services they have performed, not one has risen to any eminence in his profession. It is not to be supposed, that either talent or merit is the exclusive privilege of Protestantism: attached as I am to the Reformed Church, I cannot give her that monopoly. No man, my lords, has had more experience to the contrary than myself. Entrusted with the command of two Catholic armies, I soon found that, with similar advantages, they were quite equal to our own. The same hatred of tyranny, the same love of liberty, the same unconquerable spirit, pervaded both the soldier and the peasant of those two Catholic states. I even found amongst them Irishmen, whom the intolerance of our laws had driven to shed the lustre of their talents over a foreign clime.

"It now becomes me, my lords, to speak of the liberality which I experienced from their hands. Notwithstanding that I dissented from the religion of the state, it was never made a preliminary that I should abjure my own creed, and conform to another; (and why should I demand this sacrifice from those who are now only petitioning your lordships for similar opportunities of serving their country?)-neither my known denial of the doctrines of Transubstantiation, and of the supremacy of the Pope, presented the smallest obstacle to my advancement ;-neither my merit nor my capacity were weighed in the scale of speculative belief in

religious tenets: it was my country, and not my faith, that was my title to approval:-I was an accredited delegate from the British empire, and that was sufficient. I was entrusted with the supreme command of all their forces; I was admitted to their councils; I was called upon for my opinion in the senate; and for the services which I was fortunately enabled to render them, nothing could exceed the prodigality of the reward. The highest honours, the most munificent donations, and perhaps the most splendid presents that ever were bestowed upon a subject, were all showered down upon me, with the most generous profusion. Every succeeding service was met with a fresh eagerness of reward; and, in countries super-eminently Catholic, I was loaded with benefits only equalled by those bestowed upon me by our own Protestant legislature. Indeed, there was not a Catholic state in Europe, which was not emulous to overpower me with honourable distinctions, and to place me under an imperative obligation to it. I feel it, therefore, my lords, to be an act of the purest justice on the one side, and of only reciprocal liberality on the other, to lend my most fervent and cordial support to the measure now before you to open to my Catholic fellow-countrymen the same road to preferment along which I have been so generously borne ;—and to display to continental Europe our determination to follow the example she has set

us, by putting an end to the reign of bigotry and exclusion for ever. My lords, it is a great additional gratification to me, to advocate these principles, in conjunction with a distinguished member of my family, so lately at the head of the government of his native country; a country ever dear to me from the recollections of my infancy, the memory of her wrongs, and the bravery of her people. I glory, my lords, in the name of Ireland, and it is the highest pleasure I can ambition, to be thus united with the rest of my kindred, in the grateful task of closing the wounds which seven centuries of misgovernment have inflicted upon that unfortunate land."

September, 1828.

The brilliant opportunity has occurred, but has been suffered to pass, without placing the civic crown upon the laurelled temples of the premier. He has invited us, however, to sport in a gleam of hope, and to direct our views to brighter prospects. "Cease to agitate, and perhaps something may be done," certainly indicates the possibility of an adjustment. It proclaims to us that the war is no longer one of extermination; the flag of truce is sent forth into our camp, and we are summoned to consider upon the preliminaries of peace. If the offer be not made in a spirit of munificent liberality, the invitation to a parley shows at least

a willingness to withdraw, with what advantages they may, from a position which they begin to find incapable of defence.

There is a degree of chivalrous generosity in yielding to the prayer of a people in the attitude of supplication: justice receives additional lustre when she moves without the impulse of necessity; wisdom is adorned, and prudence is exalted in value, when, at the first appearance of danger, the remedy is applied without waiting for the hazards of accumulated evil. But the period when such deeds as these might have been achieved, is gone, never to return. The prayer of supplication so long preferred, but so long slighted and rejected, is converted into a stern demand: where justice should have stepped in unbidden, she is now dragged in by force: where danger was only discernible in the distance by the keen and watchful eye of prophetic wisdom, she now stalks forth in giant form, rending the air with her forebodings, and filling the whole soul with apprehension. Oh! that we may heed the warning which she proclaims so loudly and so distinctly.

The hand of the Orangeman is on his sword, threatening to uphold by force what he does not even pretend to defend by argument. Should he have the temerity to draw it, not a drop of Orange blood will be left in Ireland. Its stain alone will remain to cry vengeance upon the heads of those

of our rulers who have urged on the catastrophe, and especially upon that of the Duke of Wellington, who will have been principally instrumental in leading this contest to such an issue. Neither is it surprising that, in their expiring efforts, these men should have betrayed to us the inmost recesses of their hearts: Quem perdere vult Deus, prius dementat. They have told us that they would prefer the arrogance of dominion over the remnant of a nation,-over a few surviving slaves after a scene of carnage and devastation,-to the tranquil and extended happiness of millions, when that happiness is to be won by an equality of rights, and by the extinction of an odious monopoly. They have told us that the light of justice shall never pierce their hearts; that they will never listen to the voice of peace; that they will never conquer their ruling passion, but will satiate it to the full. They tell us, in fine, that the people are to be slaves, and they are to be tyrants; that the people are to pay, and they are to receive; that the people are to sow, and they are to reap,-as long as there are slaves to labour, and tyrants to be task-masters. It is in their true character that they have now appealed to the people of England, who have only needed this uplifting of the curtain, to behold them in their real forms; and in their folly and presumption, they court the gaze of the whole world, while they fill up the measure of their