holders. Thus, as far as the examination of principle and of fact, and the comparison of what now is, with what was before 1793, can lead me, I am decidedly of opinion, that changing the freeholder's lowest qualification to ten pounds, would not benefit the cause of morality. I have no doubt that such benefit was not amongst the objects of those who proposed it. I shall endeavour, in my next, to show that it would be most detrimental to civil and religious liberty in Ireland.

Believe me to be, my dear friend,

Yours, very sincerely,

JOHN, Bishop of Charleston.

To Daniel O'Connell, Esq.

LETTER IV

CHARLESTON, S. C., July 30, 1825.

My dear Friend:-Since the date of my last letter, I have had a considerable addition to my news from your side of the Atlantic. Indeed, I know not whether I am more mortified or gratified by the contents of the large packet which lies before me. Your conduct has disappointed me. But the principles upon which you and I used to agree, and which I would still hope you entertain, are ably vindicated against yourself. I thought that you and I were more assimilated in our opinions respecting freeholders, than Mr. Hutchinson was to one of his humble constituents, yet he has defended the rights of the forty shilling freeholders, but you told the people not to defend themselves. I feared Mr. Brougham did not know Ireland well enough to have been able to attempt her protection as he has firmly done. I have not been disappointed in Sir Francis Burdett. He does not know Ireland, he could not know it, though he travelled through it. Yes! just as some of your travellers hurry through a few of our states, at this side of the world, and then perhaps innocently belie us to Europe, actually thinking they know what they have had no opportunity of knowing. When Sir Francis Burdett travelled through Ireland, I was a parish priest in that country, and I know well his informants. I thought he might desire to know the state of the country, but I saw that he could not-the why, it boots not now to state. I therefore then did, and do now consider his hunt through Ireland, amused as he was by a piper, and misled as to who were the ancient owners of the castles of Kerry, to have been a serious evil. Instead of acquiring any knowledge, he perhaps "had a sack thrown over his head," and left poorer respecting correct information than he was upon his landing. Mr. Plunket,

I always thought would act as he is acting. But, you,-you, who in your examination before the committee, said such fine things about the benefit of a vote to a forty shilling freeholder-you, who upon the principles of civil liberty, professed yourself opposed to any new encroachments by the executive and favourable to the extension of the rights of people! I am astonished. I am astonished. But, you think ten pound freeholders will better secure popular rights. I am glad to be spared the pain, the mortification of arguing against you this question upon general principles. That has been well and ably done by Mr. Ensor, and by others. I am happy also to be relieved for the same reason from contrasting yourself with yourself, that you, out of the Divan, might refute yourself in the Divan. I know well the freeholders in what is called their most degraded state, and I shall answer you by facts, and as briefly as I can.

The jet of the objection is, that the poor freeholders are, in fact, but the slaves of their landlords, and have no will of their own. That in reality the large proprietors can make them vote as they please, and that permitting the continuance of such miserable shadows of freemen is a delusion, that it is destructive of civil liberty, for it enables large proprietors to make bargains for those men's votes, and thus a few rich men and not the people, will be the electors, and those few rich men are easily bought over, and thus the middling and substantial voters are overpowered, and able to do nothing.

The objection assumes. 1. That the forty shilling freeholders have no will of their own. 2. That the freeholders of high qualifications have their will more independent, and would be less likely to obey their landlords. I shall dispose of those two suppositions before I take the other assumptions of the objection. In your own evidence, given upon oath, you are stated to have said that the forty shilling freeholder was to be courted for his vote. Men, who have no will of their own, need not be courted. In plain fact they are courted, and you know a landlord in Ireland, seldom courts where he can command. What say you to the county of Dublin? Had the forty shilling freeholders in that county a will of their own? You may call some cases of this sort exceptions; I assert they are not. And I presume to say that I know as much of the nature of their will as you do, and more of it than almost any man whose evidence, as taken before the committee, has appeared on the papers. I know more of it than does Anthony Richard Blake, Esp., chief remembrancer of his Majesty's Court of Exchequer in Ireland, who, being sworn and asked, "Are you

a Roman Catholic?" answered, "I am," and amongst other very strange answers, gave the following.

"Have you ever considered what amount of qualification for the exercise of the elective franchise would suit the present state of Ireland?-I am speaking entirely with reference to the leaseholders; and speaking with regard to leaseholders, I may, perhaps, be considered too aristocratical in my notion, but I should say the qualification ought to be to the extent of twenty pounds a year.

"Do you think, generally speaking, that the forty shilling freeholders exercise any free choice at elections?-My opinion is, that they have none.

"How do you think they are controlled?-I believe they are controlled either by an absolute landlord, or by the sort of interference through religious feelings which I have already mentioned.

"Can you state to the committee, the kind of control that is exercised over those forty shilling freeholders, so as to command their votes?-I can speak only from hearsay; the landlord, of course, has the power of distress; the priest or other partisan may act upon their religious feelings or prejudices.

"Do you think a considerable outcry would be raised in Ireland, if it was proposed to raise the qualification of forty shilling freeholders ?—If the forty shilling freeholders were persons of independent property, exercising through their property a free choice, I think it would produce a very serious outery; but I do not think they are persons of a description likely to have much feeling upon the subject.

"From your experience, are you able to say whether the feeling of the great body of the lower orders of the people, is strong and keen upon the subject of what is generally called the Catholic Question?-I believe it. to be so; I do not think I ever spoke to a Roman Catholic, high or low, that did not betray something like irritation upon the subject.

"Do the committee understand you rightly to say, that the existence of Roman Catholic disqualification is a common grievance, which enables the priests to exercise an influence at an election?-It creates a feeling of discontent, of a religious nature, through which feeling the priest is enabled powerfully to act at elections; he is enabled to say to them, for instance, this man is against your religion, this man is for your religion; I am told, he has said so.

"You conceive, that by removing the Roman Catholic disqualification, you would deprive the priest of that power?—I do not think I should entirely; I should lessen the temptation to the exercise of it, and I should diminish the power also, by setting at rest the Catholic Question, and raising the qualification from forty shillings to twenty pounds a year, or to such sum at least as would raise the class of freeholders entitled to vote, so as to render them, in some degree, persons of intelligence and property, likely to have a will of their own.

"Would not the exclusion of all freeholders under £20 a year, exclude a great number of persons who have considerable capital on their farms?-I do not think it would.

"The committee understand you to state, that in cases in which persons swear to forty shilling freeholders, they have, in many instances, little interest, if any, in the lands; do not you conceive that even in the case of £20 freeholds, persons might swear to those freeholds, who had a very inferior interest in the lands than that? I do not think they would; I think common decency and shame, and the

obvious means of instant detection, would operate to prevent it; a man who comes to swear to £20, must have some property in his hands.

"A man in Ireland, who would have an interest of twenty pounds, is of a totally different class from the forty shilling freeholder?-Yes.

"Would it not, in your apprehension, exclude in towns a considerable number of persons who are householders, who have not an interest above the rent they pay for their houses, to the amount of twenty pounds?—I have already stated, that I do not mean my observation to apply to towns.

"Are you not aware that a great number of forty shilling freeholders, who exercise the right of franchise in Ireland, are not of so respectable a class as voters from towns-I consider the mass to be mere rabble."

This same aristocratical Mr. Anthony Richard Blake, would be satisfied to have the half a million of forty shilling freeholders destroyed, and their successors for ever disfranchised, to afford himself and a few more aristocrats an opportunity of going into Parliament or getting upon the bench.-Yes! read his answer.

"Do you believe that those measures which you have stated as likely to be beneficial with respect to the raising the qualification of voters, ought not to be considered as completely dependent upon being combined with their complete emancipation; that is, do you conceive that the raising the qualifications, and depriving, of course, the forty shilling freeholder of his right, could be effected without occasioning the most serious discontent, unless it were accompanied with the other measure you have suggested?—I have already, I think, stated an opinion, which must be considered as an answer in the affirmative to that question; at the same time, I should wish to understand what is meant by emancipation, in the question now put. If by emancipation is meant the universal removal of all disabilities, my opinion does not go to that extent; but it does go to the extent of representation in Parliament, and admission to the bench. I do not think, that if representation in Parliament were conceded, and the bench were open, that there would be much objection to some extent of exclusion from political office; the other exclusions, from Parliament and the bench, are the exclusions particularly felt."

Now, I assert that you have always deceived me and deceived the people, if this was your notion of emancipation. If I know you, you would heartily join with me and with the people, in keeping Anthony Richard Blake, Esq., off the bench and out of the House of Commons. I would prefer old Judge Downes for the first, and Master Ellis for the last. I know the people well: nineteen twentieths of the Irish Catholics would carry the Protestant Judge, Fletcher, to the bench, and the Protestant Christopher Hely Hutchinson to the House, and leave Anthony Richard Blake, Esq., leisure enough to obtain from heaven by his religious exercises more patriotism, and by his mixing with the rabble, if he could stoop so low, a little more knowledge of facts. But Mr. Blake says in another place, when asked

"Supposing a lessor pays to his landlord a rent of £5 a year, he ought to be

able to get out of that property a rent of £7 a year, in order to give him a forty shilling interest in it?-Certainly.

"Do you believe that this is generally the case with respect to the lower class of freeholders?—I believe quite the contrary. In general they pay what is originally a rack-rent for the land, then they build mud huts upon it, and if they make out of the land a profit of forty shillings a year, a profit produced by the sweat of their brow, they reconcile themselves to swear that they have an interest in it to the extent of forty shillings a year, whereas the gain is produced not through an interest in the land, but through their labour.

"So that, in point of fact, when their interest comes to be examined by this test, it is not an interest bona fide of forty shillings a year?-Quite the contrary; I referred in a former part of my evidence, to cases that were before me upon receivers' accounts in Ireland; I found frequently, that a great mass of tenants who were in arrear, in consequence of holding at exorbitant rates, had sworn to forty shilling freeholds.'

One word as to this, to show that here there was not perjury. During the war, all the lands in Ireland rose to an enormous rate of rent, and during that period, they were actually worth that rate. After the peace the value of land fell: most of those freeholders took at war prices, because they could not take before the war: the war commenced in 1793; and it was only in that year they were permitted to become freeholders, therefore it was impossible for them to become freeholders, except under war rents; the war rents were high, the value of the produce was high, the tenant took at five pounds, he improved, prices progressed, his freehold became worth double its rent, he could not register at twenty pounds, which would be four times the value of his freehold, but he could, at double the value, and he did at seven pounds, when it was worth ten, that is, he swore that it was at least worth less than half what it was really worth. Was this perjury? "Yes, it was," says Anthony Richard Blake, "because the man ought to be a prophet and to forsee, that all the lands would decrease in value, when no person imagined they would, and, being one of the rabble, he ought not to register what was then a fact, less at a future period, in the vicissitude of human affairs, what then was a bona fide interest, might become an incumbrance. And I, Anthony Richard Blake, do really find that several, who had forty shilling freeholds, ceased to have them." But the law provided already for this case, for the man was liable to be sworn when he came to vote, and asked, "Is your freehold still worth 40s. above all charges payable out of the same?" and he lost his franchise if he could not so swear. Mr. Anthony Richard Blake, says he was a perjurer: I say he was not, and my proof is this; for the men consulted me, and I always asked them, if a good solvent tenant offered them what they paid and 40s. more, they would, upon their oath, think