The very different position in which the
question now stands (1870) may justly be attributed to the preparation
which went on during those years, and which produced but little visible
effect at the time; but all questions on which there are strong private
interests on one side, and only the public good on the other, have a
similar period of incubation to go through.
The same idea, that the use of my being in Parliament was to do work
which others were not able or not willing to do, made me think it my
duty to come to the front in defence of advanced Liberalism on occasions
when the obloquy to be encountered was such as most of the advanced
Liberals in the House, preferred not to incur. My first vote in the
House was in support of an amendment in favour of Ireland, moved by an
Irish member, and for which only five English and Scotch votes were
given, including my own: the other four were Mr. Bright, Mr. McLaren,
Mr. T.B. Potter, and Mr. Hadfield. And the second speech I delivered[9]
was on the bill to prolong the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in
Ireland. In denouncing, on this occasion, the English mode of governing
Ireland, I did no more than the general opinion of England now admits to
have been just; but the anger against Fenianism was then in all its
freshness; any attack on what Fenians attacked was looked upon as an
apology for them; and I was so unfavourably received by the House, that
more than one of my friends advised me (and my own judgment agreed with
the advice) to wait, before speaking again, for the favourable
opportunity that would be given by the first great debate on the Reform
Bill.
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