that with such a system the Catholics can or ought to be contented?  If they are, they belie human nature; they are then, indeed, unworthy to be any thing but the slaves you have made them.  The facts stated are from most respectable authority, or I should not have dared in this place, or any place, to hazard this avowal.  If exaggerated, there are plenty as willing, as I believe them to be unable, to disprove them.  Should it be objected that I never was in Ireland, I beg leave to observe, that it is as easy to know something of Ireland without having been there, as it appears with some to have been born, bred, and cherished there, and yet remain ignorant of its best interests.

But there are who assert that the Catholics have already been too much indulged.  See (cry they) what has been done:  we have given them one entire college, we allow them food and raiment, the full enjoyment of the elements, and leave to fight for us as long as they have limbs and lives to offer, and yet they are never to be satisfied!—­Generous and just declaimers!  To this, and to this only, amount the whole of your arguments, when stript of their sophistry.  Those personages remind me of a story of a certain drummer, who, being called upon in the course of duty to administer punishment to a friend tied to the halberts, was requested to flog high, he did—­to flog low, he did—­to flog in the middle, he did,—­high, low, down the middle, and up again, but all in vain; the patient continued his complaints with the most provoking pertinacity, until the drummer, exhausted and angry, flung down his scourge, exclaiming, “The devil burn you, there’s no pleasing you, flog where one will!” Thus it is, you have flogged the Catholic high, low, here, there, and every where, and then you wonder he is not pleased.  It is true that time, experience, and that weariness which attends even the exercise of barbarity, have taught you to flog a little more gently; but still you continue to lay on the lash, and will so continue, till perhaps the rod may be wrested from your hands, and applied to the backs of yourselves and your posterity.

It was said by somebody in a former debate, (I forget by whom, and am not very anxious to remember,) if the Catholics are emancipated, why not the Jews?  If this sentiment was dictated by compassion for the Jews, it might deserve attention, but as a sneer against the Catholic, what is it but the language of Shylock transferred from his daughter’s marriage to Catholic emancipation—­

  “Would any of the tribe of Barabbas
  Should have it rather than a Christian.”

I presume a Catholic is a Christian, even in the opinion of him whose taste only can be called in question for his preference of the Jews.