me on Friday, for the first time, to the Aggregate Meeting in Fishamble Street. Being rather late I missed the orations of Mr. Connell [sic] and the leading orators, and only heard a dry monotonous effusion from Counsellor and, to me, a most disgusting harangue from a stripling, with whom I am unacquainted, but who, I am sorry to say, styled himself my countrymanan Englishman. This young gentleman, after stating that he had been only a fortnight in Ireland, expatiated on the miseries which this country endured in consequence of its connexion with his own, and asserted (from the knowledge, I presume, which his peculiar sagacity enabled him to acquire in so short a period) that its cities were depopulated, its fields laid waste, and its inhabitants degraded and enslaved; and all this by its union with England. If it revolted against my principles, Mr. Editor, to hear such language from one of my own countrymen, you will readily conceive that my disgust was infinitely heightened to observe with what transport the invectives of this renegade Englishman against his native country were hailed by the assembly he addressed. Joy beamed in every countenance and rapture glistened in every eye at the aggravated detail : the delirium of ecstasy got the better of prudential control; the veil was for a moment withdrawn. I thought I saw the purpose, in spite of the pretence, written in legible characters in each of their faces, and though emancipation alone flowed from the tongue, separation and ascendancy were rooted in the heart.

As for the young gentleman alluded to, I congratulate the Catholics of Ireland on the acquisition of so patriotic and enlightened an advocate; and England, I dare say, will spare him without regret. I must, however, remark

that as the love of his country is one of the strongest principles implanted in the breast of man by his Maker, and as the affections are more ardent in youth than in maturer years, that this young gentleman should at so early an age have overcome the strongest impulses of nature, seems to me a complete refutation of the hitherto supposed infallible maxim that Nemo fuit repente turpissimus.

AN ENGLISHMAN.

V.

LETTER OF "A DISSENTER TO THE EDITOR OF "THE DUBLIN JOURNAL," RELATING TO SHELLEY'S SPEECH AND "PROPOSALS FOR AN ASSOCIATION.'

SIR,

Saturday, March 21st, 1812.

I question the propriety of contributing to the public introduction of those literary nondescripts and political adventurers who figure occasionally on the Catholic stage. Men there are who, preferring distinction procured by infamy to inglorious obscurity, do not hesitate at the violation of any law, civil or sacred, in order to attain it: swimming at the surface by their own putrescence, these merit not our attention; silence and contempt are all we owe to the individual whose sole ambition is to become the idol of a mob, and who like Herostratus, could fire a temple the wonder of the world, merely for the sake of

This also was unearthed by Dublin Journal (21 March, 1812). Mr. MacCarthy, from Faulkner's

transmitting to posterity a name which might otherwise

rot.

Through the medium of your paper, however, the attention of the public has been called to another of the Catholic performers, and a late worthy correspondent has obliged you with some deserved and judicious animadversions upon his début. In a weekly paper, the appearance of this "very interesting" personage is announced with as much parade as if Dogberry, Verges, and the Watch graced the scene. "Oh, a stool and a cushion for the sexton." "An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind." "The ewe that will not hear her lamb when it baes, will never answer a calf when he bleats." His panegyrist has described him with the minuteness of an interested biographer; the prospects and the talents of the "stranger" and his generosity, his amazing generosity to an incarcerated individual whose crime was not loyalty, are made the subjects of commendation; and in illustration of the excellence of this modern Apollonius, who travels but for the improvement of the human race, a specimen of his composition is printed and circulated. I do not find that he, like the Cappadocian, has laid claims to miraculous powers, but he is a poet, and his very prose is so full of poetic fire, so vivid, so redundant. with words, which, like those often used by a celebrated female novelist, were probably never intended to represent any specific idea-one is tempted to think he must now and then compose under the influence of the moon. Now, sir, though I really can neither "make occasions," nor" improve those that offer," for perusing the whole of a production which is scarcely to be paralleled in the ravings of Diderot, the rhapsodies of Rousseau, or the soft sentimental stuff of the Prebend of York, I have

read enough of this specimen to confirm me in the old-fashioned but honest and conscientious prejudices which it is evidently the wish of its author to eradicate. He proposes to exterminate the eyeless monster Bigotry," and "make the teeth of the palsied beldame Superstition chatter." This, which is doubtless designed as an allegorical allusion to the Romish Church, must, if actually accomplished, be its death; and when "the teeth of the beldame chatter," her brats may go beg; he proposes to make us all "kneel at the altar of the common God," and to "hang upon that altar the garland of devotion," figures which Deism borrows from the old Heathen mythology, which are mere poetic smoke, and resemble most the steams of a perfumer's shop, or the smock of an Eastern bride smelling of "myrrh, aloes, and cassia."

In a style less elevated and Heliconian this modern. annihilator of moral and political evil roundly proposes an association throughout Ireland for the attainment of "Catholic Emancipation and the repeal of the Union Act." That the abolition of the aristocracy of the country is a feature in his picture of Utopian amelioration, though, for reasons obvious, but lightly touched, and as yet kept in the shade, is evident from the manner and connexion in which he disapproves " of other distinctions than those of virtue and talent "-a disapproval specious indeed, worthy the head of him who expects a new Jerusalem on earth, or seeks divine perfection among created beings. But ignorant, shamefully ignorant, must they be of human nature, and of the awful events which have taken place in Europe of late years, who can be gulled by such a pretext now. It is "Vox et præterea nihil," the very cant of republicans. I would suspect the cause which

recommends itself by such a pretext, as I would the chastity of a wanton assuming the dress of a nun-the loyalty of a friar or a presbyter armed with a pike, or the honesty of a beggar with a casquet of jewels. "No distinctions but those of virtue and talent" was the pretext of Monsieur Egalité, of Legendre the butcher, of the bloody Roland, and of that monster in human shape Marat, who proposed, and was applauded by a banditti of ruffians calling themselves a National Convention for professing, the cutting off one hundred and fifty thousand heads as a sovereign specific for the disorders of France.

It is said in a book to whose pages the "very interesting" Philanthropist seems not to be a stranger, that burning lips and a wicked heart" are "like a potsherd covered with silver;" the man I mean has himself quoted the phrase " a tree is known by its fruits," and if I mistake not, such expressions warrant the opinion that from certain noisy but worthless characters nothing but what is noxious can be expected. Men whose private life and known habits make them the refuse of the political, and the terror or the stain of the moral world, would make but sorry reformers of public abuse. I need not whisper "whence I steal the waters" when I say, " Physician, heal thyself." It is usual to commend the Catholic body for their loyalty; that they are generally loyal is sometimes acknowledged even by those who, in their official situations, reprobate the proceedings of the Catholic Committee. That there are loyal Catholics, both lay and clerical, is, I believe, probable, but it would puzzle a conjuror to reconcile with loyalty, as it is by loyalists understood, some of the Catholic measures.'

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The omitted portion does not relate to Shelley.