by such services, could have been resisted. Being masters and keepers of the consciences of men, they might have enforced upon the gentry of their communion the religious duty of dealing equitably and mercifully with the peasants, they might have made them feel what a sin it is to grind the faces of the poor; and they might have brought about there, what they have never in any age attempted, the civil conversion of the lower class,.. a people abounding with generous and grateful feelings,.. who are susceptible above all other people of kindness, but who, nevertheless, are continually committing more unprovoked murders and inhuman crimes than are perpetrated in any other country under the face of heaven. I would not dissemble the merits of the Romish clergy, nor withhold praise from them when it is their due; they attend sedulously to the poor, and administer relief and consolation to them in sickness and death, with exemplary and heroic devotion. Many among them, undoubtedly there are, whose error is in opinion alone, whose frame of mind is truly Christian, and who, according to the light which they possess, labour faithfully in the service of their Lord. But the condition of Ireland affords full evidence for condemning them as a body. In no other country is their

influence so great, and in no other country are so many enormities committed. Those enormities are not acts of individual depravity and guilt; they are part of a system which is the opprobrium and the curse of Ireland, and which extends among their people throughout the island. Now it is certain that the secrets of this atrocious confederacy are not and cannot be hidden from the priests. They are communicated to them under the seal of confession, a seal which the confessor is enjoined to break* when the disclosure relates to heretical opinions, but which is to be kept inviolate in all other cases, murder and treason included. If they know that these in their most horrid form, or terrible extent, are intended, it is a principle with them that they must not give such intimation as might prevent the crime. There have been Tyburn martyrs in old times for this misprision of treason and it can be no question of morality how far he who commits a misprision of murder becomes a partaker of the guilt. But without trenching upon this pernicious principle of secresy, it is in the power of the Romish clergy to draw forth such disclosures as the welfare of the state requires. They are called to the death

* Digest of Evidence, vol. i. p. 236. † Ib. i. 273.

bed of those criminals who escape the laws... and to the prison of the far smaller number who are overtaken by earthly justice. It is in their power to require a full disclosure for the purposes of justice as the condition of absolution; and it is their duty to withhold absolution as long as the guilty person persists in withholding a full confession of the schemes in which he has engaged, and the parties concerned in them. Now it is imputable to the constitution of their church, and not to the men, that they impede the natural and wholesome operation of that* principle which God has implanted in the heart of man, and make the penitent, who has whispered his tale in the priest's ear, satisfied with himself, when he would otherwise have no peace until he had made a public confession which might prevent farther crimes. But this leaving undone what they ought to have done, is their own choice; they are free to act; and thus it is that they have acted, and are acting.

* In the Digest of Evidence on the State of Ireland, there are some most able remarks by the Editors upon this important subject.

† A case is mentioned in the Evidence, in which such a confession was prevented by the priest,.. or, more accurately speaking, intercepted and supprest by him.-Digest, vol. i. p. 272.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

As if a judicial blindness affected them.

MONTESINOS.

With such a mental and moral blindness we may believe that the British and Irish RomanCatholics have been stricken. They would not else have broken all the pledges which their parliamentary advocates have given in their name, nor have uniformly conducted themselves in the manner most likely to frustrate the unhappy efforts of those advocates in their behalf. They would not else have threatened us with their numbers. The Irish priests could not else have so entirely neglected those obvious duties which it would have been most advantageous for their own designs to have performed. They would not have declared in Ireland their determination to subvert* the Established Church. They would not have proclaimed, that if a rebellion were raging in that country from Carrickfergus to Cape Clear, no sentence

*The House of Commons, in its Petition against the Spanish Match, (1621), says of the Popish Religion, "it hath a restless spirit and will strive by these gradations; if it once get but a connivance it will press for a toleration; if that should be obtained, they must have an equality; from thence they will aspire to superiority, and will never rest till they get a subversion of the true religion.”—Parl. History, vol. i. p. 1324.

of excommunication would ever be fulminated by a Roman-Catholic prelate. This they have done. And the statesmen who persist in recommending that we should conciliate them by conceding all that they demand, may be compared to the man who, if a cobra-capella were erecting itself upon its coils in hostile attitude against us, its head raised, its eyes fixed and fiery, its hood dilated, the forked tongue in action, and the fangs lifted in readiness to strike, should advise us to court the serpent with caresses, and take it to our bosom !