grand-jury-room cannot be matter of surprize. Since the nomination of Sheriffs has been transferred from the People to the Crown, grand juries, which are returnable by these officers, have lost their original character of independence, and are now notoriously subordinate to aristocratic intrigue and ministerial corruption. As therefore these ancient bodies, which should be the sacred organs of truth as well as the guardians of the constitution, have in this instance degenerated into instruments of prejudice and civil dissention, we feel it a duty which we owe to public justice as well as to our country, to appeal from the unjust sentence of a few influenced men to the tribunal of a rational nation.

It appears that a small dispersed number of individuals of the Catholic persuasion, without authority from the body at large, were, in the course of last session, cajoled into the measure of presenting an eleemosynary address to government, and this was craftily made the vehicle of some obscure and ill-founded censure upon the constitutional conduct of the Catholic Committee. The embarrassment occasioned by this stale artifice determined the committee to obtain an unequivocal expression of the Catholic sentiment; and with this view they printed, published, and circulated throughout Ireland several thousand copies of a letter submitting to the Catholic people a plan for electing delegates to the general committee: a plan at once the most simple, orderly, and the best calcu lated for framing an unquestionable organ of public opinion. The letter solicits the attendance of delegates appointed for the express purpose and with the express instruction of imploring and supplicating from the legislature and the Sovereign a participation in the elective franchise and the benefit of the trial by jury. It is worthy of remark, that this letter is utterly silent upon the ground of constitutional right, and never states this application as intended to be made upon any other principle than as a necessary means of securing to the

Catholics an equal access to leasehold property and a fair distribution of justice. Upon this proceeding, so simple, and so obviously conformable to the fundamental principles of law and constitution, pettifogging chicane, sitting in council with bigotry and nonsense, having ingeniously' discovered that the letter was circulated with great secrecy, pronounces the publication to be of a most dangerous, seditious, and inflammatory tendency-the phantom of a Popish congress is raisedthe scare-crow image of a French national assembly is conjured up-the vision of a gun-powder plot appears-and the suppliant committee of an enslaved people is identified with sovereign legislative bodies.

We say enslaved,' for it will not be denied that a people are enslaved, who being excluded from all share in the Legislature of their country, are nevertheless subject to laws and taxes imposed on them without their consent. "Law to bind all must be assented to by all." It is not in a system of extirpation by penal laws, it is in the free agency of the people that we are to seek for the true and permanent principle of a free and prosperous government. The man who says that a political constitution can be upheld by penal laws, may say that the human constitution can be nourished by the use of slow poison.

Where so small a portion of so large a mass exercises the elective franchise, and a decided majority of that small portion forms the notorious property of a venal aristocracy, we consi der the elective body of the people as nothing more than the semblance of a larger species of corporation. Hence, that political ignorance, that selfish spirit of monopoly, that jealoushostility to the general happiness, which must ever characterize these avaricious retailers of freedom, have also infected a great number of the elective body of the nation.

Hirelings, whom we have at all prices, cry out, that the Catholics prefer their complaints in a style of demand. Such

language could not have been uttered in a free land; it is the insolent dictation of despotism; its authors may wish for fel. low-slaves, but we wish for fellow-citizens. The Catholics have ever addressed the Legislature with due respect; their submissive conduct is unquestionable; but in our mind, they only show themselves worthy of their rights, when they reclaim them.

Is it meant to deny them the right of petitioning?-To question their right of meeting peaceably for that purpose a mounts to such a denial. This would be a false as well as & most mischievous doctrine; for it would necessarily throw the subject upon the alternative of violence. He must either suf fer or resist; and of course he must silently sink under despotism, or break out into anarchy. When the innocent are punished by law, the severity of negro-servitude alone could preclude them from the right of petitioning..

If the charges made against the Catholic Committee were founded in truth, grand juries, under the obligations of their oath and public station, should have presented them-if false, then have grand juries been guilty of defamatory libels.

What security do we require of our Catholic brethren ? Political mistrust has not yet devised a test, which they have not cheerfully taken. They disclaim all those abominable principles inconsistent with good government which have been falsely imputed to them by those whose monopoly was austained by the divisions of their country. They avow their support of the church establishment. They are even wille s ing to worship that new-born chimera,-"The Protestant A scendancy," provided the jealous idol may be appeased with out the sacrifice of the elective franchise and the trial by jury Popery is no longer to be met with but in the statute-book. The Catholics stand before us as political Protestants, for they protest against the errors of the state, and endeavor to esta blish the reformation of the constitution.

Will the men who suborn this upstart zeal for the integri ty of the constitution, submit their labors for its preservations during some years past to a candid and critical examination? Short is the catalogue of their services-what has signalized their political career? What, but an uniform exertion to sti fle all efforts for the establishment of Irish freedom? Indignant at the odious review, and the treacherous consistency of their present conduct, we gladly turn away to acknowledge with pride, that the virtuous founder of the Revolution of 1782 is also the leader in the great patriotic work of this day.

As for our part, associated for the attainment of universal emancipation and representative legislature, we cannot separate our duty to our country from our duty to our countrymen. The grievances they suffer are the grievances of the nation; the relief they solicit is the relief of the nation; and as the only true policy of states as well as of individuals is Justice, we cherish the grateful hope, that the rising spirit of union in a liberal age is the harbinger of its triumph.

Signed by order,

THOMAS WRIGHT, SEC

UNITED IRISHMEN OF DUBLIN.

THE HON. SIMON BUTLER IN THE CHAIR.

THE Society of United Irishmen in Dublin, address the Friends of the People at London. Impressed with the re-. semblance in the title, nature and destination of their respec-. tive institutions; and acting under that fraternity of feeling, which such a coincidence naturally inspires-the title which you bear is a glorious one, and we too are Friends of the Peo ple. If we be asked, "who are the people?" we turn nos eyes here and there, to this party, or to that persuasion,and cry, "Lo! the people;" but we look around us without partiality or predilection, and we answer, the multitude of human beings, the living mass of humanity associated to exist,

our

to subsist, and to be happy. In them and them only, we find the original of social authority, the measure of political value, and the pedestal of legitimate power.

As friends of the people, upholding their rights, and deploring their sufferings, the great object of this society is a real representation of the Irish nation in an Irish parliament; and as friends of the whole people, we support the necessity of Catholic emancipation as a means of making representation what it ought to be, free, equal, and entire.. If the people of one country be not obliged to obey the laws of another, on the same principle when the people resident in a country, have no sort of influence over the legislature, that legislature, will receive rather a discretional acquiescence than legitimate: obedience; and as this discretional state is dangerous, because precarious, a change becomes necessary for the peace and happiness of the nation, violence being the last measure to which rational beings will resort.

The present state of Ireland with regard to population is upwards of four millions, three of which are of the Catholic religion; and with regard to political freedom,

1. The state of Protestant representation is as follows: 17 boroughs have no resident elector; 16 have but one; 16 have from 2 to 5; 90 have 13 electors each; 90 persons return for 106 venal boroughs, that is 212 members out of 300, the whole number. 54 members are returned by five noblemen and four bishops, and borough influence has given landlords such power in the counties as makes them boroughs also -53 peers nominate 124 members, and influence 10, so that 228 are returned by 105 individuals, leaving only 72 out of 300 to the free election of the people. One lord who nominates 4 members, is not a peer of Ireland, and eleven lords who are Irish peers, are absentees, and spend their fortunes out of the realm; to the representation of which they send their commands and are obeyed, notwithstanding two solemn votes