SPEECH AT CONCILIATION HALL, DUBLIN, JULY 28, 1846. Y LORD MAYOR I will commence as Mr. Mitchell concluded, with an allusion to the Whigs. I fully concur with my friend, that the most comprehensive measures which the Whig minister may propose, will fail to lift this country up to that position which she has the right to occupy, and the power to maintain. A Whig minister, I admit, may improve the province - he will not restore the nation. Franchises, tenant compensation bills, liberal appointments may ameliorate, they will not exalt; they may meet the necessities, they will not call forth the abilities of the country. The errors of the past may be repaired - the hopes of the future will not be fulfilled. With a vote in one pocket, a lease in the other, and "full justice before him at the petty sessions, in the shape of a "restored magistrate," the humblest peasant may be told that he is free; trust me, my lord, he will not have the character of a freeman, his spirit to dare, his energy to act. From the stateliest mansion down to the poorest cottage in the land, the inactivity, the meanness, the debasement, which provincialism engenders, will be perceptible. These are not the crude sentiments of youth, though the mere commercial politician, who has deduced his ideas of self-government from the table of imports and exports, may satirize them as such. Age has uttered them, my lord, and the experience of eight years has preached them to the people. A few weeks since, and there stood up in the court of Queen's Bench an old and venerable man to teach the country the lessons he had learned in his youth, beneath the portico of the Irish Senate House, and which during a long life he had treasured in his heart, |