stow on
Roman Catholics they really enjoy only one, admission to Parliament: and
that they would not enjoy if you had been able three years ago to carry
your Irish Registration Bill. You have wounded national feeling: you
have wounded religious feeling: and the animosity which you have roused
shows itself in a hundred ways, some of which I abhor, some of which I
lament, but at none of which I can wonder. They are the natural effects
of insult and injury on quick and ill regulated sensibility. You, for
your own purposes, inflamed the public mind of England against Ireland;
and you have no right to be surprised by finding that the public mind
of Ireland is inflamed against England. You called a fourth part of the
people of the United Kingdom aliens: and you must not blame them for
feeling and acting like aliens. You have filled every public department
with their enemies. What then could you expect but that they would
set up against your Lord Lieutenant and your official hierarchy a more
powerful chief and a more powerful organization of their own? They
remember, and it would be strange indeed if they had forgotten, what
under the same chief, and by a similar organization, they extorted from
you in 1829; and they are determined to try whether you are bolder and
more obstinate now than then.

Such are the difficulties of this crisis. To a great extent they are
of your own making. And what have you done in order to get out of them?
Great statesmen have sometimes committed great mistakes, and yet have by
wisdom and firmness extricated themselves from the embarrassments which
those mistakes had caused. Let us see whether you are entitled to rank
among such statesmen. And first, what,--commanding, as you do, a great
majority in this and in the other House of Parliament,--what have you
done in the way of legislation? The answer is very short and simple. The
beginning and end of all your legislation for Ireland will be found in
the Arms Act of last session. You will hardly call that conciliation;
and I shall not call it coercion. It was mere petty annoyance. It
satisfied nobody. We called on you to redress the wrongs of Ireland.
Many of your own friends called on you to stifle her complaints. One
noble and learned person was so much disgusted by your remissness that
he employed his own great abilities and his own valuable time in framing
a new coercion bill for you. You were deaf alike to us and to him.
The whole fruit of your le