man cants in favour of liberty and liberal opinions with all the volubility of an English Radical. Were we to believe the Catholics, the men who dare not alter the laws of their church from the fear of the Pope and their priests, the men who assist in keeping their poor brethren in the most galling bondage,—they are the most fierce enemies of slavery in existence. All this is lost upon us in England. It is not for them to give us instructions touching liberty. We want no such liberty as they worship; we enjoy a far better kind already. When we see them as free from priestly tyranny as we are ourselves,—when we see them enjoy, and suffer their poor brethren to enjoy, the liberty, civil and religious, which the laws and constitution place within their reach, we shall then think they have some affection for liberty, but not before. O'Connell will delude the people of this country no more; they now know him; his coming to London has given them his exact measure.
We are pretty sure the Catholic priesthood imagined that their connexion with Sir Francis Burdett and Cobbett would give them a vast portion of our lower orders as proselytes. We were in some alarm touching this, but it is now dissipated; we even now think that this connexion will go very far towards accomplishing the extermination of Radicalism. So oddly do some things sometimes operate. The lower orders of the Irish have not the art of causing themselves to be beloved by the people of this country when they come among them. If an Irish regiment be expected in any of our towns, its arrival is looked for almost with horror; and so long as it may be quartered among the inhabitants, there is generally nothing but quarrelling and ill-blood between them and the soldiers. Our labourers regard the Irish ones as interlopers, who come among them to rob them of bread, and they dislike them from one side of the island to the other. In addition to this, the disposition and conduct of the Irish labourers are calculated to do anything rather than to gain the friendship of the English ones. It is a most remarkable fact, that, notwithstanding the labours of Cobbett and the radical Baronet, the petitions against the Catholic bill that were the most numerously signed, came from those places which a few years ago were the hot-beds of radicalism from Manchester, Glasgow, Oldham, Westminster, &c. In these places the Irish labourers are the most numerous. If the radical teachers only persevere in favour of the Catholics, we are pretty sure that a few years will make our lower orders once more loyal, once more King and Church people. Burdett's popularity among the Westminster electors is gone; were an election to take place in the present summer, he would lose his seat, if opposed.
We must now say a word touching the conduct of the Parliamentary and other advocates of the Catholics. These people actually speak as though the late decision had been directly at variance with the laws and constitution. With them it seems the majority is to bind the minority no longer; the voice of the nation is to be rated as nothing. They cannot see that the Catholic question is one on which the wisest and greatest of men may differ—they cannot perceive that it presents any difficulties and perplexities—they can only discover that it is quite impossible for themselves to be in error, and that all who differ from them are the most simple and ignorant persons in existence. They are not content with charging us with being utterly destitute of knowledge and understanding; we are, it appears, brim-full of all kinds of bad feeling. The modesty of this is amazing, and the liberality of it, considering that it proceeds from the exclusively "liberal" people, is still more amazing.
Well, before we concede that these are the only people in the empire who are capable of sitting in judgment on the Catholic question—that these are the only people in the empire who are capable of managing public affairs—that these are the only people in the empire who possess any talent, knowledge, and wisdom that these are the only people in the empire who are not fools, dunces, and knaves, let us see on what grounds we must make the concession.
Two of the most distinguished advocates of the Catholics—two of the leaders—maintained that the difference between the Catholic Church and the Church of England was trifling and unimportant. Did this prove that these individuals possessed suffi-
