They should compel the landlords," he again urged, "to do
their duty to the people, and if they did, there would be neither
disturbance nor starvation." In making these observations he must have
spoken with unwonted energy, and with a boldness unusual in Parliament,
as he apologised for his tone and manner, which, he said, he knew could
not be acceptable to the House. When he sat down, Lord Claud Hamilton
rose and replied to him, by one of those fierce invectives which, after
the lapse of a quarter of a century he still, on occasion, can summon up
vigour enough to deliver. He taunted the hon. member for Limerick with
having then, for the first time during the Session, made his appearance
in the House. He told him that, having neglected his own duties both as
a representative and a landlord, an attack upon the landlords of Ireland
came from him with a bad grace. He further accused him with lending
himself to a baneful system of agitation, by which Ireland was
convulsed, and prosperity rendered unattainable in that country. Lord
Claud having resumed his seat, Smith O'Brien again rose, and said he
would not take up their time in replying to him, but he wished to tell
the House, that the tone, not so much of the House as of the English
press, "about those miserable grants had exasperated him, and a large
number of his fellow-countrymen." "If Parliament met in November," be
continued, "to enact good laws, instead of now coming forward with a
Coercion Bill, they would not be under the necessity of making those
painful appeals to Parliament." On the 18th of March he spoke again,
calling for a tax of ten per cent, on absentees, which would at once, he
said, produce L400,000. But it was on the 17th of April he made his
longest and most effective speech. On that occasion, he began by reading
extracts from the provincial press of Ireland, giving accounts of
"Fearful destitution," "Deaths from Famine," and so forth. He then said,
"the circumstance which appeared most aggravating was, that the people
were starving in the midst of plenty, and that every tide carried from
the Irish ports corn sufficient for the maintenance of thousands of the
Irish people." He put forward the sound, but then unpopular view of the
repeal of the Corn Laws, which was, that its immediate effect would be
injurious to Ireland. "He could not," he told the House, "refrain from
expressing his regret, that Government should think it necessary to
couple the questi