What more is there which can be effected by Parliament which would better the state of the Irish peasantry, _while_ they suffer themselves to be made the dupes of every headless demagogue, and while they, by their own atrocities, drive from amongst them every person who is willing or able to afford them employment? The existing laws cannot repress the cruel outrages which they commit. Can an act of Parliament humanize their minds, or impart mercy to their hearts? The law cannot fix a maximum for rent; and if it could, it would be only to increase their turbulence, without any mitigating comforts. Extend the franchise, it will only enable them to accomplish more political mischief--for they reject as nothing all measures, however beneficial, which do not tend to the dismemberment of the empire; endow their church, and they accuse you of corrupting it; truckle to them, and you but make them more exacting; coerce them, and you benefit themselves and save the country. That Ireland does labour under evils, no man can doubt; but they are evils which have grown up under an exploded system, which all modern legislation has tended to remedy, but which no legislation can at once remove. The education of the people, heretofore altogether neglected, is now being attended to; but years will have passed before any favourable change can be effected through its instrumentality; and if things be suffered to progress as they have lately done, evil instead of good must result from the enlightenment of the people by means of a system which imparts knowledge without inculcating religion. If you extend their information, and still leave them under the political sway of those who induce the more ignorant by the most monstrous promises, and compel the more instructed and better disposed by unchecked intimidation, to follow in their wake, it is clear that you but endow the demagogues with more power, and render the enemies of order more capable of effecting their designs. The memorable expressions of one who was the champion of a people's privileges and the victim of their ferocity, are most true, that "to inform a people of their rights before instructing them and making them familiar with their duties, leads naturally to the abuse of liberty and the usurpation of individuals; it is like opening a passage for the torrent before a channel has been prepared to receive, or banks to direct it."[8]