state.

tholic Frenchman a Deist admitting seven? But you affect to think your property in danger by admitting them into the That has been already refuted, but you have your selves refuted your own objection. Seventeen years ago you expressed the same fear, yet you made the experiment; you opened the door to landed property, and the fact has shewn the fear to be without foundation.

"But another curious topic has been stated again; the Protestant ascendancy is in danger. What do you mean by that word? Do you mean the right, and property, and dignities of the church? If you do, you must feel they are safe. They are secured by the law, by the coronation oath, by a Protestant parliament, a Protestant king, a Protestant confederated nation. Do you mean the free and protected exercise of the Protestant religion? You know it has the same security to support it. Or do you mean the just and honourable support of the numerous and meritorious clergy of our own country, who really discharge the labours and duties of the ministry? As to that, let me say, that if we felt on that subject as we ought, we should not have so many men of talents and virtues struggling under the difficulties of their scanty pittance, and feeling the melancholy conviction that no virtues or talents can give them any hope of advancement. If you really mean the preservation of every right and every honour that can dignify a Christian priest, and give authority to his function, I will protect them as zealously as you. I will ever respect and revere the man who employs himself in diffusing light, hope, and consolation. But if you mean by ascendancy the power of persecution, I detest and abhor it. If you mean the ascendancy of an English school over an Irish university, I cannot look upon it without aversion. An ascendancy of that form raises to my mind a little greasy emblem of stall-fed theology, imported

from some foreign land, with the graces of a lady's maid, the dignity of a side-table, the temperance of a larder, its sobriety the dregs of a patron's bottle, and its wisdom the dregs of a patron's understanding, brought hither to devour, to degrade, and to defame. Is it to such a thing you would have it thought that you affixed the idea of the Protestant ascendancy? But it is said, admit them by degrees, and do not run the risk of too precipitate an incorporation. I conceive both the argument and the fact unfounded. In a mixed government, like ours, an increase of the democratic power can scarcely ever be dangerous. Not one of the three powers of our constitution acts singly in the line of its natural direction; each is necessarily tempered and diverted by the action of the other two: and hence it is, that though the power of the crown has, perhaps, far transcended the degree to which theory might confine it, the liberty of the British constitution may not be in much danger. An increase of power to any of the three acts finally upon the state with a very diminished influence, and therefore great indeed must be that increase in any one of them which can endanger the practical balance of the constitution. Still, however, I contend not against the caution of a gradual admission. But let me ask you, can you admit them any otherwise than gradually? The striking and melancholy symptom of the public disease is, that if it recovers at all it can be only through a feeble and lingering convalescence. Yet even this gradual admission your Catholic brethren do not ask, save under every pledge and every restriction which your justice and wisdom can recommend to your adoption.

"He called on the house to consider the necessity of acting with a social and conciliatory mind, remarking, that contrary conduct may perhaps protract the unhappy depression of our country, but a partial liberty cannot long subsist, A

disunited people cannot long subsist. With infinite regret must any man look forward to the alienation of three mil lions of our people, and to a degree of subserviency and corruption in the fourth: I am sorry, said he, to think it is so very easy to conceive, that in case of such an event the inevitable consequence would be, AN UNION WITH GREAT BRI TAIN. And if any one desires to know what that would be, I will tell him: IT WOULD BE THE EMIGRATION OF EVERÝ MAN OF CONSEQUENCE FROM IRELAND; IT WOULD BE THE PARTICIPATION OF BRITISH TAXES WITHOUT BRITISH TRADE; IT WOULD BE THE EXTINCTION OF THE IRISH NAME AS A PEOPLE. WE SHOULD BECOME A WRETCHED COLONY, PERHAPS LEASED OUT TO A COMPANY OF JEWS, AS WAS FORMERLY IN CONTEMPLATION, AND GOVERNED BY A FEW TAX-GATHERERS AND EXCISEMEN, UNLESS POSSIBLY YOU MAY ADD FIFTEEN OR TWENTY COUPLE OF IRISH MEM→ BERS, WHO MIGHT BE FOUND EVERY SESSION SLEEPING IN THEIR COLLARS UNDER THE MANGER OF THE BRITISH MINISTER.

"Mr. Curran then entered largely into the state of the em→ pire and of its allies; of the disposition of our enemies to wards Great Britain; of the nature of their political prin ciples; and, of the rapid dissemination of those principles. He declared that it was difficult to tell whether the dissemi nation of those principles was likely to be more encouraged by the continuance of the war, or by the establishment of a peace; and if the war was, as has been repeatedly insisted on, a war on our part for the preservation of social order and of limited monarchy, he strongly urged the immediate necessity of making those objects the common interest and the common cause of every man in the nation. He reprobated the idea of any disloyalty in the Catholics, an idea which, he said, was sometimes more than intimated, and sometimes as

vehemently disclaimed by the enemies of Catholic Emancipa tion; but, he said, the Catholics were men, and were of course sensible to the impression of kindness, and injury, and of insult; that they knew their rights, and felt their wrongs, and that nothing but the grossest ignorance, or the meanest hypocrisy, could represent them as cringing with a slavish fondness to those who oppressed and insulted them. He sought, he said, to remove their oppressions, in order to make the interests of the whole nation one and the same: and to that great object, the resolution, moved by his right honourable friend, manifestly tended; and he lamented exceedingly, that so indecent and so disingenuous a way of evading that motion had been resorted to, as passing to the order of the day, a conduct that, however speciously the gentlemen who had adopted it might endeavour to excuse, he declared, could be regarded by the Catholics, and by the public, no otherwise than as an expression of direct hostility to the Catholic claims. He animadverted, with much severity, upon an observation from the other side of the house, that the Catholics were already in possession of political liberty, and were only seeking for political power. He asked, what was it then that we were so anxiously withholding, and so greedily monopolizing; and declared, that the answer which had been given to that observation, by a learned and honourable friend near him (Mr. Wm. Smith) was that of a true patriot, and of a sound constitutional lawyer; namely, that civil liberty was a shadow, without a sufficient portion of political power to protect it.

"Having replied to the arguments of several members that had preceded him in the debate, Mr. Curran came to the speech that had been delivered by Dr. Duigenan, and entertained the house, for about half an hour, with one of the most lively sallies of wit and humour that we remember

to have heard. He said, that the learned doctor had made himself a very prominent figure in the debate! Furious indeed had been his anger, and manifold his attack; what argument, or what man, or what thing, had he not abused? Half choaked by his rage in refuting those who had spoke, he had relieved himself by attacking those who had not spoke; he had abused the Catholics, he had abused their ancestors, he had abused the merchants of Ireland, he had abused Mr. Burke, he had abused those who voted for the order of the day. I do not know, said Mr. Curran, but I ought to be obliged to the learned doctor, for honouring me with a place in the invective; he has called me the bottle-holder of my right honourable friend; sure I am, said he, that if I had been the bottle-holder of both, the learned doctor would have less reason to complain of me than my right honourable friend; for him I should have left perfectly sober, whilst it would very clearly appear, that, with respect to the learned doctor, the bottle had not only been managed fairly, but generously; and, that if, in furnishing him with liquor, I had not furnished him with argument, I had, at least, furnished him with a good excuse for wanting it; with the best excuse for that confusion of history, and divinity, and civil law, and canon law, that rollocking mixture of politics, and theology, and antiquity, with which he has overwhelmed the debate, for the havoc and carnage he has made of the population of the last age, and the fury with which he seemed determined to exterminate, and even to devour the population of this; and which urged him, after tearing and gnawing the characters of the Catholics, to spend the last efforts of his rage with the most unrelenting ferocity, in actually gnawing their names, [alluding to Dr. Duigenan's pronunciation of the name of Mr. Keogh, and which, Mr. Curran said, was a kind of pronuntiatory defamation.] In truth, Sir, said he, I felt some surprise, and some regret, when I heard him describe