this then. You very
coolly admit it all now. Am I to believe that you did know it as well
in 1841 as in 1844? Has one new fact been brought to light? Has one
argument been discovered which was not, three or four years ago, urged
twenty, thirty, forty times in this House? Why is it that you have,
when in power, abstained from proposing that change in the mode of
registration which, when you were out of power, you represented
as indispensable? You excuse yourselves by saying that now the
responsibilities of office are upon you. In plain words, your trick
has served its purpose. Your object,--for I will do justice to your
patriotism,--your object was not to ruin your country, but to get in;
and you are in. Such public virtue deserved such a reward, a reward
which has turned out a punishment, a reward which ought to be, while the
world lasts, a warning to unscrupulous ambition. Many causes contributed
to place you in your present situation. But the chief cause was, beyond
all doubt, the prejudice which you excited amongst the English against
the just and humane manner in which the late Ministers governed Ireland.
In your impatience for office, you called up the devil of religious
intolerance, a devil more easily evoked than dismissed. He did your
work; and he holds your bond. You once found him an useful slave: but
you have since found him a hard master. It was pleasant, no doubt, to be
applauded by high churchmen and low churchmen, by the Sheldonian Theatre
and by Exeter Hall. It was pleasant to be described as the champions
of the Protestant faith, as the men who stood up for the Gospel against
that spurious liberality which made no distinction between truth and
falsehood. It was pleasant to hear your opponents called by every
nickname that is to be found in the foul vocabulary of the Reverend
Hugh Mcneill. It was pleasant to hear that they were the allies of
Antichrist, that they were the servants of the man of sin, that they
were branded with the mark of the Beast. But when all this slander
and scurrility had raised you to power, when you found that you had
to manage millions of those who had been, year after year, constantly
insulted and defamed by yourselves and your lacqueys, your hearts began
to fail you. Now you tell us that you have none but kind and respectful
feelings towards the Irish Roman Catholics, that you wish to conciliate
them, that you wish to carry the Emancipation Act into full effect,
that nothing wou