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

tigated enemies of the Catholics and after all this, he, the partner of our bitterest and unrelenting enemies, calls himself the friend of the Catholics of Ireland!

Having thus traced a few of the demerits of my Right Honourable Opponent, what shall I say for myself?

I appeal to my past life for my unremitting and disinterested attachment to the religion and liberties of Catholic Ireland.

If you return me to parliament, I pledge myself to vote for every measure favourable to radical reform in the representative system, so that the House of Commons may truly, as our Catholic ancestors intended. it should do, represent all the people.

To vote for the repeal of the Vestry bill, the Subletting act, and the present grinding system of Grand Jury Laws.

To vote for the diminution and more equal distribution of the overgrown wealth of the Established church in Ireland, so that the surplus may be restored to the sustentation of the poor, the aged, and the infirm.

To vote for every measure of retrenchment and reduction of the national expenditure, so as to relieve the people from the burden of taxation, and to bring the question of the repeal of the Union, at the earliest possible period, before the consideration of the legislature.

Electors of the County Clare! choose between me and Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald; choose between him who has so long cultivated his own interests, and one who seeks only to advance yours; choose between the sworn libeller of the Catholic faith, and one who has devoted his early life to your cause; who has consumed his

manhood in a struggle for your liberties, and who has ever lived, and is ready to die for, the integrity, the honour, the purity, of the Catholic faith, and the promotion of Irish freedom and happiness.

Your faithful Servant,

DANIEL O'CONNELL,

No. XXVII.

RECONCILIATION MEETINGS.

At a meeting of the Association, held at Dublin, August 1828, Mr. Sheil proposed the following resolutions :

First, That while we warmly congratulate the people of Tipperary upon the happy cessation of their feuds, we implore them to discontinue the holding of assemblies of the peculiar character which have recently taken place.

Secondly, That we humbly entreat the Catholie clergy to co-operate with the Association in carrying the above resolution into effect.

Thirdly, That Daniel O'Connell, to whose influence the pacification of Tipperary should be referred, is hereby called upon to employ his powerful and deserved authority, in deterring the people of Tipperary from the holding of such meetings, in an address to be printed and circulated at the expense of the Association.

Fourthly,That it be referred to the standing committee to report whether it be, or may become expe