paupers in this mode; but it was thought that the issue of these first attempts was sufficiently favourable to indicate further inquiry and consideration. As the scheme was advocated on the ground of its being a successful method of removing paupers, it was opposed as an expensive and fruitless remedy for pauperism, as the numbers removed could never perceptibly reduce the superabundance of labour at home. The wider considerations of the benefits of calling new regions into fertility, and of creating new markets, and thus feeding and employing many who remained behind; the considerations of the proper ages of those who were to go; of their mutual apportionment and co-operation as capitalists and labourers; of the means of making emigration presently self-supporting and expansive -these points were not yet discussed, because they were not yet thought of. The great subject which was soon to become a science was as yet treated superficially, partially, and empirically. But a beginning was made. The committee asked for was appointed; and it presented its report and evidence before the dissolution of parliament, with a recommendation that the subject should be pursued without loss of time.

It was a disastrous year, this year 1826; but if we have seen what miseries marked its progress, we have witnessed, too, the birth of a great redeeming blessing. It is possible that from the woes and the terror and the clamour of that fearful season may have sprung the fertilisation and peopling of vast new regions abroad, and the redemption of future generations at home.

VOL. II.

CHAPTER X.

Catholic Question reviewed-State of Opinion in 1824-Catholic As ciation-Catholic_Deputation-Mr. O'Connell-Progress of Question-Sir F. Burdett's Relief Bill-Duke of York's Declarat -Bill lost-Catholics and Dissenters-Aspect of the Question.

THE year 1825 was marked by nothing more conspicuous than by a great change in the aspect and conduct of t Catholic question. In a preceding page of this Histor a promise was given of a brief narrative of this great que tion; and here, at the beginning of its final stage, we see to be at the right point for a rapid review of its history.

The difficulty of most or all perilous political question lies in the relation they bear to the long distant past; past which did not involve social principles that have sin become of primary importance, and by whose rule t matter must be finally disposed of. For long before t present date, there had been an incessant and unmanageab confusion, in the general mind of the anti-Catholic part between the religious and political mischiefs of admitti the Catholics to an equality of civil rights with the Protes ants; and this confusion itself was modern, compared wi the sufferings of the Catholics. This was because t sufferings of the Catholics began in an age when there w no distinction between civil and religious rights. Wh the distinction rose into recognition, the Romanists we actively persecuted, sometimes on the religious, and som times on the political ground; and when the persecuti became negative, and therefore confined to the politic ground, their enemies had still not arrived at any clearne of thought, or any common agreement, as to the basis their opposition to the Catholic claims. This is illustrat by the whole course of the history of those claims.

The Reformation is, of course, the point from which t separate story of the Catholic body must date. Wh Henry VIII., by his emissaries, demolished the holy shri of St. Kieran, and turned out its relics into the street, a

burned the costly crosier of St. Patrick, he did not persecute the Irish Catholics as Irish, but as Catholics; but his acts had the immediate effect of uniting in a general hostility to England the chiefs and tribes who were before incessantly at feud with each other. Nobody then thought of the distinction which grew up in a subsequent age. There was so little call for a religious reformation in Ireland, that we have it on good authority that there were not sixty Protestants in the island when Elizabeth became queen. During her 'vigorous rule' in Ireland, she and her ministers made no nice distinctions between her functions of head of the Church and head of the State, in the penal laws decreed against the Irish Catholics, and the legalised force by which she put down the Irish malcontents. In spite of the talk of the reformed religion in both countries, and the laws against the exercise of the Catholic religion, the conflicting parties were evidently full of political matters, and not of religious. The English government employed Catholic officials in the most important and confidential services in Ireland; even, if they belonged to the Pale, in repelling the Spanish invasions which took place on account of her anti-Catholic laws and policy. The Catholics of the Pale fought against those out of the Pale; and in the reign of James I., as a fierce Catholic, O'Sullivan, tells us, the eyes even of the English Irish-the Catholics of the Pale-were opened, and they cursed their former folly for helping the heretic.'

Eliza

beth's wars were waged against the chiefs of savages; chiefs whose tribes knew nothing of tillage, of homes, of property, or comforts; who, in the remoter parts of the island, went almost unclothed, and lay down round fires to sleep on the ground. These chiefs had lands to be robbed of. There will be lands for those who want,' said Queen Elizabeth, by way of stirring up her officials, when there were tidings that O'Neal was about to rise; and it would, no doubt, have been exactly the same-the whole course of her conquest of the rebels, whatever had been their religion, of all that existed, from pole to pole. Meantime, her Protestant Church of sixty members did not expand to her wish, though she gave bounties to it, and proscribed its enemies. When it did expand, it was not from con

versions in Ireland, but by the accession of the coloni of her successor, and the settlement of the soldiers Cromwell.

The confusion which arose after the incursion of the new dwellers gave rise to the Act of Settlement, by whi 7,800,000 acres of land were transferred from Ir Catholic to English Protestant proprietors. At the fi possible moment—that is, during the brief season wh James II. held up his head in Ireland-the native parl ment, in which only six Protestants sat, repealed the A of Settlement, against the will of the king. The battle the Boyne presently overthrew whatever had been dor and it is not to be wondered at that the popery laws whi succeeded were excessively severe. Though they said great deal about religious error, they were imposed dread of a political foe, whose physical force was tru formidable.The Protestant ascendency of Ireland,' sa the Edinburgh Review of Sir J. Throckmorton's work on t Catholic question, 'cared very little about purgatory a the seven sacraments. They acted upon principles simp political; and their severity was not derived from polen cal rancour, but from the two great springs of bitterne which turn the milk of human nature into gall-reven and fear. They knew what the vanquished had done the hour of success; they looked at their numbers wi dread, and sought to strengthen the barriers of law again the rude arm of physical power. The system of the pope laws, indeed, in Ireland, must be looked at as a who In their present state (1806) they are folly, caprice, feel and petulant tyranny. As they stood originally, they we vigorous and consistent; the firm, well-riveted fetters conquest, locking into one another, and stretching do the captive giant to the floor.'

More forfeitures ensued as soon as King William h driven out his enemy. The estates transferred on th occasion are declared to have covered 1,060,793 acr The one circumstance which softened their political adv sity to the Irish was that, by the Treaty of Limeric framed when the struggle was over, the free exercise their religion was secured to them for the future, on t strength of the king's guarantee for himself, his heirs, an

successors, as far as in him lay. By the words of the treaty it was expressly declared, that the Roman Catholics should enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II.; and their majesties, as soon as they can summon a parliament in this kingdom, will endeavour to procure the said Roman Catholics such further security in that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance on account of their religion.' These articles, afterwards published in letterspatent under the great seal, were signed by the English general on the 3rd of October, 1691; and for three weeks the Irish Romanists were hopeful and happy. But it was only for three weeks; and then followed a season of oppression so cruel as to provoke the question how it could have been borne, in an age of the world so advanced. Of the English government of that time, Burke says: “The severe and jealous policy of a conqueror in the crude settlement of his new acquisition, was strangely made a permanent rule for its future government.' And of the oppressed party, Swift declared that it was 'just as inconsiderable in point of power as the women and children.' In this weakness lay their strength. It was nourishing the germ of that future Catholic question which was soon to begin disturbing cabinets, and with more and more. power, till, a century after, it should be looked upon with constant dread as the explosive force which was to shatter one administration after another for five-and-thirty years together, and threaten at last to revolutionise the empire. Little did the government of Queen Anne foresee the consequences of setting its heel on the neck of the Catholic interest; but, though it could not foreknow how it would perplex and destroy a succession of administrations, and craze the feeble brain of a sovereign, and invite invasion again and again, it might have remembered how dangerous it is to sink individuals, and, yet more, whole classes, so low, that they can fall no lower, and will therefore make desperate efforts to raise themselves. They might have taken to heart Swift's words: 'General calamities, without hopes of redress, are allowed to be the great uniters of mankind; since nature hath instructed even a brood of