placed-not for themselves alone, but for their country, and through their country for themselves. They are responsible to God and their country for their high trust, and may they exercise it as men who must give an account of their stewardship. I make my appeal to King, Lords, and Commons, for they still exist in form, and I will commence with the last, as that estate from which aggression is universally threatened and expect ed.

In addressing this body, I must preface thus. If I could help myself, I would not acknowledge your authority to legislate. For I must remind you of facts. Your title is derived from a suicidal Parliament, acknowledging its own legislatorial incompetence and even that Parliament was collected by means I must ever think unconstitutional, by the basest intimidation, by before unheard-of exercise of ministerial influence; while the sober voice, and power of election in great bodies of the people were kept down by armed infuriated mobs. But let that pass. The same base arts have been practised in your election, and too many of you are not representatives to consult for the good of the whole community, but delegates of Politi. cal Unions, declared to be illegal, yet left by the Whig Ministry, for their own party ends, in the full exercise of their usurped power. Yet even then, as a Reform Parliament, you have not been established without a violation of another estate of the realm, who, unforced, would never have sanctioned the law by which you stand congregated; many, therefore, think that you want that constitutionally legal sanction that ought to render you a Parliament. Thus again they think your title defective.

But there you are in Parliament assembled, though many think established by a tyranny, to legislate for us, and we must submit.

Thus constituted, I know a large part of you to be pledged to obey the dictation of societies, the leaders of which, in times of wholesome Government, would have been tried, perhaps hanged, for treason. From such of you it would be madness to expect any thing good; a waste of words to remonstrate. You are, however, miserably deceived, if you think

your own safety one jot more secure than that of those you may be willing to doom to destruction. You yourselves form too many competitions, and out of your class these are more numerous, ad infinitum, to supplant you in the career of democratic ambition. The ready way of supplanting is by setting aside, nor will your rivals be nice in the manner; and when you fall, you will meet with no sympathy, but the execrations of the people as the perpetrators of evil.

There is among you a Conservative body; to them I need not appeal; they will do their duty, and I trust and believe there will be now no trimming, no wavering among them. The rest of you are new, or Ministerial Whigs. With you party is all. For how can I think you moved by any other spirit, when your acts are diametrically opposed to the former published sentiments of the most talented of you, and organs of your party, and to your opinions even now owned in private? It is from this dream of party security I would have you to awake, ere by your acquiescence in revolutionary schemes, you involve yourselves and every interest in the country in one common ruin. You hate the Tories, and your hatred wars against your interest. It is unquestionably your interest, and your honour is deeply concerned in it, to attach yourselves as much as possible to the Conservatives, that you may make available their sure aid against the enemies of the monarchy. Those enemies, whom you have hitherto taken as your masters, as you have been coarsely reminded by their paper The Times. You have allowed them to put the saddle on your backs, and their hard bit in your mouths, and you have not power of yourselves to shake them off, and they can use both whip and spur, and boast that they gall your sides. But if you are disposed to take your stand, and in sincerity accept, adopt the good sense and good intentions of the Conservatives, who have really no present ambition to supplant you in office, you may obtain a power, which, though I think you ill deserve, I for one shall rejoice to see in your hands.

You are fully forewarned as to the dangerous points to which you will

be urged. Against all of these you must make a resolute stand. They are the downfall of the Church, the abrogation of the CornLaws, sacrifice of the Colonies, destruction of Corporations, and the Ballot.

With the downfall of the Church, you must know, there will be an end to the Monarchy, and it is for that very end that it is urged upon you by the destructive Republicans. With the degradation of the Church, will be the degradation of the Monarchy, and of the Peerage; and England, for a time, however unfit for the change, will be a republic, and perhaps, as such, wholly and entirely such, for a short period, more strong and sound than a justly limited monarchy mutilated; and this will reconcile many friends of the Monarchy to that change. But this, as is the fate of all republics, that are really such, not in name but in fact, will be succeeded by the vilest democracy, ever outrageous in its bloody tyranny, in its time to be succeeded by a military despotism. I believe this to be the natural succession, after the first destruction has been effected.

these consequences. I say, simply, look to the titles of your estates. I know it is a doctrine you have long encouraged, that the property of the Church is public property, and may therefore be resumed. You may use this doctrine, in your enmity, to raise a cry against, and intimidate the clergy, who have always conscientiously opposed you, but you do not, and cannot believe, that it has any foundation of truth or justice.

You know that tithes and other Church property were never a grant from Parliament, and, therefore, cannot be resumed.. Force may usurp, seize, but not resume what it never gave. Such property were grants to the clergy by the original proprietors of the lands; have been acknowledged, sanctioned, and protected by the laws of Parliaments. But Parliaments gave them not, nor had the right to give, nor can have the right to take away. Nay, you have no more right even to change this property, or any part of it, for another, than you have to compel Mr Coke to give his property to Mr Hunt, or Mr Cobbett, or Mr Hume, because it is convenient for them to have it; and to take in lieu thereof any other property, or perhaps an annuity from the Funds.

The Church is so interwoven with the general ties that bind and secure all property, that in effecting its downfall, or its degradation, you must infringe upon the great law of property, and thereby admit a principle that must, if pursued, lead to confiscation; and it is important for you to consider, that you will never persuade the people to a belief that this conduct towards the Church is not intended as a punishment, a proscription, for the political opinions of the clergy. Are you prepared to establish such precedent, such law of proscription, of punishment; and will your own estates, some of them perhaps former Church plunder, and held on Church tenures, which you may condemn as invalid, be safe from the principle which you are called upon to apply to the acting, the working Church?

I say nothing of such a contemplated interference being an irreligious act, and in the highest degree demoralizing in its effect. You have so long borne enmity to the Establishment, courted into hostility with it, and taken part with the Dissenters, that you will ever remain either blind, or seeing, indifferent, to

But there is a very large body most deeply interested in the preservation of the Church in all rights and privileges, whom, as the tide runs, it may be dangerous to injure,

the poor. How will the cry," Let those pay the Church who want its offices" suit them? They now have all the advantages, and they are many, without paying one farthing. They have resident clergy spending their incomes amongst them, ready with their means, their example, and their personal attendance, who are at the sick man's bedside, and then the eye of the poor man blesses the clergyman. You will perhaps say that you mean not to effect a downfall of the Church; but look well, that your confidence that such downfall will not be effected by your measures, be not founded in mere conceit. Where is the necessity for the "perilous experiment ?" Who are they who demand it? Not the tithe-payers, but the city demagogues and unionists, who pay nothing, and desire the mischief, because they have no re

ligion, hate it with a deadly hatred, and cry" down with it! down with it, even to the ground!" detest the pure unoffending clergy, as the unjust citizen who condemned to death Aristides, because he was allowed to be just. They know that the uprooting religion will prepare the way more surely for the democracy they do mean to establish. Will not the poor consider themselves robbed with the clergy, robbed of their dearest property, their rights, a word of so large acceptation, and so wildly misapplied by the demagogues? for the diabolical attempts of the press have not yet rooted religion from the hearts and affections of the agricultural population. You say you have no such intentions; but are you sure you are not under masters who have, and will do their utmost to drive you to this accomplishment?

I repeat that the agricultural population wish no alteration, their names are used by an evil press, town demagogues, some designing dissenters and unionists; but collect the wishes of farmers and agricultural labourers fairly, and I am confident you will find they demand no change, that they dread and fear it; and well they may, for they will be the greatest sufferers. The labourer says, "I pay nothing for my church, and have it to go to; and the clergyman is my benefactor, my friend;" the farmer says, "With whom can I make a better bargain than with the parson? I know how much more I pay my landlord for lands that are tithe-free, and I do not want Government collectors who will take the full value."

the law which justifies a more equable distribution of the one, will justify and demand a more equal distribution of the other? Will they not then soon discover that aristocratic wealth is injurious to the people, and find a precedent at hand for convenient mulcts? For remember that the whole income of the 26 Bishoprics put together is under L.165,000, (it is easy to find many a two dozen of commoners whose incomes amount to more, and offer an equally tangible temptation,) and that few of these, except twelve of the best, from the necessary expenses attendant on the office and station, pay their own expenses. But your economists attempt a nice distinction, for which they have their secret object. Church property is an unfixed property, they say; not like an estate devolving from father to children, but distributable among uncertain persons, therefore the public, therefore disposable for the public. Now this principle, if admitted, will sweep all corporation funds, all charitable funds for uncertain persons, into those rapacious hands. The estates bequeathed for alms-houses for the poor must then be confiscated, and University foundations.

But Church property is magnified into a mine of wealth wherewith to pay the national debt; or if that honesty can be avoided, to furnish all expenses of government. Now the amount is not worth mentioning. By calculations made from returns laid before Parliament, it is certain that in 1812, when wheat was L.12 per quarter, the whole income of parochial clergy from tithes, and land in lieu of tithes, was L.2,046,457, 0s.5 d. And in 1803, wheat at L 3, 19s. 2d. per quarter, the whole income was L.1,694,991, 6s. 74d., and cannot be so much now. This sum divided among the parishes would give to each clergyman about L.150 pera nnum. There are 11,342 livings in England and Wales, not four livings worth L.4000, not thirty in all England worth L.2000 a-year, 4361 under L.150 each.

The real attack is upon religion; and I assume that the first change you effect, will ultimately lead to the confiscation of Church property, and from that inevitably to other confiscation. When your masters, "the people," falsely called, have obtained a Parliamentary sanction to their dogma that Church property is public property, and you shall have, under their direction acting upon it, made the distribution according to your discretion, will they not find that the property of the Peerage, and it may be one reason for declaring the Peerage useless, stands in the same relation; and that

The total amount of Cathedral property is under L.300,000, which, divided among Deans and Prebendaries, would not produce L.500 ayear to each. Many prebendal stalls are not worth any thing whatever,

plunder, "lawful" plunder. Left free from agitation, the mass of the people would be converted to the Protestant faith; no matter, then, if agitation produce robbery, murder, and cruelties that would disgrace the veriest savages. They must be irritated by constant agitation, kept up to their execrable works by the most infamous promises. The price of blood was proclaimed. And in this mischief, the Catholic priesthood met with more than government protection; they felt encouragement. The Protestants alone were discouraged, Bible education almost prohibited, the Protestant magistracy insulted and degraded, law and the fear of it setaside, universal terrorism established; lawless perjured insolence and wickedness predominant. And it is to these scoundrels, with a vain hope that you can reconcile the fiends by the sacrifice, that you would yield up the rights and privileges of the Church, made one, by the bond of the Union, with the Church of England? And you think that agitation will then cease, and that you can conquer an insatiable spirit, by yielding in part to its demands? that you can extinguish flame by feeding it with fuel?

The demon well knows his king dom to be insecure, until there is a total separation from, or extinction of Protestantism.

General plunder, perhaps general massacre, for so it has been, may be now in the schemes of the rebels.

Infidels, anarchists, and republicans, in England, will be glad to adopt what part of the precedent in Ireland suits their views, and in their time by similar agitation, and perhaps similar results, give the last blow to our mutilated empire. The Fiend of the Fisherman, escaping from his glass case, will sweep across the Channel in his expanded volume of smoke, assume on this land some new gigantic form; and then what power will charm him back into his prison, and sink him again in the deep?

You have now to grapple manfully with rebellion, to yield nothing; and you will be responsible for all the dreadful consequences, if you shew further impotence, and put not forth your insulted strength. You must secure the Catholic population from the Catholic priesthood; you must

suppress agitation; and the Protestant seed, which has been, and will be again widely scattered, will spring up and give increase. This you must encourage, and the blessing of God will reward your labours;-a contrary conduct will be your crime, and your punishment. Be not deceived-the Churches of England and Ireland are one. The blow that levels the one will level the other. I know that, ultimately, the "gates of hell shall not prevail against her." Her temporary removal or degradation may be permitted in punishment of a guilty nation.

Your tyrant masters of the Unions will likewise demand of you the abrogation of the Corn Laws-and to this they will mainly be instigated by two motives. They hate the aristocracy, all aristocratic distinction, and will go great lengths to injure the great landholders in their property; they will do what they can to burthen it with taxation, and reduce its value; and in their selfish and shortsighted policy, they will demand cheap bread, simply because they do not grow it. They have been encouraged in their selfishness, and have been taught that they might enrich themselves by the villainous game of "beggar my neighbour." Knowing this system must lead to the desired confusion, the republicans and anarchists have by all means promoted it, and dignified their impudent dogmas with the title of philosophy. But I said, it is a selfi shand shortsighted policy. The manufacturer's best customer is his home customer; he is the safest. Effect the ruin, or curtail the means of the agriculturist, the great home customer, and where in the end will shopkeeper and manufacturer be? The manufacturer will look in vain to markets whose real interests, or compulsion of Governments, or high duties, may keep him out of, and he will have either lost or injured his best and readiest. But this is not all. Even those classes, the agriculturists, will not, with the patience expected of them, suffer long. The operatives and manufacturers have now the greatest facility in combining against the farmer, landholder, and agricultural labourer; but necessity, distrust, and engendered hostility, may teach the art of combining, and create facilities for the purpose among the latter also.