we have raised them up and placed them erect are we prepared to hurl them down and bury them again? Where is the madman to propose it? Where is he who imagines that they can remain as they are? The state of the catholics o Ireland is, in this respect, unparalleled by any thing in ancient or modern history. They are not slaves, as some of their absurd advocates call them, but freemen, possessing substantially the same political rights with their protestant brethren, and with all the other subjects of the empire, that is, possessed of all the advantages which can be derived from the best laws, administered in the best manner, of the most free and most highly civilized country in the world. Do you believe that such a body, possessed of such a station, can submit to contumely and exclusion? that they will stand behind your chair and wait upon you at the public banquet? The less valuable, in sordid computation, the privilege, the more marked the insult in refusing it, and the more honourable the anxiety for possessing it! Miserable and unworthy wretches must they be if they ceased to aspire to it; base and dangerous hypocrites if they dissembled their wishes; formidable instruments of domestic or foreign tyranny if they did not entertain them! The liberties of England would not, for half a century, remain proof against the contact and contagion of four millions of opulent and powerful subjects who disregarded the honours of the state, and felt utterly uninterested in the constitution. In coming forward, therefore, with this claim of honourable ambition, they at once afford the best pledge of their sincerity, and the most satisfactory evidence of their title. They claim the benefit of the ancient vital principle of the constitution, namely, that the honours of the state should be open to the talents and to the virtues

of all its members. The adversaries of the measure invert the order of all civilized society. They have made the catholics an aristocracy, and they would treat them as a mob; they give, to the lowest of the rabble, if he is a protestant, what they refuse to the head of the peerage, if he is a catholic. They shut out my Lord Fingal from the state, and they make his footman a member of it; and this strange confusion of all social order, they dignify with the name of the British constitution; and the proposal to consider the best and most conciliatory mode of correcting it, they cry down as a dangerous and presumptuous innovation. The catholics propose no innovation. They ask for an equal share, as fellow subjects, in the constitution, as they find it; in that constitution, in whose original stamina they had an undisputed right, before there was a reformation, and before there was a revolution, and before the existence of the abuses, which induced the necessity of either. They desire to bear its burdens, to share its dangers, to participate its glory, and to abide its fate; they bring an offering, their hearts and hands, their lives and fortunes, but they desire also the pri vilege of bringing with them their consciences, their religion, and their honour, without which they would be worthless and dangerous associates.

The position, therefore, to be maintained by those who say that the first principles of the constitution are in opposition to the claim, is rather a critical one They must shew why it is that a Roman catholic may vote for a member to sit in parliament, and yet may not himself be a member of it; why he may be the most pow erful and wealthy subject in the realm, and the greatest landed proprietor, and yet may not fill the lowest office in the meanest town upon his estates; why he may be the first advocate at the

bar, and be incapable of acting as one of the counsel of his sovereign; why he may be elector, military officer, grand juror, corporator, magistrate, in Ireland, where the danger, if any, is immense, and why none of them in a England where the causes of apprehe sion are comparatively trifling and insignificant. Besides all this, arguing as they do, that the catholic religion necessarily includes hostility to the state, on the very points which, in the oaths taken by the catholics, are solemnly disavowed, they must shew the safety of harbouring in the bosom of the state, and admitting to its essential and substantial benefits, a body of men whose only title to ad. mission has been perjury; that is, a body of men, who, in addition to religious opinions inconsistent with our particular constitutions, have violated the solemn obligations which bind man to man, and therefore are unworthy of being admitted into any society, in which the sacred principles of social intercourse are respected. If these things are so, the petitions of the public shoul be, not to be protected against the dangers which are to come, but to be rescued from those which have already been incurred; nay more, if oaths are not regarded, we should not rely on the vain securities which our ancestors have resorted to, and which consist of oaths, and only oaths; but we should desire some new means of proving their religion, by the testimony of others, and chain. ing them down to it, without the possibility of disowning or escaping from it. But let us examine, somewhat more accurately, these supposed principles of public policy, which oppose an insuperable bar to the admission of the Roman catholics. They join issue on this point; so far as concession is in consistent with the true principles of the constitution, the safety of the established church, and of the protestant

We

throne, they admit that they are entitled to nothing; so far as it is not inconsistent, they claim to be entitled to every thing. Let it be shewn that these great foundations of our liberties and of our civil and ecclesiastical policy are their enemies, and they must yield in silence. They must receive it as the doom of fate; it must be submitted to as part of the mysterious system of Providence, which, whilst it has embarked us in an awful struggle, for the preservation of its choicest blessings, has ordained that, in this struggle, we may not unite the hearts and affections of our people. must cherish the hope that the same incomprehensible wisdom which at once impels us to this mighty contest, and forbids us to use the means of success, may work out our safety by methods of its own.-If it can be made appear that the imperious interests of our country pronounce, from necessity, this heavy and immitigable sentence upon millions of its subjects, they will learn submission, and not embitter their hopeless exclusion, by the miseries of discontent and of disorder; but, before they bow down to this eternal interdict, before they retire from the threshold of the constitution, to the gloom of hopeless and never-ending exclusion, are they not entitled to have it proved by arguments clear as the light of heaven, that this necessity exists? Let it be stated in some clear intelligible form, what is this fundamental prop of the constitution, what is this overwhelming ruin, which is to tumble upon us by its removal. Let us meet and close upon this argument; but beware of the attempt to outlaw the Irish people by an artificial and interested clamour. Let not those, who have encouraged the Irish people to expect redress, now affect to be bound by this spell of their own raising. This would be to palter with their own C69438

consciences and the public safety, and entail, as the inevitable consequences, calamity and disgrace.-The only obstacles which appear to stand in the way of the Roman catholics, said their advocates, are the oath of supremacy, and the declaration against transubstantiation. The former of these, in its original enactment and application, had a very limited political relation.The application of the oath, as it was modified by Elizabeth, had chiefly (and with the exception of offices immediately derived from the crown, or concerning the administration of justice) a religious, and not a political, application; subject to these exceptions, it professed not to controul private opinion, nor to make it à ground of exclusion; but it subjected the public profession of non conformity to penalty; and, accordingly, Roman catholics were admissable to parliament and to corporate offices, for more than one hundred years after the introduction of the oath of supremacy. Then came the laws of Charles II., which, for the first time, superinduced general exclusion from office, as a political consequence of religious opinion. Here, then, were two principles, the first, that of the Reformation, which proscribed the catholic religion; the second, that of Charles II., which presumed that certain unconsti tutional tenets must be held by those who professed that religion, and therefore made civil incapacity the consequence of the religious belief. Here were two principles perfectly distinct, but perfectly consistent-now what have we done? We have, in fact, abrogated the principles of the reformation, for we have repealed the laws against recusancy, and legalized the religion; having done this it was a necessary consequence to say that we could not infer, from a religious tenet which we legalized, a political opinion inconsistent with the safety of the state;

otherwise we should have been unjustifiable in legalizing it; we therefore substituted instead of the renunciation of the religious doctrine, from which the political opinion had been formerly inferred, a direct denial, upon oath, of the political opinion itself. If then the Roman catholic may lawfully exercise the religion, and if he will take the political oath, how can we consistently make the objection, either in a religious or political point of view, to his being admitted to the remaining privileges of citizenship? Again, the oath of supremacy extends to a renunciation, as well of the spiritual as of the temporal authority of the Pope; and its object appears to have been two-fold; first, to exclude the interference of the Pope in the temporal concerns of the realm; and, secondly, to secure the protestant hierarchy against the claims of the sect which had been put down: As to the first, the Roman catholic tenders an oath, utterly denying the Pope's right to exercise any kind of temporal jurisdiction in these kingdoms; as to the second, he tenders an oath, abjuring all interference with the protestant establishment and hierarchy. What then remains in difference? The right of the Pope with respect to their clergy? Now to this the oath of supremacy never had any reference, nor could have had: Their clergy were not recognised as having any legal existence when the oath of supremacy was enacted, nor as the subject of any other regulation, than that of heavy punishment if they were discovered; this part of the oath merely looks to the protestant hierarchy, and all this is effectually provided for by the oath.As to the corporation act, every person acquainted with its history, knows that it was introduced, not with a view to the Roman catholics, but to sectaries of a very different description, who had got into the corporations during

the government of Cromwell, and were supposed to be disaffected to the politics of the court. Part of the oath, as it was originally framed, declared that it was unlawful, under any pretence, to take up arms against the king, or those commissioned by him; and the amendment, which sought to qualify it by adding the word "lawfully" before "commissioned," was thrown out. One of the first acts of William and Mary was to repeal this scandalous and slavish enactment, which was at direct variance with the first principles of the Revolution; and yet we are told, in patriotic petitions, from loyal protestant bodies, that this corpora tion act was one of the great bulwarks of the Revolution.-It is required, no doubt, by the Bill of Rights, that the new oath of supremacy, thereby substituted for the former one, should be taken by all who were bound to take the former one; but this is not introduced as one of the grievances redressed, or rights declared, but it is merely incidentally mentioned, in consequence of the substitution of the one oath for the other. The declaration against popery is in no respect adverted to; but one fact, most decisive and important on this point, is this, that when this act was passed, the Roman catholics of Ireland were not, by any law or usage, excluded from parliament, or from civil or military offices.-The articles of Limerick (3d October, 691), stipulated for all such privileges, in the exercise of religion, as were enjoyed in the reign of Charles II., and as were consistent with the laws of Ireland. They required the oath of allegiance, as created in the first year of William and Mary; and the oath to be administered to the Roman catholics, submitting to his majesty's government, was to be that oath and no other; and it was farther stipulated that, so soon as their affairs should permit them to

summon a parliament, their majesties should endeavour to procure them such further securities as might preserve them from any disturbance, on account of their religion. At this time, Roman catholics were not excluded from parliament in Ireland, nor were there any test or corporation laws in force against them On the faith of these articles, all of which were punctually performed on their part, they surrendered the town, and left King William at liberty to apply his arms to the great cause in which he was sustaining the liberties of Europe. The stipulation on the part of government was to protect them against any additional oaths, and to endeavour to procure for them additional securities. What was done? The act of the 3d of William and Mary was passed, giving them no additional securities, but excluding them for the first time from parliament, and from offices civil and military, and from the bar, unless they subscribed the declaration against popery, and swore the oath of supremacy.-The great men who perfected that revolution had deeply studied the laws and constitution of their country; with ardent feelings and sublime conceptions, they made no unnecessary breach on any ancient usage; no wanton encroachment on any rights of the people or of the king; not like our modern improvers, who hold for nothing the wisdom which has gone before them, and set up their own crude conceptions, with an utter contempt for all the sacred lore of their ancestors. They committed no rude outrage on those who had gone before them; they entailed no odious bondage on those who were to suc ceed them-with the modesty and simplicity which characterize great minds, they declared the essential rights of the constitution. They saw that the system of the Reformation would be incomplete, unless the King, who was

the temporal head of the church, should be in communion with that church; they therefore enacted that he should hold his crown only while he adhered to his religion. They declared the throne unalterably protestant, they declared the religion of the state unalterably protestant; and having thus laid the firm foundation of civil and religious freedom, they left all other considerations open to the progress of time, and to the wis dom of posterity.

That time has come, and that posterity is now called upon to decide. We are fighting the same battle in which the illustrious deliverer of these countries was engaged, we are de fending the liberties of Europe, and of the world, against the same unchangeable and insatiable ambition which then assailed them, we are engaged with an enemy far more formidable than Louis the Fourteenth, whether we consider the vastness of his plans, his exhaustless resources, or his remorseless application of them, but if our dan gers are aggravated, our means of safe ty are increased. William the Third was obliged to watch, with a jealous eye, the movements of one half of his subjects, whilst he employed the energies of the other. We have it in our own power to unite them all, by one great act of national justice. If we do not wantonly and obstinately fling away the means which God's providence has placed within our grasp, we may bring the energies of all our peo ple, with one hand and heart, to strike against the common enemy..

Religion is degraded when it is brandished as a political weapon, and there is no medium in the use of it: either it is justified by holy zeal and fervent piety, or the appeal to it becomes liable to the most suspicious imputation. The safety of the state is essentially interwoven with the integrity of the establishment. The esta

blished religion is the child of freedom. The Reformation grew out of the free spirit of bold investigation; in its turn it repaid the obligation with more than filial gratitude, and contributed, with all its force, to raise the fabric of our liberties. Our civil and religious liberties would each of them lose much of their security, if they were not so deeply indented each with the other. The church need not to be apprehensive. It is a plant of the growth of 300 years; it has struck its roots into the centre of the state, and nothing short of a political earthquake can overturn it: while the state is safe, it must be so; but let it not be forgotten, that if the state is endangered, the church cannot be secure. The church is protected by the purity of its doctrines and its discipline; the learning and piety of its ministers ; their exemplary discharge of every moral and Christian duty; the dignity of its hierarchy, the extent of its possessions, and the reverence of the public for its ancient and unquestionable rights. To these the catholic adds the mite of his oath, that he does not harbour the chimerical hope, or the unconstitutional wish, to shake or to disturb it; and therefore, all which is requisite, for the security of the church, is that it should remain, in repose, on its own deep and immoveable foundations; and this is the policy which the great body of the church of Ireland, and of the church of England, have now adopted. If any thing could endanger its safety, it would be the conduct of intemperate and officious men, who would erect the church into a political arbiter, to prescribe rules of imperial policy to the throne and to the legislature.

The conduct of the Roman catholics of Ireland has been resorted to, it was remarked, as an argument for abandoning the pledge of the last session; and there have been some proceedings, on