ill impressions of them." "Parliament," we are told (Laing), "though importuned by the vindictive zeal of the clergy, resisted the further effusion of blood," and they were obliged to be content with the levying of heavy fines from Dissenters. But they still remained in possession of another power, which they used with unrelenting cruelty. They could excommunicate, and in those days civil consequences followed. The person excommunicated was held to be civilly dead his landed property passed to his next heir-he lost any office which he held and any person mixing in his society was liable in the same penalties. Let any person read the Acts of Assembly of the 17th century, at every period when the Church was in power, and he will find that the Inquisition never pressed an Auto da Fè with more vehemence or more assiduity, than the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland pressed the execution of those barbarous laws against all who differed from them, but especially against the Roman Catholics and the Episcopalians. (Acts of Assembly, 1645–48.)

Let it then be set down as a point which admits of no doubt or contradiction; and be it remembered, that in so far as respects persecution, there never was any difference between Protestant and Catholic. In every Church, the persecution has been in regular geometrical proportion to the power. It is not in that, therefore, that a Catholic anywhere differs, or has ever differed from a Protestant. In this point, the agreement to throw the precepts of Jesus behind their backs, and to shake hands with Satan, was unanimous over all Christendom.

Neither is it true that there is no religion, no education, no morality, out of our Establishments. If anybody desires to see the operation of the Catholic religion fairly tried, he must devote a year or two to the Continent. There he will see young and old, male and female, as they leave their homes between four and five in the morning, to go to the labour of the fields,* crossing themselves, and praying for a blessing on the day. If he goes to church on a Sunday, or a holiday, he will see them kneeling and putting up their own prayers for their own sins, and their own desires, while the priest is repeating his prayers in an unknown tongue; and he will see, over and above, much to lament. But after all, if he can go home, and not put up a prayer in his closet and in his family, for a purer worship no doubt, but in the mean time that the worship as it stands may be blest, and made complete redemption to their souls, his Christianity and mine have been cast in different moulds. There may be masters in Israel who would excommunicate me for so praying. They may if they please; but be they never so infallible, I tell them I will not have them my masters.

for

* All I say has reference to the Landward population exclusively.

As to Education, Catholic France is now a pattern to all Europe. There is not a glen in the Alps or the Pyrenees, nor a plain in the low country, where you do not find schools and colleges, and on the most comprehensive footing. There is a town, towards the south of France, called Aiguillon, where all are Catholic but one mana Protestant, and he is Principal of the College, respected and beloved. Under the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Pope's next neighbour, there are schools in and about every town of any consequence, taught by laymen, and superintended by young noblemen, who, in their turn, devote at least four or five hours every day to that work.

Neither is that religion, and that education, without the blessing of God in point of morality. Let any Scotsman travel through the valleys of Normandy or Tuscany, and he will find simplicity, innocence, and honesty, such as will bring to his mind the more remote valleys of the Tweed and the Clyde, and the tributary streams. I met an Englishman near Dieppe, who inhabited a house filled with purple and fine linen, and a suitable quantity of silverplate; yet there was not a lock on any door summer or winter; nor was it common in the country to have any. Over all Tuscany, the rent paid by the tenant is half the prices received for the crop, for which the landlord takes the tenant's word. Close by the town of Sienna, I found a farm stocked with vines, figs, melons, apples, pears, and all sorts of fruit and vegetables, with a dairy also, containing four or five milch cows, and a loft full of silkworms. There the tenants sold all that grew, and all the milk and silk in the town of Sienna, yet there was no fixed money-rent stipulated. The tenant came, at stated terms I presume, and laid down half his receipts, which were taken by the landlord without question or suspicion. This could not happen without simplicity and truth. There was there, too, what I never saw in Scotland, two families, brothers, and their wives and children, in the same house and it was a happy house. I was a visitor almost every day, early and late, had great pleasure in the society, and was always well received. They showed no disposition to burn the heretic. Nor is there now, in any part of the Continent, the smallest indication of strife or ill-will between Catholic and Protestant. At Lyons, and still farther south in France, where religious animosities were once carried very high, you see the Catholic and the Protestant flocking to their respective churches close by one another, and all in perfect harmony. In Germany they sometimes occupy the same place of worship at different hours. In Switzerland, half the country is Catholic and half Protestant all mixed and all tolerated. Even the Jesuits find no fault with a Protestant Chapel built under the windows of their monastery; and the Pope sanctions and honours a Protestant place of worship at the gates of Rome. Such are the Catholics on the Continent.

But we are told that an Irish Catholic is of another stamp. Says a reverend Orange champion, "There is no one crime ever chargeable upon that black and horrible apostacy the Papacy, that is not now to be traced home to the living heads of her superstition in Ireland. Perjury, treachery, tyranny, sedition, persecution, profligacy, murder, are all to be found in their standards of instruction." These are devouring words, loving ill more than good, and as to truth quite indifferent-the outbreakings of an Orangeman bereft of his ascendancy. Yet the Scottish Guardian, October 23, 1837, the living oracle of the Church of Scotland, says "This letter, like all the speeches and writings of this eloquent and powerful defender of Protestant principles, will be found well worthy the attention of every man who feels an interest in the great cause to which Mr. M'Ghee has directed his commanding talents." It is not easy to enter into such feelings. But still it is true, or at least before Lord Mulgrave's Administration it was always more or less true, that the Catholics of Ireland differed from all other Catholics. In their warfare with the English, the people of Ireland have been vindictive, cruel, devilish; and this after the same turbulent savage spirit had totally disappeared on the Continent. And the question is, why the Catholics of Ireland differ so much from their brethren everywhere else. To this there is but one answer-" Being treated like wild beasts, they became such." The law was an enemy- an iniquitous, merciless, bloody enemy to them, and they habitually became enemies to the law. It is to put an end to this ferocity, this turbulence, this disloyalty, to reconcile the people and the laws, that the Queen and Lord Mulgrave are labouring. "Her Majesty is desirous to see her Irish subjects in the full enjoyment of that civil and political equality to which by recent statutes they are fully entitled; and Her Majesty is persuaded, that when invidious distinctions are altogether obliterated, her throne will be more secure, and her people more truly united." (The Queen's Letter to Lord Mulgrave, July 18, 1837.) What a misfortune it is for Mr. M'Ghee and his associates in Scotland, the authors and sustainers of the Scottish Guardian, that King William passed the Act 1690, c. 58, "annulling all acts enjoining civil pains upon sentences of excommunication!" How convenient it would have been for a Committee of the General Assembly to go up and tell their Sovereign, that She and Lord Mulgrave did not understand the affairs of Ireland, that conciliation was folly, that nothing would do for the Irish but the scourge and the bayonet, and that if Her Majesty did not take better views of her duty and her interest, the Assembly would be under the painful necessity of exercising the powers which God had vested in them for the protection of the Church, and proceeding to excommunication! By that sentence Her Majesty would become civilly dead. The throne would be vacant, and your beloved Ernest would come over and sit down. Then what a holiday you Tories would have!

Every Orange magistrate would set himself not only to drink, but to fight over again the battle of the Diamond; the slaughters of Rathcormac and the assassinations of Moncoin would be repeated and commended; and green Ireland would be once more red with blood.

Far be it from me to say that you, Sir, or the pious faithful Christian pastors, who I trust form still the great majority of our Church, would give their voice or their approbation to any one of these measures; but still, even that body has to answer for permitting the affairs of the Church to be managed by a band of spirits who seem to give charity rather a low place in the scale of Christian graces, and who will not hear the prophet when he says, "Woe to the city which is built in blood and established in iniquity!" That there are men who have the will, if they had the power, to carry through such measures, the proceedings of one of our Presbyteries, in the case of their licentiate Mr. Carlyle, and the language of the Scottish Guardian, sufficiently prove.

Now, Sir Archibald, will Ireland be reconciled? ought she to be reconciled? Can any Irishman believe that you are disposed to do justice to his country, when he sees you refusing the benefit of education to hundreds of applications, all for want of money, and devoting from L.50,000 to L.100,000 per annum to the maintenance of men called Ministers of the Church of Ireland, but living from one end of the year to another in London, in Paris, in Rome,

anywhere but in Ireland? In the coffeehouses and public rooms where they spend their money, they are sufficiently well known, but in the parishes from which they draw it, not a soul would know the Minister if he saw him. To say that such men are Ministers, is not true. To speak of pastors without a flock, is no more intelligible than to speak of a husband without a wife. To say that the money is bestowed on the Church of Ireland, is not true. That Church has no branch at Cheltenham or Pall Mall. It is not Church endowments, therefore, that the Cabinet propose to interfere with; - it is state patrimony-money hitherto devoted to no purpose but corruption.

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Further, what is the use of any Church? I know of none but to maintain the worship of the true God, and to bring religion home to the consciences and lives of men. And how can that be done, unless the men can read their Bible; that is, unless you begin with education?

The most unexampled, the most unexpected triumph of Christianity has been in India; and it has been by beginning with education. The first Missionaries addressed the Hindoos precisely as our champions do the Irish Catholics, by telling them that they and their fathers for generations back had been the most black, abominable, profligate, treacherous, bloody villains that ever existed. But this did not win their good-will at all. Government

then took the matter in hand, and instituted schools for the purpose of teaching the English language, and absolutely prohibiting all reference whatever either to one religion or another. The natives, young and old, priest and people, learnt English; and having learnt English, they read everything, and many have been converted. One Bramin, now conducting an English religious newspaper, was asked who converted him-was it the Missionaries? No; it was Government, by whom he was taught to read. Another Bramin is now a minister of religion, preaching constantly. The Missionaries have at last seen their error-they have taken the Government course, and are going on overcoming every obstacle. That able and excellent Missionary, Mr. Duff, has published a pamphlet giving the history of the triumph. Never let it be said, then, that money devoted to elementary education, to the teaching of reading, is not devoted to the service of religion, or that any Church which has money to spare can possibly make a better use of it. In the year 1836 there were more than 400 applications to the Commissioners of Education for schools, which it was impossible to satisfy without public aid. There is no room for it here; but let any person read the statement of Mr. Carlyle, one of the Commissioners, and he will see that the schools, those under the new National Board, are overflowing, and the scholars, Catholic and Protestant, just in proportion to the population round about, all living like brothers and sisters, and all without interference from any quarter on the subject of religion; the Priests neither attempting to prevent the attendance, nor to make any religious impression on the scholars, as long as they are in the common school. How then can you, Sir Archibald, or any man of a pure, an honourable, and a pious mind, as yours is, complain of such a measure? How have you been so far deluded as to say, that those schools are Catholic seminaries, Normal schools of agitation, built and sustained out of Church property, to please O'Connell and serve à party purpose? They are common schools, which it is proposed to build out of funds in the predicament precisely of waif goods, for the first and last purposes of religion, to teach the young to read, and to introduce peace and good-will and brotherly love among all ages and creeds; and in truth to ruin O'Connell, in so far as he has any influence beyond what belongs to his personal character. Deal friendly and kindly with a nation which you have been insulting, wounding, and grinding to dust for 300 years, and O'Connell's public power will vanish.

It was to please O'Connell, too, you say, that the Ministry have proposed to give to the towns of Ireland, Protestant and Catholic, the administration of their own property. Was it to please O'Connell that the old Town-Councils of Scotland, and the rotten Incorporations of England, were abolished and new instituted, without regard to creed or sect, so that we now see a Quaker Mayor of Liverpool? No; it was in order to deal fairly and justly with