too strong to be disturbed, or at all affected, by the noisy senseless jargon of these would-be

statesmen.

By counterfeit loyalists, I mean men who make unnecessary professions of a violent zeal for the established government and protestant religion, and at the same time speak and act as if they wished to render both of these odious to as many people as possible, and thus, by augmenting the number and rancour of enemies to these establishments, promote, as far as in their power, the preparative works of revolution.

A gentleman whom I regard in a superior light to that of a counterfeit loyalist, being asked, while he was declaiming against my book,, whether the accounts were false which gave him offence? answered, "No; but they are such as "a loyalist, particularly a protestant clergyman, "ought not to have published." This I conceive to be the general opinion. A history may be written, provided that no error committed by any actor on the right side of the question, or in favour of the righteous cause, shall be recorded. To this the opposite party will give their full assent, provided that theirs shall be acknowledged to be the righteous cause. Roman catholics are as highly incensed against me, as the irrationally zealous protestants. Yet how could they expect a heretie priest to write partially in favour of the true believers? With this partiality,

however, I am charged as a crime by over-zealous protestants, while with an opposite partiality I am charged as a crime by Roman catholics. Each party has determined to discourage, as far as possible, the sale of the book, as a hostile publication; and yet it has had a sale, caused, I believe, by the yelping of certain curs, who barked from a dark abode through a filthy channel, and the big-bou-wou of a huge-mastiff, who made his appearance in clear sunshine. These barkings and bou-wous made a noise, which induced many individuals to break through the rules of their party for the gratification of their private curiosity. I therefore return thanks to my advertisers.

By the rage of party, or the influence of power, has the truth of history in all ages been distorted, obscured, or lost in oblivion; few men having courage to publish any thing disagreeable to the ruling faction, whose reign of terror may continue until the facts be forgotten, or unsupported by evidence. Thus the most obscure period of the English history, since the Norman conquest, is that of the war between the roses, including the reigns of Edward the fourth and Richard the third. Fictions, recorded as facts by the most esteemed historians of that period, and believed without scrutiny through a series of generations, are detected by the contradiction of official registries, by inconsistency, or by their

absurdity; while to supply the vacuum we have only reasoning and conjecture. That Richard the third was a monster of dissimulation, treachery, and cruelty, with a hideous distortion of body conformable to the qualities of his mind; what writer would have dared to deny in the despotic reigns of Henry the seventh, and his successors till the death of Elizabeth?-When, under the protection of a most liberal and benign government, which disdains to coalesce with petty factions, a writer, totally unconnected with catholics or croppies of any religion, either by consanguity or affinity, who had in the hour of danger strained every nerve for the support of the existing constitution, who might be supposed in some degree shielded by the sanctity of his character, as a minister of the established church, with, I hope, a corresponding moral conduct, is furiously persecuted by factious protestants in various ways, and repeatedly threatened with personal violence, because he would not condescend to be the venal historian of a party.

Toenumerate the objections of Roman catholics would give myself and the reader unnecessary trouble. One is, that I have called them Romanists. As I seldom dispute about articulate sounds, or sounds of any kind, I shall call them here Catholics. Another is that I have expressed an approbation of Sir Richard Musgrave's work. Leaving his

other excellencies to the sagacity of other critics, I have only commended his zeal and industry. The former, I hope, will be allowed by catholics themselves, after due perusal of his quarto; and of the latter, I think, his volume is a weighty (I do not say heavy) proof. I apprehend that it is already beginning to sink by its own weight into oblivion. Another is that I have apologised for orange-men, and that I consequently must be an orange-man myself. I certainly

never have been, nor ever intend to be, an orange-man, since, having eight times taken the oath of allegiance, and being fully sensible that the support of my family depended on the continuance of the established government, I could not conceive any mode by which I could be more firmly attached to it; but I have been repeatedly assured by several orange-men, of undoubted veracity, and by my own sons, who are orange-men, that their system is purely defensive, and that to give even the smallest insult to any person on account of a difference in religion is contrary to their oaths. I mean not to palliate the excesses of the lower or higher orders of orange-men, more than of any other denomina, tions of men. Those among them who have infringed the laws of heaven and of their country, must be regarded as degrading the majesty of the monarch, and the sanctity of the religion which they have pretended to maintain. Another

objection is, that I have advised the protestants of Ireland never to coalesce with their Roman catholic countrymen. Many sayings have been fabricated and reported to have been written by me, of which I am ignorant. Perhaps the

following words in page 340, may have been absurdly misconceived in the above sense. "Since, from experienee of this event, civil "wars in any part of Ireland, except some "northern counties, must, from whatever causes

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excited, be justly expected to assume a religious complexion of the most bloody hue, "Irish protestants ought to be convinced, that "the political separation of their country from "Britain by a popular insurrection, must involve "their extinction, and consequently an infran

gibly determined adherence to their British "connexion is necessary for their safety." This is only an advice to them not to join in rebellion against the British government. I have elsewhere advised both protestants and catholics to cultivate mutual friendship; but for this I expected, as I have received, no thanks from either in fact the opposite of thanks from both.

The principal objection is, that I have, under the insidiously assumed mask of candour and impartiality, made the most artfully malicious insinuations against the catholics of Ireland, and that thus my book is, beyond all comparison,