isconception of
what we were doing might occasion at home, and before measures were
settled with men of weight and authority in Ireland, in order to render
our acts useful and acceptable to that country. I said, that the only
thing which could make the influence of the crown (enormous without as
well as within the House) in any degree tolerable was, that it might be
employed to give something of order and system to the proceedings of a
popular assembly; that government being so situated as to have a large
range of prospect, and as it were a bird's-eye view of everything, they
might see distant dangers and distant advantages which were not so
visible to those who stood on the common level; they might, besides,
observe them, from this advantage, in their relative and combined state,
which people locally instructed and partially informed could behold only
in an insulated and unconnected manner;--but that for many years past we
suffered under all the evils, without any one of the advantages of a
government influence; that the business of a minister, or of those who
acted as such, had been still further to contract the narrowness of
men's ideas, to confirm inveterate prejudices, to inflame vulgar
passions, and to abet all sorts of popular absurdities, in order the
better to destroy popular rights and privileges; that, so far from
methodizing the business of the House, they had let all things run into
an inextricable confusion, and had left affairs of the most delicate
policy wholly to chance.

After I had expressed myself with the warmth I felt on seeing all
government and order buried under the ruins of liberty, and after I had
made my protest against the insufficiency of the propositions, I
supported the principle of enlargement at which they aimed, though short
and somewhat wide of the mark,--giving, as my sole reason, that the more
frequently these matters came into discussion, the more it would tend
to dispel fears and to eradicate prejudices.

This was the only part I took. The detail was in the hands of Lord
Newhaven and Lord Beauchamp, with some assistance from Earl Nugent and
some independent gentlemen of Irish property. The dead weight of the
minister being removed, the House recovered its tone and elasticity. We
had a temporary appearance of a deliberative character. The business was
debated freely on both sides, and with sufficient temper. And the sense
of the members being influenced by nothing but what will na