296 THE LOllDS, THE COMMONS, AND THE PEOPLE. 



been very different. These very corporations have been made, both 

 directly and indirectly, the instruments of inflicting on them those 

 positive evils under which they have suffered and groaned so long. 

 The members of these bodies have always been distinguished for 

 converting the powers which these offices conferred into the means 

 of oppressing the Roman Catholic part of the population. 



But, apart from religious considerations altogether, the Corporations 

 of Ireland have been the fruitful source of misery to that country. 

 Their gross mismanagement — ofttimes their flagrant, deliberate mis- 

 appropriat ion of the funds of the inhabitants— has been of a nature, 

 and , has been committed under circumstances of aggravation, with 

 which any of the corporate abuses in this country admit not of a mo- 

 ment's comparison. 



But why dwell on the flagrant abuses, and the gross injustice to the 

 Roman Catholics, of which the Irish Corporations have been the pro- 

 lific parents, when the fact has never been denied even by those well 

 known to be most friendly to their perpetuation ? Why the pro- 

 foimd silence of all the Tory Irish Members, when these Corpora- 

 tions have been, times without number, charged with the grossest 

 malversation of the public funds, and with making their power the 

 instrument of oppressing those whose religious belief did not chance 

 to quadrate with theirs ? Why, we say, this unbroken muteness .'' 

 For this simple reason, that the abuses were too palpable to be denied 

 and too flagrant to admit of even one word in the shape of palliation. 

 The Irish Municipal Corporation Reform Bill will be sent to the 

 House of Lords, not only with a large majority in its favour, but with 

 this very powerful additional recommendation — that not one single 

 voice was raised in the lower House either in denial or palliation of 

 those evils, which it is the object of the measure to remedy. How 

 monstrous must be that system of abuse — how glaring and enormous the 

 evils — which could not number one defender in the House of Commons } 

 Supposing, therefore, that no Municipal Corporation Reform mea- 

 sure had been passed in England, the urgent necessity of such a 

 measure, to remedy the great and manifold evils which are interwoven 

 with the Corporations of Ireland, must be so manifest that no reason- 

 able mind could, for a moment, hesitate as to the propriety of pass- 

 ing it. 



But when, in addition to this, it is recollected that England has had 



