell. He believed that agitation was fostered in Ireland with ulterior and most dangerous views. It disturbed every social relation, set the tenant against the landlord, and the landlord against the tenant, and involved the whole country in angry and mischievous contentions. The na

tional tribute had become a national nuisance, and had converted houses of religious worship into scenes of political dissension-of menace and of insult. He gave his cordial support to the amendment.

Mr. Sheil begged the house to remember, that the question was, whether it would assent to an inquiry into the consequences of the union, or concur in the amendment, which expressed a belief that salutary laws had been enacted for Ireland by the imperial parliament, and a determination to maintain the legislative union unimpaired. It could not be proved that the financial prosperity of Ireland, admitting its existence, was the result of the union: nor could he see how its repeal would lead to the abolition of free trade between the two countries. Besides, the revenue of Ireland had been employed in paying to England the interest of the sum which she had been compelled to borrow, and her capital was thus squandered in advancing the interests of England. He complained, likewise, that Irishmen were excluded from all official favours, and that a church with enormous revenues was supported by a majority of the people, for the exclusive advantage of the minority. If a dissolution of the union should not be speedily conceded, the mass of the people of Ireland, Protestant as well as Catholic, would, ere long, form an association which it would be difficult to resist.

Sir Robert Peel was anxious to make some effective progress in this debate; and he believed that no array of official documents, and no force of argument, could strengthen the conviction of the great majority of the house,-a

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conviction that lay deeper than any argument could reach-that they would, on no account, consent to dismember the British empire. There were convictions to which the feelings of the heart applied as much and as well as the faculties of the mind. "Repeal the union!" exclaimed Mr. Canning, enact the heptarchy!" The security of the empire depended on the maintenance of that union, without which England would be reduced to the condition of a fourth rate power in Europe, and Ireland to the desolation of a wilderness. Looking at the relative position of the islands with the other powers of Europe, and the empire rising on the other side of the Atlantic, it was impossible not at once to perceive the impracticability and madness of such a proposition as that before the house. Nature herself proclaimed the folly of such a scheme. To preserve the existence of these islands as a leading power of Europe it was absolutely necessary that they should be governed and directed by one supreme head and one

supreme legislature. Catholic emancipation had not been followed by the anticipated quiet and satisfaction; political agitation had not ceased with the removal of political disabilities; and concession had only led to more frequent and more presumptuous demands. In the year 1823 the individual who had now introduced this question, in his examination as a witness on the subject of Catholic disabilities and a repeal of the union, gave evidence that, on the settlement of the Catholic claims, the great body of the people would be perfectly contented with the union, and that a dissolution of it was