1827.} The Catholic Association. 491 



nuisance. The objection is captious ; it is unworthy ; and, for the most 

 part, I believe it insincere. 



But there is a difference, it will be said, between firmness and violence. 

 The Irish can have nothing to hope from rebellion ; and their reference 

 to foreign war, it may be asserted, is an empty insult. Mr. ShieFs attack 

 on the Duke of York, and divers other overt acts of the association, it may 

 be argued, are as useless as they are impolitic : granted. The weak are 

 ever violent ; and this womanish railing and wordy vituperation, is no more 

 than might be expected from the helplessness of the Catholic position. 

 England, it is true, has always been bullied into concession ; but then it 

 has been a foreign enemy that has frightened them into their acts of tardy 

 and parsimonious justice. The Catholics should, perhaps, know this : 

 they should know that, with a million of protestants at home, with the 

 whole population of the north longing only for the opportunity to be at 

 the papists, a very small English army will suffice to prevent successful 

 rebellion in Ireland. Still, the mistake, if they really make it, of sup- 

 posing themselves equal to a fight with England, is not an unnatural, no 

 an unpatriotic one ; and, at least, the presumption is not greater than that 

 of their enemies, who think a rebellion may be risked, and who estimate 

 the loss of life and of property, of liberty and of happiness, in an unsuccess- 

 ful resistance to their usurpations, as nothing, when compared with the 

 maintenance of their own monopoly of all the power, influence, and 

 wealth of the country. If the Catholics are violent and intemperate, the 

 orange-men are at least equally so ; and the former have never carried their 

 factious violence into the jury-box: their magistrates and their gentry 

 have not resisted and insulted the government, and intercepted justice; 

 and their clergy have not openly preached blood and provoked to insur- 

 rection. Make the most, however, of the misdeeds of the Association : 

 Mr. Shiel wanted taste, when he abused and insulted his dying enemy, 

 and the Catholics made his speech their own by their approval : what 

 then ? That the Catholic population are not as politically educated as the 

 people of London, that they have not the virtues of freemen, the moral 

 tact of a thriving and united population, is the reproach of England. If 

 the people of Ireland were, indeed, good citizens, then would there be no 

 real distinction between a bad and a good government ; causes would not 

 produce effects ; and the constitution of Algiers would be as desirable as 

 that of America. It is the curse of our proconsular misrule that it edu- 

 cates slaves, not subjects : that it deprives the citizen, in the language of 

 Homer, of one-half of his virtues, and renders him as unprofitable to the 

 state, as he is unhappy in himself. Your correspondent, Mr. Editor, has 

 taken this question by its English handle, as I have said before ; I be- 

 seech him, in all kindness and sincerity, to grasp it by its Irish one ; before 

 he censures, with such unmeasured asperity, our intemperance, let him look 

 at the dreadful condition of the entire island, not only political, but eco- 

 nomical. Let him consider that the labouring population, without employ- 

 ment, are starving in the midst of abundance ; while every class and pre- 

 dicament in society, from the Lord-lieutenant, to the beggar in the street, 

 is dislocated and strained. Let him look at the helotism of the Catholic, 

 the insolence of the orange-man : let him weigh the cruel insults and 

 mockery of the invading army of saints; their parliamentary invectives; 

 their ferocious and often false accusations against the dogmas and the 

 morality of the prevalent religion ; their intrigues and their bribery of the 

 lowest of the starving and ignorant population ; their usurpation of educa- 



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