champion of the Romish Church, or to limit his sway, and being unable in the least to accomplish this design, is thus led forth a garnished and gilded sacrifice to the altar of Popish popularity, and immolated there! Does the present evidence of priestly authority contain no gloomy forebodings of the dreadful majesty of this unholy dominion, when a person unstained by political guilt or cowardice, like Mr. Stanley, is compelled to be the register of his own imbecility-the recorder of his own unfulfilled promise to mitigate or neutralize Mr. O'Connell's unceasing vengeance against his country's peace? We may read the full display of this ecclesiastical tyranny in this simple fact. The law officers of the crown, who pursued their victim through the dark and tangled forest of the law with untiring vigour, are now paraded to the nation as so many domestic and pliant beasts of prey, engaged in ferret and mouse hunts in the pursuit of some favorite and petted animal, which, for their lives, they durst not touch or wound;—at one moment appearing with eye of fire and paw, ready to tear in pieces their hunted game, and anon, comrampant manded to sooth, caress, and cherish him; to take him to their bosom, "Rufam aut Rufillam appellent," and repeat, at the declaration of their master, the soft endearments of their coaxing and disgusting sycophancy.

But why was this abandonment of every principle of honour and prudence? Simply, because Mr. O'Connell, through the instrumentality of the Romish priesthood, could have raised such an infuriate outcry against the Reform Bill, as would have paralyzed the ministry. He was the advocate of that bill, to purchase his exemption from guilt-he was its opponent, when the price of his apostacy was paid. And even in the moment of his faithlessness, the British ministry honour him beyond all precedents, with unexampled dignity.

We shall not, as we have already declared, refer to any detached evidences of the extent of the power of the Roman Church in Ireland: nor shall we speculate how far contribution to it would invest her with the ability of dictating any fresh to the British government. spirit of the times, by observing the impression which this power We seek rather to analyze the has wrought in changing fixed principles, and in the innovation it has accomplished in unhinging the laws, and even in invading the corner stones of the Protestant Constitution and the Protestant Church. And as a witness of the extent of priestly domination in this country, we appeal to Lord Grey, the prime minister of the King of England, whose throne is founded on the exclusion of the Roman Catholic as the established religion of any part of his British dominions. The noble lord is represented to have said, "that he did not see any invincible necessity that the legislative connection between England and Ireland should be broken asunder, even if the Roman Catholic Church should be ESTABLISHED, instead of the Protestant Church in Ireland."

Again" In Scotland a religion was established, not averse

to that which was established in England, yet somewhat different. In Canada the Roman Catholic religion was established."Again" If that great misfortune, the overthrow of the Established Church in Ireland, therefore took place, the union between the two countries might still be preserved."

A superficial acquaintance with Ireland is sufficient to convince, that the abolition of the Established Church, necessarily accompanied by the ascendancy of the Roman Catholic, would ultimately, and speedily too, lead to the separation of Ireland from England. However, this is not the question immediately under our notice. But does not the supposition of the noble lord, without travelling into conjecture as to future and probable occurrences, of itself, detached from all other evidence, abundantly exhibit the irresistible power of the Romish priesthood. If, in defiance of the wisdom of the most clear-sighted politicians, and the experience of ages; in defiance of the laws of the land, and what is more, of the spirit and essence of the Constitution; in defiance of the plighted vows and oath of the Sovereign; in defiance of every sacred obligation, as a Christian, Lord Grey, as Prime Minister of the King of England, yields to the pressure of Roman Catholic power in Ireland, demanding the abolition of the Protestant Church, how will his lordship adjust and balance his political system, when the same mob which has affrighted him from his wisdom, marshalled by Mr. O'Connell, and the same ambitious hierarchy, drilled by Dr. Doyle, with equal violence and consistent rancour against England, clamour for the legitimation of a Popish creed, and the repeal of the Union? The mere supposition of the possibility of the overthrow of the Church, announced by the King's minister, in itself an evidence of the power by which it may be accomplished, is, at the same time, a government proclamation to the Roman Catholics to attempt it. But how is the overthrow of the Protestant Church to be effected? Not by force; for surely Lord Grey would not yield to a foe in arms against the institutions of his country. Is it not, then, to the clamour, or the power-imagined or realof the priests, that he yields? And if we survey our country, has not his lordship's summons to the ambition of the priesthood, and his invitation to their zeal, been enthusiastically obeyed? Dr. Doyle has echoed his lordship, and the priests have repeated the command, until the Protestant clergy-the clergy of the Constitution, of the Law, and of the King-have been left without the common necessaries of life, forced to withdraw their children from school, to sell their plate, to dispose of their libraries, to live, in fact, on the sufferance of their creditors, martyrs to the ignorance of a minister of the King, and the profligacy of an ambitious hierarchy, or pensioners, perhaps, on the contributions of kind and considerate relatives. Lord Grey, under the dominion of the Popish priesthood in Ireland, has thus consented to sacrifice the Protestant clergy. To this same system, subse

N. S. VOL. II.

B

quently pursued, will he refuse to concede the supremacy of the Italian creed, and the repeal of the Union? If to the irresistible pressure of Roman Catholic power he now bends, and retires from the stubborn discharge of his duty, will its force be less urgent and more easily repressed when new and additional vigour is added to its weight?

There are, however, some questions which Lord Grey has, ere now, tried to answer, but he cannot. If Protestant ascendancy has been injurious to the peace of Ireland, will Roman Catholic ascendancy be less so? If the Protestant Church, being the church of the minority in Ireland, has been the object of odium, and rancour, and discontent to the majority of the people of that country, will not the Roman Catholic established church, being the church of the minority of the inhabitants of the British nation, subserve to the same pernicious ends, and be the source of equal odium, rancour, and discontent, to the majority of the people of the British empire? Is the object of the union of Ireland with England to resolve itself into one absorbing question, "How shall we exalt the Romish Church, and Roman Catholic power?" Has England no voice, her interests no claim, her destiny no weight, her religion no consideration, in the question of the Union? Are the interests of one party in Ireland, and that party a small minority of British subjects, alone to be consulted? or, are religion and loyalty repudiated from our minister's creed? And are infidelity and blasphemy, ruffian buffoonery and mendicant patriotism, the only qualities that can arrest attention in these degenerate days-this awful moment of England's prostrate powers? Are the interests of the Protestants, simply because they will not be idolaters, and thus render the government of Ireland an easy pastime for our masters, are they, we ask, and the majority of British subjects, and all they hold in reverence and are attached to, to be kept in procrastinated abeyance, until Mr. O'Connell, clamorous and vindictive, is gorged with constitutional sacrifices, and is satisfied and appeased? If Popery become ascendant in Ireland, can Protestantism remain ascendant in England? If the Roman Catholic church be raised to legal pre-eminence in one island, will the ambition and the love of exaltation which have erected her into dominancy in one island, expire in the hour of triumph, and only exert those principles or passions within the verge of the British shores? or, rather, with eyes that never slumber, will not the Roman Catholic power in Ireland expand its energies and propagate its sway? Will not foreign nations still under the yoke of the Italian faith, regard the situation of Ireland with intense interest and devoted zeal? Will they listen with leaden ears to her voice, if that voice, as the sound of many waters, should be raised in defiance of England, and clamourously demand the repeal of the Union-the Protestant Church being overthrown, the Roman Catholic exalted into supremacy, and the entire population of five or more millions, acting with magical simul

taneousness, under the spiritual wand of their anointed and almost omnipotent priesthood.

We now come to examine the sources from which Lord Grey's knowledge of Ireland is derived. His lordship is reported to have declared, "that he did not profess to possess an accurate acquaintance with the affairs of Ireland, and that he relied on his friends for information." This admission-unhappily no rhetorical amplification of modesty-was, alas ! too true. But his friends have not fulfilled his lordship's expectation. Their representations, if from them was derived the information from which originated the extraordinary disclosure, that injury is not to be apprehended to England from the legal establishment of Popery in Ireland, exhibit an ignorance quite in parallel with his lordship's candid confession. What renders this announcement so exceedingly wonderful is, that whatever information he has acquired from study, he has procured from the best and purest sources. His lordship has particularly studied the memoirs of Theobold Wolfe Tone!! And so important did his lordship consider the knowledge and experience of this eminent patriot, that he deemed it a duty to recommend his works, as an Hibernian Political Manual, to the lords spiritual and temporal in Parliament assembled. We must suppose that it was in his character of deputy schoolmaster-general, under Lord Brougham, that he selected the works of this Hibernian Puffendorf as the most appropriate for their lordships' improvement. However this may be, every sentence in these volumes is replete with detestation of monarchy and of England-with veneration of France and republicanism, and with fierce wrath against all abettors of Ireland's connection with England, and of the Protestant Church. This reservoir of knowledge, recommended by his Majesty's Prime Minister, may supply some awful suggestions as to the future destiny of Ireland. His lordship has confessed he knew little of Ireland, except from the representations of his friends: they, of course, directed his studies to these memoirs. Their policy, therefore, and Tone's, must have been in some degree analogous. However, Lord Grey has read the book, and recommended it to others. How far he has been swayed by it we shall not presume to judge.

We shall classify our quotations, and we could select one thousand such sentences as the following:-

ATTACHMENT TO MONARCHY. "We neither love the English people in general, nor his Majesty's family in particular.”—Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 161.

ATTACHMENT TO ENGLAND. "I do so abhor and detest the very name of England."-Vol 2, p. 29.

Again: "I cannot but observe here that I transcribed with the greatest sang froid, the orders to reduce to ashes the third city of the British dominions. I hate the very name of England; I hated her before my exile; I hate her since, and I will hate her always."-Vol. 2, pp. 240, 241.

THE ARISTOCRACY OF IRELAND." If ever I have the power, I will most heartily concur in making them (the aristocracy) a dreadful example."-Vol. 2, p. 89.

Again: "As to royalty and aristocracy, they were both odious in Ireland to that degree, that I apprehended much more a general massacre of the gentry, and a distribution of the entire of their property, than the establishment of any form of government that would perpetuate their influence."-Vol. 2, 161.

INDEPENDENCE OF IRELAND.—“I made speedily what was to me a great discovery-though I might have found it in Swift and Molyneux-that the influence of England was the radical vice of our government, and consequently that Ireland would never be either free, prosperous, or happy, until she was independent, and THAT INDEPENDENCE WAS UNATTAINED WHILST THE CONNEXION WITH ENGLAND EXISTED.- -Vol. 1, p. 82.

Again: "He asked me what form of government I thought would be likely to take place in Ireland, in case of the separation being effected-adding, that as to France, though she would certainly prefer a republic, yet her great object was the independence of Ireland under any form. I answered, I had no doubt whatever that, if we succeeded, we would establish a republicadding, that it was my own wish, as well as that of all (so the word is marked in the original) men with whom I co-operated." -Vol. 2, p. 57.

Again: "I knew nobody in Ireland who thought of any other system, nor did I believe there was any body who dreamt of monarchy."-Vol. 2, p. 154.

Once more: "If the Directory act up with firmness to these principles, and if Spain be not utterly besotted, I think it impossible but England must be reduced within her proper and natural limits, THE FIRST STEP TO WHICH, BE IT EVER KEPT IN MIND, IS THE INDEPENDENCE OF IRELAND."—Vol. 2, p. 211.

THE MEANS, OBJECT, AND RESULTS OF SEPARATION FROM ENGLAND." The universal question throughout the country is, When do we begin?-do we refuse hearth-money or tithes FIRST?"—Vol. 1, p. 222. That is, shall we attack the Government or the Church? They are synonymous in our eyes. Does Lord Grey read no lesson in these words? Tithes have been refused to the clergy by an armed mob; the hearth-money, or opposition to Government will soon follow.

Again: "Madgett mentioned that the fellow had some notion of a resumption of the forfeited lands. That would be a pretty measure to begin with."-Vol. 2, p. 54.

Again: "He wants a total bouleversement of all property. It would be a terrible doctrine to commence with."-Vol. 2, p. 132. Washington Edition.

Ere this, our readers have inquired, what could have been Lord Grey's object in recommending to the lords spiritual and temporal, the perusal of Mr. Tone's Memoirs? Are they hence to discover the attachment to the reigning family--the admiration