testant brethren, who, in contributing to the exigencies of the state, are reimbursed through a thousand channels, by the variety of lucrative offices and appointments in the various civil departments, distributed solely amongst them, and to the utter exclusion of the Catholics, from whom wealth flows to the Government in a perpetual stream, never to return. And this monopolizing spirit of exclusion depresses the genius and talents, and degrades the mind of the nation, by entirely suppressing all honorable emulation, and extinguishing, in the breasts of three millions of people, every hope of advancement, honor, or fortune, through any degree of merit or endowment.

Catholics may not serve on any jury in a civil action, where one of the parties is a Protestant; contrary to the spirit of the laws of England, which exceed all others in the precautions they take against judicial partiality, manifested by the wise and equitable regulations which they ordain to secure, as far as human wisdom can, the most perfect indifference between the parties, and to remove the possibility of a bias operating to the injury of either.

Catholics may not serve on any jury in trials by information or indictment, grounded on any of the penal statutes, contrary to the known humanity of the law which respects even the prejudices of a culprit in his choice of the men who are to pass in judgment upon him; in all criminal cases, the exactest sympathy in rank, condition, and even the relation of vicinage, with the party accused, is, as far as possible, preserved. Foreigners may demand, of right, that half their jury shall be foreigners; not so the Catholics of Ireland. The same law which made them aliens in their native land, deprived them of the privileges of aliens.

Catholics are excluded from serving on grand juries, whereby they are, in a great degree, deprived of the grand palladium of the Constitution, trial by their Peers, not to mention the injustice of their property being taxed, by a body of which the law has taken care that they shall never form a part. This exclusion the Catholics particularly feel as a grievance; and their anxiety will not, perhaps, be thought unreasonable, by any who shall consider the spirit of the resolutions put forth by the late grand juries of Ireland, and referred to in this publication; without appearing to feel an unmanly anxiety for either life or

property, the Catholics of Ireland may be allowed to apprehend a possibility of danger to both, from the unqualified and unrestrained exertion of judicial authority, by men, who, in the very outset, display a spirit of such determined animosity.

But there remains one disqualification yet unmentioned, which the Catholics of Ireland feel more severely than all others; they are excluded from the elective franchise, to the manifest perversion of the spirit of the Constitution, which says that no man shall be taxed when he is not represented actually or virtually, nor bound by laws to which he has not assented, by himself or his representative. And this unjust exclusion is not merely the violation of a theory, but an actual and substantial grievance; for though not to have the right of voting excites, in itself, no degree of horror, yet, in this country, in a thousand instances, when combined with its attendant circumstances, it implies distress, ejectment, nakedness, cold and hunger. In every county, where electioneering contests recur, it continually happens that Catholic tenants are, at the expiration of their leases, expelled and thrown upon the world with their miserable families, to make room for Protestant freeholders, whose votes may support the consequence of their landlords; unless when the unhappy wretches, balancing between spiritual danger and temporal destruction, prefer perjury to famine, and take oaths which they do not believe a violation of moral principle which tends to bring equal scandal on the religion which they quit, and that which they seem to adopt, and, by loosing the sacred obligation of an oath, opens a wide inlet to a thousand enormities, and, independent of the moral turpitude induced by those occasional conformities which disgrace the return of every general election, the agricultural improvement of the country is very materially impeded by this uncertainty of possession to Catholics, who are thereby prevented from cultivating or improving their farms, to the extent they otherwise might and would; and further, in every department wherein favor or preference can be shown, as in presentments for roads, and a variety of other modes, they find the want of that protection, which a vote gives to him who possesses it; so that, in many essential points, the most respectable Catholic can scarcely be said to be on an equal footing with the most obscure Protestant forty shilling freeholder; and further, the administration of justice, in a variety of subor

dinate cases, which, though too minute to enter superior courts, are yet of infinite importance to the poor, the great majority of the nation, is exposed to a bias which must have some influence on the purest minds. For, in a country like Ireland, where clection interest is an object so earnestly sought after and so diligently cultivated, an uniformly impartial distribution of justice between two parties, one possessing the whole franchise, from which the other is totally excluded, is a circumstance rather to be hoped than expected; it is a temptation to petty injustice to which a good man should not be exposed, and with which a bad man should not be entrusted.

Such is the situation of three millions of good and faithful subjects in their native land! Excluded from every trust, power, or emolument of the state, civil or military; excluded from all the benefits of the Constitution in all its parts; excluded from all corporate rights and immunities, repelled from Grand Juries; restrained in Petit Juries; excluded from every direction, from every trust, from every incorporated society, from every establishment, occasional or fixed, instituted for public defence, public police, public morals, or public convenience; from the Bench, from the Bank, from the Exchange, from the University, from the College of Physicians; from what are they not excluded? There is no institution which the wit of man has invented, or the progress of society produced, which private charity or public munificence has founded for the advancement of education, learning, and good arts; for the permanent relief of age, infirmity, or misfortune, from the superintendence of which, and in all cases where common charity would permit, from the enjoyment of which the Legislature has not taken care to exclude the Catholics of Ireland. Such is the state which the Corporation of Dublin have thought proper to assert "differs, in no respect, from that of the Protestants, save only in the exercise of political power;" and the host of Grand Juries consider as "essential to the existence of the "Constitution, to the permanency of the connection with En❝gland, and the continuation of the Throne in his Majesty's "Royal House." A greater libel on the Constitution, the connection, or the succession, could not be pronounced, nor one more pregnant with dangerous and destructive consequences, than this which asserts that they are only to be maintained and con

tinued by the slavery and oppression of three millions of good and loyal subjects.

It is the duty of the General Committee to reply to those of the objections made against their present proceedings which appear to have any weight: In the first place, it is asserted that they are "a Popish Congress, formed for the purpose of overawing the Legislature." Without descending to observe on the invidious appellation of "a Popish Congress," they consider the intention to overawe Parliament as the substantial part of the charge. Against the truth of this accusation they do most solemnly protest. They utterly abjure, disclaim, and renounce the holding such an intention; and they call upon their enemies to point out the word, action, or publication, of the Catholics of Ireland, which can, before rational and dispassionate minds, be construed to bear such an absurd and wicked import. If none such can be shewn, if the conduct of the Catholics for a century past has been uniformly peaceable, dutiful, and submissive, they trust their views and motives will be fairly judged on their own merits, and not on forced constructions, unwarranted by the actions, and thus solemnly again disclaimed as the intention of the Committee.

They are charged with exciting discontent, tumult, and sedition. After the enumeration of grievances under which the Catholics of Ireland labor, it is attributing too much to this committee to say that they are the cause of the present discontents. As to tumult and sedition, they challenge those who make the assertion to show the instance. Where have there been riots, or tumults, or seditions, which can, in the most remote degree, be traced to the proceedings or publications of this Committee? They know too well how fatal to their hopes of emancipation any thing like disturbance must be. Independent of the danger to those hopes, it is more peculiarly their interest to preserve peace and good order than that of any body of men in the community. They have a large stake in the country, much of it vested in that kind of property which is most peculiarly exposed to danger from popular tumult. THE GENERAL COMMITTEE WOULD SUFFER MORE BY ONE WEEK'S DISTURBANCE THAN ALL THE MEMBERS OF THE TWO HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.

But the most complete refutation of this unjust charge is the very measure which is made the pretence for bringing it for

ward. When the humble petition already recited was, in the last session, presented to Parliament, it was rejected with circumstances of peculiar disgrace and ignominy; and, as one reason for that rejection, it was insisted that the petitioners did not speak the sense of the Catholic body; it therefore became necessary to ascertain what the sense of that body was. And the committee submit, whether a plan for collecting the general sentiment could be devised more quiet, peaceable, orderly, and efficacious, than summoning from each county and city of Ireland, the most respectable and intelligent gentlemen, who, from their situation and connections, best knew the wishes of their countrymen, and, from their property, must be most desirous and most capable of securing tranquillity and good order. But, in a case like the present, there is no argument so powerful as the fact. The choice of the Catholics has been universally made without a single instance of irregularity or disorder. There is more riot and disturbance in one day at a contested election for a common potwalloping borough, than occurred in choosing Delegates to this Committee from the thirty-two counties and every great city of this kingdom.

With regard to the apprehensions which are affected to be felt for the succession to the throne in his Majesty's Royal House, should the Catholics be restored to the right of franchise, they are too absurd to deserve any answer. The loyalty of this nation is well known; they rest on that approved character, and on the oath of allegiance universally taken by their body. If they held that obligation light, they need not now come humbly suing for what they might demand as their right. The wisdom of their enemies has been able to devise no means more efficacious than an oath to exclude them from the blessings of the Constitution.

It is said that the plan for the formation of this Committee is unconstitutional. Before that assertion be received, let the situation of the Catholics of Ireland be considered; groaning under the weight of a most severe and oppressive code, an universal system of pains and penalties, they yet possessed one privilege, which, in the general wreck and carnage of their rights, had fortunately escaped the sagacious and malignant vengeance of their persecutors. They retained the right to petition. But three millions of sufferers cannot. and if they could, ought not,