you must change your system; you have force surely to provide for your immediate security, and for your ultimate settlement and final peace. You must heal. You must harmonize. You must reconcile.

The committee then divided on Mr. Ponsonby's motion, that the chairman do leave the chair;- Ayes 7, Noes -137; Majority

130.

CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.

MR. GRATTAN MOVES A RESOLUTION RESPECTING THE ADMISSIBILITY OF ROMAN CATHOLICS TO SEATS IN PARLIAMENT.

October 17. 1796.

MR. GRATTAN, agreeable to the intimation he had already given, brought forward, on this day, his motion respecting the Roman Catholics, and spoke as follows:

Sir, We have got clear of the domestic question. It is now made by government, a matter between the people of Ireland and the crown of England. It has been said on the rejection of the Catholic bill, by those who represent the British cabinet in Ireland, that the Catholics must continue under disabilities to sit in Parliament or hold offices of state, for the security of the connection and the Crown; disability being made by the minister the price of allegiance and connection. I submit that it now remains for the friends of both to reconcile, not the freedom of the subject to the connection and the Crown, but the continuance of both to the freedom of the subject.

I beg to consider for a moment how far the minister of the Crown, on the part of Great Britain, in her present situation, is judicious in making such a point. And, first, what are her colonies? where are the American dominions, her thirteen provinces? but of that no more. Her East India settlements indeed remain, and they are wealth most undoubtedly, but they are not population; still less her West Indies, which are, in the greatest degree, and of your best officers and soldiers, the constant and melancholy depopulation and death. What is she in Europe? Where is her confederacy? Where are the Dutch will they join her fleet? No; they have joined the fleets of France already: they hate England because she preferred the power of a family and of a party to that of a people.

The Spaniard, will he join her fleet? No; he is in treaty of fensive and defensive with France, and at war with England, and has joined the French already. The king of Prussia, will he fight for her? No; he took your money indeed, but he is at peace with France; prudent prince! and will scarcely harbour the British envoy! The Sardinian, he is at peace with France. Where is the Duke of Parma, the princes of Germany, the Prince of Hesse, and the Elector of Hanover? Such has been the end of her great confederacy; fear, flight, and evaporation. Now, let us consider who are her enemies: and, first, her old allies, in conjunction with her old enemy, new France, whose population, with its accession of territory, is more than 30,000,000 of people, opposed to less than 15,000,000 in these islands; one-fifth of which the minister proposes to disqualify; that is, in the end, to disaffect; and, of course, proposes to diminish in effect near one half of the population of the empire, at a time when she, from the comparative dearth of population, was obliged to subsidize all Europe, subsidize the Hessian, subsidize the Austrian, subsidize the Sardinian and the Hanoverian. And when from the comparative superior population of her enemy, those princes are no longer permitted to take her subsidies, so that she had no resort but money, and now has no resort even there.

I beg to consider the treaties of Great Britain. On what are they founded? a dearth of population! What was her treaty with the king of Prussia? for 1,800,000l. the minister tries to buy 32,000 men of the King of Prussia: failing in that attempt, he proscribes 3,000,000 of subjects! "True it is, England is exhausted of men. True it is, England has been refused the aid of foreign powers by perfidy. Let us refuse ourselves the hearty support of native force by insolence." The minister makes a defensive league with a faithless ally; and he makes an offensive league against His Majesty's faithful and loyal subjects with a strange and contradictory display of insolence and imbecility, with a paucity of men, and a prodigality of subjects, and with a catastrophical desperation that will lead him to his perdition, and his country to ruin. The ministry made also a convention with the Emperor, founded on the same principle, the want of population in the British empire. Without entering into the merit of these treaties, I ask what other excuse had they, save only a dearth of population; and whether a British ministry might overlook in their allies, diversity of religion, all kinds of enormities, fraud, and perfidy, gather up every vice on Christian ground, and ally and incorporate therewith? Forgive

the King of Prussia for the division of Poland; forgive the Empress the plunder of that country; forgive the princes of Germany the treaty of Pilnitz because the English ministry were in a situation, or because they have reduced themselves to a situation, in which they must not presume to investigate the morals, religion, character, or conduct of their alliances; and shall they presume to set up an inquisition at home over the religion of their fellow-subjects, without a foot of ground to stand on in Europe? Driven out of every port, the minister, shall he exclaim, like a drunken toast-master, "None but stout Protestants!"

Having considered their treaties, I beg to know who are their allies? Protestant allies they have none: the American might have been more than their ally, now she is less. They have lost her warm heart by practices vile and abominable; they have lost her by their speculative tyranny; by a system of coercion followed up by a system of blood; and urged so far, and continued so long, as to leave in the breast of America an eternal alienation. The Dutch-they certainly are Protestant; but they are hostile. Her alliances are Catholic; and, so little does she regard religion in her allies, so little is she able to regard religion in her alliances, that she has made a league with the most holy empire, which is not only a part of the great confederacy, but is guarded in the Pope's person by British troops. The worship of the Virgin Mary, and the real presence, do not interpose an impediment to the framers of that confederacy. Such a pretence would have been laughed at between prince and prince, and is only resorted to when a league of power is to be formed by the prince against the subject. This league, made by the British minister with the Pope, on account of the French, and this league made by the same minister against the subject, on account of the Pope, hold out that ridiculous jargon of priestcraft and state-craft, which, in expression, is nonsense, and in practice is oppression. It states that the Pope is so innoxious, and even amical, that he may and ought to be included in a league of amity; and, at the same time, so hostile and poisonous, that the minister should exclude from the capacities of citizens, their fellow-subjects, on account of a connection with the Pope, incomparably less intimate than their own. They bring the great Catholic head of the church within the pale of their confederacy, and exclude the Catholic subjects from that of the constitution. They at once display the triumph of necessity over bigotry, and of bigotry over justice. They betray the sad symptom of a weak empire, but a tyrannic government; and, finally, they make a public and scandalous acknowledgment of the impudence and falsehood

of those arguments advanced by the ministers of a tottering empire to continue disabilities on two-thirds of our people, who have endeavoured to interrupt her downfall.

Having considered the minister's connection with the Pope, and his separation from the people on account of Popery and, after considering who were the allies of England, I beg to know who are the component parts of the empire? I do not know whether Corsica would be now owned as such; but I recollect that the Corsicans are Catholics. Immediately before the ministry refused the blessings of the English constitution to the Irish, they gave them to the Corsicans, acknowledging thereby that the grant or communication of British privileges to Catholics, and on a better plan too than any Irish Protestant enjoys them, was not only consistent with the security of the connection, but essential to its formation. I would ask whether the Italians were more in love with that constitution, understood it better, were more acquainted with Magna Charta and the acts of the Edwards, or whether these acts were translated into the Italian language, that the minister should thus exclaim" Liberty in church and state for the Italian, and perpetual incapacities for the Irish?" Whether the Italian understood the British constitution, I cannot say ; but certainly the ministry do not understand the Italian disposition, nor ours. They gave to the Corsicans what they neither comprehended nor regarded, and refused that to the Irish which had ascertained their affection. They offer to an illegitimate and stolen connection what she rejects as an adulterous gift, and what, if bestowed to the partner of their fortunes, had procured domestic tranquillity. There are another description of subjects to whom the ministry had given the constitution of England, the people of Canada; and this furnishes another instance of the mockery and impudence of those pretences which presume to exclude the Irish. I now come a little nearer home, and ask of what was the national force in Ireland composed? Catholics most certainly. And so perfectly convinced do the ministry appear to be, that the Catholics, possessed of the franchises, would be attached to the Crown and the connection, that they thought it safe to give the Catholics arms without them. Above all, I beg leave to consider one part of the military force of the empire, namely, the brigade: to arm 6000 Irish Catholics for the brigade; to put them under the command of French Catholics; to select such as had been originally Irish, but had followed the fortunes of the house of Stuart, or were otherwise connected with the same, was, on the part of the ministry, the most absolute and complete triumph which

a Protestant government could obtain over all its prejudices. I approve of the measure entirely, because I am for giving the Catholics complete emancipation. I have no jealousy of them whatsoever; but, on the contrary, perfect reliance on them in the participation of all the franchises of the constitution, and no reliance on any part of His Majesty's subjects' hearty concurrence and support on any inferior conditions. But if there was any thing which I would have refused, it was that which the present ministry have given; viz. such an establishment as the brigade. I would have given them that too, and approved of it, because I would have given the remainder, because I am willing to give every thing which the government had refused. His Grace the Duke of Portland, if that was his measure, was perfectly right in procuring that: but it was because he was perfectly wrong in refusing the remainder. If I could conceive with the government that twenty or thirty Irish Catholic gentlemen sitting in this House endangered the throne, I should think I betrayed His Majesty if I proposed to arm a brigade of 6000 Catholics under Catholic and French officers; I do not arraign that measure, but mention it only to display the presumptuous inconsistency of adopting such a special measure of incorporation, and at the same time a general policy of exclusion; for either the minister endangered the Crown by the establishment of the brigade, or they insulted the people by the argument. And if it were possible to make the special incorporation dangerous, it was by accompanying it with the general policy of exclusion, which gives the strength, and gives the provocation; a policy not in the least new to the English cabinet. The injustice to the individual as well as to the community, by such a contradictory policy, I beg to observe on. It seems Catholic foreigners may have the command of regiments, and Catholic natives must not sit in Parliament; or rather, it seems that it is not Popery which excites the jealousy of ministers, but the people, the Irish people. Catholics are the objects of confidence, if they do not belong to the country; of trust and of alliance. The Pope is protected by the British arms; the Italian endowed with British privileges; French officers at the head of regiments; and this for the plain reason, that the empire is so beset and environed with difficulties, that she has not a latitude for exercise of bigotry and folly, except with respect to the people of Ireland. In what cause do the ministry allege the federacy are now fighting? - the cause of religion, monarchy, and empire. And yet does the ministry presume to disqualify the Irish catholics, who are at this moment fighting in that