not believe in the Prophets, in Moses, in the Apostles, nor in Christ; but they believe Tom Paine. With no government but confusion, and no creed but scepticism, I believe, in my soul, they would abjure the one, if it became legitimate, and rebel against the other if it was once established. Holding, my Lord, opinions such as these, I should consider myself culpable at such a crisis if I did not declare them. A lover of my country, I yet draw a line between patriotism and rebellion-a warm friend to liberty of conscience, I will not extend my toleration to the diffusion of infidelity; with all its imputed ambiguity I shall die in the doctrines of the Christian faith, and with all its errors I am well contented to live beneath the glorious safeguard of the British Constitution. SPEECH DELIVERED AT A SPLENDID COMPLIMENTARY DINNER GIVEN TO THE IRISH LEGION BY THE FRIENDS OF SOUTH AMERICAN FREEDOM, AT MORRISON'S HOTEL, DUBLIN. My Lord and Gentlemen, I sincerely thank you: to be remembered when my countrymen are celebrating the cause of free dom and humanity, cannot fail to be grateful; to be so remembered, when a personal and valued friend is the object of the celebration, carries with it a double satisfaction; and you will allow me to say, that if any thing could enhance the pleasure of such feelings, it is the consciousness that our meeting can give just offence to no one. Topics too often have risen up amongst us, where the best feelings were painfully at variance: where silence would have been guilt, and utterance was misery. But surely here, at length, is an occasion where neither sect nor party are opposed; where every man in the country may clasp his brother by the hand, and feel and boast the electric communication. To unmanacle the slave, to unsceptre the despot, to erect an altar on the Inquisition's grave, to raise a people to the attitude of freedom, to found the temples of science and of commerce, to create a constitution, beneath whose ample arch every human creature, no matter what his sect, his colour, or his clime, may stand sublime in the dignity of manhoodthese are the glorious objects of this enterprise ; and the soul must be imbruted, and the heart must be ossified, which does not glow with the ennobling sympathy. Where is the slave so abject as to deny it?-Where is the statesman who can rise from the page of Spanish South America, and affect to commisserate the fall of Spain? Her tyranny, even from its cradle to its decline, has been the indelible disgrace of Christianity and of Europe; it was born in fraud, baptized in blood, and reared by rapine; it blasphemed all that was holy—it cankered all that was happy; the most simple habits-the most sacred institutions-the most endeared and inoffensive customs, escaped not inviolate the accursed invader; the hearth, the throne, the altar, lay confounded in one common ruin; and when the innocent children of the sun confided for a moment in the Christian's promise, what!-oh, shame to Spain! oh, horror to Christianity! oh, eternal stigma on the name of Europe!-what did they behold?-the plunder of their fortunes-the desolation of their houses -the ashes of their cities-their children murdered without distinction of sex-the ministers of their faith expiring amid tortures-the person of their Ynca, their loved, their sacred, their heroic Ynca, quivering in death upon a burning furnace; and the most natural and the most excu-. sable of all idolatries, their consecrated sun-beam, clouded by the murky smoke of an inquisition steaming with human gore, and raised upon the ruins of all that they held holy! These were the feats of Spain in South America! This is the fiery and despotic sway, for which an execrable tyrant solicits British neutrality. An Ireland, at least, has given her answer. armed legion of her chosen youth bears it at this hour in thunder on the waters, and the sails are swelling for their brave companions. I care not if his tyranny was ten thousand times more crafty, more vigilant, more ferocious than it is-when a people will it, their liberation is inevitable-their very inflictions will be converted into the instruments of their freedom-they will write its charter even in the blood of their stripes-they will turn their chains into the weapons of their emancipation. If it were possible still more to animate them, let them only think on the tyrant they have to combat-that odious concentration of qualities at once the most opposite, and the most contemptible-timid and sanguinary—effeminate and ferocious-impious and superstitious-now embroidering a petticoat, now imprisoning an hero -to-day kneeling to a God of mercy, to-morrow lighting the hell of inquisition-at noon embra cing his ministerial pander, at midnight starting from a guilty dream, to fulminate his banishment —the alternate victim of his fury and his fears— faithful only to an infidel priestcraft, which excites his terrors and fattens on his crimes, and affects to worship the anointed slave as he trembles enthroned on the bones of his benefactors. Who can sympathize with such a monster? Who can see unmoved a mighty empire writhing in the embraces of this human Boa? My very heart grows faint within me when I think how many thousands of my gallant countrymen have fallen to crown him with that ensanguined diademwhen I reflect that genius wrote, and eloquence spoke, and valour fought, and fidelity died for him, while he was tasting the bitterness of captivity; and that his ungrateful restoration has literally withered his realm into a desert, where the widow and orphan weep his sway, and the sceptre waves, not to govern but to crush! Never, my Lord, never, whether we contemplate the good they have to achieve, the evil they have to overcome, or the wrongs they have to avenge-never did warriors march in a more sacred contest. Their success may be uncertain, but it is not uncertain that every age and clime will bless their memories, for their sword is garlanded with freedom's flowers, patriotism gives them an immortal bloom, and piety breathes on them an undying fragrance. Let the tyrant menace, and the hireling bark,-wherever christianity kneels, or freedom breathes, their deeds shall be recorded; and when their honoured dust |