any part in the present debate: but the appeal which has this evening
been made to me by my honourable friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr
Edward Lytton Bulwer.) has forced me to rise. I will, however, postpone
the few words which I have to say in defence of my own consistency, till
I have expressed my opinion on the much more important subject which is
before the House.
My honourable friend tells us that we are now called upon to make a
choice between two modes of pacifying Ireland; that the government
recommends coercion; that the honourable and learned Member for Dublin
(Mr O'Connell.) recommends redress; and that it is our duty to try the
effect of redress before we have recourse to coercion. The antithesis is
framed with all the ingenuity which is characteristic of my honourable
friend's style; but I cannot help thinking that, on this occasion,
his ingenuity has imposed on himself, and that he has not sufficiently
considered the meaning of the pointed phrase which he used with so much
effect. Redress is no doubt a very well sounding word. What can be more
reasonable than to ask for redress? What more unjust than to refuse
redress? But my honourable friend will perceive, on reflection, that,
though he and the honourable and learned Member for Dublin agree in
pronouncing the word redress, they agree in nothing else. They utter the
same sound; but they attach to it two diametrically opposite meanings.
The honourable and learned Member for Dublin means by redress simply
the Repeal of the Union. Now, to the Repeal of the Union my honourable
friend the Member for Lincoln is decidedly adverse. When we get at his
real meaning, we find that he is just as unwilling as we are to give the
redress which the honourable and learned Member for Dublin demands. Only
a small minority of the House will, I hope, and believe, vote with that
honourable and learned member; but the minority which thinks with him
will be very much smaller.
We have, indeed, been told by some gentlemen, who are not themselves
repealers, that the question of Repeal deserves a much more serious
consideration than it has yet received. Repeal, they say, is an object
on which millions have, however unwisely, set their hearts; and men
who speak in the name of millions are not to be coughed down or sneered
down. That which a suffering nation regards, rightly or wrongly, as the
sole cure for all its distempers, ought not to be treated with levity,
but to be the subject of full and solemn debate. All this, Sir, is most
true: but I am surprised that this lecture should have been read to
us who sit on your right. It would, I apprehend, have been with more
propriety addressed to a different quarter. Whose fault is it that we
have not yet had, and that there is no prospect of our having, this full
and solemn debate? Is it the fault of His Majesty's Ministers? Have
not they framed the Speech which their Royal Master delivered from the
throne, in such a manner as to invite the grave and searching discussion
of the question of Repeal? and has not the invitation been declined? Is
it not fresh in our recollection that the honourable and learned Member
for Dublin spoke two hours, perhaps three hours,--nobody keeps accurate
account of time while he speaks,--but two or three hours without
venturing to join issue with us on this subject? In truth, he suffered
judgment to go against him by default. We, on this side of the House,
did our best to provoke him to the conflict. We called on him to
maintain here those doctrines which he had proclaimed elsewhere with so
much vehemence, and, I am sorry to be forced to add, with a scurrility
unworthy of his parts and eloquence. Never was a challenge more fairly
given: but it was not accepted. The great champion of Repeal would not
lift our glove. He shrank back; he skulked away; not, assuredly, from
distrust of his powers, which have never been more vigorously exerted
than in this debate, but evidently from distrust of his cause. I have
seldom heard so able a speech as his: I certainly never heard a speech
so evasive. From the beginning to the end he studiously avoided saying
a single word tending to raise a discussion about that Repeal which, in
other places, he constantly affirms to be the sole panacea for all the
evils by which his country is afflicted. Nor is this all. Yesterday
night he placed on our order-book not less than fourteen notices; and
of those notices not a single one had any reference to the Union between
Great Britain and Ireland. It is therefore evident to me, not only that
the honourable and learned gentleman is not now prepared to debate the
question in this House, but that he has no intention of debating it in
this House at all. He keeps it, and prudently keeps it, for audiences of
a very different kind. I am therefore, I repeat, surprised to hear
the Government accused of avoiding the discussion of this subject. Why
should we avoid a battle in which the bold and skilful captain of the
enemy evidently knows that we must be victorious?
One gentleman, though not a repealer, has begged us not to declare
ourselves decidedly adverse to repeal till we have studied the petitions
which are coming in from Ireland. Really, Sir, this is not a subject on
which any public man ought to be now making up his mind. My mind is made
up. My reasons are such as, I am certain, no petition from Ireland will
confute. Those reasons have long been ready to be produced; and, since
we are accused of flinching, I will at once produce them. I am prepared
to show that the Repeal of the Union would not remove the political and
social evils which afflict Ireland, nay, that it would aggravate almost
every one of those evils.
I understand, though I do not approve, the proceedings of poor Wolfe
Tone and his confederates. They wished to make a complete separation
between Great Britain and Ireland. They wished to establish a Hibernian
republic. Their plan was a very bad one; but, to do them justice, it
was perfectly consistent; and an ingenious man might defend it by some
plausible arguments. But that is not the plan of the honourable and
learned Member for Dublin. He assures us that he wishes the connection
between the islands to be perpetual. He is for a complete separation
between the two Parliaments; but he is for indissoluble union between
the two Crowns. Nor does the honourable and learned gentleman mean, by
an union between the Crowns, such an union as exists between the Crown
of this kingdom and the Crown of Hanover. For I need not say that,
though the same person is king of Great Britain and of Hanover, there
is no more political connection between Great Britain and Hanover than
between Great Britain and Hesse, or between Great Britain and Bavaria.
Hanover may be at peace with a state with which Great Britain is at war.
Nay, Hanover may, as a member of the Germanic body, send a contingent of
troops to cross bayonets with the King's English footguards. This is not
the relation in which the honourable and learned gentleman proposes that
Great Britain and Ireland should stand to each other. His plan is, that
each of the two countries shall have an independent legislature, but
that both shall have the same executive government. Now, is it possible
that a mind so acute and so well informed as his should not at
once perceive that this plan involves an absurdity, a downright
contradiction. Two independent legislatures! One executive government!
How can the thing be? No doubt, if the legislative power were quite
distinct from the executive power, England and Ireland might as easily
have two legislatures as two Chancellors and two Courts of King's Bench.
But though, in books written by theorists, the executive power and the
legislative power may be treated as things quite distinct, every man
acquainted with the real working of our constitution knows that the two
powers are most closely connected, nay, intermingled with each other.
During several generations, the whole administration of affairs has
been conducted in conformity with the sense of Parliament. About
every exercise of the prerogative of the Crown it is the privilege
of Parliament to offer advice; and that advice no wise king will
ever slight. It is the prerogative of the Sovereign to choose his own
servants; but it is impossible for him to maintain them in office unless
Parliament will support them. It is the prerogative of the Sovereign to
treat with other princes; but it is impossible for him to persist in any
scheme of foreign policy which is disagreeable to Parliament. It is
the prerogative of the Sovereign to make war; but he cannot raise a
battalion or man a frigate without the help of Parliament. The repealers
may therefore be refuted out of their own mouths. They say that
Great Britain and Ireland ought to have one executive power. But
the legislature has a most important share of the executive power.
Therefore, by the confession of the repealers themselves, Great Britain
and Ireland ought to have one legislature.
Consider for one moment in what a situation the executive government
will be placed if you have two independent legislatures, and if those
legislatures should differ, as all bodies which are independent of each
other will sometimes differ. Suppose the case of a commercial treaty
which is unpopular in England and popular in Ireland. The Irish
Parliament expresses its approbation of the terms, and passes a vote
of thanks to the negotiator. We at Westminster censure the terms and
impeach the negotiator. Or are we to have two foreign offices, one in
Downing Street and one in Dublin Castle? Is His Majesty to send to every
court in Christendom two diplomatic agents, to thwart each other, and
to be spies upon each other? It is inconceivable but that, in a very
few years, disputes such as can be terminated only by arms must arise
between communities so absurdly united and so absurdly disunited. All
history confirms this reasoning. Superficial observers have fancied that
they had found cases on the other side. But as soon as you examine those
cases you will see either that they bear no analogy to the case with
which we have to deal, or that they corroborate my argument. The case
of Ireland herself has been cited. Ireland, it has been said, had an
independent legislature from 1782 to 1800: during eighteen years there
were two coequal parliaments under one Crown; and yet there was no
collision. Sir, the reason that there was not perpetual collision was,
as we all know, that the Irish parliament, though nominally independent,
was generally kept in real dependence by means of the foulest corruption
that ever existed in any assembly. But it is not true that there was no
collision. Before the Irish legislature had been six years independent,
a collision did take place, a collision such as might well have produced
a civil war. In the year 1788, George the Third was incapacitated
by illness from discharging his regal functions. According to the
constitution, the duty of making provision for the discharge of those
functions devolved on the parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland.
Between the government of Great Britain and the government of Ireland
there was, during the interregnum, no connection whatever. The sovereign
who was the common head of both governments had virtually ceased to
exist: and the two legislatures were no more to each other than
this House and the Chamber of Deputies at Paris. What followed? The
Parliament of Great Britain resolved to offer the Regency to the Prince
of Wales under many important restrictions. The Parliament of Ireland
made him an offer of the Regency without any restrictions whatever. By
the same right by which the Irish Lords and Commons made that offer,
they might, if Mr Pitt's doctrine be the constitutional doctrine, as
I believe it to be, have made the Duke of York or the Duke of Leinster
Regent. To this Regent they might have given all the prerogatives of the
King. Suppose,--no extravagant supposition,--that George the Third
had not recovered, that the rest of his long life had been passed
in seclusion, Great Britain and Ireland would then have been, during
thirty-two years, as completely separated as Great Britain and Spain.
There would have been nothing in common between the governments, neither
executive power nor legislative power. It is plain, therefore, that a
total separation between the two islands might, in the natural course of
things, and without the smallest violation of the constitution on either
side, be the effect of the arrangement recommended by the honourable and
learned gentleman, who solemnly declares that he should consider such a
separation as the greatest of calamities.
No doubt, Sir, in several continental kingdoms there have been two
legislatures, and indeed more than two legislatures, under the same
Crown. But the explanation is simple. Those legislatures were of no real
weight in the government. Under Louis the Fourteenth Brittany had its
States; Burgundy had its States; and yet there was no collision between
the States of Brittany and the States of Burgundy. But why? Because
neither the States of Brittany nor the States of Burgundy imposed
any real restraint on the arbitrary power of the monarch. So, in
the dominions of the House of Hapsburg, there is the semblance of a
legislature in Hungary and the semblance of a legislature in the Tyrol:
but all the real power is with the Emperor. I do not say that you cannot
have one executive power and two mock parliaments, two parliaments which
merely transact parish business, two parliaments which exercise no more
influence on great affairs of state than the vestry of St Pancras or the
vestry of Marylebone. What I do say, and what common sense teaches, and
what all history teaches, is this, that you cannot have one executive
power and two real parliaments, two parliaments possessing such
powers as the parliament of this country has possessed ever since
the Revolution, two parliaments to the deliberate sense of which the
Sovereign must conform. If they differ, how can he conform to the sense
of both? The thing is as plain as a proposition in Euclid.
It is impossible for me to believe that considerations so obvious and so
important should not have occurred to the honourable and learned Member
for Dublin. Doubtless they have occurred to him; and therefore it
is that he shrinks from arguing the question here. Nay, even when he
harangues more credulous assemblies on the subject, he carefully avoids
precise explanations; and the hints which sometimes escape him are
not easily to be reconciled with each other. On one occasion, if
the newspapers are to be trusted, he declared that his object was to
establish a federal union between Great Britain and Ireland. A local
parliament, it seems, is to sit at Dublin, and to send deputies to an
imperial parliament which is to sit at Westminster. The honourable and
learned gentleman thinks, I suppose, that in this way he evades the
difficulties which I have pointed out. But he deceives himself.
If, indeed, his local legislature is to be subject to his imperial
legislature, if his local legislature is to be merely what the Assembly
of Antigua or Barbadoes is, or what the Irish Parliament was before
1782, the danger of collision is no doubt removed: but what, on the
honourable and learned gentleman's own principles, would Ireland gain by
such an arrangement? If, on the other hand, his local legislature is
to be for certain purposes independent, you have again the risk of
collision. Suppose that a difference of opinion should arise between the
Imperial Parliament and the Irish Parliament as to the limits of their
powers, who is to decide between them? A dispute between the House of
Commons and the House of Lords is bad enough. Yet in that case, the
Sovereign can, by a high exercise of his prerogative, produce harmony.
He can send us back to our constituents; and, if that expedient fails,
he can create more lords. When, in 1705, the dispute between the
Houses about the Aylesbury men ran high, Queen Anne restored concord by
dismissing the Parliament. Seven years later she put an end to another
conflict between the Houses by making twelve peers in one day. But who
is to arbitrate between two representative bodies chosen by different
constituent bodies? Look at what is now passing in America. Of all
federal constitutions that of the United States is the best. It was
framed by a convention which contained many wise and experienced men,
and over which Washington presided. Yet there is a debateable ground on
the frontier which separates the functions of Congress from those of
the state legislatures. A dispute as to the exact boundary has lately
arisen. Neither party seems disposed to yield: and, if both persist,
there can be no umpire but the sword.
For my part, Sir, I have no hesitation in saying that I should very
greatly prefer the total separation which the honourable and learned
gentleman professes to consider as a calamity, to the partial separation
which he has taught his countrymen to regard as a blessing. If, on a
fair trial, it be found that Great Britain and Ireland cannot exist
happily together as parts of one empire, in God's name let them
separate. I wish to see them joined as the limbs of a well formed body
are joined. In such a body the members assist each other: they are
nourished by the same food: if one member suffer, all suffer with it:
if one member rejoice, all rejoice with it. But I do not wish to see the
countries united, like those wretched twins from Siam who were exhibited
here a little while ago, by an unnatural ligament which made each the
constant plague of the other, always in each other's way, more helpless
than others because they had twice as many hands, slower than others
because they had twice as many legs, sympathising with each other only
in evil, not feeling each other's pleasures, not supported by each
other's aliments, but tormented by each other's infirmities, and certain
to perish miserably by each other's dissolution.
Ireland has undoubtedly just causes of complaint. We heard those causes
recapitulated last night by the honourable and learned Member, who tells
us that he represents not Dublin alone, but Ireland, and that he stands
between his country and civil war. I do not deny that most of the
grievances which he recounted exist, that they are serious, and that
they ought to be remedied as far as it is in the power of legislation to
remedy them. What I do deny is that they were caused by the Union, and
that the Repeal of the Union would remove them. I listened attentively
while the honourable and learned gentleman went through that long and
melancholy list: and I am confident that he did not mention a single
evil which was not a subject of bitter complaint while Ireland had a
domestic parliament. Is it fair, is it reasonable in the honourable
gentleman to impute to the Union evils which, as he knows better than
any other man in this house, existed long before the Union? Post hoc:
ergo, propter hoc is not always sound reasoning. But ante hoc: ergo,
non propter hoc is unanswerable. The old rustic who told Sir Thomas
More that Tenterden steeple was the cause of Godwin sands reasoned much
better than the honourable and learned gentleman. For it was not till
after Tenterden steeple was built that the frightful wrecks on the
Godwin sands were heard of. But the honourable and learned gentleman
would make Godwin sands the cause of Tenterden steeple. Some of the
Irish grievances which he ascribes to the Union are not only older than
the Union, but are not peculiarly Irish. They are common to England,
Scotland, and Ireland; and it was in order to get rid of them that we,
for the common benefit of England, Scotland, and Ireland, passed the
Reform Bill last year. Other grievances which the honourable and learned
gentleman mentioned are doubtless local; but is there to be a local
legislature wherever there is a local grievance? Wales has had local
grievances. We all remember the complaints which were made a few years
ago about the Welsh judicial system; but did anybody therefore propose
that Wales should have a distinct parliament? Cornwall has some local
grievances; but does anybody propose that Cornwall shall have its own
House of Lords and its own House of Commons? Leeds has local grievances.
The majority of my constituents distrust and dislike the municipal
government to which they are subject; they therefore call loudly on
us for corporation reform: but they do not ask us for a separate
legislature. Of this I am quite sure, that every argument which has been
urged for the purpose of showing that Great Britain and Ireland ought
to have two distinct parliaments may be urged with far greater force
for the purpose of showing that the north of Ireland and the south of
Ireland ought to have two distinct parliaments. The House of Commons of
the United Kingdom, it has been said, is chiefly elected by Protestants,
and therefore cannot be trusted to legislate for Catholic Ireland.
If this be so, how can an Irish House of Commons, chiefly elected
by Catholics, be trusted to legislate for Protestant Ulster? It is
perfectly notorious that theological antipathies are stronger in Ireland
than here. I appeal to the honourable and learned gentleman himself. He
has often declared that it is impossible for a Roman Catholic, whether
prosecutor or culprit, to obtain justice from a jury of Orangemen. It
is indeed certain that, in blood, religion, language, habits, character,
the population of some of the northern counties of Ireland has much
more in common with the population of England and Scotland than with the
population of Munster and Connaught. I defy the honourable and learned
Member, therefore, to find a reason for having a parliament at Dublin
which will not be just as good a reason for having another parliament at
Londonderry.