precipitating them into false measures, and mutual recrimination, and finally terminating in the dissolution of their committee, rendered them objects of pity or contempt, much more frequently than of apprehension, to their enemies;-yet these very enemies, from party and other motives, arising out of their own factious rivalries, were frequently obliged to call in these same Catholics to their alliance, and to make concessions to good sense and better feeling, which under other circumstances they would have scornfully disdained. Whatever were the quarrels of the ascendancy, there always resulted some advantage to the Catholics and their cause. Whether the government or the oligarchy were defeated, the Catholic could not lose. The notorious quarrel between the primate Stone and Boyle in 1753, which terminated so much to the advantage of Undertakers, and compelled the Managers to a reluctant surrender of patronage and public money, through an apprehension of an immediate refusal of the supplies; the succeeding contentions on the Elegit bill, in the final decision of which so many of the House of Commons were personally interested; but above all, the stratagems, and disputes, and changes connected with the Octennial bill of 1768, by rousing to habits of discus

sion the public mind, and dividing the Protestant interest against itself, most materially contributed, in the midst of many temporary obstacles, to advance generally the cause of the Catholics.

The Association, as has been just stated, rather gradually melted away than abruptly separated by any formal or direct act, in the year 1763. Even the mercantile body, from which it had originally sprung, and from which the greatest portion of its life and energy was derived during its short and sickly existence, had sunk under the calamitous results of internal distractions, and seceded one by one from its later meetings. In the succeeding years of 1764, 1765, and 1766, the Catholics were too much alarmed by the outrages amongst the lower classes to think of assuming any corporate form which might excite or justify a suspicion of the slightest connexion with these disturbances. It is a remarkable feature in the early history of this body, that it seems throughout to have had no communication or sympathy with the people. Neither in a collective or individual capacity do the Catholic gentry and clergy appear to have had much control, or at least much of a political control, over the lower classes of their communion. Mr. O'Conor frequently complains,

in terms of just bitterness, of the more than Protestant severity of the Catholic landholders; and the thunders of the episcopacy, and the exhortations of the lower clergy, in the insurrection of Munster, fell idly on the affections and fears of the infuriated peasantry.* A similar line of demarcation runs on through all their proceedings down to the year 1793. In that year we still find the committee in collision rather than in connexion with the Defenders, and vainly attempting to interpose an influence which was never felt, and an authority which was openly derided between the loosened passions of the multitude and open insurrection. A similar separation of Catholic views and interests, in despite of all the intermediate means of communication, arising out of the contentions and discussions connected with the Rebellion or the Union, is extremely perceptible in their first appeals to the Imperial Parliament. It was reserved for the late Association fully to amalgamate the entire mass; to compress with a broad hand the sufferers of every denomination into one body, and to give for an indissoluble bond of union the perfect sense of common injury, the most extensive sympathy with

See Mr. O'Conor's Letter, June 4, 1762; and the Pastoral Letter to the Diocese of Cloyne, March 2, 1762.

every thing Catholic, a defined and positive expression of their wants and wishes, and a umiversal, uniform, unbending determination, whatever time it might require, whatever difficulties might intervene, to obtain them. This was the mighty miracle, the great achievement of that powerful body-an effect never before produced to the same extent by any other combination of similar elements. But this also had its progress; and the people were tediously and laboriously prepared for the revolution. It rose up like a river from the earth; but an attentive investigation will still discover with astonishment from what deep and distant fountains that mighty stream had taken its birth, and with how many tributary rivulets in its long subterraneous passage it required to be fed, before it could attain, in the open day, that plenitude of power which has at length excited the alarm of the empire, and rendered necessary the immediate intervention of the entire legislature.

A considerable period now elapsed without any remarkable effort on the part of the Catholics; but in the year 1773 they again attempted a new organization. Of the relics of the First committee was gradually formed a Second, under the immediate auspices of Lord Kenmare, who seems to have succeeded in great degree to the

joint power of Lord Taaffe and of Lord Trimleston. Their first measures were not characterised by much judgment, or much indiscretion. But a fortunate concurrence of circumstances soon arose, and by the operation of those personal feelings which had obtained so considerable a support for the Elegit bill, much more than by any extraordinary exertion on the part of the Committee itself, were at last granted those important concessions of 1776, which for the first time relaxed the severity of the antiCatholic code, and laid the sure ground-work of future equalization. The necessities of the Protestant pleaded for the freedom of the Catholic, and for once a sounder policy than the miserable principles of his statute-book, led him blindly but surely to a just sense of his own interests, and a more generous feeling for the sufferings of his fellow-countrymen.