In the days of my boyhood and early life, the people of Ireland were, generally speaking, an honest, candid, faithful, and grateful people, who loved truth, and felt the practical influence of religious feeling strongly, but so dishonest and degrading has been the long curse of agitation, to which forms of it their moral and social principles have been exposed, that there probably could not be found in any country, an instance in which the virtues of the whole people have been so completely debauched and contaminated (I do not say voluntarily), as those of the Irish have been by the leading advocates of repeal. The degeneracy of character, occasioned by those tampering with our national virtues, is such as we shall not recover from these thirty years to come. Many of our best, mellow-toned, old virtues, that pass in an unbroken link of hereditary beauty from father to son, and from family to family, like some sacred and inestimable heirloom, at once reverenced and loved, are all gone--such as our love of truth, our simple devotion and patriarchal piety, our sincerity in all social intercourse, and others of the same stamp; whilst little else is left us but a barren catalogue of broken and dishonest promises, and the consciousness of having been at once fleeced and laughed at. And it would be well if we could stop here, but truth forces us onward. The Irishman of the present day--the creature of agitation--is neither honest, nor candid, nor manly, nor generous, but a poor, skulking dupe, at once slavish and insolent, offensive and cowardly--who carries, as a necessary consequence, the principles of political dishonesty into the practices of private life, and is consequently disingenuous and fraudulent. Let me not be misunderstood. I love truth; and have never been either afraid or ashamed to speak it; and I trust I never shall. I now allude to the principles of Conciliation Hall, and the system by which they were led. I feel bound, however, to exempt the party called Young Irelanders from having had any participation in bringing about results so disastrous to the best moral interests of the country. It is true, that, as politicians, they were insane; but then they were at least sincere and honest; and I am satisfied that there is not a man of them, who would not have abandoned the object he had in view, sooner than accomplish it by sacrificing the popular virtues and moral character of the country for its attainment. I have myself been a, strong anti-repealer during my whole life, and though some of the Young Irelanders are my personal friends, yet none know better than they do, that I was strenuously opposed to their principles, and have often endeavored--need I say unsuccessfully?--to dissuade them from the madness of their agitation.