directing hostile operations against the Ottoman Porte.

"His Majesty will therefore continue to combine his efforts with those of the King of France and his Imperial Majesty, for the purpose of carrying into complete execution the stipulation of the Treaty of London.

"His Majesty commands us to acquaint you, that his Majesty had every reason to hope, when he last addressed you, that the arrangements which had been made for administering the government of Portugal, until the period at which the Emperor of Brazil should have completed his abdication of the Throne of Portugal, would have secured the Peace and promoted the happiness of a Country in the welfare of which his Majesty has ever taken the deepest interest.

"The just expectations of his Majesty have been disappointed; and measures have been adopted in Portugal, in disregard of the earnest advice and repeated remonstrances of his Majesty, which have compelled his Majesty and the other Powers of Europe, acting in concert with his Majesty, to withdraw their representatives from Lisbon.

"His Majesty relies upon the wisdom of the august Sovereign, the Head of the House of Braganza, to take the course which shall be best calculated to maintain the interests and honour of that illus

trious Family, and to secure the peace and happiness of the Dominions over which it reigns.

"Gentlemen of the House of Commons,

"We are commanded by his Majesty to thank you for the Supplies which you have granted to him for the service of the present year; his Majesty will apply them with the utmost regard to economy, and will continue a deliberate revision of the several public establishments, with a view to any further reduction which may be compatible with the dignity of the. Crown, and with the permanent interests of the country.

"My Lords, and Gentlemen, "His Majesty commands us congratulate you upon the general prosperity of the country, and upon the satisfactory state of the Public Revenue.

"His Majesty contemplates the increase of our Financial Resources with peculiar gratification, on account of the decisive proof which it exhibits, that the condition of his subjects is one of progressive improvement.

"His Majesty commands us, in conclusion, to assure you that his unabated exertions will be directed to inculcate among Foreign Powers a spirit of mutual goodwill; and to encourage the Industry, to extend the Commerce, and advance the general Welfare of his own Dominions."

commerce was crippled, but that the national honour was stained, and national impotence proclaimed, by these blockades being allowed to be established at all.

Very different was the state of Ireland. There, political and religious party spirit assumed a form which produced some unexpected occurrences, and threatened, in the apprehensions of the timid, the utter dissolution of society. The Catholic Association had continued to meet and to operate, notwithstanding the statute which had been designed to suppress it. That law had been intended to abolish impartially all the angry and noisy convocations of both parties, the Orange Societies as well as the Catholic Association. The former had submitted to the voice of the legislature: the latter changed its form, but changed nothing of its activity, its violence, and abuse. The Catholic leader had boasted from the beginning that no act of parliament would be able to restrain them, and he had carried his boast into effect. The task was an easy one; for no attempt was made to put the law in execution. The government, which had called for it as being indispensable to the peace of Ireland, made no use of it, while the peace of Ireland was vanishing before their eyes; and by doing so, they deprived themselves, in a great measure, of all right to complain that the proper government of Ireland was a thing beyond their power. During the short period that Mr. Canning was minister, the Catholics had been comparatively tranquil. Although his cabinet was divided on the question of their admission to political power, they rightly placed great confidence in the circumstance that he himself was their

friend; if he should remain in power, it was more than probable that their object would be gained; and, therefore, their most tried friends in parliament had both declined pressing Mr. Canning to give any determinate pledge upon the subject, and had abstained from all motions and discussions which might have embarrassed or shaken him in his tottering position. When lord Goderich became minister, their confidence waxed weaker; for though the head of the ministry was still their friend, he was a friend whose influence with the public and in the government was infinitely less. When he retired from office, and was succeeded by the duke of Wellington, they did not merely lose all hope of ministerial assistance, but they regarded the new arrangement of the cabinet as a new obstacle reared up against their progress. True, their exclusion had not been made a cabinet question; the ministry had not been organized on the principle that emancipation ought never to be granted; and Mr. Peel had already declared in parliament that it would not be possible to frame on that principle, a ministry sufficiently strong to govern the country. But still the head of the ministry was now their enemy, instead of being their friend; and it was a powerful and energetic head instead of being a weak one. Many of their supporters still continued in office, but they had lost the marquis of Lansdowne, and in his place had come Mr. Peel, the most immoveable and determined, as far as men could judge from his whole public life, and his repeated parliamentary declarations, of all their adversaries

the representative of the embodied resistance of the Church

of England. The power of the ministry resided in the duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel; the duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel, from their first entrance into public life, had been the opponents of Catholic emancipation; and in them the Protestants of the empire trusted, with a confidence which knew no bounds, that Catholics should never, with their consent, be admitted to the enjoyment of political power.

From the instant, therefore, that the new ministry was formed, the Catholic Association had waged war against the duke of Wellington and his ministry. Its orators lavished their contumely and abuse upon his grace without either taste or discretion; so far as their words could go, they revolted all sound sense and good feeling. But their doings were things of much higher importance, and were carried through with an activity and perseverance which led to very alarming results. The general election had taught them to what an extent they could control the votes of the freeholders in the county elections. The efforts, which they made on that occasion, had not been preceded by any uncommon degree of preparation, and yet their success had been conspicuous. The same instruments promised still more important triumphs, when they should be more systematically employed. The fate of every county election in Ireland depended on the rabble of forty-shilling freeholders, men generally ignorant and poor, hitherto the mere creatures of the landlords on whose property they vegetated, easily inflamed by imagined wrongs and tales of fancied oppression, incapable of all sound or independent political sentiment, the slaves of a

religion which rules ignorance more despotically than does any other, and which, again, uses ignorance itself as one mighty instrument of its sway. The Association determined to make itself master of the voices of these men, and, thus obtaining the command of the county elections, to overthrow the ministry, or any ministry which should refuse to grant unconditional emancipation, by returning members pledged to oppose every measure of every cabinet which would not adopt and carry through this one measure. They had their itinerant orators to inflame the angry flame the angry passions and ignorant prejudices of the rabble ; what was of much higher consequence, they had the united body of the popish priesthood to work upon their consciences. They could deprive the contest of all the characters of a merely political struggle, which still leaves some room for the exercise of the understanding, and invest it with the character of a religious warfare, which, in an ignorant and superstitious mob, lays every thing at the feet of blind, unthinking, and reckless bigotry. It was very true that the success of the scheme implied a breaking-up of the usual relations of society; the proprietors of the soil must be stripped of the influence which the possession of property ought always to bestow, and which, in every well-conditioned society it always does bestow. But of this confusion the Catholic Association boasted. This disrupture of ordinary ties, this dislocation of the members of society, was the very effect which it announced its intention of producing. Its orators publicly proclaimed that "Agitation," as they termed it, was the object which

they had in view, and that agitation they would have so long as they found it necessary;-that the sole object of all their labours was, to take the government of Ireland into their own hands, and prevent it from enjoying any portion of the tranquillity of a civilized country, until the Catholics should have been made equal sharers in political franchises with the Protestants. Nothing which is reckoned on as the result of political prejudices, combined with religious bigotry, ought ever to be reckoned extravagant; and the general election had already shewn that this plan of the Catholic leaders was by no means so extravagant, in reality, as at first sight it might have seemed. The new trial, which they now made of its efficacy, was much more daring, and still more astoundingly successful. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, one of the members for the county of Clare, had vacated his seat by accepting the office of President of the Board of Trade, when Mr. C. Grant resigned it, in the course of the session, on the dismissal of Mr. Huskisson. A new election thus became necessary; but no apprehensions were entertained that Mr. Fitzgerald would not be again returned, for he had uniformly given his vote and his influence in favour of emancipation. That he belonged, however, to a ministry which would not unite to carry that question, as a cabinet measure, was, to the Catholic Association, and the Catholic priests, a sufficient reason why he should be proscribed; and they went the still more unexpected length of starting against him their own great popish leader and agitator, Daniel O'Connell. The power, which could execute a scheme like this, was truly a power to be dreaded; since government,

sitting by in listless apathy, seemed resolved to make no attempt to restrain it. Not only was a most respectable gentleman, highly popular in his own county, backed by the influence of the state, and a steady supporter of the Catholic claims, to be ousted, but a man was to be returned who had no connection with the county, and who, moreover, being a professed Catholic, was disabled from sitting in parliament by those very laws which it was the great object of the Catholics to abolish. Mr. O'Connell, however, resolved to stand as a candidate; his only hope of success lay in severing the forty - shilling freeholders from their landlords, and every instrument, which the Association and its agents could command, was immediately put in requisition. The Catholic rent, regularly collected from almost every part of a country which could scarcely pay taxes, supplied money; a meeting of Catholics held in London agreed to subscribe funds towards the same object. To get rid of the objection against electing a man who could not sit-an objection which was within the comprehension even of the cultivator of a potatoe garden,-Mr. O'Connell was rash enough to pledge his professional character as a lawyer, not merely that, although a Catholic, he was capable of being elected-which was true-but that he could sit and vote in the House of Commons without taking the oaths. Mr. Butler; a Catholic English conveyancer and barrister, published an elaborate opinion to the same effect. Such an accessory was not required to serve the purpose of the agitators. Mr. O'Connell had considerable reputation in his profession; and his legal opi