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a people proverbially ardent in the cause of the defenceless, the shout of virtuous congratulation should receive a feeble echo. Our harp has long been unused to tones of gladness, and our hills but faintly answer the unusual accent. Your heart, however, can appreciate the silence inflicted by suffering; and ours, alas, feels but too acutely that the commisseration is sincere which flows from sympathy.

Let us hope that, when congratulating virtue in your royal person, on her signal triumph over the perjured, the profligate, and the corrupt, we may also rejoice in the completion of its consequences. Let us hope that the society of your only child again solaces your dignified retirement; and that, to the misfortune of being a widowed wife, is not added to the pang of being a childless mother!

But, if Madam, our hopes are not fulfilled; if, indeed the cry of an indignant and unanimous people is disregarded; console yourself with the reflection, that, though your exiled daughter may not hear the precepts of virtue from your lips, she may at least study the practice of it in your example..

A SPEECH

DELIVERED BY MR. PHILLIPS

AT A PUBLIC DINNER GIVEN TO HIM BY THE

FRIENDS OF CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS
LIBERTY

IN LIVERPOOL.

BELIEVE me Mr. Chairman, I feel too sensibly the high and unmerited compliment you have paid me, to attempt any other return than the simple expression of my gratitude; to be just, I must be silent; but though the tongue is mute, my heart is much more than eloquent. The kindness of friendship, the testimony of any class, however humble, carries with it no trifling gratification; but stranger as I am, to be so distinguished in this great city, whose wealth is its least commendation; the emporium of commerce, liberality, and public spirit; the birth-place of talent; the residence of integrity; the field where freedom seems to have rallied the last allies of her cause, as if with the noble consciousness that, though patriotism could not wreath the laurel round her brow, genius should at least raise it over her ashes; to be so distinguished, Sir, and in such a place, does, I confess, inspire me with a vanity which even a sense of my unimportance cannot en

tirely silence. Indeed, Sir, the ministerial critics of Liverpool were right. I have no claim to this enthusiastic welcome. But I cannot look upon this testimonial so much as a tribute to myself, as an omen to that country with whose fortunes the dearest sympathies of my soul are intertwined. Oh yes, I do foresee when she shall hear with what courtesy her most pretentionless advocate has been treated, how the same wind that wafts her the intelligence, will revive that flame within her, which the blood of ages has not been able to extinguish. It may be a delusive hope, but I am glad to grasp at any phantom that flits across the solitude of that country's desolation. On this subject you can scarcely be ignorant, for you have an Irishman resident amongst you, whom I am proud to call my friend; whose fidelity to Ireland no absence can diminish; who has at once the honesty to be candid, and the talent to be convincing. I need scarcely say I allude to Mr. Casey. I knew, Sir, the statue was too striking to require a name upon the pedestal.-Alas, Ireland has little now to console her, except the consciousness of having produced such men.-It would be a reasonable adulation in me to deceive you. Six centuries of base misgovernment, of causeless, ruthless, and ungrateful persecution, have now reduced that country to a crisis, at which I know not whether the friend of humanity has most cause to grieve or rejoice; because I am not sure that the feeling which prompts the tear at human sufferings, ought not to triumph in that increased inflictions which may at length tire them out of endurance. I trust in God a change of system, may in time anticipate the results of desperation; but you may

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quite depend on it, a period is approaching, when, if
penalty' does not pause in the pursuit, patience will
turn short on the pursuer. Can you wonder at it! Con-
template Ireland during any given period of England's
rule, and what a picture does she exhibit! Behold her
created in all the prodigality of nature; with a soil that
anticipates the husbandman's desire; with harbours
courting the commerce of the world; with rivers
capable of the most effective navigation; with the ore
of every metal struggling through her surface; with a
people, brave, generous, and intellectual, literally
forcing their way through the disabilities of their own
country into the highest stations of every other, and
well rewarding the policy that promotes them, by
achievements the most heroic, and allegiance without
a blemish. How have the successive governments of
England demeaned themselves to a nation, offering
such an accumulation of moral and political advantages!
See it in the state of Ireland at this instant; in the uni-
versal bankruptcy that overwhelms her; in the loss of
her trade; in the annihilation of her manufactures; in
the deluge of her debt; in the divisions of her people;
in all the loathsome operations of an odious, monopo-
Jyzing, hypocritical fanaticism on the one hand,
wrestling with the untired but natural reprisals of an
irritated population on the other! it required no com-
mon ingenuity to reduce such a country to such a
situation. But it has been done; man has conquered the
beneficence of the Deity; his harpy touch has changed
the viands to corruption; and that land, which you
might have possessed in health, and wealth, and vigour,
to support you in your hour of need, now writhes in

the agonies of death, unable even to lift the shroud with which famine and fatuity try to encumber her convulsion. This is what I see a pensioned press denominates tranquillity. Oh, wo to the land threatened with such tranquillity; solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant; it is not yet the tranquillity of solitude; it is not yet the tranquillity of death; but if you wonld know what it is, go forth in the silence of creation, when every wind is hushed, and every echo mute, and all nature seems to listen in dumb and terrified and breathless expectation, go forth in such an hour, and see the terrible tranquillity by which you are surrounded! How could it be otherwise; when for ages upon ages invention has fatigued itself with expedients for irritation; when, as I have read with horror in the progress of my legal studies, the homicide of a "mere Irishman" was considered justifiable; and when his ignorance was the origin of all his crimes, his education was prohibited by Act of Parliament!-when the people were wormeaten by the odious vermin which a church and state adultery had spawned; when a bad heart and brainless head, were the fangs by which every foreign adventurer and domestic traitor fastened upon office; when the property of the native was but an invitation to plunder, and his non-acquiescence the signal for confiscation; when religion itself was made the odious pretence for every persecution, (and the fires of hell were alternately lighted with the cross, and quenched in the blood of its defenceless followers! I speak of times that are passed: but can their recollections, can their consequences be so readily eradicated. Why, however, should I refer to periods that are so distant? Behold at

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