tues; and to be other than noble, they must not only be unnatural but be unnational. Put my panegyric to the test. Enter the hovel of the Irish peasant. I do not say you will find the frugality of the Scotch, the comfort of the English, or the fantastic decorations of the French cottager; but I' do say, within those wretched bazaars of mud and misery, you will find sensibility the most affecting, politeness the most natural, hospitality the most grateful, merit the most unconscious; their look is eloquence, their smile is love, their retort is wit, their remark is wisdom-not a wisdom borrowed from the dead, but that with which nature has herself inspired them; an acute observance of the passing scene, and a deep insight into the motives of its agents. Try to deceive them, and see with what shrewdness they will detect; try to outwit them, and see with what humour they will elude; attack them with argument, and you will stand amazed at the strength of their expression, the rapidity of their ideas, and the energy of their gesture! In short, God seems to have formed our country like our people: he has thrown around the one its wild, magnificent, decorated rudeness; he has infused into the other the simplicity of genius and the seeds of virtue: he says audibly to us, "Give them cultivation."

This is the way, gentlemen, in which I have always looked upon your question-not as a party, or a sectarian, or a catholic, but as an IRISH question. Is it possible that any man can seriously believe the paralyzing five millions of such a people, as I have been describing, can be a benefit to the empire! Is there any man who deserves the name, not of a statesman, but of a rational being, who can think it politic to rob such a multi

tude of all the energies of an honourable ambition! Look to protestant Ireland, shooting over the empire those rays of genius, and those thunderbolts of war, that have at once embellished and preserved it. I speak not of a former era. I refer not for my example to the day just passed, when our Burkes, our Barrys, and our Goldsmiths, exiled by this system from their native shore, wreathed the "immortal shamrock" round the brow of painting, poetry, and eloquence! But now, even while I speak, who leads the British senate? A protestant Irishman! Who guides the British arms? A protestant Irishman! And why, why is catholic Ireland, with her quintuple population, stationary and silent? Have physical causes neutralized its energies? Has the religion of Christ stupified its intellect? Has the God of mankind become the partizan of monopoly, and put an interdict on its advancement? Stranger, * do not ask the bigoted and pampered renegade who has an interest in deceiving you; but open the penal statutes and weep tears of blood over the reason. Come, come yourself, and see this unhappy people: see the Irishman, the only alien in Ireland, in rags and wretchedness, staining the sweetest scenery ever eye reposed on, persecuted by the extorting middle-man of some absentee landlord, plundered by the lay-proctor of some rapacious and unsympathizing incumbent, bearing through life but insults and injustice, and bereaved even of any hope in death by the heartrending reflection that he leaves his children to bear like their father an abominable bondage! Is this the fact? Let any man who doubts it walk out into your streets, and see the consequences of such a system; see it rearing up crowds in a kind of

apprenticeship to the prison, absolutely permitted by their parents from utter despair to lisp the alphabet and learn the rudiments of profligacy! For my part, never did I meet one of these youthful assemblages without feeling within me a melancholy emotion. How often have I thought. within that little circle of neglected triflers who seem to have been born in caprice and bred in orphanage, there may exist some mind formed of the finest mould and wrought for immortality; a soul swelling with the energies and stamped with the patent of the Deity, which under proper culture might perhaps bless, adorn, immortalize, or ennoble empires; some CINCINNATUS, in whose breast the destinies of a nation may lie dormant; some MILTON, "pregnant with celestial fire;" some CURRAN, who, when thrones were crumbled and dynasties forgotten, might stand the landmark of his country's genius, rearing himself amid regal ruins and national dissolution, a mental pyramid in the solitude of time, beneath whose shade things might moulder, and round whose summit eternity must play. Even in such a circle the young DEMOSTHENES might have once been found, and HOMER, the disgrace and glory of his age, have sung neglected! Have not other nations witnessed those things, and who shall say that nature has peculiarly degraded the intellect of Ireland? Oh! my countrymen, let us hope that under better auspices and a sounder policy, the ignorance that thinks so may meet its refutation. Let us turn from the blight and ruin of this wintry day to the fond anticipation of a happier period, when our prostrate land shall stand erect among the nations, fearless and unfettered; her brow blooming with the wreath of science, and her path strewed with the

offerings of art; the breath of heaven blessing her flag, the extremities of earth acknowledging her name, her fields waving with the fruits of agriculture, her ports alive with the contributions of commerce, and her temples vocal with unrestricted piety. Such is the ambition of the true patriot; such are the views for which we are calumniated! Oh, divine ambition! Oh, delightful calumny! Happy he who shall see thee accomplished! Happy he who through every peril toils for thy attainment! Proceed, friend of Ireland and partaker of her wrongs, proceed undaunted to this glorious consummation. Fortune will not gild, power will not ennoble thee; but thou shalt be rich in the love and titled by the blessings of thy country; thy path shall be illumined by the public eye, thy labours lightened by the public gratitude; and oh, remember-amid the impediments with which corruption will oppose, and the dejection with which disappointments may depress you-remember you are acquiring a name to be cherished by the future generations of earth, long after it has been enrolled amongst the inheritors of heaven.

you

Ir is with no small degree of self-congratulation that I at length find myself in a province which every glance of the eye, and every throb of the heart, tells me is truly Irish; and that congratulation is not a little enhanced by finding that receive me not as quite a stranger. Indeed, if to respect the christian without regard to his creed, if to love the country but the more for its calamities, if to hate oppression though it be robed in power, if to venerate integrity though it pine under persecution, gives a man any claim to your recognition; then, indeed, I am not a stranger amongst you. There is a bond of union between brethren, however distant; there is a sympathy between the virtuous, however separated; there is a heaven-born instinct by which the associates of the heart become at once acquainted, and kindred natures as it were by magic see in the face of a stranger, the features of a friend. Thus it is, that,