That it should be a matter of public discretion in me to be silent on
the affairs of Ireland is what on all accounts I bitterly lament. I
stated to the House what I felt; and I felt, as strongly as human
sensibility can feel, the extinction of my Parliamentary capacity, where
I wished to use it most. When I came into this Parliament, just fourteen
years ago,--into this Parliament, then, in vulgar opinion at least, the
presiding council of the greatest empire existing, (and perhaps, all
things considered, that ever did exist,) obscure and a stranger as I
was, I considered myself as raised to the highest dignity to which a
creature of our species could aspire. In that opinion, one of the chief
pleasures in my situation, what was first and-uppermost in my thoughts,
was the hope, without injury to this country, to be somewhat useful to
the place of my birth and education, which in many respects, internal
and external, I thought ill and impolitically governed. But when I found
that the House, surrendering itself to the guidance of an authority, not
grown out of an experienced wisdom and integrity, but out of the
accidents of court favor, had become the sport of the passions of men at
once rash and pusillanimous,--that it had even got into the habit of
refusing everything to reason and surrendering everything to force, all
my power of obliging either my country or individuals was gone, all the
lustre of my imaginary rank was tarnished, and I felt degraded even by
my elevation.
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