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the principles of ascendancy. While he remained in Dublin he had the countenance of some men of rank, as a warrant for his liberality, but in Cavan there was hardly a gentleman who was not a good Protestant. A trait of character which had not been formerly discovered at length appeared in this worthy burgher, who may be designated as the "Sir Balaam" of Merchant's-quay. He became anxious for a reputation for good breeding, and found a terrible obstacle to his ambition in his former political addictions. His efforts at patrician elegance were ineffectual. "The yellow clay still broke through the plaster of Paris.” At a ball, which was not long ago given in Cavan, Lady Lucy M'Swadlum, and Miss Celestina Farintosh observed that the gestures of Mr. were in a state of continual rebellion against propriety, and his limbs were insurgents against grace. Finding himself in this deplorable condition, he consulted a certain noble lictor, who is distinguished for a prodigal use of the “ fasces," and inquired what in the world he should do to become genteel? Whip me a boy or two, (said his lordship) or, at all events, turn Orangeman. It is a passport into good society, and will make as good a gentleman of you as most of us." It was with some compunction of spirit that Sir Balaam acceded to this process of transformation. His old recollections, the reminiscences o Bridge-street, and the spectres of his friends, with halters about then necks, came upon him. But at length his love of country prevailed, and he made a sort of compromise, by determining to play the patriot in Dublin, and the Orangeman in Cavan. Did any of you ever see the "Siege of Belgrade? Do you remember Yusef? If ever Lady Lucy gets up a private play, "Sir Balaam" should perform the worthy citizen of Belgrade, who becomes Turk and Christian with such a philosophic facility of transition, by her ladyship's particular desire. When "Sir Balaam" had come to the determination to abandon his old principles, he resolved to display no ordinary alacrity in his new vocation, and saw that at the election an opportunity was offered to him for the manifestation of his zeal. He exhibited all the enthusiasm of apostacy. He was peculiarly "genteel;" in other words, in harshness towards his miserable dependants, he surpassed the more legitimate Orangemen of Cavan. "Bring up the cattle," was his familiar phrase at the hustings. "Pray, sir, what cattle?" said his agent. "The freeholders, to be sure,” replied Sir Balaam, astonished at his not knowing that he referred to the useful and industrious class to which he himself originally belonged. The cattle, however, got restive, and Sir Balaam's reputation for gentility was much injured. This was a wound in the most vital point, and accordingly he has been relentless towards the wretched men who refused to sacrifice their consciences to his pleasure. But enough of him. I would not, I protest to God, for all his hoarded thousands, and ten times his estate, be capable of any of the acts of oppression with which he has taken vengeance on his unhappy tenants. I would not take the heart of such a man into my bosom for all that fifty years of accumulation has piled in his coffers. I thank God, however, that the wretches on whom he trampled were not left without succour. From whom did it come? It is with a most pleasurable sensation---it is with

that feeling of thrilling admiration with which a noble action is always toid and heard, that I am about to recount to you an example of lofty and spirit-stirring virtue. I pray you to attend to it, for it does good to the heart to hear such things. There are two priests in that county, the name of one of whom is Egan, and the other Reilly. They belong to that class of our clergy who fall within Goldsmith's definition of opulence, and pass for "rich with forty pounds a-year." They had out of the humble contribution of their flocks, in the lapse of many years saved a sum of about three hundred pounds each, and when they heard that "Sir Balaam" was grinding his tenants to pow der, these teachers of the gospel-these humble imitators of Him by whom Christianity was first propagated through the world, gathered their flocks about them and said, "you gave this money to us—you ar now in want and misery-we come to give it back to you-we look f no re-payment but in heaven." "The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away-blessed be the name of the Lord." I do not wonder that you hear this statement of a most honourable fact with enthusiasm ; I shall not attempt to praise these humble and unostentatious ministers of God. I should travel in vain through all the language of panegyric -I should exhaust the whole repository of encomium. Glorious and lofty-minded men, you do not seek the praise of the world: you ask for no tribute of applause such as we can confer-your own hearts supply the exalted consciousness of surpassing virtue, and the eye of that God, by which those hearts are read, rests in pleasure upon two objects of his approbation as noble as ever issued from his hands. Shall we permit examples of this kind to be lost upon us? Shall we allow the poor priests to give away their miserable pittance, and to leave themselves destitute in their old age? They make no claim upon us, but shall we take advantage of the silence of benevolence, and allow them to remain unpaid. God forbid, and God forbid that we should abandon the freeholders, and permit the wretches upon whom we have entailed so much disaster, to remain without hope! For God Almighty's sake, let us not do any thing so base, so degrading, so utterly vile and bad as this! But independently of these considerations, let us remember, that even common policy requires that we should remove every feeling of distrust from the people, and that we should thoroughly convince them of a determination to give them effectual relief. If they are not saved from immediate oppression, with what face can we hereafter appeal to the spirit of patriotism, of which they have given such noble manifestations, and call upon them to perform the same part? Will they not justly say to us: "You worked upon our passions; you impelled us into rebellion against our landlords; you invoked us in the name of our country and of our religion, and you abandoned us; and, with the means of succour in your power, you refused to stretch out your hands to save us! You told us that we must wait, and that the time was not come, and that the old rent was a sacred fund; you put us off with excuses, and quibbles, and you left us with our wives and children to perish. It is therefore our interest, with a view to preserve the use of the great engine which we have obtained, to strain every nerve in the

support of the peasantry. However familiar the citation of the poet's celebrated lines may be, they cannot be more appropriately applied than to the freeholders of Ireland, and we may justly say,

"A bold yeomanry, their country's pride,

"When once destroyed, can never be supplied."

The peculiar applicabity of the quotation rescues it from the trivialty of common place. Never, indeed, can the spirit which has been awaked be supplied, if once we allow it to be extinguished. If the flame which has been raised through this country be once put out, every effort to rekindle it wil be idle. But let it be only kept alive, and how noble and wide an illumination will it diffuse. How admirable will be the results upon the moral character of the people? With a sense of independence they will acquire that sense of dignity which is the source of virtue; and the meanest in the country

"Will learn to venerate binself a man." "

That high consciousness of their personal and political rights, which imparts so much elevation to the character of the English people, will grow up amongst them. They will no longer bow down before their landlords as if they were not compounded out of the same earth, and were not to be tried by the same God. Those exhibitions of degrading tyranny, which are so dishonourable to human nature, will no longer appear, and the aristocracy of Ireland will be themselves participators in the great national improvement. The representation of the country will be thoroughly reformed, and no man whose clains do not rest upon public virtue, will take his seat in the House of Coramous. Catholic Emancipation is not the only measure which would result from this glorious liberation of the people, but a new principle would be grafted upon the government, and a fresh supply of life and vigour would be infused into the constitution These are splendid, but not visionary projects. Their realization depends to a great extent upon the course which we ourselves adopt. Not an instant ought to be lost in anording them assistance. It would be cruel and inhuman to bid them look to the new Catholic rent, and let months pass over their heads without relief. Wait till November, indeed! Alas! their distresses are at present sufficient to excite our commiseration, without waiting for the additional incentive to compassion which would be given by the winter wind. The spectacle of calamity which is already exhibited is suffi ciently moving to awaken our sensibility, and we ought not to tarry until the rain shail descend on their beds of straw, and the storm shall howl through their hovels, and their naked children shall stand shivering in groups of misery, with frozen hands and faces, at their doors. Is there a man amongst us who, with such an anticipation of calamity before his mind, and who forms even the faintest image of the wretcheduess of these poor people, will hesitate for an instant to fly to their relief? What shall we permit these miserable wretches and their families to be turned out of their habitations without fire, or food, of raiment? Shail we allow them to be cast forth to the mercy of the elements, and to be flung upon the public way to die? I put it to

myself-I made use or every effort which I could employ to induce the peasantry to rebel against their landlords in the county of Louth. If, in the course of the succeeding winter, I should have occasion to pass through that county, and I should meet a wretched man with his family in the public road, how should I feel, if, after asking him what could have brought him to such a pass, he told me, that "he was a fortyshilling freeholder, that he had voted for the country, and that the country had left him on the road-that he did not care for himself, but that when he looked upon his children, and on the mother of them, his heart was broken, and that the Association had desired him to wait for the new rent, and to starve upon a point of law?" Let me not be accused of exaggeration. Instead of heightening the pictures of distress by any fictitious colouring, I have no pencil with which I can do justice to the melancholy reality. You will hear from the worthy clergymen who are at present in this meeting, how much has already been suffered, and how much, it is probable, must be still endured. In the name of every generous and honourable feeling-for the sake, not only of the poor freeholders, but for your own sakes, and as you value your own diguity and character, and prize the future independence of your country, come forward, and by one simultaneous exclamation, signify your assent to a measure which will not only have the effect of rescuing the peasantry from ruin, but of rescuing your own character from ignominy and disgrace. Do it in the name of justice-do it in the name of humanity-do it in the name of Ireland, and I trust I do not take his name in vain, when I say, do it in the name of God.

WEALTH OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH.

SPEECH ON THE WEALTH OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH, AT THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION.

I GAVE notice that I should move an humble address to the Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, and other functionaries of the church, respectfully submitting to their consideration the anti-apostolic condition of the Establishment, and praying them, with a view to their own salvation, to reduce their wealth within the dimensions of Christianity and to some correspondence with the precepts of that holy book, of which they so zealously propagate the diffusion. I am not prepared 'o move the address to-day, for having drawn a rough draft of it, I transmitted it to a friend of mine, a curate of the Established Church, who has seventy-five pounds a-year, and a family of ten children. ought to have slept with a copy of Malthus under his pillow, instead of taking a beautiful pauper, who is endowed with a desperate fecundity, to his arms. I really thought that this amiable gentleman would in all likelihood, see the opulence of the sacred aristocracy of the church in a strong light, and upon that account I sent him the address, in

He

order that I might have the benefit of his poignant emendations. A 1 am upon my legs, it may not be inappropriate that I should mention what it was that induced me to engage in this adventurous, but not, I trust, utterly hopeless undertaking. I, not very long ago, received a letter from an old acquaintance of mine, one Anthony Pasquin, who beguiled the leisure which illness had inflicted upon him, by reading Paley's admirable book on the evidence of Christianity. Although in Anthony Pasquin's letter, subjects of a solemn nature are rather lightly treated, you will find much seriousness lurking underneath his spirit of sardonic mirth. He gives variety to a trite topic by the fantastic shape in which he presents it. We are told by Plutarch, that a banquet was once provided by a celebrated epicure, consisting of an immense variety of dishes, but that the whole was made up of pork, which had heen cooked after different fashions. The church is like the pork that supplied the materials of this variegated feast, and admits of dressing in an infinite diversity of ways. God forbid, however, that I should insinuate that any of the dignitaries of the Establishment offered the comparison to my fancy, or that I should exclaim at the sight of one of them," Epicuri de grege porcus." I return to the letter of Mr. Anthony Pasquin, which is in the words following :—

"I have been lately reading Paley's celebrated work. That portion of it particularly struck me, in which he enlarges on his fundamental proposition, that there is satisfactory evidences that many professing to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone, in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of those accounts—and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct.' The exact correspondence between the lives of the first propagators of the religion of poverty and of humility, with their precepts, is the main argument on which Paley rests bis assertion, that they were firmly convinced of the truths which they were appointed to announce. It would, indeed, have been a reasonable interference that they were impostors, if, while they were inculcating the worthlessness of temporal wealth and power, they were revelling in the enjoyments of the world, which they affected to despise. Paley therefore, has laboured to establish, that their lives did not afford a practical refutation of their doctrines, and he has completely succeeded in showing that their conduct coincided with the injunctions which are conveyed in their celestial ethics. He well observes, I do not know that it has ever been insinuated, that the Christian mission in the hands of the Apostles, was a scheme for making a fortune or getting money.' The Christians, we are told by St. Paul, knew in themselves, that they had in heaven a better and an enduring substance.' It is not only in the writings of the inspired emissaries of Christianity that proofs of their scorn for gold are to be found. So late as the time of Lucian, (we are told by him) the Christians had a sovereign contempt for all the things of the world.' After the perusal of Paley, I took up Southey's Book of the Church,' the reading of which, together with his letter to Charles Butler, operated as an opiate, and put me into a