Of
Ireland he said little, except that he had the full intention of serving
her in every way, by dealing with the land and other questions, telling
us patronizingly, that she was entitled to a "complete equality of
municipal and political rights." But this was only the old stereotyped
liberality of a beaten minister--beaten on an Irish Coercion
Act--speaking by anticipation from the Opposition benches, and
endeavouring to plant thorns in the path of his successful rival. The
sentiment, such as it was, was received with much cheers, and _some
murmurs_. Strange enough the _murmurs_ are not to be found in Hansard,
although reported in the newspapers of the day.
The Liberal party being for a long time the free trade party, and Sir
Robert Peel and his friends being only neophytes, he knew, even though
they did carry free trade, that they could not claim the merit of doing
so, only having taken it up, when it had attained such a position before
the country as to make it all but irresistible. Neither did he wish the
incoming Russell-Whig party to get credit for it; he therefore turned
aside, in a rather unusual manner, and gave the merit of it to Mr.
Cobden. "I said before, and I said truly," Sir Robert begins his eulogy
on that distinguished man, "that in proposing our measures of commercial
policy, I had no wish to rob others of the credit justly due to them.
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