The most powerful speech of the night was made by
Mr. Bernal Osborne, who pointed out that the Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended in Ireland nine times since the Act of Union. He held that the responsibility for that state of things lay with the English governors of Ireland, who still "walked the mill-horse round of coercion" till, though 2,000,000 of people had left Ireland since 1816, there had been in those twenty years two attempts at insur- rection. Fenianism was a communistic plot, which could be dealt with in the field, but in the south respectable farmers would, if the Fenians gained any success, join them in a body. He believed that the remedy would not be found in the "cuckoo cry for identity of institutions," but in reforming or abolishing the Church, in doing justice as to education, in remodelling the tenure, in abolishing the Lord.-Lieutenancy, and in organizing throughout the country a strong and active executive. We italicize those words, because we believe that this is one of the wants of Ireland which could be supplied, and which is much too often forgotten. The English system of governing the poor by the rich, and calling that self-government, is as much out of place in Ireland as it would be in France.
Previous page
