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Ferguson brought forward the subject on the 28th June, with a view of showing that by treaties to which Great Britain was a guaranteeing party, we were justified in interposing; Lord Sandon, Lord Morpeth, and others supported the motion, which was one for the production of papers. Mr. O'Connell having applied to the Emperor Nicholas the epithet of a "miscreant conqueror," Sir Robert Inglis objected to such language. Mr. Hume would have preferred the term "monster;" while Sir Robert Peel "deprecated the use of such terms in reference to a sovereign with whom the country was in alliance : he must suspend his judgment respecting his conduct until he was quite certain the allegations were true." Mr. Sheil "would not call the Czar a miscreant, because, when he saw a man delegating power to his brother-[into whom the spirit of Nero must have transmigrated, if there was a metempsychosis among despots,]-to tread the heart of Poland out; when he saw him betraying a nation of heroes into submission, and then transporting them to Siberia, degrading and enslaving women, sparing neither age nor sex, and thrusting the hand of a Herod-like infanticide into. the cradle of Polish childhood; when he saw him acting thus, and having himself nothing to add to

the damnation, he would not call him miscreant,' because the word was too poor and incommensurate with his depravity, but he would exclaim,-Oh! thou art worse than words can give thee out!"* But the Czar was then " our august ally; and the Poles, whom justice and policy alike called on England to succour and sustain, were left to their fate.

More than three years had now elapsed, and the legislative promise made by the Relief Bill remained unfulfilled. The Catholic constituencies of Ireland had returned to Parliament some twenty gentlemen professing the Catholic faith, and a few subordinate offices in the land had been conferred on members of that persuasion; but in the main the hopes and expectations of civil equality which Emancipation had naturally created, continued to be altogether unrealized. The whole of the administrative functions of Government were still reserved for Protestant hands. Not only every political office, but every seat on the judicial bench, was still monopolized as completely by members of the Established Church as they had been in the days of statutable exclusion. In a confidential letter, of a somewhat later date, Lord Wellesley forcibly called the attention of the Cabinet *Hansard, 1832; vol. xiii., p. 1146.

to the fact, "that the Roman Catholics of Ireland had never yet been admitted to the full benefit of the laws passed for their relief. Entitled by law to admission into almost any office in the State, they had been, and were still, practically excluded from almost every branch of the executive administration of the Government. The few admitted into the station of assistant-barristers or into the police, only served to mark the right to admission, without any approach to an equitable distribution of official benefits. It was impossible to suppose that a whole nation could repose confidence or act cordially with a Government, when so large a portion of the people were practically excluded from all share in the higher offices of the State, while their right to admission was established by law."*

Feelings of bitter disappointment were the natural fruit of injustice so systematic and so unwise. In the struggle for Reform the popular party in Ireland had not been wanting; yet they found themselves denied a participation in many of the benefits which that measure conferred upon the people of Great Britain and they could not but believe, that notwithstanding all the professions of an impartial and *Memoirs of the Marquis Wellesley, vol. iii., p. 406.

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comprehensive policy made in Parliament, a settled purpose was still tacitly entertained of perpetuating a system of religious disabilities. A spirit of alienation from England perceptibly began to spread amongst those classes which had hitherto stood aloof from the agitation for Repeal; and many who had previously deemed O'Connell's advocacy of such a measure impolitic and chimerical, were gradually led to regard it in a very different point of view, and to believe that without at least the menace of some such alternative it was vain to expect any substantial alteration of the mode in which Ireland was governed. In sentiments like these Mr. Sheil found himself at length compelled to sympathize. He had been among the first to offer an unconditional and confiding support to the Government. He had sacrificed a popularity second only to that of O'Connell, by refusing to join with him in the resumption of agitation after the passing of the Relief Bill. He had steadfastly clung to the belief that Ministers could not long continue to be blinded as to the course which it was their constitutional duty to pursue, by the personal resentments of Mr. Stanley, or of those who contributed with him to maintain. intolerant and illiberal views. But experience had falsified these anticipations. The taunts and re

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proaches of having deserted the cause of country and of creed, which he had previously borne with equanimity because he felt them to be unjust, assumed a very different significance when he could no longer persuade even himself that there was any definite prospect of seeing that sectarian equality established for which he so long had striven. With the literal realization of the project propounded by O'Connell, for the dissolution of the Union and the reconstitution of a separate Parliament in Ireland, he gave himself perhaps no very practical concern. But he felt that the condition of things then subsisting was indefensible, and that some essential and permanent change must be forced upon the consideration of the Imperial Government and Legislature, if peace or prosperity was ever to be looked for in Ireland. O'Connell himself had frequently avowed "that he had raised the cry for Repeal as a means to an end," and the day was not far distant when he declared himself ready to try whether the end might not be attained otherwise than by such means. With Mr. Sheil, as with many others at the time, "Repeal" was in point of fact, but short-hand for just and equal government in Ireland. With these sentiments he at length resolved to join the Repeal Association, and on the

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