My Lords, I never have made, and I never will make, a charge which I am not ready to repeat, and able to substantiate, and I will forthwith prove that which the noble Earl calls upon me to explain.  In doing this I beg leave to remind your Lordships, that some months ago I suggested to the noble Earl, (Grey) that an Act of Parliament, which had been passed for the purpose of suppressing illegal associations in Ireland, was about to expire, and I asked him, if he intended to propose a renewal of that act.  The noble Earl replied that he did; but my Lords, you will recollect that parliament was dissolved without any further notice of the act, and of course it expired.  The result of this was, that the noble Earl stated in the House, when it met again, that the noble Marquis at the head of the Irish Administration felt that he could carry on the government of that country without any additional powers; and the consequences of the noble Earl having declined to apply to the legislature for any authority beyond the existing laws were, that agitation began again, and that meeting after meeting has been held, from that time to the present moment.  This is not all, my Lords; the great agitator, the prime mover of the whole machinery, escaped the execution of the sentence of the law in consequence of the expiration of the Act of Parliament to which I have referred.  Well my Lords, what has since taken place.  This very person, the great agitator, whom the government had prosecuted to conviction, was considered to be a person worthy of the honours which the crown could bestow, and he received the highest favour which any gentleman of the Bar ever received from the hands of the noble Earl and his government; he received a patent of precedence, which placed him next the Attorney General, and above a gentleman who was once Attorney General, but was still a member of the same Bar.  If this was not a premium given to that gentleman to continue his course of disturbing the country, I do not know what else could be so considered.  I feel that no more effectual mode could be found to encourage agitation than to reward the promoter of it.  But it is not alone in this respect that his Majesty’s Government has encouraged agitation.  What was the meaning, I ask, of the friends of government taking the course they have taken out of doors, with reference to the Reform Bill?  What was the meaning of the letter of the noble Lord in another house, addressed to the Political Union of Birmingham, in which that noble Lord designated the sentiments of noble Peers on this side of the House as the “whisper of a faction?”—­What was the meaning of two friends of government collecting a mob in Hyde Park, and the Regent’s Park, on one of the days on which the House of Lords was discussing the Reform Bill?  What was the meaning of those individuals directing the line of march of the assembled multitude upon St. James’s, and publishing their orders in the papers devoted to government?  And what