mons, if any thing of English spirit has been suffered to remain there, I am justified in expecting. It is that honorable members will not continue so to forget what becomes their place, and what is owing to ours, as to add to the injury they would do, the unnecessary and dangerous aggravation of insulting language. I do not deprecate or dread insult from members of the Roman Catholic persuasion. They are merely discharging a duty to their Church, which demands that they account every thing subordinate to her exaltation-nor from any Irish representatives who occupy their seats on the condition that they pay for them the due quota of foul language. This is all as it should be, and perhaps exasperates no existing evil; but when British members-learned civilians-men who make profession of piety-describe a church with whose character and operation they have never sought to make themselves acquainted, as 66 an abominable nuisance"when they do this in a place where no Minister of that Church can be admitted to reply-a place, where in ancient days, the recollection of our necessary absence created for us in every gentleman a protector; I am disappointed-that they will forget their situation and ours, that they will disregard the obvious truth, that their vehement invectives against a system will be translated by the fierce passions of those who hate that system into a denunciation of its Ministers,-and that they will not feel it a cruel and an unmanly abuse of privileged impunity, to indulge prejudice or spleen in the utterance of taunts, which, whatever be the spirit in which they are spoken, here in Ireland give direction and encouragement to ferocious passions, and become provocatives to murder.

I would expect of a British Parliament that, for the honour of England, they would reprobate these wanton and cruel attacks on the persecuted and absent. This is not too much to expect on behalf of the Church and its Ministers.

But how will the usurpation of Church property affect you? Has any principle been laid down by which a valid distinction can be drawn between the nature of your charter and ours? None but the principle of a parliamentary majority-and thus all sanctity is withdrawn by which possession heretofore was guarded.

Whatever can be done in Parliament may be done. The distinctinction which an eloquent speaker who preceeded me, so well established between right and power, is lost in a state of things in which might becomes "lord of imbecility," and a new ingredient is thrown into the cauldron of agitation, arising out of the unequal distribution of property, and the assertion of a principle, that the state has a right to dispose of all surplus revenues.

But let us have hope. The last packet has brought us intelligence that the House of Lords has stood between the country and an evil by which the principle of justice would be grievously shaken. The Lords have thrown out the bill. Whatever the consequence may be to us, we should be thankful that God has inspired them so to do. I have, I confess, one serious drawback on my satisfaction. A right reverend prelate of this country advocated the spoliation, and declared that he did so because he had numerous letters of solicitation from his Clergy, by which he was influenced. From what I know of the Clergy in his lordship's diocess, as well as in all other parts of the kingdom, I am bold to say that they sinned in ignorance of the bill they recommended:If there be any here similarly forgetful, or if any will read the words I speak, who are not acquainted with the provisions of the bill which has been so justly cast out, I would beg their attention to a very brief explanation of its nature:-A short time since an act was passed, constituting the revenues of ten bishoprics, according as they became vacant, and a tax levied on parochial revenues, a fund for defraying the expenses of worship in the Established Church, the maintenance of churches, and other necessary charges. The bill thrown out of the Lords on Monday proposed to confiscate the greater part-perhaps the entire of the revenue thus provided, and to convert it into a free-will offering to the landlords of Ireland. That is to say, the bill proposed to confiscate the fund provided by a tax on the Ministers of Religion, and intended to secure the permanence of an external ministration; to take from the poor Protestants the provision made for their religious edification, and to bestow their rights upon the wealthy. This is the bill which the Clergy of the Right Reverend Prelate recom

mended to their Diocesan, and for which they solicited his advocacy. I am sorry to hear that their unacquaintance with the provisions of the bill, has had so unhappy a manifestation. I have a Diocesan whose sentiments upon the rejected measure I have no mode of ascertaining. Except from knowledge of his character I cannot conjecture his opinion; but I seriously and sincerely declare that I would rather be a suppliant for his private bounty, and entreat to be placed among the pensioners upon a munificence large and liberal as that of princes, and secret as the letter of Christian precepts requires, and implore that he would give me, for my children, a morsel of bread, than I would dare to affront his noble mind by soliciting his advocacy of a measure, which should have for its object to take from the fund which was the sacred property of poor Protestants, and at their cost to embellish Tyrone House, or enlarge the noble demesnes of Curraghmore. Among the many evils of recent legislation, there is one thing which in moments of excitement a sensitive nature feels as good-the power of bearing testimony to exalted worth, without dreading the imputation of a sordid motive. We may have change of duty, not preferment. And it is among its crying evils that it shall have so warped a high mind, that a Right Reverend Prelate in his distrust of the British Ministry, will rather advocate a measure which contemplates the plunder of the poorer Protestants, than leave the Clergy to the protection of a Monarch whose coronation oath only solemnizes, as it were, the prompt and kindly disposition of his heart to afford them ample protection.

Certainly, when one considers the language employed by Ministers of the Crown, it is not wonderful that the generous heart of the Prelate he is a generous and kindly-natured man— should be so affected. When a Lord Chancellor of England could threaten that Government would enforce all its claims upon the Clergy-claims incurred in consequence of a poverty with which the declarations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (I) were chargeable, and, at the same time, could intimate, in no ambiguous terms, that Government, resolute in enforcing its own

rights, to the ruin of the unoffending Clergy, was equally resolute to leave the rights of these persecuted men deserted-it is not perhaps wonderful that the Prelate became alarmed; although it would be far more desirable that such a declaration had roused up an English spirit, and dictated a dutiful supplication to the throne, soliciting to know if the keeper of the King's conscience were the interpreter of the King's sentiments, and if William IV. and Lord Chancellor Brougham held the coronation oath in the same lowliness of estimation.

But I have, it is probable, dwelt at too great length on matters peculiar to my order. It is, however, simply, because your interests are only by one remove separated from ours. If you thought only of yourselves, even of your worldly interests, it would be your prudence to prepare, and to discern, in the persecutions which have come on our body, perils impending over your own. The treacherous and the ignorant will deride such dark forebodings, and will dissuade you, if it be possible, from the determination to prepare for an evil day. According to their advice, your most prudent course would be to remain unprovided, and, if you could, indifferent. They will tell you that it is your wisdom to cast your care on those who are appointed to govern; and that if you will abandon all anxiety about yourselves, and place implicit confidence in your rulers, you shall have the reward; you shall be soothed by promises that no explosion will take place until Antrim and Armagh are reduced or exalted to the state of those counties over which a blood-stained tranquillity stretches forth its reign of terror-where the King's Ministers have their most zealous and numerous adherents, and where the King and the people of England must reckon upon their most unappeasable enemies.

If you prefer this graduated process of destruction ;—give up all care for your safety or possessions, and wait until the assassin or the spoiler pronounces that he is ready, and that your turn is come; but if you think it better to oppose danger than lie down before it-better to possess power, though evil tongues may speak ill of it, than propitiate the slanderer's silence

and purchase truce of the murderer by division and imbecilityabove all, if you account it a solemn duty to maintain the good cause confided to your keeping, in any circumstances wherein your service is righteously demanded,—leave not this place;— let no man depart, without recording in his heart a resolution, that, by all honest means-all means on which he can implore God to send down a blessing-he will promote Protestant union.