nancy. Do you seriously
imagine that under a Tory administration this would have been done? I
have no wish to say anything disrespectful of the great Tory leaders.
I shall always speak with respect of the great qualities and public
services of the Duke of Wellington: I have no other feeling about him
than one of pride that my country has produced so great a man; nor do
I feel anything but respect and kindness for Sir Robert Peel, of whose
abilities no person that has had to encounter him in debate will ever
speak slightingly. I do not imagine that those eminent men would have
approved of the conduct of the Duke of Newcastle. I believe that the
Duke of Wellington would as soon have thought of running away from the
field of battle as of doing the same thing in Hampshire, where he is
Lord Lieutenant. But do you believe that he would have turned the Duke
of Newcastle out? I believe that he would not. As Mr Pulteney, a great
political leader, said a hundred years since, "The heads of parties are,
like the heads of snakes, carried on by the tails." It would have been
utterly impossible for the Tory Ministers to have discarded the powerful
Tory Duke, unless they had at the same time resolved, like Mr Canning in
1827, to throw themselves for support on the Whigs.

Now I have given you these two instances to show that a change in the
administration may produce all the effects of a change in the law. You
see that to have a Tory Government is virtually to reenact the Test Act,
and that to have a Whig Government is virtually to repeal the law of
libel. And if this is the case in England and Scotland, where society is
in a sound state, how much more must it be the case in the diseased
part of the empire, in Ireland? Ask any man there, whatever may be his
religion, whatever may be his politics, Churchman, Presbyterian, Roman
Catholic, Repealer, Precursor, Orangeman, ask Mr O'Connell, ask Colonel
Conolly, whether it is a slight matter in whose hands the executive
power is lodged. Every Irishman will tell you that it is a matter of
life and death; that in fact more depends upon the men than upon the
laws. It disgusts me therefore to hear men of liberal politics say,
"What is the use of a Whig Government? The Ministers can do nothing for
the country. They have been four years at work on an Irish Municipal
Bill, without being able to pass it through the Lords." Would any ten
Acts of Parliament make such a difference to Ireland as the diff