With every motive to find fault, our enemies could not taunt us with a single word or act derogatory to the rights of others. And this was not because our language was guarded, for our tongues were ready enough to speak. We gave utterance to our most secret thoughts. Our principle and our practice was liberty of conscience. That principle which would emancipate the Catholic in spite of Lord Eldon and Lord Liverpool. That principle which would emancipate the Protestant in spite of Ferdinand the Seventh. That principle which would emancipate the Christian in spite of the Sultan of Constantinople.

Lord Eldon, Ferdinand and his serene Highness, are three members of the same society; they act on the same principle; they form a holy alliance against the liberty of conscience; the Sultan would shut out the Christian at Constantinople; Ferdinand would shut out the Protestant at Madrid; Lord Eldon would shut out the Catholic in London (Applause). What a worthy trio! how well, how wonderfully matched. The Turk, the Protestant, the Catholic bigot alike enforcing tyrannic exclusion. Nay, I will vindicate the religion I profess, the reli‹ gion I consider it my highest happiness to belong to. nand is no Catholic-at least he is no true Catholic, when he thus outrages and tramplos upon conscience! (Applause.) And I know that our excellent Protestant friends, the truly liberal Protestants of both countries, do equally repudiate Lord Eldon's miserable bigotry as any part of their Protestantism. (Cheers.) As for the Turk, I make Lord Eldon a present of him; they are congenial souls. (Laughter and applause.)

Ferdi

This Lord Eldon is remarkable for his attachments as well as his antipathies; for a long period of his life he cherished the strongest affection for the abuses of the Court of Chancery; and by reason of those abuses he is said to have put £50,000 a-year into his pocket; no one, however, will be bold enough to say that in his eye the emoluments recommended the abuses; they were suffered to go on perhaps upon grounds of public utility, and certainly where a man commenced a litigation before his marriage, his grandchildren had strong prospects of bringing the matter to an issue. (A laugh.)

His lordship has his doubts upon everything save upon the subject of religious liberty. At the Pitt Club he had the pre sumption to say that if the Catholic was the established religion, he hoped that the Protestants would be treated as well by the. Catholics, as the Catholics had been by the Protestants. Oh! God forbid, if the Catholics had the power, that they should 2 A

VOL. II.

treat the Protestants in the manner they had themselves been treated. If the conviction was once on my mind that the Catholics could be guilty of such breaches of faith, such a violation of every principle of honour, I would retire at once from public life.

The first state in the new world which gave liberty of conscience, was the Catholic State of Maryland, in America. Our object is the establishing religious equality in Ireland, to see the Protestant and Catholic carry their prejudices together, and lay them as an offering upon the altar of their country. The means of freedom are in our hands. Seven millions of people cannot be kept much longer without their claims being hearkened to. Every field is a redoubt, and every mountain a tower of strength. Ireland could shake the oppressors from her, like dewdrops from the lion's mane. Every man's first thought on his awaking in the morning, and his last on retiring to his bed at night, should be, how he could best perform his duty to his country; in what manner he could most effectually—

"Make Ireland great, glorious, and free;

The first flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea."

Mr. O'Connell sat down amid a loud burst of applause.

Mr. O'CONNELL rose again, to propose the health of a Protestant gentleman who felt anxious to come amongst his Catholic fellow-countrymen.

"Oh! what a country would Ireland be, if she possessed many such men as Colonel Butler. (Loud applause.) He knew no distinction but that between Irishmen and the enemies of the country. Colonel Butler looked to a long line of ancestry, only to see which amongst them was the best, in order to imitate that man." Mr. O'Connell concluded by giving,

"The health of the chairman, Colonel Butler."-Three times three and loud applause.

The CHAIRMAN returned thanks, and stated his regret at the absence of Lord Cloncurry, (who, it was expected, would have presided,) in consequence of a domestic calamity. The chairman then read a letter from his lordship, addressed to Michael O'Brien, Esq.; it was as follows:

"June 1, 1824.

"MY DEAR SIR-A very heavy and unexpected domestic calamity will prevent me meeting my respected friends on Thursday; pray apologise for me. "At the best I felt very unequal to the situation in which their kindness would have placed me, and which nothing but my paramount love for Ireland could have induced me to accept. Feelings, if possible, more strong and more painful, render me now incapable of the exertion. Dear, Sir, your faithful and obedient servant. "CLONCURRY.

"To Michael O'Brien, Esq."

The chairman then gave-"The health of Lord Cloncurry." The toast was drank with three times three, and loud applause.

MR. O'CONNELL rose. "He begged permission to return thanks for his noble friend.

Ireland had not a better friend or one more devoted to her service.—

He sets a splendid example, possessing a munificent fortune, and spending every shilling in his native land.

He was the poor man's justice of peace; he was the friend of reform. In private society-in the bosom of that family, of which he had unhappily lost one, he was the model of virtue. In public life he was worthy of the admiration and affections of the people."

The CHAIRMAN then gave-"Richard Sheil, Esq." This toast was drank with three times three, and loud applause.

The death of the good Lord Cloncurry has just occurred as we were tracing the preceding record. He was, indeed, in most things, a bright example to those in Ireland who have the advantages of rank and fortune. He resided in ireland, and was never happier than in contributing to the comfort of his neighlours and dependants. Although his judgment was limited, nay, often seriously defective, his intentions were generally excellent; and very many, indeed, were the instances in which he displayed an entire and most earnest zeal to advance the interests of his country, no matter at what cost to himself. Mr. O'Connell often and deeply regretted the occasional differences, some of them of a very important nature, which he was compelled to have with such a man.

An attack having been made in the London newspaper, The Courier, upon Mr. O'Connell for remarks in a speech of his relative to the bigotted conduct of Dr. Magee, the then Protestant Archbishop of Dublin; we' here give his reply.

ASSASSINATION OF AN ARCHBISHOP.

"TO THE EDITOR OF THE LONDON COURIER.

66

Merrion-square, Dublin, June 17.

'SIR-In your paper of the 28th of May, you condescended to introduce me to the English people in a new character-no less than that of a promoter of the assassination of an Archbishop.

"I admit that you did not directly call me an assassin; but after the necessary rebate for a few precautionary 'ifs,' which you were pleased to employ, the amount of your description of me was just such as might have tempted 'the great unknown' to make use of me as a counterpart of that Balfour of Burley, who, armed with a sharp sword and divers texts of Scripture, cut down one archbishop, and terrified sundry others.

"After having thus described me, you called for a 'prompt and indignant denial' of the language respecting Dr. Magee attributed to me by the Orange press of Dublin, and which you had the good taste to select from that pure source of information.

"A prompt denial' I could not afford to give you. You

assailed me in the busiest part of the law term, and until the sittings at Nisi Prius were over, I had no chance of being able to bestow five minutes on my own vindication. And as to 'indignation,' you must indeed excuse me. I cannot spare you any indignation. I am too much habituated to foul and false charges to have reserved any indignation for such ordinary matters.

"It is not from the Irish press alone that I have become ac customed to falsehoods-I am often assailed in 'high places, from which a plain injustice, and the base violation of a solemn treaty, have excluded me. And whilst the London newspapers carefully publish the calumnies uttered against me, they, with a precaution quite characteristic of their impartiality, avoid printing what I am enabled to say in my own vindication. I cannot, in my humble capacity of a public advocate, or of an elector, oppose the election of any talentless bigot, but I am immediately assailed by his relatives and friends in and out of doors,' and the ready London press, which gives circulation to the virulence of those gentry, does not condescend to copy a single line from the Irish papers which contain my defence.

"Use,' they say 'lessens marvel and thus my feelings have become callous to those things which would excite the irritation of a less abused man.

"In Ireland, however, I believe I require but little vindication. I have certainly many virulent political opponents, and many interested bigots who hate me because they fear that even my exertions may diminish, if not dry up, the streams of corrupt peculation. Although I have many such adversaries, I do not know that I have one single personal enemy; and if I have ---why from my heart I forgive him. In Ireland I am quite careless of what falsehoods may be circulated respecting me; I believe them to be quite harmless; they cannot, therefore, claim from me any indignation.

"Besides, Sir, I reserve my indignation for other and higher purposes-my indignation foams at atrocities of quite another description. It is the misgovernment and oppression of my native land. It is that continued system of injustice and oppression to Ireland which Lord Clare, in 1800, stated to have then existed for upwards of six centuries, and which Lord Liverpool, in 1824, treated as still in existence-it is the denial of liberty of conscience to six millions of faithful subjects—it is the countenance shown to a wicked and brutal faction-it is the refusal to do justice to as fine a people as the sun ever shone

upon-it is the concession of the Insurrection Act as the only boon this wretched country is to receive-it is the quackery of Tithe Composition Acts converting tenths into fifths, and the ludicrous solemnity with which 'petty sessions' are converted into a panacea for all evils-it is the stupid hypocrisy of endeavouring to proselytise where they affect to educate, and the vil-, lage tyranny engendered by that process-it is the humbug of grave committees examining the butchers about the keeping of Lent.'

"Oh, no-you English are too wise for that; you only examine police justices and sapient king's counsel, on the fitness of keeping themselves in pay and power. It is these, and the one thousand and one other abuses, absurdities, and oppressions, which have converted the most fruitful and abundant island in the world into one universal blot of misery, want, and woe. It is these and think you that I forget the two millions of fertile acres which the clergy of the few enjoy, along with the tithes of all the rest of the land? Think you I forget the church-rates, which compel the famishing Catholic peasants to erect gorgeous churches for that clergy, that they may pray and preach in stately loneliness?

Sir, if the, waters of my indignation were as wide and as bitter as the 'remote Caspian,' I could not afford one drop of it for mine own cause or my own calumniators.

"Having thus excused my delay, and satisfied you that I ought not to be indignant at being called an assassin, I now proceed tranquilly-sicut meus est mos-to show you that I do not deserve that name.

"On the occasion to which you allude in your paper of the 28th of May, I remarked with more of ridicule than severity, on the letter from the Archbishop of Dublin, read by that truly excellent and amiable man, the Lord Bishop of Limerick, in the House of Lords.

"The part of that letter in which his grace expresses his fear; of assassination, excited a good deal of laughter. I, however, treated it more seriously-I denied that the Irish were prone to assassination. I adverted to the insurrectionary murders, and without in the slightest degree justifying or palliating those crimes, I briefly showed that they were crimes of a savage and barbarous warfare, at which the blood-covered murderers were almost as much sinned against as sinning—and whilst the crimes of those murderers deserved punishment from man, and armed the Deity with vengeance, they yet did not come within the class of assas

sinations.