lutely destitute of foundation. The objection proceeds and states that sixteen thousand Irish Catholics fought against Great Britain in the American war. I believe the number of those Irish to be greatly magnified; and sure I am that this description is not just; those Irish were in great numbers Presbyterians of the north, not Catholics of the south; they emigrated in great bodies, and they continue now to emigrate to America from the north of Ireland, not for rebellion, but for land, or a better condition. Your fellow-subjects have emigrated from poverty at home, and sometimes have met war; and if you wish never to meet them in arms in other countries, your method should be to give them a better condition at home. The objection proceeds, and states, that great bodies of Irish fought against England at St. Eustatia and St. Lucia; here again the objection fails in point of fact; great bodies of Irishmen did not fight against England at St. Eustatia and St. Lucia. There was indeed a regiment of eighteen hundred, commanded by General Dillon, the Irish brigade; and this, I suppose, the objector conceives to be those great bodies of Irishmen; but that regiment was chiefly composed of Dutch, and of the recruits of various nations, of very few Irish; and here again I appeal to the gentlemen on the service, whether this part of the objection is not, like the other parts, entirely unfounded. The objection proceeds and states, that the Irish Catholics supply the fleets and armies of the enemies in a much greater proportion than those of Great Britain; this I must positively deny; they supply the fleets and armies of the enemy in a very trifling proportion; and they supply the fleets and armies of Great Britain in a very great and abundant proportion. In the last war, of 80,000 seamen, 50,000 were Irish names; in Chelsea, near one-third of the pensioners were Irish names; in some of the men-of-war almost the whole compliment of men were Irish. With respect to the recruiting service, it is a fact known to the gentlemen of the army, that since they have recruited for the foot in Ireland, the regiments have been filled in a great proportion with Irish Catholics. I do not mean to say, that the Irish Catholics have supplied His Majesty's fleets and armies abundantly; but so abundantly, and in so great a proportion, that the recruiting service could not well go on without them. I appeal again to gentlemen who have seen service, to their knowledge in this particular, and their candour; and I affirm, that this part of the objection, like the other parts, has no foundation whatsoever. The objection proceeds and states, that some of the Protestants are nearly as criminal as the Papists; these Protestants are the

persons who took a part for the emancipation of Ireland, and the objection complains that some of their measures were passed into laws; those measures were the emancipation of the country in 1782, and those ill-affected men were the Parliament, that is, the King, Lords, and Commons, that passed those acts of emancipation; the objection compares the persons concerned therein to the Catholic rebels before the Revolution; and at the same time it represents the Catholics since the Revolution, as well as before, as disaffected here is the division under which this objection describes His Majesty's subjects; all the Catholics disloyal, and all the Protestants, who lately took part for the emancipation of Ireland, viz. the King, Lords, and Commons, disloyal likewise, more disloyal than the Catholics since the Revolution, and very like those Catholics who, before the Revolution, were executed for rebellion. Thus the objection ends in general defamation and feeble infatuation; a proof how bigotry will extinguish the force of the mind, impair its principles, banish the virtues of the citizen, and the charity of the Christian.

The next objection is, that the Roman Catholics now have every thing short of political power; to which I must observe, that the objection proves two things, an ignorance of the nature of liberty, and the situation of the Catholic; civil and political liberty depend on political power; the community that has no share whatsoever directly or indirectly in political power, has no security for its political or civil liberty. The example of the Catholic is a proof; what deprived him of his civil rights for this century, but the want of political rights, the want of right of representation? What deprived him of the rights of education, of self defence?—a Parliament in which he had no effectual, though for a time, he had a nominal representation. Such a Parliament may take away his wife; it did so : such a Parliament may bastardise his issue; it did so: such a Parliament may enter into his domestic economy, and set on his children to defy the father; it did so. Where then is the utility of attempting to convince the Catholic that he may have in security civil liberty, without any share of political powers, when his present situation is an experimental refutation of that fallacious sophistry, and a proof that no community can long enjoy civil liberty under laws that have excluded them from all share of political power? or, in other words, that no community have a security for civil liberty, when that liberty may be taken away by any body where they have no authority. But it is supposed, the Catholics have civil liberty; certainly they have not; they have not free and unfettered the rights of education; they

have not the full benefit of trial by jury, for they are excluded from petty juries, in some cases, and from grand juries in almost all; and they have not the rights of self-defence, for they cannot carry arms. No man means to say that a license to an individual, at the arbitrary will of a privy council, to carry arms, is a substitute for a right of selfdefence; under the law, he is ever liable to be questioned on suspicion of having arms, and subject to an inquisition instituted against the principles of self-defence; he is liable to be whipped if he refuses to make discovery, for the law has not expired; and though his discovery is no evidence against him, yet his refusal is whipping. It is, therefore, trifling to say, that a person so circumstanced has even civil liberty, still less any security for its continuation.

But it is said, he is on the same ground as the exfranchised Protestant, denied, utterly denied; protestants having property, or the symbol of property, can very generally vote-franchise, that is, freedom of guilds or corporate towns is the symbol of property; but the Protestant who has no property cannot complain that he has no vote; he is a non-proprietor, and of course is not affected by laws taking or regulating property; he is a passenger on your farm, or a guest in your house, and has no pretensions to the regulations thereof; but the Catholic who is a proprietor may complain, because his property is taxed and regulated without his consent. Mr. Byrne complains, he pays to the revenue near 100,000l. annually, and has no vote. John Doe has no vote; but he pays nothing; there is no resemblance, therefore, between the enfranchised Protestant and disfranchised Catholic; or, if any, the resemblance is that between a man who is robbed, and a man who has nothing to be robbed of; the man, the profits of whose industry are taken without his consent, and the man who has no industry from whence profits could arise the difference between a violation of the rights of nature, and

none.

The Catholic proprietor appears indeed to be on a level with the Protestant beggar, but is not. The Protestant beggar is one of the community of the legislation, though not a sharer therein; he is of that tribe for whose benefit the laws are made. In this country there are two codes of laws; one for the Protestant sect, another for the Catholic. The legislature has a common interest with the one and against the other. The Protestant beggar has, therefore, an advantage over the Catholic proprietor.

It is objected, they are not fit for freedom. The elective

franchise acts directly on men, not measures. Montesquieu, I need not remind you, observes, that the people are good. judges of character, though not always of things. Do you think the Roman Catholics adequate to that? Is there a man in the House who has a name, of whose character they are not fully apprised, who has supported, who has opposed certain measures? The press has made every character a public subject; our conversations are known; our principles of action are very well known. As to the measures, can we suppose the Roman Catholics incapable of judging of them? They are not complicated; the measures of Ireland are domestic regulations.

The fact of their unfitness is not true; but if it were, if they are not rational enough to choose a man to serve in Parliament, how criminal must you have been, who have governed them; and under whose government, for a century, they have not acquired the power to exercise their rational faculties? Your government (supposing the charges to be true, which I utterly deny,) must have been more horrible than the worst of tyrannies; it must have done worse than take away property, life or limb; it must have brutalized your own species. But the truth is otherwise; they are not beasts; you are not tyrants. I can collect from the charge some meaning, though I cannot collect your conclusion; I collect that the Catholics have lived apart from you, and therefore you are inclined to think them an inferior species; and perhaps, though they do not labour under a moral incapacity, yet, from the separation of societies, they have not all your advantages. What then is the evil? The separation. What the cause? The laws. What is the remedy? The repeal of the laws.

The objections at last take the turn of self-defence, and urge that, if you give the elective franchise, you give away the power. No; you gain it; for at present you have it not the event will be the reverse of your apprehension. The Protestant would not give away the elective franchise; he would get it. The Protestant individual is now a monopolist against a Protestant people. The oligarchy, with the Crown, has the boroughs; the aristocracy has a great portion of the counties. This they call a Protestant ascendancy; but this is a monopoly against a Protestant people. Some of the Protestants have understood it rightly; they have seen that the essence of the elective franchise is, in its extent; that confined, it is the trade of the individual; and, in order to take it back from the individual, and restore it to the Protestant people, it is necessary to multiply the electors, for

VOL. III.

yeomen in numbers cannot become property; the borough may; the borough patrons, of whatever religion, will be an aristocracy; the electors, of whatever religion, will be a people. On elections there are three parties, the minister, the aristocracy, and the people. You have thrown out of the scale of the latter a great portion of your own weight, and therefore you are light; restore that portion to the scale of the people, and you will recover that gravity: the effect, therefore, of this participation will be to restore to the Protestant people their elective authority. As an example of your weakness, the whole power of the elective franchise has not created, in the Protestant body, a Protestant ascendancy; far from it; the Protestant electors have not been able to carry a single point for these last ten years, nor any point for these last twenty years, except in 1779 and 1782, when there was other strength to assist your cause, and with it the cordial and active support of the Catholic community. As the church. of England's electors have acquired strength, by communicating the franchise to the Presbyterians, so Protestants and Presbyterians acquire force, by communicating the franchise to the Catholics; and, on the same principle, on which the Protestant electors exclude the Catholics, so should that part of them, which is called the church of England, exclude the Presbyterians. The Parliament, and its electors, would then preserve what they now depart from; unity of religion, and destroy unity of interest. In a few words, this objection says, that, in order. to preserve the power of a Protestant people, we should take precaution, that we may be no people at all. This objection is entirely blind to the present progress of things, and does not see that the tendency, if it is not to Deism, most undoubtedly it is not to Popery. This objection gives no credit to the operation of association, on the repeal of the penal code; it allows nothing for the growth of liberal opinion; it does not conceive the possibility of a political conformity; it cannot conceive one political attachment in society, whose members, as is the case of every society, entertain their different notions on subjects of religion. The objection, on the whole, is founded on this position, that two sects will retain the animosity of the provocation, after the provocation is removed. The objection goes farther; it says, that if the Catholics get the franchise, they will, at length, get such power in the House of Commons, as to repeal the act of settlement, reverse the outlawries, and subvert the Protestant church. With regard to the first, there would be a difficulty, somewhat approaching to an impossibility; for, if those outlawries were set aside,