ons that any other shadow or
reflection bears to the substance. And so it would: but unhappily with
these rehearsals of the past, have mingled tumultuous menaces of a new
plot. And these menaces, in the very act of uttering themselves,
advertise for accomplices, and openly organize themselves as the
principle of a new faction for refusing tranquillity once more to
Ireland. Once more an opportunity is to be stifled for obtaining rest
to that afflicted land.

This "monster" debate, therefore, presents us in equal proportions
with grounds of disgust and terror--a disgust which forces us often to
forget the new form of terror--a terror (from a new conspiracy) which
forces us to forget even the late conspiracy of Repeal, and that
glorious catastrophe which has trampled it under foot for ever.

It is painful to the understanding--this iteration of statements a
thousand times refuted; it is painful to the heart--this eternal
neglect (in exchange for a _hear, hear_) of what the speaker knows to
be mere necessities of a poor distracted land: this folly privileged
by courtesy, this treason privileged by the place. If indeed of every
idle word--meaning not trivial word, but word consciously false--men
shall hereafter give account, Heavens! what an arrear, in the single
case of Ireland, will by this time have gathered against the House of
Commons! Perfectly appalled we are when we look into the formless
chaos of that nine nights' debate! Beginning with a motion which he
who made it did not wish[28] to succeed--ending with a vote by which
one-half of the parties to that vote meant the flattest contradiction
of all that was contemplated by the rest. On this quarter, a section
raging in the highest against the Protestant church--on that quarter,
a section (in terror of their constituents) vowing aid to this church,
and yet allying themselves with men pledged to her destruction.
_Here_, men rampant against the Minister as having strained the laws,
in what regarded Ireland, for the sake of a vigour altogether
unnecessary; _there_, men threatening impeachment--as for a lenity in
the same case altogether intolerable! To the right, "how durst you
diminish the army in Ireland, leaving that country, up to March 1843,
with a force lower by 2400 rank and file shall the lowest that the
Whigs had maintained?" To the left, "how durst you govern Ireland by
martial strength?" Question from the Minister--"Will you of the
Opposition place popish bi