Hoche in 1796, delay has, for sixteen years, made the security of Ireland dependent on the winds. At this moment, if we may. believe Mr Wakefield, the fear of Catholic discontent keeps' twenty thousand British troops in Ireland. While Napoleon is employed in Russia, such a reinforcement might enable Lord Wellington to drive the French beyond the Pyrences. A delay of Catholic emancipation for six months may therefore be decisive of the fate of Spain.

If Catholic emancipation were unanimously voted in the first week of the new Parliament, the laws of nature would still delay the enjoyment of its greatest blessings. The sorrow and an ger of ages cannot be obliterated in a moment, by a stroke of the legislator's pen. He may cease to inflame them--he may withdraw the fuel with which his laws have so long supplied them he may do much to facilitate and accelerate their extinction; but, to extinguish them at once, surpasses the power of man. Much of the immediate benefit of Catholic emancipation must depend on its manner, and on the motives from which it shall seem to issue. To be well done-to inspire confidence-to deserve gratitude-it must be done with the alacrity of men eager to begin the reparation of long injustice. But such alacrity is impatient of all delay. Delay is a proof of a reluctant and sullen submission to necessity, which can neither deserve nor command the thanks of any people. If after every art of procrastination is exhausted, the concession shall at length be made by a divided administration, of whom the most active portion profess themselves to be its conscientious, and therefore irreconcileable enemies--though the ultimate benefits will, even in that case, be inestimable ;--we must expect nothing from it for the present, but that it may enable the loyal gentry to contain the populace in a state of cold and passive neutrality, no longer indeed enemies, but far enough from being friends," Loyalty, zeal, enthusiasm, must not be expected to spring from a concession, which will be thought to prove only that the English government has more dread than detestation for the Catholics. It will be an experiment to determine the least possible quantity of immediate advantage derivable by Great Britain from such an act of national justice.

The beneficial operation of a political improvement on the condition of men is necessarily slow; but its effect on their feelings is commonly instantaneous, and must entirely depend on the manner and circumstances of the change. Catholic emancipation however delayed, however extorted from fear, however clogged with ungracious or even insidious conditions, is substantially so great a benefit, that the moment of its adoption

must form a new era in the history of Ireland. But whether that country is to be made actively useful in the present contest-whether she is to become the most valuable of all allies against France-whether the Catholics are to love, or only to endure the British connexion,-are questions which must be entirely decided by the temper, the time, and the apparent motives of the concession. The benefits of the substance must be reaped by our posterity, The manner alone can render it advantageous to us.

If it had been adopted at the accession to unrestricted power of a prince beloved in Ireland, and supposed to approve the Catholic claims-by ministers who had once left office, and afterwards refused to accept it on account of Ireland-and whose fidelity to the Irish cause had considerably weaned the Catholics from foreign hopes-at a moment when all the friends of Mr Pitt thought themselves at liberty to concur with the friends of Mr Fox, leaving only the adherents of Lord Eldon and Lord Sidmouth as an exception to national unanimity-when two illustrious Irishmen, Lord Moira and Lord Wesley, were almost equally well qualified to be bearers of the boon; surely it is not too much to expect, that such an act of magnanimous justice would have kindled the most enthusiastic attachment in the breasts of a people, susceptible in the highest degree of sudden and ardent feelings, and not more lukewarm in their affection than in their resentment. That opportunity is indeed past. Promptitude seems now to be the only adventitious aid which the measure is capable of receiving. We therefore look with peculiar jealousy and apprehension to the discussion of those supposed securities for the Protestant establishment, which are thought by some to be preliminary conditions of emancipation. Upon the intrinsic value of these securities we have very little to say. Thirteen years ago, the Irish prelates were willing to have admitted a Royal negative on the appointment of bishops. The delay of justice produced its usual effect. Such a negative is now resisted with a vehemence perhaps disproportioned to the magnitude of the object. If it could have been so regulated, as neither to weaken the constitution, nor to impair the credit and usefulness of the Roman Catholic clergy, by ministerial influence in the nomination of their dignitaries, it would have been a becoming concession to the Protestant state, though neither to be demanded as a matter of right, nor use'ul for any other purpose than that of quieting the apprehensions of some wellmeaning Protestants. In point of justice, there seems to be no more reason for giving the Crown a negative on the

VOL. XX. NO. 40.

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election of unendowed Catholic prelates, than on the appointment of priests in synagogues or mosques. In a contest between the pride of the Catholic and the fears of the Protestant, wise policy will doubtless aim at conciliating both. But if that should be impossible, impartial justice must pronounce, that more regard is due to the feelings of the sufferers by long iniquity,, than to those of its authors.

Other expedients might be devised, to provide against the danger of foreign influence, which seem to us considerably less exceptionable than a royal negative on episcopal nomination. But all such expedients would be worse than useless, if they were adopted without the hearty consent of the Catholic body; for, otherwise, they would amount to a renewal of that stigma on the Catholic faith, which it is the grand object of emancipation to efface. Every law which proceeds on the supposition that the Catholics of the nineteenth century are more unworthy of the confidence of the magistrate, than the members of other christain sects, is a gross injustice, and a grievous calumny. A change avowedly founded on such principles of sectarian jealousy, will be no reform. To proclaim distrust, is to repel attachment. In pursuit of the frail safeguards of words and paper -the only solid security-the affection of the Irish nation may be for ever alienated.

It will be seen that, in our opinion, the consent of the Catholics affects the merits of the question itself. The political effect of any security, will entirely depend on that consent. With it, the plan, most objectionable in itself, might become harmless; without it, the most plausible will only reproduce the old mischief in a new form.

But why should such a discussion precede or attend the repeal of the penal laws?-If it be unnecessary, it must be allowed that it multiplies the means of procrastination, the opportunities of attack, and the chances of disunion. But the power of parliament to provide against danger from a foreign patriarch, will be as complete, after, as before emancipation. It will not be seriously said, that ten Catholic Peers, and twenty Commoners, however disposed, will materially affect the disposition of the Legislature. But why should they be supposed adverse to reasonable provisions of this nature?-This at least, ought not to be supposed by those who tell us, that one great purpose of such provisions, is to protect the Catholic body itself against the usurpation of the See of Rome. With their consent, even after discussion, in a parliament where Catholic members are present, such provisions will not be conditions imposed on the Catholics by an enemy. Emancipation, therefore, ought to pre

cede the consideration of these provisions, because it will remove the most formidable obstacles to their adoption, as well as to their usefulness.

It is asked why the Catholics object to such measures as Catholic Sovereigns have adopted? We answer, because in Catholic Sovereigns, they can only be precautions against the court of Rome, not proofs of distrust in the fidelity of Catholic subjects. -Innumerable precedents are quoted of similar acts of legislation by Catholic Princes in ancient times, and by Sovereigns of the Protestant and Greek churches in our own. To the ancient precedents we have already given one answer. Another equally good remains. Pius VII. is no more Gregory VII, than Francis II. (when he called himself emperor of the Romans) was Trajan. Every thing but the name is in both cases changed. Our ancestors, when they took measures to protect themselves against the encroachments of Rome, directed their vigilance against one of the most formidable enemies of liberty in their own times. It is by showing the same spirit, not by combating the same enemies, that we shall wisely imitate their example.

Frederic and Catharine might have suffered their chancellors to copy from old concordats, the precautions taken against the tyranny of Rome in the fourteenth century. They were perhaps amused at the care with which these learned bigots guarded against the ghosts of departed enemies. As despotic sovereigns, they might have been jealous of any pretensions to religious or civil independence in their dominions. And it is not altogether impossible, that the disciples and correspondents of Voltaire would be pleased to communicate to their patriarch at Ferney, the harsh conditions by which they had humbled the pride of the Vatican.

ART. VI. ESSAI sur la GEOGRAPHIE MINERALOGIQUE des Environs de PARIS. Par G. CUVIER & ALEX. BROGNIART. Paris. 1811.

THE

HE Metropolis of France is situated in the midst of a country which, for one of horizontal or secondary stratification, is among the most remarkable that has ever been described. Great bodies of rock, containing thousands of marine exuvia, alternate regularly with other rocks, in which the shells of freshwater fish lye similarly imbedded. The bones of land animals, of which not only the species but even the genera are unknown, occupy entire districts; and other bones, belonging to animals of vast size, and to which we find none analogous except in very

distant countries, are scattered through the beds nearer to the surface. The characters also of a great torrent from the southeast are impressed on the forms of the hills, and the direction of the principal ridges. All those circumstances unite in forming a country well calculated to instruct us concerning the later revolutions of the earth's surface.

Two very eminent naturalists, CUVIER and BROGNIART, the one known by his valuable productions in various departments of physical science, and the other by his excellent system of Mineralogy, have undertaken the survey of this tract, and have given an account of their observations in the work before us. The perusal of one of the first copies that reached Britain has afforded us an opportunity of laying before our readers an abstract of this interesting publication.

The boundaries of the territory which is here called the country round Paris, are not fixed by arbitrary rules, but by lines which Nature herself has traced out on the surface of the earth.

The valley of the Seine is separated, for a considerable distance from that of the Loire, by an elevated ground of great extent, usually known by the name of Beauce, which stretches from north-west to south-east for more than 40 leagues; and from the line of partition of this tract the rivers descend on the north to the Seine, and on the south to the Loire. The surface of this ridge is formed of sand, which covers all the beds of which the interior consists. From the two extremities of it, or from about the Mauldre on the west, and Nemours on the east, run off two portions of a chalk country, which extend to a great distance in all directions, forming the whole of Upper Normandy, Picardy, and Champagne. The inner boundary of this great belt passes through Montereau, Sézanne, Epernay, on the east; and on the west through Montfort, Mantes, Gisors and Chaumont, to Compiégne; and forms, with the sandy ridge just described, the natural boundary of the district to which the following observations extend.

The whole of the tract comprehended within the limits now described consists of regular beds of rock or of earth, succeeding one another every where in the same order, from the chalk, which is the lowest, to the sand, which is the uppermost of all. Those successive formations convey the idea of so many depo sites made in the bottom of a great gulph, the sides of which were originally of chalk. *

*This is certainly inaccurate; the chalk itself is one of the deposites, and is only the first or oldest of the series.