tion that fime during which they had no power to exercise,

that is, from the Revolution, till the relaxation of the penal laws. During all that time the political action of the Catholic was physically impossible.

"God forbid that I should be understood as saying any thing in the defence of that system. I trust I have already said enough to obtain credit from the House, for sincerely reprobating its whole policy. But the very reason for which I condemn it,—namely, that the Catholics of necessity lay bound and prostrate under its operation,-prevents me from inferring any thing from their quiescence as to what would have been their conduct, had the pressure been removed. I must therefore restrain my view to that portion of this time, during which any means of political action was in their hands; and, referring to that portion, what are indeed the facts which it presents?

"In the year 1792, the Catholic Committee of that day thought it necessary to publish resolutions, stating that, the Committee had been informed, that reports had been circulated, that the application of the Catholics for relief extended to total and unqualified emancipation.'-In those days, Sir, the Committee seem to have considered this even as an imputation incumbent on them to repel; for they go on to state, that they therefore think it necessary to declare, that the whole of our late application' (I now use their own words), whether to His Majesty's Ministers, or to men in power, or to private members of the Legislature, neither did nor does contain any thing more in substance, or in principle, than the four following objects:-first, admission to the profession and practice of the law,-secondly, a capacity to serve as county magistrates,-third, a right to be summoned and to serve on grand and petit juries,-fourth, the right of voting in counties, only for Protestant Members of Parliament; in such a manner, however, as that a Roman Catholic freeholder should not vote, unless he rents a farm

of 201. per annum in addition to his 40s. freehold, or else shall be in possession of a freehold of 201. a year.'

"This formal act of the Committee was issued into the world under the signature of their Secretary, to undeceive the public as to those points on which they had taken up such erroneous impressions. Well, in the very year following, the Irish Parliament conceded not merely the whole of this ultimatum of Catholic desire, but a vast deal more,-the elective franchise unrestrained, and admission to very many offices not here alluded to. But, what has been the degree of content and moderation, what the order and purity of elections, what the mildness and constitutional language of the various organs of public feeling, whether aggregate or representative, which have ever since existed, what the feelings between man and man, which Ireland has ever since exhibited,—I shall not trespass on the House by detailing; wishing they should take the fact from what must be their own knowledge, rather than from my statement.

"Sir, hardly were the political concessions granted, when Ireland was in a flame from end to end; and one continued month of peace or security it has never known, from that hour to the present! And yet are we called on to assume as a matter so evident, that nothing but the most wilful and intolerant bigotry can prevent us from acknowledging, that the progress of Catholic content is in the direct proportion of the concession of political power!!!

"I know it will be said, that all this is easily accounted for; that the ambition of man is naturally progressive, and that so long as there is any unobtained residue of what is sought for, agitation will necessarily prevail.

66

Well, then, Sir, I will not shrink from the task, however painful, of contemplating the career of the Catholic party when last they possessed in Ireland political power unrestrained.-Gentlemen on both sides of the House have talked much of the Revolution in England, have discussed

the measures of its great founders, and the true nature of their views; rightly considering it as a period when the springs of human action were developed in the fullest manner, and particularly as a time when the measures taken were intimately connected with the subject now under our consideration: but I know not how it is, that, as if by common consent on both sides of the House, they have abstained from the smallest allusion to what was passing in Ireland at the same period-which, however, will be found, if I mistake not, to abound with matter much more apt for illustration.

"In the last year of King James the Second, after a lapse of twenty-four years since any Parliament had sat in Ireland, he summoned one to meet in Dublin, in his own, immediate presence. For obvious reasons, Catholicity was likely to be its ruling characteristic; indeed, the Catholics naturally exerted all their energies to procure the returns of their friends at a moment so auspicious for their views: and it was the curious, and to us perhaps not uninstructive result of their exertions, that the House of Commons which was returned consisted of six Protestants and about two hundred and thirty Catholics.

POWER.

"Here, then, are the Catholics for the last time IN FULL Let us now inquire, what measures they pursued. "Before entering on any view of their proceedings, allow me to observe that this was no casual concourse of the dregs of the people, but the genuine Catholic Aristocracy of Ireland. I could easily enumerate the names of its principal members; but the detail might appear invidious, as they are generally the names of the families who in the same towns and counties (from which these members were respectively returned) at this day possess deservedly the greatest influence. In truth, Sir, they were not only the political but the natural progenitors of some of the most respectable members of the present Catholic Committee. Like that Com

mittee, they possessed the property, the intelligence, and the spirit of the party of that day: like them also, they consisted of persons, individually no doubt of great respectability and worth, but whose actions as a party it remains for us to consider.

"Their first step was to repeal an Act well known in Ireland by the name of the Act of Settlement-of which it may not be unnecessary to inform the English Gentlemen in this House, that it was an Act which had passed in the 14th and 15th years of Charles the Second, confirming to the various Protestant proprietors the estates which, after the troubles of his father's reign, and a long course of grants and forfeitures, a court of claims had respectively allotted to them. Many of these lands, I am ready to admit, had been seized by the violence and injustice inseparable from civil wars; but the infinitely greater proportion of them had been forfeited by the undoubted treasons of the original proprietors. This Act of Settlement, as appears by the Down Survey, constituted the title to rather more than 12 millions of English acres, that is, to about two thirds of the whole of Ireland: twenty-seven years had then elapsed since the passing of the Act; and these lands had become the object, not merely of family settlements and incumbrances, but of the most extensive improvements that had ever been effected within the same period in any country.-This Act was simply repealed by the Catholic Parliament, and the whole of these lands vested in His Majesty for the purpose of re-delivery to the old Catholic proprietors, as they might respectively make good their titles: and such repeal thus summarily disposed of all the property which the Protestants of Ireland had acquired during the forty-eight years preceding,-during the last twenty-seven of which they had been in undisturbed and unquestioned possession!

"I am aware that I address some Gentlemen, who, if they spoke out upon this subject, think that this Parliament

Ꮮ

was not much to blame for re-possessing themselves, however roughly, of the estates of their ancestors. But, waving all argument on that point, I will only observe that the next Act of this Parliament was one which cannot plead even such justification; for the first Act of Repeal operated as a seizure of only two thirds of Ireland, while in the remaining third the Protestants possessed a great quantity of Real property ac quired long prior to that period-acquired not by forfeiture, but by purchase and intermarriage; and this became the object of a second Act, to which I shall beg now to advert.

2

This second Act, Sir, enumerates a long list of names of Protestant Nobility and Gentry, declaring that every one of them are thereby declared and adjudged traitors, convicted and attainted of high treason, and shall suffer such pains of death, and penalties of forfeiture, as in cases of high treason are accustomed. To enable the House to judge of the general nature of this list, it may be sufficient to observe that it contained the names of sixty-two Lay and nine Spiritual Peers, above thirty Baronets, above eighty Clergymen, very nearly two thousand two hundred Esquires, and many others-in all NEARLY TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED

PERSONS."

Here is a specimen of Catholic MODERATION, IN POWER!

SIR.

LETTER XV.

UNDER the cloak of RELIGION, and in the sacred' name of JESUS CHRIST, the Priesthood of Ireland frequently enjoin on the generous natives a course of Church-discipline as severe as Egyptian bondage! They impose heavy fines, and extort pecuniary contributions, under the fictitious pre