rights of property, while they are vain enough to think that the land. should be for their own use alone? Both parties are culpable.'Debates, 10th December. This and more of the same kind was adduced, and amongst others by Sir B. Hall, in defence of Dr. Ryan; yet what was this but the same excuse that Sir B. Hall would not listen to in Archdeacon Laffan's case?-that the laudable conclusion of a speech or charge could not in common sense justify the violence and incendiarism of the beginning. What propriety was there in Bishop Ryan's introducing such inflammatory topics such a hostile classification of the different orders of society in a Confirmation charge? And were his censures equally dangerous to both parties?-was there any apprehension that the landlords might be thereby incited to murder, or even persecute, their tenants?—while, on the other hand, was it not notorious that the lives of the landlords were throughout the country in the most imminent danger? Is Priest M Dermott's appeal to the 'wild justice of revenge'-is Father Laffan's ribaldry about 'the Saxon scoundrel,' worse than Bishop Ryan's portentous denunciation of the LANDLORDS 'As exercising over their VICTIMS a system of heartless CRUELTY calculated to bring down the VENGEANCE OF HEAVEN ON THEIR OWN HEADS.'? We are very willing to believe that Dr. Ryan is in private life all that his noble and honourable compurgators have testified; but as the case is presented to us, we cannot but think his premeditated charge as bad as Laffan's perhaps extemporary speech. Mr. Baillie Cochrane, in spite of the array of evidence brought against him, has established not only his particular case, but a much more important result:-if the most amiable-most pacific-most Christian of the Roman Catholic hierarchy preaches, in the neighbourhood where Mr. Roe has been but just buried and Mr. Bayley is lingering, that it is the cruelty of the landlords that brings down on their own heads the vengeance of angry Heaven -if, we say, the mildest and best-disposed thus preaches, what may we not conjecture as to those of a less exemplary character? It was at this particular juncture of time and circumstances— when the Romish hierarchy-after having for years abetted the seditious proceedings of O'Connell and Co.-had now, some legally by active interference, and the rest morally by silence and acquiescence-made themselves accessories to those frightful disorders, that the Ministers of the Protestant Queen of this no longer Protestant kingdom thought proper to violate the Constitution to insult and endanger the United Church-to encourage turbulence and disloyalty to countenance, apparently, whatever their intentions may be, rebellion and murder, by conferring the title of Lords upon the Popish Bishops of Ireland. We have the highest personal respect for Lord Clarendon-for his public abilities and his private character-and in censuring as we do, both as a most stupid blunder as well as a mischievous illegality, his addressing the Popish Bishops by a style that assimilates them to the spiritual peers of the realm, we consider him only as the accidental mouth-piece of the Ministry, who agreed to make this monstrous innovation. But this was one of their schemes for tranquillizing Ireland. The conduct of the Romish priesthood having become thus intolerably audacious the Ministry took counsel thus to soften and sweeten them—as if, having heard that pouring oil on water would still the waves, they expected an equally tranquillizing effect from throwing oil on flame! Lord Clarendon gave no explanation of this extraordinary creation of Lordships-the largest-the most suddenthe least to be anticipated-and, we suspect, one of the most important ever made; but we were soon informed, from a less discreet authority nearer head-quarters, not of the motives for this concession-that needed no explanation-sheer cowardice and sectarianism-but of the pretext on which it was to be excused. On the 23rd of November, 1847, there appeared in the 'Morning Herald' a copy of a circular from the Colonial Secretary of State to all our Colonial Governors, which, as an historical curiosity and specimen of ignorance and blunder, we think well worthy of quotation here: (Circular.) Downing-street, Nov. 20, 1847. Sir,-My attention has been called by the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland to the fact that the prelates of the Roman Catholic Church in the British Colonies have not hitherto in their official correspondence with the Government and authorities been usually addressed by the title to which their rank in their own Church would appear to give them a just claim. Formerly there were obvious reasons for this practice; but as Parliament by a recent Act (that relating to Charitable Bequests in Ireland) formally recognised the rank of the Irish Roman Catholic prelates, by giving them precedence immediately after the prelates of the Established Church of the same degrees, the Roman Catholic Archbishops and Bishops taking rank immediately after the prelates of the Established Church respectively, it has now appeared to Her Majesty's Government that it is their duty to conform to the rule thus laid down by the Legislature. I have accordingly to instruct you, &c.'—Morning Herald, Nov. 23, 1847. The first observation that strikes one on this grand patent of precedence is, that the Pope would have only to call all his prelates Archbishops in partibus, a power which he has and frequently exercises, to give them at once rank above all our bishops, both both at home and abroad, as well as above all our secular nobility. But what will our readers think, after reading this elaborate and official statement, at finding that there is not one word of truth in it?—that the Act referred to neither mentions nor alludes to rank or precedence, nor to Protestant Bishops, nor Roman Catholic Bishops, nor any Bishops at all, nor to any one circumstance stated in the letter. The only clause of the Act that the Lord-Lieutenant and Secretary of State could have been dreaming of runs as follows:: 'And be it further enacted, That it shall be lawful for her Majesty to appoint the Master of the Rolls, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and the Judge of the Prerogative Court, together with ten other proper and discreet persons, by warrant under the sign manual, of which ten persons five (and not more than five) shall be persons professing the Roman Catholic religion, to be Commissioners for Charitable Bequests.' Which ten persons were not then named, nor till six months after, when a list of them appeared in the Gazette.' So vanishes this fabulous excuse of the 'formal recognition by Parliament,' and the dutiful obedience of the Ministers to the rule laid down by the Legislature. We have no doubt that neither Lord Clarendon nor Lord Grey happened to look into the original Act; and that some Roman Catholic adviser (whether by design or sheer ignorance) confounded the Act with the long-subsequent notice in the 'Gazette,' and by giving his own gloss to the mistake led both the Lords into this stupendous blunder. But this is not the whole of this absurdity. Even if the list had been in the Act of Parliament, it would not have, in the slightest degree, justified the proceedings of the two noble Lords. Who ever before imagined that the order in which persons were named in a commission regulated rank anywhere else than at the Board? It happens every day that a Lord is a junior member of a public Board-so placed in all official and legal acts:—was it ever thought that all the commoners who stand before him in the commission are thereby ennobled ? In the present Board of Treasury the youngest member is the Right Honourable the Earl of Shelburne-does that invest his senior colleagues, Sir Charles Wood, Mr. O'Connor, Mr. Craig, and Mr. Rich, with social place and style similar to Lord Shelburne's? All the elder sons of Viscounts and Barons take precedence everywhere of Privy Councillors, but was it ever thought that they should therefore be styled Right Honourable? Some office-holders, such as the Chancellor, Lord President, Privy Seal, &c., precede Dukes ; who ever thought of calling them your Grace? But what clinches the matter is, that the Act, which does not take any notice of the ten subordinate Commissioners, does give the first and presidential rank to three other Commissioners-the Master of the Rolls, 296 Rolls, the Chief Baron, and the Judge of the Prerogative, all commoners, who at that Board take place of the Archbishops and Lord Donoughmore. The pretence therefore is not only fabulous, but foolish. But do our readers wish to know why this trumpery device was thought of? The nomination of the Commission was Sir Robert Peel's; the present Ministers fancied he had done it in the Act, and, being desirous to glorify the Roman Catholic Bishops, fancied that they were safe under his protecting wing. But we go a step further-we deny absolutely the right of the Crown to create Lords within the United Kingdom except by creating Peers. When our Colonial Bishops were established, it was thought expedient to call them Lords, with a view of giving them weight and importance in the Colonies; and though it was an anomalous proceeding, there was no more legal objection to their being called Lord Bishops of Canada or Zealand than there would have been to the Queen's calling the Governors of those colonies Lords-Lieutenant. The circumstances under which we obtained Canada and Malta might justify giving the style of Lord Bishop to the Roman Catholic prelates found and preserved in those dependencies; but is very different from giving this domestic dignity to my Lord Archbishop M'Hale and my Lord Bishop Higgins. But this affair, besides the blunders in fact and in law, has the additional ill luck of being His Grace John M'Hale, peculiarly odious and ridiculous. Lord Archbishop of Tuam, had been already a laughing-stock for his aristocratical pretensions. Mr. Thackeray-whose Irish Sketch-Book, though somewhat disfigured by the flippancies of his assumed character of the Cockney Titmarsh-exhibits a great deal of keen and judicious observation, with a happy power of delineating both scenery and character, and gives in his lively manner (ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?) one of the best pictures we have seen (though it be but a sketch) of the natural features and social condition of Ireland-Mr. Thackeray, we say, thus laughs at Dr. M'Hale's archi-episcopal pretensions, as paraded over the gate of his church at Tuam: 'Over the door is a huge coat of arms surmounted by a cardinal's hat-the arms of the see, no doubt,-quartered with John Tuam's own patrimonial coat; and that was a frieze coat, from all accounts, passably ragged at the elbows. Well, he must be a poor wag who could sneer at an old coat because it was old and poor. But if a man changes it for a tawdry gimcrack suit, bedizened with twopenny tinsel, and struts The practice of giving to the grandchildren of dukes, marquises, and earls, whose fathers have predeceased the grandfather, the nominal rank which in the usual course of nature would have fallen to them, is no exception. These commonly called' titles are not recognised in law, and have always been (with the exception of three or four flagrant jobs perpetrated by the Whigs) strictly limited to the natural descent. about about calling himself his Grace, and my Lord, when may we laugh if not then? There is something simple in the way in which these good people belord their clergymen, and respect titles, real or sham. Take any Dublin paper-a couple of columns of it are sure to be filled with movements of the small great men of the world. Accounts from Darrynane state that the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor is in good health; his Lordship went out with his beagles yesterday—or his Grace the Most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of Ballywhack, assisted by the Right Reverend the Lord Bishops of Trincomalee and Hippopotamus,' &c. &c.-Irish Sketch-book, vol. ii. p. 111. Alas! that the Queen's Government, by the mere blunder of not looking at the Act of Parliament which they quoted, should have fallen into so humiliating an absurdity. But it is worse than an absurdity. The grand contest now raging in Ireland has been mainly caused by the illegal and the inordinate desire of the Popish clergy to re-establish the power, dignity, supremacy of their Church; and every step that has been taken to conciliate these demagogues has only rendered them more arrogant and audacious, and the peasantry, their dupes and their victims, more criminal and more wretched. And yet it was just at a time when these audacious pretensions of the priests and this sanguinary turbulence of the populace had assumed a more formidable aspect than they had ever before ventured to do, that the Government-instead of marking its indignation at such a state of things, stimulates the seditious and clamorous-the M'Hales and the Higginses-and rewards the neutrality, or at least silence, of all the rest, with this gaudy title of Lordship-which, though an insult to every loyal man in Ireland, is received by the agitators as nothing more than their strict due-a confession of weakness-an instalment only of the full success which a continued and increasing agitation on their part, and a continued and increasing timidity and incapacity in the Government, cannot fail to accomplish. Such, under the various circumstances we have detailed, have been the character and conduct of those to whom an extraordinary concourse of accidents has committed, if not our destinies, at least all our immediate interests; and we will do them, or at least the majority of them, the justice to say that we believe that it is also an extraordinary concourse of other circumstances-and not either their want of personal talents or of upright intentions-which reduces them to the state of intrinsic weakness-the at once rash and feeble counsels which we have traced. They have, by a variety of causes, some involuntary and others more culpable, become so dependent on the Radical and sectarian parties in England, and the Papists and Repealers in Ireland, that they have hardly the power, and not at all the courage, to pursue the independent |