The Bishop of Derry's speech aroused indescribable enthu- siasm, which
was manifested again as Mr. Atkinson, in an argument from which we have quoted elsewhere, maintained the thesis that the Bill was far worse than Separation, because under the Bill a majority composed of one class alone would dispose of the forces of the United Kingdom ; while if Ireland were separate, there would not exist within her four seas the power to crash her Loyalist minority. He believed that the assurances of protection with which the Bill was introduced were intended to disguise the baseness of a surrender; but even if they were sincere, they were useless, for the men who now professed themselves penitent for their past teaching, had debauched by that teaching the Irish mind. Under an Irish Parliament, the commerce, the wealth, and the enterprise of the minority will be unjustly taxed, and their religious liberty will be endangered. A kind of horror of the Bill indeed ran through all the speeches, a feeling so deep that, of itself, it produced in the minds of the vast audience an impression that if it were passed a civil war must follow.
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