urpose of rousing angry prejudices, or appealing to any
one sentiment that a candid man of any one party could describe as
bigotry. We disapprove entirely, as a needless irritation to Roman
Catholic feelings, of going back to the Revolution of 1829. If that great
event were now pending, instead of being sixteen years in the rear, it
would be our duty, at any cost of possible offence in any quarter, to
speak of it as our conscience might require us to speak. But, as things
are, this would be to offer a wanton provocation, utterly useless for any
practical end, and tending towards the continued alienation of many
excellent fellow-subjects. Wrong or right, the policy of "Emancipation"
has triumphed; the thing is done, and cannot be undone; we must now adapt
ourselves to a system which has become the law of the land. It is in such
a case as with the past errors of a man's life: if he is wise, he will not
suffer his energies to waste themselves upon unavailing regrets. To revoke
the irrevocable being an effort so manifestly childish, he will apply
himself to an effort which is rational, manly, and full of hope--to the
correcting or mitigating of those consequences from his errors which are
most threatening for his future welfare.

Social forms often show the same principle of vitality and reproduction;
and, after the deadliest convulsions, put forward corresponding tendencies
to restoration of their natural health and equilibrium. It is one, indeed,
amongst the tests of excellence in any political constitution, that it can
stand very rude shocks, and that it has internal resources for healing all
injuries not organically destructive. Catholic emancipation, whatever
might be thought of it if viewed from a station of unlimited power to
choose or to reject, must now be reconciled to our minds for better and
worse; and in peaceable times will gradually adjust itself to the working
of our political system, settling into the general economy of the machine.
But this Maynooth endowment tends to other results. The steps are
inevitable from this centre to the very outermost periphery that bounds
the ambition of Irish Popery; viz. to absolute ascendancy for itself, to
absolute overthrow of Protestantism in Ireland, and therefore to ultimate
separation of that island from the British empire, so far as the dreadful
effort is concerned. For we must not overlook the modern symptoms of the
case. Formerly, as in 1782 for instance, Ireland drea