*

ing and blinding quicksands of Egypt, at Trafalgar, at Maida and Monte-Video, &c. &c. (in the last victory over Spanish Papists, the honour was almost exclusively their own) and often having given to their sovereign the most solemn pledge of their fidelity, (the only pledge indeed, which an earthly prince has a right to demand from a subject) by subscribing to every oath of allegiance, which the most artful minister the world ever saw could in his ingenuity devise; are they to be now treated as ideots, and told that, notwithstanding their regard alone for the sacredness of an oath keeps them beggars and slaves; notwithstanding their acknowledged services, and even the admissibility of their evidence in cases of the greatest importance, where life and property are at stake, yet they are not fit to be trusted with high or confidential situati ons under the crown!!! Such, however, (proh, Deum atque hominum fidem!) is the plain meaning of this cruel and heart-breaking treatment, which supposes the wretch, who is capable of bearing it without emotions ofI will not say what kind, to be degraded in mind below the level of the rest of the human race! Whence then, I would ask CLEON comes this degradation? It must proceed either from their nature, or from the accidental circumstances in which they are unhappily placed. If the latter, CLEON would do better by calling on their masters, like a brother, to raise them to their natural situation in their own country, and by pouring oil into their wounds, like the good Samaritan, than by coming, like Job's comforters, to

Opthalmias (to wit.)

add to their galling and unprece dented afflictions, under the false appearance of friendship-but if the former, I dismiss his proposi tion with this homely proverb,

He is a nasty bird that dirties his own nest.? When the minister was framing this oath, (and God knows he framed it right enough) did he believe the Catholics to be sincer in taking it ?—If he did not, he be came himself an accomplice to the guilt, by holding out this bait for perjury, the work of his own pol luted hands-but if he did believe him sincere, why then alienate the affections of his best, I had almost said, his only friends, by this use less and wanton intrusion into the sanctuaries of their conscience.

CLEON proceeds." If," says he, "his Letter has any meaning, lis intention must be to induce the Ca tholic Hierarchy to disavow what was offered upon their part by Messrs Ponsonby and Grattan in Parliament. This I am convinced they cannot do, and if they could, what would be the consequen ces? Let us consider the ad vantages their enemies, both in and out Parilament would derive from such a denial on their part. Might it not be said hereafter to the advocates of the Catholic cause in the senate, Gentlemen, it is in vain for you to talk to us of the loyalty, the liberality and sincerity of your clients. Upon their par you have lately offered to invest the nomination of their Bishops in the crown," &c. &c. and then con cludes by inferring, that my advice would reduce our friends in Parliament to this dilemma,' that either they had no authority for making such an offer, or if they had, that no faith is to be placed hereafter in Catholic professions-leaving it to my Ingenuity to get them out of it. Admirable!

Admirable! this is the very style of a country Buck-Parson, who, seated on his triped, which in the imaginary greatness of his mind, he conceives to be the exclusive property of his own priviledged cast, deals out, ex Cathedra, assertions for arguments, and thinks his hearers bound to swallow them, whether sense or nonsense, without discussion of any kind. I am really almost ashamed to have spent so much time with this "Martin Marall," to whom I may safely say, in using his own favourite expletive, that if the association have no better advocate on their part, their cause is desperate. Mark, reader, how in "the windmills of his imagination" he has conceived and brought forth his wonderful, his puzzling dilemma, in which he has case-lodged the English Agent, and his friends in Parliament, and out of which he challenges me to take them.

Poor Driveller! what would he be at? Might he not as well call on me to assist himself in pleading the cause of the "Association," as to apologize for the English Agent or his friends in Parliament, with the entire of whom I have just as much to do, in this case, as I have with the Great Mogul; so that, in staying in or getting out of his dilemma, they will so act, as to themselves in their wisdom may seem meet. But it is the self elected Representatives," who feel sore for the dilemma; they know that they took upon themselves to make a transfer of their live stock the Catholic body, without their consent and they also know(hæret lateri, le thalis arundo) that in this their hideous usurpation, they have been detected, defeated and dragged out of their "fastness" before that naon, the honour of which they

would have bartered for titles, for pensions and for places.

But all grievances will be shortly redressed, says the wily statesman who rejoices at this new plan for dividing Irishmen; all we now want, for your emancipation, is a little slice of your religion, to "procure the cordial union of the sovereign with the subject." Give up the nomination of your Hierarchy to your staunch friends. Let your candidate for episcopal dignity pass through the purifying ordeal of Dr. Duige nan's and Sir Richard Musgrave's recommendation-then, and, not till then, can we depend upon their principles and virtues, and thus will be removed one of the greatest barriers to your emancipation!!"

Strange satuity of insolence! Eternal God !-At a moment of such unexampled distress, when the king of Great Britain derives from the Irish Pepists, and from the most Catholic Spanish Friars, his only hope of escaping from the terrible vengeance of the French eagle, which has already carried off, in his all-grasping talons, the sceptres of Continental Europe, Į and with them now graces the triumphal car of his Royal master; is it justice, is it policy, to attempt to force the conscience of five millions of faithful people? Or if CLEON, by having "emerged from gross and sanguinary superstition," be blessed with an Ostrichconscience, which can digest any oath, does he therefore assume to himself the right of prescribing to the Irish Catholics a dose they could never swallow, without first setting "conscience to sleep!!" Having disposed of CLEON, who is convinced, but God only knows why, that the great majority of the Bishops offered to confer this formidable prerogative on the 3 E 2

66

Grown,”

My Lord, Whilst the Catholic mind was as yet reeling under the alarming impression it experienced from the unexpected and paralizing shock of Mr. Ponsonby's debasing, and I trust, unauthorized communication to the house, relative to the nomination of our Bishops; whilst, during this interval of national phrenzy, every Catholic was contemplating, in that murderous measure, the disgrace and death of his long tried and faithful Hierarchy, whose dishonoured bier, he already figured to his fancy as passing along to the silent grave in a foreign land; whilst he thought he saw her thus unwept by her own affectionate children, and exposed to the taunting derision of the enemies of her faith, who rejoiced at seeing the proud boast of Erin abandoned to the official attendance of an English Bishop, and an Irish Catholic Lord, whose hopeful "Association," trained under his own cunning inspection, had been for many years employed as agents to a hostile minister, in endeavouring to hasten the sad tolling of this early, irreligious funeral knell; whilst a thousand conflicting passions raged in his breast, on discovering this more than Catalinarian conspiracy, Heavens! he exclaimed, is it possible that with the continued violation of the articles of Limerick staring them in the face, with the numerous broken vows of seven hundred years, clearly legible in the unexampled state of our impoverished peasantry, notwithstanding their possession of the most highly-gifted island in the creation, with the solemn oath (a pledge not yet redeemed) of an English ministry, recorded at the period of the hated UNION, before God and Angels, in Heavens High Court of

Conscience, which is beyond the jurisdiction of any Royal absolution Patent, or even of the Omnipotence of Parliament itself, is it, he cried out indignantly, can it be within the range of possibility, that under such circumstances even one bishop priest or well informed layman could be found on earth so weak, or so lost to every sense of honour, of religion, of " common sense and common candour," as to lend the slight est assistance to an enemy, who, from under the masked battery of affected friendship, was in the act of firing red-hot ball into the very sanctuary of the church?

Yes, my Lord, great and just as the affliction of our hapless country most certainly was at first hearing the midnight usurpation of our "natural leaders," still, I assure your lordship, that a circumstance occurred within these last few days, which has encreased that affliction-excited the most general indignation against the unnatural "Junta"-and harrowed up the soul of every Catholic who heard it, more than any indignity that has been offered them since the commencement of Pitt's calamitous Administration to the

sent hour.

pre

A man, who on account of the groundless belief of his family's being able to lead the Catholic body by the nose, and on account of occasionally promoting the paramount work of disunion, receives from the Castle a few snug hundreds annually, has had the audacity, the unblushing effrontery, in his rounds through town and country, to assert (patience here indeed is a virtue) that every Catholic in Ireland, except Rebels, would most gladly surrender the nomination of our Bishop's to the crown! !—O ! unparalleled

unparalleled impudence-O! more than orange calumny! Pray, Mr. pensioned counsellor, are you aware of the injury you have done yourself in the public mind, by thus foully aspersing the superabundant population of unhappy Ireland?What are the whole Catholic body, except your "selfelected Representatives," to be 'branded with this odious epithet? Are all the inferior clergy, who almost to a man would prefer death to this degenerate compromise, to be calumniated by you, whose very support from the Castle depends on the influence, erroneously supposed to be held by the family with which you are connected, over the Catholic population of the country! And are the virtuous and distinguished bishops themselves, who from the very commencernent declared openly against this sacrilegi ous attempt, to pass with you for Rebels also? A pretty sample this of " Association" justice! Go on, and prosper; for I believe very few will doubt of your having received a promise of increased pension, in case of success in this new effort for dividing Irishmen, as a learned renegade brother pensioner of yours did a few years back, for writing a long and laboured book in favour of the same wicked plan. But it seems that the rod of the "Junta," like the rod of Aaron, is to swallow up all the other rods; and that we must admit this world was made for these our modern Cæsars. For the present, I dismiss this nominal Irishman without giving his name to the public, but with a solemn promise that, in case of his persevering in this unpardonable line of conduct, he shall shortly appear before the bar of the Nation, in propria persona, to answer for himself—a circumstance to be

considered morally certain, as I am convinced he never will cease to revile us for having detected, and held up to public reprobation, the parricidal policy of his party, and that he will faithfully act up to the spirit of the poets observati

ons

Forgiveness to the injured doth be long,

But they ne'er pardon who commit the wrong.

In my next I shall give your lordship an account of a late numerous meeting of clergy convened by a certain Prelate, for the purpose of explaining his own conduct on this subject, which an imp of the "Association," the would be Bishop hinted at in a former letter, had the honour of standing alone. But this man is the known lick-spittle of the very dregs of the "Junta," and the professed worshipper of our great Golden Calf, who, because he has acquired money by the mere accident of his having been admitted to a share in a respectable house, thinks he has therefore a right to ride rough-shod over the people as he does over the miserable clerks in his office.

To the whole of the wretched set of her degenerate children (in the entire kingdom they do not amount to one hundred!) methinks I hear exasperated Erin address these words of the inspired writer—“ Miserable comforters are ye all. They have gaped upon me with their mouth, they have smitten me on the cheek reproachfully, they have gathered themselves together against How long will

me.

ye vex my

soul, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times have ye reproached me: you are not ashamed that you make yourselves strange to me. God hath over. thrown me, he hath stript me of

my