your Corps punished, but attempt to juftify it by affuming a right to do fo, and a right to examine on oath, and in every inftance, you fay, the confeffions extorted by your torturing inftruments, exceeded the original information; that is, your house flogged until a man's conftitutior could no longer feftain his honor.

In the cafe of Horish, you will fully conceal the truth, for Horifh was feverely fogged, without any previous information. So little, had you against him, that it was while he was in a fwoon by the weight and variety of his punishment, your high Court were trying him; he was firft whipped and then tried, and fo far does your affertions fail, when you fay, the confeffions extorted, exceeded the original information, that your experiments on Horifh did not produce one word, either to hurt others or criminate imfelf.

The

I know, and thousands of the fhivering inhabitants of Dublin remember, it required no information, when the Riding Houfe gentlemen wanted to amufe themselves. triangles were not ftationary, they were daily, and frequently hourly, drawn on a car through the streets, with their appendages, ropes and whips, from Beresford's Riding Houfe, attended with infantry and cavalry, and martial mufic, fo that Riding Houfe Juftice was brought to every door. Wherever fpeculation or private spleen, or exceffive zeal fought revenge, or afpired to diftinc tion, it was only to fix the machine, and the child was torn from his mother's breaft, or the father from his fcreaming offspring. The tears of age, the intreaties of beauty, were shed or uttered to the air, they were answered by the tones of terror, or the taunts of obscenity.

In your panegyric upon the Lord Lieutenant, you bid us judge of the

French, by the examples they afford us in other countries. If you allude to the prefent head of the Continent, you would ferve the public, as it might tend to create a fpirit of forgiveness in the flogged part of the Irish community, if, in your next publication you would inform us in what part of the world, where the arms of Bonaparte have prevailed, did his officers erect any fimilar eftablishment to that of Beresford's Riding House. To come home with the comparifon, did the conquerers of Lord Hutchinfon, at Castlebar, who we are told were enemies, violate women, picket one child, or pitch cap one citizen.Was any part of their progress equal in cowardly atrocity to the campaign in Rathfarnham, where feven little boys were hung in a Cow house, by a divifion of the Riding Houfe army.

Your humble fervant,
W. COX.

CATHOLIC AFFAIRS.

bad

had been fo warm in the debate. Had the learned pleader lefs of the coolness of British blood in his veins, that flows with fuch equanimity of temper when the wrongs of fuffering Ireland are recapitulated, he would be as warm as the General. A burning fubject must be a warm one ; a ravishing fubject might entertain the fancy of an ancient or modern Briton, but can never be an entertaining one to any man who bears any of the attributes of honor or patriotifm. Beresford's riding-fchool, where our youth agonized, and our fathers funk into death, or Sandy's prevoft, where hunger and torture diminished the streams of life, or the Wicklow villages where the Welch horfe violated our females, and purified their facrifices with fire, are fubjects that would rouse the mind with rage, and arm the hand to revenge, in any age or country where the perpetrators or their cold hearted apologists had not the power of making laws, or of ftif. fling the public mind, under the apprehenfion of military executioners. Mr. Ponfonby, and his friend Lord Caftlereagh refused the Catholic Petition, on the grounds that the Catholics offer no conceffion on their part, that would tend to diffipate the apprehenfions of their Proteftant fellow fubjects, on the power which is allowed to the Supreme Pontiff.

This poor evalion is as evident a piece of fhuffling as any that flate jug. gling has yet exhibited. This might be compared to the conftruction other forcerers have taken from the language of the dead; the defunct were called on to answer accufations made against them, and found guilty of obfinancy for their filence. The Cath lic body crushed into filence by the Convention A&, are found convicted of stubborness, want of liberality, and declared unworthy of any indulgence -becaufe, in the face of two hundred thousand British troops, they do

not violate one law to have another repealed-for degraded, fufpected and profcribed as they are, they are not fo brutalized as to prefume to think, they can give any opinion where difcuffion nearly amounts to a capital offence. Before Mr. Ponfonby accused a great people, he thou'd repeal the Convention Act; and then, if the Catholics after mature, unawed difcuffion, evinced any hoftility to the fafety and honor of their country, or any unmanly, difpofition to retaliate burning for burning, confifcation for confifcation, or any predelition for the Italians, French, Spaniards, or Germans, who never butchered their children, wafted their villages, or fubfidized their legislatures to the generous Britons, their friends and brethren; then indeed would they be real objects of jealousy, and fhould be carefully excluded the unpolluted temple of the British conftitution.

Mr. Shaw, very handfomely followed his two friends, and imitated them as closely as his great endowments would permit. He regretted the Catholics thewed fo little difpofition to conceffion, we are forty the reprefentative of the most ignorant and bigotted corporation in the prefent dominion of Britain, could not difcern the bull he was making when he infilted the dead were obitinate, because they did not speak. But perhaps the orator did not remember there is fuch a ftatute on our law books as the Convention Act. To be not well read is no great breach of moral or political duty. Some of our belt laws for the regulation of the ftate, and the difpofition of property, were made by English gentlemen, many of whom though thorough judges of good land, were very indifferent scholars. Several of the legiflators appointed by the Virgin Queen could not read, though they made laws and preached the gospel.

PETER Marie Augustus Broussonnet, Professor of Botany at the Medical School of Montpellier, Member of the French Institute, Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and formerly associate anatomist of the Academy of Sciences, was born on the 28th of February, 1761, at Montpellier, where his father, Francis Broussonner, was professor of medicine. The life of Broussonnet displays a striking series of proofs of the high opinion with which he had inspired the different societies to which he belonged for at the age of eighteen he was selected by the University of Montpellier as one of its professors; at twenty-four he was unanimously chosen a member of the Academy of Sciences, a cir cumstance unprecedented in the whole period (20 years) that had elapsed since the first establishment of that Academy; and he was elected a member of the Institute in his absence; and was continued in that character, though the duties of his post at Montpellier rendered this bisenee perpetual. From these considerations, it is evident that he must have possessed two classes of qualities which are not always united; those calculated to, command respect, and to attract es

teem.

Being born in the bosom of a celebrated school, and the son of a man who discharged with honour the duties of instruction, it may be said that the sciences surrounded his cradle, and their's was the language of his lispings. From his tenderest years he was animated by an insatiable curiosity after the productions of nature, in which the fine climate of his nativity is FOR JUNE, 1810.

so rich; and his father, fearing that such a variety of attractive objects might divert him from those long preliminary studies without which there is no true science, thought it necessary to have him removed from home, and accordingly placed him in succession at different colleges appropriated to the belles lettres. But young Broussonnet, at the same time that he distinguished himself among his companions in the common objects of their stu dies, found opportunities also for pursuing his own particular inclination. He was able to indulge himself much more in this respect, on his return to Montpellier for the purpose of studying medicine; where, by gathering herbs in the day-time, and dissecting in the night, he crowded the apartments of his father with his botanical collections and his anatomical preparations. Yet, notwithstanding these accessory labours, he made such a rapid progress in the regular course of medical study, that at the age of eighteen he received the degree of doctor, and the university of Montpellier solicited the chancellor of France for his succession to the professorial chair of his father on its future vacancy.

His Thesis on Respiration, which he had maintained some months before, in reality justified this pro ceeding, which otherwise bore the appearance of being premature. It is an excellent piece of compa. rative anatomy and physiology, exhibiting such facts as were then known

known with equal genius and learning, and anticipating the rudiments of several of the discoveries which have been recently made on this i.nportant subject.

He visited Paris for the first time, for the purpose of procuring the confirmation of his appointment as eventual successor to his father's chair; but the minister, perhaps forming an opinion of him from his youth, or influenced by some irrelevant suggestions was not forward in dispatching this business; and Broussonnet, conceiving new ideas in the metropolis, and feeling that he could there open for himself a diffe. rent prospect from that which he had contemplated at Montpellier, desired his father not to urge it.

His characteristic sagacity en. abled him at once to perceive, from the manner in which natural history was then studied at Paris, that he might easily and quickly attract notice by the new and brilliant turn which it was in his power to give to that science. Indeed, though the eloquence of Buffon had in. spired a general taste for the study of nature, it had at the same time directed most of those who engaged in that pursuit into a wrong path; and the zoologists and mine ralogists were not yet familiar with the commodious nomenclature and the rigorous synonymy of Linneus. It appeared as if that great man had written only for Botanists; and as these had all become his disciples, they seemed to form a separate class, whose example had yet but little influence on the investigators of the other two branches of natural history. Broussonnet had himself imbibed the Linnean doctrine in all its purity; and he now resolved to establish it in France, and to attach his reputation to the success of this under

taking.

As it is in the distinction of the species that the advantage of Linneus's method is particularly conspicuous, and the cabinets of Paris did not then present a sufficient number of new ones to serve as materials for labours of any importance, he determined to visit the most valuable of the foreign collections: and he directed his first steps to England; as its universal commerce, its immense colonial possessions, its extensive maritime expeditions, and the taste which many of its most eminen? personages entertained for natural history, had rendered that country the richest emporium of the productions of the two worlds. The house of Sir Joseph Banks was at that time a resort of the most il. lustrious characters of Europe, and an open school for such young persons as were incited to emulation by these distinguished examples. According to his usual prac ice, he made M. Broussonnet undergo a sort of noviciate for a year; and when he felt assured that his visitor was worthy of his esteem, he bestowed it on him unreservedly, and continued to give him proofs of it throughout the rest of his life.

Under the roof of Sir Joseph Banks, Broussonner began his la bours on the subject of fishes; and the presents which he received from that generous friend of the Sciences, consisting of a multitude of objects collected by Sir Joseph in Captain Cook's first voyage, would have supplied the materials of continuing those labours, if it had not been for the different events which prevented the author from the further prosecution of his design. The first part of this work was published at London in 1782, under the titie of “ Ichthyologiæ Decas I:" it contains the Latin de

scriptions