erence
between having Lord Ebrington for Lord Lieutenant, with Lord Morpeth
for Secretary, and having the Earl of Roden for Lord Lieutenant, with Mr
Lefroy for Secretary? Ask the popular Irish leaders whether they
would like better to remain as they are, with Lord Ebrington as Lord
Lieutenant, or to have the Municipal Bill, and any other three bills
which they might name, with Lord Roden for Viceroy; and they will at
once answer, "Leave us Lord Ebrington; and burn your bills." The truth
is that, the more defective the legislation, the more important is a
good administration, just as the personal qualities of the Sovereign are
of more importance in despotic countries like Russia than in a limited
monarchy. If we have not in our Statute Book all the securities
necessary for good government, it is of the more importance that
the character of the men who administer the government should be an
additional security.

But we are told that the Government is weak. That is most true; and I
believe that almost all that we are tempted to blame in the conduct of
the Government is to be attributed to weakness. But let us consider what
the nature of this weakness is. Is it that kind of weakness which makes
it our duty to oppose the Government? Or is it that kind of weakness
which makes it our duty to support the Government? Is it intellectual
weakness, moral weakness, the incapacity to discern, or the want
of courage to pursue, the true interest of the nation? Such was the
weakness of Mr Addington, when this country was threatened with invasion
from Boulogne. Such was the weakness of the Government which sent out
the wretched Walcheren expedition, and starved the Duke of Wellington in
Spain; a government whose only strength was shown in prosecuting writers
who exposed abuses, and in slaughtering rioters whom oppression had
driven into outrage. Is that the weakness of the present Government? I
think not. As compared with any other party capable of holding the reins
of Government, they are deficient neither in intellectual nor in moral
strength. On all great questions of difference between the Ministers and
the Opposition, I hold the Ministers to be in the right. When I consider
the difficulties with which they have to struggle, when I see how
manfully that struggle is maintained by Lord Melbourne, when I see that
Lord John Russell has excited even the admiration of his opponents by
the heroic manner in which he has gone on, year after y