1829.] The Forty Shilling Freeholders. 3 



" By your cordial co-operation with each other, you gained your 

 emancipation : you compelled your enemies to do justice to you at 

 length. We have gained our object ; but we must not stop there. We must 

 advance further. I would as soon rob the altar, as take a single farthing from 

 government for doing nothing but keeping up a system of corruption, by 

 which the people have been, for centuries, oppressed and insulted." 

 (Hear this, my lords of the cabinet.) " My object is to get justice and 

 liberty for Ireland ! You had once a parliament of your own in Ireland. 

 You were basely and treacherously deprived of it. It ought to be near 

 you, that it might be in your power to go there and petition whenever 

 you were aggrieved by any of yoiu- Brunswick neighbours. The 

 Brunswickers were great men last year. We are as gi-eat as they now ; 

 and next year, I hope, we shall be greater ! (loud cheers.) We will follow 

 our former course. (Cries of ' May we succeed.') Peel pretended to be 

 honest when we were getting emancipation- I want to know, was he 

 honest when he turned me out of parliament ?" (So much for IMr. 

 Peel's pm-chase of the rabble. But the following sentences are of more 

 import than any contempt that can be flung on that miserable apos- 

 tate. If the spirit of the \vords here pronounced were p»t in action, 

 we know of nothing more likely to produce the most formidable conse- 

 quences.) " I shall now tell you how to deal with the new Brunswickers, 

 the persons who are now going to oppose me. Pass them by with silent 

 contempt. If they speak to you, make no reply. If they have corn or 

 hay to cut, tell them they are Brunswickers, and let them use their own 

 reaping hooks and scythes. If any of them go to the chapel, and have a 

 little corner for themselves, have a. few spikes in front, that they may be 

 penned up in a dock ! When you see three or four of them, begin to 

 laugh ; the more they are annoyed, the more you should laugh. The 

 Lord help the Brunswickers after that !" 



We cannot conceive it possible to have combined more material of mis- 

 chief in so many words. The man who votes against the Agitator, is to be 

 actually cut off from all neighbourhood. The landlord is not to have 

 the services of his tenantry and labourers, the peasant is to be left to 

 work by himself; he is to be stigmatized as a Brunswacker ; a name 

 which, in such mouths, of course, passes for every thing vile. If three 

 or four of those people are seen together, they are to be jeered at ; and 

 the more they seem inclined to resent it, the more they are to be jeered at. 

 And this, too, in the country of perpetual mobs, where hundreds gather 

 to beat out each others' brains, for all causes, or for any, for the colour 

 of a waistcoat, or the knot of a cravat ; the very country of the wildest 

 insubordination, and bitterest feuds, perhaps, tobe found in Europe. What 

 the residts of this command of perpetual insult may be, when, not three or 

 four on a side try their powers, but when three or four hundred are ready 

 for the riot by day, and the bloody revenge by night, we may feebly con- 

 jecture from the history of the last century. As to Mr. Peel's share of the 

 honours, we submit the following sentence to his consideration : — " INIr. 

 Peel does not like agitation. How must he be annoyed, when he finds 

 that / am agitating again ?" So may all the hopes of ]\Ir. Peel end, 

 and such inay be h^s reward. But the Duke of Wellington, in the 

 speech which so keenly castigated the wretched ]Marquis of Anglesey, 

 declared that " agitation" meant little short of rebellion. And what is 

 his Grace of Wellington now doing, when this " little short of rebellion" 

 13 thus publiclv proclaimed again ? when his boasted remedy for all 



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