answer the Eastern Bramin, when he replied to his exhortations in language such as this? "Father, we have heard your doctrine; it is splendid in theory, specious in promise, sublime in prospect; like the world to which it leads, it is rich in the miracles of light. But, Father, we have heard that there are times when its rays vanish and leave your sphere in darkness, or when your only lustre arises from meteors of fire, and moons of blood; we have heard of the verdant island which the Great Spirit has raised in the bosom of the waters with such a bloom of beauty, that the very wave she has usurped, worships the loveliness of her intrusion. The sovereign of cur forests is not more generous in his anger than her sons; the snow-flake, ere it falls on the mountain, is not purer than her daughters; little inland seas reflect the splendours of her landscape, and her valleys smile at the story of the serpent! Father, is it true, that this isle of the sun, this people of the morning, find the fury of the ocean in your creed, and more than the venom of the viper in your policy? Is it true, that for six hundred years her peasant has not tasted peace, nor her piety rested from persecution? Oh, Brama! defend us from the God of the Christian! Father, father, return to your brethren, retrace the waters; we may live in ignorance, but we live in love; and we will not taste the tree that gives us evil when it gives us wisdom. The heart is our guide, nature is our gospel; in the imitation of our fathers we found our hope; and, if we err, on the virtue of our motives we rely for our redemption." How would the missionaries of the mitre answer him? How will they answer that insulted Being of whose creed their conduct carries the refutation?

But to what end do I argue with the BIGOT?-a wretch, whom no philosophy can humanize, no charity soften, no religion reclaim, no miracle convert: a monster, who, red with the fires of hell, and bending under the crimes of earth, erects his murderous divinity upon a throne of sculls, and would gladly feed, even with a brother's blood, the cannibal appetite of his rejected altar! His very interest cannot soften him into humanity. Surely if it could, no man would be found mad enough to advocate a system which cankers the very heart of society, and undermines the natural resources of government; which takes away the strongest excitement to industry, by closing up every avenue to laudable ambition; which administers to the vanity or the vice of a party

when it should only study the advantage of a people; and holds out the perquisites of state as an impious bounty on the persecution of religion.-I have already shown that the power of the Pope, that the power of France, and that the tenets of your creed, were but imaginary auxiliaries to this system. Another pretended obstacle has, however, been opposed to your emancipation. I allude to the danger arising from a foreign influence. What a triumphant answer can you give to that! Methinks, as lately, I see the assemblage of your hallowed hierarchy, surrounded by the priesthood, and followed by the people, waving aloft the crucifix of Christ alike against the seductions of the court, and the commands of the conclave! Was it not a delightful, a heartcheering spectacle, to see that holy band of brothers preferring the chance of martyrdom to the certainty of promotion, and postponing all the gratifications of worldly pride, to the severe but heaven-gaining glories of their poverty? They acted honestly, and they acted wisely also; for I say here, before the largest assembly I ever saw in any country—and I believe you are almost all Catholics-I say here, that if the sce of Rome presumed to impose any temporal mandate directly or indirectly on the Irish people, the Irish bishops should at once abandon it; or the flocks, one and all, would abjure and banish them both together. History affords us too fatal an example of the perfidious, arrogant, and venal interference of a papal usurper of former days, in the temporal jurisdiction of this country; an interference assumed without right, exercised without principle, and followed by calamities apparently without end. Thus, then, has every obstacle vanished but it has done more-every obstacle has, as it were, by miracle, produced a powerful argument in your favour. How do I prove it? Follow me in my proofs, and you will see by what links the chain is united. The power of Napoleon was the grand and leading obstacle to your emancipation. That power led him to the menace of an Irish invasion. What did that prove? Only the sincerity of Irish allegiance. On the very threat, we poured forth our volunteers, our yeomen, and our militia; and the country became encircled with an armed and a loyal population. Thus then the calumny of your disaffection vanished.—That power next led him to the invasion of Portugal. What did it prove? Only the good faith of Catholic allegiance. Every field in the Peninsula saw the Catholic Portuguese hail the English

Protestant as a brother and a friend, joined in the same pride and the same peril. Thus, then, vanished the slander, that you could not keep faith with heretics.-That power next led him to the imprisonment of the Pontiff, so long suspected of being quite ready to sacrifice every thing to his interest and his dominion. What did that prove? The strength of his principles, the purity of his faith, the disinterestedness of his practice. It proved a life spent in the study of the saints, and ready to be closed by an imitation of the martyrs. Thus, also, was the head of your religion vindicated to Europe.-There remained behind but one impediment-your liability to a foreign influence. Now mark! The Pontiff's captivity led to the transmission of Quarantotti's rescript; and, on its arrival, from the priest to the peasant, there was not a Catholic in the land, who did not spurn the document of Italian audacity! Thus, then, vanished also the phantom of a foreign influence! Is this conviction? Is not the hand of God in it? Oh yes! for observe what followed. The very moment that power, which was the first and last leading argument against you, had, by its special operation, banished every obstacle; that power itself, as it were by enchantment, evaporated at once; and peace with Europe took away the last pretence for your exclusion. Peace with Europe! alas, alas, there is no peace for Ireland: the universal pacification was but the signal for renewed hostility to us; and the mockery of its preliminaries were tolled through our provinces by the knell of the curfew. I ask, is it not time that this hostility should cease? If ever there was a day when it was necessary, that day undoubtedly exists no longer. The continent is triumphant, the Peninsula is free, France is our ally. The hapless house which gave birth to Jacobinism is extinct for ever. The Pope has been found not only not hostile, but complying. Indeed, if England would recollect the share you had in these sublime events, the very recollection should subsidize her into gratitude. But should she not-should she, with a baseness monstrous and unparalleled, forget our services, she has still to study a tremendous lesson. The ancient order of Europe, it is true, is restored, but what restored it? Coalition after coalition had crumbled away before the might of the conqueror; crowns were but ephemeral; monarchs only the tenants of an hour; the descendants of Frederick dwindled into a vassal; the heir of Peter shrunk into the recesses of his frozen desert; the successor of

harles roamed a vagabond, not only throneless but houseless; every evening sun set upon a change; every morning dawned upon some new convulsion: in short, the whole political globe quivered as with an earthquake; and who could tell what venerable monument was next to shiver beneath the splendid, frightful, and reposeless heavings of the French volcano? What gave Europe peace, and England safety, amid this palsy of her Princes? Was it not the Landwehr and the Landstrum and the Levy en Masse? Was it not the PEOPLE?-that first and last, and best and noblest, as well as safest security of a virtuous government. It is a glorious lesson; she ought to study it in this hour of safety; but should she not

"Oh, wo be to the Prince who rules by fear,
When danger comes upon him!"

She will adopt it. I hope it from her wisdom; I expect it from her policy; I claim it from her justice; I demand it from her gratitude. She must at length see that there is a gross mistake in the management of Ireland. No wise man ever yet imagined injustice to be his interest; and the minister who thinks he serves a state by upholding the most irritating and the most impious of all monopolies, will one day or other find himself miserably mistaken. This system of persecution is not the way to govern this country; at least to govern it with any happiness to itself, or advantage to its rulers. Centuries have proved its total inefficiency; and if it be continued for centuries, the proofs will be but multiplied. Why, however, should I blame the English people, when I see our own representatives so shamefully negligent of our interest? The other day, for instance, when Mr. Peele introduced, aye, and passed too, his three newly invented penal bills, to the necessity of which, every assizes in Ireland, and as honest a judge as ever dignified or redeemed the ermine, has given the refutation; why was it that no Irish member rose in his place to vindicate his country? Where were the nominal representatives of Ireland? Where were the renegade revilers of the demagogue? Where were the noisy proclaimers of the board? What, was there not one voice to own the country? Was the patriot of 1782 an assenting auditor? Were our hundred itinerants mute and motionless" quite chop-fallen?" or is it only when Ireland is slandered, and her motives misrepresented, and her oppressions are basely and falsely denied, that their venal throats are ready

to echo the chorus of ministerial calumny? Oh, I should not have to ask those questions, if in the late contest for this city, you had prevailed, and sent HUTCHINSON into Parliament; he would have risen, though alone, as I have often seen him-richer not less in hereditary fame, than in personal accomplishments; the orna ment of Ireland as she is, the solitary remnant of what she was. If slander dare asperse her, it would not have done so with im punity. He would have encouraged the timid; he would have shamed the recreant; and though he could not save us from chains, he would at least have shielded us from calumny. Let me hope that his absence shall be but of short duration, and that this city will earn an additional claim to the gratitude of the country, by electing him her representative. I scarcely know him but as a public man; and considering the state to which we are reduced by the apostacy of some, and the ingratitude of others, and venality of more,-I say you should inscribe the conduct of such a man in the manuals of your devotion, and in the primers of your children; but above all, you should act on it yourselves. Let me intreat of you, above all things to sacrifice any personal differences among yourselves, for the great cause in which you are embarked. Remember the contest is for your children, your country, and your God; and remember also, that the day of Irish union will be the natal day of Irish liberty. When your own Parliament (which I trust in heaven we may yet see again) voted you the right of franchise, and the right of purchase, it gave you, if you are not false to yourselves, a certainty of your emancipation. My friends, farewell! This has been a most unexpected meeting to me; it has been our firstit may be our last. I can never forget the enthusiasm of this reception. I am too much affected by it to make professions; but, believe me, no matter where I may be driven by the whim of my destiny, you shall find me one, in whom change of place shall create no change of principle; one whose memory must perish ere he forgets his country; whose heart must be cold when it beats not for her happiness.