ledge of each other, to will and to act as a nation. To know each other is to know ourselves the weakness of one and the strength of many. Union, therefore, is power-it is wisdom -it must prove liberty.

Our design, therefore, in forming this Society, is to give an example, which, when well followed, must collect the public will, and concentrate the public power into one solid mass, the effect of which, once put in motion, must be rapid, momentous, and consequential.

In thus associating we have thought little about our ancestors-much of our posterity. Are we for ever to walk like beasts of prey, over fields which these ancestors stained with blood? In looking back, we see nothing on the one part but savage force succeeded by savage policy; on the other, an unfortunate nation" scattered and peeled, meted out and trod den down!" We see a mutual intolerance, and a common carnage of the first moral emotions of the heart, which lead us to esteem and place confidence in our fellow creatures. We see this, and are silent. But we gladly look forward to brighter prospects to a people united in the fellowship of freedom-to a Parliament the express image of that peopleto a prosperity established on civil, political, and religious liberty-to a peace-not the gloomy and precarious stillness of men brooding over their wrongs, but that stable tranquillity which rests on the rights of human nature, and leans on the arms by which these rights are to be maintained.

Our principal rule of conduct has been, to attend to those things in which we agree, to exclude from our thoughts those in which we differ. We agree in knowing what are our rights, and in daring to assert them. If the rights of men be duties to God, we are in this respect of one religion. Our creed of civil faith is the same. We agree in thinking that there is not an individual among our millions, whose happiness can be established on any foundation so rational and s●

solid, as on the happiness of the whole community. We a gree, therefore, in the necessity of giving political value and station to the great majority of the people; and we think that whoever desires an amended constitution, without including the great body of the people, must on his own principles be convicted of political persecution, and political monopoly. If the present electors be themselves a morbid part of our 'constitution, where are we to recur for redress but to the whole community?"A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised, than that which condemns the natives of a Country to perpetual servitudé, under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves."

We agree in thinking, that the first and most indispensable condition of the laws in a free state, is the assent of those whose obedience they requre, and for whose benefit only they are designed. Without, therefore, an impartial and adequate representation of the community, we agree in declaring, We can have no constitution-no country-no Ireland. Without this, our late revolution we declare to be fallacious and ideal; a thing much talked of, but neither felt nor seen. The act of Irish Sovereignty has been merely tossed out of the English Houses into the Cabinet of the Minister; and nothing remains to the people, who of right are every thing, but a servile majesty and a ragged independence.

We call most earnestly on every great and good man, who at the late æra spoke or acted for his country, to consider less of what was done than of what there remains to do. call

upon

We their senatorial wisdom to consider the monstrous and immeasurable distance which separates, in this island, the ranks of social life, makes labour ineffectual, taxation unpro ductive, and divides the nation into petty despotism and public misery. We call upon their tutelar genius, to remember, that government is instituted to remedy, not to render more griev

s the natural inequality of mankind, and that unless the

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rights of the whole community be asserted, anarchy (we can not call it government) must continue to prevail, where the strong tyrannize, the rich oppress, and the mass are brayed in a mortar. We call upon them, therefore, to build their arguments and their actions on the broad platform of general good.

Let not the rights of nature be enjoyed merely by connivance, and the rights of conscience merely by toleration.

If

you raise up a prone people, let it not be merely to their knees. Let the nation stand. Then will it cast away the bad habit ot servitude, which has brought with it indolence, ignorance, an extinction of our faculties, an abandonment of our very nature. Then will every right obtained, every franchise exercised, prove a seed of sobriety, industry, and regard to character, and the manners of the people will be formed on the model of their free constitution.

This rapid exposition of our principles, our object, and our rule of conduct, must naturally suggest the wish of multiply ing similar Societies, and the propriety of addressing such a desire to you. Is it necessary for us to request, that you will hold out your hand, and open your heart to your countryman, townsman and neighbour?-Can you form a hope for political redemption, and by political penalties, or civil excommunica tions, withhold the Rights of Nature from your Brother? We beseech you to rally all the friends of Liberty within your cir cle round a Society of this kind as a centre. Draw together your best and bravest thoughts, your best and bravest men. You will experience, as we have done, that these point's of union will quickly attract numbers, while the assemblage of such societies, acting in concert, moving as one body, with one impulse and one direction, will, in no long time, become not parts of the nation, but the nation itself; speaking with its voice, expressing its will, resistless in its power. We again entreat you to look around for men fit to form those sta

rest the lever of liberty.

If there be but two, take

ble supports on which Ireland may If there be but ten, take those ten. those two, and trust with confidence to the sincerity of your intention, the justice of your cause, and the support of your country.

Two objects interest the nation-a plan of representation ---and the means of accomplishing it. These societies will be a most powerful means. But a popular plan would itself be a means for its own accomplishment. We have, therefore, to request, that you will favor us with your ideas respecting the plan which appears to you most eligible and practicable, on the present more enlarged and liberal principles which ac tuate the people; at the same time giving your sentiments upon our national coalition, on the means of promoting it, and, on the political state and disposition of the country or town: where you reside. We know what resistence will be made to your patriotic efforts by those who triumph in the disunion and degradation of their country. The greater the necessity for reform, the greater probability will be the resistance. We know that there is much spirit that requires being brought into mass, as well as much massy boily that must be refined into spirit. We have many enemies, and no enemy is contemptible. We do not despise the enemies of the union, the liberty and the peace of Ireland, but we are not of a nature, not have we encouraged the habit of fearing any man, or any body of men, in an honest and honorable cause, In great undertakings like the present, we declare that we have found it always more difficult to attempt, than to accomplish. The people of Ireland must perform all that they wish, if they attempt all that they can.

THE CATHOLICS OF IRELAND.

ONE of the most distinguishing events in the history of Belfast Politics, is the prominent and able part which its inhabitants took on the great question of Catholic Emancipation. Their decided and unequivocal determination to support the immediate and unconditional emancipation of their Catholic Countrymen, reflects honor on the religion of the Presbyterian,

the strength of his understanding and the purity of his heart. The resolutions of the people of Belfast on the subject of Catholic Emancipation contributed in an eminent degree to dissipate the prejudices of Ireland-to influence the policy of the government of the day, and give increased confidence to the Catholics themselves. The successors of those men who distinguished themselves in the following debate, may turn with pride to the pages which record it; they may now assert the claims of their fathers to the character of sound and honest politicians, whose enlightened and benevolent policy would have embraced their Catholic countrymen-would have broken the chains which rendered them impotent in their native land, and would have made them partners with their Protestant countrymen in the great work of national salvation: a more fatal and unfortunate course was taken, and the degradation and humility of Ireland debased into a province, is the merited penalty of bigotry and prejudice.

TO THE PRINCIPAL INHABITANTS OF THE TOWN OF BELFAST.

GENTLEMEN,

As men, and as Irishmen, we have long lamented the degrading state of slavery and oppression in which the great majority of our countrymen, the Roman Catholics are heldnor have we lamented it in silence-we wish to see all dis