We remember those noble souls who banded themselves in 1798 for “the purpose of obtaining the repeal of the penal laws against Roman Catholics and for the right of the electoral franchise” and who, after the illustrious Grattan’s modest reform bill had been rejected, and the tyranny of coercive laws had changed whips for scorpions, gave their lives for freedom of conscience and civil liberty. As an Irish Protestant I claim in the loftiest pride, kinship with the chivalrous Wolfe Tone, the memorable Simon Butler, the daring Napper Tandy, with James Nelson, the owner and fearless editor of the organ of the United Irishmen in Belfast; with McCracken the Presbyterian minister, who was hanged by the neck in Belfast’s High street by the British because of his scholarly influence in the cause of freedom, and last, yet ever first, with the glorious, pious and immortal Robert Emmet,—God haste the day when we may be able to write the epitaph for which he prayed in the hour of his sacred martyrdom. As a Protestant Irishman, I repudiate the policy, and pity the men with my whole soul, who in ignorant bigotry and misguided zeal—in which they were encouraged by their English masters—persecuted hundreds of their fellow-countrymen whose only offense was that they desired a rational measure of civil and religious liberty, and may the day never dawn when any of my countrymen shall be hounded again with the inhuman cry, “To hell or Connaught.” The skies are brightening. “The blood of our martyrs as the seed of liberty is bearing golden fruit.” We have the emancipation of the farmer through Gladstone; the emancipation of the taxpayers, the county councils through Balfour. What a change as compared with Salisbury’s statement in 1884, in debate on Mr. Gladstone’s franchise bill when Salisbury was opposing the extension of this franchise to Ireland: We warned you when you gave the ballot to Ireland, and were we wrong? The Irish Presbyterian clergy are, by poorly informed people, supposed to be of the Orange cult. Not so! There are seven hundred Presbyterian clergymen in Ireland, and I am certain that not half a dozen of these are in actual or tangible touch with the Orange society. * * * * *