HISTORY OF EUROPE. 



Ii7 



indignation arose. All descriptions 

 were eager to enrol thenisclycs in 

 the voluntary associations, which 

 bad been disused since the peace of 

 Amiens: but the catholics were in 

 many places openly and avowedly 

 refused ; in most they were coldly 

 and hesitatingly accepted. These 

 two circumstances, the sentiment 

 of blame and jealousy on the occa- 

 sion of Emmett's attempt, which 

 seemed to prevail among the pro. 

 testants, and the disinclination ob- 

 servable in the same quarter, to ad- 

 mit the catholics to the defence of 

 the country, rankled iti the minds of 

 the latter with considerable aspe- 

 rity. Although the causes were laid 

 in the preceding year, the effects 

 /^ecame conspicuous in the present ; 

 ■we arc, therefore, less out of order 

 in retracing matters which may 

 seem to have been disposed of un- 

 der the head of a former volume. 



Another incident of the year 

 1803, on which we expressed some 

 seBtiinents, recurs also on this occa- 

 sion. The letters addressed to earl 

 Fingall, by the lord chancellor Re- 

 desdale, found their way, about Ja- 

 nuary, 1804, into the public papers, 

 and appeared to contain a wild, un- 

 qualified, and indiscriminate ct nsurc, 

 upon all ranks and classes of that 

 gpeat body of the Irish, who conti- 

 nue in religious communion with the 

 Latin Primate. This was, indeed, 

 the tirst regular attack which had, 

 since the revolution, been made upon 

 the superior catholics ; in faft, they 

 had hitherto been treated, by every 

 successive administration, with great 

 external appearance of decorum. 

 The sehtimcnts contained in this cor- 

 respondence, having been necessa- 

 rily divulged, had already been the 

 iubject of indignant reprehension in 

 private circles ; but, the resentment 

 pearly exceeded all bounds, whcii; 



by a complete disclosure, it was 

 found, tiiat a minister of great trust 

 and power, the second person i:i 

 that part of the united Itingdom, had 

 adopted, as the result of his delibe- 

 rate judgment, opinions thus ob- 

 stinately and irreconcileably hostile 

 to the great mass of the Irish public, 

 and that he sandlloned accusations, 

 which sate hitherto more lightly, 

 because they were considered as tlie 

 giddy and ludicrous effusions of a 

 few hot-brained enthusiasts. 



It was the more extraordinary 

 that these charges should have been 

 preferred at that parlicular moment, 

 as the principal Roman catholics 

 manifested an extreme anxiety not 

 to distratl the attention of govern- 

 ment by their own immediate con- 

 cerns. Such, indeed, was the for- 

 bearance of that part}-, and such the 

 good temper diffused by Lord Ilard- 

 wicke's popular administration, 

 that this people were universallj 

 disposed to wave the consideration 

 of its interests, and to submit to 

 the privations which the law itill 

 imposed upon it, rather than per- 

 plex the public councils with M'hat 

 was known to be an intricate anJ 

 embarrassing questionv It was not 

 above two months previous to th« 

 date of these invectives, and pre- 

 vious to the disgusting doubts of 

 their fidelity, which we have no- 

 ticed, that the catholics of different 

 counties in Ireland, having been 

 convened for the purpose of pre-, 

 ferring applications, for thorough 

 emancipation (as it was termod) 

 to parliament, in every instanCii 

 refused compliance with the rcqui-, 

 sition. 



Like every strain of outrageous 

 violence, the letters of Lord Redes- 

 dale, when they came before the 

 public, produced the very temjjcf 

 of which they ^jccmed to deprecata 



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