ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.

would seem as if this phrase were to be interpreted in its literal meaning, that their interest was distinct at present, and that they had as yet their part to choose. Such implications, however, are totally unfounded. The chief leaders of the rebellion were not Roman Catholics, nor was religion in any degree the cause of the rebellion, though, when the rebellion broke out, it heightened its horrors. It was notorious, that the most efficient strength of the United Irishmen lay among the Protestant dissenters in the North; and Belfast was the place I which gave the most manifest symptoms of dis affection at the commencement of that crisis. Mr. Martin of Galway referred to the insurrection after the Union, as if the refusal of this emancipation had occasioned it. Peace be to the spirit of Robert Emmett! such an absurdity is not to be accounted among his errors. Had he brooded over no other wrongs and grievances than exclusion from seats in Parliament and the forty offices, the hearts which are now aching for his loss might at this day have been rejoicing in him,..and that genius and those virtues which, by a sentence not the less to be deplored for its necessity, were cut off in the beauty of their spring blossom, would now have been producing fruit for his country and for

the world!

It is said, says Mr. Grattan, that danger is to be apprehended from the tenantry; and to this he replies, that they are in a situation of poverty from which it is utterly impossible they can emerge, and, therefore, they cannot be formidable to the landed proprietors. But this is precisely what makes them formidable; it is because they cannot

!

possibly emerge from their abject poverty that they are formidable; it is because they are stript and fleeced, and shorn to the skin by proctors and tithe-farmers, and cut to the quick by the whole race of harpies who intervene between the landowners* and the lord; it is because they are in

The following statement, from a writer who signs himself Vindex, is well worthy of consideration. I take the population of ** Ireland at five millions; and, as in this inquiry we have nothing to ⚫ do with sects or factions, I consider that population as composed of ⚫ two descriptions of persons, the oppressors, and those that are op *pressed. In the former are included all the land proprietors, both absentees and residents, and all the various denominations and classes of popular scourges, the middle-men; in the latter the whole mass of the labouring poor; and I have reason to assume the number of the ⚫former at one million, and that of the latter at four. Now, however accident, or good fortune, or unusual means from rare success, may ⚫enable some, out of this vast number, occasionally to vary their ⚫regular course of diet, the great staple of their support consists of potatoes. The average consumption of potatoes in a family of six persons, amounts to twenty stones in six days, or twelve hundred ⚫and twenty stones in the year. The average produce of an acre of ⚫land, in culture for potatoes, is eighty-two barrels of twenty stones ⚫each. From these averages of produce and consumption, we shall find the consumption of the whole four millions of people, to be forty millions and six hundred thousand barrels, and the quantity of land * necessary to raise that produce, to be about five hundred thousand acres. It will, no doubt, be objected, that some portion of this de *scription of persons consume other kinds of food, and, consequently, 'less of that which is assumed as the great staple of their support. *But, though that fact be admitted, it can have no material effect upon the result just stated, nor upon that which is to follow. The average rent paid for potatoe land, by the labouring poor, is much understated at six guineas per acre per annum, and the average rent of their cabins far exceeds two guineas per annum, whilst the average charge for tithes is at least fifteen shillings per acre. The result of ⚫these averages, which I challenge any man in Ireland to question, is ⚫that four millions of the Irish nation raise a subsistence, such as it is, and God knows how miserable their fare is, for themselves from 'fire hundred thousand acres of land, for which, and tithes, and the * wretched hovels, they in general have to dwell in, they pay, by their

this state of hopeless poverty and grinding oppres sion, joined to the peculiar circumstances of irritation arising from the history of Ireland, that that country is always in danger of such insurrections as those of the Jacquerie in France, of Wat Tyler in England, and the peasants in Germany;.. insurrections, not for imaginary rights, and pri vileges which can only attach to a few opulent individuals..not for seats in parliament, and the forty offices,..but for emancipation in a more genuine and alarming sense of the word, for revenge and for rapine. Never was there a land in a state so disgraceful to its rulers, and its wealthy inhabitants. Never in any part of the world, nor in any period of history, have four millions of men. existed in circumstances so fearful and so humiliating to human nature... Having for seven centuries been subject to England, being now united to it,

'labour alone, to their oppressors of all denominations, the enormons sum of five million two hundred and ninety thousand pounds, Irish currency, annually!!! Let the land proprietors and middlemen, who, in prosecuting their selfish objects, represent themselves as the people of Ireland, reflect upon this statement, and invalidate any item of it if they can;.. let them state, if they dare, or shew, if they ⚫are able, that the clergy, who are by law entitled to one-tenth of ⚫the produce of the land, in demanding little more than one-tenth of ⚫ the rent exacted for that land, are to be considered as the oppressors of the people;..let them ask themselves this tremendous question, whether a population so oppressed can be wedded to their privations, or dread a change? and if, after this process, they shall persevere in *bringing a case before parliament, let them take care to present ⚫ themselves in a character free of suspicion, and with such a representation of the real grievances of their country, as may lead to a • radical and complete investigation of its actual situation, and ter minate in such measures as the wisdom of parliament may re⚫commend for the comfort, tranquillity, and happiness of the whole pation.'

and lying almost within sight of it..of a country where the arts and comforts of civilization are carried to a higher pitch than they ever attained elsewhere, the great mass of the Irish people are at this moment, in their bodily condition, worse than slaves, and, in their moral condition, worse than savages. Pestilence, perpetual warfare, bloody superstitions, and the difficulty of procuring food, keep down the number of men in other countries wherever they thus approach to the state of wild beasts. Government, and their geographical situation, preserve the Irish from three of these evils; and against the fourth they are secured by the use of a root, of all others the most productive, and the most easily cultivated; and, in this state of degradation, they are enabled to increase and multiply, so as to be truly styled the great and growing majority. Meantime their whole education is confined to the mere forms and vulgarest fables of their false faith, the very dregs and fæces of the most corrupt Catholicism. They have no other intercourse with those who should, by their presence, and influence, and labours of love, be gradually improving and humanizing them, than what is just sufficient to excite in them all rancorous and mutinous feelings; and the knowledge which they possess serves only to supply the means, and increase the power, of mischief. They are gifted with a quickness of feeling, and with all the elements of genius, perhaps in a degree above all other people; and yet these very endowments, which, if well cultivated, might produce such infinite blessings, serve only, in their present miserable condition, to render them more sensible of

wrong, more tenacious of resentment, and more
eager for revenge.

For these people Catholic Emancipation can do nothing;..a Catholic establishment might do much; but, though it would remove much misery, it would perpetuate so much evil, that it is no more to be thought of than Harrington's extraordinary proposal of selling Ireland to the Jews. This, however, is the ultimate object of those pe titioners who have any object at all, and this would readily be conceded by the majority of their advocates; a number, happily so inconsiderable, that there is no reason to be alarmed at their disposition. No opinion has been more loudly and insolently maintained by men who disguise their irreligion, under the name of liberality, than that nations are to be suffered to enjoy their superstitions however monstrous; that no attempt should be made to shake their faith and supplant it by a better; and that the established religion of every country ought to be that of the majority of its inhabitants. The ground of these political dogmas is a heartless and hopeless Fyrrhonism, and that desperate moral atheism, which, resolving all things into expediency, considers truth and falsehood as equally indifferent in themselves. Even upon their own grounds these reasoners might be confuted. For, were it admitted that truth is not to be attained, and that there is no resting place for the heart and hopes of man,.. that which is false may still be proved to be so;..the specific evils which originate in such falsehood can be demonstrated from history and experience, and it is our duty to prevent those consequences. Wherever the Roman Catholic