of the Commons against this high infringement of their liberties and privileges. In short, representation, which in its nature is only a deposit, has been converted into a property, and that constitution which is founded on equal liberty, and which declares that no tax shall be levied without the good will' of the people, is totally perverted in its principles, and corrupted in its practice; yet the majesty of the people is still quoted with affected veneration; and if the crown be ostensibly placed on a part of the Protestant portion, it is placed in mockery, for it is encircled with thorns.

2. With regard to the Catholics, the following is the simple and sorrowful fact:-Three millions, every one of whom has an interest in the state, and collectively give it its value, are taxed without being represented, and bound by laws to which they have not given consent. They now require 'a share of political liberty, in the participation of the elective franchise, and of civil liberty in the privilege of serving on grand juries. There can be no civil without political liberty, and in requiring the right of suffrage they in reality demand only a safeguard for their religion, their property and their lives.

The code of penal laws against the Catholics reduced oppression into a system. The action and pressure of this system continually accumulating without any re-action on the part of the sufferers, sunk in the lethargy of servitude, have confirmed the governing portion of the people in a habit of domination. This habit, mixing with the antipathies of past times, and the irritations of the moment, has impressed a strange persuasion that the rights of the plurality are Protestant property, and that the birth-right of millions, born and to be born, continue the spoils of war and booty of conquest. The perversion of the understanding perverts the heart, and this Pro-1 testant ascendancy, as it calls itself, uniting power with pas sion, and hating the Catholics because it has injured them,"

na bare inquisitorial suspicion, insufficient to criminate a individual, would erase a whole people from the roll of citi zenship, and for the sins (if they were sins) of remote ancestors would attaint their remotest posterity. We have read, and read with horror, that Louis XI. ordered the children to be placed under the scaffold where the father was beheaded, that they might be sprinkled with his blood.

Is it, we think, by this unequal distribution of popular privilege, that its very nature has, in this kingdom, been corrupted, and from the moment that equality of rights was overturned, and general liberty became particular power, the public mind has been split into a conflict of factions. General distribution of the elective franchise would make corruption impracticable, but when common right becomes the property of person, party, or persuasion, it acquires a value equally unnatural and unconstitutional; is bought and sold; rises and falls like any marketable commodity. The deprivation of the elec tive franchise, on the one hand, robs a great majority of the nation of an invaluable blessing; and its accumulation in the hands of the Protestant portion, operates on that very portion The right of all, heaped up and hoarded by the few, becomes a public pest, and the nutriment of the constitu tion is changed into its poison. The-iniquitous monopoly rots in boroughs; spreads its contagion through counties; taints morals and manners; makes elections mere fairs for the traffic of franchise and the sale of men; in place of that nationality of mind which spreads its parental embrace around a whole people, substitutes the envious, excluding spirit of selfish corporations; and swelling, at length, into monstrous and gigantic ascendancy, holds forth a hundred thousand hands to bribe and betray, and tramples with a hundred thousand feet on those miserable millions who have lost their only guar antee against injustice and oppression.

as a curse.

Instructed by the genius of the constitution, and the genuine spirit of the laws; instructed, of late, by all that has been spoken, or written, or acted, or suffered in the cause of freedom; instructed by the late revolution in America, by the late revolution in Ireland, by the late revolution in France; hearing of all that has been done over the face of the globe for Liberty, and feeling all that can be suffered from the want of it; reading the charter of independence, to Ireland, and listening to the spirit-stirring voice of her great deliverer; actuated, in fine, by that imperishable spark in the bosom of man which the servitude of a century may smother, but cannot extinguish, the Catholics of this country have been lessoned into liberty, have learned to know their rights, to be sensible of their wrongs, and to detail by peaceable delegation, their grievances, rather than endure without obedience. You!-in either kingdoms, who reproach the Catholics of Ireland for asserting the rights of nature, burn your books, tear your charters, break down your free press, and crumble to pieces those moulds which have cast liberty in so fair a form, as to make Catholics feel what Protestants have felt, and join their admiration and love with those of a worshipping world.

This society and many other societies have associated to create that union of power, and that brotherhood of affection among all the inhabitants of this island, which is the interest as well as duty of all. We are all Irishmen, and our object is to unite the different descriptions of religion in the cause of our common country. From the most opposite points in the wide circumference of religion we tend with increasing velocity to the same centre of political union. A reform in parliament preceding Catholic enfranchisement would be in its nature partial and exclusive, and unless a reform immediately follows that emancipation (which it will certainly do) the extension of elective franchise, would only add to the mass of corruption. The centre of our union is fixed and immoveable.

D

The Presbyterian wishes for national freedom.-The Catholic aspires to nothing more; nor can either of them be brought to believe that those varieties of religious faith, which may be deemed the pleasures of the Creator, should be made the engines of political torture to any of his creatures. Too long have our people been set in array of battle against each other; too long have the rancor and revenge of our ancestors been left as a legacy of blood to their posterity; too long has one limb of the social body been tied down, until it had nearly lost all feeling, life and energy. It is our wish, it is our hope, to give Ireland the full and free possession of both her arms, her Catholic arm as well as her Protestant arm, that she may the better embrace her friends or grapple with her foes.

Such are the principles and practice of our institution, which having neither power nor patronage, but merely the energy of honesty, has not only been distinguished by the calumnies of those who are born only to bite the heel, and be crushed under foot, but has been honored by the obloquy of men who fill the first offices in the state. From them we ap peal to natural right, and eternal justice, which ought ever to be established without compromise or reservation. From them we appeal to those who call themselves friends of the people. Look not upon Ireland with an eye of indifference. The period of Irish insignificance is passing fast away. If the nation ever appeared contemptible, it was because the nation did not act; but no sooner in the late war was it abandoned by Government, than it rose to distinction as a people. As to any union between the islands, believe us when we assert, that our union rests upon our mutual independence. We shall love each other, if we be left to ourselves. It is the union of minds that ought to bind these nations together. Reciprocal interests and mutual wants will ever secure mutual affection; but were any, other union to be forced, and force only could effect it, you would endanger your liberties, and we should lose our rights;

you would feel the influence of the crown increase beyond all, sufferance, and we should lose the name and energies of a peo ple, with every hope of raising to its merited station in the map of mankind this noble and neglected island for which GOD has done so much and Man so little,"

WILLIAM DRENNAN, CHAIRMAN.

ARCHIBALd hamiltON ROWAN, SEC.

WE take the liberty of addressing you, in the spirit of civil union, in the fellowship of a just and a common cause. We greatly rejoice that the spirit of freedom moves over the face of Scotland; that light seems to break from the chaos of her internal government; and that a country so respectable for her attainments in science, in arts, and in arms; for men of literary eminence; for the intelligence and morality of her people, now acts from a conviction of the union between vir tue, letters and liberty; and, now rises to distinction, not by a calm, contented, secret wish for a reform in parliament, but by openly, actively, and urgently willing it, with the unity and energy of an embodied nation. We rejoice that you do not consider yourselves as merged and melted down into another country, but that in this great national question, you are still-Scotland-the land where Buchanan wrote, and Fletcher spoke, and Wallace fought.

Away from us and from our children those puerile antipathies so unworthy of the manhood of nations, which insulate