‘I will not tell you that the Whigs love us or have any strong regard for us; but they need us, gentlemen, and they know well that, without the Radicals, and Scotland, and our party here, they couldn’t keep power for three weeks. Now why is Scotland a great and prosperous country? I’ll tell you. Scotland has no sentimental politics. Scotland says, in her own homely adage, “Claw me and I’ll claw thee.” Scotland insists that there should be Scotchmen everywhere--in the Post-Office, in the Privy Council, in the Pipewater, and in the Punjab! Does Scotland go on vapouring about an extinct nationality or the right of the Stuarts? Not a bit of it. She says, Burn Scotch coal in the navy, though the smoke may blind you and you never get up steam! She has no national absurdities: she neither asks for a flag nor a Parliament. She demands only what will pay. And it is by supporting the Whigs you will make Ireland as prosperous as Scotland. Literally, the Fenians, gentlemen, will never make my friend yonder a baronet, or put me on the Bench; and now that we are met here in secret committee, I can say all this to you and none of it get abroad. ‘Mind, I never told you the Whigs love us, or said that we love the Whigs; but we can each of us help the other. When _they_ smash the Protestant party, they are doing a fine stroke of work for Liberalism in pulling down a cruel ascendency and righting the Romanists. And when we crush the Protestants, we are opening the best places in the land to ourselves by getting rid of our only rivals. Look at the Bench, gentlemen, and the high offices of the courts. Have not we Papists, as they call us, our share in both? And this is only the beginning, let me tell you. There is a university in College Green due to us, and a number of fine palaces that their bishops once lived in, and grand old cathedrals whose very names show the rightful ownership; and when we have got all these--as the Whigs will give them one day--even then we are only beginning. And now turn the other side, and see what you have to expect from the Nationalists. Some very hard fighting and a great number of broken heads. I give in that you’ll drive the English out, take the Pigeon-House Fort, capture the Magazine, and carry away the Lord-Lieutenant in chains. And what will you have for it, after all, but another scrimmage amongst yourselves for the spoils. Mr. Mullen, of the _Pike_, will want something that Mr. Darby McKeown, of the _Convicted Felon_, has just appropriated; Tom Casidy, that burned the Grand Master of the Orangemen, finds that he is not to be pensioned for life; and Phil Costigan, that blew up the Lodge in the Park, discovers that he is not even to get the ruins as building materials. I tell you, my friends, it’s not in such convulsions as these that you and I, and other sensible men like us, want to pass our lives. We look for a comfortable berth and quarter-day; that’s what we compound for--quarter-day--and I give it to you