security for your childless parents! No, there is not a Cath family in Ireland, that for the glory of great Britain is not we ing over a child's, a brother's, or a parent's grave, and yet she clamours for securities! Oh, Prejudice! where is thy reas Oh, Bigotry! where is thy blush! If ever there was an oppo nity for England to combine gratitude with justice, and dig with safety, it is the present. Now, when Irish blood has c soned the cross upon her naval flag, and an Irish hero str the harp to victory upon the summit of the Pyrenees. Englan England! do not hesitate. This hour of triumph may be the hour of trial; another season may see the splendid panora of European vassalage, arrayed by your ruthless enemy, and { tering beneath the ruins of another capitol-perhaps of LON Who can say it? A few months since, Moscow stood as splen as secure. Fair rose the morn on the patriarchal city-the press of her nation, the queen of commerce, the sanctuary strangers; her thousand spires pierced the very heavens, and domes of gold reflected back the sun-beams. The spoiler ca he marked her for his victim; and, as if his very glance was tiny, even before the night-fall, with all her pomp, and we and happiness, she withered from the world! A heap of a told where once stood Moscow ! Merciful God, if this lord of solation, heading his locust legions, were to invade our coun though I do not ask what would be your determination; tho in the language of our young enthusiast, I am sure you w oppose him with "a sword in one hand, and a torch in the oth still I do ask with fearlessness, upon what single principle of licy or of justice, could the advocates for your exclusion sc your assistance-could they expect you to support a constitu from whose benefits you were debarred? With what front c they ask you to recover an ascendency, which, in point of was but re-establishing your bondage?

t.

t

It has been said that there is a faction in Ireland reac join this despot-" a French party," as Mr. Grattan thoug decent, even in the very senate house, to promulgate. S, 1 speak the universal voice of Ireland when I say, she spurns imputation. There is no "French party," here, but there and it would be strange if there was not-there is an party-men who cannot bear to see their country taunted the mockery of a constitution-men who will be content wit

connection that refuses them a community of benefits while it imposes a community of privations-men who, sooner than see this land polluted by the footsteps of a slave, would wish the ocean-wave became its sepulchre, and that the orb of heaven forgot where it 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 or grateful for favours. In the first place, I deny that to be a favour which is a right; and in the next place, I utterly deny that a system of conciliation has ever been adopted with respect to Ireland. 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 on the earth where one would be conferred with more characteristic 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. Put my panegyric to the test. 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 fantastic decorations of the French cottager; but I do say, within those wretched bazaars of mud and misery, you will find 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 a wisdom borrowed from the dead, but that with which nature herself has inspired them; an acute observance of the passing scene, and a deep insight into the motives of its agent. 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 expression, the rapidity of their ideas, and the energy of their gesture. In short, God seems to have formed our country like our people he has thrown round the one its wild, magnificent, decorated rudeness; He has infused into the other the simplicity of genius and the seeds of virtue:He says audibly to us, "Give them cultivation."

This is the way, Gentlemen, in which I have always looked upon 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 believe the paralyzing five millions of such a people as I have been describing, 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! Look to Protestant Ireland, shooting over the empire those rays of genius, and those thunderbolts of war, that have at once embellished and preserved it. I speak not of a former era. I refer not for my example to the day just passed, when our Burks, our Barrys, and our Goldsmiths, exiled by this system from their native shore, wreathed the "immortal shamrock" round the brow of painting, poetry, and eloquence! But now, even while I speak, who leads the British senate? A Protestant Irishman! Who guides the British arms? A Protestant Irishman! And why, why is Catholic Ireland, with her quintuple population, stationary and silent? Have physical causes neutralized its energies? Has the religion of Christ stupe fied its intellect? Has the God of mankind become the partizan of a monopoly, and put an interdict on its advancement? Stranger, do not ask the bigotted and pampered renegade who has an interest in deceiving you; but open the penal statutes, and weep tears of blood over the reason. Come-come yourself, and see this unhappy people; see the Irishman, the only alien in Ireland, in rags and wretchedness, staining the sweetest scenery ever eye reposed on, persecuted by the extorting middleman of some absentee landlord, plundered by the lay-proctor of some rapacious and unsympathizing incumbent, bearing through life but insults and injustice, and bereaved even of any hope in death by the heart-rending reflection that he leaves his children to bear, like their father, an abominable bondage? Is it the fact? Let any who doubts it walk out into your streets, and see the consequences of such a system; see it rearing up crowds in a kind of apprenticeship to the prison, absolutely permitted by their parents, from utter despair, to lisp the alphabet and learn the rudiments of profligacy? For my part, never did I meet one of these youthful assemblages without feeling within me a melancholy emotion. How often have I thought, within that little circle of neglected 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, 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 will 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 injus ce of your oppressions. Surely, surely if merit had fair play, if splendid talents, if indefatigable industry, if great research, if unsullied principle,