sorting to the Continent for education, allured by the endowments which the French government are cunningly restoring and augmenting. The intercourse with the see of Rome might and would, after Catholic emancipation, be so managed, that it should be open on grave occasions, or, if thought proper, on every occasion, to the inspection of commissioners. There is no security compatible with the safety of their faith, which the Catholics are not willing to give. But what is Catholic emancipation, as far as England is concerned? not an equal right to office with the member of the Church of England, but a participation in the same pains and penalties as those to which the Protestant dissenter is subjected by the corporation and test acts. If the utility of these last-mentioned laws is to be measured by the horror and perturbation their repeal would excite, they are laws of the utmost importance to the defence of the English church; but if it be of importance to the church that pains and penalties should be thus kept suspended over men's heads, then these bills are an effectual security against Catholics as well as Protestants: and the manacles so much confided in are not taken off, but loosened, and the prayer of a Catholic is this: "I cannot now become an alderman without perjury. I pray of you to improve my condition so far, that if I become an alderman, I may be only exposed to a penalty of 5001." There are two common errors on the subject of Catholic emancipation; the one, that the emancipated Catholic is to be put on a better footing than the Protestant dissenter, whereas he will be put precisely on the same footing; the other, that he is to be admitted to civil offices, without any guard, exception, or reserve, whereas in the various bills which have been from time to time brought forward, the legal wit of man has been exhausted to provide against every surmise, suspicion, and whisper of the most remote danger to the Protestant church.

The Catholic question is not an English question, but an Irish one; or rather, it is no otherwise an English question than as it is an Irish one. As for the handful of Catholics that are in England, no one, I presume, can be so extravagant as to contend, if they were the only Catholics we had to do with, that it would be of the slightest possible consequence to what offices of the state they were admitted. It would be quite as necessary to exclude the Sandemanians, who are sixteen in number, or to make a test act against the followers of Joanna Southcote, who amount to one hundred and twenty persons. A little chalk on the wall, and a profound ignorance of the subject, soon raises a cry of No Popery; but I question if the danger of admitting five popish peers and two commoners to the benefits of the constitution, could raise a mob

in any market-town in England. Whatever good may accrue to England from the emancipation, or evil may befall this country for withholding emancipation, will reach us only through the medium of Ireland.

I beg to remind you, that in talking of the Catholic religion, you must talk of the Catholic religion as it is carried on in Ireland; you have nothing to do with Spain, or France, or Italy: the religion you are to examine is the Irish Catholic religion. You are not to consider what it was, but what it is; not what individuals profess, but what is generally professed; not what individuals do, but what is generally practised. I constantly see in advertisements from country meetings, all these species of monstrous injustice played off against the Catholics. The inquisition exists in Spain and Portugal; therefore I confound place, and vote against the Catholics of Ireland, where it never did exist, nor was purposed to be instituted. There have been many cruel persecutions of Protestants by Catholic governments; and, therefore, I will confound time and place, and vote against the Irish, who live centuries after these persecutions, and in a totally different country. Doctor this, or Doctor that of the Catholic church has written a very violent and absurd pamphlet; therefore I will con found persons, and vote against the whole Irish Catholic church, which has neither sanctioned nor expressed any such opinions. I will continue the incapacities of men of this age, because some men in distant ages, deserved ill of other men in distant ages. They shall expiate the crimes committed before they were born, in a land they never saw, by individuals they never heard of. I will charge them with every act of folly which they have never sanctioned and cannot control. I will sacrifice space, time, and identity, to my zeal for the Protestant church. Now in the midst of all this violence, consider for a moment how you are imposed on by words, and what a serious violation of the rights of your fellow-creatures you are committing. Mr. Murphy lives in Limerick, and Mr. Murphy and his son are subjected to a thousand inconveniences and disadvantages, because they are Catholics. Murphy is a wealthy, honorable, excellent man; he ought to be in the corporation, he cannot get in because he is a Catholic. His son ought to be king's counsel for his talents, and his standing at the bar; he is prevented from reaching this dignity, because he is a Catholic. Why, what reasons do you hear for all this? because

'Whilst Mary was burning Protestants in England, not a single Protestant was executed in Ireland; and yet the terrors of that reign are, at this moment, one of the most operative causes of the exclusion of Irish Catholics.

Queen Mary, three hundred years before the natal day of Mr. Murphy, murdered Protestants in Smithfield; because Louis XIV. dragooned his Protestant subjects, when the predecessor of Murphy's predecessor was not in being; because men are confined in prison, in Madrid, twelve degrees more south than Murphy has ever been in his life: all ages, all climates, are ransacked to perpetuate the slavery of Murphy, the ill-fated victim of political anachronisms.

Suppose a barrister, in defending a prisoner, were to say to the judge, "My lord, I humbly submit to your lordship that this indictment against the prisoner cannot stand good in law; and as the safety of a fellow-creature is concerned, I request your lordship's patient attention to my objections. In the first place, the indictment does not pretend that the prisoner at the bar is himself guilty of the offence, but that some persons of the same religious sect as himself are so; in whose crime he cannot, (I submit,) by any possibility, be implicated, as these criminal persons lived three hundred years before the prisoner was born. In the next place, my lord, the venue of several crimes imputed to the prisoner is laid in countries to which the jurisdiction of this court does not extend; in France, Spain, and Italy, where also the prisoner has never been; and as to the argument used by my learned brother, that it is only want of power, and not want of will, and that the prisoner would commit the crime if he could; I humbly submit, that the custom of England has been to wait for the overt act before pain and penalty are inflicted, and that your lordship would pass a most doleful assize, if punishment depended on evil volition; if men were subjected to legal incapacities from the mere suspicion that they would do harm if they could; and if it were admitted to be sufficient proof of this suspicion, that men of this faith in distant ages, different countries, and under different circumstances, had planned evil, and when occasion offered, done

it."

When are mercy and justice, in fact, ever to return on the earth, if the sins of the elders are to be for ever visited on those who are not even their children? Should the first act of liberated Greece be to recommence the Trojan war? Are the French never to forget the Sicilian vespers; or the Americans the long war waged against their liberties? Is any rule wise, which may set the Irish to recollect what they have suffered ?

The real danger is this, that you have six Irish Catholics for one Irish Protestant. That is the matter of fact, which none of us can help. Is it better policy to make friends, rather than enemies, of this immense population? I allow there is danger to the Protestant church, but much more danger, I am sure there is, in re

sisting than admitting the claims of the Catholics. If I might indulge in visions of glory, and imagine myself an Irish dean or bishop with an immense ecclesiastical income; if the justice or injustice of the case were entirely indifferent to me, and my only object were to live at ease in my possessions, there is no measure for which I should be so anxious as that of Catholic emancipation. The Catholics are now extremely angry and discontented at being shut out from so many offices and honors: the incapacities to which they are subjected, thwart them in all their pursuits: they feel they are a degraded caste. The Protestant feels he is a privileged caste; and not only the Protestant gentleman feels this, but every Protestant servant feels it, and takes care that his Catholic fellow-servant shall perceive it. The difference between the two religions is an eternal source of enmity, ill-will, and hatred, and the Catholic remains in a state of permanent disaffection to the government under which he lives. I repeat that if I were a member of the Irish church, I should be afraid of this position of affairs. I should fear it in peace, on account of riot and insurrection, and in war, on account of rebellion. I should think that my greatest security consisted in removing all just cause of complaint from the Catholic society, in endearing them to the English constitution, by making them feel, as soon as possible, that they shared in its blessings. I should really think my tithes and my glebe on such a plan, worth twenty years' purchase more than under the present system. Suppose the Catholic layman were to think it an evil, that his own church should be less splendidly endowed than that of the Protestant church, whose population is so inferior; yet if he were free himself, and had nothing to complain of, he would not rush into rebellion and insurrection merely to augment the income of his priest. At present you bind the laity and clergy in one common feeling of injustice; each feels for himself, and talks of the injuries of the other. The obvious consequence of Catholic emancipation would be to separate their interests. But another important consequence of Catholic emancipation would be, to improve the condition of the clergy. Their chapels would be put in order, their incomes încreased, and we should soon hear nothing more of the Catholic church. If this measure were carried in March, I believe by the January following, the whole question would be as completely forgotten as the sweating sickness; and that nine Doctor Doyles, at the rate of thirty years to a Doyle, would pass away one after the other, before any human being heard another syllable on the subject. All men gradually yield to the comforts of a good income. Give the Irish archbishop 12007. per annum, the bishop 8007., the priest 2007., the coadjutor 1007. per annum, and the cathedral of Dublin is almost

I

as safe as the cathedral of York. This is the real secret of putting an end to the Catholic question; there is no other; but, remember, I am speaking of provision for the Catholic clergy after emancipation, not before. There is not an Irish clergyman of the church of Rome who would touch one penny of the public money before the laity were restored to civil rights, and why not pay the Catholic clergy as well as the Presbyterian clergy? Ever since the year 1803, the Presbyterian clergy in the north of Ireland have been paid by the government, and the grant is annually brought forward in parliament; and not only are the Presbyterians paid, but one or two other species of Protestant dissenters. The consequence has been loyalty and peace. This way of appeasing dissenters you may call expensive, but is there no expense in injustice? You have at this moment an army of 20,000 men in Ireland, horse, foot, and artillery, at an annual expense of a million and a half of money; three times as much as the expense of the allowance to the Catholic clergy; and this army is so necessary, that the government dare not at this moment remove a single regiment from Ireland. Abolish these absurd and disgraceful distinctions, and a few troops of horse, to help the constables on fairdays, will be more than sufficient for the Catholic limb of the empire.

Now for a very few of the shameful misrepresentations circulated respecting the Irish Catholics; for I repeat again that we have nothing to do with Spanish or Italian, but with Irish Catholics: it is not true that the Irish Catholics refuse to circulate the Bible in English; on the contrary, they have in Ireland circulated several editions of the Scriptures in English. In the last year, the Catholic prelates prepared and put forth a stereotype edition of the Bible, of a small print and low price, to ensure its general circulation. They circulate the Bible with their own notes, and how, as Catholics, can they act otherwise? Are not our prelates and Bartlett's-buildings acting in the same manner? and must not all churches, if they are consistent, act in the same manner? The Bibles Catholics quarrel with are Protestant Bibles without notes, or Protestant

1 I say almost, because I hate to overstate an argument; and it is impossible to deny, that there is danger to a church to which seven millions contribute largely, and in which six millions and a half disbelieve: my argument merely is, that such a church would be more safe in proportion as it interfered less with the comforts and ease of its natural enemies, and rendered their position more desirable and agreeable. I firmly believe the toleration act to be quite as conducive to the security of the church of England, as it is to the Dissenters. Perfect toleration and the abolition of every incapacity as a consequence of religious opinions, is not what is commonly called a receipt for innovation, but a receipt for the quiet and permanence of every establishment which has the real good sense to adopt it.