May you remember, that the liberty which was acquired for you by your ancestors will be required of you by your descendants: then will you agree to a… - John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

Party has no doubt its evils; but all the evils of party put together would be scarcely a grain in the balance, when compared to the dissolution of honourable friendships, the pursuit of selfish ends, the want of concert in council, the absence of a settled policy in foreign affairs, the corruption of separate statesmen, the caprices of an intriguing Court, which the extinction of party connection has brought and would again bring upon this country.

When Lord Grey came into office, and the Whigs, after sixty years of exclusion, began a new scheme of Irish policy, there were two prominent evils in the government of Ireland. The first was the corrupt and intolerant system of administration called Protestant Ascendancy; the second, the Irish Church Establishment. The first of these evils—called by Burke, Non regnum sed magnum latrocinium [not a kingdom but a grand theft]; and by Fox, a miserable monopolising minority—was quite as great a grievance to the people of Ireland as the second. It drove into rebellion such men as Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Emmets, and Wolfe Tone. By a series of what were called by Irish statesmen 'ripening measures,' the disaffected classes were irritated, goaded, spurred into insurrection; and when they had rebelled, were tortured, massacred, and shot, till the spirit of disloyalty, if not extirpated, was terrified and subdued. Hence a state of government, which was described by Lord Redesdale as one law for the rich and another for the poor, and both equally ill administered.

It is quite true that landlords in England would not bear to be shot like hares or partridges by miscreants banded for murderous purposes. But neither does any landlord in England turn out fifty persons at once, and burn their homes over their heads, giving them no provision for the future. The murders are atrocious, but so are the ejectments. The truth is that a civil war between landlords and tenants [in Ireland] has been raging for 80 years, marked by barbarity on both sides. I am willing to finish the contest.... But if stringent laws are required, they must bear on both sides in the contest.