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which, if it does not inspire, will yet invigorate the martyr to merit immortality; which, when one world's agony is passed, and the glory of another is dawning, will prompt the prophet, even in his chariot of fire, and in his vision of heaven, to bequeath to mankind the mantle of his memory! Oh divine, oh delightful legacy of a spotless reputation! Rich is the inheritance it leaves; pious the example it testifies; pure, precious, and imperishable, the hope which it inspires! Can you conceive a more atrocious injury than to filch from its possessor this inestimable benefit-to, rob society of its charm, and solitude of its solace; not only to outlaw life, but to attaint death, converting the very grave, the refuge of the sufferer, into the gate of infamy and of shame! I can conceive few crimes beyond it. He who plunders my property takes from me that which can be repaired by time but what period can repair a ruined reputation? He who maims my person affects that which medicine may remedy; but what herb has sovereignty over the wounds of slander? He who ridicules my poverty, or reproaches my profession, upbraids me with that which industry may retrieve, and integrity may purify-but what riches shall redeem the bankrupt fame? what power shall blanch the sullied snow of character? Can there be an injury more deadly? Can there be a crime more cruel? It is without remedy--it is without evasion! The reptile calumny is ever on the watch. From the fascination of its eye no activity can escape; from the venom of its fang no sanity can recover. It has no enjoyment but crime; it has no prey but virtue; it has no interval from the restlessness of its malice, save when, bloated with its victims, it grovels to disgorge them at the withered shrine, where envy idolizes her own infirmities: Under such a visitation how dreadful would be the destiny of the virtuous and the good, if the providence of our constitution had not given you the power, as, I trust, you will have the principle, to bruise the head of the serpent, and crush and crumble the altar of its idolatry !

And now, gentlemen, having toiled through this narrative of unprovoked and pitiless persecution, I should with pleasure consign my client to your hands, if a more imperative duty did not still remain to me, and that is, to acquit him of every personal motive in the prosecution of this action. No; in the midst of slander, and suffering, and severities unexampled, he has had no thought, but, that as his enemies evinced how malice could persecute, he should exemplify how religion could endure; that if his piety failed to effect the oppressor, his patience might at least avail to fortify the afflicted.He was as the rock of Scripture before the face of infidelity. The rain of the deluge had fallen-it only smoothed his asperities, the wind of the tempest beat-it only blanched his brow; the rod, not of prophecy, but of persecution, smote him; and the desert, glittering with the gospel dew, became a miracle of the faith it would have tempted! No, gentlemen; not selfishly has he appealed to this tribunal; but the venerable religion wounded in his character,--but the august priesthood vilified in his person,-but the doubts of the sceptical, hardened by his acquiescence, but the fidelity of the feeble, hazarded by his forbearance, goaded him from the profaned privacy of the cloister into this repulsive scene of public accusation. In

him this reluctance springs from a most natural and characteristic delicacy; in us it would become a most overstrained injustice. No, gentlemen-though with him we must remember morals outraged, religion assailed, law violated, the priesthood scandalized, the press betrayed, and all the disgusting calendar of abstract evil; yet with him we must not reject the injuries of the individual sufferer. We must picture to ourselves a young man, partly by self-denial of parental love, partly by the energies of personal exertion, struggling into a profession, where, by the pious exercise of his talents, he may make the fame, the wealth, the flatteries of this world, so many angel heralds to the happiness of the next. His precept is a treasure to the poor; his practice, a model to the rich. When he reproves, sorrow

seeks his presence as a sanctuary-and in his path of peace, should he pause by the death-bead despairing sin, the soul becomes imparadised in the light of his benediction! Imagine, gentlemen, you see him thus--and then, if you can, imagine vice so desperate as to defraud the world of so fair a vision. Anticipate for a moment the melancholy evidence we must too soon adduce to you. Behold him by foul, deliberate, and infamous calumny, robbed of the profession he had so struggled to obtain, swindled from the flock he had so laboured to ameliorate, torn from the school where infant virtue vainly mourns an artificial orphanage, hunted from the home of his youth, from the friends of his heart, a hopeless, fortuneless, companionless exile, hanging, in some stranger scene, on the precarious pity of the few, whose charity might induce their compassion to bestow, what this remorseless slanderer would compel their justice to withhold! I will not pursue this picture; I will not detain you from the pleasure of your possible compensation; for oh! divine is the pleasure you are destined to experience ;--dearer to your hearts shall be the sensation, than to your pride shall be the dignity it will give you. What! though the people will hail the saviours of their pastor: whet! though the priesthood will hallow the guardians of their brother; though many a peasant heart will leap at your name, and many an infant eye will embalm their fame who restored to life, to station, to dignity, to character, the venerable friend who taught their trembling tongues to lisp the rudiments of virtue and religion, still dearer than all will be the consciousness of the deed. Nor, believe me, countrymen, will it rest here. Oh no! if there be light in instinct, or truth in Revelation, believe me, at that awful hour, when you shall await the last inevitable verdict, the eye of your hope will not be the less bright, nor the agony of your ordeal the more acute, because you shall have, by this day's deed, redeemed the Almighty's persecuted Apostle, from the grasp of an insatiate malice-from the fang of a worse than Philistine persecution.

SPEECH

OF

SIR JOHN NEWPORT,

DELIVERED

At an Aggregate Meeting at Waterford,

IRELAND,
JUNE, 1815.

Mr. Chairman-I beg, Sir, before you enter any further into the business of the day, to be permitted to offer a few observations. I may be considered, perhaps, as obtruding myself on the notice of this meeting, but I trust I shall be allowed the favour of your indulgence, while I endeavour to render an account of that mission with which your partiality has heretofore honoured me. It is not my intention to detain the meeting more than a few minutes, but I held it to be an imperative duty, where an important trust has been confided to me by so respectable a portion of my constituents and fellow-citizens, to render a full and exact account of the manner of its execution, and to endeavour to satisfy you, that if I have not discharged it with ability, I have at least done so with sincerity! Sir, I have at all times held it to be indispensibly necessary to the peace, the prosperity, and the happiness of this country, that a body, which constitutes so great and leading a part of the community as yours does, should be allowed fully to enjoy all the privileges of the constitution. On that principle, I have ever contended for your emancipation from the remaining disabilities which effect your body; and whether as a member of parliament, or as a private individual, I shall always endeavour to persevere in the same course. Gentlemen, I recollect a period when your cause was advocated only by a few, but I have lived to see it rise and grow up gradually, until on principle, you have hardly one enemy left. Heretofore, the principal objections to it were founded on the ground of expediency; but the time and manner are now the only question. Under these circumstances, if the people of this country persevere with firmness, calmness and temperance, in the

prosecution of their just claims, there can be no doubt of their speedy and ultimate success. -Cloud applause.)--There never was a question, perhaps, to which the maxim of "Sauviter in modo, fortiter in re, could be applied with greater propriety, because I am convinced it will appear, if rightly examined, that the most temperate of its advocates will likewise be found the most persevering. It was most gratifying and satisfactory to find, on a late occasion, that notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the question was brought forward, the number of its opponents had considerably decreased.-You have also in your favour the sense of the great body of you Protestant countrymen, and, as I have already said, you cannot fail of suring success by firm and temperate perseverance. Gentlemen, I look upon your cause as not merely that of the Catholic body, but as the cause of all Ireland, because I am firmly convinced, that this country can never enjoy peace, happiness, or prosperity, until every vestage of the distractions and difference, arising out of religious divisions, shall have been entirely extinguished by the admission of Catholics to an equality of privileges with their countrymen of other persuasions.

I beg leave, sir, to trespass on your patience a few moments longer, while I call the attention of the meeting to a circumstance which I conceive to be of high importance to your cause. In the discussion which occurred in the house of commons on the subject of the Irish Budget, the chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland, alluding to a measure which had been recommended by a committee which was then sitting for the investigation of the Irish Finances-namely the consolidation of the exchequers of the two countries, stated it as his opinion that this consolidation would be the consumation of the act of union. I objected to this statement, in the broadest and most unqualified manner, and I asserted it to be my firm and unalterable convic. tion, that the act of Union could never be completely consummated until all religious distinctions should be annihilated, and the catholics of this country admitted to the full enjoyment of the British constitution. I also thought it my duty to call upon the noble Lord, who had been one of their chief instruments in effecting that Union, to state to the house his opinion respecting my interpretation of the matter in question, when the noble Lord candidly stated, that he entirely concurred in my interpretation, and that he could never consider the act of union as fully or substantially consummated, until the remaining disabilities of the Roman Catholics of Ireland should be entirely removed. Gentlemen, you can all appreciate the value and impor tance of that declaration; you have it now upon record, as the opinion of the noble Lord who proposed the union, that he can never consider that measure as fully consumated, until you shall have attained all the privileges which you seek. Gentlemen, I considered this declaration as of the highest moment to your cause,--as such I hailed it -and feel happy in having been the humble instrument in drawing forth this statement.

Having thus stated, to the best of my ability, the mode in which I have executed the honourable trust which you have reposed in me, I have only to repeat my earnest wishes for the success of your claims.

As to the mode and manner of prosecuting those claims, it is a matter entirely peculiarly for your consideration-and it would be as inconsitent with my duty, as it is far from my intention to interfere in the remotest degree with the exercise of your discretion on that point. I have chosen to address you in this early state of your proceedings, lest by remaining to a later period, I might be suspected of a desire to influence your conduct; and I shall now take my leave of you, gentlemen, with the assurance, that the same conduct which has so often procured me the gratifying reward of your approbation, shall be unremittingly continued to the end of my political life.

(The right honourable baronet then retired, amidst the loud and continued plaudits of the assembly.)

LETTER

FROM

CHARLES PHILLIPS, ESQ.

Barrister at Law,

TO THE

Editor of the Quarterly Review,

WRITTEN IN 1817.

"Ho, then, who are you-- a man or a body?---Certainly of the lowest order of men; for slaves even are not without a name. Yet these would be accounted king's men in a degree above their fellows."--Milton.

SIR,

An absence from Dublin on professional business prevented my seeing, until very lately, the Review in which you have honoured me with such particular attention. This circumstance alone has occasion

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