banishment from society, loss of livelihood, starvation, personal outrage, stoning, assassination, and death, and the most horrible insults even on dead bodies, and in the grave-this is the civil and religious liberty now enjoined by the priests from Maynooth! Let candid men deliberately examine on the spot the great centres from which conversion is now spreading in Ireland—and they will tell the English public that persecution is at this moment as rife in Ireland as in the most palmy days of Popery-that there are martyrs in Ireland in the nineteenth century under the eye of a liberal and Protestant government-that Irish farmers and shopkeepers who dare think for themselves, if not burnt, are stoned-if not confined in the cells of the Inquisition, are turned out of house and home-if not broken on the rack, are tortured by the still worse rack of public scorn and detestation—if not delivered over to the tender mercies of the secular arm, are abandoned to the insults and violence of the most brutal of ruffians; and purchase their reception into the English church, and even the simple reading of their Irish Bible, as our ancestors did of old -with their blood.

They will tell the English people further, that these crimes do not originate spontaneously in the Irish peasantry. The Irish peasantry are a kind, affectionate, grateful race-most anxious to read their Bible, most desirous to obtain instruction, willing to have their minds enlightened, contented to hear their errors pointed out, wonderfully quick in discerning and abandoning them; naturally full, until their minds are poisoned, of confidence in their Protestant landlords and Protestant clergy; convinced of the superiority of Protestants; dissatisfied with the darkness, coldness, and fearfulness of their own creed of purgatory, and penances, and prayers in an unknown tongue, and the opus operatum' of unction and confession, without any spiritual communion of the heart; disgusted with the curses of their priest, wearied with his extortions, smarting under his horsewhip and his fist, irritated by his vexatious interference between the tenant and the landlord, and ready to cast off the yoke, if they dared to risk certainly their livelihood, perhaps their life. This is the condition of the Irish peasantry at this moment, when left to themselves. But, partly, to use the proverb of the country, the priest's curse is on them'-partly they have been filled by their priests with the most false alarms and jealousies of Protestants, and the Sassenach, and the tyranny and hatred of Englishmen, against which their native good sense, notwithstanding their experience of the contrary, finds it hard to struggle—and partly from the same mouths they have been taught from their childhood to believe of the Church of England as follows:-We are speaking deliberately

6

deliberately, and from evidence:-They are taught that its religion is the religion of the devil;' that the clergy of that church are 'devils' and 'priests of the devil;' that our Bible is the 'devil's manual;' that there is not a word of truth in it,' (we are quoting_words from the mouths of priests); that it was 'invented by Luther with the assistance of the devil;' that it is bad luck to have it in the house;' that it is not safe to touch it, without making the sign of the cross to drive away evil spirits; and that, rather than read it, it is better to burn it, or take it out with a pair of tongs, as Dr. Doyle recommended, and bury it in a hole; that our creed is Atheistic or Socinian; that our baptism is worse than invalid (and therefore, in direct contradiction to the canons of their own church, they contrive, under certain evasions, to re-baptise a convert to Popery); that our marriages are so many adulteries; that our faith is drawn not from the apostles, but from Luther, and Calvin, and Henry VIII.; that our souls can never be saved; and that our very bodies pollute the cemeteries in which they are permitted to lie. This is the explanation of the persecution with which the priests stimulate the peasant to revenge conversion. Address truth to the poor, simple Irishman in the Irish language,* which with a most touching and generous affection he believes is a holy language, and cannot be spoken by evil beings, and his hostility drops in a moment. Let the work of conversion commence in a parish gently and yet firmly, and the priest not denounce it, and no persecution breaks out. Let

* One instance out of a hundred. In one of those frightful tumults instigated by the priests at the funerals of converts, and in some of which they head the mob, when the infuriated people were about to throw the officiating clergyman into the grave and trample on him, the clergyman had the presence of mind to commence the Lord's Prayer in Irish; instantly the whole tumult ceased, spades and pitchforks were dropped, the ceremony was allowed to be performed with perfect quiet, and a few days afterwards, when the clergyman was walking, a peasant came up to him almost in tears, and ready to kneel down before him. He had been on the point of striking the clergyman down with a cleaver, at the very moment when he heard the sound of the Irish-and now came to ask forgiveness. When will England learn, that to make Ireland English, England must first become Irish, and identify itself with all the good, simple, patriotic prejudices of a people worthy to be loved, because they love so much which good men ought to love? When will the Church of Ireland make it a condition with her ministers, that in the Irish-speaking districts they shall speak the Irish language; ⚫ and render this possible by providing means for teaching it to them when young?

A priest in one of the islands denounces an Irish reader, and forbids the people to sell him any food or speak to him. They comply rigidly-refuse to speak to him-but flock to him to hear the Scriptures read-and sell him nothing, but lay every night at the door of his cabin all the little luxuries they can procure. We mention this as a specimen. What follows is from the Report on National Education-- I never gave but one shout after Mr. Nangle' [the clergyman at Achill], said a poor man, and I only gave that shout in order that I might not have the priest's curse lying on me; for he prayed in the chapel that the tongue might drop out of any one that did not shout; and as soon as I got the priest's curse removed from me by giving that one shout, I shouted no more.' him

him curse the converts, instantly they are attacked., When his curse is found from experience to have no supernatural efficacy, everything becomes quiet again. The schools, as Mr. Wyse has said, are emptied by his anathemas; but in a few days the children steal back again by back gates and lanes.' Let them have intercourse with the persons whom they are taught to abhor, and their abhorrence turns into confidence. Do you remember, sir,' said a poor old woman to a clergyman who was attending her on her death-bed, the first time you came to see me before I became a Protestant? Yes.-Do you know when you came into the room I fell into such a trembling, and was so frightened?— Why?-Sir, I believed you were the devil.-Who had taught you that? The priest, sir; and when you began to talk good words to me, sir, I thought it so strange that the devil should speak about God.'-We cannot leave our statement better summed up than in this anecdote, which we received from the clergyman himself; and which is a very fair representation, not only of the harangues of the priests, but of the authorised doctrines of Popery on the subject of the English church; and which we beg to put side by side with Mr. Wyse's panegyric on the code of civil and religious liberty and rights of conscience, promulgated by the highly-educated' disciples of the Jesuits of Maynooth.

And now-after all these melancholy details of facts-is it necessary to point out the use, to which that dark, mysterious hand that wields the destinies of Ireland first shaped its ready tool of violence, in the present parochial priest, and to which that tool is now unsparingly applied? It is employedFirst, to carry agitation into every parish; to inflame it by the most solemn sanctions of religion; to organise it, as Mr. Wyse describes, upon a regular recognised basis, far more extensive than affiliations of committees, and capable of evading every law. Secondly, it commands the election, not only for members of parliament, but for poor-law guardians; everything, in short, in which the obnoxious landlords may be thwarted, separated from their tenantry, disgusted with their residence, and so, finally driven from Ireland, leaving the ground free for the dominion of Papists and of foreign influence. Thirdly, by securing the elections it secures the majority in the House of Commons, and thus ties the hands of government-(we have no wish to use harsher language of any government)-from repressing their violence. Fourthly, it enables the foreign ruling power to maintain a perpetual ferment, by repeal meetings, the collections of rent, secret associations, temperance processions, &c. &c.-which alarm the government, dishearten Protestants, and exercise the unhappy people in contempt for law, and in prospects of rebellion and

pillage;

pillage; while at the same time it provides a check over premature violence, and secures the operation of the Jesuitical system, now so successfully adopted, of obtaining its ends and triumphs -not by another rebellion, which has so often been tried in vain, and which their present most skilful leaders' are far too discreet to head, but by menaces of some secret danger, and by quibbling evasions of law. Any one who reads the reports of the committees on Ireland will see how carefully this policy is adhered to now; how ostentatiously the priests come forward to co-operate with the magistrates in repressing rash acts of Rebellion; how strenuously they work elsewhere in fomenting the spirit of Rebellion. Perhaps, as we have before said, no greater model of such an art is to be found than the Pastoral Letter to the Ribbonmen by the notorious Dr. Doyle. Fifthly, the terrorism of the priests-supported by a most wonderful system of espionage;-which is conducted, not only by friars and monks, but by numerous confraternities of Scapularians and Purgatorians, who are tools in the hands of the priests, and efficaciously backed by the secret physical arm of the Whiteboys and Ribbonmen, and Caravats and Steelboys, and Captain Rocks-this terrorism stands over the subjectsit is the word they use themselves-the subjects of the Romish Church, and prevents desertion. No other power in the hands of Rome could effect this. Jesuits, with their acuteness, polish, craft, and versatility, may act on the higher orders; but in the lower there is nothing to resist the ministrations of a pure, scriptural, episcopal, and evangelical Church (we use the word not in its sectarian sense), carried boldly into the cabins of the Irish poor by such men as the Protestant clergy of this day, and supported judiciously, yet firmly, by the benevolence and authority of the landlords-there is nothing in Romanism to resist this-but terror. They dare not meet it in controversy: controversy is therefore forbidden both to priests and people. They cannot compete with it in benevolence-and do not even make the attempt. They cannot educate without rousing a power which will turn against its masters; and in the embarrassment thus produced by the exertions of the Church to carry education throughout Ireland, their policy has been as follows. Before the Church began to establish schools—(whether on perfectly sound principles or not we do not say)-Ireland was left without any but miserable hedge-schools, in which the teachers were wholly incompetent, or were ministers of sedition and crime. When the Church began its movement, some attempts were made to provide counter-schools by the Roman Catholic Association, but they seem to have done very little. As

the

the Church became more energetic, and her schools increased, and the people's desire for education became more ardent, and the priests' denunciation more ineffectual to keep them from seeking it—then, and not till then, came the suggestion of a (so called) National Education.

Upon the principles and details of this scheme we shall not at present enter: it must suffice to say that now, in fact, the Parliamentary grant is absorbed in the encouragement of Popery. A few questions, if fairly answered, would be enough to bring out the practical working of the system: and, indeed, the answers to most of them may already be seen in the Report of the Committee on the subject in the House of Lords. For example-Do the priests establish schools except where there are schools of the Church already existing? Though these schools of the Church may be ample for the parish, do the priests procure demands for more, and from parties who have no connexion with the parish, and by means which impose on the commissioners? When the new school is built, where is it placed? Is it planted either close by the old school to draw off its children-or close to the Popish chapel, or within the chapel-yard, or adjoining the priest's house, so that, if a Protestant did attend it, he must to a great degree be identified with his Romish companions? Or is it placed out of the way, where children may not easily find access to it? Is it used for other purposes than education,-for political purposes, for agitation, for the celebration of Popish ceremonies? Have there been any singular mistakes in multiplying the number of scholars, as the accounts appear in the Reports? Who are the masters? Are they connected with agitation? Are any of them Ribbonmen? Are they persons fit to be intrusted with the education of children? Are the subjects taught in the least likely to open and improve the mind? By whom are the money-grants received, and the accounts audited? In the schools attached to nunneries, and aided by the national board, are the children, as a regular part of the system, taught to repeat devotions which connect them with the Jesuits? Is not, in one word, the whole scheme of co-operation, as any one conversant with Ireland, and Christianity, and human nature, foresaw it must be from the first,

*

*For an elucidation of this see some recent numbers of the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal-a weekly paper established lately in Dublin, and which promises to be very useful to the Protestant cause.

Out of four consecutive cases, in which a friend examined these schools, the masters, in the face of the scholars, severally declared that they were regularly in the habit of reading the Scripture lessons every day in the week, three times and twice; and when the visitor insisted on hearing them read, the poor children, under the eye of the master, were induced to assert the same thing, but with such palpable contradictions and ignorance, that when the master was charged with the falsehood, he was unable to utter a word, and the children confessed that they were not read at all.

a complete