they adopted in the spelling class twenty-five years ago; and the rest is all matter of course

Jamque faces, et Saxa volant.

The main object, however, for which this book is written, is to prove that the church establishment is in danger, from the increase of Mr. Lancaster's institutions. Mr. Lancaster is, as we have before observed, a Quaker. As a Quaker, he says, I cannot teach your creeds; but I pledge myself not to teach my own. I pledge myself (and if I deceive you, desert me, and give me up) to confine myself to those points of Christianity in which all Christians agree. To which Mrs. Trimmer replies, that, in the first place, he cannot do this; and, in the next place, if he did do it, it would not be enough. But why, we would ask, cannot Mr. Lancaster effect his first object? The practical and the feeling parts of religion are much more likely to attract the attention and provoke the questions of children, than its speculative doctrines. A child is not very likely to put any questions at all to a catechising master, and still less likely to lead him into subtle and profound disquisition. It appears to us not only practicable, but very easy, to confine the religious instruction of the poor, in the first years of life, to those general feelings and principles which are suitable to the established church, and to every sect; afterwards, the discriminating tenets of each subdivision of Christians may be fixed upon this general basis. To say this is not enough, that a child should be made an Antisocinian, or an Antipelagian, in his tenderest years, may be very just; but what prevents you from making him so? Mr. Lancaster, purposely and intentionally, to allay all jealousy, leaves him in a state as well adapted for one creed as another. Begin; make your pupil a firm advocate for the peculiar doctrines of the English church; dig round about him, on every side, a trench that shall guard him from every species of heresy. In spite of all this clamour you do nothing; you do not stir a single step; you educate alike the swineherd and his hog;—and then, when a man of real genius and enterprise rises up, and says, Let me dedicate my life to this neglected object; I will do every thing but that which must necessarily devolve upon you alone;―you refuse to do your little, and compel him, by the cry of Infidel and Atheist, to leave you to your ancient repose, and not to drive you, by insidious comparisons, to any system of active utility.

We deny, again and again, that Mr. Lancaster's instruction is any kind of impediment to the propagation of the doctrines of the church; and if Mr. Lancaster was to perish with his system to-morrow, these boys would positively be taught nothing; the doctrines which Mrs. Trimmer considers to be prohibited would not rush in, but there would be an absolute vacuum. We will however, say this in favour of Mrs. Trimmer, that if every one who has joined in her clamour, had laboured one-hundredth part as much as she has done in the cause of national education, the clamour would be much more rational, and much more consistent, than it now is. By living with a few people as active as herself, she is perhaps somehow or another persuaded that there is a national education going on in this country. But our principal argument is, that Mr. Lancaster's plan is at least better than the nothing which preceded it. The authoress herself seems to be a lady of respectable opinions, and very ordinary talents; defending what is right without judgment, and believing what is holy without charity.

PARNELL AND IRELAND.* (EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1807.)

Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics. By William Parnell, Esquire. Fitzpatrick, Dublin, 1807.

If ever a nation exhibited symptoms of downright madness, or utter stupidity, we conceive these symptoms may be easily recognized in the conduct of this country upon the Catholic question. A man has a wound in his great toe, and a violent and perilous fever at the same time; and he refuses to take the medicines for the fever, because it will disconcert his toe! The mournful and folly-stricken blockhead forgets that his toe cannot survive him;-that if he dies, there can be no digital life apart from him; yet he lingers and fondles over this last part of his body, soothing it madly with little plasters, and anile fomentations, while the neglected fever rages in his entrails, and burns away his whole life. If the comparatively little questions of Establishment are all that this country is capable of discussing or regarding, for God's sake let us remember, that the foreign conquest, which destroys all, destroys this beloved toe also. Pass over freedom, industry, and science -and look upon this great empire, by which we are about to be swallowed up, only as it affects the manner of collecting tithes, and of reading the liturgy-still, if all goes, these must go too; and even, for their interests, it is worth while to conciliate Ireland, to avert the hostility, and to employ the strength of the Catholic population. We plead the question as the sincerest friends to the Establishment;-as wishing to it all the prosperity and duration its warmest advocates can desire,but remembering always, what these advocates seem to forget,

*I do not retract one syllable (or one iota) of what I have said or written upon the Catholic question. What was wanted for Ireland was emancipation, time and justice, abolition of present wrongs; time for forgetting past wrongs, and that continued and even justice which would make such oblivion wise. It is now only difficult to tranquilize Ireland, before emancipation it was impossible. As to the danger from Catholic doctrines, I must leave such apprehensions to the respectable anility of these realms. I will not meddle with it.

that the Establishment cannot be threatened by any danger so great as the perdition of the kingdom in which it is established. We are truly glad to agree so entirely with Mr. Parnell upon this great question; we admire his way of thinking; and most cordially recommend his work to the attention of the public. The general conclusion which he attempts to prove is this; that religious sentiment, however perverted to bigotry or fanaticism, has always a tendency to moderation; that it seldom assumes any great portion of activity or enthusiasm, except from novelty of opinion, or from opposition, contumely and persecution, when novelty ceases; that a government has little to fear from any religious sect, except while that sect is Give a government only time, and, provided it has the good sense to treat folly with forbearance, it must ultimately prevail. When, therefore, a sect is found, after a lapse of years, to be ill disposed to the government, we may be certain that government has widened its separation by marked distinctions, roused its resentment by contumely, or supported its enthusiasm by persecution.

new.

The particular conclusion Mr. Parnell attempts to prove is, that the Catholic religion in Ireland had sunk into torpor and inactivity, till government roused it with the lash: that even then, from the respect and attachment, which men are always inclined to show towards government, there still remained a large body of loyal Catholics; that these only decreased in number from the rapid increase of persecution; and that, after all, the effects which the resentment of the Roman Catholics had in creating rebellions had been very much exaggerated.

In support of these two conclusions, Mr. Parnell takes a survey of the history of Ireland, from the conquest under Henry, to the rebellion under Charles the First, passing very rapidly over the period which preceded the Reformation, and dwelling principally upon the various rebellions which broke out in Ireland between the Reformation and the grand rebellion in the reign of Charles the First. The celebrated conquest of Ireland by Henry the Second, extended only to a very few counties in Leinster; nine-tenths of the whole kingdom were left, as he found them, under the dominion of their native princes. The influence of example was as strong in this, as in most other instances; and great numbers of the English settlers who came over under various adventurers, resigned their pretensions to superior civilization, cast off their lower garments, and lapsed into the nudity and barbarism of the Irish. The

limit which divided the possessions of the English settler from those of the native Irish, was called the pale; and the expressions of inhabitants within pale, and without the pale, were the terms by which the two nations were distinguished. It is almost superfluous to state, that the most bloody and pernicious warfare was carried on upon the borders-sometimes for something-sometimes for nothing-most commonly for cows. The Irish, over whom the sovereigns of England affected a sort of nominal dominion, were entirely governed by their own laws; and so very little connection had they with the justice of the invading country, that it was as lawful to kill an Irishman, as it was to kill a badger or a fox. The instances are innumerable, where the defendant has pleaded that the deceased was an Irishman, and that therefore defendant had a right to kill him ;— and upon the proof of Hibernicism, acquittal followed of course. When the English army mustered in any great strength, the Irish chieftains would do exterior homage to the English Crown; and they very frequently, by this artifice, averted from their country the miseries of invasion: but they remained completely unsubdued, till the rebellion which took place in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, of which that politic woman availed herself to the complete subjugation of Ireland. In speaking of the Irish about the reign of Elizabeth, or James the First, we must not draw our comparisons from England, but from New Zealand; they were not civilized men, but savages; and if we reason about their conduct, we must reason of them as savages.

'After reading every account of Irish history,' (says Mr. Parnell,) 'one great perplexity appears to remain: How does it happen, that, from the first invasion of the English, till the reign of James I., Ireland seems not to have made the smallest progress in civilization or wealth?

"That it was divided into a number of small principalities, which waged constant war on each other; or that the appointment of the chieftains was elective; do not appear sufficient reasons, although these are the only ones assigned by those who have been at the trouble of considering the subject: neither are the confiscations of property quite sufficient to account for the effect. There have been great confiscations in other countries, and still they have flourished: the petty states of Greece were quite analogous to the chiefries (as they were called) in Ireland; and yet they seemed to flourish almost in proportion to their dissensions. Poland felt the bad effects of an elective monarchy more than any other country; and yet, in point of civilization, it maintained a very respectable rank among the nations of Europe; but Ireland never, for an instant, made any progress in improvement till the reign of James I.

VOL. I.-6