very persons, who impose restraints upon him, and are at the same. time ready to express the highest veneration for their ancestors in other respects?" ment. From these pursuits the Catholic peer is deterred by the letter of the laws, or by their ne. cessary operation. Still more galling to a well-constituted mind, We shall conclude our view of must be the state of systematic insult and contempt, to which the the disabilities, which peculiarly Catholic peer is exposed. His affect the Catholic peers, by oh. conspicuous rank points him out serving that as the law now stands to continual notice, and as a mark in Ireland, the Catholic peer is for hostility; whilst his powerless precisely the only man in the and unprotected condition invites community, who is wholly disquali repeated aggression, and prostrates fied, not only from sitting or voting him before the slights and spurns in either House of Legislature, but of official insolence. Poverty, ob- also from voting at the election of scurity, personal privations-these a member for either. might be tolerable, but, alas! to be made A fixed figure for the hand of scorn A late Catholic peer (Lord Petre) universally revered for his valuable endowments of head and heart, has feelingly complained of this exclusion, as amounting to little short of a personal imputa. tion. In pathetic language he thus vents his indignation: By the express words of the Act of Union, he is disabled from voting at any election of a representative peer to serve in the Par. liament of the United Kingdom; and, by the standing order of the House of Commons against the interference of peers, he is for bidden to interfere or vote at the election of any member of the lower House of Legislature. 2. As to the House of Commons. -This exclusion is still more important in its extent and operation. "Is it not an insult to me, to It comprizes a greater number of be debarred from exercising my situations of trust and power, hereditary right of legislating in amounting at present to 658. the Peers' House of Parliament, These 658 members and their conmerely because I will not take nections are in continual contact oaths, and subscribe declarations, with the people of all descriptions; of which my conscience disap- they transact a great quantity of proves and to be cruelly told, in public business, controul the pub. the same breath, that any oath lic purse, correct public abuses, I may take cannot be depended criminate public delinquents. They upon? Is it not disgraceful to have frequent opportunities of any man of honour to stand as an manifesting personal favour or illobject of suspicion, and the victim will: of benefiting or enriching of, at least, an implied stigma, in their private friends: of injuring his native land, for no other rea- or despoiling the obnoxious or de son but because he prays to God fenceless. Moreover, the frequent in his own way, and professes the changes of its numerous members, religion of, not only his forefathers, the variety and fluctuation of its but the forefathers also of those proceedings, render this House M far more instrumental than the able public interest, be, at the upper House can be, in widely same time, a benefactor, a patron, diffusing the effective influence of a father, a guardian angel to his. legislative power. political adherents." On the other hand, how stands the Catholic gentleman or trader? For his own person, no office, no power, no emolument: for his children, brothers, kindred, or friends, no Let us keep in mind, that it is not so much to the purpose to inquire, what may be the precise number of Catholics actually excluded from the legislature, as to consider how many are excluded promotion, ecclesiastical or civil, from all chance of participation military or naval. Except from in it; and what must be the gene- his private fortune, he has no ral effect of such exclusion upon means of advancing a child, of the interests and feelings of the making a single friend, or of shewCatholic body. ing any one good quality. He has nothing to offer but harsh refusal, pitiful excuse, or despondent representation. sion. The number of Catholics qualified for seats in the Legislature, (if learning, talent, landed estates, or commercial wealth be admitted Further, we may observe the as a qualification,) probably ex. powerful effect of opinion upon ceeds thirty thousand persons. this subject. The personal imThese men stand personally pro- portance, the conscious indepenscribed by the existing exclusion, dence, the sense of security and whilst their Protestant neighbours protection which belong to the find every facility for ready admis. legislative character, are partici. pated with hundreds of persons Now, the advantages flowing without doors, whom the repre from a seat in the Legislature, it sentative may be desirous to court, is well known, are not confined to or whose interests or sympathies the individual representative. They may accord with his own. extend to all his family, friends Ireland, these persons are, almost and connections; or, in other universally of the Protestant prowords, to every Protestant in fession; connected with the memIreland. Within his reach are all ber by the ties of family or of triendhonors, offices, emoluments: every ship, of early acquaintance, edu. sort of gratification to avarice or cation, or reciprocal services. vanity the means of spreading Besides, they already enjoy exclua great personal interest by innu- sive power and privileges, and merable petty services to individu. therefore can command the respect, als. "He can do an infinite and pre-occupy the exertions of number of acts of kindness and the member. Perhaps, they are generosity, and even of public not without the prospect of seats spirit. He can procure advantages for themselves. Hence, every in trade, indemnity from public Protestant feels himself, and really burdens, preferences in local com- is, more firm and secure in the petitions, pardons for offences. He favour of the laws, more powercan obtain a thousand favours, ful in society, more free in his and avert a thousand evils. He energies, more elevated in life than may, whilst he betrays every valu- his Catholic neighbour of equal merit, property, talents, and education. He alone feels and pos. sesses the right and the legal ca. pacity to be a legislator, and this consciousness is actual power. franchise against frivolous ver. bal objections, that it may perhaps be termed the most salutary statute for the Irish public, that has been enacted during the last twenty years.] The Catholics are liable to peculiar restraints as to the elective franchise, in cities and towns corporate. Such Catholics as are entitled to their freedom of the corporation, by birth or service, are rarely admitted to it. They are scarcely ever made free by grant; and thus they are denied equal means of acquiring the elective franchise with those which the Protestants enjoy. In 1727, the Catholics of Ireland were deprived of the elective franchise, or right of voting at the election of members of Parliament, by act of Parliament. And thus they remained during 66 years. In 1793, it was enacted, in substance, "That every Cath. olic should be qualified to vote at such elections, upon his producing to the returning officer a certificate of his having taken and subscribed certain oaths and declarations required by that Act."-But, by a In cities and corporate towns, subsequent statute of 1797, com. the elective franchise, as apper. monly termed the Election Act, it taining to freemen, is almost solely was declared, that Catholics, who confined to Protestants, who are qualify previous to the teste of the in the ratio of at least fifty to one writ of election, shall be deemed of the Catholic freemen, owing to have qualified within the mean to the watchful jealousy with ing of those statutes of 1793 and which the freedom is withheld 1797, in order to entitle them to from Catholics. This monopoly, vote at such elections. Upon therefore, occasions a decided these two statutes a question has though unnatural, preponderance arisen, which imposes new diffi. of Protestant voters, at elections culties upon the Catholic fran- of members for such places; con. chise. trary to the professed principle of granting equal qualification för voting to persons of all religions. [Since this Statement went to press, a valuable statute has been passed in 1811, 51 Geo. iii. ch. Moreover, in all elections of 77, which removes the difficulty members, whether for counties, stated in p. 84, and facilitates cities or towns, every Catholic the Catholic qualification for ex- freeholder is liable to rejection, ercising the elective franchise. for some alledged error in his cerThis statute, óbviating the con- tificate of Catholic qualification, tradictions between the statutes of whether as to the date or wording 1793 and 1797, enables the of the certificate, place or time Catholics to qualify during the of qualification, or other ground of election. In other particulars, it technical objection to the peculiar so clearly and wisely establishes form of his qualification. the general exercise of the elective MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. With many a sigh, and many a tear, he said, Remember me, ye shepherds, when I'm dead: Ye trifling glories of this world adieu, deeds we have Procure the sweetest slumbers in the grave. Then, since your fatal hour must surely come, Surely your heads lie low as mine, home: That expression, the mighty Pan is, I apprehend, not merely a poetic licence, but an allusion to a story in Plutarch's Dialogue on the cessation of oracles, to which a Christian application has been given, but which Lardner examines, (H. T. Works, vii. 246.) and declares to be "all over heathenish." To his instances of those who have Christianized the story, may be added George Sandys, the learned translator of Ovid. In his Travels, 1610, passing by Delos, which he describes "as utterly forsaken, when oracles ceas"doubtless ed, which," he says, was upon the passion of our Saviour," he adds:-" For Plutarch reports from the mouth of one Epitherses, who had been his schoolmaster, that he embarking for Italy and one evening becalmed before the Pari, (two little islands that lie between Corcyra and Leucadia,) they suddenly heard a voice from the shore, (most of the passengers being yet awake,) calling to one Thamus, a pilot, by birth an Egyptian, who till the third call would not answer. Then (quoth the voice) when thou art come to the Palodes, proclaim it aloud that the great Pan is dead. -All in the ship that heard this, In Jacob's Poetical Register, were amazed. When, drawing '1723, (ii. 56.) Mr. Flatman is de- near to the aforesaid place, Thascribed as "a Barrister of the Mid- mus, standing on the poop of the dle Temple, equally ingenious in ship, did utter what formerly com the arts of painting and poetry." manded, forthwith there was heard His Poems were published in 1682. a great lamentation, accompanied He died in 1688, aged 55. Mr. with groans and screeches. This Wakefield, in his Observations on coming to the knowledge of TibePope, has occasionally quoted rius Casar, he sent for Thamus, Flatman among the versifiers to who avouched the truth thereof. whom the poet had been indebted. Which declared the death of If to Elysium you would happy flie, Live not like Strephon, but like Strephon die. Christ, (the great Shepherd) and work, having observed, respecting subjection of Satan, who now had unbelievers, that "those who no longer power to abuse the illu. would convince them upon the minated world with his impos- common hypothesis, the schemes tures."-Sandys' Travels, 7th ed. and systems of these latter ages, have wanted their greatest arguments to prevail upon them," he adds: p. 9. Fontenelle well proposes the question, cui bono? to such an application of the story. He asks, whether in the age of Plutarch it was ever conjectured that Pan was Jesus Christ. Mais qu'en arriva. · til? Quelqu'un entendit-il ce mot de Pan dans son vrai sens? Plu. tarque vivoit dans le second siecle de l'eglise, et cependant personne ne s'etoit encore avisé que Pan fút Jesus Christ mort en Judée. Hist.des Orac. 1728. P. 20. I have thought that Watts might have the verses of Flatman in his recollection, when he wrote, in 1708, in Lyric Poems, Pt. 2d. the following lines on Lord Roch "One instance I shall give, which I have been well informed of, and that is in the late Earl of Rochester: in the midst of all his extravagancies, both of opinion and practice, he was once in company with the author of this treatise, who, discoursing with him about religion and the being of a God, took the opportunity to dis play the goodness of God in its full latitude, according to the scheme laid down in this his present work, Upon which the Earl returned him answer, that he could approve of and like such a God as he had represented. So far was he from drawing any encouragement for his loose principles from hence, that, on this supposition, he gave up the cause.” Burnet affords but scanty infor mation on this point. He says, (p. 54.) that Lord R. " doubted much of rewards and punishments: the one he thought too high for us to attain by our slight services; and the other was too extreme to Does the poet here refer to any be inflicted for sin." We are not circumstance then known respect- informed whether the objector were ing the last hours of Lord Roches. silenced or satisfied by Burnet's ter, or only express that desire reply, (p. 58.) that "good or ill which he must have felt, to destroy dispositions accompanying the dethe remembrance of those too nu- parted souls, they must either rise merous lines which dying he up to higher perfection, or sink to might wish to blot?" a more depraved and miserable There is an interesting anecdote state," and that "in a state respecting this nobleman, in the wherein the soul shall be sepa preface to White's Restoration of rated from sensible things, and em. all Things, 1712. The anony- ployed in a more quick and submous editor of that posthumous lime way of operation, this must |