66

"that humble and peaceful conduct, and dutiful application, are the only true and effectual me"thods for good subjects to obtain relief from a "wise and good government.

"That our Catholic brethren therefore desire, "that application may be made for such relief as "the wisdom and justice of parliament may grant; "and they hope to be restored, at least, to some "of the rights and privileges which have been "wisely granted to others who dissent from the "established church; that they may be thus en"abled to promote, in conjunction with the rest "of their fellow-subjects, the present and future happiness and strength of their country.

66

66

"That our said Catholic brethren direct, that "such application be immediately made, and continued, in the most submissive and constitu"tional manner, for a mitigation of the restric"tions and disqualifications. under which they "labour."

The general committee having agreed with, and adopted this report, a petition was prepared in order to be laid before parliament in the ensuing

session.

With this petition a deputation of the general committee waited upon the chief Secretary, Lord Hobart, to solicit the countenance and protection of government, but in vain. This was not only refused them, but the Catholics of Ireland, constituting, at the lowest calculation, a very large majority of the inhabitants of the kingdom, had not even sufficient influence to induce any one member of parliament to present it.

A second deputation having failed to obtain even an answer from government to a renewed application for its support, it was determined to

send Mr. Keogh to London, to lay before his Majesty's ministers the state of his Catholic subjects.

Mr. Keogh, on his arrival in London, instituted a negociation with Mr. Pitt and the Cabinet: at the close of which, the Catholics were given to understand that they might hope for four objects grand juries, county magistrates, high sheriffs, and the bar. Admission to the right of suffrage was also mentioned, and taken under consideration.

The spirit of religious liberty having, at this time, made great progress among the Protestant dissenters in Ulster, the 1st Belfast volunteer company, in July 1791, passed a resolution in favour of admitting the Catholics to a full enjoyment of the constitution; and, in October, the great Northern Association of United Irishmen* pledged themselves" to endeavour, by all due means, to procure a complete and radical reform of the people in "parliament, including Irishmen of every religious "persuasion."

66

In the mean time, whilst Mr. Keogh was in London, the Irish Administration had been endeavouring to counteract the views of the Catholic body, by a negociation with the principal nobility and gentry belonging to it; and, in some degree, their exertions were successful. For at a meeting of the general committee, held in December 1791, for the purpose of considering of the policy of petitioning parliament in the ensuing session, some of the meeting wished to adopt a resolution of seeking no removal of the existing dis

*It was not till 1794, that a new society, under this name, embarked in an attempt to separate Great Britain and Ireland.

abilities, but in such a manner and to such an extent as the wisdom of the legislature deemed expedient. This was resisted by others, and on a division upon the question of petitioning, the nobility were left in a minority of 90 to 17.

Pursuant to this decision, the following petition was drawn up, and introduced into the House of Commons, by Mr. O'Hara, on the 23d January 1792.

We your petitioners, being appointed by sundry of His Majesty's subjects professing the Roman Catholic religion, to be agents for conducting applications to the legislature for their relief, in our own and their names, beg leave to approach this High Court of Parliament with an unfeigned respect for its wisdom and authority; and at the same time, with a deep and heartfelt sensation of our singular and deplorable situation. And, first of all, we implore (and for this we throw ourselves on the indulgence of Parliament) that no irregularity or defect in form or language, should obstruct the success of these our most ardent supplications. The circumstances in which we stand deserve consideration. For near a hundred years, we and our fathers, and our grandfathers, have groaned under a code of laws, (in some parts already purged from the statutes), the like of which, no age, no nation, no climate ever saw. Yet, sore as it were from the scourge of active persecution, scarce yet confirmed in our minds, and but lately secure in our persons and in our houses, from the daily alarms of search-warrants and informers, we come before Parliament for the first time; and we come to ask an alleviation of burdens, under which we can only find consolation in the melancholy comparison of former times. In this state of recent apprehension and troubled anxious hope, with minds unadapted to the precise observances of decorum, we rest upon the simple merits of our case. is a part of our calamities, that we do not know how to tell them with propriety; and if our complaints should deviate into remonstrance, and we should seem to upbraid, when we mean to supplicate, we trust a due allowance

It

will be made for expressions extorted by our anguish, or proceeding from an inevitable ignorance of form. Excluded from the constitution in all its parts, and in many respects aliens to the law, how should we have learned the forms of Parliament ?

The hardships we suffer proceed from the law. It is, therefore, only to the fountain of the law that we can look for relief. You are the great Council of our Sovereign Lord the King; but you are also subjects like ourselves. The ear of Majesty, by the law of the land, and by the benignity of that Sovereign, whom it is your glory to imitate, is ever open to the petitions of his people. As far as we are able to discern the great outlines of a constitutution, which we know only in speculation, we conceive that it is the boast of the constitution of these kingdoms, to have associated a portion of the people into the Sovereign power; in order that, not dazzled by the awe of supreme Majesty, the subject may find a happy mediatorial institution, an asylum wherein to deposit the burden of his griefs, to expose the nakedness of his oppressions, and indulge complaint even to exaggeration. There were, indeed, those who would have made us believe, that Parliament was only to be approached with circumspect and timid steps; at most, in general terms; and that, wrapped in proud and inexorable state, you would consider a specification of the wants of the people as an insult, and a reason for not supplying them. But we knew it could not be. We knew that no senate, no king, no tyrant, had ever professed to turn his ear from detailed supplication. The Majesty of God himself is willing to receive, and demands the incense of particular prayer. And shall we, who speak from man to man, from subject to subject, not dare to specify the measure and extent of our crying necessities? Despising that base and hypocritical affectation, we are sure it is far more congenial to the nature and to the temper of Parliament, with a firm and generous confidence, to say, as we say here is the evil there is

the remedy: To you we look for relief.

Behold us then before you, three millions of the people of Ireland, subjects of the same King, inhabitants of the

same land, bound together by the same social contract, contributing to the same revenues, defended by the same armies, declared, by the authentic words of an act of Parliament, to be good and loyal subjects to His Majesty, his Crown, and Government, and yet doomed to one general unqualified incapacity, and universal exclusion, an universal civil proscription. We are excluded from the state. We are excluded from the revenues. We are excluded from every distinction, every privilege, every office, every emolument, every civil trust, every corporate right. We are excluded from the navy, from the army, from the magistrature, from the professions. We are excluded from the palladium of life, liberty, and property, the juries, and inquests of our country. From what are we not excluded? We are excluded from the constitution. We stand a strange anomaly in the law; not acknowledged, not disavowed; not slaves, not freemen: an exception to the principles of jurisprudence; a prodigy in the system of civil institution. We incur no small part of the penalties of a general outlawry, and a general excommunication. Disability meets us at every hour, and in every walk of life. It cramps our industry, it shackles our property, it depresses our genius, it debilitates our minds.-Why are we disfranchised, and why are we degraded? Or rather, why do those evils afflict our country, of which we are no inconsiderable part?

We most humbly and earnestly supplicate and implore Parliament to call this law of universal exclusion to a severe account, and now at last to demand of it, upon what principle it stands, of equity, of morality, of justice, or of policy. And, while we request this scrutiny into the law, we demand, also, the severest scrutiny into our principles, our actions, our words, and our thoughts. Wherein have we failed as loyal and affectionate subjects to the best of Sovereigns, or as sober, peaceable, and useful members of society? Where is that people who can offer the testimony of a hundred years' patient submission to a code of laws, of which no man living is now an advocate without sedition, without murmur, without complaint? Our loyalty has undergone a century of se