Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/238

THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS and the daggers of the assassins, and, for the matter of that, between their daggers and Mr. Burke, too.

Now, sir, I leave this subject. I have suffered more than any other man from that terrible deed in the Phœnix Park, and the Irish nation has suffered more than any other nation through it.

You are going to plunge everything back into the seething caldron of disaffection. You can not see what the results of all this may be. We can only point to the experience of what has happened in past times. We anticipate nothing beneficial from this Bill, either to your country or to ours; and we should not be honest men if we did not warn you, with all the little force at our command, of the terrible dangers that may be before you.

I trust before this Bill goes into Committee, or at all events before it leaves Committee, the great English people will make their voices heard and impress upon their representatives that they must not go on any further with this coercive legislation.

If this House and its majority have not sense enough to see this the great heart of this country will see it, for I believe it is a great and generous heart that can sympathize even when a question is concerned in reference to which there have been so many political antipathies. I am convinced by what I have seen of the great meetings which have been held over the length and breadth of England and Scotland that the heart of your 228