sure) meet together in a county town, and enter into resolutions that no farther concessions are to be made to the Catholics; but if you will not let them into Parliament, why not allow them to be king's counsel, or serjeants at law? Why are they excluded by law from some corporations in Ireland, and admissible, though not admitted, to others? I think, before such general resolutions of exclusion are adopted, and the rights and happiness of so many millions of people disposed of, it would be decent and proper to obtain some tolerable information of what the present state of the Irish Catholics is, and of the vast number of insignificant offices from which they are excluded. Keep them from Parliament, if you think it right, but do not, therefore, exclude them from any thing else, to which you think Catholics may be fairly admitted without danger; and as to their content or discontent, there can be no sort of reason why discontent should not be lessened, though it cannot be

removed.

You are shocked by the present violence and abuse used by the Irish Association; by whom are they driven to it? and whom are you to thank for it? Is there a hope left to them? Is any term of endurance alluded to? any scope or boundary to their patience? Is the minister waiting for opportunities? Have they reason to believe that they are wished well to by the greatest of the great? Have they brighter hopes in another reign? Is there one clear spot in the horizon? any thing that you have left to them, but that disgust, hatred and despair, which, breaking out into wild eloquence, and acting upon a wild people, are preparing every day a mass of treason and disaffection, which may shake this empire to its very centre? and you may laugh at Daniel O'Connell, and treat him with contempt, and turn his metaphors into ridicule; but Daniel has, after all, a great deal of real and powerful eloquence; and a strange sort of misgiving sometimes comes across me, that Daniel and the doctor are not quite so great fools as many most respectable country clergymen believe them to be.

You talk of their abuse of the Reformation, but is there any end to the obloquy and abuse with which the Catholics are upon every point, and from every quarter, assailed? Is there any one folly, vice, or crime, which the blind fury of Protestants does not lavish upon them? and do you suppose all this is to be heard in silence, and without retaliation? Abuse as much as you please, if you are going to emancipate, but if you intend to do nothing for the Catholics but to call them names, you must not be put out of temper if you receive a few ugly appellations in return.

The great object of men who love party better than truth, is to have it believed that the Catholics alone have been persecutors; but what can be more flagrantly unjust than to take our notions of history only from the conquering and triumphant party? If you think the Catholics have not their Book of Martyrs as well as the Protestants, take the following enumeration of some of their most learned and careful writers.

Henry VIII., with consummate impartia. ity, burnt three Protestants and hanged four Catholics for different errors in religion on the same day, and the same place. Elizabeth burnt two Dutch Anabaptists for some theological tenets, July 22, 1575, Fox the martyrologist vainly pleading with the queen in their favour. In 1579, the same Protestant queen cut off the hand of Stubbs, the author of a tract against popish connection, of Singleton, the printer, and Page, the disperser of the book. Camden saw it done. Warburton properly says it exceeds in cruelty any thing done by Charles I. On the 4th of June, Mr. Elias Thacker and Mr. John Capper, two ministers of the Brownist persuasion, were hanged at St. Edmundsbury, for dispersing books against the Common Prayer. With respect to the great part of the Catholic victims, the law was fully and literally executed; after being hanged up, they were cut down alive, dismembered, ripped up, and their bowels burnt before their faces; after which, they were beheaded and quartered. The time employed in this butchery was very considerable, and, in one instance, lasted more than half an hour.

The uncandid excuse for all this is, that the greater part of these men were put to death for political, not for religious crimes. That is, a law is first passed making it high treason for a priest to exercise his function in England, and so, when he is caught and burnt, this is not religious persecution, but an offence against the state. We are, I hope, all too busy to need any answer to such childish, uncandid reasoning as this.

The total number of those who suffered capitally in the reign of Elizabeth, is stated by Dodd, in his Church History,* to be one hundred and ninety-nine; further inquiries made their number to be two hundred and four: fifteen of these were condemned for denying the queen's supremacy; one hundred and twenty-six for the exercise of priestly functions; and the others for being reconciled to the Catholic faith, or for aiding and assisting priests. In this list, no person is included who was executed for any plot, real or imaginary, except eleven, who suffered for the pretended plot of Rheims; a plot, which Dr. Milner justly observes, was so daring a forgery, that even Camden allows the sufferers to have been po

*The total number of sufferers in the reign of Queen

Mary, varies, I believe, from 200 in the Catholic to 280 in the Protestant accounts. I recommend all young men who wish to form some notion of what answer the Catholics have to make, to read Milner's "Letters to a Prebendary," and to follow the line of reading to which his references lead. They will then learn the importance of that sacred maxim, Audi alteram partem.

ner.

litical victims. Besides these, mention is made in the same work of ninety Catholic priests, or laymen, who died in prison in the same reign. "About the same time," he says, "I find fifty gentlemen lying prisoners in York Castle; most of them perished there, of vermin, famine, hunger, thirst, dirt, damp, fever, whipping, and broken hearts, the inseparable circumstances of prisons in those days. These were every week, for a twelve-month together, dragged by main force to hear the established service performed in the castle chapel." The Catholics were frequently, during the reign of Elizabeth, tortured in the most dreadful manIn order to extort answers from Father Campian, he was laid on the rack, and his limbs stretched a little, to show him, as the executioner termed it, what the rack was. He persisted in his refusal; then for several days successively, the torture was increased, and on the last two occasions he was so cruelly rent and torn, that he expected to expire under the torment. While under the rack, he called continually upon God. In the reign of the Protestant Edward VI., Joan Knell was burnt to death, and the year after, George Parry was burnt also. In 1575, two Protestants, Peterson and Turwort, (as before stated,) were burnt to death by Elizabeth. In 1589, under the same queen, Lewes, a Protestant, was burnt to death at Norwich, where Francis Kett was also burnt for religious opinions in 1589, under the same great queen, who, in 1591, hanged the Protestant Hacket for heresy, in Cheapside, and put to death Greenwood, Barrow, and Penry, for being Brownists. Southwell, a Catholic, was racked ten times during the reign of this sister of bloody Queen Mary. In 1592, Mrs. Ward was hanged, drawn and quartered, for assisting a Catholic priest to escape in a box. Mrs. Lyne suffered the same punishment for harbouring a priest; and in 1586, Mrs. Clitheroe, who was accused of relieving a priest, and refused to plead, was pressed to death in York Castle; a sharp stone being placed underneath her back.

Have not Protestants persecuted both Catholics and their fellow Protestants in Germany, Switzerland, Geneva, France, Holland, Sweden, and England? Look to the atrocious punishment of Leighton under Laud, for writing against prelacy; first, his ear was cut off, then his nose slit; then the other ear cut off, then whipped again. Look to the horrible cruelties exercised by the Protestant Episcopalians on the Scottish Presbyterians, in the reign of Charles II., of whom 8000 are said to have perished in that persecution. Persecutions of Protestants by Protestants, are amply detailed by Chandler, in his History of Persecution; by Neale, in his History of the Puritans; by Laing, in his History of Scotland; by Penn, in his Life of Fox; and in Brandt's History of the Reformation in the Low Countries; which furnishes many very terrible cases of the sufferings of the Anabaptists and Remonstrants. In 1560, the Parliament of Scotland decreed, at one and the same time, the establishment of Calvinism, and the punishment of death against the ancient religion: "With such indecent haste (says Robertson) did the very persons who had

just escaped ecclesiastical tyranny, proceed to imitate their example." Nothing can be so absurd as to suppose, that in barbarous ages, the excesses were all committed by one religious party, and none by the other. The Huguenots of France burnt churches, and hung priests, wherever they found them. Froumenteau, one of their own writers, confesses, that in the single province of Dauphiny, they killed tro hundred and twenty priests, and one hundred and twelve friars. In the Low Countries, wherever Vandemerk and Sonoi, lieutenants of the Prince of Orange, carried their arms, they uniformly put to death, and in cold blood, all the priests and religious they could lay their hands on. The Protestant Servetus was put to death by the Protestants of Geneva, for denying the doctrine of the Trinity, as the Protestant Gentilis was, on the same score, by those of Berne; add to these, Felix Mans, Rotman, and Barnevald. Of Servetus, Melancthon, the mildest of men, declared that he deserved to have his bowels pulled out, and his body torn to pieces. The last fires of persecution which were lighted in England, were by Protestants. Bartholomew Legate, an Arian, was burnt by order of King James in Smithfield, on the 18th of March, 1612; on the 11th of April, in the same year, Edward Weightman was burnt at Litchfield, by order of the Protestant Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry; and this man was, I believe, the last person who was burnt in England for heresy. There was another condemned to the fire for the same heresy, but as pity was excited by the constancy of these sufferers, it was thought better to allow him to linger on a miserable life in Newgate. Fuller, who wrote in the reign of Charles II., and was a zealous Church of England man, speaking of the burnings in question, says, "It may appear that God was well pleased with them."

There are, however, grievous faults on both sides: and as there are a set of men, who, not content with retaliating upon Protestants, deny the persecuting spirit of the Catholics, I would ask them what they think of the following code, drawn up by the French Catholics against the French Protestants, and carried into execution for ore hundred years, and as late as the year 1765, and not repealed till 1782 ?

"Any Protestant clergyman remaining in France three days, without coming to the Catholic worship, to be punished with death. If a Protestant sends his son to a Protestant schoolmaster for education, he is to forfeit 250 livres a month, and the schoolmaster who receives him, 50 livres. If they sent their children to any seminary abroad, they were to forfeit 2000 livres, and the child so sent, became incapable of possessing property in France. To celebrate Protestant worship, exposed the clergyman to a fine of 2800 livres. The fine to a Protestant for hearing it, was 1300 livres. If any Protestant denied the authority of the pope in France, his goods were seized for the first offence, and he was hanged for the second. If any Common Prayer-book, or book of Protestant worship be found in the possession of any Protestant, he shall forfeit 20 livres for the first offence, 40 livres for the second, and shall

It is, however, some extenuation of the Catholic excesses, that their religion was the religion of the whole of Europe, when the innovation began. They were the ancient lords and masters of faith, before men introduced the practice of thinking for themselves in these matters. The Protestants have less excuse, who claimed the right of innovation, and then turned round upon other Protestants who acted upon the same principle, or upon Catholics who remained as they were, and visited them with all the cruelties from which they had themselves so recently escaped.

Both sides, as they acquired power, abused it; and both learnt, from their sufferings, the great secret of toleration and forbearance. If you wish to do good in the times in which you live, contribute your efforts to perfect this grand work. I have not the most distant intention to interfere in local politics, but I advise you never to give a vote to any man,

to continue the punishments, privations, and incapacities of any human beings, merely be cause they worship God in the way they think best: the man who asks for your vote upon such a plea, is, probably, a very weak man, who believes in his own bad reasoning, or a very artful man, who is laughing at you for your credulity: at all events, he is a man who, knowingly or unknowingly, exposes his country to the greatest dangers, and hands down to posterity all the foolish opinions and all the bad passions which prevail in those times in which he happens to live. Such a man is so far from being that friend to the church which he pretends to be, that he declares its safety cannot be reconciled with the franchises of the people; for what worse can be said of the Church of England than this, that wherever it is judged necessary to give it a legal establishment, it becomes necessary to deprive the body of the people, if they adhere to their old opinions, of their liberties, and of all their free customs, and to reduce them to a state of civil servitude? SYDNEY SMITH.