"That your praises of my humble efforts exceed their merits, I am, and must be sensible; but I feel it, at the same time, gratifying to know that those, who with you have been betrayed into this generous error, are conspicuous for their devotedness to the cause of truth; and that their favorable opinion is signified by one thoroughly acquainted with my natural disinclination to the exertions which have been so partially commended. You know with what reluctance I suffered the occupations of the quiet and happy obscurity in which Divine Providence had given me all that I desired, to be for a season interrupted; and you do not require to be informed that nothing but a paramount sense of public duty, and I may add, of public danger, could influence me to come forth for the purpose of aiding in the defence of our most precious and sacred institutions, and in the endeavour to procure justice for my cruelly persecuted brethren.

"I shall pay to your request the respectful attention to which I feel it is entitled. Whatever my estimate may have been, of exertions which the difficulty of evil days constrained me to make, the opinion expressed by you, and by those in whose name you write, prescribes to me my course of duty. Addresses which you think worthy of being preserved in a permanent form, I shall endeavour to collect and arrange; and must ever hold it a subject of thankfulness, that they have been held useful, and have procured testimonies of approbation from so many of the wise and good.

ERRATUM.

Page 20 line 15, for "do so," read "make them known." 131 and throughout the Address, for " Bath Herald," read" Bath Journal."

At a Meeting of the PROTESTANTS OF IRELAND, held at the Mansion House, Dublin, on Thursday, August 14, 1834.

The Right Hon. the LORD MAYOR in the Chair.

THE circumstances under which we meet, and the animating addresses to which you have so fully responded, have taught you this stern but salutary truth, that now, for the protection of your dearest interests, for the maintenance of your religion, for defence of life, except in the resources which your own wisdom and union and resolution shall provide, you have no earthly dependence.

I am glad to find you receive the announcement as it should be received by men. Let me not be mistaken. Far be it from us to doubt the cordial friendship of our brethren in England. Even if it could for a moment be forgotten, the presence of the distinguished personage who has honored our meeting-the representative of what is best and noblest in England, representative of a class which has ever watched with most vigilant and most benevolent anxiety over the interests of their Protestant brethren here, would recal it to our remembrance. (A) But, that you should be benefited by the exertions of your friends, you must be true to yourselves. Your cause has been blackened by foul misrepresentations. You must be industrious to refute them;-and, while they are in process of correction, you must be united, and prepared to meet the difficulties to which they now leave you exposed. England, you must remember, is not as she was. The moral pestilence of expediency has found, in her, a body prepared for it. That the stupor, in which she has yielded to pernicious counsel, and abused sound principle, will be broken, and that energies now dormant will be roused into wise action,

B

the dealings of Providence towards that favored country encourage us strongly to anticipate; but, if you are to be instrumental to that moral renovation, it may depend, so far as human means are effectual, on your use of the opportunities with which you have been mercifully favored, whether the occasion which calls out the spirit of old England, shall be a summons to avenge disasters which can never be repaired-to avenge, it may be, the blood of slaughtered Protestants-or a call to assist you in counteracting efforts calculated to produce irremediable evil; to stand at your side in preventing or in putting down barbarous insurrection.

In order to your having a more distinct view of the difficulties against which you should make provision, allow me, with all plainness of thought and speech, to suggest a contingency which it is of moment that you contemplate. Suppose the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland repealed; (even if you think such a result unlikely, yet for a moment let your imagination assist reason, in presenting it to you as possible-we shall soon see, whether, under existing circumstances, a reflecting man will think such aid necessary;) suppose repeal of the union effected. It might find you unprepared for its attendant dangers, or it might find you resolved and united.

If when separated from England you were found distracted among yourselves, do you imagine that your weakness and your adversaries' success would not summon into existence, or quicken into activity, hopes and claims, and projects, aiming at your utter overthrow? Do you imagine that you could find favor, or time to rally and unite? or do you not feel persuaded that policy might conspire with the impetuous malice of your least disguised enemies in accelerating movements which should not allow you a moment's pause to concert measures by which property could be secured or life defended? Your persecutors would be mistaken in their judgment of England. Their violence would provoke from her offended justice a dreadful retribution. But I can well understand that even crafty men may be wrought upon by the unsteadiness of the British Government to forget the British character, and to think that their crimes against the forsaken Protestants of this land, although they might become the objects