Page:Abolition of the Vice-Royalty of Ireland.djvu/9

5 the manner in which it is to be accomplished is a point of the most obvious importance, and must tend in a great degree to determine the amount of public advantage to be derived from it, either to Ireland or to England.

I have, therefore, from the first, looked with much anxiety to this part of the question; entertaining a strong opinion that there were arrangements which might be made to give far greater value to the change than could be involved in the mere migration of the Irish Executive across the Channel; and that the opportunity was one which should not be neglected, of carefully considering the possibility and expediency of such dispositions, and of rendering them auxiliary, not merely to the promotion of official, but of national interests. Holding such opinions, however, I nevertheless felt that I had no special or peculiar title to a voice in this matter; and I was, therefore, reluctant to obtrude them upon the public, at any rate before I saw what were the conclusions at which the Government might have arrived Even after its specific proposal had been made to Parliament, I deemed it becoming to wait, at least, to learn whether it might not be suggested by others better entitled to be heard upon the subject, that a more satisfactory and useful arrangement could be made; and it is by considerations of this nature that I have been hitherto deterred from a step which, taken precipitately, might have savoured somewhat of