Such, invariably, in all countries and ages, have been the motives to the bigot's conflicts, and such the use of his victories; not the propagation of any opinion, but the engrossment of power and plunder, of homage and tribute. Such, I much fear, was the real origin of our popery laws. But power and privilege must necessarily be confined to very few. In hostile armies you find them pretty equal, the victors and the vanquished, in the numbers of their hospitals and in the numbers of their dead: so it is with nations; the great mass is despoiled and degraded, but the spoil itself is confined to few indeed. The result finally can be nothing but the disease of dropsy and decrepitude.

In Ireland this was peculiarly the case. Religion was dishonoured, man was degraded, and social affection was almost extinguished. A few, a very few still profited by this abasement of humanity.

But let it be remembered, with a just feeling of grateful respect to their patriotic and disinterested virtue, and it is for this purpose that I have alluded as I have done, that that few composed the whole power of the legislature which concurred in the repeal of that system, and left remaining of it, not an edifice to be demolished, but a mere heap of rubbish, unsightly, perhaps pernicious, to be carted away.

If the repeal of those laws had been a mere abjuration of intolerance, I should have given it little credit. The growing knowledge of the world, particularly of the sister nation, had disclosed and unmasked intolerance; had put it to shame, and consequently to flight! But though public opinion may proscribe intolerance, it cannot take away powers or privileges established by law. Those powers of exclusion and monopoly could be given up only by the generous relinquishment of those who possessed them. And nobly were they so relinquished by those repealing statutes. Those lovers of their country saw the public necessity of the sacrifice, and most disinterestedly did they make it. If, too, they have been singular in this virtue, they have been as singularly fortunate in their reward. In general, the legislator, though he sows the seed of public good, is himself numbered with the dead before the harvest can be gathered. With us it has not been so, with us the public benefactors, many of them, at least, have lived to see the blessing of heaven upon their virtue, in an

uniformly accelerating progress of industry, and comfort, and liberality, and social affection, and common interest, such as I do not believe that any age or nation has ever witnessed.

Such I do know was the view, and such the hope, with which that legislature, now no more! proceeded so far as they went, in the repeal of those laws so repealed. And well do I know how warmly it is now remembered by every thinking Catholic, that not a single voice for those repeals was or could be given except by a Protestant legislator. With infinite pleasure do I also know and feel, that the same sense of justice and good-will which then produced the repeal of those laws, is continuing to act, and with increasing energy, upon those persons in both countries, whose worth and whose wisdom are likely to explode whatever principle is dictated by bigotry and folly; and to give currency and action to whatever principle is wise and salutary. Such, also, I know to be the feelings of every court in this hall. It is from this enlarged and humanized spirit of legislation, that courts of justice ought to take their princicles of expounding the law.

At another time I should probably have deemed it right to preserve a more respectful distance from some subjects which I have presumed (but certainly with the best intentions, and I hope no unbecoming freedom) to approach; but I see the interest the question has excited; and I think it right to let no person carry away with him any mistake, as to the grounds of my decision, or suppose that it is either the duty or the disposition of our courts to make any harsh or jealous distinctions in their judgment, founded on any differences of religious sects or tenets. I think, therefore, the motion ought to be refused; and I think myself bound to mark still more strongly my sense of its impropriety, by refusing it with full costs.

NEWRY ELECTION.

17th October, 1812.

AT the General Election, in 1812, many of Curran's friends desired to see him enter the English Parliament. His reputation was not firmly established in England; and a few speeches on great occasions, in the House of Commons, they conceived would win the waverers. Curran himself was anxious to help Grattan in urging the Catholic claims, and he acceded to their wishes. A requisition was addressed to him from Newry, to contest that borough, on the popular interest, against General Needham, the Government candidate.

In the Dublin Evening Post, of October 13th, 1812, appears the following address to the Electors from some of Curran's friends :

"To the Independent Electors of Newry.

"CITIZENS OF NEWRY,

"Once more has devolved upon you the exercise of the sole political prerogative vested by the constitution in the people. Your Representatives are no more; they are melted down in the general mass, and you are now, in your own persons, part of the Commons of Great Britain, and the third branch of the Legislature. But as you cannot act in your collective capacity, you are again called upon to choose that representative body, to whom you delegate the guardianship of your lives, your liberty, and your property. The constitution has, with parental care, guarded your rights, by restoring to you, at certain intervals, the opportunity of fixing on the most virtuous to represent you; but what its wisdom has conceived, you alone, by your co-operation, can effectuate. "Tis in vain to cry out against the profligacy and venality of a House of Commons, if we ourselves are not immaculate. "Tis in vain to talk, when it is too late, of the necessity of Parliamentary Reform, after having, from interested and unworthy motives, betrayed the opportunity which the constitution has afforded us, and, by the authority of our own example, countenanced the corruption we complain against.

"That opportunity has at length arrived-the most glorious that has fallen to the lot of any Electors of the United Kingdom. A large number of your most respectable fellow-citizens have sent a requisition to him, on whom, of all other men, the country looks with admiration for his talents, with reverence for his virtues, with gratitude for his past services, and confidence in his future exertions for his well-known and tried attachment to Ireland. Nor has he refused— he felt that, at this momentous time, when his country calls upon him for his services, he was not permitted to reject her petition. He has offered to exercise in your service his gigantic eloquence, backed by long experience, and supported by invincible honesty, and, with these all-powerful instruments, to work the regeneration of Ireland.

"He has done his part; it only remains for you to perform yours. To the independent and liberal Protestants of Newry is this chiefly addressed. They, as they do not suffer the wrongs of their Catholic countrymen, are not so sensible of the degradation of their country. But there cannot surely exist so vile a Catholic, that would, with spaniel crouch, lick the hand that holds the whip of infliction, and kiss the chains that bind themselves and their posterity to endless servitude and disgrace-much less can that Catholic be a man, whose fortune should make him independent, and who can ascribe no motive for his perfidy, but the meanness of his mind, and the debasement of his nature.

"Away! No Irishman could descend so low! but should there be such a wretch, leave him to the torture of self-reproach, the execration of his own party, and the contempt even of that which he debases by his alliance.

"We have already on our side a numerous class of our Protestant fellowcitizens, those who have already come forward, with generous ardour, to support their Catholic brethren in their petition for redress of their grievances. They have thus declared their sentiments they know full well the chief object of the dissolution of Parliament is to obstruct that cause which they so warmly espoused; and they have not, and, it is hoped will not follow the example of the Government candidate, in making professions never to be fulfilled, and with which their conduct in voting for that candidate would be so glaringly inconsistent. It is possible he may again tender such hollow pledges, but we know what value to place upon them; they will not again pass current.

"Citizens of Newry! it is the more particularly necessary for you to be vigilant on the present occasion, when the Government party have resorted to such mean, but fruitless artifices, as to push on this election with unprecedented haste publishing the notice on the very day the requisition was signed, and before it could be transmitted to the Man of the People's choice. But such paltry contrivances will be as ineffectual as they are unworthy-since we behold all that is liberal, all that is independent, all that is noble in the county, coming forward to support the great advocate of the people, THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS.

"October 10th, 1812."

A letter from a Correspondent, in the same journal, reports the commencement of the Election :

"Extract of a letter from Newry, dated Monday, 12th Oct. 1812.

"The enthusiasm of the people was such as to take the horses from the Master of the Rolls' Carriage on Saturday evening, two miles out of town, and about 3000 people drew him in. He made the finest speech I ever heard this day, for an hour and twenty minutes, amid the greatest acclamations; whilst his opponent, who refused the test in favor of the Catholics, was groaned. We only polled twenty this day-we were equal-we will poll fifty each to-morrow, and, on Wednesday or Thursday we will know our chance his speech has brought

us crowds."

But the Government influence was too strong, and a few of the Catholic shopkeepers who were creeping into rural importance were cowardly and slavish. They sustained the Government candidate, and turned the scale against Curran. On October 17th, the sixth day of the Election, he saw that the borough was lost, and withdrew from the contest. It was on that occasion, he made the following speech :

I was induced by some of the most respectable electors of the borough to offer myself a candidate. As to myself, I could have no wish to add to the weight of my public duties; and as to serving the country essentially, I think very moderately indeed of my own powers: and under circumstances like the present, under such rulers, and in such a state of popular representation, or, rather misrepresentation, I am perfectly convinced that no force of any individual, or even of many joined together, could do much to serve us, or to save us.

In addition to personal disinclination, I was ignorant of the exact state of the borough, and, of course, of the likelihood of my success. But yet, though without personal wish or probable hope, I thought myself bound, as a public man, to obey; because, though

the victory was doubtful, the value of the contest was incalculable, inasmuch as it must bring before ourselves, and before the rest of Ireland, not only an exact picture of our situation, and of the public malady under which we are sinking, but must also make an infallible experiment. It must decide, to the commonest observer, the principle of the disease, the weakness and misery of public distraction, the certain success, if the sufferers can be combined by the sense of common danger, in a common effort, to throw off the odious incubus that sits upon the public heart, locking up the wholesome circulation of its blood, and paralysing its action.

The experiment has now been made, and has failed of immediate success; it was an effort nobly supported by every generous and honest man within the limits of the borough; but its triumph has been delayed by the want of union, by the apostacy of the perfidious, by the vile defection of others, whom opulence could not reconcile to duty and independence.

Yet, notwithstanding this sad coalition of miserable men against themselves and their children, I do not hesitate to announce to the generous and honest electors who hear me, that though their triumph is deferred, their borough is from this moment free, and that terror has ceased to reign over it; you have polled a greater number of honest and independent voters than ever appeared heretofore for your most successful candidate.

Look now, for a moment, against what a torrent of adverse circumstances you had to act.

The object of your support, personally a stranger, giving public notice that he would not solicit a single individual; the moment a contest was apprehended, corruption took the alarm; and a public officer, in my opinion most unbecomingly, appointed so early a day for the election, as to make all preparation whatsoever on my part impossible. If you remember the indignant laugh that was excited in the course of the poll, when the returning officer demanded of the poll-taker how many had voted for the Master of the Rolls, and how many "for us!" you must, I think, be satisfied that there must be something base in this business. Sad, indeed, is the detail of this odious and ludicrous transaction, but it is too instructive to be passed over in silence.

When the election opened, an old gentleman rose, and proposed