tians, while holding as one of the first principles of their religion the common descent of all mankind, their common sinful nature, and common need of being born again in Christ, should adopt a conclusion which rested wholly on their supposed different extraction, and on the high purity and excellence of some particular races contrasted with the degraded state of others. To us who admit of no such differences it is a conclusion little better than monstrous; and the very fact that no beings exist in the world who enjoy a natural superiority over mankind, and that no one race of mankind possesses, except from accidental causes, such a superiority over another, shews decisively that God has given to men the right of self-government, and that as no one race can claim dominion as its peculiar birthright, so all lawful power over them is derived solely from their own consent, and is a mere matter of arrangement for the general benefit. Mankind, therefore, have a right to govern themselves, that is to say, society is the supreme power on earth, and the ordinances of society, or the laws and the commands of magistrates who act in the name and for the welfare of the society, are binding upon all the individual members of it; but neither has any one national society any authority to govern another, nor still less have magistrates, who are but the officers of society, any right to rule contrary to the will of that society, or to exercise any greater power than it may authorize. And if such magistrates, by the physical force of a body of men purposely kept distinct from the interests and feelings of the community, exercise and maintain a despotic power over society, it is a state as monstrous as if wild beasts were to occupy any country to the exclusion of mankind; and the social body would be as fully justified in delivering itself from the unnatural violence of one of these brute enemies as of the other. The Christian Scriptures indeed enjoin conscientious submission to government on the part of individuals, resting this duty on the divine authority vested in it, as the

representative on earth of our supreme moral Governor. They strongly condemn the doctrines of the Fifth Monarchy men, and of the ancient Jews, who held that the saints were not subject to any earthly society, especially when it consisted of heathens, because they had one only King in heaven. They discourage the notion so common amongst religious bigots, that there is something profane in political institutions with which the servants of God should not intermeddle. On the contrary, the apostles teach that these political institutions are God's appointed means of governing the world, and that he so highly regards them as to invest them with one of his own attributes, the dispensation of good to the well disposed, and of punishment to the evil doer. If they are perverted from fulfilling these purposes they are faulty and require amendment, and every servant of God should use his best endeavours to restore them to their designed purity. But that they who had so perverted them should be allowed to profit by their own wrong, that they should in spite of nature transfer the principles of government exercised over beings naturally inferior to the government of beings naturally equal; and that this violation of the manifest laws of God's providence, and obstruction of his declared will for the perfecting of human society, should defend itself by arguments grounded upon falsehood and idolatry, and then claim to be sanctioned by divine truth, affords altogether a melancholy instance of the art with which the great enemy of all goodness employs the pretext of respect for the Gospel, when he would most effectually prevent the Gospel from bringing forth its proper fruits.

And now I would briefly recapitulate the proofs of my original position, that it is a direct Christian duty to grant the claims of the Roman Catholics, and a direct sin, however ignorantly committed, to endeavour to procure the rejection of them. We conquered Ireland unjustly, and have perpetuated the evils, and consequently the guilt, of our first conquest. We refuse to admit the Irish nation

into the pale of our civil society, whilst, by admitting into it those Protestant military colonies by which we have from time to time garrisoned Ireland, we keep up a broad line of distinction between union and conquest, between the small minority whom we make our fellow-citizens, and the majority whom we treat as subjects. We plead the inconveniences to ourselves of a connection with Ireland on equal and just terms, while we affected in the first instance, and still insist on maintaining, a connection on unequal and unjust terms. We talk of the sin of uniting ourselves with Papists, yet we force Papists to belong to us; and we plead the idolatry of the Catholics as a reason for not doing them justice, when our own injustice has been the cause of this idolatry still existing and had it not been for us, Ireland would in all human probability have been at this moment Protestant. We confound an entire national society with particular orders or professions of society, and sacrifice the rights of one nation to the interests of another, because the interests of a part of a nation may lawfully be sacrificed to the paramount rights of the whole. We attempt sometimes to justify our conduct by an argument, which, if acted upon in private life, would cause a man to be banished from all honest society; namely, that we are not bound to repair an injustice done by others, even though we continue to reap the profits of it. We attempt at other times to defend it by transferring conclusions, legitimately drawn from premises which we acknowledge to be false, to the very contrary premises which we acknowledge to be true. And we individually, that is, the clergy, gentry, farmers, and shopkeepers of this country, make ourselves each separately guilty of the injustice which we have committed as a nation, by calling upon our rulers to persevere in this wickedness, when they appear inclined to relieve us and our posterity from the curse which it must entail upon us, and to return at last to the path of duty.

It is not, therefore, the advocates, but the enemies of

the Catholics who are preferring state policy to their Christian duty; it is not their advocates who would sacrifice the Protestant religion to the views of worldly expediency, but their adversaries who would violate the plain duties of our common Christianity, rather than consent to the political evil of abandoning Ireland to herself, if their consciences will not permit them to treat it with justice. The plea of religion is wholly foreign to the question, except upon such grounds as would authorize direct persecution. If the believers in a true religion claim a title to restrain those who are in error from the enjoyment of their natural rights, in order to have a greater chance of converting them to the truth; then also they may pretend to persecute them directly with the same object, and there is no doubt that a thorough persecution will generally root out the doctrines against which it is directed. Or if they claim a natural superiority on account of the truth of their religion, so that they are fitted to govern unbelievers, or heretics, on the same principles that men govern children, this is a pretension far less reasonable than if we were to claim dominion over those nations whose constitutions were unfavourable to the welfare of their people, or whose moral character we might judge to be inferior to our own. What human power can pronounce authoritatively upon the truth of a religion, when every nation will with equal zeal maintain the truth of its own? Or does Christ authorize his servants as such to assume the office of judging the world, until the day when he shall himself appear to pronounce the judgment?

Hitherto then I have argued the Question solely on the ground of justice: and have shewn, that a third part nearly of the inhabitants of the whole empire, containing in themselves all the different elements of a nation, locally distinct, differing in race, and a large part of them in language also, from the people of Great Britain, cannot be considered as necessarily forming only a part of our national society, on whom we as the majority may impose what

rules we will, while they have no other duty but submission. We are bound either to treat them fairly, or not to meddle with them at all; and if our constitution must be altered before they can be members of it, we are bound to alter it; as we, by making them subjects unjustly, contracted voluntarily the obligation to make them citizens; or else we are labouring at this hour under the guilt of our ancestors' usurpations. But although this would be the plain path of duty under any circumstances, yet it would be a most painful alternative, had we to choose between the overthrow of our religious institutions, and th dismemberment of the empire. No national evil that did not involve national sin could be greater in my judgment than the destruction of our Protestant Church Establishment. That union of Church and State, which so many good men lament and some condemn, appears to me to be far too powerful a means of diffusing the blessings of Christianity to be lightly broken asunder; and although I earnestly desire to see the actual abuses of that union remedied, yet even now the good which it is daily working is such as to make every sincere Christian regard at least with anxiety the prospect of its dissolution. I have said thus much, because the advocates of the Catholic claims are often accused of indifference to the safety of our own Establishment. With whatever justice this may be imputed to some of their number, I beg in my own case to protest against the charge as wholly groundless and untrue. I think certainly, that even the existence of our Establishment would be too dearly purchased, if it could only be upheld by injustice; I should be unwilling to do evil that good might come; to call upon Satan to cast out Satan. But our Protestant Church is one of the greatest blessings with which England has been favoured; and may it exist secure from every enemy under the care of its divine Head, and trusting in its lawful arms, the truth of its doctrines, and the holiness of its members!

With this feeling, not less sincere than theirs, who