568 The Brunswick Clubs. [Dec. 
national hand the power of defending them, we should deserve our fate, 
if we folded our arms, and lazily lingered for the shaping of the Cabinet 
opinion, whether we were or were not to be undone. It is the first and 
most imperious call of our hazarded rights and our insulted understand- 
ing, to assemble, and, by all legitimate means, pronounce the will of the 
British people. 
On Thursday, November the 3d, the leading Protestants of Ireland 
were convened in Dublin, for the purpose of forming a Brunswick Club. 
The assembly was immense—of the highest importance, in point of rank, 
property, and intelligence—and their speeches and resolutions were 
worthy of their character and their cause. The chair was taken by the 
Earl of Longford, a nobleman of large fortune, and among the most 
estimable and honourable of the peerage. 
The Earl of Mayo, pledging himself to the firm support of “ the Pro- 
testant Church, the Protestant King, and the glorious Constitution as it 
was settled in 1688,” proposed the First Resolution :— 
“That, associated as we are on the principle of defending the integrity of 
our Protestant constitution against the dangers to which its existence is at 
this day exposed, we conceive it our duty, in the present posture of affairs, 
to employ every means which a legal and constitutional exercise of our privi- 
lege, as British subjects, can place at our disposal, in order to effect its pre- 
servation.” ; 
The Earl of Enniskillen, declaring, “ that the time was arrived when 
it was absolutely incumbent on every Protestant in Ireland to oppose the 
machinations of the enemies of the Constitution, and to stop the progress 
of that disaffection which they were labouring to spread through the 
land,’ moved the Second Resolution :— 
“ That the constitution, which we thus willingly pledge ourselves to sup- 
port, was the effect of that great national Settlement of these countries, the 
Revolutiou of 1688, under which the system, designated by the law by the 
name of Popery, was completely excluded from the civil constitution of this 
country—not merely because it had been denounced as erroneous in matters 
of religion, but because it had been found, by experience, to involve a political 
system unsuited to the free spirit of the nation, and inconsistent with the inde- 
pendence of the crown.” a 
This resolution was seconded, and elucidated, in a long and able 
speech, by Mr. Moore, one of the representatives of Dublin. 
The Hon. General Taylor, pronouncing, that “ the Catholic Associa-~ 
tion had usurped the Government of Ireland, that unqualified emancipa- 
tion meant nothing less than the overthrow of the established Govern- 
ment, and that toleration was perfectly incompatible with the spirit of 
Popery,” moved, that— 
“No change whatever has taken place, that we can discover, to warrant a 
departure from the policy and principles which governed those who conducted 
the great constitutional settlement of the Revolution, investing the political 
power of the state in Protestants exclusively, as the best safeguard of the 
Protestant religion, of the Protestant establishment of those countries, of the 
Protestant succession to the crown, and of the civil and religious liberties of the 
empire. ¢ 
Viscount Castlemaine moved the Fourth Resolution :— 
“ That, under the Protestant constitution of the state, as completed and 
established by the Revolution of 1688, toleration unlimited has been extended 
