results of that system which you have been this day called together to sustain ? You behold in Ireland a beautiful country, with wonderful advantages agricultural and commercial-a resting-place for trade on its way to either hemisphere; indented with havens, watered by numerous rivers; with a fortunate climate in which fertility is raised upon a rich soil, and inhabited by a bold, intrepid, and, with all their faults, a generous and enthusiastic people. Such is Ireland as God made her-what is Ireland as you have made her? This fine country, swarming with a population the most miserable in Europe, of whose wretchedness, if you are the authors, you are beginning to be the victimsthe poisoned chalice is returned in its just circulation to your lips. Harvests the most abundant are reaped by men with starvation in their faces; all the great commercial facilities of the country are lost-the rivers that should circulate opulence, and turn the machinery of a thousand manufactures, flow to the ocean without wafting a boat or turning a wheel-the wave breaks in solitude in the silent magnificence of deserted and shipless harbours. In place of being a source of wealth and revenue to the empire, Ireland cannot defray its own expenses; her discontent costs millions of money; she debilitates and endangers England. The great mass of her population are alienated and dissociated from the state-the influence of the constituted and legitimate authorities is gone; a strange, anomalous, and unexampled kind of government has sprung up, and exercises a despotic sway; while the class, inferior in numbers, but accustomed to authority, and infuriated at its loss, are thrown into formidable reaction-the most ferocious passions rage from one extremity of the country to the other. Hundreds and thousands of men, arrayed with badges, gather in the south, and the smaller faction, with discipline and with arms, are marshalled in the north-the country is like one vast magazine of powder, which a spark might ignite into an explosion, and of which England would not only feel, but, perhaps, never recover from the shock. And is this state of things to be permitted to continue? It is only requisite to present the question in order that all men should answer-something must be done. What is to be

done? Are you to re-enact the Penal Code? Are you to deprive Catholics of their properties, to shut up their schools, to drive them from the bar, to strip them of the elective franchise, and reduce them to Egyptian bondage? It is easy for some visionary in oppression, to imagine these things. In the drunkenness of sacerdotal debauch, men have been found to give vent to such sanguinary aspirations, and the teachers of the Gospel, the ministers of a mild and merciful Redeemer, have uttered in the midst of their ferocious wassails, the bloody orison, that their country should be turned into one vast field of massacre, and that upon the pile of carnage the genius of Orange ascendancy should be enthroned. But these men are maniacs in ferocity, whose appetites for blood you will scarcely undertake to satiate. You shrink from the extirpation of a whole people. Even suppose that, with an impunity as ignominious as it would be sanguinary, that horrible crime could be effected, then you must needs ask, what is to be done? In answering that question you will not dismiss from your recollection that the greatest statesmen who have for the last fifty years directed your councils and conducted the business of this mighty empire, concurred in the opinion, that, without a concession of the Catholic claims, nothing could be done for Ireland. Burke, the foe to revolution-Fox, the asserter of popular right-Pitt, the prop of the prerogative, concurred. With reference to this great question their minds met in a deep confluence. See to what a conclusion you must arrive when you denounce the advocates of Emancipation. Your anathema will take in one-half of Westminster Abbey; and is not the very dust into which the tongues and hearts of Pitt, and Burke, and Fox have mouldered, better than the living hearts and tongues of those who have survived them? If you were to try the question by the authorities of the dead, and by those voices which may be said to issue from the grave, how would you decide? If, instead of counting votes in St. Stephen's, you were to count the tombs in the mausoleum beside it, how would the division of the great departed stand? There would be a majority of sepulchres inscribed with immortal names upon our side.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

THE

LORD MACAULAY

(1800-1859)

HE extracts which follow will, it is hoped, give a just idea of Macaulay's oratory at its best, so far as the period up to 1832 is concerned. His History, his poetry, and his Essays are familiar to every schoolboy, but his orations to-day are hardly read. In fact, owing to his prodigious reputation as a historian, Macaulay has never quite had his due as a public speaker. If a celebrated painter develops a taste for singing in opera, he must possess superlative vocal powers for his new claim to be recognised in the world of music; for if a man does one particular thing better than any one else, the rest of the professions will be sure to grudge him a reputation in any of their own fields of work. There is, in fact, a common belief, whether well-founded or not, that the expenditure of time and talent required for perfecting an art leaves no residue behind it for the highest achievement in any other.

Macaulay was pre-eminently a great impressionist and portrayer of history. That is the label by which he is known, and upon what he accomplished in this respect his fame must ultimately rest. But, in addition to this, he delivered some remarkable speeches that deserve to be saved from the blotting hand of Time. And, indeed, it is not surprising that a scholar of his attainments, with a practised and well-nigh limitless vocabulary; with varied and well-marshalled information concerning the political, religious, and social structures of all the civilised countries of the earth and of almost every age; with a memory which for readiness and retentiveness has probably never been surpassed, should have been able to take part in Parliamentary discussion with so much eloquence and effect. Some of his speeches could scarcely be better. They are lucid, convincing, attractive presentments of particular points of view, not without an occasional dash of irony, and supported by the light horse of quotation and the artillery of precedent. One or two of them are something more. On those occasions when he forgets

that he is the omnivorous reader, with an inexhaustible reservoir to draw upon for allusion and proof, his native originality is released; the lumber of piled-up fact slips from him; his reasoning becomes vital and unimpeded, and the result is the contribution, not merely of a historian, but of a statesman with a fertile, seeing, and constructive mind.

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

2nd March, 1831.

On the previous day Lord John Russell had introduced a motion in the House of Commons to amend the representation of the people in England and Wales. The discussion lasted for seven days, and the motion was carried without a division on the 10th of March. Macaulay spoke in support of it on the second day of the debate.

Every gentleman, I think, who has spoken from the other side of the House, has alluded to the opinions which some of His Majesty's Ministers formerly entertained on the subject of Reform. It would be officious in me, Sir, to undertake the defence of gentlemen who are so well able to defend themselves. I will only say that, in my opinion, the country will not think worse either of their capacity or of their patriotism, because they have shown that they can profit by experience, because they have learned to see the folly of delaying inevitable changes. There are others who ought to have learned the same lesson. I say, Sir, that there are those who, I should have thought, must have had enough to last them all their lives of that humiliation which follows obstinate and boastful resistance to changes rendered necessary by the progress of society, and by the development of the human mind. Is it possible that those persons can wish again to occupy a position which can neither be defended nor surrendered with honour? I well remember, Sir, a certain evening in the month of May, 1827. I had not then the honour of a seat in this House; but I was an attentive observer of its proceedings. The right honourable Baronet opposite,' of whom personally I desire to speak with that high respect which I feel for his talents and his character, but of whose public conduct I must speak with the sincerity required by my public duty, was then, as he is

1 Sir Robert Peel.

now, out of office. He had just resigned the seals of the Home Department, because he conceived that the recent ministerial arrangements had been too favourable to the Catholic claims. He rose to ask whether it was the intention of the new Cabinet to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, and to reform the Parliament. He bound up, I well remember, those two questions together; and he declared that, if the Ministers should either attempt to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, or bring forward a measure of Parliamentary Reform, he should think it his duty to oppose them to the utmost. Since that declaration was made four years have elapsed; and what is now the state of the three questions which then chiefly agitated the minds of men? What is become of the Test and Corporation Acts? They are repealed. By whom? By the right honourable Baronet. What has become of the Catholic disabilities? They are removed. By whom? By the right honourable Baronet. The question of Parliamentary Reform is still behind. But signs, of which it is impossible to misconceive the import, do most clearly indicate that, unless that question also be speedily settled, property, and order, and all the institutions of this great monarchy, will be exposed to fearful peril. Is it possible that gentlemen long versed in high political affairs cannot read these signs? Is it possible that they can really believe that the Representative system of England, such as it now is, will last till the year 1860? If not, for what would they have us wait? Would they have us wait merely that we may show to all the world how little we have profited by our own recent experience? Would they have us wait, that we may once again hit the exact point where we can neither refuse with authority, nor concede with grace? Would they have us wait, that the numbers of the discontented party may become larger, its demands higher, its feelings more acrimonious, its organisation more complete? Would they have us wait till the whole tragicomedy of 1827 has been acted over again; till they have been brought into office by a cry of No Reform,' to be reformers, as they were once before brought into office by a cry of No Popery,' to be emancipators? Have they obliterated from their minds-gladly, perhaps, would some