especially in the observations which they had permitted themselves to make upon His Majesty. On the 7th of November, when the bill was in the committee, Lord Donoughmore supported the divorce clause.

A bill for the removal of the Catholic disabilities having, in the session of 1821, been passed in the House of Commons, and brought to the House of Lords, Lord Donoughmore, on the 3d of April of that year, moved (as a matter of course) the first reading of the bill; observing, "that he was deeply impressed with a sense of the important situation in which he was placed, by being selected to advocate the claims of the Catholics in that house." On the 16th of April, the noble lord prefaced his motion for the second reading of the bill with a speech of great length and ability; in which he described the cruel and anomalous situation in which the Roman Catholics were placed, and urged the necessity of granting them relief. Adverting to the unreserved opinion which had been pronounced in hostility to the measure by the Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Liverpool, Lord Donoughmore said, that "although the authority of the two noble lords was doubtless very great, he had an authority as high in favour of the bill—the decision of the other House of Parliament. He would, therefore, only ask as a boon, that their lordships would consider the bill in the usual parliamentary manner. He desired not to pledge them to the whole, or to any part of the bill; all that he required was, a calm and temperate investigation of its merits. Who were the persons whose case the two noble lords treated so lightly, as to be of opinion that it did not deserve any consideration at all? They composed one-fourth part of the whole population of the United Kingdom; and four-fifths of that part of the empire to which he had the honour of belonging. Four millions of loyal Irishmen a body no less respectable for their honourable and conscientious feelings than for their number now demanded justice at their lordships' bar. They petitioned their lordships to be heard; they called for .

an examination of their claims; and he hoped they would not be sent away with their prayer rejected, and their application treated with contempt and insult.”

On the 19th of July 1821, Lord Donoughmore was created a peer of the United Kingdom, by the title of Viscount Hutchinson, of Knocklofty, county of Tipperary, with remainder as before stated.

When the Marquis of Lansdowne, on the 14th of June 1822, moved a resolution in the House of Lords, that the state of Ireland required the immediate attention of parliament, Lord Donoughmore supported the motion. On the 19th of July in the same year, the noble Lord gave "his reluctant assent" to the Irish Insurrection Bill, "as a mea-, sure of imperative necessity."

We have now arrived at the last session of the Earl of Donoughmore's laborious and patriotic parliamentary life. In the beginning of the year 1825, contrary to the advice and wishes of his family and friends, the noble Lord hurried to London in a very weak state of health, once more to obey the call of the Roman Catholics of Ireland. On the very first day of the session, the 3d of February 1825, he declared the pain which he felt at the passage of His Majesty's speech, which related to the Roman Catholic part of the community. in Ireland. His Lordship deprecated, in the then tranquil state of that country any recourse to measures of coercion, and maintained, not only that the Catholic Association had produced no evil, but that it had effected much good.

On the 24th of February 1825, Lord Donoughmore presented the Petition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, "the value of whose confidence," the noble Earl said, "he fully appreciated;" and he accompanied the presentation with a few powerful remarks on the expediency of restoring to the petitioners their rights; and an eulogium on the conduct of Marquis Wellesley, in the vice-regal government.

The bill for the relief of the Roman Catholics having been passed in the House of Commons, and brought to the House of Lords, on the 11th of May, 1825, on the motion of the

Earl of Donoughmore, it was read a first time; the noble Lord taking the opportunity to observe, that "his Catholic fellowsubjects having long done him the honour to place their petitions in his hands, and make him the medium of communicating their grievances, he could not but feel the greatest satisfaction, (the sincerity of which feeling he knew would be allowed by every noble Lord,) at welcoming from the other House of Parliament a bill which was a signal proof of justice, and of a growing spirit of conciliation." On the 18th of May, 1825, Lord Donoughmore moved that the bill be read a second time; but was too much indisposed to take a part in the long and animated debate on that question; the result of which it is scarcely necessary to add was, that the bill was thrown out.

On the 21st of May, a numerously attended meeting of the Roman Catholics of England and Ireland, was held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, the Duke of Norfolk in the chair. The first resolution, which was proposed and carried, was a vote of thanks to the advocates of the Catholie cause, in both Houses of Parliament. Lord Donoughmore, who had left the bed of sickness to be present at the meeting, was loudly called upon; and notwithstanding the bodily debility under which he was labouring, rose to address the noble Chairman. He said, "that in obeying the call which had just been made upon him, he begged, in returning his thanks to the meeting for the compliment which they had paid him, to applaud the spirit and determination with which they announced their intention to persevere in the attainment of their just rights. He felt no common interest in the success of their cause - it was bequeathed to him as an inheritance; for his father was the first man in the empire who had ventured to raise his voice even for a slight emancipation of his Catholic fellowcountrymen. Being thus from his birth attached to their cause-believing it to be inseparably connected with the great cause of civil and religious liberty-through all the vicissitudes of their struggle he had hitherto been through life, and he would remain to the close of life, their steady and unalterable

advocate. He therefore hailed with fervour the spirit which they manifested upon the present occasion, and which, he had no doubt, would eventually overcome the obstinacy that still resisted the justice and policy of concession."

Lord Donoughmore was mainly assisting in bringing to gether the sixty-nine peers, whose resolutions, agreed to at the house of his grace the Duke of Buckinghat, he was afterwards the chief instrument of publishing; thus, as it were, on his death-bed, leaving the Catholic cause supported by a solemn league and covenant, which bore the signatures of many of the greatest and most illustrious names in the British peerage, standing pledged to its principles.

From that period, the noble Earl rapidly declined; and on the 22d of August, 1825, he died at the house of his brother, Lord Hutchinson, (now Earl of Donoughmore,) in Bulstrodestreet, Manchester-square, aged sixty-nine.

By the death of Lord Donoughmore, Ireland lost a most devoted friend; the Roman Catholics, a dauntless advocate; the magistracy, an able and incorruptible judge; his tenantry, a kind and indulgent landlord; and his family, a powerful and most affectionate member. He will long be remembered by his country; and more especially by the county which, unlike the majority of the Irish aristocracy, he made the principal seat of his residence throughout life. By his mingled activity and moderation, he kept all tranquil in his neighbourhood, without any departure from constitutional principles; and it never became necessary to visit his barony with the inflictions of the Peace Preservation, or the Insurrection act.

At an open meeting of the general committee of the British Catholic Association, held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, on the 10th of November, 1825, after a resolution had been carried expressive of the warmest acknowledgments of the meeting to the sixty-nine peers, for the resolutions adopted by them at the residence of his grace the Duke of Buckingham, the Rev. Dr. Collins rose and addressed the meeting to the following effect:

"As a member of the committee, and in accordance with

their feelings, I come forward to propose a resolution for your adoption. I am sorry to say that this resolution is one more of lamentation than of thanks. Since our last meeting we have lost a distinguished friend, who was styled the 'hereditary advocate' of the Catholic claims by general consent. That great man fully justified the appellation by a life begun in your service, and marked in its progress by a fervent zeal which never abandoned him. With some difficulty, and after some struggling, I have acquired courage to name him. He was my personal friend, whom I valued for his private worth, and respected for his public conduct. I shall not obtrude my private sorrows on the meeting when I am engaged in a public cause, although I am sure no man could blame me for my inability to extinguish the operation of those feelings which all are proud to confess towards those to whom they are bound by sentiments of friendship and gratitude.

more.

"Curæ leves loquuntur; ingentes tacent"

But I will name him we have lost the Earl of DonoughHis distinguished father, Hely Hutchinson, came forward in defence of the Catholics at a time when no man dared oppose the cruel and unnatural code then in existence without danger to his fortunes, and destruction to his prospects. In the present times there is little comparative merit in the advocacy of our claims. The cause is in itself so just and so glaringly patriotic, and so thoroughly interwoven with the very essence and first principles of the constitution, that there is no honest man that is not ashamed not to support it. There may be some dark bigot who can never rise beyond the rottenness which gave him birth, or some ambitious ignorant fool, who hopes to win his way to the favour of some persons by persecuting his fellow-creatures, and these may still form exceptions to the general liberality of the age: but at the time when Hely Hutchinson came forward to support us, the bulk of the people were as iniquitously adverse to our claims as a few obscure individuals are now. Then there was a high degree of merit in standing by us. In some time afterwards, when