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CAULFIELD. looked forward to the result of the American contest as the criterion of their own fate; and many of the most leading landed proprietors foresaw, that, if America should be successful in shaking off the government of England, her next project would be to encourage emigration from Europe, to people her boundless but fertile solitudes; and, with such an opportunity, it was natural to expect that the catholic population of Ireland would prefer expa- triation and liberty in America, to slavery, debasement, and oppression at home; and that population was of some value to the land-owner, if not to the government. Some efforts were made in England, by Sir George Saville and other leading men, for the relief of the catholics there and Lord North, then at the head of the British minis- try, was highly favourable to relaxation in Ireland, but thought that any measure for that purpose should origi- nate in the Irish parliament.Accordingly Mr. Luke Gardiner, afterwards Lord Mountjoy, a man of large pos- sessions in the country, in 1778, brought in a bill, the chief objects of which were to empower catholics, subscribing the oaths of allegiance, to take leases of lands for nine hundred and ninety-nine years; and to render such pro- perty devisable and descendible, as that enjoyed by pro- testants-and, also, to abrogate that infamous law for enabling, and consequently encouraging, the son of a catholic gentleman to make his father tenant for life, and possess himself of the inheritance, by proving his father a catholic, and conforming himself to the established church. This bill was resisted in every stage; but finally carried in the house of commons; and in the lords it passed by a majority, thirty-six to twelve. Such was the change, excited by the rapid alteration of circumstances, in parliamentary sentiment within the short space of six years; and thus was the long proscribed catholic restored once more to the privilege of obtaining a permanent inhe- ritance in his native country. The last-mentioned clause of this bill, Lord Charlemont supported, but opposed it on other points. The bill was gratefully accepted as an 418