ed gentleman is not now prepared to debate the
question in this House, but that he has no intention of debating it in
this House at all. He keeps it, and prudently keeps it, for audiences of
a very different kind. I am therefore, I repeat, surprised to hear
the Government accused of avoiding the discussion of this subject. Why
should we avoid a battle in which the bold and skilful captain of the
enemy evidently knows that we must be victorious?

One gentleman, though not a repealer, has begged us not to declare
ourselves decidedly adverse to repeal till we have studied the petitions
which are coming in from Ireland. Really, Sir, this is not a subject on
which any public man ought to be now making up his mind. My mind is made
up. My reasons are such as, I am certain, no petition from Ireland will
confute. Those reasons have long been ready to be produced; and, since
we are accused of flinching, I will at once produce them. I am prepared
to show that the Repeal of the Union would not remove the political and
social evils which afflict Ireland, nay, that it would aggravate almost
every one of those evils.

I understand, though I do not approve, the proceedings of poor Wolfe
Tone and his confederates. They wished to make a complete separation
between Great Britain and Ireland. They wished to establish a Hibernian
republic. Their plan was a very bad one; but, to do them justice, it
was perfectly consistent; and an ingenious man might defend it by some
plausible arguments. But that is not the plan of the honourable and
learned Member for Dublin. He assures us that he wishes the connection
between the islands to be perpetual. He is for a complete separation
between the two Parliaments; but he is for indissoluble union between
the two Crowns. Nor does the honourable and learned gentleman mean, by
an union between the Crowns, such an union as exists between the Crown
of this kingdom and the Crown of Hanover. For I need not say that,
though the same person is king of Great Britain and of Hanover, there
is no more political connection between Great Britain and Hanover than
between Great Britain and Hesse, or between Great Britain and Bavaria.
Hanover may be at peace with a state with which Great Britain is at war.
Nay, Hanover may, as a member of the Germanic body, send a contingent of
troops to cross bayonets with the King's English footguards. This is not
the relation in which the honourable and learned gentleman proposes that