t at a repeal of the Union; while the ministers,
though they denounced such a measure as ruinous to every part of the
kingdom, seemed willing to give it practical encouragement by a bill
which they introduced, which bore the name of a Registration Act for
Ireland, but which was not confined to that object. On the contrary, it
contained a provision for lowering the qualification for the franchise
by one-half; so that it was, in fact, a new Reform Bill for
Ireland,[252] calculated greatly to increase his influence by the number
of voters of the poorer classes whom it would create. The bill was
defeated, but the odium of having proposed it remained.

But, besides these home difficulties, there were troubles abroad, both
in the East and in the West. In the East, the complications inseparable
from a dominion like that of ours in India, where constant expansion
seemed to have become a law of its existence, had involved us in a war
with a new enemy, the warlike Afghan nation; in the West, both Jamaica
and Canada were in a state threatening insurrection. Indeed, the
troubles in Jamaica had been the immediate cause of that resignation of
the ministry in 1839 which has already been mentioned. Measures adopted
in the English Parliament with reference to the termination of that
apprenticeship system which, as we have seen, formed a part of the bill
for the abolition of slavery, and another for the regulation of the
prisons in the island, had given such offence to the colonial Assembly,
never very manageable, that the members passed a resolution that their
legislative rights had been violated, and that they would abstain from
all exercise of their legislative functions, except such as might be
necessary "to preserve inviolate the faith of the island with the public
creditor, until" (by the rescinding of the resolutions, etc., of which
they complained) "they should be left to the free exercise of their
inherent rights as British subjects." And this resolution was seconded
by an insulting protest, in which they drew an offensive comparison
between the state of crime in the island and that which prevailed in
Great Britain, taunting the British Parliament with the murders and acts
of incendiarism which terrified Ireland night and day, with the murders
of Burke and Hare in Scotland, with the law of divorce and _crim. con._
trials in England, and "a Poor-law which has taken millions from the
necessities of the destitute to add to the luxur