l in making proselytes? Has it been
what the Established Church of England has been with justice called,
what the Established Church of Scotland was once with at least equal
justice called, the poor man's Church? Has it trained the great body
of the people to virtue, consoled them in affliction, commanded their
reverence, attached them to itself and to the State? Show that these
questions can be answered in the affirmative; and you will have
made, what I am sure has never yet been made, a good defence of the
Established Church of Ireland. But it is mere mockery to bring us
quotations from forgotten speeches, and from mouldy petitions presented
to George the Second at a time when the penal laws were still in full
force.

And now, Sir, I must stop. I have said enough to justify the vote which
I shall give in favour of the motion of my noble friend. I have shown,
unless I deceive myself, that the extraordinary disorders which now
alarm us in Ireland have been produced by the fatal policy of the
Government. I have shown that the mode in which the Government is now
dealing with those disorders is far more likely to inflame than to allay
them. While this system lasts, Ireland can never be tranquil; and till
Ireland is tranquil, England can never hold her proper place among the
nations of the world. To the dignity, to the strength, to the safety of
this great country, internal peace is indispensably necessary. In every
negotiation, whether with France on the right of search, or with America
on the line of boundary, the fact that Ireland is discontented is
uppermost in the minds of the diplomatists on both sides, making the
representative of the British Crown timorous, and making his adversary
bold. And no wonder. This is indeed a great and splendid empire, well
provided with the means both of annoyance and of defence. England can do
many things which are beyond the power of any other nation in the world.
She has dictated peace to China. She rules Caffraria and Australasia.
She could again sweep from the ocean all commerce but her own. She could
again blockade every port from the Baltic to the Adriatic. She is able
to guard her vast Indian dominions against all hostility by land or
sea. But in this gigantic body there is one vulnerable spot near to the
heart. At that spot forty-six years ago a blow was aimed which narrowly
missed, and which, if it had not missed, might have been deadly. The
government and the legislature, each