390 The Catholic Resolutions. [ APRIL, 



and rave, and vapour and prepare matters for just the same sort of 

 failure next year. 



. Now the threat of " rebellion " is very absurd. The great mass of the 

 Catholics of Ireland the peasantry suffer no practical inconvenience 

 from the existing disabilities. And, if those men who would have given 

 up even the political rights that they have who would have disfranchised 

 the forty shilling freeholders can rouse those freeholders into rebellion 

 for Catholic Emancipation, then they will be able to accomplish the same 

 work upon any future pretext, no matter how frivolous ; the struggle will 

 have to arise : and we may as well meet it on the instant. But, if it 

 should come to this, the fault will never be attributable to any necessary 

 unpopularity of the Catholic cause in England, but to the weakness and 

 apathy of those fit and natural representatives of the Catholic community 

 in Ireland, who shrink back, when they should step forward and take 

 their cause out of the hands of men, who are carrying it with long and 

 rapid strides, to its destruction. Of this the Irish Catholic proprietors may 

 rest assured : while the Catholic Association remains constituted as it is, 

 and conducts itself as it has done, the removal of their disabilities never 

 will take place. Whatever may be the intention of these persons, their 

 conduct has done more mischief, in only the last year, to the Catholic 

 interests, than three years of temperance, and prudence, and sober conduct 

 will fetch up again. They have contrived the two or three individuals 

 who are heard of as the " leaders " of the Catholic Association to 

 associate with the name of " Catholicism " almost every idea that is 

 repugnant to the minds of the people of England. Sedition equivo- 

 cation bigotry obstinacy and vain boasting, are the only thoughts that 

 suggest themselves to the minds of (numerically) three-fourths of the 

 British people, when the claims of the Catholics are named. " Do you 

 refuse us what we ask by a ' Resolution ' one night ? we'll try you with 

 a ' Bill/ and make you go through the debate again on the next. Do 

 our meetings and our inflammatory speeches offend you ? we'll give you 

 ten times more of them and more furious than ever. We sent you a 

 thousand petitions ; you read them, and decided against us : no matter ; 

 in six months more we'll send you two thousand ; see what you will say 

 to them. We are refused by the House of Commons : we'll try if we 

 can't annoy the king. You will not give us Emancipation? well ! we 

 shall go now for a ' Repeal of the Union.' If we can do nothing else, we 

 will provoke and bait you : and beware ! for, if debate does not answer 

 us at last ' action ' ; legal, constitutional action 'is at hand !" This 

 is Irish Catholic argument, and conciliation ! 



It is trash for the Catholic noblemen and gentlemen of Ireland to say 

 that they are not responsible for the acts or the conduct of the Catholic 

 Association. They, many of them, support that Association : two- 

 thirds of them subscribe to its funds : not one comes forward to reject 

 and renounce the inflammatory matter that is put forth from it on their 

 account ; and, until they do this whatever their own feelings may be 

 to talk of their not being responsible will be treated as a pretence. 



Catholic Emancipation is a measure which must be carried sooner or 

 later : but, if the present generation of Catholics are to see it carried, their 

 proper leaders must come forward firmly, andtakethe cause out of those hands 

 to which, by some fatal error only, it could ever have been entrusted. The 

 majority of*" four " in the House of Commons taken as a fact of itself 

 would not be a circumstance worth naming : but it is a going-back a 



