spirit of popish persecution was thus active abroad, we naturally increased our guards and securities against a similar spirit at home. In 1793 again our shores are covered with a banished clergy. Of what persuasion? Roman catholic. Flying from what? An atheistical persecution. Were these events calculated to produce similar impressions? Or did they call for similar precautions? Undoubtedly they did not. And blind indeed must those persons be to the signs of the times, who would apply to cases so different the same reasoning, or act upon them by an undistinguishing and inflexible

rule of conduct.

"But, sir, we did not so reason or so act. The year 1793, the period to which I have last referred, when the dissension of catholic and protestant appeared to be swallowed up in the wider difference between christian and anti-christian :—that was the period chosen, and wisely chosen, by the crown, for recommending to the legis lature of Ireland, the relaxation of the penal laws against the Irish catholics. The lesser danger disappeared before the greater; and the restraints which were no longer necessary, were properly considered as no longer just.

"As much was done for the Irish catholics at this period as perhaps could be done, while England and Ireland continued separate kingdoms. The question of admission into political office was wisely, if not of necessity, deferred till after the Union. The Únion happily did away that argument from numbers, which, in my judgment, has been always as unwisely urged on one side of this question, as unfairly answered on the other. Most unwisely is it urged by the friends of the catholics; for the boast of numbers sounds too like an attempt at intimidation ; but most unfairly is it held out on the other side, to intimidate us the other way, and to induce

us to withhold even what it might be right to grant, because the claimants form a large proportion of our population.

"The Union, however, puts an end to the danger of this argument, without destroying whatever is its legitimate force. The numbers of the Irish catholics, merged in the whole population of the united kingdom, have ceased to be formidable from their relative, without ceasing to be respectable from their positive amount.

"Such being the advantage derived to this question from the Union, I confess I am astonished to find, that some among the catholics call for a repeal of the Union; and that an honourable gentleman, a strenuous advocate of the catholic cause, has given notice of a motion to that effect.Repeal the Union! Restore the heptarchy as soon!-The measure itself is simply impossible. But with such a question depending in the House, I doubt how far it is possible to entertain the consideration of the present subject to any useful purpose. For, suppose the honourable gentleman to succeed in procuring the repeal of the Union, not only might it become unsafe to concede the catholic claims at all, but in this House we could not even discuss them with propriety. This House could not presume to determine on a subject which would then belong to separate Ireland alone.

Scarcely less unfair than the use of the argument derived from numbers, is that which is often made of the concessions heretofore granted to the catholics by the legislature. It is affirmed, that those concessions have been extorted in times of trouble and danger; that advantage has been taken of the distresses of the crown, to bring forward claims at the moment when it had no means of resisting them. Nothing can be more untrue than this statement; which proceeds

entirely on a confusion between the claims of Ireland, as against England, and those of the catholics of Ireland, which are totally different things. I will not now enter into any enquiry, whether the concessions made to Ireland in 1782, were or were not wrung from the British government by the necessities and difficulties of the times. It is sufficient to remark, that those concessions were not concessions to the catholics, but to the protestant parliament of Ireland; that in the boasted adjustment (as it was called) of 1782, not one word was contained which ameliorated the situation of the catholics, or in any degree affected their interests. So far is it from being true, that what has been granted to them has been granted to menace, that it has not, in point of fact, been granted even to supplication. Their petitions had been rejected by the Irish parliament; and the crown afterwards voluntarily came forward, and suggest ed to that parliament a spontaneous compliance with the prayers which it had previously refused. And to this is to be added, that in almost every statute which has passed to improve the situation of the catholics, their uniformly peaceable and loyal conduct has been recited in the preamble, as occasioning and justifying the conces sion.

"In looking at the nature and extent of the concessions which have thus been made to the catholics, and at the state in which they were left at the Union, will any man contend, that the point at which those concessions have stopped can have been selected as that at which it was seriously intended they should remain ? Is it not obvious upon the slightest consideration, that to have opened the elective franchise to the catholics, and to preclude the exercise of it in favour of candidates of their own persuasion; that to have admitted them to the bar, and

to exclude them from the bench, would, if considered as a permanent arrangement, be one of a most perverse and dangerous nature? But it would be perfectly intelligible that such concessions should be made by degrees; and that the consummation of them, and especially that the admission to seats in the House of Commons, should have been purposely postponed till after the Union of the two parliaments.

"I protest, if I were to look upon the arrangement as permanent, I should doubt whether the seat in the House of Commons might not have been granted with less danger, than the right of voting for members, disjoined from the eligibility to serve. In the former case the conduct of the catholic member would have been influenced and controuled by his protestant constituents; but the irresponsible exercise of the elective franchise admits of no controul; and, powerful as the catholics are, and growing daily more and more powerful by the growing extent of their property, how is it to be supposed that the catholic constituents should not influence and controul the conduct of their protestant representative? It was natural to postpone the admission into parliament till the Union, lest there should be in time a preponderance of catholic members in the local parliament of Ireland; but as applied to the united parliament, I profess, I see no danger from the admission of catholic members from Ireland, which does not arise in an equal, or in a more eminent degree, from the power of returning members being vested in the catholic population.

"Look next to the situation of the Irish bar. In proportion as other walks of liberal profession are shut to the catholics, must the numbers of them be greater who will naturally flock into the profession of the law.

Comparing the amount of the catholics with that of the protestant population in Ireland, at no distant time a great proportion of the bar must be of the catholic persuasion. There is no reason on which to presume, that the talents of the catholic_barristers will not be equal to those of their protestant competitors; and it is in the very nature of things, that so long as the catholic population are depressed below the level of their protestant fellowsubjects, they should feel towards each other with the spirit of a sect, and preferably throw their business into the hands of those of their own persuasions. I have the highest opinion of the profession of the law; a profession which has produced so many eminent men, ornaments and supports of the state; and which is generally characterized as much by liberality as by talents. But it is no disparagement of that honourable and able profession to say, that great talents are won to the support of the state by honourable expectations, and by the prospects of just reward. And if the bar of Ireland are to be illiberalized, (if I may use that word to express my meaning,) and their views to be contracted and debased, by being confined merely to the acquisition of money, to the exclusion of any object of honourable distinction-would not the character of the bar be materially altered? And ought we not seriously to consider what might be the danger to the state from a body of such ability and influ. ence, if an impassable limit and barrier were to be put to the hopes and exertions of a generous ambition?

"They who refer to the French revolution, and justly refer to it, as a lesson of dreadful warning, would do well to consider some of the leading principles, and predisposing causes, I will not say from which it arose, but by which the mass of the French people were prepared for it. None of

these causes was more prominent, or more universally acknowledged by all thinking men, than the existence of those fanciful and artificial barriers, by which an insuperable line of separation was drawn between the higher ranks of the community, and those whose wealth, or talents and services, might raise them to acquired eminence. This line was drawn with precision, and observed with rigour; but it was drawn only in the manners and prejudices of society. Here you have established it by statute; and established it against a profession, whose daily studies are conversant with the constitution of states, and with the general principles of human society,-whose daily practice is of a nature to kindle and keep alive the spirit of aspiring ambition,-whose habits and qualities fit them to be leaders of the people.

"Look forward a few years to the period when the mass of the bar being catholic, and the mass of the business in their hands, a briefless protestant must nevertheless be selected to fill any vacancy on the bench. Every one knows what is the reciprocal influence of an enlightened bench and an enlightened bar; the mutual check and controul of authority on the one side, and of opinion on the other. Conceive a state of things in which that check should cease to operate on one side, by the loss of that eminence which is the soul of all authority on the bench, conceive a catholic bar pleading to catholic juries, before judges who have been placed upon the bench, not for their wisdom but for their faith, and imagine what consequences must follow!

"I do not say that this is now the case, I know it is otherwise; but I am tracing the inevitable operation, in times to come, of principles to which the concessions already made to the Roman catholics have given life and activity. I am contending against the

proposition, that the remaining disabilities can be maintained for ever. I am contending that the principles of the question are principles of expediency and of time; not fixed, not immutable, not eternal. I am contending that the condition of the catholics, after what has been done for them, must be necessarily progressive: unless indeed you are prepared to go back instead of forward. And I ask, Can you go back?

"All this may be very much to be lamented. It may be unlucky that we are brought into a situation in which we cannot stand still, and in which we can neither go on nor recede with safety. I am not of that opinion: but that opinion I am not now argu ing; nor am I bound to argue it. I am only arguing that such is the state of things, however it may have become so; whether by negligence, or by impolicy, or by a just and provident design. A practical statesman will take things as he finds them; and will adapt his measures to what he finds, instead of lamenting over irretrievable errors, if errors they be, and wishing their consequences reversed and undone.

"Look next at your army. War is not now, as it has been in former times, an occasional and transitory evil. It must be considered, in the present state of Europe, as a permanent habit, as the very element in which this country must breathe and have its being. You have admitted catholic officers into your army; but you exclude them from the higher ranks of it. Your army swarms with catholic soldiers. To the Irish militia you do not scruple to entrust a part of the defence of Great Britain itself. Protestant generals, in other countries, have commanded catholic armies. Foreigners of whose religion we take lit tle note, may command protestant British soldiers here. But no native

VOL. V. PART I

catholic is to be permitted to hold a command over his fellow-subjects, of whatever religion they may be. Can this state of things, in such a state of the world, be permanent?

"I have heard, indeed, one answer to all these arguments, which, as I observed, was hailed with acclamation by some gentlemen opposite to me. It is this; that the great objects of ambition, whether civil, political, or military, from which the catholics are now excluded, could fall to the lot only of a few of the higher classes among them; and that it is mere pretence to suppose that the influence of their disappointment and discontent can affect the body of the people. O! profound ignorance of human nature! As if the objects of honourable ambition operated as incitements only to those who may have been proved by a calculation of chances to have a reasonable hope of attaining them! As if the aspiration after things too high to be within the reach of probable achievement, were not the surest pledge of excellence, even in the discharge of inferior duties! As if the single lord chancellorship, which it is so many thousand to one that any given individual does not reach, were not yet that which fills your bar, and throngs your inns of court with multitudes of men, capable of discharging its functions! As if the removal of this single prize, though you might show by irrefragable arithmetic that it did not in fact affect the prospects of one man out of ten thousand, would not yet be felt as touching and degrading the whole! As if, when some climbing spirit having nearly reached the topmost round of the ladder of ambition, was there met by a sentence of perpetual exclusion, the crowd of his fellowcitizens, who had watched and cheered his ascent, would not sympathize in his final ill success! As if they would not feel, however little pretension they

might have themselves to rise to a similar eminence and to experience similar disappointment, that it was some. what hard upon their children, and their children's children, that they too should continue to bear about with them in their native land, a brand of natural inferiority, an inheritable and indelible stain like that of cast or of colour, not incapacitating them, indeed, for the toil of honourable exertion, but precluding them for ever from distinction and reward!

"But am I therefore prepared to concede every thing that is required, to concede it without delay, to concede it without condition or limitation? No such thing. The time when the brand of disqualification shall be removed; the period or the genera tion in which the stain of incapacity shall be considered as worn out or washed away, I am not now pretending to define. I do not say that this is the moment; but I do say that it is utterly inconceivable to me, that any man should talk of the present as a state of things which can endure for ever; that any man should think that we are now arrived at the point at which legislative wisdom can stop, and expect contented acquiescence; that any man should recommend a vote, which is to confirm this state of things, and to extinguish the hope of any future change, as the best mode of tranquillizing Ireland.

"But then the dangers of any fresh concession! the dangers of a catholic chancellor, or a catholic general, influenced by the pope, and the pope in the power of Buonaparte! What could we look for in such a case, but the subversion of the constitution, and the conquest of the kingdom?

"I confess I think that those who are appalled by these terrors, do give a rein to their imagination, rather than consult their sober judgment. I think too, that under the influence of an

imaginary fear, they overlook nearer and more substantial dangers.

"There have been times, no doubt, when (as I have already had occasion to state) the tie of community of religion was stronger than that of a common country; when the geographer might have distinguished the divisions of the map of Europe by two colours, one denoting the catholic, and the other the reformed religion; and when the same distinction that described differences of faith would have implied, at the same time, the respective policy, connections, and alliances of the several states of Europe. But thanks to Buonaparte for this incidental good arising from his various acts of usurpation and atrocity; he has exalted and called into action the feelings of patriotism, and taught them to supersede that fellowship which grew heretofore out of similarity of religious profession. The different nations of the civilized world may now, as heretofore, be characterized by only two descriptions-but these descriptions are no longer catholic or protestant, but French or not French.

"If leagues have been formed in other times of catholic powers, against the advancement of the protestant cause and interests, while states which had embraced the tenets of the reformed religion have combined on the other hand to reduce the pretensions of the ancient and corrupted ecclesias. tical establishment, let us see how far the distinctions, founded upon religi ous differences, would apply to the existing state of the world. What is, in this respect, the conduct of Buonaparte, the sovereign of France, the successor of Charlemagne, the eldest son of the church? Is his a catholic league? Is it only with catholic sovereigns and catholic states that he forms his connections, or to them alone that he extends the benefit of what he calls his protection? Look, I say, at the