It is chiefly on this account that the Catholics at this day

It should not be a subject of great wonder to the reader of this volume, that the Author of ORELLANA should have held such opinions with regard to his Catholic countrymen in the year 1784.-For a long series of years the victims of a heartless and debasing oppression, their understandings were subdued to a most unaccountable patience of the injuries they endured.-Is the eye of the slave able to bear the meridian blaze of Freedom, or might he not, in the language of CURRAN, be inclined to break his chains on the heads of his oppressors? On this principle, the auther of ORELLANA might have correctly supposed, that the mind of the Catholic required the aid of political discussion to prepare him for the enjoyment of political power. From 1778, (the year when the Irish Catholic first raised his head from the floor of his cell, that year when the first gleamings of Liberty were allowed to pass through the bars of his prison) to 1793, the political discussions by which Ireland was distinguished were constant, interesting and informing. The Catholics threw off the chains of religious as well as political bigotry, and made themselves worthy of the confidence of their more fortunate Protestant fellow-countrymen. It was therefore in the year 1794 we find the Author of ORELLANA, under the signature of a Boeotian, bearing testimony to the progress of the Catholic mind, to its full capability of the enjoyment of political power, and to its UNDOUBTED RIGHT to a participation in the blessings of the British Constitution.—

"The circumstances of the times, as well as persons, have changed in the very manner wished for, and the mind must change along with them. To commercial interest, a middle and mediating rank has rapidly grown up in the Catholic community, and produced that enlargement of mind, that energy of character, and that self-dependence which men acquire whose interests do not hang at the mercy of this or that individual, but on general and necessary consumption. Will any person assert that such men are not as well qualified to exercise civil franchise as the most of our 40s. Protestant freeholders, whose corruption is in reality occasioned by the unjust partition of political power, and who are tempted to convert their monopoly into money, because its partial distribution has given it an artificial value much beyond what nature and reason allow it. The unjust detention of liberty from others, operates as a curse and a blast upon those who have hoarded the common good.

are absolutely incapable of making a good use of political li

It rots in their possession. It corrupts when not partaken; and he who has more than his exact share of freedom, becomes in one situation of life a tyrant, and in another, degenerates and putrifies into a slave. It is the judgment of God on all nations and all men who presume to ap propriate his gifts, and to make of right a privilege or a prerogative. The Catholic mind has cast off its feudality, and that person would in truth be inconsistent who kept prejudice as it were at nurse, when by nearer approach and closer acquaintance, he finds in that body a nationality of sentiment, and a fidelity in engagement, demanding respect and admiration; while he knows it to be his general duty, as it is his dear delight, to foster the spirit of freedom, wherever it may be found, especially in the breasts of his countrymen.

"It is in reality the civil incapacity which has made and must continue the moral incapacity. It is the will to be free, which makes the capability, and the first sigh that the heart sends forth for liberty is a sufficient indication of potency to enjoy it. To affect a wish for their ability to possess freedom, while you continue the penal code which makes them incapable, is cruel mockery. A capacity for freedom is as natural to man as a capacity to eat or to drink; it is an instinct of nature, not a consequence of education. Man is often indeed the creature of habit, and he may learn to be a slave, as he may learn to drink alcohol and to eat asafoetida, but you will never break him of these bad customs by degrees; it is only by giving a complete wrench of the mind to an opposite direction. The doctrine of natural rights is plain, simple, cemmonsensical; and the practical enjoyment of them requires no tuition, nor any course of adoption. Rights most unjustly have been converted into favors derived from the gratuitous lenity of government, and are now to be purchased as a license; when it was solely for their plenary enjoy. ment that men entered into civil society.— Magna Charta need not be taught like the Principia of Newton, and the rights of personal security, personal freedom, private property, the right of defending them, and of electing a trustee to watch over and protect them from undefined privilege or unlimited prerogative, require neither literature to feel their value, nor any reach of mind to exercise them with judgment and prudence. In a state of nature we should know them well, and government has too often been only a means and an art to render and keep us ignorant of fundamental rights and of our primary duties.

berty, or what is the same thing, of political power. I speak the sentiments of the most enlightened among them, and I assert it as a fact, that the most able men in that body are too wise to wish for a complete extension of civil franchises to those of their own persuasion; and the reason is, because they well know that it must require the process of time to en large their minds and meliorate their hearts into a capability of enjoying the blessing of freedom. If your best friends doubt whether you yourselves be capable of enjoying a reform, the most liberal among the Catholics must know the greater insufficiency of their brethren,-and hence their si lence upon the subject. Their acquiescence in what has been said and done in their favor, proceeded only from that secret wish for liberty so natural to the human heart; but their tacit acquiescence evinces a mixture of desire and dread proceeding from a consciousness that they were not able to be free. I assert it as a fact, that the leading men among the Catholics did not begin to agitate this unhappy question. It was forced upon them by men whose goodness of intention is the best excuse they can make for their want of fore-knowledge; and who have unconsciously supplied the enemies of reform with the means of warding off the otherwise irresistible impulse of public opinion. Let then every man among you know, that the Catholics have withdrawn their claim of civil franchise, and that they do it because the business of reform must be re tarded rather than promoted by their interference. I rejoice that there is not the shadow of excuse left for YOUR indolence or inattention. I rejoice that I am now writing a sentence which will manifest to him who is yet unborn, that the success or failure of reform is to be your proper and peculiar glory, or your everlasting condemnation. May this sentence live, when the hand that writes it is mouldering in the dust, to tell wondering posterity that after the Catholics had withdrawn every claim on the justice or generosity of their country, for

the welfare of their Protestant brethren, the Protestants themselves, abandoned without the shadow of a cause, the glorious object just within their grasp; became exhausted, spiritless, afflicted, fallen, and then sunk into the grave tormented by the agonizing reflexion of what might have been done, and haunted by the ghost of their departed grandeur.

*

The question of reform is therefore to be considered merely as a political question, and he-I care not who he be—that intermixes aught of religion in the matter, is from ignorance, from simplicity, or from design-an enemy to his country. The question is not, whether a reform, attended by an equal participation of civil rights with the Catholics, is better or worse than to continue without a reform;-I may answer, worse, if I chuse to wander from the question, which is simply and solely this,-whether the government of Ireland is to continue an oligarchy, or to become a limited monarchy: whether a few men are to return the legislative, and chain the executive beneath their feet, or are the people to rescue the rights of the Crown from pollution, and to vindicate their own. The Catholics, I again repeat it with exultation, have declined all share of the contest; and conscious that the plurality among them are placed, as it were, in an earlier stage of society than the rest of the island, they submit in silence to the necessity of situation and circumstance-waiting with patience until time has given them maturity of strength, and ability equal to the arduous object they wish to attain. I do not think it at all surprizing that an enlightened Catholic, on sceing his Protestant brother almost certain of possessing a reform, should exclaim with Esau, "Is there not one blessing left? Bless me, even me also, O my country!" but when that same man considers calmly his situation, he resigns himself to the sentence of fate, and for a time is content to serve his brother. May that time be made a short one by their own laudable exertions? May the light of true science illuminate

their minds and soften their hearts! May the gradual diffusion of property, while it engrafts their affections upon the soil which supports them, communicate at the same time a spirit to maintain what their industry has acquired; give them self-estimation, conscious dignity, and in short that republi canism of soul which will announce to the world that the people who possess it are stamped by the hand of Heaven, heirs of independence!

A reform in parliament, dear countrymen, is not merely the removal of an evil. It must prove a never failing fund of po sitive and substantial blessings, which, with respect to Protestants would be immediate, and to Catholics, eventual. The public mind, by being frequently brought into action, must grow better informed; the latent powers and energies of every individual that enjoyed the blessing, would be brought into action; for there is sympathy between all the noble princi. ples of our nature. The heat of public spirit would foster and bring into the light of day those seeds of science, which at present germinate but to die in the breasts of indolent and unambitious men. The republic of letters, a name sacred in the mouths of every free people, a name pronounced with reverence in the courts of kings, would arise to illuminate the land. The mines of labor would be opened, and the mists of superstition would dissolve away. The fanaticism of sects would become an enthusiasm for civil freedom. We would all 'live like Christians, and behave as countrymen. The Catholic soothed by favors, by the conveniences of life, and by the hopes of affluence, would gradually melt into the citizen; the Presbyterian would ackowledge that all sects when in posses sion of power have abused it: and the Churchman would find a nobler foundation for the security of the church than-the abuses of the constitution. The laws would inspect our actions, while our thoughts were left to God.

O Thou, who hast showered down on this fair and fertile