Wednesday's debate was chiefly remarkable for an outbreak of sympathy
for law-breaking on the part of Mr. Bernard Cole- ridge, M.P. for Sheffield,—a barrister, and the eon of the Lord Chief Justice,—and Mr. M'Laren, M.P. for Crewe, who outdid Mr. Bernard Coleridge in his admiration of law-breaking. Mr. Coleridge pronounced no opinion on the legality of the " Plan of Campaign," but ventured to think that "it commended itself to the feelings of the vast majority of the English people." Law, "to be operative, either in England or Ireland," most be approved by the moral sense of the majority of the com- munity. So that in a reformatory school where the majority of the boys happen to have a bias against the law, we suppose that Mr. Coleridge would regard the enforcement of the law as pure tyranny. Mr. M'Laren went even further. He thought it a matter of conscience with the poor tenant-farmers of Ireland to persist in violating the law, "in order that they might carry out their marriage-vows and their parental duties, by protecting their wives and children." Would Mr. M'Laren kindly tell us whether he also thinks it the bounden duty of poor tenants to enter into contracts which they never intend to keep, "in order that they may keep their marriage-vows," &c.? On these principles, why should not any English tradesman in danger of bankruptcy, consider it a matter of conscience to become (say) a fraudulent trustee, in order to enable himself to keep his marriage-vow to his wife, and to discharge his parental duties to his children ? Mr. M'Laren appears to be a thorough- going antinomian.
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