imputed to them in the preamble of the bill; and that therefore
to disfranchise them without compensation would be an act of
revolutionary tyranny. The honourable and learned gentleman has
compared the conduct of the present Ministers to that of those
odious tools of power, who, towards the close of the reign of
Charles the Second, seized the charters of the Whig corporations.
Now, there was another precedent, which I wonder that he did not
recollect, both because it is much more nearly in point than that
to which he referred, and because my noble friend, the Paymaster
of the Forces, had previously alluded to it. If the elective
franchise is property, if to disfranchise voters without a crime
proved, or a compensation given, be robbery, was there ever such
an act of robbery as the disfranchising of the Irish forty-
shilling freeholders? Was any pecuniary compensation given to
them? Is it declared in the preamble of the bill which took away
their franchise, that they had been convicted of any offence?
Was any judicial inquiry instituted into their conduct? Were
they even accused of any crime? Or if you say that it was a
crime in the electors of Clare to vote for the honourable and
learned gentleman who now represents the county of Waterford, was
a Protestant freeholder in Louth to be punished for the crime of
a Catholic freeholder in Clare? If the principle of the
honourable and learned Member for Newport be sound, the franchise
of the Irish peasant was property. That franchise the Ministers
under whom the honourable and learned Member held office did not
scruple to take away. Will he accuse those Ministers of robbery?
If not, how can he bring such an accusation against their
successors?

Every gentleman, I think, who has spoken from the other side of