Majesty can have no more pleasing wish than to remove the causes of discontent of this neglected people, and all ranks of men will hail the result of your united efforts, as an event of the greatest consequence to the empire. To Great Britain the Irish people look up as the model of a prosperous country; and part of that capital now employed in the mines of South America might be of greater service if employed in exploring the mines of Ireland: but Parliament must remove the evils before any of the superabundant wealth of England will find its way into that country; and when once that epoch shall have taken place, when the two countries shall have become, not in name but in deed, an united kingdom, it will not be idle to utter this invocation-" Length of days be in her right hand, and in her left riches and honor. May her ways be ways of pleasantness, and all her paths be peace!" A LETTER, &c. &c. SIR, I THINK that Ireland has at length put herself into such a posi tion as to her claims, both civil and religious, of what she holds to be her natural rights, and has of late exhibited such an unequivocal and menacing aspect as to the obtaining the fruition of those rightful claims, that all points of contention and difference are happily brought to a definable issue; and government, or rather parliament, is now at all hands called on to decide, categorically, on the case of Ireland and England, and, as it seems to me, which is to be the supreme. You, Sir, have had opportunities by your residence in Ireland, which I cannot boast the pleasure and advantage of having possessed, of studying the character of the Irish people at large, and of being well acquainted with their moral habits, their religious sentiments, and their political views. Your attention, I know, as well as mine, has been particularly directed towards the movements of the Roman Catholic part of the community, which forms so apprehensible a portion of the population of that country. I make use of that term because inasmuch as the Protestant religion forms the church establishment of the British empire, it must needs be an object of anxious apprehension to England, that Ireland has at length abandoned her first claim of a toleration in matters of religion, and now virtually claims to have the ascendancy on the score, merely, of her overwhelming majority, in point of numbers, of Roman Catholics over the Protestants in Ireland. If Ireland were an integral independent state, as she claims to become, then, without any strife or contention, without any supplication or demand of her rights, they would accrue to her spontaneously, and she would enjoy them as her lawful inheritance. But until this overwhelm ing majority of Roman Catholics over the established church of England can find itself transplanted here, if she will not conform to that establishment, she must be contented to enjoy the exercise of her religion through the medium of toleration, and quietly submit to the ascendancy being committed to other hands, and to other control, rule, and governance, than to her sovereign at Rome. Ireland does not, as the dissenters do, wish for an oligarchy of particular sects, but she is restless and impatient to have the reins of government delivered up into her hands, that she may transfer them to a foreign power. The government of England, with its revered and illustrious head, the parliament of England, and the united commonalty of the land, exclaim with one voice, "We will not have changed our laws and constitution in church and state, and we will preserve them safe and inviolate; and so maintain them with our blood!" Ireland has, at length, in the plenitude of its local power and strength, within the confines of the "Catholic Association," assembled at a tavern, ingenuously told us, that she will not now be content with complete Catholic emancipation, but they will have an unrestrained enjoyment of their civil rights, which they fondly call natural rights. As Ireland has now taken her stand on higher ground, and haughtily demands as a right much more than she ever before only supplicated for as a boon, she must now be addressed by England with much less ceremony, in plainer terms, and with more severity and loftiness of tone. Let Ireland once for all know that she has no rights, exclusively of her own, independent of England, and that political power is not a natural right, as she proudly and unjustly assumes. We have an establishment in church and state, and an establishment shows the beauty and order of good government. It is a wall of defence; it secures, it protects, it forms a resting-place. It is (as Selden aptly observes) a pair of compasses; it is comprised within certain metes and boundaries, it has certain fixed principles, certain set forms and rules of action which never change or deviate. Pull down the establishment, and we are open at once to every different assault of its enemies; subject, in miserable and restless fluctuation, to every succeeding impulse of power, and, amidst the conflicting elements of confusion and disorder, have not where to lay our head in that quiet which constitutes the charm of life! The church and state are, as it were, twin-sisters; and as is said to exist in the natural world, so it is even with these, their life and destinies are involved in one united fate: when one sickens, the other languishes and droops her head; when one receives a mortal blow, the other also perishes. So the church and state must stand or fall together. Every establishment must of necessity have a test. The laws must have a constitution on which they |