him back. As soon as that vote had passed, he addressed the following letter to the electors :

TO THE ELECTORS OF THE COUNTY OF CLARE

"The House of Commons have deprived me of the right conferred on me by the people of Clare. They have, in my opinion, unjustly and illegally deprived me of that right, but from their decision there is no appeal, save to the people-I appeal to you

"Electors of the county of Clare, to you is due the glory of converting Peel and conquering Wellington. The last election for Clare is admitted to have been the immediate and irresistible cause of producing the Catholic Relief Bill. You have achieved the religious liberty of Ireland. Another such vietory in Clare, and we shall attain the political freedom of our beloved country.

The Catholic religion is liberated from the shackles of oppression. The Protestant religion is liberated from the stain of persecution. The cause which produced Orangeism and Brunswickism are at an end. The Catholics are emancipated and conscience is free.

To the electors of the county of Clare are these happy results mainly and immediately due. But there remain many political and practical grievances and oppressions. There remain many obstacles to the property of our countrymen to the diffusions of capital-to the safety of the poor man's cottage, to the security of the rich man's mansion, in fine, to the comfort, prosperity, and happiness of the Irish people.

Electors of the county of Clare, give me the right and the power to correct these grievances; to remove these obstacles; to abolish oppressive and grinding cesses and county taxes; to repeal the new and most oppressive law respecting subletting, and to procure for the sick and poor a well-regulated provision out of the property of absentees and other proprietors a provision for the poor, to be perfectly free from the insulting debasing and demoralising details of the English poor laws.

The first grievance we have to redress, is the abolition of the forty shilling freehold franchise. I do not think that in the annals of legislation, there ever yet was passed, a law more unjust and groundless than that which destroyed the forty shilling franchise in Ireland; destroyed that franchise for the Catholics, at a period when they had exhibited heroic virtue. It was destroyed for the Catholics, on the mere false accusation of a nominal crime. It was destroyed for the Protestants, with still stronger features of injustice, because the Protestant were not seen accused of any crime.

Return me to Parliament, and I will instantly press this subject on the consideration of the House, until sentiment in England becoming too strong for any oligarchical faction, shall compel the repeal of the Disfranchisement Bill, regulate the future exercise of the elective, so as to give independence and security to the voters.

“ If you send me to Parliament, I undertake to demonstrate there, that the abolition of forty shillings franchise is a direct violation of the legislative union between the two countries.

"Again, if you send me to Parliament, I undertake to demonstrate there, that the refusal to allow me to sit and vote was not only an assumption of illegal power under the name of Parliamentary privilege, but was another direct violation of legislative union.

"I now sincerely rejoice that the ministry mixed up my in terests with those of the forty shilling freeholders; and when they destroyed the vested rights of more than two hundred thousand registered freeholders, they did me a kindness to fling me into the aristocratic whirlpool, in which they have submerged a living portion of the British constitution.

"Send me to Parliament, and I will assail there the subletting act, I am convinced I shall be able to assail with success that act-an act calculated to make the poor more wretched, and to render the destitute more miserable.

"Send me to Parliament, and I will there assail, and I trust with success, the vestry bill; that most unconstitutional law

which enables a few Protestants to tax, to almost any extent they may fancy, the poverty of the Catholic landholders. Indeed I ought to add, that the Protestants have in many instances, shown a forbearance from using this act oppressively, which does infinite honour to their good sense and humanity. But in many instances, it has been already grievously enforced; and it is in human nature that will, unless repealed or amended produce all its fruits of bitterness.

"Send me to Parliament, and I will there assail, and I think successively, the system of grand jury jobbing, and grand jury assessment, I will then be able to prove to those who ought to give redress, that the taxation of the people by the grand juries, is as oppressive in practice as it is unconstitutional in principle; and it enables the rich man to farm gravel walks near to his demesne, at the expense of the poor, and gives to the influential portion of the aristocracy a dominion over the properties of their fellow-subjects.

"Send me to Parliament, and I will struggle hard to procure a dimiuntion of heavy and illegal exactions and an equitable distribution of the revenues of the established church, between the poor on the one hand, and the most meritorious and really laborious portion of the Protestant clergy on the other, by operating to the deprivation of, at least, part of the enormous wealth of the pampered and overpaid pluralists and dignita

ries.

"Send me to Parliament, and I will struggle hard to cleanse the Augean stables of the law; I will devote all my faculties to destroy the tails and nets of form and fiction, in which justice is at present so often entrapped. I will dedicate my life to the glorious work of rendering law, at one, and the same time, all comprehensive and also precise, and intelligible; and in making the administration of that law cheap and expeditious so that the poor may have effectual and ready protection against every species of illegal oppressions, and at the same time the property of the many may become more valuable and secure. My professional habits give me peculiar facilities to attempt, at least, this herculean task; and I will attempt it

with an unchangeable and persevering determination to effectuate this most useful purpose.

"Send me to Parliament, and I undertake to procure laws to protect the property of Protestant dissenters, as well as of Catholics, for all charitable purposes, for the maintenance of their churches and places of worship, of their parochial houses, schools and hospitals, and in particular, to consolidate such a system as may, by means of public and private bounty, procure for every Catholic rector of a parish in Ireland, a parochial house, and an adequate glebe in each parish, transmissible by law to each successor, and protected against all abuse of trust and expense of litigation.

"Send me to Parliament, and I will convince every rational man, and every man possessed of sentiments of religion, of the monstrous injustice attempted to be done to the monastic orders in Ireland, by some clauses in the late law: and I will be the constant advocate of the pious men who devote themselves to God, in singleness of heart and humility of spirit; of those invaluable institutions which give not only literary but religious and moral education to the poor, and I will challenge enquiry and promulgate the truth respecting that most learned body, the Jesuits, a body of men who have done more for literature and religion than any other society that ever lived. They have produced more scholars, they have furnished more martyrs, they have preached Christianity to more infidel nations.

"I trust I shall be the instrument of erasing from the statute book that paltry imitation of the worst and still existing portion of French jacobinism-a miserable imitation—which pretends to do that which nature and religion forbid to be done to extinguish monastic orders in Ireland. While it is law, its penalties will be submitted to; but let me add, as a matter of fact, that its mandate will most assuredly not be obeyed. It was formerly death in Ireland to be a friar, and the Irish earth is still scarcely dry from the blood of martyred friars, the friars multiplied in the face of death. O for the sagacity of Peel, and the awful wisdom of Wellington, tna. meditate to suppress monastic orders in Ireland by a peca

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niary penalty, and the dread of a foreign mission, under the name of banishment !!!

"The law permits men to be profligate, and debauched and corrupt, and selfish; it cannot-and I venture to add that if I am in Parliament, it shall not-long prohibit men from devoting their lives to poverty, to chastity, to obedience, and to the education of the poor.

"Send me to Parliament, and I will incessantly urge on government the necessity of assisting in the internal improvement of your country; in particular in the improvement of the navigation of the Fergus, and construction of an asylum harbour on the western coast.

"Send me to Parliament, and I will strongly urge the abolition of the accursed monopoly of the East India Company, a monopoly which while it grinds more than sixty millions of native inhabitants, by a ruinous and death-dealing revenue exaction, worse than the worst rack rents of Ireland, loads the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland with prices, which render an indispensible article of consumption, about twice as dear in this country, as in any other part of Europe.

Send me to Parliament, and I will struggle for freedom of conscience for every human being; and for liberty for men of every creed, caste, and colour.

"Send me to Parliament, and I will strain every nerve to renovate the British constitution, by abolishing rotten boroughs and fictitious titles to vote; by extending the elective franchise to every man who is affected by taxation; and by carrying into full effect that species of constitutional reform, which whilst it applies a radical remedy to every abuse in the system of popular representation, would necessarily dimininish the public burdens, augment the value of private property, increase the safety of individual life, and add to the security of individual and popular liberty.

"Send me to Parliament, and I will employ all the intellect I possess, and every faculty of my mind, unremittingly, perseveringly, perpetually to restore to Ireland a resident gentry, and a real representation in Parliament. Protestaants and Ca