No. XCV.

PETITION OF THE CATHOLICS OF IRELAND....PAGE 51.

January 2, 1793.

MR. BYRNE, Mr. Keogh, Mr. Devereux, Mr. Bellew, and sir Thomas French, the gentlemen delegated by the Catholics of Ireland, attended the levee at St. James's and had the honour to present the humble petition of that body to his majesty, who was pleased to receive it most graciously.

The delegates were introduced by the right honourable Henry Dundas, secretary of state for the home department.

The following is a correct copy of the petition:

TO THE KING'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY.

The humble petition of the undersigned Catholics, on behalf of themselves and the rest of his Catholic subjects of the kingdom of Ireland.

MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN,

WE your majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects of your kingdom of Ireland, professing the Catholic religion, presume to approach your majesty, who are the common father of all your people, and humbly to submit to your consideration the manifold incapacities and oppressive disqualifications under which we labour.

For, may it please your majesty, after a century of uninterrupted loyalty, in which time five foreign wars and two domestic rebellions have occurred, after having taken every oath of allegiance and fidelity to your majesty, and given, and being still ready to give, every pledge, which can be devised for their peaceable demeanour and unconditional submission to the laws, the Catholics of Ireland stand obnoxious to a long catalogue of statutes, inflicting on dutiful and meritorious subjects pains and penalties of an extent and severity, which scarce any degree of delinquency can warrant, and prolonged to a period, when no necessity can be alleged to justify their continuance.

In the first place, we beg leave with all humility to represent to your majesty, that notwithstanding the lowest departments in your majesty's fleets and armies are largely supplied by our num

bers, and your revenue in this country to a great degree supported by our contributions, we are disabled from serving your ma jesty in any office of trust and emolument whatsoever, civil or military-a proscription, which disregards capacity or merit, admits of neither qualification nor degree, and rests as an universal stigma of distrust upon the whole body of your Catholic subjects.

We are interdicted from all municipal stations, and the franchise of all guilds and corporations; and our exclusion from the benefits annexed to those situations is not an evil terminating in itself; for, by giving an advantage over us to those in whom they are exclusively vested, they establish throughout the kingdom a species of qualified monopoly, uniformly operating in our disfavour, contrary to the spirit, and highly detrimental to the freedom of trade.

We may not found nor endow any university, college, or school for the education of our children, and we are interdicted from obtaining degrees in the university of Dublin by the several charters and statutes now in force therein.

We are totally prohibited from keeping or using weapons, for the defence of our houses, families, or persons, whereby we are exposed to the violence of burglary, robbery, and assassination; and to enforce this prohibition, contravening that great original law of nature, which enjoins us to self-defence, a variety of statutes exist, not less grievous and oppressive in their provisions, than unjust in their object; by one of which, enacted so lately as within these sixteen years, every of your majesty's Catholic subjects, of whatever rank or degree, peer or peasant, is compellable by any magistrate to come forward and convict himself of what may be thought a singular offence in a country professing to be free-keeping arms for his defence; or, if he shall refuse so to do, may incur not only fine and imprisonment, but the vile and ignominious punishments of the pillory and whipping, penalties appropriated to the most infamous malefactors, and more terrible to a liberal mind than death itself.

No Catholic whatsoever, as we apprehend, has his personal property secure. The law allows and encourages the disobedient and unnatural child to conform and deprive him of it: the unhappy father does not, even by the surrender of his all, purchase his repose; he may be attacked by new bills, if his future industry be successful, and again be plundered by due process of law. We are excluded, or may be excluded, from all petit juries, in civil actions, where one of the parties is a Protestant; and we are further excluded from all petit juries in trials by information or indictment founded on any of the Popery laws, by which law we most humbly submit to your majesty, that

your loyal subjects, the Catholics of Ireland, are in this their native land, in a worse situation than that of aliens, for they may demand an equitable privilege denied to us, of having half their ju ry aliens like themselves.

We may not serve on grand juries, unless, which it is scarcely possible can ever happen, there should not be found a sufficiency of Protestants to complete the pannel; contrary to that humane and equitable principle of the law, which says, that no man shall be convicted of any capital offence, unless by the concurring verdicts of two juries of his neighbours and equals; whereby, and to this we humbly presume more particularly to implore your royal attention, we are deprived of the great palladium of the constitution, trial by our peers, independent of the manifest injustice of our property being taxed in assessments by a body, from which we are formally excluded.

We avoid a further enumeration of inferior grievances; but may it please your majesty, there remains one incapacity, which your loyal subjects, the Catholics of Ireland, feel with most poignant anguish of mind, as being the badge of unmerited disgrace and ignominy, and the cause and bitter aggravation of all our other calamities; we are deprived of the elective franchise, to the manifest perversion of the spirit of the constitution, inasmuch as your faithful subjects are thereby taxed, where they are not represented, actually or virtually, and bound by laws, in the framing of which, they have no power to give, or withhold their assent; and we most humbly implore your majesty to believe, that this our prime and heavy grievance is not an evil merely speculative, but is attended with great distress to all ranks, and in many instances, with the total ruin and destruction of the lower orders of your majesty's faithful and loyal subjects the Catholics of Ireland; for may it please your majesty, not to mention the infinite variety of advantages in point of protection and otherwise, which the enjoyment of the elective franchise gives to those who possess it, nor the consequent inconveniences, to which those who are deprived thereof are liable; not to mention the disgrace to three-fourths of your loyal subjects of Ireland, of living the only body of men incapable of franchise, in a nation possessing a free constitution, it continually happens, and of necessity from the malignant nature of the law must happen, that multitudes of the Catholic tenantry in divers counties in this kingdom are, at the expiration of their leases, expelled from their tenements and farms to make room for Protestant freeholders, who, by their votes, may contribute to the weight and importance of their landlords; a circumstance which renders the recurrence of a general election, that period which is the boast and laudable triumph of our Protestant brethren, a visitation and heavy curse to us, your

majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects. And may it please your majesty, this uncertainty of possession to your majesty's Catholic subjects operates as a perpetual restraint and discouragement on industry and the spirit of cultivation, whereby it happens, that this your majesty's kingdom of Ireland, possessing many and great natural advantages of soil and climate, so as to be exceeded therein by few, if any countries on the earth, is yet prevented from availing herself thereof so fully as she otherwise might, to the furtherance of your majesty's honour, and the more effectual support of your service.

And may it please your majesty, the evil does not even rest here; for many of your majesty's Catholic subjects, to preserve their families from total destruction, submit to a nominal conformity against their conviction and their conscience, and prefering perjury to famine, take oaths which they utterly disbelieve; a circumstance, which we doubt not will shock your majesty's well known and exemplary piety, not less than the misery which drives those unhappy wretches to so desperate a measure, must distress and wound your royal clemency and commiseration.

And may it please your majesty, though we might here rest our case on its own merits, justice, and expediency, yet we further presume humbly to submit to your majesty, that the right of franchise was, with divers other rights, enjoyed by the Catholics of this kingdom, from the first adoption of the English constitution by our forefathers, was secured to at least a great part of our. body by the treaty of Limerick, in 1691, guaranteed by your majesty's royal predecessors, king William and queen Mary, and finally confirmed and ratified by parliament; notwithstanding which, and in direct breach of the public faith of the nation thus solemnly pledged, for which our ancestors paid a valuable consideration, in the surrender of their arms, and a great part of this kingdom, and notwithstanding the most scrupulous adherence, on our part, to the terms of the said treaty, and our unremitting loyalty from that day to the present, the said right of elective franchise was finally and universally taken away from the Catholics of Ireland, so lately as the first year of his majesty king George the second.

And when we thus presume to submit this infraction of the treaty of Limerick to your majesty's royal notice, it is not that we ourselves consider it to be the strong part of our case; for though our rights were recognized, they were by no means created by that treaty; and we do with all humility conceive, that if no such event as the said treaty had ever taken place, your majesty's Catholic subjects, from their unvarying loyalty, and dutiful submission to the laws, and from the great support afforded by them to your majesty's government in this country, as well in their

personal service, in your majesty's fleets and armies, as from the taxes and revenues levied on their property, are fully competent, and justly entitled to participate and enjoy the blessings of the constitution of their country.

And now that we have with all humility submitted our grievances to your majesty, permit us, most gracious sovereign, again to represent our sincere attachment to the constitution, as established in three estates of king, lords, and commons; our uninterrupted loyalty, peaceable demeanour, and submission to the laws for one hundred years; and our determination to persevere in the same dutiful conduct, which has, under your majesty's happy auspices, procured us those relaxations of the penal statutes, which the wisdom of the legislature has from time to time thought proper to grant; we humbly presume to hope, that your majesty, in your paternal goodness and affection towards a numerous and oppressed body of your loyal subjects, may be graciously pleased to recommend to your parliament of Ireland, to take into their consideration the whole of our situation, our numbers, our merits, and our sufferings; and as we do not give place to any of your majesty's subjects in loyalty and attachment to your sacred person, we cannot suppress our wishes of being restored to the rights and privileges of the constitution of our country, and thereby becoming more worthy, as well as more capable of rendering your majesty that service, which is not less our duty than our inclination to afford.

So may your majesty transmit to your latest posterity, a crown secured by public advantage and public affection; and so may your loyal person become, if possible, more dear to your grateful people.

The above petition is signed by the delegates from the following counties, cities, and towns in the kingdom of Ireland.