e announce that the perilous state
of Ireland--the magnitude of the evil resulting from the Tithe
system--would not allow them to reject the Tithe Bill though
denuded of the appropriation clauses, as all the rest of its
provisions (all those by which the Tithe system was to be
determined) had been passed by the Lords. I cannot conceive how a
conscientious Minister can take upon himself the responsibility of
quashing this measure, and contentedly look forward to the
probability--almost certainty--of a fresh course of outrage and
disorder, and a new catalogue of miseries and privations, which he
all the time believes it is in his power to avert. But these
Ministers think that they could not avert these evils (by
accepting the Bill) without giving umbrage to their task-masters
and allies, and they do not scruple to sacrifice the mighty
interests at stake in Ireland to the paltry and ephemeral
interests of their party--interests which cannot outlive the
present hour and party, which the slightest change in the
political atmosphere may sweep away in an instant. There is also
another reason by which they are determined; they cannot face the
accusation of inconsistency--the question that would be put, Why
did you turn out Peel's Government? You turned him out on this
very principle which you are now ready to abandon. There is no
doubt that this question would be put with a very triumphant air
by their opponents, but they might easily answer it, without
admitting in so many words--what everybody well knows without any
admission--that the resolution was brought forward for the express
purpose of turning Peel out. They might say that they moved that
resolution because it is a principle that they wished to
establish, and that they still think ought to be established; that
Peel's resignation on that particular question was of his own
choice, and that if they are not irrevocably bound by the
resolution itself, they are not the more bound by that circumstance;
that they sent the Bill to the House of Lords in what they
consider the best form, but that after the Lords had agreed to the
whole measure, with the exception of the appropriation clauses, it
was their duty to take the matter again into their serious
consideration, and to determine whether it was on the whole more
advantageous to Ireland and to the Empire that the Bill should be
rejected (with all the consequences of its rejection apparent) or
that it should be passed withou