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on it, a divided assault can never overcome a consolidated resistance. I allow that an educated aristocracy are as an head to the people, without which they cannot think; but then the people are as hands to the aristocracy, without which it cannot act. Concede, then, a little to even each other's prejudices; recollect that individual sacrifice is universal strength; and can there be a nobler altar than the altar of your country? This same spirit of conciliation should be extended even to your enemies. If England will not consider that a brow of suspicion is but a bad accompaniment to an act of grace; if she will not allow that kindness may make those friends whom even oppression could not make foes; if she will not confess that the best security she can have from Ireland is by giving Ireland an interest in her constitution; still, since her power is the shield of her prejudices, you should concede where you cannot conquer; it is wisdom to yield when it has become hopeless to combat.

There is but one concession which I would never advise, and which, were I a Catholic, I would never make. You will perceive that I allude to any interference with your clergy. That was the crime of Mr. Grattan's security bill. It made the patronage of your religion the ransom for your liberties, and bought the favour of the crown by the surrender of the church. It is a vicious principle, it is the cause of all your sorrows. If there had not been a state-establishment

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there would not have been a Catholic bondage. By that incestuous conspiracy between the altar and the throne infidelity has achieved a more extended dominion than by all the sophisms of her philosophy, or all the terrors of her persecution. It makes God's apostle a court-appendage, and God himself a court-purveyor; it carves the cross into a chair of state, where, with grace on his brow and gold in his hand, the little perishable puppet of this world's vanity makes Omnipotence a menial to its power, and Eternity a pander to its profits. Be not a party to it. As you have spurned the temporal interference of the Pope, resist the spiritual jurisdiction of the crown. I do not think that you, on the one hand, could surrender the patronage of your religion to the King, without the most unconscientious compromise, so, on the other hand, I do not think the King could ever conscientiously receive it. Suppose he receives it; if he exercises it for the advantage of your church, he directly violates the coronation-oath which binds him to the exclusive interests of the Church of England; and if he does not intend to exercise it for your advantage, to what purpose does he require from you its sufrender? But what pretence has England for this interference with your religion? It was the religion of her most glorious era, it was the religion of her most ennobled patriots, it was the religion of the wisdom that framed her constitution, it was the religion of the valour that achieved

it, it would have been to this day the religion of her empire had it not been for the lawless lust of a murderous adulterer. What right has she to suspect your church? When her thousand sects were brandishing the fragments of their faith against each other, and Christ saw his garment, without a seam, a piece of patchwork for every mountebank who figured in the pantomime; when her Babel temple rocked at every breath of her Priestleys and her Paynes, Ireland, proof against the menace of her power, was proof also against the perilous impiety of her example. But if as Catholics you should guard it, the palladium of your creed, not less as Irishmen should you prize it, the relic of your country. Deluge after deluge has desolated her provinces. The monuments of art which escaped the barbarism of one invader fell beneath the still more savage civilization of another. Alone, amid the solitude, your temple stood like some majestic monument amid the desert of antiquity, just in its proportions, sublime in its associations, rich in the virtue of its saints, cemented by the blood of its martyrs, pouring forth for ages the unbroken series of its venerable hierarchy, and only the more magnificent from the ruins by which it was surrounded. Oh! do not for any temporal boon betray the great principles which are to purchase you an eternity! Here, from your very sanctuary,-here, with my hand on the endangered altars of your faith, in the name of that God, for the freedom of whose wor

ship we are so nobly struggling,-I conjure you, let no unholy hand profane the sacred ark of your religion; preserve it inviolate; its light is "light from heaven;" follow it through all the perils of your journey; and, like the fiery pillar of the captive Israel, it will cheer the desert of your bondage, and guide to the land of your liberation!

PETITION

REFERRED TO IN THE PRECEDING SPEECH,

DRAWN BY
/

MR. PHILLIPS

AT THE REQUEST OF

THE ROMAN CATHOLICS

OF

IRELAND.

To the Honourable the COMMONS of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled:

The humble Petition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, whose Names are undersigned on behalf of themselves, and others, professing the Roman Catholic Religion,

SHOWETH,

THAT we, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, again approach the legislature with a statement of the grievances under which we labour, and of which we most respectfully, but at

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