speech from the throne, was defeated by the Irish cabinet, who were at that time on that subject in opposition; and being incensed at the British cabinet for the countenance afforded to the Catholics, punished the latter, and sowed those sceds which afterwards, in conjunction with other causes, produced the rebellion.

I leave the member, and proceed to discuss the differences now remaining that discriminate. His Majesty's subjects of the Protestant and Catholic persuasion. Before we consider how far we differ, it is necessary to examine how far we agree; we acknowledge the same God, the same Redeemer, the same consequences of redemption, the same Bible, and the same Testament. Agreeing in this, we cannot, as far as respects religion, quarrel about the remainder; because their merits as Christians must, in our opinion, outweigh their demerits as Catholics, and reduce our religious distinctions to a difference about the eucharist, the mass, and the Virgin Mary; matters which may form a difference of opinion, but not a division of interest. The infidel, under these circumstances, would consider us as the same religionists, just as the French would consider us, and cut us down as the same community. See whether we are not agreed a little farther, and united by statute as well as religion; the preamble of three acts declare the Catholics to be loyal subjects; the act of 1778 declares that they have been so for a series of years; the same act declares that they should be admitted into the blessings of the constitution: the act of 1793 goes farther, and admits them into a participation of those blessings; thus is the principle of identification established by the law of the land, and thus are the Catholics, by that law, proclaimed to be innocent, and the calumniators of the Catholics guilty. Let us consider their situation under these laws, professedly and in principle admitted to every thing except seats in parliament, and certain offices of state; they are, in fact, excluded from every thing, under the circumstances of paying for every thing: (the few places they enjoy make no exception:) they pay their proportion of money to the navy, and contribute one-third to its numbers, and have not a commission; they contribute to the expences of the army, and to one-third of its numbers, and have not a commission; and shall I now be asked, how are the Catholics affected by this? or be told that the Catholic body would not be served by the removal of this; how would the Protestant body be affected, if only removed from the state, the parliament, the navy, and the army? in addition to this, I am to add the many minor injuries done to the Catholics, in ways that must be felt, and cannot be calculated;

the incalculable injury done to the Catholic mind, by precluding it from objects of ambition, and to the Catholic spirit, by exposing it to taunts and insults - you cannot be at a loss for an instance, such as is uttered by the vilest of the Protestants against the first of the Catholics. I am to add the mischief done to the morals of the country, by setting up a false standard of merit, by which men, without religion, morals, or integrity, shall obtain, by an abhorrence of their fellow-subjects, credit and consequence, and acquire an impunity for selling the whole community, because they detest a part of it. You see it is impossible for any one part of the society to afflict the other, without paying the penalty, and feeling the consequences of its own bad policy in the re-action of its own bad passions. I am to add the mischief done to the peace of the country among the lower orders, when the spirit of religious discord descends, and the holiday becomes a riot, and the petty magistrate turns chapman and dealer in politics, theologian and robber, makes for himself a situation in the country, by monstrous lies, fabricates false panics of insurrection and invasion, then walks forth the man of blood; his creditors tremble; the French do not; and atrocities, which he dare not commit in his own name, perpetrates for the honor of his king, and in the name of his Maker. I have heard of the incivilization of Ireland; too much has been said on that subject: I deny the fact: a country exporting above five millions, even at your official value, above half a millions of corn, three millions of linen, paying nine million to the state, cannot be barbarous; a nation connected with you for six hundred years, (what do you say?) cannot be barbarous. If France should say so, you should contradict her, because it is not on Ireland, but on you the reflection must fall; but if any thing, however, delays the perfect and extensive civilization of Ireland, it is principally her religious animosity; examine all the causes of human misery, the tragic machinery of the globe, and the instruments of civil rage and domestic murder, and you find no demon is like it, because it privileges every other vice, and amalgamates with infidelity, as well as with murder; and conscience, which restrains other vices, becomes a prompter here. To restrain this waste, and this conquest, exercised over your understanding, your morals, and your fortune, my honourable friend makes his motion. * Come, let us hear the objections: the Catholics, they say, should not have political power: why, they have it already;

* The present Lord Lieutenant of Ireland has done much to reconcile, but his mild integrity and good sense must be aided by Parliament.

they got it when you gave them landed property, and they got it when you gave them the elective franchise. "Be it enacted, that the Catholics shall be capable of holding all offices, (civil and military, except") and then the act excludes a certain numeration.

This is the act of 1793; and is not this political power allowed by act of parliament? So that the objection goes not so much against the petition as against the law, and the law is the answer to it. The reasons they give for objecting to the Jaw are, 1st, That the Catholics do not acknowledge the King to be the head of their church. To require a person of the Catholic faith to acknowledge a person of another religion, who makes no very encouraging declarations towards them, to be the head of the Catholic church, is going very far; but to make the with-holding such acknowledgement, the test of dissaffection, is going much farther; farther than reason, and farther than the law, which does not require such test, but is satisfied with a negative oath, and therefore the Presbyterian who makes no such acknowledgment may sit in parliament; so that here the objector is answered again by the law, and the reason he gives in opposition to the law shows that the legislature is wiser than the objector. The reason alleged is, that he who allows His Majesty to be the head of his church has more allegiance, because he acknowledges the king in more capacities; according to this, the Turk has more allegiance than either, for he acknowledges the Grand Seignior in all capacities; and the Englishman has less allegiance than any other subject in Europe, because, whereas other European subjects acknowledge their king in a legislative as well as an executive capacity, the English acknowledge their king in the latter capacity only; but such men know not how to estimate allegiance which is not measured by the powers which you give, but by the privileges which you keep: thus your allegiance is of an higher order, because it is rendered for the proud circumstances belonging to an Englishman, to the peer who has his rank, the commoner who has his privileges, and the peasant who has his magna charta. The Catholic too,—he has an interest in his allegiance; increase that interest, that is, increase this privilege, you increase the force of the obligation, and with it your own security; but here again the objector interposes, and alleges, that the Catholic does not only not acknowledge the king to be the head of their church, but acknowledges a foreign power: - whom? I cannot find him. There was indeed a power which you set up in the last war and guarded with your troops; is that the memory at which gentlemen

tremble? A sort of president, or chair, in whose name the business of the Catholic church is conducted, for whom no Catholic would fight, and against whom the Irish Catholic would fight, if he came into their country at the head of an invading army; they have said so. You will recollect how little you yourselves feared that name, when you encompassed and preserved it, at the very time of the Irish rebellion; and now do gentlemen set it up and bring it back again into the world, as a principle likely to influence the action of the Irish? But then I here received an answer to this, viz. that Bonaparte has gotten possession of the power and person of the Pope. What power? He had no power before his captivity, and therefore he became a captive; he has not found his power in his captivity, or will you say, that he could now disband an Austrian army or an Irish army, or that if he were to issue out his excommunications, your seamen and soldiers would desert. Such the power of the Pope, such your fear of it, and such is the force of their argument. What is the policy of it? Bonaparte has gotten the Pope; give him the Catholics: but here the objector interposes again, and tells us, it is in vain to look for harmony with the Catholics, inasmuch as they deliver us, the Protestants, to damnation: gravely they say this, soberly they say this, in the morning, and according to this you must not only repeal your laws of toleration, but you must disband part of your army and your navy, and disqualify your electors. The Catholic who hears this produces a Protestant creed, which does the same thing, and damns his sect likewise; the Infidel, who listens, agrees with both, and triumphs and suggests that it were better not to cast off your people, but to shake off your religion. So Volney makes all sects contend, and all conquer, and religion the common victim; the truth is, exclusive salvation was the common phrenzy of all sects, and is the religion of none, and is now not rejected by all, but laughed at; so burning one another as well as damning one another, you can produce instances-they can produce instances: it was the habit of the early Christians to anathematize all sects but their own. No religion can stand, if men, without regard to their God, and with regard only to controversy, shall rake out of the rubbish of antiquity the obsolete and quaint follies of the sectarians, and affront the majesty of the Almighty, with the impudent catalogue of their devices; and it is a strong argument against the proscriptive system, that it helps to continue this shocking contest; theologian against theologian, polemic against polemic, until the two madmen defame their common parent, and expose their com

mon religion. With arguments such as these it is urged, that the laws were in error which gave the Catholic political power; and, it is further added, that he will use that political power to destroy the church. I do not think they have now said, He will destroy the present state of property: bigotry has retired from that post, and has found out, at last, that the Catholics cannot repeal the act of settlement in Ireland, by which the property of the country was ascertained, until they become the Parliament; nor become the Parliament, till they get the landed property of the country; and, that when they get that property, that they will not pass an act to set aside their titles to it. Further, it is now understood that the Protestant title is by time; that there are few old Catholic proprietors, a multitude of new ones; that the Catholic tenantry hold under Protestant title; and, therefore, that there is, in support of the present state of property in Ireland, not only the strength of the Protestant interest, but the physical force of the Catholics; therefore the objectors have judiciously retired from that ground, and now object to Catholic power, as certain to destroy the Protestant church. How? They must do it by act of legislation, or by act of force; by act of legislation they cannot, and by force they would not: they would not by act of force, because the measures proposed, which do not go to increase the force, do go decisively to remove the animosity or will you say, when you give them every temporal motive to allegiance, they will become rebels; that when, indeed, they had rights of religion, rights of property, rights of election, they were loyal; but when you gratified their ambition likewise, then they became disaffected, and ready to sacrifice all their temporal rights and political gratifications. In order to do what? To get a larger income for their clergy; that is, that their bishops should drink more claret, and wear finer clothes; and with whose assistance should they do this? With the aid of the French, who starve their clergy; the ordinary principles of action: the human motives that direct other men, according to these reasoners, are not to be found in the Catholic; nature is in him reversed; he is not influenced by the love of family, of property, of privilege, of power, or any human passions, according to his antagonists, no more than his antagonists appear in their logic influenced by human reason; and therefore it is, these reasoners deal mostly in the prophetic strain a prophet's fury, and his blindness, much zeal, and no religion. I would ask them, what authority have they for thus introducing the church as an obstacle to the advantages of the state. Is it political, or is it moral, to deprive the Catholics of the franchises of the