THE PROTESTANT.

RARELY have I seen my uncle so deeply moved as he was by an extract that appeared in the Record from a lately-published work. He could scarcely get on; his glasses were so often dimmed, and required so much brightening, that at length he gave up the attempt, desiring me to read the article, while he, leaning back in his easy chair, threw in every now and then a remark, sometimes merely an exclamation, expressive of the recollections that were called up.

No lapse of time can deaden one of those feelings, or blunt the poignancy of those regrets inseparable in my uncle's mind from the bitter recollection of England's deadly fall-the fatal epoch of 1829. What we had now met with was calculated to rend open the wound then inflicted on his honest, patriotic, truly Protestant heart; and at the same time to call into lively action the old-fashion spirit of simple loyalty that distinguishes his character. There are not, perhaps, many who can enter as my uncle did into the very marrow of what he was now listening to; but few, it is to be hoped, could peruse it unmoved. I shall give it here: every day brings fresh proof that the deed so perpetrated was the actual wrecking of our stately ship: she floats indeed still, but with every timber creaking, every plunge deepening the water in her hold, and the clumsy

efforts of her infatuated navigators only bringing her into perpetual contact with new elements of destruction. Thus, then commences the statement of what, on the 28th of March, 1829, the king said to his politically and historically, though not spiritually, enlightened counsellor, Lord Eldon as I read it to my uncle :

"That at the time the administration was formed, no reason was given to him to suppose that any measures for the relief of the Roman Catholics were intended or thought of by Ministers: that he had frequently himself suggested the absolute necessity of putting down the Roman Catholic Association-of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, to destroy the powers of the most seditious and rebellious proceedings of the members of it, and particularly at the time that Lawless made his march: that, instead of following what he had so strongly recommended, after some time, not a very long time before the present session he was applied to, to allow his Ministers to propose to him, as an united Cabinet, the opening the Parliament, by sending such a Message as his Speech contained :— that, after much struggling against it, and after the measure had been strongly pressed upon him as of absolute necessity, he had consented that the Protestant members of his Cabinet, if they could so persuade themselves to act, might join in such a representation to him, but that he would not then, nor in his recommendation to Parliament, pledge himself to anything. He repeatedly mentioned that he represented to his Ministers the infinite pain it gave him to consent even so far as that."'

'The king,' observed my uncle, 'was well read in history, and by no means wanting in the sagacity

that men of the world, who have seen much of human nature in its worst manifestations, often possess. We cannot doubt that the members of his Cabinet were equally well informed; indeed, they had before taken a decided part against the ruinous policy now pressed on the sovereign. What had operated to change their line of conduct we cannot tell: that their minds were changed I can scarcely believe. Such a sudden darkness overspreading the reasoning faculties of a body of men, obliterating from their memories all the past, of England's and the world's history, and presenting to their view such a preposterous vision of an impossible future, savours of the miraculous. It may have been a miracle of judgment; but it looks more like a deliberate act of self-willed presumption, a pitched battle against conscience; a bargain and sale business conducted

-but I will not pursue the speculation. So far, George the Fourth stands exonerated from participation in the sin. The royal prerogatives are greatly confined in our constitutional monarchy: and the provision that throws the onus of all wrong-doing on the king's servants may be rendered very ensnaring in crafty hands. Now go on.'

But uncle, just mark how the first false step was taken. The king allowed them, if they as Protestants could persuade themselves to such an act, to make an official application to him on the subject: a permission involving what his royal father never conceded, never would concede. Here he betrayed a capability of wavering: here, he virtually allowed the consciences of other men, supposing them to have any, to become the rule of his conduct. Oh, I can easily imagine how any wily, watchful traitor must

have chuckled over this symptom of weakness! Now to proceed:

"He complained that he had never seen the Bills -that the condition of Ireland had not been taken into consideration-that the Association Bill had been passed through both Houses before he had seen it-that it was a very inefficient measure compared to those which he had in vain, himself, recommended -that the other proposed measures gave him the greatest possible pain and uneasiness-that he was in the state of a person with a pistol presented to his breast-that he had nothing to fall back upon-that his Ministers had threatened (I think he said twice, at the time of my seeing him) to resign, if the measures were not proceeded in, and that he had said to them, 'Go on,' when he knew not how to relieve himself from the state in which he was placed :-and that in one of those meetings, when resignation was threatened, he was urged to the sort of consent he gave by what passed in the interview between him and his Ministers, till the interview and the talk had brought him into such a state, that he hardly knew what he was about when he, after several hours, said 'Go on.'-He then repeatedly expressed himself as in a state of the greatest misery, repeatedly saying, 'What can I do? I have nothing to fall back upon:' and musing for some time, and then again repeating the same expression."'

Resignation!" exclaimed my uncle, with the strongest expression of indignant scorn that I remember to have seen on his countenance, " Ay, it seems they are adepts at that game. A pistol presented to his breast! it would appear to justify a feeling either of incredulity as to the fact, or of amazement

amounting almost to derision at the moral and physical cowardice of the man who could permit himself to be so bullied into a tame acquiescenee with what he had recently denounced as contrary to his solemn conviction, and avowed his resolution to oppose. But the royal memory is now safe from such contumely; we have been favoured-no, we have been cursed with two or three recent exemplifications of the power of such a menace ; not in the private closet of a king, but in the most public assemblies of the land, and among men chosen out of the whole population as the fittest to represent the very highest classes, as respects principle and elevation of sentiment throughout all classes. Resignation forsooth! Why the very worst pack that could have been assembled, urging, as of course they would do, the same measure, would have been honestly consistent in their proceedings, whereas these renegades—oh, go on; I cannot trust myself on the subject of these drivelling threats of resignation."

I knew an instance of a young lady being frightened into accepting and ultimately marrying a suitor whom she exceedingly disliked, by his solemn assurance that if rejected he would go and put a period to his existence. She reaped the fruit of her culpable weakness, poor girl! in much wedded misery but here is a case where the empty threat of a political suicide has wrought first on a king, now on a parliament, to drag a Christian nation into reluctant, but alas! indissoluble union with Antichrist in all his forms; to say nothing of the deep, black, cruelty perpetrated against the poor factory children, who, on this ground, and on this ground ALONE, were denied the short respite from overwhelming