English parties, instead of legislating for Ireland as an integral part of the Empire, have been in the habit of using her for the promotion of their own ambitious views. The party out of place seeks her aid to help to reinstate it in power; whilst those in power, profuse of promises before they had attained to it, forget, or postpone the measures which, in opposition, they had pronounced essential to her welfare. When Sir Robert Peel was resigning, he took especial care to lay down the doctrine, that Ireland was fully entitled to all the rights and privileges of Great Britain. His successor, Lord John Russell, expressed the same view only a short time before he was summoned to the Councils of his Sovereign. A few days after his unsuccessful attempt to form a government, at the close of 1845, he was invited by the people of Glasgow to accept the freedom of their city. In the speech which he addressed to them, on that occasion, he said, "My opinion is, that Scotchmen should have the same privileges as Englishmen, and that Irishmen ought to have the same privileges as both Englishmen and Scotchmen." The sentiment was received with cheers. He further said: "I consider that the Union was but a parchment and unsubstantial union, if Ireland is not to be treated, in the hour of difficulty and distress, as an integral part of the United Kingdom; and unless we are prepared to show, that we are ready to grant to Irishmen a participation in all our rights and privileges, and to treat them exactly as if they were inhabitants of the same island. I, therefore, could never listen to, or agree with the assertion, that they ought to be considered as aliens. Nor could I consent to any laws which were founded on this unjust presumption." These sentiments were received by his audience with repeated applause. During the absorbing debate on the Irish Coercion Bill, in June, he not only opposed that measure, but, in some sense, became the apologist of those outrages, which the Government alleged had made it necessary. After quoting, very fully, from the evidence given before the Devon Commission, he goes on to say: "This, sir, differs from the account given by the noble lord, the Secretary for Ireland; and it is evidence which, I think, this House can hardly neglect or deny. However ignorant many of us may be of the state of Ireland, we have the best evidence that can be produced--the evidence of persons best acquainted with that country--of magistrates for many years, of farmers, of those who have been employed by the Crown; and all tell you, that the possession of land is that which makes the difference between existing and starving amongst the peasantry, and that, therefore, ejections out of their holdings are the cause of violence and crime in Ireland. In fact, it is no other than the cause which the great master of human nature describes, when he makes an oppressed nature violate the law:--