eligible, but the body of the bill is silent with respect to lay

men.

66

By the seventh section it is that we are given to understand that five are to form a quorum for business. The eighth section provides that one member shall be the secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, being a Protestant, OR ! some other Protestant privy councillor; and also one Catholic bishop. The margin, again going beyond the text, adds one Catholic layman. The ninth section provides that the secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, or in his absence, the commissioners first named in the commission shall be the president of the Board. The tenth empowers the crown to revoke the commission when and as often as it shall think fit. The eleventh provides that on the revocation of one commission a new one shall issue. The twelfth section specifics the oath to bo taken by the commissioners. I shall have occasion to call your attention to that oath. The thirteenth section enables the Board to make rules to regulate its own proceedings, and to appoint secrctaries and clerks—aye, in the plural—secretaries and clerks; and, by way of a hint to such officers, the fourteenth section provides that the commissioners shall take no fee or salary. The fifteenth section sets out an oath to be taken by the secretaries and clerks.

"Such is the constitution of this new Board. Before I speak of its duties, allow me to say a few words respecting such its formation. You have too much sense and shrewdness, my countrymen, not to see that it is a mere form-a mere delusion-or, what is vulgarly called in Ireland, a humbug. It is essentially Protestant; indeed, for all working purposes, it is exclusively Protestant. For the crown, though it must nominate one or perhaps two Catholics, may nominate five hundred Protestants. Then if either Catholic or Protestant commissioner displeases the minister, such commissioner can be cashiered and turned off with quite as little civility and less ceremony than you could dismiss a footboy,

If

"This, therefore, is a mere humbug board. Its complicated details are introduced merely to delude. Such a board must be merely the echo of the will of the secretary of the Castle. they dared to dissent from him, they would be dismissed at the instant, and more pliant commissioners found without difficulty.. "To continue the delusion, it will be said that the Catholic commissioners would form a check on the Protestants, and on the minister, and prevent any injury from being inflicted on the Catholic religion. Consider this matter for one moment, and you will see how impossible it would be for the Catholic commis

sioners to check any adverse measure. They could do so only by one of three ways:-first, by outvoting the Protestants; secondly, by an appeal to a court of law; thirdly, by an appeal to public opinion, and to the sense of public decency. As to the first, it is absurd to suppose that the Catholic commissioners will ever equal in number the Protestants. That is quite absurd. I need not waste time in proving that they never could outvote the Protestants. You may have Doctor Troy and the Earl of Fingal at one side of the table; but you would have the Chancellor, the Attorney-General, Sir George Hill, Lord Frankfort, and probably Sir Harcourt Lees, at the other. But I only waste time in proving what no man can doubt.

"The next resource would be an appeal to a court of law. But alas! there would be no kind of legal remedy for any mischief this board may cause. We should only be scouted out of a court of law.

"The remaining resource would be an appeal to public opinion and to public decency. This at best would be but a poor remedy in Ireland, especially after the specimen Mr. Plunket has given us in traducing our religion, whilst he appeared to be our advocate. But even this poor resource is not left, because the oath of the commissioners, as given in the twelfth section, precludes that, for it is an oath of secrecy. It is an oath that the commissioners will not publish or disclose any matter coming to his knowledge as such, save to his majesty or by his majesty's coinmand.

"Mark that oath well. It precludes the Catholic commissioner from disclosing any conspiracy which may be arranged in the Board to injure the Catholic religion. But if there should be any thing the disclosure of which could hurt us, it leaves every commissioner at liberty to disclose that, by his majesty's command!

"I have long known that Mr. Plunket was a man of great and powerful ingenuity; but I did not think he had acuteness enough to frame so complete a snare for the Catholic religion. I still -cannot give Mr. Plunket credit for the extreme fitness of his 'infernal machine,' as the French would call it. I think he must have been aided by some personage still more ingenious than himself, and one possessed of deep malignity.

"I shall now proceed to point out the functions of this humhug Board, as I have already traced its constitution. These functions are declared by the statute from the nineteenth section to the end. They relate to all bulls, rescripts, and instruments coming to any Catholic-lay or ecclesiastical-from, first, the

See of Rome; or, secondly, from any foreign body; or, thirdly, from any foreign individual whatsoever; or fourthly, from any person or body in foreign parts acting under the authority of th See of Rome; or, fifthly, from any person or body in foreign parts acting under any other spiritual superior; all such instrumen's -and the word instrument includes letters of all kinds-must be laid before the Board. Yes, as the bill is printed, without any reference to the contents or subject matter. Yes, this bill is printed in a way so general as to affect all his majesty's subjects upon all topics whatsoever. A Committee of the House

ay, and I think must, confine the operation of the law to matters of doctrine or discipline, or to ecclesiastical affairs. At present the matter is left at large and this extreme extent proves at least the voraciousness with which it is sought to swallow up ail our religious concerns.

"Within a given time after the receipt of every such instrument, it is, under severe penalties, to be laid before the Humbug Board-that is, in fact, before the secretary or clerks at the Castle. And if they find any thing in it which appears to them in any way injurious to the safety or tranquillity of the state, or of the Established Church, they are to suppress it :-otherwise they are, at their good leisure, to return it, with a certificate of innocency.

"There is by the twentieth section, a species of exception... favour of instruments confined solely and exclusively to the spi tual concerns of an individual or individuals, with this addition, that they must be of such a nature as cannot, according to the discipline of our Church, be submitted to lay inspection. With this minute qualification surcharged upon the instrument, being solely and exclusively relative to the spiritual concerns of an individual, the commissioners are to decide; and if they, 'in the exercise of their judgment and discretion,' think fit, they may refer the instrument to the senior Catholic commissioner, and upon his certificate, and upon his oath, the instrument is to be returned to the person sending it in. But it is quite clear that the commissioners are at full liberty to exercise their judgment and discretion, and to read it and retain it if they please. Ay, and to publish its contents by his Majesty's command!

"The distinction is just this: All instruments relative to doctrine, discipline, ecclesiastical and spiritual affairs, save those that relate solely to the spiritual concerns of an individual, must be read by the Board. They may read those which relate solely and exclusively to the spiritual concerns of an individual. Tho difference is only in wordз.

"Such is the intended operation of the new bill; such is the thraldom under which Mr. Plunket would place all communications between the Irish Catholics and the See of Rome. It was rightly prophesied by a Catholic vetoist, in my presence, that if over nodified veto were given to the Crown, the Catholic religin could not survive it fifty years in Ireland. If this bill passes, the Catholic religion cannot subsist one hour, except by means of disobeying its provisions, and submitting to the martyrdom of its penalties. Our fathers would have done so. Are we less faithful or less interested in the purity of the Catholic faith? Our eternal salvation is involved in the question, and the trifles of this world vanish as empty baubles during the con templation of the awful results.

"There are two questions which any statesman, not carried away by an overweening anxiety to injure and degrade our religion, would have asked before he brought in such a bill. The first is, whether those provisions are at all necessary for the government?—the second, whether they be practicable? Both these questions should be answered by every fair man in the negative.

"Those provisions are not necessary for the safety of the state, for the following among other reasons:-First, the correspondence with the See of Rome is carried on upon subjects of an ecclesiastical and spiritual nature solely, and, therefore, upon matters which do not concern the State, as the State has no connexion with our Church; secondly, that correspondence is carried on by persons (namely our clergy) of unsuspected and unimpeachable loyalty; and, thirdly, if those persons were disloyal, the existing laws are already quite sufficient to protect the State against them. "The existing law inflicts a punishment upon any person, whether layman or clergyman, who corresponds with any foreign power to the prejudice of our government, and the punishment for that offence is no less than hanging by the neck, but not until the party be dead; for before death the party is to be cut down, and his bowels ripped open and flung in his face; and his head is then to be cut off, and his four quarters are to he at the King's disposal. I am quite serious. This punishment is that which the law prescribes against any correspondence with a foreig state contrary to the duty of our allegiance.

"I humbly think such punishment quite sufficient to dete: persons from committing the offence, to guard against which al the machinery of the new Board is got up. It is, therefore, ridi culous to talk of the new Board being necessary as an adjunct

to our law of treason. The truth is plain and stares every man in the face. The new Board is not intended to guard against the idle and imaginary dangers of a traitorous correspondence— a species of correspondence which, it is clear, would never be exposed to the Board. No! The real object of the Board is different. It is simply to place all the details of the Irish Catholic Church in the hands of Protestants, and then to control and crush that Church in all her branches.

"Having thus shown that the provisions of the new act are unnecessary, I proceed to show that they are impracticable. They are impracticable, because, in the first place, the assent o the Pope would at all events be necessary before the Catholic clergy could accede to them. But that assent will not be given. Cardinal Litta, in the celebrated Genoese Letter, although he gives, on the part of the Pope, some assent to vetoistical arrangements yet he goes on to declare that the exposing the correspondence with the See oj Rome cannot be listened to even for the purpose of discussion. We are therefore in possession of the express rejection by the Pope of this very measure which Mr. Plunket vainly wishes the parliament to force on us.

"In the next place the Catholic clergy cannot dispose to 'the discretion and judgment' of the Board the correspondence which relates to the spiritual concerns.of individuals. Such correspondence has, of its nature, a connexion with sacramental confession, and cannot, therefore, be disclosed. The Catholic priests of Ireland, whatever their traducers may say to the contrary, would suffer to be torn limb from I'mb rather than make any disclosure having a tendency, either directly or indirectly, to reveal matters known to them by confession. It will, therefore, be impossible to submit the private spiritual concerns of individuals Board. and there must be a very malignant spirit of hostility to Catholics in the mind of the man, or men, who could think of requiring a disclosure of that nature. And yet, my country men, the present penal bill would directly subject such private and spiritual concerns to 'the judgment and discretion' of a Protestant tribunal; and that, too, after requiring an oath from a Catholic priest, that the particular letter or instrument related solely and exclusively to the private spir tual concerns of an individual. It is quite in the spirit of this act, first, to require an oath from the Catholic priest, and then to go on with its precautions. just as if that oath did not deserve any the slightest

to any

credit.

"Another reason why the Catholic clergy cannot submit the