275

IRISH ELECTION PETITIONS.

MAIDEN SPEECH.

December 7, 1837.1

[The first Parliament of Queen Victoria assembled on November 13, 1837, and on December 6 the attention of the House was called by Mr. Smith O'Brien to the existence of an Election Subscription Fund, carried on for several months in England and Scotland for the purpose of encouraging the presentation of petitions against members returned to serve in the present Parliament for the counties, cities, towns, and boroughs of Ireland, and of defraying the expenses attendant upon the conduct and prosecution of the same.' The result was that on the following day a debate took place on the subject, Mr. Smith O'Brien moving for a Select Committee 'to inquire into the allegations' contained in the petition aforesaid. The motion was opposed both by the Government and the Opposition, and supported of course by the Irish members. Sir Francis Burdett, then member for North Wilts, was one of the offenders aimed at, and his speech was answered by O'Connell. When O'Connell sat down the new member for Maidstone rose. The earlier part of the following speech, at all events, seems sensible and practical enough; but that in some way or another the speaker, before he had done, succeeded in making himself ridiculous, is a fact too well attested to be doubted.]

MR.

R. DISRAELI rose and said, that he trusted the House would extend to him that gracious indulgence which was usually allowed to one who solicited its attention for the first time. He had, however, had sufficient experience of the critical spirit which pervaded the House, to know and to feel how much he stood in need of that indulgence—an indulgence of which he would prove himself to be not unworthy, by promising not to abuse it. The honourable and learned member

'This speech is reprinted from Hansard's Debates by permission of Mr. Hansard.

for Dublin had taunted the honourable baronet, the member for North Wiltshire,' with having uttered a long, rambling, wandering, jumbling speech. Now, he must say and he could assure the honourable and learned gentleman that he had paid the utmost attention to the remarks which flowed from him-that it seemed to him that the honourable and learned gentleman had taken a hint from the honourable baronet in the oration which the honourable and learned gentleman had just addressed to the House. There was scarcely a single subject connected with Ireland which the honourable and learned member had not introduced into his rhetorical medley. The honourable and learned member for Dublin had also taunted the honourable and learned member for Exeter 3 with travelling out of the record of the present debate, while he himself had travelled back 700 years, though the House was engaged in the discussion of events which had taken place within the last few months.

The honourable and learned member had favoured the House with an allusion to poor-laws for Ireland. Perhaps he was wrong; but at all events there had been an allusion to the Irish Corporation Bill. He did not pretend that he could accurately remember all the topics the honourable and learned member had introduced into his speech; but, if no reference had been made by the honourable and learned gentleman to the subject of Irish poor-laws, at least there had been a dissertation upon the measure relating to the municipal corporations of Ireland. Was that subject relative to the debate before the House? He would not allude-for he would spare the feelings of the honourable and learned member in that respect to the subscriptions which the honourable and learned member had told the House had not been successful on his side; but that circumstance might account for the bitterness with which he spoke of the successful efforts of the muchvilified Mr. Spottiswoode. He had, indeed, been much inclined

1 Mr. D. O'Connell,

3 Sir William Follett.

Sir Francis Burdett.

After the return of the new Parliament in the summer of 1837, it was alleged that many of the Irish returns which were favourable to the O'Connell party were attributable to intimidation and corruption, and on these grounds

to ask the honourable member for Limerick (Mr. O'Brien) if he had attended the meeting at which it had been expected that every Liberal member would subscribe 50l. to the protection fund. He had thought that perhaps the honourable member could have given some curious information upon that subject; that, though there might have been 3,000l. or 2,950l. to begin with, there was now nothing in the exchequer, and that this project of majestic mendicancy had now wholly vanished. The honourable and learned member for Dublin had announced that the Spottiswoode subscription was a Protestant subscription. That it was supported by many Protestants nobody could attempt to deny, but if the honourable and learned member meant to say that it was a subscription established for the particular object of supporting a Protestant faction against the Catholic people, he begged to remark that he saw nothing at all to justify that supposition. It might be a Protestant, but it was essentially a defensive fund.

The honourable and learned member for Dublin had talked of the clergymen of the Church of England subscribing to this fund, and had contrasted their conduct with that of the priests of his Church; but he defied the honourable and learned member to produce a single instance of tyrannical interference on the part of the Protestant clergy at all similar, or in the least degree analogous, to those acts which were imputed to the clergy of the Catholic Church. If the honourable and learned member doubted what he was saying, let him refer to the volume of evidence taken before the Intimidation Committee, and the honourable member would see that from Cornwall to Yorkshire no case had occurred that bore a comparison to the occurrences in Ireland, and that he was fully justified in the statements he made. The object of the subscription entered into was to procure justice for the Protestant constituencies and the Protestant proprietors of Ireland, those constituencies, and those proprietors being unable to obtain justice single-handed. Honourable members knew very well

it was resolved to contest them. A public subscription was opened to defray the expenses; and at the head of the committee of management appeared the name of Mr. Andrew Spottiswoode, the Queen's printer.

that a landlord in Ireland had been told by his tenants that they could not vote for him because their priest had denounced him from the altar. They knew very well that when it was attempted to reinforce the strength of the Protestant constituency in the registration courts, some revising or assistant barrister from the Castle of Dublin was easily found to baffle it, and thus were they forced on to their last resource and refuge -to a committee of that House.

Now was this a petition which had the downfall of the Catholics for its object? For his part, he thought that the facts which had been brought before the notice of the Intimidation Committee perfectly justified the use of the epithets which had been employed in the original circular or manifesto of Mr. Spottiswoode. He should not trouble the House at any length. He did not affect to be insensible to the difficulty of his position, and he should be very glad to receive indulgence even from the honourable members opposite. If, however, honourable gentlemen did not wish to hear him, he would sit down without a murmur. He should confine himself to an attempt to bring back the subject to the point which was really at issue. He could not comprehend why a considerable body of Her Majesty's subjects respectable not only for their numbers, but for their independence and integrity, should be held up to scorn and odium by the honourable and learned member for Dublin, for the commission of an act the legality of which he had not presumed to question, of the propriety of which they were as competent judges as that honourable and learned member, and of which, after what he had himself confessed, the honourable and learned member ought to be the last to question the delicacy.

He had examined the list of contributors, as well as the honourable and learned member for Dublin, and with a more than ordinary degree of interest, arising from the fact that the town which he represented had contributed a larger proportion of the fund than any part of England, and he did not find that the subscribers principally consisted of members of the aristocracy. With very few exceptions they were to be found among the middle classes-men of moderate opinions and of a temperate

tone of mind-men, in fact, who seldom stepped out of the sphere of their private virtues-men, as honourable gentlemen who had examined these lists must know, who seldom partook of the excitement created by the conflict of parties, and were rarely inflamed by the passions which agitated the political world. He must say that he thought it a very strange thing that so large a body of individuals, many of whom were constitutional Reformers, many of whom, until very lately, supported Her Majesty's Government he must repeat, that he considered that it would be very hard, very unjust, very impolitic to appoint a committee of inquiry, which would be equivalent to a verdict against those individuals, without first inquiring what were the feelings which induced them to pursue the line of conduct which they had adopted. He would remind the House that those individuals, many of whom supported the Reform Bill, might have entertained hopes in reference to the working of that measure which, like the hopes cherished by some honourable gentlemen opposite, might have been disappointed. They might have entertained an expectation that nomination would be at an end, that the stain of boroughmongering would be wiped out, and that not a remnant of the system would remain in a Reformed Parliament. But when they found that the stain of boroughmongering assumed a deeper and a darker hue, that seats were openly bought and sold, and that a system of intimidation was organised, compared with which the riots which even under the old system exhibited the more flagrant features of electoral operations, were peaceable -when they found that this was the case, they perhaps thought that it was time to bring matters to a head.

He had but one more observation to make, and he confessed he was rather anxious to make that observation, as it would give him the first opportunity which had been afforded him of saying something with respect to Her Majesty's Government. He wished he could induce the House to give him five minutes. It was not much. He stood there to-night not formally, but in some degree virtually, as the representative of a considerable number of members of Parliament. Now, why smile? Why envy him? Why not let him enjoy