What! are you willing to shut your eyes against your own experience and to remain untaught by the wretched history of your wretched country? Do you not know, that it was your own internal divisions that first promoted a foreign usurpation; which caused the degradation, the oppression, the misery of this noble island, for which God has done so much and man so little? Reflect on the want of skill in your manufacturer; on the small capital of your farmer; mark the appearance of your miserable peasant; see the wretched hovel in which he dwells; survey your country; ponder on the repeated insults offered to Ireland, on her profligate parliaments; on her commerce, once annihilated; on her constitution held in chains; examine well both the past and the present, and then, if you are wise, you will find these effects accounted for by the divisions which distracted you. If you are honest you will seize this opportunity of doing them away for ever. You will then, after the lapse of so many ages become again one nation; for the catholick will forget to be a bigot as soon as the protestant shail cease to be a persecutor.

On the best consideration that I have been able to give this, the most important of all subjects, I do not hesitate to declare, that you must prepare your minds for a radical reformation. I do not say exactly the manner or the time when, but sooner or later this system must fall to the ground, oppressed by its own weight. This necessity arose with the establishment of the independence of your legislature. You are willing after you have become a kingdom to cling and adhere to that narrow and wretched form of government which cursed a humiliated and distracted province. The thing is impossible. You are in

the middle between the Irish catholick and English protestant. You must either adopt the one or unite with the other. You must either renounce your prejudices, or abdicate your legislative supremacy. Did you only seize on the sceptre of dominion, in order to exhibit yourselves as a spectacle to the world, and prove that such feeble hands could not wield it?

Would you rather go from nation to nation, begging a master, than form a compact of strength and perpetual peace with your Irish brother?

I have now stated to you my opinion on this question; a question of such magnitude that he must be a dishonest man indeed who could utter any sentiments that were not really his own; and he must be more than a coward, who, feeling strongly, should not dare to express himself in the same manner. I have done so. I thought it my absolute, and bounden duty. I know your fears, and I laugh at them. I am convinced of your prejudices, and I despise them. I cannot think of putting the fleeting opinions of any body of men, however respectable in competition with the dictates of my conscience, and the sacred interest of this my country.

I appeal from yourselves to your cooler reflections, in moments of less irritation. For my part I can see the prosperity of Ireland but in the union of all its inhabitants, and the union of all its inhabitants but in the adoption of the Catholick body. If it can arise from any other circumstances, convince me of it by arguments strong and irresistible-I will then acknowledge my errour, and my renunciation of the principle shall be strong, explicit, decided, and sincere as the avowal.

THE HON. MR. KNOX'S SPEECH,*

ON A BILL INTRODUCED INTO THE IRISH HOUSE OF COMMONS BY SIR HERCULES LANGRISHE, FOR REMOVING CERTAIN RESTRAINTS AND DISABILITIES UNDER WHICH HIS MAJES

TY'S ROMAN CATHOLICK SUBJECTS LABOUR FROM STATUTES AT PRESENT IN FORCE, FEBRUARY 18TH, 1792.

DURING the course of this debate, in which we exultingly perceive the triumph of genius, and candour, and charity, over the illiberal powers of rancor ous fanaticism, Mr. Knox distinguished himself by a speech which happily unites the precision of logick and the pathos of eloquence. One object of the bill to which his ardent zeal and brilliant talents brought the most decisive support, was to throw wide open the profession of the law to the ambition of every aspiring catholick. By a policy equally narrow and absurd, the disciples of the church of Rome had been interdicted from practising in the courts of justice. This odious restraint, this manacle of mind, was now to be for ever cast away. On this occasion, with an ardour, which the topick warrants, and with an accuracy of discrimination which nothing can amend, the orator justly characterizes that noble profession of which he appears to be an exemplary member.

We here see as on an animated canvas the true resemblance of an honest lawyer, whose liberality of conduct never halts behind liberality of sentiment, and whose honour is always as bright as his genius.

* Mr. Knox is the son of lord Welles, and though a very young man at the time of the delivery of this speech, was a leading member of the Irish bar and the house of commons.

MR. SPEAKER,

SPEECH, &c.

I OFFER myself to your notice, sir, in the humble hope, that the consideration which I have given this subject may be of some service to the cause which I support. I know that in the cause of truth, the weakest abilities will prosper, and I believe that such is the cause in which I now engage. Sure I am, that since the hour I had first the honour of a seat within this house, to the present moment, no question so extensive in its operation, and so important in its consequences; in which interests more various were involved, and in which prospects more distant and obscure were to be penetrated, ever came into discussion here. To determine it, we must peruse the pages of the future by meditating the records of the past; we must inquire into the nature of man as an individual, and as a member of society, and see where the appetites of the savage stimulate the habits of the citizen. Before this question every struggle of party, every exertion of a partial and local ambition, every effort at a vain and temporary popularity, is forgot, Over this question the nation does not sleep, nor the parliament slumber. It needs not the arts of the rhetorician to adorn it, nor the powerful appeals of the orator to gain it audience. It comes forward in its simplest garb, and the eyes of the multitude are upon it,

It is useful in the investigation of a great subject to lay down certain principles as axioms, by which the person who discusses them is to be governed, and beyond which he ought not to wander. Now I discover such a principle in the muniments of our constitution, and to that principle I adhere. It is connexion with Great Britain; and I add another principle, as a corollary to that, namely, protestant ascendency. For I say that as long as Great Britain remains attached to a protestant establishment, and a protestant crown, so long must we, being protestants, remain the ruling

power here, or the connexion is dissolved. That is, so long must such a paramount authority be vested in us as shall be a security for the permanence of our protestant monarchy. Shall we call a catholick parliament; and how long shall we be without a catholick king? Can the legislative be of one faith and the executive be of another? And, if they can, is it possible that they should cooperate in the support of the same ecclesiastical establishment? No, sir. The catholicks are but men; and is it not the nature of man that desire should grow with gratification, and ambition with power? They are men attached to a particular worship; and is it not the nature of religion to urge its votaries to the elevation of its ministers? Let the catholicks endeavour to persuade themselves of the contrary. They cannot persuade us. What then must be the objects of our deliberations? Conformity, civil and religious.

And how is conformity to be obtained? I will not quote to you the words of Montesquieu, nor the language of every writer on toleration. I need not tell you that christianity flourished under contempt and grew up under oppression; I need not tell you that the protestant faith was generated in the fires of intolerance, and that the ashes of her martyrs fertilized the soil of reformation. We know, without the aid of history or appealing to any authority, save the feelings of our own breasts, that there is an elastick principle in the mind of man that rises against pressure, and that to oppose prejudice by force, is to strengthen and condense it. How has that principle operated here? A hard and cruel necessity obliged our ancestors to consider their countrymen as their enemies, and to load them with those fetters which suspicion, hatred, and timidity have already forged for discomfited ambition, and half smothered, but not extinguished revenge. What was the consequence? The catholicks, finding the arms of the protestants folded, and that their hearts were closed against them, resorted to foreign powers for protection, and to each other for sympathy. They became a strong, be