I know the strength of the cause I support; it must appeal to all the quarters of the globe; and it will walk the Earth and flourish, when dull declamation shall be silent, and the pert sophistry that opposed it shall be forgotten in the grave. I canuot think that the civil capacities of millious, coupled with the cause of this empire, which is involved in their fate, shall owe their downfall to folly and irauition. As well night I suppose the navy of England to be blown out of the ocean by a whirlwind raised by witches, or that your armies in Spain and Portugal should be laid prostrate by Harlequin and his wooden sword, as that such interests as I now support should be overturned by a crew of quaint sophisters, or by ministers, with the aid of a few studious but unenlightened ecclesiastics, acting under the impulse of interest and the mask of religion. The people, if left to themselves and their good understanding, will agree; it is learned ignorance only that would sever the empire.

As the call of the House may have brought together many gentlemen who did not attend the former debates on the subject, I beg to apprise them of some further objectious with which they must expect to be encountered. They will be told, that the people of Ireland are base and barbarous, and are not equal to the exercise of civil capacities; that is, that the first order of Catholic gentlemen in Ireland, who are to be affected by the repeal of these laws, are base and barbarous; that is to say, that in the course of 600 years, the British government in Ireland has made the people of that country base and barbarous, or, in other words, that your governmert has been in Ireland a public calamity. They state the Christian religion, as exercised in Ireland by the majority of the people, to be another cause of this evil; and thus they suggest, as the only remedy, the adoption of a measure which would banish from that island her government and her religion. The folly, the indecency, and the insanity, of these objections do not deserve an answer.

They will tell you, moreover, that the spirit of the act of settlement, which deposed the reigning prince for his attack on civil and religious liberty, commits the very crime it punishes, and goes to deprive of civil liberties one-fourth of your fellow-subjects for ever. Desire those men who tell you so, to show the clause in the act of settlement of such an import; and ask them why they, in defiance of an express provision in the act, raise foreign Catholics to the highest rank in the army? Ask them why the eucharist, which overpowers the understanding, as they suppose, of Lord Fingall or Sir Patrick Bellew, has no effect on these foreigners? and why they abandon their prejudices in favour of strangers, and advance them

:

only to proscribe the natives of their country? They will tell you that the disqualifying oath is a fundamental part of the act of Union. Desire them to read the act of union: they will there find the disqualifying oath is directly the contrary; that by the fourth article of the Union it is expressly declared to be provisionary, not fundamental and you may add, that herein is a provision by act of parliament, declaring that the excluding oath, as prescribed at the Revolution, is not a fundamental part of the constitution. The same declaration will be found in the Scotch Union. Thus all the parliaments of these realms have repeatedly declared that the disqualifying oath is not a fundamental part of the constitution; and, therefore, against the argument of the minister on this head, you may quote the two acts of Union, and also the authority of those who voted for the Irish act of Union, that is to say, some of the ministers themselves, and also of those who drew up the Irish act of Union, who, I apprehend, were some of themselves. Ask them, have they set forth in this act of parliament, that the disqualifying oath was provisionary, and, after obtaining the Union, will they now belie their own law, and assert that the oath is fundamental? They will tell you, that by the constitution of the country, the parliament is Protestant. Ask them, are not the Commons a part of parliament? and are not they in no small proportion Catholic? The persons who argue with you thus against the Catholics, have sworn the oath at your table. Desire them to read it, and there they will find no profession of faith whatever; that Christianity itself is no part of the qualification; that any man can take that oath except a Catholic. Ask them, whether that exclusion was not on account of political combinations formerly existing in Europe? ask them whether they continue? and, in answer to all their objections and jealousy, ask them why they continue to fill their navy and army in such an immense proportion with men whose race they affect to distrust, and therefore they presume to disqualify? Ask the generals and admirals how these men act in the fleet and in the field? Read the lists of the killed and wounded, and see in what number these men have died in your service: read the Irish names of wounded officers; recollect that they cannot be generals, and see in their practical allegiance a complete answer to all objections. Tell them they must extend their constitution to their empire, or limit their empire to their church establishment. Or, if you wish for further information, do not apply to the court, but ask the country; ask the Protestant gentlemen of Ireland; ask the house of Leinster; ask the house of Ormond; ask the great landed proprietors of the country, men

who must stand the brunt of danger; ask their petition; and do not, in the face of their opinion, decide against the civil privileges of a fourth of your own people; do not hazard the name of England on such a principle; do not hazard the empire of England on such an experiment.

I appeal to the hospitals, which are thronged with the Irish who have been disabled in your cause, and to the fields of Spain and Portugal, yet drenched with their blood, and I turn from that policy which disgraces your empire, to the spirit of civil freedom that formed it: that is the charm by which your kings have been appointed, and in whose thunder you ride the waters of the deep. I call upon these principles, and upon you to guard your empire, in this perilous moment, from religious strife, and from that death-doing policy which would teach one part of the empire to cut the throats of the other, in a metaphysical, ecclesiastical, unintelligible warfare.

I call upon you to guard your empire from such an unnatural calamity, and four millions of your fellow-subjects from a senseless, shameless, diabolic oppression. You come on the call of the House to decide, as you suppose, a great question regarding the people of Ireland. You have to say to them: We are ruined; unless we stand by one another, we are ruined; and they have to say to you: We require our liberties; our lives are at your service.

He then moved, "That it be referred to a committee to consider the state of the laws imposing civil disabilities on His Majesty's subjects professing the Catholic religion".

February 25, 1813.

SIR, I am very happy that the right honourable gentleman has caused those passages in the bill of rights to be read to the House, for I am distinctly of opinion, that the qualifications which it enumerates as the indispensable accompaniments of the sovereignty of this empire, ought to form a part of the preamble of any bill that may be introduced into parliament for the relief of the Roman Catholics. For, sir, it is most necessary and most wise, that whenever we admit the Catholics to the privileges which they claim, we should insure to the Protestants the unendangered continuance of all the privileges which are founded on the act of settlement. The same measure which gives liberty to one, should give security to the other. I rise, sir, to support the petition, which some time ago I had the honour to present from the Catholics of Ireland. I am sure that I

may say, without fear of contradiction, that this petition is generally from the Catholics of Ireland; that it is substantially true; and tnat it conveys the wishes of the whole body. The motion which I mean to make is, that the House will resolve itself into a committee, in pursuance of the resolution which, at the desire of my right honourable friend, has been read by the clerk at the table. Sir, I know very well that a resolution of a former parliament cannot bind its successor. At the same time, I do not conceive that I am guilty of any impropriety in referring to the resolution of a former parliament. I have to lament, and it would be miserable affectation not to acknowledge it, that the petitions against the claims of the Catholics are very numerously and very respectably signed. I have to lament that there are still in my native country many individuals, enlightened in other respects, but fallible on the subject of religious distinctions. I have also to lament and condemn the venomous manner in which some of these petitions denounce the Catholics. I will avoid the example; and, in the allusions which I may find it necessary to make to the Protestant petitions, I will speak of those from whom ney have proceeded with the highest respect. I respect and love many of them. I dissent partially from their opinions; but I respect and love them personally. Nay, more; I will consider them not as present enemies, but as future friends to the Catholics. They live in the same country, they are embarked in the same cause, they have the same battles to fight against the common enemy for the common interest. Never can it be my wish to widen the breach between great bodies of men. The particular object of the Catholic petition is general concord. Never can I think that any difference in religion must necessarily lead to civil discord. Never can I believe that revelation came down to us a firebrand, to justify parliament in withholding from a part of the subjects of the realm their just rights.

Sir, I am the more induced to hope that the cause which I have undertaken humbly to advocate, will ultimately be successful, because I recollect that in the Irish Parliament of 1792, some general and strong resolutions were adopted against the claims then made by the Catholics, and that, in the next session, more was actually granted to the Catholics than they had claimed. The understanding of the Irish parliament enlarged with the exigency of the state. I trust that this will be the case with us. With this view to the ultimate success of Catholic emancipation, I beg leave to make a few observations on the anti-Catholic petitions on your table, using that liberty with the arguments they contain, that my cause may require, but

maintaining the greatest respect for the persons who have signed them, and whom, I am persuaded, are sincere in that which I, nevertheless, consider to be a very mistaken view of this most important subject.

In the first place, I object to the manner in which, in many instances in this country, and more particularly in Ireland, these petitions have been obtained. In Ireland, they have been the consequence of a requisition to the sheriffs of the respective counties, to call a meeting of the Protestant inhabitants. Now, it appears to me to be exceedingly objectionable for a public officer to call the people together in sects, and to give to a private and party meeting the authority of a public assembly. Again, it appears to me exceedingly objectionable, thus to separate religious sects, and to give the semblance of public authority to religious animosities. I ubject again to calling one part of his Majesty's subjects to petition against another; and still more do I object to their petitioning another country against the liberties of their own.

Sir, I beg not to be understood as casting any reflections on the Irish Protestant petitioners; but their object has evidently been neither more nor less than this—to entreat the parliament of this country not to grant civil liberty to the great body of the people of Ireland. They petition us to inflict on their countrymen a sentence of perpetual incapacity: they petition us to announce to Ireland the destination of being for ever a divided colony, and to impress on the general sense an acquiescence in the necessity of this being a divided empire. Sitting for a moment, they have given judgment for eternity. Let us consider a little their reasons for this judgment. One of the first observations which these petitions contain is, that the tone which the Catholics have assumed, renders it unwise to grant their claims. But that is not the question. We are not in the parliament of the United Empire entering into an examination of the arguments that may have been urged in this or that body. We are not inquiring whether Mr. A or Mr. B may or may not have spoken too freely. What has the conduct of any particular assembly to do with the great body of the Catholics? The question is, Shall the great body of the Catholics of Ireland be emancipated? The opponents of the Catholic claims say, that they ought not to be emancipated, because Mr. Fitzpatrick published a libel. But this is not a question dependent on such circumstances. I do not say that there may not have been much warmth exhibited in discussions in Ireland; but I say that the question is, Can you in any of their proceedings, charge the Catholics with want of allegiance? It is a