locally as well as politically with other professions and other classes; so that it is impossible that either should constitute a distinct society by themselves. They are essentially parts of a whole; and as such, submission is their duty; and Government may lawfully, on its own conscientious belief of its being for the general good, impose on them restrictions which they may consider injurious. And this same principle applies also to the Catholics of England, whose claims certainly could not be urged with justice if they were likely to be dangerous to the Church establishment of England-that is, to the interests of the great majority of that society of which the Catholics are necessarily and naturally a part. It applies also, it may be observed, to very small portions of a national society, even though they may be locally distinct; as, for instance, it were idle for the inhabitants of one single county, united as they are by laws, language, customs, and habits of living, to the rest of the nation, to consider themselves as capable of forming a distinct national society. Thus when Johnson, in order to ridicule the pretensions of the American Congress, imagines a congress of Cornishmen assembled at Truro to hold a similar language, and then adds, that he knows no argument used by the Americans which may not with greater justice be urged by the Cornishmen, he forgets the infinitely different ratio which America and Cornwall bear towards Great Britain; and that distance, resources, and population fitted the former as decidedly for a separate social existence, as its close local connection, and its comparative insignificance in power and numbers, marked the latter as a natural part of the civil society of Britain. Now the Catholics of Ireland are not a single profession, like the clergy; nor a single class of society, like the poor; on the contrary, they comprehend all the different elements of a nation; nobility, wealth, intelligence, num

a

a In his Pamphlet, entitled "Taxation no Tyranny," vol. viii. of his Works, 8vo. edit. 1806.

bers, and variety of professions and occupations. Nor again, are they so locally mixed up with the mass of British society as to form only a necessary part of it, incapable of a separate existence. On the contrary, Nature herself has marked out their boundaries with a decided hand; and Ireland is, geographically speaking, a world by itself. Further, they are not so insignificant a portion of the society of the empire as to be bound, under all circumstances, to submit to the will of the majority, because their separation could not be contemplated without ridicule. Many states in Europe, far inferior to Ireland in population and resources, and far less favourably situated, have enjoyed, and still enjoy, a happy and glorious independence. If, by a persevering refusal to treat the Irish as citizens, we urge them hereafter to consider themselves as foreigners, they may be called rebels in England during the continuance of the struggle, but as soon as it is over the name of rebellion will be exchanged for that of war, and even municipal law will allow of our then giving it a title which universal law and the voice of all other nations had conferred on it from the very beginning.

Nay, even were we to extend the principle of non-resistance to societies as well as to individuals; if we hold that war is under all circumstances unlawful, and that the nation which repels injury by force is ever to be condemned, still this cannot lessen the guilt of those who offer injury, or of those who make the injustice of the government their own by their loud petitions to persevere in it. Naboth certainly would have been guilty of rebellion, had he attempted as an individual to maintain his vineyard against Ahab by force; but would this have altered the wickedness of the king's act in seizing it, or of those counsellors who had instigated him to the crime? If it be sinful even to resist evil, how much more sinful is it to do evil? But some are not ashamed to argue that although the present state of things in Ireland is the result of injustice, yet that it is not injustice now to main

1

tain it; that our fathers are answerable for the sin, and that we may fairly reap the profit of it. I know not a more striking proof of the lamentable ignorance in which many good men live as to all political duties, than that any one calling himself a Christian should use such an argument as this. Apply it to private life, and he who would advance it is not an erroneous reasoner, but deficient in common honesty; "non verbis et disputatione philosophorum sed vinculis et carcere fatigandus." The Catholic St. Louis, King of France, had other notions of Christian duty than these. He, not contented with the scrupulous justice of his own Christian life, "appointed commissaries to inquire what possessions had been unjustly annexed to the Royal domain during the two last reigns. These were restored to the proprietors, or, where length of time had made it difficult to ascertain the claimant, their value was distributed among the poor." This was the real tenderness of an enlightened conscience; this was a true horror of the contamination of that worst idolatry, unrighteous gain. But to make no attempts to compensate for our fathers' injustice, or to think that sin can ever die to those who retain the benefit of it without repairing the evil which it occasioned, is indeed to "allow the deeds of our fathers," and to expose ourselves to the heavy judgment denounced against those who repent not of their fathers' crimes.

a

As a last resource, we are opposed by the argument "that men have no right to govern themselves, but only to be kindly and justly treated by their governors. That, therefore, the Irish Catholics may indeed claim exemption from persecution and tyranny, but that they have no right to a voice in the Legislature, or to exercise the highest functions of free citizens, the administration of the whole state." Now if men, that is, if societies of men, for we are not speaking of individuals, have not a right to govern themselves, who has the right to govern them? Govern

a Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 42. 8vo. edit.

ment is either a matter of agreement, as when the proprietors in a joint-stock company depute some of their body to manage the concerns of the whole; or it arises out of a natural superiority, either temporary, as that of men over boys and children, or perpetual, as that of men over beasts. Now it is very true that beasts have no right to govern themselves, but only to be kindly and justly governed; for men have a natural superiority over them, which is perpetual and unalterable; and God has accordingly declared his will, that to men they should be subject. It is true also, that boys and children have no right to govern themselves while they remain boys and children, for there also is a natural superiority in their parents and elders over them; and God has accordingly in this case also sanctioned this authority by his express law. But as soon as boys arrive at manhood, the superiority of nature on the part of the parent expires; then, therefore, the child has a right to govern himself, and this the law of Christian countries, justly, as I conceive, interpreting the divine law, has agreed to acknowledge. A child, then, has no right to govern himself while he is a child, but he has a right so to be governed as shall qualify him for governing himself hereafter; and what should we say of the guilt of that parent who should wilfully neglect his son's education in order to protract the period of his own authority? Now according to the general belief of ancient times, such a natural superiority existed in some classes of men over the rest, and was derived from a supposed divine extraction for the descendants of those deified men who were amongst the earliest objects of idolatry, were accounted themselves to be a race of demigods or heroes, and to be entitled to the exclusive possession of the offices of king and priest; of king, because as men were the natural lords of the brute creation, so demigods were the natural rulers of men; of priest, because the gods would receive no strangers' services with the same satisfaction as those offered by their own descendants. These were the

διοτρεφέες βασιλήες of the heroic age of Greece, and a similar belief gave a sacred authority to the Brahmins of India, the Lucumones of Etruria, the Patricians of Rome, and the hero race who, according to the national traditions, were the earliest sovereigns of Egypt and of Aztlan. It was the government of such kings that the old philosophers accounted the most natural and perfect of all governments; because it was the government of a superior being, so far exalted above the nature of his subjects, that his single worth and fitness to govern surpassed the sum total of the virtues of the whole people besides. On similar principles the existence of slavery was defended ; some divisions of the human race were naturally fitted to command, and others to obey; and the former, amongst whom the upholders of this doctrine took care to class themselves, were only acting agreeably to the order of nature when they made the latter their slaves. Still, however, it was a question whether this inferiority was accidental or perpetual; for, if it were the former, then emancipation was the right of the slaves so soon as they became fit for it, and the duty of the masters was to prepare them in the mean time for exercising hereafter the power of self-government. But in all these cases the principle was just and intelligible, that a superiority of nature conferred a title to authority over beings of an inferior order; and they who believed kings to be of superhuman extraction and to possess superhuman virtues, justly maintained their divine right to govern mankind, and justly asserted that men were lawfully subject to them, and could claim no more from them than they were bound themselves to render to the brute creation, that is, just and kind treatment, so far as it was compatible with an absolute right of dominion. When, however, the conclusions of one set of premises are appended to premises entirely opposite, the incongruity would be truly ludicrous, were not its consequences too mischievous to allow of laughter. It is among the most humiliating instances of human folly that Chris