The agitators cannot, in justice, blame him for having recourse to the Conservative bar, for when in trouble they sought protection from its ranks themselves. Except Mr Shiel, who was merely employed to make a speech, and whose legal knowledge was never insisted on by his friends; and Mr _Precursor_ Pigott, who was retained lest a slur should be thrown on the Whigs--all the leading lawyers who conducted the defence in the "monster trial" were Protestants and Conservatives of the highest order. But what has this much-abused minister done to conciliate Ireland since he came to office? He has nearly trebled the grant for national education, and still continues the system adopted by the Whigs and patronised by the priests, in opposition to a powerful and influential portion of his own supporters;--he found a board of charitable bequests composed altogether of Protestants, and seeing, as he stated, "that two-thirds of the property they had to administer was Roman Catholic," he dissolved that board and constituted another, in which the Roman Catholics have an equality, and may under certain circumstances have a majority;[7]--he found the mortmain laws in existence, and he repealed them; now any man who wishes may endow the Roman Catholic church to any extent he pleases. Yet these last concessions have been denounced by priests and bishops as an additional insult, as an unjustifiable and tyrannical interference with their rights. And why? Because Sir Robert Peel clogged the measure with the condition, that any testator so leaving property should have his will made and registered three months before his death. Because he wishes to protect the interests of the Roman Catholic laity, by securing them against the interference of the clergy when their relatives are at the point of death, he stirs the bile and rouses the indignation of ravenous and pelf-seeking ecclesiastics. He brought in a bill to remedy what was said to be the great defect in the registration laws, and it was not his fault that it was not carried; he proposed to extend the franchise, and he was denounced for doing so by the advocates of universal suffrage; he has promoted the formation of railways; he has issued a commission to enquire into the oppressions said to be perpetrated on their tenantry by the Irish landlords; and he has subjected Irish absentees to the payment of the property tax.