Page:A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland.djvu/94

 I should be the last person, I say, who would reproach Mr. Disraeli, if he hesitates or shrinks from this great task. For I have myself, since 1844, held for more than twelve years important offices in the Government, and I have not attempted, during that time, to carry into effect opinions which in 1844, and on the grant to Maynooth in 1845, I had openly and distinctly avowed.

I have felt for the last quarter of a century that if I were to try to introduce religious equality in Ireland, I should be opposed by the Tory party as a solid phalanx, and that they would be assisted by a considerable defection from my own party. I should thus have injured, and not promoted, the cause of religious equality. The position of Mr. Disraeli is different from mine. He has boasted in the presence of the Lord Mayor and the merchants of the City of London, that he would not permit the Liberal party to have the monopoly of liberal measures. At Edinburgh he has declared that he has for seven years educated the Tory party, and has taught them successfully the grammar of household suffrage. Surely, therefore, we may expect that so easy a lesson as that of Ecclesiastical Equality in Ireland, the pons asinorum of political geometry, must have been mastered by all the more intelligent of his pupils.

But the question arises, ought the Irish people and their representatives to allow the Ministry, as Lord Stanley suggests, another year for further instruction from the great professor? No; let us say decidedly, No. For the question is one which will not brook