out any feelings of anxiety or apprehension; I have no object of personal ambition to gratify, and, whatever else I may lose, I cannot lose the consolation of having acted on a sense of public duty at a period of great difficulty. If I succeed I shall have the satisfaction of thinking that I have succeeded against great obstacles and amid the most confident predictions of failure. I believe that I shall succeed. I have that confidence in a good cause; I have that confidence in the success of good intentions that I believe that a majority of the representatives of England will be satisfied with the measures which I shall propose, and that they will lend their support and co-operation in carrying them into effect. But, gentlemen, if I am mistaken; if after having exerted myself to the utmost in that great cause in which I am engaged; if, having nothing to upbraid myself with, I shall nevertheless fail, then, I do assure you, so far as my personal feelings are concerned, I shall relinquish the powers, emoluments, and distinctions of office with any feelings rather than those of mortification and regret. I shall find ample compensation for the loss of office; I shall return to pursuits quite as congenial to my taste and feelings as the cares and labors of office; I shall feel the full force of the sentiments which are applied by the poet to the hardy natives of the Alpine regions:

"As the loud torrents and the whirlwind's roar
But bind him to his native mountains more!"

so shall I feel, that the angry contentions and collisions of political life will but bind me the more to this place, not, indeed, the place of my nativity, but dearer to me than the place of my nativity by every early recollection and association, and by the formation of those first friendships, which have remained uninterrupted to this hour. I shall return hither to do what good I can in a more limited sphere, and with humbler powers of action to encourage local improvement, to enjoy the opportunities of friendly intercourse, and to unite with you in promoting good-fellowship and a spirit of conciliation and mutual goodwill in that society, to the bosom of which I shall return.

THE CHURCH OF IRELAND

BY

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

1792-1878

John Russell, the record of whose life is so intimately interwoven with the fortunes of the Whig party for nearly half a century, was born in London, August 18, 1792. He was the third son of the sixth duke of Bedford. He received his early education at Westminster school and with a private tutor in Woodnesborough, in Kent. He studied at Edinburgh from the autumn of 1809 till the summer of 1812. Lord Russell visited the Peninsula in 1812, and during this visit he met Wellington at Burgos, and in 1814 Napoleon at Elba. While still under age, in July, 1813, he was elected member of Parliament for the borough of Tavistock in the interest of the Whig party. And with his return to Parliament began his long and useful career as a statesman. At the general election in 1820 he was returned for Huntingdonshire. Henceforth, for twelve years, he devoted himself to the pressing of Parliamentary reforms. After the accession to power of Earl Grey, Lord Russell, though then not a member of Parliament, was intrusted with the task of explaining the Government Reform Bill to the House of Commons. His speech on this occasion marks an epoch in his career. In March, 1835, Russell brought in a motion to consider the temporalities of the Irish Church, which was carried by a considerable majority after a three nights' debate, and when Lord Melbourne's ministry again came into power during the same year he was made Home Secretary with a seat in the Cabinet.

As Colonial Secretary in 1839 Russell pacified the Canadians, whose claims to self-government he allowed. His proposal of a fixed duty on foreign grain led to the defeat of Melbourne's administration and made way for Peel, who in 1845 made public announcement of his conversion to the immediate repeal of the Corn Laws. After Peel's resignation in consequence, his recall to power, and another resignation, all within a twelvemonth, Russell became what he in reality had been under the Melbourne administration-Prime Minister. In 1846, 1847, and 1848 we find him engaged in adjusting the affairs of Ireland. In the Cabinet of the Earl of Aberdeen, Russell became Foreign Secretary with the leadership of the House of Commons, but was forced to resign on account of the unpopularity incurred by his attitude at the Congress of Vienna. In 1859 Russell became Foreign Secretary a second time under the second administration of Palmerston, which office he held till 1865. He threw his whole influence on the side of Italian unity and preserved a strict neutrality in the Civil War in America. He was created Earl Russell in 1861, and entered the House of Lords. On the death of Lord Palmerston in 1865 he became Prime Minister a second time. The reform bill which he introduced with Gladstone in 1866 was rejected and his ministry shortly after resigned. From now on, up to the time of his death, May 28, 1878, he remained an active member of the Liberal party in the House of Lords. In private life, says a competent authority, Russell was a genial companion, never happier than when surrounded by his children and his books.

As a statesman he was a sincere, but not a demonstrative, patriot. He championed every measure that he believed would increase the happiness of his people. Though his voice was weak and his delivery somewhat affected, Earl Russell was an admirable and successful debater, his speeches rising to a high order of eloquence. The speech on The Church of Ireland" is characteristic of Russell's style of oratory.

I

THE CHURCH OF IRELAND

Delivered in the House of Commons, March 30, 1835

RISE fully sensible of the arduous task I have undertaken; but although I am well aware both of the difficulty of that task, and of the responsibility I incur, yet the confidence I feel in the nature of the question I am to bring forward diminishes much of my anxiety, because I cannot but think that the clearness of the proposition I shall submit will compensate for any obscurity in the arguments I may use to enforce it. I am confident that the truth and justice of the cause will prevail though the weakness and incompetence of the advocate should be manifest.

With no further preface, therefore, I shall enter upon the consideration of the subject of the Church of Ireland; and in doing so, let me advert, in the first instance, to a motion made on April 22, in the last year. The honorable member for the city of Dublin then introduced a motion for a committee to inquire into the means by which the union with Ireland had been effected, and as to the expediency of continuing it. The honorable member was met by an amendment in the form of an address to the Crown, which was carried by a large majority, and in the minority appeared only one member for England, and no member for Scotland. The answer to the motion of the honorable and learned member, therefore, was given by the Representatives of England and Scotland, supported by a great part of those from Ireland. The address was in these terms: "We, your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons, in Parliament assembled, feel it our duty humbly to approach your Majesty's throne, to record in the most solemn manner our fixed determination to maintain unimpaired and undisturbed the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland, which we consider to be essential to the strength and