1827.] The Catholic Resolutions. 391 



retrograding a loss of thirty -one votes : it is the decision of a fresh parlia- 

 ment, elected under the influence of those feelings which the Catholic 

 administration of Mr. Shiel and Mr. O'Conriell had excited in the minds 

 of the people of this empire. If the Catholic gentlemen of Ireland dare 

 do justice to themselves and to their country, they will not let their pas- 

 sions betray them into sanctioning this ruinous conduct any longer. The 

 most moderate portion of talents, united with sobriety, patience, and inte- 

 grity, would be sufficient to ensure the success of their cause: but every 

 moment that its present representatives remain entrusted with it, places that 

 success at a further distance, and widens that breach between the two par- 

 ties, which wiser or more sincere politicians will have to fill up. The course 

 of clamour, dogged pertinacity, and menace, may lead to insurrection ; 

 but England never will change her opinions to get rid of mere importunity, 

 or be so mad as to answer an appeal to her fears with any other reply 

 than that she is prepared. It is not by employing advocates, at whose 

 very names persons of sober meaning turn away with dislike ; it is not 

 by relying upon what may have been dreamed of two hundred years or 

 twenty years ago -the hopes held out at the Union, on the true reading 

 of the treaty of Limerick ; it is only by shewing that the privileges 

 which they demand may now be yielded to them with safety, that the 

 Catholics can hope to do any practical good in England ; and, unfor- 

 tunately, almost every word that has been uttered for them of late years 

 goes directly to the contrary of such a proposition. There is a distinction 

 if the Catholics of Ireland could find it between pertinacity and per- 

 severance. With men of only common character and conduct for its lead- 

 ers, their cause cannot fail of eventual success ; but unless the thing is 

 done by force after the measures of the last two years it is hopeless it 

 is impossible, that that success can be immediate. The temperate and 

 influential friends whether Protestant or Catholic of the removal of 

 Catholic restrictions in Ireland, must unite themselves into a body for pro- 

 moting that object if it is to be promoted upon different principles from 

 those on which it has been advocated of late. Their aim must be to con- 

 vince not merely to importune or to threaten ; to shew the people of 

 England the inconveniences which, practically, they suffer from the opera- 

 tion of the existing system two-thirds of whom scarcely believe that 

 (except for the purposes of an occasional oration) they labour under any 

 grievances at all. This object will be more readily obtained, too hard 

 as it will be for some persons to believe us by the exhibition of facts than 

 by the utterance of harangues. The actual evils of Ireland and not the 

 beauties of Burke must be the matter for demonstration. The species of 

 motion guardedly selected as to subject, and well followed up which 

 Sir John Newport has once or twice brought before the House of Com- 

 mons, upon the state of the Church property and church " rating " in 

 Ireland would produce ten times more effect, for the next five years, 

 in sapping the foundation of the existing system in that country, than a 

 dozen debates upon Bills, Resolutions, or what not, proceeding directly 

 for that object which the people of England are as yet not prepared to 

 grant for " Catholic Emancipation. " 



