FORE:The Irish Bill was read a second time in the House of Lords on the 23rd of July. It was strongly opposed by the Duke of Wellington, as transferring the electoral power of the country from the Protestants to the Roman Catholics. Lord Plunket, in reply, said, "One fact, I think, ought to satisfy every man, not determined against conviction, of its wisdom and necessity. What will the House think when I inform them that the representatives of seventeen of those boroughs, containing a population of 170,000 souls, are nominated by precisely seventeen persons? Yet, by putting an end to this iniquitous and disgraceful system, we are, forsooth, violating the articles of the union, and overturning the Protestant institutions of the country! This is ratiocination and statesmanlike loftiness of vision with a vengeance! Then it seems that besides violating the union Act we are departing from the principles of the measure of 1829. I deny that. I also deny the assumption of the noble Duke, that the forty-shilling freeholders were disfranchised on that occasion merely for the purpose of maintaining the Protestant interests in Ireland. The forty-shilling freeholders were disfranchised, not because they were what are called 'Popish electors,' but because they were in such indigent circumstances as precluded their exercising their[353] suffrage right independently and as free agentsbecause they were an incapable constituency." The Bill, after being considered in committee, where it encountered violent opposition, was passed by the Lords on the 30th of July, and received the Royal Assent by commission on the 7th of August.Elsewhere, however, Lord Palmerston abstained from interference, particularly in Germany. The immense phlegmatic mass of the Teutonic populationamounting to 43,000,000, spread over 246,000 square miles, and divided into thirty-five sovereign Stateswas powerfully moved by the shock of the French Revolution. Those States existed under every form of government, from absolutism to democracy. They were all united into a Bund or Confederation, the object of which was the maintenance of the independence of Germany, and of its several States. The Confederation consisted of a Diet, composed of the plenipotentiaries of all the States. This Diet was no bad emblem of the German mind and characterfruitful in speculation, free in thought, boundless in utterance, but without strength of will or power of action. The freer spirits demanded more liberal forms of government, and on these being refused, the Revolution broke out in Baden, Hesse-Cassel, and Bavaria. In Saxony the monarchy was saved by bending before the storm of revolution: a new Administration was appointed, which at once issued a programme of policy so liberal that the people were satisfied. Even the King of Hanover yielded to the revolutionary pressure, and called to his councils M. Hub, a Liberal deputy, who had been imprisoned several years for resisting an unconstitutional act of the Crown. On the 20th of March he issued a proclamation, in which he stated that, in compliance with the many representations addressed to him, he had abolished the censorship of the press, granted an amnesty and restoration of rights to all who had been condemned for political offences, and was willing to submit to changes in the Constitution, based upon the responsibility of Ministers to the country. It was not without necessity that such appeals were addressed to the German people. At Frankfort, while the Assembly were occupied in framing a brand-new Constitution, the Republican party in the Chamber appealed out of doors to the passions of the multitude, and excited them to such a pitch that barricades were erected, and the red flag planted in the streets. By midnight the struggle was over, and tranquillity everywhere restored through the exertions of the military.
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