Representative British Orations Volume 4 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
History
Representative British Orations Volume 4 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
Speeches, addresses, etc., English
But the Attorney-General triumphantly tells you that there must be a
libel in this paragraph, because it ends with a charge of falsehood.
May I ask you to take the entire paragraph together? Common sense and
your duty require you to do so. You will then perceive that this charge
of falsehood is no more than an opinion that the administration of
the Duke of Richmond will terminate precisely as that of many of his
predecessors has done, by an excuse for the past--a flattering and
fallacious promise for the future. Why, you must all of you have seen,
a short time since, an account of a public dinner in London, given by
persons styling themselves “Friends to Religious Liberty.” At that
dinner, at which two of the Royal Dukes attended, there were, I think,
no less than four or five noblemen who had filled the office of Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland. Gentlemen, at this dinner, they were ardent
in their professions of kindness towards the Catholics of Ireland, in
their declarations of the obvious policy and justice of conciliation
and concession, and they bore ample testimony to our sufferings and
our merits. But I appeal from their present declarations to their past
conduct; they are now full of liberality and justice to us; yet I speak
only the truth of history when I say that, during their government of
this country, no practical benefits resulted from all this wisdom and
kindness of sentiment; with the single exception of Lord Fitzwilliam,
not one of them even attempted to do any good to the Catholics, or to
Ireland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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