275

IRISH ELECTION PETITIONS.

MAIDEN SPEECH.

December 7, 1837.1

[The first Parliament of Queen Victoria assembled on November 13, 1837, and on December 6 the attention of the House was called by Mr. Smith O'Brien to the existence of an Election Subscription Fund, carried on for several months in England and Scotland for the purpose of encouraging the presentation of petitions against members returned to serve in the present Parliament for the counties, cities, towns, and boroughs of Ireland, and of defraying the expenses attendant upon the conduct and prosecution of the same.' The result was that on the following day a debate took place on the subject, Mr. Smith O'Brien moving for a Select Committee to inquire into the allegations' contained in the petition aforesaid. The motion was opposed both by the Government and the Opposition, and supported of course by the Irish members. Sir Francis Burdett, then member for North Wilts, was one of the offenders aimed at, and his speech was answered by O'Connell. When O'Connell sat down the new member for MaidThe earlier part of the following speech, at all events, seems sensible and practical enough; but that in some way or another the speaker, before he had done, succeeded in making himself ridiculous, is a fact too well attested to be doubted.]

stone rose.

MR.

R. DISRAELI rose and said, that he trusted the House would extend to him that gracious indulgence which was usually allowed to one who solicited its attention for the first time. He had, however, had sufficient experience of the critical spirit which pervaded the House, to know and to feel how much he stood in need of that indulgence-an indulgence of which he would prove himself to be not unworthy, by promising not to abuse it. The honourable and learned member

'This speech is reprinted from Hansard's Debates by permission of Mr. Hansard.

for Dublin had taunted the honourable baronet, the member for North Wiltshire,' with having uttered a long, rambling, wandering, jumbling speech. Now, he must say and he could assure the honourable and learned gentleman that he had paid the utmost attention to the remarks which flowed from him-that it seemed to him that the honourable and learned gentleman had taken a hint from the honourable baronet in the oration which the honourable and learned gentleman had just addressed to the House. There was scarcely a single subject connected with Ireland which the honourable and learned member had not introduced into his rhetorical medley. The honourable and learned member for Dublin had also taunted the honourable and learned member for Exeter 3 with travelling out of the record of the present debate, while he himself had travelled back 700 years, though the House was engaged in the discussion of events which had taken place within the last few months.

3

The honourable and learned member had favoured the House with an allusion to poor-laws for Ireland. Perhaps he was wrong; but at all events there had been an allusion to the Irish Corporation Bill. He did not pretend that he could accurately remember all the topics the honourable and learned member had introduced into his speech; but, if no reference had been made by the honourable and learned gentleman to the subject of Irish poor-laws, at least there had been a dissertation upon the measure relating to the municipal corporations of Ireland. Was that subject relative to the debate before the House? He would not allude-for he would spare the feelings of the honourable and learned member in that respect to the subscriptions which the honourable and learned member had told the House had not been successful on his side; but that circumstance might account for the bitterness with which he spoke of the successful efforts of the muchvilified Mr. Spottiswoode. He had, indeed, been much inclined

1 Mr. D. O'Connell.

3 Sir William Follett.

Sir Francis Burdett.

After the return of the new Parliament in the summer of 1837, it was alleged that many of the Irish returns which were favourable to the O'Connell party were attributable to intimidation and corruption, and on these grounds

to ask the honourable member for Limerick (Mr. O'Brien) if he had attended the meeting at which it had been expected that every Liberal member would subscribe 50l. to the protection fund. He had thought that perhaps the honourable member could have given some curious information upon that subject; that, though there might have been 3,000l. or 2,950l. to begin with, there was now nothing in the exchequer, and that this project of majestic mendicancy had now wholly vanished. The honourable and learned member for Dublin had announced that the Spottiswoode subscription was a Protestant subscription. That it was supported by many Protestants nobody could attempt to deny, but if the honourable and learned member meant to say that it was a subscription established for the particular object of supporting a Protestant faction against the Catholic people, he begged to remark that he saw nothing at all to justify that supposition. It might be a Protestant, but it was essentially a defensive fund.

The honourable and learned member for Dublin had talked of the clergymen of the Church of England subscribing to this fund, and had contrasted their conduct with that of the priests of his Church; but he defied the honourable and learned member to produce a single instance of tyrannical interference on the part of the Protestant clergy at all similar, or in the least degree analogous, to those acts which were imputed to the clergy of the Catholic Church. If the honourable and learned member doubted what he was saying, let him refer to the volume of evidence taken before the Intimidation Committee, and the honourable member would see that from Cornwall to Yorkshire no case had occurred that bore a comparison to the occurrences in Ireland, and that he was fully justified in the statements he made. The object of the subscription entered into was to procure justice for the Protestant constituencies and the Protestant proprietors of Ireland, those constituencies and those proprietors being unable to obtain justice single-handed. Honourable members knew very well

it was resolved to contest them. A public subscription was opened to defray the expenses; and at the head of the committee of management appeared the name of Mr. Andrew Spottiswoode, the Queen's printer.