however, in a manner which shewed that they had a thorough knowledge of this Convention Act, and that they were determined not to transgress it; for they declared, that the persons who were instructed to prepare the petition could not be considered as representatives of the catholic body; and they made it imperative on them to finish their labours within the first fortnight after the meeting of parliament.

"This committee was composed of 36 representatives of the different parishes of Dublin, who, on a previous occasion, had formed a similar committee; the remnants of the committees that prepared the petitions of 1805 and 1807; and, finally, of the surviving delegates of the Catholic Convention of 1793, and the noble lords who compose the catholic peerage. With regard to the first, I believe that some of the gentlemen opposite to me had some communication with them when they were in office, because they were the persons who addressed the Duke of Bedford. I believe, also, that in those communications the honourable and learned gentleman opposite to me, and his right honourable friend, who at that time was chief secretary to the lord lieutenant, gave them some wholesome advice with regard to the Convention Act. Such is the rumour in Dublin. The lord lieutenant and the government of Ireland knew perfectly well the nature of the construction of this committee; they knew what passed at their meetings; they knew that their debates were ardent, vehement, and sometimes violent; but it was obvious to every man, of a fair and honest mind, who looked at their proceedings with calmness and candour, that, though their language was stronger than propriety could justify, yet that their real, and indeed their sole object, was to frame their petition for parliament. The Irish government, therefore, did not interfere, or take any notice of

their proceedings, for this simple reason, that they felt it to be their duty not to interfere with the catholics, as long as they professed to be merely engaged in preparing their petition for parliament, and as long as their proceedings had not a tendency to inflame the public mind, and endanger the peace of the country.

"The committee of 1810 conducted itself in a very different way. It commenced much in the same manner, by a general meeting of the catholics, by which the committee of 1809 was reestablished, and the same resolutions were passed, as those which had been agreed to in the preceding year. An aggregate meeting afterwards assembled on the 2d of November; a great difference of opinion prevailed among those who attended it, with regard to the propriety of petitioning, and the debate was conducted with extreme violence. One argument was used by a Mr Finnerty, a person formerly well known in Ireland, which it may not be improper to notice. The manner in which it was said the English nation was misled, with regard to Ireland, had been previously dwelt on with great heat, and much had been stated of the stupidity and vulgarity of the people of England. Mr Peter Finnerty, in the course of a very long speech, defended the English nation from these charges. He observed, that the English people detested their government, and that it would be as great a libel to judge of the English nation by the principles of their government, as it would be to judge of the Irish people by theirs. He asked, what honest Irishman would endure to have his principles judged of by the principles of the Irish government? After this, Mr Finnerty proceeded to recommend a petition to parliament for catholic emancipation, a petition for parliamentary reform, and a peti tion for a repeal of the Union! His

speech was received with the loudest applause, and he was rewarded by an unanimous vote of thanks of the. aggregate meeting. This same meeting resolved, that the Catholic Committee (that committee which had been appointed by the former aggregate meet ing, for the sole purpose of framing the petition to parliament) should have the sole management of the catholic affairs. All this was perfectly well known at the Castle. But at the same time it was felt, that though it was extremely imprudent conduct, it yet involved no danger to the state. The lord lieutenant, therefore, and those by whom he was advised, took upon themselves the responsibility of looking over the whole transaction.

"On the 24th of November the Catholic Committee met again, and Lord Fingall was called to the chair: of that noble lord, it is hardly necessary that I should state, that he is one of the best men among the Roman catholics, and one of the best and most loyal men in Ireland. A motion was made for a vote of thanks from the catholics of Ireland to Lord Donoughmore. The impropriety of discussing a question of that kind, in a committee appointed solely and exclusively for the purpose of preparing a petition to parliament, struck Lord Fingall; he stated his doubts, and desired to be informed, whether it was competent to the committee to do any thing but prepare the catholic petition? Mr O'Connel answered, that the last aggregate meeting had removed all doubts upon that subject, by their resolution, empowering the committee to conduct all the affairs of the Roman catholics of Ireland. Mr O'Connel's opinion, with respect to the general powers of the committee, accorded with the sense of the members present, and the resolutions were carried unanimously. Here then was a doubt expressed by a Roman catholic peer, of the highest cha

racter, whether the committee was exceeding its powers; but still the lord lieutenant abstained from interposing: he still remained firm to his purpose of trying mild and conciliatory mea sures as long as possible, consistently with the safety of the state. In the meeting of the 1st of December, the committee went still farther: one of the members, in very strong language, called the attention of the committee to what he described as a very great grievance, which had been suffered by a catholic soldier. He told the committee that they were the natural guardians of the rights of the catholics, and proposed a subscription for prosecuting those bigotted delinquents,' as he called them, whatever their rank or station might be, by whom this catholic soldier had been injured.

"The facts respecting this soldier were these: In August last, Dr Troy, the titular archbishop of Dublin, wrote to the chief secretary to the lord lieutenant, and mentioned the case of a soldier, of the name of Spence, who had commuted a very severe sentence which had been passed upon him by a court martial, by consenting to go into a regiment always employed upon foreign service. Dr Troy, in his letter, represented this man's case as being peculiarly hard. This letter, by the ford lieutenant's order, was immediately transmitted to the commander of the forces, for his opinion on the subject. The proceedings had not been laid before him previously, because the man had been tried by a regimental court martial. The commander of the forces directly ordered the case to be investigated, and the result was, that the whole of the sentence was remitted; the man was brought back again, and freely discharged from the army. In December, the business was taken up in the committee: the matter was discussed with great warmth and acrimony of language; at length they ad

mitted that justice had been done to the soldier. They, however, boldly asserted, that it was through their exertions, and by their means, that the wrongs of this soldier had been redressed; that is to say, that their exertions in December had produced a remission of his sentence, which sentence had been completely remitted, by the orders of government, in consequence of proceedings instituted by them in the preceding August! They told the Roman catholics of Ireland, in the most violent language (language indeed of such a nature, that I almost doubt whether government was justifiable in having refrained from prosecuting the printer by whom it was published), that, in consequence of the exertions of the committee, all the catholic soldiers in Ireland had had justice done to them; that they might now worship their Maker according to their own ritual: thus inferring, that all tenderness, kindness, and justice, did not proceed from the government, but emanated from the Catholic Committee; and holding themselves up as the proper and exclusive objects of the affection of the people! Even this, however, did not rouse the indignation of the lord lieutenant, who still felt that forbearance was preferable to an appearance of rigour.

"On the 29th of November the petition was received from the sub-committee, was read in the Catholic Committee, and acknowledged as the petition of the catholics of Ireland. The petition having been agreed to, it was to be presumed, that if the committee were constituted solely for the purpose of preparing a petition, their labours were in fact at an end, except, indeed, as to the consideration of the question of the mode of presenting the petition, and the nominating the persons to be employed for that purpose. At this time many of the most respectable of the catholics of Ireland had

become very much dissatisfied with the proceedings of the committee, and with the violent, inflammatory, and intemperate language which had been used in their debates. Lord Ffrench, and others that I could name, certainly did disapprove of their proceedings; and here, sir, I think it necessary to state to the house in the strongest manner, that it never once entered into the contemplation of the government of Ireland to take any steps against the catholics generally, or to throw any reflection upon them as a body. Nothing could be further from their intention; the object of the government was only to act against what they knew to be an illegal body, and to put a stop to proceedings, which, if not checked in time, might lead to the most serious consequences, even to rebellion." Here some members on the opposite side of the house laughed.

"Gentlemen," said Mr W. Pole, " may laugh if they please; it may appear a very good joke to them, but I can assure them it was no joke to the people of Dublin, who did certainly look with considerable uneasiness to the proceedings, and the intemperate language of the committee. The lord lieutenant, however, feeling that the petition having been agreed to, and that nothing remained for the committee to do but to choose the persons who were to carry it over, was of opinion, that bad as the proceedings of the committee had been, mischievous as the publication of their debates had proved, and great as was the ferment occasioned in Dublin, by the presence of a Catholic Parliament, as it had been emphatically termed, the evil must soon cease, and that it was much better, if possible, to allow it to arrive at a termination without any interference on the part of the government, in order to convince the catholics that there was not the slightest disposition to interfere with them in the framing or

managing their petition. But the Catholic Committee did not stop here; the next step they took, about the middle of December, was to appoint a Committee of Grievances. The Catholic Committee, originally appointed for the sole purpose of preparing a petition to parliament, appointed a sub. committee to enquire into all the grievances, real or imaginary, of all the catholics of Ireland, and into all the indignities and insults which they might suffer, or to which they were in consequence liable.

"At one of the meetings of the committee, a member informed them that he had received a letter from Dr Troy, which contained an account of some shocking acts of bigotry which had been manifested in the management of the Foundling Hospital in Dublin. The Foundling Hospital was established by act of parliament, and receives annually large parliamentary grants. Every child that is brought to it is received, without any distinction whatever; and there are generally about twelve hundred children in the hospital, and about four or five thousand are at nurse in the country. All the children received into this hospital have some name or label brought with them, which is entered into a secret book, and a number is given to the child, by which it is distinguished while it remains in the house, and not by any name. As this is a government institution, the children that are received into it are, of course, brought up in the established religion of the country, and, when apprenticed, they are apprenticed to protestant masters. However, when any person, whether catholic or protestant, claims a child, and states the private name, or mark, by which it was distinguished when it was received, the child is instantly delivered up to the person making the ap. plication. Dr Troy's letter accused the governors of this institution of en

deavouring to gain proselytes to protestantism, by contriving that no catholic should ever receive his child; and it narrated a shocking circumstance, which was said to have occurred in consequence of this bigotrythe marriage of a brother and a sister, who were ignorant of their mutual relationship. This statement was, of course, warmly taken up by the committee, and the debates which took place upon the subject were of such a nature, that I will refrain from reading them. This case was referred to the Committee of Grievances: thus they proceeded, but the government still forebore to interpose. In the mean time, the Catholic Committee continued to meet from week to week, and sometimes twice a week: they adopted, as far as they could, all the forms of the House of Commons. Their debates were attended by short-hand writers, and were published regularly in the Irish newspapers.

"About the beginning of January a member of the committee stated, that the Committee of Grievances had nearly prepared their report, which con sisted of three hundred folio pages. It was proposed that this report should be printed, that it might be circulated throughout Ireland; and it was proposed, though by what means that was to be regularly effected I really do not know, to lay a copy of it on the table of this house. One of these grievances was, the number of offices which it was said catholics were incapable of possessing, and which, in this report, were made to amount to 32,000. It cannot be supposed that during such proceedings Dublin was in a very tranquil state; in fact they had produced a considerable effect upon the public mind, not only in Dublin, but in every part of Ireland. The quiet and welldisposed people, seeing that no steps had been taken to put a stop to such dangerous proceedings, began to think

that the government of Ireland was really dissolved. Indeed, sir, nothing could have justified the lord lieutenant, and those who had the honour to advise him, in their abstinence, but the expectation which they naturally entertained, that every meeting of this committee would be the last. It is true, in a debate which took place towards the end of December, some symptoms appeared of the intention of these gentlemen to increase their number; but the intention was not manifested in the decided manner which it af terwards assumed. A resolution was agreed to, desiring the secretary to correspond with some gentlemen in the country, who were friendly to their views, but not a word was said about any election. Afterwards, a guarded resolution was adopted, stating, that an augmentation of the number of the committee was desirable, and that the management of that augmentation should be vested in a sub-committee. On the 23d of January the Irish government became possessed of the fact, that a circular letter had been written by the secretary of the Catholic Committee, and that several answers had been received thereto; but of the nature of the letter, or of the answers, they were wholly ignorant. To shew, however, what was the nature of the augmentation suggested in December, I beg to state the opinion of one of the members, who declared, that when to the 36 representatives of parishes, ten members should be added from each county, the whole would make a greater number than he had ever seen at any aggregate meeting.'

"The committee adjourned from week to week, under the pretext of affording assistance to Lord Fingall in the conveyance of the petition; but at every meeting a violent and inflammatory debate almost invariably took place. The principal Roman catholics of Ireland had become more and

more dissatisfied with the proceedings of the committee, as abusing the lenity of government, and injuring, by the intemperance of their conduct, the cause which they were assembled to support. On the 2d of February they agreed unanimously to a resolution, that the petition of the catholics of Ireland should be transmitted to parliament. On the same day a resolution was proposed, that the Catholic Committee had exceeded its powers, by agreeing to augment its numbers by the addition of ten members from every county in Ireland. This motion produced a very warm debate, and was finally rejected. In the course of the debate Lord Ffrench made use of the following expressions :—' You were appointed for a specific purpose; your commission is ended; Íreland is sick of this business! Do you mean to erect yourselves into a perpetual government?"-The committee, however, would not acknowledge that their powers were terminated; and, instead of ending the business altogether, they adjourned to the 9th of February.

"At this meeting several of the mem bers indulged in the most violent and intemperate language One gentleman, in particular, professed to under take the defence of Lord Fingail, who, it appears, had been accused of supporting the veto, of concurring in the Union, and of moving a vote of thanks to Lord Wellington. The defence which this gentleman professed to make for his lordship, was in fact the most libellous accusation. The speak er did that which nobody ever thought of doing before, he identified the whole catholic body with the rebels of 1798.

"Up to this time no step had been taken by the government of Ireland; they had cherished the expectation, that any interference on their part would have been unnecessary; but the fallacy of that hope began to mani fest itself, and they were assailed on