1829.] The Dublin Public Dinner to Lord Morpeth. 9 
We scarcely know whether this measure, or the Reform, should have 
taken the precedency in the scale of subversion ; for, if the former would 
be the endless plague of England, the latter would be the total ruin of 
Ireland. 
But the topic is too wide for our present discussion. At another time 
we shall show that, however melancholy the loss of a legislature may be 
to a people, the transfer of the legislature from Ireland, was in the stern- 
est degree essential to the connexion of the countries ; that the creation 
of the Forty Shilling Freeholders—an act of the most miserable and fac- 
tious folly—was the true evil which made the Union this matter of abso- 
lute necessity: the popish influence, by that frantic measure, having 
rapidly corrupted the Irish House of Commons, and made it a focus of 
hostility to the whole system of the British Government. The repeal of 
the Union now, would be the creation of a declaredly popish parliament. 
But we know the tender mercies of the religion of the Inquisition. 
The proscriptions of James can never be forgotten. The protestants 
would be forced to stand with arms in their hands against the inveterate 
bitterness of popery: they must fight or fly ; the British Cabinet must 
be roused by the cries of the Irish protestant for mercy, and of the 
English protestant for justice ; however weak, sluggish, or conciliating, 
they would not dare to suffer this scene, if they valued their heads. There 
must be military interference. Then there must be civil war. And can we 
suppose that a popish parliament would be looked on with an indifferent 
eye by the spirit of popery in Europe; that every agent of superstition 
would not be busy in such a hope of the reconquest of a nation to the 
undivided allegiance of Rome? or that foreign powers would not rejoice 
in the chance of British dismemberment ; and, with the faithlessness that 
belongs to their. oath-dispensing religion, rouse and sustain the fray, 
until Ireland was turned from a field of battle into an appanage of France, 
Spain, or Austria; or the war burned out in the ashes of the last inha- 
bitants of the undone land? 
_ We will pronounce to the British Cabinet, with the most solemn con- 
viction of our hearts, founded on the most intimate knowledge of popery, 
that if they suffer papists to enter the British parliament, all those things 
will be done. A faction, of which a generation of knotted snakes would 
be but a tame emblem, will start up before them. Concession after con- 
cession will be wrung from them ; till a fraudulent, a timid, or a foolish 
administration finds itself qualified to barter away the country to the 
iron-linked faction of popery. The votes of its hundred members will 
be the purchase ; but the remedy and the atonement will be Revolu- 
tion. 
M.M. New Series —Vow. VII. No. 37. C 
