archy; and any lukewarmness on their parts in late party struggles has been caused, not by any vacillation in their convictions, but by the degree in which the present prime minister has himself vacillated in carrying out the tradition of his present party at home, and by his utter abnegation, in his foreign policy, of every one of those principles which all parties in this country have hitherto considered sacred, and which, so long as the English people retain the love of justice, the manly instincts, and the generosity which have hitherto distinguished them, will, except when religious prejudice blinds them, be the distinguishing characteristics of their policy abroad.

Look at what has just happened in the House of Commons. Our readers no doubt remember the Orange demonstrations which took place in the north of Ireland last July: Orange flags were hoisted on the Protestant churches; one of her Majesty's judges, who is a Catholic, was insulted by the Orange grand jury of the county of Fermanagh; some Orangemen marching in illegal procession in the neighbourhood of Lurgan fired upon an unarmed body of Catholics, one of whom was killed, and several others were grievously wounded. The effect produced on the public mind was such, that a new law as to party demonstrations, opposed by a considerable section of the Tory party, was passed through Parliament. On the spot vigorous measures to discover the murderers were adopted; informations were sworn against several of the Orangemen; they were committed for trial, and at the spring assizes Mr. O'Hagan, the Irish AttorneyGeneral proceeded to Armagh to conduct the prosecution. Three cases were tried, with extreme moderation and exemplary fairness on the part of the crown; and the AttorneyGeneral gave a precedent of vast importance to all who may succeed him in the conduct of political trials in Ireland, for he directed that partisanship and prejudice only, and not religious opinion, should exclude men from the jury. In the two first cases, the prisoners having challenged every Catholic, Protestants exclusively were impanneled; and on the third, a misdemeanour case, there was a mixed jury-eight Catholics and four Protestants. The first and the third juries convicted; the second gave a verdict of acquittal. The Orangemen were in consternation. Forthwith they assailed the prosecution and the Attorney-General with an outrageous malignity and audacity of falsehood which have had no parallel in our time. They howled like baffled fiends about the packing of the jury! They, whose settled practice it had been never to

permit one Catholic to sit upon a jury for the trial of a Catholic when it could possibly be prevented ;-they, who tried Daniel O'Connell by twelve Protestants seventeen years ago, and with a desperate consistency of action, on their last advent to power, tried Daniel Sullivan, the young "Phoenix" prisoner of Kerry, also a Catholic, by twelve Protestants, every Catholic, however high his station or pure his character, being deliberately driven from the box;-they, who have repeated this operation of wrong and insult until it has become too familiar to Irishmen to stir their wonder, though it has not ceased to move them to indignation;-they dared to assail a Catholic attorney-general because he would not permit Orange partisans to try an Orangeman charged with an Orange murder. They got two exclusively Protestant juries and a mixed jury; they never have given a Catholic jury, and rarely a mixed jury, to a Catholic in any political case. Yet they had the impudence to rave and roar as if they had suffered injury. To them mere justice, simple fair play, wears the show of oppression, because for generations they have had license to tyrannise and trample down their fellowbeings, and interference with the precious privilege is utterly intolerable to them. So they attacked the Catholic Attorney-General as not even Plunkett was attacked, when he ventured to do his duty and encounter them forty years ago in Dublin. They manufactured lies; they charged the suppression of proof, and the withholding of witnesses, and official partiality, without the shadow of evidence; and they went on, day after day and week after week, scattering the "poison-spume" of their rancour through all their organs, with an unconquerable malice which made them wholly reckless of exposure and refutation.

We venture to say that there is no one whose character stands higher with all classes and creeds than Mr. O'Hagan. He is not only a great orator and an accomplished scholar, but his scrupulous justice and his tolerant spirit have won for him the love and the approbation, often recorded in public documents, of those who most widely differ from him in religion and in politics; but he is a Catholic, the culprit was an Orangeman. The Orange feeling of Ireland was roused just as in the southern states of America the indignation of the slave-owners will be roused if the blacks having been placed by the law on an equality with the whites—a black attorney-general ever prosecutes to conviction a white cri

minal.

How did this indignation find a voice in the House of

Commons? Where did outraged Protestant ascendency find advocates there? Was it Mr. Spooner, or Mr. Newdegate, or that new and fitting antagonist of Maynooth, Mr. Whalley, who was chosen for the purpose? No; Sir Hugh Cairns, the late English Solicitor-General, and Mr. Whiteside, late Irish Attorney-General, were the two men to whom was intrusted the task of impugning the conduct of the Queen's law-officer, and of vindicating for Orange delinquents a virtual impunity from the terrors of the law.

Some fourteen Orangemen were found guilty at Armagh. One of them, convicted of manslaughter by an exclusively Protestant jury, escaped, we believe, from some doubt expressed by the judge who tried him as to the effect of evidence which happened to be given on a subsequent trial. The executive acted according to usage on the suggestion of the judge. And there was great jubilation amongst the Orangemen; their rancour was intensified instead of being subdued, and they raved for the destruction of the AttorneyGeneral. The whole of the incidents of this transaction, to which we cannot more fully advert, are frightfully illustrative of the unchanged ferocity of this terrible faction, and of their resolution, so far as they have power, to deal with the Catholic people as insolently and as barbarously as in the darkest period of the penal times.

We have dwelt on this matter at so much length because we think that it brings out in the clearest light the point we are insisting on,—the ingrained, ineradicable conviction of the Tory leaders, that whatever the Act of Emancipation may have done as to the law in fact, Protestants and Catholics are not, and ought not to be, treated as equals. They are ready to rule us as kind masters, but masters they are determined to be.

Mr. Whiteside bas often said in the House of Commons, "I don't know how things are looked upon in the rest of Ireland; I know the opinion of Ulster." Ulster is his Ireland and that of his party; the rest of Ireland is a conquered province, to be treated generously, kindly, even liberally, but to be kept in subjection. This is well understood in Ireland. Hence her influence has maintained the liberal party in power perhaps for the greater part of the last thirty years. But if the Irish Catholics never can be supporters of Tory rule, are they bound to support Lord Palmerston's government? must they be either Derbyites or Palmerstonians? Nothing can be more absurd, more contrary to reason, more unsustained by parliamentary precedent, than such a view. When

Lord John Russell turned out Lord Palmerston from his government, did Lord Palmerston join the Tories? Far from it. He took a line of his own, and, with the assistance of Tory votes, he overthrew Lord John's government. When the Manchester party were disgusted by the exclusiveness and nepotism of Lord Palmerston's administration, did they inscribe Church and Queen upon their banners, and join that Tory party whose principles were far more opposed to theirs than the principles of the existing government were? Nothing of the sort. They took an independent line, watched their opportunity, and drove Lord Palmerston from office. We could multiply instances of a similar line of conduct. The two we have mentioned are, however, sufficient for our present purpose; and be it observed, that in both these instances the result aimed at by the actors was obtained. Lord Palmerston wished for revenge; he certainly had no intention of joining the Tories, or of spending the rest of his life in opposition. After a short Tory administration he came into power himself as prime minister, and he humiliated his rival. In the case of the Manchester party, within a few months a new liberal government was formed, in the constitution and direction of which they had their fair share of influence.

It is true that in each of these cases Lord Derby was given a short possession of power; but after all, in this country, no government can long remain in office that does not represent popular opinion. If the popular opinion had been with the Tories, they would have gained and kept power without the intervention of Lord Palmerston at the one period, or of the Manchester party at the other. As the popular opinion was liberal, the Tories were not able to maintain the position they had accidentally gained.

That policy, therefore, which recommends itself not only to the instinct of the great mass of the Catholics of the United Kingdom, but also to the deliberate convictions of the deepest thinkers among them, involves no abandonment of liberal principles, and no defection from the liberal party. They may turn out the government over which Lord Palmerston and Lord John preside, but they will not become Tories. It would be madness on our parts to establish Orange ascendency because for a moment, under the influence of politico-religious excitement, the party with which we have been identified has been untrue to its principles. Let us not undo the work of O'Connell, and bind round our neck and kiss those chains which he struck off from the necks of

our forefathers, because a statesman who never sacrificed once in the course of his long life his own interest to any principle, sees us weak from division, and, thinking that he can do without us, insults us in order to conciliate our enemies; but, on the other hand, let us not submit to outrage or to insult from those whose battles we have fought, and whose victories without our sacrifices could never have been achieved.

The leaders of Catholic opinion in the county of Cork have recently set us a good example. Mr. Baron Deasy, after having through their influence represented the county for a long time, thought fit to insult them, and to proclaim that his party could do without them. An election came on; they stood aloof, and the liberal party was ignominiously defeated. We doubt not that this salutary lesson has already purged the mental error of Mr. Deasy's friends, and made them forget those vows made at ease, as violent as void.—A similar process on a wider amphitheatre will produce a similar effect on the leaders of the liberal party. We regret, as much as any one can do, the necessity of giving them such a lesson, but that necessity under existing circumstances is imperative. Nothing, however, can be further from our intention than to maintain that we ourselves are not in a large degree responsible for the unfortunate position in which we are now placed; on the contrary, we believe that the insolence of those few among us who are Veneziani e poi Cattolici first Whigs and then Catholics, the absolute ignoring of the convictions of onefourth of her Majesty's subjects by Lord John's foreign policy, the exclusion of Catholics from every position of influence or authority,—all these injuries and all these insults would never have been possible if it had not been for our own disunion. No party, we may be quite sure, will deal justly by us from any exuberance of affection for us. It is quite true that the Tories are faithful, and the Liberals unfaithful to their principles when they wrong us. Carry out the principles of the one party to their logical results, and we have all we ask for or desire-liberty; a clear stage, and no favour; absolute and entire equality, civil and religious; in foreign affairs boná-fide non-intervention. Tory principles, on the other hand, involve privilege-exceptional favour towards the Established Church. Church and king is the idea on which the one party subsists, civil and religious liberty, the very life-blood of the other; the reason for which it exists, and the negation of which would make it cease to exist. A very slight consideration of these simple truths will show how utterly absurd is the view of those who say, How can Catholics