had excited
the hopes of the oppressors, had excited also the terror and the rage of
the oppressed. Agitation, which had, during more than a year, slumbered
in Ireland, awoke with renewed vigour, and soon became more formidable
than ever. The Roman Catholic Association began to exercise authority
such as the Irish Parliament, in the days of its independence, had never
possessed. An agitator became more powerful than the Lord Lieutenant.
Violence engendered violence. Every explosion of feeling on one side of
St George's Channel was answered by a louder explosion on the other.
The Clare election, the Penenden Heath meeting showed that the time
for evasion and delay was past. A crisis had arrived which made it
absolutely necessary for the Government to take one side or the other. A
simple issue was proposed to the right honourable Baronet, concession
or civil war; to disgust his party, or to ruin his country. He chose
the good part. He performed a duty, deeply painful, in some sense
humiliating, yet in truth highly honourable to him. He came down to this
House and proposed the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Among his
adherents were some who, like himself, had opposed the Roman Catholic
claims merely on the ground of political expediency; and these persons
readily consented to support his new policy. But not so the great body
of his followers. Their zeal for Protestant ascendency was a ruling
passion, a passion, too, which they thought it a virtue to indulge. They
had exerted themselves to raise to power the man whom they regarded as
the ablest and most trusty champion of that ascendency; and he had not
only abandoned the good cause, but had become its adversary. Who can
forget in what a roar of obloquy their anger burst forth? Never before
was such a flood of calumny and invective poured on a single head. All
history, all fiction were ransacked by the old friends of the right
honourable Baronet, for nicknames and allusions. One right honourable
gentleman, who I am sorry not to see in his place opposite, found
English prose too weak to express his indignation, and pursued his
perfidious chief with reproaches borrowed from the ravings of the
deserted Dido. Another Tory explored Holy Writ for parallels, and could
find no parallel but Judas Iscariot. The great university which had been
proud to confer on the right honourable Baronet the highest marks of
favour, was foremost in affixing the brand of infamy. From Cornwall,