SPEECH AT A PUBLIC DINNER, GIVEN BY THE CATHOLICS OF SLIGO. TO MR. FINLAY, THE BARRISTER, AUGUST 5, 1813. WHEN Mr. FINLAY had concluded his Address to the Mecting, Mr. PHILLIPS rose, and spoke as follows: I think, Sir, you will agree with me, that the most experiencel speaker might justly tremble in addressing you, after the display you have just witnessed. What must I then feel, who never before addressed a public audience? However, it would be an unworthy affectation in me, if I attempted to conceal from you the emotions with which I am agitated by this kindness. J. The exaggerated estimate, which other counties have made, of the few services so young a man could render, has, I trust, inspired me with the sentiments it ought; but here, I do confess to you, I feel no ordinary sensation. Here, where from every object springs some new association, and the loveliest visions, mellowed as they áre by time, rise painted on the eye of memory-here, where the light of heaven first blessed my infant view, and Nature breathed into my infant heart that ardour for my country, which nothing but death can chill---here, where the scenes of my childhood remind me how innocent I was, and the graves of my fathers admonish me how pure I should continue---here, standing as I do, among my fairest, fondest, earliest sympathies,---such a welcome, operating not merely as an affectionate tribute, but a moral testimony, does indeed quite oppress and overwhelm me. 1 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 rude and inexpressive phrase, shock the sensibility of a gratitude too full to be suppressed, and yet 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 (Mr. Curran); though perhaps I am com mitting one of our imputed blunders, when I speak of introducing one, whose services have already rendered him familiar to every friend of 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 any attempt at his panegyric. Indeed, Gentlemen, you can have. but little idea of what he has to endure, who in these times advo A cates your cause. Every calumny which has been heaped on you comes redoubled on us. We are called traitors, because we wish to obtain for the crown an unanimous people---we are called apostates, because we will not persecute Christianity---and we are branded as separatists, for our endeavours to annihilate the fetters that, instead of binding, clog the connexion. To these may be added, the frowns of power, the envy of dullness, 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! I am not ashamed to confess to you, that there was a day when I was as bigotted as the blackest; but I thank that Being, who gifted me with a mind not quite impervious to conviction, and I thank you, who afforded such dawning testimonies of my error: I saw you enduring with patience the most unmerited assaults, bowing before the insults of revived anniversaries; in private life, exemplary---in public, unoffending---in the hour of peace exerting your loyalty, and in the hour of danger proving it; even when the triumphant enemy penetrated into the very heart of our country, I saw the banner of your allegiance bearing refutation on your slanderers. No wonder, then, that I seized my prejudices, and with a blush burned them on the altar of my country! I rejoice that that motley compound of oaths and penalties, the Security Bill, has been scouted by all parties; the people of Ireland have not been suffering centuries of death and degradation for the purpose of putting on at least a pie-bald garment of rags and tinsel, which could only add to their wretchedness the ridicule of ostentation. That prodigious coalition, the memorable committees, may put it into their heads, that you will be contented with huckstering up half a dozen peers and pensioners for the political Rialto---or allow your prelates to be dragged, with a halter about their necks, to the vulgar scrutiny of every village tyrant--and for what? Why, in order to enrich a few political traders, and stil through some state-alembic the miserable rinsings of an igno rant, a decaying, and a degenerate aristocracy. If there were no other objection to that bill, the interference o the church with your state was sufficient to condemn it. We have leeches enow feeding on the bloated tumours of a morbid monopoly---we have too much of the mixture---Christ does not warrant it: it is, at best, but a foul and adulterous connexion, polluting the purity of heaven with the abominations of earth, and hanging the profaneness of pretended piety around the cross of an insulted Saviour! This union of church and state only converts good Christians into bad statesmen, and political knaves into pretended christians. Religion ought not, in the words of its founder, to be "led into temptation: the hand that holds the chalice should be pure, and the priests of her temple should be spotless as the vestments of her ministry. Rank only degrades, wealth only impo verishes, and ornaments only disfigure her; her sacred porch be comes the more sublime from its simplicity, and should be seated on an eminence, inaccessible to human passions---even like the summit of some Alpine wonder, for ever crowned with the sunshine of the firmament, which the vain and feverish tempest of human infirmi ties breaks through, harmless, and unheeded. Better, by far, that the days of ancient barbarism should revive ---better that your religion should again take refuge among the fastnesses of the mountains, and the deformities of the cavern--better that the rack of murderous bigotry should again terminate the miseries of your priesthood, and that the gate of freedom should be only open to them through the gate of martyrdom, than that they should gild their missals with the wages of a court, and expect their ecclesiastical eminences, not from superior piety, but comparative prostitution. If ever there was an opportunity for England to do justice with dignity, it is the present. Now, when Irish blood has crimsoned the cross upon her naval flag, and an Irish hero strikes the harp to victory, upon the summit of the Pyrenees. England! England! do not hesitate! This hour of triumph may be but an hour of trial; the caprices of fortune are not to be trusted; one season more may show the splendid panorama of European vassalage, arrayed by your ruthless enemy, and glittering beneath the ruins of another capital---perhaps of London. A few months since, Moscow stood as splendid and secure; fair rose the morn upon the patriarchal city---the empress of her nation, the queen of commerce, the sanctuary of strangers; her thousand spires pointed towards the heavens, and her domes of gold enriched the sun-beams. The tyrant came---he marked her for his residence; and, as if his very glance was destiny, with all her pride, and pomp, and happiness, she withered from the world Merciful God! if this embroidered butcher of the human race, heading his largest legions, were to land in IRELAND, I am sure you would oppose him, in the language of our young enthusiast*, with a torch in one hand, and a sword in the other." But I do ask, upon what principle could the advocates for your expulsioni solicit your assistance? Would they say, "Recover our ascen dency, and we will repay you with bondage?" It has been said, that there is a faction in Ireland, who would join this monster ;- - a French party, it has been said, even by him who poured over his country's ruins the elixir of his immortality. No doubt it escaped that venerable man, in one of those moments when God infatuates the wisest, as if to convince them they were human. But I care not on what authority it comes: there is no French party; but I will tell Mr. Grattan what there is---there is an Irish party; and would it not be strange, if there were not men who cannot bear to see their country taunted with the name of a constitution she has not?---Men, who will be content with no con * Mr. Emmett, a young man of great attainment and eminent talent. He was executed for High Treason, in 1802, and used the memorable words, quoted by Mr. Phillips, in his eloquent defence on his trial. nexion, without an equality of benefits, but who would die in defence of the connexion, if she had them?---Men, who sooner than see this lovely island polluted with the footsteps of a slave, would wish the ocean-wave to become its sepulchre, and that the orb of heaven forgot where we existed? It has been said, too (and when we were to be calumniated, what has not been said?) that Irishmen are neither fit for freedom, nor grateful for favours. In the first place, I deny that to be a fa-~ vour which is a right: and in the next place, Irishmen were never tried. Try them, and my life on it, they will be found grateful. I think I know my countrymen :---they cannot help being grateful for a benefit; and there is no country upon earth, where one would be conferred with more disinterested benevolence; they are emphatically the school-boys of the heart---a people of sympathy;' their acts spring instinctively from their passions; by nature ardent---by instinct brave---by inheritance generous: the children of impulse, they cannot avoid their virtues; and to be other than noble, they must not only be unnatural, but unnational. Enter the hovel of the Irish peasant. I do not say you will find the frugality of the Scotch, the comfort of the English, or the trifling and fantastic decoration of the French cottager; but I do say, that within those wretched garrisons of mud and misery, you will tind sensibility the most affecting, politeness the most natural, hospitality the most grateful, merit the most unconscious; their look is eloquence, their smile is love, their retort is wit, their remark is wisdom-not wisdom borrowed from the dead, but that with which nature has herself inspired them an acute observance of the passing scene, and a keen insight into the motives of its agents. Try to deceive them, and see with what shrewdness they will detect; try to outwit them, and see with what humour they will elude; attack them with argument, and you will stand amazed at the strength of their expressions, the rapidity of their ideas, and the energy of their gesture in short, God seems to have formed our people like our island; he has thrown round the one, its wild, magnificent, decorated rudeness; he has infused into the other, the simplicity of virtue and the seeds of genius. He says audibly to us, "Give them cultivation !" This is the way in which I have always received your question ;not as a party, or a sectarian, or a Catholic, but as an Irish question. Is it possible that any man can seriously think the paralizing of five millions of such a people as I have described, can be a benefit to the empire? Is there any man who deserves the name not of a statesman, but of a rational being, who can think it politic to rob such a multitude of all the energies of an honourable ambition? Why has Protestant Ireland shot over the empire those rays of genius, and those thunderbolts of war, which have at once embellished and preserved it? I speak not of a former era; I refer not, for instance, to that splendid day, when our Burkes, our Barrys, and our Goldsmiths, exiled by nature, went from their native shore, and, even on an envious soil, wreathed the shamrock round the brow of Painting, Poetry, and Eloquence! But now--even now whilst I speak, who leads the British Senate? A Protestant Irishman! Who guides the British arms? A Protestant Irishman! And why is Catholic Ireland, with her quintuple population, stationary and silent? Stranger! open the penal statutes, and weep tears of blood over the reason! Do not ask the bigotted and pampered renegade, who has an interest in deceiving you; but come, come yourself, and see this unhappy people: see the Irishman an alien in Ireland, in rags and wretchedness---` staining the sweetest scenery the eye ever reposed on---persecuted by the extorting middle-man of an absentee landlord, and plundered by the lay-proctor of an absentee incumbent---bearing through life but insults and injustice, and bereaved even of any hope in death by the heart-rending reflection that he must leave his children to bear, like their father, an abominable bondage! Is it the fact? Let any man that doubts it walk out into your streets, and see the consequence of such a system See it sending crowds of young apprentices to the prison---sent by their unfortunate parents in despair to learn the rudiments, and lisp the alphabet of deceit. For my part, I have never seen one of those wretched assemblages, collected for the purposes of play and profligacy, without feeling within me a melancholy emotion. Perhaps, I have thought, within that neglected circle of little triflers, who seem to have been born in caprice, and bred in orphanage, there may exist some mind formed of the finest mould, and wrought for immortality; a soul swelling with the energies, and stamped with the patent of the Deity, which might bless, adorn, immortalize, and ennoble empires; some Cincinnatus, in whose breast the destiny of a nation may be dormant ; some Milton, "pregnant with celestial fire;" some Curran, who, when thrones were crumbled, and dynasties forgotten, might stand the land-mark of his country's genius, rearing himself amid regal ruins and national dissolutions, a mental pyramid in the solitude of time, beneath whose shade things moulder, and round whose brow eternity must play! Even in such a circle, the young Demosthenes might have once been found, and Homer, the grace and glory of his age, have sung neglected! Other states have seen such prodigies, and why not Ireland? Who is there will say, Nature has stampt a degrading brand upon her intellect? Oh! my countrymen, let us hope, that under better auspices, and sounder policies, the ignorance that thinks so may meet its refutation. Let us turn from the blight and view of this wintry day, to the fond anticipation of a happier period, when our prostrate land will stand erect among the nations, her brow blooming with the wreaths of science, and her paths strewed with the offerings of art; the breath of heaven blessing her flag, the extremities of earth acknow-ledging her name; her fields waving with the fruits of agriculture, her ports alive with the varieties of commerce, and her temples rich with unrestricted piety: above all, her mountains crowned with the wild wreath of freedom, and her vallies vocal with the B る。 |