the energies and stamped with the patent of the Deity, which, under proper culture might perhaps bless, adorn, immortalize, or ennoble empires; some CINCINNATUS, in whose breast the destinies of a nation may lie dormant; some MILTON, "pregnant with celestial fire;" some CURRAN, who, when thrones were crumbled and dynasties forgotten, might stand the landmark of his country's genius, rearing himself amid regal ruins and national dissolution, a mental pyramid in the solitude of time, beneath whose shade things might moulder, and round whose summit eternity must play. Even in such a circle the young DEMOSTHENES might have once been found, and HOMER, the disgrace and glory of his age, have sung neglected! Have not other nations witnessed those things, and who shall say that nature has peculiarly degraded the intellect of Ireland? Oh, my countrymen, let us hope that under better auspices and a sounder policy, the ignorance that thinks so may meet its refutation. Let us turn from the blight and ruin of this wintry day to the fond anticipation of a happier period, when our prostrate land shall stand erect among the nations, fearless and unfettered; her brow blooming with the wreath of science, and her path strewed with the offerings of art; the breath of heaven blessing her flag, the extremities of earth acknowledging her name, her fields waving with the fruits of agriculture, her ports alive with the contributions of commerce, and her temples vocal with unrestricted piety. Such is the ambition of the true patriot; such are the views for which we are calumniated! Oh, divine ambition! Oh, delightful calumny! Happy he who shall see thee accomplished! Happy he who through every peril toils for thy attainment! Proceed, friend of Ireland and partaker of her wrongs, proceed undaunted to this glorious consummation. Fortune will not gild, power wil! not ennoble thee: but thou shalt be rich in the love and titled by the blessings of thy country; thy path shall be illumined by the public eye, thy labours enlightened by the public gratitude; and oh, remember-amid the impediments with which corruption will oppose, and the dejection with which disappointments may depress you-remember you are acquiring a name to be cherished by the future generations of earth, long after it the been enrolled amongst the inheritors of heaven. A SPEECH DELIVERED AT AN AGGREGATE MEETING OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF CORK. It is with no small degree of self-congratulation that I at length find myself in a province which every glance of the eye, and every throb of the heart, tells me is truly Irish; and that congratulation is not a little enhanced by finding that you receive me not quite as a stranger. Indeed, if to respect the Christian without regard to his creed, if to love the country but the more for its calamities, if to hate oppression though it be robed in power, if to venerate integrity though it pine under persecution, gives a man any claim to your recognition, then, indeed, I am not a stranger amongst you. There is a bond of union between brethren, however distant; there is a sympathy between the virtuous, however separated; there is a heaven-born instinct by which the associates of the heart become at once acquainted, and kindred natures, as it were by magic, see in the face of a stranger, the features of a friend. Thus it is, that, though we never met, you hail in me the sweet association, and I feel myself amongst you even as if I were in the home of my nativity. But this my knowledge of you was not left to chance; nor was it left to the records of your charity, the memorials of your patriotism, your municipal magnificence, or your commercial splendour; it came to me hallowed by the accents of that tongue on which Ireland has so often hung with ecstacy, heightened by the eloquence and endeared by the sincerity of, I hope, our mutual friend. Let me congratulate him on having become in some degree naturalized in a province, where the spirit of the elder day seems to have lingered; and let me congratulate you on the acquisition of a man who is at once the zealous advocate of your cause, and a practical instance of the injustice of your oppressions. Surely, surely if merit had fair play, if splendid talents, if indefatigable industry, if great research, if unsullied principle, if a heart full of the finest affections, if a mind matured in every manly accomplishment, in short, if every noble, public quality, mellowed and reflected in the pure mirror of domestic virtue, could entitle a subject to distinction in a state, Mr. O'Connel should be distinguished; but, it is his crime to be a Catholic, and his curse to be an Irishman. Simpleton! he prefers his conscience to a place, and the love of his country to a participation in her plunder! Indeed he will never rise. If he joined the bigots of my sect, he might be a sergeant; if he joined the infidels of your sect, he might enjoy a pension, and there is no knowing whether some Orange-corporator, at an Orange-anniversary, might not modestly yield him the precedence of giving "the glorious and immortal memory." Oh, yes; he might be privileged to get drunk in gratitude to the man who colonized ignorance in his native land, and left to his creed the legacy of legalized persecution. Nor would he stand alone, no matter what might be the measure of his disgrace, or the degree of his dereliction. You will know there are many of your own community who would leave him. at the distance-post. In contemplating their recreancy, I should be almost tempted to smile at the exhibition of their pretensions, if there was not a kind of moral melancholy intermingled, that changed satire into pity, and ridicule into contempt. For my part, I behold them in the apathy of their servitude, as I would some miserable maniac in the contentment of his captivity. Poor creature! when all that raised him from the brute is levelled, and his glorious intellect is mouldering in ruins, you may see him with his song of triumph, and his crown of straw, a fancied freeman amid the clanking of his chains, and an imaginary monarch beneath the inflictions of his keeper! Merciful God! is it not almost an argument for the sceptic and the disbeliever, when we see the human shape almost without an aspiration of the human soul, separated by no boundary from the beasts that perish-beholding with indifference the captivity of their country, the persecution of their creed, and the helpless, hopeless destiny of their children? But they have nor creed nor consciences, nor country; their god is gold, their gospel is a contract, their church a counting-house, their characters a commodity; they never pray but for the opportunities of corruption, and hold their consciences, as they do their government-debentures, at a price proportioned to the misfortunes of their country. But let us turn from these men tlicants of disgrace: though Ireland is doomed to the stain of their birth, her mind need not be sullied by their contemplation. I turn from them with pleasure to the contemplation of your cause, which, as far argument can affect it, stands on a sublime and splendid elevation. Every obstacle has vanished into air; every favourable circumstance has hardened into adamant. The Pope, whom childhood was taught to lisp as the enemy of religion, and age shuddered at as a prescriptive calamity, has by his example put the princes of Christendom to shame. This day of miracles, in which the human heart has been strung to its extremest point of energy; this day, to which posterity will look for instances of every crime and every virtue, holds not in its page of wonders a more sublime phenomenon, than that calumniated pontiff. Placed at the very pinnacle of human elevation, surrounded by the pomp of the Vatican and the splendours of the court, pouring the mandates of CHRIST from the throne of the CESARS, nations were his subjects, kings were his companions, religion was his handmaid; he went forth gorgeous with the accumulated dignity of ages, every knee bending, and every eye blessing the prince of one world, and the prophet of another. Have we not seen him in one moment, his crown crumbled, his sceptre a reed, his throne a shadow, his home a dungeon! But if we have, Catholics, it was only to show how inestimable is human virtue compared with human grandeur; it was only to show those whose faith was failing, and whose fears were strengthening, that the simplicity of the patriarchs, the piety of the saints, and the patience of the martyrs, had not wholly vanished. Perhaps it was also ordained to show the bigot at home, as well as the tyrant abroad, that though the person might be chained, and the motive calumniated, religion was still strong enough to support her sons, and to confound, if she could not reclaim, her enemies. No threats could awe, no promises could tempt, no sufferings could appal him; mid the damps of his dungeon he dashed away the cup in which the pearl of his liberty was to be dissolved. Only reflect on the state of the world at that moment? All around him was convulsed, the very foundations of the earth seemed giving way, the comet was let loose that, "from its fiery hair shook pestilence and death," the twilight was gathering, the tempest was roaring, the darkness was at hand; but he towered sublime, like the last mountain in the deluge-majestic, not less in his elevation than in his solitude, im mutable amid change, magnificent amid ruin, the last remnant of earth's beauty, the last resting-place of heaven's light! Thus have the terrors of the VATICAN retreated; thus has that cloud which hovered o'er your cause, brightened at once into a sign of your faith, and an assurance of your victory.-Another obstacle, the omnipotence of FRANCE; I know it was a pretence, but it was made an obstacle. What has become of it? The spell of her invincibility destroyed, the spirit of her armies broken, her immense boundary dismembered, and the lord of her empire become the exile of a rock. She allows fancy no fear, and bigotry no speciousness; and, as if in the very operation of the change to point the purpose of your redemption, the hand that replanted the rejected lily was that of an Irish Catholic. Perhaps it is not also unworthy of remark, that the last day of her triumph, and the first of her decline, was that on which her insatiable chieftain smote the holy head of your religion. You will hardly suspect I am imbued with the follies of superstition; but when the man now unborn shall trace the story of that eventful day, he will see the adopted child of fortune, borne on the wings of victory from clime to clime, marking every movement with a triumph, and every pause with a crown, till time, space, and seasons, nay, even nature herself, seeming to vanish from before him-in the blasphemy of his ambition he smote the apostle of his God, and dared to raise the everlasting Cross amid his perishable trophies! I am no fanatic: but is it not remarkable? May it not be one of those signs which the Deity has sometimes given, in compassion to our infirmity? signs, which, in the punishment of one nation, not unfrequently denote the warning to another;— "Signs sent by God to mark the will of Heaven: The argument, however, is taken from the bigot; and those whose consciousness taught them to expect what your loyalty should have taught them to repel, can no longer oppose you from the terrors of invasion. Thus, then, the papal phantom and the French threat have vanished into nothing.-Another obstacle, the tenets of your creed. Has England still to learn them? J will tell her where. Let her ask Canada, the last plank of her American shipwreck. Let her ask Portugal, the first omen of her European splendour. Let her ask Spain, the most Catholic country in the universe, her Catholic friends, her Catholic allies, |