therefore, need not detail his past vagaries, repeat his political creed, and dilate on his universal suffrage and annual parliaments, or his other schemes of public ruin. We need not say that he is destitute of the confidence of Parliament and the country; and that he can scarcely espouse any cause whatever, without rendering it odious in the eyes of both. If there were two men in the British empire whom the Catholics, on the score of interest alone, ought to have shunned above all others, these men were William Cobbett and Sir Francis Burdett.
To identify themselves with these two individuals to the utmost point, seemed to be the great object of the Catholics. O'Connell, their acknowledged leader, acquainted the House of Lords that he was the advocate of universal suffrage and annual parliaments. He wandered about from one public meeting to another, to utter silly slang in favour of liberty, which was as repugnant to Whiggism as to Toryism; and which had been uttered by the Liberals before him, until the very groundlings disdained to listen to it. He could only cry up revolutionists and republicanism ; he could only worship a species of liberty the very reverse in shape and principles to that of Britain.
To that tribunal, therefore, which alone could relieve the Catholics—to that tribunal which, however the question of right might stand, they well knew would only decide in their favour from receiving satisfactory evidence that their religious and political feelings were unexceptionable, they brought only evidence to prove that they were a religious and political faction of the most dangerous character. That tribunal, upon listening to them, was told that they wished the Irish Church to be robbed, and the constitution to be altered: that they detested Bible and Missionary Meetings, and the Protestant religion; and that they were enamoured with the schemes of Radicalism: that, as a religious body, they meant to support those who were labouring to root up, by piecemeal, the established church; and that, as a political body, they meant to support those who were attempting to pull to pieces the constitution.
The leaders of the Catholics were noblemen, and men of liberal education —they were men of age and experience—they were men perfectly exempted from the control of their humble and ignorant brethren ; yet no body of men in the universe ever made a display of ignorance, folly, and imbecility, equal to this: It is amazing—it is incomprehensible. If they had wished to unite the British nation against them, and to convince Parliament and the Executive that it would be ruinous to relieve them from the disabilities, they would have done what they did, to have taken the wisest method. If "this ought not to be charged upon insincerity, or weakness of intellect, but upon the debasing influence of Catholicism, we regret, from our souls, that any of our fellow-subjects should be subject to the influence of such a religion.
In other times, Parliament would scarcely have listened to the claims of the Catholics after witnessing such an exhibition. The sight of the old spirit of Popery, holding its faggot in one hand, and waving the blood-stained banner of Reform in the other, would have been quite sufficient to deter any member from risking his reputation with the country by becoming its champion. But the nation happened to be in the midst of an outrageous fit of "liberality," the mania had excessive power in the House of Commons, and it was declared to be in the highest degree "illiberal" to keep the Catholics under disabilities. The Catholic question was, therefore, brought before this House in due form; its passage through it was characterized by various most remarkable circumstances.
Almost the first duty that Parliament had to discharge after its assembling, was to put down the Catholic Association: an association which practically comprehended the Catholics of the three kingdoms. It was put down on the avowed ground, that it was following the most unconstitutional and dangerous conduct, and putting the public peace in jeopardy. This Association had vilified in every way the religion of Britain, the British people, and the British government; it had displayed political principles perfectly at variance with the principles of the British constitution, and it had exhibited almost everything that is supposed to disqualify men for being British legislators and ministers. Yet no sooner had the
