1807. jealousy of every independent adviser of the crown: and unequivocally urged, that if his Majesty continued to give ear to any counsellor of Whig principles, he would soon want a throne to sit upon, and a Protestant church to head. The highest disgust and diffidence in the Whig part of the administration was most industriously transfused through every avenue of the interior cabinet, and the ingenuity of every servitor was put on the stretch to devise the most plausible pretext for supplanting and expelling those obtrusive ministers. If the King's friends could not discover, they must create the means of debarrassing his Majesty from the degrading mortification of being importuned, dietated to, and controuled by men, whom he mistrusted, feared, and loathed. forward activity and craft in discrediting and dislodging the Whig ministers, ensured grace, favor, and promotion amongst the King's friends.

The Newry

prosecute

lou for a li

Hence

The spirit of a government is generally read in magistrates the acts of those, who advise and direct the exeMr. O'Han- cutive. From the Chancellor's conduct to Mr. Wilson the Tyrone magistrate, it appears to have been inferred by a large body of the northern magistrates, not only that opposition to abuses would not be encouraged, but that the censure of them would be actually punished. In this assurance a ule had been obtained in the Court of King's Bench, in the cause of The King v. O'Hanlon, to shew cause, why a criminal information should not be granted against Patrick O'Hanlon, Esq. a magistrate of the county of Armagh and Down, on

the application of certain magistrates of the town 1807. and vicinity of Newry, viz. John Ogle, Thomas Waring, William Pollock, Robert M'Can, Trevor Corry, Robert Thompson, George Atkinson, William Beath, and Charles Courtnay, Esqrs. for a libel, grounded on his having published in the newspapers an address presented by him from the Roman Catholics of Newry to his Grace the Duke of Bedford, on the affidavit of William Pollock, Robert M'Can, Smithson Corry, Esqrs. and James Bell, gentleman. These affidavits set forth the address.

address the

"To his Grace John Duke of Bedford, Lord Catholics Lieutenant General and General Governor of Duke of Ireland.

Bedford

"We the Roman Catholics of the town and parish of Newry, beg leave to approach your Grace with an assurance of unfeigned loyalty and attachment to our most gracious Sovereign, and with sin. cere gratulations on your appointment to the viceregal government of this country. We contemplate in this event, a sure pledge of that equal administration, which has been the object of our wishes, and which has appeared to be but the more removed from us, as the laws to our disqualification have been repealed. To those principles of constitutional freedom, of which your illustrious family have ever proved themselves the advocates,

1807.

we are devotedly attached. We revere the British constitution, and we hope from an enlightened legislature, an entire participation of its franchises. We wait this consummation of our hopes. Meanwhile, under your Grace's administration, we do not fear, but we shall experience, that the relaxation of the penal laws, under which we and our forefathers have so severely suffered, shall not have been in vain. While the magistracy, the army, places of subordinate trust and profit have been made accessible to persons of our persuasion, we have seen a jealous and exclusive spirit rendering these concessions nugatory. Our poor, our industrious labourer and mechanic, have been made to suffer under the partial exercise of ill understood and ill executed local authority; and having no other medium of judging of the spirit of his Majesty's government, they have been at times led to fear it was adverse to their happiness. We bless the divine disposer of events, that an æra more auspicious opens to our country and to us. No longer shall we see power abused, to the oppression of those, for whose protection it was destined; nor shall the character of a loyal people be misrepresented by those, who seek their debasement. Under your Grace's welcome and equal rule, wè shall become a united and happy people; culti vating the blessings of our genial clime and fruitful soil, a lever fostering as our best hopes, and most valuable possession, that estimable political system, our free constitution, for the preservation of which, and for the glory and independence of

the Empire, we shall consider no exertion too great, no sacrifice too dear."

1807.

in the King's

When the defendant came in to shew cause Proceedings against the conditional rule, Mr. Serjeant Ball Bench. stated the affidavits for the prosecution, which set forth the publication of the address by the defendant, and denied the application to the magistrates of the town and neighbourhood of Newry, and asserted the fair and impartial administration of justice by those magistrates between every class of his Majesty's subjects. It also set forth, that they conceived the said publication as calculated to defame and degrade the administration of justice, and the magistrates of the town and neighbourhood of Newry.

Mr. Oil

He then proceeded to state the affidavit of Mr. Affidavit of O'Hanlon, filed in this cause last Michaelmas on. Term, which set forth, That the town of Newry is situated partly in the county of Armagh and partly in the county of Down. That the address alluded to, had originated in a general meeting of the Roman Catholics of the town and parish- of Newry, convened for the purpose of addressing his Grace the Duke of Bedford on his appointment to the government of this country; and was prepared by a committee of eleven persons chosen at the meeting. That the defendant, accompa nied by two other gentlemen appointed for that purpose, did present the address, to which the Lord Lieutenant returned a gracious answer. That the address was once published in the Evening Herald and Hibernian Journal, and he believed in no

1807.

other paper, except the Dublin Gazette, in which he believed it is usual to publish addresses to the chief governor. That the Roman Catholics of the town of Newry, from their numbers, being three-fourths of the inhabitants, and from their respectability and property, are the most important body of that persuasion in any town of Ulster, and therefore assumed to speak without impropriety, in some degree for that province. That it was from these circumstances, that the said Roman Catholics judged it right and becoming in them to come forward among the first to lay at the foot of the throne a representation of grievances, which the Roman Catholics had suffered; to regret, that owing to a spirit of political monopoly, and the improper exercise of subordinate and local authority in different parts of Ireland, the relaxation of the penal law had not been attended with those benefits to the Catholics and to the community, which the legislature seems to have intended; and further to express an ardent hope and confident expectation of an equal and good government under the present administration. That the construction of the address made by the prosecutors, was, unfounded. That he had no intention, nor, as he believed, had others, parties in the same address, but to represent abuses, which had been too general not to be a matter of notoriety; and disclaimed for himself and for others, parties to the address, any intention to libel or defame the magistrates of the town and parish of Newry, or to bring the administration of justice into contempt, and that the