disposition hereafter to offer himself as a candidate. Lord Stopford may hold the county for the next session, but it is impossible that he should permanently retain it. In Waterford, a most valuable feeling has sprung up. Villiers Stuart must be returned; Lord Waterford has effectually contributed to his success. Think of the political infatuation of that feeble-minded person; notwithstanding the denunciation of Orange badges by men of all parties, Lord Waterford has recently dressed his own band in orange and blue, and exhibits his musicians, attired in that livery of insult (for such it may be called), in the most conspicuous part of the city from which his title is derived. Is not this the very wantonness of ascendancy; and is it to be wondered that the Catholic serfs of the most puissant and preposterous Marquis, should revolt from their allegiance, and obeying the dictates of their consciences and every instinct of honourable pride, should throw off the yoke of their political villainage! In Kilkenny, (for, my Lord, you will, perceive that I am retracing my progress), a corresponding spirit is universally prevalent. The Protestants of that county have conspired with the Catholics. A petition already signed by eight Protestant peers, and almost all the aristocracy, is in rapid circulation.The Catholic meeting is attended by the chief gentry of the county, and Butler Clarke may soon have reason to recite the Penitential Psalms in the same doleful tone with which he pronounced his first parliamentary essay against the Association. The meeting at Clonmel was distinguished by the attendance of several able and eloquent ministers of our religion. The priests who delivered their sentiments upon that occasion, spoke the feelings of the whole body of our clergy; and if there be a circumstance peculiarly auspicious, it is, I think, the energetic sympathy which the priesthood have manifested in the national cause. I have, my Lord, upon former occasions, expressed my conviction, that it is principally through the instrumentality of the clergy that the rights and power of the Catholics will be presented to the English people in a just light, and, in my judgment, I cannot too frequently revert to this important topic. It is clear, that we must resort to other expedients besides those which we have hitherto adopted. In order to advance the question it is not sufficient that we should petition. the legislature after our habitual fashion. Something must be done to give it an impulse, and propel it through the mind of the English peo ple. There must not be a monotony in our call for redress; our question will go round without advancing; we shall revolve in the same dull rotation without being in the least degree progressive. Suppose that we present our usual petition in March next. The measure may pass the Commons, but the same causes which have hitherto contributed to its rejection in the Lords, will still remain in operation. The public ear will become tired by the reiterated burden of Catholic grievances, and in order to excite the popular, and I may add, the legislative interests, we must devise some measure which shall make a great and vermanent impression. It is not mere novelty that I am disposed to Jeek-I look for some expedient which shall at once arrest the atten tion of the empire, and present the evils of our condition in a light which shall glare upon the public eye. Something must be done at which men will start. Seven millions of British citizens in a state of indignant exasperation; boiling with the fierce passions which shame and wrong produced; animated by a single and undivided sentiment, and moving with a common, and, I trust it will eventually prove, an irresistible impulse; this is a great object, and such a spectacle should not be presented under any ordinary view. It is not a mere annual debate in Parliament, returning in wearisome succession, and bequeathed by one expiring session to the next, which becomes a crisis like the present. What, then, (I return to the interrogation), what shall be done to strike a blow upon the English mind? I think that a great instrument of political effect lies in our reach. It is no visionary scheme-no idle and fantastic speculation; we need but stretch forth our hand to grasp it. I propose, my Lord, that the secretary of this Association do forthwith insert in an official book, to be kept for the purpose, the name and the address of every parish priest in Ireland, and that a letter be addressed to each of them, requesting their co-operation in the objects which the Association have in view. Thus an individual intercourse with every parish priest in Ireland will be estab lished, and we shall have an active and powerful agent in every parochial subdivision of the country:-we shall thus obtain a series of conduc tors, through which the feeling which we are solicitous to circulate, will be readily conveyed. From one extremity of the land to the other, a regular and uniform communication will be set on foot, through the Catholic priesthood, and a great national agency will be established. This being effected, a general census of the population may be taken in a week, and what is still more important, that population may be organised into supplication, and disciplined in what I may call the tactics of petitioning. Hitherto we have been desultory and irregular in our movements; one county petitioned and another did not; and there was no accordance in time or place, nor any simultaneous movement of the national mind. We must learn to kneel down together; we must learn how to perform this universal genuflection. On the same day, and at the same hour, a meeting must be held, under the direction of the parish priest, in every parish chapel in Ireland. Offer to yourselves, in anticipation, the effect of such a proceeding. If the people of Ireland meet on the first of January, 1826, in their respective houses of worship, and send a common cry for liberty from the altars of God, will not that cry reach into the cabinetmake its way to the throne-echo through the chambers of Westminster, and make-even Eldon start? Two thousand three hundred petitions, signed upon two thousand three hundred altars, and rushing at the same instant into the councils of the legislature, may not excite alarm, but cannot be treated with contempt. But I may be asked how can the Association effect all this? I answer, the Association is not tu effect all this. We have no right to petition for the redress of griev ances, but we are entitled, by a special clause, to promote education We shall array the clergy for an end which is perfectly legal, and when they shall once have been marshalled-when once the political apparatus shall have been prepared, it will be the office of another Association, which shall sit for fourteen days, (the period allowed by law) to make use of the instruments with which they will have been provided, and to turn the means which we devise for the attainment of one object, into the achievement of another. It is for us to plant the tree of knowledge-it is for others to graft liberty upon it. We assemble the people to give them instruction. Finding them assembled, it will be for others to point out the way to freedom. This brings me to the third expedient to which I have adverted. By the law, as it stands, an association for the redress of grievances may exist for fourteen days. The law itself has given us a useful intimation. I thank Mr. Plunkett for the hint. Much may be done in fourteen days. They will afford a session to the people. Perhaps the brief duration of such a body, as the law permits, will render it still more imposing. An association may be formed which will have as great an effect upon the public mind as the former body, and the exertion necessary for its vigorous sustainment need not be so permanently vigorous. I propose the following plan: Let the hierarchy, the nobility, the chief clergy, the gentry, the great agriculturists, the leading merchants, the Catholic bar, and the members of the professions assemble on the first day of the next session of parliament. This would, indeed, be a national convention, not repre senting the people, but being, in some measure, the people itself, and containing the essence-the abstract-the very core of the country. It appears to me most easy of accomplishment; indeed, I see no difficulties at all in the way of its achievement. Even if there were great impediments, we should fearlessly and determinately encounter them. "Possunt quia posse videntur," is a maxim founded in the depth of our nature; for the confidence of success is almost success itself. When was anything great, or noble, or elevated accomplished by men who made a nice calculation of feasibility? Did the great Carthagenian, when he arrived at the foot of the Alps, draw forth his mathematical instruments to measure the height of Mount St. Bernard above the sea? He rushed at once up the mountain, and burst its rocks with the ardent spirit of his own fiery and aspiring mind. Nothing, I repeat it, great or noble was ever achieved by minute calculators of difficulty; and rightly was it observed by Voltaire, that it is not so much high faculty as determination of character that achieves political success. If there were great obstacles in our progress though difficulties should be heaped upon each other, and "Alps on Alps arise," we should not be deterred from pursuing the steep and rugged path which should lead to liberty. But, thank God, "the way is clear and open," and we have in reality but few impediments to surmount. I have, my Lord, expressed my opinions, and perhaps at too great length, upon that question which involves so much of our interests. I thought it not inappropriate, that as I conceive the Association should adjourn until November, to suggest what I regarded as the best plan of future action which the Catholics could adopt, distinguishing between the objects which it is legal on out part, as members of the Association, to pursue, and those ulterior enda for which we may prepare the way, and which it will be the province of a distinct association, founded upon a different principle, and of limite! existence, to attain. In the prosecution of those objects the people will lend us their strenuous co-operation. Never was the popular feeling raised to a greater height-never did a nobler and more enthusiastic zeal exist among the people of Ireland. Whatever our antagonists may say, the same deep determination to seek the liberty of the country keeps its pulse in the nation's heart. From one extremity of Ireland to the other, the same pulsation beats with a strong and regular throb. It is not a mere feverish and transitory excitation, but the uniform result of the great circulation of a vital principle, and it may be justly said, "Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. SPEECH AT AN AGGREGATE MEETING, HELD IN KILKENNY. The Honourable PIERSE SOMERSET BUTLER having moved the following resolution:"Resolved-That the exasperating exclusion of seven millions of British subjects from the rights and privileges of the Constitution, generates passions which arrest the progress of national improvement, impede the education of the people, prevent the diffusion of British capital, deteriorate the value of property, and render its title insecure; offer an allurement to the enemies of Great Britain, and endanger the stability of the empire." MR. SHEIL Seconded the resolution, and said-Niphon is the largest of the islands of Japan; Ximo is of inferior magnitude. If a traveller were to tell us, (the case is an imaginary one, but I shall be indulged in putting it,) that seven millions of the inhabitants of Ximo were deprived by the legislators of Niphon of the rights of citizens, because they believed in a religion more studded with mystery than the established creed of the larger island; if he told us that one-seventh of the population of Ximo, who professed the idolatry as by law established, enjoyed all the honours and emoluments of the State-that their bouzes possessed one million of acres-that they were supported with onetenth of the produce of public labour-that their empty pagodas were built at the expense of those who rejected their worship that the Japanese vestries excluded the infidel from all share in the ecclesiastica! taxation that deep and indignaut feelings were generated by this monopoly in the seven millions of Ximoites-that the heir to the empire of Japan had declared an implacable hostility to these degraded millions. If he were, besides, to tell us that the cabinet of China, who were anxious to lower the pride of Japan, had turned their eyes to Ximo, and had calculated upon their co-operation in case a war should ensue-if he were to say that, notwithstanding the danger arising from the disaffection of the Ximoites, the legislators of Japan still obstinately persevered in their system of government, for the sake of the fat and unwieldy bonzes-if, Sir, a traveller were to tell us this, should we not ray that the government of Japan was exceedingly rash in offering outrage to so large a portion of its subjects, and that it must be composed of fatuitous and narrow-minded men? Shall that system, then, be wise in Ireland, which in Ximo would be absurd? And if an Englishman would smile at the prejudices of a constitutionalist of Japan, might we not say Mutato nomine, de te Fabula narratur ? The strange infatuation which presides over the councils of England, will hereafter excite astonishment, and posterity will wonder at the obdurate perseverance with which the legislators of England continued so long to inflame the minds, and administer provocation to the passions of seven millions of men. But, Sir, it is a matter of congratulation, that the prejudices which have hitherto obstructed the progress of political truth are rapidly diminishing. In England the Catholic Question has made great way, and the Protestants of Ireland begin to feel that they are embarked in the same cause as ourselves. I look round, and see almost the whole Protestant aristocracy of this county here. The High Sheriff is attended by the Grand Jury. What does this prove? That the spirit of the resolutions passed at Buckingham House is beginning to pervade the great mass of the Protestant community. The diffusion of this feeling is further evinced by the Protestant petition which is in course of signature amongst you, and to which the names of eight peers are already attached. This wise and generous anxiety for the relief of their Roman Catholic brethren is not confined to this county Among the lower orders of Protestants, it is true, that much bitterness of feeling still continues. They who have no other superiority cling, with a natural tenacity, to the prerogatives of a patrician creed-but the enlightened, the opulent, and the noble, who rest their ascendancy upon a better title, are weary of discord, and call for the pacification of Ireland. They are deeply sensible of the calamities produced by the disfranchisement of a whole people, of which an epitome is expressed in the resolution which I have risen to second. It condenses much political truth. The disqualification of seven millions of British citizens generates passions which arrest the progress of national improvement -prevent the co-operation of the several classes of the community in promoting the national good-interfere with the education of the people -impede the circulation of British capital-deteriorate the value of property, and render its title insecure-offer an allurement to the enemies of Great Britain-and endanger the security of the empire. Is not the progress of national improvement arrested by the dissensions which have been gendered by the Penal Code? The whole mind of Ireland is absorbed by this fatal question. No other topic attracts the popular attention. Arts, science, literature, are all merged in the disastrous interest attending this question. It enjoys a fatal monopoly of the public passions. This is, in itself, a great evil. Instead of co-operating for the purpose of improving the moral and physical condition of the poor-instead of devising the means of diffusing better habits and a sounder morality among them, we direct the whole energy of the ovum |