ing every difficulty, has poured around our misfortunes the splendor of an intellect, that at once irradiates and consumes them. For the services he has rendered to his country, from my heart I thank him; and for myself, I offer him a personal, it may be, a selfish tribute, for saving me, by his presence this night, from any attempt at his panegyric. Indeed, gentlemen, you can have but little idea, what he has to endure, who, in these times, advocates your cause. Every calumny which has been heaped on you, comes redoubled upon us. We are called traitors, because we wish to obtain for the crown an unanimous people. We are called apostates, because we will not persecute Christianity-and we are branded as separatists, for our endeavours to annihilate the fetters that, instead of binding, clog the connection. To these may be added the frowns of power, the envy of dullness, the mean malice of exposed self-interest, and it may be, in despite of all natural affection, even the discountenance of kindred. Well, be it so: For thee, fair Freedom, welcome all the past- I am not ashamed to confess to you, that there was a day when I was as bigotted as the blackest-but I thank that Being who gifted me with a mind not quite impervious to conviction, and I thank you, who afforded such dawning testimonies of my error-I saw you enduring with patience, the most unmerited assaults, bowing before the insults of revived anniversaries-in private life, exemplary; in public, unoffending; in the hour of peace, asserting your loyalty, and in the hour of danger, proving it; even when the triumphant enemy penetrated into the very heart of our country, I saw the banner of your allegiance bearing refutation on your slanderers. No won der, then, that I seized my prejudices, and with a blush, burned them on the altar of my country. I believe, most sincerely, that every man worth having, has done the same: the repeated discussions of your cause have refuted every one, who has not an interest in opposing you, and there is not now in the rank of your enemies, a single creature who has the faculty of reasoning. I know well, there are still some security-men, a set of beings whom nothing could convince, a most laughable, if they were not a most melancholy specimen of the race which bigotry begets upon dullness. How often have I seen an assemblage of these legislative worthies, devising" securities" over the orgies of the punch bowl; their minds, like their favourite beverage, a medley of mawkish and vitiating contradictions, and their few ideas coursing after one another, and the most ludicrous collision, through the fumes of their intoxication. How often have I seen them, their hands grasping the jug, and their minds grasping the constitution! hiccoughing confusion to Christ, for the sake of the Church, and drowning their own memories, out of compliment to king William's! These are the animals who clamour for securities; these are the creatures before whose fantastic and besotted shrine, five millions of human beings are asked to sacrifice their liberties. Give us securities! we offer our lives-Give us securities! we offer our propertiesGive us securities! take our dearest ties on earth, our wives and children-Give us securities! take our oaths -still, still they bellow out, securities! Catholics, give them no securities at all, since they will not even take the God of Heaven as the trustee of your allegiance. I rejoice that that motley compound of oaths and penalties, the security-bill, has been scouted by all parties; the people of Ireland have not been suffering centuries of death and degradation, for the purpose of putting on at last a piebald garment of rags and tinsel, which could only add to their wretchedness the ridicule of ostentation. That prodigious coalition, the memorable committee, may put it out of their heads that you will be content with huckstering up half a dozen peers and pensioners, for the political rialts, or allow your prelates to be dragged, with a halter about their necks, to the vulgar scrutiny of every village tyrant! And for what? Why, in order to enrich a few political traders, and distil, through some state alembic, the miserable rincings of an ignorant, a decaying, and a degenerate aristocracy. If there was no other objection to that bill, the interference of the Church with your state was sufficient to condemn it. We have leaches enough feeding on the bloated tumour of a morbid monopoly-we have too much of the mixture; Christ does not warrant it; it is, at best, but a foul and adulterous connection, polluting the purity of Heaven with the abomination of earth, and hanging the profaneness of pretended piety around the Cross of an insulted Saviour! The union of Church and State, only converts good Christians into bad statesmen, and political knaves into pretended Christians. Religion ought not, in the words of its founder, be led into temptation; that hand that holds her chalice should be pure, and the priests of her temple should be spotless as the vestments of her ministry. Rank only degrades, wealth only impoverishes, and ornaments only disfigure her; her sacred porch becomes the more sublime from its simplicity, and should be seated on an eminence inaccessible to human passions-even like the summit of some Alpine wonder, for ever crowned with the sunshine of the firmament, while the vain and feverish tempest of human infirmities breaks beneath; harmless and unheeded. Better, by far, that the day of ancient barbarism should revive-better that your religion should again take refuge among the fastnesses of the mountain and the deformities of the cavern-better that the rack of murderous bigotry should again terminate the miseries of your priesthood, and that the gate of freedom should be only open to them through the avenue of martyrdom, than that they should gild their missals with the wages of a court, and expect their ecclesiastical eminence, not from superior piety, but from comparative prostitution. Away, then, with securities! you have given your oaths already; and, even if you could, you ought to give no more. This trafficking for liberty is new in Ireland. The union-that abominable offspring of blood and bribery-has not yet so legered us into the calculations of a commercial policy as to hear, without indignation, men asking us, "What will you give us if we give you rights?" And, "if we take the chains off one part of your community, to rivet them on another, wo'nt you consider it complete emancipation?" Yet such was the bill-A bill which the philosopher of Botley so characteristically called, "a Job for some, and a Tub for others." Such was the boon, which one of your committee, with the most stupendous effrontery that ever graced the annals of political juggling, had the audacity to assert, "If Ireland did not receive, he would desert her!" Ireland needs not such weathercock adherents; and if such men have only mounted on our misfortunes for the purpose of capering into place on them, they may find their seats no very pleasant acquisition. It was a high compliment, even to your veteran friends, that you bore with patience, such an experiment upon your sufferings; and if it be repeated by any man, no matter whom, I hope the country will disown him. Such alliances may retard your cause, but a generation of them could not defeat it. The mind of Ireland is on its march, and who shall stay it? They might as well set boundaries to the shoreless air, or command the movements of the majestic ocean, as either prescribe or oppose its progress. Grand, and lucid, and resistless, the splendid orb rolls on its course rejoicing-its path paved with stars, and its goal eternity. It is to the operation of this great moving power of opinion, fed by the press, and by repeated discussions, that I look for your ultimate success; it may be distant, but it is certain. And what do a few years signify in the life of a nation? I trust there is no Irishman so froward in his ambition, that he would not sooner remain for a season in misfortune, than forestall a commercial freedom clogged with stipulations. We have lost every thing except that high national dignity of character, which, I trust Irishmen will never forfeit. They have plundered from us our imperial crown, and a paricidal parliament sold our birthright. But though we have lost the inheritance our fathers left us, thank God, there are some who still retain their spirit-that spirit will evaporate but with our expiring sigh, and, if it must be so, we will lose them, like the Egyptian matron, in a manner worthy the posterity of kings. If ever there was an opportunity for England to do justice with dignity, it is the present-Now when Irish blood has crimsoned the cross upon her naval flag, and an Irish hero* strikes the harp to victory upon the sum Alluding, I suppose, to LORD WELLINGTON, mit of the Pyrenees. England, England, do not hesitate; this hour of triumph may be but an hour of trial; the caprices of fortune are not to be trusted. One season more may show the splendid panorama of European vassalage, arrayed by your ruthless enemy, and glittering beneath the ruins of another capitol-perhaps London. A few months since, Moscow stood as splendid and secure fair rose the morn on the patriarchal city— the empress of her nation, the queen of commerce, the sanctuary of strangers-her thousand spires pointed to the Heavens, and her domes of gold enriched the sunbeams. The tyrant came-he marked her for his residence and, as if his very glance was destiny, with all her pride, and pomp, and happiness, she withered from the world! Merciful God, if this embroidered butcher of the human race, heading his locust legions, were to land in Ireland! I do not ask you what would be the consequence-I am sure you would oppose him, in the language of your young enthusiast, "with a torch in one hand, and a sword in the other." But I do ask, upon what principle would the advocates of your exclusion, ask your assistance? Would they say, re-conquer our ascendency, and we will repay you with bondage?" It has been said, there is a faction in Ireland, who would join this monster-a French party. It has been even said by him who has poured over his country's ruins the elixir of his immortality. No doubt, it escaped that venerable man, in one of those moments when God infatuates the intellect of the wisest, as if to convince them they are human. But I care not on what authority it comes, there is no French party in Ireland; but I will tell Mr. Grattan what there is :—there is an Irish party, and, would it not be strange, if there were not men who cannot bear to see their country, taunted with the name of a constitution she has not?-men who will be content with no connection without an equality of benefits, but who would die in the defence of the connection if they had them-men who, sooner than see this lovely Island polluted with the footsteps of a slave, would wish the ocean wave to become their sepulchre, and that the orb of Heaven forgot where they existed. It has been said too (and, when we were to be calumniated, what has not U |