‘People sometimes talk,’ he said, ‘too lightly of Coercion; it means that hundreds of Irishmen who, if law had been maintained unaltered and had been firmly enforced, would now have been leading peaceful, industrious, and honest lives, will soon be torn off to prison without trial; that others will have to fly the country into hopeless exile; that others, driven to desperation through such cruel alternatives, will perhaps shed their blood and sacrifice their lives in vain resistance to the forces of the Crown; that many Irish homes, which would have been happy if evil courses had been firmly checked at the outset, will soon be bereaved of their most promising ornaments and support, disgraced by a felon’s cell and by a convict’s garb; and if you look back over the brief period which has been necessary to bring about such terrible results, the mind recoils in horror from the ghastly spectacle of murdered landlords, tenant-farmers tortured, mutilated dumb animals, which everywhere disfigure the green and fertile pastures of Ireland. It is to me, and many others who, like myself, have had the good fortune to live amongst the people of that country, to discover their high qualities and their many virtues, and to know that, under a firm and statesmanlike government, immense prosperity must have been their lot, as it is their due--it is, I say, appalling to reflect that all this promise has been for a time blotted out, all progress arrested, and all industry thrown back by one reckless and wanton act on the part of a Government who, at the outset of their career and in the heyday of their youth and of their strength, knew no higher object and had no nobler aim than to obtain at any cost a momentary and apparent advantage over their opponents.’