say what I do not think; and I say it now, because on this head the Roman Catholics have no cause for complaint-at least in my judgment. Not a single individual on either side of the water has so much as bestowed a smile of approbation on the Brunswickers; and therefore much of what we all remember in the shape of offensive and irritating sentiments, and which used to be thought the exclusive body of loyalty in this country, are wholly removed. One word for myself. I have as good a right to get credit for a sincere attachment to this country and its best interests as any other man; and I most conscientiously declare, before God and the country, that I am convinced Ireland can never have peace until the penal code and every trace of it shall be effaced from the statute-book.

LORD TEYNHAM

TO THE FREEHOLDERS OF THE COUNTY OF KENT.

LONDON:-1828.

MEN OF KENT AND BROTHER FREEHOLders,

DR. HODGSON, of Tunstal, has called on me, I am informed, in the face of the county, to declare why I have changed the sentiments I have hitherto held on the subject of Catholic emancipation. I have the greatest regard for the reverend gentleman, and think him an ornament to his profession. If I had heard him, or could have made myself heard in such an extended assembly, I should have answered him on the spot. I trust, therefore, this public appeal will not be considered either obtrusive or useless by the men of Kent. I am proud to say, I have not, nor ever will, be guilty of any inconsistency in my public conduct whatever-a conduct for which I am most desirous of obtaining your approbation, because I consider myself as one of the ancient barons of this county-the responsive voice of its sentiments and feelings in my seat in parliament-and there is no cause I would so resolutely advocate there as one in which either the sentiments, feelings, or interest of this great county was concerned. Men of Kent, from choice and from inclination I am a sincere Protestant of the Church of England; my family are all brought up in the same sentiments. I have never changed or deviated from that path. I firmly support the Church of England, and am conscious of the value of its connexion with the state, as thereby civil and religious liberty is dispensed to all the subjects of this great empire. Permit me to add here, that my ancestors, from the earliest records of your history, have commanded your armies in the field, and held the most important offices in your county. And that either against the Norman invader, or on the walls of Acre and Ptolemais, or in the battles of Cressy and Agincourt, was ever the white cross of the De Cheneys or Apulderfelds, or the lion of the. Ropers, separated from the blue banner of Kent, and its proud Invicta? Base indeed must my mind be, if such very proud recollections did not inspire me with the wish to merit

your approbation, and to thus vindicate myself from aspersions by those whose ancestors would have been happy to find a seat in the halls of my forefathers, and to have held the stirrup as they mounted their prancing war-horse. I married also a fair maid of Kent, whose fame shone in the deeds of her fathers, and the valor of the Hawkins gained the arms of France, her fleur-de-lis, as their inheritance. Their names florished for a thousand years in your county, and the last of them now sleeps with his fathers in their chancel of Boughton Church, the bold knight-bannerets of the Edwards and Henrys.

I am, therefore, connected with your county in every possible way, and must repel, with proud defiance, the assertions of men returning from the plundered thrones of the princes of Indostan, where the recording angel is tired with writing down the crimes of Britons. That I am an alien and a stranger amongst you. No; I am a man of Kent in heart and hand, and envy them not those lands their ill-got treasure have purchased in your county. I feel, men of Kent, that you will excuse me these expressions, as I will yield to no man in my attachment to my country, to the Protestant cause, and to the honor and welfare of your distinguished county. I have in my seat in parliament hitherto opposed Catholic emanci pation, because I saw no securities offered for the protection of the Established Church; and I was one of the most active in passing the Act to put down that, then alarming, political club, the Catholic Association. Your noble lord-lieutenant, the Marquis Camden, joined most cordially in that object: though, perhaps, more anxious than any other peer to settle the Catholic question, because his great experience in the government of Ireland taught him to consider it the only remedy to pacify that most valuable portion of your empire, his truly disinterested conduct in relinquishing one of the largest sinecures ever held, his sentiments and esteem for the great county he governs as the King's lieutenant, ought to have spared him the insults he met with on the Heath, and the epithets that have been so unsparingly bestowed on him; but, like Scipio, he may repose in the conscious rectitude of his own mind, and lament that any cause should have raised such unmerited feelings against him. This Bill could not, or did not, effectually put down this Association. They have now usurped the government of Ireland, and most completely changed the face of affairs between the two kingdoms. All the real powers of government are in their hands. Their rent is a military chest they have organised the six millions of Catholics, appointed captains and controllers over them, and have engaged the whole of their most influential clergy in the same cause. Foreign nations are also taking a deep interest in this lamentable cause.

Fifty thousand Irishmen in the United States of America, possessed of wealth and power, are eager to join and assist them. France looks on with anxious eyes-her press teems with pamphlets pointing out the means by which Ireland can assert her independence and become a free nation, and the naval and military preparations of her government show sufficiently their intention to take a part the moment the green flag is hoisted. Dunkirk is now fitting with cannon and warlike stores, and if you do not pacify Ireland, every effort will be made to rescue her from the British power and dominion. Russia also, and at no distant day the northern states, will hurl defiance at you, because your forces are all engaged in securing your ascendancy in Ireland. And the numerous and able petitions from your county, men of Kent, presented to parliament during the last two sessions, by myself and other peers, sufficiently attest you are alive to the awful internal state of your country; you have stated that an overwhelming debt has destroyed the bold peasantry and the yeomen of olden times; that your enormous jails are now filled with criminals, your poor-houses and work-houses with paupers, victims to excise laws and excessive taxation; that your farms are worse cultivated, and your property on them deteriorated; and that the landlord has a bowstring around his neck extended and drawn at the two ends-first, by the necessity of paying the dividends and public expenditure, amounting nearly to sixty millions annually-secondly, by the poor-rates operating against enabling him so to do, by counterbalancing any rise in the value of corn and provisions. Turn again to Ireland. Even without a civil war, has not the election for the county of Clare proved that the representation of Ireland is in the hands of the Catholics? They will return eighty members to the next parliament. Will you allow them to sit? If you do not, the Union will be virtually dissolved, and Ireland must be governed by a severe military despotism, as in the times of Cromwell and his cruel generals, if such an event were possible. On a review of these circumstances, were Lord Liverpool able to take a part in the councils of his country, he would say, the time is come to pacify Ireland, to restore the Roman Catholics to their civil rights, taking care to give the best possible securities to the Protestant establishments of the empire. So, I am confident, thinks the Noble Duke who is now at the head of his Majesty's government. So, I firmly believe, thinks the Sovereign of the country himself. So, in last session, thought a majority of the House of Commons, amongst them your county member, Mr. Honywood, ever, in all your contested elections, placed at the head of the poll, with his high mind and character, if he thought for a moment that a majority of

his constituents would risk a civil war, bankruptcy, and the final separation of the two sister islands, for fear of the imaginary evils and apprehensions from popery in the present times, without a moment's deliberation his trust would be laid at your feet; his vote never yet caused this county to blush; and the Commons of England have ever considered him one of their most upright members. So also thinks a gallant youth whom the intelligent freedom of Canterbury send as their representative; and from the high principles and patriotic feelings of the noble house of Darnley, would Lord Clifton hold his seat one hour if he thought he spoke and voted against the sense of those independent men who sent 'him there?

So thought about one hundred members of the House of Peers last session the highest in rank, the greatest in talent, the purest in patriotism, and the richest in landed possessions. So thought one-third of the University of Oxford when the petition against those claims was last discussed in convocation. So thinks Mr. Dawson, the friend and brother of Mr. Peel, the great opponent of these claims. So thinks Mr. Peel himself, for his silence in his late tour in Lancashire bears no other construction. So thinks, by a declaration I have just seen, a large majority of the Protestant peers, baronets, and landed proprietors of Ireland. Permit me therefore to think, brother freeholders, here are sufficient reasons to induce me to think also that the time is now come that makes it just, expedient, and necessary, to grant Catholic emancipation. We are not changed, but the times are changed-tempora mutantur, et neve mutamur in illis. The safety of our common country, the integrity of the empire, its ability to defend its colonies, its power to pay the public creditor, nay, even its means to prevent famine, and ultimately pestilence, from stalking throughout the land, all, all, my friends, depend on conciliating Ireland, and healing her wounded feelings, and bringing her ardent, her gallant, her enthusiastic sons once more to your bosoms, and to a real union of pride, glory, and satisfaction in their common country.

Freeholders of Kent-Deeply did I lament the very mistaken infatuation of many noble, able, and honorable characters who met at Maidstone to proclaim a Brunswick or an Orange club in this county. The result of its establishment must be to embarrass the government in this great work, to create party feuds, and raise animosities in this now happy and sociable county; it is the use of clubs that has actually brought Ireland to its present state, and, depend on it, that the authors of these clubs will have to rue the day that they established them in England. An appeal to the county on Catholic emancipation was made; and in my humble opinion the petition that was so triumphantly carried at Penenden