to feel apprehensions from which I am entirely free. I do not
fear, and I will not pretend to fear, that the right honourable
Baronet will be a tyrant and a persecutor. I do not believe that
he will give up Ireland to the tender mercies of those zealots
who form, I am afraid, the strongest, and I am sure the loudest,
part of his retinue. I do not believe that he will strike the
names of Roman Catholics from the Privy Council book, and from
the Commissions of the Peace. I do not believe that he will lay
on our table a bill for the repeal of that great Act which was
introduced by himself in 1829. What I do anticipate is this,
that he will attempt to keep his party together by means which
will excite grave discontents, and yet that he will not succeed
in keeping his party together; that he will lose the support of
the Tories without obtaining the support of the nation; and that
his government will fall from causes purely internal.

This, Sir, is not mere conjecture. The drama is not a new one.
It was performed a few years ago on the same stage and by most of
the same actors. In 1827 the right honourable Baronet was, as
now, the head of a powerful Tory opposition. He had, as now, the
support of a strong minority in this House. He had, as now, a
majority in the other House. He was, as now, the favourite of
the Church and of the Universities. All who dreaded political
change, all who hated religious liberty, rallied round him then,
as they rally round him now. Their cry was then, as now, that a
government unfriendly to the civil and ecclesiastical
constitution of the realm was kept in power by intrigue and court
favour, and that the right honourable Baronet was the man to whom
the nation must look to defend its laws against revolutionists,
and its religion against idolaters. At length that cry became