Mazzini's letters, and acted on the most approved principles of continental espionage. The word is strong; is it inappropriate? If you had employed a spy in the house of Maz-' zini, and had every word uttered in his convivial hours, at his table, or even at his bed-side, reported to you, that would be espionage. Between that case of hypothetical debasement and what has actually befallen, the best casuist in an Italian university could never distinguish. Are we, in order to avoid the hazards of war, to do that which is in the last degree discreditable? You would not, in order to avoid the certainty of war, submit to dishonor. When an Englishman was wronged in a remote island in the Pacific, you announced that the insult should be repaired, or else — ; and if you were prepared, in that instance, to incur the certainty of war, and to rush into an encounter, the shock of which would have shaken the world, should you, to avoid the hazards of war, founded on a series of suppositions, perpetuate an act of self-degradation? There are incidents to this case which afford a warrant for that strong expression. If you had sent for Mazzini; if you had told him that you knew what he was about; if you had informed him that you were reading his letters, the offence would not have been so grievous; but his letters were closed again, with an ignominious dexterity they were re-folded, and they were re-sealed, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the honor of this country was tarnished by every drop of that molten wax with which an untruth was impressed upon them.

I have not entered, and I will not enter, into any legal disquisitions; it is to the policy, the dignity, the truthfulness of this transaction that my resolution is directed. It will, no doubt, be said that the committee-men of great worth and high integrity, and singular discrimination-have reported in favor of the government. I admit their worth, their integrity and their discrimination, but I deny that they have reported in your favor. They avoid, cautiously avoid, finding a justification, giving an approval of your conduct. They say that they see no reason to doubt the goodness of your motives. Your motives! There is an aphorism touching good intentions to which it were a deviation from good breeding too distinctly to refer; but it is not for your good intentions that you were made a minister by the Queen, or that you are retained as a minister by the House of Commons. The question is not whether your intentions are good or bad, but whether you have acted as became the great position of an English minister, named by an English sove reign, and administering a great trust for the high-minded

English people. I think that you have not; and it is because I think so that I propose a resolution, in which I have set down facts beyond doubt and beyond dispute, and with facts. beyond doubt and beyond dispute I have associated an expression of sorrow in which I trust this House will participate. Richard L. Sheil, 1845.

THE VOTE BY BALLOT.

WHEN the ballot is in question certain gentlemen exclaim, "Good heavens! shall we introduce into England a system of voting, by which duplicity and dissimulation, and all the base results that follow from them, shall be propagated amongst us?" I acknowledge the ballot has its evils, but great as these evils may be, they are more than countervailed by the abuses which are incident to our existing system.

Turn to the mournful realities which are offered to you in the land from which I come, and look at the £10 voter, who has had the misfortune to pass through the registration. court, and who receives from his landlord a summons to attend the hustings, and, in a contest between a Liberal and a Tory candidate, to give his vote. On one side, all his feelings, (feelings like your own,) all his national predilections, all his religious emotions, all his personal affections are enlisted. Perhaps, on one side, he sees a man whom he has long been accustomed to regard as the deliverer of his country; whom he looks upon as the champion of his creed and of his priesthood; of the land in which he was born, and for which, if there were need, he would be prompt to die; his eye fills and his heart grows big, and prayers break from his lips as he beholds him." On the other side-the side on which he is called upon to vote-he beholds some champion of that stern ascendency, by which his country had long been trodden under foot; by whom his religion had long been vilified; its ministers had long been covered with opprobrium, and the class to which he belongs treated with contumely and disdain. For such a man he is called upon, under a penalty the most fearful, with impending ruin, to give his false and miserable suffrage. Trembling, shrinking, cowering, afraid to look his friends and kinsmen in the face, he ascends the hustings as if it was the scaffold of his conscience, and, with a voice almost inarticulate with emotion, stammers out, when asked for whom he votes-not the name of him who he loves and prizes, and honors-but of the man whom he

detests, loathes, abhors. For him it is, it is in his favor, that he exercises the great trust, the sanctity of which requires that it should be exercised in the face of the world; for him it is, it is in his favor, that he gives utterance to that which, to all intents and purposes, is a rank and odious falsehood. But perhaps he resists; perhaps, under the influence of some sentiment, half religious, half heroic, looking martydom in the face, he revolts against the horrible tyranny that you' would rivet on him, and he votes, wretch that he is, in conformity with the dictates of his conscience, and what he believes to be the ordinance of his religion. Alas, for him! a month or two go by, and all that he has in the world is seized; the beast that gives him milk, the horse that drags his plough, the table of his scanty meal, the bed where anguish and poverty and oppression were sometimes forgotten; all, all are taken from him, and with Providence for his guide, but with God, I hope, for his avenger, he goes forth, with his wife and children, upon the world.

And this, this is the system which you are prepared to maintain! This is the system under which what is called a great trust is performed, in the eyes of the country. This is the system under which, by the exercise of the great preroga tive of freemen, open and undisguised, every British citizen invested with the franchise should feel himself exalted! Oh, fie upon this mockery!-R. L. Shiel, 1843.

AGAINST THE EXTENSION OF THE INCOME TAX TO IRELAND.

SIR, my honorable friend is determined to give us, in the form of an income tax, the benefit of British institutions-a benefit analogous to that which we derive from the English church. I warn him not to attempt to extort from Ireland a revenue which she cannot afford, and which we ought not to be compelled to pay. No minister by whom an income tax has yet been proposed ever thought it possible to extend it to Ireland. The imposition of such a tax upon Ireland would be unjust; and what is unfortunately of still more importance in the estimate of public men, would be in the last degree impolitic and unsafe.

Before the Union Ireland had a surplus revenue expended in Ireland, and the country flourished. You induced us to enter with you into a ruinous co-partnership, of which you have had all the profits, while we have deeply participated in the loss. The impolicy of England plunged her into

debt, of whose load we are compelled to bear a part; had we remained in the enjoyment of our legislative independence, of your ruinous expenditure we should not be the victims. It is most unfair that you should now call on us, after all the detriment which we have already suffered, to bear a portion of the vast cost incidental to this experiment. You drain us through the absentee system-an inevitable attendant on the Union-of millions of money, which, instead of circulating through Ireland, swell the overflowings of the deep and broad Pactolus of British opulence. You have transferred all our public establishments to this single point of imperial centralization; the revenue which Ireland yields is expended, not in Ireland, but here. Do not then, for the sake of a small accession to the revenue, do us an injustice, and a signal detriment to yourselves. There are other means of obtaining a revenue from Ireland besides an income tax. There is an alchemy in good government. By doing perfect justice you can largely save, and saving is equivalent to gain. Justice is a good housewife. My honorable and frugal friend, the member for Montrose, has often told you that you can, by adopting a sound policy in Ireland, effect a great reduction, and reduce your army to a force comparatively small. He has often said, that as in Scotland 2,000 men are quite sufficient, the army of Ireland might be reduced in the same proportion. If you will but endeavor to adapt your institutions to Ireland, instead of laboring to adapt Ireland to your institutions, if, instead of inflicting a temporary tranquillity, you confer a perpetual peace, you will obtain from Ireland a revenue far exceeding anything which, by the torture of this inquisitorial imposition, it would be possible for you to obtain. Peace, true peace-peace founded upon justice, and equality and national contentment, has an enriching, as well as a civilizing and ameliorating, attribute. Peace will pay you large import duties-peace will consume in abundance sugar, and coffee, and tea, and every article on which a charge will remain-peace will draw from the earth twice its ordinary return, and while it shall give you more food, will take more of your manufactures in return-peace will enlarge and give security to that market which is already the best you possess peace will open a wider field to your laborious industry and your commercial enterprise; and for every benefit you confer upon us, for every indulgence you shall show us, for every gift you bestow, with an usury incalculably profitable, by peace you will be repaid.-R. L. Sheil, 1845.

IRISH INSURRECTION.

SIR, these topics are perilous; but I do not fear to touch them. It is my thorough conviction, that England would be able to put down any insurrectionary movement, with her gigantic force, even although maddened and frantic Ireland might be aided by calculating France. But at what a terrible cost of treasure and of life would treason be subdued! Well might the Duke of Wellington, although familiar with fields of death, express his horror at the contemplation of civil war. War in Ireland would be worse than civil. A demon would take possession of the nation's heart-every feeling of humanity would be extinguished-neither to sex nor to age would mercy be given. The country would be deluged with blood, and when that deluge had subsided, it would be a sorry consolation to a British statesman, when he gazed upon the spectacle of desolation which Ireland would then present to him, that he beheld the spires of your Established Church still standing secure amidst the desert with which they would be encompassed. You have adjured us, in the name of the oath which we have sworn on the gospel of God-I adjure you, in the name of every precept contained in that holy book-in the name of that religion which is the perfection of humanity-in the name of every obligation, divine and human, as you are men and Christians, to save my country from those evils to which I point, and to remember, that if you shall be the means of precipitating that country into perdition, posterity will deliver its great finding against you, and that you will not only be answerable to posterity, but responsible to that Judge, in whose presence, clothed with the blood of civil warfare, it will be more than dreadful to appear. God forbid that these evils should ever have any other existence, except in my own affrighted imaginings, and that those visions of disaster should be embodied in reality. God grant that the men to whom the destinies of England are confided by their sovereign, may have the virtue and the wisdom to save her from those fearful ills that so darkly and so densely lower upon her. For my own part, I do not despair of my country; I do not despair of witnessing the time when Ireland will cease to be the battle-field of faction; when our mutual acrimonies will be laid aside; when our fatal antipathies will be sacrificed to the good genius of our country; and, so far from wishing for a dismemberment of this majestic empire, I would offer up a prayer, as fervent as ever passed

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