182?.] The Catholic Association. 41)3 



landlords. The proposition of prying into titles was mere talk an empty 

 menace, never intended to be executed : and, if it had been, what cheaper 

 or more effectual stop could have been put to the vindictive poundings of 

 the cattle, and persecuting ejectments of the rebellious tenantry ? On 

 this point of rent, however, it would be but fair in the English to leave the 

 people of Ireland to themselves. They best understand their own con- 

 cerns, and know better than strangers where the shoe pinches, and what 

 will best serve their own occasions. The English have no idea of the 

 sort of persons by whom the Catholics at home are opposed, nor of the 

 sort of measures which are calculated to hold them in check. The Pro- 

 testant morality is as vitiated as the Catholic, by the demon of ascen- 

 dancy ; and a stranger would hardly conceive the malignant animal that 

 a genuine orange saint really is. These are domestic points in which a 

 stranger has no right to interfere. Give us Emancipation, and we will 

 no longer offend you by our follies. You sow thorns, and you expect to 

 reap figs and grapes; unreasonable presumption! 



Much might here be offered in extenuation of the errors of the Associa- 

 tion, on the ground of its necessary constitution. In Ireland there is no 

 effective middle rank of society. There is little between the highest 

 classes of proprietors, chiefly Protestant, and the peasantry. English mis- 

 rule has made Ireland a nation of absentee proprietors, and beggarly pro- 

 letarians. Newspaper editors, attorneys, here and there a small country 

 gentleman, and shopkeepers, form, of necessity, the bulk of every popular 

 assembly. These men may be inadequate to conduct a nation's affairs ; 

 but they are all we have ! As for the few men of education and fortune, 

 in the ranks of Catholicity, they are much intimidated, and are easy and 

 retired in their habits. If the Protestant proprietors, who are favourable 

 to Catholic claims, would join their Catholic fellow-citizens, and take their 

 place in the popular meetings of their countrymen, much might be done : 

 but, all things considered, this, perhaps, is too much to expect. 



Be the Association what it may, its existence is an uncontrollable neces- 

 sity, for which things, and not men, are alone answerable. The half-and- 

 half policy, which has given the Catholics much power, which has enabled 

 them to acquire wealth, without entirely removing either insult or injury, 

 has inevitably given birth to public assemblies of the people. This even 

 Mr. Peel allows, in acknowledging that he has advised an abstinence from 

 legal measures against them. The Association is the mere creature of 

 circumstances, and with circumstances laws cannot contend. As well, 

 therefore, might the English rail against the sun for shining, or the rain 

 for beating, as complain of this inevitable contingency. 



As to the imputed influence of the acts of the Association on the opini- 

 ons of the British public, I believe it is much over-rated. Hostility to 

 Catholic Emancipation is almost exclusively confined to the great borough- 

 oligarchy. The English people know and feel that their enemies and 

 those of the Catholics are the same ; and if the parliamentary advocates 

 of the question are fewer than heretofore, it is because corruption has been 

 active in the late elections. The opponents of emancipation are also, for 

 the most part, opponents of a free trade in corn ; and it is in their latter 

 capacity, more than in their former, that they have been nominated by 

 the great noble and landed proprietors of boroughs, to seats in parliament. 

 True it is, that the Duke of York being dead, and Lord Liverpool hors 

 de combat* the Catholic cause continues stationary. But the Lonsdales, 

 and the Rutlands, and tne Eldons, are at their posts,* and England and 

 * These obstacles now exist no longer. 



