well as the abuse is to him a grievance. This is a great aggravation of public taxes; it is a home-felt tyrant, that brings to his door the little vexations and fretful tyranny of a superior, and makes him insignificant in his own farms, and under his own vine, and touches him in those lesser nerves where he is less mortal but extremely irritable; and here you subject him to where the partial distributions of justice in a tribunal tax him without his consent, and try him without his peers, where he has no peers, and his adversary may have votes; and as the oppression is great, so is the motive little; it is a monopoly of jobbing. You do not exclude him entirely from the petty jury, which is a function much more interesting to Protestant life and property, but which is trouble without county patronage or county power. As the object is monopoly, so, as usual, the pretext is religion; that exclusion which you impose in the case of juries, you impose in the case of magistracy; and though with less oppression, with as little pretence; -3,000,000 of your fellow-subjects are to have no share whatsoever in the execution of the law, no more than they have in the formation of it over the whole extent of your country; and of 4,000,000 of people, you exclude 3,000,000 from the function of enforcing obedience to the law. As you have taken care that liberty, so have you taken care that law, shall have no very general extension in your island. You have here, as usual, punished the Protestant the better to disable the influence of the Papist; and no Protestant married to a Papist can be a justice of peace. I have heard your reasons; a Catholic should not be a magistrate in Ireland, because the laws contain a code which is against him; that is, the law is his enemy; and yet we talk of the lawlessness of the common people, just as we talk of the blessings of our most excellent constitution, excluding them from any share in the law, or any participation in the constitution. What makes the subject love the law not the hangman? Pains and penalties may be the objects of terror, but not of affection; he loves the law because he has a share in the formation and execution of it; the men who are reconciled to taxes are those who vote; and the men who are reconciled to penalties are those who enact them; and the men who are friends to a rigid execution of a law, is the community that furnishes juries to find bills, judges to sentence, and magistrates to execute. The relation in which the Protestant stands, makes him a party to the laws; the relation in which the Catholic stands, makes him the object of the law; not party. He is not a party to the law, and the law is a party against him; therefore the laws may be objects of his obedience not his affection. This, then, is their situation; and this situation

explains the liberality of those who say, they offer them every thing except the privilege of becoming part of the state; every thing except a part of the electoral community; every thing except a part of the legislative community; every thing except a part of the judicial community; every thing except a part of the corporative community; every thing except a part of the executive community-that is, a species of excommunity, with privileges to acquire property for you to tax without their consent! Thus are the Catholics by the present code excluded from an interest in your laws; they are also excluded from communication with your persons; the society of marriage punished; the society of education forbidden; the society of civil employment forbidden; the society of military employment forbidden; the society of parliament forbidden; the society of election forbidden; the society of grand jury forbidden; the society of magistracy forbidden; there is no subject of public care, in which they can associate with the Protestant without breach of law, no subject of conversation, except foreign politics, foreign changes, and foreign revolutions!

We have declared, we hope to become one people; how? By these lines of circumvallation, erasing the natural geography of your country, and setting up parallels and circles of folly and superstition, from the marriage bed to the cradle, from cradle to college, and from college to the grave, are two nations that cannot by any public interest or business, or by any general call, save that of death, be brought together? There have been three policies observed with respect to the Catholics, the first was that of Cromwell, — extermination by operation of the sword! the second was that of Anne, extermination by operation of the laws! and the third was your'swhich allowed them a qualified existence! Though the two former were cruel, yet both were consistent. They both considered Papists as criminals, and exercised over them the right of conquest. They considered the Catholics as a body who were neither to have the power, nor property, nor any public existence in your country. The laws of Ireland prevented them. from acquiring property in land; and the usurpations of England prevented either them or the Protestants from acquiring any considerable property by commerce. But the third policy, much milder than either, is -more extragavant than both your policy. You allow them schools, seminaries, and colleges, but distinct from our own, and without funds; marriage, but marriage attended with pains and penalties; a free trade without franchise, and land without a vote. Let us discuss how far this policy is consistent with the interest of the constitution, the King or

the British empire. I will suppose under your laws the Catholics purchased considerable tracts of land. The land so purchased is unrepresented. Just as the wealth of your country grows, the extent of your constitution contracts. I will suppose these men become a great commercial body; a great portion of commercial interest, as well as the landed, is unrepresented; and your constitution still more contracted. What a portion of the strength of the country must, in that event, be taxed, without the consent of its owners! Your constitution will be no longer a representation, either of property or population; so that the British constitution will be worked out of the island by operation of law. Who will answer for the patience of that strength, compounded of a great portion of wealth, as well as of numbers? Who will answer for the satisfaction of those proprietors? It is not life but the condition of living; the slave is not so likely to complain of the want of property, as the proprietor, of the want of privilege. The human mind is progressive; the child does not look back to the parent that gave him being, nor the proprietor to the people that gave him the power of acquisition, but both look forward; the one to provide for the comforts of life, and the other to obtain all the privileges of property.

Your imperfect grants and comprehensive theories have given those aspiring thoughts, and let in that train of ideas which may hereafter greatly serve, or marvellously distract your country; you have already given to their minds the first principles of motion, and the laws of motion now must direct the machine.

The germ on the soul, like the child in the womb, or the seed in the earth, swell in their stated time to their destined proportions by virtue of their own laws, which we neither make nor controul. Talk not in such cases of gratitude; rely on that gratitude which is founded on interest; such gratitude as governed yourselves from 1691, when you secured your property, to 1779, when you demanded your trade; and 1782, when you demanded your liberty, from a colony looking only to property, to a people looking to a free form of government; from planters joining with the mother country against the Catholics, to a nation joining with the Catholics to exact of the mother country trade and freedom. Do I condemn you; such is the progress of nations; such the nature of man, and such is gratitude! Let me now consider how far this policy is consistent with the interest of His Majesty. It has been said, that under a Protestant monarch, the Catholic ought never have the elective franchise; thus gentlemen have

attempted to annex the curse of Catholic slavery to the person of the King. They have gone a step farther, and have supposed the coronation oath goes against the present claims of the Catholics, and have thus represented the King as sworn against the liberties of his people. They have done this on a surmise, the statement of which would excite our scorn, if its consequence did not produce our apprehensions that men believing in the real presence cannot be well affected to the house of Hanover; they have urged this when the pretender was extinct, when the power of the Pope was extinct, and when the sting of Catholic faith was drawn; they have done this when a new enthusiasm had gone forth in the place of religion, much more adverse to kings than Popery, and infinitely more prevailing,—the spirit of republicanism. At such a time, they have chosen to make the Catholics outcasts of a Protestant monarchy, and leave then no option but a republic; such a policy and such argument tend to make Irish Catholics French republicans; they aid the cause of proselytism against the cause of kings; they would drive the Roman Catholics from the hustings, where they might vote without danger, and would send them to plant the tree of liberty on their own hills, where treason, foreign and domestic, may intrigue in a body kept vacant for all the floating poison of the times, to catch and propagate; a school for the discontents of both countries, and the foreign emissaries, who need not bring any other manifesto than your own code and your own resolutions.

I differ much from those who say that the Roman Catholic cannot, under a Protestant King, enjoy the franchises of the constitution; I should say directly the reverse; that under no government can the franchises of the constitution be communicated so effectually, and secured so permanently to all His Majesty's subjects, as under our present monarchical government. The time is come, when every loyal subject should be free, and every free subject loyal. It is true, the Roman Catholics will now be your fellow-subjects, but not your subjects; they will be subjects of the King, and not the slaves of subjects, who stood, with regard to them, in the place of kings. Do you lament the change? I congratulate you upon it; the Basha will not command the cringe of the peasant's knee, but the King will command the strength of it. You appropriate this great body of men to the throne; you put the stamp of the King upon them, and serve the Crown more by far than when you vote for his minister. Let me consider this policy in its relation to the British empire. Britain, you know, governs you no longer; it is not your

religious arrangement that interests her, but your physical strength. You do not mean to say that the Catholics cannot be faithful in their connection with Great Britain. I appeal to those officers who served with them in the last war; their religion surely cannot now make them adverse; the Roman Catholic religion resembles much more the church of England than the church of France; their dissent cannot make them adverse. You say the Catholics are not as well disposed as the Protestants, because they are not descended from the English; many of them are; but nations have neither a parent's nor a child's affection; like the eagle, they dismiss their young and know them no longer. I know not whether the Roman Catholics are as well disposed to Great Britain as the Protestants are; but I am sure they are at least as well disposed as the Protestants would be, if they were deprived of civil and political advantages. If you doubt their disposition, do you dispose them better. You are trustees to preserve to Great Britain the physical force of the Catholics of Ireland, and nothing but you can forfeit it; not religion, not the Pope, not the pretender, but your proscription, which argues that the franchise of the Catholic is incompatible with British connection, and of course teaches the Catholic to argue that the British connection is incompatible with Catholic liberty. Thus you would deprive Great Britain of her resources, in recruiting army and navy, but you will supply their place; how? One million, after filling all the places in church and state, will spare the overplus of their numbers. You will borrow from the loom, and send the weaver of the north into the ranks. But this is a partial statement for you; instead of affording one million to Great Britain, you must borrow men from Great Britain to defend and garrison yourselves. Calculate, then, that in persisting to disfranchise the Catholic, you make him adverse; three millions are to be put into the other scale, which would be a difference of six millions, that is nearly one half of the whole empire. It follows from this, that your policy is prejudicial to the British empire as well as to the throne.

I have considered your situation and your arguments. A situation of extraordinary peril. Arguments of extraordinary weakness, of monopoly, of panic, of prejudice, of any thing but. religion; arguments which, like the fabric they would sustain, cannot stand the proof of any trial; nor the principles of morality, not those of religion, nor those of policy, nor those of constitution; neither the touch of time nor the revolutions of mankind; their tendency is to make freedom a monopoly, which is like an endeavour to make the air and the