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 retarded a short time by a motion brought on by Mr. O'Connell, on the impending famine and disease in Ireland. He appeared to be labouring under great debility, and his splendid, full-toned voice, was subdued almost to a whisper. The broken-spirited man being assured by Sir James Graham that means would be used to mitigate the calamity of his country, withdrew his motion. Lord John Manners resumed the debate, and said that the time was come for a settlement of the question, but that a dissolution of parliament ought to be taken first to test the opinion of the constituencies. Captain Layard, member for Carlow, made a spirited speech, in favour of free trade, and Mr. Robert Palmer, a prosy one against it. Mr. Shaw, the Recorder of Dublin, previously a humble follower of Sir Robert Peel, now charged him with treason, faithlessness, instability, cowardice, and trickery, Sir Charles Napier, in his bluff sailor-like style, denied that agriculture benefited by monopoly. Mr. Bright followed in a powerful speech, the more powerful in effect that it followed so much inanity. "The singularity of his position," says a writer in the Sun, "as he rose to address the ministerialists and oppositionists, seemed to animate him to an unwonted pitch of rhetorical excellence; his periods were, as usual, adroitly and elegantly turned; but in addition to this, they alternately glittered with satire, and burnt and thrilled with a tone even pathetic." He was generously eloquent in defence of his former antagonist. "I watched the right honourable baronet go home last night," he said, "and I confess I envied him the ennobling feelings which must have filled his breast after delivering that speech—speech, I venture to say, more powerful and more to be admired than any speech ever heard in this house, within the memory of any man in it;" and in allusion to the bitter denunciations which were poured on the minister by his former supporters, he said: "When the right honourable baronet resigned, he was no longer your minister, he