THE IRISH BILL.
MINISTERS are, it seems, determined to give to the Irish as little Reform as for very shame they dare. On Wednesday, two motions—one for the extension of the franchise, at present most scandalously restricted, and the other for a better distribution of the representation—were negatived, by the willing aid of such notable assistants as Mr. LEFROY and Mr. CRORER. We wonder that Lord ALTHORP was not ashamed to go below the Bar with them.
The motion of Mr. O'CONNELL for restoring to the forty- shilling freeholders the rights of which they were robbed by the Duke of WELLINGTON and Sir ROBERT PEEL, is not one in the loss of which we very deeply sympathize. We look upon mere forty-shilling freeholders to be very little better than potwallopers ill cenditionof they be not the worse of the two, and in point of independence of sentiment to be greatly inferior. The reason why, in many instances, they are found to be a valuable consti- tuency, is not far to seek. Men who are freeholders of 100/. or 1,000/. vote as forty-shilling freeholders only. If we had distinc- tions of value in our freehold. votes, as the Irish have, we should soon perceive, that in England, as in Ireland, the lowest class was worthless. But while we cannot participate in Mr. O'CONNELL'S anxiety to restore them in the latter country, as little can we subscribe to the logic by which their restoration was opposed. Mr. STANLEY spoke of them as "squatters:' Mr. O'CONNELL replied, justly, that the whole of Ireland was a " squattery." There is indeed hardly an acre of' it the right of possession to which rests upon higher grounds than party confiscation and party grants. But, laying this consideration aside, how came Mr. STANLEY, when babbling about Irish "squatters," so wholly to forget the English squatters? How came he to forget that it is by virtue of a band of the latter that Lord ASHLEY sits for Dorsetshire ? Mr. STANLEY also stated—and in this he was followed by Lord Aemoup—that the forty-shilling freeholders • in fee were very few, and therefore it was not worth while to restore them. But did it not strike these two gentlemen, that if few ill number, these freeholders could hardly possess that very questionable character which they both attributed to them ; and that, whether good or bad, if very few, they could do little harm, and to oppose their restoration was the more ungracious ?
But if the refusal to restore the forty-shilling franchise were
weakly defended, what are we to say of the defence of that most absurd of all arrangements, the giving of an additional Mem- ber to Trinity College? We shall not ask whether its constitu- ency is to be 200, or 400, or 600: take it at the maximum as- signed to it—what claim, positive or comparative, has it to an additional member ?—to one-fifth part of the entire addition to the Irish representation! If Ireland only deserve or require four members, why not spare it the mockery of this College nominee ? Why not give the fifth man to one of the many unrepresented towns in England? But it seems the Protestant interest requires a supporter !—What is meant by the Protestant interest? The tithes ? The Duke of WELLINGTON with a hundred. thousand men could not save them. They are gone beyond the possibility of recal. Mr. STANLEY may as soon summon spirits from the - vasty deep as restore them, or establish any thing in the stead of them. They must be left to perish—in kind, in composition, in commutation.
But then comes the argnmentum ad misericordiam—" Oh! dear .
gentlemen, be sparing of 3-cur opposition: if the 13111 should be made worth rejecting, we shall never get it passed." Now do the Ministry imagine, that because they are content to hold power on terms which preclude them from commanding a majority ill the House of Lords, the People of England will hold power on these terms ? What if the Lords are determined to pass no act of the House of Commons that has for its aim the good of the People— is the House of' Commons to abandon the interests of the People? If the Ministers respect the Peers more than they respect the Commons, how came they to resign the other day? But what if the Lords were to reject the Irish Bill, because it was framed in some respects as it ought to be ? Must Ministers by a second re- signation alarm them into suffe.rance ? By no means. Ministers would merely have "put the saddle on the right horse ;" they would only have shown yet more clearly, if that were possible, that the House of Lords must be reconstructed, in order to fit it for the proper performance of its part in the Legislature. Acting as they now do, they inevitably give deep and lasting offence to Ire- land, and—what is more important still—to England. What will be the consequence of passing this maimed and halting bill ? Agitation, backed by the sympathy of the whole English public. CECornmr. would have agitated, it may be, let Ministers do u' they please; but now he will proceed to his task with John Bull clapping him on the shoulder. If the Irish Bill is to be " final " —that is, in the same sense in which the English and Scotch Bills may be regarded as final—it must be complete. Neither Eng- lishmen nor Scot,chmen will suffer it to be final on any other terms • will Irishmen suffer it—ought they to suffer it?
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