the head of their church has the power of deposing temporal magistrates, and even of sanctioning the horrid crime of assassination. And here I certainly admit, that if it could be proved that there is any thing in their religion tending to permit it, or to justify a subject in withdrawing his allegiance from his sovereign, or in raising his hand against the common father of the country, it would be necessary to provide every possible guard, and to take every practicable precaution, against a creed pregnant with so much mischief, and such flagrant enormity. But let me seriously ask your lordships, whether it would not be trespassing upon your patience, and offering an insult to your understandings, to prove that nothing can be more false and unfounded than such a charge, when imputed to the Roman-catholics of the present day? The Catholics themselves have formally and solemnly disclaim ed these odious principles; and you are bound to believe the statement which they give of the articles of their own faith, except you find that their professions and their practice do not agree. You cannot, in fairness, say to them, "I believe you when you tell me you are a catholic; but when you begin to explain to me what a catholic is, I do not believe a word you say." They have done every thing which men can do to vindicate themselves from such aspersions: not only by solemn declarations, and certificates, procured from courts of law, of their having taken the oaths of allegiance; but they have even carried their zeal so far, in defence of their own character, and for the sake of the religion which they profess, as to propose questions upon the subject to the principal catholic universities upon the continent, the consequence of which was, that doctrine has been disclaimed with the unanimous consent of Europe, accompanied with expressions of horror and astonishment at such questions being submitted to them. And if the answers of the catholic universities will not satisfy you, you have the edict of the papal see itself, published in 1791, prohibitng all catholic pastors from teaching principles of this description.

There remains only one other objection for me to advert to, namely, that the catholis refuse to take the oath of supremacy. The catholics have disclaimed owing any temporal allegiance to the popc. But I must make one or two observations upon some things which were thrown out on a former occasion when the question was discussed, respecting persons holding the offices of pastors and bi

shops. If you have an episcopal church, you must have bishops. I make this observation, which to some may appear trite, because the great difficulty which certain persons feel against granting the catholics the immunities for which they ask, is the power of the bishops. I repeat, therefore, that if you have an episcopal church, you must have bishops; and if you tolerate the Roman-ca tholic religion, you must likewise permit the existence of catholic, bishops. In Scotland, where the presbyterian religion is established, they have no bishops belonging to the establishment, nevertheless they tolerate episcopacy. The jurisdiction of the bishops must be con fined to matters purely spiritual; but wherever the Ro man-catholic religion exists, they will necessarily be found. Much has been said respecting their right of excommunication. But it is evident, that no society can hang together if it has not the power of excluding from its bosom such members as do not conform with its rules. This power must exist in every religious society; and, in fact, does exist in every church, in every Jewish synagogue, and in every body of men whatever who are permitted to meet for the purposes of religious worship. It is a right which does not imply any interference whatever in temporal matters; and if any apprehensions are entertained of such interference, it may be restrained and subjected to as strict limitations as may be thought necessary. I am assured, however, that in practice, this power has not been abused; and that if your lordships will take the trouble to investigate the matter with that attention which its importance merits, you will find very few instances indeed in which any attempt has been made to stretch it beyond its proper bounds. I do not at present recollect any other grounds on which it is alleged, that the Roman-catholic religion is incompatible with the safety of the existing establishment. Were any further arguments necessary to shew that no danger is to be apprehended from it in the present state of the world, I might appeal to the experience of those countries in which it has been tolerated. In Russia, where the Greek religion is established, the Roman-catholic religion has been tolerated without danger. In Prussia, where the protestant religion is established, no bad consequences have been felt from this toleration. In Holland, both the protestant and Roman-catholic reVOL. III-1808.

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ligions have been suffered without inconvenience, and in Switzerland they have existed together with the utmost harmony. In this country we have not found that the catholics have molested us in the exercise of either our civil or religious rights; and in Ireland they conducted themselves in such a way as to induce the Irish parliament in 1778 to pass an act to relax the severity of the penal laws, and which was done, as the act itself declares, in consideration of their long and uniform good conduct. The question then now is, whether you will persevere in a mild and conciliatory conduct towards the catholics for the purpose of more firmly and steadily attaching them to the constitution, and for the purpose of animating them to stand forward in its defence with increased zeal and alacrity in the present moment of peril. That you should do so, I have no hesitation whatever in giving my opinion; an opinion founded upon various grounds, buthupon none more than the consideration of the system which you have pursued since 1778, and the beneficial effects which have resulted from it. Since that period you have sought by all the means in your power to raise the people of IrcTand to opulence and wealth, and all the enjoyments of civil life, because you have thought that in so doing you were most likely to increase your own prosperity, and to attach them to the happy constitution and government under which they lived. In this course of indulgence and conciliation you have proceeded gradually, but uniformly, sand never surely were wisdom and liberality more sig nally rewarded. Under the benign influence of this system, you have seen Ireland starting from a state of po-verty, insignificance, and degradation, to wealth, consequence, and power; and to a wealth, consequence, and power, of which Ireland has not had the exclusive benefit ; but which have increased proportionally the wealth, power, and consequence, of Great Britain. Had the present crisis in your fate happened thirty years ago, how ill prepared - would you have been to meet it, when compared with the state of your actual resources! And has not the favourable change to a considerable degree arisen from your policy to Ireland during that period? When you look to your maritime strength, the great bulwark of your safety; when you look to the increase of your population, when you look to the flourishing state of your commerce

and navigation; you must reflect with pleasure that they are in no inconsiderable degree the result of that policy. which, by giving the people of Ireland an interest in the soil, has made them large contributors to the prosperity and defence of the country. In 1792, true to the same. system of conciliation, you proceeded much further than you had done before. At the eve of the great and awful contest, which was then about to commence, and in con❤ templation of the succours which you might have occasion · to call upon Ireland to furnish towards carrying it on, you extended he benefits already conferred upon her, uniting the additional ones which you bestowed to the improvement which had taken place in her situation. You con... sidered that she had already acquired wealth, that respect had followed upon wealth, that her population no longer consisted entirely of a rude peasantry, but that education had polished the habits and improved the manners of the. people, and that they were capable of enjoying the rights and performing the duties of the subjects of a free constitution; and with these considerations before you, you imparted to them the elective franchise. And why did you do this? Was it for the purpose of enabling the disaffected catholics more securely and more effectually to sap your religious establishment, and to overturn the government? No: you said, The people of Ireland are now capable of exercising the rights of freemen; with wealth, they have. acquired attachment to the country and to the government; and therefore those privileges which at one time it might have been unsafe to grant, it would now be equally illiberal and impolitic to withhold, You went even further than that you opened to the catholics all the professions, offices, and honours, of the state. And on what principle did you do this? Because you supposed them to be the enemies both of church and state? No. It was because you thought they were capable of holding, and worthy to as, ire after them, and that they would discharge the duties of these several stations to the advantage, not to the detriment, of the common ealth. All I ask of you now is to pursue this system, and to be faithful to your own principles, to proceed in the course in which you have begun, and to persevere till you have finished it. The offices from which Roman-catholics are excluded are so few in number, that it is usual for the opposers of

the measure to ground an argument against their admission to them upon this very circumstance. It cannot, say they, be an object for which they can consider it worth contending. The offices are indeed few in number, and may be granted with perfect safety: but it ought to be recollected that though they may be little for you to grant, they are not little for them to receive. The restriction is felt over the whole community, and every individual feels the oppression of being excluded from an office which, had it been open to all, he never might have attained. Think, my lords, of what would be the feelings of any one among you, if he were told that he might enter himself or bring up his son in any particular profession, but that whatever might be his talents, whatever might be his industry, whatever might be his perseverance, the highest honours of the profession were for ever and irrevocably inaccessible to him; were he to be told that he might, indeed, encounter all the toil, expose himself to all the dangers, and undergo all the disgusts, incident to the line, but that to its highest preferments he never could aspire. By such a measure of exclusion, the danger against which you guard is nothing, but the mortification which it occasions to those who are affected by it is extreme. The principle upon which it proceeds. is even more galling than the thing itself. They are told not only that they must despair of ever attaining those high situations, but they must despair of attaining them because they are unworthy of being trusted with them. It offers a stigma upon them as a body, and sets them as marks for the hand of Scorn to point at. Whatever may be the result of their present application, I hope it will not have the effect of weakening their attachment either to the country or to the government; but if it shall prove unsuccessful, it is impossible but they must feel the disappointmen, and feel it poignantly; if they did not they would not have the feelings of men, much less the feelings characteristic of freemen. My lords, you are now calling upon the people of Ireland for great sacrifices for a great object: you are calling upon them to risk their lives, and all they possess, to resist the invasion of a foreig enemy, to prevent our being numbered with the sub. jugated states of the continent, and to defend a constitu tion which is at once the source of our happiness and of