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acted till four rebellions of Irish Romanists, each conducted with most horrible acts of barbarity, convinced the Protestants, that nothing but deprivation of political power, and inability to injure, could secure them from the effects of the inveterate hostility of their Romish fellowsubjects. The enjoyment of real property is attended by political power and influence; it was the object of the popery laws, enacted in the reign of Queen Anne, to prevent Romanists from acquiring it, and, by degrees, to diminish the portion of it then in their hands; not by depriving them of their estates, but by holding out inducements to such of them as were then seised of real estates, " to conform to the Protestant religion; and by dividing them, after the demises of the then possessors, if they continued Romanists, among their children, so as to prevent, hereafter, large landed estates from remaining in their hands individually. These laws were attended with the best effects. Being enacted before the Romanists could recover from their total defeat in the reign of William the Third, they were prevented from acquiring new strength again to assault the state, and Ireland remained, for a century, without a rebellion. If these laws had been continued, it would have remained undisturbed to this day; but unluckily a very active, industrious, indefatigable, and able agent of the Irish Romanists,

the late Mr. Edmund Burke, obtained such credit with the English ministry, as to persuade them that it was impolitic to keep the Irish Romanists under the restraints of the popery laws; and prevailed on them to exert all their influence in Ireland to procure their repeal, which they effected by every kind of intrigue, exerted with uncommon activity, for a period of twenty years and upwards; and in the year 1793, they compleated the business in Ireland, and conferred on Romanists the elective franchise, giving them, by that measure, a decided political interest, which they further increased at the union of Great Britain and Ireland by disfranchising almost all the boroughs in Ireland, wherein a great portion of the Protestant interest in that country was, exclusively vested, and, thereby, transferring the return of almost the whole of the present Irish representation to popular elections. By such measures, the British ministry put the Irish Romanist on an exact level with the Irish Protestant, in respect to all political privileges, save that a Romanist cannot sit in the imperial parliament without taking the oath of supremacy, and repeating and subscribing the declaration; the repeal of the obligations to do this, is what the Irish Romanists at present pretend to be the object of their political pursuit; but the truth is, they only look upon such repeal as the effectual

means of subverting the whole Protestant establishment in Ireland in church and state.

It might have been thought, by any reasonable man, that the English ministry would have been eured of their papomania, by the conduct of the Irish Romanists in the year 1798: after they had been put on a level with the Irish Protestants in the year 1793; and after all the Popery laws, of which they so loudly complained, had been then repealed, they broke out suddenly into a very general rebellion, in the year 1798, and at the first burst massacred, without mercy, all Protestants, men, women, and children, which fell into their hands: the Protestants, though surprised, flew to arms, and suppressed this rebellion in about a month, without any assistance from England. The Marquis Cornwallis, who at the blazing out of the rebellion was appointed Lord-fieutenant, did not arrive in Dublin, till the day on which the battle of Vinegar Hill was fought, sixty miles from Dublin, which completely suppressed the rebellion, so far as it was at all formidable. He was a nobleman of great honour and humanity, and seemed to have been sent over by the ministry, to suppress the rebellion, not by arms, but by clemency; for his very first measure was a proclamation of pardon to the rebels on very easy conditions, when nothing remained to be done with them, but to hunt their dispersed

fugitive parties through the country and bring them to justice. This rebellion demonstrated the impolicy of the repeal of the Popery laws; whilst they were in force the nation was quiet, and for a longer space of time than it ever had been before: when repealed, rebellion raised its hydra head.

The conduct of the two classes of malcontents, already mentioned, shew, that they are thoroughly acquainted with the ultimate views of the Irish Romanists, utterly to subvert the Protestant establishment in Ireland; and that their determination was not to obstruct them in it, for the measures of the ministry, called the Talents, afforded strong instances of their hostility to the whole Protestant establishment in Ireland. The Protestant charter schools in Ireland were instituted, in consequence of an address to the Crown, by the Irish parliament, upwards of seventy years ago, for the elemosynary education of the children of Irish Romanists, and bringing them up in the Protestant religion, The mass of the Irish Romanists, being of the lower order of the people, sent their children to the schools founded by this institution, where they were lodged, clothed, educated, and apprenticed to Protestants: the schools were supported by voluntary donations of charitable Protestants, and by an annual donation from parliament. This institution was

the most effectual measure in its operation, for reclaiming the lower orders in Ireland from the Romish superstition, that had been ever thought of, or established in that country; and was therefore most dreaded and abhorred by the Romish priests, and by such of the Romanists as were wealthy, and had any claim to rank among them; but they were not very numerous. Their friends, composing the ministry called, All the Talents, therefore determined to annihilate this institution. They first began their operations, by circulating the most atrocious misrepresentations of the design, conduct, internal management, and effect of it; calumniating and maligning the agents employed in its execution; they were rather too hasty and explicit in their reprobation of this most salutary institution, declaring openly in parliament, their intention to apply the revenues of the Protestant charter schools in Ireland, to more salubrious purposes.

The next measure of this Talent ministry was to diminish first, and then abolish, in Ireland, the payment of tithes applicable to the support of the Protestant parochial clergy. One-third of the tithes in Ireland is in lay hands, or are appropriations belonging to the dignitaries in the church; the other two-thirds are payable by law to the incumbents of the several parishes; but though