wished to prefer a petition; their tenacity of the principle, and the sacrifice they made to it; these were the merits of the late administration. I feel it my duty most strongly to oppose that principle, which, at a moment when we are surrounded with enemies, and assailed with dangers, at a moment when our best and surest safeguard exists in the unanimity of the people, would defeat the benefits of that unanimity, would, at the same moment that it divided the public feeling and distracted the popular energy, hold out to the foe who menaces us, the alarming and detestable hope, that a great majority of those who were most prominent in rank, in talents, in property, had conspired with a great proportion of your physical force, against the acknowledged establishment of church and state. To admit such a position is to perpetuate an incurable evil; it is to infuse into two classes of your fellow-subjects the source and principle of an inextinguishable hostility. To support this evil, great reasons should be adduced by the advocates of disunion, or at least better reasons than we have either heard or found in the speeches and productions of those who have thought it their interest to promote it. In some of their reasons, they appear inclined to admit that the bill in question was innoxious, but that the minister who propounded it was dangerous. The noble lord (Castlereagh), and the right honourable secretary (Mr. Canning), could not, consistently with their former conduct and recorded pledges, war with the principle; they therefore have directed their present hostility against the minister, who had the sincerity to act upon that principle. The right honourable gentleman (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) cannot adopt the principle of his colleagues, because it appears big with danger, and replete with ruin. I condole with him for his fear; but can give no credit to the validity of his statement. I cannot for a moment admit the validity of a statement, the most hostile to the particular interests of Ireland, and the general security of the empire. I cannot, I say, as the friend of my own country, as solicitous for its fame and fortune, give credit to a proposition monstrous in its conception, and destructive in its effect. As a member of Europe, I protest against this unjustifiable and dangerous argument, which tends unavoidably to deprive it of the means of rescue and recovery from the alarming and impending calamities with which it is threatened. I feel proud, that, with all the temptation, with all the endeavours which have been so unwisely and so improperly made, the expedient has not only proved unsuccessful, but hopeless. There is not, I say, any disposition on the part of this country to quarrel with their Irish brethren on account

of religion. The good sense and liberality of the people have prevailed against the misapplied zeal of the bigot, and the interested speculation of the miserable politician. It is the victory of the unadulterated good sense of the English people, over religious discord and unchristian rancour.

If we were to give credit to the church cry, or if there were any ground for it, your situation must be most unfortunate; for at a time when your country has no chance of safety but in her unanimity, a conspiracy it should seem has taken place to destroy her church, and ultimately her state. And this conspiracy has been headed by the most powerful and able of her own inhabitants, assisted by a great proportion of the population of her empire; and if there be any truth in the cry, her remedy is hopeless, because, though she might be saved from the present danger, yet your religious animosities are such, that you can never trust one another; and your fate is, that of a country for ever in dread of her enemies, and of her fellow-subjects. Let us examine the foundation of this anathema.

The addresses, the essays, and the publications on this subject, and the principle of them I have read; weigh them, analyse them, and you will find the whole amount of them, (their attachment, as they call it, to their religion; their devotion, as they call it, to the principles of the revolution,) are reducible to two heads; the first, an objection to the admission of the Catholics into the army, or to the bill framed for that purpose; the second, an objection to their admission into a share of political power. It is an answer to the first objection, to say, that the Catholics are in the army already; that the bill does substantially exist, has existed for above fourteen years; several of your regiments of the line owe their formation to it; that the Irish militia depends upon it; that the Irish yeomanry could not exist without it; that your victories, Monte Video, Maida, and Egypt, were the fruits of it; and, finally, that without it your country could not be defended; and, further, it is offered to put the question to a test, the Irish bill of 1793 is in your hands. Will the addressers petition to repeal it; if they do, they disband a great proportion of their troops: if they do not, they disclaim their argument; they acknowledge that their cry is false; that the Protestant religion is not in danger; that the operation of the bill is necessary: and they exhibit a singular instance of the domination of bigotry and blindness over the human understanding, in a body professing to apprehend ruin from the introduction of a practice, which practice they have long experienced, have found to be necessary, and

continue to adopt. The second objection is answered in the same manner, the danger has been tried. The Catholics are admitted to a share of political power already; have been so for fourteen years. They were, by the act of 1793, rendered capable of civil and military offices, and were by the same act qualified to vote at elections; they are, therefore, not a sect tolerated, but, with certain limitations, a people identified; your equals, our brethren, and a constituent portion of the Commons of the realm; our militia and army do not exist by sufferance; our constituents do not exist by sufferance. The Catholic situation was what I have stated; it was so at the union, and the union could not change it; the objection, therefore, preferred against their admission to a share of political power, is against the fundamental law of the land; and the two objections taken together, that which goes against their admission into the military, or what is called giving the Catholics the sword, and that which goes against their admission to political power, are not what these partizan addresses adherence to our present most excellent constitution, but a direct attack upon the same; a retraction of past concession, and an innovation of the rights of the subject as by law established; going to the disorganization of the whole of our military system, to the disbandment of a considerable part of the troops of the line, of a considerable part of the yeomanry, and of the greater part of the Irish militia.

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The partizans cannot escape by saying they only meant to object to the admission of the Catholics to the staff; their objections went to the whole, and to the principle of admission against the king's assent, to a limited as well as an unlimited bill; against the Irish as well as the English bill. But supposing they meant what they did not; to confine their objection to the staff, what then became of their panic and their alarm? or will they hold out to the public as an object of terror such a point as that, a point so small that it can hardly be felt, the solidity of which rests on this hypothesis; namely, that the Catholics of property and education are disloyal, and cannot be trusted; but that the multitude may, and the gentry may not. This latter objection is answered by its folly; and the former objections (their plan) are answered by their mischief. A church cry is always mischievous; in the latter years of Charles the Second it invented a popish plot; shed much innocent blood; overturned the rights of the subject; gave a complete victory to the other party, who shed in its turn some of the best blood in the realm; realised the danger which their opponents had feigned; and, finally, for a time, overturned the constitution in church and state. A church cry in the

reign of Queen Anne, deprived your country of the fruits of the Duke of Marlborough's victories; restored France to power and dominion; was a principal cause of your subsequent debt and war, and left the foundation of that power, which now shakes the realm. A church cry, in 1781, attempted to secure the faith by setting fire to the city: the spirit of such outcries is ever little and wild; it deals in some point perfectly trivial, or wholly unintelligible, and it acts on some little selfish sordid interest; the love of power, the love of monopoly, and the thirst of a little galling miserable superiority: hear the supporters of this cry! they are ruined, it seems, by obtaining a greater range of intellectual power; they are ruined, it seems, by enlarging the physical force of their country; they carry the Pope on their shoulders, and cry out no popery; they admit the Catholics into the army, and cry, do not give them the sword; they let them have the elective franchise, and cry do not let them into the constitution: religious alarms are not the efforts of great or comprehensive minds; they originate in low cunning, and operate on ignorant irritability; they are not founded on religion; they are generally expedients of the depraved; they are hatched with the hope of delusion, and are the worst political vices baptized; there is nothing intelligible, nor coherent, nor profound, nor high, nor comprehensive in their reasoning; they strike no legitimate public fire; they command no grand passion; they call forth none of the strenuous qualities of their country, and embattle on her side neither the great virtues, nor even the manly vices of the subject.

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It is for those, as well as other reasons, I rejoice that such a cry as I have described, was neither general nor furious. In England, your country is too ancient and too rational: she has suffered too much already by such violence; she is pressed too much at present by real enemies, to suffer herself to fall generally into such practices; as to my country, I must on this late occasion admire her conduct. I have seen on your walls," no popery! !" I never saw on her's "no England!" The Catholics would not answer folly by folly, and left a drunken challenge to answer itself. Why "no popery?" Do the contrivers of that scribble, mean, that you should give up Canada, or that you should renounce your Austrian allies, or that you should refuse the service of the Irish Catholic, and refine your strength down to something very pure, but very slender. They had no meaning; and the Irish Catholic has disdained to put a serious comment on a senseless expression.

They came forward with their petition at a certain time,

and on mature consideration withdrew it with much temper and moderation, and not without dignity. The Irish Protestants on their part, tenacious as they are of their religion, have generally manifested their scorn and abhorrence of the false alarm, and their horror of the divisions incidental to it.

The college of Dublin has declined to address on the subject, against the Catholics; she educates their children; she will not take part against their fathers; the seat of learning will not derogate from her grave and high condition, nor take a part in the game of vulgar mischief. Were religion in danger, she would defend it with her erudition: she now supports it by her dignity and her example; and gives a splendid instance of an ecclesiastical corporation that feels neither the impressions of servility to the court, nor illiberality to the people: - the city of Dublin too!

I do believe the sense of the Protestants of Dublin to be like that of Westminster, - against the stupid cry of no Popery! Many persons of our religion, in that city, who were supposed to be violent and bigotted, I know personally, and found them (though they would not go so far as I should) free from religious animosity, free from malice. The corporation of the city, I do allow, has voted an address to His Majesty, and has also voted a counterpart petition to Parliament against the Catholic claims. I love the city, her ancient charter, her rank in the empire; the honours she has conferred on me, the services I have rendered her, bind me to her for ever; it is, therefore, I differ from her corporation with great reluctance and sincere affection; but on this occasion, in common with a great portion of my fellow-citizens, I must differ, and claim my ancient privilege, still to respect her feelings, and still to prefer her interest.

I can excuse corporations on this subject, and account for these proceedings; they very naturally wish, as members of Parliament are apt to wish, to guard their assemblies against the participation of power. But the general interest is on the other side, and I believe the general sentiment of the community. Sure I am, my country, both in its Protestant and Catholic inhabitants, have shown on the late general election, a strong disposition to concord and peace, and distinguished marks of civilization and temper. They have proved themselves superior to the impression of false alarm, and have shewn that the Irish are neither barbarous nor uncivilized: they are neither-but they are often traduced, and by none more than some of their countrymen, who seek to advance in this country, by abusing their own. On the late occasion the two countries have held a conduct from whence you should