\ * W ■ • 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 From the collection of 
 James Collins, 
 Drumcondra, Ireland. 
 Purchased, 1918. 
 
 36 2 . 04-15 
 D 85^ 
 
 
THE 
 
 CASE OF THE CITY OF DUBLIN. 
 
 THE 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 DELIVERED BY COUNSEL 
 
 AT THE BAR OE THE HOUSE OF LORDS, 
 
 IN 
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CITY OF DUBLIN, 
 
 ON THE MOTION FOR GOING INTO COMMITTEE ON THE 
 
 Kri^Buntrtiml licform BtlL 
 
 DUBLIN: 
 
 PRINTED BY GEORGE FAULKNER, 
 
 Printer to the Hon. the City of Dublin. 
 
 * %\ t 
 
 1840. 
 

 
N 
 
 35 a .f>-% ! S' 
 
 c< 
 
 SPEECHES, 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 
 4 
 
 HOUSE OF LORDS, 
 
 Thursday, 14th May, 1840, 
 
 The order of the day being read for the house to be 
 put into committee on the bill, intituled 44 An Act for 
 the regulation of Municipal Corporations in Ireland,” 
 and for counsel to be heard, and for the lords to be 
 summoned, counsel were accordingly called in, when 
 Sir Charles Wetherell and Mr. Butt appearing 
 as counsel against the bill, Sir Charles Wetherell 
 proceeded as follows :— 
 
 My Lords, 
 
 I have the honor of attending your Lordships upon 
 this occasion as counsel for the Corporation of the City 
 of Dublin. By your lordships order, the city having 
 presented a petition against that part of the present bill 
 
4 
 
 which relates to them, have received permission to be 
 heard by counsel. Individually, I regret much that that 
 duty, for which their kind partiality has made a selec- 
 tion so flattering to me, did not devolve on some other 
 person more capable of doing justice to their cause. 
 For, as the subject relates to matters with which, per¬ 
 sonally, I am little acquainted, involving opinions, ques¬ 
 tions, sentiments, and feelings, whose source and con¬ 
 nection is with the sister kingdom, or rather which 
 have their locality and being in a town of the sister 
 
 kingdom, it had been better—in all truth and sincerity 
 
 \ 
 
 I say this—it had been better for the interest of my 
 clients that these duties had devolved on some one 
 whose residence in the city for which I plead, might 
 have given him greater accuracy of detail, and a more 
 copious knowledge of whatsoever bears on this most 
 important question, than an advocate acquainted with 
 these topics only in the way of his professional engage¬ 
 ments can hope to bring. I can, therefore, say, my 
 lords, with sincerity, that I regret deeply the corpora¬ 
 tion of Dublin did not entrust their cause, or so much 
 of it as has been placed in my hands, rather to some 
 Irish barrister. 
 
 I have said enough, I think, to show in limine , that 
 there must be many parts of this subject, which I can¬ 
 not understand as accurately as an Irishman would, and 
 that there are parts of it upon which I cannot feel with 
 Irish feeling. Your Lordships will, therefore, seeun- 
 
5 
 
 der what disadvantages the cause labours, and how 
 great is the deficiency of him who now addresses you : 
 were it not that I am no stranger to your Lordships’ bar, 
 it could not be, but that under such circumstances I 
 should feel solicitously anxious ; but frequent expe¬ 
 rience has taught me how complete a protection your 
 wisdom extends over the client from the weakness of 
 his advocate, so that the subject now under discussion 
 will be investigated as comprehensively and impartially 
 as it would have been, had all the advantages of ad¬ 
 vocacy it were possible to conceive been brought to 
 assist. 
 
 i 
 
 My Lords, the city of Dublin, in their petition, con¬ 
 tend, that whatever be the principle which it is the 
 pleasure of this house to establish with respect to the 
 change and alteration of other corporations in Ireland, 
 they, the city of Dublin, ought to be excepted from the 
 operation of the present bill. The city of Dublin in 
 effect say to the house—legislate as you think fit for 
 other corporations according to the proposed model of 
 the present measure, but do not legislate for us upon 
 that model. Abolish other corporations; change them, 
 mutilate them, detrunk them, deface them, bury them 
 with a chance of resurrection, put an end to them at 
 once, or put them into purgatory, do with them what 
 you will; but with respect to this, the corporation of 
 the metropolis of Ireland, leave us as we are, or at 
 
6 
 
 least do not alter our constitution in the mode and 
 manner proposed in the provisions of the present bill. 
 
 My Lords, this is in strictness the topic upon which 
 I have to address you, and I have every wish, as I 
 naturally should have, to confine myself within the 
 fair circle of argument belonging to that topic. But 
 it must be obvious to your Lordships that, in deciding 
 on the fitness and propriety of the proposed municipal 
 changes, it is indispensible to take into account their 
 fitness and propriety when considered in relation to 
 the religion of the state ; their fitness and propriety 
 when measured by the principles on which is based the 
 constitution of England; their fitness and propriety 
 when tried by the test of their efficiency towards the 
 purpose of preserving inviolate the union between this 
 country and Ireland. It must, I say, be apparent to 
 your Lordships that in discussing the particular case 
 of the city of Dublin, I cannot avoid in some degree 
 adverting to the general topic to which I have last 
 alluded. 
 
 The first point to which, in the prosecution of my 
 humble address, I would call your Lordships’ attention, 
 is the present constitution of the corporation of Dub¬ 
 lin. They consist of a mayor, of two sheriffs, of 
 twenty-four aldermen, and of 144 common council- 
 men. The common council of the city of Dublin are 
 
7 
 
 elected by the twenty-five guilds; they return, each 
 a certain number, which, united, compose the total of 
 144. They elect them and return them as component 
 parts of the corporation of the city of Dublin ; but the 
 twenty-five guilds which return them are separate and 
 distinct corporations, resembling, in effect, the com¬ 
 panies in the city of London. Your Lordships know 
 that the companies of the city of London have each of 
 them their separate charter, totally independent of the 
 city of London. In London the common councilmen 
 composing the governing part of that corporation, are 
 elected in wards, by an election totally independent of 
 the companies. There is a ward election of the com¬ 
 mon council, and they, with the aldermen, compose 
 the governing part of the corporation. In Dublin 
 there is this peculiarity, namely—that the common 
 council are not elected, as in London, upon the princi¬ 
 ple of a separate election, though this principle is com¬ 
 mon to both, namely, that no one can be returned as 
 a common councilman who is not a freeman of one of 
 the companies. In London, however, the election of 
 common councilmen is totally independent of the free¬ 
 men. In Dublin the common councilmen are returned 
 by the guilds, each returning to the corporate body 
 its quota of the number. The merchants return a 
 larger number, the joiners a smaller, and so on, but 
 each however small, sends its quota to the common 
 council of the city: these guilds admit freemen. 
 
8 
 
 My Lords, such is the existing* corporation of Dub¬ 
 lin, which, as I before stated to your Lordships, con¬ 
 sists of a mayor, two sheriffs, twenty-four aldermen, 
 and 144 common councilmen. According to what I 
 have stated, it is obvious that no person can be returned 
 to the city of Dublin to become a member of the com¬ 
 mon council, unless he is a freeman. The principle 
 of the present bill is to take away that principle of 
 constituting the common council of the city of Dublin, 
 and to substitute in its place a principle founded upon 
 analogy to the late parliamentary franchise, namely, 
 an elective principle founded upon a certain amount of 
 property. This, my Lords, is, perhaps, the most im¬ 
 portant, indeed the essential change proposed to be 
 introduced by the present bill. 
 
 My Lords, the city of Dublin, thus composed, as I 
 before stated, has in addition to that, about 4000 free¬ 
 men. It has various officers belonging to it, some of 
 whom hold offices in the corporation, and various other 
 persons connected with, and employed under, that 
 corporation. 
 
 My Lords, according to this scheme, as your Lord- 
 ships must anticipate, the governing part of the cor¬ 
 poration must emanate from the inferior guilds; a man 
 must be first a freeman ; this dignity he attains in Dub¬ 
 lin in the ordinary modes, by birth or servitude. Af- 
 
9 
 
 ter reaching this station, he is eligible for promotion to 
 the body of the common council ; from thence he 
 may ascend to the aldermanic offices, and finally to 
 the highest in the corporation, that of mayor. It must 
 be obvious to your Lordships, that an election of this 
 sort cannot be called a very narrow election ; there is 
 nothing of the close borough about it; on the contrary, 
 it is a very open election ; pretty nearly as open as that 
 in the city of London, which has been left in the Eng¬ 
 lish Municipal Bill an excepted case. The similar 
 body in Ireland, the corporation who constitute the 
 governing body of the metropolis of Ireland, contend, 
 that, supposing it is desirable to alter other corpora¬ 
 tions in Ireland, the metropolis ought to stand an ex¬ 
 cepted case from the act. In contending for this 
 exception, they have a “ precursor’’—it is an Irish 
 phrase, and therefore in more senses than one germane 
 to the matter—they have a precursor of their claim in 
 the ease of the London corporation. I cannot con¬ 
 ceive—I never have met any one able to give—a rea¬ 
 son or shadow of a reason, why the metropolis of Eng¬ 
 land should escape the English corporation bill, and 
 the metropolis of Ireland not receive a like exemption 
 from the Irish. I cannot understand by what princi¬ 
 ple of equal justice you will, in cases precisely similar, 
 apply two wholly different, two diametrically opposed, 
 rules of conduct. 
 
 My Lords, such is the general scheme of the corpo- 
 
10 
 
 ration as it now stands. The scheme of the corpora- 
 tion proposed, which now awaits your decision, is 
 to reduce the number of the common council. On 
 this it is not worth while to say a word; it matters not 
 much whether they consist of 144 persons or 105. 
 Then it settles the number of aldermen at fifteen, and 
 these, with the common councilmen, are to make up in 
 all 105. The principle of the present bill is to abolish 
 the present mode of electing through the body of free¬ 
 men, and to substitute another mode in its place, 
 namely, election through the medium of persons quali¬ 
 fied by inhabitancy. The bill indeed leaves to the free¬ 
 men of Dublin the parliamentary franchise, and allows 
 them to vote for members of the House of Commons. 
 It says to them, You shall vote for the members for 
 Dublin, but you shall have no longer a vote for any of 
 your municipal body, unless you happen to possess, in 
 point of residence, in point of occupation, and in point 
 of property, those elements of the elective franchise 
 which are to be introduced by the present bill. 
 
 My Lords, this is, in a few words, a statement of the 
 scheme of the corporation, as it at present exists, and 
 the scheme of the corporation as it is proposed that it 
 shall exist hereafter. In order to carry that scheme 
 into effect, the present bill proposes to abolish so much 
 of the present charters, laws, and usages of the corpo¬ 
 ration of Dublin as, essentially involved with the old 
 scheme, must be abolished, in order to let in the new. 
 
11 
 
 Now, my Lords, such being the general features of 
 distinction between the two ; such being the general 
 principle of the old corporation, namely, eligibility 
 from the body of freemen ; and such being the princi¬ 
 ple of the new corporation, namely, eligibility from 
 the rated inhabitants ; such being the present state, and 
 such the intended change, it is my wish, and it will 
 be my endeavour, in the course of these remarks, to 
 examine how far such a principle is conducive to the 
 interests of the city of Dublin ; how far conducive to 
 all the other interests of this great empire. 
 
 Let us, my Lords, consider, first, what it is that the ge¬ 
 neral scheme of the bill proposes. In the first schedule 
 there are introduced eleven corporations : Dublin I am 
 concerned with; I hare nothing to do with the other cor¬ 
 porations ; still I cannot help adverting to them when 
 I am alluding to the case of Dublin, for Dublin is 
 scheduled with various other companions. It is in- 
 mated, if I may so express it; domiciled, if I may so 
 express it; householded, if I may so express it, with 
 ten other corporations. For the sake of argument I 
 am willing to grant the measure correct as to the other 
 ten in the first schedule ; but that is no reason—it 
 does not in the stightest degree tend to create any 
 thing like a reason why Dublin should share the same 
 fate as Belfast, Clonmel, Cork, Drogheda, Galway, 
 Kilkenny, Limerick, Londonderry, Sligo, and Water¬ 
 ford. Appearing here for the city of Dublin, as their 
 
12 
 
 individual counsel, I have nothing to do with the ship¬ 
 wreck which may be made of those bodies. Whether 
 they are swamped or sunk, or whether they have been 
 under water, and by some process come to life again, 
 it matters not. The other ten towns are nothing to 
 Dublin, and Dublin is nothing to them, save and so 
 far as they, being parts of Ireland and Great Bri¬ 
 tain, are anxious for the well-being of the community, 
 and therefore, for the preservation of the Dublin cor¬ 
 poration. Indeed, in one sense, I may assert, that the 
 case of Dublin is the case of every other corporation, 
 inasmuch, as it is made a model for the reform of every 
 other. Those who have been fortunate enough, after 
 days of labor, and weeks of labor, to understand this 
 bill, cannot fail to have seen that such is this case, 
 that is so far as any thing can be seen in the sort of 
 darkness visible suspended over the provisions of this 
 very unintelligible enactment. I cannot then separate 
 their case from that of Dublin, because they and Dub¬ 
 lin are in the same batch, in the same lot, members of 
 one class, so that, what is the fate of one, must be the 
 fate of all, and what is the fate of all, must be the fate 
 of one. 
 
 The whole intent, aim, and object of this bill, is the 
 spoliation and plunder of the property and rights of 
 these eleven corporations. Under the name of reform, 
 this, the real design is hidden. I say, disguise it as 
 they may, and as they seek to do, this is the meaning 
 
13 
 
 of the whole of the proposed changes; this the mean¬ 
 ing of abolishing the guild and freemen system ; this 
 the meaning of establishing the ten pound principle of 
 voting ; a principle which is now nearly a five pound 
 franchise ; nay, which I will engage to show may come 
 down to a five shilling principle of voting. I say, the 
 whole is one scheme of plunder, and lest the work of 
 destruction might not go on fast enough, a pauper con¬ 
 stituency, a constituency without any stake in the well¬ 
 being of the community ; a constituency not influenced 
 by that feeling which now operates on the guilds; that 
 feeling -which is far nobler and more beneficial than 
 self-interest; the feeling that their rights were inhe¬ 
 rited as a trust, a privilege, the highest of honors, and 
 as such, are again to be transmitted ; a constituency, 
 such as I have described, the mere excrescence, not 
 the natural or wholesome growth of the soil, are given 
 the whole power and authority ; a power and authority 
 arbitrary, uncontrolled, and oppressive beyond any 
 known to history. 
 
 The corporation of Dublin, as your Lordships are 
 very well aware, is a protestant corporation. I have 
 heard it objected that a protestant corporation is too 
 exclusive ; I shall by and by show that if exclusiveness 
 is the vice of the present corporation—and here I beg 
 it to be understood, that I do not undertake to argue 
 the abstract proposition, whether exclusiveness is a 
 vice or not—but taking for granted that it is, and that 
 
14 
 
 this is a valid objection to existing corporations, then 
 do I pledge myself to demonstrate clearly, and to the 
 conviction of all, that the proposed new corporation 
 will participate equally in that criminality. That part 
 of my argument, however, I beg leave for the present 
 to postpone. 
 
 * My Lords, the second schedule consists of thirty- 
 seven corporations; they are not all corporations ; 
 many of them are, but some are not. Such then as 
 are corporations in actual existence and operation, are 
 by this very strange, very anomalous, very unintelli¬ 
 gible bill, put into a most extraordinary predicament. 
 They are, pro hac vice , to be suppressed as corpora¬ 
 tions ; they are no longer to act; they are swamped— 
 but not for ever. They are indulged with the hope of 
 being hereafter revived; perhaps it is not correct to 
 borrow a religious term for a civil object, but there is 
 none in the whole language so well expresses the state 
 in which they are placed, as that so well known to 
 their new constituency—purgatory. They are then, 
 
 I say, put in purgatory ; not quite damned, but next 
 door to it; rather uncomfortable to be sure, but not 
 quite so wretched as they might be. On petition from 
 the majority of their inhabitants, when those inhabi¬ 
 tants once reach the number of three thousand, the 
 Queen is empowered to re-establish them according to 
 the Apollo Belvidere sort of model which the new 
 Dublin corporation is expected to present. So much 
 
15 
 
 for the second class. Then comes a schedule of 
 twenty corporations, finally, irrecoverably, for ever 
 abolished, cast down, or rather wholly expurgated 
 from the face of the earth. So that this reforming 
 measure ; this measure for the abolition of exclusive¬ 
 ness; this measure for the extension of municipal 
 advantages and privileges to as many as possible, ex¬ 
 terminates twenty ; consigns to a sort of existence, 
 neither life nor death, thirty-seven, and allows just 
 eleven to survive. But let us confine ourselves to these 
 eleven. Exclusiveness, we are told, is an odious, ex¬ 
 ecrable, rapidly to be swept away sort of thing. The 
 eleven corporations, as they now exist, are exclusive, 
 therefore, they must perish. Above all, the Dublin 
 corporation is exclusive. Let us see which will be 
 first, with pickaxe and spade, in the work of demoli¬ 
 tion. It is exclusively protestant! Can any thing be 
 more monstrous ! Two such evils in any one place ! 
 Two such hateful things combined, within one political 
 body ! Be it so, I will not dispute—I will not delay 
 my time or your Lordships, in considering this ques¬ 
 tion of exclusiveness ; how far it was beneficial, how 
 far it was necessary, demanded by the circumstances 
 of the times, and intended in their first constitution by 
 their founders. But I ask, if this same exclusiveness 
 be such a dreaded monster, how comes it we never 
 hear any indignation against it when practised by the 
 other side. All parties admit—I never met, I never 
 heard of any one who did not admit the new corpora- 
 
16 
 
 tion will be overwhelmingly popish. "Are we then to 
 conclude protestant exclusiveness an evil, and catho¬ 
 lic exclusiveness a blessing? It seems the sin of the 
 present corporations is not their exclusiveness but their 
 protestantism. The vice is not in the system, but in 
 the w T ay in which it operates. 
 
 My Lords, this may do for the vulgar, for the igno¬ 
 rant, for the deluded followers of democratical am¬ 
 bition, but only the last audacity could hope to palm 
 such sophistry on the peers of England. They—the 
 protectors, the appointed, sworn protectors of a pro¬ 
 testant church—the servants of a monarch, whose 
 crown was won for her family by that revolution 
 which England delights to honor with the lofty appel¬ 
 lation of glorious—they are required to condemn and 
 destroy the present constitution of the Dublin corpo¬ 
 ration, because its results are, that the mayor is pro¬ 
 testant, the aldermen are protestant, the common 
 councilmen are protestant, and at the same time that 
 you thus condemn the present, to approve and institute 
 in its room a system which will terminate in making 
 the mayor catholic, the aldermen catholic, the com¬ 
 mon councilmen catholic. 
 
 I 
 
 I have thus called your Lordships’ attention to the 
 ground whereon our opponents think themselves 
 strongest. I have shown you that their own assaults 
 recoil against themselves ; that what they pretend to 
 
27 
 
 deprecate they secretly desire. They simply desire to 
 alter the agents, not the system. And here it is, my 
 Lords, that I confess myself wholly unable to discover 
 on what reasons, or show of reasons, they hope to rest 
 their case. They have themselves confessed exclusive¬ 
 ness an evil. Its being a catholic exclusiveness can¬ 
 not render it less an evil. Certain I am, that there is 
 a principle in the English municipal bill which can be 
 so applied as to sanction these things ; certain I am 
 that this is not justice to Ireland. I say too, that 
 when no such results would, by any chance, flow from 
 the English franchise, as must inevitably from the same 
 in Ireland, it is absurd to argue from the one case to 
 the other. Exclusiveness could not arise in England ; 
 but it is the great calamity apprehended in Ireland. 
 What analogy is there then between the instances, and 
 why should Ireland be subjected to a system wholly 
 inapplicable merely because it has been adopted on 
 this side of the channel ? 
 
 Saying so much, then, on exclusiveness, and the 
 practice of such conduct by the framers of this bill, 
 I come now to call your Lordships’ attention to 
 another operation of this bill. The bill, as I before 
 stated, is drawn in such a manner, that many parts 
 are not quite intelligible ; and a most irksome work it 
 is to travel through its 158 pages, and 214 clauses ; but 
 whoever has not, at his own loss of time and great in¬ 
 convenience done so, will not understand its practical 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 operations. I must now beg your Lordships to look 
 at page thirteen; first, however, I should premise that, 
 on the abolition of the old corporate system, and con¬ 
 sidering the intent of the legislators, it is not unfair, 
 nor can we with justice object to their taking away the 
 election of the council by the guilds, and conferring 
 the right of voting on the ten pound or any other 
 householders. I say that, did this bill do no more 
 than alter so much of the constitution of those twenty- 
 five guilds as is necessary to accomplish the general 
 purpose of substituting the new corporation instead of 
 the old, I would not be justified in relying on this point. 
 But if your Lordships look for a moment to page thir¬ 
 teen, you will find that it proposes, “ that all the fran¬ 
 chises, rights, trusts, powers, authorities, properties, and 
 estates in the existing corporation shall be transferred 
 to the new corporation.” I was quite puzzled, when I 
 read over the bill, to understand how or why those 
 twenty-five guilds are to be suppressed. Why are 
 their properties—why are their halls, in which they 
 have their social parties, to be taken from them ? Why 
 should not these brother tradesmen continue to meet 
 together, just as the companies of London meet? And 
 here I must remark, how darkly, how subtilly all this 
 is done. There is no recital in the bill, nor any ex¬ 
 planation indicating it, until you call in the interpreta¬ 
 tion clause. This is a barbarous mode of legislation : 
 one can be thus declared to mean two; any evil can be 
 disguised; any injustice perpetrated under safe cover ; 
 
19 
 
 by it ail distinctions of sex and arithmetic are annihi¬ 
 lated; grammar mutilated, and language, deprived of 
 its meaning, stands aghast! Common sense bids the 
 scene perpetual adieu. But such as this bill is, come 
 we back to it, and in the present instance come we to 
 this same strange logic and reason-annihilating inter¬ 
 pretation clause ; and there I find, and there your 
 Lordships will probably be very much surprised to 
 find, that “corporate body” not only means a corpora¬ 
 tion, but that the corporate body of Dublin “ shall be 
 construed to include all guilds and fraternities of, 
 within, or connected with such corporate body.” Am 
 I not justified, my Lords, in repeating that every 
 clause, every provision, every definition of this bill is 
 a charade, an enigma, a conundrum, or a dark lantern, 
 which requires that you should read it and study it 
 most anxiously in order to arrive at its construction 
 and import. Now be it observed, that against these 
 guilds, thus abolished, thus deprived of their property, 
 and that in this secret, serpent-like, most Jesuitical 
 manner—against these most aggrieved bodies not one 
 syllable of evidence was received by the commission¬ 
 ers of corporation inquiry. I repeat, my Lords, that 
 shameful as is the fate to which they are doomed, the 
 mode in which it is to be inflicted, the poison hidden in 
 something apparently harmless, aggravates the pain 
 and the injustice also. 
 
 My Lords, I have alluded to the city of London : 
 
20 
 
 only fancy a bill in parliament to alter the constitution 
 of the corporation of London ; only fancy its compa¬ 
 nies used as the Irish guilds are in this bill; but, my 
 Lords, the London corporation is English, and the 
 Dublin Irish ; the one is on this, and the other on the 
 opposite side of St. George's Channel; one domiciled 
 on the Liffey, and the other on the Thames; and for 
 this, and for no better or other reason, the one is left 
 and the other taken away. Is it to be expected that 
 Ireland shall endure all this in silence and without 
 indignation. Disguise it, palliate it, invent any and 
 every plea, still must it be confessed this is gross injus¬ 
 tice. 
 
 My Lords, I will conclude what I have to say on 
 this subject by stating that the suppression of these 
 guilds is utterly unnecessary ; I do not mean the sup¬ 
 pression of their power as electors of the common 
 council, but I mean their suppression as bodies for 
 wholly different purposes ; no reason has been, or can 
 be' given, why their property should be handed over 
 to the hands of the spoiler—the very last destination 
 which those from whose munificence it was derived 
 would have wished it to reach. 
 
 Having given so many specimens of the language 
 and mode of legislation adopted in this bill, and of the 
 loose and improvident manner in which, as it appears 
 to me, this measure has been prepared; I will go on 
 
21 
 
 next to that which your Lordships will naturally look 
 at as one of the principal considerations connected 
 with this bill, namely, the principle of qualification. 
 Who is to elect the common council, the governing 
 body of the corporation, according to the model of the 
 present measure ? If your Lordships look to page 
 eighteen of this bill, you will find the qualification 
 stated. For three years the qualification is to be ten 
 pounds ; during the next three, any person occupy¬ 
 ing premises which are rated to the poor, will have a 
 vote for the municipal offices. The ten pound is sub¬ 
 ject to a deduction for landlords’ repairs, though I 
 am told (I never was in Ireland) that they never re¬ 
 pair houses, and for insurance against fire, insurance 
 being very uncommon. This statement, my Lords, 
 may be from my ignorance, but I am told that Irish 
 providence does not quite extend to those things; 
 however this may be, there is a reduction of £1 8s. for 
 repairs and insurance, so that in effect, the franchise 
 is reduced under the nominal sum of £10 to £8 12s.; 
 these being, as I have said, a subtraction for insurance 
 never made, and repairs never done ; however, my 
 Lords, let it be taken so. For three years the quali¬ 
 fication of those to elect the common council of the 
 metropolis of Ireland, is a bona fide qualification. I 
 will say a bona fide inhabitancy of a tenement worth 
 £8 10s. 
 
 That, my Lords is to last for three years, but w T hat 
 
22 
 
 is to become of it after three years ? Your Lordships 
 will permit me here to call to your recollection that 
 you are establishing a model corporation for Ireland ; 
 not only a model for the corporations comprised in 
 schedule A of the bill, but a model for any other cor¬ 
 porations which may be hereafter established in Ireland; 
 not only a principle for Dublin, but for the eleven 
 mentioned in the same schedule, and hereafter for any 
 corporations that at any time may be established. You 
 are laying down a principle on which not only you 
 are to establish corporations, but on which your chil¬ 
 dren and those who in future may preside over this 
 legislation are to establish corporations ; nay, on which 
 the crown is by implication bound to construct any 
 to which, under the provisions for the tow*us of the 
 third schedule, it may extend municipal privileges; on 
 no other footing, according to no other plan, is there 
 ever again to be a corporation in Ireland. And now, 
 my Lords, bearing this, which adds so much to the 
 weighty reflections connected with this bill, in mind, 
 what, I ask, what is to be the qualification after the 
 first three years have elapsed ? My Lords, it is no 
 small effort to steam through the clause at page eigh¬ 
 teen, so long is it and so confused, but if you continue 
 so to do, there you will find that after three years any 
 person in Dublin who has any property rateable under 
 the present poor law in Ireland; (the statute of the 1st 
 and 2nd of Her Majesty’s reign) any persons rateable 
 under the poor law in Ireland at any sum, whether at 
 
ten pounds or five pounds, or any definite sum in the 
 lowest scale of the divisibility of property, and rateabi- 
 lity following that divisibility, will become a burgess 
 of the city of Dublin. My Lords, I assert that to be 
 the meaning of the clause in page eighteen ; the 21st 
 clause of the bill, which refers to the Irish poor law 
 act of the 1st and 2nd of Her Majesty’s reign : it states 
 that persons so rateable shall be electors under this 
 new bill. Your Lordships are aware, those particu¬ 
 larly in this house who are either representatives from 
 the sister kingdom—a representation which I hope 
 will for ever continue, though there are those out of 
 this house who are actively engaged in endeavouring to 
 prevent its continuance—those representative peers 
 of Ireland and others, who from property and other 
 considerations, are locally acquainted with, and have 
 taken a part, in constructing the poor law bill, are 
 aware that, according to that bill, any property is rate¬ 
 able. It is true, that, in particular cases, there is a 
 liberty where the value is lower than five pounds, to 
 rate the landlord—and this mode is adopted in many 
 places in Ireland. But any person who has a right 
 to be rated under that statute will have a right to 
 vote ; and I again repeat, a man subject to the pay¬ 
 ment of the rate on a ten pound house, or a five pound 
 house, or the renter of a house worth five pounds, or 
 any sum to which the divisibility of property can re¬ 
 duce the scale, has a right to be rated the propor¬ 
 tion descending in the scale. Such is the necessary 
 
24 
 
 consequence of the clause to which I am now calling 
 your Lordships’ attention. Rateability and rating are 
 henceforth the sources of the elective franchise for the 
 election of the governing body of the city of Dublin. 
 
 I will not here detain your Lordships further 
 upon this subject, repeating that which 1 have 
 before said, and which I have done wdth great sin¬ 
 cerity, that I am making no statement which my 
 own industry does not enable me to be satisfied is 
 correct. I assert that to be the proposition of this 
 bill. But, my Lords, it does not end there. A 
 part of my labour has been to collate the Irish 
 Municipal Bill with the English Municipal Bill, in 
 order to see whether what is called equal justice to 
 Ireland is or not equal justice. I have looked at the 
 Municipal Bill for England, and I do not find in that 
 bill such clauses as I find in this bill. For the Eng¬ 
 lish contemplates a separate occupation and a separate 
 rating, whereas the fraternizing principle of this bill 
 says, you need not be rated separately; you may all 
 live together and still you shall have a vote. I do not 
 assert that there may not be cases in which joint 
 occupation may very properly give a joint right to 
 both occupants ; but I deny that it were wise to allow 
 it to do so in the case of properties of the most inferior 
 scale. If you look at this bill you will find two 
 clauses in it, (I would particularly direct your Lord- 
 ships’ attention to clause 36,) under which joint 
 
25 
 
 occupiers may claim to be rated, and under which 
 joint occupiers may say to the landlord, “ The poor 
 law act enables the commissioners to rate you to secure 
 the payment of the rate, but we, the tenants, will not 
 consent to your being rated, that is, according to the 
 theory of this bill.” I am not quarrelling with this 
 principle ; I am only showing how it operates, to let 
 in persons who have no property at all. With the 
 theory of this bill I am not disputing, if you choose to 
 follow it, and put it at the lowest scale of divisibility. 
 I am not quarrelling with the principle of those clauses 
 as applicable to the object of the bill. That object, it 
 is perfectly evident, is the creation of universal suffrage. 
 They may call it household suffrage; but I say that, 
 under this joint tenantcy clause, it becomes universal 
 suffrage. And is there one of your Lordships igno¬ 
 rant what is Irish universal suffrage ? I repeat, that it 
 is a most idle and vain thing to make distinctions 
 where no distinctions exist. It is preposterous to say 
 that, when the lowest degree of rating entitles to vote, 
 and that, no matter how many share in the ownership 
 or the habitancy of a house ever so low in the scale 
 of rating, all of them are to have votes—it is prepos¬ 
 terous to say this is not universal suffrage. 
 
 Pursuing the course of this bill, I shall next call 
 your Lordships’ attention to what the powers of the 
 lord mayor are to be. This lord mayor, as your 
 Lordships will find, is to be elected from the common 
 
 D 
 
26 
 
 councillors, which body of the common council are 
 to be composed according to the principle of house¬ 
 hold suffrage, or universal suffrage, to which I have 
 alluded. The lord mayor is to be the judge to decide 
 upon the rights of the freemen of Dublin. I need not 
 remind your Lordships that the freemen of Dublin, of 
 course, are deprived by this bill, as they must be for 
 municipal purposes, of any vote within the munici¬ 
 pality. They are not to have votes for the municipal 
 body unless they have property, but their parlia¬ 
 mentary franchise is preserved ; their parliamentary 
 franchise being an object, as it is obvious, perfectly 
 collateral to the municipal purposes of this bill. The 
 lord mayor of Dublin is constituted by this bill a sort 
 of court, with two assessors, and this court may insert 
 or expunge the names of any voters they think fit for 
 the first year after this bill has passed. During that 
 year there is to be a lawyer to assist the lord mayor. 
 After that year the lord mayor and the court of 
 assessors are to be the judges of votes and matters 
 belonging to their own judicium; not only matters 
 belonging to the government of the city, but also 
 judges of the parliamentary franchise. The bill 
 directs that the assessors are to have a qualification, 
 like that of the council, not over high—namely, being 
 domiciled in a tenement of twenty pounds a year. I 
 do not know how cheap houses are in Dublin. All I 
 know is, that inhabiting a house, and being rated at 
 twenty pounds a year, is all the qualification which 
 
21 
 
 is requisite for the lord mayor, for the council, or for 
 the assessors. They live probably, as our ancestors 
 did formerly, in houses not of very great elegance of 
 structure—a sort of primitive simplicity : patriots at 
 deal tables and on three-legged stools. Even so, 
 however, the rate is not as high as twenty pounds ; 
 for, deduct the repairs and insurance allowance, 
 and the rent of the house will be about eighteen 
 pounds a year. I shall say no more about it. It is 
 quite consistent with the principle of this bill—with 
 household suffrage amounting to universal suffrage. 
 When this is the case, what is the use of arguing the 
 matter ? The lower I show the amount of qualifica¬ 
 tion, the more I recommend the system to its advo¬ 
 cates. I only wonder they did not elect them by a 
 scale graduating down from beggary. Thus—the 
 lord mayor, neither shoes nor stockings ! the common 
 council, one shoe and one stocking !! Really a very 
 simple and admirable series of qualifications could be 
 made out thus. But to say no more of this, and 
 come to this court for trying the franchise. 
 
 This bill is to carry into effect good municipal 
 government in Ireland. It professes to say, “ Oh, 
 we have nothing to do with the parliamentary fran¬ 
 chise of the freemen.” The parliamentary franchise 
 is preserved to them. This bill affects to confirm and 
 re-establish to them the enjoyment of that privilege. 
 See, then, the very extraordinary manner it takes to 
 
28 
 
 bring about this professed preservation : neither more 
 nor less than subjecting the existing freemen to the 
 scrutiny and revisal of this very odd sort of a court; 
 giving a lord mayor and a barrister (very probably a 
 briefless one) for the first year power, and after the first 
 year the lord mayor and two assessors, whom from 
 their qualification we will call eighteen-pounders, 
 powers, absolute power to batter down the citadel of 
 the freemen’s parliamentary franchise. Yes, my 
 Lords, the eighteen pound a year gentry are to revise, 
 supervise, expunge from, insert in, play what fantastic 
 tricks they like with the roll of freemen entitled 
 to vote for members of parliament. Oh, most fran¬ 
 chise-preserving, franchise-confirming, franchise-re¬ 
 establishing bill! ! 
 
 Can there be any doubt of the wisdom of these 
 sapient assessors ? Can any man doubt that, in these 
 eighteen pound dwellings, they have learned content¬ 
 ment, impartiality and independence ? So rich, what 
 can ever induce them to sigh for more, or covet their 
 neighbour’s goods ! so noble of soul, no privilege could 
 awaken their envy! But I am not done with these 
 assessors: I must take you to another part of this bill 
 relating to them, and there I find, “that as soon after 
 his election as conveniently may be, the assessor is 
 empowered to appoint under his hand a deputy to act 
 for him in case of his illness or incapacity to act at 
 any election, or any revision of the burgess lists. And 
 
29 
 
 every such appointment shall be signified by him in 
 writing, under his hand, to the council.” So then the 
 court is to consist of the lord mayor and two assessors. 
 But directly the assessor is appointed, he may be ill, 
 or imagine himself ill, or imagine he w r ill be ill, or > 
 sham to be ill, and then this eighteen pound a year 
 enjoying, independent-minded and franchise-preserv¬ 
 ing assessor, non academicoram , sends in his name 
 to the bursar, or dean, or what you will, and so down 
 walks a deputy, who again may grow ill at the sight 
 of franchise revision and supervision. Oh, admira¬ 
 ble, impartial, well-chosen court, to revise the parlia¬ 
 mentary franchise ! 
 
 This is the way I understand these clauses. But 
 indeed it were no wonder if I err altogether ; for one 
 part of this bill batters down another, and its graces, 
 and its structure, and its whole tenor and composition, 
 are such, that no man after any labour can tell whe¬ 
 ther he perfectly understands its operation or not. 
 However, as I take it, and as far as I can see, the 
 two assessors are cyphers. One of them says to the 
 lord mayor, “ I shall be ill.” “ When will you be 
 ill ?” “ I cannot tell. I will be ill, may be, next 
 
 week—but any time your lordship likes.” Now I 
 ought to observe that in the Anglo-Irish language 
 the distinction between shall and will is not perfectly 
 observed. There is a beautiful convertibility between 
 them to their apprehensions, and so with several such 
 
 \ 
 
30 
 
 like shalls and wills—simpering and sighing, sighing 
 and simpering, “ When shall we three meet again !*’ 
 the two assessors grow actually sick-sick of looking 
 at the mangled remains of freemen’s votes, sick of 
 trouble, sick of tearing conscience, and their various 
 misdoings, and forthwith they write out two proxies, 
 and down come two deputies, to go through the same 
 process of shall and will, mangling and sickening, 
 departing, resigning, and proxying again. 
 
 My Lords, I point out this among many others as 
 a specimen, an admirable specimen, in the frame and 
 texture of this bill—a limb of this Apollo-Belvidere 
 model. I have been told if a man were rejected 
 unjustly, he may have a mandamus in the Queen’s 
 Bench to be admitted ; but I have looked to this bill 
 with much labour, and others have looked at it with 
 some labour, and I am strongly of opinion, and they 
 agree with me, that under this very extraordinary 
 bill, the lord mayor, and the two assessors, or the 
 two deputies, or the two deputies’ deputies, have 
 absolute power and are sole judges of the right 
 of admission. For by a clause, which your Lord- 
 ships will find in a subsequent part of this bill, 
 namely, the mandamus clause, at page 30—though 
 a mandamus is competent to any of the courts of law 
 to compel a man to be admitted whom this lord mayor 
 with his sham assessors has rejected, or a man whom 
 the lord mayor with his sham assessors has expunged 
 
31 
 
 from the list—though I say this bill does give to him 
 a right of application to the common law courts for a 
 mandamus to be admitted, there is another mode 
 of fraud besides that of expunging, namely, by putting 
 on persons who have no right to vote at all, and by 
 putting on non-electors ; and when I read this bill, if 
 I were called upon as a lawyer to give an opinion 
 whether it was in the power of the Court of Queen’s 
 Bench in Ireland, upon a quo warranto , to take a 
 man off the list who was surreptitiously put upon it, 
 
 I should have great hesitation in saying whether I 
 thought the common law left them that power or not. 
 However in this bill that question is left in a state of 
 uncertainty in which it ought not to be. According 
 to my construction of this bill, the lord mayor would 
 have a right to admit upon the list, with these asses¬ 
 sors present or absent, a person without any title to 
 vote at all; and when admitted, a quo warranto 
 would not enable the courts of law to strike him 
 off. I will not, as a lawyer, pledge myself that 
 that is the construction of the bill, but I think 
 it is a construction that can justly be given it. 
 May I direct your Lordships’ attention to the fol¬ 
 lowing clause in page thirty, which I will read— 
 u That after the passing of this act every application 
 to the Court of Queen’s Bench in Ireland, for the pur¬ 
 pose of calling upon any person to shew by what 
 warrant he claims to exercise the office of mayor, 
 alderman, or councillor in any borough, shall be made 
 
32 
 
 before the end of the term following next but one 
 after the election of the person against whom such 
 application shall be directed.” It there seems by im¬ 
 plication admitted that a man corruptly and unduly 
 admitted, has no right to apply for a quo warranto. I 
 have pointed out to your Lordships what, in my opi¬ 
 nion, is the necessary construction of the act. I ven¬ 
 ture to state (and others have agreed with me,) that as 
 this bill stands, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, with or 
 without those coadjutors, is constituted an arbitrary 
 court from whose decision no appeal rests in the case 
 of his undue admission of electors, though there is a 
 court of appeal for the undue rejection of any. 
 
 Now, my Lords, going on with the rest of this bill, 
 it professes to contain a great many clauses that are 
 drawn from the model of our own municipal bill, and 
 among the rest, it contains a clause with respect to the 
 offices and salaries. They are to appoint officers with 
 salaries ; there is a power to remove every officer in the 
 city of Dublin, and to give him compensation ; there 
 is a power in the bill to create new officers, and the 
 language of it is, that they are not to create new officers, 
 “ not usual in the corporation .” A very strange phrase 
 that, “ not usual.” According to my interpretation 
 under those words, they may abolish the offices which 
 exist, and appoint other offices of a similar description. 
 If they appoint offices in breach of what is called 
 “ usual offices,” the Lord Lieutenant has the power 
 
33 
 
 to check them ; but I apprehend no man would be 
 bold enough to assign to the word “ usual’’ that per¬ 
 fect and distinct meaning which is to take away from 
 it a discretionary character. 
 
 But, my Lords, be that as it may, there are in the 
 corporation of Dublin various offices, to the amount 
 of forty or fifty ; and there are various other persons 
 who are employed as collectors, and in the lower 
 mechanical and executive departments of the corpo¬ 
 ration, to the amount of upwards of 300. This large 
 body of persons “ employed,” to use a common term, 
 under the corporation, may be by this bill suppressed, 
 every one, and being suppressed, the officers may be, 
 as I shall presently point out to your Lordships, 
 peopled by the substitution of Romanists in every 
 office. In other words, every officer in that city— 
 every man from the highest to the lowest—the Recorder 
 alone being excepted ; with his single exception, every 
 person in every office, in every situation or employ¬ 
 ment by the city of Dublin, is removable under the 
 effect of this bill. 
 
 My Lords, I now call your Lordships’ attention to 
 some other clauses in the bill. There is in this bill 
 the preservation of the catholic oath, the consideration 
 of which I beg leave to reserve to future consideration. 
 
 I wish at present to put you in possession of the prac¬ 
 tical machinery of the bill, as far as it relates to the 
 
 E 
 
34 
 
 mode of election to the common council, and as far 
 as the bill relates to the popular and executive ma¬ 
 nagement which that common council may carry on. 
 Now, my Lords, following up that, I shall call your 
 attention next to the taxation clause. I have discussed 
 at length the principle of the elective clause, and I 
 have now to call your Lordships’ attention to the prin¬ 
 ciple of the taxation clause. Your Lordships will 
 find, if you will have the goodness to look at the 
 clause in page 77 of the bill, that if any further sum 
 is wanted in the corporation of Dublin, after they have 
 employed the corporate funds that belong to it, they 
 are invested, by the clause at page 77 of the bill, with 
 the power of taxation. The clause, my Lords, is 135 
 of this bill. By the taxation clause, in addition to the 
 funds of the borough, if those funds of the borough 
 are not sufficient to carry into effect what are called 
 “ the provisions of the act,” (and it is left to the 
 arbitrement of the new corporation to say what “ the 
 provisions of the act” are,) this body is invested with 
 the power of taxation ; that power of taxation being 
 borrowed from the 9th of George IV., which was the 
 act under which the commissioners of paving and 
 lighting were enabled to make rates; and by the 
 words, as your Lordships will see upon reading the 
 clause, they are to have all the powers of the com¬ 
 missioners under the 9th of George IV. In other 
 words, if the borough funds are not sufficient, they 
 are invested with a power like what the Chancellor of 
 
35 
 
 the Exchequer might have in this country, peradven- 
 ture something larger, of putting a tax upon the 
 inhabitants within the municipality of Dublin, accord¬ 
 ing to the provisions of the act. 
 
 Now, my Lords, without troubling you with goiug 
 through the clauses, which would be a waste of your 
 Lordships’ time, I will shortly state to you what the 
 result of that act is. Under that act, property which 
 is under five pounds pays sixpence in the pound, that 
 is, two aud a half per cent. ; property between five 
 pounds and ten pounds pays nine pence, which is three 
 quarters of five per cent.; and property which is above 
 ten pounds pays one shilling, which is five per cent. 
 Those are the powers which the common council of 
 the city of Dublin are to have; that common council 
 being elected in this manner—every person who pays 
 any sum, according to arithmetical divisibility of num¬ 
 bers, or the physical divisibility of property, having 
 a vote to the common council ; and this body, so 
 elected, are, if more money is wanted in Dublin, to 
 have these powers of taxation. 
 
 Duke of Wellington —What clause is that in 
 the bill ? 
 
 Sir Charles Wetherell— That is, my Lord, the 
 taxation clause, page 77—it is clause 135. There are 
 
36 
 
 some copies which have it clause 134, and others 
 which have it clause 135—mine is clause 135. 
 
 Now, my Lords, this is indeed a tremendous power 
 of taxation. I have before stated to your Lordships 
 the reserve which I wish to put, and which I am 
 bound, out of respect to your Lordships, to put upon 
 myself in making this statement; but, unless I very 
 much err, there are upon the table of this house 
 documents w T hich shew what is the rateable property 
 of all Dublin. There is Mr. Sherrard’s valuation, 
 which puts it, as I am told, at the very low estimate 
 of <£704,000 a year. Now, five per cent, upon 
 £704,000 a year, would be £35,000 a year. The 
 power which they have given to them here would not 
 be a complete levy upon that £704,000, because all 
 the property is not taxed at a shilling in the pound. 
 There is five per cent, to be charged upon the valu¬ 
 able property ; the property from ten pounds to five 
 pounds is to an inconsiderable amount, and is hardly 
 worth mentioning ; and that property which is to pay 
 six pence, is hardly worth mentioning. The substan¬ 
 tial property upon which this taxation is to operate, is 
 obviously that w hich is of the value of ten pounds and 
 upwards. This council of Dublin is to be constituted 
 upon the principle of household suffrage, or rather, 
 as I have before shown, of universal suffrage; and in 
 men so elected you, by this bill, are to repose an 
 
87 
 
 unlimited power of taxation. The body elected by 
 those who pay scarcely any thing, are to be empowered 
 to tax those who are to pay every thing. 
 
 I say, my Lords, this is a principle unknown in the 
 history of this constitution, unkown in the history of 
 any constitution which professes to proceed upon prin¬ 
 ciples of justice. For it cannot be justice, or based on 
 principles of justice, if you ascribe to numbers the 
 whole civil power of the country; and yet that is what 
 you are now called upon to do, and to do in the metro¬ 
 polis of Ireland, the place which is to become a model 
 for all the corporations in Ireland, which are now 
 allowed to exist, or which the Queen is hereafter to 
 constitute. Here I say it is that you are to enact, 
 and if you pass this bill, will enact, that a body who 
 
 i 
 
 pay nothing shall constitute the taxators of the city, 
 accordingto their own undefined and undefinable notion 
 of what is necessary for corporate purposes, levying 
 on the people of Dublin a tax, which, upon the lowest 
 estimate, would be £100,000. What could be more 
 despotic ? 
 
 I beg to ask your Lordships, is this “justice to Ire¬ 
 land ?” It may be justice to its oppressors ; it may 
 be justice to a faction ; it may be justice to those who 
 claim to themselves the domination of Ireland upon 
 the element of numbers; but the British constitution 
 says that the element of numbers is not the sole source 
 
 
38 
 
 of power ; that property is to be mixed with numbers ; 
 that many other considerations are mixed with num¬ 
 bers ; and that the element of government in this realm, 
 whether parliamentary or municipal, is not the sole 
 unsophisticated simple element of numbers. My Lords, 
 I assert that I have stated to you enough to shew that 
 this is not “justice to Ireland.” What is it, my 
 Lords, that has been the constant struggle of this 
 country in all time and in every age ? What is it, that 
 from the very dawn of the British constitution, has 
 been the struggle ? It has been to prevent numbers 
 as numbers, and democracy as democracy, from being 
 the sole and single source of municipal and parlia¬ 
 mentary authority. My Lords, I have been surprised 
 when I have looked at this bill to find such clauses in 
 it, and it is not till after much consideration that I 
 feel I have ascribed to these clauses their true and 
 correct operation. If I have not done so, I beg to call 
 in aid again the apology I before alluded to, that it is 
 from defective opportunities that I have come to this 
 conclusion. 
 
 Now, my Lords, going on with this bill, which as I 
 before said, is throughout the whole of it difficult to 
 understand; if I look at the next clause, I find that the 
 very marginal note is an ignis fatuus to deceive the 
 reader. The marginal note, generally speaking, indi¬ 
 cates the contents of the corresponding clause. But 
 when I look at the marginal note of the next clause, 
 
ill page seventy-eight, your Lordships will find this, 
 
 “ Appeal to the Recorder or Assistant Barrister of the 
 county.” Now let us see what sort of an appeal this 
 is ; your Lordships would suppose that the Recorder 
 of Dublin was to sanction this taxation which is to 
 raise a sum of £100,000, and to prevent a profligate 
 use of the money. No such thing, my Lords ; there 
 is no appeal from our good friends, the council of 
 Dublin ; no appeal from their judgment or discretion. 
 The appeal to the Recorder is only to see that the 
 assessment may be properly made. Now, my Lords, 
 in reading bills as they are passed, when I had the 
 honor of sitting elsewhere, the mode was this—The 
 marginal note was read, “ Appeal to the Recorder or 
 Assistant Barrister,” and the ayes said “yes,” and 
 the others “ no,” and so they turned over without 
 reading the clause. Every body would suppose from 
 this note, that there was to be in some way or other a 
 check to prevent those persons oppressively using or 
 scandalously abusing the power of raising money for 
 their own corporate purposes, and that the Recorder 
 was to check the power of profligate taxation. No, 
 the Recorder is not only not to prevent it, but he is to 
 take care that the tax is properly made, that the taxa¬ 
 tion upon the shilling, the nine pence, and the six pence 
 payers, is properly made. 
 
 My Lords, upon that subject I will trouble you no 
 further. There is, however, one thing which I do not 
 
40 
 
 wish to omit—there is a clause that requires an account 
 of their expenditure to be sent to the Lord Lieutenant; 
 he has no power to prevent the exercise of this colla¬ 
 teral power; no power to say “ Gentlemen you have 
 employed your funds improperly, and I do not think 
 it right that you should raise money to expend in this 
 manner.” This bill, my Lords, is skilfully framed; 
 the Lord Lieutenant has power where he ought not to 
 have it, but where he ought to have it, he has none. 
 There is an account of the expenditure to be laid 
 before the Lord Lieutenant in such manner as he shall 
 think fit, and then there is another clause which, 
 strangely as it appears to me, I must own makes the 
 Lord Lieutenant a sort of party to the corporate expen¬ 
 diture. I may be wrong in discussing here the princi¬ 
 ple in the abstract; but that the government should be 
 made a party to the expenditure of property appears to 
 me to be a principle utterly inconsistent with any cor¬ 
 porate principle heretofore established, and quite incon- 
 sistentwith that character which originally belonged to 
 corporations. This bill appears to me to put the cor¬ 
 poration of Dublin in a situation perfectly new in the 
 history of our municipal institutions. There was 
 never such a thing heard of as a corporate body laying 
 upon the table of the Houses of Parliament their annual 
 expenditure, and the object is to bring the government 
 or the party in the state, (I am not using the word 
 party in any offensive sense,) making them privy to the 
 expenditure of every twenty or thirty pounds by the 
 
I 
 
 41 
 
 corporation. It is a principle exposed on all sides to 
 great inconvenience, if not great mischief; it does not 
 check wasteful expenditure, and yet it involves the 
 Lord Lieutenant in giving his sanction to an improper 
 expenditure of money. I would ask those who call it 
 “justice to Ireland,” to give me the model of such 
 things in England. 
 
 Well, my Lords, there is here again in this bill—I 
 fancy I am reading in every part of it a kind of 
 enigma, which I have to solve to know what the 
 meaning of it is—there is here a clause, which directs 
 the accounts to be laid before the Lord Lieutenant; 
 to do what? To lay them before parliament. It 
 appears to me, my Lords, I can only offer my own 
 very humble judgment upon this occasion, that this 
 clause is again open to objection. The accounts of 
 the expenditure of the city of Dublin are first to be 
 sent to the Lord Lieutenant, who, of course, however 
 occupied he may be, if he is to do anything at all, is 
 to exercise a judgment upon them ; a thing, as I have 
 already said, novel and highly objectionable, utterly 
 unprecedented, and inconsistent with the exercise of 
 the fair, sound, independent judgment which ought to 
 belong to any corporate body ; seeing that if you 
 cannot trust them with any degree of discretion, they 
 ought not to be constituted at all. Trust, confidence, 
 is the principle of other corporations—it is the ground 
 on which they rest; but this bill has its sham checks, 
 
 F 
 
42 
 
 and ideal protections, and sophistications, to guard 
 against corporation abuse ; it, in effect, pronounces the 
 corporation unworthy to be left to itself, and leaves 
 us the pleasant sensation that no preventive is by it 
 devised to prevent malpractices on the part of a body 
 so corrupt. When the Lord Lieutenant has got these 
 accounts, he is to send abstracts of them to be laid 
 before both houses of parliament. Those general heads 
 will disclose nothing at all, and parliament not be a 
 whit the wiser. How could it possibly know, looking 
 at general heads, whether any of the component parts, 
 or any one component part of the expenditure, nay, 
 whether any one item of the total was duly and pro¬ 
 perly expended ? and yet, all this arbitrary, intolera¬ 
 ble power of taxing, is committed to the town council 
 of Dublin—to a body the bill itself teaches us to 
 distrust. 
 
 My Lords, I have, in calling your attention to these 
 clauses, adverted to those points which constitute the 
 main and principal hinges upon which those corpora¬ 
 tions are to turn : I hope that I have made good ground 
 to ask your Lordships whether it is consonant to any 
 principle of the British constitution that such a bill 
 should pass in the state, and of the character, in which 
 this has been proposed to your house. 
 
 But, my Lords, there are other clauses of the bill 
 of no less importance; I allude to the clause of internal 
 
43 
 
 government, upon which I have not heretofore touched. 
 The clause of internal government, in legal language, 
 is designated under the term of making bye-laws. 
 This clause I beg leave to call your Lordships’ atten¬ 
 tion to. Now, my Lords, in discussing this question, 
 I desire to adopt the same course as I have relative to 
 the other clauses, that is, to consider it side by side 
 with our own municipal bill. There is in our muni¬ 
 cipal bill undoubtedly a power to make bye-laws, and 
 that power is to be exercised by the corporations, 
 subject to the approval of the Secretary of State. 
 
 My Lords, it is true that in page 74 there is pro¬ 
 posed something in analogy to this. It is left to the 
 Lord Lieutenant to approve or disapprove ; and per¬ 
 haps it may be said that this submitting to the Lord Lieu¬ 
 tenant the approval of the bye-laws of the corporation 
 of Dublin, for the internal regulation of that place, is 
 analogous to the rule in our own municipal act, that 
 they shall be submitted to the Secretary of State. I 
 must say, that I do not think they are exactly the 
 same; but whether the same or not, let us advert to 
 the state of Dublin. In the English municipal bill, 
 of which I shall only say, that it was passed in a mo¬ 
 ment of patriotic feeling, that it would be useful to the 
 country ; was passed in haste, when all its clauses 
 could not be dispassionately and accurately examined: 
 certainly there is such a clause; but as certainly, 
 however, it was a great infringement upon the ancient 
 
 \ 
 
44 
 
 constitution of the realm. Never before it was any 
 body, elected as corporations are, permitted so uncon¬ 
 trolled to call any thing a nuisance they thought fit— 
 to order, to prohibit, to do, or to undo ; and all this, 
 with the right to enforce their tyranny by a fine of 
 five pounds. I say, in the history of this constitution 
 this was utterly unheard of, up to the day our own 
 municipal bill passed. Still it was thought fit the 
 Secretary of State should have an interference, and 
 thus both the executive council of the borough and 
 the government were combined as the legislators 
 respecting said nuisance. Even so, however, it was 
 monstrous to give such powers, so enforced ; powers 
 which no corporation ever had—which no magistrate 
 ever had, except under the circumstances of crime 
 designated by act of parliament—a power which even 
 no court of law ever had. I admit then, my Lords, 
 that the clause in the bill lying upon your Lordships’ 
 table has its precedent in a similar clause in our own 
 municipal bill; but I maintain that is no reason why 
 it should be followed, unless exigency requires that it 
 should. And if it turns out, as I shall demon¬ 
 strate to your Lordships, that that power, given in our 
 own municipal bill, could be applied in Ireland for the 
 purpose of religious distinction—for the purpose of 
 political parties—for the purpose of giving domination 
 to one party, and annihilating and putting down the 
 other—it will be bad logic, bad reason, and bad sense, 
 to say that because such a clause might be fair and 
 
46 
 
 proper in Bristol or in Liverpool—that because, con¬ 
 sidering the state of those cities, it could not be 
 tyrannically used there; that, therefore, it could not 
 be used with oppression in a different kingdom, under 
 totally different circumstances. There exists in Ire¬ 
 land what, thank God, we have not, not only a differ¬ 
 ence in political and party feelings, but a wide and 
 ever irreconcileable difference on religious subjects. 
 
 I say that this power of declaring what they choose a 
 nuisance may extend to religious subjects, and the 
 day may come when a Romanist corporation will call 
 a scriptural controversy, or a protestant religious 
 society, a nuisance, and prohibit them, under a penalty 
 of five pounds, or ten pounds, on each individual at¬ 
 tending them. 
 
 Now, my Lords, having pointed out, and I presume 
 to think, not unfairly pointed out, what is to be the 
 substituted government of the metropolis of Ireland 
 for that which at present exists—may we not, in all 
 candour, and with all justice, ask the question, why 
 is the existing dynasty to be overthrown in order to 
 make room for that which is to come. When our own 
 municipal bill was in agitation, your Lordships were 
 troubled with a thing called a report; and I say a 
 thing called a report, because it was any thing but a 
 fair report; and your Lordships accordingly examined 
 witnesses at the bar of this house. I will not appeal 
 to a number of noble lords who were present when 
 
 » 
 
46 
 
 our bill was passed upon that subject, but I have made 
 it my labor to look through the report as it applies to 
 the city of Dublin, to know what are the charges 
 against them; what are their malversations, their 
 abuses, their improper application of corporate funds, 
 or undue exercise of powers ; what are the civil delin¬ 
 quencies which they have committed, and which are 
 to be visited upon them by the forfeiture of their exist¬ 
 ing government and the substitution of a new one. 
 My Lords, no doubt, some of you have tried to go 
 through the labor of reading volumes, the sight of 
 which is almost a headache, upon the subject of these 
 Irish reports. I have had a headache or two myself 
 in reading through them ; but, my Lords, I say that 
 in them I have seen, and you can see, nothing justi¬ 
 ficatory of these extraordinary proceedings. You will 
 see that the paving board, the police board, the wide- 
 street improvement board, are wholly independent of the 
 corporation; and hard, very hard, indeed, would it be 
 if their doings or misdoings were laid upon the corpo¬ 
 ration of Dublin, having neither act, nor part, nor let 
 in the matter. In short it does so happen, and I press 
 this upon the attention of your Lordships, that in Dub¬ 
 lin the corporate body have less of incidental duties to 
 perform than belong to most corporations. For which 
 paving, lighting, the regulation of the streets and har¬ 
 bour are generally entrusted to, and discharged by, the 
 corporation, and vested in the corporate body; in 
 Dublin they are vested in collateral bodies named by 
 
47 
 
 the government, or by act of parliament. The corpo¬ 
 ration have nothing to say to them in their corporate 
 capacity. My Lords, I have looked through the re¬ 
 port with some diligence to see what are the charges 
 against the corporation of Dublin ; I have not found 
 them out; I do not know whether the evidence is 
 printed or not; I would read it over if I had it; some¬ 
 what indeed has come forth : the corporation, it is 
 said, is in debt; it so happens, that about twenty years 
 ago, one of the aldermen was a defaulter, and the cor¬ 
 poration lost £20,000 ; but the report, instead of cen¬ 
 suring the corporation for not taking care of the 
 funds, says this, “ that within the memory of man no 
 lease or grant has been improperly made, and no pro¬ 
 perty has been misapplied.” My Lords, this is im¬ 
 portant, this is irrefutable evidence coming from men 
 appointed to find faults and spy out deficiencies ; from 
 men who panted for accusation, embraced the slan¬ 
 derer, and believed any and every liar, so he did but 
 revile. 
 
 Again I press this upon your Lordships. In our 
 municipal corporations, some applied their funds to 
 party purposes, for electioneering purposes. There 
 is not a syllable of that in this case ; in truth, though 
 I labored to find out in the report the gravamen upon 
 which they are to be disfranchised, I have not been 
 able to do so. My Lords, there is but one, there can 
 be but one—any one who has read the report knows 
 
48 
 
 that for all these sweeping charges, for plunder, spoli¬ 
 ation, transferences, what you will—there is but one 
 reason—that the corporation of Dublin is protestant. 
 
 My Lords, I beg here to read a striking passage— 
 “ The grants in perpetuity and for long terms of years 
 are of ancient date ; none are known to have been 
 made within the memory of any person living. The 
 persons now holding under the corporation have valu¬ 
 able properties in them.” Then it says “ The present 
 treasurer stated that in twenty years the property 
 would be worth £50,000 a year.” 
 
 Now r , my Lords, the point into which the question 
 before your Lordships will ultimately resolve itself is, 
 the question of the protestantism of the corporation. 
 The present corporation is exclusive, and the new one 
 will be exclusive. The question then, I say, is not 
 wdiether you will have an exclusive or an open corpo¬ 
 ration, but whether you will have an exclusively pro¬ 
 testant or an exclusively catholic corporation. This 
 question, my Lords, is to be debated in a country 
 where the church is protestant, the Queen protestant, 
 the constitution protestant. 
 
 My Lords, I will not charge myself with stating 
 what is the proportion between catholic and protestant 
 property in Dublin, but, unless I very much err, the 
 proportion is nine or ten to one in favor of protes- 
 
49 
 
 tantism. It may turn out, and probably will turn out, 
 that there are documents upon the table of this house 
 from which that conclusion may be deduced, but a 
 direct census or estimate, in that precise and specific 
 shape, I believe does not exist; but I state that to be 
 the ratio, and I believe it is perfectly correct. My 
 Lords, I say that if the objection is, that the govern¬ 
 ment of this corporation is exclusively protestant, the 
 change proposed will tend to establish it hereafter 
 upon the mere basis of numbers, and not on the basis 
 of numbers and property combined, 
 
 Now I must here trouble your Lordships, and I 
 will do it very shortly, with stating what the religion 
 of the majority is, and the religion of the minority, 
 according to a paper which I believe has been printed 
 and put upon your Lordships’ table, namely, the 
 estimate of houses—Mr. Hamilton’s estimate. You 
 will find that the protestant houses, even supposing 
 the houses alone were rated, without taking in the 
 infinite divisibility of houses I have already explained — 
 I say you will find the rate of houses, without letting 
 in all that influx of rateable persons which I before 
 alluded to, gives a ratio of two to one in favor of the 
 catholics. If your Lordships will look at some cal¬ 
 culations which I have, of the guardians of the poor, 
 who are to be the main engines of carrying this into 
 effect—who are to appoint valuators fairly to rate the 
 property—you will find that of this number not two to 
 
 G 
 
50 
 
 one, but a number nearly approaching three to one, 
 are members of the catholic religion. My Lords, 
 those are facts which I cannot but think deserve your 
 Lordships’ particular attention. I have seen a 
 census—I do not know whether it is the paper lying 
 upon the table of this house—authenticated, in which, 
 according to its estimate, the catholic population, 
 taking them as composed of the body I have men¬ 
 tioned, without regard to property, is certainly more 
 than two to one. 
 
 My Lords, what is the consequence of all this? 
 Why, my Lords, the consequence of all this is, that 
 those who are to compose the council of this town, if 
 you take it upon the basis of numbers in any way 
 taken, and I have tried it in several, in which the 
 elective franchise might be put upon the basis of 
 rateable property, that rateability descending to the 
 lowest scale, there is no mode of rating in which, 
 putting it at the lowest and at the least, the catholic 
 ascendancy is notwithstanding in the proportion of 
 two to one. My Lords, I may be wrong in that ; if I 
 am, I must again resort to what I have stated—I am 
 unintentionally wrong, but I feel I am perfectly con¬ 
 fident in putting it upon that ground ; but your Lord- 
 ships are to look at that proposition. 
 
 Now, my Lords, the poor law act gives property 
 some weight. A man has a number of votes propor- 
 
51 
 
 tioned to his property, and yet the votes are twenty- 
 five to eight in favour of the catholics. These are 
 serious facts, and deserve the deepest thought and 
 reflection—at least so it seems to me. 
 
 My Lords, examine the poor law election lists, 
 where property has some weight, and yet overwhelm¬ 
 ingly catholic, and then tell me whether, under the sys¬ 
 tem proposed in this bill—a system where property has 
 no weight—there ever would be a single protestant 
 returned as a member of the common council of 
 Dublin. I assert, that if this bill passes, you are put¬ 
 ting into the hands of persons, to whom you ought not 
 to give any such franchise, a power of exclusion quite 
 commensurate with that which at present exists in the 
 protestant body; and I will not repeat what I have 
 before taken the liberty of stating, that if the object 
 of this bill is to combine together a reasonable pro¬ 
 portion between the two contending parties, protestant 
 and catholic, the notion is delusive and absurd. 
 
 My Lords, you should bear in mind that this bill, 
 which you are to pass, professes in its preamble, to 
 establish a peaceable and quiet government for the 
 towns ; these are the very words. Your Lordships see 
 
 how admirably it effects it. It crushes protestantism, 
 gives popery a complete ascendant, and then, amid the 
 
 silence and waste of an ascendantand unresisted despot¬ 
 ism, cries, “peace and good government.” Protestant- 
 
52 
 
 ism is to be swept away. But one home for it is to remain 
 —how long, God only knows—I mean the university of 
 Dublin. That body, from its constitution, must be 
 protestant; but if this bill passes, according to my 
 calculations and data—if they are wrong my argument 
 upon it is w’rong—but I never felt more confident in 
 an argument which I had the honor to urge any where, 
 than in stating that according to this bill, taking it 
 even upon the ten pounds voting, which is eight pound 
 ten shillings; or taking it upon that rate of voting 
 which is to be substituted after three years; taking it 
 as it operates at present, or taking it as it is to operate 
 in future; from the moment it passes, and comes into 
 effect, in the month of October next, the period will 
 not be long until the corporation of the university of 
 Dublin itself will begin to shake, and the terrors of 
 popery, triumphant in the city, will try what they can 
 do in the college, and for the destruction of its pro- 
 testantism. 
 
 My Lords, looking at the operation of this bill in 
 that view of it, your Lordships are put by this bill in 
 a situation, in my opinion, of very tremendous diffi¬ 
 culty. There was a time, undoubtedly, when in 
 Ireland every protestant corporation was suppressed— 
 the year 1686. The Lord Lieutenant (Tyrconnell) 
 confiscated or suppressed every protestant corporation, 
 and substituted new charters, and a year after that 
 Catholicism ceased to reign. Those events took place 
 
53 
 
 in Ireland in the years 1686 and 1687. The events of 
 the year 1688, it will be quite superfluous to repeat. 
 Now, my Lords, I will ask no man’s motives, or what 
 he means to do in putting down the protestant insti¬ 
 tutions ; I will ask of no government what they mean 
 by it; I will ask of no men what they mean by it; but 
 I have a right to the fact, and the fact is, that you are 
 putting Ireland at the present moment in the same 
 situation as it stood in the year 1687. Of the corpo¬ 
 rations that are mentioned in the first schedule, there 
 is Londonderry, which I believe from its constitution, 
 not from its charter, will be protestant; and there is 
 Belfast, which is rather desirous of not being swamped 
 by this bill. Belfast, I understand, is rather desirous 
 of being scheduled in the next schedule, or, in other 
 words, relieved from the domination of the present 
 bill; but I assert, I confidently assert before your 
 Lordships, that, if this bill is passed, Ireland will be, 
 in the year 1840, in exactly the same predicament as it 
 was placed in the year 1687, before the glorious revo¬ 
 lution. It may be very true that those who framed 
 this bill mean not to establish catholicity ; they have 
 no such meaning ; they mean not to swamp protes- 
 tantism. But the bill inevitably must have that effect, I 
 will not inquire into motives. I will not inquire of any 
 man, in the year 1840, what he means by doing this ; 
 I can only inquire what will grow out of the facts, 
 whether it will have that effect or will not have that 
 effect. 
 
54 
 
 My Lords, it is upon these gounds that I have ven¬ 
 tured with some confidence to call your Lordships’ 
 
 4 
 
 attention to the most extraordinary principle of this 
 bill. You are by this bill annihilating every protestant 
 corporation which exists. Now, my Lords, looking 
 at this bill again in another view, let us see what it is 
 that your Lordships are about to do; there is under 
 this bill the power of municipal government; you are 
 constituting in Ireland a catholic parliament, the body 
 is to consist of 105 men ; you are legalising in Ireland a 
 body who have proclaimed and issued through that 
 country papers and declarations for the purpose of 
 subverting the union; you are giving them a legal 
 right; you are giving a body of persons to be appointed 
 under this act of parliament a power to meet when¬ 
 ever they think fit; a power to have the control of the 
 metropolis whenever they think fit ; I have before 
 described their power of taxing; I have before de¬ 
 scribed their power of legislating; you are by this bill 
 creating in Ireland, in the person of the council of the 
 city of Dublin, a body of 105 persons, every one of 
 whom may be, and as I assert of necessity will be, a 
 member of the catholic communion, a body of men 
 armed with those powers, and who will, to a man, be 
 repealers of the union. 
 
 My Lords, you cannot fail to have seen in the 
 papers which are issued, and the resolutions which are 
 passed in the various meetings which are held in Ire- 
 
55 
 
 land, the address of the national association of Ireland 
 to the people of Ireland. Your Lordships cannot fail to 
 have seen another paper which bears, I think, a some¬ 
 what similar title, namely, a plan of the national associ¬ 
 ation of Ireland. In that plan it is declared, that all the 
 property of the church is to be surrendered to this 
 new body : it declares 44 that inasmuch as the state 
 eclesiastical and the revenues of England are not 
 applied to the sustentation of the church of the mino¬ 
 rity of the English people, and as the state ecclesias¬ 
 tical of Scotland is not applied to the sustentation of 
 that church, so the state ecclesiastical revenues of 
 Ireland shall not be applied to the sustentation of the 
 church of the minority of the Irish people.” And they 
 have in another address declared a similar proposition. 
 Then, my Lords, in another address, they have de¬ 
 clared, acting upon that principle of numbers alone, 
 which I before pressed upon your Lordships’ atten¬ 
 tion, that 44 the demands of Ireland are for the same 
 relative proportion of members in the other house as 
 is the proportion between the numerical body in Ire¬ 
 land and the numerical body in England the ele¬ 
 ment of property, or any other element, being totally 
 left out. And they have passed resolutions, printed 
 and circulated through the realm, that those are the 
 conditions upon which alone they are to leave off an 
 incessant agitation for the repeal of the Union, nay, 
 they do not content themselves with that, because 
 arguing the point in various ways, they say 44 that the 
 
56 
 
 restoration of their domestic legislature is the only 
 principle upon which equal justice can be done to Ire¬ 
 land. 
 
 Now, I ask of your Lordships—these documents 
 being not the mere thunder of any individual, not 
 mere threats, but determined resolutions, the resolu¬ 
 tions of “500,000 fighting men”—I ask your Lord- 
 ships whether it is safe, or wise, or just to give these 
 men, these utterers of sedition, these fighting men, 
 power to tyrannise over the loyal, to exterminate all 
 who love England, to work in every fair or unfair way 
 for the repeal of the Union. I ask is such a body likely 
 to aid in introducing peace, and order, and good will, 
 the specious pretences upon which the measure is 
 introduced. You, my Lords, heed not threats and 
 intimidations, but you will look whether threatening 
 men should be rewarded, and encouraged,and indulged 
 with power ; whether persons who inform you, as they 
 have done from time to time, that unless equal justice 
 is conceded in Ireland, which equal justice means 
 ascendant tyrannising popery, they will rebel against 
 English interference and English connection ; whether 
 such persons are to be promoted and gratified. 
 
 My Lords, I say that principle has been laid 
 down, not to-day or yesterday, but incessantly ; and 
 every man who will look at what is passing in Ireland, 
 leaving out party prejudice and contention—leaving 
 
57 
 
 out predilections for or against the government; every 
 man abstracting his mind from all these intervening 
 topics, who examines what has passed for several years 
 in Ireland, since the catholic emancipation bill passed, 
 must see that every step which is taken is a step lead¬ 
 ing to but one point of finality, and that is the repeal 
 of the union. 
 
 My Lords, feeling myself that I have properly 
 deduced that consequence from the papers which I 
 have seen, I entreat your Lordships to consider whe¬ 
 ther you are not, in recognizing the proposition which 
 is contained in this bill, acting upon that very principle. 
 My Lords, I repeat that you cannot avoid acting upon 
 it, if you adopt that principle of suffrage which ascribes 
 to numbers the weight due, according to the consti¬ 
 tution of this country, to property. 
 
 My Lords, though I have felt it my duty to travel 
 over the various parts of this subject, I have been 
 unwilling to occupy your Lordships’ time; I shall, 
 therefore, with some few additional remarks, bring 
 what I have to state to your Lordships to a conclusion. 
 While this bill professes to begin and end with a mere 
 municipal question, I beg with humility to say, that 
 its limits go much beyond the limits of the municipal 
 question. Protestantism is at stake—it is assailed in 
 its last refuge; admit the spoiler, and how long will 
 
 H 
 
58 
 
 » 
 
 the church survive ? The corporations were indispu¬ 
 tably established to protect protestantism, to form an 
 antagonist influence against popery and superstition ; 
 they were fastnesses guarding the true religion, and 
 fencing it in from assault and danger. Admit Catho¬ 
 licism into the corporation and you destroy these asy¬ 
 lums. In truth, however, this bill is not admission, but 
 a total surrender. You are called on to man the walls, 
 and garrison the towers, with the inveterate foes of that 
 religion those walls and towers were erected to defend. 
 Such is, such ever must be, the result of acting upon the 
 principle embodied in this and every other modern 
 revolutionary bill—the principle that votes are to be 
 numbered and not weighed—that a majority, however 
 degraded in mind and circumstance, is to rule over a 
 minority, however enlightened, free, and independent. 
 “ We are seven millions—we are the majority—we 
 must have government by that majority, and our 
 church ascendant and established.” So shout the 
 men to whom you are asked to grant increased political 
 privileges. I ask you, then, are you prepared to echo 
 such sentiments, submit to such demands, and by gra¬ 
 tifying clamour and sedition, strengthen them to new 
 assaults ? Are you prepared to give up the equipoise, 
 the antagonist force that alone heretofore preserved 
 peace and safety in Ireland, and allow the uncoun¬ 
 teracted impulse to prevail of a furious and unmitigated 
 Romanist democracy ? My Lords, I cannot believe 
 
59 
 
 that the peers of England can be doped by treacherous 
 falsehood, or intimidated by swaggering threats, into 
 such weakness and infatuation. 
 
 My Lords, in this bill there is a clause, which I 
 hope will be expunged. The bill deprecates the idea, 
 in pathetic terms, that any thing in it should be con¬ 
 strued to take away the necessity of taking the catholic 
 oath. Now, I do hope that that clause of the bill will 
 be struck out, because it is a mockery to put it in, and 
 legislation ought not to be a mockery. I say it is a 
 mockery to insert this oath, while you create a con¬ 
 stituency who will return none but Roman catholic 
 and apostate protestants to the common council. It 
 is preposterous to hear so false a profession in the 
 mouth, and act so certainly in opposition to that pro¬ 
 fession. You know that Roman catholics will work to 
 overturn protestantism, no matter in what situation 
 placed; you know that enmity to protestantism will be a 
 recommendation in the new municipal elections, and yet 
 you are by this bill required to demand an oath from every 
 Roman catholic directly contrary to his opinions,to the 
 wishes of his constituency, nay,to what he believes a reli¬ 
 gious duty ; and you are, I suppose, asked to imagine 
 that any body of men so situated, placed between two 
 religious duties, will not find a way to escape towards 
 that side, whither passion, and prejudice, and long 
 cherished opinion drive them. I say the annals of the 
 
60 
 
 world could not show an instance where such has not, 
 such would not be, the result under similar circum¬ 
 stances. Here is the oath :— 
 
 ts And I do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any 
 ntention to subvert the present Church Establishment as settled 
 by law within this realm; and I do solemnly swear that I never 
 will exercise any privilege to which I am or may become entitled 
 to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant go- 
 vernment in the United Kingdom*” 
 
 Now I pray your Lordships* attention for one mo¬ 
 ment to these words—“ Church Establishment.” I 
 ask would not any one say, looking to their obvious 
 import, they include something more than mere re¬ 
 ligion. It appears to me they embrace the church, 
 as consisting of temporalities as well as of faith. It 
 is not simply the religion, but the religion embodied 
 with the constitution and state rights, the religion as 
 established; and, to prevent mistake, then come the 
 subsequent words, that they will not u disturb or 
 weaken the protestant religion or protestant govern¬ 
 ment/* 
 
 % 
 
 My Lords, I have assumed that this body will be 
 exclusively catholic, and I beg to ask of what avail 
 it is that such an oath as the one I have alluded 
 to should be taken. Your Lordships are aware that 
 
61 
 
 an exposition has been given of this oath—certain per¬ 
 sons have laid down their principles of construction. 
 That took place elsewhere upon a motion made on 
 purpose to try the validity of this oath. It can hardly, 
 my Lords, be competent for your Lordships, by any 
 resolution of yours, to say what is or is not the mean¬ 
 ing in the minds of those who take the oath, and yet 
 assail both the faith -and religion of the church; 
 
 I therefore can only refer to what was stated by some 
 very eminent persons upon that occasion—by one, my 
 Lords, who has upon this occasion taken a very pro¬ 
 minent lead in issuing all the papers and framing all 
 the documents to which I have had the honor of calling 
 your Lordships’ attention, it is thus explained— 44 He 
 denied that he knew any means of ascertaining which 
 was the right or which was the wrong construction of 
 the oath. There was a manifest distinction between 
 the protestant religion, or the protestant government, 
 and the temporalities annexed to the established church, 
 and in this distinction it was that Roman catholics 
 founded their right to interfere with the latter that 
 is to say, with all the temporalities. Another very 
 eminent individual avows the same thing :— 44 There 
 could be no controversy about the oath as it now 
 stood, because there was nothing in it to prevent the 
 catholic from acting as he pleased with respect to the 
 temporalities of the established church, either as 
 regarded the authority or emoluments of the church.” 
 So that, my Lords, leading members, and those who 
 
are at the present moment charging themselves in 
 Ireland with the duty of circulating all these papers, 
 have announced, and publicly announced, in the face 
 of the House of Commons, that they do consider, that 
 the true construction of that oath leaves a catholic 
 open, not indeed to attack the protestant religion, nor 
 to attack its faith, but to take away from it the whole 
 of its powers, authority, and property. 
 
 My Lords, it is a mockery; the institution which you 
 are about to establish under this bill is a civil institu¬ 
 tion, not a spiritual institution, an institution to be 
 governed by laymen, and I have adverted to what lay¬ 
 men have stated in their places in the House of Com¬ 
 mons, professing to represent the catholic body. They 
 do not state it to be their own opinion alone ; their 
 opinion is, that that oath which contains the words 
 “ Established Church,” “ Protestant Government,” 
 and “ the Protestant Church,” mean simply this “you 
 may have your faith if you think fit; that we will not 
 interfere with; but as to your buildings, your property, 
 your estates, your establishment, your rank, and every¬ 
 thing which is embodied in what is called establish¬ 
 ment and property, we attack all those forms in which 
 this church is embodied, in which it is invested, in 
 which, legally and constitutionally speaking, it con¬ 
 sists.”' Now, my Lords, we understand that an oath 
 is to be interpreted according to the meaning of the 
 person who imposes it; and that in this case the mean- 
 
63 
 
 ing was, that tithes were not to be confiscated, that 
 all the property of the church was not to be taken, that 
 the church was to be maintained, and that its tempora¬ 
 lities were to be preserved, as an essential part of the 
 aggregate quality of the church. That is the interpre¬ 
 tation of this oath which we undoubtedly according to 
 our casuistry believe; and I have endeavoured to find 
 out whether I could discover a mode of interpreting 
 language different from this ; I have in vain endea¬ 
 voured to do so ; but I have found a case which gives 
 something like that interpretation, such an interpreta¬ 
 tion, however, as I cannot consent to. I find Paley, 
 in his treatise on e< promises,” has put a case of this 
 sort “ Temures promised the garrison of Sebastia that, 
 if they would surrender, no blood should be shed. 
 The garrison surrendered, and Temures buried them 
 all alive. Now Temures fulfilled the promise in one 
 sense, and in the sense too in which he intended it at 
 the time, but not in the sense in which the garrison of 
 Sebastia actually received it, nor in the sense in which 
 Temures himself knew that they received it.” Now, 
 my Lords, I cannot but think that this is exactly a 
 parallel case. It is said <c This oath means this—you 
 are a protestant, your faith and your religion are to 
 remain to you—I will not touch that; but as a pro¬ 
 testant having a church of your own, property of your 
 own, temporalities of your own, rights and privileges 
 of your own, in that character I shall treat you just 
 as the individuals were treated who were not, literally 
 
64 
 
 speaking, annihilated in one shape, but undoubtedly 
 were annihilated in another. I shall endeavour to 
 weaken that church, and to strip that church of all its 
 power and authority.” That, my Lords, is one of 
 those casuistries into which others may fall, but into 
 which I will never permit my humble judgment to fall. 
 Therefore, my Lords, when this bill, as I assert, 
 establishes the principle of catholicity in this corpora¬ 
 tion, and will establish it to such an extent that every 
 member will be a catholic; if any person imagines, 
 that all the powers confided to this institution will not 
 be applied to the subversion of the church of England, 
 the man who so believes possesses very great credulity, 
 and in my humble judgment any man would be very 
 adventurous who should enter into competition with 
 w’hat would be the most extravagant extent of cre¬ 
 dulity. But, my Lords, I do not wish to dwell upon 
 the mere abstract definition of the oath. Let us see 
 what has been done.—There has been a comment made 
 upon this oath, wheu poor-law guardians have been 
 elected; in one place, Limerick I believe, the priests at 
 the altar made out the lists of guardians ; I will prove 
 it, if you think fit to allow it to be proved. Now this 
 does not belong to spiritual matters, and is by no pos¬ 
 sibility capable of being reduced within the distinction 
 of a spiritual right as opposed to a civil right, yet have 
 they made out the lists, and dictated the guardians of 
 the poor, which guardians are to make the assessment 
 and to become an important part of the machinery 
 
65 
 
 upon which this bill is to be established. In many 
 parts of Ireland the priests have interfered, and com¬ 
 pelled persons within their parishes to vote for certain 
 guardians, asserting that they, as priests, had a right 
 to be consulted in making out those lists. My Lords, 
 
 I urge that as a sample ; I urge that as a fact; I urge 
 that as a proof of what by and by is to be done within 
 the municipality of Dublin ; I care little, however, 
 whether the priests make out the lists or not. I have 
 shewn to your Lordships that there is a majority of 
 power, which is a vicious majority, upon the principle 
 of numbers, asserted not only in this bill as a principle, 
 but in all the documents and addresses to which I have 
 alluded. 
 
 My Lords, though I might and have had materials 
 before me, of troubling your Lordships at more length, 
 I shall abstain from so doing, hoping that I have been 
 enabled intelligibly to place before you what is, I do 
 not say the probable, but what is the certain, operation 
 of this measure, as it at present stands. You are to 
 democratise Dublin with a catholic body ; Catholicism 
 is to be mixed with the democratic principle ; those 
 elements are the basis on which of necessity is to be 
 built up the structure of the new corporation of Dub¬ 
 lin, and I do not say, I have not said, that exclusiveness 
 is desirable; but I do say it is unjust, and cannot come 
 to good, to destroy exclusiveness because it is protes- 
 tant, and establish it again because it will be Roman 
 
 I 
 
66 
 
 catholic: an exclusiveness too claiming the absolute 
 extirpation of the protestant church. It may be leav¬ 
 ing its faith, as faith, untouched, but overturning and 
 never resting till it overturns the means for the pro¬ 
 mulgation of that faith, the keeping up of the protes¬ 
 tant worship as embodied with the only mode in which 
 that faith and worship can be kept up, namely, minis¬ 
 ters who are to represent the church with their build¬ 
 ings, their habitations, and their stipends. This, I 
 say, is the avowed, openly proclaimed principle and 
 explanation of the new universal suffrage constituency; 
 and be it observed that you are conceding in the pre¬ 
 sent bill all this license, and encouraging such princi¬ 
 ples, not only in Dublin, but every one of the corpora¬ 
 tions which are now permitted to remain, and in every 
 future corporation, which the Queen’s prerogative is 
 hereafter permitted to establish ; for, I say, upon this 
 bill hereafter the government of the Queen can con¬ 
 stitute no corporation, except upon the model and 
 principle of the bill now lying upon your table. There¬ 
 fore, not only now for this bill, but toties quaties —not 
 only in the year 1840, when this corporation is con¬ 
 stituted, but in all time as long as Ireland continues, 
 and as long as an act of parliament is in force—your 
 Lordshps are binding your hands behind your own 
 backs, and binding the hands of the crown behind the 
 back of the crown ; you are precluding yourselves and 
 the crown from hereafter establishing any corporation 
 existing in Ireland, which is not solely and exclusively 
 catholic. 
 
67 
 
 l say, ray Lords, that you are now called upon to pass 
 this bill after some years of agitation ; after agitation 
 which has been going on year after year since the 
 catholic bill was passed ; and those who now clamour 
 for the present bill have, at the present moment, 
 undoubtedly circumstances peculiarly advantageous 
 to them. My Lords, there was a time when the House 
 of Lords refused to pass bills in moments of agitation, 
 despising the terror and feeling that those extrinsic 
 circumstances were operative upon the independence 
 of the legislature. When Earl Grey, I think, was 
 prime minister, a speech was made by His Majesty, 
 which is now remaining upon the journals of this house, 
 and which I apprehend I may fairly and properly 
 allude to, in which, not by name but by incidental 
 circumstances and by principle, this sort of agitation— 
 which from that time to the present haunts and terri¬ 
 fies (I do not mean in a physical sense) the government 
 and the people of this country—was denounced from 
 the throne. That was in a speech made in the year 
 1833 : 
 
 “ On my part I shall be ready to co-operate, to the utmost of 
 my power, in abating all just causes of complaint, and in pro¬ 
 moting all well considered measures of improvement; but it is 
 my painful duty to observe, that the disturbances in Ireland, to 
 which I adverted, at the close of the last session, have greatly 
 increased. A spirit of insubordination and violence has risen to 
 
 the most fearful height, rendering life and property insecure, 
 
 1 
 
68 
 
 t 
 
 defying the authority of the law, and threatening the most fatal 
 consequences, if not promptly and effectually repressed. I feel 
 confident that, to your loyalty and patriotism I shall not resort 
 in vain for assistance in these afflicting circumstances, and that 
 you will be ready to adopt such measures of salutary precaution, 
 and to entrust to me such additional powers as may be found 
 necessary for controlling and punishing the disturbers of the 
 public peace; and for preserving and strengthening the legis¬ 
 lative union between the two countries, which, with your support, 
 and under the blessing of Divine Providence, I am determined 
 to maintain/' 
 
 My Lords, that address was made to the two houses 
 by his Majesty on the opening of the session, on the 
 5th of February, 1833. It was thought, though that 
 address did not point at individuals or at individual 
 associations, which it was beneath the dignity of the 
 crown to allude to ; it was thought, however, that it 
 had allusion to the then threat of dissolving the union 
 of Great Britain and Ireland. From that time to the 
 present, my Lords, that agitation has gone on with 
 increased virulence and increased power, and cer¬ 
 tainly increased hope on the part of the agitators and 
 repealers. It has gone on, till at last your Lordships, 
 in the document that I have referred to, have heard it 
 stated, that even this measure, which is called in the 
 language of the address, “ A tardy and paltry mea¬ 
 sure,” is insufficient, and that the repeal of the union 
 is the only thing which can effectuate the demands of 
 
69 
 
 Ireland. His Majesty, in that speech, alludes to the 
 disturbers of the public peace. May I be permitted to 
 state that these associations in Ireland have gone on 
 from that time to the present, the same party consti¬ 
 tuting them who in that speech are called the disturbers 
 of the public peace, and against whom your Lordships 
 were called upon to co-operate with the crown in main¬ 
 taining those measures which were to prevent the dis¬ 
 solution of the union. My Lords, my most humble 
 opinion is, that in agreeing to the measure now before 
 your Lordships, and acceding to the principle, though 
 you may repudiate the threats of these disturbers of 
 the public peace, you are aiding them in the repeal of 
 the union ; you are following their policy ; you are 
 treading in their steps ; you are working their machi¬ 
 nery, and you are artists co-operating with them— 
 unintentionally co-operating in the same design. This 
 bill is the precursor, almost inevitably, of the ulterior 
 measure of repeal. 
 
 My Lords, when these disturbers of the public peace 
 allude to any measures passing, there is no finality 
 short of repeal of the union. In our own parliament 
 reform hasbeen tried, and our reform has been declared 
 to be final, as it ought to be. In our municipal bill it 
 is laid down that it is final ; not so in this case. Here, 
 then, you may learn a lesson from your enemies, 
 though you treat their threats with contempt. You 
 have been told that the suppression of these exclusive 
 
70 
 
 bodies is a step that they call for, in order to achieve 
 the repeal of the union. I have heard it said, and I 
 believe it has been truly said, “ Give us the corpora¬ 
 tion bill and we will take care of the rest.” 
 
 In the shape and form of municipal institutions, your 
 Lordships are laying down a principle of civil govern¬ 
 ment and religious government in Ireland, whose 
 results you can scarcely foresee ; somewhat of them, 
 enough to make you pause before you vote for such a 
 bill—somewhat of them any man, not absolutely blind, 
 can predict almost with certainty. You are told—your 
 enemies themselves warn you—it is not a final close of 
 the contests between the different parties in Ireland, 
 The movement party in religion and in political feelings 
 declare it is only an instalment. Their great object 
 they announce, and that to which all others tend, is 
 the repeal of the legislative union. 
 
 I cannot here trouble your Lordships with allusions 
 made to the state of Ireland. It is said that the Irish 
 amount to eight millions and a-half, and that Holland, 
 Spain, Portugal, and other countries have not that 
 amount of physical force. See how this falls in with, 
 how it is supported by, the principle of this bill—the 
 principle that numbers shall be omnipotent. Think 
 not that you can bouud the principle to corporations ; 
 do not imagine that it is good for any thing—are 
 there not ready those who will make it good for every 
 thing ? 
 
71 
 
 My Lords, repeating again the apology with which 
 I commenced, of my inability from various circum¬ 
 stances to follow this question into all its bearings as 
 it needs, and as I should desire, I have, however, 
 stated nothing upon the construction of this act that 
 I do not believe to be its interpretation, nor have I 
 stated any proposition of fact that I do not believe to 
 be correct. Finally then, I say, if this bill passes, there 
 is an end to every protestant corporation in Ireland. 
 “ Valete ,” and some may say “ acplaudite^* I say 
 “ valete” to all the protestant corporations of Ireland. 
 Now or hereafter there never can be another, if that 
 principle is fit to be acted upon. Beitso. But supposing 
 this adopted; supposing this principle, for argument’s 
 sake granted, I ask what there is in it to justify treat¬ 
 ing London so much better than Dublin ? Why is 
 not London to be assailed in the same manner ? Why 
 not hand over the metropolis of England to a similar 
 system? Is this justice to Ireland? The Irish are 
 a very generous people, a warm hearted, kind people ; 
 they may say, “ Now you have done justice to us, you 
 shall do justice to London.” The Irishmen will have the 
 same establishment set up in London. “ Noli me 
 tangere” the citizens of London cry. But when this 
 bill is established, democrats will tell your Lordships— 
 and perhaps English democrats—“You have overturned 
 Dublin, why do you leave London free ?” and I am at 
 a loss to know how that argument is to be answered. 
 No one will say, I take it, because Dublin is in Ire- 
 
7 2 
 
 land, and London in England—because one is at this 
 and the other at the opposite side of the channel. You 
 have pluck enough to swamp the lord mayor and twen¬ 
 ty-five aldermen of Dublin in the mud of the Liffey ; 
 why do you not give the mayor and aldermen of Lon¬ 
 don a washing in the Thames ? Why do you meddle 
 with the Irish alone ? Cannot you take the lord 
 mayor of London up to Richmond or down to the Nore, 
 and give him a little washing in the silver Thames ? 
 Is it because the one body may go up to St. James’s 
 with their addresses, if the government do this ? they 
 may go up to St. James’s and immediately set it right. 
 Is it not because they have four members ? What is 
 the principle of theory on which the one corporation 
 is left to drive about with its carriages and gold orna¬ 
 ments, and so on, while the other is destroyed ? 
 
 My Lords, there is anotherclause which I omitted, 
 and it is the last I shall advert to in this bill. The 
 sheriffs of Dublin are to be named by the common 
 council. Two names are to be made out, and the 
 Lord Lieutenant is to select one if he pleases ; but if he 
 does not please to select one, this bill does not tell 
 us who is to be the sheriff. If the act had said that the 
 first named in the list should be the sheriff, there would 
 be something intelligible. However, I do not care much 
 about who is the sheriff, for sheriffs now-a-days, instead 
 of putting others into gaol, go to gaol themselves, and 
 houses of commons occupy themselves in locking them 
 
73 
 
 up, and coaxing an apoplexy, and watching every day 
 to see when the apoplexy will come on. To be sure 
 they have not yet got a parliament in Dublin, but they 
 soon will, with the new corporation as a fulcrum for 
 the repeal lever. 
 
 My Lords, I have before me here, what I forgot 
 before to mention, a document which is not unimpor¬ 
 tant. Your Lordships are aware, that large property 
 was given to the corporation of Dublin for protestant 
 purposes. This the University received from the cor¬ 
 poration, and in return, therefore, it was enacted that 
 the University pray for the lord mayor and corpora¬ 
 tion of Dublin. Only fancy and imagine, (for without 
 any difficulty your Lordships may suppose a catholic 
 filling the office of lord mayor of Dublin,) fancy the 
 University of Dublin being compelled to pray for a 
 catholic lord mayor and corporation in these words— 
 “We pray for our most munificent benefactor, our 
 present Sovereign, (fee.” (reading the form of the 
 prayer.) In our University we pray for our chancel¬ 
 lor, for all the doctors, and both the proctors, and if 
 this bill passes, the University of Dublin will have to 
 pray for a catholic lord mayor and his council, all of 
 whom have declared in the face of the country, and in 
 the face of parliament, that they consider themselves 
 at liberty, that they are bound by no impediment, that 
 they conceive themselves even in duty bound to anni- 
 
 K 
 
74 
 
 hilate every branch of that protestant church, for 
 which this protestant chancellor, doctors, and scholars 
 feel it to be their duty to pray. 
 
 It is under these circumstances, conscious of the 
 ineffectual manner in which I have been enabled to 
 deal with this subject, I have to retire from your 
 Lordships’ bar, thanking you for the extent to which 
 you have indulged me with your attention. 
 
 Adjourned till to-morrow. 
 
%v-*« 
 
 HOUSE OF LORDS, 
 
 Friday, 15th May, 1840. 
 
 Isaac Butt, Esq. on addressing their Lordships, 
 spoke as follows— 
 
 May it please your Lordships, 
 
 It now becomes my duty to follow up the statement 
 which was made last night, on behalf of the city of 
 Dublin, by my learned friend who opened their case. 
 Our duty is to endeavour to shew to your Lordships 
 reasons why you ought not to adopt the provisions of 
 the bill now before your Lordships for regulating the 
 municipalities of Ireland, so far as they destroy the 
 rights, confiscate the property, and abrogate the char- 
 ters of the city of Dublin. In the observations with 
 which I may feel it necessary to trouble your Lord- 
 ships, I shall endeavour strictly to confine myself to 
 that duty. 
 
 The principle of the bill which your Lordships have 
 affirmed, I understand to be simply this—that the 
 
7 6 
 
 legislature will interfere to regulate the corporations 
 of Ireland. Against that principle I am aware we have 
 no right to contend ; it is not necessary that we should ; 
 the very petition which the city of Dublin has presented 
 to your Lordships, states their readiness to acquiesce 
 in any reform that your Lordships’ wisdom may seem 
 fit, which will not compromise the safety of the pro- 
 testant religion, nor take away their ancient charters. 
 But, my Lords, I will endeavour to prove that the 
 provisions of this bill, as they affect the city of Dublin, 
 are not warranted by anything that has been laid before 
 your Lordships’ house ; that they are unjust to indi¬ 
 viduals, and fraught with danger to the constitution 
 and the country at large. 
 
 My Lords, the petitions which have been presented 
 from the city of Dublin, and parties or bodies con¬ 
 nected with that corporation, to be heard at the bar, 
 and upon which your Lordships have been graciously 
 pleased to accede that privilege, are these :—A petition 
 from the city at large ; a petition from the sheriffs’ 
 peers of the city of Dublin, as individuals; and peti¬ 
 tions from several of the guilds or companies of 
 which the corporation is composed. With your Lord- 
 ships’ permission, I will briefly state the substance of 
 these several petitions. 
 
 The petition from the right honourable the lord 
 mayor, sheriffs, commons, and citizens of the city of 
 
77 
 
 Dublin, in common council assembled, states that they 
 have learned that a bill has been introduced into your 
 Lordships’ house, which, under the pretence of regu¬ 
 lating municipal corporations in Ireland, takes away 
 all their charters. They state, that no ground can be 
 established to your Lordships for such a measure in any 
 misconduct of their ancient corporation. They sub¬ 
 mit that they have faithfully fulfilled the trusts confided 
 to them by their charters, and that there is, therefore, 
 nothing to justify your Lordships in passing this bill 
 of pains and penalties. After declaring, as I have 
 already apprised your Lordships, that they are ready 
 to acquiesce in any measure of reform which your 
 Lordships may adopt, which will not violate their an¬ 
 cient charters, or interfere with the safety of the pro- 
 testant religion, they proceed to state that the bill 
 before your Lordships’ house gives to the new corpo¬ 
 ration a power of taxation unknown in the history of 
 corporations in Ireland ; that the bodies to whom it is 
 now proposed to confide the rights and powers which 
 are forcibly torn from their present possessors, will be 
 dangerous to the peace of the country, inimical to the 
 protestant religion, and to British authority in Ireland ; 
 and that their establishment must inevitably lead to the 
 destruction of the protestant church, the separation 
 of Ireland from England, and the dismemberment and 
 degradation of the British empire. My Lords, they 
 again repeat, in the strongest manner, their denial of 
 any crime ; they challenge (if I may venture to use the 
 
78 
 
 expression) your Lordships to point out one single act 
 of misconduct, or of mismanagement, or of deviation 
 from the trusts confided to them, by which they have 
 given just occasion for this measure of pains and pe¬ 
 nalties. They assure your Lordships, that no large or 
 influential class of the inhabitants of Dublin are anxi¬ 
 ous for such a change of its municipal institutions as 
 that proposed by this bill ; that the feeling of a great 
 majority of the better classes in Dublin is unequivo¬ 
 cally opposed to it; and that of those who will pay the 
 tax projected by this bill, a majority, calculating by the 
 rates to which they will be subject, have actually peti¬ 
 tioned your Lordships that it may not pass. 
 
 I will not trouble your Lordships by going at more 
 length into the petition of the sheriffs’ peers. Sheriffs' 
 peers are those individuals who have served the office 
 of sheriff; and under this title have acquired, by the 
 present charters of the city, a certain rank, with a 
 right to a seat in the common council for life. They 
 present to your Lordships’ justice a case which it is 
 not possible altogether to disregard. They state, that 
 on the faith of these charters they devoted themselves 
 to the acquisition of various rights and privileges in 
 the city—that, ascending through various civic gra¬ 
 dations, they were at last selected by their fellow-citi¬ 
 zens to fill the high and responsible office of sheriff of 
 the City—an office which they represent to be one of 
 great labour, risk, and anxiety, and involving a heavy 
 
79 
 
 expenditure beyond the emoluments derived from it: 
 they consented to serve this office, believing that in 
 return they would obtain a privilege of sitting in the 
 common council for life, with the rank and dignity 
 of sheriffs’ peers ; of this privilege and this rank they 
 are now about to be deprived. Against this, my Lords, 
 they protest. They deny that ever, as individuals, 
 they have done a single act to justify your Lordships 
 in thus punishing them: they submit to your Lord- 
 ships that, from their experience in corporate business, 
 their station in society, their property and characters, 
 they are well qualified to retain their seats in the com¬ 
 mon council with advantage to the community. As 
 individuals, they refer, with pride and confidence, to 
 the testimonies of approbation of the manner in which 
 they discharged the office of sheriff, which they have 
 received from all classes of their fellow-citizens, and 
 from successive chief governors of Ireland; and they 
 submit to your Lordships’ house a claim which, in 
 justice, they believe irresistible: they call on you to 
 protect the rights thus secured to them by law, and 
 pray that, whatever regulations you may adopt for the 
 city of Dublin, you will, at least, secure to them their 
 right to seats in the common council for life, unless it 
 can be established that they have justly forfeited them 
 by some crime. 
 
 The case of some of the gentlemen who have signed 
 this petition is, perhaps, stronger than I have stated. 
 
80 
 
 It is possible to become a sheriffs’ peer without serving 
 the office of sheriff, by paying the fine imposed upon 
 freemen who are nominated and refuse to serve ; and 
 several of those gentlemen who now submit their 
 claims to your Lordships’ justice, have actually per¬ 
 mitted themselves to be nominated to the office, and 
 paid the city the fine of £500 : thus actually purchas¬ 
 ing their places as sheriffs’ peers—places of which 
 your Lordships are now called upon to deprive them, 
 without so much as the allegation of a crime. 
 
 My Lords, the city of Dublin is not a single corpo¬ 
 ration. It is a corporation consisting of twenty-five 
 different guilds or companies, each of those guilds 
 having their separate charters, and most of them their 
 separate property. Several of those guilds have also 
 petitioned your Lordships’ house, that, in whatever 
 measures you may adopt for regulating the municipa¬ 
 lity of Dublin, you will respect their'charters and pro¬ 
 tect their rights. My Lords, I will call your attention 
 to but two out of those petitions ; and I take them as 
 mere samples of the rest. One is the petition of the 
 guild of weavers, the other of the guild of merchants. 
 The guild of weavers state to your Lordships, in their 
 petition, that they have property not very large, but 
 whatever the amount may be, it is employed in provid¬ 
 ing an almshouse for the decayed brethren of their 
 guild, and for their widows and their orphan children. 
 Under the bill now before you Lordships’ house, this 
 
81 
 
 \ 
 
 property, derived not from public grants but from the 
 private contributions of their own members, thus ap¬ 
 plied by them to charitable purposes, is taken away 
 and given to a body composed of the ten pound house¬ 
 holders of the city, who can have no earthly claim to 
 it. They state that they have repeated charters from 
 many kings; that in times of difficulty they stood 
 steadily by British authority in Ireland; and that for 
 those services they have, at various times, received the 
 thanks of successive lord lieutenants ; and they appeal 
 to your Lordships not to take away their rights, what¬ 
 ever regulations you may adopt for the city at large. 
 
 The guild of merchants state in the same way that 
 they have property ; that their guild is composed of 
 nearly a thousand freemen. They go a little more at 
 large into the general question of the bill; but I will 
 not trouble your Lordships by repeating their petition. 
 They challenge investigation into every part of the cor¬ 
 porate management of Dublin. They say that the 
 present system of corporate authority has supplied ma¬ 
 gistrates, against whom no charge has ever been estab¬ 
 lished—against whom, to this hour, no charge is 
 brought in any evidence, or in the report of any com¬ 
 mission that has been issued by the authority of the 
 crown or of parliament; and, therefore, they pray 
 that, however your Lordships may regulate the muni¬ 
 cipality of Dublin, you will not take away their rights. 
 They state that all the rights of freemen have been 
 
 L 
 
procured by services and purchased by an outlay of 
 money : many of the freemen of this guild have paid 
 as high as fifteen pounds. They then go on to say, 
 that this bill professes so far to respect these rights as 
 to preserve their parliamentary franchise : this, my 
 Lords, they rely on as an admission that they are not 
 unfit to exercise the municipal : although, at the same 
 time, they submit to your Lordships that the provi¬ 
 sions by which this professed preservation of their par¬ 
 liamentary rights is carried out, are such as to make it 
 a mockery, by leaving these rights at the mercy of the 
 new municipalities. 
 
 These petitions, my Lords, briefly state the case 
 which it will be my duty now, following my learned 
 friend, to lay before you. Your Lordships will per¬ 
 ceive that it is a case involving both private rights and 
 public interests ; and I do confess that this very cir¬ 
 cumstance makes me feel no little embarrassment in 
 addressing you. In other cases where advocates have 
 the privilege of appearing at your Lordships 5 bar—in 
 those cases of ordinary appeal in which your Lord- 
 ships decide the controversies of property, you have 
 but a simple duty to discharge—to determine between 
 man and man upon occurrences resulting in the inter¬ 
 course of every-day life. But this is a question of a 
 different nature—a question, it is true, of equity, of 
 justice, and of law, but one involving political consi¬ 
 derations and constitutional questions ; and as the duty 
 
83 
 
 of your Lordships is here to look to subjects more ex¬ 
 tended and more enlarged than those upon which you 
 are accustomed, as a court of judicature, to decide, to 
 take on yourselves the spirit and dignity of the consti¬ 
 tution, and while you respect the principles of past, 
 have regard to the interests of future generations—so, 
 my Lords, the duty of the advocate is also enlarged. 
 And thus I do feel an embarrassment, lest, on the one 
 hand, I might appear to introduce topics that are be¬ 
 yond my province, and unsuitable to my position here* 
 But while I am deeply anxious to avoid this, I have 
 another, and your Lordships will pardon me for say¬ 
 ing, a still higher anxiety, lest I might omit any con¬ 
 sideration that could possibly induce your Lordships 
 to protect from this bill of pains and penalties those 
 rights which, as an advocate at your Lordships’ bar, it 
 is my highest and my most sacred duty to defend. 
 
 My Lords, I will first call your attention to this bill 
 as divided into two parts. It is a bill of disfranchise¬ 
 ment and a bill of enfranchisement. It begins by 
 sweeping away every existing right in the city of Dub¬ 
 lin. Not the right of a single freeman to vote for mu¬ 
 nicipal offices is retained* No privilege is spared—no 
 franchise respected. Now we assert that, to justify 
 this part of the bill, there ought to be some crime estab¬ 
 lished against the holders of these rights ; or it ought, 
 at least, clearly to be shewn that their rights are incon¬ 
 sistent with the welfare of the community. However 
 
84 
 
 your Lordships may decide as to the admission of new 
 rights and new franchises, we fearlessly assert that no 
 reason has yet been supplied to your Lordships’ house 
 which can justify you, as the highest court of judica¬ 
 ture in the land, in forfeiting the existing rights of free¬ 
 men. Thus, my Lords, our first ground of protesting 
 against this bill is that of individual injustice. You 
 punish, my Lords, a number of individuals who have 
 been advanced, under the existing order of things, to 
 the highest offices in the magistracy of the city ; I say 
 you punish, because to degrade is to punish ; you de¬ 
 grade, in the evening of their days, the aldermen—men 
 who have borne an unblemished character, who, as 
 magistrates, have never yet been charged with parti¬ 
 ality in the execution of their magisterial duties : you 
 degrade the sheriffs’ peers, who have acquired their 
 right by long and onerous attention to civic duties ; 
 and you degrade the freemen of the city of Dublin, be¬ 
 cause you take from them their rights—rights, my 
 Lords, which have hitherto been supposed to rest upon 
 the same foundation as the privileges of your Lord- 
 ships’ illustrious house—upon hereditary succession, 
 the transmission from father to son, upon the charters 
 of monarchs, and upon repeated acts of parliament 
 recognising their privileges. 
 
 Now, my Lords, the freemen of Dublin appearing 
 here at your Lordships’ bar, deny that in any one 
 respect they have proved themselves unfit to retain 
 
85 
 
 these franchises ; and, in the confidence of the justice 
 of their cause, they are bold to say to you, If you 
 think that new rights should be given, if you think 
 that any class has been hitherto excluded from the 
 franchises of the city of Dublin who ought to have 
 them, then give them those rights; but do not pass a 
 measure of confiscation, a bill of pains and penalties, 
 unless it can be shewn to your Lordships that some 
 crime has been committed to justify it; do not adopt 
 against us that which both justice and the constitution 
 abhors—an ex post facto system of legislation. 
 
 My Lords, I am very anxious to call your attention 
 to those clauses of the bill which take away the exist¬ 
 ing rights of the freemen, because it is these clauses 
 (clauses certainly not involving the principle of the 
 bill) which make the measure a revolution. To admit 
 new classes to new rights may be a reform ; but to take 
 power from those who have it and confer it upon ano¬ 
 ther, and a totally different class, is in every sense of 
 the word a revolution. Give me leave to say, that 
 there is nothing in any complaint that has ever yet been 
 submitted to your Lordships, which cau justify this. 
 What is the complaint? That Roman catholics have 
 now no franchises. What is the remedy which this 
 bill proposes ? That the franchises of protestants 
 should be taken from them. 
 
 If to give these franchises to Roman catholics be to 
 
86 
 
 grant a boon, to take them from the protestants is to 
 inflict an injury: the alleged evil and the proposed 
 remedy are not merely unconnected but directly con¬ 
 tradictory. If your Lordships think fit that Roman 
 catholics should be admitted—I leave this to your 
 wisdom—let it be done by any means which your 
 Lordships’ wisdom may devise. But upon what 
 grounds are you called on to disfranchise protestants, 
 unless the object of this bill be not a participation of 
 power but a transfer ? I do strongly and earnestly 
 press this upon your Lordships. I say, not merely 
 that there does not exist in fact any reason ; I go 
 further, and fearlessly assert, that not in any complaint 
 that has ever been made to your Lordships’ house—in 
 
 any report that has ever been laid upon your table— 
 
 0 
 
 in any evidence that has ever been taken—not in any 
 argument that has ever been put forward in favour of 
 this bill, is there suggested the shadow of a reason for 
 taking away these existing rights of the freemen. The 
 exclusiveness of the present corporation arises from a 
 privilege claimed by them of arbitrarily placing a veto 
 upon any admission of a freeman ; then, if this be an 
 evil, what is the remedy ? Abolish that veto. If I 
 am told that even then the rights are not extensive 
 enough, then give new rights ; but I do again and again 
 urge upon your Lordships’ justice this one broad prin¬ 
 ciple of the constitution, that by the law of England 
 no man can be punished unless he is convicted of a 
 crime; that when you degrade, you punish ; that when 
 
87 
 
 you take away franchise, you punish ; and that, there¬ 
 fore, this is a bill inflicting punishment upon parties 
 against whom not merely no crime has been proved, 
 but against whom no charge even has been made. 
 
 Thus far I have spoken of individuals—I have called 
 your Lordships’ attention to the injustice which will 
 be done to the several persons whose rights are affected 
 by this bill, as individual British subjects entitled to 
 your Lordships’ protection, not the less because the 
 hardship of which they complain involves public 
 wrong, because the taking away of their private rights 
 is also the violation of the charters of whole communi¬ 
 ties. But when we come to consider the rights, not 
 merely of individuals but of corporate bodies, we shall 
 find charters almost innumerable granted to the city of 
 Dublin and to its separate guilds ; and there is one 
 thing very remarkable which I will venture to bring 
 before your Tiordships’ attention, although it may be 
 old-fashioned to speak of Magna Charta. We have, 
 my Lords, a Magna Charta for Ireland ; and one of 
 its provisions is, that the rights and franchises of the 
 city of Dublin should remain inviolate. Magna 
 Charta was not granted to Ireland until an early year 
 in the reign of Henry the Third : Henry the Third 
 confirmed the Magna Charta of John to England, and 
 at the same time granted it for the first time to Ireland, 
 and one of its provisions is, that the rights and privi¬ 
 leges of the city of Dublin should be respected, just as 
 
88 
 
 the English Magna Charta makes a similar decla¬ 
 ration as to the city of London. And, perhaps, 
 I would scarcely venture tobring thisbeforeyour Lord- 
 ships, if it were not that the English Magna Charta has 
 been respected so far as to exempt from the operation 
 of the English act the city of London ; and I ask why 
 our Magna Charta should not also be respected so as 
 to exempt the city of Dublin ? The corporation of 
 Dublin is as ancient as the British rule in Ireland. I 
 only trust, my Lords, that as in its commencement it 
 synchronised with the establishment of British autho¬ 
 rity in Ireland, so its downfal may not be a prelude to 
 the close of the connexion between the countries. 
 
 My Lords, the corporations of Ireland are in a great 
 many respects different from the corporations of Eng¬ 
 land. The charters of the corporations of Ireland 
 were granted for an express purpose, and that purpose 
 was to maintain against the weight of numbers, against 
 the authority and weight of the Irish people disaffected 
 to the British government, the authority of Great 
 Britain in Ireland. This w T as the policy of James the 
 First, the first monarch who ever established any thing 
 like a constitution, or anything like law, in Ireland. 
 
 The charters which were granted before his time 
 were granted to English settlers—expressly to English 
 settlers ; when the whole policy of the English govern¬ 
 ment was in every possible way to discourage and pro- 
 
89 
 
 hibit any intercourse between the colony from this 
 country and the native Irish. James introduced a 
 more liberal and enlightened policy, giving to the 
 whole of Ireland English laws and the English consti¬ 
 tution. Before his reign, Ireland had scarcely the 
 semblance of a parliament ; a few deputies, indeed, 
 were convened from towns within what then was 
 called the English pale—a colonial, not even a provin¬ 
 cial assembly, called a parliament, without power, 
 without authority, or any thing like a system of popu¬ 
 lar representation. So little way had English laws 
 then made, that it was a common saying in the country 
 before the days of James the First, that those who 
 dwelt west of the Barrow dwelt west of the law (the 
 Barrow, my Lords, is a river a few miles west from 
 Dublin). James was the first monarch who reduced the 
 whole of Ireland to the British rule, and his policy was 
 to establish a number of corporations for the avowed 
 and express purpose, and on the express condition, that 
 they should spread the protestant religion, and support 
 British authority in Ireland ; thus extending over the 
 whole country, and among all the people, that order 
 aud tranquillity which, before his days, had been only 
 known within the limits of the pale. From him the 
 national, in opposition to the colonial, constitution of 
 Ireland, may be said to date. And it is essential that 
 your Lordships should bear this in mind, that the cor¬ 
 porations of Ireland were bound by their charters, and 
 bound by their trusts—I say not whether wisely or not, 
 
 M 
 
90 
 
 hat is nothing now to the point—but they were bound 
 by their charters, and bound by their trusts, to promote 
 British authority by the influence of intelligence, of 
 civilization, and of privilege, in opposition to numbers. 
 For this, and the advancement of the protestant reli¬ 
 gion, was the very end and object of their existence. 
 The charters granted before this period were English 
 of necessity, when all intercourse between the settlers 
 of the colony and the natives of the country was a 
 crime. There were few, however, of those previously 
 formed which did not accept new charters from • 
 James. 
 
 All the charters granted to the city of Dublin, from 
 the first grant by Henry the Second of the city to his 
 men of Bristol, are swept away by this bill. I ought 
 to apprise your Lordships that many of these charters 
 confer privileges and properties for services rendered 
 to the state, for contributions to its exigencies by the 
 freemen of the city ; but all these charters, to which 
 the faith of a long line of your monarchs is pledged, by 
 one sweeping clause this bill destroys ; confiscating all 
 this property, and taking away all these privileges, from 
 the descendants of the men by whose loyalty and ser¬ 
 vices they were earned, and who transmitted them by 
 the settled rule of the constitution as an inheritance to 
 their sons. 
 
 But this, my Lords, is not ail. 1 have stated already 
 
91 
 
 that there are twenty-five guilds, or companies, in the 
 city of Dublin. Each of these have their properties, 
 each of these have their charters ; and all those char¬ 
 ters, without any reason that I have been able to dis¬ 
 cover, are destroyed by this bill ; and all the powers 
 and properties transferred to the new bodies created 
 by this bill. There is this distinction between the pro¬ 
 perty of the corporation and the properties of the guilds. 
 The property of the corporation is derived from pub¬ 
 lic grants, from public charters made by kings ; but 
 the property of those twenty-five guilds—in some in¬ 
 stances considerable—is, if I am rightly instructed, in 
 no instance derived from public charters, but it has 
 been created—under a license given them by their char¬ 
 ter—by the contributions of the individual members of 
 the guilds. And here, as far as these guilds are con¬ 
 cerned, what is it that your Lordships are called upon 
 to do by this bill ? A number of persons associated 
 under these charters have contributed their private re¬ 
 sources, their private sums of money, to purchase pro¬ 
 perty, that it may run in a particular direction ; and, 
 without any necessity alleged, or any crime proved, 
 your Lordships are called upon to take from the 
 descendants of those persons that property, and to give 
 it to persons the very last upon whom the donors 
 would have conferred it. 
 
 Had these guilds been mere private societies of trades, 
 or benefit clubs, unsanctioned by any law and un- 
 
92 
 
 licensed by any charter, such an attempt would be 
 indignantly rejected, as robbery and spoliation. The 
 only difference is, that these companies, before uniting 
 themselves into societies, or presuming to acquire pro¬ 
 perty in their associate capacity, sought and obtained 
 the license and the authority of the state. 
 
 The petition of the city of Dublin states, that they 
 have in every instance fulfilled their trusts—in times 
 of disloyalty to Britain, by remaining true to the 
 throne and maintaining British rule in Ireland ; that 
 they have fulfilled their trust by adhering steadfastly 
 to the protestant religion ; and, more than this, that 
 they have fulfilled their trust by preserving the peace 
 of their town, and securing that it should be well and 
 quietly governed. 
 
 I will just trouble your Lordships with one testi¬ 
 mony, which may satisfy you that the corporation, as 
 far as the appointment of officers are concerned, has 
 done all that could be expected from such a body. I 
 am about, with great respect, and attaching great 
 weight to his opinion, to quote to your Lordships the 
 testimony of a member of your Lordships 7 house, who 
 filled the high situation of viceroy of Ireland. It is the 
 custom in the city of Dublin, that each year the officers 
 elected, the lord mayor and sheriffs shall be presented 
 solemnly to the lord lieutenant of Ireland for his ap¬ 
 probation, and upon this occasion an interchange of 
 
93 
 
 words passes generally between some one representing 
 the corporation and the lord lieutenant. In the year 
 1837, the noble lord who then filled the office of lord 
 lieutenant of Ireland, thus addressed the lord mayor 
 elect: 
 
 “ My Lord Mayor elect—I feel it the less necessary to do 
 more on this occasion than to express my general concurrence in 
 the description of your duties, which has just been given to you 
 by the learned judge who has addressed you, because I am for¬ 
 tunate in being able to refer you to the past, as a sufficient 
 guide for the future. I am able to direct your attention to the 
 acts of your predecessor, and by these, better than by any words 
 of mine, to give you a guide for your future conduct. It is a 
 matter of unqualified satisfaction to me to find, at the close of 
 the second entire year in which it has been my fortune to wit¬ 
 ness the result of appointments such as have this day been made, 
 that I can in this instance, as in the preceding, state that in every 
 official act in which, by my position, I have been placed in con¬ 
 tact with the chief magistrate of this city, he has acquired my 
 hearty concurrence and approbation. I had the happiness of 
 stating this at the close of the mayoralty of that worthy and re¬ 
 spected man, Mr. Alderman Morrisson, of whom an intervening 
 year has not been able to obliterate the remembrance. I am 
 happy to state that his successor has emulated the line of conduct 
 which in him elicited my approbation, and in doing so, I am hap¬ 
 py to add, that the activity, zeal, and integrity of his coadjutors, 
 the high-sherifis, have also been all that I could desire.” 
 
 This, my Lords, was the testimony borne in 1837, 
 
94 
 
 and, as your Lordships will perceive, extending 
 over two years, to the character of the appointments 
 made by the corporation of Dublin; and, therefore, 
 on the authority of the noble lord who bore that testi¬ 
 mony, I am justified in saying, that there was nothing 
 in the character of those appointments, or in the con¬ 
 duct of the men advanced to the high situations of 
 magistrates of Dublin, to justify this bill of pains and 
 penalties. This testimony extends through the years 
 1836 and 1837 ; and in 1838 the same noble lord used 
 equally strong language in approving of the past con¬ 
 duct of the officers who were then presented to him; 
 and thus for three years I have the testimony of this 
 noble lord, who (I say it with all respect) w*as not a 
 friend to the corporation of Dublin, that they had not 
 in the appointment of their magistrates done injustice 
 to any class of their fellow-citizens. 
 
 This brings me, my Lords, to another part of the 
 subject, upon which I must trouble your Lordships. 
 I have said that no charge whatever has been estab¬ 
 lished against the corporation of Dublin. Your 
 Lordships are, of course, aware that a Royal Com¬ 
 mission was issued to inquire into the corporations of 
 Ireland, and that they have laid upon the table of your 
 Lordships’ house a report professing to state the result 
 of the evidence which they took. I do not use the 
 word “professing” unadvisedly, as I will presently 
 shew your Lordships. I will be obliged to trouble 
 
 
95 
 
 you with a brief sketch of this commission and its pro¬ 
 ceedings ; and in the discharge of this portion of my 
 duty, I feel happy that the proceedings upon which I 
 am compelled to comment belong to another parlia¬ 
 ment and another reign. The proceedings of that 
 commission, which his late majesty was advised to 
 issue, are now matters of history; and in speaking of 
 them, therefore, I am free from all restraint. 
 
 But, my Lords, in the very first instance, let me tell 
 you, that this report (and I pray your Lordships’ 
 attention to this fact), voluminous as it is, and the ap¬ 
 pendix relating to Dublin, contains scarcely a single 
 charge against the city. The few charges that it con¬ 
 tains I will presently advert to. I know that an im¬ 
 pression of a different nature has gone abroad; but if 
 any one believes that this report of the commissioners 
 contains charges against the city of Dublin of corrup¬ 
 tion, of mismanagement, of misapplication of the cor- 
 porate funds, of improper appointments, that person, 
 my Lords, is grossly in error. From beginning to 
 end of this report there is not a single charge of mis¬ 
 management, or a single charge of corruption ; but, 
 on the contrary, unwillingly and evidently reluctantly 
 these commissioners have been forced, in all important 
 instances, to acquit the corporation ; while they have 
 collated, and collated sedulously, unimportant, and 
 paltry, and trivial complaints, to which I will call the 
 attention of your Lordships. 
 
96 
 
 This, my Lords, is a very large report on the city of 
 Dublin, but I will shew you how it has been made up. 
 Of this report in my hand, containing four hundred 
 pages, not more than one hundred relate directly or 
 indirectly to the corporation of the city of Dublin ; 
 and these include its history, an abstract of its char¬ 
 ters, and the rental of its property. The commission¬ 
 ers inquired into the paving board—it is necessary for 
 me to tell your Lordships, that the paving board is a 
 board appointed by the government. They have 
 brought charges against the paving board which may 
 be true or maybe false, for I cannot say that I believe 
 them; their insertion in this report is scarcely a prima 
 facie evidence of their truth (I will shew your Lord- 
 ships that I am not using too strong language): but 
 whether these charges be true or false, the paving 
 board is appointed by the Lord Lieutenant, and with 
 that appointment the corporation of Dublin has nothing 
 whatever to do. They have also brought charges 
 against the ballast board, a board appointed under 
 act of parliament, and with which the corporation has 
 no connexion. But against the corporation of Dublin 
 they have brought no serious charge, and the few that 
 they have brought are, I believe, as I will satisfy your 
 Lordships, untrue. The wide street is another of 
 those boards which occupies a large portion of this 
 report, a board also unconnected with the city of Dub¬ 
 lin. For your Lordships mustTecollect this in dealing 
 with the city of Dublin, and particularly when you come 
 
97 
 
 to consider the propriety of establishing a new corpo¬ 
 ration, that almost all the municipal functions which 
 properly would belong to a corporation have, one by 
 one, been taken from the corporation of Dublin, and 
 transferred by repeated acts of parliament to boards 
 appointed by the government; and it is against those 
 boards, which have been taken from the corporation, 
 and which have been transferred to the government, 
 that the charges contained in this report are preferred. 
 There is, indeed, a general allegation, that the corpo¬ 
 rations of Ireland have not fulfilled the objects for 
 which they are designed, and that they do not now 
 fulfil all the objects for which they might have been 
 made useful; and it will be for your Lordships to con¬ 
 sider, when 1 come to analyse the appointment of that 
 commission, and the mode in which they have taken 
 their evidence, whether on this general allegation, 
 unsustained by one single particular charge of corrup¬ 
 tion against this corporation as a body, you are pre¬ 
 pared to take away their rights. 
 
 My Lords, this commission, I have no hesitation in 
 
 saying, was a partisan commission. There is not a 
 
 single commissioner named in this commission who 
 
 was not known, by his previously pledged opinions, to 
 
 be strongly prejudiced against the corporation of the 
 
 city of Dublin. The chairman of this commission was 
 
 Mr. Perrin, one of his majesty’s serjeants-at-law ; and 
 
 I do say, that if any thing was wanting to fasten the 
 
 N 
 
98 
 
 charge of partisanship and unfairness towards the cor¬ 
 poration of Dublin upon this entire commission, it was 
 the appointment of Mr. Perrin. The commission was 
 appointed in 1833, and your Lordships will recollect 
 this. It was notorious at the time, that in 1831 this 
 Mr. Perrin (I have no wish to say any more than my 
 duty obliges me to do in derogation of that gentle¬ 
 man)—this Mr. Perrin was a candidate for the city of 
 Dublin on the interest of the party favourable to the 
 reform bill, in conjunction with Sir Robert Harty, the 
 then lord Mayor of Dublin. Notwithstanding all that 
 we hear of exclusiveness as to the political opinions of 
 the corporation of Dublin, the lord mayor in 1831, a 
 gentleman whose opinions were well known when he 
 was elected lord mayor, was a candidate for the city 
 on the interest of his majesty’s government, on the 
 interest of the reform bill. But Mr. Perrin was vehe¬ 
 mently opposed, I admit, by the corporation as a body. 
 The circumstance of the lord mayor being a candidate, 
 and of his being opposed by the corporation, naturally 
 engendered even more than the ordinary heat of elec¬ 
 tion animosity ; and your Lordships may readily be¬ 
 lieve, that, even had it ended here, Mr. Perrin was not 
 the man to come to try the corporation of Dublin with 
 an unprejudiced mind. 
 
 But, my Lords, it did not end here. Mr. Perrin 
 and Sir Robert Harty were returned ; and principally 
 through the influence of active members of the corpo- 
 
99 
 
 ration a petition was presented against that return. 
 The petition was successful. Mr. Perrin and his col¬ 
 league were declared guilty of bribery. Your Lord- 
 ships will find this on the journals of the House of 
 Commons. You will find also that the committee 
 thought it necessary to make a special report on the 
 interference of the government at that election ; and 
 yet, two years afterwards, this Mr. Perrin—who had 
 been thus engaged in the very heat of an election con¬ 
 test, who had been opposed strongly by the corpora¬ 
 tion of Dublin, and mixed up in every animosity that 
 could naturally be excited in such a contest—this 
 Mr. Perrin, who had been declared by the House of 
 Commons morally unfit to sit in their assembly for that 
 parliament, becanse he was convicted of bribery; who 
 owed to the exertions of some leading members of the 
 corporation this brand upon his character ; he was the 
 man that was appointed chief judge in the commission 
 to try this corporation ! 
 
 And, my Lords, that there might be no doubt of the 
 motives which had influenced this selection, who was 
 one of his colleagues ? Mr. Hudson, a gentleman 
 whom the House of Commons reported to have been 
 also guilty of bribery at that same election—a gentle¬ 
 man whom the House of Commons directed the Attor 
 ney-General to prosecute ! This Mr. Hudson, who 
 was thus charged with having bribed, as Mr. Perrin’s 
 agent, was now associated with his late accomplice as 
 
100 
 
 his chief, as an impartial judge to decide upon the 
 purity or corruption of the corporation of Dublin. It 
 may be that those who selected this commission (I am 
 speaking now of matter of history) believed, as they 
 were anxiously seeking for evidence of corruption, 
 that those who were practically best acquainted with 
 it in themselves would best be able to detect it in 
 others ; but upon no other principle can I conceive 
 why they selected these men from the whole mass of 
 the Irish bar to sit as judges to try the corporation of 
 Dublin. 
 
 This, my Lords, was enough to mark the character 
 of the whole proceeding. The criminal made judge— 
 the men baffled and disgraced in a contest with the 
 corporation, given the opportunity of revenging their 
 defeat by an appointment as inquisitors. But this was 
 not all. Of the remaining commissioners (they were 
 twelve in all), five were Roman catholics (while the 
 Irish bar, the body from whom they were chosen, 
 were protestant in the proportion of five to one), and 
 Roman catholics not distinguished for the moderation 
 of their politics ! and every one of the commissioners, 
 protestant or Roman catholic, was known to be hostile 
 to the corporation. And it is, my Lords, upon the 
 general allegation of such commissioners, unsustained 
 by evidence, unsupported even by particular charges, 
 that your Lordships are called upon to destroy our 
 rights. 
 
101 
 
 
 My Lords, this commission, thus constituted, com¬ 
 menced its inquiries as to Dublin, and I am free to say 
 at your Lordships’ bar, that had I then had the honour 
 of advising the corporation of Dublin, I would have 
 advised them to resist the authority of that commission. 
 They did not do so. The commission came in the 
 name of the king ; however abused, that name was 
 respected by the loyalty of those for whom I plead. 
 Every information was given by the corporate officers 
 to this commission. Their books were freely laid 
 before them ; their officers attended. Your Lord- 
 ships shall hear how they were treated. 
 
 The first step of these commissioners was to insert— 
 and I cannot help thinking it rather an unusual pro¬ 
 ceeding—an advertisement in the public papers, in¬ 
 viting persons to come forward and give evidence 
 against the corporation. 
 
 I hold in my hand, my Lords, a copy of this singu¬ 
 lar document. After stating that they would sit at a 
 particular place, and calling on the officers of the 
 corporation to come forward, not by notice, but by 
 advertisement in the public papers—the pith is in the 
 postscript—they say, that “ All communications ad¬ 
 dressed to the commissioners or secretary, and left at 
 the Commercial Buildings, or at No. 46, Dominick- 
 street, will meet with attention.” 
 
 The meaning of this could not be misunderstood. 
 
102 
 
 They did not seek out sources of information on 
 which they could rely; through the medium of the 
 public press, they invited every chance accuser to 
 come forward ; proclaiming an invitation to slander in 
 the insulted name of the king. It needs, my Lords, 
 but little knowledge of human nature to calculate the 
 inevitable effect of such an advertisement in a great 
 city, where, of necessity, there must be a large class 
 who regard every constituted authority as their enemy ; 
 to what bad motive did not such an invitation appeal ? 
 a call upon the discontented—upon the envious and 
 the malicious—upon every man who had a false tale— 
 upon every man who desired to make himself of con¬ 
 sequence by inventing a grievance, or establish his cha¬ 
 racter for patriotism by bearing false witness against 
 his neighbour—upon every man who wished to make 
 his fortune with the new corporation, by having a share 
 in the condemnation of the old ? It was the procla¬ 
 mation of a mart for slander—a bidding for calumny 
 from every source, however base. 
 
 The result was such as might have been naturally 
 expected. I speak, my Lords, under great disadvan¬ 
 tages, for I have not yet seen the evidence which has 
 been laid only within these few days on your Lord- 
 ships’ table ; but I must describe it as I can prove. 
 When a royal commission bids for evidence in a great 
 populace against an ancient magistracy, evidence of 
 some kind could not be long wanting, be its character 
 
103 
 
 or its value what it might. Those who had looked 
 with envy on the civic honours which were conferred 
 on industry and merit, came forward to make up for 
 their exclusion by maligning their successful competi¬ 
 tors : discarded servants of the corporation dignified 
 into martyrs ; nay more, men who had no higher 
 motive or no graver charge than the fact that they had 
 been fined by some of the civic magistrates, in the dis¬ 
 charge of their magisterial duties, all flocked to the 
 receipt of slander. No passion was too base to find its 
 gratification here, provided only it made a man an ene¬ 
 my to the corporation. The witnesses were notorious 
 partisans, many of them without character. In some 
 instances, before the ink that took down the evidence 
 was dry, some of these respectable witnesses, asto¬ 
 nished and frightened at the hardihood of their own ac¬ 
 cusations, returned and asked leave to withdraw their 
 charge, alleging that they had sworn by mistake : we 
 can prove this at this bar. We can prove that, after 
 some of them had been contradicted by evidence which 
 could leave no doubt on the minds of the commis¬ 
 sioners that they had sworn what was not true, they 
 were yet allowed again to come forward to malign the 
 character of respectable citizens. 
 
 My Lords, this was not all. Questions were allowed 
 to be put to those witnesses ; the room was filled with 
 the members of the trades’ union—a body, whatever 
 may be its merits, at all events notoriously opposed to 
 
104 
 
 the corporation ; and these gentlemen handed their 
 written questions to the commissioners. Whenever a 
 member of the corporation appeared, he was ques¬ 
 tioned and cross-questioned ; but whenever a witness 
 appeared against the corporation, he was asked, “ Upon 
 what point he would wish to be examined ?” The 
 commissioners did not go fairly to execute their mis¬ 
 sion ; they did not call the men that they thought could 
 give them fair information ; they did not call the re¬ 
 spectable merchants of the town. I feel some degree 
 of restraint, even with all the latitude I feel your Lord- 
 ships’ generosity will allow to the defender of ancient 
 rights about to be rudely taken away, in describing the 
 witnesses as they deserve; but I venture to say that, 
 when the names of the witnesses and the testimony they 
 have given are in your Lordships’ hands, in the printed 
 evidence, you will not consider that I am describing it 
 too strongly, when I say that many of them were men 
 without character, without station, without property, 
 or respectability. 
 
 Something, however, was still wanting to complete 
 the unfairness of this inquiry ; it was not wanting 
 long. The corporation employed counsel, and told 
 the commissioners that they were prepared with evi¬ 
 dence, which they wished to have received. Some 
 officers of the corporation, it is true, were examined, 
 but they were examined by the commissioners ; but 
 when the corporation pressed upon the commissioners 
 
105 
 
 to receive the evidence they tendered, day after day, 
 by one excuse after another, the examination of these 
 witnesses was postponed ; and the commission abso¬ 
 lutely closed, and made their report, without giving 
 the corporation the opportunity which they had pro¬ 
 mised of laying their evidence before them : and I re¬ 
 peat it is upon the general allegation of these commis¬ 
 sioners that you are now called upon to destroy the 
 rights of the city of Dublin. 
 
 Your Lordships will remember that it is only within 
 these few weeks, and then in answer to a demand of 
 your Lordships, that, after an interval of six years, the 
 evidence taken by that commission has been laid upon 
 your table. Your Lordships will presently have no 
 difficulty in perceiving the reason of this. When the 
 English commission made their report, the evidence 
 was laid upon your table as fast as it could be printed; 
 but when the Irish commission gave their report, the 
 evidence was withheld, and your Lordships were only 
 permitted to judge of the general allegations. I will 
 shew your Lordships the plain, though I can scarcely 
 say the honest, reason for this suppression of the 
 evidence. 
 
 My Lords, I ought to say, and of course your 
 Lordships will understand me to speak, under this 
 responsibility, that, after consulting with my learned 
 friends, we are prepared to prove to your Lordships, 
 
 o 
 
10G 
 
 if your Lordships think fit so to order, every fact I 
 state. Having- said this, I may venture to explain how 
 I have been enabled to examine parts of that report, 
 and what I have detected. A short-hand writer was 
 employed by the city to take notes of the evidence that 
 was given, and a considerable portion of the evidence 
 was thus reported, until at last the commissioners 
 divided themselves into seven different courts, sitting, 
 I believe, two or three in one room, and others in diffe¬ 
 rent rooms ; and it then became impossible for one 
 reporter to follow these seven gentlemen at once. A 
 small portion, however, of the evidence that was taken 
 I obtained. I examined as much of it as I could. Let 
 one instance satisfy your Lordships of the faithfulness 
 with which the evidence has been represented by the 
 commissioners. 
 
 In page 28 of the appendix to the report upon the 
 city of Dublin, it is stated that the grand juries w r ere 
 composed exclusively of protestants ; and this sentence 
 occurs : “ A few Roman catholics are occasionally 
 returned.” I pray your Lordships’ special attention 
 to this passage. “ An alderman, who stated that he 
 supposed he had served twenty grand juries, said that 
 he had probably served with three Roman catholics.” 
 The sentence is ambiguous ; but there is no man read¬ 
 ing this report who would not believe that this aider- 
 man had given in evidence, that on all the twenty grand 
 juries he had served there were but three Roman ca- 
 
i 07 
 
 tholics, making the proportion of one Roman catholic 
 on seven grand juries. Now the alderman’s name is 
 not given, probably because they knew that this per¬ 
 version might be contradicted. But what will your 
 Lordships say when I tell you that the evidence of this 
 alderman—it was Alderman Montgomery—was, that 
 he had served on twenty grand juries, and that on each 
 of those twenty grand juries he had met three Roman 
 catholics ? I say it is impossible that such a falsifica¬ 
 tion of the evidence should have arisen from mistake ; 
 and whether it was some clerk who imposed upon these 
 commissioners, or whether it was their own default (for 
 I dare say any thing at your Lordships’ bar in the dis¬ 
 charge of my solemn duty as an advocate against this 
 bill), here there is a wilful and dishonest falsification 
 of the evidence by this report that is laid upon the table 
 of your Lordships’ house. 
 
 i 
 
 I will give your Lordships more instances. It is 
 stated that £500 a-year were granted by King Charles 
 the Second to the corporation of Dublin out of the 
 casual revenues of Ireland ; and this is all that is 
 stated in the report. Now, my Lords, it was stated in 
 evidence by two of the aldermen of the city before 
 these commissioners, that this £500 a-year was given 
 under the circumstances I will state. The corporation 
 had, in defence of Charles the First, maintained a re¬ 
 giment for thirty-six weeks; and when the second 
 Charles came to the throne, with more recollection of 
 
108 
 
 past services than usually distinguish the acts of that 
 monarch, he remembered these services of the city of 
 Dublin : he calculated the amount that they had laid 
 out, adding the interest, and in return for the sum 
 they had thus expended, he gave them £500a-year—the 
 bare interest of the money that, as individuals, they had 
 laid out. And why was this fact not stated? The 
 grant of £500 a-year is stated ; but while they profess 
 to give your Lordships a full history of the corporation, 
 and its charters, and its property, they never state to 
 you the singular circumstances, interesting as a mat¬ 
 ter of history, under which this was granted. Because ? 
 my Lords, they knew that to your Lordships’ equity 
 this grant, in return for money thus laid out, would have 
 established a claim of private property in the descend¬ 
 ants of the freemen of that day; and that it would 
 have been impossible for your Lordships to have taken 
 it from those descendants, and conferred it upon a 
 totally different body. 
 
 These are not the only instances. I pray your Lord- 
 ships to recollect how imperfect my examination of 
 the report has been, by means of the small portion of 
 evidence I have been able to obtain. Had I the oppor¬ 
 tunity of collating the entire evidence with the report, 
 I feel persuaded that in almost every line I could have 
 found some evidence dishonestly suppressed, or more 
 dishonestly falsified. 
 
109 
 
 I Will call your Lordships’ attention to another 
 instance. It is stated, as a charge generally against 
 the corporations of Ireland, that they have encumbered 
 their property with debt. When they come to speak 
 of the City of Dublin, they state that the City of Dub¬ 
 lin is in debt. Now this is quite true ; but they say 
 that the origin of that debt is beyond the memory of 
 man, and they give no further account. My Lords, it 
 was in evidence before them, on unexceptionable testi- 
 mony, that that debt was, in a great degree, contracted 
 by the corporation from the expenses incurred in 
 raising a regiment for the defence of the country, and 
 in giving contributions to the levy of seamen. This 
 would have been an honourable account'of the debt, 
 and as they could not fasten upon a dishonourable 
 one, they left your Lordships to conjecture what you 
 pleased, knowing that it is no good sign, either of a 
 corporation or of an individual, to be in debt. But, 
 more than this, they say that of late years the debt has 
 been increased ; another charge of mismangement in¬ 
 sinuated, although not openly made. They have not 
 the honesty to tell your Lordships how it had been 
 increased; but another part of the report makes it 
 evident that, in fact, it was by the failure of Alderman 
 Carleton, the city treasurer, a man in whose solvency 
 the corporation placed, and were justified in placing, 
 every confidence: but who, in the vicissitudes of trade, 
 which occur in every mercantile community, failed, 
 and involved the city to the extent of 40,000/. Thus, 
 
110 
 
 my Lords, was the debt, in great measure, originally 
 contracted, and thus it principally increased. The 
 report states the debt to your Lordships, but it does 
 not allow you to judge how far it reflects discredit 
 upon the corporation that it was thus contracted. 
 
 I have stated that, except general allegations of 
 unfitness, there is scarcely a charge made against the 
 City of Dublin. I can go further. There are upon 
 your Lordships’ table two documents, the general re¬ 
 port on the state of the municipal bodies, and the 
 appendix, containing a special report as to each cor¬ 
 poration. I pray your Lordships to bear with me (I 
 will do it as briefly as I can) while I shew your Lord- 
 ships, even on the evidence of these documents them¬ 
 selves, that of the charges which they put forward 
 in their report as condemning the corporations 
 in general, they are found, in the appendix, relating 
 to Dublin, to acquit that city. 
 
 In the first place, in the report, at page 34, they 
 state that the property of the corporations has been 
 made away with—has been applied to private purposes. 
 A serious charge, I admit; but on turning to their 
 own report relating to Dublin, they say (p.256) that 
 within the memory of any man not a single improvi¬ 
 dent grant has been made of property by the city of 
 Dublin. In the same page of the report they state, 
 that the management of the corporate estates involves 
 
Ill 
 
 a disregard of the public interest, and inattention to 
 pecuniary matters ; but when we come to refer to the 
 appendix relating to Dublin, we find it stated that since 
 the appointment of the present officers—a period, I 
 believe, of nearly thirty years—the pecuniary affairs 
 of the city of Dublin have been managed with marked 
 faithfulness and carefulness. (P. 42 ). Another charge 
 against the corporation at large is their debts. They 
 state the origin of the debt of the corporation of Dub¬ 
 lin is so old as to be unknown ; this is in itself almost, 
 if not altogether, au acquittal. But I have shewn to 
 your Lordships that they have suppressed facts relating 
 to that debt. I have thus contrasted their general 
 charges with their particular statements as to Dublin, 
 and I am bold to say, that if your Lordships have been 
 induced to believe that this report contains any spe¬ 
 cific charges whatever against the city of Dublin, of 
 mismanagement, or corruption, or of improper appoint¬ 
 ment of officers, or of oppression of any class of their 
 fellow-citizens, it is an entire and complete mistake. 
 The commissioners have not, indeed, the honesty to 
 pronounce an acqaittal, but they cannot bring a single 
 charge, except a few—trivial and paltry ; and when 
 this was the report from such a commission, I am 
 justified in saying that it is a triumphant acquittal. 
 
 I beg to call your Lordships’ attention to another 
 part of the report. In page 2 9, after stating the ap¬ 
 pointment of sheriffs, and objecting to that appoint- 
 
112 
 
 ment by the exclusive body, they say, “ In theevidence 
 given before the commissioners of inquiry into the fees 
 and emoluments of courts of justice, and published in 
 their fifteenth report, in the year 1826, we find a case 
 of the direct packing of a jury for a criminal trial at 
 the court of quarter sessions, at the instance of one of 
 the parties.” No doubt such things may have oc¬ 
 curred, and as long as men are open to corruption they 
 will occur, no matter who may appoint sheriffs. To 
 find this one solitary charge, they resorted, not to the 
 evidence taken by themselves, but evidence given four¬ 
 teen years ago ; but they add, “ No evidence has been 
 laid before us of any similar abuse in that or any of the 
 other courts to which jurors are returned by the 
 sheriffs of the city.” “ No evidence has been laid 
 before us!” How cautious, how niggardly, how spite¬ 
 ful, this extorted verdict of acquittal! but, therefore, 
 how triumphant! The sheriffs of Dublin return jurors 
 to all the superior courts of Ireland : out of all they 
 find, in the report of an old commission of inquiry, 
 that once upon a time a quarter-session jury was 
 packed; but no evidence before themselves, armed as 
 they were with inquisitorial power ! advertising for 
 accusers of a falling body ! a body surrounded by an 
 unscrupulous populace, opposed to them in politics 
 and religion! My Lords, this is a triumphant testi¬ 
 mony indeed! 
 
 I have called your Lordships’ attention to the 
 
113 
 
 remarkable admission that no improvident grants have 
 been made by the City of Dublin within the memory 
 of man. I am not much concerned with any thing 
 beyond this: your Lordships will scarcely punish us 
 for the sins of a remote antiquity. But^my Lords, I 
 ought to observe that these grants of ancient times 
 carry no real imputation. In times not very far dis¬ 
 tant, individuals in Ireland were in the habit of giving 
 away grants of property with an imprudence, which in 
 this country would have been deemed madness. It 
 may have been the unsettled state of the country—the 
 familiarity with confiscation—the ease with which pro¬ 
 perty was acquired, and the difficulty of keeping it, 
 that made men less unwilling to part with it. Facile 
 parita, facile dilabuntur. Whatever may have been 
 the cause, certain it is, that even in examining the titles 
 of Irish property, we constantly meet with convey¬ 
 ances of reckless generosity. The Corporation of 
 Dublin was not exempt from the national imprudence; 
 but if these grants were improper, the fault is not that 
 of the body, but of the country and the age. 
 
 Among other charges gravely mentioned in this 
 report, we find it stated that, in one of the city courts, 
 an officer was dismissed for pawning a pair of gates 
 which he had seized under an attachment! I know 
 not why they considered it necessary to inform your 
 Lordships on this point: perhaps the crime was that 
 he was dismissed. Your Lordships will forgive me 
 
 p 
 
114 
 
 for noticing such frivolous accusations; but it is upon 
 such charges, and such charges alone, that this an¬ 
 cient corporation is to be condemned. Failing in 
 establishing any serious case of misconduct, the com¬ 
 missioners turned their inquisitorial powers to hunt 
 after such petty delinquencies as these. No scandal 
 was too base, no tattle too contemptible, no charge too 
 ridiculous, provided only it could cast a slur upon the 
 authorities of this ancient city. 
 
 In another part of the report they object to the 
 arrangement of the sheriffs’ office, because it leaves to 
 
 the sub-sheriff the management of the details of the 
 
 / 
 
 office without the interference of the high-sheriff; an 
 objection which I believe applies to every sheriff’s 
 office in Ireland. But the sub-sheriff, they say, may 
 be an obscure and irresponsible person ; and then, in 
 the next page, they state that the sub-sheriff gives se¬ 
 curity to the amount of 20,000J. not nominal, but bond 
 fide security, taken by the sheriffs for their own in¬ 
 demnity; and, therefore, I should apprehend, he can¬ 
 not be considered as unknown or irresponsible. They 
 object, again, to the arrangement that is carried into 
 effect between the high-sheriff and sub-sheriff in ano¬ 
 ther respect. The fees of the sheriffs’ office are con¬ 
 siderable, amounting to three or four thousand a-year. 
 The high-sheriffs are subject to a considerable expense, 
 and the arrangement is, that the sub-sheriff shall pay 
 out of those fees a sum nearly, though not quite suf- 
 
115 
 
 ficient to indemnify the high-sheriff for keeping up the 
 hospitality of his office, and defraying the other ex¬ 
 penses. The commissioners object that that is illegal. 
 This matter was very recently discussed in the court 
 of Chancery, before my Lord Chancellor Plunket, and 
 Lord Plunket gave his opinion that nothing could be 
 more fair than such an arrangement, that it violated 
 neither the letter nor the spirit of any statute. 
 
 Another charge is, that the common council are 
 distinct from the mercantile body in the city. And 
 how, my Lords, do they prove this ? They state that 
 the chamber of commerce does not contain a single 
 alderman or sheriffs’ peer. It being perfectly noto¬ 
 rious that the chamber of commerce was formed by a 
 party opposed to the corporation, and for the express 
 purpose of disputing some fees claimed by them ; and 
 yet, they say, because the aldermen or sheriffs’ peers 
 are not members of this hostile body, that it is clear 
 that the corporation does not include the mercantile 
 interest. I assert, my Lords, that the corporation 
 contains a fair proportion of the wealth and respecta¬ 
 bility of the city—that is, of the protestants. I admit 
 their exclusiveness. In the same way of the guild of 
 merchants, they say that the majority of respectable 
 merchants are not members of it. That is not true: 
 there is scarcely a single respectable protestant mer¬ 
 chant in the City of Dublin that is not free of the guild 
 of merchants. 
 
116 
 
 My Lords, I have been thus particular in examining 
 the details of this report; not because I believe these 
 matters to be in themselves, perhaps of importance, 
 but because it is upon this report that you are called 
 on to pass this bill of pains and penalties. If the sim¬ 
 plest rules of justice prevail, it is utterly impossible, 
 on such evidence, to take away the most unimportant 
 right: we have been put upon our trial by this com¬ 
 mission—we demand that our tribunal should be im¬ 
 partial, and our trial be fair. If you pass this bill, you 
 set the stamp of your approbation upon these pro¬ 
 ceedings—proceedings which (respectfully I say it, my 
 Lords) not even that stamp can render any thing but 
 disgraceful. As a court of justice, my Lords, you 
 cannot act upon this report—you cannot make this 
 inquiry, unfair, partial, and dishonest as it is, the 
 ground of a bill of pains and penalties against a whole 
 people ;—unfair in its origin, partial in its proceedings, 
 and dishonest in its result;—unfair, because the men 
 selected to try this corporation were pledged to de¬ 
 stroy it—partial, in collecting every the basest evi¬ 
 dence against my clients, and rejecting the most 
 unexceptionable testimony in their favour—dishonest, 
 in suppressing and falsifying the evidence of which 
 they professed to give their report. 
 
 My Lords, when the crown sent out this commission, 
 an issue was sent to be tried ; on that issue we now 
 come before your Lordships for judgment. If the 
 
117 
 
 verdict be one in our favour, we have a right to de° 
 mand judgment for us at your Lordships’ hands—if 
 against us, we impeach our trial as iniquitous and 
 unfair. 
 
 I may be told that your Lordships, in the supreme 
 discretion of your legislative power, do not need this 
 inquiry to justify your acts. I ask, then, Why was 
 was this commission issued ? It was competent to 
 your Lordships to legislate without inquiry ; you had 
 the power to punish without investigation : but the 
 framers of this bill have thought it necessary to insti¬ 
 tute an inquiry ; they have thereby made it necessary 
 that it should be a fair one. Your Lordships might 
 have condemned us without a trial, but not after such 
 a trial as this. You cannot act on this evidence ; you 
 cannot now act without evidence : the character of 
 
 the commission forbids the one, the fact that it has been 
 issued is a bar to the other. 
 
 If your Lordships are called on to act on this com¬ 
 mission, you must have two things clearly established : 
 that it was a fair commission, and that it supplies suf¬ 
 ficient grounds for a bill of pains and penalties. We 
 have disproved both. If you are called on.to act inde¬ 
 pendent of it, I ask, Why was it issued ? Surely not 
 to justify a determination previously formed, and to be 
 carried intp effect even if no sufficient excuse were 
 found ! “ Punish these corporations : if we can find 
 
118 
 
 good grounds, so much the better ; but, at all events, 
 punish.” I cannot believe that, in the mind of a single 
 member of this illustrious tribunal, the resolve to 
 punish had, in fact, preceded inquiry; and that after 
 this resolve—on this resolve—a commission was issued 
 to examine—to search for evidence—to torture by 
 inquiry, and extract some confession that might jus¬ 
 tify that which was in effect determined on, even if 
 no justification could thusbe found. Your Lordships re¬ 
 member, but you will not imitate, the ancient judge :— 
 
 u Castigatque auditque dolos, subigitque fateri.” 
 
 There is, indeed, one charge (if I am correct in 
 using the expression) which is not denied—and that is, 
 the charge of exclusiveness. In the conscientious exer¬ 
 cise of a discretion confided to them by their charters, 
 the city of Dublin have confined their franchises to per¬ 
 sons professing the protestant religion. My Lords, you 
 have heard our petition ; I have no instructions on the 
 subject of maintaining this exclusiveness. We leave 
 this question to your Lordships* wisdom. You must 
 decide how far you can change that exclusiveness with 
 safety to the protestant church. I only argue, that in 
 the past exclusiveness of the corporation there has been 
 nothing criminal, therefore nothing to justify the 
 measure before your Lordships. 
 
 I will briefly go through the history connected with 
 
119 
 
 this subject ; your Lordships will judge how far it 
 supplies a criminal ground for condemnation. 
 
 Before the year 1793, Roman catholics were ex¬ 
 cluded from the corporation of Dublin by law. Up to 
 that period, therefore, if there be a crime in exclusive¬ 
 ness, the legislature, and not the corporation, is to 
 blame. Then, for the first time, the city of Dublin ob¬ 
 tained the power of admitting them. They were not 
 desired by that law to admit them : there was nothing 
 in that act which, even by implication, could be con¬ 
 strued into a legislative direction. The capability of 
 admission to lay corporation was conferred inci¬ 
 dentally along with other privileges. It might as well 
 be contended, that when the legislature gave to Roman 
 catholics the permission of holding leases of a long 
 term, that every landlord was criminal who neglected 
 to give them such leases on his estate, as that the city 
 of Dublin was criminal in not availing themselves of 
 the power conferred by the act of 1793. 
 
 Scarcely had this act been passed, when the disaffec¬ 
 tion spread through the country, which broke out into 
 open insurrection in the sanguinary rebellion of 1798. 
 Unhappily for Ireland, that rebellion was a religious 
 war. Designs were proclaimed to establish a Roman 
 catholic ascendancy in Ireland. I will not pain your 
 Lordships by dwelling on the horrors of that period. 
 It was not during that period of peril and alarm, when 
 
120 
 
 every man was suspected, and the loyalist scarcely 
 knew whom to trust, that it could be expected that the 
 city of Dublin would abandon the safeguard of exclu¬ 
 siveness. My Lords, I repeat, that war was a religious 
 war—a war on protestant institutions ; and however 
 loyal individual Roman catholics may have been, in 
 spite of their religious prejudices, I say fearlessly, that 
 the government and the legislature were forced to re¬ 
 gard the body—as a body—disaffected ; and had the 
 corporation then, while a religious war was waged 
 upon the royal authority in Ireland, thrown open their 
 franchises to Roman catholics, the government would 
 have deemed it little less than an overt act of dis¬ 
 loyalty, and an abetting of treason. 
 
 Then followed the mysterious, the yet unfathomed 
 insurrection of 1803, when a conspiracy was within 
 half an hour of seizing on the castle of Dublin, and 
 proclaiming an insurrectionary government. Again a 
 religious war ! When the chief justice of Ireland was 
 barbarously murdered in one of the leading streets of 
 its metropolis ; and when it was notorious that there 
 was a French party and a Roman catholic party ready 
 to sever the connexion between the two countries. 
 Will your Lordships tell me that the corporation of 
 Dublin were then called on to admit to their franchises 
 a class regarded as disaffected ? I do not inquire into 
 the policy by which that disaffection may have been 
 produced ; if that policy was wrong, it was the fault 
 
121 
 
 of the British government. It only concerns me to 
 allege that such was the state of the country, by what¬ 
 ever cause produced, that the corporation was not to 
 be blamed if, in fidelity to their trusts, they thought 
 themselves bound to maintain their exclusiveness. 
 
 In 1810 was commenced that fierce Roman catholic 
 agitation, which for the next twenty years disturbed 
 the country and embarrassed the government. The 
 Irish Roman catholics demanding emancipation—the 
 British government and the British legislature refus¬ 
 ing it. All this time a Roman catholic question, 
 avowedly a religious one, was agitated in opposition 
 to successive ministries and successive parliaments. 
 Act after act was passed by this parliament to con¬ 
 trol or suppress boards and associations, Roman ca¬ 
 tholic even in name. A contest was going on in 
 which the whole feelings of the Roman catholic popu¬ 
 lation were enlisted against the government. My 
 Lords, your own government would have regarded it 
 as a dereliction of duty had the city of Dublin by its 
 act proclaimed its surrender of the principle of exclu¬ 
 sive protestantism. Not a single intimation was con¬ 
 veyed to the corporation, directly or indirectly, that 
 parliament disapproved of their conduct—if any thing, 
 it was distinctly approved of; successive marks of 
 approbation were bestowed upon them—not a syllable 
 of censure breathed. I say nothing of the conduct 
 pursued by the Roman catholic leaders themselves; 
 
 Q 
 
1 22 
 
 of the fierce and irritating attacks which were made 
 upon all the authorities of the city, upon the corpora¬ 
 tion itself—attacks not very likely to conciliate. Your 
 Lordships will recollect that I am only contending, 
 that the exclusion of Roman catholics by the city is 
 not a criminal act sufficient to warrant this bill of pains 
 and penalties. 
 
 Then came the measure of 1829 ; and then, and then 
 only, can it be contended that it was manifestly the 
 intention of the legislature that the exclusiveness of 
 the corporation should be removed. My Lords, I 
 might admit they have not complied with the spirit of 
 the act, and yet I might claim something of indul¬ 
 gence for prejudices which your Lordships yourselves 
 have nurtured and encouraged. I might remind you 
 how long you had paused, how long you had refused 
 to admit Roman catholics here ; but I will again ap¬ 
 peal to the circumstances of the country. Immedi¬ 
 ately on that measure being granted, instead of the 
 Roman catholics acquiescing in its policy, and, satis¬ 
 fied with its concessions, giving up all agitation, the 
 repeal of the union was made, in reality if not in name, 
 a Roman catholic question ; associations were formed 
 in the city of Dublin strong enough to overawe, and 
 daring enough to defy, the law ; the proclamation of 
 the Viceroy in the morning was met by the proces¬ 
 sion of multitudes in the evening parading the banners 
 and emblems of sedition through our streets. When 
 
our garrison was kept constantly under arms, and the 
 guards at our posts were doubled ; nay more, when 
 your ministry—the ministry of Earl Grey—were 
 driven to rely on the loyalty and the strength of the 
 protestant population of Ulster, when they called out 
 and armed the yeomanry of that province, shall I be 
 told that then it was a crime in the city to keep up the 
 principle of exclusiveness, when the very Roman ca¬ 
 tholics whom they would most naturally have selected 
 as the first object of their experiment were the fore¬ 
 most in the ranks of the agitation for repeal ? 
 
 Then succeeded the war upon the Irish church—a 
 war religious in its character. Then it was that mul¬ 
 titudes were collected together to spoliate the clergy 
 of the protestant religion. Then it was that the minis¬ 
 try were compelled to come down and ask for a sus¬ 
 pension of the constitution of Ireland, in consequence 
 of the religious war then waged—a war carried on in 
 the name of the Roman catholic population of Ireland, 
 against which none of them protested : Where were 
 the city then to find the objects of their admission, 
 unless they admitted the violent enemies of the pro¬ 
 testant church ? This has been the state of things 
 from 1793 up to the time your Lordships first enter¬ 
 tained this bill. So that the very first intimation the 
 corporation received that it was your Lordships’ wish 
 that exclusiveness should be done away with was this 
 bill of pains and penalties, and this introduced because 
 
124 
 
 they had fulfilled the trusts of their charters. My 
 Lords, my argument is not that this exclusiveness 
 should be maintained—this I leave to your Lordships’ 
 wisdom ; but it is this, that there is nothing in the past 
 history of that exclusiveness to make it a crime. If 
 you are bound by those rules of justice which in every, 
 and especially in this the most illustrious, assembly 
 ought, against every other consideration, to prevail — 
 if you determine at last upon a legislative interference 
 with this exclusiveness, you must do it by some mea¬ 
 sure less violent than the total confiscation of our 
 charters. 
 
 But in one corporation of Ireland exclusiveness had 
 been very early done away with ; and there was not 
 much to encourage others to follow that example. 
 The corporation of Tuam had admitted Roman catho¬ 
 lics, and here is the report of the commissioners, which 
 shews that that corporation had become exclusively 
 Roman catholic ; in 1817, they disfranchised the pro- 
 testant burgesses and elected Roman catholics in their 
 place. Their revenues are derived from tolls : of these 
 tolls, worth £400 a-year, they have made a lease for 
 £250 to the Roman catholic archbishop and the com¬ 
 mittee for building the Romish cathedral; and even of 
 this reduced rent they have stipulated that the surplus, 
 after paying some necessary charges, should be applied 
 to the building of this cathedral ! Every penny of 
 their disposable income is thus applied. Your Lord- 
 
125 
 
 ships will find all this detailed in the report on the 
 borough of Tuara—not a word of censure or of repre¬ 
 hension, but rather praise. Your Lordships will find 
 it also stated that “ the sovereign and burgesses are 
 now, all with one exception, of the Roman catholic 
 religion though I am bound to tell your Lordships 
 it is added— “ It was stated to us that there are not 
 now any religious or political prejudices in the election 
 of burgesses.” 
 
 There is one charge in the report to which I ought 
 to allude, but to which I accidentally omitted to advert 
 in the proper place. It is the only one involving any 
 charge against an officer. It is stated in the report, on 
 the jurisdiction of the lord mayor in inflicting fines, 
 that he has used his power in an improper way. Most 
 probably, my Lords, the passage to which I allude 
 would have escaped the notice of every noble Lord in 
 this house; it contains a charge, and I will call your 
 attention to it. I have no wish to conceal any thing, 
 to gloss over any thing. The way, my Lords, in which 
 this charge is stated is curious, if not suspicious. They 
 state, that it was admitted by the registrar of the lord 
 mayor’s court that a remarkable practice existed as to 
 compounding for fines : the fine on a publican is 4s. 7d. 
 for a breach of the Sabbath, and when a publican is 
 summoned for the first time, he was in the habit of 
 paying a pound to the registrar as a composition for 
 future fines, the informers of the office visit him no 
 
126 
 
 more, and thus he obtains for one pound a plenary 
 indulgence to break the Sabbath for a year. Now, 
 my Lords, I will venture to say that in this represen¬ 
 tation there is a fraud. While the evidence is sup¬ 
 pressed I am bold to say, that no such general charge 
 is warranted. 
 
 I do not mean to say that some one lord mayor’s 
 secretary may not have acted thus; there have been 
 corrupt men in all stations : but I deny that any regis¬ 
 trar could have stated that it was a general practice, 
 as is here insinuated; and for this reason, that each 
 lord mayor appoints his own registrar—generally a 
 private friend of his own. And, my Lords, when you 
 come to examine the evidence, which at last is now 
 printed, you will find that this is a misrepresentation of 
 the evidence, as well as in the case of the three grand 
 jurors. 
 
 After all, examine this charge. They do not dare to 
 say that the lord mayor was cognisant of this improper 
 practice—they do not allege that any person who had 
 purchased this indulgence had escaped punishment on 
 a complaint being made against him—it is only said 
 that, on paying this pound, the informers of the office 
 visit him no more : so that the charge virtually comes 
 to this, that some common informer received a pound 
 not to summon him to the court. I, as a citizen, might 
 
127 
 
 summon any one of the publicans to the court, and 
 there is no allegation that my complaint would not be 
 heard. 
 
 I venture to say this charge is as dishonest as the 
 rest of the report. I am almost ashamed of thus 
 dwelling upon such charges, but the report actually 
 contains nothing else. I can find nothing more serious, 
 more grave, than charges that the informers of the 
 lord mayor’s court, were bought off by publicans ; 
 and that an officer in another city court was dismissed 
 for pawning a pair of gates. It is literally upon such 
 charges, and such charges alone, that your Lordships 
 are called on to visit with the penalties of guilt this 
 ancient corporation. 
 
 I do entreat your Lordships’ attention to the case 
 we have made upon this report, upon which I am sorry 
 to have detained you so long; but it was necessary to 
 shew to your Lordships that this report was a trium¬ 
 phant acquittal of the city of Dublin. No mismanage¬ 
 ment—no corruption is proved. Upon what is this 
 bill of pains and penalties grounded ? The corpora¬ 
 tion is unpopular—will you ground a bill of pains and 
 penalties upon common fame? Sometimes these com¬ 
 missioners insinuate a charge upon common suspi¬ 
 cion—the people suspect its officers. “ It is said,” is 
 the convenient formula adopted when they have no 
 
evidence which they can produce. Will your Lord- 
 ships punish us upon this ? There is one precedent— 
 it is an Irish one. 
 
 In James the Second’s reign an act of attainder was 
 passed against 3000 protestant gentlemen, and the 
 Speaker of the House of Commons, in presenting the 
 bill, said to that monarch, “ Some of these we have 
 attainted upon such evidence as we think sufficient, 
 but a great many more upon common reportand 
 when this bill is presented to Her Gracious Majesty, 
 Her Majesty ought to be told that a very few of the 
 charges, and these trivial ones, rest upon evidence 
 that these commissioners thought sufficient, but that 
 most of them rest upon common report. That act of 
 attainder does supply a precedent, but I will venture 
 to say there is no other. 
 
 Now, my Lords, I come to detain your Lordships 
 by an examination of the provisions of the bill laid 
 upon your table. Perhaps, my Lords, I may venture 
 to say I have shewn you, that even if you should de¬ 
 cide upon admitting new franchises, there is nothing 
 in the past history or conduct of the corporation to 
 justify your Lordships in taking away those already 
 existing. And now I am sure I will equally demon¬ 
 strate to you from this bill, that were the corporation 
 of Dublin ever so corrupt, ever so guilty, ever so de¬ 
 serving of punishment, you could not inflict a greater 
 
129 
 
 curse upon the city of Dublin, or the country, than by 
 creating' such a corporation as that contemplated by 
 this bill. This bill takes away every existing fran¬ 
 chise, and enacts that a new common council shall be 
 elected by the inhabitants rated to a certain amount. 
 And first, my Lords, I will call your attention to the 
 permanent franchise that is proposed. A temporary 
 substitute is provided for the first three years, but the 
 permanent franchise is, that every one rated to the 
 poor law shall have a vote—that is, household suffrage; 
 for by the Irish poor law every property, however 
 small, is liable to be rated, and this constitutes house¬ 
 hold suffrage. I will call your attention to the clause 
 regulating the permanent franchise—it is the 326 . The 
 oi(ly qualification is, to be two years rating to the poor 
 law ; it is not necessary that the voter should reside in 
 one and the same house, or hold one and the same 
 property, during the two years ; the bill provides ex¬ 
 pressly that removal shall not interrupt his franchise 
 He may be a wanderer in the city, migrating from 
 parish to parish, from alley to alley, from hovel to 
 hovel—I will shew your Lordships presently, from one 
 room to another, a cobbler moving from stall to stall, 
 and shed to shed, seeking some new shelter as his 
 landlord ejects him from the old. But let him con¬ 
 tinue to occupy any tenement, however wretched, and 
 be rated to any amount, however small, he is a bur¬ 
 gess of the city and entitled to his vote. 
 
 R 
 
ISO 
 
 lour Lordships must estimate the full effect of this 
 32d clause, by taking it in connexion with two others. 
 By the 36th clause it is enacted that every occupier 
 may claim to be put upon the rate, while at the same 
 time it is provided that if any act obliges the landlord 
 to pay the rate, notwithstanding the tenant is rated, 
 the liability of the landlord shall be still undisturbed ! 
 
 Then comes the 37th clause, which is this : “ And 
 be it enacted, that where any of the premises as afore¬ 
 said, in any such borough, shall be jointly occupied 
 by more persons than one as owners or tenants, each 
 of such joint-occupiers shall, subject to the conditions 
 herein before contained as to persons occupying pre¬ 
 mises in any borough, be entitled to be enrolled as a 
 burgess for such borough.” That is, my Lords, that 
 every man rated as a joint-occupier is entitled to have 
 a vote; and, by the provisions to which I have already 
 called your Lordships’ attention, every man having 
 property is entitled to claim to be rated; every man 
 who holds any fractional portion of a tenement may be* 
 a burgess ; five or six may hold a tenement together, 
 but each of them being an inhabitant householder 
 (whatever restriction this may impose) is entitled to 
 be registered as a burgess. 
 
 These are the provisions of the bill which are in¬ 
 tended to be permanent: they are, I believe, too 
 
131 
 
 monstrous ever to be adopted by your Lordships. Let 
 us see what is proposed for the first three years : it is 
 proposed that every one rated to the poor rate to the 
 value of £10, deducting a certain allowance for repairs 
 and insurance (of which, as my learned friend told 
 your Lordships last night, we know little in Ireland), 
 is entitled to vote. Now your Lordships will observe, 
 that whatever security this gives us for a bona fide 
 franchise depends altogether upon the honesty, the 
 integrity, and the impartiality of the poor law valua¬ 
 tors ; and we will prove it in evidence at your Lord” 
 ships’ bar, if you should so direct, that the valuators 
 selected for the city of Dublin, for which alone I am 
 concerned, are notorious partisans of the democratic 
 party ; that they have in every instance where practi¬ 
 cable raised the amount, in order to bring parties 
 within the franchise. If your Lordships rely upon 
 the impartiality, the integrity, or the honesty of the 
 poor law valuators, for securing a bona fide franchise, 
 you will certainly find yourselves utterly mistaken. 
 
 But, my Lords, it may be said that the rating will 
 correct this—that men will not submit to a high valua¬ 
 tion when it imposes higher taxation ; but your Lord- 
 ships will recollect, that if all property be equally 
 overvalued, the proportion of the sum to be raised that 
 falls upon each part of it continues unaltered. A fixed 
 sum is to be raised off a given amount of property in 
 a union ; it matters not whether that property is valued 
 
high or valued low, the same sum is to be raised. Only 
 apply the same scale of exaggeration to all, and, ex¬ 
 cept as the proportion between landlord and tenant is 
 slightly altered, the sum payable by each individual 
 remains just the same. If the property in a union be 
 really worth £20,000, and you have to raise a tax of 
 £1000, you lay on a shilling in the pound: estimate it 
 however at £40,000, that is, double every man’s nomi¬ 
 nal value, you still raise the £1000 by a tax of sixpence 
 in the pound; and every individual pays exactly the 
 same sum he did before. 
 
 But, my Lords, even admitting that the valuation 
 was unequal—that houses worth nine pounds were 
 placed on a level with houses worth ten, let us estimate 
 the full value of the security afforded by the additional 
 tax. The poor rate declared in the north union of the 
 city of Dublin is five pence in the pound. If the nine- 
 pound houses be all rated at ten, the franchise on which 
 your Lordships rely is completely disturbed ; yet each 
 of the houses thus improperly obtaining the franchise, 
 incurs but an extra charge of five pence in the year. 
 A house is raised from eight pounds, at an annual 
 charge of ten pence, a charge which the occupier will 
 gladly pay for the franchise : it is not that a man above 
 the line is subject to a tax, and the man below it to 
 none ; it is only that one man will pay a few pence 
 more in the year by being rated to the standard of the 
 franchise. 
 
133 
 
 If, before your Lordships pass this bill, you wilt 
 ascertain how many persons in Dublin have petitioned 
 to have their ratings raised, and an additional value 
 set upon their tenements, and the result of their peti¬ 
 tions, you will at once, far better than by any argu¬ 
 ment, understand the value of the test of franchise 
 furnished by the poor law system, as it has been ma¬ 
 naged in Ireland. 
 
 I assert, my Lords, that the poor law system, made 
 as it has been—dishonestly made—an engine of parti¬ 
 sanship, supplies you no test whatever of a bona fide 
 franchise; but I feel justified in stating, that even if 
 you could obtain a bona fide ten pound rating, the 
 corporation would be exclusively Roman catholic ; at 
 least, in the body that would elect it, the Roman 
 catholic would be to the protestant householders in 
 the proportion of two to one. 
 
 My learned friend last night put before your Lord- 
 ships a calculation, prepared by a gentleman ready to 
 verify it at your Lordships 5 bar (Mr. Hamilton, the 
 late member for Dublin), who calculates the protes¬ 
 tant ten pound houses at 4000, the Roman catholic at 
 over 9000. The result is, that the Roman catholics, 
 distinguishing them as a religious sect, would, in four¬ 
 teen out of fifteen wards, be able to elect the common 
 councilmen ; and that, in the remaining ward, the pro- 
 testants would be able to carry the election by an im- 
 
134 
 
 mense majority. Each ward returns six common 
 councilmen and one alderman; and out of the 105, 
 seven would be returned by the protestants. I am 
 not prepared to say that a protestant may not be re¬ 
 turned by the Roman catholics, but he would be a pro¬ 
 testant ready to do their bidding. I do not wish to 
 allude to parties at this bar, but there are in Ireland 
 two known and defined parties upon one point—those 
 prepared to support the protestant church, and those 
 determined to destroy it: and, out of fifteen wards, 
 the elections of fourteen will be controlled by those 
 determined to destroy the protestant church. 
 
 It is, my Lords, by the disfranchisement of the free¬ 
 men—a disfranchisement in itself unjust—that this bill 
 takes away from the property, intelligence, and cha¬ 
 racter of the city all chance of influencing the munici¬ 
 pal elections. I may be asked, Will not the freemen 
 of respectability retain their votes as ten pound house¬ 
 holders ? The question is one that naturally occurs 
 to the mind. My Lords, the freedom of the city of 
 Dublin has been conferred upon almost all the respect¬ 
 able protestants in its vicinity who have had any long 
 connexion with the city; upon men who had distin¬ 
 guished themselves in the naval or military service of 
 their country; upon men eminent in literature, science, 
 or art. Many retired merchants, freemen of the city, 
 and others living not within the city but in the neigh¬ 
 bourhood, possessing still large property in the city, 
 
135 
 
 will be disfranchised by this bill; for though a man 
 may be owner of fifteen thousand a-year in fee-simple, 
 he will have no vote under this measure. Your Lord- 
 ships, too, will recollect that the sons of freemen are 
 all free, and thus a whole family, occupying but one 
 house, acquire several votes. There are houses in the 
 city worth £300 a-year, the inmates of which, if the 
 rights of freemen were retained, would command se¬ 
 veral votes, which by this bill will be placed on a level 
 w r ith the house rated at ten pounds. If your Lordships 
 decide on adopting this bill, and still retain the rights 
 of freemen, whether by permitting them to vote in the 
 wards with the householders, or by enacting that the 
 guilds should still send a portion of representatives to 
 the common council, you will have at least devised a 
 mode by which the exclusiveness we apprehend will be 
 in some degree prevented, and the property and re¬ 
 spectability of the city retain some share of influence 
 in its municipal institutions. 
 
 My Lords, I do not hesitate to say, unless you can 
 devise some such means of countervailing the influence 
 of the democratic principle, that, even with a bona 
 fide ten pound franchise, the new corporation of Dub¬ 
 lin will be composed almost exclusively of men pledged 
 to repeal the union between the two countries. In 
 proof of this, I refer your Lordships to our recent 
 election for poor law guardians. Men were elected 
 who were certainly not the best qualified by station or 
 
136 
 
 property ; who were violent partisans, and pledged to 
 repeal. Of six wards on the north side of the city, 
 just the same as those under this bill, the party that 
 support repeal and the destruction of the church car¬ 
 ried the elections of their nominees in five; on the 
 south side they were not quite so successful, being 
 defeated in two or three out of nine : but the result of 
 the entire election was, that out of thirty-six guardians, 
 twenty-two were Roman catholics; and, classifying 
 them by political opinions, twenty-five were men who 
 had voted at the last election for the candidates pledged 
 to destroy the church ; only eight who had voted 
 against them. And thus, though by the mode of 
 voting under the poor law, property is, in some de¬ 
 gree, represented—under the municipal bill not at all. 
 
 If I wanted an argument to satisfy your Lordships 
 that the new corporations w T ill be made engines of 
 partisanship, I could find it in the contests under the 
 poor law in our city. The office was one with which 
 politics had nothing to do ; the measure, one with 
 respect to which charity ought to have hushed to 
 silence all political and religious discord : but every 
 election was made the subject of a fierce religious and 
 political contest; placards have been posted in our 
 streets, such as would in this country scarcely be pub¬ 
 lished during a parliamentary election, and the rate¬ 
 payers were called upon to reject respectable gentle¬ 
 men because they were not violent enough as partisans. 
 
137 
 
 Then, if the poor law bill has been turned into an en¬ 
 gine of political discord, it is impossible that the cor¬ 
 porations will not be so too. My learned friend has 
 stated, that the men elected as guardians were nomi¬ 
 nated in many places from the altars of the chapels, 
 and he has offered to prove it; it is, my Lords, almost 
 universally the case. If that has been done in the 
 poor law, how much more will it be done in the muni¬ 
 cipal elections ? 
 
 Now, I pray your Lordships’ attention to another 
 clause with relation to the franchise. The lord mayor 
 is made by this bill the judge of the admission of bur¬ 
 gesses, assisted by two assessors; but assessors chosen, 
 like himself, by a partisan town council. If he reject 
 a claimant, it is true there is an appeal expressly given, 
 but there is none against his admission. Your Lord- 
 ships will understand the full evil of this only by bear¬ 
 ing in mind those clauses, which relate to the extension 
 of the franchise to joint-occupiers. It will be in the 
 power of a partisan lord mayor to admit the rabble 
 indefinitely—no appeal is given—his deoision is final. 
 I may, perhaps, be told, that, independent of this act, 
 there is the right to apply to the Queen’s Bench for a 
 quo warranto ; but, my Lords, this right is, by this 
 act, not openly, indeed, but covertly, and by implica¬ 
 tion, taken away ; the 56th clause, which regulates the 
 application for a quo warranto , is studiedly confined 
 
 % 
 
138 
 
 to mayors, aldermen, and councillors. The lord 
 mayor’s admission of a burgess is, therefore, made 
 absolute and final. 
 
 Another regulation in this bill is this. By the 51st 
 clause, the lord mayor is to hold an annual revision of 
 the list, between the 1st and 15th of October; and if 
 any man is objected to, and does not sustain his quali¬ 
 fication, he loses his vote. See hew this would operate 
 in Dublin. Dublin has not a commercial population 
 like other cities : its population is composed of the 
 gentry and professional men, who have little or no 
 connexion with the city except that which its being 
 the metropolis, the seat of government and the courts 
 of law, obliges them to have. Some of your Lordships 
 will readily understand that gentlemen of our profession, 
 during what is commonly called the long vacation, are 
 glad to escape as far from the city as we can ; and it is 
 just during the time of our absence that this revision- 
 court is fixed, even were we inclined to endure in one of 
 these courts an annual quarrel with the rabble of the 
 city. Nay more, suppose any of us were patriotic 
 enough to abridge our summer relaxations to contend 
 for our right to vote for a common councilman, the 
 mayor may fix the revision after three days’ notice ; 
 and this at a period when every professional man, and 
 every gentleman not locally connected with business 
 in the city, is absent. 
 
When your Lordships come to consider the peculiar 
 circumstances of this population, you will see how 
 vain it is to expect the better classes of the city to 
 claim or to exercise the municipal franchise. It is an 
 unfortunate, perhaps, to human nature, a humiliating 
 truth—but it is a truth—that, generally speaking, the 
 higher we ascend in the scale of wealth, independence, 
 and even character, the less disposed will we find per¬ 
 sons to submit to annoyance and trouble for a politi¬ 
 cal object. Those to whom the franchise is a personal 
 object—those whom its possession makes of some con¬ 
 sequence, will submit to annoyance and trouble to attain 
 it. I need not tell your Lordships, that, to different 
 grades of society, apparently the same exertion in¬ 
 volves a very different amount of sacrifice. The 
 gentry have fixed their residence in Dublin for plea¬ 
 sure, not to become burgesses ; professional men to 
 follow their professional avocations. These classes 
 will not attend the revision once a-year, they will not 
 vote once a-year—all for an object apparently so insig¬ 
 nificant as the return of a common councilman. Thus 
 the principle of a democratic corporation is here pal¬ 
 pably unjust, because you virtually exclude from all 
 share, even the smallest, in its management, the large 
 and the most influential portion of its population, 
 which consists of the gentry and professional classes 
 of the kingdom ; while by this bill you subject us to 
 an enormous power of taxation, by a common council 
 in which we have no voice. 
 
140 
 
 It will, my Lords, be an anomaly in society, that the 
 corporation of a metropolitan city should be directly 
 and bitterly opposed in religion and feeling to the great 
 majority of the gentry and professional classes—yet 
 this anomaly your Lordships will create by the pro¬ 
 posed incorporation of Dublin. 
 
 I have, perhaps, made plain to your Lordships what 
 will be the constitution of this new body ; I will now 
 speak of their powers. 
 
 My Lords, I will first call your attention to the 98th 
 and 99th clauses of the bill. The 98th clause enacts, 
 that the town council may appoint one person to be 
 town clerk, and another, treasurer ; “ and also may 
 appoint such other officers as have been usually ap¬ 
 pointed in such borough, or as they shall think 
 necessary, for enabling them to carry into execution 
 the various powers and duties vested in them by virtue 
 of this act, and may, from time to time, discontinue 
 the appointment of such officers as shall appear to 
 them not necessary ; and such council or board shall 
 take such security for the due execution of his office 
 by any such town clerk, treasurer, or other officer, as 
 the said council or board shall think proper ; and shall 
 order to be paid to the mayor, and to the town clerk 
 and treasurer, and to every such officer to be employed 
 as aforesaid, SUCH SALARY OR ALLOWANCE as the 
 SAID COUNCIL OR BOARD SHALL THINK REASONABLE.” 
 
141 
 
 So that, my Lords, the discretion of this town coun¬ 
 cil is to be the limit on the salaries of the officers. The 
 99th clause annexes to this a provision that enacts, that 
 if they appoint an officer not usual in the borough, in 
 that case the appointment must be approved by the 
 Lord Lieutenant; but that your Lordships may see 
 how far this will be any check—you will perceive, 
 with regard to the offices already in existence, no such 
 control is to be exercised over the amount of salary; 
 the only thing reserved is that they must not appoint 
 any officer not usual—I will just read for your Lord- 
 ships a list of officers now usual. They have a coro¬ 
 ner, president of the court of conscience, town clerks, 
 marshal, water bailiffs, serjeants at mace, secretary of 
 lord mayor and registrar of lord mayor’s court, regis¬ 
 trar of court of conscience, bailiffs of that court, crier, 
 governor of newgate, keeper of sheriffs’ prison, trea¬ 
 surer, accountant, architect, surveyor, high constable, 
 sword bearer, mace bearer, officer of commons, clerks 
 of the market, &c., &c., and last, not least, the city 
 chaplain. To every one of these officers they may 
 appropriate, without any control from the privy coun¬ 
 cil, any salary they think fit: electing some notorious 
 partisan as lord mayor of Dublin, they may vote him 
 £10,000 a-year ; to the city chaplain, who need not be 
 a clergyman of the established religion—that is proved 
 in England—who will be a Roman catholic prelate or 
 priest, they may vote £3000 or £4000 a-year. The 
 mace-bearer’s office may be conferred upon some man 
 
142 
 
 who has performed distinguished service to the anti- 
 English and anti-protestant party in Ireland, and they 
 may give him £1000 a-year, without any control. Here 
 is room for patrouage enough in converting these 
 offices, small but still usual, into lucrative ones. And 
 give me leave to say, my Lords, that, even with regard 
 to the creation of new officers, I would look with some 
 alarm at the check proposed in this bill—it leaves in 
 the government something like a power to job with the 
 corporation—and if the government refuse to consent 
 to the new appointment, the refusal towards an indivi¬ 
 dual is always ungracious—suppose the appointment 
 to be connected either with politics or religion, it will 
 at once place the government and the corporation in an 
 unfortunate collision, perhaps upon atopic well calcu¬ 
 lated to excite popular feeling. 
 
 Now, my Lords, there is, I admit, and my learned 
 friend called your attention to it last night, a clause 
 directing the accounts to be laid before the Lord 
 Lieutenant, and abstracts laid before parliament. For 
 what purpose ? The Lord Lieutenant has no power 
 of control—parliament has no power of control. Can 
 any man imagine that a sense of shame or dread of 
 exposure in your Lordships’ house, or the other house 
 of parliament, might influence this democratic corpo¬ 
 ration ? A great statesman long since well observed, 
 that a democracy is the most shameless of all shame¬ 
 less things. What would be to the town council of 
 
143 
 
 Dublin the debates in your Lordshis’ house, if they 
 vote the money of the citizens as I have shewn you 
 they have the power to do ? the opinion of their own 
 little public would be with them. Perhaps your cen¬ 
 sures would be quoted, but it would only be to shew 
 how little sympathy a Saxon parliament in England 
 had with the Irish people. 
 
 But I may be asked where these funds are to come 
 from. I will shew you ; and let me here observe, my 
 Lords, that in this bill you are throughout legislating 
 on unknown quantities—nothing is honest—nothing is 
 fair ; important enactments are carried into effect by 
 implication. You may suppose you are confiscating 
 property of a few thousands a-year ; at the period of 
 the commission it appears to have been £25 ,000 
 a-year, but encumbered with a debt; but from the 
 falling in of old leases (principally building leases), 
 the commissioners state that they were informed by 
 the city treasurer that the increase on the present in¬ 
 come would amount to an addition of £15,000 a-year 
 in twenty years ; six or seven of those years have al¬ 
 ready passed. After the most minute inquiry that I 
 have been able to make, I think I could establish at 
 your Lordships’ bar (I wish to be understood as not 
 speaking with perfect accuracy), that within a period 
 of thirty or forty years from this time, the property of 
 the corporation of Dublin, at the lowest calculation, 
 will amount to not less than £50,000 a-year. 
 
144 
 
 All this property, my Lords, is confiscated by this 
 bill ; nay more, whatever property may be possessed by 
 the different guilds is transferred to the new corpora¬ 
 tion ; this latter, my Lords, an act of spoliation, without 
 even the semblance of excuse. By the 18th clause 
 the new town council 44 are invested with all the law¬ 
 ful franchises, rights, trusts, powers, authorities, pro¬ 
 perties, and estates, now or of late legally vested in, 
 and belonging to, or which of right ought to belong 
 to, the old bodies corporate.” This same clause dis¬ 
 solves the existing bodies named in schedule A. It 
 is worth while to call your Lordships’ attention to 
 the heading of this clause, certainly not the heading 
 under which you would expect to meet with these 
 provisions of confiscation; the marginal heading is 
 simply 44 Corporations in schedule A to be styled 
 mayor, aldermen, and burgesses !” But this is not all 
 the fraud; I have said that this clause transfers all the 
 properties of the guilds, and destroys these bodies. 
 Your Lordships may read over the clauses again and 
 again without detecting a single hint of this; but when 
 we turn to the interpretation clause—a clause gene¬ 
 rally passed without observation—we find these words, 
 that 44 Body corporate shall be construed to include 
 all guilds or fraternities of, within, or connected with, 
 such body corporate.” If it were necessary to destroy 
 these guilds, would not the honest way to do it be by 
 a direct clause, enacting, that whereas there are in the 
 city of Dublin twenty-five guilds with separate char- 
 
145 
 
 ters and distinct property, these charters should cease 
 and this property be taken away ? But every thing in 
 this bill is dishonest; the suppression of these bodies 
 is accomplished by an interpretation clause—twenty- 
 five corporations swept away by an explanation ! by a 
 new meaning put upon words ! private properties con¬ 
 fiscated by the same !—a clause of confiscation ex¬ 
 tended to totally different bodies by the formal inter¬ 
 pretation clause ! and even the clause itself headed as 
 if it were only regulating a matter of etiquette, fixing 
 the proper title of the corporation ! 
 
 In addition to this property which is to be handed 
 over to this new corporation, they are to have a 
 power of taxation, for the first time conferred upon 
 corporations in Ireland; this power is given by the 
 134th and 135th clauses. My Lords, I am free again 
 and again to repeat, that throughout the whole of this 
 bill, from the beginning to the end, nothing is fair, 
 nothing is open, nothing is above board—every thing 
 is done by trick, every thing is done by manoeuvre, 
 every right is conferred or taken away by implication. 
 Instead of saying, Be it enacted that they shall have 
 the power to make a borough rate, and then proceed¬ 
 ing to regulate and limit its collection, it is enacted 
 that they shall have the power of taxation conferred 
 upon the commissioners in the act of the 9th of George 
 
 the Fourth, an act for paving and lighting towns in 
 
 T 
 
146* 
 
 Ireland ; thus sending us to examine the provisions of 
 another, and perhaps a complicated statute, before we 
 ascertain the actual powers that this bill confers. 
 
 My Lords, I hold in my hand the statute of the 9th 
 of George the Fourth, which is here referred to. If 
 your Lordships will bear with me for a few minutes 
 on a dry question of law, I will call your attention to 
 the peculiar wording of the clause in this statute con¬ 
 ferring the power of taxation. The commissioners are 
 empowered to make not one rate, but three distinct 
 and separate rates : one on houses over £20 a-year in 
 value up to Is. in the pound: another on houses 
 between £20 and over £10 of 9d. in the pound ; under 
 £10 of 6d .; obliging them, however, whenever they 
 make one of these rates, to make at the same time the 
 others, and in the same proportion. 
 
 Now these powers of taxation are given to the town 
 council with this qualification by this bill, “ Except 
 that every such rate shall be, and is hereby authorised 
 to be, assessed and levied, and raised from and off the 
 owners, occupiers, or tenants of all hereditaments 
 rateable for the relief of the destitute poor in Ireland, 
 in an equal and uniform manner.” 
 
 Do these words control the graduated scale estab¬ 
 lished by the 9th of George the Fourth? If so, to 
 
147 
 
 what extent of rate does the authority of the town 
 council extend ? If they are not to levy three rates 
 on three distinct classes of houses, but one uniform 
 assessment upon all, which of the three limits men¬ 
 tioned in the former statute controls them ? A court 
 of law will, no doubt, find means of solving the diffi¬ 
 culty. When your Lordships recollect that by the 
 former statute three distinct rates are to be levied, it 
 may be a serious question whether the proviso in the 
 bill now before you may not be construed, not so as to 
 interfere with the graduated scale, but to apply dis¬ 
 tinctly and separately to each of these three rates, 
 enacting that each of them shall be levied in an equable 
 and uniform manner on that class of property which is 
 subject to it; and that the exception means simply to 
 substitute for the old valuation the new valuation un¬ 
 der the poor law, as the basis of the municipal rate— 
 and to subject to the new tax all property rated to the 
 poor law, in some respects different from that subject 
 to the former tax. 
 
 This, however, my Lords, is immaterial, whether the 
 rate be levied uniformly or on a graduated scale ; 
 whatever, however, be the power, it ought to be de¬ 
 fined to prevent litigation hereafter. There is no doubt, 
 however, that they have the power to levy a rate. Six 
 pence in the pound will produce £18,000 a-year ; nine 
 pence, £27,000 ; one shilling, £36,000 ; the valuation 
 of Dublin being £704,000. 
 
148 
 
 This is bad enough: but conferring, as I have said, 
 this power by implication, you are giving them an ex¬ 
 tent of power of which, up to this hour, you are un¬ 
 aware. This clause, my Lords, confers upon the 
 
 democracy of Dublin an UNLIMITED POWER TO TAX 
 ITS property : a power of which I confess none but 
 a lawyer would ever have detected the existence in this 
 clause ; and a lawyer only, because his profession has 
 trained him to look for fraud. The limited rate the 
 commissioners, and, consequently, the town council, 
 have a right to impose of their own authority ; but by 
 the 45th clause of the 9th of George the Fourth they 
 have the power, if two-thirds of them agree, of recom¬ 
 mending an extraordinary assessment, indefinite in 
 amount, upon calling a meeting of rate-pavers ; and if 
 the majority present at this meeting agree to assess¬ 
 ment, they have the power of levying a rate to an un¬ 
 limited amount upon the citizens. I will venture to 
 say, my Lords, so artfully is this power conferred, not 
 by, honest and direct words, but by reference to a sta¬ 
 tute on another subject, that there is not a single 
 noble Lord in your Lordships’s house, who was aware 
 that, not merely by this bill were you giving the town 
 council the power of levying six pence, or nine pence, 
 or one shilling in the pound, but that you were giving 
 them the power absolutely, according to the majority 
 of rate-payers at a public meeting assembled, where 
 the populace will always bear sway—that you were 
 giving them the power of levying an unlimited rate 
 
149 
 
 within the city. If it were fair or right to confer this 
 tremendous taxing power, it ought to have been done 
 directly, not by implication. Of those who have paid 
 most attention to this measure in Ireland, I know of 
 no one who was aware of this extraordinary power 
 contained in this clause. Those who have property, 
 whatever be their creed or their class, looked with 
 alarm on the limited power of taxation which it was 
 understood this bill conferred, but they never dreamed 
 of the tremendous and unlimited power which is behind 
 this. In a consultation with my two learned friends, 
 we had examined this clause several times with care 
 before we discovered that such an extraordinary power 
 was conferred. In addition to the ordinary rate which 
 they may impose of their own authority, two-thirds of 
 the common council, with the consent of the rate¬ 
 payers, have the power of taxing the population of 
 Dublin to any amount. For what purpose ? “For 
 the purpose aforesaid of appointing “what officers 
 they think fit,” and voting them what salaries “they 
 think reasonable!” 
 
 Now, as far as the city of Dublin is concerned, let 
 me again remind your Lordships that, for this enor¬ 
 mous revenue and this enormous taxation, they have 
 not one proper municipal function to discharge : they 
 will not lay down a single pavement; they will not 
 light a single lamp—we are taxed for these purposes 
 by a separate board. They will not establish any 
 
150 
 
 police—we are taxed for that by a separate board. We 
 are taxed to pay the grand jury assessments, the ex¬ 
 penses of prisons, and such like ; and if another bill, 
 not yet before your Lordships, professes to transfer 
 the powers of the grand jury to these new town coun- 
 
 t 
 
 cils, it will give them all their powers of taxation. We 
 are taxed for the wide streets; we are already taxed 
 separately for every conceivable municipal purpose ; 
 and with these purposes the new corporation will not 
 interfere. They will, indeed, supply us with pipe 
 water, but they will have a separate tax for that. The 
 only proper municipal function which this Dublin cor¬ 
 poration will have to discharge, with its enormous 
 revenue and power of taxation, is to supply us with * 
 
 cold water; and perhaps, my learned friend w r ould 
 say, by agitation keep us in hot water too. 
 
 For this large amount of taxation we are to get 
 nothing in return. It is to be solely applied to the 
 payment of officers; to keeping up an expensive staff 
 for a body whose only business will be political agita¬ 
 tion. The very absence of all useful occupation com¬ 
 pels them to seek employment the reverse of useful. 
 
 You create a corporation which you call municipal, 
 and then studiously shut it out from every municipal 
 function ; you will not let them light a lamp ; you will 
 not permit them to pave a street; you have provided 
 us a separate police, one man of which they cannot 
 control. You have given them great pomp—“ The 
 
151 
 
 Right Honorable the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen,” 
 with their chains, their collars, and their gowns. I do 
 not speak lightly of these emblems of civic authority. 
 You invest this new body with all the prestige of 
 ancient authority. Is it to be expected that a corpora¬ 
 tion you have enthroned in dignity will sink down into 
 insignificance and do nothing ? But their choice is 
 between insignificance and mischief. If they do not 
 become political agitators, they have nothing to do. In 
 the name of the great mass of the professional inhabi¬ 
 tants of Dublin, I ask for what you will impose on us 
 the tyranny of this body ? We have no objection to 
 the present corporation : it does not tax us ; it does 
 not interfere with us ; it does not agitate against our 
 religion—against the church we love— the laws we 
 revere—and the constitution we are determined to 
 uphold; we are content to pursue our avocations at 
 our profession, and have nothing to do with it. But 
 this new corporation will do all these things, while it 
 has no one useful function to discharge. You are 
 incorporating some one of those seditious societies in 
 Dublin which for years have convulsed the peace of 
 the country, and made it difficult for any good govern¬ 
 ment to be established. This act is utterly useless for 
 municipal purposes ; it is an act to incorporate the 
 trades’ union, giving them the power to legislate and 
 to tax with perpetual succession, by the name of lord 
 mayor, aldermen, and burgesses. 
 
152 
 
 Another clause of this bill enacts, that whenever the 
 lord mayor pleases he shall have the power of conven¬ 
 ing the common council—that is, my Lords, a power 
 to hold an Irish parliament in the city of Dublin, to 
 discuss all questions of national policy. You must 
 not judge of the practical effect of such a power in Ire¬ 
 land from what it might be in this country. It will 
 be, my Lords, a power to hold a Roman catholic par¬ 
 liament, constituted by the vote of this house the legal 
 representative of the metropolis of Ireland, to discuss 
 all grievances, to give authoritative expression to the 
 national voice. You will, at the same time, have 
 established provincial parliaments in all our great 
 towns to second its efforts. When your Lordships 
 recollect the tremendous power which agitation has 
 always had upon the peace of Ireland; when you call 
 to mind the times of danger which all of us can remem¬ 
 ber, the difficulties that existed in dealing with unau¬ 
 thorised and illegal societies for agitation ; when you 
 call to mind that, but six years ago, the Marquess of 
 Wellesley, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, stated, in 
 his depatch to my Lord Grey, that “ there was nothing 
 he wished more to impress upon the government than 
 that agitation and crime went together in Ireland as 
 cause and effect; that he could not separate them in 
 an unbroken chain of indissoluble connexion will 
 you create through our country state authorities for 
 agitation—legalised, chartered, perpetuated. 
 
153 
 
 I need not, my Lords, say a word about the clauses 
 giving; the town council the power of legislation, as 
 my learned friend so fully dwelt on that subject last 
 night; nor upon those regulating the appointment of 
 the sheriffs again placing the corporation and govern¬ 
 ment in collision, the provision being that the town 
 council shall send successively two lists of three per¬ 
 sons each, and in case the Lord Lieutenant disapproves 
 of both lists, he shall then name a fit person. This 
 would be a power which he could scarcely exercise, 
 except he had judicial grounds for it, such as would 
 justify the privy council in acting ; if he did, his nega¬ 
 tive would be a popular grievance, and bring the 
 government into collision with the civic authorities. 
 
 Nor will I, my Lords, take up your time by dwel¬ 
 ling on the provision professing to preserve the rights 
 of freemen at parliamentary elections. My learned 
 friend who preceded me has already, I trust, satisfied 
 your Lordships that to leave these rights to the deci¬ 
 sion of the new lord mayor is a mockery ; and that, 
 unless your Lordships consent to alter altogether in 
 our city the balance of political power settled by the 
 reform bill, you must adopt some other provisions 
 upon this subject. 
 
 Nor do I feel it necessary to do more than allude to 
 the provisions substituting for our chartered magis¬ 
 tracy, against whom no complaint has been ever made, 
 
 u 
 
154 
 
 a new commission named by the crown. I will con¬ 
 tent myself by appealing to your Lordships’ experience 
 of the working of a similar provision even in England, 
 and just reminding you that, by the 161st clause of 
 this bill, it is specially enacted that the borough jus¬ 
 tices need not in any way be qualified by estate. 
 
 I must, however, detain your Lordships while I pray 
 you to recollect the effect which this bill will infalli¬ 
 bly have on the peace and tranquillity of Dublin—what 
 dissensions it will produce—to what ill-will it must of 
 necessity give rise—aggravatingand perpetuating every 
 feud—inflaming every quarrel, and legalising and in¬ 
 dividualising every dissension ! At parliamentary elec¬ 
 tions our city is the scene of strife that does not soon 
 or easily subside. The relations of trade are inter¬ 
 rupted—the harmony of private and of commercial 
 life disturbed. Respectable merchants persecuted for 
 their votes by assaults upon their carriers—combina¬ 
 tions formed to destroy them—shopkeepers proscribed 
 by one party, and this again retaliated by a system of 
 exclusive dealing on the other. How much bad feel¬ 
 ing was excited by every election of poor law guar¬ 
 dians ! neighbours dragging each other to the police 
 offices with all the animosity of enemies ; inflammatory 
 placards covering our walls. Oncea-year, my Lords, 
 this bill creates among us such a strife ; once a-year 
 you summon us as good citizens from our avocations 
 to take a part in such a contest—a contest in which the 
 
155 
 
 bigotry of religious hate, the fury of political animo¬ 
 sity, will be aggravated by passions baser than either— 
 the desire to share in the enormous public plunder 
 that this bill provides. Every petty motive of per¬ 
 sonal ambition—every motive of personal avarice—the 
 greediness for speculation—every bad passion of the 
 human heart, will be called into action by these muni¬ 
 cipal contests in our town. Yet the preamble of this 
 bill professes that it is expedient that our towns may 
 be well and quietly governed. 
 
 And let me pray your Lordships 5 attention to the 
 enormous expenses that will be necessarily entailed. 
 In the first year the Lord Lieutenant is to appoint bar¬ 
 risters to revise the lists. Now, when you recollect 
 that there will be at least 10,000 claims for the first 
 time to be registered in the city of Dublin, you can 
 very well conceive what an enormous expense will be 
 here, at the very outset, entailed upon the city. Bar¬ 
 risters—selected, perhaps, not for the extent of their 
 business at the bar—will sit until they have investi¬ 
 gated these 10,000 claims ; and, if they are so inclined, 
 they may protract the investigation and make each 
 case a separate record, and all this at the expense of 
 the city. But besides that, in each year assessors are 
 to be employed and paid in each of fifteen wards; 
 polling clerks to be appointed and paid ; polling booths 
 to be erected ; all the expensive machinery of a con¬ 
 tested election in each ward once a-year, or “ oftener 
 
156 
 
 if need be and all this to be paid for by a tax upon 
 the town ! In the grand jury presentments, I am in¬ 
 formed a very large item of the expenditure is that 
 entailed on the city by printing the notices and lists 
 
 enjoined by the reform bill ; all this expense is re- 
 
 / 
 
 peated for the municipal franchise. Then will come 
 the item of law-costs, a mandamus to compel the lord 
 mayor to admit some claimant resisted by the corpo¬ 
 ration, and the expense falling on the inhabitants; and 
 yet you are asked to pass this bill, banishing peace 
 from the town, and involving us in incalculable ex¬ 
 pense, without any one useful object that has ever yet 
 been pointed out. 
 
 These expenses are made necessary, they are inevi¬ 
 table to the working of the bill; they are utterly inde¬ 
 pendent of the salaries of the officers left to the discre¬ 
 tion of the town council—that is, a power given to this 
 town council to reward favourites at the public ex¬ 
 pense. 
 
 But, my Lords, another enormous charge upon the 
 town will be the compensation of existing officers— 
 men whom you feel you cannot remove without pro¬ 
 viding them with compensation; but whom you re¬ 
 move, not for any unfitness for their office, but solely 
 to enable the new town council to appoint friends of 
 their own to the vacant places. 
 
157 
 
 1 have asserted, my Lords, that this bill is a total 
 transfer of the corporate powers to bodies totally dif¬ 
 ferent from those who now possess them ;—that is, my 
 Lords, it is a revolution. Here is the admission of 
 this upon the face of this bill. Upon what other prin¬ 
 ciple does it discard, at an enormous expense, every 
 officer of the present corporation—men competent to 
 discharge their duties, and ready to continue to do 
 so ? What is the object of turning away every single 
 officer except the Recorder ?—imposing taxes upon 
 the city that the town council and the castle may di¬ 
 vide the plunder between them ? Two gentlemen, 
 perfectly competent to the discharge of their duties, 
 perfectly ready to hold their offices, now jointly fill 
 the places of town clerk and clerk of the peace : they 
 hold their places under a warrant of approval from the 
 privy council. I believe their emoluments amount to 
 nearly two thousand a-year, and the citizens of Dub¬ 
 lin are to be taxed to give them compensation : they 
 are turned out of both offices ; and mark this, my 
 Lords, the offices are separated—the town council to 
 appoint the town clerk, and the government the clerk 
 of the peace. Why, then, remove them, at least, from 
 the clerkship of the peace ? They are already ap¬ 
 proved of by the warrant of the privy council as com¬ 
 petent for that office. Why are we to be taxed, for 
 no reason in the world but to provide patronage for 
 the Lord Lieutenant ? This, perhaps, is the grossest 
 case ; but why, I ask again, unless upon the principle 
 
 v 
 
158 
 
 that this bill is to be a complete transfer to parties op¬ 
 posed to the old system—aye, and upon a violent ap¬ 
 plication of that principle—are all the old corporate 
 officers to be turned out, while they are competent 
 and ready still to act ? Why must we pay two city 
 treasurers, two law agents—one because he has been 
 an officer, and the other because he is ? Here, my 
 Lords, is the avowal that this bill contemplates a total 
 transfer—a transfer perfect and complete ; so sweep¬ 
 ing that, no matter how respectable, how competent 
 any officer maybe—enough that he was appointed by 
 the old system: he cannot be retained, no matter at 
 what expense to the citizens he is turned out. This 
 very provision proclaims the character of the whole 
 bill. It is a bill, not for the good management of our 
 municipal concerns, but a bill of salaries and patron¬ 
 age—a bill to provide places for the adherents of a 
 faction. 
 
 Now, my Lords, the point we have urged in our 
 petition is, that Dublin ought to be exempt, as you 
 have exempted London; that, whatever regulations 
 you may hereafter apply to us, you cannot deal with 
 Dublin upon the principle of establishing a purely de¬ 
 mocratic corporation. In our petition we state our 
 willingness to acquiesce in any measure of reform 
 that your Lordships can adopt, that will not compro¬ 
 mise the safety of the protestant religion or violate 
 
1 5 \) 
 
 our charters ; but, my Lords, by adopting’ this mea¬ 
 sure you will do grievous injustice to the population 
 of a metropolitan city. I pray your Lordships’ atten¬ 
 tion to the peculiar circumstances that distinguish a 
 metropolitan city from all others : in all other towns 
 the population is stationary, they are more or less lo¬ 
 cally connected with the town, and possess a natural 
 influence in its concerns ; but in a metropolitan city 
 the population is composed of professional men, be¬ 
 longing not to the city but to Ireland; of gentry, who 
 have their places of occasional residence there ; many 
 noble lords, members of your Lordships’ House, have 
 residences in Dublin : the principle of giving a demo¬ 
 cratic corporation, even if applicable to other towns, 
 is utterly and grievously inapplicable here. Why 
 subject us to the control of a democratic corporation, 
 with which we have no sympathy, no community of 
 sentiment, no connexion, no influence? Why place 
 the bar, the professional classes, the gentry of Ireland, 
 under the control of the populace of its chief city? 
 The principle has never been carried into effect in 
 England. I do not merely urge that London has 
 been exempted ; but what would your lordships say if 
 it was proposed to incorporate into one vast corpora¬ 
 tion the whole of this immense metropolis, so that 
 Finsbury-square should give law to St. James’s ? Is 
 it because the professional classes and gentry of Dub¬ 
 lin are distant, because they are unprotected, that you 
 will inflict upon them a grievance and tyranny which 
 
 / 
 
you would not endure in London ? I may be told 
 that you must give the same bill to Ireland that you , 
 have given to England, no matter how differently cir¬ 
 cumstanced the two countries. I take the argument. 
 
 I say, if you give us all the evil, give us the one soli¬ 
 tary good. London has been exempted—exempt 
 Dublin. You have respected the Magna Charta of 
 John in London, why not respect the Magna Charta 
 of Henry in Dublin? My learned friend reminded 
 the House of the advantage possessed by the city of 
 London in being close to the seat of royalty. Their 
 neighbourhood gives them an influence on the crown 
 and on the legislature. The city of Dublin reminds 
 your lordships, in their petition, that they once had a 
 similar influence : they tell your lordships that if the 
 union had not passed their rights would have been 
 respected. Am I to be told that, because on the faith 
 of England we gave up our independent parliament, 
 that you are to disregard us ? On the faith of the le¬ 
 gislative union, my Lords, we demand that our rights 
 should be held in the same respect as those of Lon¬ 
 don. In our own parliament they were so. Once, 
 indeed, in that parliament, in a debate upon the privi¬ 
 leges of the city of Dublin, it was pleaded that some 
 similar rights of the city of London had been respected 
 by the English legislature. Some one dared to hint 
 that the privileges of Dublin stood on lower and less 
 sacred grounds. Who was the man who rose with 
 prompt indignation to resent this insult to the consti- 
 
161 
 
 i 
 
 tution of Ireland ?—a man, my Lords, whose memory 
 is still held in honor in our country—the illustrious 
 Henry Grattan ! He it was who, in the spirit of a true 
 Irishman, indignantly denounced the attempt to place 
 the privileges of Dublin below those of London. It 
 was no part of that great man’s patriotism to vilify 
 and bring into contempt the institutions of his 
 country. 
 
 I must pray your lordships’ attention to one return 
 derived from the Report of the Commissioners, even 
 at the risk of being tedious. 
 
 The city of Dublin is peculiarly circumstanced. 
 From whatever cause it proceeds, the habits of the 
 people as to residence have changed. Streets which 
 once were the first in the city are now utterly deserted, 
 and deserted not merely by the gentry but by the mer¬ 
 cantile classes: the old portion of the city is almost 
 exclusively inhabited by the lower orders. The loss 
 of the parliament at the time of the union may have 
 had its effect, by throwing into the market a number of 
 the residences of the nobility; but the fact is unques¬ 
 tionable, that there is a large portion of the city aban¬ 
 doned to a class not much above the lowest. The 
 failure of the silk trade has plunged a very large dis¬ 
 trict into distress ; but these districts will give law in 
 Jk he new corporation to the magnificent streets and 
 squares which are the residences of our gentry and 
 
 X 
 
162 
 
 our professional men. By the report of the commis¬ 
 sioners of corporate inquiry, I find that there are in 
 Dublin, valued over <£200, 127 houses, rated at 
 £33,000: so that 127 individuals, the owners of these 
 houses, will pay one-twentieth of the tax imposed by 
 the town council, a body bitterly opposed to them in 
 political and religious feeling, and in which their uni¬ 
 ted influence would not command the return of a single 
 member. Valued between £100 and £200 there are 
 678 houses, rated at £83,000 ; so that, my Lords, there 
 are 805 individuals assessed at £116,000 (the whole of 
 the valuation being £704,000,) paying, therefore, nearly 
 one-sixth of the entire rate. But they will be com¬ 
 pletely overpowered, so that you must consider that, 
 whether with a ten pound franchise, or a five pound 
 franchise, you are giving in Dublin to numbers the 
 power to tax property to an indefinite amount. The 
 whole power will vest in numbers. Injurious and 
 unjust as this would be even in this country, in Ireland 
 it is infinitely more so, where property and wealth is 
 in the hands of the protestants, and numbers in the 
 hands of the Roman catholics. You are giving to 
 Roman catholic numbers the power to tax protestant 
 property. 
 
 In Ireland, my Lords, unfortunately, property and 
 numbers are opposed—religious differences make a 
 broad separation between the holders of property and 
 the mass of the people. You cannot disregard this 
 
163 
 
 unfortunate state of things—a vote of your Lordships' 
 house cannot alter it, it must be an element of your 
 Lordships’ deliberation. 
 
 My Lords, I have shewn you the enormous influence, 
 and patronage, and power, which will be conferred 
 upon the new corporation of Dublin: it is wisdom, at 
 least, to pause and weigh well the uses to which they 
 will be likely to turn the powers which you bestow on 
 this body, whatever be its character. You make them 
 the accredited, the constitutional representatives of the 
 metropolis of Ireland, the second city in the British 
 dominions. Before another generation they will have 
 property which I am, I believe, undervaluing at fifty 
 thousand pounds a-year. You are dignifying them 
 with ancient authority, investing them with constitu¬ 
 tional influence ; you give them a place, a name, au 
 authority in the constitution ; you constitute them an 
 Irish parliament; you give them the power to legis¬ 
 late and to tax ; you enact for them their sittings; you 
 give them their meetings, which no law can suppress 
 without a violation of all constitutional principle, which 
 may defy the government and agitate the public mind, 
 without the power of parliament to interfere. No 
 coercion act will ever be tolerated to suppress the 
 legalised meetings of a corporation. Suppose this 
 corporation is directed by some active and unscrupu¬ 
 lous popular leader, under whose control they direct 
 all their energies to the repeal of the union, or the 
 
164 
 
 destruction of the Irish church. You have established 
 this body in the metropolis, where all the discontented 
 and ambitious spirits of the country naturally congre¬ 
 gate—where the profession of the bar will be at hand 
 to supply its candidates for popular patronage aud 
 fame. If such should be the character of a metropo¬ 
 litan corporation, with such power of rewarding its 
 adherents, holding out such temptations to ambition, 
 is it possible to over-estimate the extent of the mischief 
 it will do ? 
 
 In the name, my Lords, of the ancient corporation 
 which I represent, a corporation dating its origin with 
 that of British authority in Ireland, I am bold to tell 
 your Lordships their solemn, their deliberate convic¬ 
 tion—that, deal as you will with their privileges, which 
 have been never forfeited by any crime, if you establish 
 in their room such a body as that contemplated by this 
 bill, it will be impossible to maintain the Irish church. 
 I need not remind your Lordships that we have high 
 authority for the statement, that when that church falls 
 the doom of the connexion between the countries is 
 sealed. 
 
 Establish over the face of our island corporations 
 such as these, and never again can you govern Ireland, 
 except (if this can be called to govern) at the dictation 
 of her democracy and her priests. 
 
105 
 
 These prophecies have been made, and they have 
 been disregarded. Experience after the passing of this 
 bill will justify those whose predictions have been 
 despised. But, my Lords, there is no room for expe¬ 
 riment, for there is none for repentance ; this step once 
 taken is irrevocable: to-night you are about to make 
 a fee-farm grant of Ireland to influences from which 
 you never can reclaim it. 
 
 Your Lordships may be told that justice to Ireland 
 requires you to pass this bill. Not if it be a mischie¬ 
 vous one. Justice to Ireland requires you to protect 
 her from every measure which will interfere with her 
 peace, throw back her progress, and mar her pros¬ 
 perity. In the name of her resident gentry—in the 
 name of her protestant people—in the name of thou¬ 
 sands of my Roman catholic fellow-countrymen, who 
 look with alarm upon this bill, who tell us, their pro¬ 
 testant brethren, their feelings in private, though mob- 
 rule deters them from joining us publicly in resisting 
 this fatal measure—in the name of justice to Ireland, I 
 implore of your Lordships to save that country from 
 the evils that will be inflicted on it by the present pro¬ 
 visions of this bill. 
 
 My Lords, I feel all the inconvenience of address¬ 
 ing your Lordships upon this subject at this late pe¬ 
 riod, when your Lordships may have assented, upon 
 
166 
 
 some former occasion, to many of the provisions 
 against which my duty to my clients and my country 
 forces me to contend; but, my Lords, if Providence 
 has given you the opportunity of once more reviewing 
 your decision on this all-important question, you will 
 not reject that opportunity. Every day’s experience 
 of this house reminds you that neither parliaments nor 
 judges are infallible—that the decisions of the best 
 and the wisest may be reviewed. I feel, indeed, that 
 when you passed the vote which has admitted my 
 learned friends and myself to your bar, you gave us a 
 pledge that you were not hearing us as a mere matter 
 of form. You declared that the question was still 
 open, that your Lordships’ minds were not yet finally 
 made up. I am privileged to appeal to your Lord- 
 ships as judges—it is only because you are judges 
 that I can be present in this august assembly. As 
 judges clothed with a judicial power, of which the 
 highest and most sacred attribute is openness to con¬ 
 viction—invested with a judicial discretion which no 
 pledge can bind, no party combination fetter, and 
 which, up to the very moment when the irrevocable 
 decision is pronounced, no previously formed convic¬ 
 tions, however strong, can control. And if, even at 
 the eleventh hour, we have brought, for the first time, 
 to your Lordships’ minds the conviction that this bill 
 is injurious and unjust, we have, my Lords, a right, a 
 solemn right, in the face of the country and of Hea¬ 
 ven, to demand of the conscience of each individual 
 
167 
 
 # 
 
 member of this illustrious tribunal that he pronounce 
 the judgment which is the necessary consequence of 
 that conviction. 
 
 I will not trespass much longer on your Lordships’ 
 attention ; but there is still one allegation in our peti¬ 
 tion to which I must allude. The corporation state 
 that no large or influential class of their fellow-citi¬ 
 zens are anxious for this bill in its present shape. The 
 guild of merchants tell you that the great majority of 
 the mercantile classes are opposed to it. We offer to 
 prove this at your Lordships’ bar. You must not 
 mistake the clamour of a few interested individuals for 
 the voice of the public. To this measure the mass of 
 the people are indifferent—the better classes are 
 strongly opposed—no one wishes for it but those who 
 hope to share in the plunder which it will create. A 
 petition, my Lords, has been presented from Dublin 
 against this bill, signed by 7,000 inhabitants, who will 
 pay the larger proportion of the tax which this bill 
 imposes. These persons implore your Lordships not 
 to burden the city with this tax, not to involve them in 
 the turmoil of constant elections: but, rather than 
 pass this bill, they pray they may have no corporation 
 at all. They do not pray, my Lords, to be placed in 
 schedule B—because they know that, by the provi¬ 
 sions of this bill, a corporation may then be granted 
 to the petition of the majority of the rated inhabitants, 
 and they fear that the very same influence which could 
 
168 
 
 command the new corporation would be able to obtain 
 it. They pray your Lordships distinctly that, rather 
 than pass the present bill, they should have no corpo¬ 
 ration. This petition has 7,000 substantial signatures. 
 Many signatures of persons strongly opposed to this 
 bill were withheld. However cautiously this petition 
 may be worded to avoid the appearance of sanctioning 
 an abolition of our ancient charters, many persons 
 would not, even by implication, seem to consent to a 
 measure which they knew to be unjust. 
 
 There is, indeed, my Lords, a people who look with 
 intense anxiety to your decision on this question—the 
 people to whom these charters were granted, the pro- 
 testant people of Ireland. They contemplate this bill 
 with alarm and dismay; they believe that it will place 
 them under a tyranny intolerant and intolerable—that 
 it will hand over their country to the control of Jaco¬ 
 bin clubs, but Jacobinism on which will be engrafted 
 the worst elements of national antipathy and religious 
 hate; which will present to the world the spectacle 
 of the extraordinary union of civil anarchy and religi¬ 
 ous despotism, uniting in an anomalous combination 
 all the evils of democracy and of superstition. They 
 implore of your Lordships to protect them from this 
 tyranny. One argument they have against this mea¬ 
 sure which your Lordships will not disregard. In 
 this the highest court of judicature in the realm, 
 where the errors of every inferior tribunal are cor- 
 
169 
 
 rected—in this most solemn and most equitable of all 
 tribunals, they appeal with confidence to your Lord- 
 ships, and say that this measure ought not to pass be¬ 
 cause it is unjust. 
 
 My Lords, I have done. For myself I have no 
 words strong enough to express my gratitude for the 
 patience and indulgence with which you have heard 
 me. If in any thing I may have wandered beyond 
 the limits which my situation imposed, I implore of 
 your Lordships to attribute it to the embarrassment 
 and novelty of my position—my inexperience in the 
 forms and usages of your Lordships’ house. The 
 great cause which I have pleaded, however ineffici¬ 
 ently, I commit to your Lordships’ justice; with an 
 earnest and a solemn prayer that He who has cast 
 upon you this night the deep responsibility of decid¬ 
 ing for Ireland this important question may guide you 
 to a right and a wise conclusion: in the words of that 
 beautiful petition which millions of your Lordships’ 
 countrymen offer up every Sabbath for a blessing on 
 your deliberations, “ May God so direct and prosper 
 all your consultations for my unhappy country to the 
 advancement of His glory, the good of His church, 
 the safety, honor, and welfare of our Sovereign and 
 her dominions, that all things may be so ordered and 
 settled by our endeavours upon the best and surest 
 foundations, that peace and happiness, truth and jus¬ 
 tice, religion and piety, may be established among us 
 for all generations.” Y 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 *' 
 
 ’ ; ■ I ' 
 
 ' 
 
 * 
 
 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 PROTEST OF THE BISHOP OF EXETER 
 
 (IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS) 
 
 AGAINST THE PASSING OP THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS 
 
 (Ireland) bill. 
 
 DISSENTIENT— 
 
 I. Because no sufficient proofs of delinquency or 
 misconduct were adduced against the municipal cor° 
 porations of Ireland, to justify so sweeping a measure 
 of destruction, in contempt of the sacredness of ancient 
 charters, and in defiance of those principles which, 
 till within the last few years, were wont to distinguish 
 the legislation of the British parliament, and especi- 
 ally in this house. 
 
 II. Because, in the admitted absence of such proofs 
 of delinquency, the plea on which the measure was 
 mainly rested, the exclusive character of the existing 
 corporations, did in effect establish the fidelity of those 
 bodies to the one great end for which they were all 
 alike created, the maintenance of the British interest 
 
172 
 
 in Ireland ; the more ancient corporations having 
 been founded as fortresses and fastnesses to protect 
 that interest against the rebellious attempts of the 
 native Irish, and of the descendants of the earliest 
 English settlers ; the more modern combining, with 
 this great common object, the still greater and more 
 sacred purpose of maintaining the cause of true reli¬ 
 gion against the unceasing efforts of the papists to re¬ 
 establish the domination of their own priesthood in its 
 grossest and most revolting form, 
 
 III. Because, if it be true that the continuance of 
 bodies in practice exclusively protestant be no longer 
 consistent with the policy which seeks to deal with 
 all distinctions of religious faith, as equally unworthy 
 of peculiar favour in the political institutions of the 
 empire, common sense and common justice alike point 
 out the only proper course to be pursued—the simple 
 abolition of those bodies, when the cause for which 
 they were created is supposed to have ceased. 
 
 IV. Because the adoption of a measure, which is 
 admitted by all to ensure the establishment of bodies 
 of Roman catholics equally exclusive as those which 
 they are made to supersede, is not only contrary to 
 common sense and common justice, but also to the 
 spirit of the most solemn promises and engagements 
 repeatedly made by those who advised, and ultimately 
 carried, the act for the relief of her Majesty’s Roman 
 
 
173 
 
 catholic subjects in 1829. The leaders in that great 
 and perilous experiment pledged themselves to pro¬ 
 pose to parliament the re-enactment of the statutes 
 which were then repealed, or the adoption of still 
 more stringent restraints, if the parties, who were 
 freed from the restrictions before imposed, should 
 prove (as they notoriously have proved) themselves 
 unworthy of the confidence then reposed in them, 
 and should renew their attempts against the protes- 
 tant church in Ireland. If any unhappy occurrence 
 of circumstances has prevented the literal redemption 
 of that pledge, yet the least and low r est obligation 
 which it can justly be understood to have imposed 
 was, the duty of a resolute and firm resistance to every 
 new proposition for increasing the pow T er of so bitter, 
 so unrelenting, and so perfidious an enemy. 
 
 » 
 
 V. Because, although it was declared by high au¬ 
 thority on the second reading of the bill, that it would 
 be unworthy of finally passing into a law, unless such 
 amendments were introduced as should give security 
 against the establishment of other bodies equally ex¬ 
 clusive with those which are abolished, yet the amend¬ 
 ments actuall} r made not only give no such security, 
 but do not even attempt nor profess to give it, their 
 only object being to mitigate the acknowledged mis¬ 
 chiefs of the measure, and in some trifling degree to 
 limit the power with which it arms the popish demo¬ 
 cracy of the cities and towns in Ireland to tyrannise 
 
174 
 
 over the protestant and more opulent classes of inha¬ 
 bitants, and to extort from them funds for the speedy 
 and effectual execution of their unhallowed designs. 
 
 VI. Because, there is strong reason to believe that 
 the final passing of the measure was the result rather 
 of considerations of party convenience, than of any 
 large and liberal views of national policy—none of 
 those who had it in their power to decide on the ulti¬ 
 mate fate of the bill venturing to pronounce it a mea¬ 
 sure either just or safe in itself, or worthy of favour 
 on any other account, than that it put an end to a ques¬ 
 tion which could no longer remain unsettled, without 
 dividing public men, who, from the purest motives, 
 wish to continue to act together. Thus were the 
 gravest interests of the country forgotten in personal 
 considerations—the end was sacrificed to the means, 
 and the only plea which can justify the combination of 
 statesmen, the more effectual assertion and mainte¬ 
 nance of a great common principle, was here openly 
 abandoned. 
 
 i VII. Because the House of Lords having, since the 
 passing of the act for the reform of the Commons 5 
 House of Parliament, been practically deprived of 
 what was wont to be deemed its constitutional share 
 of controul over the executive power of the crown, 
 was yet enabled, till the present disastrous session, to 
 retain, and to assert, its legislative independence ; and, 
 
175 
 
 by the wise and efficient exercise of its just privilege, 
 or rather of its highest duty, in the correction or re¬ 
 jection of bad bills, had continued to earn and to enjoy 
 the grateful veneration of the English people. That 
 lofty position it has, in this instance, voluntarily sur¬ 
 rendered ; and has thus, by its own act, gone far to¬ 
 wards realising the prophetic declaration of Sir Wm. 
 Blackstone, that the constitution of England would 
 be destroyed, and could only be destroyed, by one of 
 the three branches of the legislature losing its consti¬ 
 tutional weight, and submitting to the other two. 
 
 VIII. Lastly, and above all, because by this wilful 
 and deliberate abandonment of the cause of true reli¬ 
 gion, and of the security of the church in Ireland, to 
 which the fundamental laws of the constitution, the 
 act of union, the oath of our sovereign, and all the 
 most sacred duties of subjects to their ruler, and of 
 men to their Maker alike bind 14 s, we have provoked 
 the justice of Almighty God, and have too much rea¬ 
 son to apprehend the visitation of Divine vengeance 
 for this presumptuous act of national disobedience. 
 
 H. EXETER. 
 
176 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 FROM THE CORPORATION OF DUBLIN TO THE BISHOP 
 
 OF EXETER. 
 
 Be it remembered, that at a General Assembly of 
 the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Commons, 
 and Citizens of the City of Dublin, held at the City 
 Assembly House, on Monday, the tenth day of August, 
 1840, the following address was unanimously agreed 
 to be presented :— 
 
 TO THE RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOP OF EXETER, ETC. ETC. 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 We, the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Commons, and Citi¬ 
 zens of the City of Dublin, in Common Council as¬ 
 sembled, being the ancient, loyal, and protestant cor¬ 
 poration of said city, beg leave to express the high 
 sense we entertain of the uncompromising advocacy 
 of the cause of protestantism evinced by your Lord¬ 
 ship’s steady opposition to the bill recently passed 
 through parliament, having for its professed object the 
 regulation of municipal corporations in Ireland. 
 
1 ( i 
 
 Viewing the provisions of such bill as nothing short 
 of legalising the transfer of municipal authority from 
 the tried and trusty friends of British monarchy and 
 British connexion to the avowed and convicted ene¬ 
 mies of both—and conscious that the time neither has 
 arrived, nor is likely to arrive, when the reasons which 
 made it necessary to entrust protestants with some ex¬ 
 clusive privileges, either have ceased, or will cease to 
 exist; but that, on the contrary, there seems to us to 
 be a greater necessity to guard those privileges with 
 care, and be more cautious in giving an ascendancy to 
 a religion whose object ever has been to exalt itself on 
 the ruins of our established church—we cannot avoid 
 expressing in the strongest terms our sentiments of 
 distrust in the policy of such an enactment. In pro¬ 
 portion to the feelings we entertain against this disas¬ 
 trous measure are those of admiration with which we 
 have viewed the consistent and able advocacy of the 
 protestant cause, adopted by your Lordship on all 
 occasions. 
 
 Permit us, my Lord, in our corporate capacity, 
 to offer to your Lordship the unfeigned expression 
 of our gratitude and respect—gratitude for your 
 Lordship’s straightforward and powerful defence of 
 our ancient charters—respect for the truly consis¬ 
 tent course in religion and politics distinguishing 
 your Lordship’s career, and which must render your 
 
 z 
 
178 
 
 name alike illustrious in the records of the church 
 and the senate. 
 
 In testimony whereof, the common seal of 
 said city is hereunto affixed the day and 
 year aforesaid. 
 
 ANSWER. 
 
 Exeter, 5th September, 1840. 
 
 MY LORD MAYOR, 
 
 On my return to Exeter, after a long absence, I find 
 the address which your Lordship, the Sheriffs, the 
 Commons, and Citizens of Dublin, in Common Coun¬ 
 cil assembled, have been pleased to vote, and to trans¬ 
 mit to me. 
 
 In acknowledging the high honor thus conferred 
 upon me, I feel myself under no ordinary difficulty. 
 It is not that I am embarrassed by the too favourable 
 manner in which my poor attempts to serve our great 
 common cause have been estimated by you ; for, at the 
 present crisis, I should be ashamed of obtruding on 
 you any merely personal considerations. This part of 
 my subject, therefore, I dismiss with the unfeigned 
 expression of my most profound gratitude. 
 
179 
 
 But it is not easy to dispose of the far higher mat¬ 
 ters which are connected with the occasion, and which 
 are characterised in the address before me, with a truth 
 and power of expression which I should in vain 
 attempt to equal; even these, therefore, it will be my 
 wiser course to pass over almost in silence. Why, 
 indeed, should I dwell on them ? Can it be gratifying 
 to any lover of his country to descant on such a por¬ 
 tion of its history ? or can I hope to make either our 
 dangers or our duties more dear than they already are, 
 to those whom I have the honor of addressing ? No ! 
 You know, you see, you feel both the evils which ex¬ 
 ist, and those which are impending over us. You have 
 suffered (God grant that we may not all be doomed 
 still further to suffer) from the unhappy policy which, 
 in spite of all the warnings of history, all the experience 
 of the times in which we live, all the dictates of the most 
 ordinary prudence, all the obligations which might 
 be expected to decide the conduct of high-minded and 
 honorable men, seeks to purchase the short-lived con¬ 
 venience of a party, by the sacrifice of the protestant 
 cause in Ireland, in one of its surest and strongest 
 holds. 
 
 At such a time the path of duty is plain—and it will, 
 I know, be faithfully trod by you and men like you. 
 While you will adhere more zealously —more devotedly 
 than ever—to the church for which you suffer ; you 
 will not permit even a just indignation to urge you to 
 
180 
 
 aid the efforts of the common enemy, in dismembering; 
 that empire, in which though you will no longer con¬ 
 stitute the most powerful and most useful of all its 
 bodies corporate, yet you will still be among the most 
 honorable and most honored, as you are among the 
 most loyal of its subjects. 
 
 You have this greatest of all encouragements, if you 
 faithfully perform your part, you may rely with con¬ 
 fidence on Him who can educe good from a lower 
 abyss of evil than any which we have yet reached—on 
 Him who overruleth all things to his own glory, and 
 the lasting good of His church. May it please Him to 
 give to that church, and to that branch of it which to 
 human eyes may seem the most endangered, a more 
 powerful protection than any which the wisdom of man 
 has devised, or the folly or faithlessness of man can 
 fling away. 
 
 I have the honor to be, my Lord Mayor, with the 
 deepest sense of the value of the high distinction con¬ 
 ferred upon me, your Lordship’s most obliged and 
 most humble servant, 
 
 The Rt. Hon, the Lord Mayor of Dublin. 
 
 H. EXETER. 
 
 THE END.