TWO:Thenby a process of argument so close, so logical, as to amount to a demonstrationSir Robert Peel meets this objection, and shows that the proposals of the Conservative party afforded no solution of the real difficulty. Granted that the overwhelming sense of the people of Great Britain was against concession, what aid could they afford in the daily, practical administration of the law in Ireland? If seditious libels were to be punished, or illegal confederacies, dangerous to the public peace, to be suppressed, the offenders could only be corrected and checked through the intervention of an Irish jury, little disposed, if fairly selected, to defer in times of political excitement to the authority of English opinion. But the real difficulty to be surmounted was not the violation of the law; it lay, rather, in the novel exercise of constitutional franchises, in the application of powers recognised and protected by the law, the power of speech, the power of meeting in public assemblies, the systematic and not unlawful application of all these powers to one definite purposenamely, the organisation of a force which professed to be a moral force, but had for its object to encroach, step by step, on the functions of regular government, to paralyse its authority, and to acquire a strength which might ultimately render irresistible the demand for civil equality. If, then, Irish agitation could not be repressed through the action of Irish juries, if the agitators kept strictly within the letter of the law, so that even a conviction by an Irish jury might be pronounced, by the highest legal authorities in England, an Act making trial by jury "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare," how was the public opinion of England and Scotland to be brought to bear in putting down the popular will in Ireland? It could be done only through the Imperial Parliament, by having a law passed to suspend or abolish the Constitution in Ireland. But the existing Parliament could not be got to pass any such measure, for the House of Commons had just voted that the proper way to put down agitation in Ireland was to grant Catholic Emancipation; and that the remedy of establishing civil equality ought to be tried without delay. Was[278] there any hope that a dissolution of Parliament would produce different results? No; for at the general election of 1826, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, and Devonshire sent representatives to Parliament, a majority of whom voted against the maintenance of Protestant ascendency in Ireland. The members for London, for Liverpool, for Norwich, for Coventry, for Leicester, were equally divided on the question; while the members for Westminster, Southwark, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Preston, Chester, and Derby voted unanimously for concession. Now, the Parliament which assumed this Liberal complexion had been elected in circumstances calculated to call forth the strongest manifestation of Protestant feeling; for it was only the previous year that, after long discussion and a severe contest, the Commons had sent up to the Lords, by a majority of twenty-one, a Bill for the repeal of Roman Catholic disabilities. Then, with regard to Ireland, what would have been the effect of a general election there? Would not the example of Clare have been imitated in every county and borough where the Roman Catholic electors were the majority? And what would have been the effect of such an attempt on the public peace? Probably, to involve the whole island in the horrors of a civil and religious war; to be followed by another penal code.On the 19th of February Lord Wellesley resigned his office of Secretary of Foreign affairs, because he did not approve of the employment of some of his colleagues. The Prince Regent now showed that he had no intention of dismissing the present administration. He proposed to Lords Grey and Grenville to join it, but they absolutely declined, knowing that, with the difference of the views of the two parties on many essential questions, especially on those of the Catholic claims, of the prosecution of the war, and of our relations with America, it was impossible for any coalition Cabinet to go on. Lord Castlereagh succeeded the Marquis of Wellesley in the Foreign Office, but on the 11th of May a fatal event put an end to the Ministry and the life of Spencer Perceval.
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ONE:The most respectable witnesses testified in his favour, that he had always argued that the monarchy of the country was good; the government far superior to that of France; that many opinions of Paine were unsound and untenable; that an equal division of property was a chimera, and that we here wanted no revolution, but only moderate reform. The chief witness against him was a woman-servant, who had lived in his father's family, who deposed to his telling people to read the "Rights of Man;" to giving an organ-man something to play "?a ira!" and the like. It is clear that Mr. Muir was what would now be considered a very moderate reformer indeed. But the Lord Advocate treated him with the most scurrilous indignity, calling him "that unfortunate wretch at the bar;" "that demon of mischief;" "that pest of Scotland." The very proofs of Muir's moderation were turned by the Lord Justice Clerk into crimes; it was only "policy;" and he proceeded to pass on him the monstrous sentence of transportation for fourteen years!
