1827.] [489 ] 



T1IK CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION.* 



To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 



SIR : I must throw myself on your justice and compassion ; and intreat 

 of you a few pages (and a very few only I ask), in the ensuing number of 

 your Magazine, for the present communication, rendered necessary by the 

 article headed " Catholic Resolutions," which appeared in April. That 

 article, though written by a friend of Emancipation, is calculated to preju- 

 dice the cause ; and its appeaiance, at this critical moment, will do much 

 mischief, unless its statements and reasonings are met with an immediate 

 reply. Every question, it is said, has two handles; and your correspon- 

 dent has, unfortunately, taken hold of the wrong one. There is, moreover, 

 a sufficiency of truth and common-sense about much that he writes to ren- 

 der its misapplication a source of very fatal error : an open and avowed 

 enemy could not, indeed, be more injurious. It is not my intention to 

 justify all the overt-acts of the Catholic Association, which he so vehe- 

 mently accuses. That body has done many things disgracious to the 

 English many injurious to their own cause many to provoke their ene- 

 mies many to cool, to annoy, and to impede their friends. But your 

 correspondent views all this through the fog of a London atmosphere, which 

 aggravates and distorts ; and the inferences he draws are neither philoso- 

 phical nor candid. Admitting the premises admitting that there is much 

 in the conduct of the Association to blame, as unwise and factious yet 

 it should be remembered that their position is peculiar their duties, embar- 

 rassing; and that, when all allowances are made, if there still remains 

 something which is susceptible of no apology, it should not be forgotten 

 that error is the natural consequence of that moral degradation, which six 

 centuries of misrule are calculated to impress on the population. If the 

 Catholics are turbulent, the circumstance, so far from affording an argument 

 against their emancipation, is one of the strongest in favour of their liber- 

 ties ; and if there are individuals in England fools enough to fall into a 

 passion, and to refuse justice, because the victims of oppression do not 

 writhe gracefully under the lash, nor sigh harmoniously under the harrow, 

 the fact is deeply to be lamented. It tells more against the English than 

 against the Irish ; and it is surely not the part of an enlightened politician, 

 or of a considerate friend, to encourage the prejudice, and to elaborate the 

 sophism, to the widening of the breach, and the mutual injury of both 

 countries. There is still one more error in your correspondent's reasoning, 

 which lies in the consequence that flows by implication from it that, had 

 the Catholics acted more wisely, their enemies would have been less trium- 

 phant. 



Upon the score of violence, the people of Ireland have ever been most 

 unfairly dealt with. Whenever they have been tranquil, and have quietly 

 waited the growth and development of opinion in England on the subject 

 of their wrongs, they have been represented as insensible to injury ; and an 



* As an unequivocal proof of the sincerity of our opinions upon the subject of Catholic 

 Emancipation, we insert the above reply to an article in our last number contrary to the 

 declared rule of our Magazine. Our reproof in that paper was meant to apply not to the 

 conduct of the Catholics of Ireland as a people, but to the measures which a few indivi- 

 duals who call themselves self-constituted or otherwise their " leaders, 5 ' have thought 

 fit to pursue on their behalf. The letter of our present correspondent is written with spirit 

 and ingenuity ; but of the utter fattructiveness (to all Catholic interests) of the course 

 which we have reprobated, it is still impossible for us to entertain a doubt. ED. 



M.\f. Neto Series VOL. ITT. No. 17. 3 R 



