North avowedly to deprive me of whatever share of your confidence I might have gained, and in this light I have given it an answer. Had I treated it with silent contempt, I should have hoped that its coming from an administration which had so deservedly forfeited the confidence of every Irishman, who valued the liberties of his country, would have insured me from suffering, in your estimation, from the falsehood and calumny with which it abounds; but my respect for those invaluable censors, the press and the public opinion, the conscious integrity of my own heart, and the most perfect reliance on the virtue of the cause I espouse, prompt me to seize any occasion, which affords an opportunity of vindicating it or myself from the aspersions of an administration, whose heaviest charge, in their wretched production, is, that at any time of my life I had been the advocate of them or their measures. As the whole of this work is one continued issue of misrepresentation and falsehood, a plain recital of facts will be the best means of giving it a full refutation. After the question of regency, that memorable display of the infamy and principles of the factions of Ireland, some of the most considerable of them were forced into Irish parliamentary patriotism, by being stript of the wages of their prostitution; I accepted a seat from my uncle lord Longueville, in the chimerical hope that this crash, between the factions and the government, might be improved to the advantage of Ireland; but experience soon convinced me that nothing short of the establishment of a national government, a total annihilation of the factions, and their usurpations, and an entire abolition of religious distinctions could restore to my country those rights and that liberty which had been so long a subject of traffic, under a regular organized system of treason, and acting up to this conviction from the day I accepted the seat from lord Longueville, to the day I resigned it. I earnestly entreated him to declare for a reform of parliament, and for the freedom of my Catholic countrymen. The thanks which were given me by the delegates of the Catholics of Ireland, for my defence of them and their cause, so early as 1791, and the vote which I gave for their total emancipation, against lord Longueville and the government, in the beginning of 1793, gives the lie to the assertion of administration, that I was not the advocate of Catholic freedom until my having spoke on that subject in 1795, and so wholly is it unfounded in truth, that I have exerted myself in defence of the liberties of my country, because the government refused me a commissioner's place, that although lord Longueville repeatedly pressed me to let him procure me a commissioner's place, I as often refused it, assuring him that it was contrary to my principles to accept the money of my impoverished countrymen, for the detestable treason of betraying their rights, their industry, their manufactures

and commerce: that for the bribe of a British pander I should basely contribute to aggrandize his country, at the expense of every thing dear to my own; whilst so far from bartering my principles to better my fortune, that though lord Longueville pressed me to accept large sums of his own money, I declined them; and it is notorious he has since disinherited me for the open avowal of my political sentiments on the Catholic question. Being forced, in my own vindication, to speak of myself, I will leave you, my fellow-citizens, to judge of an administration, that by falsehood and calumny have attempted to widen a breach between me and connexions that were but too widely extended before; yet whilst they have given me an opportunity of proving to you, that no consideration could induce me to abandon my principles, they shall never succeed in making me utter one unkind expression of a man, whose wishes to promote me in life, have left a grateful remembrance their malice shall never efface. Abandoned administration! who have trampled on the liberties of my country, do you presume to accuse me of dissuading my countrymen from arming to oppose an invasion, which your's and your accomplice's crimes have provoked? Is it that the unalienable rights of free-born men to make their laws by delegates of their choice, should be bartered and sold by usurpers and traitors, that I should persuade them to arm? Is it that our markets, our manufactures, and commerce, should be sold to that nation, which appoints our government, and distributes our patronage, that I should persuade them to arm? Is it to support the Gunpowder Bill, which deprives them of arms, or the Convention Bill, which aims at perpetuating the usurpation of rights, by proscribing the only obvious and orderly means to regain them, that I should persuade them to arm? Is it to support the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Bill, which has destroyed the bulwark of liberty by withholding the trial by jury, that I should persuade them to arm? Is it to rivet the bolts or to guard the dungeons of their fellow-citizens, who, torn from their homes and their families by administration, vainly demand that trial by jury, which by proving their innocence must establish its guilt, that I should persuade them to arm? Is it that a vile pander of national honour and legislative duty should be in-. vested with uncontrouled power over the opinions and persons of an injured, a gallant and generous people, that I should persuade them to arm? Or, to crown all, is it under the auspices of the indemnified Carhampton, I should persuade them to arm? Go, impotents, to the Catholics, whose elevated hopes of all-glorious freedom, you have been appointed to tauntingly blast, and if they should charge you with the crimes of your mission, although you cannot plead the having raised them to equal rights with their fellow-citizens, you can at least boast that you have levelled those

rights to the standard of Catholic thraldom. Hence, then, contemptible administration, from those you have insulted and levelled, to those you have raised; go to the monopolists of the representation of Ireland, and ask them to arm; go to those whom the continuance of the system of corruption enables to live in affluence at the expense of that poverty and misery their treason has caused, and ask them to arm; go to those hussars of fees and exactions in the revenue, whose regular pay bears no proportion to their pillage and plunder, and command them to arm; go to attorneys and lawyers, who live by villainy, chicane and fraud, under a system of complexity, finesse and fiction, at the expense and ruin of those who are forced to employ them, and tell them they ought to arm; go to those swarms of petty tyrants, perjured grand-jury jobbers, army contractors, tithe proctors and land sharks, and tell them how necessary it is for them, to be armed; go to the established clergy, who pocket those monstrous funds for instructing nine-tenths of the nation, which should provide decent establishments for three such countries as Ireland, and tell them to preach to the nine-tenths who are excluded from this glorious half of the constitution, to arm in its defence, or ask them to blow the expiring embers of religious dissention, and I will leave it to the inhabitants of Armagh, at length recovering from delusion, to judge of their zeal in this christian-like duty. These factions, and administration, are your natural allies; these are your strength; on these you may reckon, and although as devoted to systems which should be abolished, as apostates to national rights and national honour they count but too high; thank heaven they are as insignificant in numbers as in strength to those that are found. Although the old volunteers have been discouraged, because they boldly threw off the open avowed dominion of Britain, and that these yeomen corps have been raised to support the concealed deadly influence she has gained by corruption and treason; although the old volunteers have been rejected because they extended the rights and liberties of their country, and that these corps have been set up to support laws subversive of both; yet when the systematic scheme of the British minister, and of those vermin that have nestled about the throne, to frame some new-modelled despotism on the ruins of freedom, by the erecting of barracks, those bills that have been passed year after year, the late contempt of that only privilege of the commons which was left them, the granting of money, and the correspondent conduct of their creatures in this country shall have been developed to that degree which would make resistance an indispensable duty, from my soul I believe that they would find themselves widely mistaken in the support they will meet from many of these corps they have raised. Are the people of Ireland so weak as to convert a threat,

ened invasion from France into an expiation of the injustice, the crimes and oppression by which the temptation to make it was caused, or shall an invasion from France act like magic in changing the present ardent affection of the people of Ireland for liberty, into an unbounded display of loyalty to a system of corruption and treason, by which the most happily gifted nation on earth has been made to contain more misery than any country in the creation? Away with delusion! Are the people of Ireland sure that the factions and administration who so earnestly press them to arise to repel the invasion of France, are not invaders themselves? Are we sure that their master and maker, the minister of Britain, has not invested them with enormous funds of corruption to which our wretchedness has been made to contribute? Are we sure that these funds have not been distributed amongst traitors, in the heart of our island, for betraying the industry, manufactures and commerce of the people of Ireland, to aggrandize those of Great Britain? Nay, are we not certain that every market in Great Britain is shut against every species of Irish industry, with the solitary exception of linen, whilst every manufacture of England has free access to every market in Ireland, without any exception whatever? With these facts in our view, what Irishman can doubt that to support the worst of invasions, the invasion of rights and commerce, 15,000 English and Scotch have not been sent to invade us already? Or, can we be certain that the shambles of Germany have not been resorted to, to invade us with more? Compare the few troops they left us in the war against American freedom, when they had all Europe their foe, with the numbers they have sent us this war against the freedom of France, when they had all Europe their ally; compare the weakness of Ireland, divided by religious dissension, when troops were so few, with that strength which Union has given, when troops are so many; we cannot but see with whom they seek to contend. Could French invaders do worse than establish a system of pillage and treason within, that they may pillage and plunder without? Could they do worse than reject laws a unanimous people had sought, or than pass those they detested? Could they do worse than commit the personal liberty of the people of Ireland to two men without connexion or interest in the country, without responsibility or control? Could they do worse than withhold trials from Irish citizens cast into dungeons, to the destruction of their health, and the ruin of their property? Could they do worse than establish military magistrates throughout the nation, and indemnify those whose unfeeling souls had torn hundreds of Irish citizens from every endearing connexion in life, after depriving their habitations of every privilege due to the residence of free-born men, consigned them to the flames, turning their wives and

children to beggary and famine, exiled their husbands to fight against that freedom of which they had robbed them on an element they disliked, and in a cause they abhorred? Or, could any thing be more alarming to a people who valued their liberties, than the appointment of a man, that could require such an indemnification, to be commander in chief of the army? Or, to crown all, could any invaders do worse, that with powers to legislate for a limited time, under the form of constitutional order, destroy the constitution itself?

In vain shall the accomplices of the author of carnage inveigh against French fraternity, as long as Ireland exhibits so melancholy a picture of the fraternity they have adopted themselves: I will not compare the systems of fraternity in the East or West Indies, adopted by England and France, but I will compare the alliance which England had formed with France, she calls her natural enemy, with that she dictates to Ireland, she calls her brother and friend. In her alliance with France, she gave what she got, and reciprocity was the equitable basis on which it was made; whilst in her alliance with Ireland, she has taken all she could have asked or demanded, and she has given us exclusion in grateful return. On this scale of British fraternity, let her hirelings boast of British connexion. On this scale of British fraternity, may my country no more be cursed with the friendship of Britain! Too long a tyrant, she forgets her dominion has ceased. Too long her slaves, we must shew her we are resolved to be free! Had she ceased to maintain power by the accursed means of fomenting religious dissension; had she ceased to support factions, usurpers, and traitors; had she abandoned the false illiberal notion, that she gained more by our depression than by our exaltation; had she treated us like brothers and friends, I may, with confidence affirm, a more affectionate generous ally never existed, than she would have found Ireland to her. But if the existing fraternity, my fellow citizens, be the bonds by which you wish a connexion with Britain, I am not a delegate fit for your choice; for though I stood alone in the commons of Ireland, I would move the repeal of every law which binds us to England, on those or any such terms. I will neither be conquered by England or France; nor are we any more bound to a disadvantageous alliance to one than we are to the other; and before England, the factions of Ireland, and the adminis tration, I speak it, if it is more the true interest of Ireland to form an alliance with France than with England, she is free to adopt it. The jargon of standing or falling with Britain is false: in the days that are past we have always been down, it is time we should seek to be up! Rich in a population of 4,000,000 of