THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON THE ADVOCATE OF EMANCIPATION.

After many anxious vicissitudes of hope and fear; after passing through a trying variety of tempera

Protestant or Catholic, for which credit has been emphatically claimed? Here are two sets of men in Ireland, one of whom confines itself, on principle, to such means of asserting and establishing its rights as are prescribed by the forms of the constitution, congenial to its spirit, and preservative of the public tranquillity. The opposite party never meets or moves without denouncing vengeance, by armed violence, against the Catholics; challenging its enemies to open combat, and exclaiming against the king's government for persecution of the Protestants, and treason to the State, the moment it ceases to go all lengths with these 'exclusive loyalists,' as they call themselves, in their hatred and oppression of the great majority of the people. Thus the Catholics who cry out for peace, whose necessary policy is a strict adherence to the law, and a scrupulous, though vigorous, exercise of a lawful privilege for a purpose in which the most enlightened and exalted Protestant body abet them, -the peaceful Catholics are deprived of the use of arms, while the Orangemen, who have no game left but that of war, are equipped with musket, bayonet, and ball-cartridge; and this is to pass upon mankind as a system of equal justice and paternal government! Verily, the Catholic is but a step-child! It is said, however, that lord Angle

ture-the political horizon appeared to have settled in almost unclouded sunshine upon the Catholics

sea will be able to carry on the government and administer the laws in spite of any or all who may seek to disturb by arms the peace of the community. We doubt not that the noble marquis will enforce the executive authority, like a brave and upright representative of the king. But is there no wisdom in weighing well the burden of embarrassment which surrounds a kingdom, and no prudence in diminishing its pressure? If lord Anglesea be competent to keep down the armed violence of the Orange faction, would he not be still more competent to repress the same violence if unarmed? Would not, indeed, the spirit of outrage be apt to evaporate in mere noisy demonstrations, if the implements of a more noxious species of atrocity were once taken away? We are more decided than ever in our belief, that no means of actual warfare ought to be suffered to exist in Ireland, except in the hands and under the control of Government, and on the responsibility. of those to whom the defence of the public peace is officially and by law confided. It is not,-need we say so?-for the detached welfare of the Catholic body, that these observations are offered to the people of Great Britain. The line of demarcation deepens every day between the two classes of the king's subjects in the sister island. The quarrel assumes every hour a character more complex, inveterate, and appalling. It is not merely religion by itself, or civil liberty, that is at stake; but the contest is one for Catholicism, embittered by Hibernicism, and fermented by the growing leaven of democracy, against Protestant pride--Protestant power-Protestant avariceProtestant insult-Protestant menace: at last, rendered

of the empire; when, to our dismay and horror, it is now again suddenly darkening around us." We cannot but fear that the appointment of the Duke of Wellington as premier, is a fatal omen to our cause: for hitherto he has but too often ranked amongst the most signal of our opposers. If the Duke of Wellington be the bigot which many imagine, our fate is sealed as long as his counsels prevail. But we are willing to hope against hope; to anticipate the strength of argument, and the influence of wisdom and expediency; and to expect that the new circumstances in which the destinies of the empire are again placed in his hands, will elevate his mind to the level of those beneficent and liberal ideas, by which the affairs of a great nation ought alone to be guided.

When the Duke of Wellington looks back to the brilliant scenes of his eventful life, he will see that the time was, when he thought it no dishonour

desperate, it is aimed against Protestant heresy ; all painted more hideous to the Hiberno-Catholic eye, because they wear the colours of England, the traditional and irreclaimable oppressor. To this complexion things move onward rapidly. The 40s. freehold - that God-send of 1793 has left one chance of saving the empire, by shewing the Catholics that they hold in their grasp a weapon which cuts mortally, but sheds no blood.-Times, Aug. 1828.

(*) Jan. 1828.

to hold command under Catholic sovereigns,-to receive the reward of his services from them, and even to place himself, on very many occasions, under singular obligations to those whom he has since declared to be unworthy of their hire. Were it not for his Catholic troops, the Duke of Wellington had never gathered one solitary laurelfor all the laurels which he wears have sprung from their valour, and have been watered by their blood; but for the confidence reposed in him by Catholic governments, he had never been carried forward in his career;-but for the honours heaped upon him by Catholic monarchs, his breast had never blazed with half that brilliancy which beams upon it now; and many of those high-sounding titles, which so loudly proclaim his glory to the world, would have been mute.

If justice, gratitude, and wisdom still dwell upon the earth, we trust that the day will soon arrive when the Duke of Wellington, from the elevated station which he now holds, a station far more enviable than that of the commander of the proudest army in Europe, will stand forth to remove that blemish from his political life, of having hitherto left unrequited the services which his Catholic fellow-countrymen have so eminently rendered him. And I think we are justified in this expectation, by the noble sentiments which his Grace, not many months ago, expressed in par

liament upon the subject. The Duke of Wellington still holds the situation under the crown') which he is reported to have said to be "so consonant to his feelings, liking it, as he did, from the opportunities which it gave him to improve the condition of his old comrades in arms which enabled him to recommend to the notice of his Majesty all his former friends and companions, and to reward them, according to their merits, for the exertions which they had formerly made, under his command, in the field." (*) Now,

(y) This was written when the Duke of Wellington was both commander-in-chief and first lord of the treasury.

(*) The following public testimony which history has transmitted to us, of the Duke of Wellington's opinions on the propriety and justice of "cementing a general union of sentiment among all classes and descriptions of his Majesty's subjects, in support of the established constitution," ought certainly to inspire us with the confident expectation, that the same wisdom and liberality, which distinguished his views of Irish politics, thirty-five years ago, will likewise constitute the characteristics of his grace's administration of similar affairs now.

On the 16th of January, 1793, the House of Commons being met, a message was brought from his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant, which contains the following passage:"I have it in particular command from his Majesty, to recommend it to you to apply yourselves to the consideration of such measures as may be most likely to strengthen and cement a general union of sentiment among all classes and descriptions of his Majesty's sub