The assembly consisted not only of the volunteers and inhabitants of the town and vicinity of Belfast, but of a very considerable number of distant volunteer companies, together with a great concourse from a wide circuit of the north. A num. ber of principal catholics and others from Dublin, attended this meeting by previous agreement, that they might witness the spirit with which the dissenters were animated. area, The day's proceedings commenced by a review of the volunteer corps, after which they returned to town, and commenced a grand procession through the principal streets, bearing standards, with appropriate devices and mottoes, and proceeded to Linen hall street, where the whole fired three feude-joye, and then entered the White Linen-hall, where a chair was raised in the centre of the round which the volunteers and principal inhabitants assembled. John Crawford, Esq. reviewing-general, having been called to preside, Mr. Sinclair rose: he said he was deputed to propose two addresses to the assembly for their consideration; one to the National Assembly of France, the other to the People of Ireland. Infamous calumnies, he said, had gone abroad relative to them, which had been industriously circulated by interested men, but which he would not take up the time of the Assembly to refute. The papers, themselves, when read, would save him that trouble; and he would venture to say there was not an individual present, who claimed the noble title of a freeman, that would hesitate in giving his approbation. To the National Assembly of France. It is not from vanity or ostentation, that we, the citizens of Belfast, and citizen-soldiers of that town and neighbour. hood, take the liberty of addressing the representative majesty of the French people.-We address you, with the rational respect due to a title elevated far above all servile and idola. trous adulation, and with that affectionate fraternity of heart which ought to unite man to man, in a mutual and inseparable union of interests, of duties, and of rights; which ought to unite nation with nation, into one great republic of the world. On a day, sanctified as this has been, by a declaration of human rights, the germ of so much good to mankind, we meet with joy together, and wish well to France, to her National Assembly, to her People, to her Armies, and to her King. May you, legislators, maintain, by the indefatigable spirit of liberty, that constitution, which has been planned by the wisdom of your predecessors, and never may you weary in the work you have undertaken, until you can proclaim with triumphant security, it is finished! Manifest to an attentive and progressive world, that it is not the phrenzy of philosophy, nor the fever of wild and precarious liberty, which could produce such continued agitation, but that imperishable spirit of freedom alone, which always exists in the hearts of man, which now animates the heart of Europe, and which, in the event, will communicate its energy throughout the world, invincible and immortal! We rejoice, in the sincerity of our souls, that this creative spirit animates the whole mass of mind in France. We aus. picate happiness and glory to the human race, from every great event which calls into activity the whole vigour of the whole community; amplifies so largely, the field of enterprize and improvement, and gives free scope to the universal soul of the Empire. We trust that you will never submit the liber. ties of France to any other guarantees than God, and the right hands of the People. The power that presumes to modify or to arbitrate with respect to a constitution adopted by the people, is an Usurper and a Despot, whether it be the meanest of the mob, or the ruler of empires; and if you condescend to negociate the alteration of a comma in your Constitutional Code, France, from that moment, is a slave. Impudent Despots of Europe! Is it not enough to crush human nature beneath your feet at home, that you thus come abroad to disturb the domestic settlements of the nations around you, and put in motion your armies, those enormous masses of human machinery, to beat down every attempt that man makes for his own happiness? It is high time to turn these dreadful engines against their inventors, and, organized as they hitherto have been, for the misery of mankind, to make them now the instruments of its glory and its renovation. Success, therefore, attend the ARMIES of France! May your soldiers, with whom war is not a trade, but a duty, remember, that they do not fight merely for themselves, but that they are the advance guard of the world: nor let them imagine, that the event of the war is uncertain. A single battle may be precarious, not so a few campaigns.-There is an omnipotence in a righteous cause, which masters the pre. tended mutability of human affairs, and fixes the supposed inconsistency of fortune. If you will be free, YOU MUST; there is not a chance that one million of resolute men can be enslaved; no power on earth is able to do it; and will the God of justice and of mercy?—Soldiers! there is something that fights for you, even in the hearts of your enemies. The native energies of humanity rise up in voluntary array against tyrannical and preposterous prejudice, and all the little cabals of the heart give way to the feelings of nature, of country, and of kind. Freedom and prosperity to the PEOPLE OF FRANCE! We think, that such revolutions as they have accomplished, are so far from being out of the order of society, that they sprung inevitably from the nature of man, and the progression of reason; what is imperfect, he has the power to improve; what he has created, he has a right to destroy. It is a rash opposition to the irresistible will of the public, that, in some instances, has maddened a disposition, otherwise mild and magnanimous, turned energy into ferocity, and the generous and gallant spirit of the French into fury and vengeance. We trust that every effort they now make, every hardship they undergo, every drop of blood they shed, will render their constitution more dear to them. Long life and happiness to the KING of the FRENCH! not the Lord of its soil and its servile appendages, but the King of Men, who can preserve their rights while they entrust their powers. In this crisis of his fate, may he withstand every attempt to estrange him from the Nation; to make him an exile in the midst of France, and to prevent him from identifying himself as a Magistrate with the Constitution, and as a Frenchman with the People. We beseech you all as Men, as Legislators, as Citizens, and as Soldiers, in this your great conflict for liberty, for France, and for the world, to despise all earthly danger, to look up to God, and to connect your Councils, your Arms, and your Empire to his Throne, with a chain of union, fortitude, perseverance, morality and religion. We conclude with this fervent prayer: that as the Almighty is dispersing the political clouds, which have hitherto darkened our hemisphere, all Nations may use the Light of Heaven: that, as in this latter age, the Creator is unfolding in his creatures, powers which had long lain latent-they may exert them in the establishment of universal freedom, har mony and peace: may those who are free, never be slaves! may those who are slaves, be speedily free! To the People of Ireland. We, the volunteers and other inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood of Belfast, assembled to commemorate this great day, embrace with earnestness the opportunity which it affords, at once to express our zeal and affection for the cause of liberty in France, and our undisguised opinions on subjects of the last importance to our native land. Trained from our infancy in a love of Freedom, and an abhorrence of Tyranny, we congratulate our brethren of France, and ourselves, that the infamous conspiracy of Slaves and Despots, against the happiness and glory of that admired and respected nation, and against the common rights of man, has hitherto proved abortive. Fixing our view steadily on the great principle of Gallic emancipation, we will not be diverted from that magnificent object, by the accidental tumults or momentary ebullitions of popular fury; we will not estimate the wisdom of her legi slators, by the transports of a mob; nor the spirit of her armies, by the cowardice of a regiment; nor the patriotism of her people, by the treachery of individuals; nor the justice of her cause, by the number of her enemies. We judge with other views, and on other principles.-We see, with admi⚫ration, France extending the land-marks of human knowledge in the great art of government, and opening to the world new systems of policy and of justice. We see her renounce all wars on the principle of conquest. We see her propose an universal brotherhood, and an eternal peace, among the nations. We see her, even now, when forced into arms and bloodshed, by the unjust and unprincipled machinations of her enemies, separating, as far as possible, the innocent subjects from the guilty despot; respecting, amidst the horrors of war, the property of individuals; and exempting from interruption, the peaceful traffic of the merchant. It is from views like these, that we estimate that stupendous event, the Revolution, which we daily commemorate; not from accidental irregularities, which, while we condemn them, we are compelled to pity, as feeling that they spring not merely from a spirit of licentiousness, but from a sense of injury working on a sanguine people, still galled with the recollection of recent tyranny and oppression, and jealous of liberty, but just recovered, and scarcely yet secure. Such are our sentiments on the subject of the French Revo lution; we come now to the state of our own country. - Impressed as we are with a deep sense of the excellence of our constitution, as it exists in theory, we rejoice that we are not, like our brethren in France, reduced to the hard necessity of tearing up inveterate abuse by the roots, even where utility was so intermixed as to admit of separation. Ours is an easier and a less unpleasing task; to remove with a steady and a temperate resolution, the abuses, which the lapse of many years, inattention and supineness in the great body of the people, and unremitting vigilance in their rulers to invade and plunder them of their rights, have suffered to overgrow and to deform that beautiful system of government, so admirably suited to our situation, our habits, and our wishes. We have not to innovate, but to restore. The just prerogatives of our Monarch we respect, and will maintain. The constitutional power of the Peers of the realm, |