Page:Abolition of the Vice-Royalty of Ireland.djvu/28

24 believe will have been heard with satisfaction by every reflecting person in the kingdom; and it is one to which we may be permitted anxiously to hope that the ultimate performance may correspond. But for my present purpose, it is enough to shew that the promise has been made; and to point out that a juncture, when, by a rare concurrence of circumstances, an announced change in the whole framework of one great department of internal administration, coincides with the promised revision of the highest judicial office in the State, is one which forcibly suggests some arrangement for the former as well as the latter object, more satisfactory than the bare establishment of an Irish Secretary of State in London; more effectually marking those distinctions which it is our professed policy as far as possible to forget; and neither applying nor providing one remedy or improvement, beyond the suppression of an obsolete pageantry, and the convenient migration of a few scores of clerks.

I have made a larger demand upon your attention than I intended when I first sat down. I trust, however, that I have not burdened it by anything that is materially irrelevant or superfluous to my argument. If I have, your discrimination will enable you speedily to reject it, and to extract that which I presume to think may, in spite of any such faults of mine, be found deserving of your notice and of that of the House of Commons, before it passes the Bill at present before it. I now commend