![]() Thomas and the English trying to impose their will on Ireland, and the two nations engaged in a barging match. The controversy was conducted in a tone as little respectful or deferential to the English halfpence and their promoters as could be devised, and the consequence was that the bad halfpence were taken back, and a good deal of bad language sent instead, an article of English export to which we are too well accustomed to regard as objectionable, however objectionable it may be. ![]() I think if we take an example from Dean Swift we will not be very far wrong. ![]() Let them persuade the people of England that we are in the wrong to reject the halfpence and let me persuade the people of Ireland to reject them, and then let them do their best and their worst." But thank God the best of them are only our fellow-subjects and not our masters. "Our neighbours, whose understandings are just on a level with ours, have a great contempt for most nations, but particularly for Ireland. Dean Swift replied to these attacks and he said: On that occasion the organs of public opinion in England said that all who opposed the bad halfpence were Papists, and enemies of King George, and they taunted the opponents of the measure that their arguments had no weight with the people of England. George I., in order to pay his mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, had contracted with a man in Birmingham to send over to Ireland a large quantity of bad halfpence, with the object, as Dean Swift suggested, of ruining the very beggars in Ireland, after having previously ruined the rest of the population. The first instance that occurs to me at the moment was in the time of George I. If in my pursuit of examples I have got to look back a considerable way, I will, before I finish, bring the matter up to date, and to the life of the last Government. I think I can show very clearly that the methods set out in the amendment produced in the other House have been adopted by many well-meaning Irishmen and have always resulted in dismal failure, generally with sorrow and misfortune to the person who proposed them. No person would advise a friend, nor would a doctor advise his patient, to adopt any means that have never yet succeeded either to his knowledge or to that of any medical man. It will, I think, be generally admitted that in this world the experience and the precedents of the past are the best guides and, in fact, the only guides we have to guide us in any decision we may take. It is on this demand that I shall consider the matter. It will be seen that the main point is the demand for negotiations and agreement with the British Government. Senator Douglas wishes the question referred to the British Privy Council, and another Senator says that we were quacks for bringing in this Bill. It is only a question of what the English people think. Senator Brown says it does not matter in the least what the Irish people think. ![]() All the opponents have based their opposition on that particular point. Kennedy in Leinster Houseĭeputy Cosgrave, those who agree with him in the Dáil and various other people speaking here decline, they say, to give this Oath Bill a Second Reading pending negotiations and agreements between the Executive Council and the British Government upon the question at issue. Appearing before an Oireachtas committee. ![]()
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