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THREE:The year 1824 is memorable in Ireland for the establishment of the Catholic Association. The Catholic question had lain dormant since the union. Ireland remained in a state of political stupor. There was a Catholic committee, indeed, under the direction of a gentleman of property, Mr. John Keogh, of Mount Jerome, near Dublin. But his voice was feeble, and seldom heard. The councils of the Roman Catholics were much distracted. Many of the bishops, and most of the gentry, recommended prudence and patience as the best policy. Liberal statesmen in England were willing to make concessions, but the conscientious scruples of George III. had presented an insuperable barrier in the way of civil equality. There was an annual motion on the subject��first by Grattan, then by Plunket, and lastly by Burdett; but it attracted very little attention, till the formidable power of the Catholic Association excited general alarm for the stability of British institutions. Adverting to the past history of Ireland��her geographical position, her social state in respect of the tenure of property, and the numbers of the respective religious denominations of her people��the ablest Conservative statesmen considered that it would be extremely difficult to reconcile the perfect equality of civil privilege, or rather the bona fide practical application of that principle, with those objects on the inviolable maintenance of which the friends and opponents of Catholic Emancipation were completely agreed��namely, the Legislative union and the Established Church. There was the danger of abolishing tests which had been established for the express purpose of giving to the legislature a Protestant character��tests which had been established not upon vague constitutional theories, but after practical experience of the evils which had been inflicted and the dangers which had been incurred by the struggles for ascendency at periods not remote from the present. There was the danger that the removal of civil disabilities might materially alter the relations in which the Roman Catholics[249] stood to the State. Sir Robert Peel, in his "Memoirs," recites those difficulties at length, and in all their force. He fully admits that "the Protestant interest" had an especial claim upon his devotion and his faithful service, from the part which he had uniformly taken on the Catholic question, from the confidence reposed in him on that account, and from his position in Parliament as the representative of the University of Oxford.The progress that the electors had made in liberality of sentiment was evinced especially by two of the elections. Mr. Hume, the Radical reformer, the cold, calculating economist, the honest, plain-speaking man of the people, was returned for the county of Middlesex without opposition; and Mr. Brougham, a barrister, who owed nothing to family connections��who, by the steadiness of his industry, the force of his character, the extent of his learning, and the splendour of his eloquence, devoted perseveringly for years to the popular cause, had won for himself, at the same time, the highest place in his profession, and the foremost position in the senate��was returned for Yorkshire. These counties had hitherto been the preserves of the great[319] landed proprietors. Lord Fitzwilliam, though the personal friend of Mr. Brougham, did not like this intrusion of a foreigner into that great county. Indeed, it had been sufficiently guarded against all but very wealthy men by the enormous expense of a contest. In 1826, when a contest was only threatened, and the election ended with a nomination, Mr. John Marshall's expenses amounted to ��17,000; and, on a previous occasion, it was rumoured that Lord Milton had spent ��70,000 in a contest. No wonder Brougham was a friend of Parliamentary Reform.

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