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True , these parts and many others of this flagitious and sanguinary code were done away during the reign of his late Majesty , whose memory we , on that account , hold in grateful remembrance . Still , however , much remains to be removed , in order to place us on an equal
footing with our Protestant fellow-subjects , which is the object of our present exertions and prayers . His present Majesty , when Regent , in the 57 th year of the reign of his Royal Father , graciously gave his assent to an Act , which in some degree mitigated our disabilities in respect to the army and the navy . But
we still remain excluded from all offices in corporate towns and cities—from the higher ranks at the Bar , and wholly from the Bench—from the office of Sheriff ; an office of the utmost importance to the security of life and property—and from the councils of the King and both Houses of Parliament . There remain other and
more serious grievances ; but we rest our appeal to you on these grounds alone . Our crafty and selfish foes , your foes as well as ours , would fain persuade you , that that for which we pray would do no good ; and they ask , with a degree of simplicity , which would not hare detracted from the cunning of the seducer of the
primitive parents of mankind , how the allowing of Catholic merchants to become Mayors 5 Aldermen and Common Councilrnen of towns and cities ; how the permitting Catholic gentlemen to be Sheriffs ; how the making of Catholics occasionally King's Counsel , and Law Officers of the Crown : how the putting of
Catholic Judges on the Bench ; how the making of Catholics sometimes Judges in Equity ; how the putting of a few Catholics into the Privy Council ; how the placing of fifty or sixty of them , perhaps , in Parliament—they ask , with all imaginable simplicity , how this could tend
to clothe the backs and appease the hunger of the ragged and half-famished people of Ireland ? But , Englishmen , make but for a moment our case your own . Suppose that some strange combination of circumstances were to give the small sect of Unitarians , for instance , a
mastery over you—supposing this sect , not forming more than a sixteenth part of the population of England , held all the civil otlices of importance ; that they , and they alone , nominated juries in causes of property , and of life and death ; sat on the bench , administered justice in equity ;
were alone the advisers of the King ; alone were Mayors and Aldermen , and Common Councllmen of towns and cities ; kept wholly to themselves the power of making laws ; appointed all the Justices ot the Peace > disposed of every civic
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office down to the very excisemen and tide-waiters ;—and suppose that to all these powers * they added that of disposing , at their pleasure , of the whole of the tithes , and of the immense property of your Church ; heaping benefice upon benefice on the same man , even until half-scores together ; suffering the churches and parsonage houses to tumble to pieces ; and compelling you to pay taxes for their re-erection and repair , while there was only one of sixteen to enter
those churches , and while you were compelled to build chapels for yourselves , and pay your own teachers , or live without the knowledge of God in the world : suppose all this , and though we think we see your cheeks redden at the bare idea ; suppose all this , and you are still far short of" the case of Ireland , where , out of about four hundred thousand Church Protestants , which thus domineer oyer six millions of Catholics , there are about forty families , who ingross for
themselves and their dependents all the real power , all the honours , all the emoluments of the State ; in fact , all the revenues of our country , which do not now yield annually to the King ' s Exchequer a sura equal to that which you yourself pay for the purpose of forcibly Keeping us in abject submission to these families , and
their faction ; add , moreover , to our sufferings , the habitual insolence and cruelty of this faction , who , though now deprived of the administration of certain parts of the plundering and sanguinary code , still act as if they had an imprescriptible right to be unjust , profligate , and ferocious : and still , a mere handful of a faction as they are , treat the people
at large as outcasts and slaves . Would , then , our emancipation from the fangs of this faction do no good ?
Could there be Catholic Mayors , Sheriffs , Aldermen ; could there be Catholic Law Officers of the Crown , Judges in Law and Equity , Privy Councillors , and Members of both Houses of Parliament , and could things still remain the same ; and will this faction still , in all simplicity , ask how that for which we pray ,, could possibly tend to improve the food and
clothing of our labouring brethren ? If they still ask this question , we beg not them , but you , to reflect ; first , on the powers which the administrators of justice , the rulers of towns and cities , the sheriffs of counties , the advisers of the Crown , and the makers of laws , have , and always must have , in the making of the people happy or wretched . In the next place , returning to the supposition , that you were domineered over by the sect of Unitarians , though the domination were more bearable than that which
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Intelligence . —Appeal of the Catholics of Ireland . 253
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1825, page 253, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2535/page/61/
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