oppression, no tyranny in belief: a free altar, an open road to heaven; no human insolence, no human narrowness, hallowed by the name of God.

Every man in trade must have experienced the difficulty of getting in a bill from an unwilling paymaster. If you call in the morning, the gentleman is not up; if in the middle of the day, he' is out; if in the evening, there is company. If you ask mildly, you are indifferent as to the time of payment; if you press, you are impertinent. No time and no manner can render such a message agreeable. So it is with the poor Catholics: their message is so disagreeable, that their time and manner can never be right. "Not" this session. Not now: on no account at the present time; any other time than this. The great mass of the Catholics are so torpid on the subject, that the question is clearly confined to the ambition of the few; or the whole Catholic population is so leagued together, that the object is clearly to intimidate the mother country." In short, the Catholics want justice, and we do not mean to be just; and the most specious method of refusal is, to have it believed that they are refused from their own folly, and not from our fault.

What if O'Connel (a man certainly of extraordinary talents and eloquence) is sometimes violent and injudicious? What if O'Gorman or O'Sullivan have spoken ill of the Reformation? Is a great stroke of national policy to depend on such childish considerations as these? If these chains ought to remain, could I be induced to remove them by the chaste language and humble deportment of him who wears them? If they ought to be struck away, would I continue them, because my taste was offended by the coarse insolence of a goaded and injured captive? would I make that great measure to depend on the irritability of my own feelings, which ought to depend on policy and justice? The more violent and the more absurd the conduct of the Catholics, the greater the wisdom of emancipation. If they were always governed by men of consummate prudence and moderation, your injustice in refusing would be the same, but your danger would be less. The levity and irritability of the Irish character 'are pressing reasons why all just causes of provocation should be taken away, and those high passions enlisted in the service of the empire.

In talking of the spirit of the Papal empire, it is often argued that the will remains the same; that the Pontiff would, if he could, exercise the same influence in Europe; that the Catholic church would, if it could, tyrannize over the rights and opinions of mankind: but if the power be taken away, what signifies the will? If the Pope thunder in vain against the kingdoms of the earth, of what consequence is his disposition to thunder? If mankind are too enlightened and too humane to submit to the cruelties and

hatreds of a Catholic priesthood: if the Protestants of the empire are sufficiently strong to resist it, why are we to alarm ourselves with the barren volition, unseconded by the requisite power? I hardly know in what order or description of men I should choose to confide, if they could do as they would; the best security is, that the rest of the world will not let them do as they wish to do; and having satisfied myself of this, I am not very careful about the rest.

Our government is called essentially Protestant; but if it be essentially Protestant in the distribution of offices, it should be essentially Protestant in the imposition of taxes. The treasury is open to all religions, parliament only to one. The tax-gatherer is the most indulgent and liberal of human beings; he excludes no creed, imposes no articles; but counts Catholic cash, pockets Protestant paper; and is candidly and impartially oppressive to every description of the Christian world. Can any thing be more base, than when you want the blood or the money of Catholics to forget that they are Catholics, and to remember only that they are British subjects; and when they ask for the benefits of the British constitution, to remember only that they are Catholics, and to forget that they are British subjects?

No Popery was the cry of the great English Revolution, because the increase and prevalence of Popery in England would, at that period, have rendered this island tributary to France. The Irish Catholics were, at that period, broken' to pieces by the severity and military execution of Cromwell, and by the penal laws. They are since become a great and formidable people. The same dread of foreign influence makes it now necessary that they should be restored to political rights. Must the friends of rational liberty join in a clamor against the Catholics now, because in a very different state of the world they excited that clamor a hundred years ago? I remember a house near Battersea-bridge which caught fire, and there was a general cry of Water, water." Ten years after, the Thames rose, and the people of the house were nearly drowned. Would it not have been rather singular to have said to the inhabitants, "I heard you calling for water ten years ago, why dont you call for it now?".

There are some men who think the present times so incapable of forming any opinions, that they are always looking back to the wisdom of our ancestors. Now, as the Catholics sat in the English parliament to the reign of Charles II. and in the Irish parliament, I believe, till the reign of King William, the prece dents are more in their favor than otherwise; and to replace them in parliament, seems rather to return to, than to deviate from, the practice of our ancestors.

If the Catholics are priest-ridden, pamper the rider, and he will not stick so close; dont torment the animal ridden, and his violence will be less dangerous.

The strongest evidence against the Catholics is that of Colonel John Irvine; he puts every thing against them in the strongest light, and Colonel John (with great actual, though I am sure with no intentional exaggeration) does not pretend to say there would be more than forty-six members returned for Ireland who were Catholics; but how many members are there in the House now returned by Catholics, and compelled, from the fear of losing their seats, to vote in favor of every measure which concerns the Catholic church? The Catholic party, as the Colonel justly observes, was formed when you admitted them to the elective franchise. The Catholic party are increasing so much in boldness, that they will soon require of the members they return to oppose generally any government hostile to Catholic emancipation, and they will turn out those who do not comply with this rule. If this be done, the phalanx so much dreaded from emancipation, is found at once without emancipation. This consequence of resistance to the Catholic claims is well worth the attention of those who make use of the cry of No Popery as a mere political engine.

We are taunted with our prophetical spirit, because it is said by the advocates of the Catholic question, that the thing must come to pass; that it is inevitable: our prophecy, however, is founded on experience and common sense, and is nothing more than the application of the past to the future. In a few years' time, when the madness and wretchedness of war are forgotten, when the greater part of those who have lost in war, legs and arms, health and sons, have gone to their graves, the same scenes will be acted over again in the world. France, Spain, Russia, and America, will be on us. The Catholics will watch their opportunity, and soon settle the question of Catholic emancipation. To suppose that any nation can go on in the midst of foreign wars, denying common justice to seven millions of men, in the heart of the empire, awakened to their situation, and watching for the critical moment of redress, does, I confess, appear to me to be the height of extravagance. To foretell the consequence of such causes, in my humble apprehension, demands no more of shrewdness, than to point out the probable results of leaving a lighted candle stuck up in an open barrel of gunpowder.

It is very difficult to make the mass of mankind believe that the state of things is ever to be otherwise than they have been accustomed to see it. I have very often heard old persons describe the impossibility of making any one believe that the American colonies could ever be separated from this country. It was always

considered as an idle dream of discontented politicians, good enough to fill up the periods of a speech, but which no practical man, devoid of the spirit of party, considered to be within the limits of possibility. There was a period when the slightest concession would have satisfied the Americans; but all the world was in heroics: one set of gentlemen met at the Lamb, and another at the Lion; blood and treasure men, breathing war, vengeance, and contempt; and in eight years afterwards, an awkward-looking gentleman in plain clothes, walked up to the drawing-room of St. James's, in the midst of the gentlemen of the Lion and Lamb, and was introduced as the Ambassador from the United States of America.

You must forgive me if I draw illustrations from common things, but in seeing swine driven, I have often thought of the Catholic question, and of the different methods of governing man. kind. The object, one day, was to drive some of these animals along a path, to a field where they had not been before. The man could by no means succeed; instead of turning their faces to the north, and proceeding quietly along, they made for the east and west, rushed back to the south, and positively refused to advance : a reinforcement of rustics was called for; maids, children, neighbors, all helped; a general rushing, screaming, and roaring en sued; but the main object was not in the slightest degree advanced: after a long delay, we resolved (though an hour before we should have disdained such a compromise) to have recourse to Catholic emancipation; a little boy was sent before them with a handful of barley; a few grains were scattered in the path, and the bristly herd were speedily and safely conducted to the place of their destination. If, instead of putting Lord Stowell out of breath with driving, compelling the Duke of York to swear, and the Chancellor to strike at them with the mace, Lord Liverpool would condescend, in his graceful manner, to walk before the Catholic doctors with a basket of barley, what a deal of ink and blood would be saved to mankind!

Because the Catholics are intolerant, we will be intolerant ; but did any body ever hear before that a government is to imitate the vices of its subjects? If the Irish were a rash, violent, and intemperate race, are they to be treated with rashness, violence, and intemperance? If they were addicted to fraud and falsehood, are they to be treated by those who rule them, with fraud and falsehood? Are there to be perpetual races in error and vice between the people and the lords of the people? Is the supreme power always to find virtues among the people; never to teach them by example, or improve them by laws and institutions? Make all sects free, and let them learn the value of the blessing to others, VOL. XXVII. NO. LIII. D

Pam.

by their own enjoyment of it; but if not, let them learn it by your vigilance and firm resistance to every thing intolerant. Toleration will then become a habit and a practice, ingrafted on the manners of a people, when they find the law too strong for them, and that there is no use in being intolerant.

It is very true that the Catholics have a double allegiance; but it is equally true that their second or spiritual allegiance has nothin gto do with civil policy, and does not, in the most distant manner, interfere with their allegiance to the crown. What is meant by allegiance to the crown, is, I presume, obedience to acts of parliament, and a resistance to those who are constitutionally proclaimed to be the enemies of the country. I have seen and heard of no instance for this century and a half last past, where the spiritual sovereign has presumed to meddle with the affairs of the temporal sovereign. The Catholics deny him such power by the most solemn oaths which the wit of man can devise. In every war,

the army and navy are full of Catholic officers and soldiers; and if their allegiance in temporal matters be unimpeachable and unimpeached, what matters to whom they choose to pay spiritual obedience, and to adopt as their guide in genuflexion and psalmody? Suppose these same Catholics were foolish enough to be governed by a set of Chinese moralists in their diet, this would be a third allegiance; and if they were regulated by Bramins in their dress, this would be a fourth allegiance; and if they received the directions of the Patriarch of the Greek Church, in educating their children, here is another allegiance: and as long as they fought, and paid taxes, and kept clear of the quarter sessions and assizes, what matters how many fanciful supremacies and frivolous allegiances they choose to manufacture or accumulate for themselves?

A great deal of time would be spared, if gentlemen, before they ordered their post-chaises for a No-Popery meeting, would read the most elementary defence of these people, and inform themselves even of the rudiments of the question. If the Catholics meditate the resumption of the Catholic property, why do they purchase that which they know (if the fondest object of their political life succeed) must be taken away from them? Why is not an attempt made to purchase a quietus from the rebel who is watching the blessed revolutionary moment for regaining his possessions, and revelling in the unbounded sensuality of mealy and waxy enjoyments? But after all, who are the descendants of the rightful

1 The same double allegiance exists in every Catholic country in Europe. The spiritual head of the country among French, Spanish, and Austrian Catholics, is the Pope; the political head, the king or emperor.