lous impiety of her example. But if a3 Catholics you should guard it, the palladium of your creed, not less as Irishmen should you prize it, the relic of your country. Deluge after deluge has desolated her provinces. The monuments of art which escaped the barbarism of one invader fell beneath the still more savage civilization of another. Alone, amid the solitude, your temple stood like some majestic monument amid the desert of antiquity, just in its proportions, sublime in its associations, rich in the virtue of its saints, cemented by the blood of its martyrs, pouring forth for ages the unbroken series of its venerable hierarchy, and only the more magnificent from the ruins by which it Was surrounded. Oh! do not for any temporal boon betray the great principles which are to purchase you an eternity! Here, from your very sanctuary,---here, with my hand on the endangered altars of your faith, in the name of that God, for the freedom of whose worship we are so nobly struggling---I conjure you, let no unholy hand profane the sacred ark of your religion; preserve it inviolate; its light is "light from heaven"; and, like the fiery pillar of the captive Israel, it will cheer the desert of your bondage, and guide to the land of your liberation!

LETTER

FROM

GENERAL WASHINGTON,

ΤΟ

SIR JOHN SINCLAIR,

Extracted from a work entitled, “A Gene-· ral View of the Agriculture of the Northern Counties and Islands of Scotland."

I have read with peculiar pleasure and approbation, the work you patronize, so much to your honour, and the utility of the public.--. Such a general view of the Agriculture of several countics of Grea

Britain, is extremely interesting, and cannot fail of being very beneficial to the agricultural concerns of your country, and to those of every other wherein they are read; and must entitle you to their warmest thanks. for having set such a plan on foot, and for prosecuting it with the zeal and intelligence you do,

I am so much pleased with the plan and execution myself, as to pray you to have the goodness to direct your bookseller to continue to forward them to me, accompanied with the cost, which shall be paid to his orders, or remitted as soon as the amount is made known to me; when the whole are received, I will promote as far as in me lies, the reprinting them here.

I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country, than by improving in agriculture, in breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman's cares; nor can I conceive any plan more conducive to this end, than the one you have introduced, by bringing to view the actual state of them in all parts of the kingdom, by which good and bad habits are exhibited in a manner too plain to be misconceived. For the accounts given to the British Board of Agriculture, appear in general to be drawn up in a masterly manner, so as fully to answer the expectations formed in the excellent plan which produced them; affording at the same time a -fund of information, useful in political economy, and serviceable in all countries,

GEORGE WASHINGTON,

SPEECH

OF

CHARLES PHILLIPS, ESQ.

IN THE

CASE OF O'MULLEN v. M'KORKILL,

DELIVERED

IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, GALWAY,

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,

I am instructed as of counsel for the plaintiff, to state to you the circumstances in which this action has originated. It is a source to me, I will confess it, of much personal embarrassment. Feebly, in

deed, can I attempt to convey to you, the feelings with which a perusal of this brief has affected me; painful to you must be my inefficient transcript-painful to all who have the common feelings of country or of kind, must be this calamitous compendium of all that degrades our individual nature, and of all that has, for many an age of sorrow, perpetuated a curse upon our national character. It is, perhaps, the misery of this profession, that every hour our vision may be blasted by some withering crime, and our hearts wrung with some agonizing recital; there is no frightful form of vice, or no disgusting phantom of infirmity, which guilt does not array in spectral train before us. Horrible is the assemblage! humiliating the application! but, thank God, even amid those very scenes of disgrace and of debasement, occasions oft arise for the redemption of our dignity; occasions, on which the virtues breathed into us, by heavenly inspi ration, walk abroad in the divinity of their exertion; before whose beam the wintry robe falls from the form of virtue, and all the midnight images of horror vanish into nothing. Joyfully and piously do I recognise such an occasion; gladly do I invoke you to the generous participation; yes, gentlemen, though you must prepare to hear much that degrades our nature, much that distracts our country-though all that oppression could devise against the poor-though all that persecution could inflict upon the feeble-though all that vice could wield against the pious-though all that the venom of a venal turpitude could pour upon the patriot, must with their alternate apparition afflict, aff.ight, and humiliate you, still do I hope, that over this charnel-house of crime-over this very sepulchre, where corruption sits enthroned upon the merit it has murdered, that voice is at length about to be heard, at which the martyred victim will arise to vindicate the ways of Providence, and prove that even in its worst adversity there is a might and immortality in virtue.

The plaintiff, gentlemen, you have heard, is the Rev. Cornelius O'Mullan; he is a clergyman of the church of Rome, and became invested with that venerable appellation, so far back as September, 1804. It is a title which you know, in this country, no rank ennobles, no treasure enriches, no establishment supports; its possessor stands undisguised by any rag of this world's decoration, resting all temporal, all eternal hope upon his toil, his talents, his attainments, and his piety --doubtless, after all, the highest honours, as well as the most imperishable treasures of the man of God. Year after year passed over my client, and each anniversary only gave him an additional title to these qualifications. His precept was but the handmaid to his practice--the sceptic heard him, and was convinced; the ignorant attended him, and were taught he smoothed the death-bed of too heedless wealth; he rocked the cradle of the infant charity-oh, no wonder he walked in the sunshine of the public eye, no wonder he toiled through the pressure of the public benediction. This is not an idle déclamation; such was the result his ministry produced, that within five years from the date of its commencement, nearly £2000 of voluntary subscription enlarged the temple where such precepts were taught, and such piety exemplified. Such was the situation of Mr. O'Mullan, when a dissolution of parliament took place, and an unexpected contest for the representation of Derry, threw that county into unusual

In

commotion. One of the candidates was of the Ponsonby family—a family devoted to the interests, and dear to the heart of Ireland; he naturally thought that his parliamentary conduct entitled him to the vote of every catholic in the land; and so it did, not only of every catholic, but of every christian who preferred the diffusion of the Gospel to the ascendancy of a sect, and loved the principles of the constitution better than the pretensions of a party. Perhaps you will think with me, that there is a sort of posthumous interest thrown about that event, when I tell you, that the candidate on that occasion was the lamented Hero over whose tomb the tears, not only of Ireland, but of Europe, have been so lately shed he who, mid the blossom of the world's chivalry, died conquering a deathless name upon the field of Waterloo, He applied to Mr. O'Mullan for his interest, and that interest was cheerfully given, the concurrence of his bishop having been previously obtained. Mr. Ponsonby succeeded: and a dinner, to which all parties were invited, and from which all party spirit was expected to absent itself, was given to commemorate one common triumph-the purity and the privileges of election other countries, such an expectation might be natural; the exercise of a noble constitutional privilege, the triumph of a great popular cause, might not unaptly expand itself in the intercourse of the board, and unite all hearts in the natural bond of festive commemoration.But, alas, gentlemen, in this unhappy land, such has been the result, whether of our faults, our follies, or our misfortunes, that a detestable discussion converts the very balm of the bowl into poison, commissioning its vile and harpy offspring, to turn even our festivity into famine. My client was at this dinner; it was not to be endured that a catholic should pollute with his presence the civic festivities of the loyal Londonderry! such an intrusion, even the acknowledged sanctity of his character could not excuse; it became necessary to insult him. There is a toast, which, perhaps, few in this united country are in the habit of hearing, but it is the invariable watchword of the Orange orgies; it is briefly extitled "The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good King William." I have no doubt the simplicity of your understandings is puzzled how to discover any offence in the commemoration of the Revolution Hero.-The loyalists of Derry are more wise in their generation. There, when some Bacchanalian bigots wish to avert the intrusive visitations of their own memory, they commence by violating the memory of King William.* Those who happen to have shoes or silver in their fraternity--no very usual occurrence--thank his Majesty that the shoes, are not wooden, and that the silver is not brass, a commodity, by the bye, of which any legacy would have been quite superfluous. The Pope comes in for a pious benediction; and the toast concludes

This loyal toast, handed down by Orange tradition, is litterally as follows,-we give it for the edification of the sister island.

"The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good King William, who saved us from Pope aud Popery, James and slavery, brass money and wooden shoes; here is bad luck to the Pope, and a hempeu rope to all Papists

It is drank kneeling, if they cannot stand, nine times nine, amid various mysteries which none but the elect can comprehend.

with a patriotic wish, for all his persuasion, by the consummation of which, there can be no doubt, the hempen manufactures of this country would experience a very considerable consumption. Such, gentlemen, is the enlightened, and liberal, and social sentiment of which the first sentence, all that is usually given, forms the suggestion. I must not omit that it is generally taken standing, always providing it be in the power of the company. This toast was pointedly given to insult Mr. O'Mullan. Naturally averse to any altercation, his most obvious course was to quit the company, and this he did immediately. He was, however, as immediately recalled by an intimation, that the catholic question, and might its claims be considered justly and liberally, had been toasted as a peace-offering by Sir George Hill, the City Recorder. My client had no gall in his disposition; he at once clasped to his heart the friendly overture, and in such phrase as his simplicity supplied, poured forth the gratitude of that heart to the liberal Recorder. Poor O'Mullen had the wisdom to imagine that the politician's compliment was the man's conviction, and that a table toast was the certain prelude to a parliamentary suf frage. Despising all experience, he applied the adage; Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt, to the Irish patriot. I need not paint to you the consternation of Sir George, at so unusual and so unparliamentary a construction. He indignantly disclaimed the intention imputed to him, denied and deprecated the unfashionable inference, and acting on the broad scale of an impartial policy, gave to one party the weight of his vote, and to the other, the (no doubt in his opinion) equally valuable acquisition of his eloquence ;-by the way, no unusual compromise amongst modern politicians.

The proceedings of this dinner soon became public. Sir George, you may be sure, was little in love with his notoriety. However, gentlemen, the sufferings of the powerful are seldom without sympathy; if they receive not the solace of the disinterested and the sincere, they are at least sure to find a substitute in the miserable professions of an interested hypocrisy. Who could imagine, that Sir George, of all men, was to drink from the spring of Catholic consolation? yet so it happened. Two men of that communion had the hardihood, and the servility, to frame an address to him, reflecting upon the pastor, who was its pride, and its ornament. This address, with the most obnoxious commentaries, was instantly published by the Derry Journalist, who, from that hour, down to the period of his ruin, has never ceased to persecute my client, with all that the most deliberate falsehood could invent, and all that the most infuriate bigotry could perpetrate.

You may remember, gentlemen, amongst the many expedients resorted to by Ireland, for the recovery of her rights, after she had knelt session after session at the bar of the legislature, covered with the wounds of glory, and praying redemption from the chains that rewarded them you may remember, I say, amongst many vain expedients of supplication and remonstrance, her catholic population delegated a board to consult on their affairs, and forward their petition. Of that body, fashionable as the topic has now become, far be it from me to speak with disrespect. It contained much talent, much inte