genan, the bitter and implacable enemy of the sect; and it is so important an oath, so little known and read in England, that I cannot, in spite of my wish to be brief, abstain from quoting it. I deny your right to call No Popery, till you are master of its contents.

that I will not exercise any privilege to which I am or may become entitled, to disturb and weaken the Protestant religion, and Protestant government, in this kingdom. So help me God."

This Oath is taken by every Catholic in Ireland, and a similar oath, allowing for the difference of circumstances of the two countries, is taken in England.

It appears from the evidence taken before the two Houses, and lately printed, that if Catholic emancipation were carried, there would be little or no difficulty in obtaining from the Pope an agreement, that the nomination of the Irish Catholic Bishops should be made at home constitutionally by the Catholics, as it is now in fact, and in practice, and that the Irish prelates would go a great way, in arranging a system of general edu

which now renders such a union impossible, were laid aside. This great measure carried, the Irish Catholics would give up all their endowments abroad, if they received for them an

"I do swear that I do abjure, condemn, and detest, as unchristian and impious, the principle, that it is lawful to murder, destroy, or any ways injure, any person whatsoever, for or under the pretext of being a heretic; and I do declare solemnly, before God, that I believe no act, in itself unjust, immoral, or wicked, can ever be justified or excused by or under pretence or colour, that it was done either for the good of the Church, or in obedience to any ecclesiastical power whatsoever. I also declare that it is not an article of the Catholic faith, neither am Ication, if the spirit of proselytism, thereby required to believe or profess, that the Pope is infallible; or that I am bound to obey any order, in its own nature immoral, though the Pope, or any ecclesiastical power, should issue or direct such order; but, on the con-equivalent at home; for now Irish trary, I hold that it would be sinful in me to pay any respect or obedience thereto. I further declare, that I do not believe that any sin whatsoever committed by me, can be forgiven at the mere will of any pope or any priest, or of any persons whatsoever; but that sincere sorrow for past sins, a firm and sincere resolution to avoid future guilt, and to atone to God, are previous and indispensable requisites to establish a well-founded expectation of forgive-tible with the safety of their faith, which ness; and that any person who receives absolution, without these previous requisites, so far from obtaining thereby any remission of his sins, incurs the additional guilt of violating a sacrament: and I do swear, that I will defend, to the utmost of my power, the settlement and arrangement of property in this country, as established by the laws now in being.-I do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present Church establishment, for the purpose of substituting a Catholic establishment in its stead; and I do solemnly swear, VOL. II.

priests are fast resorting to the Continent for education, allured by the endowments which the French government are cunningly restoring and aug. menting. The intercourse with the see of Rome might and would, after Catholic emancipation, be so managed, that it should be open, upon grave occasions, or, if thought proper, on every occasion, to the inspection of commissioners. There is no security, compa

the Catholics are not willing to give. But what is Catholic emancipation as far as England is concerned? not an equal right of 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 mea

The Catholic Bishops, since the death by the chapters or the parochial clergy, to of the Pretender, are recommended either the Pope; and there is no instance of his deviating from their choice.

I beg to remind you, that in talking

sured by the horror and perturbation | cipation, or evil may befall this country their repeal would excite, they are laws for withholding emancipation, will of the utmost importance to the defence reach us only through the medium of of the English Church; but if it be of Ireland. importance to the Church that pains and penalties should be thus kept sus-of the Catholic religion, you must talk pended over men's heads, then these of the Catholic religion as it is carried bills are an effectual security against on in Ireland; you have nothing to do Catholics as well as Protestants and with Spain, or France, or Italy: the the manacles so much confided in, are religion you are to examine is the Irish You are not to not taken off, but loosened, and the Catholic religion. prayer of a Catholic is this:-"I can- consider what it was, but what it is: not now become an alderman, without not what individuals profess, but what perjury. I pray of you to improve my is generally professed, not what indicondition so far, that if I become an viduals do, but what is generally alderman, I may be only exposed to a practised. I constantly see, in adverpenalty of 500l." There are two com- tisements from county meetings, all mon errors upon the subject of Catholic these species of monstrous injustice emancipation; the one, that the eman-played off against the Catholics. The cipated 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 eman

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 confound 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 upon by words,

While Mary was burning Protestants in England, not a single Protestant was exe cuted 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.

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 de

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 incon-pended upon evil volition; if men were veniences and disadvantages, because subjected to legal incapacities from the they are Catholics. Murphy is a mere suspicion that they would do harm wealthy, honourable, excellent man; if they could; and if it were admitted he ought to be in the corporation; he to be sufficient proof of this suspicion, cannot get in because he is a Catholic, that men of this faith in distant ages, His son ought to be king's counsel for different countries, and under different his talents, and his standing at the bar; circumstances, had planned evil, and, he is prevented from reaching this dig- when occasion offered, done it." nity, because he is a Catholic. Why, what reasons do you hear for all this? Because 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.

When are mercy and justice, in fact, ever to return upon the earth, if the sins of the elders are to be for ever visited on these 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 four 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 resisting 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 honours: 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 The difference between

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 perceive it.

the two religions is an eternal source of York. This is the real secret of of enmity, ill-will, and hatred, and the putting an end to the Catholic quesCatholic remains in a state of perma- tion; there is no other; but, remember, nent disaffection to the government I am speaking of provision for the Caunder which he lives. I repeat that if tholic clergy after emancipation, not I were a member of the Irish Church, before. There is not an Irish clergyI should be afraid of this position of man of the Church of Rome who would affairs. I should fear it in peace, on touch one penny of the public money account of riot and insurrection, and before the laity were restored to civil in war, on account of rebellion. I rights, and why not pay the Catholic should think that my greatest security clergy as well as the Presbyterian consisted in removing all just cause of clergy? Ever since the year 1803, the complaint from the Catholic society, Presbyterian clergy in the North of in endearing them to the English con- Ireland have been paid by the governstitution, by making them feel, as soon ment, and the grant is annually brought as possible, that they shared in its forward in parliament; and not only blessings. I should really think my are the Presbyterians paid, but one or tithes and my glebe, upon such a plan, two other species of Protestant Dissenworth twenty years' purchase more ters. The consequence has been loythan under the present system. Sup-alty and peace. This way of appeasing pose the Catholic layman were to think Dissenters you may call expensive, it an evil, that his own church should but is there no expense in injustice? be less splendidly endowed than that You have at this moment an army of of the Protestant Church, whose popu- 20,000 men in Ireland, horse, foot, and lation is so inferior; yet if he were free artillery, at an annual expense of a himself, and had nothing to complain million and a half of money; about of, he would not rush into rebellion one third of this sum would be the and insurrection, merely to augment expense of the allowance to the Cathothe income of his priest. At present lic clergy; and this army is so necesyou bind the laity and clergy in one sary, that the government dare not at common feeling of injustice; each this moment remove a single regiment feels for himself, and talks of the inju- from Ireland. Abolish these absurd ries of the other. The obvious conse- and disgraceful distinctions, and a few quence of Catholic emancipation would troops of horse, to help the constables be to separate their interests. But on fair days, will be more than suffianother important consequence of Ca-cient for the Catholic limb of the emtholic emancipation would be to improve the condition of the clergy. Their chapels would be put in order, their incomes increased, and we should soon hear nothing more of the Catholic Church. If this measure were carried * I say almost, because I hate to overstate in March, I believe by the January an argument, and it is impossible to deny following, the whole question would be that there is danger to a Church, to which as completely forgotten as the sweating seven millions contribute largely, and in which six millions disbelieve: my argument sickness, and that nine Doctor Doyles, merely is, that such a Church would be at the rate of thirty years to a Doyle, more safe in proportion as it interfered less would pass away one after the other, with the comforts and ease of its natural before any human being heard another desirable and agreeable. I firmly believe enemies, and rendered their position more syllable on the subject. All men gra- the Toleration Act to be quite as conducive dually yield to the comforts of a good to the security of the Church of England income. Give the Irish archbishop tion, and the abolition of every incapacity 1200l. per annum; the bishop 800l., as a consequence of religious opinions, is the priest 2007, the coadjutor 100% not, what is commonly called, a receipt for per annum, and the Cathedral of Dub-innovation, but a receipt for the quiet and permanence of every establishment which lin is almost as safe as the Cathedral has the real good sense to adopt it.

pire.

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

as it is to the Dissenters. Perfect tolera

are occasionally exposed, in which you are utterly helpless, and must give way to their claims: and if you do it then, you will do it badly; you may call it an arrangement, but arrangements made at such times are much like the bargains between a highwayman and a traveller, a pistol on one side, and a purse on the other: the rapid scramble of armed violence, and the unqualified surrender of helpless timidity. If you think the thing must be done at some time or another, do it when you are calm and powerful, and when you need not do it.

Spanish or Italian, but with Irish Ca- | till you are caught in one of those tholics: it is not true that the Irish political attitudes to which all countries 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 insure 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 Bibles with Protestant notes, and how can they do otherwise without giving up their religion? They deny, upon oath, that the infallibility of the Pope is any necessary part of the Catholic faith. They, upon oath, declare that Catholic people are forbidden to worship images, and saints, and relics. They, upon oath, abjure the temporal power of the Pope, or his right to absolve any Ca-out No Popery, would fearlessly put tholic from his oath. They renounce, upon oath, all right to forfeited lands, and covenant, upon oath, not to destroy or plot against the Irish Protestant Church. What more can any man want, whom anything will content ?

There are a set of high-spirited men who are very much afraid of being afraid; who cannot brook the idea of doing anything from fear, and whose conversation is full of fire and sword, when any apprehension of resistance is alluded to. I have a perfect confidence in the high and unyielding spirit, and in the military courage of the English; and I have no doubt, but that many of the country gentlemen who now call

themselves at the head of their embattled yeomanry, to control the Irish Catholics. My objection to such courage is, that it would certainly be exercised unjustly, and probably exercised in vain. I should deprecate any rising of the Catholics as the most grievous misfortune which could happen to the empire and to themselves. They had far better endure all they do endure, and a great deal worse, than try the experiment. But if they do try it, you may depend upon it, they will

Some people talk as if they were quite teased and worried by the eternal clamours of the Catholics; but if you are eternally unjust, can you expect anything more than to be eternally vexed by the victims of your injustice? You want all the luxury of oppression, do it at their own time, and not at yours. without any of its inconvenience. I should think the Catholics very much to blame, if they ever ceased to importune the legislature for justice, so long as they could find one single member of parliament who would advocate their cause.

The putting the matter to rest by an effort of the county of York, or by any decision of parliament against them, is utterly hopeless. Every year increases the Catholic population, and the Catholic wealth, and the Catholic claims,

They will not select a fortnight in the summer, during a profound peace, when corn and money abound, and when the Catholics of Europe are unconcerned spectators. If you make a resolution to be unjust, you must make another resolution to be always strong, always vigilant, and always rich; you must commit no blunders, exhibit no deficiencies, and meet with no misfortunes; you must present a square phalanx of impenetrable strength, for keen-eyed revenge is riding round