The new Chief Secretary threw the Irish portion of his speech into a
pretty antithesis. "I go to Ireland," he said, to support the law--that
it may be respected, and to amend the law--that it may be beloved."

Lord Palmerston, of course, was a man not to be beaten in the
vague-generalities line. In fact it was a line in which he quite
surpassed his chief. When speaking of Ireland to the electors of
Tiverton, the new Foreign Secretary said, with a dignified and generous
philosophy,--"Ireland must present itself to the mind of all men as a
subject which required an enlarged, an enlightened view; the most
anxious and sincere desire to do equal justice to all; which requires
energy of purpose, firmness of spirit, and zealous co-operation on the
part of those upon whose support the Government must found its
existence."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, in his speech at Edinburgh, showed a more
real anxiety for the welfare of this country than any of his colleagues.
In his peroration he said: "If the present Government did not exert
itself to elevate the condition of the people of Ireland socially as
well as politically, and above all, if it did not endeavour to
ameliorate the relations between landlord and tenant, that Government
will deserve to be expelled from office with public contempt." These
manly words were uttered in the presence of an audience hostile to
Ireland, and hostile to himself, on account of his sympathy for her: an
audience, which at a former election, drove him from the representation
of their city, because he had supported the endowment of Maynooth in
Parliament.

Ireland is generally regarded as one of the chief difficulties of
English Cabinets, but at no period was it a greater difficulty than on
the day Lord John Russell accepted the seals of office, as First
Minister of the Crown. Nine millions of people were passing through the
terrible ordeal of a famine year; a far more awful year of famine was
before them; the Repeal of the Union was still regarded by them as the
only true remedy for their grievances; the hopes awakened by the great
public meetings of Clifden, Mullaghmast, and Tara were still clung to
and fostered; whilst the fierce indignation resulting from the sudden,
and therefore treacherous suppression of the projected meeting at
Clontarf; and above all, the prosecution and unjust imprisonment of
O'Connell and his compatriots, caused the Irish people to turn a deaf
ear to every promised conces