ernment favourable to their views. This agitation
they have maintained by orations, harangues, and seditious speeches at
public meetings--by publications through a licentious press--by
exaggerations--by forgeries--and by all other means which it is in the
power of that description of persons to use, in order to excite the
multitude; and then, when they are excited, to make them appear in large
bodies to terrify and over-awe the people. If, my Lords, any person
ventures to oppose himself to these proceedings, he is either
immediately murdered or his house is destroyed, his cattle or other
property carried off, and combinations are formed to prevent resistance,
or the discovery of the guilty. In short, all measures are adopted which
go to, and which are intended to, destroy the Constitution of this
country. This, my Lords, is what is called the system of "agitation."

_July_ 19, 1833.

* * * * *

_What constitutes a Blockade_.

To constitute an effective blockade, it is unnecessary to say that the
port in question must be actually blockaded; and, further, that notice
must have been given of such a blockade. No capture could be made
without previously warning off vessels. There are various modes of
notice; but the most authoritative manner of giving notice is through
the Government of the power to be so warned. It should never be
forgotten, however, that there should be certain means in existence to
enforce the blockade at the time of notice.

_July_ 19, 1833.

* * * * *

_Objection to the reduction of the Number of Irish Bishops_.

I object to the proposed reduction of the number of Bishops in Ireland,
and I totally dissent from the argument upon which the propriety or
expediency of that reduction is founded. I am willing to admit that if
we were now, for the first time, establishing the Protestant Church in
Ireland. I might be inclined to think that twenty-two Bishops were more
than was necessary to the supervision of some 1000 clergymen; but when I
take into account, besides the fact that the higher number has been in
existence for centuries--when I consider the importance of the
Protestant Church in Ireland in relation to the political ties of the
two countries--when I consider, as a Right Reverend Prelate has
remarked in the course of the debate, that wherever a Protestant Bishop
is removed, there a Catholic Prelate will remain, who, doubtless, wil