In those days Mr. Pope Hennessy was one of the most active and aggressive members of the Irish Party. He had been advanced in public life by the social influence of Cardinal Wiseman, and had attached himself to the Tories as one of Mr. Disraeli’s partisans. His object was to revive, if possible, those Nationalist ideas which Mr. Disraeli had promulgated when bidding for the Irish vote in 1844. Mr. Disraeli’s object in cultivating his enthusiasm was to use him as an agent in cementing “the natural alliance between Catholicism and Conservatism,” which at the time he was most anxious to promote. Early in the Session, then, a lively discussion was initiated by Mr. Hennessy on Irish affairs, obviously with the intention of eliciting from the Ministry declarations that would tend to render Lord Palmerston’s Cabinet unpopular in Ireland. Mr. Hennessy’s motion was “that this House observes with regret the decline of the population of Ireland, and will readily support her Majesty’s Government in any well-devised measure to stimulate the profitable employment of the people; and that an address to the Crown be prepared, founded on the foregoing resolution.” The resolution was supported by a number of speakers, both Irish [Illustration: MIDHURST, SUSSEX: BIRTHPLACE OF COBDEN.] and English, among whom were prominent Conservatives, like Sir Stafford Northcote and Lord Robert Cecil, and prominent Whigs like Sir Patrick O’Brien and Mr. Monsell. It was opposed on the part of the Government by Mr. Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel, and Sir George Grey. Sir Stafford Northcote, in speaking on the motion, indicated very plainly that his leaders had already begun to angle for the Irish vote. Ireland, said he, had been crippled by English legislation, and Parliament “ought to approach this question with a feeling of tenderness,” and a desire to see how far it was possible to remedy that grievance. Lord Palmerston concluded the debate with a speech which has been rendered historic by one of its phrases. He said, “Until by some means there can be provided in Ireland the same remuneration for labour and the same inducements to remain which are afforded by other countries, you cannot, by any laws which you can devise, prevent the people from seeking elsewhere a better condition of things than exists in their own country. We are told that tenant right and a great many other things will do it. None of these things will have the slightest effect. _As to tenant right, I may be allowed to say that I think it is equivalent to landlord’s wrong._” In 1865 the idea that there was, and ever had been since the conquest of Ireland, a dual ownership in Irish soil--an ownership which naturally and equitably follows from the relations of an unimproving landlord to an improving tenant, had not yet dawned on the English mind.