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rather be under the ascendency of certain people or under their dominant influence. If human words convey anything this new constitution is the words, "a new ascendency." (Applause.) Mr. Gladstone disestablished our Church. He did one thing after another to cut down the Upas tree of the old ascendency, and he now comes, and, for once in a way, he plants a new tree of ascend- ency. (Applause.) Can inconsistency go beyond this? I heard an old gentleman say many years ago that one of the most striking things he ever heard was when he heard the great O'Connell, stand- ing on the hill of Tara, after Catholic Emancipation had passed. The great orator lifted up his hands to heaven, and he said, "The shackles have been stricken from my hands, but the mark of the fetters is still upon my wrists." But the shadow of the fetters still glooms over us, and when this new ascendency is fastened upon us, where will be the O'Connell to free us from them ? (Hear, hear.) Now, I will say to all thinking men in the United Kingdom, and especially to the Nonconformists, "Help us, help us, as the friends of liberty in the past, as the friends of purity of election." I will put it on another footing. 1 have none of the airy asceticism of the late convert to temperance, Sir William Harcourt. (Laughter.) But as friends of temperance, I call on them to help us in the work. (Hear, hear.) The Bill
STAGGERS UNDER WHISKEY
in its financial proposals. (Hear, hear.) It smells of whiskey, and the snake bite of national bankruptcy is to be doctored by doses of National drunkenness. (Applause.) Yes, I would say to them not to support the spirit of excessive faction in alliance with that of revolution. (Hear, bear.) But great would be his guilt, and terrible and dark will be the shadow of your shame, if it should happen that the great betrayal should be accomplished, and that great betrayal shall be followed by a great fall — the fall of an empire, and the isles will shake with the sound of it. (Applause.)
