their properties under the act of settlement, it must be confessed to be a natural and obvious act

buke preyed on his ambitious spirit, and the tomb soon concealed him from the pity or the detestation of the empire. This unfortunate nobleman thus spoke of the act of settlement in 1789. "Give me leave to say, Sir, when we speak of the people of Ireland, it is a melancholy truth that we do not speak of the great body of the people. This is a subject on which it is extremely painful to me to speak in this assembly; but when I see the Right Hon. Member (Mr Grattan) driving the gentlemen of Ireland to the verge of a precipice, it is necessary to speak out. Sir, The ancient nobility and gentry of this kingdom have been hardly treated. That act by which most of us hold our estates, was an act of violence, an act palpably subverting the first principles of the common law of England and Ireland. I speak of the act of settlement passed in this country immediately after the restoration, which vests the estate of every man, who had been dispossessed during the rebellion of 1641, absolutely in the Crown, and puts the old proprietors to the necessity of proving that they had not been guilty of high treason, in order to avoid the penalties of confiscation, which, by the sacred and fundamental principles of the common law, can be incurred only upon conviction and attainder. And, that gentlemen may know the extent to which this summary confiscation is gone, I will tell them that every acre of land in the country that pays quit-rent to the Crown, is held by title under the act of settlement; so that I trust the gentlemen on the opposite benches will deem it a subject worthy of their consideration, how far it may be prudent to pursue the successive claims of dignified and unequivocal independence made for Ireland by the Right Hon. Gentleman, (Mr Grattan.)"

Here stands the opinion of an Irish protestant of the highest rank and talent in the legislature, of the merits of the act of settlement, and that opinion delivered one hundred and twenty years after this infamous act was passed. If such were his feelings and sentiments with regard to its merits, what must have been the feelings of those whose families were beggared by its enactment, and who in 1687 enjoyed the opportunity of repealing it? Yet

of retribution to the thousands who had been beggared by that act, and who were now shedding

the colonial writers of Irish history declaim, in furious and abusive language, against the injustice of restoring property to its rightful owner. The protestant of the present day is too enlightened and too liberal to refuse his acknowledgment of the cruelty of the act of settlement, and the right which the Irish nation had to resume their plundered property. The catholic reads the sufferings of his ancestors with an honest and generous sympathy, but he sees that whatever property he himself now enjoys, is depending on the duration of this very act which the Irish parliament of 1687 repealed. One hundred years have made the protestant and catholic title the same. Both are equally interested in each other's security. The liberal and enlightened policy of the last thirty years has thrown into oblivion the oppression of fanaticism, and the suspicions of the protestant no longer interrupt that confidence which all sects should repose in each other. Mr Grattan, in his profound and statesman-like speech of 1792, for ever silenced the objections grounded on the supposed event of the Irish catholic repealing the act of settlement. "Whatever, therefore, (says our great countryman,) may be the crime of the catholic to ground a code of disability, there is one offence of which he is not, and of which he cannot now be guilty-disaffection; because the objects and the resources of disaffection, and with them the principle itself, must have departed. His offence is therefore reduced to two heads-his nativity, as connected with claims of property, and his religion, as distinct from views of politics. As to the first, he strongly and immediately meets the charge; he denies the possibility of their existHe denies that he could benefit or you lose by the repeal of the act of settlement; he relies upon it that your title is by time, as well as by act of parliament; he insists that a greater number of Roman catholics take under the act of settlement, than could prefer claims on the repeal of it; that such claims, if any, are common to you, as your title under the act of settlement is common to him; and he offers you any assurance, not only for your titles, which he reveres, but for your fears, which he respects; and he alleges that the whole catholic body are rea

ence.

their blood in the cause of James and the crown of England. That such men should be attended to, when they remonstrated against the injustice under which they and their families had suffered for twenty years, is not surprising, when we consider that the relations and the friends of these very men who then possessed large and extensive properties under the act of settlement, were in arms against their lawful king, and struggling to drive him from his throne. With regard to Ireland, it was at this period a proceeding of great public justice to repeal the act of settlement to which the perfidious Charles assented; but with regard to England, it might have been more judicious not to adopt a measure which might have created such inveterate hostility. James was against the repeal; but the voice of the nation was irresistible, and the act of settlement was overturned, with few dissenting voices. They then proceeded to attaint all absentees who would not return to their country and join the royal standard. But let us now pass on to the more grateful office of recording those acts, in which this catholic and protestant parliament (for it was a mixed

dy and desirous to take the same oath to secure the act of settlement, which you have thought sufficient to secure the suc cession to the Crown. He desires you to name your own conditions and terms of abjuration, touching any imputed claim on this subject. Thus the code of disabilities, as far as they are maintained on this ground, is reduced to an act of power, which disables three millions of people for the unallowable dissent of a few, grounded on the apprehension of claims imputed to that few, which they cannot trace, which none can make, and which all abjure."

assembly) have manifested a true Irish independ ent feeling ;-where we see our countrymen lifted up into the proud character of Irish legislators, making laws by which the independence of their country is asserted, and their past humility to England blotted from the records of an Irish parlia

ment.

The laws which were enacted by this distinguished assembly of Irishmen, whom Mr Leland and other Irish calumniators are pleased to denominate a pretended parliament, were the true and genuine offspring of a sincere patriotism, not regulating its feelings by the measure of English toleration, but boldly and unequivocally asserting the rights and privileges of a free people. They first declared that the parliament of England cannot bind Ireland, and that the ultimate appeal should for the future be placed in the Irish house of lords. They passed an act in favour of liberty of conscience, and for repealing all acts, or clauses in any act of parliament, which are inconsistent with the same. They passed an act for the encouragement of strangers of all sects and denominations to inhabit and plant in the kingdom of Ireland. They also passed an act for the advance and improvement of trade, and for the encouragement and increase of shipping and navigation. These were the great leading and distinguished works of the Irish parliament which met in the year 1689. Let this parliament, then, be judged by its acts; let it be compared with that assembly which, under the direction of Mr Grattan's eloquence, established a free constitution for

the protestants of Ireland in 1782. The reader will see the great superiority of the acts of parliament of 1689, in the single consideration that Mr Grattan's parliament legislated for a part-the parliament of 1689 legislated for the whole. Mr Grattan, no doubt, established a free trade, and thus gave liberty to the industry of Ireland, without distinction of religion; but he could not, even in his independent parliament, communicate to the catholics of Ireland the free constitution he procured for the protestants. He could not establish the great comprehensive principle of liberty of conscience, nor overturn that religious monopoly, under whose withering influence the free trade and the free constitution of Mr Grattan little more than illuminated the prison of the catholic. In that Irish parliament which passed the acts we have recited, we see no effort to plunder the protestant by law, to deprive him of education, to set the protestant child against his father, to encourage perjury, to demoralize society, and to barbarize the country: those sacred labours were reserved for the loyal parliaments which were to follow. Let no man, therefore, insult the Irish understanding by his idle declamation against the bigotry of the Irish parliament of 1689. They broke the chains with which the intolerance of the reformers bound down the energies of our country; and set an example of public spirit, which was followed at an humble distance by the powerful genius of Grattan. Far be it from our intention to disparage the acts of this great and illustrious Irish senator. We hope we look back upon his labours