system never obtained extensive currency among the Germans, being held by only one of the numerous sects of the great Kantean school. A modern Greek, the pupil of Krug, translated the Fundamental Philosophy into the language of the mod. ern Greeks; another translated it into Hungarian, and a third into Polish; but with what effects on those nations, we are not informed. Posthumous Influence: A Sermon occasioned by the death of the Hon. Samuel Hubbard, LL.D., Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, preached to the Park Street Congregation, Boston, Sabbath morning, January 2, 1848. By SILAS AIKEN, Pastor of the Church. A Good Man Lamented: A Sermon preached in the First Congregational Church, Canandaigua, N. Y., at the funeral of Walter Hubbell, Tuesday, March 28, 1848. By the Pastor of the Church, O. E. DAGGETT: with Notes appended. THE excellent men whose memories are commemorated in these discourses were lawyers; the first distinguished in his profession, and both distinguished for their usefulness, and held in the highest esteem as men of business, as citizens, and as members of the church of Christ. They have rested from their labors; but the salutary influence of their example, prayers, and charities, will long survive them. The lives of such men are a sufficient refutation of the prevalent opinion that young men of Christian character, if they would be useful in the highest degree, must devote themselves to the Gospel ministry. The demand for preachers may be so pressing that no young man of education, talents and piety, should prefer another work; but ordinarily other doors of usefulness may be open to him, so full of promise, that he may conscientiously enter them. The legal and the medical professions no less than the clerical, may be adorned by the highest style of Christian character; and in them no less than in the latter, a most beneficent influence may be exerted. The want of piety in a minister of the Gospel shocks our moral sense, but it is no less really a defect in the other professions. We need men of devoted piety at the bar to plead the cause of justice; and at the bed side of the sick, to minister both to the body and the mind of the sufferer. It should not therefore be pronounced a dereliction of duty, if a young man, considering his peculiar talents, tastes and opportunities, devotes himself to the study and practice of law. It may be the field which he is best fitted to occupy; and if he should be successful, one in which he can contribute most effi ciently to the triumph of truth in the world. The conflict of the courts, and the drudgery of busi ness, may be so uncongenial to his taste, that he can not be happy in the profession; but that he can be an upright lawyer, and a consistent Christian, we have no doubt. A profession which has to do with the right administration of justice, may be practiced with integrity, and confer important benefits upon mankind. The erroneous views commonly taken of this subject,. we ascribe to the notion, that the great work of teaching religion, and guiding men to heaven, devolves exclusively on ministers consecrated to the work. As we return more and more to the primitive idea of the church in which it was expected that every brother would share in the work of mutual edification, and in instructing the ignorant, we shall do more to introduce men of Christian principle not only into the Gospel ministry, but into the other learned professions. Every Christian will then be considered a laborer in the vineyard of Christ, and every profes sional man as enjoying peculiar fa cilities for doing good. THE NEW ENGLANDER. No. XXIV. OCTOBER, 1848. IRELAND. IN our number for April, we endeavored to spread before our readers, the actual condition of Ireland, together with some of the causes of her present social degradation. In reviewing the article, we feel, that notwithstanding the painful array of facts which it presents, we have failed to convey any adequate idea of the miseries of that unhappy land; and yet the very description which to us appears so meagre, has probably been read with incredulity by those who have never before looked upon the fearful picture of a nation in want. For the sake of suffering humanity, we could wish that all we have written were a fiction; but as in the first instance we made no statement touching the destitution of the people, except upon the authority of competent and impartial eyewitnesses, we now find every such statement corroborated by facts daily brought to our knowledge.* * Of the thousand and one publications which the state of Ireland has called forth from the British press, only a few have reached us; for most of them were of such an ephemeral character as to have vanished from the market before our blank order could be filled. Those which have been received, however, possess a We asked a bright Irish lad of fifteen, the other day, "What did you use to live upon in Ireland ?” "Potatoes, sir." "Did you never have any meat before you came to America?" "Never a bit of mate, sir." "Did you have no bread either?" "Sometimes, when we could'nt buy the potatoes we would have a little bread." This was in the summer months, when the old crop of potatoes was exhausted, and the new could not yet be gathered; and when of course potatoes, from being cheap and plenty, rose to a higher price per stone than meal, which was commonly beyond the reach of the poorer classes. The "meal months" are always a season of great priva tion. Then only in all the year did our little Irish lad taste bread, and then not because bread could be afforded, but because potatoes could not. We could believe him when he said, "I'd rather live in this country, sir, than in that;" for though his home consisted only of two rooms, neither of them ten feet square, dark, solitary and poorly standard value, and others are constantly furnished, without even a comforta ble bed for a family of four, yet he arriving. VOL. VI. 58 was decently clothed and well fed, or as he expressed it, the diet is better in this country than in that.' This lad belonged to a Protestant family, which had lived in compar atively good circumstances previous to the distress; but whose condition after all, was substantially that described on pp. 279-80 of our April number. The rules of the Romish church respecting fasts, are quite superfluous, so far as the peasantry of Ireland are concerned, since for them 66 to abstain from meats" can be no privation. Those rules have force chiefly with the priesthood, and with the religious orders. Mrs. Nichol son informs us, that at Father Mathew's table during Lent, "three kinds of fish, with puddings, jellies and fruits, were substituted for pig, beef and poultry;"-and that a more jovial priest, whom she encountered at the same season, was by no means choice of his imprecations against the “ blackguard salt herring," to which he had been restricted until he was "scalt intire ly;" but the common people would welcome the return of the forty days fast, if it would bring with it so much as a herring to vary their monotonous fare of potatoes and salt. This allusion to the dietetic discipline of the Roman Catholic church, leads us to consider the whole influence of that church upon the moral character and the social condition of the Irish people. In no country of Europe, not in Spain itself, certainly not in Italy, not even in the petty regency of Tréves, where the wonder of "the Holy Coat" was for weeks exhibited to adoring thousands, have the priest hood had more absolute sway over the mass of society than in Ireland. By the ignorant, the priest is looked upon as one invested with a divine sanctity; and even those who have learned to discriminate between the office and the man, have a feeling of reverence for the former that borders on superstition. "What honor you pay to these men," said Mrs. Nicholson to an Irishman of Cork, who was bowing reverently to a priest. "Not to the man," said he, "but to what he may have about him. He may have been to visit some dying person, and have some of the broken body of the Savior with him!" No class of Catholic emigrants in the United States, remains so long under the surveillance of the priesthood as the Irish. The Ger mans soon become enfranchised; even the German priests are liberal and independent in comparison with their Irish brethren; and national. ity often proves to be with each a stronger tie than their common faith. The Roman Catholic religion, though not indigenous to Ireland, has found a congenial soil and at mosphere in the civil institutions and the social condition of the peo ple. More than eighty per cent., or between six and seven millions of the population are Catholics; and this class of population increases in a larger ratio than any other. The following curious fact is stated on the authority of Mr. Shafto Adair. "A lease fell out, some years since, of a town-land in Antrim, which had been granted a century ago for a term of years and three lives. The youngest life, then a baby in the cradle, lingered above ninety The consideration of the years. lease was expressed to be, the es tablishment of a Protestant tenantry; and a trifling rent was charged in consideration of the nature of the expected service. After the usual fashion, and to meet the griping spirit of the lessee's representatives, subdivision proceeded at a fearful rate. When this lease expired, there were eighteen hundred souls upon the town-land, and not a Protestant amongst them.” to the same general results, which are witnessed under its undisputed influence in other countries; and that too, notwithstanding it has been brought into contrast and competi tion with one of the worst specimens of Protestantism that has been produced since the Reformation. The Roman Catholic church in Ireland has done little to elevate the people; she has not been as the church of Christ ever should be, a vitalizing and reforming power in society; on the contrary, while in the favorable position of a champion for the people against political and social proscription, she has yet done much in various ways to keep them in that state of depression to which centuries of mal-government have reduced them. We charge it upon the Roman Catholic church in Ireland, as a high crime, that while possessing almost unbounded influence and authority over the people, while having the moral training of the nation in her hands, she has not elevated them in intelligence and in virtue, in spite of bad legislation and of a vicious social economy. Amid all the anarchy, the corruption, the oppression, with which Ireland has been cursed, there was one source from which a redeeming influence should have gone forth; a church strong in the confidence and in the affections of the people, should have diffused among them the leaven of knowledge, of peace, of order, of industry, and of a pure morality; should have developed their intellectual and moral strength: should have educated them for free. dom; should have led them out from barbarism into the front ranks of civilization. But the Roman Catholic church in Ireland, with a pliant nation to be molded at her will, so far from fulfilling the high mission of their social regeneration, has riv. Battersly's Complete Catholic Dieted upon them also the chains of rectory, Dublin, 1848. The number of the religious orders is probably greatly underrated, as also the income of the priests. There are in Ireland four Catholic archbishops, one for each of the provinces,-Ulster, Leinster, Munster, and Connaught; their sees are Armagh, Dublin, Cashel and Tuam. A similar arrangement formerly existed in the established church; but of late the archbishoprics of Cashel and Tuam have been reduced to bishoprics. In addition to the four archbishops, there are twenty-four bishops and two thousand six hundred and fifty-five clergy of the Romish church: the whole body of whom are supported directly by the people; the priests receiving, on an average, £100 per annum, though many of them have a much larger income, and employ several curates and other assistants. The number of parish priests is nine hundred and eighty three, of curates, one thousand three hundred and sixty-two, of regular clergy of the religious orders, three hundred.* As the ancient estates and revenues of the Catholic church in Ireland, were long since transferred to other hands, the only present sources of revenue, are the fees for the cele bration of births, marriages and masses, Christmas and Easier dues, and other voluntary offerings. Of course it is for the interest of the clergy, to promote the increase of population, by encouraging early marriages, and to keep the people in a state of dependence on their favor for spiritual blessings. In this way the Romish system, always costly and severe in its exactions, has contributed to the social degradation of Ireland. It has there led spiritual despotism, and made them more absolutely the victims of su perstition and of priestly domination than any other people in Christendom. Puritanism, under oppression, worked out far different results, not only for its immediate adherents, but for the English nation and for all mankind. Proscription, acts of uniformity, fines, imprisonment, the star-chamber, the pillory and the scaffold, all these served only to develop more powerfully the principles and the energies of the despised sect and to make them at length the very fountain-head of all that is great and good in English history. Why has not Romanism done the same for Ireland ? But though we charge it as a crime upon the Roman Catholic church in Ireland, that while she has had it in her power to do so much for the renovation of society, she has, in fact, done so little; and though we feel that in some respects she has aggravated evils which she should have removed, we are happy also to express the conviction, that in other respects her influence has been salutary upon a people whom she has attended almost with. out intermission in their slow march from barbarism toward civilization. Indeed it would be dishonorable to whatever of Christian truth she yet retains, to suppose it otherwise. She has done not a little of late years, for the education of her youth, for the relief of the poor, the aged, the infirm and the orphaned, and for the removal of particular social and moral evils. In what other country, and under what other system, could a single individual have procured five or six millions of signatures to the temperance pledge? The labors of Father Mathew, though not strictly ecclesiastical, were immeasurably promoted by the sanctity which pertains to him as a Capuchin, to his blessing, and to the medal which he had consecrated.* His A story is told of a man who felt his appetite for drink returning after he had success affords a striking illustration of the manner in which even superstition may be made auxiliary to a wholesome moral reform, and also of the stupendous enginery of the Roman Catholic hierarchy for good or for evil. The temperance movement in Ireland did not originate with Father Mathew; it had already enlisted the sympathies o even the Catholic population, wher he entered into it, against the wishes, or with only the reluctant approval of many of the clergy; but the re sult illustrates the power of the re ligious element among the people. The Catholic clergy of Ireland, have been accused of instigating rebellion, and even of denouncing individuals from the altar, as worthy of the knife or the bullet of the assassin. In some instances, un. doubtedly, this has been done. But the influence of the clergy as a body, has been upon the side of peace and order; they have done much to further the conciliatory policy of O'Connell. The Catholic Prelates, at their annual meeting at Dublin, Oct., 1847, presented an address to his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant, in which they allude to the rights of property in these terms: "The legitimate rights of property so necessary for the maintenance of society, we have ever felt it our duty to recognize and inculcate. The guilty outbreaks of violence and re• venge which sometimes unfortunate. ly disgrace the country, we deplore and reprobate; but, in justice to their general character and habits, we feel it our duty to declare our con viction, that there is not on earth a people who exhibit more respect for law and order under unheard of privations, than the people of Ireland:" and they furthermore express their anxiety, "to preserve the souls of taken the pledge, and who walked sev eral miles to Father Mathew to procure a dispensation from his vow; but when told that the blessing must be revoked, he was frightened into perpetual sobriety. |