amendment, by the supporters of the Ca- | stances did the Catholic, and the Protesttholic claims in the Irish House of Com-ant, and the parliament reclaim and remons; the noble earl will, I am sure, cover their invaded right? In times of also do me the justice of recollecting, that I expressed my acquiescence in his lordship's measure in the other House, as establishing a growing principle of legitimate claim on the one hand, and just concession on the other. British weakness and apprehension. When did these invasions of their rights fall upon my countrymen with the greatest weight? In the most triumphant moments of British strength, pride, and prosperity.Under such impressions as these, I feel it to be my bounden duty, earnestly to recommend to your lordships' prompt and favourable consideration, the manifold grievances of your Catholic fellow-sub. jects, whilst the grant may still preserve somewhat of the dignity and the grace of unenforced concession. The intention of this argument, if it deserves that name, was obviously this: to represent the Irish Catholic to your lordships, as an untoward, untractable creature, who must always have in his mind ulterior views, which he is in the constant habit of concealing, and whom you can never hope effectually to conciliate, or entirely to satisfy. When it is by such arguments as these that the Catholic claims are assailed, it is material to shew how little these insinuations are sup-violent and unmanly threats, proceeding ported by the fact. With respect to that general and misplaced invective with which the noble lord appears to have indulged himself, against the character of the Irish people-on taking counsel from his own better judgment and returning discretion, he will assuredly join with me in thinking, that these were not fit expressions, by which to designate a high-spirited population, whose feelings to the sense of injury or insult, are not less acute than those of his lordship; and in defence of whose national and individual characteristics, there is fortunately no necessity to require either the opinion or the testimony of the noble lord. Are my Catholic countrymen then, to be characterized as beggars, by his Majesty's mild, conciliating, and temperate ministers? If they are beggars, who made them so? They have, unhappily, had the full benefits of your instruction and fraternity, for the last 600 years. You complain of your own acts: it was your own barbarizing code which forcibly arrested from the Catholic the constitution of his country, which was his inheritance and his birthright-that made him, as it were, an alien in his native land. It was the all devouring spirit of your commercial monopoly which stripped my countrymen of their manufactures, their commerce, and their industry; it was your insatiate lust of power that degraded the parliament, and the nation, by the arrogant assumption of binding by your laws, another legislature as independent as your own. But when, and under what circum I am impelled by this additional motive to press these suggestions on your lordships' attention at the present moment, for the purpose of putting an end to those not from the ministers, but from behind the throne; of tranquillizing your Catholic petitioners by military execution, and returning an answer to their respectful application to the Prince Regent and to the parliament, by his Majesty's guards, and a certain illustrious personage; for the purpose of exhibiting to my countrymen more forcibly, the blessings of British protection; and thus conciliating, at the point of the bayonet, a brave and generous population, of four millions of fellow subjects. And finally, to protect the public peace against the recurrence, at any future period, of such unconstitutional, arbitrary, and sanguinary projects, as would justify and demand resistance from every lover of constitutional liberty, and detester of tyrannous oppression. But, perhaps, such idle and impotent denunciations would be best answered by contemptuous silence, and by the consoling conviction, that their authors would assuredly, be more disposed to provoke hostility, than to take their place in the front of battle. Since the commencement of the unfor. tunate reign of Charles the 1st, blindly welcomed by my Catholic countrymen, as a period pregnant with the happiest prospects, for their religion and for themselves;-to no event have they ever looked with so much confident and anxious hope, as to that auspicious moment, when, in the fulness of time, the present Heir Apparent to the crown should assume the government of these his realms. In him, they thought they saw the messenger of peace, with healing on his wing-the promised guardian of the people's rights of the fomented discord of his father's Irish subjects, the indignant spectator-of their interests, the avowed and zealous assertor to Catholic privilege, an assured and plighted friend. When the exercise of the executive functions was suspended, for the first time, by the same awful visitation, Ireland successfully maintained the cause of the Prince, not equally triumphant in this more favoured nation, committing to him, the legitimate heir to all the royal authorities, the administration of his own inheritance, till returning health should restore his sceptre to the suffering King. The heart of the illustrious person overflowed with affectionate and just feelings; and my confiding countrymen fondly trusted, that they had bound their future monarch to them by a double tie. How sanguine were these hopes! How strong and firmly rooted the foundations on which they seemed to rest! But they are gone-blasted at the moment of full maturity; and, instead of that rich and abundant harvest of national union and prosperity, which we were prepared to gather, as the first fruits of the promised conciliation of the illustrious person, the sharpened edge of a slumbering statute, which had never been awakened before for the annoyance of the people, called, for the first time, into mischievous activity, and turned against the Catholic, assembled for the lawful purpose of remonstrating for the redress of grievances; and those desperate men who dared thus to intercept, in their constitutional and legitimate progress to the parliament and to the throne, the petitions of an oppressed community of four millions of their fellow subjects, confirmed in the full possession of all their former power, in the full exercise of all their former intolerance, as the ministers of his own peculiar choice, by the first act of the unlimited Regent. For what act of mercy to a suffering people has introduced, and graced the inauguration, if I may term it so, of this new order of things? What grievance of the state not unredressed? What pledge of a long public life not unredeemed?— Confidence unbounded to those very ministers who, but last year, would not confide to that illustrious person, the unshackled discharge of those royal duties, of which, from the high privilege of his exalted birth, he was the natural and only representative.-The just claims of our Catholic fellow subjects, the conciliation of Ireland, and every former impression on these most interesting and important subjects, complimented away, as a premium and a boon, for the continuance of such an administration as was never permitted at any former time of equal exigency and alarm, to insult the feelings, and betray the dearest interests of a devoted people. Such are the true characteristics of this inauspicious crisis-these the distinguishing features of the new era, unequalled for the easy abandonment of all preconceived opinions and former pledges, by any other, either of ancient or of modern times; the most prominent and striking circumstances of which, it has been my necessary, though painful duty, thus to expose to your lordships' view, and which have excited the deepest and most universal spirit of regret, astonishment and indigna tion. The ministers have drawn as it were a magic circle round the throne, into which none are permitted to enter, on whom the confidence of the illustrious person has been accustomed to repose. Within its range the artificers of mischief have not ceased to work, with too successful industry. What phantoms have they not con We have indeed been told, from the highest authority, that all remembrance of the past should now be buried, in mutual congratulations, on the happy pros pects of the present moment-abroad, triumphant warfare-prospering com-jured up to warp the judgment, to excite merce, and successful negociation at home, universal satisfaction, tranquillity, confidence, and concord. A New Era, it seems, has opened upon us;-but what, my lords, let me ask, are those peculiar circumstances from which this high sounding designation has derived the feelings, and appal the firmness of the royal mind? But, though the evil genius should assume a mitred, nay, more than noble form, the sainted aspect which political bigotry delights to wear, or the lineaments of that softer sex, which first beguiled man to his destruction-though, to But here, my lords, let me put to the ministers of the Regent, one serious question; have they ever permitted themselves to call to their calm and deliberate attention, what those circumstances are, of their own country and of other surrounding nations, under which they are still prepared to exclude, from the enjoyment of their constitutional rights, so large a part of the puny politicians of the present day, and who are incapable of extending their views to the consideration of to-morrow, condescended to measure the true dimensions and magnitude of those dangers, with which we are now encompassed? the allurements of Calypso's court, were joined the magic, and the charms of that matured enchantress, should the spirit of darkness take the human shape, and issuing forth from the inmost recesses of the gaming house or brothel, presume to place itself near the royal ear;-what, though the potent spell should not have worked in vain, and that the boasted recantation of all incumbering prepossessions and incon-efficient strength of the state? Have these venient prejudices, had already marked the triumph of its course-though from the royal side they should have torn the chosen friend of his youth, and faithful counsellor of his maturer years, the boast of his own gallant profession, the pride, the hope, the refuge of my distracted country, and a high and conspicuous ornament of yours-though they should have banished from the royal councils talents, integrity, honour and high-mindedness like his, and should have selected for the illustrious person, an associate and an adviser from Change Alley and from the Stews-though they should have thus filled up, to its full measure, the disgusting catalogue of their enormities, we must still cling to the foundering vessel, and call to our aid those characteristic British energies by which the ancestors of those, whom I have now the honour to address, have so often, and so nobly saved the sinking state. Parliament must lay the spirit of evil which is abroad: beware how you neglect the performance of your part of that important duty. Public indignation, justly provoked, and the maddening sense of unheeded grievances and triumphant profligacy, are fearful reformers. But I will not despair of better times. The illustrious mind cannot but loath the ignoble and degrading fetters by which it is enchained; the time cannot be distant, when the illusions of the present moment shall have vanished from the sight; may I not be permitted to anticipate the auspicious consummation of these my sanguine hopes? See, he has already rallied round him the men, in whom the nation puts its trust; the counsellors of his own unbiassed choice. See, he has broken the spell, and presents himself to his gratified country, with the olive branch of conciliation in his hand "Restitit Æneas, clarâque in luce refulsit, Os humerosque Deo similis❞— in all the natural and fair proportions of his own generous and enlightened mind, to heal all our wounds, and to unite all his people. When was there ever, at any former period, directed against the existence of any nation, so formidable a mass of gigantic means? From the gates of the seraglio to the frozen shores of the Baltic, is there one friendly arm uplifted in our defence? Has not the ruler of France surrounded, as it were with an armed bulwark, the coasts of Europe and her ports, against the adventurous enterprise of British speculation? For our exclusion, has he not effectually locked the continent up; and does he not keep the keys in his own hands? In the peninsula indeed, the brave defenders of their own invaded rights, have admitted us to the illustrious fellowship of fighting by their side, for the display of the best energies of our gallant troops; they have given us an extensive field, in the bosom of their own wasted country, and the happy occasion of still continuing to shed additional lustre on the British name, by the brilliant achievements of our distinguished leader, and the bright career of glory which he has run. But is it, let me ask your lordships, the war of rival sects, or the thunders of the Vatican, which have convulsed and shaken to its centre astonished Europe? No, my lords, it is the sword of as great a conqueror as any, either of ancient or of modern times; it is the energy of that comprehensive mind, which, in the pursuit of its vast and magnificent projects, can unite all na tions, languages, interests and religions. At such a moment as the present, what pledge should be required from British subjects, of their fidelity to the state? Perpetual hostility to France, the foe to Britain, and to British greatness; universal amity, and union, and concord, and concentration at home. The state of our relations with foreign powers, thus presenting to our view pro important part of your population, driven by impolicy and rashness, to the brink of despair; the other, to deliver the nation from the obstinate incompetency of its present rulers. Happily these duties are not inconsistent one with the other. From bis place in parliament, the first minister of the Regent has informed us, in an authoritative tone, that he has made a compact with the representative of his sovereign, and has obtained from his royal master, the rejection of Catholic concession, as the consideration and the price of his own present and future services. I therefore call upon your lordships, to acquire for yourselves, a double claim to the gratitude of the public; by opening wide the doors of this House, to a candid and just consideration of the Petitioners' case; and by the extensive and sweeping benefits of the same healing measure, to redress and wipe away the two great grievances of the state; the exclusion of our Catholic fellow subjects, and the administration of the right honourable gentle-. man. spects so truly dark and gloomy, and in the condition of our people at home, driven to despair, by the suspension of manufactures, the ruin of their trade, the weight of the public burthens, and the pressure of private distress, with so little to console and animate. With four-fifths of the population of the sister country, taught by the perpetual babble of our Anti-Catholic ministers, and by the concurrent testimony of their favourite code of proscription, that the Catholic subjects of the same King, must of necessity continue for ever, and under every possible change of circumstances, irreconcilable foes to their Protestant countrymen, and to the interests of the Protestant state. Under such circumstances as these, would not the confidence of the most assured believer in our deliverance from these impending dangers, be melted down, and every hope extinguished of the continuance of those relations, by which the discordant parts of this United Kingdom, have been so unsuitably linked together? My lords; this is not precisely the favourable moment for sporting with the feelings of our Catholic millions; we have no indispensible necessity for strife or division. At a conjuncture like the present big with our fate, an awful crisis! when the union of all hearts and hands would not be more than enough to save us! wantonly to irritate to distraction, a generous, gallant, high-spirited population! the sinews of our military strength, is absolute insanity. It is the sure sign and prognostic of divine anger, dooming an empire to perish. "Quippe, inductabilis fatorem vis, cujus"cunque fortunam mutare instituit, men"tem corrumpit." And to refer to that committee, the several Petitions of the Catholics of Ireland, now upon your table; and, also those of their Protestant countrymen, strongly in affirmance of the necessity of conceding to the justice of the Catholic claims. No counter petition having found its way to either House of Parliament, from any quarter, with the exception only of that solitary attempt, to raise the Protestant cry, in which the ministers have succeeded, in the obsequious city of Dublin, by a miserable majority of sixteen ; and after a former baffled effort, these two classes of Petitions contain, I have a right to assume, a fair expression of the undivided sentiment of the Irish nation, on a question to them of vital importance, and not interesting, in any proportionate degree, to any other part of the United Kingdom. broken. Office and emoluments,-power | the attention with which I have been and honours the most distinguished, have honoured, during so long a trespass upon been proffered in vain, as the price of po- your lordships' time; and humbly to litical inconstancy, and of a disgraceful move you, That a Committee be appointed connection with the present administra- to take into consideration the laws, imtion; formed under auspices the most posing civil disabilities, on his Majesty's odious and disgusting, and whose watch subjects, professing the Catholic religion, words are, intolerance and religious war. Even the Garter itself, that high and eminent distinction, has been put away; as ceasing to be an object of honourable ambition; under the degrading colour of these disastrous times. The Catholic cause, and the cause of the British empire have been loudly proclaimed, by all our great constitutional leaders, to be one and the same. Eternal hostility has been sworn, against your calumniators and oppressors, upon the altar of our common country. The minions of the court have been dragged from behind the throne, and exposed to the view of an insulted public, and the whole system of misrule, by which this devoted empire is oppressed and goaded, has been denounced to this House by a noble friend of mine* in a strain of masculine and indignant eloquence, which, if equalled at any time, has never been exceeded within these It is also my intention to move your walls. That clumsy combination of vice lordships, to refer to the same committee, and bigotry, from which you are now the Petition of the English Catholics, that seeking for a deliverance-on your own truly respectable class of our fellow-subpart, and on that of the suffering commu-jects; together with the several petitions nity, is composed of materials so wretch- for religious liberty; from different denoed in themselves, and held together by aminations of Christians; which were precement, which has in its nature, so little sented by my noble friend (earl Grey) at of what is permanent, or binding, that the the same time. whole pile exhibits, now almost at the moment of its construction, the obvious principle of decay-and, assuredly, cannot ⚫ long continue to interpose itself, between the representative of the sovereign power, and the best interests of the people." My lords; I will not permit myself to doubt of the salvation of my countryencompassed though it is, by difficulties and dangers on every side; and, that there is yet in store, for this united kingdom, a long and bright train of prosperity and of glory. Animated by this consoling hope, I will still continue to recommend patience to my calumniated and oppressed countrymen; for the hour of their deliverance cannot be far removed. For the purpose therefore of taking into consideration, the laws imposing civil dis abilities, on his Majesty's subjects professing the Catholic religion, Inow move your lordships to resolve yourselves into a com mittee. His Royal Highness THE DUKE OF SUSSEX:* My lords; every good subject must is not enough to begin by submitting to respect the laws of his country. It them; but it is our duty also to maintain which must be religiously observed, does them as long as they exist. This obedience, From the Original Edition published by James Asperne, Cornhill, intitled, "The Speech of His Royal Highness the "Duke of Sussex in the House of Lords, My lords, I have done and have only to express my acknowledgments, for" on the Catholic Question, April 21,1812, "with Proofs and Illustrations: Inde data legés, ne fortior omnia posset. Ovid, lib. « iii. Fast." *Earl Grey, on lord Boringdon's motion. See p. 80. (VOL. XXII.) " (2 M) |
