I think it never can be assumed that a country in the position in which this country is can be secure from the danger of war. In the first place, we … - John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

[E]ight millions were advanced to enable the Irish to supply the loss of the potato crop and to cast about for some less precarious food.... The result has been that they have placed more dependence on the potato than ever, and have again been deceived. How can such a people be assisted? No one in their senses would think of repeating the outlay to lead to a similar improvidence.

It is my persuasion, that the liberties of Englishmen, being founded upon the general consent of all, must remain upon that basis, or must altogether cease to have any existence. We cannot confine liberty in this country to one class of men: we cannot erect here a senate of Venice, by which a small part of the community is enabled to lord it over the majority; we cannot in this land, and at this time make liberty the inheritance of a caste. It is the nature of English liberty, that her nightingale notes should never be heard from within the bars and gratings of a cage; to preserve any thing of the grace and the sweetness, they must have something of the wildness of freedom. I speak according to the spirit of our constitution when I say, that the liberty of England abhors the unnatural protection of a standing army; she abjures the countenance of fortresses and barracks; nor can those institutions ever be maintained by force and terror that were founded upon mildness and affection. If we ask the causes, why a system of government, so contrary to the spirit of our laws, so obnoxious to the feelings of our people, so ominous to the future prospects of the country, has been adopted, we shall find the root of the evil to lie in the defective state of our representation. The votes of the House of Commons no longer imply the general assent of the realm; they no longer carry with them the sympathies and understandings of the nation. The ministers of the Crown, after obtaining triumphant majorities in this House, are obliged to have recourse to other means than those of persuasion, reverence for authority, and voluntary respect, to procure the adherence of the country. They are obliged to enforce, by arms, obedience to acts of this House—which, according to every just theory, are supposed to emanate from the people themselves.

For three hundred years the Protestant Established Church of Ireland has been the most odious and offensive emblem of the corruption and the intolerance of England. To have quietly removed this monopoly so offensive to the Irish nation, the target against which the arrows of Ireland's best archers were always aimed, without any of the rabbling which marked the expulsion of the English liturgy from Scotland, without disorder, without riot, is a great feat in the history of any statesman. No man can complain that he has been wronged, a nation may rejoice that she has been righted.