gion of Ireland, the annals of England afford the con futation. The body of your common law was given by the Catholic Alfred. He gave you your judges, your magistrates, your high-sheriffs, your courts of justice, your elective system, and, the great bulwark of your liberties, the trial by jury. Who conferred upon the People the right of self taxation, and fixed, if he did not create, their representation? The Catholic Edward the First; while, in the reign of Edward the Third, perfection was given to the representative system, Par liaments were annually called, and the statute against constructive treason was enacted. It is false,-foully, infamously false, that the Catholic religion, the religion of your forefathers, the religion of seven millions of your fellow-subjects, has been the auxiliary of debasement, and that to its influence the suppression of British freedom can, in a single instance, be referred. I am loath to say that which can give you cause to take offence; but, when the faith of my country is made the object of imputation, I cannot help, I cannot refrain, from breaking into a retaliatory interrogation, and from asking whether the overthrow of the old religion of Eng land was not effected by a tyrant, with a hand of iron and a heart of stone;-whether Henry did not trample upon freedom, while upon Catholicism he set his foot; and whether Elizabeth herself, the virgin of the Reformation, did not inherit her despotism with her creed; whether in her reign the most barbarous atrocities were not ccmmitted ;—whether torture, in violation of the Catholic cominon law of England, was not politically inflicted, and with the shrieks of agony the Towers of Julius, in the dead of night, did not re-echo?

You may suggest to me that in the larger portion of Catholic Europe freedom does not exist; but you should bear in mind that, at a period when the Catholic religion was in its most palmy state, freedom flourished in the countries in which it is now extinct. False,-I repeat it, with all the vehemence of indignant asseveration, utterly false is the charge habitually preferred against the religion which Englishmen have laden with penalties, and have marked with degradation. I can bear with any other charge but this--to any other charge I can listen with endurance. Tell me that I prostrate myself before a sculptured marble; tell me that to a canvas glowing with the imagery of Heaven I bend my knee; tell me that my faith is my perdition; --and, as you traverse the church-yards in which your forefathers are buried, pronounce upon those who have ain there for many hundred years a fearful and appalling sentence,-yes, call what I regard as the truth not only an error, but a sin, to which mercy shall not be extended, all this I will bear,-to all this I will submit,―nay, at all this I will but smile,--but do not tell me that I am in heart and creed a slave!-That, my countrymen cannot brook! In their own bosoms they carry the high consciousness that never was imputation more foully false, or more detestably calumnious!

THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF IRELAND.-Id.

I lay down a very plain proposition, and it is this,nowever harsh the truth, it must be told,-it is this:Whatever may be your inclination, you have not the ability to maintain the Irish establishment. At first ·

view, the subject seems to be a wretched dispute be tween Catholic and Protestant-a miserable sectarian controversy. It is no such thing; it is the struggle for complete political equality on the part of the overwhelming majority upon the one hand, and for political ascendency on the part of the minority on the other. Can that ascendency be maintained? Taught so long, but uninstructed still, wherefore, in the same fatai policy, with an infatuated pertinacity, do you disastrously persevere? Can you wish, and, if you wish, can you hope, that this unnatural, galling, exasperating ascendency should be maintained? Things cannot remain as they are. To what expedient will you fly? Would you drive the country into insurrection, cut down the people, and bid the yeomanry draw forth the swords clotted with the blood of 1798, that they may be brand ished in massacre, and sheathed in the nation's heart? For what, into these terrific possibilities, are we madly, desperately, impiously, to plunge? For the Irish Church!-the church of the minority, long the church of the State, never the church of the people; the church on which a faction fattens, by which a nation starves; the church from which no imaginable good can flow, but evil after evil, in such black and continuous abundance, has been for centuries, and is to this day, poured out; the church by which religion has been retarded, morality has been vitiated, atrocity has been engendered; which standing armies are requisite to sustain, which has cost England millions of her treasure, and Ireland torrents of her blood!

To distinctions between Catholic and Protestant let

nere be an end. Let there be an end to national animosities, as well as to sectarian detestations. Perish the bad theology, which, with an impious converse, makes God according to man's image, and with infernal passions fills the heart of man! Perish the bad, the narrow, the pernicious sentiment, which, for the genuine love of country, institutes a feeling of despotic domination upon your part, and of provincial turbulence upon ours!

THE KEPEAL OF THE UNION, 1834.—Id.

The population of Ireland has doubled since the Union. What is the condition of the mass of the people? Has her capital increased in the same proportion? Behold the famine, the wretchedness, and pestilence of the Irish hovel, and, if you have the heart to do so, mock at the calamities of the country, and proceed in your demonstrations of the prosperity of Ire land. The mass of the people are in a condition more wretched than that of any nation in Europe; they are worse housed, worse covered, worse fed, than the basest boors in the provinces of Russia; they dwell in habitations to which your swine would not be committed; they are covered with rags which your beggars would disdain to wear, and not only do they never taste the flesh of the animals which crowd into your markets, but while the sweat drops from their brows, they never touch the bread into which their harvests are converted. For you they toil, for you they delve; they reclaim the bog, and drive the plough to the mountain's top, for

you. And where does all this misery exist? In a country teeming with fertility, and stamped with the beneficent intents of God! When the famine of Ireland prevailed,-when her cries crossed the Channel, and pierced your ears, and reached your hearts,—the granaries of Ireland were bursting with their contents, and, while a people knelt down and stretched out their hands for food, the business of deportation, the absentee tribute, was going on! Talk of the prosperity of Ireland! Talk of the external magnificence of a poorhouse gorged with misery within !

But the Secretary for the Treasury exclaims: “If the agitators would but let us alone, and allow Ireland to be tranquil!" The agitators, forsooth! Does he venture has he the intrepidity-to speak thus? Agi tators! Against deep potations let the drunkard rail; at Crockford's let there be homilies against the dicebox; let every libertine lament the progress of licentiousness, when his Majesty's ministers deplore the influence of demagogues, and Whigs complain of agitation! How did you carry the Reform? Was it not by impelling the people almost to the verge of revolution? Was there a stimulant for their passions, was there a provocative for their excitement, to which you did not resort? If you have forgotten, do you think that we shall fail to remember your meetings at Edinburgh, at Paisley, at Manchester, at Birmingham? Did not three hundred thousand men assemble? Did they not pass resolutions against taxes? Did they not threaten to march on London? Did not two of the cabinet ministers indite to them epistles of gratitude and of ad