which carried the Union. It is the price for the Union; and an essential part thereof; you will now pay the purchase of that measure. National honour, is power; in trade, it is capital; in the state, it is force. The name of England has carried you through a host of difficulties; we conjure you by that name to accede to those petitions; should you finally refuse, you repeal the Union; you declare the Irish and the English to be a distinct people; you not only declare it, but you do it; you dissolve the incorporation; they were kept together by hope, and you divide them by despair; you make them two distinct nations, with opposite and with hostile interests; the one with civil privileges, the other without; the one in the act of disqualifying the other; the oppressor and the oppressed. The idea of the Union is twofold; a union of Parliament, and a union of people. I see the union of Parliament; and in that I see the measure which makes the legislature more handy to the minister; but where are the people? where is the consolidation? where is the common interest? where is the heart that should animate the whole, and that combined giant that should put forth his hundred hands for the state? There is no such thing: the petitioners tell you so; they tell you, that it is impossible such a policy should last; a policy that takes away the Parliament of Ireland, and excludes the Catholic from the Parliament of England; a policy that obtained the Union by the hope of admission, and now makes the exclusion everlasting. The Catholics now come to you; they have brought their Protestant neighbours along with them, and they both call upon you for the civil capacities of the Catholics, and for the integrity of the empire. Thus, you perceive, it is no longer a question between the different sects of Ireland, no longer a question regarding the security of the Protestant property or the Protestant church. Far from looking for that security in civil diqualifications, they deprecate those disqualifications as their principal danger, and they reduce the subject to a question between the people of Ireland, and the ministers of the Crown. So it now stands. But should you wish to support the minister of the Crown against the people of Ireland, retain the Union and perpetuate the disqualification; the consequence must be something more than alienation. When you finally decide against the Catholic question, you abandon the idea of governing Ireland by affection, and you adopt the idea of coercion in its place. National disqualification, national litigation, informations, attachments, an angry press, an angry prosecution, errors on both sides; men discharged for their virtuous sentiments in favour of the people; such was the case of Mr. Stanhope*; domestic feud added to foreign war. Such must be the situation of Ireland; a situation which is nothing more nor less than preparation to render the Irish mind completely hostile to Great Britain. This misfortune will be very great to both of us. In what particular way it will break out I know not, but I know it will be ruin; when I say ruin, you must know I mean ultimate separation, separation either in fact, or separation in disposition,—either will undo us. Nature protests against it: France, with all her powers, could not atchieve it; civil disqualification may. We shall first be destroyed, and your gorgeous empire will follow; you are ruined by the hostility of Ireland, you are ruined by her neutrality. You are therefore pronouncing the doom of England. You, opposed to the population of France, with all her appendages; you, with only sixteen millions of inhabitants, strike out of actual operation four. Never was an instance of human insensibility so fatally displayed. The mad Athenian, when he disqualified for a few bushels of corn, a part of his fellow citizens, was not so frantic. The mad Greek, who in the last moments of his existence refused the assistance of the West, damned the cardinal, and gave up his empire, was not more frantic. A nation fighting for her existence, a wise nation, a civilized nation, striking out of operation one-fourth of her people, deliberately, in her senses, for no reason; the eucharist is no reason, the worship of the Virgin Mary is no reason; arguments of public scorn, if they were not the cause of public ruin; without any cause, except we suppose that the hand of death precipitates the empire; I say, you are pronouncing the doom of England. If you ask how the people of Ireland feel towards you, ask yourselves how you would feel towards us, if we disqualified three-fourths of the people of England for ever. The day you finally ascertain the disqualification of the Catholic, you pronounce the doom of Great Britain. It is just it should be so. The king who takes away the liberty of his subjects, loses his crown; the people who take away the liberty of their fellow-subjects, lose their empire. . The gentlemen who are invited by the call, think, perhaps, they are presiding over a few penal laws affecting the Irish, or exercising a lazy tyranny in the easy chair of pride and security depend upon it they are mistaken. You are presiding over the fame and fortune of that great renowned empire * Son of Lord Harrington. He attended and spoke at a dinner in Dublin, in favour of the Catholics. called Great Britain. The scales of your own destinies are in your own hands; and if you throw out the civil liberty of the Irish Catholic, depend on it, Old England will be weighed in the balance, and found wanting: you will then have dug your own grave, and you may write your own epitaph, viz. “England died, because she taxed America, and disqualified Ireland." It is worthy to enquire, how many rights you violate in order to destroy yourselves and your fellow-subjects. You assume a right to make partial laws, or laws against the very principles of legislation. You govern one part of the society by one code, and the other by a distinct one. You make laws as arbitrary as they are partial, that is to say, you disqualify one part of the society for differences, not more essential in a political point of view, than colour or complexion; as if you should say, no man shall be a general who has black hair; no man shall be a member of Parliament who has brown. You not only make partial and arbitrary laws, but you invade the sacred right of religion; and you, with a sentence which is eternal, invade the sacred cause of liberty. They say you have power to regulate qualifications; that is,. you are a trustee for the privilege; but if, under pretence of regulation, you destroy the privilege, you exceed your power and violate your trust. Thus, if you enacted, that no man who had less than 3000l. a-year should be a member of Parliament, you would disqualify the people of England, and break your trust. Thus, when you, on the pretence of regulation, forbid the Catholic to sit in Parliament, you disqualify a great part of the people of Ireland, and break your trust. It is said, Parliament may do partial ill for the general good yes; but the majority cannot take away the liberty of the minority; for this never can be the general good: still less, can the minority, as in the case of Ireland, take away the liberty of the majority; that would be a breach of the principle by which the society is compacted. You cannot rob one part of the society of her property, to enrich the community; still less, can you rob one part of the society of her liberty; and least of all, can you do that in the case of Ireland, which is connected with England, as that liberty is protected. : When the general good means the existence of the state, there the ruling power may abandon a part to save the remainder. But what is understood by the general good, in its modern application? It means power, as opposed to liberty: such was the case in the American stamp act; such was the case of the British statutes that restrained the trade of Ireland; such is the case now; it is the power of one sect over the pri vileges of the other: and what is that, but the disqualification of the part, and the dismemberment of the whole? Whenever one sect degrades another, on account of religion, such degradation is the tyranny of a sect. When you enact, that, on account of his religion, no Catholic shall sit in parliament, you do what amounts to the tyranny of a sect. When you enact that no Catholic shall be a sheriff, you do what amounts to the tyranny of a sect. When you enact, that no Catholic shall be a general, you do what amounts to the tyranny of a sect. There are two descriptions of laws: the municipal law, which binds the people; and the law of God, which binds the parliament and the people. Whenever you do any act which is contrary to his laws, as expressed in his work, which is the world, or in his book the bible, you exceed your right; whenever you rest any of your establishments on that excess, you rest it on a foundation which is weak and fallacious; whenever you attempt to establish your government, or your property, or your church, on religious restrictions, you establish them on that false foundation, and you oppose the Almighty; and though you had a host of mitres on your side, you banish God from your ecclesiastical constitution, and freedom from your. political. In vain shall men endeavour to make this the cause of the church; they aggravate the crime, by the endeavour to make their God their fellow in the injustice. Such rights are the rights of ambition: they are the rights of conquest: and in your case, they have have been the rights of suicide. They begin by attacking liberty; they end by the loss of empire. In all matters where the legislature interferes, you will take care to distinguish between nomination and eligibility. No-mination is the right of the person who nominates, and eligibility of the person who is nominated. Eligibility is a common law right; and can only be taken away by act of parliament: but Parliament can only take it away for crimes or unfitness: religion is neither. You cannot take away eligibility, which is a common law right, on account of religion, which is a right also. The clause of disqualification consists of three heads: the superstition of the eucharist; the adoration of the mother of God; and the Papal power. The two first are merely matters of religion, such as the state has no right to investigate, and such as form an objection, which must be, and which is for the most part, entirely abandoned. Two parts of the objection, then, are disposed of; and a third only remains; and that third, namely, the power of the Pope, is reduced to a mere spiritual authority: nor are the arguments founded, which say, that spiritual and temporal powers are inseparable; and which instance as proof of their inseparability, marriage and excommunication. There is no solidity in their observation nor their instance, inasmuch as marriage is a civil contract; and all its consequences, inheritance and legitimacy, &c. depend on the civil quality of that contract, and cannot be affected by a spiritual connexion, of which, the law has no conception; and to establish which, no evidence is admissible. This matter has been settled by the act which allows Catholics. to be on juries; and therefore allows them safe and competent to try the validity of marriage; the same may be said of excommunication, which is an authority which cannot be enforced; attended by an obedience which cannot be commanded: the ecclesiastic who attempts to enforce such a power, is subject to a prosecution; and the parishioner who is injured, is entitled to damages, and damages have been given accordingly. To this objection there are further answers: the law, and the fact. The law, which has made the distinction between temporal and spiritual, and has (see 14th and 15th of the king) reduced that distinction to an oath, to be taken by Catholics, under the authority of an act of parliament. It is remarkable, that in our dealings with the Catholics, the arguments of their opponents have been answered by their laws. They say, the Catholics are not credible on their oaths; and they have made, by act of parliament, their oath the test of allegiance. They say, that temporal and spiritual power are inseparable; and they have made them distinct by act of parliament. They say, that the disqualifying oath is a fundamental part of the law of the land; and they have declared by the fourth article of the act of union, that oath to be provisionary, not fundamental. They say, that by the constitution, the Catholics should have no political power; and they have made them by act of parliament, that is, by the act of union, a part of the commons, that is, of the third estate of the empire. Thus, they speak to the Catholics with a double tongue, and then most piteously exclaim, "These Romanists will keep no faith with heretics." In further answer to their objection, which confounds spiritual with temporal power, and which supposes the Pope to divide with the prince the allegiance of his subjects, we have the fact as well as the law. Let the princes of Europe tell how far the Pope has shared or divided the loyalty of their Catholic subjects. Let the Pope declare how far he commanded the allegiance of the Roman Catholics in Europe, when he was dragged from his palace. This dreaded interpreter of the scriptures, and this joint proprietor of allegiance, dragged to Paris through an immense extent of Catholic country, at the wheels of the car of a Catholic prince, without a sword in his support, or an arm to defend him. Or say, what succour has he, in all his afflictions, experienced, |