1827.] The Catholics of Ireland. 19 



ther. And it is because we do not understand the strange anomaly of 

 alarming us about the advance of bigotry and priestcraft at one extre- 

 mity of a kingdom, while we are instituting prosecutions to check the 

 march of open infidelity at the other, that we apprehend no proselytism 

 from the utmost exertions of the Roman Catholic clergy, except of such 

 sucklings as would become followers of Richard Taylor, or Joanna 

 Southcote. 



In this view, therefore, it is, finally, that we intreat our readers to 

 look at the Catholic Question to look at it as a whole, not as a series of 

 unconnected items to attend to the grand result, not to the working of 

 isolated parts. We intreat them to consider in what a position how 

 contrary to nature the existing system places all parties in Ireland ! 

 Catholic ministers going from house to house, exhorting and influencing 

 the Catholic tenant to break his solemn compact with his Protestant 

 landlord ; Protestant landlords marching up their Catholic tenants, to vote 

 for that member as their representative in Parliament, who stood pledged 

 to maintain the exclusion of all Catholics from the rights and privileges 

 which their fellow-subjects hold for ever ! 



Let the gentlemen of England ask their own hearts and senses, if any 

 system under which men are placed in a situation such as this, can 

 ever prosper ? We ask them do they believe that, while the people of 

 Ireland have no leisure for any other employment but to hate and curse 

 each other, any improvement in the state of that country can rationally 

 be hoped for ? Our own object has been to take a view, less of the legal 

 quibbles incident to the Catholic Question, than of its broad and general 

 bearing. The exact extent to which we think concession should be car- 

 ried, we have not opportunity here to lay down in detail ; but we have 

 stated our principle, that such concession should be large free ample 

 such as would give almost every thing that the Catholics demand, and 

 every thing from which the security of this country, in its operations 

 with foreign powers, does not necessarily exclude them. Our main 

 anxiety has been to establish the principle of relief. To shew that no 

 real danger can result from that course ; and that, as regards Ireland, 

 without it, practically, we may dismiss the question of improvement 

 altogether. With our last line we repeat, that, of apprehension from 

 the consequences of Emancipation, no particle approaches us. If 

 England is strong enough to keep down Ireland now, and still to 

 persevere as she has so long persevered in a course of wrong ; she 

 has at least the same strength to maintain that unhappy country with, 

 if she were to try the experiment of doing justice. 



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