If any modification of the Union takes place, I trust it will be a total
divorce _a vinculo matrimonii_. I am sure we have lived a cat and dog life
of it. Let us have no silly saving of one crown and two legislatures; that
would be preserving all the mischiefs without any of the goods, if there
are any, of the union.
I am deliberately of opinion, that England, in all its institutions, has
received injury from its union with Ireland. My only difficulty is as to
the Protestants, to whom we owe protection. But I cannot forget that the
Protestants themselves have greatly aided in accelerating the present
horrible state of things, by using that as a remedy and a reward which
should have been to them an opportunity.[1]
If the Protestant Church in Ireland is removed, of course the Romish Church
must be established in its place. There can be no resisting it in common
reason.
How miserably imbecile and objectless has the English government of Ireland
been for forty years past! Oh! for a great man--but one really great man,--
who could feel the weight and the power of a principle, and unflinchingly
put it into act! But truly there is no vision in the land, and the people
accordingly perisheth. See how triumphant in debate and in action O'Connell
is! Why? Because he asserts a broad principle, and acts up to it, rests all
his body on it, and has faith in it. Our ministers--true Whigs in that--
have faith in nothing but expedients _de die in diem_. Indeed, what
principles of government can _they_ have, who in the space of a month
recanted a life of political opinions, and now dare to threaten this and
that innovation at the huzza of a mob, or in pique at a parliamentary
defeat?
[Footnote 1:
"Whatever may be thought of the settlement that followed the battle of the
Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland, yet when this had been made
and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser policy, I doubt not, to
have provided for the safety of the constitution by improving the quality
of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or like the
former, limited only by considerations of property. Still, however, the
scheme of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink
was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of the
Popish parliament. The crimes of the man were generalized into attributes
of his faith; and the Irish catholics collectively were held accomplices in
the perfidy and baseness of the king. Alas! his immediate adherents had
afforded too great colour to the charge. The Irish massacre was in the
mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be remembered, but as a thing
of recent expectation, fear still blending with the sense of deliverance.
At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying system have been enforced
with so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with so little
outrage on the general feeling of the country. There was no time, when it
was so capable of being indirectly useful as a _sedative_ in order to the
application of the remedies directly indicated, or as a counter-power
reducing to inactivity whatever disturbing forces might have interfered
with their operation. And had this use been made of these exclusive laws,
and had they been enforced as the precursors and negative conditions,--but,
above all, as _bonâ fide_ accompaniments, of a process of _emancipation_,
properly and worthily so named, the code would at this day have been
remembered in Ireland only as when, recalling a dangerous fever of our
boyhood, we think of the nauseous drugs and drenching-horn, and
congratulate ourselves that our doctors now-a-days know how to manage these
things less coarsely. But this angry code was neglected as an opportunity,
and mistaken for a _substitute_: _et hinc illae* lacrymae!_"--Church and
State, p. 195.]
* * * * *
I sometimes think it just possible that the Dissenters may once more be
animated by a wiser and nobler spirit, and see their dearest interest in
the church of England as the bulwark and glory of Protestantism, as they
did at the Revolution. But I doubt their being able to resist the low
factious malignity to the church which has characterized them as a body for
so many years.
_February_ 16. 1833.