"Then you think cruelty to animals a sin, Ned?"
"Think it a sin!" replied Ned, with an expression of countenance that would had have brought thunders of applause at Drury-lane; "Yes, sir, it is a crying sin, and one of the very worst signs of our time. It is a foul blot upon our scutcheon. When I was a younker, the gentlemen did not set their poor neighbours such examples as they do now, and we see the fruits. What right has a man, who is returning home from a bull-bait himself, though he rides a fine horse, and has ten thousand a year, to talk to an ignorant savage that he sees on the high road for goading a jaded bullock to market, or belabouring an overloaded ass up the hill? or what right has any man who encourages the wicked amusement of prize fighting, which teaches people to become brutes, and mangle each other in cold blood, to abuse others for doing the same in hot blood, when they meet at a fair, and meet too as enemies who think that they are bound to revenge some real or imagined wrong? No, no, sir, preachers must be doers, or they will only be laughed at."
"Whom else do you think well of in our great National Assembly, Ned?" asked Bentley.
"Sir, I like Mr. Robinson. He knows his business. He found things in a bad condition, and it is more troublesome to mend than to make. He is going the right way to work, and he is not frightened by opposition. Mr. Huskisson too, sir, is a sensible man, and knows what he is about."
"What say you, Ned, to Mr. Canning?"
"Why, sir, I think that at all events he can talk well, and I love him better for one thing that he said the other day, than if he had given me a hundred pounds in hand. Do you remember, sir, when he defied the house to shew him any act of liberality, any treaty upon a broad generous foundation, that was not proposed by the Tories. That was nuts and apples, to my heart, for it was truth, and very well they all knew it, for not a man dared to contradict him; even Mr. Hume, who contradicts every thing and every body, let him alone when he threw that challenge in their teeth."
"You do not then like Mr. Hume, Ned.?"
"I should like him better, sir, if he took the trouble of being better informed. He, sir, is the watch dog in the orchard, but he barks so often when no harm is at hand, or when he mistakes a crow for a band of robbers, that when the thieves come in earnest, people do not mind him, and the uproar that he makes then, passes by unheeded, which is a pity. However, sir, he does some good, though not so much as he might do, and the fear of giving tongue keeps many a pilferrer out of the apple trees."
"Well, Ned, will it not be a fine thing for Ireland, if we live to see the day when emancipation is proclaimed, and all animosity, discontent, and rebellion, are laid in the dust?"
Ned laughed heartily. "Wait a while," said he, "and if we live to see that day I am a pickled herring. No, sir, 'tis not because I am no longer a Roman myself that I say it, but the never a bit of good would emancipation do in this country. The name of it indeed, would make the people light fires, and drink a double dose of whiskey, when they heard of it; and they would shout, and those that have hats would throw them up into the air. You would have more noise, and drunkenness, and bloodshed, and battery for a week or so, and when that was over, and not a rap was to be found in their pockets, or a tatter left on their backs, they would begin to look about them, and ask one another, what they had got? Whether the potato-garden was lowered in its rent, or leather in its price? Whether wages were raised or the necessaries of life cheaper than they were before; and when they discovered that all the difference in their condition was, that Daniel O'Connell and his partner Shiel, might stun the House of Commons in London, with their blustering speeches as they do now the Catholic Association in Dublin; the people would find that they had gained nothing but broken heads."