SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES (IRELAND).

March 1, 1833.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL said, on the last occasion when he spoke after the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Harvey), he had complimented him on the candour with which he had avowed his opinions. He had to pay the learned Gentleman a like compliment on the present occasion. Notions and doctrines of a more extravagant nature were never advanced in this House, and if acted upon to their full extent, they would lead to the destruction of all property, to the revolution of all society, and to the annihilation of all order in the community. He confessed that the measure before the House was alarming and arbitrary in its nature, and that it could not be adopted without pain by any one who had imbibed a reverence for free institutions. He deeply regretted that it had been imposed on Ministers by a stern necessity; but being convinced of the existence of that necessity, they would not shrink from performing their duty, though it was the most unpleasant which could be imposed on them. He had resolved to address himself to this awful and solemn subject with calmness and temper; but he owned that the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech had almost shaken him from his determination. He could not believe his ears when he heard his right hon. Friend's (Mr. Stanley's) statement, which made so great an impression on the House, not less from the horrible detail which it gave of atrocious crimes, than from the eloquence and ability with which they were described, characterised as a 'silky representation.' Was it possible that the hon. and learned Gentleman had called the manifold murders and outrages which were unfortunately so frequent in Ireland, only thirteen cases of irregularity in Ireland? What, when men at their toil had been stoned in the fields-when

women were cruelly butchered in their houses-when children, even innocent children, were beaten and murdered by ruffians—were they to be told that such deeds were only 'irregularities'? The hon. and learned Member knew how to garble a statement with colours borrowed from that Bill of which he spoke, and had dismissed the long list of outrages with the appropriate title, no doubt, of thirteen cases of irregularity in Ireland.' Before he proceeded farther, he would make one or two observations on the Amendment moved by his right hon. Friend the Member for Lambeth, to adjourn the first reading of this Bill for a fortnight. In his opinion, it would be more in accordance with the character of legislators, and more consistent with their dignity, to apply themselves boldly to the present measure if it were requisite; or if it were not requisite, at once to put a direct negative on it. His right hon. Friend (Mr. Tennyson) had said, that this was not a question on which the Ministers ought to stake the tenure of their offices. On this point he entirely differed from his right hon. Friend. If the Ministers thought that they could not give protection to property-that the force of Government was insufficient to secure the lives and property of the King's loyal subjects, and called upon Parliament to strengthen their hands by further powers, he could not conceive a more degraded situation than they would stand in, if, after making that proposition, and after it should have been rejected by Parliament, they still remained in office. They brought forward measures which they considered necessary to enable them to carry on the Government, and Parliament was to decide between three things-whether they would allow the Government of Ireland to be in the hands of the midnight legislators, the Whitefeet-or in those of an individual, wielding the democracy of Ireland at his command-or whether they would assert and maintain it to be in the Crown and in the Parliament of a

united people? The hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Harvey) had prophesied that Ministers would fail in their attempt to carry the present Bill, and that a new Administration must be formed. The hon. and learned Member added, that he thought a Tory Government, corrected of its former errors, would be the best Government. He should not envy them their situation, supported as they would be by gentlemen who thought that the present Administration did not go far enough in the way of Reform. A Tory Government would find it a very difficult matter, in the present temper of the country, to carry on the affairs of the nation, and at the same time give satisfaction to those gentlemen. He would be ready to give them, as far as he consistently could, his support; and though they might be obliged, as in former times, to propose a coercive measure for Ireland, perhaps the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Harvey) would not be so disposed to find fault with them, if, having a clearer perception of his merits than the present Administration, they should have appointed him to some lucrative post. He thought it extremely probable that such a Government might reckon on the support of the hon. and learned Gentleman, even in a measure of coercion, though the present Government were not fortunate enough to obtain it. He had been diverted from what he had intended to say upon the Bill itself, and he should, therefore, be compelled to trespass longer upon the attention of the House than he had originally contemplated.

He should commence by referring to the state of Ireland in the year 1828, for when gentlemen spoke, as some gentlemen had spoken in the course of this debate, of the impolicy and injustice of legislating against an individual, it was necessary, for the sake of those who did not bear it in their recollection, to refer to the history of the state of Ireland for the few last years. The question of the

Roman Catholic claims was, as everybody knew, for a long series of years a matter of serious and violent dispute, both in Parliament and in the country. Whilst one side of the House gave to those claims constant support, the gentlemen who sat on the Ministerial side of it were divided upon the policy to be pursued regarding them; and the personal influence of the Crown was generally employed in creating and maintaining that division of opinion. The effect of the great measure of Catholic Relief being so long delayed was, that there came at last a period at which one individual was enabled to appeal, and to appeal with success, to the passions of the people of Ireland. The influence which that individual acquired by that appeal was exercised in a manner which constituted a case the most extraordinary that ever occurred in the history of any country. For many months an association held its sittings in Dublin, which organised branch associations, interfered in trials, directed public opinion, and all but governed the country. What was the consequence? At the end of that time, when Parliament reassembled for the performance of public business, the Ministers, who brought forward the question of Catholic Emancipation, thought it necessary to bring forward a Bill to put down the Catholic Association, and to arm the Lord Lieutenant with power to prohibit such associations in future. But that extraordinary power which had been acquired by one individual, and which had been held by him in consequence of the delay which took place in granting those claims, which ought to have been conceded years before, was not destroyed or done away with by that Bill. It was owing, he would say, to the good feeling of the people of Ireland that, out of gratitude to that individual for his exertions, they blindly did all that he recommended, and supported all the measures which he occasionally brought forward. He did not mean to say

whether it were from unwillingness to part with power, or from a desire to gain some greater object, or from the purer motives of patriotism, that that individual continued to recommend to his countrymen agitation for certain purposes; but he did mean to say, that the individual in question, the hon. Member for Dublin, had not the same success in his second career of agitation that he had in his first. During the first agitation this extraordinary case happened, that while the people were excited to the utmost, the public peace was preserved; and, as the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite had said, the perpetration of outrages was prevented by the existence of the Catholic Association. But when the second agitation commenced the result was not similar; on the contrary, wherever agitation was tried, outrages commenced of the most violent and detestable kind-outrages, which for a time the law was able to suppress, but which in the end overcame the law, and prostrated it at the feet of a ruthless and sanguinary rabble. It was in evidence before the Committee on the State of Ireland, that in many places where this agitation prevailed the Whitefeet were the same persons who attended the tithe meetings. They were ready to accept of agitation for one purposenamely, to get rid of the tithe system-but they were also prepared to remedy their own grievances, which went beyond the tithe system, and extended in many cases to the ejection of persons from lands which they thought other parties were better entitled to hold. His right hon. friend near him had stated, on a former night, that of 150 outrages of this kind not one had been tried. He remembered that in the month of December last there had been scarcely one case of outrage committed connected with tithe, but many outrages of a different character. Yesterday he had received a letter, stating that on the night of the 18th of February, six or eight violent out