CHAPTER V.

Essay on Toleration-Tending to prove that a Man's Speculative Opinion ought not to deprive him of the Rights of Civil Society— Prefatory Remarks of the Author.

CHRISTIANITY is a religion of love-it deprecates hatred and cruelty, seeking to win proselytes by gentle persuasion rather than by coercion ; believing that a change of religion is a conversion of mind, and that no amount of physical force can convince the intellect or bend the will. The great Author of Christianity despised the sword, and yet His creed has triumphed-He counts His worshippers from the rising to the setting of the sunfrom pole to pole-through every age of human history. If Christian rulers ever sought to gain converts to the faith by terror, their zeal for religion was the enthusiasm of fanatics, rather than the well-regulated earnestness of sober men. To hate our neighbour, because he will not conform to our religious views, is surely to do a most unchristian thing-to torture and persecute him for his nonconformity, is to bring to the aid of religion means of disciple-making which the God of religion disowns and repudiates.

The two greatest blessings which his Creator has conferred upon man, are Religion and Liberty; and yet none have been more sadly perverted and abused than they. Under the mask of the one, bigotry and fanaticism have deluged the world. with blood; under the guise of the other, anarchy and misrule have perpetrated crimes that reveal hidden depths of degradation to which humanity was deemed incapable of descending. And, yet, man is not convinced by the experience of

ages that his efforts to alter the convictions of his fellowmen by fire and sword have proved utterly unavailing. Rulers are as ready to-day to enforce conviction by cruelty, as they were in the times when rack and stake and sword were the arguments of religious truth. The crimes that have been committed in the name of liberty, are constantly re-enacted under the eyes of men. But the persecuted of this age are as well prepared as were their forefathers, to face the wrath of tyrants, and bend their necks unflinching to the blow, which, while inflicting death, adds to the brows of the victim a martyr's crown, and the halo of an imperishable remembrance. History repeats itself, and persecution for religion would, in this century, have the same effect that it had in the darkest hour of the past—it would only confirm the convictions it would seek to remove, and add to the principle of religious fidelity a new principle of honor, which would stimulate, to an invincible resolution, the votaries against whom its tortures would be directed. It would be said of them as was said of their ancestors:

"Proud of persecution's rage,

Some in fire, and some in field,
Their belief with blood have sealed,
Dying, as their fathers died,
For the God their foes denied."

The persecutions against the Irish on the score of religion, find no parallel for atrocity in the history of mankind. How men could so hate their neighbours. for the love of God, would be a paradox none might venture to solve. But the truth is, they did not hate their neighbours for God's sake, but for their own selfish purposes. It was against the property of the Irish that the penal laws were levelled-religion was only a pretext for persecution. Confiscation and suppression of manufactures enriched the conquerors-the conquered

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were told that they should never have been so punished but for their foolish adherence to an impious creed. Had the whole Irish race become Protestant, some other ground of persecution and rapine would have been invented. A highwayman attacks a defenceless traveller. My good man," he cries, "you are an unfortunate Papist, you are going straight to damnation-change your religion this moment-swear to the thirty-nine articles of the Anglican creed, or I will filch from you the last shilling of your wealth!" The traveller is a timid man he replies, "My friend, I cannot afford to lose my wealth, I accept your alternative-I swear to the articles of your creed." Are we justified in supposing that the scrupulous Turpin will not invent some new condition which his victim cannot possibly fulfil, and which will necessitate the sacrifice of his purse?

In this enlightened age, when the human mind seems nearly to have exhausted its researches after truth, and to begin acting on the stored-up experience of the past, it is but natural to think that statutes of persecution for creed's sake would be obsolete or entirely abolished, and that men, at length, would see the advantage of living in peace and harmony together, regardless of private feelings on the subject of religion. One would imagine that the Christians of the nineteenth century could scarcely learn a lesson of charity from the Romans who lived before the birth of Christ. And yet, we find the Romans worshipping, each family in its respective home, their own penates, while the citizens joined in common in offering sacrifices to the tutelary deities of the State. Would it were so with us, and that each religious sect or community might worship according to choice, without grudge or sneer, while Christians of every denomination would combine in upholding before the world the love and respect which all claim for the Creator, whom all alike acknowledge!

In the days of Arthur O'Leary, the Catholic religion, as we have seen, was not tolerated by law in Ireland; the professors of it were treated with a spirit of contempt, hatred, and contumely, degrading to human nature. The friends of the country, perceiving the influence he had gradually acquired by his writings, deemed it a favorable opportunity for the display of his talents in the cause of religious toleration. He was appealed to on the subject by many, and, at length, yielded to their solicitations. He produced the essay which we subjoin, and which would be much injured in the estimation of the reader by compression or curtailment. We give it in full, in the hope that the arguments it contains may exercise in the minds. of the intolerant of this day, an influence similar to that it produced on its first appearance-an influence which dissipated the clouds of prejudice and error concerning the religion of the Irishman, and opened for him the way to the enjoyment of those civil rights from which he had been so long and so unjustly excluded.

It would be treating the memory of Arthur O'Leary with cruel injustice, if we were to deny that this remarkable essay was largely instrumental in the favorable change which, at that time, took place in the English estimation of the Irish "Papists," and in the sudden lenity that marked the enactment and administration of the laws in their favor. Before he wrote, things had come to a pass which puts our credulity to the severest test. A Catholic scarcely ventured to address a Protestant with his hat on; a Catholic, as he walked the street, was immediately recognizable by his abject air and appearance. A remarkable anecdote illustrative of these facts, is given by Wyse, in his "Historical Sketch of the Catholic Association." "The pastor," he writes, " of one of the largest parishes in one of the principal towns of Ireland, had never been.

seen in the public promenade. For forty years he had lived in utmost seclusion from Protestant. .eyes, shielding himself from persecution under his silence and obscurity. But, the influence of the persecution remained after the persecution itself had passed away. After the concessions of 1793, a friend induced him, for the first time, to visit the rest of the town. He appeared amongst his fellow-citizens as an intruder, and shrunk back to his retreat the moment he was allowed. It was with difficulty, and on the most urgent occasions only, that he could be prevailed upon to quit it. Seldom did he appear on the walk afterwards, and it was always with the averted eyes and faltering step of a slave."

Things, indeed, have changed since then; but a great deal yet remains to be done. There are yet civil disabilities to which Catholics are unjustly subject; there are offices in the State which they are not permitted to fill; there are inequitable legal provisions affecting the disposal of their property. Everything that is holiest and most sacred in their religion, is constantly sneered at and ridiculed in the Protestant press, and on Protestant platforms. Ignorance and bigotry and fanaticism are still permitted to insult and deride the mysteries in defence of which the Irish Catholic would shed the last drop of his blood. Is this toleration, ample and honorable? Is it a toleration worthy of Christian men towards their fellow-Christians? Every candid reader will answer, No. The time is come when full and impartial justice should be done to Irishmen, and when the outcry against their religion should be hushed for ever. Many of the injustices to which they were subjected in bygone times, had their origin in the calumnies by which the national religion was misrepresented in the eyes of Englishmen, who learned to see in "Popery" a system of sanctifying the most abominable crimes. But Eng