requirement; and the state patronage was employed to stimulate and
to reward a staff of demagogues, by whom the masses were alternately
excited to madness, and betrayed, according to the necessities of the
English factions. When Russells and Greys were out or in danger, there
were free promises of equal laws and privileges and franchises for
oppressed Ireland; the minister expectant or trembling for his place,
spoke loudly of justice and compensation, of fraternity and freedom.
To these key-notes the place-hunting demagogue pitched his brawling.
His talk was of pike-making, and sword-fleshing, and monster marching.
The simple people were goaded into a madness, the end whereof was for
them suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the hulks, and the gallows;
for their stimulators, silk gowns and commissionerships and seats on
the bench. Under this treatment the public mind became debauched; the
lower classes, forced to bear the charges of agitation, as well as to
suffer its penalties, lost all faith in their social future; they saw
not and looked not beyond the momentary excitement of a procession or
a monster meeting.'

Sir Robert Peel, when introducing the Emancipation Bill, had to
confess the utter failure of the coercive policy which had been so
persistently pursued. He showed that Ireland had been governed, since
the Union, almost invariably by coercive acts. There was always some
political organisation antagonistic to the British Government. The
Catholic Association had just been suppressed; but another would soon
spring out of its ashes, if the Catholic question were not settled.
Mr. O'Connell had boasted that he could drive a coach-and-six through
the former act for its suppression; and Lord Eldon had engaged to
drive 'the meanest conveyance, even a donkey cart, through the act of
1829.' The new member for Oxford (Sir Robert Inglis) also stated that
twenty-three counties in Ireland were prepared to follow the example