Page images
PDF
EPUB

monish me, how pure I should continue-here, standing as I do amongst my fairest, fondest, earliest sympathies, -such a welcome, operating, not merely as an affectionate tribute, but as a moral testimony, does indeed quite oppress and overwhelm me.

Oh! believe me, warm is the heart that feels, and willing is the tongue that speaks; and still, I cannot, by shaping it to my rudely inexpressive phrase, shock the sensibility of a gratitude too full to be suppressed, and yet (how far!) too eloquent for language.

If any circumstance could add to the pleasure of this day it is that which I feel in introducing to the friends of my youth, the friend of my adoption, though perhaps I am committing one of our imputed blunders, when I speak of introducing one whose patriotism has already rendered him familiar to every heart in Ireland; a man, who, conquering every disadvantage, and spurning every difficulty, has poured around our misfortunes the splendour of an intellect, that at once irradiates and consumes them. For the services he has rendered to his country, from my heart I thank him, and, for myself, I offer him a personal, it may be a selfish, tribute for saving me, by his presence this night, from an impotent attempt at his panegyric. Indeed gentlemen, you can have little idea of what he has to endure, who, in these times, advocates your cause. Every calumny which the venal and the vulgar, and the vile are lavishing upon you, is visited with exaggeration upon us. We are called traitors, because we would rally round the crown an unanimous people. We are called apostates, because we will not persecute Christianity. We are branded as separatists, because

of our endeavours to annihilate the fetters that, instead of binding, clog the connection. To these may be added, the frowns of power, the envy of dulness, the mean malice of exposed self-interest, and, it may be, in despite of all natural affection, even the discountenance of kindred!-Well, be it so,

For thee, fair Freedom, welcome all the past,
For thee, my country, welcome, even the last!

I am not ashamed to confess to you, that there was a day when I was bigoted as the blackest; but I thank the Being who gifted me with a mind not quite impervious to conviction, and I thank you, who afforded such convincing testimonies of my error. I saw you enduring with patience the most unmerited assaults, bowing before the insults of revived aniversaries; in private life, exemplary; in public, unoffending; in the hour of peace, asserting your loyalty; in the hour of danger, proving it. Even when an invading enemy victoriously penetrated into the very heart of our country, I saw the banner of your allegiance beaming refutation on your slanderers; was it a wonder then, that I seized my prejudices, and with a blush burned them on the altar of my country!

The great question of Catholic, shall I not rather say, of Irish emancipation, has now assumed that national aspect which imperiously challenges the scrutiny of every one. While it was shrouded in the mantle of religious mystery, with the temple for its sanctuary, and the pontiff for its sentinel, the vulgar eye might shrink and the vulgar spirit shudder. But now it has

come forth, visible and tangible for the inspection of the laity; and I solemnly protest, dressed as it has been in the double haberdashery of the English minister and the Italian prelate, I know not whether to laugh at its appearance, or to loathe its pretensions—to shudder at the deformity of its original creation, or smile at the grotesqueness of its foreign decorations. Only just admire this far-famed security bill,-this motly compound of oaths and penalties, which, under the name of emancipation, would drag your prelates with a halter about their necks to the vulgar scrutiny of every villagetyrant, in order to enrich a few political traders, and distil through some state alembic the miserable rinsings of an ignorant, a decaying, and degenerate aristocracy! Only just admire it! Originally engendered by our friends the opposition, with a cuckoo insidiousness, they swindled it into the nest of the treasury ravens, and when it had been fairly hatched with the beak of the one, and the nakedness of the other, they sent it for its feathers to MONSEIGNEUR QUARANTOTTI, who has obligingly transmitted it with the hunger of its parent, the rapacity of its nurse, and the coxcombry of its plumassier, to be baptized by the bishops, and received æquo gratoque animo by the people of Ireland!! Oh, thou sublimely ridiculous Quarantotti! Oh, thou superlative coxcomb of the conclave! what an estimate hast thou formed of the MIND of Ireland! Yet why should I blame this wretched scribe of the Propaganda! He had every right to speculate as he did; all the chances of the calculation were in his favour. Uncommon must be the people, over whom centuries of oppression have revolved in vain! Strange must be the mind,

which is not subdued by suffering! Sublime the spirit, which is not debased by servitude! God, I give thee thanks!-he knew not IRELAND. Bent-brokenmanacled as she has been, she will not bow to the mandate of an Italian slave, transmitted through an English vicar. For my own part, as an Irish Protestant, I trample to the earth this audacious and desperate experiment of authority; and for you, as Catholics, the time is come to give that calumny the lie, which represents you as subservient to a foreign influence. That influence, indeed, seems not quite so unbending as it suited the purposes of bigotry to represent it, and appears now not to have conceded more, only because more was not demanded. The theology of the question is not for me to argue, it cannot be in better hands than in those of your bishops; and I can have no doubt that when they bring their rank, their learning, their talents, their piety, and their patriotism to this sublime deliberation, they will consult the dignity of that venerable fabric which has stood for ages, splendid and immutable; which time could not crumble, nor persecutions shake, nor revolutions change; which has stood amongst us, like some stupendous and majestic Appenine, the earth rocking at its feet, and the heavens roaring round its head, firmly balanced on the base of its eternity; the relic of WHAT WAS; the solemn and sublime memento of WHAT MUST BE!

Is this my opinion as a professed member of the church of England? Undoubtedly it is. As an IRISHMAN, I feel my liberties interwoven, and the best affections of my heart as it were enfibred with those of my Catholic countrymen; and as a PROTESTANT, Con

vinced of the purity of my own faith, would I not debase it by postponing the powers of reason to the suspicious instrumentality of this world's conversion? No; surrendering as I do, with a proud contempt, all the degrading advantages with which an ecclesiastical usurpation would invest me; so I will not interfere with a blasphemous intrusion between any man and his Maker. I hold it a criminal and accursed sacrilege, to rob even a beggar of a single motive for his devotion? and I hold it an equal insult to my own faith, to offer me any boon for its profession. This pretended emancipation-bill passing into a law, would, in my mind, strike not a blow at this sect or that sect, but at the very vitality of christianity itself. I am thoroughly convinced that the antichristian connection between church and state, which it was suited to increase, has done more mischief to the Gospel interests, than all the raving's of infidelity since the crucifixion. The sublime Creator of our blessed creed never meant it to be the channel of a courtly influence, or the source of a corrupt ascendency. He sent it amongst us to heal, not to irritate; to associate, not to seclude; to collect together, like the baptismal dove, every creed and clime and colour in the universe, beneath the spotless wing of its protection. The union of church and state only converts good Christians into bad statesmen, and political knaves into pretended Christians. It is at best but a foul and adulterous connection, polluting the purity of heaven with the abomination of earth, and hanging the tatters of a political piety upon the cross of an insulted Saviour. RELIGION, HOLY RELIGION, ought not, in the words of its Founder, to be "led

« PreviousContinue »