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ingly declare, that we approve of the conduct of the Commons of the Common Council, in withholding their approbation in favour of any Police Magistrate; and further, that in every capacity in which we shall be, we will endeavour to procure the repeal of that mischievous Act of Parliament. And further, as we conceive the corruption and violence of Ministers have not been confined to the city, but have extended to the kingdom at large, to defend the same we solemnly declare,

That we will not vote for any person who will not support a place bill, a pension bill, a bill to make his Majesty's Ministers responsible; a bill to disqualify revenue officers from voting for members to serve in Parliament; a repeal of the Police Acts; nor shall we vote for any person who does not support the redress of grievances; viz, the war charges imposed by the late Lord-lieutenant, and continued by the present; the sale of honours; arbitrary and illegal imprisonment; arbitrary and illegal demands of bail; infringement of the privileges of the commons of the city of Dublin. Finally, we declare,we will not vote for any person who does not promise that be never will assent to the misconstructions of statute the 33d of George II., whereby no person can be the Lord Mayor of Dublin, who is rejected by the Commons.

Resolved unanimously, that this meeting do most heartily concur with the report of the committee, and do submit the same to the consideration of our fellow subjects at large.

Resolved unanimously, That the warmest thanks of this meeting be presented to those respectable personages, his Grace the Duke of Leinster, the Earls of Charlemont and Moira, and other members of the Whig Club, for their manly, spirited, and constitutional support of the laws of the land, and the privileges of the citizens of Dublin; and we cannot avoid expressing our concern, that anything disrespectful should have been offered to them in the discharge of their duty to their country.

Resolved unanimously, That the thanks of this meeting be voted to the independent jury who refused to find TRUTH a LIBEL, on the late prosecution of a printer.

Sir Edward Newenham, at the request of the meeting, having taken the chair,

Resolved, That the thanks of this meeting be given to our worthy and respectable chairman, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Esq., for his spirited and proper conduct in the chair.

Mr. Rowan having resumed the chair.

Resolved unanimously, That the report of the committee, and the proceedings of this day, be published in the public papers, and that this meeting do now adjourn.

Signed by order,

MATT. DOWLING, Sec.

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REQUISITION AGREED TO AT A MEETING OF THE INDEPENDENT DUBLIN VOLUNTEERS, 17th October, 1791,

ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN in the Chair.

We, the undersigned Protestant members of the corps of Independent Dublin Volunteers, have seen with infinite regret, a publication, in which a reward is offered for the conviction of Roman Catholics found under arms in this country.

That a part of those laws which discredit our ancestors' memories, should be enforced instead of being repealed, in these enlightened days, must be a matter of astonishment; and the more so, as France, a country of Catholics, has opened its arms to the religious of all persuasions, and with that justice which is inseparable from wisdom, have declared every man to possess equally the rights of citizenship, among which, that of bearing arms is most essential.

We therefore call upon our brother Protestants of this corps, to join us in expressing an abhorrence of those statutes, under the sanction of which such publication has appeared, and to assure our Catholic brethren, that while we honour and will support the individual and the magistrate who distribute impartial justice, we execrate those characters who would enforce laws, which, in our opinion, disgrace the statutes of the nation, October 11th, 1791. Signed by 21 Members.

We, the Protestant members of the Independent Dublin Volunteers, having assembled in consequence of the above Requisition, do sincerely and unanimously join in opinion with those members who have called us together, and, admiring the liberality of the sentiments contained in a proclamation of Louis XVI., King of the French, do adopt them as

our own.

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"Louis, by the grace of God, and the constitutional law of the States King of the French, to all citizens, greeting :

"Let every idea of intolerance be abandoned for ever. Let religious opinions no longer be a source of persecution and animosity. Let all who observe the law be at liberty to adopt that form of worship to which they are attached, and let no party give offence to those who may follow opinions differing from their own, from motives of conscience." At a Meeting of Delegates from the Protestant Members of the Associated Corps of the City of Dublin, 23d October, 1791:

It was unanimously resolved, That we perfectly concur in opinion with our brothers the Independent Dublin Volunteers, in their proceeding, of the 7th instant, respecting a late transaction, and adopt, as they do, the liberal sentiments of Louis, the King of the French; sentiments which dignify human nature, add lusture to a throne, and adorn the monarch of a free people; and while we admire the philanthropy of that great and enlightened nation, who have set an example to mankind, both

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of religious and political wisdom, we cannot but lament, that distinctions injurious to both have too long disgraced the name of Irishmen; and we most fervently wish that our animosities were entombed with the bones of our ancestors; and that we, and our Roman Catholic brethren, would un te, like citizens, and CLAIM THE RIGHTS OF MAN.

JAMES NAPPER TANDY, for the Liberty

Artillery, and Donore Union.

JOHN EDWARDS, P. Horse.
THOMAS BACON, Goldsmiths' Corps.
JAMES RIDDAL, Liberty Volunteers.
WILLIAM SMITH, Dub. Leg.

J. T. ASHENHURST, Dub. Rangers.

III.

PETITION OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF
IRELAND.*

INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN PRESENTED TO PARLIAMENT BY

MR. O'HARA, IN FEBRUARY, 1792.

SHEWETH, 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, had 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 alarm 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. It is a part of our calamities, that we do not know how to tell them with Prepared by Mr. Burke.

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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 will be made for expressions extorted by 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 constitution, 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 with 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 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; a universal exclusion, a 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 emolu

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ment, 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 these 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 severe persecution, for the sake of our religion, and we come out of the ordeal, with our religion, and with our loyalty.

Why then are we still left under the ban of our country? We differ, it is true, from the national church in some points of doctrinal faith. Whether it is our blessing or our misfortune, HE only knows to whom all things are known. For this our religion we offer no apology. After ages of learned and critical discussion, we cannot expect to throw farther light upon it. We have only to say, that it is founded on revelation as well as the religion established by law. Both you and we are regenerated in the same baptism, and profess our belief in the same Christ; you according to the Church of England, we according to the Church of Rome. We do not exercise an abject or obscure superstition. If we err, our errors have been, and still are, sanctioned by the example of many flourishing, learned, and civilized nations. We do not enter, we disdain to enter into the cavils of antiquated sophistry, and to insult the understanding of Parliament, by supposing it necessary to prove, that a religion is not incompatible with civil government, which

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