In the fifth and sixth years of the reign of Edward an act was passed" against quarrelling and fighting in churches and church-yards :" the constant disputing about religion, which these laws created, caused these quarrels.

The makers of these persecuting laws did not seem to consider that

Religion was intended

For something else than to be mended;"

nor attend to the following maxim of Confucius: "He who persecutes a good man, makes war against himself and all mankind."

The learned Selden says: "No man was punished for perjury by man's law until Queen Elizabeth's reign; it was left to God as a sin against him: the reason was, because it was so hard a thing to prove a man perjured. I might misunderstand him, and yet he swears as he thought."-Table Talk.

A writer in the Boston Pilot (W. Comstock) very properly observes: "Cromwell had found fanaticism very serviceable in the field, where, like steam power, it propelled his followers to a charge which battled every obstruction before it, until the bravest cavaliers rolled in the dust at the feet of the saints; yet he discovered that authority, obedience, system, and regularity were indispensable requisites in affairs of state. Accordingly he seized the reins of government with a strong hand, and vaulted into the vacant throne as naturally as if he had been brought up to the business.”

to

In Edward VI.'s reign an act was passed, compelling people pay tithe on their personal labour in the exercise of any art, trade, or employment.

An act, called the "Test and Corporation Act," was passed in the reign of Charles II., which excluded from all offices in corporations, and from all offices of trust and emolument under the crown, all persons who should not receive the sacraments according to the rites and ceremonies of the established church. Every dissenter was thus shut out from all offices of trust, and also out of the universities, who had any scruples against these "rites and ceremonies."

In 1602 there was a proclamation to restrain the Puritans from going to Virginia. Bishop Bancroft would at that time, if he could, have extended his law-church all over the world, and kept the people at home to endure it, whether they liked it or not.

In 1604 King James I. expelled the Jesuits; while the revocation of the edict of Nantes sent over plenty of industrious, ingenious manufacturers to London, (all Protestants.)

Archbishop Laud told them, "Though their opinions were connived at, yet it was not fitting such a schism should be tolerated."

"The Church of England, as by law established," has yet to learn the following lines of Dryden parodied:

"The pulpit's laws the pulpit's patrons give;

Those who live to preach, must preach to live."

PERSECUTION IN THE OLDEN TIME.

THE following curious document is a specimen of what was done in old times:

"A special release granted by the crown, June 24th, 1634, to Sir Edward Cary, Knight, with a grant to Thomas Risdon, Esq., and Christopher Maynard, Gent. WOLSELEY

"Sir Edward Cary, of Marldom, Knt., was convicted in law on the 16th of March, 1629, of being a recusant. In virtue of a writ from the crown office, an inquisition was taken October 1st, 1630, in the Parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, by John Davye, Esq., High Sheriff of Devon, by which it was certified that the said Sir Edward Cary was seized of and in The whole Manor of St. Mary Church, of the clear (per annum) £5 0

value of

The Manor of Coffinswell,

Northlewe,

Ashwater,

Bradford,

66

Abbotesham,

Stockley als Meath, ·
Goodley,

Estkimber,

Of a messuage and tenement, and 90 acres,

Of a messuage and tenement, and 44 acres, called

Middlelake,

Of a messuage and tenement, and 91 acres, called
Monchouse,

7

1

Of a messuage and tenement, and 53 acres, Dobles

Thorne,

Of a messuage and tenement, and 55 acres, Gaston

or Gason,

Of a messuage and tenement, and 70 acres, Yeo in

Allington,

Of a messuage and tenement, and 53 acres, in

A third part of a cottage in Bedyford,

6 acres in Aishenage or Alverdiscott,

27 acres in Westland, Chery bere, and Dalton,
97 acres in Parvacott, Thornadon, and Peworthy,
12 acres in Instowe and Bradeworthy,

120 acres in Westweeke and Bondehouse, in Lamer-
ton and Broadwoodwiger, -

"As Sir Edward Cary had not paid since his conviction the penalty of £20 per month, King Charles I. was entitled, by law, to take, seize, and enjoy all the goods and chattels, and two parts of all the said lands, tenements, and hereditaments; but by letters patent, under the great seal, dated June 24th, 1634, and enrolled in the pipe office October 20th, that year, his majesty was pleased to cancel and pardon all arrears to the said Sir E. Cary, his heirs, executors, and administrators, and to lease the said estates to Thomas Risdon and Christopher Maynard, Gents., to hold the same from Lady-day, 1632, during the term of forty-one years, by the yearly rent to the crown of £136 13s. 4d., to be paid at Lady-day and Michaelmas, in even portions, into the exchequer. The said Thomas Risdon and Christopher Maynard have full power and authority to lease and grant the whole or part of the recited estates to Sir Edward Cary, Knight, or to any person or persons for his own use, notwithstanding the statute of the 3d of James I., an act for the better discovery and repressing of Popish Recusants; and so long as the said Edward Cary pay the said yearly sum of £136 13s. 4d., both he and his wife are to remain unmolested by the civil and ecclesiastical judges and commissioners, and to be exempt from all pains and penalties, by reason of their past recusancy or their future absence from the Protestant church, chapel, or place of common prayer.”

A very curious circumstance came to light last year, which gives great information upon the law respecting religion. In the reign of Charles II. a Lady Hawley left certain manors of land in the county of York, in trust, to support " Godly preachers of Christ's holy Gospel," which, in the course of time, had got into the hands of the Unitarians. The phrase of the donor, taking into consideration the historico politico condition of the times, meant some sort of Protestant dissenters, otherwise it would have been soon obtained by trustees of "the church as by law established." After various trials in various courts, it came to a final decision in the house of lords, (1842.) On the opinion of the judges, that Unitarians do not come within the forms of the trust deeds, Mr. Justice Erskine observed, that "those who denied the Trinity were blasphemers, and,

therefore, they could not be intended by the term 'Godly preachers.''

I should have thought this was more a point to be decided by a doctor of divinity than a doctor of law; but I yield—

"The pulpit is none of my office."-DE FOE.

TRANSPORTATION AND EMIGRATION.

"It is a shameful and unblessed thing, to take the scum of the people, and wicked and condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant.”—BACON.

I BELIEVE the introduction of the African negro into this continent was in the year 1445. It first commenced in 1442, by Anthony Gonsalez, a Portuguese. In 1502 the Spaniards employed them in Hispaniola.

In 1618 the British were regularly engaged in it. In 1620 they were employed in Virginia. The Dutch brought twenty. The total number of slaves in the British colonies and America, from 1680 to 1786, may be put down at 2,120,000.

The emigration and transportation of the white population were almost all cut off by the natives or disorders before the Stuarts began to grant their charters. Those instruments secured property, and laid the basis for order and good government; indeed one of them, that for Rhode Island, still remains.

In the thirty years' war of Gustavus Adolphus, he had four lieutenant generals, twenty colonels, and inferior officers of great number, (all natives of Scotland,) in his army.*

After the treaty of Limerick, 1691, to the battle of Fontinoy, 1745, there was so great an emigration from Ireland, that the French army was partly composed of an Irish brigade. There died in their service 150,000 Catholic soldiers.

At this distance of time we can see the injurious effects persecution has had, and how such vile measures against their own subjects produced disastrous effects even against themselves; while it also produced more disastrous effects to the cause of religion itself. But many then found that

"Persecution and devotion

Did equally advance promotion." HUDIBRAS.

According to Anderson, people began to emigrate voluntarily about 1700. In 1729, 6208 emigrated to Pennsylvania: there were 243 Germans, 267 English and Welch, and 43 Scotch; the

* Mackay.

rest were Irish. The Germans were all passengers, the Scotch all servants, the English, Welch, and Irish were partly servants and passengers.

*

In 1617 Capt. Samuel Argal was appointed deputy governor of the colony of Virginia, under Lord Delaware and admiral of the adjacent seas. The following is an instance of his infamous edicts, from Dr. Belknap's American Biography: "He fixed the advance on goods imported from England at twenty-five per cent., and the price of tobacco at three shillings the pound: the penalty for transgressing this regulation was three years' slavery. No person was allowed to fire a gun, except in his own defence against an enemy, till a new supply of ammunition should arrive, on penalty of one year's slavery. Absence from church on Sundays and holydays was punished by laying the offender neck and heels for one whole night, or by one week's slavery; the second offence by one month's; and the third by one year's slavery. Private trade with the savages, or teaching them the use of arms, was punishable by death." These, and similar laws, were executed with great rigour. Although Argal was odious to the colonists, yet he was not only never punished, but was knighted by King James.

It is painful to relate that, "in the year 1736, Henry Justice, Esq., a lawyer of the Middle Temple, was tried at the Old Bailey for stealing books out of Trinity College, Cambridge, and was sentenced to be transported to the American plantations for seven years."

The Scotch began to emigrate in shoals about 1745, the last Scotch rebellion; and then the government began to take alarm, and, with the view of restraining them in that part of the kingdom, voted annually large sums to make good roads, construct bridges, and make the three northern lakes navigable from sea to sea. Indeed, until Malthus promulgated his curious doctrine of over population, the government seemed to entertain the opinion, and persevere in the maxim, that had hitherto governed all the world—that a nation could not be too full of people.

Forming colonies tends

"To enlarge the world's contemporaneous mind,
And amplify the picture of mankind.”

*Mr. Mooney, in his seventh lecture on "Irish history," said: "The south of this country was settled by Spaniards and French, and also up the Mississippi; Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio very generally by Irish. Virginia has many from England, and so have the northern states; but Baltimore, and some of the Carolinas, generally settled by Irish. Pennsylvania was very early after its first settlement peopled by Irish; and there are now in Philadelphia seventy thousand Irish."

+ Hone's Every Day Book.