ther gave the catholics the privilege of teaching school without licence from the ordinary, and permitted them to take two or more apprentices.

Whether this bill was intended as a reward for the fidelity of the sixty-eight, or a compliance with some order from the English cabinet, does not clearly appear; but it certainly was introduced without consulting the catholic committee. That body, however, in pursuance of its resolution, and of the decided wishes of those who declared in its favour, prepared a petition, which detailed at large the peculiar hardships of their situation. This Mr. O'Hara attempted to present on the 25th of January; but he quickly withdrew it, in consequence of some formal objections, and of the hostile temper of the house, very unequivo cally manifested by the furious speeches of some members, and the heat and ferment that seemed to agitate the whole. Another petition was substituted a few days after, and presented on the 18th of February by Mr. Egan. This last was couched in language the most humble, and simply entreated the house to take into consideration, " Whether the removal of some of the "civil incapacities under which they laboured, and the restora. "tion of the petitioners to some share in the elective franchise, "which they enjoyed long after the revolution, would not tend "to strengthen the protestant state, add new vigour to in"dustry, and afford protection and happiness to the catholics "of Ireland."

A petition was likewise presented by the inhabitants of Belfast in favour of the catholic claims. While the sufferers themselves were supplicating partial relief, in terms almost abject, their nor thern friends, little accustomed to temporise with the passions or prejudices of their opponents, boldly relied on the justice of the application, and asked for a complete repeal of all penal and restrictive laws against the catholics; so that they might be put on the same footing with their protestant fellow subjects.

It

.

It has been already mentioned that a resolution expressing si milar sentiments was withdrawn, lest it should be lost at the preceding celebration of the 14th of July in Belfast; but such had been the progress of liberality among the dissenters, that this unqualified application to parliament was accompanied by six hundred protestant signatures.

The House of Commons, however, was not actuated by the same spirit. These petitions were indeed received; but after some days they were taken off the table, on the motion of the Right Hon. David Latouche, and rejected by a very large majority; thereby cementing the already formidable union of sects, and binding the catholics and dissenters more closely together by a community of insult.

In the debate on this motion, Mr. Grattan reprobated the bigotry of the protestant ascendency, and predicted the final success of the catholics, by one of those sublime comparisons that peculiarly characterise his eloquence." What, never be "free" exclaimed this overwhelming orator" Three millions "of your people condemned by their fellow subjects to an everlasting slavery, in all changes of time, decay of prejudice, encrease of knowledge, the fall of papal power, and the esta"blishment of philosophic and moral ascendency in its place! "Never be free! Do you mean to tell the Roman Catholic, it "is in vain that you take oaths and declarations of allegiance; «it would be in vain even to renounce the spiritual power of "the Pope, and become like any other dissenter, it would make "no difference as to your emancipation: go to France: go to "America: carry your property, industry, manufactures, and "family, to a land of liberty. This is a sentence which requires "the power of a god and the malignity of a demon: you are ❝ not competent to pronounce it. Believe me, you may as well plant your foot on the earth, and hope by that resistance to "stop the diurnal revolution, which advances you to that morn

"ing sun, which is to shine alike on the protestant and catho "lic, as you can hope to arrest the progress of that other .. light, reason and justice, which approach to liberate the ca"tholic and liberalise the protestant. Even now the question «is on its way, and making its destined and irresistible progress, "which you, with all your authority, will have no power to re"sist; no more than any other great truth, or any great ordi"nance of nature, or any law of motion, which mankind is free "to contemplate, but cannot resist there is a justice linked to "their cause, and a truth that sets off their application."

Notwithstanding the adverse disposition of parliament, Sir Hercules Langrishe's bill was allowed to pass into a law; but in the debates to which it gave rise, the speakers on both sides of the question, even many of its supporters, who were likewise adherents of government, vented the most unmeasured abuse against the catholic committee, against those who defended it by resolutions and addresses, against the people of Belfast, and the societies of United Irishmen. Of these last, that of Dublin was attacked with peculiar severity, because it had made itself pre-eminently obnoxious, by several publications of various merits and importance. One of these, The Digest of the Popery Laws, prepared by the Hon. Simon Butler, an eminent lawyer, and the first chairman of the society, was admirably calculated to promote the cause for which it was written. By merely stripping the statutes of their preambles and recitals, and bringing the enacting clauses together in a simple arrangement, it presented, at one view, such a monstrous mass of tyranny and oppression, as shocked almost every reader.

Indeed, although this society appeared to be actuated by the purest principles of patriotism, it had so conducted itself, that it did not seem to have gained a single friend in either house of parliament. The Castle and its followers were such enemies as it must have counted on from its very origin; but their enmity

was

3

not more marked than the aversion of the opposition. This party had formed itself, as already stated, about the time of the regency dispute, into a whig club, and had hoped to collect the nation under its standard, by pledging itself to a bill for preventing placemen and pensioners from sitting in parliament, with others of a similar nature and equal importance. The members of opposition were by no means agreed as to the catholic claims or a parliamentary reform; although the able and eloquent Mr. Grattan, whose talents, exertions and public estimation had deservedly made him the head of the party, together with Mr. Curran, and some others, were avowed friends to both. In order, therefore, to preserve the appearance of co-operation and unanimity, the club remained intentionally silent on these two vital questions. Its prudence, however, did not increase its strength; for so entirely had the United Irishmen succeeded in drawing general attention to their own objects, that a place bill and a pension bill were considered as petty evasions of more important measures. The candidates for political situation who rested their pretensions on them were despised and derided, and those societies had not been instituted many months, before they destroyed the popularity and extinguished the power of the whig club. No wonder, then, that the members of opposition were not their parliamentary advocates, and were in some instances among their most inveterate abusers.

2

But the effects of the abuse thrown out against the Catholics and their committee were infinitely more important. The members of that religion had been charged with tenets inimical to good order and government; with harbouring pretensions to the forfeited estates of their forefathers; and with wishing to subvert the existing establishment that they might erect a popish one in its stead. These declarations were denied by a very full and unequivocal declaration from the committee; which was subsequently subscribed both by the clergy and laity. It also published the answers of foreign universities to queries proposed

at the desire of Mr. Pitt, by the committee of English Catholics on the same religious opinions attributed to their communion; which, in all their answers are explicitly disavowed. The faculty of divinity at Louvain in particular expressed itself "struck with astonishment, that such questions should at the "end of this eighteenth century, be proposed to any learned body, by inhabitants of a kingdom that glories in the talents " and discernment of its natives." These measures exceedingly comforted the timid protestants.

The majority of the committee had also been stigmatized in parliament as turbulent and seditious agitators, whose conduct should rather operate to prevent the relief granted to the good demeanour of the Sixty-Eight. The petition of the former was said to be only the act of an obscure faction, confined merely to the capital, disavowed by the great mass of the Catholics, ignorant of their sentiments, and incompetent to speak on their behalf.

If it was intended ever to proceed further, by any secondary body, in pursuit of emancipation, this objection of incompetency, could no longer be overlooked, urged as it had been with pecu, liar force, and well founded as it certainly appeared to be, were the organization' only of the committee considered. The neces sity of unequivocally shewing, that whatever future application might be made, was conformable to the wishes of the Catholics at large, and, perhaps, also, the desire of shaking off an hereditary aristocracy, which had become odious in consequence of the conduct of the Sixty-Eight, determined the committee to devise a plan, whereby the sentiments of every individual of that persuasion in Ireland should be ascertained. To this it was further impelled, by an assurance which was possibly given under an idea, that compliance with the requisite would be impracticable, and which is alluded to in the plan itself, in the following words: "We have the first authority for asserting, that this application

86