Note (return) — IRELAND.

It is painful to the understanding—this iteration of statements a thousand times refuted; it is painful to the heart—this eternal neglect (in exchange for a hear, hear) of what the speaker knows to be mere necessities of a poor distracted land: this folly privileged by courtesy, this treason privileged by the place. If indeed of every idle word—meaning not trivial word, but word consciously false—men shall hereafter give account, Heavens! what an arrear, in the single case of Ireland, will by this time have gathered against the House of Commons! Perfectly appalled we are when we look into the formless chaos of that nine nights' debate! Beginning with a motion which he who made it did not wish1 to succeed—ending with a vote by which one-half of the parties to that vote meant the flattest contradiction of all that was contemplated by the rest. On this quarter, a section raging in the highest against the Protestant church—on that quarter, a section (in terror of their constituents) vowing aid to this church, and yet allying themselves with men pledged to her destruction. Here, men rampant against the Minister as having strained the laws, in what regarded Ireland, for the sake of a vigour altogether unnecessary; there, men threatening impeachment—as for a lenity in the same case altogether intolerable! To the right, "how durst you diminish the army in Ireland, leaving that country, up to March 1843, with a force lower by 2400 rank and file shall the lowest that the Whigs had maintained?" To the left, "how durst you govern Ireland by martial strength?" Question from the Minister—"Will you of the Opposition place popish bishops in the House of Lords?" Answer from a premature sponsor of Lord John's—"We will." Answer from Lord John—"I will not." Question retrospective from the Conservatives—"What is it, not being already done, that we could have done for Ireland?" Answer from the Liberals—"Oh, a thousand things!" Question prospective from the Conservatives—"What is it, then, in particular, that you, in our places, would do for Ireland? Name it." Answer from the Liberals—"Oh, nothing in particular!" Sir R. Peel ought to have done for Ireland whole worlds of new things. But the Liberals, with the very same power to do heretofore, and to propose now, neither did then, nor can propose at present. And why? partly because the privilege of acting for Ireland, so fruitful in reproaches, is barren in practice: the one thing that remained to be done,—viz. the putting down agitators—has been done; and partly because the privilege of proposing for Ireland is dangerous: first, as pledging themselves hereafter; second, because to specify, though it were in so trivial a matter as the making pounds into guineas for Maynooth, is but to put on record, and to publish their own party incapacity to agree upon any one of the merest trifles imaginable. Anarchy of anarchies, very mob of very mobs, whose internal strife is greater than your common enmity ab extra—what shall we believe? Which is your true doctrine? Where do you fasten your real charge? Amongst conflicting arguments, which is it that you adopt? Amongst self-destroying purposes, for which is it that you make your election?