Ireland. Misgovernment, lasting without interruption from the reign
of Henry the Second to the reign of William the Fourth, has left us an
immense mass of discontent, which will, no doubt, in ordinary times,
make the task of any statesman whom the Queen may call to power
sufficiently difficult. But though this be true, it is not less true,
that the immediate causes of the extraordinary agitation which alarms us
at this moment is to be found in the misconduct of Her Majesty's present
advisers. For, Sir, though Ireland is always combustible, Ireland is not
always on fire. We must distinguish between the chronic complaints which
are to be attributed to remote causes, and the acute attack which
is brought on by recent imprudence. For though there is always a
predisposition to disease in that unhappy society, the violent paroxysms
come only at intervals. I must own that I am indebted for some of my
imagery to the right honourable Baronet the First Lord of the Treasury.
When he sate on this bench, and was only a candidate for the great place
which he now fills, he compared himself to a medical man at the bedside
of a patient. Continuing his metaphor, I may say that his prognosis, his
diagnosis, his treatment, have all been wrong. I do not deny that the
case was difficult. The sufferer was of a very ill habit of body, and
had formerly suffered many things of many physicians, and, among others,
I must say, of the right honourable Baronet himself. Still the malady
had, a very short time ago, been got under, and kept under by the
judicious use of lenitives; and there was reason to hope that if that
salutary regimen had been steadily followed, there would have been
a speedy improvement in the general health. Unhappily, the new State
hygeist chose to apply irritants which have produced a succession of
convulsive fits, each more violent than that which preceded it. To drop
the figure, it is impossible to doubt that Lord Melbourne's government
was popular with the great body of the Roman Catholics of Ireland. It is
impossible to doubt that the two Viceroys whom he sent to Ireland were
more loved and honoured by the Irish people than any Viceroys before
whom the sword of state has ever been borne. Under the late Government,
no doubt, the empire was threatened by many dangers; but, to whatever
quarter the Ministers might look with uneasy apprehension, to Ireland
they could always look with confidence. When bad men raised disturbances
here, when a Chartist rabble fired on the Queen's soldiers, numerous
regiments could, without the smallest risk, be spared from Ireland. When
a rebellion broke out in one of our colonies,--a rebellion too which it
might have been expected that the Irish would regard with favour, for it
was a rebellion of Roman Catholics against Protestant rulers,--even then
Ireland was true to the general interests of the empire, and troops were
sent from Munster and Connaught to put down insurrection in Canada. No
person will deny that if, in 1840, we had unhappily been forced
into war, and if a hostile army had landed in Bantry Bay, the whole
population of Cork and Tipperary would have risen up to defend the
throne of Her Majesty, and would have offered to the invaders a
resistance as determined as would have been offered by the men of Kent
or Norfolk. And by what means was this salutary effect produced? Not by
great legislative reforms: for, unfortunately, that Government, though
it had the will, had not the power to carry such reforms against the
sense of a strong minority in this House, and of a decided majority
of the Peers. No, Sir; this effect was produced merely by the wisdom,
justice, and humanity with which the existing law, defective as it might
be, was administered. The late Government, calumniated and thwarted at
every turn, contending against the whole influence of the Established
Church, and of the great body of the nobility and landed gentry, yet did
show a disposition to act kindly and fairly towards Ireland, and did, to
the best of its power, treat Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. If
we had been as strong as our successors in parliamentary support, if we
had been able to induce the two Houses to follow in legislation the same
principles by which we were guided in administration, the Union with
Ireland would now have been as secure from the assaults of agitators
as the Union with Scotland. But this was not to be. During six years an
opposition, formidable in numbers, formidable in ability, selected as
the especial object of the fiercest and most pertinacious attacks
those very acts of the Government which had, after centuries of mutual
animosity, half reconciled the two islands. Those Lords Lieutenant who,
in Ireland, were venerated as no preceding Lord Lieutenant had ever been
venerated, were here reviled as no preceding Lord Lieutenant had ever
been reviled. Every action, every word which was applauded by the nation
committed to their care, was here imputed to them as a crime. Every
bill framed by the advisers of the Crown for the benefit of Ireland was
either rejected or mutilated. A few Roman Catholics of distinguished
merit were appointed to situations which were indeed below their just
claims, but which were higher than any member of their Church had filled
during many generations. Two or three Roman Catholics were sworn of
the Council; one took his seat at the Board of Treasury; another at the
Board of Admiralty. There was great joy in Ireland; and no wonder.
What had been done was not much; but the ban had been taken off; the
Emancipation Act, which had been little more than a dead letter, was at
length a reality. But in England all the underlings of the great Tory
party set up a howl of rage and hatred worthy of Lord George Gordon's
No Popery mob. The right honourable Baronet now at the head of the
Treasury, with his usual prudence, abstained from joining in the cry,
and was content to listen to it, to enjoy it, and to profit by it. But
some of those who ranked next to him among the chiefs of the opposition,
did not imitate his politic reserve. One great man denounced the Irish
as aliens. Another called them minions of Popery. Those teachers of
religion to whom millions looked up with affection and reverence were
called by the Protestant press demon priests and surpliced ruffians, and
were denounced from the Protestant pulpit as pontiffs of Baal, as false
prophets who were to be slain with the sword. We were reminded that a
Queen of the chosen people had in the old time patronised the ministers
of idolatry, and that her blood had been given to the dogs. Not content
with throwing out or frittering down every law beneficial to Ireland,
not content with censuring in severe terms every act of the executive
government which gave satisfaction in Ireland, you, yes you, who now
fill the great offices of state, assumed the offensive. From obstruction
you proceeded to aggression. You brought in a bill which you called a
Bill for the Registration of Electors in Ireland. We then told you that
it was a bill for the wholesale disfranchisement of the electors
of Ireland. We then proved incontrovertibly that, under pretence of
reforming the law of procedure, you were really altering the substantive
law; that, by making it impossible for any man to vindicate his right to
vote without trouble, expense, and loss of time, you were really taking
away the votes of tens of thousands. You denied all this then. You very
coolly admit it all now. Am I to believe that you did know it as well
in 1841 as in 1844? Has one new fact been brought to light? Has one
argument been discovered which was not, three or four years ago, urged
twenty, thirty, forty times in this House? Why is it that you have,
when in power, abstained from proposing that change in the mode of
registration which, when you were out of power, you represented
as indispensable? You excuse yourselves by saying that now the
responsibilities of office are upon you. In plain words, your trick
has served its purpose. Your object,--for I will do justice to your
patriotism,--your object was not to ruin your country, but to get in;
and you are in. Such public virtue deserved such a reward, a reward
which has turned out a punishment, a reward which ought to be, while the
world lasts, a warning to unscrupulous ambition. Many causes contributed
to place you in your present situation. But the chief cause was, beyond
all doubt, the prejudice which you excited amongst the English against
the just and humane manner in which the late Ministers governed Ireland.
In your impatience for office, you called up the devil of religious
intolerance, a devil more easily evoked than dismissed. He did your
work; and he holds your bond. You once found him an useful slave: but
you have since found him a hard master. It was pleasant, no doubt, to be
applauded by high churchmen and low churchmen, by the Sheldonian Theatre
and by Exeter Hall. It was pleasant to be described as the champions
of the Protestant faith, as the men who stood up for the Gospel against
that spurious liberality which made no distinction between truth and
falsehood. It was pleasant to hear your opponents called by every
nickname that is to be found in the foul vocabulary of the Reverend
Hugh Mcneill. It was pleasant to hear that they were the allies of
Antichrist, that they were the servants of the man of sin, that they
were branded with the mark of the Beast. But when all this slander
and scurrility had raised you to power, when you found that you had
to manage millions of those who had been, year after year, constantly
insulted and defamed by yourselves and your lacqueys, your hearts began
to fail you. Now you tell us that you have none but kind and respectful
feelings towards the Irish Roman Catholics, that you wish to conciliate
them, that you wish to carry the Emancipation Act into full effect,
that nothing would give you more pleasure than to place on the bench of
justice a Roman Catholic lawyer of conservative politics, that nothing
would give you more pleasure than to place at the Board of Treasury, or
at the Board of Admiralty, some Roman Catholic gentleman of conservative
politics, distinguished by his talents for business or debate. Your only
reason, you assure us, for not promoting Roman Catholics is that all the
Roman Catholics are your enemies; and you ask whether any Minister can
be expected to promote his enemies. For my part I do not doubt that you
would willingly promote Roman Catholics: for, as I have said, I give
you full credit for not wishing to do your country more harm than is
necessary for the purpose of turning out and keeping out the Whigs.
I also fully admit that you cannot be blamed for not promoting your
enemies. But what I want to know is, how it happens that all the Roman
Catholics in the United Kingdom are your enemies. Was such a thing
ever heard of before? Here are six or seven millions of people of all
professions, of all trades, of all grades of rank, fortune, intellect,
education. Begin with the premier Peer, the Earl Marshal of the realm,
the chief of the Howards, the heir of the Mowbrays and Fitzalans, and
go down through earls, barons, baronets, lawyers, and merchants, to the
very poorest peasant that eats his potatoes without salt in Mayo; and
all these millions to a man are arrayed against the Government. How
do you explain this? Is there any natural connection between the Roman
Catholic theology and the political theories held by Whigs and by
reformers more democratical than the Whigs? Not only is there no natural
connection, but there is a natural opposition. Of all Christian sects
the Roman Catholic Church holds highest the authority of antiquity, of
tradition, of immemorial usage. Her spirit is eminently conservative,
nay, in the opinion of all Protestants, conservative to an unreasonable
and pernicious extent. A man who has been taught from childhood to
regard with horror all innovation in religion is surely less likely than
another man to be a bold innovator in politics. It is probable that a
zealous Roman Catholic, if there were no disturbing cause, would be a
Tory; and the Roman Catholics were all Tories till you persecuted them
into Whiggism and Radicalism. In the civil war, how many Roman Catholics
were there in Fairfax's army? I believe, not one. They were all under
the banner of Charles the First. When a reward of five thousand pounds
was offered for Charles the Second alive or dead, when to conceal
him was to run a most serious risk of the gallows, it was among
Roman Catholics that he found shelter. It has been the same in other
countries. When everything else in France was prostrate before the
Jacobins, the Roman Catholic peasantry of Brittany and Poitou still
stood up for the House of Bourbon. Against the gigantic power of
Napoleon, the Roman Catholic peasantry of the Tyrol maintained unaided
the cause of the House of Hapsburg. It would be easy to multiply
examples. And can we believe, in defiance of all reason and of all
history, that, if the Roman Catholics of the United Kingdom had been
tolerably well governed, they would not have been attached to the
Government? In my opinion the Tories never committed so great an error
as when they scourged away and spurned away the Roman Catholics. Mr
Burke understood this well. The sentiment which, towards the close
of his life, held the entire possession of his mind, was a horror,--a
morbid horror it at last became,--of Jacobinism, and of everything that
seemed to him to tend towards Jacobinism, and, like a great statesman
and philosopher,--for such he was even in his errors,--he perceived, and
he taught Mr Pitt to perceive, that, in the war against Jacobinism, the
Roman Catholics were the natural allies of royalty and aristocracy.
But the help of these allies was contumeliously rejected by those
politicians who make themselves ridiculous by carousing on Mr Pitt's
birthday, while they abjure all Mr Pitt's principles. The consequence
is, as you are forced to own, that there is not in the whole kingdom
a Roman Catholic of note who is your friend. Therefore, whatever your
inclinations may be, you must intrust power in Ireland to Protestants,
to Ultra-Protestants, to men who, whether they belong to Orange lodges
or not, are in spirit Orangemen. Every appointment which you make
increases the discontent of the Roman Catholics. The more discontented
they are, the less you can venture to employ them. The way in which
you treated them while you were in opposition has raised in them such a
dislike and distrust of you that you cannot carry the Emancipation Act
into effect, though, as you tell us, and as I believe, you sincerely
desire to do so. As respects the offices of which you dispose, that Act
is null and void. Of all the boons which that Act purports to bestow on
Roman Catholics they really enjoy only one, admission to Parliament: and
that they would not enjoy if you had been able three years ago to carry
your Irish Registration Bill. You have wounded national feeling: you
have wounded religious feeling: and the animosity which you have roused
shows itself in a hundred ways, some of which I abhor, some of which I
lament, but at none of which I can wonder. They are the natural effects
of insult and injury on quick and ill regulated sensibility. You, for
your own purposes, inflamed the public mind of England against Ireland;
and you have no right to be surprised by finding that the public mind
of Ireland is inflamed against England. You called a fourth part of the
people of the United Kingdom aliens: and you must not blame them for
feeling and acting like aliens. You have filled every public department
with their enemies. What then could you expect but that they would
set up against your Lord Lieutenant and your official hierarchy a more
powerful chief and a more powerful organization of their own? They
remember, and it would be strange indeed if they had forgotten, what
under the same chief, and by a similar organization, they extorted from
you in 1829; and they are determined to try whether you are bolder and
more obstinate now than then.
Such are the difficulties of this crisis. To a great extent they are
of your own making. And what have you done in order to get out of them?
Great statesmen have sometimes committed great mistakes, and yet have by
wisdom and firmness extricated themselves from the embarrassments which
those mistakes had caused. Let us see whether you are entitled to rank
among such statesmen. And first, what,--commanding, as you do, a great
majority in this and in the other House of Parliament,--what have you
done in the way of legislation? The answer is very short and simple. The
beginning and end of all your legislation for Ireland will be found in
the Arms Act of last session. You will hardly call that conciliation;
and I shall not call it coercion. It was mere petty annoyance. It
satisfied nobody. We called on you to redress the wrongs of Ireland.
Many of your own friends called on you to stifle her complaints. One
noble and learned person was so much disgusted by your remissness that
he employed his own great abilities and his own valuable time in framing
a new coercion bill for you. You were deaf alike to us and to him.
The whole fruit of your legislative wisdom was this one paltry teasing
police regulation.
Your executive administration through the whole recess has been one long
blunder. The way in which your Lord Lieutenant and his advisers acted
about the Clontarf meeting would alone justify a severe vote of censure.
The noble lord, the Secretary for the Colonies (Lord Stanley.), has told
us that the Government did all that was possible to caution the people
against attending that meeting, and that it would be unreasonable to
censure men for not performing impossibilities. Now, Sir, the ministers
themselves acknowledge that, as early as the morning of the Friday which
preceded the day fixed for the meeting, the Lord Lieutenant determined
to put forth a proclamation against the meeting. Yet the proclamation
was not published in Dublin and the suburbs till after nightfall on
Saturday. The meeting was fixed for the Sunday morning. Will any
person have the hardihood to assert that it was impossible to have a
proclamation drawn up, printed and circulated, in twenty-four hours, nay
in six hours? It is idle to talk of the necessity of weighing well the
words of such a document. The Lord Lieutenant should have weighed well
the value of the lives of his royal mistress's subjects. Had he done so,
there can be no doubt that the proclamation might have been placarded on
every wall in and near Dublin early in the forenoon of the Saturday. The
negligence of the Government would probably have caused the loss of many
lives but for the interposition of the man whom you are persecuting.
Fortune stood your friend; and he stood your friend; and thus a
slaughter more terrible than that which took place twenty-five years ago
at Manchester was averted.
But you were incorrigible. No sooner had you, by strange good luck,
got out of one scrape, than you made haste to get into another, out of
which, as far as I can see, you have no chance of escape. You instituted
the most unwise, the most unfortunate of all state prosecutions. You
seem not to have at all known what you were doing. It appears never to
have occurred to you that there was any difference between a criminal
proceeding which was certain to fix the attention of the whole civilised
world and an ordinary qui tam action for a penalty. The evidence was
such and the law such that you were likely to get a verdict and a
judgment; and that was enough for you. Now, Sir, in such a case as this,
the probability of getting the verdict and the judgment is only a part,
and a very small part, of what a statesman ought to consider. Before you
determined to bring the most able, the most powerful, the most popular
of your opponents to the bar as a criminal, on account of the manner in
which he had opposed you, you ought to have asked yourselves whether
the decision which you expected to obtain from the tribunals would be
ratified by the voice of your own country, of foreign countries, of
posterity; whether the general opinion of mankind might not be that,
though you were legally in the right, you were morally in the wrong. It
was no common person that you were bent on punishing. About that person
I feel, I own, considerable difficulty in saying anything. He is placed
in a situation which would prevent generous enemies, which has prevented
all the members of this House, with one ignominious exception, from
assailing him acrimoniously. I will try, in speaking of him, to pay the
respect due to eminence and to misfortune without violating the respect
due to truth. I am convinced that the end which he is pursuing is not
only mischievous but unattainable: and some of the means which he has
stooped to use for the purpose of attaining that end I regard with deep
disapprobation. But it is impossible for me not to see that the place
which he holds in the estimation of his countrymen is such as no popular
leader in our history, I might perhaps say in the history of the world,
has ever attained. Nor is the interest which he inspires confined to
Ireland or to the United Kingdom. Go where you will on the Continent:
visit any coffee house: dine at any public table: embark on board of any
steamboat: enter any diligence, any railway carriage: from the moment
that your accent shows you to be an Englishman, the very first question
asked by your companions, be they what they may, physicians, advocates,
merchants, manufacturers, or what we should call yeomen, is certain to
be "What will be done with Mr O'Connell?" Look over any file of French
journals; and you will see what a space he occupies in the eyes of the
French people. It is most unfortunate, but it is a truth, and a
truth which we ought always to bear in mind, that there is among our
neighbours a feeling about the connection between England and Ireland
not very much unlike the feeling which exists here about the connection
between Russia and Poland. All the sympathies of all continental
politicians are with the Irish. We are regarded as the oppressors, and
the Irish as the oppressed. An insurrection in Ireland would have the
good wishes of a great majority of the people of Europe. And, Sir, it is
natural that it should be so. For the cause of the Irish repealers has
two different aspects, a democratic aspect, and a Roman Catholic aspect,
and is therefore regarded with favour by foreigners of almost
every shade of opinion. The extreme left,--to use the French
nomenclature,--wishes success to a great popular movement against
the throne and the aristocracy. The extreme right wishes success to a
movement headed by the bishops and priests of the true Church against a
heretical government and a heretical hierarchy. The consequence is that,
in a contest with Ireland, you will not have, out of this island,
a single well-wisher in the world. I do not say this in order to
intimidate you. But I do say that, on an occasion on which all
Christendom was watching your conduct with an unfriendly and suspicious
eye, you should have carefully avoided everything that looked like foul
play. Unhappily you were too much bent on gaining the victory; and you
have gained a victory more disgraceful and disastrous than any defeat.
Mr O'Connell has been convicted: but you cannot deny that he has been
wronged: you cannot deny that irregularities have been committed, or
that the effect of those irregularities has been to put you in a better
situation and him in a worse situation than the law contemplated. It is
admitted that names which ought to have been in the jury-list were not
there. It is admitted that all, or almost all, the names which were
wrongfully excluded were the names of Roman Catholics. As to the
number of those who were wrongfully excluded there is some dispute. An
affidavit has been produced which puts the number at twenty-seven. The
right honourable gentleman, the Recorder of Dublin, who of course puts
the number as low as he conscientiously can, admits twenty-four.
But some gentlemen maintain that this irregularity, though doubtless
blamable, cannot have had any effect on the event of the trial. What,
they ask, are twenty or twenty-seven names in seven hundred and twenty?
Why, Sir, a very simple arithmetical calculation will show that the
irregularity was of grave importance. Of the seven hundred and twenty,
forty-eight were to be selected by lot, and then reduced by alternate
striking to twelve. The forty-eighth part of seven hundred and twenty is
fifteen. If, therefore, there had been fifteen more Roman Catholics in
the jury-list, it would have been an even chance that there would have
been one Roman Catholic more among the forty-eight. If there had been
twenty-seven more Roman Catholics in the list, it would have been almost
an even chance that there would have been two Roman Catholics more among
the forty-eight. Is it impossible, is it improbable that, but for this
trick or this blunder,--I will not now inquire which,--the result of the
trial might have been different? For, remember the power which the law
gives to a single juror. He can, if his mind is fully made up, prevent
a conviction. I heard murmurs when I used the word trick. Am I not
justified in feeling a doubt which it is quite evident that Mr Justice
Perrin feels? He is reported to have said,--and I take the report of
newspapers favourable to the Government,--he is reported to have said
that there had been great carelessness, great neglect of duty, that
there were circumstances which raised grave suspicion, and that he was
not prepared to say that the irregularity was accidental. The noble lord
the Secretary for the Colonies has admonished us to pay respect to the
judges. I am sure that I pay the greatest respect to everything that
falls from Mr Justice Perrin. He must know much better than I, much
better than any Englishman, what artifices are likely to be employed by
Irish functionaries for the purpose of packing a jury; and he tells us
that he is not satisfied that this irregularity was the effect of mere
inadvertence. But, says the right honourable Baronet, the Secretary for
the Home Department, "I am not responsible for this irregularity." Most
true: and nobody holds the right honourable Baronet responsible for it.
But he goes on to say, "I lament this irregularity most sincerely: for
I believe that it has raised a prejudice against the administration of
justice." Exactly so. That is just what I say. I say that a prejudice
has been created against the administration of justice. I say that
a taint of suspicion has been thrown on the verdict which you have
obtained. And I ask whether it is right and decent in you to avail
yourselves of a verdict on which such a taint has been thrown? The only
wise, the only honourable course open to you was to say, "A mistake has
been committed: that mistake has given us an unfair advantage; and of
that advantage we will not make use." Unhappily, the time when you might
have taken this course, and might thus to a great extent have repaired
your former errors, has been suffered to elapse.
Well, you had forty-eight names taken by lot from this mutilated
jury-list: and then came the striking. You struck out all the Roman
Catholic names: and you give us your reasons for striking out these
names, reasons which I do not think it worth while to examine. The real
question which you should have considered was this: Can a great issue
between two hostile religions,--for such the issue was,--be tried in a
manner above all suspicion by a jury composed exclusively of men of one
of those religions? I know that in striking out the Roman Catholics
you did nothing that was not according to technical rules. But my great
charge against you is that you have looked on this whole case in a
technical point of view, that you have been attorneys when you should
have been statesmen. The letter of the law was doubtless with you; but
not the noble spirit of the law. The jury de medietate linguae is of
immemorial antiquity among us. Suppose that a Dutch sailor at Wapping is
accused of stabbing an Englishman in a brawl. The fate of the culprit is
decided by a mixed body, by six Englishmen and six Dutchmen. Such were
the securities which the wisdom and justice of our ancestors gave to
aliens. You are ready enough to call Mr O'Connell an alien when it
serves your purposes to do so. You are ready enough to inflict on the
Irish Roman Catholic all the evils of alienage. But the one privilege,
the one advantage of alienage, you deny him. In a case which of all
cases most require a jury de medietate, in a case which sprang out of
the mutual hostility of races and sects, you pack a jury all of one
race and all of one sect. Why, if you were determined to go on with this
unhappy prosecution, not have a common jury? There was no difficulty
in having such a jury; and among the jurors might have been some
respectable Roman Catholics who were not members of the Repeal
Association. A verdict of Not Guilty from such a jury would have done
you infinitely less harm than the verdict of Guilty which you have
succeeded in obtaining. Yes, you have obtained a verdict of Guilty;
but you have obtained that verdict from twelve men brought together by
illegal means, and selected in such a manner that their decision can
inspire no confidence. You have obtained that verdict by the help of a
Chief Justice of whose charge I can hardly trust myself to speak. To do
him right, however, I will say that his charge was not, as it has been
called, unprecedented; for it bears a very close resemblance to some
charges which may be found in the state trials of the reign of Charles
the Second. However, with this jury-list, with this jury, with this
judge, you have a verdict. And what have you gained by it? Have you
pacified Ireland? No doubt there is just at the present moment an
apparent tranquillity; but it is a tranquillity more alarming than
turbulence. The Irish will be quiet till you begin to put the sentence
of imprisonment into execution, because, feeling the deepest interest in
the fate of their persecuted Tribune, they will do nothing that can be
prejudicial to him. But will they be quiet when the door of a gaol has
been closed on him? Is it possible to believe that an agitator, whom
they adored while his agitation was a source of profit to him, will lose
his hold on their affections by being a martyr in what they consider as
their cause? If I, who am strongly attached to the Union, who believe
that the Repeal of the Union would be fatal to the empire, and who think
Mr O'Connell's conduct highly reprehensible, cannot conscientiously say
that he has had a fair trial, if the prosecutors themselves are forced
to own that things have happened which have excited a prejudice against
the verdict and the judgment, what must be the feelings of the people of
Ireland, who believe not merely that he is guiltless, but that he is the
best friend that they ever had? He will no longer be able to harangue
them: but his wrongs will stir their blood more than his eloquence ever
did; nor will he in confinement be able to exercise that influence which
has so often restrained them, even in their most excited mood, from
proceeding to acts of violence.
Turn where we will, the prospect is gloomy; and that which of all things
most disturbs me is this, that your experience, sharp as it has been,
does not seem to have made you wiser. All that I have been able to
collect from your declarations leads me to apprehend that, while you
continue to hold power, the future will be of a piece with the past. As
to your executive administration, you hold out no hope that it will
be other than it has been. If we look back, your only remedies for the
disorders of Ireland have been an impolitic state prosecution, an unfair
state trial, barracks and soldiers. If we look forward, you promise
us no remedies but an unjust sentence, the harsh execution of that
sentence, more barracks and more soldiers.