by Earl Grey in the other House, and by Lord Althorp in this. Earl Grey being succeeded by Lord Melbourne,conciliation took a fresh start; the Church Temporalities Act, another great concession, having first been passed, then followed the Irish Municipal Act, and this series of concessions, large beyond example, brought him to 1838; in which year, notwithstanding so many conciliatory measures, Lord Morpeth found it necessary to bring in that Arms Bill, which was the basis of the present. Individuals too had been soothed; Mr. Sheil was made Vice-President of the Board of Trade, the Chief Barony of the Irish Exchequer was offered to Mr. O'Connell, and yet, after all this, the Arms Bill of 1838 had been held indispensable. Then came Lord Normanby's Government that perfect sample of conciliation and yet Lord Fortescue, when he succeeded to Lord Normanby, found the cry of Repeal so rife throughout Ireland, that he was obliged to announce that no part of the Ministerial patronage would be extended to any one who should join in it. Mr. C. Buller had represented the condition of the Irish people as in progress of deterioration, but the reports of Parliamentary committees proved the very contrary; for instance, of late years more wheat had been grown in Ireland and less exported from it than ever before. We had heard of the duty of conceding to well-expressed popular opinion. How was that opinion to be estimated when the Duke of Wellington, with whose fame it had been truly said by Mr. Sheil, that the world was filled, had been described at a late Irish meeting, as

Sepoy, amid the cheers of a vast mob? Such was well-expressed popular opinion! Many years ago it had been said by Sir S. Romilly, that it would be madness to pass a Bill like this. At a juncture like the present it would be madness and cowardice to refuse it.

Mr. Roebuck said, that the present Ministers were only carrying out the principle on which Ireland had been governed for centuries, and which he was now about to impugn. What he had to regret was, that Sir R. Peel had not been wise enough to transcend the liberality of his predecessors. There were four parties to this discussion

the Government-Mr. O'Connell, who threw himself upon the masses of the people-a party in that House, who complained that patronage was not well distributed

and a party who took an independent survey of the question how Ireland ought to be governed. To the last party he himself belonged, and in that view he would look at the several acts on which the Arms Bill was founded. The first of those Acts was passed by the domestic Legislature: the poison, though reptiles will not live in Ireland, was generated there. This Bill hardly differed from its predecessors, and here was the great error of the Government, that they had made their Bill thus similar to those, and had hazarded all this turmoil for such a trifle. But if a Whig Adminis tration, with their conciliatory policy, and with the quiet which they took credit for having thereby produced, found it necessary to have an Arms Bill, then, according to them, it must be wanted, à fortiori, in a state of less tranquil

of the leading provisions of this Bill with the corresponding sections of former Acts, showing how small the variations were, he observed that these arguments were a complete answer to the objections of the Whigs and the Irish Members. But then they were no answer to the objections of those who, like himself, took a larger view of the subject. He reviewed the political and ecclesiastical history of Ireland from the time of the Reformation, and characterised this Bill as a faint specimen of the spirit in which she had uniformly been governed. The sort of person most likely to be assassinated in Ireland, and therefore most in need of arms for his defence, was a poor man, who took a few acres over the head of his neighbour, and who would find it most difficult to obtain the permission of keeping arms under this Act. There was no great difference between the late and the present Government. Neither of them had put down the giant evil of Ireland-her rampant Church. He would take away her revenue and give it, if to any Church at all, to the Church of the Roman Catholics. The grand evil and sore of Ireland was the domination of the Church of the minority. Mr. C. Buller had said, "give the powers of despotism to Ministers I like, and I have no objection that they should wield them, but propose to vest them in a Ministry I disapprove, and I will refuse them." For himself, he detested despotism alike, whether in the hands of Lord J. Russell, or Sir R. Pecl. Whoever voted for this Bill, or forbore to vote against it, supported the old principle of Irish Government; whoever voted for throwing out the Bill aided the

He was unfavourable to Repeal, but he thought the Repeal cry ought so far to influence the British Ministry as to induce them to govern Ireland as they would govern England. What are you to do, (continued Mr. Roebuck,) with the present movement ? Are you to array the English army against the Irish people? He was surprised that one so prudent as Sir R. Peel should have given additional importance to the Irish leaders by making martyrs of them. He asserted the legality of petitioning, writing, speaking, even raving against any law. He criticised the proceeding, and the letter of the Irish Chancellor, who furnished another instance of indiscretion which Sir R. Peel was obliged to cover, stepping forward, like Ajax with his broad shield, while the minor man ran away. But Sir R. Peel could not now govern Ireland on the old system; if he would rule her, he must rule her in the improving spirit of the age.

Sir H. W. Barron attacked the appointments of judges by the Government, designating Mr. Justice Jackson and Mr. Baron Lefroy as opponents to the rights and liberties of the people.

Sir David Roche defended the two judges who had been alluded to, whose conduct, he said, had given occasion to no complaint.

Sir R. Peel insisted that the Government had fulfilled every pledge to govern Ireland with fairness and moderation. He appealed to Sir David Roche's testimony, to show the fallacy of some reports, which should teach caution in respect of others; and he remarked that, in speaking of the conduct of the judges, people did not refer to

speeches; which he might have done on the appointment of Sir Michael O'Loghlen. He asked the Irish Members why, if they now found it necessary to oppose the Bill, they abandoned their Parliamentary duty in 1841, and gave their sanction to precisely the same measure? It appeared, in deed, from what Mr. Smith O'Brien had said, that he agreed to the passing of an Act of three lines only, that was to continue another Act with which he now admitted he was wholly unacquainted; and, as a magistrate, he had been executing the law without knowing the provisions of it. (Cheers and laughter.) "That is the way the honourable Gentleman acted with regard to the Bill. But the Government have acted differently, We did not think it right to propose a mere continuing Bill of a few lines. We thought it right that the House should have the Bill before it; and therefore we printed the original Bill with the additional clauses. The honourable Gentleman, however-this worthy legislator and magistrate, helped to pass a law, and helped to execute a law, of which he knew nothing till we explained it to him in this House. And that is your zeal for the liberties of Ireland." (Cheers.) Sir Robert Peel believed, how ever, that in 1841 they thought the peculiar circumstances of Ireland justified such a measure. It was all very well to talk of general principles and rights, as opposed to the Bill; but let them bear in mind the position of a man with a family exposed to assassination. One of the last persons who was shot, Mr. Gatchell, said before his death, that he had taken the best security he could against assassination,

but "it was impossible to watch every bush that was on the roadside." The immediate question was, whether there was not greater facility and impunity in committing murders with fire-arms than with other weapons. Instead, however, of showing peculiar favour to one class, the Bill altered the existing law, which did not require the arms of the yeomen to be registered, and placed the veomen on the same footing as their fellow subjects. Mr. Sheil's speech was a complete vindication of the Bill: he advised a much more extraordinary measure, to meet the state of society - the compelling persons of wealth to sit on Petit Juries-the principle of the law being "judicium parium et lex terra"-compelling landowners to sit in judgment in the agrarian disputes between themselves and their tenants! And he described the state of the country as such, that while the assassin laughs at the law and returns from the criminal dock to his family, the honest witness must be expatriated. Sir Robert Peel thought it a better way to protect that witness, by preventing the improper use of fire-arms. So far from regarding the Bill itself as a matter of indifference, like Mr. Charles Buller, he regarded it as of first-rate importance, and justified only by necessity; and the House would decide whether, after the admission of the Irish Members so recently as 1841, that such a Bill was necessary for Ireland, the whole difference being a change in the Government, the House would take upon itself the responsibility of putting a stop to any measure for the registration of fire-arms in Ireland? The measure was an

nounced at too early a period of the session, to have been framed in special reference to the present state of Ireland. (Lord Eliot here made an observation.) His noble Friend told him that it was framed last year. He would only repeat, that Government were determined to exercise every legitimate power which they possessed, for the prevention of that which every Member for the English and Scotch constituencies, and a great proportion of the Irish Members, considered as equivalent to a separation of Ireland from England and a dismemberment of the empire; postponing, however, the discussion of that question until a fitter occasion.

The House divided; and the second reading was carried, by 270 to 105.

On the Motion for committing the Bill, Mr. Smith O'Brien moved as an Amendment

"That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire whether the condition of Ireland was such as to require statutory enactments different from those of Great Britain; and if so, to ascertain to what cause the difference of legislation was to be attributed."

The Amendment was negatived without a division, and the Bill was ordered to be committed.

The Bill, of which the second reading had thus been carried, was yet destined, however, to encounter the most pertinacious and pro. tracted opposition. Lord Clements, Sir H. W. Barron, Mr. Wyse, Mr. Sheil, Mr. Smith O'Brien, Mr. M. J. O'Connell, and other Irish Members, backed by some of the extreme Liberal party among the English and Scotch Members,

sure through the Committee clause by clause; moving repeated amendments, and dividing again and again on some of the most obnoxious sections. A great deal of valuable time at the latter end of the Session, when other important measures were pressing for the attention of the House, was thus consumed with very little effect, except increased irritation and more confirmed difference of opinion between the contending parties. Nor did the debates on the Arms Bill exhaust all the discussion of Irish affairs, for while it was dragging its weary length through the Committee, several interlocutory discussions took place in both Houses on the state of that country, now more than usually disquieted by the Repeal movement, which Mr. O'Connell was vigorously carrying on on the other side of the channel. A brief notice of some of these proceedings will not be out of place, though interrupting for a time our notice of the progress of the Arms Bill, which we shall subsequently trace to its termination.

While the discussion on the second reading of the Ministerial measure was going on in the Lower House, the Marquis of Clanricarde in the Upper, drew attention to a letter from Sir Edward Sugden's Secretary to Lord Ffrench intimating to that Nobleman his dismissal from the Commission of the Peace, and from the Deputy Lieutenancy of the county, on account of his having attended some public meetings held for promoting and petitioning for the Repeal of the Union. Lord Clanricarde observed that, according to that letter, Lord Ffrench was dis

cause he had not read and digested the declaration which the Lord Chancellor said some Ministers had made in Parliament respecting Repeal. Lord Ffrench had simultaneously been dismissed by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from the Deputy-Lieutenancy of the county in which Lord Clanricarde was Lord Lieutenant. He wanted to know on what right a single declaration in Parliament was taken as sufficient ground for such a proceeding; and whether any communication of any message from the Throne, of any speech from the Throne, or of any speech in Parliament, had been made to the Irish Government, or published in the Gazettes either of London or Dublin, or in any other official form.

The Duke of Wellington replied, that the Lord Lieutenant and the Lord Chancellor had both received instructions on their appointment to discountenance Repeal; but no instructions on the subject had recently been issued to her Majesty's servants in Ireland.

The Marquis of Clanricarde then proceeded to move an Address to the Crown, for a copy of the letter to Lord Ffrench. He admitted that the assembling of great bodies of men throughout the country, creating disturbances, and alarming the minds of peaceable subjects of the Crown, was in itself, on a broad principle, an illegal act; but the course to pursue would have been, to issue a proclamation stating the simple truth, that those meetings were calculated to disturb, and did disturb and alarm the minds of the quiet and peaceable subjects of the realm; advising such persons to discountenance these meetings; and then they might fairly

enough, if they had so chosen, have desired and enjoined all Magistrates not only to discountenance, but to keep away from such meetings. Without any such authentic warning, but merely from a declaration in Parliament, Government proceeded to break every Magistrate that attended a Repeal meeting. How could Lord Ffrench have known what was declared, but that a Parliamentary law is daily broken by the reporting of the debates ? and it is a positive fact, that many Magistrates in Ireland do not even sce the English newspapers, but only Irish papers, which give abridged reports of Parliamentary proceedings.

The Duke of Wellington did not oppose the production of the documents required; but he described the anxiety felt upon the subject of the Repeal agitation by thousands in Ireland; the relief which the declaration of the Government had given to that anxiety, and the general notoriety of the declaration.

Lord Campbell argued that to make a meeting illegal, its object must be illegal; and petitioning for the Repeal of the Union was not illegal; nor was it made so by certain declarations, which did not alter the law. He condemned the use of the Sovereign's name by Sir Robert Peel, as establishing a bad precedent.

The Duke of Wellington remarked, that the Queen's name had only been used in connexion with her Majesty's reference to the declaration of her Royal predecessor. In dismissing the Magistrates, the Lord Chancellor had referred not only to the declaration of the Ministers, but to the tendency to outrage which