V. OF CHANGING THE RULES AND REGULATIONS.

1st-These rules and regulations may be added to, amended, or suppressed, at the discretion of the members of the club.

2nd-This power can only be exercised at extraordinary meetings, on a motion of a member, of which notice shall be given at the previous ordinary meeting of the club.

Rules for the Formation of the Parish Clubs.

Sir,

I am directed by the County Liberal Club, pursuant to the resolution passed at their first public meeting, held August 2, to communicate with you on the practicability of establishing in your parish a Parochial Club, on the following principles :-

1. The club to be composed, as much as possible, of the principal gentry, clergy, churchwardens, and such of the respectable farmers as can read, and are able and willing to take a part in such proceedings in their parish -These to form the first members-others to be added afterwards by nomination or ballot.

2. The club, when so formed, to hold meetings (if possible) once a fortnight; but at all events once a month, in such place and time as they may judge expedient.

3. These clubs and meetings to have for object, keeping every man in constant readiness for future elections, maintaining the registries, inquiring into and giving in

formation of any persecution of freeholders, &c., and promoting good order, perfect subordination to the laws, political knowledge, and liberal feeling, as much as possible in their parish.

4. A report of these particulars, addressed to the secretary, will be expected once in every three months by the county club, and perhaps oftener.

5. Every club to contribute three pence a week, and to be thereby entitled to a weekly paper, to be sent down every Saturday for their information. No other contribution to be required.

You will be so kind on the perusal of the above to

state

1. Your approbation or disapprobation of each article, and on what grounds, seriatim.

2. The difficulties existing (if any) to their execution. 3. Whether you be willing or unwilling to co-operate in their establishment.

I beg you to give me such answer as I may be able to lay before the club at their next quarterly meeting, and to

Believe me, dear Sir,

Very sincerely, your faithful Servant.

No. XXVI.

MR. O'CONNELL'S ADDRESS TO THE ELECTORS OF THE COUNTY CLARE,

Fellow-Countrymen!

Dublin, June, 1828.

Your county wants a representative. I respectfully solicit your suffrages, to raise me to that station.

Of my qualification to fill that station I leave you to judge. The habits of public speaking, and many, many years of public business, render me, perhaps, equally suited with most men to attend to the interest of Ireland in Parliament.

You will be told I am not qualified to be elected : the assertion, my friends, is untrue.--I am qualified to be elected, and to be your representative. It is true that, as a Catholic, I cannot, and of course never will, take the oaths at present prescribed to members of parliament; but the authority which created these oaths-the parliament-can abrogate them: and I entertain a confident hope that, if you elect me, the most bigotted of our enemies will see the necessity of removing from the chosen representative of the people an obstacle which would prevent him from doing his duty to his king and to his country.

The oath at present required by law is, "That the sacrifice of the mass, and the invocation of the blessed Virgin Mary, and other saints, as now practised in the

Of

church of Rome, are impious and idolatrous." course I will never stain my soul with such an oath: I leave that to my honourable opponent, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald. He has often taken that horrible oath; he is ready to take it again, and asks your votes, to enable him so to swear. I would rather be torn limb from limb than take it. Electors of the County Clare! choose between me, who abominates that oath, and Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, who has sworn it full twenty times! Return me to parliament, and it is probable that such blasphemous oath will be abolished for ever. As your representative, I will try the question with the friends in parliament of Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald. They may send me to prison.-I am ready to go there to promote the cause of the Catholics, and of universal liberty. The discussion which the attempt to exclude your representative from the House of Commons must excite, will create a sensation all over Europe, and produce such a burst of contemptuous indignation against British bigotry in every enlightened country in the world, that the voice of all the great and good in England, Scotland, and Ireland, being joined to the universal shout of the nations of the earth, will overpower every opposition, and render it impossible for Peel and Wellington any longer to close the doors of the constitution against the Catholics of Ireland.

Electors of the County Clare! Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald claims as his only merit, that he is a friend to the Catholics. Why, I am a Catholic myself; and if he be sincerely our friend, let him vote for me, and raise before

the British empire the Catholic question in my humble person, in the way most propitious to my final success. But no, fellow-countrymen--no; he will make no sacrifice to that cause. He will call himself your friend, and act the part of your worst and most unrelenting enemy.

I do not like to give the epitome of his political life ; yet, when the present occasion so loudly calls for it, I cannot refrain. He first took office under Percevalunder that Perceval who obtained power by raising the base, bloody, and unchristian cry of "No Popery" in England.

He had the nomination of a member to serve for the borough of Ennis. He nominated Mr. Spencer Perceval, then a decided opponent of the Catholics.

He voted on the East Retford bill, for a measure that would put two violent enemies of the Catholics into Parliament.

In the case of the Protestant Dissenters in England, he voted for their exclusion; that is, against the principle of the freedom of conscience-that sacred principle, which the Catholics of Ireland have ever cultivated and cherished, and on which we found our rights to emancipation.

Finally, he voted for the suppression of the Catholic Association of Ireland!!!

And after this-sacred Heaven! he calls himself a friend to the Catholics!

He is the ally and colleague of the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel; he is their partner in power; they are, you know, the most bitter, persevering, and unmi