in the real presence. I beg to know, whether the controverted points of religion are the principle of action that unite the present confederacy, or what was the present confederacy? The King of these countries, at the head of the Catholic powers of Europe, with the Pope among others, to restore monarchy in France, and eventually the Popish religion in full splendour. Why? because the British court do not fear Popery, but republicanism, and preferred a Catholic monarchy to an un-catholic, or to any species or sort of republic. The King of England is attempting to do in Europe, that which the minister falsely surmises the Catholics wish to do in Ireland to restore Popery in full splendour; because religion is no longer a subject of alarm or dispute, and the dangers of Popery are lost in the dangers of democracy; and in order to guard against the success of the latter, he must give up his fears of the former. When, therefore, his Majesty is advised to proscribe that religion in Ireland, he is advised to depart from the present necessary practice of his reign, and from a fundamental maxim of his safety. I beg to know what was the cause of the American war? Was it religious controversy? No; but the principle of religious controversy was over-ruled and borne down by the principle of political controversy, power distinct from religion, and in contempt of it, of every principle of religion and of morals. Protestant England makes war on Protestant America for power, and Protestant America unites with Catholic France against Protestant England for liberty. There were men at that time who did idly and wickedly rely on the discord of religion, but they found that an oppressed people has but one religion, and that their religion is to turn out the oppressor. Let us come back to the present hapless confederacy. The British court wished to make America a party of it; but very far from being disposed by the similarity of religion to ally with England, America, under the influence of a degree of similarity of constitution, was disposed to ally with France. Let us turn to Ireland; in 1792, the minister endeavoured to detach the Catholics from their attachment to their franchises by the influence of their clergy, aided by that of some of their landed proprietors. What did the Catholics? It was a pious attempt on the part of our court to set the pastor against the flock. But what did the Catholics? They paid as little attention to the priest as they had done to the minister. What induced the minister of England to authorize the viceroy to promise the Catholic bill? Was it religion? No. What was it induced him to break his promise, and to refuse the Catholic bill? Indeed the religion of ministers would be only matter

of amusement, if it was not called in as a cheat to alienate three-fourths of the people. What induced great powers here to make up their consciences to vote for the Catholic bill with one administration, and made them change their consciences with the change of administration? Was it religion? No; they acted on the temporal, not the spiritual consideration, to keep their situation under one administration, to keep the monopoly of situation under another; disguising interested politics, as is common, under the false colours of religion. He said, that though religious controversy is no longer a principle of action, political controversy is one, and a very prevailing principle of action; a new spirit, the spirit of reformation has gone forth, and the objects of its wrath are, the abuses of the European governments, abuses in their churches, and abuses in their states; the proscriptive genius of their church, the despotic genius of their monarchies. In other countries it is the despotism, in these the corruption, of monarchical government that is complained of.

How ought you to oppose this new principle of action, and this spreading spirit of reformation? - by reforming and rejecting the abuses by which it is attracted. How do you oppose it? By increasing them, by allying with them; almost the only allies now left you are your abuses; by selling the peerage, creating nameless offices to purchase the Parliament, influencing the corporations, intimidating popular meetings, and making all the constituted authorities as corrupt as it is possible, and afterwards by making them proscriptive.

This is the method your wisdom suggests to quell, and baffle, and discountenance the present spirit of reformation. You make boroughs your constitution, and proscription your religion. To prevent the people from speaking on the subject, and to force them into clandestine meetings, you pass a convention bill; and, finally, to subdue the people to such a political constitution, you take away their civil liberty that might reform it; you accordingly suspend the Habeas Corpus for a year and a half, and take away the freedom of the person, with a view to guarantee the abuses of the state, and with an argument approaching to nonsense, and to something much worse than nonsense, that you must surrender the blessings of your constitution for their continuance and preservation. Thus, when you are to rally your fellow-subjects, they have nothing about which they can assemble. You may command their tame duty, but where is the standard to kindle their enthusiasm? The Protestant ascendancy is no popular standard, venal boroughs none, nor a proscriptive church; no, nor a system of coercion; no, no more than the gallows!

The old sounds of our "most excellent constitution, and our most mild government ;" the hackneyed chaunting of your addresses are so ground and ground, and strummed and strummed, that they have not the novelty or the fire to set the nerves of the weakest brain a dancing.

You must give the people to understand for what they are really contending, whether it is for a constitution which you profess to give, but do not give, -- where the Commons may sit, and the community are represented; or for a constitution which you disclaim, but do give them an English cabinet, a court majority, and a proscriptive establishment. How are we to combat the enemy? Namely, by the means by which she has defeated you by the people. How are you to get the people? By privileges; not new and fantastic privileges, but the privileges you profess to give. What are they? They are the privileges which you refuse; the rights of eligibility, and the rights of election. Your bigotry has refused the former, your venal boroughs the latter. Do you imagine there is any man that would prefer the wild schemes of republicanism to the sober blessings of the English constitution, if he enjoyed them? What is the tree of liberty? It is sprinkled with the blood of kings and of nobles, some of the best blood in Europe; but if you force your fellow-subjects from under the hospitable roof of the constitution, you will leave them like a weary traveller, at length to repose under the shade of the dreadful tree of liberty. Give them, therefore, a safer dwelling, the goodly old fabric of the constitution, with its doors open to the community. You have thought another plan safer; you have thought proper to support the monarch, not on the principles of monarchy, but of corruption, and you have added those of bigotry; you support monarchy by kingcraft, and kingcraft by priestcraft; you support the King by the abuses of the state, and the abuses of the state by the abuses of the church; and while you think you are withholding reforms, you are the secret and unconscious ministers of revolutions.

I am sorry I cannot go along with you; I know not where you are leading me, from one strong bill to another, until I see a gulf before me at whose abyss I recoil. In it, I see no

safety, nothing but the absence of our dearest rights; the absence of the Habeas Corpus act; the absence of civil liberty. The ministers of the crown seem of late to have resorted to the constitution, only to dig up the foundations of the buildings, and to pelt and overwhelm the people with the ruins of their own inheritance. Every session they come for new acts of power, and thereby confess the original error of their unfortunate plans of coercion and proscription; and they have

got so much unconstitutional power in law, that nothing is now further necessary but unconstitutional force; Scotch or English fencibles, instead of our native force, to enslave totally and entirely the people of Ireland.

;

Perhaps, if the business was to begin again, they would not undertake it; but it has become a question of passion as well as of power, and they are ashamed to adopt those plans which they wish they had never resisted. It is not, however, too late they may yet recover the confidence of their country; but it is by a change of maxims and measures, and by adopting our humble offering. The best tribute we can make to our country and to the government; the plans of conciliation, which will place their strength upon a less paradoxical security than the enthusiastic exertions of a proscribed people, and the gratuitous and eleemosynary succour of an interdicted and an insulted community. Where are the petitions of the Catholics? say certain gentlemen. You kicked them out of the House of Commons. Where are the petitioners? they demand. They were so vilified on a former occasion, they are afraid to come nigh you. I am glad gentlemen now discover a disposition to pay respect to the petitions of the Catholics; formerly they abominated their persons, their petitions, and their claims; they now affect to respect their persons and petitions, and only direct hostility against their rights and liberties. If they wish for Catholic petitions, they are to be found in abundance; petitions of 1792 to this House; of 1792, to His Majesty; and of 1795 to this House, and of the same year to His Majesty again, all on the same subject. I do not imagine that they have departed from the objects of those petitions, and therefore, if gentlemen are ready to support their claims on a knowledge of their sentiments, they have that knowledge abundantly.

The Parliament has been assembled at this early period for the defence of the country; and, as far as granting away money, granting away civil liberty, and voting voluntary associations, were measures of defence, the country has been greatly defended; but as far as uniting, reconciling or animating their people, were means of defence, she has been entirely and most deplorably neglected; they have overlooked union, and remained satisfied with coercion. I do not believe there will be an invasion; if there were, I make no doubt it will prove wholly unsuccessful; but if there is the remotest chance of its success, that chance arises from the conduct of government. They have the less excuse, because, by this time, they must be perfectly apprised of the melancholy and extensive consequences of their measures. They have

found their project of armament rejected by the parishes of Dublin, and they have had recent proofs of the hatred of the north. They declared in the bill of the other day, that a conspiracy exists, they would suggest, in the north, and they accompany that information by proscribing the rest of the kingdom. To correct the evil consequences of such a system of administration on the minds of the people; they have resorted to the aid of certain Castle instruments, that might be termed the trumpeters of the constitution. These trumpeters, to advance their private and pecuniary traffic, proclaim the mildness of the government, and the blessings of the constitution; but their logic appears to be little more, than that in consideration of a mild government, you should suspend civil liberty, and in consideration of the blessings of our constitution, you ought to deprive three-fourths of the inhabitants of its franchises; in other words, that in gratitude for the blessings of the constitution, you are to surrender it to the crown. The sophism is extremely glaring, but profoundly wicked; it mistakes the constitutional checks on government, for the natural mildness of its character, and infers that we should give up those checks to fortify that government; it proposes to put down the constitution to strengthen the government, and then the people will reform the government to recover the constitution."

The House divided on the question for the order of the day, Ayes 143, Noes 19; Majority 124. Tellers for the Ayes, Mr. Ogle and Doctor Duigenan; for the Noes Mr. Grattan and Mr. Curran.

LORD LIEUTENANT'S MESSAGE.

MR. GRATTAN MOVES AN AMENDMENT TO THE ADDRESS IN ANSWER TO THE MESSAGE FROM THE LORD-LIEUTENANT.,

January 17. 1797.

ON the 16th, Mr. Secretary Pelham delivered to the House a message from the Lord-lieutenant; and gave notice that he would, on the ensuing day, move the House to take it into consideration. The message contained the intelligence, that war had been declared by Spain, that the negotiation with France had been broken off; and that Lord Malmsbury had been obliged to quit Paris. It congratulated the House upon the failure of the