the apprehension of the English ministry of their". vaunted prowess. They originally set out with asserting, that in number they amounted to two millions, and were one-third of the inhabitants of Ireland. On every new application they made to parliament, they added half a million to their computation, and have now the shameless effrontery to boast, that they amount to five millions in Ireland; and that the Protestants of the establishment in Ireland, together with Dissenters of all denominations, do not amount to more than one million; whereas the fact, is, that the whole inhabitants of Ireland, by the best and most accurate calculation, do not amount to three millions and a half, and that the Irish Romanists are not two-thirds of them; and are of the lowest and most indigent parts of the community. The Irish Protestants are able, in case of a Romish rebellion, to drive the whole mass of them into the sea, without any external assistance whatsoever, as they are in the possession of the estates, the arms, the wealth, and the ability of the country, derived from education and industrious habits: and, consequently, have that superiority, which such circumstances bestow, over a wild and necessitous mob.

The Talents' ministry, discarded in the manner beforementioned, and now forming the first or the aristocratic class of malcontents, determined

to redouble its exertions in encouraging and supporting the claims of the Irish Romanists. No cause can be assigned for their espousing that party with so much zeal, before their dismissal from employment, save undue impressions made upon them by artful Romish agents, who magnified, in a tenfold ratio, the numbers and power of the Irish Romanists, and persuaded them that it was possible to reconcile, to a Protestant state, so large a body of subjects, notwithstanding they were bigoted Romanists; and induced them to believe, that it was indifferent to Great Britain whether the religious establishment in Ireland was Protestant or Romish. Their recent defeat and disgrace inflaming them with rage, they resolved to revenge themselves on all who had opposed their progress, and particularly on those who had succeeded to their places of power and profit; and therefore immediately joined the Jacobin democratic class. Many of them had large landed estates in Ireland, on which they had never resided. The Irish Romanists, who were most numerous among the peasantry, had procured considerable influence, as forty shilling freeholders, in county elections, issued orders to their agents in Ireland, to support every candidate for the representation of a county in Ireland who professed himself attached to the Romish interest. By these means they procured some of

their party in Ireland to be returned members of the Imperial Parliament; and such men were, by them, held forth as Protestants (though actually destitute of all religion) and converts to their insidious doctrine of conciliation. Some Jacobin adventurers in Ireland, to prove their attachment to the party, and also to gratify their own propensity to subversion of all existing governments, and to the substitution of their own whimsical and pernicious system of a democratic republic; began to vent their venomous doctrines in scurrilous and lying publications; depreciating and vilifying every part of the venerable British constitution in church and state, its economy and management, and the conduct of the persons intrusted with its administration. At the same time they exerted themselves in extolling Popery, and denying or extenuating all the pernicious doctrines, particularly those which rendered the professors of it peculiarly hostile to a Protestant government: to state, in defiance of truth, of history, and of all public records, robberies, massacres, and oppressions of Englishmen, committed and inflicted, by them, on the Irish natives, from the first commencement of the English government in Ireland to the present day; but more especially the cruelties and injustice with which the English Protestants and their descendants have treated the Irish Romanists, since the accession of Queen

Elizabeth; thus endeavouring, by every species of unfounded and malignant falsehood and misrepresentation, to excite the Irish Romanists to a repetition of rebellion, robbery, and murder of their innocent and loyal Protestant fellow-subjects.

The Irish Romanists, thus encouraged, se conded their auxiliaries with the greatest industry. The public prints teemed with the grossest abuse of the Irish Protestants. They republished all the falsehoods which had been written, by their party, since the reformation, as well against the government as the Protestant religion. All these false and libellous productious had been fully detected, exposed, and refuted, immediately after their first publication; and such of the Romanists, as retained any share of modesty became ashamed of them, they were so totally groundless. A large collection from such tracts had been made by one Curry, a Romish physician, in Dublin, and a new edition of it was published by the Irish Romanists, after the year 1793. This is styled a "Review of the Civil Wars of Ireland," For direct and shameless falsehood misrepresentation, and acrimonious Romish venom and malignity, it would be difficult to match this book in any ancient or modern times or languages; it is calculated to inflame Romanists against Protest

ants, and excite rebellion in Ireland; and that of the most sanguinary and relentless nature.

Another book has been lately printed in. Dublin and London, by the Irish Romanists, though it is pretended to have been printed at New-York in America; and perhaps it might have, originally, been printed there: this abounds with falsehood and rancour against the British government, and endeavours to inculcate the necessity of the abolition of the Protestant government in Ireland, and of a separation from Great Britain. In the title page, it is stated to have been published by William James M'Nevin, one of the traitors who, in the year 1798, were examined before the Secret Committee of the Irish House of Lords, and appears to be the joint production of him and Thomas Addis Emmet, examined at the same time. These traitors then escaped the gallows by making a full disclosure of their treasonable operations, for the purpose, of separating Great Britain and Ireland, in concert with, and by the assistance of, the French Directory; and of totally subverting the Constitution in church and state. Three other traitors, to wit, Oliver Bond, Arthur O'Connor, and Samuel Nelson, were examined at the same time; and their confessions, on oath, before the Secret Committee, are published in the journals of the