The National Register. — London, England, 1808-06-19 00:00:00

THE NATIONAL REGISTER. herself for the freedom of her children : she has undergone the sacrifice, but her children have not been fre e d ! W e nave no doubt that Ireland; as well as England, will at some future period derive advantages from the measure of union : but we hale also no doubt that her immediate suf ferings have been great and heavy. An immediate price ought therefore to have been paid to her : the price which England stipulated to pay. The country of Ireland is now before our eyes, a painful and dangerous /11 emoria 1 of Ministerial ambition and British fallacy. Her noble lies, once the sources of her wealth, as they were the sup ports of her grandeur, have emigrated to England, in the train of their delegated Parliament. They have b een obliged to abandon the city of Dublin, the capital that was endeared to them by early habits, by associations which have grown with their growth, and strengthened with their strength, by the influence and respect which they com manded, by the benefits and opulence which they diffused, and by the grandeur of hereditary nobility. These sor rows may seem but imaginary—it matters not : call them imagination—prejudice, if you will but while human hap piness depends upon imagination, or even prejudice, a real CS is inflicted upon us in the deprivation of ideal good. And now the only vestiges remaining of that legislature, which once directed the Government of districts, and gave life and motion to the interests of millions, must be traced in—a hundred members ! who are sent to the United Par liament in England, and who surviving their country's existence, sit, as Mr. Grattan has forcibly expressed him self, the images of degradation, and the representatives of nothing !" The Irish Opposition have been compared to the sea in a storm. Unhappily, the orb of liberty, which dawned from their bosom, was fated to sink amid their waves : and it went down with a mighty sound, as the ancients have fabled, that in the western seas the sun is heard to extin cr e ,uish his fires, and hiss to the bottom of the ocean ! Long mill that sound reverberate in the ears of Irishmen : long will the recollection of it continue to remind them that they once were free : and may its warnings at length in duce this country to pay the stipulated price of all the sacrifices that have been made by her sister nation ! In the mean time let not the defenders of their country be aspersed as the breeders of sedition, when they arc only demanding- justice. Let them persevere in their manly course, and even though they fail in their immediate object, they must receive the reward of immortality. If those heroes who have lived or died in the cause of their country, be ever remembered by grateful posterity. the names of Charlemont and Grattan, of Leinster and ;if Curran, must always be recorded with the loftiest en thusiasm, in the pages of historians who shall celebratc their greatness, and in the traditionary tales of a people whom they could not preserve ! REVIEW OF POLITICAL PAMPIILETEERS. No. XX V. TOE EA OF SELKIRK'S PAmyJILET ON TUE NECESSITY OF A MODE EFFECTUAL SYSTEM OF NATIONAL DEEENcE. AND THE MEANS OF EsTAILLISIIING Tilt PEI:MANI:NT SECURITY OF TILE KINGDOM. (Continued from our last.) Lord Selkirk, in this pamphlet, proposes to call into military life every young man between the ages of 18 and 25. Each in idual, from the 18th to the 19th year of his age, Alan he liable to three months service : buPfrem the age of 19 upwards, only three w eeks, at a fixed period of the year, will be re quired annually till the age of :15, after w hich no one w ill I e alum to any demands of military service. Every youth may , enrol his name in any district that lie prefers, and the period of his three months service may be left to the dett.rininat ion ot the magistracy of the district. The mere itacritice of so :-liort a time as this scheme requires, cannot occasion any serious detr iment to any individual's pans of life; the lower orders will cot be himseit .4 to maintniu the Protestant reformed religion as by Jaw established.'' !Vow there are three ways in which these obligations may be interpreted. The laws establish ed may wean the laws which at the time of King William's accession to the throne, mina this oath was devised, hao been already established : or may mean the laws which may be successively established by the legislature : or may mean the laws which shall have been established apd be actually in existence at the moment when each successive King shall ascend the throne. if the meaning be, tht laws which at the time when the oath was devised had already been established, then there is no impediment to the Emancipation of the Catholics: for when that oath was devised and taken by King William, the Catholics sate in both Houses of Parliament in Ireland, and were eligi ble to all offices, civil and military : it was not till several years had elapsed, that they were deprived of the rights which they are now seeking to regain. If the meaning be the laws which may be successively established by the legislature, the legislature is thus acknowledged to p ossess a right of establishing laws: and the King, as a part of that legislature, is entitled to take a share in the forma tion of laws, according to which laws he has sworn that he will govern, when they are formed. Such a law would be that Emancipation which the Catholics now request from the legislature. if the meaning be the laws which shall be in existence at the moment when each succes sive King shall ascend the throne, then William and Anne had no right to make those laws relating to the Catholics, which, by diminishing their privileges, induced them to rebellion : by inducing them to rebellion endangered the State: and by endangering the State contributed to injure the Protestant religion, as connected with the State. if King William and Queen Anne had no right to make laws thus dangerous to the Protestant church, then King George, in repealing those laws, does no new act, but only sets right those affairs which his predecessors had set wrong : or perhaps, to speak more correctly, he only pronounces void an act, which, being unlawful, was in fact, ab inilio, void. But it scent's too ridiculous to argue that the " laws established" really mean any thing else than 46 the laws that may be successively enacted by the " legislature." For if the King may not use his legislative authority in altering the laws relative to the Church, lie may not use his authority in altering any other laws : since at the same time when be swore to maintain the Protestant .Religion as established ky law, he swore also to govern according to the statutes in Parliament agreed on. Here if the laws established exclude the notion of the laws to be established, the statutes already agreed tn exclude the no tion of statutes in be agreed on hereafter: and then the King has no legislative power : and then what is the Br'!ish Constitution Besides, it should be recollected that the King has al ready made alterations in the lams relating to the Catho hes. During the last thirty years the Catholic subjects of the King have been admitted to a crrrat variety of privi leges from which they mere excluded when George the Third ascended the Throne : and who shall say that the King has a right by his Coronation Oath to alter some existing constitutions, and has no right to alter others ? All that On be said appea-s to resolve itself into th i s : if the King', notwithstanding his Coronation Oatl:, (lid con sent to the repeal of the penal stat► tes in 1718, or 1782, or • 1793, he may consent, natuithstai.ding his Coronation Oath, to the reveal of the disqualifying statutes in 1808. Ireland has a right to the Emancipation of the Catholics. When Mr. Pitt persuaded the lush people, or rather the Irish Parliament, Io adopt th. meaglie of union, be offered by way of compensation for the sacrifices which Ireland must make of her independence, n:►y, of her very existence as a nation, the complete Emaneipai ion of several millions , of men from a state of exclusion the most painful and de grading. It was for the Emancipation of the Catholics that Ireland consented to be no longer a country - - to blot honed from the map of the world. agreed to sacrifice JUNE lg.