The Petition was then brought up and read; setting forth, "That, contemplating the warning fate of surrounding nations, and the fearful disparity of our physical means in the vital conflict in which we are engaged, the Petitioners respectfully express, as they deeply feel, a serious and surely not irrational apprehension of the result, unless the legislature in its wisdom shall hasten to oppose an effectual counterpoise to the mighty power now wielded with such rancorous hostility for our destruction; and this great object, it appears to the Petitioners, can only be achieved, by calling into instantaneous action, and combining, ill protection of these threatened realms, every vigorous and quickening impulse, all the elements of generous and moral feeling that can animate and exalt the human breast; and yet, amidst the crowding terrors of these days, in a war emphatically distinguished as a war of principle, when an enlightened policy would be anxious to communicate the equal benefits, in order to infuse the unconquered spirit of freedom, the Petitioners behold, with concern and dismay, a vast majority of the population of this land still degraded and discouraged; above four millions of a gallant and loyal people are summoned to 369 shed their blood in support of a constitution which unnerves the hand raised in its defence, by intercepting its fair reward, and checks the aspiration of their genius by the opposition of ungenerous barriers to its course; they are precluded from numerous offices of trust and honour, the objects and incentives of a noble emulation, though to many of these the more favoured alien is invited at home, and all are open, with the concurrence of the House, to the newly conquered Catholic subject abroad; the native Catholic alone, as if marked by the reprobating stamp of nature, is pronounced unworthy of making his services, in every station, acceptable to his sovereign, or useful to his country; and that these proscriptive statutes, the Petitioners lament to say, have transplanted from their natural soil the talents and fortunes of many an able statesman and valiant soldier; born to diffuse lustre on their own, and compelled to promote the glories of another land; the Petitioners claim, as their kindred, while they deplore to their country, the loss of many names of renown in foreign annals, and on the present great theatre of war, they trace, in some of the most distinguished actors, the blood and spirit of banished Irishmen; and that still a system, so injurious in its operation, generated in times and under circumstances of which the very shadow has passed away, is, they blush to add, attempted to be justified by imputations aspersive of their morality as Christians, and allegiance as subjects, their enemies, and the enemies of the edifice, would fain blot from the page of history, and from the recollection of the House; that to their Catholic ancestors, Britons are mainly indebted for the transcendent blessings of their constitution; they laid the firmest basis of the empire; and it surely is an ungenerous retribution to their memory to make the creed they professed a title of exclusion from the more perfect fabric; that religion, they are bound to infer, could inculcate nothing dangerous to society or prejudicial to the state, the sole and paramount sway of which was owned by those men who first defined the grand outlines of our civil rights, and the influence of which, at the present day, subjects the master passions of our nature, even interest and ambition, to the controul of conscience; by moral man alone is that sacred bar held inseparable and inviolate which the law has interposed between the Petitioners and the 370 attainment of their wishes; and that here they hope they shall be indulged in adducing, as a crowning proof of the tenets and practice of their ancient faith, the sublime example of its spiritual head, the suffering and magnanimous Pius, who stands an illustrious monument of glory to his religion, and of shame to many Christian princes; on him humiliations have been heaped, and the cup of bitterness impotently exhausted; immovable in conscious rectitude, he alone has defied the vengeance of a ruthless power, and, as be came the great minister of peace, refused to join a confederacy leagued for the overthrow of these kingdoms; his despoiler they may confidently maintain will meet little countenance or partiality from Catholic Ireland; and that the Petitioners will not stoop further to repel these calumnies, which even their propagators do not believe, but they refer with complacency, to the solemn recognition of their meritorious demeanor by their own parliament, when it first invited them to the threshold of the constitution, a measure wise and salutary at the time, but doubly grateful as a spontaneous emanation from the royal breast; the benign and parental source, they are proud to acknowledge, of numerous other gracious favours; and with equal pleasure do the Petitioners appeal to the honourable and decisive testimony of their Protestant fellow citizens, whose just discernment has long obliterated, in society, the partial demarcations of the law; with them the Petitioners are blended in all the sympathies of private life and communion of dearest interests; they would open wide, and hail as reason's triumph, their unqualified admission to the sanctuary of British freedom, for to them they have amply proved how deeply they have imbibed, and how prepared they are to vindicate its principles; they witnessed and they cheered their late assertion, constitutional they trust, and authorized of that radical provision of its guardian law, the right they at this moment exercise of addressing the House; and the Petitioners therefore feel warranted respectfully, but most earnestly, to impress on the wisdom of the House the policy of cherishing those elements of harmony and conciliation, which will unite in consentaneous impulse all the energies of the state, will elect for their rulers, in the bosoms of enfranchised Irishmen, a temple of ever lasting gratitude, and impart vigour to the arm, and ardour to the heart, of every in 371 dividual of this nation; the time and talent too they consume in complaint will be de voted, unfettered and undivided to the common cause; and that it is reserved, the Petitioners presume to hope, for the House, and it is worthy the character of enlightened statesmen, to redeem at length the great name of the British empire from the disparaging imputation of sacrificing an eternal principle of justice, and a commanding maxim of legislation, to a passing expediency and to fleeting events; and praying the House, in this Crisis of Unprecedented Emergency, to hearken to the monitory voice of those great luminaries of their councils, whose discerning patriotism has identified their cause with the security of these realms, and who have exhorted the House, as they contemplate a successful resistance to our inveterate foe, to make a brave and gallant people happy in the possession, and invincible under the banners of the British constitution, by the repeal of those laws so manifestly hostile to its genuine spirit".