department was to belong to them, and that they had sent for us to adopt our measures, I stated the Catholic emancipation as one of them. Thus the charge, that we were originally persecutors of the Catholics, appears to be a departure from the fact. Thus the charge, that we took up the Catholics after the passing of the place and pension bill, as Irish matter of opposition, appears likewise to be a departure from fact. The proofs are in the proceedings of parlia

ment.

The pamphlet of 1798, in the author's name, has said, that the experiment of conciliation was abundantly tried. Here is the second experiment, and here it is but just to acknowledge the wisdom of His Majesty, and the benignity of his intentions, when he was graciously pleased to recommend the Catholics in 1793, in his speech from the throne, so that this body, thus royally patronized, might be attached not only to the constitution, whose privileges they were to participate, but to the great personage also at whose special interposition they were thus parentally and majestically recommended. But as in the first experiment, the people of England, so in the second, was His Majesty betrayed by those infatuated, weak, and pernicious counsels, which had been, in 1789, the instruments of political corruption, and now became the horn of religious discord.

I will give the learned author every advantage, and, contrary to my fixed and unalterable opinion, admit the policy of excluding the Catholics from the constitution; yet should I, nevertheless, condemn the hostile and outrageous manner in which that exclusion was defended. "If", says he, "the Catholics do not subvert the Protestant government, they must resist the ruling passions and propensities of the human mind; they can never be cordially affected to His Majesty's government. I am confident, the old Roman superstition is as rank in Ireland now as in 1641: the profound ignorance of the lower order, the general abhorrence of the Protestant religion by the people, qualify them to receive any impression. their priests can make; and if their minds be divested of veneration for the priest, such is the ignorance and barbarity of the people, that they would fall into a state of rude nature: the Popish superstition is not confined to the lower order, it flourishes in full vigour amongst the higher order".

This was the language, improper because not founded in fact, and impolitic and indecent in any man, though the facts could support it; idle, empty, and shallow ranting, The best way to distinguish the indecorum of such a speech, is to advert to a speech made on the same side of the question, by a gentleman who said everything

that could be urged against their pretensions, without uttering a single syllable which could give offence to their persons, so that the Catholics might much more easily forgive the latter his vote than the former his speech; and, on a comparison of the two productions, you will see the eminent superiority of sense with temper over talents without it. There are two sides in this question which men of principle might take, for the measure or against it but the ministry that took both parts, could be justified by neither. The fact was, that the ministry encouraged the Protestants, and forsook them afterward; they brought forward the grand juries, and deserted them also-then to the Catholics-then to the Protestantsthen back again to the Catholic, and then to the Protestants once more. This was a great mistake, but there was a greater, and that was to be found in those speeches and publications from a quarter in high confidence, which vilified the acts of concession in the moment of conferring them, and, affecting to support the king's government, called the bill he had recommended an act of insanity. The incoherent plan was erroneous, but this was infatuation, it was the petulance of power, it was the insolence of wealth, it was the intoxication of a minister in a state of sudden and giddy elevation, breathing out on a great and ancient description of His Majesty's subjects the frenzy of his politics and the fury of his faith with all the feminine anger of a feverish and distempered intellect. It went to deprive the Protestant ascendency of the advantage of temper and of the graciousness of good manners, which should always belong to the powerful sect; it went to deprive the state of a certain comeliness of deportment and mild dignity which should always belong to government; it fought in the king's colours against the king's benevolence; it went to deprive His Majesty of the blessings of gratitude, and his people of the blessings of concord; it went to corrode where the Crown had intended to heal, and it curdled with the temper of the minister the manna that was descending from the throne.

The argument that accompanied this invective was of little moment; a man in a fury cannot argue; the weakness of his reasoning will be exactly in proportion to the strength of his passion. Behold a melancholy example of the victory of human passion over the human understanding. The present danger of the Papal powe after the deposition of the Pope, the incompatibility of the real presence and of the worship of the Virgin Mary, with the interest of the House of Hanover, and the incompetency of parliament to alter the oaths of its own members—such are the author's arguments. However, if the pamphlet of 1798 denies the competence of parlia

ment, here comes the pamphlet of 1800 to console you, and as the one sets the law above the law-maker, so the other sets the lawmaker above the constitution, and both together would prove that the legislature is incompetent to admit a Catholic, but is perfectly competent to destroy a parliament.

We leave these arguments, and the vehement spirit with which they are poured forth, and come to the close of the pamphlet and the beginning of the subject-the Union. Of one hundred and one

pages, twenty-six only are devoted to the question; the rest contaik feelings, battles, and sores from a perpetual encounter with all descriptions of men, and with patriotism in all ages. As the author scarcely argues the question of Union, or indeed affects it, here I shall say but little; however, to two great points which he would establish I beg to advert. They contain positions which are not only glaringly unfounded, but exceedingly dangerous; the first, That this country is unable to pay her establishments; second, That her constitution is incompetent to provide for her security. He attempts to warrant his first, by a statement affecting to prove, that in three years, if she was to continue without an Union, we shall owe £50,000,000. He states, that we borrow annually £8,000,000; he should have stated, that we borrow but £4,000,000; whatever capital we may create on each loan, he should have stated how much less we should borrow on the adoption of an Union. He should have stated, that the projectors of the Union only proffered the payment of £1,000,000 of our war establishment; that the present year was provided for; that the saving in the two following years of war will be, according to this proffer, but £2,000,000, and the purchase of boroughs will be £1,500,000. He should have stated further, that our war contribution was rated at £4,400,000, and that our present war expense was only £4,652,000, so that the proffer appears fallacious; and if we be unable to support our present war expense, we will be unable to support our war contribution; and the reader will observe, the present war expense is an occasional war establishment, principally caused by insurrection, whereas the war contribution will in all probability be a permanent war contribution, except as far as it may be augmented.* But there is an answer to his argument which is more decisive, it is his own argument in 1798, which is as follows: "First, as to the adequacy of the constitution for the purpose of security and connexion, next for that of wealth and prosperity.

* Vide Lord Farnham's excellent pamphlet, and his judicious speech on the Union.

"A parliament perfectly distinct from and independent of the other parliament, forms a system the most critical and complicated; to a common observer, utterly impracticable; but experience has proved, that in the midst of popular turbulence and in the convulsion of rancorous and violent party contests, the Irish Parliament, as it is now constituted, is fully competent to all political and beneficial purposes of government; that it is fully competent to protect this which is the weaker country against encroachment, and to save the empire from dissolution, by maintaining the constitutional connexion of Ireland with the British crown". Here is the refutation of his second great argument, published by himself. Hear him couquer himself in his pamphlet of 1798--here (page 5) he writes as follows: "There is not a nation in the habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation and commerce, in agriculture and manufactures, with the same rapidity in the same period";-speaking of Ireland since the constitution of 1782, namely, for the last twenty years.

Here we add nothing, but that the author has been, by his own account, recommending an Union for these eight years; he has been according to his own account, betraying, for these eight years, the constitution in her counsels, in the very moments of his panegyric On this important discovery let others expatiate; to us it is more material to observe on his work, where it sets up our history against our constitution, and the annals of the parliament against its legislative capacity. To establish this, he has thought it prudent to advert to four periods in which the greatest questions were successfully discussed, and the legislative abilities were triumphantly. displayed.

This pamphlet quotes the period of 1753, and relates, that a question regarding a surplus in the treasury was then started, to try the strength of two factions, which, in its consequence, transmitted a spirit that afterwards degraded the parliament. What, when, or where, this parliamentary degradation appeared, we are at a loss to discover. This is not history, nor comment, nor fact, but it is a garbling of history to establish a conclusion the opposite of that which the history itself would administer. The principle then determined, the importance of that principle, the abilities displayed on the discussion of it, the real effect of both on the public mind,. have escaped the pen of the historian; from that pen you would collect, that Mr. Malone and Mr. Pery were nothing more than two prize-fighters, embattled in the cause of faction, under two great state criminals, the Primate and Lord Shannon; that they agitated a matter of no moment; but that they propagated sedition of great moment and fatal consequences to the next generation

Having thus disposed of parliament, and the characters of '53, without the vexation of any study, or any sordid obligation to fact, the pamphlet proceeds to dispose of the character of the House of Commons and the principal gentlemen of the country for fifteen years after. It had before represented them as incendiaries, it here represents them as plunderers; it sets forth, that, under the pretext of public improvement, the commons plundered the country; and that their parliament, to pay their parliamentary following, plundered the treasury, until they imposed on the Crown the necessity of resorting for supply to parliament; which the author most pathetically bemoans, and which he seems to think the only great grievance of the country.

Having given this history of parliament, from 1753 to 1768, it advances to the administration of Lord Townshend, in which it seems to recollect nothing but the noise of opposition.

The pamphlet of 1798, in the name of the author, had observed, that from the revolution of 1782, the system adopted by those in whom the power resided (they were those, among others, whom he had just been pleased to reprobate as incendiaries and plunderers), went to cement the connexion which had so long subsisted between Great Britain and Ireland, to their mutual advantage; the pamphlet of 1800 is pleased to observe, that the precedent of their government was fatal; and that a system was formed on it that would beat down any nation on Earth; accordingly it states, that the English government opened their eyes, shook, indeed, the aristocracy, but generated a race of political adventurers, full of noise and indecorum. I think I have heard spruce authority as petulant and indecorous as yonng ambition.

The attempts of the court to pack a parliament at that period, the increase of the establishment for that purpose, the great abilities displayed, the altered Money Bill, protests, prorogation, in short, the history of the period, once more escape this historian. The learned author now approaches the year 1779; the expedition of his march is very great, and very liberally does he leave untouched everything behind him; he is arrived; and here he scarcely is stricken with anything worthy of his history, save only the weakness of Lord Buckinghamshire in arraying the volunteers, and the illiberality of the nation in demanding a free trade; the pamphlet commends the volunteers of that period; and yet I think I remember a young barrister going forth in his cock-boat, and scolding the waves of that ocean, and the waves regarded him not. Certainly the volun

Alluding to Mr. Fitzgibbon's speech in 1780, when he termed the proceed inge of the volunteers "riot, clamour, and the production of a giddy faction".