A SPEECH DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC DINNER GIVEN TO MR. FINLAY BY THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF THE TOWN AND COUNTY OF SLIGO I THINK, Sir, you will agree with me, that the most experienced speaker might justly tremble in addressing you, after the display you have just witnessed. What, then, must I feel, who never before addressed a public audience? However, it would be but an unworthy affectation in me, were I to conceal from you, the emotions with which I am agitated by this kindness. The exaggerated estimate which other countries have made of the few services so young a man could render, has, I hope, inspired me with the sentiments it ought; but here, I do confess to you, I feel no ordinary sensation-here, where every object springs some new association, and the loveliest objects, mellowed as they are 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 grave of my fathers admonish 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, I am not ashamed to confess to you, that there was a day when I was bigotted 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 anniversaries; 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 refu tation 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 cmancipation, 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 motley 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 village tyrant, 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-broken-manacled. as she had 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 ist 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 reppresent 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 wиHAT 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, convinced 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 interest, than all the ravings 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 ascendancy. 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 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 into temptation." The hand that holds her chalice should be pure, and the priests of her temple should be spotless as the vestments of their ministry. Rank only degrades, wealth only impoverishes, ornaments but disfigure her. I would have her pure, unpensioned, unstipendary; she should rob the earth of nothing but its sorrows: a divine arch of promise, her extremities should rest on the horizon, and her span embrace the universe; but her only sustenance should be the tears that were exhaled and embellished by the sun-beam. Such is my idea of what religion ought to be. What would this bill make it? A mendicant of the Castle, a menial at the levee, its manual the red book, its liturgy the pension list, its gospel the will of the minister! Methinks I see the stalled and fatted victim of its creation, cringing with a brute suppliancy through the venal mob of ministerial flatterers, crouching to the ephemeral idol of the day; and, like the devoted sacrifice of ancient heathenism, glorying in the garland that only decorates him for death! I will read to you the opinions of a celebrated Irishman, on the suggestion in his day, of a bill similar to that now proposed for our oppression. He was a man who added to the pride not merely of his country, but of his species-a man who robed the very soul of inspiration in the splendours of a pure and overpowering eloquence. I allude to Mr. Burke an authority at least to which the sticklers for establishments can offer no objection. "Before I had written thus far," says he, in his letter on the penal laws, "I heard of a scheme for giving the Castle the patronage of the presiding members of the Catholic clergy. At first I could scarcely credit it; for I believe it is the first time that the presentation to other people's alms has been desired in any country. Never were the members of one religious sect fit to appoint the pastors to another. It is a great deal to suppose that the present Castle would nominate bishops for the Roman church in Ireland, with a religious regard for its welfare. Perhaps they cannot, perhaps they dare not do it. But suppose them to be as well inclined, as I know that I |