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MR. O'CONNELL assumes to be the representative and organ of the Roman Catholic people in Ireland. his assumption be warranted-and, to confess a truth, it does not seem very extravagant—the “Memoir on Ireland and the Irish" suggests an explanation and a defence of severities cruel even as those which it most falsely charges upon the English nation. This conclusion is indisputable, if the Roman Catholics of the present day "shame not their sires."

The argument is simple. To understand its force no more is necessary than to compare the manifesto embodied in Mr. O'Connell's book, with the professions and the habits of Irish Roman Catholics during that period in which the burden of penal laws lay heavy on them. Of the spirit which then prevailed in the Roman Catholic body, we shall be satisfied to adduce the testimony of a single witness—Mr. Curry, author of a Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland. This laborious compiler, who is considered to have rendered valuable services to his party, has it much at heart to prove that under severe trials the Roman Catholics of Ireland were patient, loyal, and obedient; cites acknowledgments in confirmation of his assertions from personages of high distinction-from Lord Chesterfield, Primate Stone, Prime Sergeant Stanyard; but cites, perhaps no testimony more pertinent to the present occasion than a petition to his majesty George III., presented by the Roman Catholics to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, lord lieutenaut of Ireland, in, we believe, the year 1777. A few very brief extracts from this petition will suffice for our purpose.

"In this deplorable situation, let it not be considered, we earnestly beseech your majesty, as an instance of presumption or discontent, that we thus adventure to lay open to your majesty's mercy a very small part of our uncom

mon sufferings; what we have concealed under a respectful silence would form a far longer and full as melancholy a recital. We speak with reluctance, though we feel with anguish, we respect from the bottom of our hearts that legislation under which we suffer," &c.

"In all humility we implore that our principles may not be estimated by the inflamed charge of controversial writers,

nor

our practices measured by the events of those troubled periods, when parties have run high, (though they have been often misrepresented, and always cruelly exaggerated to our prejudice,) but that we may be judged by our own actions, and in our own times; and we humbly offer it to your most equitable and princely consideration, that we do not rest the proof of our sincerity on words, but on things--on our dutiful, peaceable, submissive behaviour for more than four score years," &c.

"Permit us, most gracious sovereign, on this occasion to reiterate the assu

rances of our unshaken loyalty, which all our sufferings have not been able to abate; of our sincere zeal for your majesty's service, of our attachment to the constitution of our country, and of our warmest gratitude for your majesty's continual indulgence, and for the late instance of favour we have experienced from parliament, in enabling us, consistent with our religious tenets, to give a legal proof of our sentiments upon these points: and we hope that the alacrity and eagerness with which we have seized this first, the long-wished opportunity of testifying, in the most solemn and public manner, our inviolable fidelity to your majesty, our real principles, and our good-will and affection towards our fellow-subjects, will extinguish jealousies," &c. &c.

The petition from which these passages are extracted, was framed while the penal code was yet unrelaxed on the statute-book.

"There never yet," writes Mr. O'Connell, "was such a horrible code of persecution invented-so cruel, so coldblooded, calculating, emaciating, uni

versal, as this legislation, which the Irish Orange faction*-the Shaws, the Lefroys, the Verners of the day-did invent and enact: a code exalted to the utmost height of infamy by the fact, that it was enacted in the basest violation of a solemn engagement and a deliberate treaty."—A Memoir, &c. p. 16.

"There there never was a people on the face of the earth so cruelly, so basely treated as the Irish."-Ibid. p. 17.

"The persecution I have describedthe persecution founded on a breach of national faith and public honour-lasted for eighty-six long years of darkness, of shame, and of sorrow."-Ibid. p. 18.

With this last sentence Mr. O'Connell commences his sixth chapter, which extends over the space of time from 1778 to 1800. We are not for the present dealing with the falsehood of his assertions. We are simply noticing the fact, that for a space of eighty-six years the Roman Catholics of Ireland laboured under the severity of that system which Mr. O'Connell has described: a year, or probably two years, before this system was ameliorated, the sufferers under it presented the petition to which we have adverted, declaring their unabated loyalty, their attachment to the constitution, their zeal for his majesty's service, their heartfelt respect for the very 'legislature under which they suffered," &c. &c., and appealing in proof of the sincerity of their professions to their " dutiful, peaceable, submissive behaviour for more than four score years;" or, in other words, for the years in which the penal code had authority. They are thankful for any indulgence that has been extended to them; and if they hope a relaxation of the code by which they are aggrieved, their trust is placed in the wisdom and clemency of the British crown and people. Such, receiving their professions as true, were the Roman Catholics of Ireland under the rule of the iron age between 1692 and 1778.

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The interval which has elapsed since then bears a different character. The four score years and more to which the petitioners appealed in the Irish administration of Lord Buckinghamshire were laden with severities and oppression. Sixty-five years have passed since, rendered memorable by an almost uninterrupted succession of

indulgences and benefits. The chains which the petitioners of the former day beheld as they were forging, and painfully felt as each new restraint was imposed, Mr. O'Connell has seen, link by link, break and fall off; he has seen the whole penal code erased from the statute-book; he has seen political disabilities on account of religious belief removed; ecclesiastics whom his ancestors saw proscribed, he has seen not only protected but favoured; he sees a college endowed by the state for teaching the doctrines of his religion-a system of education maintained at the public cost, in which, to render it acceptable to those who think with him, Holy Scripture is disparaged; he has seen ministers of the British crown inflicting heavy blows and sore discouragement on Protestantism; has seen the clergy of the Established Church in Ireland for many dark years enduring persecution in every form in which it could assail them; he has seen their church dishonoured and enfeebled; he has seen Protestant corporations instituted for the maintenance of British connection, converted into arsenals for amassing and directing the force which is to carry repeal; he has seen all this, and more, much more, of advantage given to his party-of injury visited on what he terms the adverse party, by the British legislature and government. How does he speak of his benefactors, in a passage of which the truth and wisdom bear about the due proportion to the gratitude and good feeling in which it has originated?

he

"Wellington and Peel-blessed be heaven!-we defeated you. Our peaceable combination, bloodless, unstained, crimeless, was too strong for the military glory-bah! of the one, and for all the little arts, the debasing chicanery, the plausible delusions, of the other. Both at length conceded, but without dignity, without generosity, without candour, without sincerity. Nay, there was a littleness in the concession almost incredible, were it not part of public history. They emanci pated a people, and by the same act they proscribed an individual. Peel and Wellington, we defeated and drove you before us into coerced liberality, and you left every remnant of character behind you, as the spoil of the victors."

How does he speak of the disposition of his "constituents" towards the country which conceded the great and healing measure, as it was styled, of emancipation, and of all the " reforms" which fellowed in its train?

"What the sovereign and the statesmen of England should understand is, that the Irish people feel and know, that there cannot happen a more heavy misfortune to Ireland than the prosperity and power of Great Britain."-Preface x.

"It is also of the utmost importance that the sovereign and the statesmen of England should be apprised, that the people of Ireland know and feel that they have a deep and vital interest in the weakness and adversity of England.”— Ibid. xi.

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At the present day it would be vain to attempt to conceal the satisfaction the people of Ireland feel at the fiscal embarrassments of England. They bitterly and cordially regret the sufferings and privations of the English and Scotch artisans and operatives. But they do not regret the weakness of the English government, which results from fading commerce and fading manufacture. For the woes of each suffering individual they have warm compassion and lively sympathy. From the consequent weakness of the government party, they derive no other feelings than those of satisfaction and hope."—Ibid.

And what-after all (and more than all) the demands or prayers of the Roman Catholics in the interval between 1778 and 1829 had been granted-what is now, according to the manifesto of Mr. O'Connell, their fixed and final determination?

"The Irish people are determined to preserve their allegiance to the throne unbroken and intact: but they are equally determined to obtain justice for themselves; to insist on the restoration of their native parliament, and to persevere in that demand without violating the law, but also without remitting or relaxing their exertions, until the object is achieved and success attained."Ibid. ix.

Look well upon "that picture and on this." While Roman Catholics suffered privations and oppressionwhile the law regarded them with suspicion, and excluded them from all power-they loved, or professed to love, the government and the country which severely coerced them, and "to respect, from the bottom of their

hearts, the legislature under which they suffered:"-when the state, in its wisdom or its generosity, had admitted them to the rights of subjects and citizens, on conditions which left them, as religionists, no more to ask or desire -the terms in which they acknowledge so great favours are those of hatred and contempt; the feelings they avow towards England are those of trouble at her prosperity, and malignant triumph at her distress; and the use they declare it their intention to make of the "emancipation," is to employ the privileges and powers with which it has invested them, in the pernicious, and we trust chimerical, project which is professedly aimed at, a repeal of the legislative union. Confidence and favour are undeserved where their influence is so deleterious. The creature which licks the rod that smites it, and rends the hand by which it is fed and caressed, is not fit for indulgence; it ought to be held in chains.

But let it not be supposed that we confound the Roman Catholics of Ireland in one common cause with Mr. O'Connell. We do not impute to them the injustice of participating in his sentiments-far less that of acceding to his assumption of being their Circumorgan and representative. stances have rendered the assumption plausible-but we want to see how the "Memoir on Ireland and the Irish" will be received, before we can agree that it is just.

And now to our review. We shall endeavour to expose the character of Mr. O'Connell's work, without being provoked by it into even that degree of intemperance which might seem, under the circumstances, natural and pardonable.

The charges against England, contained in the first chapter of the memoir, "years 1172-1612," and the appended "Proofs and Observations," are substantially these :

1. That England claimed or usurped the disposal of the whole Irish soil.

2. Refused to receive the Irish as subjects, admitting but few exceptions to the stern rule of general proscription.

3. Behaved towards them as towards enemies.

4. Carried on a war against them in a spirit of injustice, cruelty, and treachery, altogether unparalleled.

5. And governed them on principles of extreme rigour and injustice.

The frame of mind in which he makes these charges, and his purpose in urging them, he very frankly

avows:

"I am very desirous to have it unequivocally understood, that one great. object of mine is, to involve the people of England in much-in very much of the guilt of their government. If the English people were not influenced by a bigotry, violent as it is unjust, against the Catholic religion on the one hand, and strong national antipathy against the Irish people on the other, the government could not have so long persevered in its course of injustice and oppression. The bad passions of the English people, which gave an evil strength to the English government for the oppression of the Irish, still subsist, little diminished and less mitigated."p. 46.

and in which it may be believed by those who believe in Mr. O'Connell's love of truth. He is the agent and representative of a party unfriendly to the English people, and hostile to their religion-a party which holds that an "officious" lie, though it were vile as that of Jacob, may be, as Dr. Murray actually pronounces that offence to have been, "venial,"-and that falsehood or even perjury, where the Church of Rome requires it, may be a duty. The agent of such a party, if sensible to any "compunctious visitings" of honour or conscience, may sometimes loathe the practices by which the obligations of party constrain him to make profit of his position, and may thus be brought to feel the ignorance of adversaries "an inconvenience." Whether Mr. O'Connell's distress has been occasioned by resisting, or by yielding to, the dishonest importunities of those whom he serves, we pause not to inquire; "Ireland and the Irish" will show that duty to his party has prevailed, and that the fabrications by which he proposes to instruct the "ignorance of England" are not composed in a spirit of either truth or charity.

"Through the grant of an Irish chieftain!!" Is any reader ignorant of the fact that the grant by which Henry claimed dominion over Ireland was not that of an Irish chieftain, but of an English ecclesiastic who had become pope. The flippancy and injustice which Mr. O'Connell charges on the British sovereign is, as all know who have the slightest acquaintance with the history of our country, primarily chargeable on the Bishop of Rome. Pope Adrian IV. granted the whole island to Henry, on condition that he respected the rights of the church, extended the religion of Rome, and paid a penny from each house to the patrimony of St. Peter. This was the grant of which a historian should complain-of which, indeed, all historians have complained; but Mr. O'Connell is not a historian-his duty, as the advocate of an unscrupulous party, demanded that he should suppress the truth respecting Adrian's audacious injustice, and hide it by the falsehood which imputed the pope's guilt to Henry II. and an Irish chieftain."

The facts respecting Henry's claim to Ireland, which Mr. O'Connell has carefully concealed, may be briefly

stated. The church in Ireland had fallen from a state of high temporal prosperity, and its ministers had to complain of much wrong and vexation from the disorderly chiefs and adventurers of troubled times. In these difficulties, a considerable party of the ecclesiastics, who had for some time intrigued with the court or see of Rome, eventually sold their country for the advancement of their order. Henry agreed to pay Peter's pence as the return for Adrian's grant, and to secure to the papalizing clergy of Ireland, as the price of their co-operation, ecclesiastical rights and immunities. Such were the terms of the compact between the three contending parties. The papacy, whether in Rome or in Ireland, was the directing and commanding power, England was the secular arm to execute; and if there were crimes in the execution, they are chargeable primarily upon those whom Mr. O'Connell would screen from obloquy. We may have to return to this subject again, but must now proceed to the second charge against England.

"It might be supposed by some, that the Irish were unwilling to receive the English laws, or to be received into the condition of subjects. The attorneygeneral, Davies, however, tells us the contrary. At p. 87, he puts the question thus :

"But perhaps the Irish in former times did wilfully refuse to be subject to the laws of England, and would not be partakers of the benefit thereof, though the crown of England did desire it; and therefore they were reputed aliens, outlaws, and enemies. ASSUREDLY THE CONTRARY DOTH APPEAR.'

"And in page 101, he expressly declares.

"That for the space of two hundred years at least, after the first arrival of Henry II. in Ireland, the Irish would have gladly embraced the laws of England, and did earnestly desire the beneft and protection thereof; which, being denied them, did of necessity cause a continual bordering war between the English and Irish.'

"It does, indeed, appear that the reason why that wise monarch, King Edward III., did not extend the benefit of English protection and English law to the Irish people, was, that the great lords of Ireland, the Wicklows, the Stanleys, and the Rodens of the day, certified to the king,

"That the Irish might not be natu

ralized, without being of damage or prejudice to them, the said lords, or to the crown.'

"This appears by a writ, directed by that monarch to the lord justice of Ireland, commanding him to consult and take the opinion of the great lords of Ireland, with the return thereon, amongst the rolls in the tower of London, quoted at length by Davies, at p. 88."

The reader will distinguish in this extract the statements which are supported by testimony, and that which belongs to Mr. O'Connell. It is proved, we may affirm, that the Irish were desirous of obtaining the benefits of English law, and that their prayer for such justice was denied. So much is matter of testimony. That the guilt of resisting a claim so affecting and so just is to be charged upon the "great lords of Ireland, the Wicklows, the Stanleys, and the Rodens of the day," rests upon no better authority than that of Mr. O'Connell's reputation. It is true that the Irish parliament, or some prevailing party in it, must bear the obloquy of this cruel injustice: of whom did the offending party consist? It consisted of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics. The party which had sold a country's independence for a promise of its own aggrandizement, was in power when the cry of the Irish had won grace from the king, and was able to render the monarch's good will abortive. A simple statement of facts will enable the reader to pronounce on the truth of our assertion.

The petition in the reign of Edward III. was not the first which had been laid before the English throne, praying, on the part of the Irish, that they might be received as subjects. A similar prayer was addressed to Edward I. accompanied by an offer of eight thousand marks, as an acknowledgment of the expected grace. In reply, Ed

ward communicated to D'Ufford, lord justice of Ireland, his desire that the prayer should be granted, "provided always that the general consent of our people, or, at least, of our prelates and nobles do concur in this behalf." D'Ufford answered, that the time for deliberating on such a proposal was unsuitable, in consequence of the necessary absence of the greater number of the barons on business of the state, or in defence of their lands, and because of the minority of very many. "The