establishment, she regards the nation as her charge, and looks upon all the teachers of strange doctrines as intruders upon her pastoral care. Now, this is just the spirit which a Christian statesman, or even a wise politician, would have endeavoured to foster and encourage. We say even a wise politician, for almost all impartial men now admit that, while Popery preserves her debasing and demoralizing sway over the hearts and consciences of the peasantry of Ireland, there can be but little hope of elevating her from her abject state of moral and physical degradation; and, therefore, we hold that all the maxims of political wisdom, and all the sanctions of religious duty unite in demanding it of the rulers of this unhappy and distracted country, to employ every means which the spirit of Christianity will recognise, to destroy and exterminate Popery in Ireland. This may not be the language that is suited to the soft-tongued liberalism of modern times; it may shock the Popish predilections of many who call themselves Protestants-of many who have sworn that Popery is damnable and idolatrous. But we care not for the approbation of those who think that an energetic attachment to our religion is a crime-of those who would go to worship, in the temple of their God, in velvet slippers, lest the sound of their footsteps should tell that they have been there. We love Ireland, we love our Roman Catholic brethren, as well as they do; and it is because we love both that we feel indignant that superstition has flung her chain alike around our country and our countrymen-that a despotic priesthood have enslaved the consciences of Irishmen -have made imaginary fears the me dium of real extortion-have kept the people in darkness lest, in acquiring knowledge, they might cease to be their serfs-and extending the limits of ecclesiastical rule, until it reached the utmost verge of temporal dominion, have become alike, in politics and religion, the keepers of their consciences and are rivetting the fetters of their own ascendancy, in perpetuating national ignorance, and national degradation. And it is because we are indignant at all this, that we tell the minister who will presume to govern Ireland, and yet not use all his endeavours to oppose the false religion that is her bane, that he will answer to his God for all the misery, and all the bloodshed-and there will be much of both-which Popery will yet cause within her borders. Ministers have avowed their readiness to make an alliance with Popery to buy off its attacks and commit sacrilege to procure the price of the exemption. The revenues of the suppressed benefices are to be applied to the paying of the priests-the priests! the deadliest foes of British connection the men who, free themselves from all human ties, have established a spiritual tribunal before which all human, and all divine obligations can be dispensed with!—the men who teach their votaries that they can legalize murder, and make perjury a virtue!who, avowing themselves no principle but the forwarding the interests of their church, impress upon their flocks attachment to that church as a virtue, beyond all others!-the men who, by the dogmas of their infallible religion, are bound to believe that it is a good deed to extirpate, not heresy but heretics. Will Protestant England suffer See, in particular, the fortieth canon—a canon which we have very lately had occasion to quote as damning evidence against the temporizing and compromising Archbishop of Dublin. (Vol. 3, p. 707.) It is a canon to which we cannot too often refer. It is the Magna Charta of our church-the solemn declaration whereby she acknowledges herself to the world as a missionary church. We take the following paragraph from the Wexford Conservative, a journal of high respectability, which will prove that the influence of the priests is exerted as we have stated: "We have it from the lips of a gentleman of unquestionable authority, that at the late election two freeholders, who it was supposed had been bribed, were dragged by the priests to one of the polling booths to vote for Mr. Waddy. The poor men resisted, but all to no purpose, as the priests and the mob were too powerful. The book was put in their hands, and the bribery oath tendered, but the men evincing this?-will the English Protestant dissenters, who profess a special anxiety for the purity of religion, permit this ungodly and iniquitous application of property which, if it does not belong to the church, certainly does to the state? Will the lovers of freedom suffer it? Popery is tyrannytyranny in its worst-in its most tremendous form-the same tyranny sits at the confessional of the holy office, and at the humbler, but not less despotic confessional of the Irish mass-house. And this is a tyranny before which all human associations, and all earthly regards must bow. No feeling of earthly affection must interfere with the commands of those "unto whom all power in earth or heaven is given;" no sanction of the law of God can interfere between the conscience and the bidding of those who have arrogated to themselves the convenient power of dispensing with the commands of their Creator, and forgiving all transgressions against his law. And this too, is the tyranny of the soulan all-seeing tyranny, to which every thought is open, and to which even the half-formed feelings of the mind are acknowledged and avowed. The Sicilian tyrant has been branded as the worst, because the most suspicious of oppressors, because he contrived the cave where he could listen to all the words of his prisoners. But Popery has improved upon his plan-she has established a Dionysian cave, where she sits to catch not merely the expressions, but the thoughts of her captives; and, in a country where the mass of the people are Roman Catholics, every whisper of suspicion-every tale of hidden scandal, or of secret guilt, are all confided to her safe keeping. In Ireland no movements of covert treason-no risings of secret insurrection have been, or are unknown to the church. The keepers of the secrets of the people, the priests, become, of necessity, the masters of the people's fears, "Scire volunt secreta domus atque inde timeri." Auricular confession is the engine by which they convert spiritual authority into ecclesiastical dominion, and make all the terrors of the next world subservient to the temporal aggrandisement of their order. It is this which spreads the bleak and withering influence of their tyranny over all the reciprocity of social, all the intercourse of domestic life-that establishes their system of espionage by every man's fire-side, and makes their unhappy victim dread in the friend of his confidence, and the wife of his bosom, a spy and informer of the church. And let us not be told that in stigmatizing their power as tyranny, we are giving to it a name that it does not deserve, because forsooth it is voluntarily submitted to by men whose erroneous belief is its foundation. We deny the fact-Popery is not voluntarily submitted to by individuals; and had it not been that Popery has established an organized and systematic persecution against all those who dare to show symptoms of questioning her authority, history would long since have recorded the exultation of mankind over her complete and unpitied downfall. But, with a population as her serfs, she coerces her rebellious children by the most terrible of all penalties-that of outlawry from the pale of humanity, and excommunication from the sympathies of men. some reluctance to take the oath, the priests got into a rage, stamped and raved, cursed them, and vociferated, take the oath, take the oath, you villains, take the oath.' The men still refusing, the deputy called their reverences to order, and having asked the men calmly would they take the oath, they turned off, saying they would consider of it." Need we remind our readers of the case of priest Burke, at Cork, who absolutely induced a dying man to make depositions before a magistrate, which were afterwards proved, on the cross-examination of the reverend individual himself, to be false and this too, after many witnesses had sworn to their truth in open court! Thus did the priest compel a dying man to commit perjury-persuade many of his flock to unite in that perjury-and prevaricate upon oath himself-all to take away the life of an innocent individual! Is not this "legalizing murder, and making perjury a virtue?" And, did we believe that the newly appointed Commissioners were men whose principles could allow them to receive such evidence, or whose intellect could enable them to understand it, we could prove before them, prove, beyond the possibility of doubt, that Popery wields the power which she derives from general opinion to coerce individual dissent, and by guiding the lawless will of the multitude binds her dominion over the consciences of all! In Popish districts, the man who presumes to read the word that God has given him, or to question, in aught, the authority of his priest, is visited by all the vengeance of a lawless, but, at the same time, an organized mob. Proscribed by the anathema of the priest as effectually as he could be by the firman of the despot, he is exposed to the fury of a populace that know no law and that respect no right; he has no further security for either property or life; he goes abroad with the mark of Cain upon his forehead, a vagabond upon the earth; but, alas! without Cain's exemption from attack upon his life: well may he say, "whosoever findeth me shall kill me;" in every stranger he meets a foe, and his blood pays the penalty of his apostacy from the Church. These are the means by which Popery maintains her supremacy. Many-many have been the martyrs to the dread inquisition which she has in Ireland set up; and ready enough is the priest to give absolution and his blessing to the man whose hands are yet reeking with the blood of the heretic. In Portugal or Goa, her murders are perpetrated in the dungeon-in Ireland, on the mountain or in the glen; but murder is, in both places, the same sanguinary auto da fe in both, her power is maintained by cruelty and oppression-in the one case, the legalized butcheries of the familiar-in the other, the unrecognized, but not unsanctioned, atrocities of the marauder: both the worthy dispensers of Papal vengeance, and the fit upholders of Papal power: both pursuing their bloody avocations in the name of their God, and at the instigation of their Church. : the formal murders of the Holy Office, where persecution is arrayed in the robes of Christian justice, and torture is meekly dispensed in orthodox severity, according to the dictates of Christian charity, but by the more summary, and certainly the less iniquitous, proceedings of the barbarity of the gang. But it needs not this to prove that Popery is tyranny; it is tyranny over those who are its slaves from persuasion as well as those who are its captives from intimidation. Terror is the instrument by which all despotism is maintained; force is only brought into action when resistance is offered, but resistance is obviated by maintaining the fear of force; fear, of consequences, either real or imaginary. When the Mussulman permits the Grand Seignor to take away his wife, it is because he fears to resist : and though the fears which the priests employ are of imaginary punishment, which they impiously pretend they have at their command, this does not diminish the effect, nor palliate the enormity of their depotism. It may increase our compassion for the slave, to know that he is a dupe, it cannot take from our detestation of the tyrant to be assured that he is an impostor. Against the despotism of the priests the Church of Ireland has raised the standard of pure and tolerant Christianity, and by the very contrast created by her presence, has materially mitigated the pretensions of the rival Church. There is a moral check in the contrast with Protestantism, which puts a restraint upon Popery; and this check the governnient are about altogether to remove, and consign whole districts, peopled with immortal souls, to her dark and unmitigated reign. They are, virtually, about to make Popery the established religion in many parts of Ireland. Disguise their intentions as they may, to palliate the enormity of the proposition, to a people not yet prepared for this flagrant act of moral guilt and political insanity, this is the plain, the unvarnished meaning of the measures they propose; and if ever the legislature adopt those measures, the constitution is dissolved, and all government is at an end; the King will have done that for which James the Second lost his crown; he will have violated his coronation oath; he will virtually have abdicated his throne; the propriety of resistance will then be measured only by the probability of success-our obedience to the mandates of a godless and an illegal usurpation will be a matter of expediency, not of duty. If there be faith in pledges-if there be meaning in compacts-if there be virtue in oaths, there never has been privilege more solemnly guaranteed than to the Protestants of Ireland, the maintenance of their church. It is secured by the King's coronation oath and by the act of Union—the one of which cannot be broken without dissolving the constitution, nor the other violated without dismembering the empire. We know that with respect to the coronation oath, the ministers have put forward the doctrine, that the King will be looked upon by his God in a two-fold capacity, and that what is sworn by the individual will not be binding upon the hypothetical personage whom they call the Legislative Sovereign. But this miserable sophistry-this desperate resource of casuistical chicanery, fails them in the instance of which we speak. rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them, OR ANY OF THEM?" William the Fourth-Legislative, Executive, and actual King of Great Britain-"All this I promise to do-(and having laid his hand upon the Holy Gospels), "The things which I have here before promised, I will perform and keep. So help me God"-(and his Majesty kissed the book.) Now, after this solemn compact, thus made between the Protestant King and his Protestant people, and ratified by a solemn appeal to Him before whose bar kings as well as private men must yet appear-were we credulous, if we imagined that our church and our religion were secure? It can only be in direct contravention of this compact-in undisguised violation of this oath, that measures can be based upon the Commission whose immediate effect will be to suppress the "true profession of the Gospel," by removing from many districts those who preached it-to subvert "the Protestant reformed religion," by putting an end to its worship, and, most likely, giving over its then useless The Commission is issued by temples to be desecrated by the cerethe executive King-a personage whom monies of an idolatrous faith-and to they have acknowledged to be bound deprive many "churches," or congregaby the vows that the actual King took tions, of their most sacred "right"-of at his coronation. When William the their dearest "privilege"-that of reFourth-we designate his Majesty thus, ceiving consolation and instruction from to get rid of all the confusion of the a resident pastor. The Commission is multiplicity of characters in which intended to facilitate these measures— ministers would present him-when the issuing of the Commission is an exWilliam the Fourth was crowned ecutive act-and even admitting that King of this mighty empire, the Arch- the Whigs have succeeded, by a novel bishop who imposed on him these species of political legerdemain, in divows, as if to remind him that all his viding the monarch into distinct perpower he held but by the sufferance of sons, with distinct, and in the present his God-in the sight of that God, and case, opposing duties; it follows, of nein the presence of the people over whom cessity, that William the Fourth, No. 1, he was to rule-thus embodied in an (the executive King) who has sworn to oath, the terms of that original contract maintain the church, is bound to give which subsists between the sovereign no assistance to William the Fourth, and the nation : No. 2, (the legislative King,) for whom it is expedient to destroy it-and thus the moment that legislative robbery is based upon the Commission, William the Fourth, No. 3, (the King, in his proper and individual person,) has viofated his coronation oath. Archbishop-"Will you, TO THE UTMOST OF YOUR POWER, maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion, established by law? and will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and TO THE CHURCHES COMMITTED TO THEIR CHARGE, all such And let no person imagine, that the observance of the coronation oath, in The Protestant places of worship, in the suppressed benefices, will, of course, be given up to the new clients of the government, the Romish Priests. all its integrity, is a matter of light moment, even as it respects the preservation of the general liberties of Britain. By a maxim of the constitution, we have admitted that the King can do no wrong; but while we exempt him from all earthly account, by this oath we oblige him to feel himself the more deeply accountable to an Almighty power and while we set up by the constitution no tribunal to which he is amenable, it is only because we have already made his duty to his subjects a part of his responsibility to his God. Prerogative implies discretion, and in the coronation oath is to be found our only constitutional pledge for the proper exercise of that discretion. Resistance is an extra-constitutional remedy unknown to the contemplation of the law. But here is the proper, the safest limit of royal prerogative-the security that discretionary shall never become arbitrary power. There are many things which the law enjoins upon the King, the performance of which it has neither established the means of compelling, nor yet sanctioned the infliction of punishment for their neglect. In the coronation oath is to be found the expression of all those moral checks-all these intellectual barriers which Kings might or might not respect so long as they merely existed in the vague and undefined principles of our constitution, but which acquire, in these vows, a permanent habitation and a shape. It is this oath that prevents prerogative from being tyranny, and privilege from being but a modification of resistance--that makes the King's conscience the safeguard of our freedom-and obliges him to be a traitor to his God before he can be the tyrant of his people; and which even in these very matters, where we seem to place him above law, brings him most effectually under the authority of the law. Unless they desire the only security of their freedom to be found in the possibility of resistance-in the power of breaking up the whole frame of our social constitution-let Britons guard, with the most jealous solicitude, against the slightest encroachment on the sanctity of the coronation oath-let them repudiate, with indignation, any doctrine that could furnish Kings with a pretext for disregarding it. If the precedent is established, who is to set limits to its application? If we consent to the practical abrogation of any part of it, we vitiate and make worthless the security that is derived from the entire. But we must hasten to speak of the act of Union; an act by which the nationality of Ireland was surrendered, and her constitution utterly destroyed; the provisions of which, towards her, should, therefore, be observed with the most scrupulous exactness. The fifth article of that union provides, “that the continuance and preservation of the united church, as the Established Church of England and Ireland, shall be an essential and fundamental part of the union;" and let us not be told that, when the doctrine of proportion is admitted, this article is observed. No. If this be so, it is an unmeaning and worthless form of words. If the legislature have the right, by this article, to fix any proportion, they may fix any proportion that they choose-they may make the presence of a single Roman Catholic a sufficient reason for destroying the church establishment in a parish-if the suppressing any number of benefices does not contravene this article, neither would the suppressing of all. Now, we do not question the legal power of the Imperial Parliament to modify even the act of union; but this we assert, that when it was declared that the preservation of the church was an essential and fundamental part of the union," it was enacted that whenever this was disregarded, the union was-not violated, but REPEALED. We beg to be understood. We do not address ourselves to the reason of politicians, but to the judgment of lawyers. The very act by which the Imperial Parliament sits, provides that when the Established Church is not maintained in both countries, that act shall expire and be of no force-we can see no other meaning in the words “essential and fundamental." The Parliament, then, has the power to destroy the Church; but in so doing, to all intents and purposes, they repeal the act of union. Both countries, then, are in the same relative position as if it had been formally enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, &c. &c., that the act of union be repealed. The Imperial Parliament no longer exists. The United Parliament of England and Scotland may meet and legislate 66 |