truth is truth-right is right—justice is justice-whether it may suit men's interests, passions, and prejudices to practise them or not; and it is all men's duty, in their public as well as private capacities, to square their conduct by the rule of right. Yet times and circumstances ought to be considered, not as opposing but as assisting theoretical conclusions. Solon, in legislating for the Athenians, had an idea of a more perfect Constitution than he gave them; but he gave them such Laws as they were then capable of receiving, agreeably to the old maximquodcunque recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis; and our Saviour in saying to His Disciples, "Be ye therefore perfect,

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as your Father that is in Heaven is per"fect," proposed to them, not what was practically wrong, but a standard of perfection which, though above their reach, was well fitted to excite their endeavours to attain it. In like manner, abstract truths in Ethics and in Politics ought to be precisely stated and admitted, that Men

Men may, as much as possible, approximate their conduct to them.

The Irish Catholics are willing to take the Oath of Allegiance prescribed by the Irish Parliament in 1782--and the British Catholics are willing to take that prescribed by the British Parliament in 1791. And as both Legislatures have considered all those who take these Oaths, as good and loyal subjects to his Majesty, his Crown, and Government,-Why then, it may be said, are the Catholics alone excluded from a Right, which Men of all other religious denominations enjoy? Presbyterians, Independents, Socinians, Unitarians, Men of every Sect, however differing from each other and from the Established Church in doctrine, worship, and discipline, are all allowed to sit and vote in Parliament.-By what principle of equal and impartial Justice are the Catholics alone excluded from that privilege? An answer to this complaint has long ago occurred to my mind; and, after much careful sifting of the subject, I profess Vol. I. that

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that I cannot see its fallacy; the answer in brief, without entering into historical detail, is this:-Catholics are not allowed to sit in Parliament as Legislators, because Catholics are not allowed to sit on the Throne as Kings-If it is contended, that the Restraint ought to remain upon the King, how can it be argued that it ought not to remain upon others?-Must a disability be extinguished as to a Catholic Peer or Commoner, and yet continue, in full force, as to a Catholic King ?—If it is argued, that the disability ought to cease in both cases,-as Protestants, jealous of the civil and religious liberty which we have enjoyed, for above a century, under Protestant Princes, we firmly reprobate any relaxation of the Law which prohibits a Catholic King, from ascending the Throne of these Kingdoms.

It may however be said, and properly said, that the influence of a Catholic King is very different, both in degree and kind, from that of a Catholic Peer or Commoner in Parliament-that a Catholic King may,

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by his influence, oppress a Protestant People, and subvert their Religion; but that a few Catholic Legislators, when mixed with a great majority of Protestants, cannot be dangerous, either to the Established Church of these Dominions, or to the avowed principles of all the Reformed Churches in Europe. To apprehend danger from the admission of Catholics into Parliament proceeds not, I humbly think, from any correct view of the habitudes of human nature; from any enlightened foresight of future events; or enlarged notions of political expedience; but rather, from an inadvertence to our present situation, as connected with, or, more truly speaking, as unconnected with the rest of Europe, and from a too strong attachment to the prejudices of Education. We have from our childhood been taught to combine into one Idea the Pope and the Pretender, as constituting an object of our detestation; united they were dangerous, but a Pope without a Pretender can be no reasonable subject

for our alarm; nor can the Catholics be now considered as dangerous, especially when they disclaim and solemnly abjure, as they have done, any intention to overturn the present Protestant Church Establishment for the purpose of substituting a Catholic Establishment in its stead; and when they declare, that they will not exercise any privilege to which they may become entitled, to disturb the Protestant Religion and Protestant Government. This reasoning is not devoid of strength; I submit it to your consideration.

I know it has been said-That Popery is still the same,-that the Church of Rome has never made any material alteration in its principles or practice-that if it had the power it would not want the will to persecute Protestants,-that Bellarmine's maxiin-" Hæreticos non esse bello petendos quando sunt fortiores nobis” -is still the maxim of the Court of Rome, and accounts for its present moderation;-that the connexion between

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