I know, Sir, you are impatient to ask me the momentous question, whether, after all I have seen and heard, and reflected upon in Ireland, I am of opinion that the Irish Catholics are strictly loyal, and may be depended upon by government under whatever circumstances may happen at the present eventful period? I will answer your question, if you will give me leave first to make two or three observations. In the first place, it is plain that government does not thus depend on them, by its introducing into parliament the two bills above alluded to, which it certainly knows have a tendency to inflame the disorders they are intended to cure. Secondly, it appears that Mr. Grattan, and most of our other friends in the legislative assemblies, think that the Catholics cannot be entirely depended upon, by their voting for those bills. This, this is the blow which reached the heart of every Irish Catholic whom I conversed with. When he heard that even Grattan had consented to disturb his midnight rest and that of his family, and to make his house a prison to him during sixteen out of the twenty-four hours in winter, he indignantly exclaimed: Et tu, Brute? The loyal Irishman's only comfort at this intelligence, was in perusing the brilliant and pathetic speeches of his other countryman Sheridan. For my part, I have apologized for Mr Grattan, and have besought my friends not to weigh one night's vote against the invaluable services of many years. Mr. "Grattan," I have said to them, is as much

your friend as ever he was; but having tried "in vain to obtain for you what he conceives to "be your due, he thinks it impossible you "should not resent the disappointment; and "therefore he wishes to hinder you from doing yourselves and your country harm. In this he "imitates a skilful surgeon, who having fruit"lessly endeavoured to disperse a dangerous humour, when he finds a cruel operation necessary, binds his best friend." -Thirdly, I have to observe, in spite of PATRICK DUIGENAN, (when he turned his coat, why did not he change his name?) who endeavours to prove all his own forefathers for fourteen hundred years, up to the first Patrick, to have been traitors, that the Catholics of this realm have in times of trial manifested a principle of duty and loyalty, in opposition to apparent interest, which no other description of Christians has evinced. might prove this by an appeal to the history of the English Protestants during the two catholic reigns, of the Presbyterians of Scotland, of the Huguenots of France, of the Gueux of the Low Countries, of the Lutherans of Germany, of the Calvinists of Geneva and Switzerland, &c. Having made these remarks, I answer your question by saying, that I have never heard a seditious or disloyal speech uttered in any of the numerous and diversified companies which I have met in various parts of Ireland during almost six weeks that I have passed in it, nor have I the least reason to suppose that they will swerve from

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that line of conscientious duty which the great body of them has hitherto followed: though perhaps they may not be quite so forward in volunteering their services, as if they had found these were wanted, and that they themselves were trusted. Of two things I am confident, that the stories of dangerous combinations and unlawful meetings amongst the Catholics*, which have been propagated in the newspapers of latet, originate in the mere bigotry and malice of their enemies; and that the Catholic Bishops and Clergy will, at all times, do their own duty in endeavouring to keep the people steady to theirs.

I will here, Sir, close my correspondence with you from Ireland, hoping, when we meet, to hear your remarks on the several subjects of it. By way of conclusion, I will present you with an extract from a pamphlet lately published at Dublin, for the sake of the sensible and pathetic address at the end of it, which I am confident is calculated to reach both the heart and the head of

* Having called, by appointment, upon a most respectable friend, to dine and pass the evening, on my road into the South of Ireland, in company with two other friends of known loyalty, (one of whom has been distinguished by such public honours for the proofs he has given of it, that few Orangemen are likely to merit the same) I afterwards found that a messenger was sent by some of these to the Castie of Dublin, to accuse us of a seditious meeting. The charge, however, was dismissed with deserved contempt.

The accompanying of a funeral, an ordinary meeting to dig potatoes, the planting of a May-pole, and even the amusements of little children, have been denounced to government, and published in the newspapers as insurrectionary movements.

every Englisman who is not quite brutalized by bigotry or avarice. The author is arguing against those friends of the Catholics who constantly dissuade them from petitioning parliament for a redress of grievances, on account of the alledged unseasonableness of the time, when he says: "If "the friendly dissuasion is unable to fix a period at which it shall be not wrong to break silence; "if their friends resolve, that to attempt it this year is improper, and in the next will be dangerous, and in the third will be unusual, unnecessary, and the symptom of punishable dis"affection reviving.-If years of slavery roll on "their generation, to the exit of their fore

father, and bring to their last view the sad "vision of a posterity of slaves, condemned by "THE GREAT OATH, which gives freedom to "all others, is not such dissuasion the acknowledgment that forbearance would be a crime? "If during this endless round of evils still

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great, and hope deferred, and friends not yet. "resolved, a mighty apparition should start up "between earth and heaven, intercepting the view "of the world: if lightnings blaze, and bloody "meteors run through the atmosphere, and "shouts approach, that 'SLAVERY IS NO "MORE:' if the sufferers, as they will do, reject the unholy invitation, and offer to die "with the brothers who afflicted, rather than "live with the aliens who court them: with what consistency shall it be said to those deluded,

"broken-hearted reptiles: Come on, brave men, "and fight for our common freedom!"

May they not well answer to this call: "We "will fight for you, and let Providence judge our cause, and see our distress. If you conquer "with us, our doom is perpetual. The consti"tution will be saved, and you say it excludes

us everlastingly. If you are vanquished, you "will be spared with honour; you had fought "for the dearest things to man, which those "enemies came to wrest. But while they spare

you, they will exterminate us for safety and "for example. We shall fight as slaves, and we shall perish as traitors !"*

*Remarks on the Protestant Barrister's Vindication, &c. by a Catholic of Dublin, pp. 71, 72.