DA 
 9f>0.3 
 
 O12.H
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 LETTER 
 
 TO TUB 
 
 RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 GEORGE C*4JWIJVG, 
 
 ON HIS 
 
 PROPOSED MOTION 
 
 IN FAVOUR OF 
 
 Catholic emancipation. 
 
 LONDON: 
 PRINTED FOR J. HATCHARD, 
 
 BOOKSELLER TO HSR MAJESTY, 
 
 NO. 19O, OPPOSITE ALBANY, PICCADILLY. 
 1812.
 
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 LETTER, 
 
 ; cum.'t -io!h';fo 1 art ibirfw '!o Jtf 
 
 
 9lft oj U!i; 3 2(iid V *-KX|*u;<| '>;it j'i 
 SIR, 
 
 You are too humane of heart, too loyal in 
 principle, not to have mingled your tears with 
 the sincerest that have been shed over the 
 bleeding corse of Mr. Perceval. For this!, all 
 who know you will give you the fullest credit. 
 Yet, however you may detest the execrable 
 deed by which he was so prematurely cut off; 
 however you may abhor the assassin, and all 
 who rejoice in his crime, still it is not in human 
 nature that the prospect which this melancholy 
 event opened to your hopes, should have been 
 altogether displeasing to you. In an instant of 
 time it promised to bring within your grasp^ 
 what it might require years' even of such ta- 
 lents as you possess, and of character, such as 
 those talents, and the manners that grace them, 
 hav6 established, to accomplish. It promised 
 to call you to the councils of the Prince Regent; 
 
 B 
 
 1189455 ;
 
 and, in that high situation, it encouraged you 
 to anticipate what is most flattering, and at the 
 Same time most serviceable, to an aspiring 
 statesman a principal and commanding share 
 in the success of a measure to which he devotes 
 his time and his talents, and to the accomplish- 
 ment of which he looks for fame and popularity, 
 and the support of a daily increasing party in 
 the state. 
 
 That in the prospect of being called to the 
 councils of the Prince Regent you have been 
 disappointed, is a matter of serious regret to 
 many, and to no one more than to him who 
 now addresses you. But with respect to your 
 favourite measure of Catholic Emancipation, it 
 is not surprising that you should still anticipate 
 that success which you never could have ex- 
 pected, had it pleased God to prolong the life of 
 that unshaken and unshakeable friend of the 
 Constitution in church and state, the late Mi- 
 nister. 
 
 How far your country can share your feelings 
 on this occasion, is another question. With 
 yourself, also, it may be a question, and, I should 
 think, no little drawback, to reflect how few of 
 those who applauded the principles of your early 
 political life who rejoiced in the eminence you. 
 had attained in the public council of the na-
 
 3 
 
 tion, where these principles might operate to its 
 best interests share in the triumph you pro- 
 mise yourself over the opinions and conduct of 
 Mr. Perceval, and of all who thought and acted 
 with him in opposing the pertinacious attempts 
 of the innovating spirit of the day to force this 
 measure on Parliament. 
 
 I ,.'.. s *J* 'f I J. < ._->' / 
 
 All these tried and steady friends to the an- 
 cient order of things recollect, with pleasure, 
 what an active part you took in resisting this 
 innovating spirit, on its first introduction from 
 that land of horrors, which it began by inun- 
 dating with the blood of its inhabitants, and 
 ended by subjecting to the most oppressive 
 tyranny. They gave you your full share in the 
 triumph gained by the admirable publications 
 that appeared at that period, over all the at- 
 tempts of our domestic incendiaries to debauch 
 our people from their attachment to all our an- 
 cient institutions, and to substitute in their 
 place the theories and speculations of rash ex- 
 perimenters. How different were their feelings, 
 when they saw you pass over to the camp of 
 the enemy ! when they heard you, in the last 
 debate on the Roman Catholic question, exert 
 alt the powers of ridicule and raillery, which 
 you so eminently possess, in decrying all attach- 
 ment to such institutions ! when they saw you 
 unfurl the flag of innovation and experiment
 
 A 
 
 of liberal opinions and new (eras, as a rallying 
 point to the different factions into which the 
 House was splitting on that momentous ques- 
 
 rafniyr* *L'ob3!fitt3<; >.: >?n*oi-r v 
 To stand in the old ways, is not the precept of 
 
 religion alone. The mos majorum has ever had 
 
 the greatest weight with the wisest men, both 
 
 of .ancient an.d modern times. Not that an- 
 
 tiquity, abstractedly considered, is any more a 
 
 proof of the excellence of an institution, than 
 
 grey hairs are a proof of wisdom, or old age an 
 
 assurance of prudence. But woe to the rash 
 
 hand that would daringly innovate on insti- 
 
 tutions, planned and matured, on the soundest 
 
 principles, by the best men of their day, to 
 
 secure their posterity against evils of which 
 
 they had themselves the bitter experience ! Be- 
 
 fore a prudent statesman will tamper with such 
 
 institutions, additionally recommended and ren- 
 
 dered venerable by the happy experience of 
 
 more than a century ; before he will attempt 
 
 any change in the principles in which they were 
 
 laid, and the substitution of others of a direct 
 
 contrary tendency, he should have nothing short 
 
 pf demonstration to satisfy him that the change 
 
 cannot, ir* any degree, endanger the public 
 
 welfare. He will act as if under that sacred 
 
 injunction, Nc quid Rcspublica detrimenti capiat. 
 
 Of this, I am persuaded, you are fully aware ;
 
 ami, therefore, in the third attempt, in the same 
 Session, to force the measure of Catholic Eman- 
 cipation 011 the House at* Commons, of which 
 you have given notice, you will, doubtless, be 
 prepared to prove that the measure implies no 
 danger, either immediate or remote, to the 
 Constitution, or to the interests of the coun- 
 try, which are allowed to be inseparably 
 united with the preservation of that Consti- 
 tution. 
 
 J$t*K'*'tM\t > i''>f<' '>y*fc'i*c>'j' ii"; > 1 .i\-.Y-jiA ^ > ^w$\.'. 
 You will not deny, that by the adoption of 
 the measure in its full extent, and uncondi- 
 tionally, the very foundation of the system esta- 
 blished at the period of the Revolution is to be 
 subverted ; and that new materials are to be laid, 
 on which to build the future destinies of the Bri- 
 tish empire. You are too well read in the history 
 of your country, not to know, and knowing, 
 you have too great a respect for your own cha- 
 racter not to admit, that the dread of Popery, 
 and the evils to be apprehended from it to the 
 laws and liberties of the kingdom, was the great 
 moving principle, as well with the distinguished 
 characters who placed William and Mary on 
 the throne which the bigot James had abdicated, 
 as with those who, at a later period, settled the 
 succession to the Crown on the descendants of 
 the princess Sophia, being Protestants.
 
 If we are to believe the newspaper reporters, 
 an attempt has been made in the House of 
 Lords to mislead the public opinion on this 
 most important point. It would appear from 
 what is given as the speech of a noble Baron 
 in a debate on the Catholic Question, that he 
 undertook to prove that the exclusion of Po- 
 pery formed no part of the stipulations of that 
 great charter of the liberties of the subject, as 
 asserted and secured by the Revolution, the 
 Bill of Rights. I can consider such a represent- 
 ation in no other light than that of a libel 
 on this noble personage. No Peer of Parlia- 
 ment could have ventured to make, in his place, 
 and in the face of his country, the assertion he 
 is said to have made. No Peer of Parliament 
 could have descended to the artifice imputed to 
 him, or offered insult to the understanding of 
 the House, by a garbled reference to one part 
 of an Act of Parliament, as bearing him out in 
 his assertion, from its making no specific men-, 
 tion of Popery, while he suppressed the many 
 declarations, statements, and provisions of the 
 same Act, that so demonstratively refute it. 
 
 Sir, it is a gross deception to represent the 
 instances of arbitrary power exercised by James 
 the Second, which the Act of William and 
 Mary enumerates in its declaratory, and pro- 
 vides against in its enacting part, as the whole
 
 of what is usually called the Bill of Rights. 
 To have a full and clear conception of all that 
 the Act, which, in general language,- goes 
 under that title, had in view, we must consider 
 it in all its parts : we must look particularly to 
 the Declaration to which it refers in the 
 preamble, as made by the Lords and Commons 
 lawfully assembled at Westminster the preced- 
 ing session. That Declaration sets forth, "That 
 James the Second, by the assistance of divers 
 evil counsellors, ministers, and judges, employ- 
 ed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extir- 
 pate the Protestant religion, and the laws and 
 liberties of this kingdom." Here we have spe- 
 cified the two great evils which the Act was 
 particularly designed to remedy, and the ground- 
 work of all its subsequent enactments and pro- 
 visions. The means by which James and his 
 advisers attempted to entail these evils on the 
 country, are next adverted to : these means are 
 enumerated under twelve distinct heads, and 
 the blessing of God is gratefully acknowledged 
 in having made King William the happy instru- 
 ment of delivering the kingdom from Popery 
 and arbitrary power, for the establishment of 
 which, these means had been employed. To 
 guard against the repetition of all such attempts 
 in future, the instances of arbitrary power, enu- 
 merated in the former part of the Act, are de- 
 clared to be illegal, and the inverse, of each of
 
 them is confirmed and established as the ancient 
 and indisputable right of the people of this 
 kingdom ; and then, as further securities against 
 the evils they had been employed to produce, 
 namely, Popery and arbitrary power, Papists 
 and persons married to Papists are debarred the 
 Crown ; an oath is prescribed to be taken by 
 every King and Queen at their coronation, for 
 maintaining the Protestant religion as by law 
 established, together with all the rights, privi- 
 leges, and possessions of the clergy of the Es- 
 tablished Church ; and they are required, a*t 
 a certain given time after their accession, to 
 subscribe the Declaration contained in the Act 
 passed in the reign of Charles the Second, for 
 preventing Papists from sitting in either House 
 of Parliament. 
 
 Can any thing be more obvious, to the plain- 
 est understanding, than that, in every line of 
 this Act, the Protestant religion, and the laws 
 and liberties of the kingdom, on one hand, and 
 Popery and arbitrary power on the other, are 
 identified? Is not the very groundwork of 
 the Act laid as clearly and as explicitly in the at- 
 tempts of James and his evil counsellors to ex- 
 tirpate the Protestant religion, as in their at- 
 tempt to subvert the laws and liberties of the 
 kingdom? in their endeavours to introduce 
 Popery, as' in their endeavours to introduce ar-
 
 9 
 
 bitrary power ? Is there a clause in the Act in 
 which the danger from the one is separated from 
 the danger of the other? the security of the 
 one, from the security of the other ? Are not 
 the instances of power enumerated in the Act, 
 and branded as illegal, and guarded against by 
 the subsequent provisions, branded and guard- 
 ed against, not more for the danger to which a 
 repetition of them would expose the laws and 
 liberties of the country, than for the danger to 
 which it would expose the Protestant religion ? 
 And what could be more obviously designed to 
 mislead, than to read to the House the clause 
 of the Act that declared the means employed by 
 James to accomplish his objects, to be illegal, 
 and contrary to the ancient and indisputable 
 rights of the people of the kingdom ; and to 
 pass over, in total silence, every part of the 
 Act that has in contemplation one of the two 
 great blessings it designed to secure against all 
 recurrence to the same means, the same illegal 
 attempts, for all after-ages ? 
 
 I* ,V'. *i-ii\ -r-.-..>:'intiX fci'V.i'':! l* 4 j> t 'it .III ^irtyli i : :?^--* 
 
 I am persuaded thaj there was no necessity 
 for my arguing this point with you. You will 
 not commit your character with the public, by 
 playing the part of an Old Bailey solicitor, la- 
 bouring to mislead the Court, or by joining in 
 an attempt to impose on Parliament and on the 
 public by such a garbling of the ^ct of Wil-
 
 10 
 
 liam and Mary, such an insidious commentary 
 on the Bill of Rights, as has heen imputed to 
 Lord Holland. You know that the great bond 
 of union between the illustrious characters who 
 took the lead in the proceedings of those days 
 of glory, was not more the love of civil liberty, 
 than a detestation of Popery, as the engine 
 from which that liberty had most to dread. 
 
 This detestation, you know, is to be traced 
 to" a much more distant period. Even when 
 the Roman Catholic was the religion of the 
 country, the love of liberty, that in-born pas- 
 sion of all Englishmen, the gift of Heaven, it 
 Would seem, to their very soil, maintained a 
 atruggleof ages against the encroachments of the 
 see of Rome on the civil authority, and on the 
 fights of the Crown and the subject *. It was 
 this impatience of all papal usurpation that was 
 chiefly instrumental in introducing the Reform- 
 
 . * W - c * * . 
 
 * The very first article of the Great Charter, granted in the 
 reign of Henry III. is, Quod Ecclesia Anglicana lilera sit, et 
 haleat omnia sua jura et lilertates ill#sas. It has been ob- 
 served by the polished and learned author of the " Observa- 
 tions on the more ancient Statutes," and, indeed, it has never 
 been doubted, that the liberties of the English Church, hereby 
 insisted, on, were chiefly ita immunities from the Papal juris- 
 diction, which had been so far extended in the reign ot 
 Henry's predecessor. The 35th of Edw. I. the 25th of Edw.III. 
 and l6th of Rich. II. were as strong against the Pope's Inter- 
 ference in England, as any law of Henry the Eighth.
 
 11 
 
 aion into these realms. Subsequent to that pe- 
 riod, the love of religious freedom degene- 
 rated, at one time, into excess ; and of the dis- 
 orders to which it led, the Second Charles invi- 
 
 7 
 
 diously, and his infatuated brother openly, at- 
 tempted to avail themselves, for the purpose of 
 reconciling the nation to the proscribed reli- 
 gion, as the assured auxiliary by which they 
 were to work their way to the arbitrary power 
 to which they aspired. But we owe it to the 
 goodness of Providence that both projects were 
 defeated. The attempt only served to produce 
 an indissoluble union between the Protestant 
 religion and the laws and liberties of the king- 
 dom j to identify them in the hearts and affec- 
 tions of the people, as well as in the securities 
 to which they trust the defence of their ancient 
 rights ; to render it impossible for them to se- 
 parate the ideas of Popery and arbitrary power. 
 
 Of the historical truths, on which this repre- 
 sentation rests, you are convinced ; and your ai'r 
 guments in favour of Catholic Emancipation 
 will not belie your conviction. You will not 
 maintain, as Lord Jrlolland is .said to have 
 maintained, that the dreacj of danger to our civil 
 .liberties from Popery, was not one of the distin- 
 guishing features of the Revolution; you will not 
 maintain that the preservation of the Protestant 
 religion was not a fundamental principle in the 
 
 C 2
 
 12 
 
 Bill of Rights ; you Will not maintain that to 
 demolish the barriers that were raised by the 
 framers of that Bill against Popery is not a se- 
 cond revolution ; a substitution of a new prin- 
 ciple in the place of one on which those great 
 men modelled, and, as they flattered them- 
 selves, perfected, the Constitution under William 
 and Mary. 
 
 No, Sir; you will not deny that Catholic 
 Emancipation, as it is called, will be the intro- 
 duction of a new principle into the frame of 
 the Constitution ; but your argument will be, 
 that this principle implies no danger to any of 
 our civil or religious liberties. Preparing incan- 
 tations to call up the spirit of Popery from its 
 sleep of more than a century, your defence will 
 be, that it has become harmless. You will 
 maintain, that time and circumstances have re-* 
 moved the prejudices of the Irish Roman Ca- 
 tholics against the British constitution, and that 
 their only object is, to be admitted into a full 
 participation of blessings of which they are be- 
 come as enamoured as any of their Protestant 
 fellow-subjects; that the religion they now 
 profess is not the religion of th6 Papists of 
 James the Second's day ; that there is as little 
 room for apprehension from the doctrines they 
 now maintain, as from their attachment to a 
 Popish pretender to the Throne, which the ex-
 
 tinction of* the Stuart line has necessarily extin- 
 guished in their breasts. If there should still 
 be Protestants who cannot divest themselves of 
 old prejudices; who cannot conceive how a Pro- 
 testant establishment can confidently and se- 
 curely look for support from a Legislature inocu- 
 lated with Popery ; who are slow to believe that 
 a Protestant hierarchy will have nothing to ap^- 
 prehend when power shall be vested in men who 
 have a distinct hierarchy of their own, to which 
 they are attached with all the enthusiasm of re- 
 ligious zeal ; which they conceive " to have the 
 '* most ancient title to the most exalted rank ; 
 " which they cannot be content to see remain in 
 " a situation of bare permission to fulfil its du- 
 " ties, without being placed in one of actual faci- 
 " lities, and marked public encouragement * :" 
 if still there should be such bigoted and nervous 
 Protestants, securities may be obtained, condi- 
 tions stipulated, regulations adopted, to remove 
 their fears; the Roman Catholics are ready and 
 anxious to give those securities, to enter into 
 those stipulations, to concur in those regu- 
 lations ; and, in your conception of the sub- 
 ject, it' lam rightly informed, and according to 
 the plan you mean to arrange, they must be re- 
 quired to come forward and give satisfaction on 
 
 ''fcfj /J.'iii *i;*;;i..*.'-: j.'ut .. t' >' >,? * 
 
 * See a pamphlet printed and published by a Committee of 
 the Convention. .
 
 -14 
 
 every point on which the friends of the Es- 
 tablishment feel alarmed. 
 
 These and similar arguments, it is easy to an- 
 ticipate, will form the whole of your defence 
 of this momentous experiment. Session after 
 session they have been hashed and served up 
 under different forms, even to nausea. You 
 will add nothing new to them except the high 
 seasoning of your eloquence, which, even with- 
 out the garnish of office, will doubtless have 
 a proper effect in rendering them palatable to 
 the House. I have not the advantage of a seat 
 in that House, and shall not hear you. But 
 even if I had that advantage, I should be very- 
 unequal to break a lance with you in debate. 
 Indeed, although you do not present yourself, as 
 was expected, in new armour of Ministry, op- 
 position-proof, I know no one who is. Cold 
 does he lie in his untimely grave on whom the 
 last hope of his country rested in this arduous 
 struggle for all that has been hitherto most 
 dear and sacred in the estimation of the people 
 of England. And who am I, that I can hope 
 that what I am now mournfully and obscurely 
 penning in my closet, shall so extensively make 
 its way to the public, as still to rally round 
 the Constitution those members of either House 
 who, in the discussion of this question., look 
 only to its real merits, and how it bears upoqt
 
 15 
 
 the peace, the interests, the safety of* the Bri- 
 tish empire? But I will satisfy my own con- 
 science the rest be left to Heaven. 
 hi n, Ji,:p ,bmt 
 
 Asrainst every man in or out of Parliament 
 
 o / 
 
 who attempts to expose the dangerous tendency 
 of the cause you advocate, and to wani the 
 country of the evils with which he conceives 
 the grant of Catholic Emancipation to be preg- 
 nant, a cry of higotry is raised ; a cry of reli- 
 gious intolerance and persecution, at which the 
 spirit of every true Englishman, every true Pro- 
 testant, revolts. I trust I shall not be borne 
 down by this cry. I take the field with the 
 Roman Catholics themselves in the very front 
 of my battle. My weapons of attack or de- 
 fence shall not be taken from the unfounded 
 representations of illiberal Protestants ; the pre- 
 judiced assumptions of interested churchmen; 
 but from the avowed objects, the recorded sen- 
 timents, of their own writers, orators, and 
 clergy. I will oppose their Keoghs, their Scul- 
 lys, their conventional pamphleteers, their 
 Troys, and their O'Connors, to the Greys, the 
 Grenvilles, the Whitbreads, and the whole body 
 of your associates and supporters on this ques- 
 tion. They for whom I principally write (I 
 have just described them) will form their own 
 opinion on the alarming difference between 
 these contending doctors..
 
 This difference is observable in the very outset 
 of this question. You, Sir, and the other Pro- 
 testant advocates for the Roman Catholics, con- 
 tend, that emancipation from the pressure and 
 from the disgrace of the laws that exclude them 
 from Parliament, and that declare them to be 
 ineligible to the higher offices of the state and 
 the law, of the army and the navy, forms the 
 whole extent of their claims. Now, Sir, what 
 says Mr. Keogh in answer to this ? But first 
 let me inform you who Mr. Keogh is ; and this 
 I feel to be the more necessary, as the very 
 name excites some little risibility, and as, hi 
 answe: to every argument drawn from the 
 speeches or writings of the Roman Catholic 
 agitators, it is thought sufficient to say that the 
 whole body are not answerable for the opinions, 
 or sentiments, or declarations of individuals. I 
 do not deny that this proposition must, to a cer- 
 tain extent, be admitted in all fair reasoning ; 
 but you will agree with me, that it cannot apply 
 where such individuals are men who have a 
 commanding lead among their confederates, and 
 whose opinions are known to have a decisive 
 influence on all their deliberations. Among the 
 most distinguished of these figures Mr. Keogh. 
 Brought up at the feet of his father, the hoary 
 and sage Gamaliel of the Catholic sanhedrim, 
 to whom the meeting of the Catholics of Ire- 
 land, on the 12th of June 1810, voted with
 
 17 
 
 * , i^ , _ 
 
 loud and unanimous acclamation, " The thanks 
 of the Catholics of Ireland, as eminently due 
 for his long, faithful, and unparalleled services 
 to the cause of Catholic Irish Emancipation ;" 
 Brought up at the feet, nurtured in the prin- 
 ciples, intimately acquainted with the views 
 and projects, and speaking the sentiments of 
 this faithful and zealous associate of T. W. Tone 
 and William Broughall, in traversing the four 
 provinces (as he boasted at the above meeting), 
 to produce a confederacy between the bishops, 
 the lower clergy, and the people of Ireland, in. 
 opposition to the government, and to the Ca- 
 tholic aristocracy ; this Mr. Keogh, whom I 
 oppose to you, must surely be entitled to credit 
 when he tells you in what Emancipation, as the 
 Catholics assembled on the 12th of June 1810 
 define it, consists ; what the objects are which 
 it is designed to embrace ; and what it must be 
 to satisfy the people of Ireland. Hear him, 
 then, speaking for himself, and for his asso- 
 ciates, in his Letter to Lord Grenville on the 
 Veto : " Catholic Emancipation, if an insulated 
 " measure, must be, in every point of view, un- 
 " desirable. Taken by itself, it means for Lord 
 " Fingal a seat in Parliament, for Mr. Bryan a 
 " troop of horse. To satisfy the people of Ire- 
 " land there must be means adopted which the 
 " poor man will feel in his cottage; there must 
 " be a total change of the whole system of go-
 
 18 
 
 " vernment : there must be the abolition of tithes; 
 " the annulling of all corporate bodies, including 
 " the University: there must be the resumption oj 
 " the enormous and misapplied revenues of the IN- 
 ** TUUSIVE Church." 
 
 The Committee appointed by the Convention 
 in Dublin to state to the public the Catholic 
 grievances and claims, although a little more 
 cautious and guarded in their expressions, yet 
 take precisely the same ground. They assert 
 " the right of the Catholics to demand, not only 
 " the removal of all parliamentary and official 
 " disabilities, but the utter abolition of all cor- 
 " porations ; the acknowledgment of the full 
 " and unlimited jurisdiction of their church 
 " over marriages ; the unrestrained exercise of 
 " her power of excommunication ; the revival 
 " of her lucrative trade of endowments and be- 
 " quests; actual facilities, marked public en- 
 " couragements, and a befitting share of the 
 " public revenue, for her ancient and unbroken 
 " hierarchy ;" " a hierarchy not belonging to a 
 " sect in the nation, but to the people of Ire- 
 " land, claiming, as a nation, the establishment 
 " of its national worship." Such is Emancipa- 
 tion in the conception and views of the per- 
 sons who have loaded the tables of both 
 Houses, and beset the levee-room of the Prince 
 Regent, with their petitions in its favour. 
 Here is their answer to their Protestant ad-
 
 19 
 
 vocates : here their refutation of the state- 
 ments of their parliamentary friends, wilfully 
 or ignorantly deceiving the people of Eng- 
 land, and either regardless of the pernicious 
 consequences of a measure, the adoption of 
 which they expected would open to them the 
 door of power ; or merely amusing the Roman 
 Catholics, and going with them as far as their 
 discontents and their clamours embarrass an Ad- 
 ministration they have confederated to subvert. 
 With such men I should be most unwilling to 
 class you ; but I put down things as they are 
 you are the best judge and guardian of your 
 own reputation. 
 
 A second point on which the Protestant ad- 
 vocates for Emancipation most pertinaciously 
 dwell is, that all opposition to this measure 
 arises from religious bigotry on the part of the 
 Protestants, irritating religious prejudices in the 
 breasts of the Roman Catholics : that to reli- 
 gious hatred alone, and to the passions it ex- 
 cites and inflames, we are to ascribe all the mi- 
 series of Ireland, all the heart-burnings between 
 her and England ; and that as soon as the ques- 
 tion ceases to be a question of religion, by the 
 Protestants divesting themselves of their reli- 
 gious prejudices, all is to be peace, and har- 
 mony, and unanimity, between the two coun- 
 tries. 
 
 D 2
 
 so 
 
 But do they who speak the sentiments and 
 express the feelings of the Irish Catlu lies agree 
 with their Protestant friends in this represent- 
 tion? What says Mr. Keogh in answer to this? 
 In his Letter to Lord Greuville he will not suffer 
 Irish prejudices and religious prejudices to be 
 confounded in this great struggle for Catholic 
 Emancipation. He maintains, that " if Irish 
 " Catholics usually regard the Protestants with 
 " an eye of hostility, it is not on account of 
 " their religious tenets." " The Catholic," he 
 says, beholds in the Protestant the offspring 
 " of a race n w, and intrusive i the island;" 
 and as a demonstrative proof of this assertion, 
 he adduces the very synonomy of the language: 
 " Sassenagh, that is, a Saxon, means imhner- 
 " ently, an Englishman, a Protestant, or an 
 " enemy; while a Turk, Jew, or Pagan, French- 
 " man, Spaniard, Asiatic, African, or American, 
 " are never used in Ireland as terms of re- 
 " proach." " Thus," he says, " the Irishman, 
 " naturally indulgent and kind to all nations 
 " and all religions, entertains an exclusive dis- 
 *' like to one race, and to one religion." li he 
 claims, as he does claim, for Ireland " a right 
 " to oppose, and, by every legal effort, to sub- 
 ' vert, any religious ascendancy injurious to 
 ' the great mass of her own population, it is 
 ' principally from his considering religion in 
 ' a political view, as connected with the an- 
 " cient civil rights of the Irish people" This
 
 'is a denomination which he, and all who sup- 
 port the same cause, confine to the Roman 
 Catholics of Ireland, to the exclusion of its 
 whole Protestant and dissenting population; 
 and if this people are determined, as he says 
 they are determined, " never to allow a sys- 
 " tematic abasement of their clergy, or consent 
 " to the desertion of their venerable church, the 
 " cherished pride of Ireland, it is because it is 
 11 the last undestroyed monument of the ancients 
 " national grandeur (as it is expressed in ano- 
 " ther public document), and the pledge of the 
 ' resurrection of Ireland to the rank of nations" 
 
 Here you will exclaim, What idle, what in- 
 applicable declamation is all this ! Are not many 
 of the descendants of Englishmen amongst the 
 foremost and most zealous of the Catholic pe- 
 titioners? Is not the majority of their dele- 
 gates of that description ? Can they be insti- 
 gated by hatred to the EngUsh name? The 
 history of the Irish disturbances will afford a 
 decisive answer to this are'umentnm ad ab- 
 
 o 
 
 surdum. Hibernis ipsis Hiberni-ores, is the cha- 
 racter an historian gives of the descendants of 
 the English settlers of his day : they had 
 adopted the Irish names, the Irish habits, the 
 Irish customs, the Irish laws; they were the 
 Queen's most virulent enemies. Among the 
 most conspicuous of the., Protestant advocates
 
 22 
 
 for Emancipation at this day, is a descendant, 
 as he assumes, of one of the most notorious of 
 these degenerate English, the Sougan Earl : and, 
 if I am rightly informed, that gentleman can 
 prove his descent much more satisfactorily by 
 his principles, than by his genealogical tree. 
 
 But besides this, Sir, we have numberless 
 documents to prove what little hopes the de- 
 scendants of the English can entertain of their 
 being able to sway or direct the councils of 
 the Irish Catholic agitators, whenever they be- 
 tray the least predilection to the country of 
 their forefathers, or a desire to be entirely re- 
 conciled to it. In what -is called the Great 
 Rebellion, the Pope's nuncio succeeded, by his 
 intrigues, to deprive the Catholic nobility and 
 gentry of all weight and influence in the Roman 
 Catholic parliament and council of Kilkenny. 
 He established a conviction " that all the An- 
 " glo-Hibernian Catholics were secret favourers 
 " of heresy ; and that there were no sincere 
 " Catholics in Ireland but Owen Roe O'Neil's 
 " party, and the Milesian families who support- 
 " ed his excommunication *.'' 
 
 * See Dr. O'Connor's Second Letter on the Calamities 
 occasioned by Foreign Influence in the Nomination of Bishops 
 to Irish sees.
 
 23 
 ' '} 
 In 1792, the elder Mr. Keogh, as he boasted 
 
 in the Catholic Assembly of 1810, succeeded, 
 with the assistance of his lamented friend Tone, 
 who was taken in arms, conducting a French 
 force into Ireland, and of his lamented friend 
 Broughall, an attainted rebel, and of the Ca- 
 tholic Bishops of Connaught and Ulster, in 
 putting down a Catholic aristocracy, the de- 
 scendants of Englishmen, in their opposition 
 to the assembling of the Convention ; and when 
 the Convention did assemble, these English aric- 
 tocrats were excluded from all deliberation, all 
 place, in that genuine, full, and complete repre- 
 sentation, as Mr. Keogh describes it, of the Ca- 
 tholics of Ireland. 
 
 But is not Lord Fingal, at present, the head 
 and leader of the Catholics of Ireland ? True, 
 he is. With the best motives, however ill- 
 advised, he gave up his own opinions to adopt 
 those of the late Convention, and hence this 
 temporary pre-eminence. But we cannot for- 
 get how contemptuously he was treated by the 
 O'Connels, and the O'Gormans, &c. &c. when 
 he ventured to testify his disapprobation of 
 their proceedings. We cannot forget that they 
 who were most indulgent to him, who wished 
 to give him the strongest proofs of their friend- 
 ship and attachment, thought it expedient to 
 vindicate his character against the imputations
 
 of loyalty laid to his charge at one of their 
 meetings ; that they exerted all their eloquence 
 to excuse him, to the people of Ireland, for 
 the part he had acted during the late rehellion ; 
 for appearing in arms among the King's troops, 
 and for contributing to the defeat of the rebels 
 at Tara. Let him but exhibit any new proof 
 of loyalty and moderation (and this he will do 
 whenever he acts from himself), and he is cer- 
 tain to fall again under the displeasure of the 
 O's and the Macs, and all the Irish with Eng- 
 lish names who domineer in their assemblies. 
 He that leads this turbulent body, must lead 
 them like the headmost sheep of the flock, 
 because he is driven on by those from behind 
 him. 
 
 Doctor O'Connor, a Roman Catholic Clergy- 
 man, a Doctor of the Sorbonne, I believe, and 
 a gentleman whom I am far from meaning to 
 place in the same class with Mr. Keogh, agrees 
 with him in tracing all the disturbances of Ire* 
 land, not to religion, but to hatred of the 
 English name. According to him, they are 
 sadly mistaken who think that the calamities of 
 Ireland arose from the difference of religion, 
 previous to the accession of the House of Stu- 
 art; and he feels indignant, when he sees the 
 people of Ireland misled by this cry of reli- 
 gion. Even at the time of the accession of the 
 4
 
 Stuart line x he agrees with Morryson, that the 
 war between th,e Protestants and the Catholics 
 was not, accurately and properly speaking, a 
 war of religion; hut that " then, for the first 
 " time, religion was made use of as a cloak for 
 " treason." This new feature in the national en- 
 mity, he lays to the charge of Papal interfer? 
 ence and Papaj influence. " The first signal of 
 " religious war was a plume, presented to Hugh 
 " Earl of Tyrone, on the part of the Pope, by a 
 " Franciscan friar, afterwards made Archbishop 
 " ef Pubjin, a niost active inpendjary, aufl agent 
 " of Philip the Second." 
 
 , 
 AS religion, according to this respectable Dir 
 
 vine, was npt the cause of the national hatred 
 to England ; so neither was it, i$ hi$ opinion, 
 the cause of the penal laws. To prove ^feis, 
 he quotes Peter Walsh. '* fhi s celebra.te4 
 " Franciscan friar," he says, "justly ascribes the 
 (< Irish penal laws, since the Reformation, to a 
 ' system of Doctrines and practices cpntrary tq 
 " those manifiestly recomniende4 hy the Gospels 
 " and by the Christian Church, and propagated 
 " only with fi view tp establish the temporal in.- 
 " t^rference ano! dominion of the Court of Rome." 
 He arraigns, without reserve, the present Roman 
 Catholic Bishops of Ireland, * as pursuing that 
 " identical system ; of insisting on the continu^ 
 ?' ^tjon of that identical ultramoptamsm, which 
 
 1
 
 26 
 " always offered to the Legislature, as a*// BEFORE 
 
 " AS AFTER THE REFORMATION, JUSt, Solid, and Sllb- 
 
 " stantial grounds for dreading a foreign influence; 
 " and, consequently, dreading the unreserved ad~ 
 " mission of Catholics into the full enjoyment of 
 " the rights and privileges of the Constitution'' 
 He sees nothing in the circumstances of the 
 present day to diminish that dread. " The Pope's 
 " temporal power," he asserts, <; is still strong 
 " enough, by means of such Catholic Synods as 
 " have been lately held in Ireland, to wield the 
 " popular fury even against the Catholic gentry 
 " of Ireland : as his temporal power did in 1645, 
 " when it rendered the Pope, for a time, absolute 
 " monarch of Ireland. The principles on which 
 " that temporal power was asserted in those days, 
 " actually exist " he says, " in full force in these 
 " Synods, and are taught at Maynooth without 
 " reserve to this day." 
 
 What will you, Sir, and the other Protestant 
 advocates, reply to this answer to all your 
 arguments on this part of the subject? Must 
 not the Protestant be demented who rejects such 
 a testimony from a Roman Catholic of Dr. 
 O'Connor's character, and who, from his hav- 
 ing exercised for many years the function of a 
 parish priest in Ireland, must have a thorough 
 knowledge of the subjic';? 
 
 . i'i Li/il/>-*'
 
 27 
 
 But, you will say, have not the Catholics of 
 Ireland, bishops, clergy, and laity, taken the 
 oath of allegiance? have they not, in that oath, 
 expressly disclaimed all foreign temporal power? 
 In their Synod held in Dublin in 1810, do 
 they stipulate for any thing more than the 
 spiritual power of the Pope? Who then, but 
 a bigoted no-popery man, can apprehend any 
 danger from the contrary doctrine ? 
 
 The Roman Catholic Divine, Dr. O'Connor, 
 will answer this question also. He will tell you 
 that, " although the Roman Catholic religion 
 " is always the same, yet clerical politicians will 
 " fluctuate with the exigencies of the time, and 
 " whenever a nuncio, or legate, or papal emissary 
 " will interfere." He will tell you, that " the 
 " oath of allegiance which is taken by the Irish 
 " Catholics of this day, is precisely the same for 
 " the taking of which the Irish Catholics were 
 " excommunicated by the Synod of Waterford, 
 " in 1645." But take the oath as it is, and sup- 
 pose a Catholic to consider it to be binding 
 under every change of circumstances and times, 
 " still," says Dr. O'Connor, " the important 
 " question will return, What is this temporal 
 " power ? what its extent ? what its limits ? If it 
 " should appear, that in their mode of explaining 
 " spiritual power, the Roman Catholic Bishops 
 " render it in many instances a temporal domi- 
 
 Sfl
 
 w< riion, then it 'will foltow that th resolution of 
 
 " the Dublin Synod is nugatory." He knows that 
 
 they do render it, in many instances, a temporal 
 
 dominion ; and he therefore enters his protest 
 
 'against it. " Nothing," he says, " but thie 
 
 " Wayward whimsical thing called human will 
 
 v " 'stands in the stead of law, to guard against its 
 
 " practical operation. The Catholic gentry and 
 
 " clergy who subscribed the Remonstrance in 
 
 " 1662, were excommunicated for so doing, 
 
 lt tfoough that declaration implied nothing more, 
 
 '" Directly Or indirectly, than temporal allegiance ; 
 
 fh &li& the power usurped on that occasion by the 
 
 "Dope's nuncio, lis tfrre 'true comment of the 
 
 *' lloman m'eani'ng of spiritual power. Some 
 
 " more rational and Christian ideas of this spi- 
 
 r 
 
 '* ritual power must therefore," he says, :t be 
 ^'entertained by Catholic doctors and synods, or 
 
 ^ 4<i it must be quite nugatory to allege, that the 
 '"'tiatk of allegiance, which disclaims all power y 
 
 /w EXdEfcT S^fRI^UAL POWER, AFFORDS SUFFICIENT 
 
 " SECURITY TO THE STATE. This power is, in the 
 " Irish acceptation, a sort of vain legerdemain, 
 '* <v 'and of the most dubious meaning. Its limits 
 "'^ftiust'be ascertained by law, otherwise the oath 
 " of iitlegiance, that disclaims all otlier power, is 
 " a trifling with the solemnity of 'an oath:: 'it 
 " exposes such enlightened Catholics, as may 
 ^ entertain dttulbts dtt the extent of spiritual ju- 
 torrneYtortf 'c^scientious
 
 " scruples, and to the fear of evident prevari- 
 " cation." 
 
 Such is the light in which Dr. O'Connor views 
 this security fl'om the oath of allegiance, as 
 now taken by the Catholics of Ireland. Could 
 the lamented Mr. Perceval himself, had Pro- 
 vidence permitted that he should be still in his 
 place, and arguing this question with you, 
 under all his settled conviction of its danger, 
 with all his mild firmness, and his unrivalled 
 powers of debate, could he more clearly detect 
 the fallacy of this argument, on which so much 
 stress is laid? Could he more lucidly expose 
 the nugatoriness of the oath of allegiance, as 
 now taken by the Irish Catholics, or the \veafk- 
 ness and folly of trusting to it? Could he 
 more convincingly prove the necessity of ex- 
 plaining the nature of spiritual power, of de- 
 'fining its extent and its limits; of strictly con- 
 fining it within lazv, and bringing it under a 
 legitimate control from the state, that might 
 restrain its abuse? 
 '.f&jft to-ft'ij'jrtTfl #0 ehttfiwfttft'}- i&'i mwilvt* wk 
 
 But the zeal of the Protestant apologists of 
 the Roman Catholics of the present day is inde- 
 'fatigable. It carries them to the foreign univer- 
 sities, to France, to Flanders, to Spain, to gain 
 information that lay at their doors, and that 
 could be found only there. To satisfy them-
 
 30 
 
 selves that the doctrines of the Irish Roman 
 Catholic church are not as hostile to the civil 
 power, as in the days of their ancestors, they 
 collect the opinions of the theologians of Paris 
 and of Douay, of Salamanca, Alcala, and Val- 
 ladolid; and with these opinions, transmitted to 
 they know not whom, they rest perfectly sa- 
 tisfied. Verbosa et grandis epistola venit a Ca- 
 preis ; nit plus interrogo. 
 
 I do not believe, that among your very splen- 
 did and useful acquirements, theology holds a 
 very conspicuous place. Your lively imagina- 
 tion would not long rest on the dull pages of 
 casuistry; you would soon be put to flight, or 
 to sleep, by the barbarous argumentations of 
 a school divine, instructing you on such subjects 
 .as engage his vigils. I will not, therefore, put 
 your patience to the trial, by entering into the 
 disputations of controvertists and schoolmen, 
 on the sources from whence the doctrines of 
 the Romish church are derived; nor with their 
 clashing opinions in deciding by what organ 
 she delivers her commands on articles of faith. 
 In one thing Dr. Troy, the titular Archbishop 
 of Dublin, will tell you they are all agreed ; 
 namely, " that the Church is infallible in her 
 " doctrinal decisions and canons on all points of 
 " faith and morals ; and that all Catholics are 
 " obliged to adhere implicitly to all decrees and
 
 3t 
 
 " canons which the Church, assembled in general 
 " council, declares and delivers, and which the 
 " Pope has confirmed." If this archiepiscopal 
 authority will not be sufficient, and you should 
 be better pleased to have a lay authority, you 
 have that of Mr. Plowden ; a lawyer, deeply 
 read in all such learned lore, and I should think 
 better qualified to instruct you than Dr. G rattan, 
 notwithstanding the decision with which that 
 profound casuist delivers the modern doctrines 
 of the Church of Rome to the House. Mr. 
 Plowden will tell you, that " the decrees of a 
 " general council, in matters of faith and mora- 
 " lity, when approved by the Pope, and received 
 " by the Church, are not liable to deceit or error, 
 " and that all Roman Catholics are obliged to 
 " adhere to them." In addition to this, you will 
 find, on inquiry, that every Roman Catholic 
 priest, on receiving orders, signs a declaration, 
 or takes an oath, that " he undoubtedly receives, 
 " believes, and professes all things, that have 
 " been delivered and declared by oecumenical 
 " councils." 
 
 -sfo Jd4 ttafgol '^ liSHftifiaoa . ^aiiaiiiwa ^:IH^ 
 - Are not these proofs strong as Holy Writ, and 
 satisfactory to every thing except the obsti- 
 nacy of wilful ignorance, sealing its ears against 
 information, that the Roman Catholic doctrine 
 of all times is, that the only organ by which 
 true Church of Rome pronounces her decrees
 
 on all points of faith and morals, is her oecu- 
 menical councils, approved by the Pope ? To 
 refer us, therefore, to any Roman Catholic 
 university, to know what her present doctrines 
 are, is a gross imposition on modern Protestant 
 credulity and ignorance. It is a deception that 
 could be practised only on those who are will- 
 ing to be deceived. From her canons and 
 oecumenical councils alone, you are to collect 
 the doctrines of the Church of Rome in this 
 day, as in all times past. Nothing but the 
 authority that has enacted, can annul them : so 
 say all her casuists, and prelates, and priests. 
 The universities of Paris and of Douay, of 
 Alcala and Salamanca, may therefore disclaim 
 what doctrines they think fit; they may de- 
 clare that the Church no longer inculcates 
 among the moral duties, the deposition and 
 murder of heretical Sovereigns, the nullity of 
 oaths of allegiance to these Sovereigns, and the 
 extirpation of heretics, and all the other doc- 
 trines on which they are said to have been 
 consulted : but there are canons and decrees of 
 general councils, confirmed by Popes, that de- 
 clare them to be moral duties : these canons 
 and decrees have never been annulled by tl) 
 authority that declared and delivered them ; and 
 Dr. Troy, consonant to the unchangeable Doc- 
 trine of the Church, pronounces (ex cathedra) 
 that, under these circumstances, alj Roman Ca-
 
 tholics are obliged implicitly tp adhere to 
 them. 
 
 But, Sir, I will bring this question to a short 
 issue. From the day that this inauspicious 
 measure was first agitated, all who opposed it 
 have objected, and all who supported it have 
 denied, that these are still the doctrines of the 
 Church of Rome. Why then have not the 
 Roman Catholic bishops and clergy thought it 
 expedient to assemble a national Synod, and de- 
 cide the question at once, if, in fact, these doc- 
 trines are no longer taught by their priests, or 
 admitted by their laity ? They had numberless 
 precedents, in what they would call the best 
 days of their church, for resorting to such a 
 measure. In their impatience to remove all 
 suspicions of incipient loyalty, and to disclaim 
 all intention of being in any way connected 
 with an heretical government, they resorted to 
 it, themselves, on the question of the Veto,, 
 They have resorted to it on other occasions, to 
 which I shall presently call your attention, and 
 of which the English public never would have 
 heard, had not Dr. O'Connor disclosed their 
 secret proceedings. Would not such a national 
 Synod, disclaiming, as a national church, the 
 doctrines imputed to them, be the proper expc* 
 dient for removing the suspicions and the fears 
 pf Jiis. Majesty's Protestant subjects, instead of
 
 a reference to foreign universities, or to the 
 opinions of foreign theologians, by which the 
 Koniaii Catholic bishops of Ireland would be 
 the first to say they never could conceive them- 
 selves, their clergy, or their laity, to be bound? 
 Why, having this reasonable assurance of their 
 real tenets to demand of them, are we to be 
 amused with opinions derived from other sources, 
 or with their own vague and indefinite assur- 
 ances in private communications, either with 
 their Protestant advocates, or with those of 
 their own communion, the loyalty of whose 
 feelings might be shocked at the consequences 
 cleducible from these doctrines? 
 
 I have conversed much with these men. I 
 am well accustomed to " their two voices :" I 
 have learned how to appreciate their assurances, 
 that they no longer inculcate these tenets,; and 
 I know what a different language they hold in 
 their clerical meetings, their diocesan confer- 
 ences, and their general synods. I am equally 
 accustomed to their professions, that they do 
 not entertain a wish hostile to the established 
 church ; that they have it not in contemplation, 
 not the most distant, to interfere with her 
 hierarchy, with her honours, her privileges, her 
 benefices, her possessions and revenues; what- 
 ever the existing laws secure to her. You, Sir, 
 and their other Protestantadvocates, implicitly
 
 8,5 
 
 adopt this language ; you give them full credit 
 for its sincerity; you urge these professions 
 among the most satisfactory and decisive of 
 your arguments in favour of their claims. But 
 is it necessary to ask which we are to credit, 
 vague conversations said to be held by their 
 bishops and priests with some Protestant advo- 
 cates ; private and closetted professions ; or, 
 even the loose declarations which the agitating 
 lawyers who hold the pen for them, slide into 
 their petitions, or the publications of their fa- 
 vourite agitators, the speeches of their fa- 
 vourite orators, the resolutions of their public 
 
 meetings t 
 
 Ecce ilerum Crisp'mus. I must here, once 
 more, introduce Mr. Keogh to ^y r ou. This high- 
 mettled champion of the persecuted Catholics 
 disdains all concealment or mincing on this 
 most vital part of their claims. He wishes the 
 question between the two Churches " to be 
 " fairly understood." He hesitates not to ac- 
 knowledge that, " as long as the two kingdoms 
 " continue to be united, Ireland will aim at the 
 " subversion of the religious establishment of 
 " England." He maintains that " he has a right 
 " to oppose, and by every legal effort to subvert, 
 "any internal religious ascendancy, injurious to 
 "the great mass of her own population." He 
 places " the resumption of the enormous and jnis- 
 
 p 2
 
 " applied revenues of the intrusive Church 
 " among die h'rst consequences of Emancipation, 
 " if it is meant that it should satisfy the Irish 
 " people." If Lord Grenville, in his Letter to 
 Lord Fingal, declares that, to the civil and re- 
 ligious establishments of his country, he is un- 
 alterably attached ; that their inviolable mainte- 
 nance he has ever considered as essential to the 
 dearest interests of his country ; Mr, Keogh dis- 
 dains to enter into any reasoning with his Lord- 
 ship on the subject; his answer is given in all 
 the superciliousness of democratic superiority : 
 y And really, my Lord Grenville, do you 
 " figure to yourself any fellow-feeling of my 
 " Lord Fingal about the increased security of 
 ** your religion ? Can England entertain the ab- 
 " surd notion of exciting the sympathy^ of Ire- 
 " land in wishes for the inviolable maintenance 
 " of your religion f Indeed this is too glaringly 
 " absurd." 
 
 In this sentiment and feeling; in an idola- 
 
 'trous veneration for what Doctor Milner calls 
 
 " the independent) spiritual hierarchy, seated in 
 
 " the highest heavens, and in the secrets of the 
 
 "conscience of every Roman Catholic, and 
 
 41 whiclrcannot be touched by our parchments ;" 
 
 in an exclusive devotedness to its] interests, and 
 
 'to its ascendancy over the intrusive Church, all 
 
 "their writers and orators, lay and clerical, all
 
 frbo take a lead in their Conventions and public 
 meetings, loudly, zealously, enthusiastically 
 join. I have already alluded to the darling fea- 
 ture in this descendant of other days, that 
 chiefly endears it to the -genuine sons of Erin ; 
 you will recognise it in the following address 
 of the Catholic inhabitants of Kilkenny to the 
 Bishops of Ireland (so they exclusively denomi- 
 nate them), on their conduct in the business of 
 the Veto : " In your temperate, yet firm disap- 
 " pointmcnt of any innovation in the mode of 
 " perpetuating that divine hierarchy which, co- 
 " vered with the glories won out of a rude and 
 " lingering struggle, we look up to as to the last 
 " undestroyed monument of our faith, and of our 
 " ancient national grandeur, v. r e solemnly recog- 
 *' nise the succession of those virtues by which 
 |C your sainted predecessors were ennobled ; and 
 " in your steadiness we solemnly anticipate the 
 " unimpaired transmission of those virtues to 
 44 future times." 
 .**4.4t***u.<, i ~*.*.j :a->*.i,',i'*iiJau*i *t> 3tafj ; t 
 
 * Is it in infatuation to mistake the meaning 
 and the purport of this Address ? or what 
 are the ultimate views, either of the meeting or 
 of the successors of those sainted men, who 
 have perpetuated the Catholic hierarchy of Ire- 
 land ? Compare the spirit of the Address with 
 the language of Mr. Kfeogh ; compare it w r ith 
 the fixed determination he avows of cherishing
 
 38 
 
 and upholding the divine Catholic hierarchy, as 
 a pledge of the resurrection of Ireland to the 
 rank of nations ; compare it with the acrimony 
 with which he speaks of the intrusive Church, 
 and the ridicule with which he treats the very 
 supposition that Ireland could entertain a 
 thought of maintaining the religious establish- 
 ment of that country ; compare it with the 
 avowed sentiments of Doctor Milner, who asks, 
 " if it is possible that, as a guardian of the Ca- 
 " tholic religion, he could be expected to pledge 
 " his consent to the making of an adequate pro- 
 " vision for the maintenance of a Protestant Es- 
 " tablishment ?" And, having before you all these 
 documents, these public declarations, made by 
 men, speaking not only for themselves, but for 
 the whole body with whom they act, will you 
 suffer yourself to be deceived, and will you 
 make yourself instrumental in deceiving the 
 Commons of England into a belief that the 
 Jrish Catholics entertain no hostile sentiments, 
 against the Establishment ; that they mean not. 
 to foment any rivalship between their own di- 
 vine hierarchy and that established by law ; that 
 no transfer, no dividing of the rights, distinc- 
 tions, or possessions of the Protestant clergy 
 ever entered into their contemplation; that they 
 never entertained the most distant intention to 
 convert their Church into a political engine, or 
 to make their bishops or their priests auxiliary,
 
 99 
 
 either now, or at any future day, in forwarding 
 Hie glorious work of restoring Ireland to the 
 rank of independent nations ? 
 
 It would swell these sheets beyond all that 
 the impatience of inquiry, and the precipitancy 
 of decision, which disdain the laborious inves- 
 tigation and cautious proceedings of other 
 days, could bear, were I to anticipate all the 
 arguments which the advocates for Emancipa- 
 tion are to repeat in support of your MotioH, 
 and which the numbers who generously wait 
 for no argument to take from the value of their 
 votes, must sit and doze out, however impa- 
 tient, for the hundredth time. But there rer 
 mains one argument, on which such great stress 
 has been, and will be laid, that no unwilling- 
 ness to become tedious can prevent me from ad 
 verting to it. 
 
 The Protestant advocate asserts, that all ap- 
 prehension of clanger from the Roman Catholic 
 bishops and clergy to the State or to the Esta- 
 blishment, under the degradation to which the 
 Popedom has been reduced by Buonaparte, is a 
 bugbear ; the suggestion of bigotry, and merely 
 designed to swell the cry of No Popery. 
 
 Not even the prison, the chains, the beggary 
 to which the tyrant has consigned the present
 
 40 
 
 Pope, could be so degrading or ignominious as. 
 the part he was compelled to act on the tyrant's 
 assuming the imperial diadem. The Allocution 
 to the secret Consistory, the journey to Paris, 
 the coronation of the dethroner and murderer 
 of the descendants of St. Louis, the pontifical 
 benediction to the marriage of Josephine, the 
 Concordat sanctioning the plunder of the Gal- 
 lican Church, and the degradation and pollu- 
 tion of its episcopacy, and of every order of 
 it$ clergy ; the whole of this humiliating and 
 scandalous scene filled the Catholic Con- 
 tinent with indignation and horror. Where-* 
 ever a prelate or priest of the Gallican Church 
 was placed beyond the grasp of the tyrant, he 
 indignantly raised his voice against such a pro- 
 fanation of the pontifical functions. The 
 Abbe Blanchard thundered against it with all 
 the vehemence and eloquence of a St, Cyprian 
 and a St. Jerome, 
 
 <r '.'K t*rii .?nv--i, etfryVvhn ; rM^tw $*T 
 
 But while the French clergy vindicated the 
 Gallican Church from all participation in the 
 ijifamy thus entailed on the Apostolic See ; 
 while they showed themselves worthy of the 
 liberty which that Church had, from the ear* 
 Jiest age.8, asserted against the usurpations of 
 the Court of Rome, the Irish Catholic Bishops 
 maintained their consistency of character. They 
 gave a new earnest to ike people oj Ireland of
 
 41. 
 
 the zeal with which they would persevere to 
 tread in the steps of their sainted predecessors, 
 the canonized champions of the Triple Crown. 
 They gave a new proof of the implicit obe- 
 dience which the Irish Catholics have at all 
 times prided themselves, above all other nations, 
 in paying to the will of the Holy Father, and 
 of their passive subserviency to all his decrees. 
 
 ** . , rr* rr.fr rnoft rr^t : ;!. K fq of lW* 
 Without having been called upon, as Doctor 
 
 O'Connor observes, by any legitimate authority, 
 they voluntarily assembled at Tullow, on the 
 6th of June 1809, and solemnly decreed, 
 " That the Holy Father, Pius the Seventh, had 
 " only yielded by the Concordat what the 
 " dreadful exigencies of the times demanded 
 " from a true shepherd of the Christian flock ; 
 " and that, in his measures for the restoration 
 " of the Catholic unity in France, he had va- 
 " tidly, and agreeably to the spirit of the sacred 
 " canons, exerted the powers belonging to the 
 " Apostolic See" 
 
 Now, Sir, I would ask you what it has 
 availed towards ascertaining the doc,trines held 
 at present by the Roman Catholics of Ireland, 
 and how far they differ from those of other 
 times, to have applied to foreign universities, 
 and collected the opinions of foreign theolo- 
 gians. Here you have an authentic record of
 
 42 
 
 the doctrines maintained and taught by the 
 Irish Catholic bishops of the present day; 
 doctrines promulgated in an assembled s^nod, 
 and by that authority which Doctor Milner 
 will tell you has " the exclusive power of de- 
 " ciding in all matters relating to the faith and 
 " the discipline of the Irish Church, and of the 
 "jurisdiction of which you might as well pre- 
 " tend to pluck a beam from the sun, as to 
 " touch one fibre." That authority has given 
 its full and unqualified sanction to the measures 
 pursued by Pius the Seventh, for the restoration 
 of the Catholic unity in France. What these 
 measures were, I have already reminded you. 
 Doctor O'Connor specifies, particularly, the 
 dethroning of the Bourbons, the crowning of 
 Buonaparte, the acceptance of his Concordat. 
 Are we not here fairly at issue ? Have we not 
 here the deposition of one king, the transfer of 
 his crown and of the allegiance of his subjects 
 to another, and the usurper requiring, and ob- 
 taining, the sanction of the Pope, lest his title 
 should be deemed incomplete and insecure ? 
 The Irish Roman Catholic bishops voluntarily, 
 in an ebullition of zeal which they cannot re- 
 strain, come forward, and, in national synod as* 
 sembled, vindicate the Holy Father from the im- 
 putations cast upon him for " this deed without 
 " a name," as well by Catholics as by Heretics. 
 They pronounce by that authority which every
 
 43 
 
 Irish Catholic is bound to obey, that in the 
 whole of this transaction the Holy Father had 
 acted validly, agreeably to the sacred canons, aiul 
 to the powers belonging to the Apostolic See. They 
 declare the present civil constitution of the 
 French Clergy to be impious, schismatical, hereti- 
 cal', yet the Irish Catholics must believe, for*o 
 they teach them, that in sanctioning that con- 
 stitution by the Concordat, the Holy Father 
 had only yielded to what the dreadful exigencies 
 of the times demanded from a true SHEPHEKD OF 
 THE CHRISTIAN FLOCK, and what the maintenance 
 of the Catholic unity required of him. 
 
 , , .. , .. 
 
 In what dark and murky night of supersti- 
 
 tion, among what priest-ridden people, in any 
 age, were religion and reason ever jnore dar- 
 ingly insulted and disgraced th.an by this de- 
 cree of the synod of Tullow ? And shall we 
 still be told that the Irish Roman Catholics 
 have renounced the tenets imputed to them by 
 bigoted Protestants? There is taught in the 
 schools of party-morality, and inculcated 
 amongst the first and most obligatory of all 
 virtues, a consistency, binding a party-map, 
 irrevocably, and under all the chiding of sub- 
 sequent conviction, to whatever he has once 
 pledged himself to support. Will you, Sir, 
 think 'yourself bound by that profligate consist- 
 ency to persist in maintaining that the Irish 
 
 2
 
 44 
 
 Roman Catholics of this day have renounced 
 all doctrines dangerous to the civil authority, 
 from their blind subserviency to the Papal 
 power? that we have nothing to dread from 
 the thraldom in which that power is held by 
 Buonaparte ? Read the Decree of the Council 
 of Tullow. What appears there to be the para- 
 mount object they have in view at this day, as 
 ever of old, and that sanctifies every measure ? 
 The maintenance of Catholic unity. What 
 is the excuse ? what the vindication of the 
 Holy Father for sanctioning, as Christ's Vicar 
 on earth, regulations affecting the Church of 
 Christ, while in the same breath they are ac- 
 knowledged to be schismatical, heretical, impious? 
 The exigencies of the times. Whatever com- 
 plexion these exigencies assume, it is still al- 
 lowed, as it has ever of old, to this spiritual 
 camelion to shift his colour to them. Let the 
 fortitude which Pius has assumed be broken 
 down by his privations and sufferings ; let him 
 relapse into all the weakness he betrayed on 
 the coronation of Buonaparte ; let him become 
 the ready agent of his designs against Eng- 
 land ; let him enforce by his spiritual authority 
 whatever Concordat the tyrant may either dic- 
 tate or accede to with the Roman Catholic bi- 
 shops and clergy of Ireland, for restoring and 
 maintaining the Catholic unity in that country: 
 his conduct must be reverenced, his decrees
 
 45 
 
 must be obeyed, as dictated by the genuine spirit 
 of the holy canons, as worthy of a true shep- 
 herd of the Catholic flock. Let Buonaparte pour 
 his legions into Ireland, under the sanction of 
 the Holy Father ; let him bear on his standard 
 the image of the cross, consecrated by His Ho- 
 liness ; let him have a transfer of the Crown of 
 Ireland to plead, as Henry the Second had to 
 plead the transfer of that Crown from Pope 
 Adrian, with the additional recommendation 
 of its being from an heretical to a Catholic 
 prince ; the Roman Catholics of Ireland must 
 acknowledge the Holy Father's part in the 
 whole of the proceeding to be valid, inasmuch 
 as it leads to the restoration and the maintenance 
 of the Catholic unity in Ireland: they must bow 
 to the exercise of the powers belonging to the 
 Holy See, and contemplate them with submis- 
 sive awe and reverence, while they yield to the 
 dreadful exigencies of the times. Or should this 
 much-injured and oppressed old man sink un- 
 der his afflictions and sufferings, and a creature 
 of Buonaparte succeed, as you will allow a 
 creature of Buonaparte must succeed to the 
 Popedom, the Irish Roman Catholics must still 
 reverence and obey him. Buonaparte will be 
 then once more the Holy Fathers dear son in 
 Jesus Christ*, as Pope Pius denominated him in 
 
 * See the Allocation to the Secret Consistory.
 
 46 
 
 his famous Allocution. He will be, as he was 
 at that period, the anointed and consecrated Pro- 
 tector of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church ; 
 he will be the pious and religious Prince, who 
 puts forth all his high power and authority to 
 cause the hcly Catholic religion to be restored, and 
 freely professed, and publicly exercised in Ireland, 
 as, at the time of the Allocution,, he put forth 
 his power and authority to promote the same 
 sacred cause in France. He must have more 
 than Popish credulity, who, after reading this 
 Decree of the Synod of Tullow, can believe 
 that there is a Roman Catholic in Ireland who 
 would resist a man thus panegyrized, thus 
 sainted, thus commissioned by Christ's Vicar to 
 guide the ark of salvation, the Holy Catholic 
 Church, out of which the Pope of this day, 
 as all Popes of past times, declares, in his Allo- 
 cution, that all must perish, through the deluge 
 of heresy that now overspreads the ancient Isle 
 of Saints. 
 
 Of all that is most material in what I have 
 submitted to your consideration in this Letter, 
 . I may say, Ron meus hie sermo. In answer to 
 the arguments of the Protestant advocates of 
 the Irish Roman Catholics, I have fairly and 
 simply given their own declarations, their own 
 statements, their own opinions, their avowed 
 intentions, and acknowledged views. The ob-
 
 servations I have added will, I think, appear 
 to you to breathe no rancorous spirit, or to in- 
 dicate any other feelings than those of a man 
 deeply impressed with a conviction of the dan- 
 ger to which every thing that ought to be most 
 dear to an Englishman, must be exposed, should 
 the question of Catholic Emancipation be de- 
 cided in the way we have but too great reason 
 to anticipate, from the present appearance of 
 things. To the unconditional concessions of 
 Lord Grey ; to his sweeping repeal of all the 
 disqualifications that at present exclude the 
 Roman Catholics from all political power ; to 
 the total demolition of all the fences and bul- 
 warks with which the throne, the state, and 
 the church, were surrounded by our ancestors; 
 to the sacrifice of the Constitution to the Ro- 
 man Catholics, instead of an admission to its 
 civil blessings and benefits, which their Pro- 
 testant advocates pretend is all they desire, 
 the people of England have but too much 
 reason to fear they must at length be required 
 to give their assent. 
 
 I must confess, Sir, that in the view which 
 an intimate knowledge of the sentiments- and 
 designs of the persons who dictate, on every 
 question, to the Roman Catholic body, enables 
 me to take of the subject, I see no difference 
 between unqualified and restricted compliance-
 
 48 
 
 I wish I could bring myself to think, that any 
 conditions, any securities, could be devised of 
 sufficient force to avert the dangers, which I 
 must be faction-struck (blinded by the love of 
 power I cannot be. as it never could be within 
 my reach) not to dread from the desperate ex- 
 periment you seem determined to give your 
 assistance in forcing on the Legislature. The 
 great man, under whose auspices you began the 
 brilliant career you are running, could never 
 determine with himself how such securities 
 could be devised. You lived in his intimacy : 
 have you not heard him repeatedly say, that 
 the more he considered the subject, the less he 
 could satisfy his mind, or come to any deci- 
 sion? Little, as you know, could Mr. Grattan's 
 epigrams weigh with that great mind : " Show 
 " me the dangers, and I will show you the secu- 
 " rities." Clearly, distinctly, intuitively, did he 
 see the dangers the securities eluded even his 
 transcendent penetration to frame. Surrender- 
 ing the outworks, he could plan no new defences 
 to preserve the citadel. 
 
 But, it seems, the country is to be more for- 
 tunate in the resources of your mind, and of 
 those who think with you on the subject. The 
 friend* of the Constitution as it is, are encou- 
 raged not to give way to their apprehensions : 
 ample securities shall be provided to guard
 
 49 
 
 against every evil they can dread. But we have 
 only to look to the several parties who support 
 you in this measure, to see how our dearest 
 interests and our feelings are trifled with.*- 
 What are the securities to be stipulated by men, 
 who tell us they see no danger to require se- 
 curities? Lord Grey apprehends no mischief 
 from the fullest and most unqualified conces- 
 sions : how careless must he be about secu- 
 rities ! Lord Grenville will, possibly (we can 
 gather nothing from his declarations), bring 
 forward the measure of the Veto. The Roman 
 Catholic Bishops, who originally consented to 
 that measure, but afterwards retracted, may 
 yield to the exigencies of the times, and consent 
 to it again. They had been betrayed into it, as 
 they allege in their excuse, from deception 
 and fear ; they may retract their retractation, 
 from hope, and more assured promises of pro- 
 tection and favour to the friends of Catholic 
 unity. But what security can a measure so ac- 
 ceded to, and resting on such principles, afford 
 to satisfy your friend Lord Wellesley's anxiety 
 11 for the Protestant Establishment in Church and 
 " State r On " the stability of that Estafclish- 
 " ment" his Lordship depends, as he has pub- 
 licly declared, " for the safety of the Empire, 
 " and the security of all the good which we at 
 " present enjoy, and of all which we can hope 
 " to enjoy in future." Will he be content to 
 
 H
 
 50 
 
 set it adrift in this Euripus of Popish synod* 
 and Popish conventions, with no other chart 
 than the exigencies of the times, and the mainte- 
 nance of Catholic unity? 
 
 I need not inform you, that it is not against 
 the religion of the Roman Catholics, as differ- 
 ing from the established Church on some ar- 
 ticles of faith, connected with nothing but re- 
 ligion, that we require securities. The Pro- 
 testant Dissenters differ from us as essentially 
 as the Roman Catholics in many points, as well 
 of faith as of discipline, yet we stand in no 
 terror of their being admitted to the privileges 
 claimed by the Roman Catholics. It is long* 
 since, in Ireland, any religious test has been 
 required of them, as the condition of their be- 
 ing admitted into political power. The doc- 
 trines against which we call for securities, are 
 those that have been engrafted on the Roman 
 Catholic rule of faith, and that are of the ni9st 
 obvious noxiousness to all civil government. We. 
 require securities against the power that con- 
 nected itself with the Western Church in ages 
 of ignorance, disorder, and confusion; that, 
 availed itself of every doctrine that had crept 
 into that Church, which promised to be auxi- 
 liary to the tyranny it aimed at establishing 
 over the conscience; that daily devised new 
 doctrines of the same tendency, and that aided
 
 51 
 
 and forwarded its encroachments on the civil 
 authority, until it had reduced it to the most 
 abject slavery. We require securities against 
 that foreign influence, which, I have Dr. O'Con- 
 nor's authority for asserting, is as powerful at 
 this moment, and " as effectual towards raising 
 " the mass of the people in Ireland to any pur- 
 " pose the emissaries of the Pope may have in 
 " view," as in the most disturbed period of the 
 history of that infatuated country ; and which 
 demands as much vigilance to guard against it 
 now, as in those times when, depriving even 
 the Irish Supreme Council at Kilkenny of the 
 right of nominating Bishops, " it appointed 
 " sycophant Roman courtiers to Irish sees, and 
 " then conspired with those sycophants against 
 " the liberties of the country." 
 
 If any hope cau be conceived of obtaining 
 these securities; any expedient devised for con- 
 ductino; the difficulties in which this ill-omened 
 
 O 
 
 contest is involved, to a favourable issue, it 
 must be something in the way this very re* 
 spectable and well-informed gentleman sug- 
 gests. He thinks " the time is arrived when 
 
 o 
 
 " the Roman Catholics of Ireland might esta- 
 " blish a national church discipline of their 
 " own, founded on general will, and affording 
 " complete satisfaction to the civil power on the 
 " one side, and to the Catholic clergy and laity 
 
 H 2
 
 52 
 
 " on the other." I do not agree with him. I 
 cannot think that the discoveries he has him- 
 self made, in his very useful and valuable pub- 
 lications, give any such stamp to the present 
 hour. But if any thing is to be attempted, and 
 if the precipitancy with which it is to be feared 
 the measure is to be conceded, is not to sur- 
 render the Constitution and the Establishment 
 at discretion, the mode of proceeding at which 
 he has hinted is the only one that can give die 
 slightest hope of success. 
 
 ?H*' 7-ff?-#Krti'> <- s<i. <'- -** 
 
 With whatever care the Roman Catholic 
 clergy may have been, hitherto kept in the 
 back-ground, either through some secret un- 
 derstanding amongst themselves, or by agree- 
 ment with the laity ; how seldom soever they 
 have been brought forward to act any part in 
 the great revolutionary drama now rehearsing, 
 either as petitioners or public agitators ; he 
 must know but little of the internal state of 
 Ireland, who does not see the necessity of mak-* 
 ing them a contracting party in whatever 
 arrangement any Administration may propose to 
 enter into wit!) the Roman Catholics of. Ireland. 
 You must begin by them ; you must take them 
 with you through your whole progress ; you 
 must end with them. Lord Grenville is not to 
 be told, how nugatory it must proves to have 
 the laity agree to any of the points, on which
 
 A* 
 
 it may be necessary to quiet and to satisfy the 
 Protestant mind, unless their bishops and clergy/ 
 by the solemn act of a Synod, or some other 
 adequate authority, confirm and ratify the pro- 
 ceeding. He will recollect that propositions, to 
 which not only the whole Roman Catholic nobi- 
 lity, gentry, and commonalty of England, but- 
 even some of their Vicars Apostolic, and most of 
 the second order of their clergy, gave their assent 
 and approbation by their individual signatures, 
 were, on a communication with Rome, anathe- 
 matized, when proposed to be embodied into 
 ail Act of Parliament, and to be professed by 
 the solemnity of an oath. The faet was brought 
 before the House of Commons by Mr. Yorke, 
 and proved from the Blue-book, as it was 
 called (why, I do not know), which contained 
 an authentic account of the transactions, but 
 which was so completely suppressed by the 
 subsequent common consent of the Roman Ca- 
 tholic clergy ari<J laity, that the copy produced 
 by Mr. Yorke is the only one that is known to 
 be in the hands of a Protestant. The Vicars 
 Apostolic and the clergy, who signed the pro- 
 positions, were, like the Irish Catholic -Bishops 
 who agreed to the Veto, compelled to retract; 
 and, either I am misinformed, or the principal 
 laity who had most actively engaged in the ne- 
 gotiation with Government, and had the hardi- 
 Jiood to remonstrate against the breach of -faith
 
 54 
 
 in which their Vicars Apostolic had implicated 
 them, were laid under an interdict, and denied 
 absolution until they had performed some act 
 of penance that bore testimony to their con- 
 trition. It was in vain that, in a strain of elo- 
 quence seldom surpassed, the gentleman who 
 held the pen on that occasion remonstrated 
 against the doctrines contained in the ency- 
 clical letter issued by the Vicars Apostolic ; it 
 was in vain that he complained that the Court 
 of Rome were treating the Catholics of Eng- 
 land as it had treated them on all former occa- 
 sions, when the government of England seem- 
 ed to be kindly disposed to them, and proposed 
 entering into a friendly compact with them, " de- 
 " nying," as he feelingly expressed it, "to the per- 
 " secuted Church in England, what they conced- 
 " ed to the prosperous and triumphant church of 
 " France." He was silenced by the Vicars Apo- 
 stplic ; he was abandoned by the very laity for 
 whose Christian liberty he pleaded, and who 
 had most zealously co-operated with him in the 
 work of reconciliation, to which they found the 
 Government and the Legislature most cordially 
 disposed. 
 
 If it should be proposed to enter into any ne- 
 gotiation with the Irish Roman Catholics simi- 
 lar to this negotiation of Lord Grenville's with 
 the English Roman Catholics, let a, lesson be
 
 55 
 
 taken from this recent example : let their bi- 
 shops and clergy be called upon, and legally 
 authorized, to hold a national council or synod. 
 
 There let it be discussed in what way they 
 may model their national church, to suit the 
 existing circumstances of their country, without 
 touching on any of the fundamental articles of 
 their religious creed. Let them determine how 
 they can bring it into contact with Government, 
 so as to support it at once, and to be protected 
 by it, conformable to the principles and spirit 
 of genuine Christianity wherever it has been 
 established. There let it be discussed in what 
 way the appointment of their archbishops and 
 bishops may be brought as near as possible to 
 the practice of the Church of England, when it 
 was yet Catholic, and to the declarations of the 
 Legislature in the reign of King Edward III. 
 namely, " That the conge" d'elire, the election 
 " in the chapter, had been originally granted 
 ** by the King's progenitors upon condition 
 " that they should have first asked leave of the 
 " King to choose ; and after the election, also 
 " requested his assent, previous to the person's 
 " being presented for consecration." They trifle 
 with our understanding who tell us that this 
 cannot be done where the prince is not a Roman 
 Catholic. I will pass over the insulting assump- 
 tion, so incompatible with the liberal cant taken
 
 56 
 
 tip by all the Roman Catholic apologists, that 
 any interference in the supreme head of the 
 state, being a Protestant, would be pollution, 
 desecration, a chasing away the Holy Ghost. 
 It is not understood that the King should take 
 any spiritual part in these appointments; strictly 
 speaking, he takes no spiritual part in the suc- 
 cession to bishopricks, as supreme head of the 
 established Church. The investitures, the pos- 
 session of the temporalities, he gives per sccp- 
 1rum, by virtue of his regal authority, in oppo- 
 sition to the encroachments of the Papal See in 
 giving them, together with the spiritual charac- 
 ter and privileges independent of the King, per 
 annulum et baculum. But the power of consecrat- 
 ing, and of imparting the episcopal character 
 by the imposition of hands, and in the manner 
 prescribed in the Scriptures, or derived from 
 the aposto*lic practice, that power, although the 
 right to exercise it emanates from the King's 
 authority, and although it cannot be exercised 
 but by his authority, is exclusively vested in 
 the successors of those to whom the divine 
 Founder of our religion gave the commission 
 to perpetuate a succession of the divers orders 
 of ministers in his Church to the end of time. 
 This succession, or the spiritual power and au- 
 thority conveyed by it, we do not dispute with 
 the Roman Catholics; what we object to, and de- 
 jnand to sec altered, is the exercise pf that power, 
 4
 
 57 
 
 independent of all interference or permission 
 from the supreme civil magistrate, and altoge- 
 ther in right of another authority, assuming to 
 itself the sole power, as well of nomination as 
 of consecration, and thereby forming to itself, 
 in the heart of His Majesty's dominions, a most 
 powerful body of men, kept up by a perpetual 
 succession, who owe their important situation, 
 and the influence it gives them, to a foreign, 
 and a hostile power; and who hold that situa- 
 tion, and exercise that influence, where it may 
 operate most dangerously to the state, inde- 
 pendent of the Crown, and of the fundamental 
 laws of the land. I will venture to assert, that 
 in no well-constituted country, possessing the 
 energy necessary to the great and salutary pur- 
 poses of all governments, and where religion 
 acts so powerfully either in preserving or dis- 
 turbing the public tranquillity, would such a 
 system be tolerated. The tyrant who has sub- 
 jugated Europe, and whom the Holy Father 
 ' once acknowledged as arbiter of the spiritual, 
 while his own sword had secured to him the 
 temporal, power throughout the whole extent of 
 the French territory, would not tolerate it there 
 for an hour. 
 
 It is not tolerated in Holland ; it is not tole- 
 rated in Prussia. In bath these Protestant coun- 
 tries we have a precedent for Roman Catholics
 
 reconciling their religious principles, in this in- 
 stance, with the subordination they owe to the 
 state in which they live. 
 
 In this national synod let it be arranged in 
 what manner the whole body of the Roman Ca- 
 tholic clergy may be, equally with their Bishops, 
 connected with the government of the country; 
 ho\v they may be brought within the circle of 
 its influence, so as to co-operate with it in pro- 
 moting religion and morals among the people ; 
 while under its protection they freely exercise 
 their spiritual functions without clashing with 
 the interests of the national Church, and with- 
 out any rivalship with its ministers in the dis- 
 charge of their duty to their respective flocks. 
 
 i '*}?. t r ' 
 
 There let it be discussed and settled in what 
 manner the regulations of the statutes of Pro- 
 visors and Pnunmnire may be preserved from 
 encroachments, and all solicitations, all appeals 
 to the Papal jurisdiction, all sentences, bulls, 
 and instruments issued by it, may be prevented 
 from circulation, unless subjected to the inspec- 
 tion of such persons as shall be authorized by 
 the Government, and who shall be obliged to 
 give an official account to the Government of 
 their object and their contents; at the same time 
 that no agent shall be employed at the court or 
 residence of the Pope, without an express li-
 
 59 
 
 cense from the King, appointing him speci- 
 fically. 
 
 There let it be considered in what way the 
 spiritual discipline of the Irish Roman Catholic 
 church may he maintained and enforced, with- 
 out erecting tribunals that are unknown to the 
 laws of the land ; without establishing juris- 
 dictions that derive all their authority from 
 the Papal power, that operate as a government 
 within, a government, and upon the principles 
 of a law that has never, at any time, Catholic 
 or Protestant, been recognised as a law in Eng- 
 land ; that, in cases of excommunication, act 
 in direct violation of the spirit of the Constitu- 
 tion ; and with a power of enforcing the sen- 
 tences denied to the ecclesiastical courts of the 
 established Church ; infringing on the personal 
 rights of the subject, and oppressing him in his 
 reputation, in his property, in the means of 
 procuring his livelihood, by arbitrary proceed- 
 ings, and by an exercise of spiritual tyranny 
 
 that is a disgrace to any free land, 
 .} ,; - ffOftr* 
 
 There let it be discussed in what manner the 
 splendid establishment formed by an enlighten- 
 ed and generous Legislature for the supply of 
 the Roman Catholic clergy, shall be rendered 
 subservient to all its wise and salutary purposes, 
 instead of forming a seminary for perpetuating
 
 60 
 
 that alienation, that hatred, and that animosity 
 against His Majesty's Protestant subjects, which 
 it was the great object of the gloomy Philip to 
 ferment and to cherish, when he established se- 
 minaries for the Irish mission throughout all his 
 realms, which was the object chiefly pursued in 
 these seminaries as long as they received stu- 
 dents from this country, too faithfully answer- 
 ing the intentions of this sworn enemy to the 
 British nation. Let means be provided to ba- 
 nish from the walls of this great national insti- 
 tution (in itself a splendid proof of enlighten- 
 ed liberality) a system of education that bears 
 every feature of its barbarous and ignorant ori- 
 gin ; enveloping the heads and minds of its 
 theological and ethic students in all the mists 
 and vapours of the darkest ages of the Church, 
 and impenetrable to every ray of improvement 
 from the discoveries and the experience of pro- 
 gressive ages. Let it not be suffered to search 
 for its theological professors and ethic teachers 
 among the natives of a foreign country, who, 
 to say the best of them, can feel no attachment 
 to the constitution, the laws, or the interests of 
 this country ; nor among the school-mates and 
 intimates of the apostate clergy who have now 
 ranged themselves under the standard of Buo- 
 naparte, and with whom these professors and 
 teachers maintain a constant interchange of pro-
 
 6* 
 
 fessional, religious, and political commuuic^- 
 tion. Let no doctrines be taught iu tlio^ 
 schools, but in some such manner as was prer 
 scribed under the old regime in France, requir- 
 ing each professor to submit his course of lec- 
 tures to a censor (he might be a Roman Catho- 
 lic), approved by the government, and answer- 
 able for the doctrines he revises: answerable 
 that they shall inculcate nothing repugnant to 
 the Constitution, or the fundamental laws of 
 the country, or that can have a tendency to 
 subvert or alter the present establishment 
 Lastly, let this institution be confined to its 
 original object, that of furnishing the Roman 
 Catholic church in Ireland with a perpetual 
 supply of religious, moral, and learned clergy, 
 untainted by any political prejudices against 
 the government of their native country, and 
 adding to the character of worthy ministers of 
 the Gospel, that of loyal subjects to the state. 
 Let no excrescence attach to it, such as has 
 been connived at in the establishment of a 
 school for the separate education of the Catho- 
 lic lay youth, on the principle of that most 
 pernicious doctrine, first taught and enforced 
 by the turbulent Hussey, the titular Bishop of 
 Waterford, and in furtherance of the most 
 fatal device that the bitterest enemy of this 
 country could, in his malignant ingenuity,
 
 have devised for keeping up for ever two dis- 
 tinct descriptions of citizens the doctrine, 
 that a Catholic is contaminated, and rendered 
 guilty of a misprision of heresy, by a com- 
 munion of education with a Protestant. 
 
 .iiU)i i )'-- i. r ivim **> ttm?*i> **; 
 
 If, contrary to every thing that I can prevail 
 on myself to expect, the Roman Catholic Bi- 
 shops and clergy shall engage in this work of 
 approximation and of mutual good-will; if 
 they will agree to establish, as Dr. O'Connor 
 thinks the time is come for establishing, such a 
 national church discipline as shall afford com- 
 plete satisfaction to the civil power, by remov- 
 ing all dread of that foreign influence which 
 threatens to become more formidable than even 
 at the period when it excluded them from all 
 place in the Constitution ; by renouncing the 
 exercise of all jurisdiction derived from any 
 other authority than that of the Supreme Ma- 
 gistrate and the Legislature ; by putting an end 
 to all hostility, all rivalship between them and 
 the established Church ; in short, by casting 
 away that accursed thing, the entrance of which 
 into our camp we dread as certain destruction, 
 I should not despair of the co-operation of their 
 laity, or of seeing a spirit revive among them 
 of equally happy presage towards healing the 
 wounds of their country.
 
 Violent as have been the proceedings of their 
 late meetings ; menacing and insulting as is the 
 tone they have assumed in their petitions; and 
 alarming as has been the ascendancy acquired in 
 their councils by the demagogues amongst 
 them, whose ultimate object is separation from 
 England, and who would be the first to lament 
 the success of their present endeavours to en- 
 force what they call Emancipation, if they 
 thought it would contribute to allay the revo- 
 lutionary spirit they have been so active in 
 raising; yet I most sincerely believe, that the 
 principal nobility and gentry, and large de- 
 scriptions of their commonalty, would gladly 
 return to the moderation and temper with which 
 they stated their grievances, and advanced their 
 claims, in the early stages of their application 
 to Government and to the Legislature, 
 
 In the year 1791, they published a Declara- 
 tion, breathing the most perfectly pacific spirit. 
 It procured them, as might be expected, many 
 zealous friends and abettors among their Pro- 
 testant fellow-subjects. It stated, "that it 
 " was not for the Irish Catholics, like public 
 " foes, to ask advantage from public calamity : 
 t( they ought to advance their claims at a time 
 " favourable to discussion, when the condition 
 " of the Empire is flourishing and tranquil. 
 ** They might seem culpable to their country,
 
 w if, affecting to dissemble what it is unmanly 
 * c not to feel, they reserved their pretensions in 
 " ambuscade, to augment the perplexities of 
 * some critical emergency." 
 
 If they have discarded this spirit of mode- 
 ration ; if they have changed this laudable feel- 
 ing, this decent procedure, for a temper and 
 a conduct that alarm, and disgust, and alienate 
 . every loyal mind; if their claims have kept 
 increasing with the increase of the public dis- 
 tress; if they take advantage of every public 
 calamity to clamour in the ears of Parliament, 
 and avail themselves of every critical emer- 
 gency to augment its perplexities, as at this 
 present moment; if, in their very petitions, they 
 assume the most hostile tone of menace and 
 intimidation ; if the main argument they plead 
 in favour of their demands, is the encourage- 
 ment held out, by their discontents, to the ty- 
 rant of France to pour his legions on their 
 shores, and the support to which he may look, 
 on that event, to their numbers and their phy- 
 sical strength ; if they have thus widely de- 
 parted from the moderation of their early pro- 
 ceedings, and come to the bar of your House, 
 to the bar of the Lords, and to the levee-room 
 of. the Prince, with petitions in one hand and 
 pikes in the other ; in my soul I believe, that 
 it is to an Irish faction in both Houses of
 
 65 
 
 liament, and the more immediate connexions of 
 that faction in England, that we are to ascribe 
 a change so fatal to their own cause. I be- 
 lieve in my soul, that it is to the counsels, the 
 exhortations, the incessant goadings of that 
 faction, and their confidential communications 
 with the most violent of the Popish agitators, 
 their most avowed incendiaries, the survivors of 
 the late rebellion, the bosom-friends and fellow- 
 labourers of Tone and Broughall, that we are to-; 
 ascribe, as well the teasing pertinacity of their/ 
 petitions, by which they have so often inter- 
 rupted all public business during this most im- 
 portant Session, and trie menaces they breathe, 
 as the ascendancy they have acquired over the 
 loyal and well-intentioned persons of their com- 
 munion, who, from their situation in the coun-> 
 try, ought to take the lead in all their councils; 
 but who have found themselves compelled to 
 yield to the violence of the moment, in tbe 
 hope that they may find some favourable oppor-* 
 tunity to urge their claims in a manner more 
 suitable to their own temper and principles* 
 
 Raise then, in God's name, a standard round 
 which these men may rally, with all of iheit 
 own rank, and natural influence; with all who 
 have a permanent stake in the country ; with all 
 who see the fortunes and the happiness of their 
 families floating oa a tempestuous sea, agitated
 
 66 
 
 by adventurers and men of desperate hopes ; 
 with all who sincerely wish to be admitted into 
 a full and unlimited participation in the British 
 Constitution, because they know how to appre- 
 ciate its advantages and its blessings ; because 
 in it they find security of person, security 
 of property, rational and rightly understood li- 
 berty, an equipoise of power resulting from the 
 free enjoyment of their respective rights in the 
 several orders of the state, and operating to the 
 protection and safety of them all, beyond what 
 any other country ever possessed. 
 
 -'mi Je0ftr%nj afHtt/ft^eg&htead -'''' '' ; -< >- ./.. >: 
 This union of the Roman Catholic clergy 
 
 and laity of Ireland in the salutary work of re- 
 storing peace to their distracted country ; this 
 co-operation with the Government and the Le- 
 gislature in removing the only cause that pre- 
 vents their being cheerfully received into the 
 full enjoyment of all the civil rights of British 
 subjects; this restoration of the Roman Ca-= 
 tholic religion ijn all things relating to the civil 
 power, to what it was in the time when Eng- 
 land was Roman Catholic, and when the in- 
 fluence of the Papal power was held in as much 
 abhorrence, and was as effectually resisted as 
 when it became Protestant, is a vision which I 
 should wish to indulge; it is a vision which 
 you, no doubt, expect to realize. Be it so: I 
 will no longer labour to dissipate the delusion ;
 
 67 
 
 I will only beg of you to reflect, that you are 
 acting for posterity, and that, as long as any 
 record remains of the transactions of the pre- 
 sent day, your name will be connected with 
 the consequences of Roman Catholic Emanci- 
 pation, in proportion to the part you may take 
 in effecting it. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by S. Cornell, Uttte Quen Street, Londom.
 
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 What joy to be humbugged by thee; 
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 ' Let the galled jade wince!" SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " You are a LIAR, and a SLANDERER, and want courage only 
 to be an ASSASSIN." CANNING. 
 
 lonflon : 
 
 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY JOHN FAIRBURN, 
 
 2, BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 1818.
 
 c ^
 
 THE 
 
 SIR, 
 
 I SHALL address you without ceremony, for you are 
 deserving of none. There is nothing in your station, 
 in your abilities, or in your character, which entitles 
 you to respect. The first is generally the reward of 
 political, and frequently of private crime. Your 
 talents, such as they are, you' have abused; and as for 
 your character, I know not an individual of any party, 
 or in any class of society, who does not consider the 
 defence of it a paradox too outrageous and untenable 
 even for the profligate indifference of these candid, 
 complying times. Between the shrugs and smiles of 
 your associates, and the frowns of your honest country- 
 men, you fall to the ground. Low as public principle 
 has sunk, you are still justly appreciated; and no one is 
 deceived by qualities, which, even in their happiest exer- 
 tion, are not calculated or employed to conciliate his 
 esteem. 
 
 Think you, that the good-natured greedy spectators, 
 who suffered themselves to be tickled by the tricks, were 
 seduced into one emotion of regard for the person of their 
 mountebank? Not a jot; though that mountebank was a 
 Minister. It was not, I confess, sufficiently present to, 
 their reflections, that the same grimaces had been em- 
 ployed to distract their attention while the confederate 
 thieves were picking their pockets; nor did they appear 
 to understand that the same exhibition was now played 
 off to cheat them of more than their pecuniary property: 
 but you were still not forgotten for a moment; your 
 jingling, and chattering, and balancing, were all ini- 
 mitably performed, and admirably becoming; perhaps 
 some of the younger senators, transported by low ambi- 
 tion, envied one instant, your cap and bells; but neither 
 young nor old envied yourself. In plain words, there 
 was not a member in the House, not a stranger, not a 
 clerk, or door-keeper, who had a higher opinion of you, 
 after than before your speech, or felt more inclined to 
 change characters with Mr. George Canning ; not one.
 
 It is, however, to the eternal discredit of that assembly, 
 that you were not, by so shameless a display of your im- 
 modest parts, by capers which discovered your hideous 
 nakedness, plunged below the depths of your former 
 disgrace 
 
 The adventurer who meditated apostacy in his tender 
 years, and whose virtue melted away, almost before 
 puberty, under the first seductive palm, might, by the 
 advantages of an elevation, however unmerited, and by 
 the external decency of subsequent life, have preserved a 
 tolerable respectability, a character equivocal perhaps, 
 but not altogether abandoned, and such as the convenient 
 morality of the day might regard without unqualified 
 disdain. But it is not to be expected, that the unredeemed 
 profligate, one who cannot boast that his course, even of 
 vice, has been steady, since he has 
 
 " Obliquely waddled to his end in view;" 
 
 onewhose recorded treacheries had disqualified him for all 
 trust, until his meanness had reduced him to impotence, 
 and made his alliance no longer dangerous, one who has 
 shewn himself insensible alike to the reproaches of oppo- 
 nents insulted, and the remonstrance of friends betrayed, 
 and has slid downwards, through paths more dirty and 
 devious than were ever yet tried by selfishness, dropping 
 from power to pension, and from pension to less profitable 
 place, with all the tranquillity and more than the boldness 
 of virtue, it is not, I say, Sir, to be expected, that such a 
 shameles unredeemed adventurer should be allowed more 
 than the mere privilege of existence, in a country where 
 the public good is still, at least, the pretext of all political 
 conduct. If such a person is allowed to enjoy, unmo- 
 lested, his ill-gotten gains, we exclaim, that all honest 
 indignation is dead, and our patriots are slumbering at 
 their post. What, then, must we think of our condition ; 
 what must we think of ourselves, when we find this delin- 
 quent, not only clamorous but insolent ; not only insolent, 
 but, instead of the passive unobtrusive air of convicted 
 imposture, assuming in the fare of the Legislative Assem- 
 bly who knows him, and of the whole nation who de- 
 spises him, the tone, not of innocence, but of accusation!!* 
 To what a state of degradation are we sunk, when a 
 criminal becomes a plaintiff, and when a man, for whose 
 presence it is necessary to make an apology in any liberal 
 society, dares to insult the sufferings of the oppressed, to
 
 arraign the motives of men of unsullied reputation ! ! And 
 how much more must we bewail our condition, when we 
 find such an atrocious outrage of all common decency, 
 not only borne, but actually applauded, by those who 
 are entrusted with our liberties and our lives. You are 
 yourself aware, Sir, that in no other assembly in Eng- 
 land would you have been allowed to proceed, for an 
 instant, in so gross a violation of all the decencies of life, 
 as was hazarded by that speech, which found a patient, a 
 pleased audience in the House of Commons. There 
 must be in that body, composed, as it undoubtedly is, of 
 men who in the private relations of life may be distin- 
 guished for many good qualities, there must be an habi- 
 tual disregard of decency, a contempt of public principle, 
 an absurd confidence that, either individually or in mass, 
 they are protected from the censures of their fellow citi- 
 zens, and absolved from the rules of common life. Were 
 it nottbrsuchagroundless persuasion, there is not a gentle- 
 man (for such a being is not quite extinct in Parliament) who 
 would not have thought himself compromised by listening 
 to your insolent attacks upon the national character, and 
 to a flashy declamation, which, from beginning to end, 
 supposed an audience devoid of all taste, judgment, spirit, 
 and humanity. 
 
 I am at a loss, Sir, to account for the effrontery even of 
 your colleagues in office, who share with you the public 
 hatred, though they are tar from being fair competitors 
 for the contempt which is consummately your own. 
 Those worthy persons must have had some motive deeper 
 than their usual superficial designs, for entrusting their 
 defence to such " hangman's hands." Were they afraid 
 of your partially redeeming your character by silence? 
 Were they resolved, that if you were yet not enough 
 known, some decisive overt act should reduce you below 
 the ministerial level? Did they suspect, that you were 
 again willing to rebel or to betray? Hoyv was it, that you 
 were selected for the odious task of justifying the only 
 vigorous measures of the imbecile Sidmouth, directed 
 against the aged, the imfirm, the powerless of his own 
 countrymen ? How was it, that you were required to 
 emerge from your suspected silence, in behalf of him 
 whom you had first insulted by the offer of your alliance, 
 then by your vulgar hostility, and, lastly, by the accepted 
 tender of an insidious reconciliation ? 
 
 You know, Sir, and the world should know, that when
 
 6 
 
 your seducer, Pitt, was tired of you, you offered yourself 
 to this silly, vain man, who thought your keeping too 
 dear at the proposed price, and accordingly declined the 
 bargain. 
 
 You know, and the world rnay remember, the imme- 
 diate consequence of this slight of proffered iniquity. 
 Your lampoons in parliament, your speeches in the 
 papers (I torget where they fell, but whether in one or 
 the other they were equally unprepared and opportune) ; 
 these, and other assaults mainfully directed against those 
 whose forbearance was the sole protection of your inso- 
 lence, can hardly have slipped through the meshes of the 
 ill- woven memories of your colleagues. Perhaps, then, 
 it was intended to reduce you to irretrievable humiliation, 
 and to fit you for the lowest agency, by making you the 
 loudest encomiast of the most undefensible measure of 
 him whom you have vilified as " the most incapable of all 
 Ministers, the most inept-of all Statesmen." 
 
 You had before given this satisfactory pledge to the 
 other of your colleagues, who might have borne your abuse, 
 but did not choose to bear your treachery; and shewed 
 himself, accordingly, more tender of his own honour than 
 he has been of that of his country. You have kissed the 
 hand that chastised you, arid have lost but few opportuni- 
 ties of testifying your feigned repentance to him who 
 commands you from that eminence which you were ad- 
 judged incapable to occupy, even so as to save the few 
 appearances required from ministerial manners. 
 
 Your submission to Lord Castlereagh, tricked out, as he 
 appears, in those decorations of fortune, which might well 
 deceive a vulgar eye, was not surprising ; it was the natu- 
 ral deference of meanness to success. But it was not ex- 
 pected, even from your condescension, that the butt of his 
 party, the agent of that department which had, even in 
 these times of peace, with infinite address, contrived to 
 make the executive administration not only hateful but 
 ridiculous; that the very minister who had no character 
 for talents should be defended by him who had no charac- 
 ter for honesty. 
 
 It i not my purpose with you, Sir, to refute your argu- 
 ments in defence of the late iniquitous agents employed 
 in destroying the little confidence and mutual good-will 
 which might still have subsisted between the governors 
 and the governed of this distracted country. In spite of 
 the sophistry which such an attempt was sure to bring
 
 into play, and which shook, no doubt, the timid minds of 
 many of our poor alarmists; in spite of the general spirit 
 of acquiescence, and the panic terror which makes the 
 pretended preservation of peace and order the surest snare 
 of the well-meaning, selfish politician; there was still 
 enough of common sense left amongst the members of the 
 House of Commons to expose so rude a violation of the 
 constitution, and to lay bare the fallacies which were em- 
 ployed to excuse the past, and to prepare for future in- 
 fractions of British freedom. Your reply to those who 
 spoke the language of their constituents, of all unpreju- 
 diced Englishmen, of human nature itself, and who step- 
 ped forward to rescue the Parliament from indelible dis- 
 grace, was such as is seldom hiccuped up from the drunken 
 triumph of ministerial majorities. I give you full credit 
 for the foul words which you dared to apply to an honour- 
 able young man, whose instinctive sense of right tar sur- 
 passes your vain, vicious experience, and shewed inm the 
 naked iniquity of your proposed indemnities in behalf of 
 the only traitors to be found in England, of t lie vile agents 
 of a weak, suspicious administration. The envy of repu- 
 tation which you have lost, and of talents more graceful 
 and essential than your own flimsy, tinsel trappings, was 
 certain to secure your especial hostdity. The antipathy 
 of bad to good naturally inflamed you into fury against 
 the interposition of Mr. Lambton; and, to confess a dis- 
 graceful truth, you found many enough amongst your 
 compeers wdling to join you in the shameless outcry. A 
 young man, placed by his fortune, as well as by his honest 
 propensities, beyond the reach of corruption, at the outset 
 of a courageous, though forlorn career, which threatens 
 a protracted defence of the tottering fabric of English 
 freedom, is a monster in the eyes of the base, the vain, 
 the timid, who readily conspire to remove such a standing 
 reproach of their venality, their folly, and their fear. I 
 do not wonder that the menials around you felt themselves 
 elevated by the momentary depression of virtue: but I do 
 wonder that the forms, even of the House of Commons, 
 admitting as they do of language current only amongst 
 the lowest and most depraved classes of society, should 
 have been infringed upon so grossly without a word from 
 him who is appointed to regulate ttie jargon of that ill- 
 polished assembly. 
 
 The paltry subterfuge, hesitated between regretted 
 insolence and forced retraction, the hand obtruded upon
 
 8 
 
 the object of your insult at the close of the debate, but, 
 more than all, the rudeness of the assault (the usual pre- 
 lude of all your political amours) might well make that 
 gentleman suspect that he was menaced by your future 
 intimacy. Some such apprehension, and the clamours of 
 your party, may have prevented him or his friends from 
 remarking the curious felicity with which, of all the in- 
 discretions of the opposing party, you chose to select 
 credulity as the prominent feature. What, Sir! one of 
 the present cabinet dare to accuse any individual of too 
 much faith in common rumour or in proffered information ? 
 A member of that cabinet, whose belief in the idle, mali- 
 cious falsehoods of spies, pimps, bullies, and all the aban- 
 doned, broken characters whom their promises allured 
 into perjury, has been proved by the verdict of juries; has 
 been recorded in the courts ; has been the object of gene- 
 ral indignation ; and, after having been the cause and ex- 
 cuse of a wanton attack on our liberties, has been judged 
 by that cabinet itself so little qualified for examination, 
 that their Parliament has been instructed to indemnify the 
 rogues who told the lies, and the fools who believed them. 
 What! an apologist for the gulled, the gaping Sidmouth, 
 to deprecate the indiscriminating reception of tales and 
 tale-bearers! a defender of him who put his trust in 
 Castles; who employed Oliver; and who, on the faith of 
 atrocious fabrications, of which he was alike the encoura- 
 ger and the dupe, has persecuted and imprisoned, has 
 fettered and fractured, and would have put to death, hi* 
 fellow-countrymen, even to decimation. You tell us, you 
 should have thought yourself " a dolt and ideot" to have 
 listened for a moment to complaints against an agent of 
 the home department, a runner of Bow-street, a gaoler's 
 turnkey, or a secretary's secretary. 
 
 Mighty well, Sir', but let a runaway from the hulks, a 
 convicted felon, tell you, that a bankrupt apothecary, a 
 broken down farmer, and a cobler, are the centre of a 
 widely spread conspiracy; have formed and partially exe- 
 cuted a plan for raising the kingdom, and for taking the 
 Tower of London; have provided arms; have published 
 manifestoes; let the same respectable evidence impeach 
 the loyalty of the nobles and gentry in some districts, and 
 of the lower classes in all ; let this single felon assert that 
 he is honest, and the majority of his countrymen are 
 rogues; you do not think yourself a dolt and ideot you do 
 not think Lord Sidmouth a dolt and ideot, for proceeding,
 
 9 
 
 chiefly upon such information, to hang, draw, and quarter 
 the first individuals designated by this credible witness. 
 But whatever you or your colleagues thought, the jury 
 did think the secretary of the home department a dolt and 
 ideot, and shewed their opinion by their verdict. It is of 
 no moment to me, Sir, when or why you may please to 
 think yourself a "dolt and i'leot" (for I will harp upon 
 this House of Commons' phrase); but I will take leave to 
 observe, that there is this difference between the credulity 
 of such men as Mr. Lambton, and of such ministers as you 
 ,and your colleagues the former may interpose to save, 
 but the consequence of the latter must be to destroy. 
 The worst evil that can possibly arise from the former 
 is the exculpation of yourself and your hateful fraternity, 
 from some unfounded charge (an exculpation which I 
 own to be productive of mischievous results); but the 
 least evil that can be produced by the credulity of the 
 Head of the Police, is the suspension of our liberties, is 
 the imprisonment, the ruin, the torture, of our innocent 
 fellow-subjects, is the present diffusion of suspicion and 
 terror and treachery, and the establishment of wicked 
 precedents, which accustom the people to extraordinary 
 acts of government, and must finally be fatal to the con- 
 stitution. When next, therefore, you indulge your legis- 
 lative audience with the hypothesis of your doltship and 
 idibtcy, do not found that improbability of so extreme a 
 case upon your prudent scepticism and discouragement 
 of all informers. The Suspension Bill has been suspended, 
 but the asses' mouths of the home office are as open as 
 ver to any charge, provided only that it be to the discre- 
 dit and destruction of some suspected, that is, some inde- 
 pendent, member of the community. 
 
 It is not, I have before told you, my object to refute 
 your detestable doctrines; whatever was tangible, which- 
 ever of those doctrines had any real existence (for the 
 greater part of your arguments were but the phantoms of 
 folly and insolence), had been handled and disposed of 
 before you arranged them in the hues of your own florid 
 eloquence, and, by appropriating these principles to your- 
 self, consigned them to eternal infamy. Nor shall I un- 
 dertake the ungrateful labour of following you through 
 all your flippancies; nor blow away the superficial froth, 
 to arrive at the vile, vapid liquor beneath. It is sufficient 
 for my purpose to tell you, that the general tone of your 
 discourse was such as would have disgraced the defence 
 of virtue, and was intolerable in the apologist and de- 
 
 E
 
 10 
 
 fender of depravity ; and such as will not be borne as 
 long as this people have it in their power to controul, In 
 any way, the conduct of their presumed representatives. 
 Had your pleasantries been as polite as they were rustic, 
 had they been as humane as they were atrocious, they 
 would still have been misapplied in a discussion profess- 
 edly treating ot the fundamental interests of your coun- 
 try, and, even in your own vrew of the question, of delin- 
 quencies arising confessedly from the distresses of your 
 fellow-subjects. That yoD should brand with the names 
 of" rebel and traitor" those whom you have been unable 
 to prove rebellious and traitorous, is but in the ordinary 
 course of official perseverance and incorrigible folly ; but 
 that you should presume to assail those unfortunate indi- 
 viduals, the victims ot your own recorded credulity, by 
 making a mockery of old age, and of the natural infirmi- 
 ties which have been occasioned by your own injustice!! 
 Such an outrage upon your audience how is that to be 
 accounted for? The revered and ruptured OgdenJ f f 
 And this mad, (his monstrous sally, was applauded was 
 received with roars of laughter! and if there was a con- 
 fession from some more candid lips, that such allusions 
 were not " quite in good taste," an excuse was drawn 
 from the warmth of the debate; clear as it was, to those 
 accustomed to your patchwork, that the stupid allitera- 
 tion was one of the ill-tempered weapons coolly selected 
 from your oratorical armoury. 
 
 Certainly, Sir, you found the legislative assembly more 
 tractable than your Sovereign, who has, more than once, 
 repulsed your rude familiarity. HLs Majesty, were he 
 now on the throne, would recognize the froutless upstart 
 who placed the hand of his Sovereign upon the seat of the 
 wound which had been inflicted upon him as the reward 
 of his duplicity; and of him who had referred him to a 
 brother minister with the indecent freedom of equal inti- 
 macy. When, Sir, you placed the King's hand upon your 
 thigh, when you told him you would send to Pembroke, 
 you gave rise to a resentment, such as would have af- 
 fected your honest interests, whilst the throne of Eng- 
 land was filled by a gentleman. But, I presume, the 
 silent nbuke of offended majesty was not s iarp enough 
 to be felt by the coarseness of your textuie; for the in- 
 sultoff'ered totho^e who should be th repiesmtatives of 
 the people, and to the people themselves, is equally rude 
 and familiar, and is ten times more overbearing, in every 
 respect, than that which before offended your Sovereign.
 
 11 
 
 You have never, Sir, before Found a body of your coun- 
 trymen so patient, go lost to all sense of shame, as your 
 fellow-members of the House of Commons. Even the 
 underlings of the Foreign Otfice brok^ into murmurs at 
 your unusual arrogance. The little knot of dependents, 
 who were willing to make common stock, ami carry 
 themselves to market with you, have become ashamed 
 of the tiifling oscillating buffoon, whom they mistook for 
 the head of a party, and who accepted the first and 
 lowest vacancy that could replace him in tlie precincts of 
 power. Even the miserable chuckfarthing, Ward, who 
 has learnt from you how to run rioi ou his own roguery, 
 owns, that he hesitates between the disgrace of" serving 
 without wages, and of being dismissed without a cha- 
 racter." 
 
 In the House of Commons alone you find yourself 
 taken ou your word, with no inquiries made; and when, 
 you display the whole deformity of a heart devoid of all 
 just, and generous, and gentlemanly feeling; and when, 
 you shew, by arts untried before, not only how despicable 
 you are yourself, but how you despise all around you, 
 you are not hissed to the ground, as you would iufaHibly 
 have been, had you ventured at such topics before a po- 
 pular assembly ; you are heard, you are encouraged, you 
 are cheered; your inhuman taunts on the irons and the 
 infirmities of those who demand reparation for the inju- 
 ries they have endured from a bloody police; your ridi- 
 cule of the prisoner and the oppressed, are received with 
 shouts of laughter, with loud shouts of laughter !!! 
 
 Go on, Sir, I pray you ; proceed with your pleasan- 
 tries; light up the dungeon with the flashes of your 
 merriment; make us familiar, make us pleased with the 
 anguish of the captive; teach us how to look upon tor- 
 ture and tyranny as agreeable trifles; let whips and ma- 
 nacles become the playthings of Parliament; let patriot- 
 ism and principle be preserved only as vain names, the 
 materials of a jest; and as you have disturbed the bed 
 of sickness with your unhallowed mirth, hasten, with 
 appropriate mockery, the long foretold approaching 
 Euthanasia of the expiring Constitution. 
 
 But confine your efforts to that assembly where they 
 have been so favourably, so thankfully received. You 
 will find no other hearers. You are nothing but on that 
 stage. The clerks, the candle?, the heated atmosphere, 
 the mummeries and decorations, the trained, packed, 
 paper audience, confused, belated, and jaded into ari
 
 12 
 
 appetite for the grossest stimulants ; these are the pre- 
 parations indispensable to your exhibition. 
 
 Thank Heaven, however, the House of Commons is 
 not the only tribunal ; and it is possible that, in spite of 
 your extraordinary progress and probable success, there 
 may still be, in this country, a body of men, now dis- 
 persed, but whom their common interests will one day 
 collect and unite, for the defence of their rights and the 
 punishment of their oppressors. 
 
 Believe me, Sir, not an echo of those shouts of laugh- 
 ter, which hailed your jests upon rebellious old age and 
 traitorous disease, not an echo has been lost in the wide 
 circumference of the British islands. Those shouts still 
 ring in our ears; they will never die away, until we are 
 finally extirpated by your triumph, or you are annihi- 
 lated by our indignation. Do not flatter yourself, that, 
 by securing the connivance of Parliament, you are safe 
 from all national censure. Parliament does not represent 
 the feelings, any more than the interests, of the British 
 nation. It would be an insult to this great, this glorious 
 people, to suppose that their representatives were sent to 
 the House of Commons to encourage the playful ferocity 
 of a hardened politician. The nobler portion of the na- 
 tion are certainly not members of either House: the 
 bettter educated, the more enlightened, and the more 
 wealthy, at least the more independent, are to be found 
 without the walls of Parliament. You are (and what dis- 
 honest man is not?) an enemy to reform. But you shall 
 be told, Sir, that the extreme necessity of Reform, and of 
 choosing our representatives from some other classes of 
 society, was never so decidedly shewn as in the reception 
 of your speech. If Mr. Canning was, on a former oc- 
 casion*, applauded for saying, that the constitution of 
 that assembly could not be bad, which " worked so well 
 in practice" as to admit of the selection of such men as 
 Mr. vVindham and Mr. Horner, 1 am sure it is to be al- 
 lowed me to say, that the assembly can have no feelings 
 or opinions, in common with the rest of their country- 
 men, which would receive, with shouts of approving 
 laughter, such a speech as this of Mr Canning. 
 
 Your practice, Sir, may work well in the House of 
 Commons; but are we to become accomplices in the 
 crime of acquiescence in such riotous, wanton ribaldry? 
 
 See Motion for a new Writ foe the borough of St. Mawes, in the 
 room of Francis Horner, Esq. deceased.
 
 13 
 
 God forbid! Your impunity will be our reproach ; let 
 me therefore record the judgment of one who shall be 
 heard, since he speaks the sentiment of your countrymen. 
 You cannot be t'ar from the close of your career; for 
 either we shall be so lost that all your larther efforts 
 will be superfluous, or you will be so resisted as to dis- 
 able you for ever at once for all noxious exertion. This, 
 then, may be the time for summing up the evidence, 
 furnished by the unbiassed, uncontratliclory witnesses of 
 your life; and for enabling your countrymen to pass the 
 verdict. Your current is muddy, even at the spring, and 
 runs clear in no part of its winding, babbling course. 
 Let him speak who ever knew you in possession of any 
 respectable reputation. The rag you stole from Mr. 
 Sheridan's mantle was always too scanty to cover your 
 nakedness: like all mimics, you caught only the meaner 
 characteristics of your archetype; oratorical, notoiator; 
 poetaster, not poet; witling, not wit. You were never 
 the fiist-or best in any one line of action. You might 
 not have been altogether inept or slow in playing second 
 parts; but on no one occasion have you ever evinced that 
 integrity, either of principle or capacity, which the lowest 
 amongst us are accustomed to require from the pretenders 
 to excellence. Your spirit was rebuked in presence of 
 those accomplished persons whom the followers of all 
 parties recognized as beings of a higher order, and were 
 willing to yield even more deference than their unam- 
 bitious merit required. The cjiances of survivorship have 
 left you a great man in these days of little men; but 
 you keep true to the epic rule; you end as you began: 
 power has conferred upon you no dignity; elevation has 
 not made your posture moret-rect. The decency of your 
 character consists in its entire conformity to the original 
 conception formed of you in early life. It lias borrowed 
 nothing from station, nothing from experience. It be- 
 comes you, and would disgrace any other man. Mean 
 and trifling as you are, it is not, however to be over- 
 looked, that you have the power of mischief. You 
 belong to a class of men who have been adjudged most 
 pernicious in a state. Amongst your other school-boy 
 acquisitions, you read Latin, Sir; let me quoe to you a 
 sentence of one \\ho knew how te write it, and who was, 
 perhaps, as capable of appreciating the merit of a timely 
 joke .:$ Mr. Canning. It is my Lord Bacou, who, com- 
 menting upon the aphorism of Solomon, " Homines deri- 
 sores civitatem perdwt" has these words:
 
 14 
 
 ** Mirum videri possit, quod in descriptwne hominum, 
 qui ad respublicas labefactandas et perdendas veluti natura 
 comparati et facti stint, delegerit Salomon characterem, 
 non hominis superbi et iusolentis ; nan tyrannici et cru- 
 delis; non temerarii etviolenti; non impii et scelerati; non 
 injusti et oppressoris ; non seditiosi et turbulenti ; non libi- 
 dinosi et voluptuarii non denique insipientis et inhabilis ; sed 
 derisoris. Verum hoc sapientia ejus Regis, qui rerum pub- 
 licarum conservations et eversiones optime norat, dignissi- 
 mum est. Neque enim similis fere est pestis regnis et rebus- 
 publicis quam si Consiliarii Regum, aut Senatores, quique 
 gubernaculis rerum admovetur, sint ingenio derisores. *" 
 . You see then, Sir, that we have not quite so much to fear 
 from your colleagues as from yourself. Look in this glass, 
 and you will start back at your frightful image. And yet 
 this great man would have thought this " plague" still 
 more deadly, could he have divined to what lengths a 
 future statesman, and senator, and minister of England, 
 would dare to push this pernicious mockery. 
 
 Such an unqualified attempt, not to vindicate, but to 
 make light of acts of tyranny and cruelty, would, in an 
 assembly of free Rome, have been answered with a dagger. 
 When the Republic was overthrown, the most odious and 
 frantic of the Emperors did, indeed, amuse himself in 
 your way, Sir, and indulged his turn tor talking and 
 trifling by declamatory defences and accusations of cul- 
 prits in presence of his slavish Senate. Between your 
 apologies for Oliver and your other coadjutors in office, 
 and your invectives against your state prisoners, you com- 
 plete the parallel. Or, if you are displeased with Cali- 
 gula, you may prefer a rivalry with the other Caesar, 
 who, directing the punishment of some old men, told the 
 executioner to number them out from bald head to bald 
 head. 
 
 " Scornful men bring a city into a snare. 
 
 " It may appear strange, that in describing those who are, as it 
 were, fashioned by nature, and made for the ruin of a state, Solomon 
 should have selected, not the proud and the insolent, not the tyrannical 
 and the cruel, not the rash and the violent, not the impious and (lie 
 wicked, not the unjust and the oppressor, not the seditious and the 
 turbulent, not the lustful and the voluptuary, and, lastly, not the un- 
 wise and the incapable, but the man given to mockery. And yet this 
 judgment is very worthy of the wisdom of that King, who knew so well 
 all that contributes to the preservation and the overthrow of states : 
 for there is no greater pestilence in a monarchy or a common wealth, 
 than when the counsellors of the King, or the members of the Senate, 
 and those entrusted with the direction of affairs, are by nature gucn 
 to mockery." De Aug. Sd. lib. viii, cap. 2.
 
 You see, Sir, that you are not quite original, even in 
 your facetious assaults upon old. age. You said some- 
 thing, 1 observe, about the misapplication of popular 
 complaints to the present state of the country; and you 
 used the remarkable allusion, that they were not less out 
 of time and place than it would have been to discourse 
 about Tarquin and Brutus in the days of Imperial 
 Rome. I shall overlook the pleasant comparison be- 
 tween the present state of England and that of Rome 
 after she had lost her liberties: I suppose this, too, is one 
 of your jokes, though I do not see the accustomary 
 " loud laugh" that accompanies your waggeries, But I 
 will tell you, that you are no less ignorant than imperti- 
 nent, in adopting this illustration. The Romans, after the 
 triumph of tyranny, did find it very much to the purpose 
 to recur to the example of their patriots, and, " more 
 than two hundred years after the establishment of the 
 Imperial Government, the character of the younger 
 Brutus was studied as the perfect idea of Roman virtue,'* 
 They still read Cicero; they still admired that noble sen- 
 timent, which taught them that " the most truly grace- 
 ful, the most beneficial, the most glorious boast-worthy 
 act of an honest citizen, was to slay a tyrant.* 
 
 They did more; they aspired sometimes to imitate 
 their glorious tyrannicides; and, notwithstanding the fear 
 of anarchy, which was carefully instilled into the subjects 
 of the empire, and was iu fact the origin of their servi- 
 tude, their despots found that there was still some limit 
 to their intemperate trifling with the rights and feelings 
 of human nature. 
 
 You may not yet have forgotten, that the historian 
 tells us, that the Romans might perhaps have borne the 
 cruelty of Nero, but were driven into revolt at last 
 against his buffoonery. As for the declaimer Caligula, a 
 brutal joke, too frequently tried, cost him his life. 
 
 Hampden was no assassin; but what think you he 
 would have said to a minister of Charles I.? " You are 
 not protected by your personal insignificance: the power, 
 almost absolute, which has been and may again be placed 
 in your hands, may make you a respectable victim; and 
 be assured, Sir, that if I should ever be a prisoner of state, 
 and, after being maimed by your gaolers, should be 
 assaulted by your jokes, I will put you to death with the 
 same deliberation as I now give you this timely warning. 
 
 * ' Quam sit re pulchrum, buieticio gratuni, fam5 gloriosuco, tyrau- 
 nuiu occidere. 1 '
 
 16 
 
 This is no idle, although it is only a defensive, menace; 
 nor is the. resolution confined to one individual: 
 
 " Idem Treccnti juravimus." 
 
 YOUR COUNTRYMAN. 
 
 MR. CANNING'S LETTER TO THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Gloucester Lod^e, April 10, 1818. 
 
 SIR, I received early in the last week the Copy of your Pamphlet, 
 which you (1 take for granted) had the attention to send to me. 
 
 Soon after I was informed, on the authority of your Publisher, that 
 you had withdrawn the whole impression from him, with the view 
 (as was supposed) of suppressing the publication. 
 
 I since learn, however, that the Pamphlet, though not sold, is circu- 
 lated under blank covers. 
 
 I learn this. from (among others) the Gentleman to whom the Pam- 
 phlet has been industriously attributed, but who has voluntarily and 
 absolutely denied to me, that he has any knowledge of it or its author. 
 
 To you, Sir, whoever you may be, 1 address myself thus directly, for 
 the purpose of expressing to you my opinion, that 
 
 You are a Liar and a Slanderer, and want courage only to be an 
 Assassin. 
 
 I have only to add, that no man knows of my writing to you; that t 
 shall maintain the same reserve so long ;s I have an expectation of 
 hearing from you in your own name ; and that I shall not give up that 
 expectation till to-morrow (Saturday) night. 
 
 The same address which brought me your Pamphlet will bring any 
 fetter safe to my hands. I am, Sir, your humble Servant, 
 
 (Signed) GEO. CANNING. 
 
 >: (Mr. Ridgway is requested to forward this letter to its destination.) 
 
 LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE EDITOR OF THE 
 EXAMINER 
 
 SIR, You are requested to insert in your paper the Reply of the Right 
 Hon. George Canning to my public remonstrance with that Gentleman 
 dn the insult he lately dared to oiler to the People oi England. 
 
 1 am agreeably disappointed. After ten days deliberation, he acknow- 
 ledges the tribunal, and has determined to plead. 
 
 Whilst his Jd'dges are deciding on the merits of his defence, it 
 shall be my Care to provide the Gentleman with another opportunity 
 of displaying his taste and talents in the protection of his character. 
 
 In the mean time, whilst Mr. Lambton is a "Dolt and an Ideot," 
 I am content to be a " Liar and a Slanderer and an Assassin," ac- 
 cording to the same inimitable Master of the Vulgar Tongue. lam, 
 Sir, ,your obedient Servant. 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF THE LETTER TO THE RIGHT HON. 
 GEORGE CANNING. 
 
 Several mutilated editions of the preceding Letters 
 having been given to the public, we have presented our 
 readers with a correct copy; with which Mr. Canning 
 cannot possibly be offended, since he asserts the writer to 
 be a liar, a slanderer, and an assassin ! Let the public 
 judge between them. 
 
 f rioted uil Published by John Fail-burn, 2, Broad-way, Ludgute Hill, Londiw.
 
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