heartless jocularity, asked Sir Robert Peel "What he meant to do with
Ireland?"--adding, that whatever else he might be able to do, by the aid
of intrigue and corruption, "he could _never_ govern Ireland." How
_now_, gentlemen? What will you find to lay to the charge of Ministers
in the coming session? What has become of your late patron, Mr O'Connel?
Is "his occupation gone?" Is he spending the short remainder of his
respectable old age at Darrynane, even (begging pardon of the noble
animal for the comparison)

--"like a worn-out lion in a cave,
That goes not out to prey?"

What can you any longer do, or affect to do, old gentleman, to earn your
honourable wages? Is there not (as the lawyers would style it) a failure
of consideration? If you go on any longer collecting "the rent," may you
not be liable to an indictment for obtaining money under false
pretences? Poor old soul! his cuckoo cry of Repeal grows feebler and
feebler; yet he must keep it up, or starve. _Tempus abire senex! satis
clamasti!_ That Ireland is still subject to great evils, recent
occurrences painfully attest. Mr Pitt, in 1799, (23d January,) pointed
out what may still be regarded as their true source:--"I say that
Ireland is subject to great and deplorable evils, which have a deep
root: for they lie in the nature of the country itself in the present
character, manners, and habits of its people; in their want of
intelligence, or, in other words, in their ignorance; in the unavoidable
separation of certain classes; in the state of property; in its
religious distinctions; in the rancour which bigotry engenders, and
superstition rears and cherishes."[6] How many of these roots of evil
are still in existence!