pendent and constitutional course which we are willing to hope that the majority of them in their hearts approve and wish that they could venture to adopt. Nothing, for instance, can be better, as far as they venture to go, both in sentiment and expression, than the speeches of Lord John Russell and Sir George Grey on the state of Ireland, or than the various official communications of Lord Clarendon; but seeing that all these excellent declarations stop dead-short when they should strike at the real causes of the disorganization, and comparing them with the measures that halt after them, we again are driven to exclaim-'O lame and impotent conclusion!'

Those who have ventured to criticise the conduct of the Ministry-even such humble and, as it were, amateur statesmen as ourselves—have been reproached with not having stated what we should have had them do. That reproach, if true in fact, would yet be an idle one-for Ministers, like servants, should understand their work before they undertake it, and be satisfied that they are able to perform it: it is not to be expected from individuals that they should elaborate the details of Government measures;—but it is notoriously ill-founded; for Lord Stanley and Lord George Bentinck have lectured the Ministry fully, copiously, and severely on the principles applicable to our present condition. Nor can it, we submit, be fairly said that this Journal has not with perhaps more frankness than was desired—indicated what we, and those who think with us, have considered the most probable remedy for every grievance we adduced; but that no similar charge may be made on this occasion, we shall venture to recapitulate some of the chief points of the advice which the Ministry have received on various important subjects, all of which they have neglected or rejected.

They were warned of the necessity of a Coercion Bill, which they nevertheless threw out for the sole object of getting into office, and which, before they have been two years in office, they have been forced to re-enact with additional stringency.

They were warned that their wild and shallow scheme for meeting the Irish famine by the at once partial and universal jobbing of public works, would only encourage idleness, extend misery, excite dissatisfaction, and desolate the country. They persisted-till after millions on millions had been wasted, and— what is worse than mere waste-the habits of the people (bad enough already) have been further deteriorated-they have been forced to put a sudden stop to a system-the withdrawal of which will, we fear, create more wretchedness and danger than its operation had ever removed.

They were warned when this destitution fell upon Ireland, that there happened to be at hand, as if by a special providence, the

largest,

largest, the readiest, the most effective resource that ever had presented itself in any great national emergency: instead of the partial, narrow, useless, unprofitable, and corrupt pretence of public works there were the railways ready to ramify themselves out in every direction, even to the remotest districts, carrying with them abundant labour, well-earned food, profitable returns, public utility, a certain repayment of all that should be expended, and with no other inconvenience than anticipating in the hour of need works that sooner or later will and must be done. This resourcewhich might have been adapted to any advisable extent, whether large or small, which, gigantic in power, was simple and manageable in its smallest details-was rejected in toto; but subsequently, when it could do little good but to three individual railroad companies, a sum of money was advanced, so trifling in amount and so narrow in application, that it really seemed only granted to mark and record the inconsistency of the Ministry.

They were warned that the leaving Ireland (for the first time for three centuries) without an Arms Act would be the signal for and the means of a general armament of the populace, and terrible disorders. This they not only disregarded, but published by authority an incentive to the people to arm themselves; and were, in this alone, so well obeyed, that though murder, by those very arms, ravages the country and disgraces it and us in the eyes of Europe, the pusillanimous Ministry dare not venture on bringing the only effective remedy-an immediate and general disarmament, and a permanent and thorough system of registration and restriction as to the future possession of arms.

The Ministers have been warned, not by the loyal only, but trumpet-tongued by the Popish priests themselves, of the baneful influence which they have-and recently more than ever-exercised over their already turbulent flocks: and that very opportunity is taken for rewarding with the highest titles of dignity the Popish hierarchy some of whom have distinguished themselves in encouraging the incendiary priests, and not one of whom has had the will or the courage to distinguish himself by censuring or reprimanding' them.

They have been warned that the real object of all these atrocities in Ireland is to expel the Protestant landlords and confiscate their estates; and instead of boldly and at once exposing and stigmatizing that treasonable scheme, and proclaiming a full and final resolution to protect the rights of property with all the power of the state, they accompany their fair words and feeble efforts in that direction with inuendoes against the landlords, and hints of new laws of tenant-right and so forth, which the ignorant peasantry will imagine to be meant to accomplish their lawless purposes.

So

So much for the warnings they have had. Let us now say a few words as to the present and the future, which, we regret to say, afford no more satisfaction.

We need not repeat what we have so recently urged on the apprehended change in the system of taxation, and of the abrogation of the Navigation Laws; though we must say that renewed consideration only confirms and increases our alarm at these wanton and perilous experiments.

But there is a subject of still higher interest, which begins to assume a severer aspect. We cannot but complain with equal regret and earnestness at the tone of obvious hostility which the Ministers have assumed towards the Church. Their consent to preserve the Welsh bishoprics-unsatisfactory as it became by the concomitant severance of a bishopric from the peerage—had excited hopes which every subsequent step has disappointed.

We have a great indulgence for political gratitude, and we do not complain at seeing secular patronage lavished on the Dis senting supporters of the Ministry, when (which is, by the way, a pretty considerable restriction) they happen to be decently fit for what they get; but we cannot extend any indulgence to the policy of gratifying such connexions by affronting the Church, or, what is worse, disturbing her by schismatic or otherwise unbecoming appointments-which have the additional ill consequences of raising questions, before unthought of, on the royal prerogative. There may no doubt be thousands in the Radical constituencies that contribute to Lord John Russell's mosaic majorities, who will be grateful at every embarrassment, great or small, in which he may involve the interests of the Church; but he can hardly need to be warned that there are millions who feel and resent with deep, though silent and for the moment powerless indignation, such proceedings as he has been lately obtruding upon us-the nomination of inferior or at least undistinguished men to the highest dignities—the selecting out of all England for a bishopric one chiefly if not solely known in the religious or literary world by a condemnation for heterodoxy -the endeavour to force a Jew, or two or three Jews, into Parliament, an object in itself so inconsiderable, that it is obviously undertaken to forward the principle of a complete severance of Church and State. These are all pregnant symptoms of a hostile spirit, but we have to complain of evasion and even infringements, still more direct and practical, of the laws which ought to protect our ecclesiastical establishment.

When the great change in our Protestant Constitution was effected in 1829, certain guards and guarantees were introduced into that pact for the ulterior security and inviolability

of

of the rights of the Established Church. Already this session Mr. Anstey (one of the few gentlemen, be it observed, who strenuously opposed the Coercion Bill) has introduced a bill to repeal inter alia (we need not enter into details) some of the most important of those securities. What did the Government? Sir George Grey divided the objects of the bill into two parts, one repealing old and obsolete Acts, theoretically though not practically offensive to the Roman Catholics, and the other repealing some of the securities of the Act of 1829. On the first subject he considered the bill as of little importance; on the second part, he would not apply the principle of finality to the Bill of 1829, but he thought it undesirable to disturb the settlement of a great question by enactments of this kind.' Undesirable, forsooth! Why, if the compromise, for such it essentially was, of 1829, is not to be final on one side, why should it be on the other? If one member proposes a clause to repeal the securities, why should not another propose another clause to repeal the indulgences granted on the faith of those securities? Why, if Sir George Grey thought lightly of one-half of the bill, and disapproved of the other, why did he not vote against the disturbance of a great national settlement, and leave Mr. Anstey to bring in a bill for those minor purposes which he approved? Instead of this fair, manly, and Parliamentary course, Mr. Anstey's measure was supported by all the Ministers, and the second reading (that is, the principle) of a bill to break down the securities of 1829 was carried by a majority of 168 to 136.

Amongst other provisions of the Bill of 1829 was one (§ 24) that interdicted, under a penalty, any Roman Catholic prelate's assuming the title of any see of the Established Church. It is notorious that they have of late set this law at defiance, and the address of the Roman Catholic prelates, in reply to which Lord Clarendon so belorded them, was signed, John, Archbishop of TUAM,' -John, Bishop of CLONFERT.' How can Lord Clarendon expect any law to be respected in Ireland, when he himself not only submits to, but encourages so gross a violation of it?

But a still larger stride has been since made. The Pope, it seems, has announced his intention of proving that he has power and authority, both temporal and spiritual, here in England itself, by erecting those ecclesiastic officers heretofore tolerated under the modest and sufficient title of Vicars Apostolic, into the dignities of Archbishops and Bishops-not merely nominal, not in partibus-but of Pope-created dioceses, in this by law Protestant realm of England, but having more respect for the penal provisions of the Act of 1829, than the English Ministers or his Irish prelates, he calls them Bishops of Westminster and Birmingham!

Passing

Passing over for a moment the graver question of our national territory being thus parcelled out by a foreign jurisdiction, we must here ask, was there ever anything so fantastically insulting to our ideas of law and constitution, and even of common sense, as this entire affair? The Queen's Majesty, it seems, must not summon the Bishop of Hereford, who happens to be the junior bishop, to the House of Peers, but her Lord-Lieutenant can, by a stroke of his pen, make Lords of Drs. MacHale and Higgins, and some thirty of their brethren. She could not of her own authority create a bishopric of Manchester, but she submits to the Pope's erecting we know not how many archbishoprics and bishoprics of Westminster, Birmingham, &c.!

These new and extraordinary pretensions cannot but remind her Majesty, and her loyal subjects should not forget, that there exists in Italy the lineal heir to the British Crown, excluded only by those very laws which her Ministers are every day setting or permitting to be set at defiance.

But in the midst of all these papal and papist intricacies there has arisen a new question of considerable curiosity and interest, and which may turn out to be, in its results, of great and perhaps beneficial importance.

To any one who had marked the series of events, and endeavoured to trace to their true source and causes all our danger in Ireland, and many of our difficulties in England, it could be no surprise to hear that our Government was about to enter into diplomatic relations with the Court of Rome; but he must, we think, have been somewhat perplexed by the answer made by Lord Palmerston when Sir Robert Inglis questioned him on that point, on Tuesday the 10th of December:

'Lord PALMERSTON.-It is well known that for some weeks past Lord Minto, who holds the office of Privy Seal, has been at Rome, but he is not there in any official capacity; he has no power and no instructions to negotiate any convention whatever with the Court of Rome, to which Court he is not in any way accredited. My honourable friend will therefore see that the statement to which he alludes is entirely destitute of any foundation whatever. I need not say that so long as doubts can be entertained by any person as to the legality of diplomatic intercourse with the Court of Rome, her Majesty's Government have too much respect for the law to do anything which could by possibility be considered as an infringement of it. I believe it is known to those who have looked into the subject, that the doubt arises chiefly upon the construction of the word " communion," the law being that the Crown is not allowed to hold any communion with the Court of Rome. A doubt exists whether that word "communion" should be strictly interpreted as applicable to religious communion, or whether it would apply to diplomatic intercourse. I am not called upon to go into that question of construction: in my own opinion it is pretty clear; but until Parlia

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