Page:Abolition of the Vice-Royalty of Ireland.djvu/8

4 worthy of consideration, I know how powerful will be the support which they will have gained: if I fail in recommending them to your judgment, and through your authority to that of the public, I shall feel that probably I have overrated their value, or that they must be left to abler hands to do them justice. When some time since it was announced to be the intention of Her Majesty's Government to extinguish the actual and ancient form of separate government for Ireland, and to transfer its functions and its powers to this country, I felt, in common, I believe, with the great majority of the population of both kingdoms, that the time was now fully come for such a change, and that upon a variety of grounds it was reasonable, just, and politic that it should be made.

I do not now mean to swell the bulk of this letter (which I desire to keep within the smallest practicable limits,) by entering into any review or discussion of the arguments for that alteration. It has been proposed, apparently with the concurrence—I believe I might say with the approbation—of almost all classes on both sides of St. George's Channel; and the abolition of the Vice-Royalty, and the general consolidation of the machinery of English and Irish Government may be assumed as a fact accomplished. But whatever may be the merits of the question as regards this fact itself, it is obvious that its consummation may be effected in more ways than one; and it appears to me, that