ium there
are 375 miles completed; in Austria and Germany 3,000 miles; in the
United States of America, 3,300; whilst Ireland, where private
enterprise is left unaided by Government, has only 123 miles of
railroad. Would the House listen to this effete policy of the right
honourable gentleman, or would they agree with him (Lord George
Bentinck) in the opinion, that, as Government aid had succeeded in
Belgium, in Austria, in Germany, in the United States of America, the
aid of the Government of this country ought to be afforded to
Ireland--not to supersede private enterprise, for that he had never
proposed to do, but to stimulate private enterprise." Sir Robert Peel
had also gone into the state of the finances of the country, to show the
passing of Lord George's Bill would imperil them. Addressing himself to
that argument, his lordship said, Sir Robert Peel had totally passed by,
as all the three Chancellors of the Exchequer who preceded him did, the
financial statement which he (Lord George Bentinck) had made a fortnight
before to the House, and to which he challenged denial, that the effect
of giving to Ireland L4,000,000 a-year for railways would be not only
to improve her condition, but to increase the consumption of exciseable
articles in Ireland; not to take away from the general taxes of the
country, but to add, from the proceeds of Irish taxes, between L600,000
and L700,000 a-year to British revenue. That exposition, he said, had
now run the gauntlet of three Chancellors of the Exchequer and a Prime
Minister, and he thought they might take it for granted that no man in
the House could gainsay it. Turning to the threat of resignation made by
the Russell Cabinet, Lord George said, it was only consistent with the
independence of that House and the country, that when the Government
rejected a measure which the proposer of it believed to be for the good
of the country, the author of such a measure ought not to shrink from
any responsibility implied by the nature of his proposition; and when
those who held the reins of government declared that, in the event of
such a measure being carried, they must retire from responsible office,
then he did not hesitate to say, that he should be wanting in spirit and
independence, if he did not come forward and address the House in the
language which they had already heard from him, but nothing that fell
from him was conceived in a spirit of hostility to the minister of the
crown. He