kind, you are of course precluded from a second. Austria may have a second situation, Prussia may have a second, but England seems to have linked her post and being to her glory, and when she ceases to be the first she is nothing. According to this supposition, and it is a supposition which I do not frame, but find in your country, the day may not be very remote, when you will have to fight for being, and for what you value more than being, the ancient renown of your island: you have said it yourselves, and you have added, that Ireland is your vulnerable part: why vulnerable?-Vulnerable, because you have misgoverned her. It may then happen that on Irish ground, and by an Irish hand, the destinies of that ancient monarchy, called Britain, may be decided. Accordingly you have voted your army, but you have forgot to vote your people; you must vote their passions likewise. Horrors at the French proceedings will do much, but it is miserable to rely on the crimes of your enemies always, on your own wisdom never; besides, those horrors did not prevent Prussia from leaving your alliance, nor Austria from making peace, nor the United Irishmen from making war. Loyalty will do much; but you require morepatience under taxes and loans, such as are increased far beyond what we have been accustomed to, from one million and a half to nine millions, nor patience only, but ardour. The strong qualities, not such as the scolding dialect of certain gentlemen would excite; a fire, that in the case of an invasion will not sit as a spy on the doubt of the day and calculate, but though the first battle should be unsuccessful, would, with a desperate fidelity, come on and embody with the destinies of England. It is a wretched thing to ask how would they act in such a case. What! after a connexion of six hundred years, to thank your admiral for your safety, or the wind, or anything but your own wisdom; and, therefore, the question is not whether the Catholics shall get so many seats, but whether you shall get so many millions; in such a case you will have all people. What is it that constitutes the strength and health of England but this sort of vitality, that her privileges, like her money, circulate everywhere, and centre nowhere; this it was which equality would have given, but did not give France; this it was which the plain sense of your ancestors, without equality, did give the English; a something, which limited her kings, drove her enemies, and made a handful of men fill the world with their name. Will you, in your union with Ireland, withhold the regimen which has made you strong, and continue the regimen which has made her feeble? You will further recollect, that you have invited her to your patrimony, and hitherto you have given her taxes, and an additional debt; I believe it is an addition of twenty-six millions: the other

part of your patrimony, I should be glad to see it; talk plainly and honestly to the Irish: "It is true your taxes are increased, and your debts multiplied; but here are our privileges, great burthens, and great privileges; this is the patrimony of England, and with this does she assess, recruit, inspire, consolidate." But the Protestant ascendancy, it is said, alone can keep the country; namely, the gentry, clergy and nobility against the French, and without the people: it may be so; but in 1641, above ten thousand troops were sent from England to assist that party; in 1689, twenty-three regiments were raised in England to assist that party; in 1798, the English militia were sent over to assist that party: what can be done by spirit will be done by them; but would the city of London, on such assurances, risk a guinea? The Parliament of Ireland did risk everything, and are now nothing; and in their extinction left this instruction, not to their posterity for they have none; but to you, who come in the place of their posterity, not to depend on a sect of religion, nor trust the final issue of your fortunes to anything less than the whole of your people.

The Parliament of Ireland-of that assembly I have a parental recollection. I sate by her cradle, I followed her hearse. In fourteen years she acquired for Ireland what you did not acquire for England in a century-freedom of trade, independency of the legislature, independency of the judges, restoration of the final judicature, repeal of a perpetual mutiny bill, habeas corpus act, nullum tempus act-a great work! You will exceed it and I shall rejoice. I call my countrymen to witness, if in that business I compromised the claims of my country, or temporised with the power of England; but there was one thing which baffled the effort of the patriot, and defeated the wisdom of the senate, it was the folly of the theologian. When the Parliament of Ireland rejected the Catholic petition, and assented to the calumnies then uttered against the Catholic body, on that day she voted the Union: if you should adopt a similar conduct, on that day you will vote the separation : many good and pious reasons you may give; many good and pious reasons she gave, and she lies THERE with her many good and her pious reasons. That the Parliament of Ireland should have entertained prejudices, I am not astonished; but that you, that you who have, as individuals and as conquerors, visited a great part of the globe, and have seen men in all their modifications, and Providence in all her ways; that you, now at this time of day, should throw up dikes against the Pope, and barriers against the Catholic, instead of uniting with that Catholic to throw up barriers against the French, this surprises; and, in addition to this, that you should

have set up the Pope in Italy, to tremble at him in Ireland; and further, that you should have professed to have placed yourself at the head of a Christian not a Protestant league, to defend the civil and religious liberty of Europe, and should deprive of their civil liberty one-fifth of yourselves, on account of their religion—this surprises me; and also that you should prefer to buy allies by subsidies, rather than fellow-subjects by privileges; and that you should now stand, drawn out, as it were, in battalion, 16,000,000 against 36,000,000, and should at the same time paralyze a fifth of you own numbers, by excluding them from some of the principal benefits of your constitution, at the very time you say all your numbers are inadequate, unless inspired by those very privileges.

As I recommend to you to give the privileges, so I should recommend the Catholics to wait cheerfully and dutifully. The temper with which they bear the privation of power and privilege is evidence of their qualification: they will recollect the strength of their case, which sets them above impatience; they will recollect the growth of their case from the time it was first agitated, to the present moment; and, in that growth, perceive the perishable nature of the objections, and the immortal quality of the principle they contend for. They will further recollect what they have gotten already-rights of religion, rights of property, and above all, the elective franchise, which is in itself the seminal principle of everything else: with a vessel so laden, they will be too wise to leave the harbour, and trust the fallacy of any wind: nothing can prevent the ultimate success of the Catholics but intemperance. For this they will be too wise; the charges uttered against them they will answer by their allegiance: so should I speak to the Catholics. To the Protestant I would say, You have gotten the land and powers of the country, and it now remains to make those acquisitions eternal. Do not you see, according to the present state and temper of England and France, that your country must ultimately be the seat of war. Do not you see, that your children must stand in the front of the battle, with uncertainty and treachery in the rear of it. If, then, by ten or twelve seats in parliament given to Catholics, you could prevent such a day, would not the compromise be everything? What is your wretched monopoly, the shadow of your present, the memory of your past power, compared to the safety of your families, the security of your estates, and the solid peace and repose of your island? Besides, you have an account to settle with the empire: might not the empire accost you thus? "For one hundred years you have been in possession of the country, and very loyally have you taken to yourselves the power and profit thereof. I am now to receive

at your hands the fruits of all this, and the unanimous support of your people where is it? now, when I am beset with enemies and in my day of trial." Let the Protestant ascendancy answer that question, for I cannot. Above twenty millions have been wasted on their shocking contest, and a great proportion of troops of the line locked up in the island, that they may enjoy the ascendancy of the country, and the empire not to receive the strength of it. Such a system cannot last their destinies must be changed and exalted; the Catholic no longer their inferior, nor they inferior to every one, save only the Catholic; both must be free, and both must fight,-but it is the enemy, and not one another: thus the sects of religion renouncing, the one all foreign connexion, and the other all domestic proscription, shall form a strong country; and thus the two islands, renouncing all national prejudices, shall form a strong empire-a phalanx in the west to check, perhaps ultimately to confound the ambition of the enemy. I know the ground on which I stand, and the truths which I utter, and I appeal to the objects you urge against me, which I constitute my judges, to the spirit of your own religion, and to the genius of your own revolution; and I consent to have the principle which I maintain tried by any test, and equally sound, I contend, it will be found, whether you apply it to constitution where it is freedom, or to empire where it is strength, or to religion where it is light.

Turn to the opposite principle, proscription and discord—it has made in Ireland not only war, but even peace calamitous: witness the one that followed the victories of King William, to the Catholics a sad servitude, to the Protestants a drunken triumph, and to both a peace without trade and without constitution. You have seen in 1798 rebellion break out again, the enemy masking her expeditions in consequence of the state of Ireland, twenty millions lost, one farthing of which did not tell in empire, and blood barbarously, boyishly, and most ingloriously expended. These things are in your recollection: one of the causes of these things, whether efficient, or instrumental, or aggravating, the proscriptive system I mean, you may now remove; it is a great work!-or has ambition not enlarged your mind, or only enlarged the sphere of its action? What the best men in Ireland wished to do but could not do, the patriot courtier, and the patriot oppositionist, you may accomplish. What Mr. Gardiner, Mr. Langrishe, men who had no views of popularity or interest, or any but the public good; what Mr. Daly, Mr. Burgh, men whom I shall not pronounce to be dead, if their genius live in this measure; what Mr. Forbes, every man that loved Ireland; what Lord Pery, the wisest man Ireland ever produced; what Mr. Hutchinson, an able, accomplished, and

enlightened servant of the Crown; what Lord Charlemont, superior to his early prejudices, bending under years, and experience, and public affection; what that dying nobleman; what our Burke; what the most profound divine, Dr. Newcome, for instance, our late Primate (his mitre stood in the front of that measure); what these men supported, and against whom? Against men who had no opinion at that time, or at any time, on the subject, except that which the minister ordered, or men, whose opinions were so extravagant, that even bigotry must blush for them: and yet those men above mentioned had not before them considerations which should make you wise-that the Pope has evaporated, and that France has covered the best part of Europe. That terrible sight is now before you; it is a gulf that has swallowed up a great portion of your treasure, it yawns for your being-were it not wise, therefore, to come to a good understanding with the Irish now; it will be miserable if anything untoward should happen hereafter, to say we did not foresee this danger; against other dangers, against the Pope we were impregnable; but if, instead of guarding against dangers which are not, we should provide against dangers which are, the remedy is in your hands-the franchises of the constitution. Your ancestors were nursed in that cradle, the ancestors of the petitioners were less fortunate, the posterity of both born to new and strange dangers; let them agree to renounce jealousies and proscriptions, in order to oppose what, without that agreement, will overpower both. Half Europe is in battalion against us, and we are damning one another on account of mysteries, when we should form against the enemy, and march.

25th May, 1808.

The petition which the House has just heard read, contains the sentiments of the Catholics of Ireland: not only that petition, but the other petitions presented this day speak the sense of that body. I may therefore fairly assume, that they speak the sentiments of fourfifths of the Irish population. The petitions come from a considerable portion of your electors, having political power, forming a part of the United Kingdom, and applying to the constitutional organ for a legitimate object. In discussing the merits of the petitioners' claims, I should recommend to gentlemen to avoid any intemperate language, and to adopt a spirit of concord, that nothing may pass in debate which shall sharpen the public mind. Whatever decision the House may come to upon the motion which I shall have the honour to propose, I should hope that the temper with which it will be met, and the man