Ireland; which situation he resigned on the accession of Mr. Percival to power. Although, during the whole of the period to which we have hitherto adverted, Lord Donoughmore showed himself the warm and constant supporter of the claims of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, circumstances now occurred which served to draw still more closely the ties between them, and to render the noble lord, not more sincere, or more indefatigable (for that was impossible), but more conspicuous in his parliamentary efforts in their behalf. In consequence of a difference of opinion which took place in 1810 between the Roman Catholics of Ireland and Lord Grenville, with respect to the nature of the proffered securities which the latter thought ought to accompany the application to parliament of the former, the Catholics determined to confide their petition to the House of Lords, and the immediate task of urging that House to a compliance with its prayer, to the care and advocacy of the Earl of Donoughmore. Accordingly, on the 12th of March 1810, Lord Donoughmore presented two petions; the one from the general body of the Catholics of Ireland, and the other from the Catholics of the city of Cork, praying to be relieved from the degrading disabilities under which they were suffering; and on the 6th of June, in the same year, the noble earl moved to refer the petitions to a committee of the whole House. Lord Donoughmore prefaced this latter motion by a very able and eloquent speech. He commenced by generously defending the conduct of Lord Grenville, although he differed from that noble baron in his opinion of the necessity of any further securities on the part of the Catholics, and he expressed the concern which he felt at the strictures which he had met with on one who had always shown himself so warm and sincere a friend to the Catholic cause. The noble earl then proceeded to state and combat the various objections which had, at different times, been urged against concession to the Catholics, denying that it would, in the slightest degree, trench on any of the essential principles of the constitution. He especially ridiculed the - idea that any danger existed which should render the continuance of restriction necessary; "for where is now," he observed, "an insolent pretender to the British crown? Is there a British subiect who does not know and feel, with conscious security, that it is irrevocably seated on the brows of His Majesty's illustrious house? Where are we now to find the principle of that formidable confederacy with which our ancestors had to contend the assertion of the rights of exiled royalty, and the repudiated Catholic faith? Where are now the thunders of the once all-powerful head of that church, with which he was accustomed to shake the monarch on his throne, and to convulse the Christian world? If all these dangers have so entirely ceased, that for the proof of their ever having had any existence at any period we can only look to the history of times long gone by-I call upon those who still cling to those exclusions which they can no longer defend, for one justifiable argument, one plea of even colourable expediency, for the continuance of these degrading badges of distinction on this important class of our community,―numerous, loyal, and energetic." After a powerful and detailed course of reasoning, to prove the justice and necessity of granting the relief for which the petitioners prayed, the noble earl thus concluded: "What is it of which I complain, on the part of His Majesty's Catholic subjects?—an injurious system of laws, refusing equal benefits, and imposing unequal restraints. And what do I demand on their behalf? — An exemption from unequal restriction; the enjoyment of their birthright as citizens of a free state; and a full and complete participation in every right, privilege and immunity of the British constitution. Like the quality of that endearing attribute of Omnipotent Power, your merciful dispensations would be twice blessed in him that gives, and him that takes; in the deliverance of your enfranchised Catholic millions from unmerited insult and degradation, and in the increased and assured security of the Protestant state; presenting to every insolent menace of the implacable foe to the British name and greatness a wall of adamant, in the unconquerable energies of a united people." The noble earl's reply at the close of the debate was equally animated. In the debate on the 18th of February 1811, on Lord Moira's motion respecting Mr. Wellesley Pole's celebrated Circular, Lord Donoughmore took the opportunity of defending the Irish Catholics from various and contradictory imputations. "Your lordships are told at one moment, that the alleged dissentions of the Catholics justified this measure; and at another, that their deliberate and systematic perseverance in the violation of the law had made it necessary. But even insinuations of a less liberal nature have been thrown out; the real object of those meetings has been darkly hinted at with a mischievous air of mystery. The real object of the Catholic is his avowed one-to obtain the restoration of indisputable constitutional rights. His legal and constitutional demand of them ought not to be rejected with such insulting suspicions. Standing here as the person selected by the Irish Catholics to present to your lordships their claims upon your justice, I should ill deserve the high honour they have conferred upon me if I could patiently hear their motives misrepresented, their principles misstated, and their views and general character abandoned to suspicions as gross as they are groundless." When the subject of Mr. Pole's Circular again came under discussion on the Marquis of Lansdowne's motion, 22d February 1811, Lord Donoughmore again defended the Catholic body, and remonstrated against the line of policy which His Majesty's government on both sides of the water had adopted respecting them. On the 18th June 1811, Lord Donoughmore again moved to refer the Catholic Petitions to a committee of the whole House. He re-stated, with great force, the arguments which, in his opinion, ought to induce their lordships to consent to his proposition." On behalf of the petitioners, he only claimed the justice of being permitted to prove the merits of their case; the opportunity of rebutting those false and cruel aspersions by which their holy religion, and they, as the professors of it, had been unceasingly assailed; the opportunity of challenging their calumniators, to come forth and show in what manner they had sinned against their common country; by what transgressions of theirs they had deserved that condition of restraint and degradation under which they still continued to suffer. Consistently with the unity of the Catholic church, under one and the same spiritual head, its great land-mark and distinguishing characteristic, and which they could never cease to uphold until they should have renounced the religion of their forefathers, there was no sacrifice which they were not prepared to make to conciliate the esteem and the affections of their Protestant fellow-subjects. The sum and substance of his humble but earnest solicitation to their lordships, on behalf of his petitioning and aggrieved countrymen, was only this:-that they would not pronounce against them the hard sentence of perpetual exclusion from a just and equal participation in all the rights and privileges of the constitution, as disaffected members of the state, without the decent formality of some previous investigation,that they would not dismiss them from their bar discredited and condemned unheard.” " On the 1st of January, 1812, Lord Donoughmore received his commission as Lieutenant-general. On the 20th of April, 1812, he presented the general petition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland; and, on the next day, moved to refer it to the consideration of a committee of the whole House. “ Simple and uncomplicated, in all its native dignity and importance," exclaimed the noble lord, "the cause of your Catholic fellow-subjects now approaches your lordships. The known removal of that obstacle which has so long stood in the way of its accomplishment, leaves every man at liberty. to take up the question now on its own peculiar grounds. And though there should be some little deviation from former opinions and former votes, no one need be ashamed of such a change of sentiment, or of turning, however late, out of the road in which he has been travelling too long, into that path which leads to national conciliation, and national strength." 66 Having at all times, whenever it has fallen to my lot to -- address your lordships on this subject, put the question on the strong ground of constitutional right, I will not now degrade its magnitude and importance by condescending to enter into a detailed consideration of the particular impolicy and mischief of each existing disability; or to argue every separate head of exclusion as a distinct grievance in itself, on its own peculiar constitutional demerits. It is the principle of exclusion against which I raise my voice,-that principle which would draw a line of perpetual demarcation between the citizens of the same commonwealth, the subjects of the same king; which would brand upon the foreheads of our Catholic countrymen the foul imputation of unassured fidelity to the parent state; which would claim for the Protestant part of the community the British constitution as their exclusive inheritance, and cut up by the roots every prospect of uniting those conflicting interests, by that complete and useful adjustment which can be expected to stand on no foundation less firm than this, the enjoyment of the same constitutional privileges, the acknowledgment of the same constitutional rights."-"On the act of 1793, I take my stand; containing, as it does, a long catalogue of grievous disabilities. I produce it to your lordships as sufficient evidence to prove the case of my Catholic countrymen, in the existence of those exclusions from constitutional privileges, the removal of which` is the ground of their present appeal to the justice and wisdom of this House. I produce the same statute to your lordships, as a most important document in favour of the petitioner's claims, in another point of view; inasmuch as, by the great importance of the privileges which it restores, it enacts the most authentic proof of the conviction of the legislature, that that class of persons on whom it had conferred already so great a portion of political power, were worthy of perfect and complete confidence, as members of the Protestant state. On that foundation, so ably and so broadly laid in the statesman-like and weighty argument of a noble marquis (Wellesley,) on a late occasion, I lay the corner-stone of my argument. I say, with him, that every restraint excluding |