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CURRAN. 835 the merehants of Ireland; he had abused Mr. Burke, he had abused those who voted for the order of the day. I do not know (continued he) but I ought to thank the learned Doctor for honouring me with a place in his iuvective. He has styled me. the bottle-holder of my right honourable friend (Mr. Grattan), but sure I am, that if I had been the boltle-holder of both, the learned Doctor would have less reason to complain of me than my right honourable friend; for him I should have left perfectly sober, whilst it would clearly appear, that the bottle, with respect to the learned Doctor, would have been managed, not only fairly but generously; and that if, in furnishing him with liquor I had not furnished him with argument, I had at least furi nished him with a good excuse for wanting it; with, indeed, the best excuse for that confusion of history, and divinity, and civil law, and common law; that heteroge- neous mixture of politics, and theology, and antiquity, with which he has overwhelmed the debate, and the havoc and carnage he has made of the population of the last age, and the fury with which he has seemed determined to extermi- nate, and even to devour the population of this, and which urged him, after tearing the character of the catholics, to spend the last efforts of his rage with the most relentless ferocity in actually gnawing their names, (allading to the Doctor's enunciation of the name of Keogh, which he pro- nounced Keoaugh). In truth, Sir," continued he, "I felt some surprise, and some regret, when I heard him describe the sceptre of lath, and tiara of strao; and mimic his bed- latnite emperor and pope, with such refined and happy gesticulation, that he could be prevailed on to quit so congenial a company. I should not, however, be disposed to hasten his return to them, or to precipitate the access of his fit, if by a most unlucky felicity of indiscretion, he had not dropped some doctrines which the silent approbation of the minister seemed to adopt. I do not mean, amongs those doctrines, to place the learned Doctor's opinion of the revolution, nor his wise and valorous plan ia case of invasion, to arm the beadles and the sextons, and put