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1843.] ing and scathing those who proclaimed pended. I avow it [hear, hear]. Re~ liberality and afterwards violated their member that I respect vested rights. professions [hear and cheers]. This is There is no man shall, with my consent, the band that drew up a petition in favor or with the consent of the Irish people, of the Protestant Dissenters of England. lose one particle of that which he now enjoys. I claim but the reversion. But That petition was twice passed unani mously on the private committee. It was you may tell me that Protestantism wants passed unanimously in the Catholic Asso that reversion for its support. Is that to ciation, and it was afterwards carried be your argument, that reason, scripture, unanimously at an aggregate meeting and authority, are insufﬁcient for its of Catholics held in the Clarendon-street support, but that it must have money to chapel, where its adoption was proposed maintain its existence? I will not say a by a Capuchin friar. That petition was single word that could irritate the slightest presented to Parliament with 800,000 religious feelings; but I will merely ob signatures attached to it, and within three serve that if that be your argument, I weeks after its presentation the Protestant trust I will be permitted to exalt in the Dissenters of England were liberated religion thatI myself profess. You took [loud cheers]. You would, I repeat, have away from my religion the money and the a strong Protestant minority in Parlia temporalities; you deprived us of our ment, and you would also have a power churches; you prostrated our monaste— ful Protestant population out of doors. ries and temples; and yet religion sur But the age of persecution is gone by. vived. It took shelter in hovels and Look to Belgium, where at one time the caverns. The wealth, the lands, and the most atrocious persecutions were carried temporalities, were taken away; but was on—where the sanguinary Alva slaugh the Catholic religion put down by it? tered the Protestants, and where the Its hierarchy survived [hear, hear]. It equally sanguinary Desonoy and Vander has still its four archbishops and its merk slaughtered the Catholics with no twenty-three bishops. It has its deans, less fury on the other side. But what is vicars-general, priests, friars, monks, and her present condition? With no more nuns in thousands. You may liken it to a column of Palmyra in the desert. than 200,000 Protestants, out of a popu lation of four millions, has she enacted Tempests howl around it—the elements any persecuting law, or made any re discharge their fury against it—its orna ments, its polish, and its gold may be ligious distinctions? If there be a peo ple on the face of the earth attached to taken away, but still it stands a noble monument oflasting greatness, unshakeu religious observances, or absorbed in re ligious duties, they are the Belgians. In in its solid foundation [great cheering]. fact, a people more entirely devoted to No ; do justice to your own Protestantism religious Observances than the Belgians —say that Popery has survived, being does not exist; and yet have they injured stripped of its temporalities—say that: a single Protestant? Have they destroyed truth must surely be equally vivacious any of the rights of their Protestant and equally long-lived. Do yourselves fellow-countrymen ? No; blessed be God .' justice, or else concede to me manfully they have, on the other hand, established that you want the assistance of state the most perfect religious equality. In power and the support of state wealth. their Parliament there were four priests, Avow that, and the argument is at an end, and when M. Du Thieux, the Minister but it will still be not the less conclusive for Home Affairs, proposed a grant for on the necessity of Repeal.” building a Protestant place of worship, it was carried by a majority of forty to And the following is the other ex four; while three out of the four priests tract, being the conclusion of his voted for the grant, and only one of them speech: ‘ against it—showing, that though he had individual prejudices, they did not reﬂect “ I am not here for sectarian purposes. on those who took a different view from I have at my side a Church of England him. Yes—the time for prejudices is gentleman, Alderman O’Neil]; I have gone by; and the man who wants the also at my side a Presbyterian friend, Mr. bayonet and the law to enforce his opi M’Clelland; here we stand together, nions, admits, from by-gone conclusion, Protestant, Presbyterian, and Catholic, that his arguments are not in themselves the evidence of our social condition—the sufﬁcient to enforce conviction. It is evidence of our future unanimity. If I alleged, as an argument against the Re thought that I was so lost to all feelings peal, that we would seek to appropriate of propriety and decorum as to be capable the church revenues in adiiferent manner of saying one word in disparagement of from that in which they are at present ex the religious convictions of any man in