the idea of driving France upon her resources, lest you should make her a military government. The question now is, whether you will make that military government perpetual? I therefore do not think the theory of Mr. Fox can be quoted against us; and the practice of Mr. Fox tends to establish our proposition, for he treated with Buonaparte and failed. Mr. Fox was tenacious of England, and would never yield an iota of her superiority; but the failure of the attempt to treat was to be fand, not in Mr. Fox, but in Buonaparte. On the French subject, speaking of authority, we cannot forget Mr. Burke. Mr. Burke, the prodigy of nature and acquisition. He read everything, he saw everything, he foresaw everything. His knowledge of history amounted to a power of foretelling; and when he perceived the wild work that was doing in France, that great political physician, intelligent of symptoms, distinguished between the access of fever and the force of health; and what other men conceived to be the vigour of her constitution, he knew to be no more than the paroxysm of her madness, and then, prophet-like, he pronounced the destinies of France, and, in his prophetic fury, admonished natións. Gentlemen speak of the Bourbon family. I have already said, we should not force the Bourbon upon France; but we owe it to departed (I would rather say to interrupted) greatness, to observe, that the house of Bourbon was not tyrannical; under her, everything, except the administration of the country, was open to animadversion; every subject was open to discussion, philosophical, ecclesiastical, and political, so that learning, and arts, and sciences, made progress. Even England consented to borrow not a little from the temperate meridian of that government. Her court stood controlled by opinion, limited by principles of honour, and softened by the influence of manners: and, on the whole, there was an amenity in the condition of France, which rendered the French an amiable, an enlightened, a gallant, and an accomplished race. this gallant race you see imposed an oriental despotism. Their present court (Buonaparte's court) has gotten the idiom of the East as well as her constitution; a fantastic and barbaric expression: an unreality, which leaves in the shade the modesty of truth, and states nothing as it is, and everything as it is not. The attitude is affected, the taste is corrupted, and the intellect perverted. Do you wish to confirm this military tyranny in the heart of Europe? A tyranny founded on the triumph of the army over the principles of civil government, tending to universalize throughout Europe the domination of the sword, and to reduce to paper and parchment, Magua Over Charta and all our civii constitutions. An experiment such as no country ever made, and no good country would ever permit; to relax the moral and religious influences; to set Heaven and Earth adrift from one another, and make God Almighty a tolerated alien in His own creation; an insurrectionary hope to every bad man in the community, and a frightful lesson to profit and power, vested in those who have pandered their allegiance from king to emperor, and now found their pretensions to domination on the merit of breaking their oaths and deposing their sovereign. Should you do anything so monstrous as to leave your allies in order to confirm such a system; should you forget your name, forget your ancestors, and the inheritance they have left you of morality and renown; should you astonish Europe, by quitting your allies to render immortal such a composition, would not the nations exclaim, "You have very providently watched over our interests, and very generously have you contributed to our service, and do you falter now? In vain have you stopped in your own person the flying fortunes of Europe; in vain have you taken the eagle of Napoleon, and snatched invincibility from his standard, if now, when confederated Europe is ready to march, you take the lead in the desertion, and preach the penitence of Buonaparte and the poverty of England"? As to her poverty, you must not consider the money you spend in your defence, but the fortune you would lose if you were not defended; and further, you must recollect you will pay less to an immediate war, than to a peace with a war establishment, and a war to follow it. Recollect further, that whatever be your resources, they must outlast those of all your enemies; and further, that your empire cannot be saved by a calculation. Besides, your wealth is only a part of your situation. The name you have established, the deeds you have achieved, and the part you have sustained, preclude you from a second place among nations; and when you cease to be the first, you are nothing. CATHOLIC QUESTION. MR. GRATTAN observed, that his right honourable friend (Mr. Elliot, who presented the English Catholic petition) had argued this question so justly, so wisely, and with so much honour to himself and his country, that he had really left him very little to say on the subject. He begged to return his best thanks to the House for the extreme patience with which, on various occasions, they had listened to the repetition of his opinions on the Catholic claims. Again he had to entreat their candour, which would again be followed by his gratitude. It had been repeatedly urged in hostility to the claims of the Catholics, that those claims ought to be advanced with more temper, and that a greater attachment ought to be exhibited to the existing institutions of the country. It must be most satisfactory to the House to observe, that the Catholics now grounded their hope of obtaining their liberties, or their rights, or their claims, or by whatever name the concessions to them were to be called, on evincing a disposition not merely to acquiesce, but heartily to concur, not in form only, but in act, in such terms as that House might think necessary for the preservation of the church establishment, and of the Protestant succession to the throne. The known wishes of that House could not indeed fail to make a due impression on their minds; and having considered the whole subject, and the absolute necessity of expressing their attachment, not to the crown only, but to the Protestant succession, the Catholics of Ireland presented a petition, from which he begged leave to read some extracts. [Here he read several passages of the Catholic petition, the tendency of which was to express the anxious wish of the Catholics, that the great measure of emancipation should take place under such circumstances as might render it satisfactory and unobjectionable to all classes of his Majesty's subjects; inasmuch as, in their opinion, the chief benefit to be derived from it, would be an union in the bonds of concord of the various religious persuasions of the empire, and the removal of those jealousies and apprehensions which at present prevented a cordial cooperation for the public good. They also declared it to be their duty to state, that they were ready to submit and conform to any regulations not incompatible with the principles of their religion, or threatening with danger its pure and permanent exercise; and that, while they fully relied on the liberality and justice of the legislature, not to impose any conditions inconsistent with their religious persuasions, they were convinced that an adjustment might take place conciliatory to the Protestant mind, and at the same time compatible with the principles of their faith and discipline.] This petition was signed by above nine hundred persons, many of them of the highest rank. [Here the clerk, by desire of Mr. Grattan, read a number of the names, comprehending a large portion of the Irish nobility.] The House had desired to have certain declarations on the part of the Catholics, and the Catholics had given him a petition to present to the House in which those declarations were explicitly made. The House had exacted certain terms, and with those terms the Catholics had complied. He held in his hand a letter, for the authenticity of which he could vouch, directed by the Pope to be written by Cardinal Litta to Dr. Poynter, touching the conditions with which the legislature of this country wished to accompany any concession to the Catholics. The letter set forth the forms of those oaths, which were very little different from those at present taken by the Catholics of Ireland, and though the oath which was to be taken by the bishop was thought in itself a sufficient security, yet his Holiness did not hesitate to permit those to whom it appertained to make out a list of the candidates for a bishopric, which list was to be presented to the King's ministers, in order that if any one of such candidates were disliked or suspected, his name might be expunged from it. The letter went further, and said, that as soon as the British government shall promulgate emancipation to the Catholics, his Holiness will send a brief to the Roman Catholic bishops to the above effect, and publish to the universe his grateful sense of the generosity and clemency of the British government, and finally permit the bishops to observe what was before stated with regard to the oaths and to the mode of elections. Here then, upon the granting of emancipation, was that power given to the crown which had been so frequently demanded as its condition. He had been often, on former occasions, asked what plan did he bring, in order that emancipation should be granted? what plan could he propose for the security of the Protestant religion as by law established? In order to be able to answer such questions on the present occasion, he had, with a great deal of pains, possessed himself of good information on the subject. He was acquainted, through a most authentic channel, with the sentiments of the Pope on the great question; and the Pope had expressed himself, that if emancipation was now withheld, the fault was not his. He (the Pope) had very fairly said, "Why will the parliament not legislate for the Catholics? I am not indisposed to withhold my assistance". If then he was asked on the present occasion, where are your securities? he would say: "Here are my terms; they are the terms on which you wished heretofore to grant emancipation, and if you now refuse them, you refuse what you so anxiously sought for, and considered as securities ". He would ask the House how many petitions had been presented to them this session against the claims of the Catholics? We wished to have all, or any, such petitions read. None could be read. None had been presented. What then was the inference? That the great body of the Protestants were not inimical to the claims of their Catholic brethren. He would not go so far as to say, that there were not many Protestants who still opposed Catholic emancipation, but it would not be presuming too much in him to suppose, that where so many petitions had been presented on a former occasion, all or most of which were against emancipation conditionally, and none on the present, there did not exist any general opposition to it in the minds of the Protestants. There then was no general prejudice to contend against on the part of the Protestants, and there was sufficient authority to show that they could legislate in respect of concessions for the Catholics. The Catholic bishops had in 1799 agreed to certain resolutions, which declared that the concessions which were then, and have been since demanded, were not hostile to the discipline of the church. The Pope himself not only declares that such concessions may be granted, but has actually granted them, provided the Catholics be emancipated. This then, would be one good effect of the committee for which he intended to move: it would show to some of the Catholics, that those concessions to which they objected were not only not against the discipline of the church, but accordant with its practice. He would not take up the time of the House by mentioning in detail the grievances which at present affected Ireland. They might be classed under a very few heads. She had commercial and financial difficulties; but a great deal of he present misfortunes might be traced to religious animosities. The causes of the other evils of Ireland might be removed with perhaps little difficulty; but it would not be easy to remove many of the evils which arose from religious distinctions and the effect of the penal code, without a particular investigation. To this inquiry he called the House; by it they would reduce those who made religious differences a pretext for disturbance, to a mere banditti, because the removal of that pretext would be the result of the inquiry, and having no foreign power to aid them in their wish for disturbance, they would die from jejunity. If the result of the inquiry which the House might enter into did not satisfy some of the Catholics, it should be recollected that the duty of the House was to serve, not to satisfy them; and if they succeeded in the former, he trusted they would have firmness and spirit sufficient to act upon that conduct which justice and duty should point out. resent affected Ireland were not to be jursued by one or another chief governor. Most of the evils which at attributed to the system He by no means wished |
