tholics are equally interested in having Ireland and Irish interest faithfully and effectually represented in Parliament. "I address Protestants equally with Catholics-I address the landlords equally with the tenants-I address the rich as well as the poor. "If the landlords of Clare wish to preserve their estate, from the merciless fangs of the English system of poor laws; if they wish to develope the natural resources of their country; if they wish to bury in oblivion former feuds and animosities; if they wish to render their properties more valuable, by the dimunition of public burdens, the encouragement of domestic manufactures, the advancement of Irish commerce, the increase of Irish agriculture, the amelioration of the social circle, the extension of industry, comfort, and prosperity; if the landlords of Clare desire all these things, they will join in sending me to Parliament, to work for the benefit of our common country. "If the tenantry desire the repeal of the sub-letting act and of the vestry bill; if they desire to have the parish cess lightened, and the grand jury cess abolished; if they desire to see a domestic provision made for the sick and the destitute, and opportunities afforded to the strong and the healthy to earn the wages of industry; if they desire to see Catholic charities established and secure; if they desire to see the Catholic parochial clergy rendered independent and comfortable; it they desire to see the Catholic monastic orders vindicated and protected; if they desire to see the Catholic rights and liberties prevented from being sapped and undermined by the insidious policy of those men who, false to their own party, can never be true to us; and who have yielded, not to reason, but to necessity, in granting us freedom of conscience; if they desire all this, let them do me the honour to elect me. "If in fine the gentry of Clare are desirous to have as their representative a man who is able and most desirous to protect in Parliament their properties and permanent interests, let them do me the honour to select me. "But let them not lay the flattering unction to their souls, that they can without an independent man of business as their representative, postpone the introduction of the English system of poor laws. I implore them to recollect that the English members of Parliament have a direct and personal interest in introducing poor laws into Ireland, in order to relieve themselves from a portion of the burden created in England by the Irish labourers throwing, by their numbers, and the cheapness with which they work, a large portion of English labourers on the English poor rates. If I am returned to Parliament it will be my sacred duty to arrange the necessary provision for the infirm and sick poor in Ireland, in such a manner as to avoid the mischiefs of the English system, and to render it not only healing in its application to the poor but advantageous even to the pecuniary interests of the resident proprietors of Ireland. "Shall I be told that it is impossible to do all this? My answer is that I was often told that it was impossible to obtain Catholic emancipation. Every difficulty creates an impossibility to those who will not struggle against it. There is no impossibility to him, who, having no other object under heaven, but the good of his country and his kind, is determined by honest, open, and constitutional means to achieve the restoration of his native land Impossible to restore Ireland to that happiness and freedom of which she was so foully deprived! impossible! I utterly deny it. The spirit of improvement is abroad,-the causes of political regeneration are multiplied,-The landed aristocracy of England, by means of the corn laws, have an undue share of the price of the morsel of bread with which the exhausted. artizan feeds his hungry family, whilst that very same aristocracy purchase the articles of their own consumption, more cheaply, by means of "the free trade" in manufactures. The principle of free trade, let me add, is one which I cherish; but that principle, to be just, should be universal.-It should not operate to the disadvantage of the poor man, by making his bread dear, and at the same time operate to the advantage of · 1 the rich, by giving him cheap foreign manufacture. It ought not to make food dear, whilst it made silks cheap. The spirit of improvement is abroad, and the present oligarchical system, which produced these mischiefs, is rocking to its centre. England is interested equally with Ireland, more interested than Ireland in the prosperity of England. Ireland consumes at present but a limitted portion of British manufactures-suppose ten millions of pounds worth per annum, (for I have not the documents before me, shewing the precise amount); but taking it at ten million at present, it is quite certain that it would rise to thirty millions at leastthat is, to three times the present amount by the natural and necessary result of Irish prosperity and Irish greatness. The coal mines, the iron mines, the salt mines of England, gave her facilities for manufactures not possessed by any other nation on the face of the globe. The rich teeming soil of Ireland-her ever-verdant plains-her sunny hills and rich meadows-the luxuriant limestone districts, and the hardy and steady fertility of her gravelly mixture of soil, render her the fit nursing mother of her neighbouring artisans and operators by her superabundance of food. "Thus the efficient representation of Ireland, giving a natural stimulus to the one country, would be doubly beneficial to both, and in mutual prosperity, would increase in mutual strength and security. "I appeal for support to Protestants as well as Catholics. Protestants, as well as Catholics are equally interested in the prosperity and glory of Ireland. "In my person the county of Clare has been insulted. The brand of degradation has been raised to mark me, because the people of Clare endure this insult, Low that they can firmly but constitutionally efface for ever. "My friends, my beloved friends, Protestants and Catholics -they put me in nomination at the late election, O'Gorman Mahon and Thomas Steele, have also been visited by a similar attempt. People of Clare, what are your sentiments towards the persecutors of O'Gorman Mahon and Thomas Steele? You are not ignorant that they made themselves enemies by the activity, courage, and success, with which at a critical moment, in spite of every obstacle, and of every excitement, they preserved the peace of your country. You know how much bloodshed they prevented. The commission of the peace was never in the hands of men who so sedulously and successfully preserved the peace. But it was a crime in the eyes of some of our enemies, too great to be forgiven, that the king's peace was preserved. Now, again, I repeat the question-What are your feelings towards the persecutors of O'Gorman Mahon and Thomas Steele? Any man who votes against me at the ensuing election, must be a man who joins the enemies of O'Gorman Mahon and Thomas Steele, and thinks that these estimable gentlemen ought to be visited with a paltry attempt to insult them, merely because they preserved the lives of the people, and nobly vindicated at the last election, the religion and liberties of the Catholics of Ireland. "It has been said that I am a stranger in Clare. Me a stranger in any part of Ireland? Foolish and absurd. I am identified with the people of Clare in every thing that can identify man to man. All, however, I can claim, is the ratification of the former election. I ask only the sympathy of Clare upon the vacancy; I have a title to that sympathy by the community of interest and generous feeling and exalted resolves. "Catholic brothers, respected and esteemed Protestant, friends, I claim your suffrages on this occasion. "To my Catholic brothers, I say, that the protection of rights of the Catholics in Parliament, that the establishment of Catholic charities and schools, that the independent and permanent support of the Catholic clergy, that the integrity of the Catholic religious charities' societies, and in fine that the vindication of the principles and of the genuine purity of calumniated Catholic doctrines require that I should be in Parliament. "To my esteemed and beloved Protestant friends, I say that the local interest of your country, the individual interest of your resident gentry, and landed proprietors, the universal interests of Ireland, require that I should be in Parliament. "To both Catholic and Protestant friends, I would recall to mind, that we achieved emancipation in the most peaceful loyal and constitutional manner. We committed no offence, we were guilty of no crime, we destroyed no property, we injured no man's person, we affected no man's life. The glorious revolutions which gave us Catholic emancipation was affected without the destruction of one particle of any man's property, without the shedding of one drop of human blood. A sober, a moral and a religious people, cannot continue slaves; they become too powerful for their oppressors; their moral strength exceeds their physical powers, and their progress towards prosperity, and liberty is in vain opposed by the Peels and Wellingtons of society. These poor struggles for ancient abuses yield to a necessity which violates no law, and commits no crime; and having once already succeeded by these means, our next success is equally certain, if we adopt the same virtuous and irresistible means. "I conclude as I began. Electors of Clare, I have been illegally injured, and you have bee nunworthily insulted by that unworthy ministerial dexterity which deprived me of my right to represent you in Parliament. I call upon you to wipe away that injury, to blot out that insult, by sending me back to express my sentiments and yours, to the men who in so undignified a manner, injured me, and insults you. Protestants and Catholics, Friends and Brothers, London, May 25, 1829. DANIEL O'CONNELL It may be supposed that this powerful address, although a mixture of sense and bombast, of truth and falsehood, of the height of vanity and the depth of flattery, did not fail to have its desired effect upon the willing and pliant electors of the county of Clare. Previously however to entering into a detail of the occurrences immediately following the decision of the House of Commons of the ineligibility of Mr. O'Connell to |