104. TILE DEATH PENALTY FOR NEW OFFENCES, 1812. - Lord Byron. B. 1778; d. 1824

SETTING aside the palpable injustice and the certain inefficiency of this Bill, are there not capital punishments sufficient in your statutes? Is there not blood enough upon your penal code, that more must be poured forth, to ascend to Heaven and testify against you? How will you carry this Bill into effect? Can you commit a whole country to their own prison? Will you erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like scarecrows? or will you proceed (as you must, to bring this measure into effect) by decimation; place the country under martial law; depopulate and lay waste all around you; and restore Sherwood Forest as an acceptable gift to the Crown, in its former condition of a royal chase, and an asylum for outlaws? Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? Will the famished wretch who has braved your bayonets be appalled by your gibbets? When death is a relief, and the only relief, it appears, that you will afford him, will he be dragooned into tranquillity? Will that which could not be effected by your grenadiers be accomplished by your executioners?

If you proceed by the forms of law, where is your evidence? Those who have refused to impeach their accomplices when transportation only was the punishment, will hardly be tempted to witness against them when death is the penalty. With all deference to the noble Lords opposite, I think a little investigation- some previous inquiry - would induce even them to change their purpose. That most favorite State measure, so marvellously efficacious in many and recent instances, - temporizing, would not be without its advantage in this. When a proposal is made to emancipate or relieve, you hesitate, you deliberate for years,

you temporize and tamper with the minds of men; but a death-bill must be passed off hand, without a thought of the consequences. Sure I am, from what I have heard, and from what I have seen, that to pass the Bill, under all the existing circumstances, without inquiry, without deliberation, would only be to add injustice to irritation, and barbarity to neglect.

The framers of such a Bill must be content to inherit the honors of that Athenian lawgiver, whose edicts were said to be written not in ink, but in blood. But suppose it passed, suppose one of these men, as I have seen them, meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your Lordships are, perhaps, about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame, suppose this man surrounded by those children, for whom he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, about to be torn forever from a family. which he lately supported in peaceful industry, and which it is not his fault that he can no longer so support; suppose this man, — and there are ten thousand such, from whom you may select your victims, dragged into Court, to be tried, for this new offence, by this new law, still, there are two things wanting to convict and condemn him; and these are, in my opinion, twelve butchers for a Jury, and a Jeffries for a Judge!

* Dracon, the author of the first written code of laws for Athens.

105. ON CHARGES AGAINST ROMAN CATHOLICS, 1828.—Sheil.

Richard Lalor Sheil was born in Dublin, Ireland, August 16th, 1791, and died at Florence, Italy, where he held the post of British Minister, May 25th, 1851. He was returned to the Imperial Parliament in 1829, and for twenty years was a prominent member of the House of Commons. A contemporary says of him: "His great earnestness and apparent sincerity, his unrivalled felicity of illustration, his extraordinary power of pushing the meaning of words to the utmost extent, and wringing from them a force beyond the range of ordinary expression, were such, that, when he rose to speak, members took their places, and the hum of private conversation was hushed, in order that the House might enjoy the performances of an accomplished artist." His style of speaking was peculiar; his gesticulation rapid, fierce, and incessant ; his enunciation remarkably quick and impetuous. His matter was uniformly well arranged and logical. He carefully prepared himself before speaking.

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CALUMNIATORS of Catholicism, have you read the history of your country? Of the charges against the religion of Ireland, the annals of England afford the confutation. The body of your common law was given by the Catholic Alfred. He gave you your judges, your magistrates, your high-sheriffs, your courts of justice, your elective system, and, the great bulwark of your liberties, the trial by jury. Who conferred upon the People the right of self-taxation, and fixed, if he did not create, their representation? The Catholic Edward the First;, while, in the reign of Edward the Third, perfection was given to the representative system, Parliaments were annually called, and the statute against constructive treason was enacted. It is false, foully, infamously false, that the Catholic religion, the religion of your forefathers, the religion of seven millions of your fellow-subjects, has been the auxiliary of debasement, and that to its influence the suppression of British freedom can, in a single instance, be referred. I am loath to say that which can give you cause to take offence; but, when the faith of my country is made the object of imputation, I cannot help, I cannot refrain, from breaking into a retaliatory interrogation, and from asking whether the overthrow of the old religion of England was not effected by a tyrant, with a hand of iron and a heart of stone; whether Henry did not trample upon freedom, while upon Catholicism he set his foot; and whether Elizabeth herself, the virgin of the Reformation, did not inherit her despotism with her creed; whether in her reign the most barbarous atrocities were not committed ;

whether torture, in violation of the Catholic common law of England, was not politically inflicted, and with the shrieks of agony the Towers of Julius, in the dead of night, did not reëcho?

You may suggest to me that in the larger portion of Catholic Europe freedom does not exist; but you should bear in mind that, at a period when the Catholic religion was in its most palmy state, freedom flourished in the countries in which it is now extinct. False, — I repeat it, with all the vehemence of indignant asseveration, — utterly false is the charge habitually preferred against the religion which Englishmen have laden with penalties, and have marked with degradation. I can bear with any other charge but this to any other charge I can listen with endurance. Tell me that I prostrate myself before a sculptured marble; tell me that to a canvass glowing with the imagery of Heaven I bend my knee; tell me that my faith is my perdition; and, as you traverse the church-yards in which your fore

fathers are buried, pronounce upon those who have lain there for many hundred years a fearful and appalling sentence, yes, call what I regard as the truth not only an error, but a sin, to which mercy shall not be extended, all this I will bear, to all this I will submit, nay, at all this I will but smile, — but do not tell me that I am in heart and creed a slave! That, my countrymen cannot brook! In their own bosoms they carry the high consciousness that never was imputation more foully false, or more detestably calumnious!

106. IRISH ALIENS AND ENGLISH VICTORIES. — Sheil.

This brilliant appeal - -one of the most eloquent in the annals of British oratory is from Sheil's Speech on the Irish Municipal Bill, in the House of Commons, February 22, 1837. The episode was called forth by an unfortunate expression which Lord Lyndhurst had employed, some time before, in the House of Lords, in alluding to the Irish as "aliens, in blood and religion." During Sheil's speech, his Lordship was sitting under the gallery; and it is recorded that Sheil shook his head indignantly at him, as he spoke. The effect upon the House was very marked. Nearly all the members turned towards Lord Lyndhurst; and the shouts of the Ministerialists, encountered by the vehement outcries of the Conservatives, continued for some minutes. The latter half of this speech demands great rapidity of utterance in the delivery.

I SHOULD be surprised, indeed, if, while you are doing us wrong, you did not profess your solicitude to do us justice. From the day on which Strongbow set his foot upon the shore of Ireland, Englishmen were never wanting in protestations of their deep anxiety to do us justice; -even Strafford, the deserter of the People's cause, the renegade Wentworth, who gave evidence in Ireland of the spirit of instinctive tyranny which predominated in his character, even Strafford, while he trampled upon our rights, and trod upon the heart of the country, protested his solicitude to do justice to Ireland! What marvel is it, then, that Gentlemen opposite should deal in such vehement protestations? There is, however, one man, of great abilities, - not a member of this House, but whose talents and whose boldness have placed him in the topmost place in his party, who, disdaining all imposture, and thinking it the best course to appeal directly to the religious and national antipathies of the People of this country, abandoning all reserve, and flinging off the slender veil by which his political associates affect to cover, although they cannot hide, their motives, - distinctly and audaciously tells the Irish People that they are not entitled to the same privileges as Englishmen; and pronounces them, in any particular which could enter his minute enumeration of the circumstances by which fellow-citizenship is created, in race, identity and religion, to be aliens;- - to be aliens in race, to be aliens in country, to be aliens in religion! Aliens! good God! was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, in the House of Lords, and did he not start up and exclaim, "HOLD! I HAVE SEEN THE ALIENS DO THEIR DUTY!" The Duke of Wellington is not a man of an excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking that, when he heard his Roman Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate could supply, -I cannot help thinking that he

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ought to have recollected the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. "The battles, sieges, fortunes that he has passed," ought to have come back upon him. He ought to have remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name imperishable, - from Assaye to Waterloo, - the Irish soldiers, with whom your armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiéra through the phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled the moats at Badajos?* All his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory, Vimiéra, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuéra, Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest for you were there, I appeal to the gallant soldier before me (Sir Henry Hardinge), from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast; - tell me, for you must needs remember, -on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, while death fell in showers, when the artillery of France was levelled with a precision of the most deadly science, when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset.

me,

Tell

tell me if, for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the "aliens" blenched? And when, at length, the moment for the last and decided movement had arrived, and the valor which had so long been wisely checked was, at last, let loose, — when, with words familiar, but immortal, the great captain commanded the great assault,

tell me if Catholic Ireland with less heroic valor than the natives of this your own glorious country precipitated herself upon the foe? The blood of England, Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same stream, and drenched the same field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together; - in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from Heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not be permitted to participate; and shall we be told, as a requital, that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out?

107. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF IRELAND. — Id.

I LAY down a very plain proposition, and it is this, however harsh the truth, it must be told, it is this: Whatever may be your inclination, you have not the ability to maintain the Irish establishAt first view, the subject seems to be a wretched dispute

ment.

*Pronounced Ba-dah-yhor.

between Catholic and Protestant a miserable sectarian controversy. It is no such thing; it is the struggle for complete political equality on the part of the overwhelming majority upon the one hand, and for political ascendency on the part of the minority on the other. Can that ascendency be maintained? Taught so long, but uninstructed still, wherefore, in the same fatal policy, with an infatuated pertinacity, do you disastrously persevere? Can you wish, and, if you wish, can you hope, that this unnatural, galling, exasperating ascendency should be maintained? Things cannot remain as they are. To what expedient will you fly? Would you drive the country into insurrection, cut down the People, and bid the yeomanry draw forth the swords clotted with the blood of 1798, that they may be brandished in massacre, and sheathed in the Nation's heart? For what, into these terrific possibilities, are we madly, desperately, impiously, to plunge? For the Irish Church!-the Church of the minority, long the Church of the State, never the Church of the People; the Church on which a faction fattens, by which a Nation starves; the Church from which no imaginable good can flow, but evil after evil, in such black and continuous abundance, has been for centuries, and is to this day, poured out; the Church by which religion has been retarded, morality has been vitiated, atrocity has been engendered; which standing armies are requisite to sustain, which has cost England millions of her treasure, and Ireland torrents of her blood!

To distinctions between Catholic and Protestant let there be an end. Let there be an end to national animosities, as well as to sectarian detestations. Perish the bad theology, which, with an impious converse, makes God according to man's image, and with infernal passions fills the heart of man! Perish the bad, the narrow, the pernicious sentiment, which, for the genuine love of country, institutes a feeling of despotic domination upon your part, and of provincial turbulence upon ours!

108. THE REPEAL OF THE UNION, 1834. — Id.

THE population of Ireland has doubled since the Union. What is the condition of the mass of the People? Has her capital increased in the same proportion? Behold the famine, the wretchedness and pestilence, of the Irish hovel, and, if you have the heart to do so, inock at the calamities of the country, and proceed in your demonstrations of the prosperity of Ireland. The mass of the People are in a condition more wretched than that of any Nation in Europe; they are worse housed, worse covered, worse fed, than the basest boors in the provinces of Russia; they dwell in habitations to which your swine would not be committed; they are covered with rags which your beggars would disdain to wear; and not only do they never taste the flesh of the animals which crowd into your markets, but,