of Clare. 'What will you do,' asked Sir Robert Peel, 'with that power,
that tremendous power, which the elective franchise, exercised
under the control of religion, at this moment confers upon the Roman
Catholics? What will you do with the thirty or forty seats that will
be claimed in Ireland by the persevering efforts of the agitators,
directed by the Catholic Association, and carried out by the agency
of every priest and bishop in Ireland?' If Parliament began to recede
there could be no limit to the retrogression. Such a course would
produce a reaction, violent in proportion to the hopes that had been
excited. Fresh rigours would become necessary; the re-enactment of the
penal code would not be sufficient. They must abolish trial by jury,
or, at least, incapacitate Catholics from sitting on juries. 2,000,000
of Protestants must have a complete monopoly of power and privilege in
a country which contained 5,000,000 of Catholics, who were in most
of the country four to one--in some districts twenty to one--of the
Protestants. True, there were difficulties in the way of a settlement.
'But,' asked Sir Robert Peel, 'what great measure, which has stamped
its name upon the era, has ever been carried without difficulty?

At the present moment there is a loud cry in the English press for the
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and for the old remedy, coercion.
Those who raise the cry would do well to read Mr. Shiel's speech at
the Clare election in 1828. He said:--

'We have put a great engine into action, and applied the entire force
of that powerful machinery which the law has placed under our control.
We are masters of the passions of the people, and we have employed
our dominion with a terrible effect. But, sir, do you, or does any man
here, imagine that we could have acquired this formidable ability to
sunder the strongest ties by which the different classes of society