Lord Viscount Gosford's Addrefs to the Grand Jury of Armagh. (Page 554.) GENTLEMEN, HAVING requested your attendance here this day, it becomes my duty to ftate the grounds, upon which I thought it adviseable to propofe this meeting, and at the fame time to fubmit to your confideration a plan which occurs to me as moft likely to check the enormities that have already brought difgrace upon this county, and may foon reduce it into deep diftrefs. It is no fecret, that a perfecution, accompanied with all the circumstances of ferocious cruelty, which have in all ages diftinguished that dreadful calamity, is now raging in this county. Neither age nor fex, or even acknowledged innocence as to any guilt in the late disturbances, is fufficient to excite mercy, much lefs to afford protection. The only crime which the wretched objects of this ruthless perfecution are charged with, is a crime, indeed, of eafy proof; it is fimply a profeffion of the Roman Roman Catholic faith, or an intimate connexion with a perfon profeffing this faith. A lawless banditti have constituted themselves judges of this new fpecies of delinquency, and the fentence they have denounced is equally concife and terrible! It is nothing less than a confifcation of all property, and an immediate banishment. It would be extremely painful, and furely unneceffary, to detail the horrors that attend the execution of fo rude and tremendous a profcription, a profcription that certainly exceeds in the comparative number of those it configns to ruin and mifery, every example that ancient and modern history can fupply: for where have we heard, or in what story of human cruelties have we read of more than half the inhabitants of a populous country deprived at one blow of the means as well as of the fruits of their industry, and driven, in the midst of an inclement seafon, to feek a fhelter for themselves and their helpless families where chance may guide them. This is no exaggerated picture of the horrid fcenes now acting in this county. Yet furely it is fufficient to awaken fentiments of indignation and compaffion in the coldest bofoms. Thefe horrors are now acting with impunity. The fpirit of impartial juftice (without which law is nothing better than an inftrument of tyranny) has for a time disappeared in this county, and the fupineness of the magiftracy of Armagh is become a common topic of conversation in every corner of the kingdom. It is faid in reply, the Catholics are dangerous, they may be fo---they may be dangerous from their numbers, and ftill more dangerous from their unbounded views they have been encouraged to entertain; but I will venture to affert, without fear of contradiction, that thefe proceedings are not more contrary to humanity than they are to found policy. It is to be lamented, that no civil magiftrate happened to be prefent with the military detachment on the night of the 21ft inftant; but, I truft, the fuddennefs of the occafion, the unexpected and inftantaneous aggreffion on the part of the delinquents will be univerfally admitted as a full vindication of the conduct of the officer, and the party acting under his command. Gentlemen, I have the honor to hold a fituation in this country, which calls upon me to deliver my fentiments, and I do it without fear and without difguife. I am as true a Proteftant as any gentleman in this room, I inherit a property which my family derived under a Proteftant title, and, with the bleffing of God, I will maintain that title to the utmost of my power. I will never confent to make a facrifice of Protestant afcendancy to Catholic claims, with whatever menace they may be urged, or how however fpeciously or invidiously supported. Confcious of my fincerity in this public declaration, which I do not make unadvisedly, but as the refult of mature deliberation, I defy the paltry infinuations that malice or party-fpirit may fuggeft. I know my own heart, and I fhould defpife myself, if, under any intimidation, I could close my eyes against such scenes as prefent themselves on every fide, or my ears against the complaints of a perfecuted people. I should be guilty of an unpardonable injuftice to the feelings of gentlemen here prefent, were I to say more on this fubject. I have now acquitted myfelf to my confcience and my country, and take the liberty of propofing the following refolutions: 1ft. That it appears to this meeting, that the county of Armagh is at this. moment in a state of uncommon diforder; that the Roman Catholic inhabitants are grievously oppreffed by lawless perfons unknown, who attack and plunder their houses by night, and threaten them with instant destruction, unlefs they immediately abandon their lands and habitations. 2d. That a committee of magiftrates be appointed to fit on Tuesdays and Saturdays in the Chapter-room in the town of Armagh, to receive information against all perfons of whatever defcription, who disturb the peace of this county. 3d. That the inftruction of the whole body of magiftrates to their committee shall be to ufe every legal means within their power to ftop the progrefs of the perfecution now carrying on by an ungovernable mob against the Roman Catholic inhabitants of this county. 4th. That faid committee, or any three of them, be empowered to expend any fum or fums of money, for information or fecret service, out of the fund fubfcribed by the gentlemen of this county. 5th. That a meeting of the whole body of the magiftracy be held every fecond Monday, at the house of Mr. Charles M'Reynolds, in the town of Armagh, to hear the reports of the committee, and to give fuch further inftructions as the exigence of the cafe may require. 6th. That offenders of every description in the prefent difturbances fhall be profecuted out of the fund subscribed by the gentlemen of this county. VOL. II. 7 H No No. C. Mr. ARTHUR O'CONNOR's Addrefs to his Fellow Citizens, for which he was confined by an Order of the Privy Council. (Page 592.) FELLOW CITIZENS, THE Poft-office is fo immediately dependent on the government,that any anonymous production iffuing from thence, must be looked on as coming from the administration itself; in this light I have viewed the anonymous paper which has been fo industriously distributed through the poft-offices of the North avowedly to deprive me of whatever fhare of your confidence I might have gained, and in this light I have given it an answer. Had I treated it with filent contempt, I fhould have hoped that its coming from an adminiftration which had fo defervedly forfeited the confidence of every Irishman, who valued the liberties of his country, would have infured me from suffering, in your estimation, from the falfehood and calumny with which it abounds; but my respect for thofe invaluable cenfors, the Prefs and the Public Opinion, the confcious integrity of my own heart, and the most perfect reliance on the virtue of the cause I espouse, prompt me to seize any occafion, which affords an opportunity of vindicating it or myself from the afperfions of an adminiftration, whofe heaviest charge, in their wretched production, is, that at any time of my life I had been the advocate of them or their measures. As the whole of the work is one continued iffue of mifreprefentation and falfehood, a plain recital of facts will be the best means of giving it a full refutation. After the question of Regency, that memorable display of the infamy and principles of the factions of Ireland, fome of the moft confiderable of them were forced into Irish parliamentary patriotifm, by being stript of the wages of their prostitution; I accepted a feat from my uncle Lord Longueville, in the chimerical hope that this crafh between the factions and the government, might be improved to the advantage of Ireland; but experience foon convinced me that nothing short of the establishment of a national government, a total annihilation of the factions, and their ufurpations, and an entire abolition of religious diftinctions could restore to my country thofe rights and that liberty which had been fo long a fubject of traffic, under a regular organized fyftem of treafon, and acting up to this conviction from the day I accepted the feat from Lord Longueville, to the day I refigned it. I earnestly entreated him to de clare clare for a Reform of Parliament, and for the freedom of my Catholic countrymen. The thanks which were given me by the delegates of the Catholics of Ireland, for my defence of them and their caufe, fo early as 1791, and the vote which I gave for their total emancipation, against Lord Longueville and the government in the beginning of 1793, gives the lie to the affertion of administration, that I was not the advocate of Catholic freedom until my having spoke on that fubject in 1795, and fo wholly is it unfounded in truth, that I have exerted myself in defence of the liberties of my country, because the government refused me a commiffioner's place, that although Lord Longueville repeatedly preffed me to let him procure me a commiffioner's place, I as often refufed it, affuring him that it was contrary to my principles to accept the money of my impoverished countrymen, for the deteftable treafon of betraying their rights, their industry, their manufactures and commerce: that for the bribe of a British pander I fhould bafely contribute to aggrandize his country, at the expence of every thing dear to my own; whilst so far from bartering my principles to better my fortune, that though Lord Longueville preffed me to accept large sums of his own money, I declined them; and it is notorious he has fince difinherited me for the open avowal of my political fentiments on the Catholic queftion. Being forced, in my own vindication, to speak of myself, I will leave you, my fellow-citizens, to judge of an administration, that by falfehood and calumny have attempted to widen a breach between me and connections that were but too widely extended before; yet whilst they have given me an opportunity of proving to you, that no confideration could induce me to abandon my principles, they shall never fucceed in making me utter one unkind expreffion of a man, whose wishes to promote me in life, have left a grateful remembrance their malice fhall never efface. Abandoned adminiftration! who have trampled on the liberties of my country, do you prefume to accufe me of diffuading my countrymen from arming to oppose an invafion, which your's and your accomplice's crimes have provoked? Is it that the unalienable rights of free-born men to make their laws by delegates of their choice, should be bartered and fold by ufurpers and traitors, that I should perfuade them to arm? Is it that our markets, our manufactures, and commerce, should be fold to that nation, which appoints our government, and distributes our patronage, that I should perfuade them to arm? Is it to support the Gunpowder Bill, which deprives them of arms, or the Convention Bill, which aims at perpetuating the ufurpation of rights, by profcribing the only obvious and orderly means to |