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petition prays may be continued, have produced upon Ireland. From the principles of that system, from the cruelty of those laws, I turn, and turn with the homage of my whole heart, to that memorable proclamation which the head of our church-the present monarch of these realms has lately made to his hereditary dominions of Hanover—That no man should be subjected to civil incapacities on account of religious opinions. Sir, there have been many memorable things done in this reign. Hostile armies have been destroyed, fleets have been captured, formidable combinations have been broken to pieces-but this sentiment, in the mouth of a king, deserves more than all glories and victories the notice of that historian who is destined to tell to future ages the deeds of the English people. I hope he will lavish upon it every gem which glitters in the cabinet of genius, and so uphold it to the world that it will be remembered when Waterloo is forgotten, and when the fall of Paris is blotted out from the memory of man.

Of the Catholic emancipation bill, I shall say, that it will be the foundation stone of a lasting religious peace; that it will give to Ireland not what it wants, but what it most wants, and without which no other boon will be of any avail.

When this bill passes, it will be a signal to all the religious sects of that unhappy country to lay aside their mutual hatred, and to live in peace, as equal men should live under equal law-when this bill passes, the Orange flag will fall— when this bill passes, the Green flag of the rebel will fallwhen this bill passes, no other flag will fly in the land of Erin than that flag which blends the lion with the harpthat flag which, wherever it does fly, is the sign of freedom and of joy-the only banner in Europe which floats over a limited king and a free people.

XLIII.-SECURITIES FROM CATHOLIC IRELAND.

PHILLIPS.

WHY is it that in the day of peace they demand securities from a people who in the day of danger constituted their strength? When were they denied every security that was

reasonable? Was it in 1776, when a cloud of enemies, hovering on our coast, saw every heart a shield, and every hill a fortress? Did they want securities in Catholic Spain? Were they denied securities in Catholic Portugal? What is their security to-day in Catholic Canada? Return-return

to us our own glorious Wellington, and tell incredulous England what was her security amid the lines of Torres Vedras, or on the summit of Burrossa! Rise, libelled martyrs of the Peninsularise from your "gory bed," and give securities for your childless parents! No, there is not a Catholic family in Ireland, that for the glory of Great Britain is not weeping over a child's, a brother's, or a parent's grave, and yet still she clamors for securities! Oh! Prejudice! where is thy reason! Oh! Bigotry! where is thy blush! If ever there was an opportunity for England to combine gratitude with justice, and dignity with safety, it is the present. Now, when Irish blood has crimsoned the cross upon her naval flag, and an Irish hero strikes the harp to victory on the summit of the Pyrenees. England-England! do not hesitate. This hour of triumph may be but the hour of trial; another season may see the splendid panorama of European vassalage, arrayed by your ruthless enemy, and glittering beneath the ruins of another capital-perhaps of London. Who can say it? A few months since, Moscow stood as splendid, as secure. Fair rose the morn on the patriarchal city-the Empress of her nation, the queen of commerce, the sanctuary of strangers; her thousand spires pierced the very heavens, and her domes of gold reflected back the sunbeams. The spoiler came; he marked her for his victim; and, as if his very glance were destiny, even before the nightfall, with all her pomp, and wealth, and happiness, she withered from the world! A heap of ashes told where once stood Moscow !

XLIV.--BLESSINGS OF EDUCATION.

PHILLIPS.

No doubt, you have all personally considered-no doubt, you have all personally experienced, that of all the blessings which it has pleased Providence to allow us to cultivate, there is not one which breathes a purer fragrance, or bears a

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heavenlier aspect than education. It is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no clime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave; at home a friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament; it chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave! a reasoning savage, vacillating between the dignity of an intelligence derived from God, and the degradation of passions participated with brutes; and in the accident of their alternate ascendency, shuddering at the terrors of an hereafter, or embracing the horrid hope of annihilation. What is this wondrous world of his residence?

"A mighty maze, and all without a plan"

a dark and desolate and dreary cavern, without wealth, or ornament, or order. But light up within it the torch of knowledge, and how wondrous the transition! The seasons change, the atmosphere breathes, the landscape lives, earth unfolds its fruits, ocean rolls in its magnificence, the heavens display their constellated canopy, and the grand animated spectacle of nature rises revealed before him, its varieties regulated, and its mysteries resolved! The phenomena which bewilder, the prejudices which debase, the superstitions which enslave, vanish before education. Like the holy symbol which blazed upon the cloud before the hesitating Constantine, if man follow but its precepts, purely, it will not only lead him to the victories of this world, but open the very portals of omnipotence for his admission. Cast your eye over the monumental map of ancient grandeur, once studded with the stars of empire, and the splendors of philosophy. What erected the little state of Athens into a powerful commonwealth, placing in her hand the sceptre of legislation, and wreathing round her brow the imperishable chaplet of literary fame? what extended Rome, the haunt of banditti, into universal empire? what animated Sparta with that high, unbending, adamantine courage, which conquered nature herself, and has fixed her in the sight of future ages, a model of public virtue, and a proverb of national independence? What but those wise public institutions which strengthened their minds with early application, informed their infancy with the principles of action, and sent them into the world, too vigilant to be deceived by its calms, and too vigorous to be shaken by its whirlwinds!

XLV.-WRONGS OF IRELAND.

GRATTAN.

HEREAFTER, when these things shall be history, your age of thraldom and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commercial redress, and miraculous armament, shall the historian stop to declare, that here the principal men amongst us fell into mimic traces of gratitude they were awed by a weak ministry, and bribed by an empty treasury; and when liberty was within their grasp, and the temple opened her foldingdoors, and the arms of the people clanged, and the zeal of the nation urged and encouraged them on, that they fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold.

I will not be answered by a public lie in the shape of an amendment neither, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty; I have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chains, and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied as long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of British chain clanking in his rags: he may be naked, he shall not be in irons. And I do see the time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the declaration is planted: and though great men should apostatize, yet the cause will live and though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, shall not die with the prophet, but survive him.

XLVI.-ON THE FUNERAL OF HENRIETTA.

BOSSUET.

Ir is not surprising that the memory of a great queen— the daughter, the wife, the mother of monarchs—should attract you from all quarters to this melancholy ceremony; it will bring forcibly before your eyes one of those awful examples which demonstrate to the world the vanity of which it is composed. You will see in her single life the extremes of things felicity without bounds, miseries without parallel; a

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long and peaceable enjoyment of one of the most noble crowns in the universe-all that birth and grandeur could confer that was glorious-all that adversity and suffering could accumulate that was disastrous; the good cause attended at first with some success, then involved in the most dreadful disasters. Revolutions unheard of, rebellion long restrained, at length reigned triumphant ; no curb there to license, no laws in force. Majesty itself violated by bloody handsusurpation and tyranny, under the name of liberty—a fugitive queen, who can find no retreat in her three kingdoms, and was forced to seek in her native country a melancholy exile. Nine sea-voyages undertaken against her will by a queen, in spite of wintry tempests,-a throne unworthily overturned, and miraculously reestablished. Behold the lesson which God has given to kings! thus does He manifest to the world the nothingness of its pomp and grandeur. words fail, if language sinks beneath the grandeur of such a subject, the simple narrative is more touching than aught that words can convey. The heart of a great queen, formery elevated by so long a course of prosperity, then steeped in all the bitterness of affliction, will speak in sufficiently touching language; and if it is not given to private individuals to teach the proper lessons from so mournful a catastrophe, the King of Israel has supplied the words-" Hear, O ye great of the earth! Take lesson, ye rulers of the

world!"

If our

XLVII-TRIAL OF THE CHURCH.

GILFILLAN.

THERE is coming upon the church a current of doubt, deeper far and darker than ever swelled against her beforea current strong in learning, crested with genius, strenuous

yet calm in progress. It seems the last grand trial of the truth of our faith. Against the battlements of Zion a motley throng have gathered themselves together. Atheists, pantheists, doubters, open foes, secret foes, and bewildered friends of Christianity, are all in the field, although no trumpet has openly been blown, and no charge publicly sounded. There are the old desperadoes of infidelity-the last followers of Paine and Voltaire; there is the soberer and stolider