026 The Wellington and Ike Grey Administration*. f DEC. 



ten or a dozen Roman Catholics have become members of Parliament ; 

 our answer is plain; that a single year is no standard of the evil of a 

 legislative absurdity, which is to spread over the existence of all empire; 

 that no one ever supposed that in the first two or three parliaments 

 the evil would be prominent; and that the Roman Catholics were, hitherto, 

 chiefly among the lower classes, and kept back by their habits of life 

 from the means of indulging a dangerous ambition. But this means 

 we have now given them, and now that their eyes are fixed on Par- 

 liament, we shall see the madness of our concession, in the continued influx 

 of Roman Catholics. But, one point is still to be peculiarly observed. 

 In the Iat6 elections, the Popish priesthood were singularly and suspi- 

 ciously quiet. That they can be singularly active, and suspiciously 

 influential we have had abundant proof. 



In the Clare election, when there was a Papist object to carry, 

 they carried it with a high hand. They broke down with the most 

 perfect ease the influence of the crown, the church, and the country 

 gentlemen. They trampled Protestantism under their feet, and waving 

 alternately the cross and the green banner, they bore their popular can- 

 didate into parliament. But that deed once done, they instantly 

 stopped, their enthusiasm seemed to be extinguished at the moment 

 when it might have been expected to blaze, they seemed tamed by their 

 victory, and while a common calculation might have supposed the whole 

 Popish priesthood lifting the trumpet to their lips, and summoning all 

 their congregations to the support of Popery in the Legislature, not a 

 note was heard ; all was completely hushed, doubtless, by orders from 

 high quarters. 



The palpable reason of this extraordinary stillness is, that having 

 accomplished the only difficult part of the achievement by forcing 

 open the gates of the legislature, they were sagaciously prohibited from 

 awaking the British parliament to the folly which it had committed, 

 by any hasty exhibition of their strength ; and they have, in conse- 

 quence, suffered the elections to take their natural course for a while. 

 But when any foreign policy shall make it of importance to Rome to 

 influence the British legislature, we shall see the mandate sent forth to 

 the priesthood, the populace summoned from the altar, and the whole 

 force of Popery pouring into the houses of parliament. 



But the grand folly and crime are already committed. The progress 

 of Popery has been suddenly aided by the legislature, so far as it could ; 

 by this act, it has declared that truth and error in religion to it are the 

 same ; that a man is not the worse legislator for being the propagator 

 of the most erroneous religion ; that he tnay be a perfect subject of 

 the law, while he is a wilful or a blind opponent of those mighty truths 

 which are the foundation of all law ; and that he may be a safe 

 guardian of the liberties, civil, and religious, of a people, whose whole 

 constitution has been founded on a determined and principled rejection 

 of the authority, of the practises, and of the doctrines of that Popery 

 which he is bound, at the peril of his body and soul, to make para- 

 mount over all the rights and creeds of mankind. 



But what have been the fruits of this guilty and boasted measure, 

 even while the ink that registered it was scarcely dry ? Has it paci- 

 fied Ireland ? Let the answer be given in the universal tumults of 

 Ireland, in the insolent and daring public meetings, the furious speeches, 

 the proposals for armed confederacies, the contumely and defiance of 



