Mr. Bright's speech on Tuesday was in his most improved
and conciliatory manner. Its objects were twofold, to show that Government by minority, such as Mr. Disraeli is trying to carry on, is fatal both to Government and opposition, because Government can propose nothing on its own principles, and Opposition has nothing to oppose and to divest the resolutions of their revolu- tionary magnitude. Allowing for Episcopalians who in Ireland, as in England, never go to church, there were probably not more than 500,000 Episcopalians in Ireland, the population of a single great city like Liverpool. Even to this "one-city population" nobody was going to do any special wrong. They were only to be placed in the position in which the majority of the people of Scotland, the majority of Welshmen, half the people of England, and all the people of the white colonies already are. As to the English Establishment, if it did not perish from within, no man could predict the term of its existence. The Tories had been frightened by many hobgoblins—colonial reform, free trade, destruction of the balance of power, democratic representation— but when they had advanced nearer they had feared none of them. He believed that the refusal of justice now, after justice had been seriously proposed, would make Ireland despair of justice at the hands of a British Parliament ; declared that Ireland longed for reconciliation, and England and Scotland to make atonement ; and that it depended on this debate whether the reconciliation should be accepted, and the atonement made.
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