the people of Ireland might be properly instructed and yet not change their religion, still the probability is, that many of them would change it; and the certainty is, that if they did not, Catholicism would be wholly changed, the main chains which their Church has fixed on their hearts would be broken, the clergy would be reduced into mere spiritual advisers, and the Church would lose the greater portion of its power and hopes.

We say then, that the Catholic Clergy of Ireland are acted upon by the most powerful motives that can influence the human heart, to keep the animosity of their flocks towards the Protestants at the highest point, and to fan their dislike to the government; and they would be the veriest dolts in existence, if they could not accomplish this by the tremendous powers which they possess for the purpose, and the peculiar circumstances in which the people of Ireland are placed. Their Church subjects its members to the most perfect form of discipline that could be devised, for obtaining despotic authority over them. It rivets its fetters on their passions, wrings from them their thoughts, keeps its eyes on every footstep, pries incessantly into their dwellings, holds over their heads the terrors of excommunication, and thus obtains power over them that the King himself does not possess. It is impossible for an ignorant, superstitious, credulous Catholic,-and all ignorant men are superstitious and credulous, to be other than the abject slave of his priest. While the priests possess this power, those of them, who officiate among the peasantry, are, as well as the peasantry, grossly ignorant; and, in proportion as a religious teacher and his hearers are ignorant, in the same proportion will his appeals to their worst passions against other religious bodies be outrageous and successful. The peasantry are taught to regard the Protestants, not only as believers in a false religion, who cannot escape perdition, but as the robbers of the Catholic priesthood and the former Catholic landholders. While they are taught this, they are called upon by the Protestant Clergy for tithes, and by Protestant landlords for rents, which human effort cannot extract from the soil. On the other hand, the Government makes it a matter of policy to do nothing, and to dis

courage everything, that may be obnoxious to the Catholics on the score of religion; the Protestant clergy are therefore rendered powerless, and the Catholic ones meet with scarcely anything to interfere with their efforts and triumph.

The proofs of all this are to be found in Ireland, in the most astounding and monstrous forms and combinations. The peasantry are commanded, exhorted, supplicated, tempted, and bribed by the Government, to become free, and receive instruction, and still they hug their chains, and spurn from them knowledge. They dwell under a form of government which is the boast of human wisdom, and in the very focus of mental and bodily exaltation, and still they are more turbulent, depraved, barbarous, and wretched, than any other people in Europe. They have formed themselves into a gigantic confederacy for committing the most horrible crimes against their neighbours and their country, against God and man-and still they are furious religious fanatics, and profess to do it for the cause of religion. The people and Parliament of England are unceasingly anxious to do almost anything, to make almost any sacrifice, to conciliate and benefit them. With regard to public burdens, they enjoy immunities which are unknown in England and Scotland. The general government is almost constantly occupied in framing schemes for their advantage-and their own go vernment, in a fit of drunken folly, has publicly insulted and disgusted the Protestants, as a body-to please them, has kissed their gory hands, knelt at their feet, and offered them its honour, duty, and reason, as a sacrifice to propitiate their favour;-and still they hate England, the English government, the Irish government, and the Protestants.-They are still disaffected and rebellious.

We maintain it to be proved-indisputably proved-by what we have said, that the ignorant portion of the Catholics-if their forefathers had never been injured by the Protestants, and if the latter now felt no party animosity towards them whatever-would still hate the Protestants as cordially as they now do; and that, so long as they remain as they are, and their Church remains what it is, their hatred will not lose one iota of its inten

sity. We say that this must be the case, if Irishmen be like other men. We have laboured this point the more, because it is one of the very highest importance. To discover the source of the peasantry's hostility to the Protestants, and the Protestant government, and the means of removing it, would be, in our poor judgment, to discover a cure for the greatest portion of Ireland's evils. We have likewise laboured it the more, because it is the point on which almost all sides seem determined to be deluded.

Let us not be mistaken. We do not charge the Romish Church of Ireland with wanton misconduct; we do not even say that it does anything whatever that we should not ourselves do, were we members of it, and directing its affairs, without regard to anything else. Its power, and even existence, are unhappily bound up in the blindness and disaffection of the people, and they must perish together; it is therefore compelled, in self-preservation, to exert its gigantic means to keep the people blind and disaffected.

Now, is there one impartial and enlightened man in the empire, who will say that this ought to continue that the most strenuous efforts ought not to be made to remedy it? Is there one now, among those who so loudly and justly insist on the instruction of the Irish in sound, social, moral, and religious principles, who can look at the past, and believe that these will ever be taught them by the Catholic Church-who is not aware that it is the clear interest of this Church to keep such principles from them? Does the virtuous and eminent head of the Ministry, who so lately declared in Parliament that his anxious wish was to give to the Irish, English feelings and habits, believe that he can give them these, without previously giving them English knowledge and religion? And is there one man, of any party, who will deny that THE CONVERSION OF

THE IRISH TO THE PROTESTANT RE

LIGION, would be the most invaluable benefit that could be gained, both by themselves and the empire at large? We say no! And yet what is the fact? The attempts of the Protestant clergy to make converts, are systematically discouraged. The encouraging of" proselytism" from the Catholic religion, has been made matter of grave charge against the government, in Parlia

ment, and government has anxiously laboured to prove itself guiltless of the crime of having given such encouragement! A proposition was actually made to Ministers in the last session, to encourage the Irish Protestants to leave their country!! The avowed system is, to extend not merely the same protection, but the same encouragement, to the Catholic as to the Protestant church; and the system in practice is, to give the confidence and the preference to the latter. Protestantism is never mentioned in Parliament with reference to Ireland, except to be vilified, and Catholicism is never mentioned except to be eulogised!!! The Irish Protestant government has publicly insulted and cast off its Protestant supporters, on account of their religion, and has thrown itself, not into the arms of the Catholics, for they scorned its embrace, but at their feet!!! We are inventing nothing. "We are not mad, most noble Festus, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness." We are not relating what passed some thousands of years since, but the history of the present hour.

The grand principle of all this is confessedly Conciliation. The Catholic Church is to be cajoled by sweet words into its ruin the Catholic priests are to be softened by panegyric, until they make their flocks religious and loyal, and voluntarily strip themselves of power; and nothing is on any account to be done that this Church and its clergy disapprove of. If a mistaken, vicious, and ruinous system of policy could be adopted with regard to Ireland, this is that system. In what chapter of the book of human nature do you learn that this can be accomplished by such means-that a people, so brutishly ignorant as the peasantry, will ever be taught by their priests to regard the Protestants with anything but detestation, when these priests are jealous in the last degree of even one of them becoming a Protestant? In your enlightened England, party spirit pervades the whole community, and among the lower classes, party spirit and personal enmity are the same. What then can you expect from the Irish peasantry, when you suffer their party leaders to be their sole teachers? Do you suppose that the peasantry will become better informed, and less violent in party matters, without your exertions? Look at the

past. For ages has your free press laboured to reach them-your freedom strove to burst the barriers that separate them from it. Your genius, learning, and wisdom, blazed around them, and the example of England endeavoured to force upon them light and happiness, and they are still what they were when these ages commenced.

One word touching the remaining Catholic disabilities. It is admitted on all hands, that their removal could only benefit a small number of the rich Catholics; and it is clear, that their existence has the smallest share possible, if any, in producing the present feelings of the poorer ones. Captain Rock never mentions them; and the Catholic Association, however it may affect to call for their removal, always abuses every plan that is formed for the purpose; and it has had for years, a number of other inflammatory claims ready to put forth in lieu of them, in order that it may be enabled to pursue its present conduct, and that the feelings and conduct of the people may be preserved from change. If these disabilities were removed, the conduct of the Church, from what we have stated, would continue the same; and therefore the conduct and sentiments of the ignorant part of the people would undergo no alteration. We say that the removal of these disabilities would be a curse to Ireland. It would, by introducing a number of Catholics into the Ministry and Parliament, effectually consolidate the power of the Catholic Church in that unhappy country, and shield it from all attacks whatever; and it would therefore secure to the people an eternity of their present ignorance, depravity, party madness, slavery, and wretchedness.

The Government ought unquestionably, both now and at all times, to act on the principle of conciliation to the utmost point that may be consistent with its duty; and it, as unquestionably, ought never to sacrifice its duty to conciliation. Now it is the duty, the sacred, even the highest, duty of the Government, with regard to Ireland, to procure for the Irish people the practical enjoyment of the liberty of the press, to remove all the obstructions that stand between them and the acquisition of sound knowledge, and to release them from any

tyranny that may keep them from the possession of British freedom. It is the highest duty of the Government to make them, if possible, enlightened, honest, virtuous, peaceable, free, and loyal men. If the Catholic Church will permit its followers to read any works whatever, except seditious and immoral ones-if it will freely permit their intermarriage, and association, with Protestants-if it will grant them liberty of conscience, and the right of free inquiry and discussion-if it will expunge from its books of education all that is in effect treason towards a Protestant government-if it will change its grievous penal punishment of excommunication, into simple expulsion

and if it will confine its power to the inculcation of just principles, then let it be conciliated. But if it persist in usurping so tremendous a portion of the sovereign authority, and using it to deprive the people of their rights, and keep them in the lowest stage of ignorance, bondage, and debasement, then, if the Government conciliate it, remain neutral between it and the Protestant one, and even do not use every effort to change its followers into Protestants, the Government abandons the most sacred of its duties. We quarrel not with the Catholic Church on the number of its sacraments, its opinions on transubstantiation, or even its monopoly of heaven; the question is not one of religious speculation, but of national freedom and happiness. The chartered rights, weal, and happiness of the Irish people, are involved in fierce hostility with the interests of their Church, and to remain neutral is a crime; to take the part of the Church is a greater crime, and to contend for the people is alone duty.

The present system of conciliating the Catholic Church, has, up to this hour, yielded its natural fruits, that is, the very reverse of what it was meant to yield. The products of Marquis Wellesley's marvellous experiment are, the resurrection of the Catholic Board, and the greatest possible portion of party madness between Catholics and Protestants. And what hope does the future offer us? Governments and corporate bodies will sometimes, like individuals, commit suicide, and the Catholic Church of Ireland may be guilty of self-destruction; but if it be not, the fruits of this system must remain unchanged. If this

Church could with safety to itself allow the people of Ireland the free use of the Scriptures, and other works necessary for their instruction-remit its system of espionage and tyranny and permit them to become friendly to the Protestants and the Protestant government, we will give it the credit of believing that it would, but it cannot. The alternative before it is the continuance of the Irish in their present blindness, bondage, and disaffection, or its destruction, as everything, but a contemptible sect. What its choice will be, may be easily imagined, more especially when the government can offer nothing in the shape of bribe, or otherwise, to bias it. It is not to be expected, that the people either will, or can, enlighten, emancipate, and reform themselves; and therefore they must remain what they now are, or be changed by our instrumentality.

We vie with each other in ascribing a very large share of our freedom and greatness to the Reformation. It is clear to all men living, that a Reformation would be equally beneficial to Ireland, and still we must not assist her in obtaining one. Were a Luther at this moment to arise in that unhappy country, we fear that not only the Broughams and Humes, but much greater men, would anxiously discountenance him. The universal cry and rule in England is, freedom of discussion and proselytism. Whig, Tory, and Radical,-Churchman, Methodist, and Calvinist, may say what they please of each other's creed, and make what converts they please from each other's followers. It is even deemed meritorious in an adherent of the government, to bring over a Whig, or to reclaim a Radical; and the Whigs have made gigantic efforts to procure permission for Carlile to carry off our Church and Chapel congregations to his Temple of Deism: but the Protestant Clergy of Ireland must not be permitted to attack the errors of the Romish Church, or attempt to lead the blind and depraved peasant to Protestantism. We pronounce this, upon our conscience, to be the worst of all systems. The one, simple reason for it, that it would exasperate, and make the state of Ireland still worse, is not more worthless, than despicable. The Catholics are as much exasperated against the Protestants

under the conciliatory system, as they ever were, and they will continue to be so, so long as their Church is anxious to retain its power and existence. But can anything be achieved without risk? Granting, for the sake of argument, the possibility of exasperation and turbulence, is there no other possibility connected with the matter? Are the days of change in religious opinions for ever past, and has truth lost its influence and invincibility? When men flock in crowds to the creeds of Deism and Jacobinism, is it impossible for the Irish to be taught not to believe in a new God, a new Saviour, and a new Bible-but to purge their present religion of its glaring errors and impurities? Were proper efforts made, the probability is, that the great body of the people might be led to embrace Protestantism, and to become good men and good subjects; if no such efforts be made, the certainty is, that they will continue in their present state of blindness, superstition, depravity, and disaffection.

We should scarcely express ourselves so warmly on this point, if we were not quite sure that the present system flowed mainly from causes of the most indefensible nature. Nearly the whole press of the country-Whig, Tory, Radical-has been, for months, directing its thunders against the Catholic Church of Spain and Portugal, and depicting in the most frightful colours the ignorance and slavery in which it keeps its followers; but this press is religiously silent respecting that Catholic Church which exists in our own bosom, exercises the same tyranny, and keeps one-third of our population in the same ignorance and slavery, and, moreover, in a state of hatred to their fellow-subjects and rulers. The Whigs have been for years heaping all the abuse upon the Church of England and its Ministers that language could supply, and they have been at the same time the furious defenders of the Catholic Church and clergy of Ireland. We are eternally boasting of our liberty, calling the people of other countries slaves, fabricating for them schemes of freedom which they will not accept, and bewailing their slavery, as though we should break our hearts over it, and still we cannot attempt to remove, or even see, the slavery of Ireland. Some of the causes of these astounding in

consistencies, are sufficiently apparent. The Whigs and Radicals, half the Irish government, and half the Ministry and its supporters, are advocates of what is called Catholic Emancipation. They must, to carry their measure, eulogise and fight for the Catholicism of Ireland. To open the doors of office to a small number of the rich Catholics, they must endeavour to give to the vast mass of the poor ones a perpetuity of blindness and bondage, which, when looked at in Spain and Portugal, thrill them with horror. And those who oppose the measure, rendered powerless for any thing but defence, by the hostility of colleagues and connections, and fearful of rendering the state of Ireland still worse by inveighing against what they cannot remedy, are silent on one of the most crying evils in which that wretched country is involved.

When we thus, putting religious feelings out of the question, believe that the Catholic Church of Ireland usurps a very large portion of that authority over the people, which belongs only to the Government-that by the exercise of this authority, it deprives them of some of their most valuable constitutional rights and privileges, and keeps them in a state of strife, barbarism, and actual, if not nominal, slaveryand that, if it were called an Orange Association, a Pitt Club, a Catholic Board, or anything else but a Church, although its constitution, functionaries, creed, and practice, should be the same, it would be at once put down by acclamation as an intolerable nuisance-when we believe this, we are compelled to believe likewise, that it is the highest duty of the government to promote to the utmost the spread of Protestantism in Ireland. We would carry the principle of toleration-the liberty for every man to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, to the utmost point-much farther than the Whigs and Radicals, the braggadocios of "civil and religious liberty," carry them: We would carry them to the Irish peasant; he should be permitted to read the Scriptures, sound expositions of Christianity, and all works whatever, not prohibited by law; and he should be permitted to enter any church or chapel, and to hear any minister whatever, without being subjected to interrogatories, and what amounts to a heavy

penal punishment, or to any restraint of any kind: We would root up religious tyrannies, and more especially civil tyrannies, disguised and strengthened by the sacred name of religion.

While it is the highest duty of the Government to promote to the utmost the spread of Protestantism in Ireland, the most effectual means that could be adopted, are happily those, which law, wisdom, and moderation, would prescribe. As the preparatory step, let the tithes, if possible, be commuted; and let that assemblage of patricidal fools, who call themselves the Catholic Association, and who exist only to fill the people with hatred of the Protestants and England, be silenced. Let every parish be provided, not nominally, but really, with a Protestant Minister and place of worship, that is now without; and let the most ample means be provided for protecting the clergyman and his flock in the exercise of their religion, and more espe cially for protecting the proselyte from injury on account of his proselytism. As the rest must depend almost wholly on the clergy, the most particular care must be used in their selection. One of their qualifications we shall insist on at some length, because, without it, all other ones would be comparatively useless, and because at present scarcely any attention is paid to it whatever.

In selecting the clergy, interest must be entirely disregarded. They must be, not only men of great sanctity of life, devout, learned, active, zealous, discreet, kind, charitable and generous, but they must be EXCELLENT ORATORS. We would reject any one for badness of oratory alone, let his other qualifications be what they might. A bad orator might by chance retain those who already belonged to his Church, but he would never make converts. If this qualification were a little more attended to in our English clergy, we are quite certain that our churches would not be so often forsaken for the chapels as they are; and the inattention that is shewn to it, is to us perfectly incomprehensible. None but those who are duly qualified ought to possess public trusts, and no man can be said to be duly qualified for the pulpit, who is not a good orator. It is not necessary for us to dilate on the mighty influence which eloquent speakers possess