18 The Catholics of Ireland. [JAN. 



And we dislike in general arguing from what are called " facts," for 

 the cause and effect, as regards these, is always liable to be disputed 

 but surely the system of coercion as far as we can dare to try it has 

 been long enough, and obstinately enough, tried in Ireland. It has cursed 

 the Protestant inhabitant of that country who looked for advantage 

 from it with the hourly fears, as well as with the hideous passions, which 

 belong to an oppressor. To the Catholic it has given the blood-thirsty, 

 vindictive, treacherous spirit of a man, who feels that he is injured, and 

 feels that no fair no honest, candid means of redress, or of relief, are 

 open to him. It is this system which has brought us to the misery, of 

 hearing one portion of a people publicly adjured by the hatred which they 

 bore to another portion ! -and answering that adjuration. It is under this 

 system that we have heard the painful bodily affliction the deep and 

 calamitous personal suffering of at least a brave and open of a firm and 

 noble political opponent made the subject of laughter of ribald jest of 

 horrible exultation, merriment, and triumph. It is under this system that 

 we have seen a public petition presented against a gentleman eighty years 

 of age, and one who, in his day, it is well known, was used to put up word 

 for no man, to remove him from a post, which he could scarcely hope 

 to occupy a great while longer, upon the published statement that his 

 age and infirmities made him unjtt any longer to discharge the duties 

 of it. 



Acts like these arise out of feelings which Englishmen cannot com- 

 prehend. It is no wonder ; for those feelings are the fruits of a political 

 system, which Heaven be praised ! has been unknown to us. It is only 

 by abolishing and putting an end to that system which makes the two 

 parties in Ireland Catholic and Protestant the born enemies of each 

 other, that we can ever hope to eradicate those feelings, or cut down 

 that accursed poison-tree of party-spirit, which blasts and withers all 

 the wholesome existence of Ireland, and of Irishmen rendering their 

 society an offence, and their country a desert. 



Catholic Emancipation will not produce a result like this instantly; 

 but, until Emancipation is granted, that result can never be produced. 

 When attained, that result will not cure all the evils and miseries of 

 Ireland ! but it will allay the burning fever that consumes her, and 

 allow to other remedies the chance of operation and fair play. At least, 

 the fury lawlessness the disaffection of the general population of the 

 country will then no longer be, as it is now the boast, and the 

 RELIANCE of a large class of its inhabitants ! 



The length to which this article has already extended itself joined 

 to the impossibility of competently discussing the Catholic Question 

 within the limits of any single essay compels us to close our argument 

 for the present, though we leave many important circumstances connected 

 with it untouched. We are no friends to the Catholic faith or system. 

 None will be better content than we should, to see not a wreck or a frag- 

 ment of that religion remaining ; and upon some of the tenets and 

 usages upheld by it viewed with reference to their effect merely upon 

 the temporal interests of mankind we may hereafter take occasion to 

 observe. But it is because we are convinced that it is in the very nature 

 of every creed which is held by six millions of men, to gain additional 

 strength and compactness from the restraints imposed upon it, that we 

 are disposed to weaken those restraints to untwist the string that holds 

 the faggot to withdraw the pressure which binds the Catholics toge- 



