Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/180

THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS government and a free people there can be but one issue. That party must prevail which has truth and justice on its side; otherwise there is an end of freedom or of government—it must end in despotism or anarchy. While you resist the claim of civil right, the Roman Catholic is armed with truth and justice. Grant him what he ought to have, and if he refuses the reasonable conditions or aspires to more, you transfer to yourselves these invincible standards, and you may look with confidence to the result.

Sir, to enumerate all the inconsistencies of this supposed measure of final adjustment would be endless; but there is one so glaring that I must beg leave particularly to allude to. You admit the Roman Catholic, both here and in Ireland, to the bar; you invite him to study the laws of his country, to display his knowledge on a public theater, where his talents and his acquirements are tried and known; you engage him in a career of honorable competition; you see him distinguished by the approbation of his countrymen; you see every relative connected with him gladdened and gratified by his successful progress; and when his heart is beating high with the consciousness of desert, and the hope of fame and honor, you stop him in his course, you dash his hopes, you extinguish his ambition, you leave him disgraced and mortified, sitting on the outer benches of your courts of justice, and imparting the gloom of his own hopeless exclusion to every one connected with him by consanguinity, 170