This remarkable address was an abnegation of the whole policy of Mr. O'Connell's career. It proved, by a mass of authentic evidence ranging over a long term of years, that Irish outrage was the consequence of physical misery, and that the social evils of that country could not be successfully encountered by political remedies. To complete the picture, it concluded with a panegyric of Ulster and a patriotic quotation from Lord Clare.
Lord John Russell, who, as an experienced parliamentary leader, had already made more than one effort to extricate the Whigs from the consequences of the hearty support given to the government measures in the other House by Lords Lansdowne and Clanricarde, and even by Lord Grey, ventured to-night even to say that if he should agree that the House would do well to assent to the first reading of this bill, he thought he was bound to state also that in the future stages of it, he should have 'objections to offer, going to the foundations of some of its principal provisions.'
His speech was curious, as perhaps the last considerable manifesto of Whig delusion respecting Ireland. Coercion Bills might be occasionally necessary; no doubt of it; Lord Grey had once a Coercion Bill, and Lord John Russell had voted for it; but then remedial measures ought to be introduced with coercive ones: the evil should be repressed, but also cured. Thus, Lord Althorp, when the government introduced their great Coercion Bill, introduced also a measure which, besides making a great reform in the Protestant Church of Ireland, exempted the whole Catholic community of Ireland from the payment of church cess, which had previously been felt as a very great grievance. On another day Lord Althorp declared his intention of pressing through Parliament a Jury Bill, which had been brought into the House the previous session, but which was allowed to drop in the House of Lords.
Again, there was another declaration which Lord Althorp had made, which, somehow or other, seemed to have been forgotten; it was a declaration with respect to the municipal corporations of Ireland. Lord Althorp said it was exceedingly desirable that the institutions of the two countries should be assimilated as much as possible; and that, as a general rule, the corporate bodies of Ireland should be the same as England. Mr. O'Connell had said on that occasion that there was no greater grievance in Ireland than the existence of corporations in their then shape. Lord John contrasted this language of Lord Althorp, 'simple, plain, emphatic, and decided,' with the language of the government of Sir Robert Peel; and held up to admiration the Whig policy of 1833, certainly coercive, but with remedial measures--a measure for the abolition of church cess, introduced ten days before the Coercion Bill, and a promise of municipal reform made simultaneously with the proclamation of martial law. This was real statesmanship and touching the root of the evil. Whereas 'Sir Robert Peel had only consented to passing the Municipal Bill in a crippled state, and only now (in 1846) promised, that the corporations of Ireland should be placed on the same footing as the corporations of England.' Who could be surprised that such a policy-should end in famine and pestilence?