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the liberties of England,-the liberty of the press, and of every other institution dear to Englishmen. The bill, it is true, is mitigated; but, even in its mitigated shape, it con tains horrors enough to insult, in the grossest manner, the people of my country. There remain still those clauses which put down the right of petitioning, which put down political agitation, which make them both, offences not punishable by the ordinary tribunals, but by what I will call revolutionary ones.

Against the bill I protest in the name of the Irish people, and in the face of Heaven. I protest against the power granted to the Lord Lieutenant to prevent meetings, no matter for what purpose they might be convened. All I ask for my country, is, justice; and, so long as the present government are unjust towards her, I laugh to scorn your promised generosity.

I strenuously object to the power granted to the Lord Lieutenant to prevent meetings, because there are grievances to be redressed in my country; and one of the ways to remedy these, is by petitions, emanating from large assemblies. I will dare any one to say that there are not grievances in Ireland.

I treat with scorn the puny and pitiful assertions that grievances are not to be complained of,-that our redress is not to be agitated: for, in such cases, remonstrances cannot be too strong, agitation cannot be too violent, to show to the world with what injustice our fair claims are met, and under what tyranny the people suffer.

There are two frightful clauses in this bill. The one which does away with trial by jury, and which I have called upon you to baptize :-you call it a court martial,-a mere nickname; I stigmatize it as a revolutionary tribunal. What, in the name of heaven, is it, if it is not a revolutionary tribunal ? It annihilates the trial by jury;-it drives the judge from his bench, the man who, from experience, could weigh the nice and delicate points of a case,-who could discriminate between the straight-forward testimony and the suborned evidence, who could see, plainly and readily, the justice or injustice of the accusation. It turns out this man who is free, unshackled, unprejudiced,-who has no previous opinions to control the clear exercise of his duty. You do away with that which is more sacred than the throne itself; that for which your king reigns, your lords deliberate, your commons assemble.

I pray to my God that when repeal comes; and come it

now must, ministers can never stay it; they cannot even hope to do so; it may come through peaceful agency, and not through oceans of blood. If ever I doubted before of the success of our agitation for repeal, this bill,-this infa mous bill, the way in which it has been received by the House, the manner in which its opponents have been treated, -the personalities to which they have been subjected, the yells with which one of them has this night been greeted ;all these things dissipate my doubts, and tell me of its complete and early triumph. Do you think those yells will be forgotten? Do you suppose their echo will not reach the plains of my injured and insulted country, that they will not be whispered in her green valleys, and heard from her lofty hills? Oh! they will be heard there :-yes, and they will not be forgotten. The youth of Ireland will bound with indignation; they will say, "We are eight millions; and you treat us thus, as though we were no more to your country, than the isle of Guernsey or of Jersey!"

I have been, all my life, opposed to a certain party of my countrymen in this House. I have contended with them for years. I will not contend with them again; or, if I do, it shall not be in hostility. I appeal to them now. They have a deeper interest in their native land, than in that of party; and they must feel that there is nothing so prejudicial, so destructive, as those bad passions between man and man. Let that hour arrive when mutual prejudices can be overcome, and evil passions set at rest, and Irishmen can then say, in a bold and unanswerable tone, We want justice, and will have equality Ministers may then legislate for England, but Irishmen will legislate for themselves.

Ministers have greatly assisted in the repeal of the Union; they have given increased energy to the cry; because they have convinced those who before doubted, that justice was not meant to be done for Ireland. To be sure it may be said they are not eight millions,-that they are divided; but then they will be eight millions, when the fears of some, and the unlucky prejudices of others, have been conquered by the force of reason and of truth.

I have done my duty:-I stand acquitted to my conscience and my country:-I have opposed this measure throughout; and I now protest against it as harsh, oppressive, uncalled for, unjust,—as establishing an infamous precedent by retaliating crime against crime,-as tyrannous, cruelly and vindictively tyrannous.

EXERCISE LIII.-CONDITION OF IRELAND, PREVIOUS TO CATHO LIC EMANCIPATION.- Shiel.

[The declamatory tone, in this piece, is softened by the poetic beauty of the language. It should still, however, be warm andglowing.]

Englishmen, look at Ireland!-what do you behold?—a beautiful country, with wonderful agricultural and commercial advantages,-the link between America and Europe,the natural resting place of trade, in its way to either hemisphere;-indented with havens, watered by deep and numerous rivers, with a fortunate climate, and a soil teeming with easy fertility, and inhabited by a bold, intrepid, and,-with all their faults, a generous and enthusiastic people.

Such is natural Ireland :—what is artificial Ireland? Such is Ireland, as God made her:what is Ireland, as England made her? For she is your colony, your dependent; and you are as answerable for her faults, as a parent is for the education of a child. What then have you made Ireland? Look at her again.

This fine country is laden with a population the most miserable in Europe, and of whose wretchedness, if you are the authors, you are beginning to be the victims :-the poisoned chalice is returning, in its just circulation, to your own lips. Your domestic swine are better housed than the people. Harvests, the most abundant, are reaped by men with starvation in their faces,-famine covers a fruitful soil; and disease inhales a pure atmosphere :-all the great commercial facilities of the country are lost ;-the deep rivers, that should circulate opulence, and turn the machinery of a thousand manufactures, flow to the ocean without wafting a boat or turning a wheel; and the wave breaks in solitude, in the silent magnificence of deserted and shipless harbours.

Instead of being a source of wealth and revenue to the empire, Ireland cannot defray her own expenses or pay a single tax; her discontents cost millions of money; and she hangs like a financial millstone round England's neck. Instead of being a bulwark and fortress, she debilitates, exhausts, and endangers England, and offers an allurement to the speculators in universal ruin.

The great mass of her enormous population is alienated and dissociated from the State; the influence of the constituted and legitimate authorities is gone ;-—a strange, anomalous, and unexampled kind of government has sprung up from

the public passions, and exercises a despotic sway over the great mass of the community; while the class inferior in numbers, but accustomed to authority, and infuriated at its loss, are thrown into formidable reaction. The most ferocious passions rage from one extremity of the country to the other. Hundreds and thousands of men, arrayed with badges, gather in the south; and the smaller factions, with discipline and arms, are marshalled in the north. The country is strewed with the materials of civil commotion, and seems like one vast magazine of powder, which a spark might ignite into, an explosion, that would shake the whole fabric of civil society into ruin, and of which England would not only feel, but perhaps never recover from, the shock.

EXERCISE LIV.-MARSEILLESE HYMN.-Translation.

[An example of the style of declamatory recitation. The effect of the form of verse being added to declamation, is, of course, to heighten all its prose characteristics. The fire of lyric passion is, consequently added to the fervour of martial enthusiasm and declamatory eloquence; and the modulation becomes doubly vivid and effective. While the appropriate rhythm of the metre, is allowed free scope, it should be preserved from a mere chanting style.]

On, countrymen, on! for the day,—

The proud day of glory,-is come!-
See, the Tyrant's red banners in battle array
Are raised, and he dares to strike home!
Hark! will you not,-can you not,-hear
The foe's fast approaching alarms ?—
They come! 'tis to wrest from us all we hold dear,
And slaughter our sons in our arms!

To arms, gallant Frenchmen, to arms! 'Tis the hour
Of freedom; march on, in the pride of your power;
And fight, till the foe to your valour shall yield,
And his life-blood dye deeply hill, valley, and field.

Say, whom do these traitors oppose ?

These kings leagued together for ill?

Who for years have o'erwhelmed us with Tyranny's woes,

And are forging fresh chains for us still?

'Tis France they have dared to enthrall!
'Tis France they have dared to disgrace!

Oh! shame on us, countrymen, shame on us all,
If we cringe to so dastard a race!

Tremble, ye traitors, whose schemes
Are alike by all parties abhorred,-
Tremble! for roused from your parricide dreams,
Ye shall soon meet your fitting reward!
We are soldiers,-nay, conquerors all!

Past dishonour we've sworn to efface;
And, rely on it, fast as one hero shall fall,
Another shall rise in his place.

Ye Frenchmen,-the noble,-the brave,-
Who can weep, e'en in war's stern alarms,
Spare, spare the poor helpless and penitent slave,
Who is marshalled against you in arms!—

But no pity for Bouillé's stern band,

Who, with reckless and tiger-like force, Would fain tear to atoms their own native land, Without e'en a pang of remorse.

We will speed on our glorious career,

When our veterans are low in the tomb;

But their patriot deeds, when they fought with us here, In our memory forever shall bloom:

'Twas their just,-their magnanimous boast,

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That for us they lived,-battled,—and died;And we 'll either avenge them on Tyranny's host, Or be laid, to a man,-by their side!

Freedom, dear freedom, sustain

Our hopes of revenge for the past;

And grant that our banner, o'er hill and o'er plain,
In triumph may float to the last!

Grant, too, that our foes may behold,

-Ere death lay his seal on their eyes,
Our success in the patriot cause we uphold,
And which dearer than ever we prize!

To arms, gallant Frenchmen, to arms!-'Tis the hour
Of Freedom; march on in the pride of your power;
And fight till the foe to your valour shall yield,
And his life-blood dye deeply hill, valley, and field!

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