motives to the bigot's conflicts, and such the use of his victories: not the propagation of any opinion, but the engrossment of power and plunder-of homage and tribute. Such, I much fear, was the real origin of our Popery laws. But power and privilege must necessarily be confined to very few. In hostile armies you find them pretty equal, the victors and the vanquished, in the numbers of their hospitals and in the numbers of their dead; so it is with nations, the great mass is despoiled and degraded, but the spoil itself is confined to few indeed. The result finally can be nothing but the disease of dropsy and decrepitude. In Ireland this was peculiarly the case. Religion was dishonoured, man was degraded, and social affection was almost extinguished. A few, a very few still profited by this abasement of humanity. But let it be remembered, with a just feeling of grateful respect to their patriotic and disinterested virtue, and it is for this purpose that I have alluded as I have done, that that few composed the whole power of the legislature which concurred in the repeal of that system, and left remaining of it, not an edifice to be demolished, but a mere heap of rubbish, unsightly, perhaps pernicious-to be carted away.

"If the repeal of those laws had been a mere abjuration of intolerance, I should have given it little credit. The growing knowledge of the world, particularly of the sister nation, had disclosed and unmasked intolerance, had put it to shame, and consequently to flight!-But though public opinion may proscribe intolerance, it cannot take away powers or privileges established by law. Those powers of exclusion and monopoly could be given up only by the generous relinquishment of those who possessed them. And nobly were they so relinquished by those repealing statutes. Those lovers of their country saw the public necessity of the sacrifice, and most disinterestedly did they make it. If too,

they have been singular in this virtue, they have been as singularly fortunate in their reward. In general, the legis lator, though he sows the seed of public good, is himself numbered with the dead before the harvest can be gathered. With us it has not been so with us the public benefactors, many of them at least, have lived to see the blessing of Heaven upon their virtue, in an uniformly accelerating progress of industry and comfort, and liberality, and social affection, and common interest, such as I do not believe that any age or nation has ever witnessed.

"Such I do know was the view, and such the hope, with which that legislature, now no more! proceeded so far as they went, in the repeal of those laws so repealed. And well do I know, how warmly it is now remembered by every thinking Catholic, that not a single voice for those repeals was or could be given, except by a Protestant legislator. With infinite pleasure do I also know and feel, that the same sense of justice and good will which then produced the repeal of those laws, is continuing to act, and with increasing energy, upon those persons in both countries, whose worth and whose wisdom are likely to explode whatever principle is dictated by bigotry and folly, and to give currency and action to whatever principle is wise and salutary. Such, also, I know to be the feelings of every court in this hall. It is from this enlarged and humanized spirit of legislation that courts of justice ought to take their principles of ex→ pounding the law.

At another time I should probably have deemed it right to preserve a more respectful distance from some subjects which I have presumed (but certainly with the best intentions, and I hope, no unbecoming freedom,) to approach. But I see the interest the question has excited, and I think

it right to let no person carry away with him any mistake, as to the grounds of my decision, or suppose that it is either the duty or the disposition of our courts to make any harsh or jealous distinctions in their judgement, founded on any differences of religious sects or tenets. I think, therefore, the motion ought to be refused; and I think myself bound to mark still more strongly my sense of its impropriety, by refusing it with full costs.”

While Mr. Curran was Master of the Rolls, he was invited by the independent interest of the town of Newry to offer himself as a candidate to represent it. His speech on that occasion not being among any collection of those published. under his name, is here given, and demonstrates that, even so late in life, the fire of his genius was by no means diminished.

"On the morning of the sixth day of the poll, October 17, 1812, Mr Curran rose and addressed the court in substance as follows: He said, he had been induced by some of the most respectable electors of the borough to offer himself a candidate. As to himself, he could have no wish to add to the weight of his public duties; and as to serving the country essentially, he thought very moderately indeed of his own powers: but under circumstances like the present, under such rulers, and in such a state of popular representátion, or rather unrepresentation, he was perfectly convinced, that no force of any individual, or even of many joined together, could do much to serve us, or to save us. In addition to this personal disinclination, he was ignorant of the exact state of the borough, and, of course, of the likelihood of his success; but yet, though without personal wish or

probable hope, he thought himself bound, as a public man, to obey: because, though the victory was doubtful, the value of the contest was incalculable, inasmuch as it must bring before themselves, and before the rest of Ireland, not only an exact picture of their situation, and of the public malady under which they were sinking, but must also make an infallible experiment: it must decide, to the commonest observer, the principles of the disease; the weakness and misery of public distraction; the certain success, if the sufferers could be combined, by the sense of common danger, in a common effort, to throw off the odious incubus that sits upon the public heart, locking up the wholesome circulation of its blood, and paralysing its action. The experiment has now been made, and has failed of immediate success; it was an effort nobly supported by every generous and honest man within the limits of the borough: but its triumph has been delayed by the want of union; by the apostacy of the perfidious; by the vile defection of others, whom opulence could not reconcile to duty and independence. Yet, said he, notwithstanding this sad coalition of miserable men against themselves and their children, I do not hesitate to announce to the generous and honest electors who hear me, that, though their triumph is deferred, their borough is from this moment free, and that terror has ceased to reign over it. You have polled a greater number of honest and independent voters than ever appeared heretofore for your most successful candidate. Look now, for a moment, against what a torrent of adverse circumstances you had to act; the object of your support, personally a stranger, giving public notice that he would not solicit a single individual. The moment a contest was ap prehended, corruption took the alarm; and a public officer, in my opinion most unbecomingly, appointed so early a day for the election, as to make all preparation whatsoever on my part impossible. If you remember the indignant laugh that was

excited in the course of the poll, when the returning officer demanded of the poll-taker how many had voted for the Master of the Rolls, and how many FOR US! You must, I think, be satisfied that there must be something base in this business. Sad indeed is the detail of this odious and ludi. crous transaction; but it is too instructive to be passed over in silence.

"When the election opened, an old gentleman rose and proposed my gallant opponent, as being a gentleman of 'great influence in the borough,' and had served it for three parliaments: that is, in other words, a gentleman who had the dregs of its population under his feet, and who had, for three parliaments, been the faithful adherent of every minis ter, and, upon every vital question, the steady and remorseless enemy, so far as a dumb vote would go, of this devoted island. And, indeed, what could you expect from a gentleman of another country, who could have neither interest in you, nor sympathy for you, but was perfectly free to sell you, or to bestow you, at his pleasure? This motion was seconded, I blush to think of it, I burn at being obliged to state it, by a merchant of Newry, himself a Catholic, himself the uniform witness, as he, together with his Catholic brethren, had been the uniform victims, of the principles of a gentleman whom he thought proper to support. Never shall I forget the figure which the unhappy man made, hesitating, stammering, making a poor endeavour to look angry, as if anger could cast any veil over conscious guilt, or conscious shame, or conscious fear: and to what extent must he have felt all those sensations if he looked forward, not merely to the sentiment of indignation and contempt which he was exciting in the minds of those that he betrayed; but the internal horror that he must feel, when thrust forward to the bar of his own conscience, and the