burg-dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic he was still the same military despot!

Cradled in the camp, he was to the last hour the darling of the army; and whether in the camp or the cabinet, he never forsook a friend or forgot a favor. Of all his soldiers, not one abandoned him, till affection was useless; and their first stipulation was for the safety of their favorite.

They knew well that if he was lavish of them, he was prodigal of himself; and that if he exposed them to peril, he repaid them with plunder. For the soldier, he subsidized every people; to the people he made even pride pay tribute. The victorious veteran glittered with his gains; and the capital, gorgeous with the spoils of art, became the miniature metropolis of the universe. In this wonderful combination, his affectation of literature must not be omitted. The jailer of the Press, he affected the patronage of letters— the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy-the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning!-the_assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England.

Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A Royalist

-a Republican and an Emperor-a Mohammedan-a Catholic and a Patron of the Synagog— a Subaltern and a Sovereign-a Traitor and a Tyrant a Christian and an Infidel-he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original-the same mysterious incomprehensible self-the man without a model, and without a shadow.

His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In short, his whole history was like a dream to the world, and no man can tell how or why he was awakened from the reverie.

Such is a faint and feeble picture of Napoleon Bonaparte, the first (and it is to be hoped the last) emperor of the French.

That he has done much evil there is little doubt; that he has been the origin of much good, there is just as little. Through his means, intentional or not, Spain, Portugal, and France have arisen to the blessings of a free constitution; superstition has found her grave in the ruins of the inquisition, and the feudal system, with its whole train of tyrannic satellites, has fled for ever. Kings may learn from him that their safest study, as well as their noblest, is the interest of the people; the people are taught by him that there is no despotism so stupendous against which they have not a resource; and to those who would rise upon the ruins of both, he is a living lesson, that if ambition can raise them from the lowest station, it can also prostrate them from the highest.

LORD PLUNKET

ON CATHOLIC RELIEF1

(1821)

Born in 1765, died in 1854; entered the Irish Parliament in 1798; opposed the "Union”; one of Emmet's prosecutors in 1803; SolicitorGeneral for Ireland in Pitt's Cabinet in 1804; elected to Parliament in 1812; raised to the Peerage in 1827; Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 1830-34 and 1835-41.

SIR, I hold in my hand a petition, signed by a very considerable number of his majesty's Roman Catholic subjects of Ireland. A similar petition was presented, from the same body, the year before last. It is unnecessary for me to remind the House that, on that occasion, it was presented by the late Mr. Grattan. It was sanctioned by the authority of his name, and enforced by all the resistless powers which waited on the majesty of his genius. I have no design to give vent to the feelings with which my heart is filled, or to mingle with the public mourning the mere peculiar and selfish regrets, which have followed to the grave the friend by whose confidence I was honored, by whose wisdom I was

From a speech in the House of Commons, February 28, 1821, Plunket having succeeded after Grattan's death to leadership in the Catholic cause. Peel said of this speech that "it stands nearly the highest in point of ability of any ever heard in this House." Printed here by kind permission of Messrs. James Duffy & Co., of Dublin.

instructed, by whose example I was guided. His eulogium has been heard from the lips of kindred eloquence and genius. The last duties have been rendered to his tomb by the gratitude and justice of the British people. In his death, as in his life, he has been a bond of connection between the countries.

I will not weaken the force of that eulogium, or disturb the solemnity of those obsequies, by my feeble praise, or unavailing sorrow; but with respect to the sentiments of that great and good man on this particular question, I wish to say a word. Sir, he had meditated upon it deeply and earnestly it had taken early and entire possession of his mind, and held it to the last. He would willingly have closed his career of glory in the act of asserting within these walls the liberties of his countrymen; but still, regarding them as connected with the strength, the concord, and the security of the empire. Sir, he was alive to fame to the fame that follows virtue. The love of it clung to him to the last moments of his life; but tho he felt that "last infirmity of noble minds," never did there breathe a human being who had a more lofty disdain for the shallow and treacherous popularity which is to be courted by subserviency, and purchased at the expense of principle and duty. He felt that this question was not to be carried as the triumph of a party or of a sect, but to be pursued as a great measure of public good, in which all were bound to forego

their prejudices, and to humble their passions for the attainment of justice and of peace.

Our duty is to inquire whether injustice is offered to our fellow subjects, and if so, to atone for it; whether grievances press on them at which they have reason to be dissatisfied, and if so, to remove them; whether injurious distinctions exist, and if so, to obliterate them. If these things excite discontent, the more our shame to suffer injustice, and grievances, and injurious distinctions to remain, and the more imperious the call on every honorable mind to do them

away.

Whatever difference of opinion exists on this subject, there is little of hostility, nothing of rancor. Prejudices, I must say, I believe there are; but when I call them so, I acknowledge them to be derived from an origin so noble, and to be associated with feelings so connected with the times when our civil and religious liberties were established, that they are entitled to a better name; and I am confident that they are accessible to reason and open to conviction, if met by the fair force of argument without rudeness and violence. Sir, it is impossible to mistake the feeling of the House and of the enlightened part of the country on this subject, or to doubt that it is a growing one.

And now, sir, I shall proceed, without further preface, to the main argument. The question presents itself in three distinct points of view: as a question of religion, as a question of consti