CHAP. X.

CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.

AFTER what has been already written by others on this subject, it may seem presumptuous to entertain any hope of presenting it in a new or more interesting form: and, indeed, were it not that these pages may be read by some who are uninformed upon this head, and who neglect works of greater magnitude, I should have passed it in silence. As it is, I can only offer a few remarks in addition to those that I have advanced.

It is unnecessary to inquire minutely into those causes which prepared the way for that most important and glorious deliverance which Ireland obtained in 1782-4. This was partly occasioned by those silently operating, but eventful circumstances, which, whenever they occur in a nation that has long been oppressed, form the elements of a revolution, and render resistance to its just claims unavailing; and partly by the readiness of an enlightened ministry to do justice to the demands of a people who only requested the full possession of those powers and privileges, to the exercise 'and enjoyment of which, every

Briton has an indubitable right. From this period the commercial restrictions and the most grievous part of the penal code were abolished; and Ireland since has experienced all the happy effects of a rapidly increasing wealth and political importance. This growing opulence among Catholics and Protestants serves to shew, in the most striking light, the pernicious consequences of that narrow policy by which its concerns were managed in the days of its thraldom. It is now, however, compared with its former state, almost free, and this freedom has raised its rental in little more than twenty years from six millions to nearly fifteen; and has rendered its complete deliverance either from religious or political grievances infallibly certain. The silent but infinitely important revolution which it has already undergone, has opened the eyes of its inhabitants, however much divided by religious opinions, to view their real interest in its proper light,-to perceive that their disunion is the ruin of their country,-that the increase of their commerce, agriculture, and national happiness depends on their being free, perfectly free, and that, therefore, the accession of the Catholics to the full enjoyment of their rights is essential to the permanent prosperity of the whole population.

It is maintained by some of the people of this

country that what is termed Catholic emancipation can do the Irish peasantry, though it were obtained, no good; that its benefit can only extend to a few ambitious noblemen and gentlemen, and that, therefore, it is extremely absurd to force this subject so much on the public attention: and they are confirmed in this opinion by the hasty assertions of tourists, who say, that the inferior orders in Ireland are perfectly indifferent about emancipation; that few of them have ever heard of such a word, and still fewer know what is its import. This will appear to many good reasoning and altogether satisfactory.

As to the assertions of tourists, allowing them to be well founded, they certainly prove nothing. For it is very evident that the populace may in any country be very miserable, and, at the same time, not be able to mention to an inquiring stranger the remote and perhaps the principal cause of that misery. They feel the pressure of their calamities, and perhaps either blame the immediate agents by which these are occasioned, or their governors, without reflecting on the most effectual method of alleviating their sufferings, and bettering their condition. It is more natural for those of Ireland to dwell on the hardheartedness of middlemen, on the great rise of rents, and on other evils which are ever present with them, which affect, without any intervention.

of circumstances, their feelings and their comfort, than on political arrangements, of which they may possibly be very ignorant, whose operation because it is more general is less perceived, but whose influence is mighty on their character and happiness. Under the most despotic governments, where the inferior orders of the people are daily suffering, and where they are sunk in stupid ignorance, can it be supposed that they will be able to tell us accurately, the real causes of their grievances, to point out with the precision of a philosophic legislator the very sources whence their calamities proceed; and if they should fail in this, and seem altogether ignorant on the subject, are we to conclude that no such causes truly exist? The traveller in Ireland should endeavour to ascertain, not whether the people can talk fluently of emancipation, but whether the penal code has had any influence on their condition; whether it has, on the one hand, produced consummate and disgusting insolence, and on the other melancholy depression; whether it be fairly chargeable either remotely or directly with any share of the poverty, the ignorance, the vice, and the wretchedness with which this country is afflicted, and whether, consequently, its abolition would facilitate the removal of these evils.

It is not, however, true that the inferior orders of the Irish are indifferent or ignorant about

penal statutes: they know, for they must know from experience, that they and their fathers. have not been treated like protestants, and that neither they nor their nobles have enjoyed the rights to which they are entitled. Their sense of grievances, it is true, arising from this quarter, cannot at this day be so strong or so percept ble as it was thirty years ago, since the most galling of these were removed at that period, and since it is probable their condition in many instances, in consequence of their deliverance, has been rather improving. Still, however, the spirit which these grievances produced, which the operations of the Catholic code as a whole occasioned, does exist, and will continue to exist in a more alarming form, until every vestige of this yoke of bondage is destroyed. It is surely. folly peculiar to our own times to suppose, that by bettering the condition of the prisoners, that by taking off their irons, and affording a more plentiful supply of food, we render their future. confinement delightful, and are entitled to accuse them of ingratitude and unmanageable insubordination if they are not perfectly satisfied with their prison-house. The way to remove a discontented spirit from a people who have been wronged, is to do full and immediate justice to their claims. If they have been degraded by a code of laws, it is the most impolitic and dan