are, accordingly, now that they are invested with all the privileges of the state, as compact and as resolute for the accomplishment of those ulterior objects to which you and I so ardently look forward, as ever they were, in the day of their disabilities, for the attainment of Emancipation.

But, you will ask me, was the iron Duke, as he is called, really frightened by the Catholic Association? No more than I was. There was not a man in England who knew better the stuff of which they were made. There was not a man in Europe who would have been less likely to quail, if there was any real danger. But the Duke, some how or other, began to consider that the measure of Emancipation was a wise one. Of religion, I believe no one accuses him of caring very much. And the arguments of Burke, and Fox, and Grattan, who advocated the measure when it really might have produced what they would have considered salutary effects, began to impinge upon the retina of the Duke's mental vision, at a time when circumstances had altogether altered the state of the question, and when the most sanguine of its enlightened advocates would have acknowledged that the benefits to be expected from it were doubtful. The Duke's character as a warrior was complete. His exploits placed him at the head of the chivalry of Europe. He was ambitious of the character of a statesman; and supposed that he could not exhibit either his power or his wisdom in this new character more decidedly, than by carrying a measure which baffled the ability of the greatest senators that ever were at the head of an English administration. He wished to eclipse Pitt and Fox and Canning, as completely as he had conquered Bonaparte. To this I attribute his conduct. He was not frightened by the Catholic Association into the surrender of their civil privileges-but he would not suffer their violence to divert him from the settled purpose of conferring their civil privileges upon them. It was a grand thing to say he was afraid of civil war. It had its effect upon fools and dotards, and furnished him with a pretext for doing that very thing, which, had there been the least ground for his apprehension, he would have cut off his right hand

sooner than have recommended.But, does not all this only shew that events have been overruled by Providence? Results have been produced by the folly of our agitators, and the infatuation of our enemies, which no wisdom or foresight on our part could have rendered probable. May the same Almighty Power still continue to preside over our affairs, and may we, with humble gratitude, learn to estimate the value of his divine protection!

I have now, I trust, shewn how the measure which it was apprehended would have ruined us as a sect, and weakened us as a party, was granted in a manner and under circumstances which increased and consolidated our political and religious importance. If it found us strong, it has made us stronger. But that is not all, or even half. Whilst it promoted union and confidence among us, it has caused divisions, and carried dismay, among our adversaries. This I shall now proceed to explain to you.

The Duke of Wellington and Mr Peel were, you know, regarded as the heads of the Tory party. They were distinguished, during their whole political lives, by hostility to our claims. They both went out of office when Mr Canning became premier, because they would not act under a prime minister who was a powerful and determined advocate of Emancipation, although Mr Canning had pledged himself not to make that measure a cabinet question, and would have left his colleagues free and unshackled to oppose or support it as they pleased. Well, they contrived to cripple and embarrass him during the shortlived period of his power, and, in the end, broke his heart. That brilliant declaimer may be said, literally, to have fallen a victim to their hostility and his own ambition. He was succeeded by a weakling who was as amiable as a man as he proved imbecile as a Minister: a friend, also, to our claims; but from that very circumstance altogether incapable of accomplishing any thing for us. Had either Canning or Lord Goderich remained in power to this hour, we should have been still in bondage. But it pleased HIM who ruleth on high so to order things

here below, that what we never could have obtained from our friends, we obtained from our enemies. There is an old proverb which says that "no enemy can match a friend." This our adversaries were doomed to prove; while for us was reserved the happier experience of its converse, namely, that no friend can match an enemy. The Duke of Wellington came into power with the loud acclaim of the Protestant party, who regarded him as a leader by whom their intolerance should be rendered as triumphant in the cabinet as the arms of England were in the field. But how little did they know what awaited them! And, truly, I may also add, how little did he know what awaited him! In a word, he deceived their hopes,-he abused their confidence. Their own chosen champion defeated the intolerants; and the same act which wrecked his party, and ruined himself, struck the chains off the hands of the liberated millions of Catholic Ireland! Yes, our emancipation would have been but half accomplished if it had been brought about by the Whigs. The Tory, or conservative party, as they are called, would still have existed in their unbroken strength, and have been able to oppose the most serious obstacles to those ulterior views, with reference to which alone faithful believers have ever looked with any degree of earnestness to the removal of civil disabilities. But when the same act which consummated our political hopes, annihilated, or almost annihilated, the faction which could alone effectually contend against us in our pious endeavours for the re-establishment of our ancient ascendency; when our exaltation was not more sudden or complete, than their humiliation was unexpected and disastrous, how is it possible to refuse our assent to the conviction, that the same power which led the Israelites through the Wilderness, and caused them to pass dry-shod through the Red Sea, while overwhelming destruction awaited their oppressors, was visible in the great deliverance which was now vouchsafed to his persecuted Church, and in the prodigious discomfiture which was visited upon her heretical enemies!

The Duke betrayed his party; and nothing less should be expected by him than that his party should have deserted him. And yet, I think, if he apprehended that, to the extent that it has actually taken place, even his iron nerves would have shrunk from the consequences. He hoped, perhaps, that, after a season, the resentment of his old followers would have passed away; that they would have had reason to acknowledge the ridiculous nature of the apprehensions which they entertained of popish influence; or, if any such apprehension appeared likely to be realized, that they would have been rallied under his standard by a sense of common danger. But he reckoned without his host. The Tories, to do them justice, were deeply sincere in their abhorrence of popery, (as the poor deluded creatures are wont to call true religion,) and were stung by the Duke's treachery to a degree of madness which rendered them reckless of every consideration but that of revenge. To hurl him from power seemed now the summit of their ambition, without any regard to ulterior consequences. The vindictive creatures resembled the insects of whom the poet has said, "ponunt in vulnere vitas." They succeeded in their object. The Duke was compelled to resign: and the consequence was, the promotion of an exclusively Whig administration. Lord Grey, who assumed the reins of power, felt himself without that customary support without which, as the constitution at present stands, the affairs of government cannot be carried on; and, although a most haughty aristocrat, and pledged by a declaration that he would "stand by his order," has been compelled, no doubt most unwillingly, to court popular support by proposing a measure of legislative reform, the most sweeping and radical that ever was entertained by a British Parliament. Oh! my friend, how delightful is it to see the different parties in the heretical State all pursuing courses so directly favourable to the very cause to which any of them would least desire to be subservient! Their hostility to our Holy Church has not been neutralized merely by their insane divisions:-it has been rendered fatal to themselves. Should the meditated

reform take effect, how can the monarchy stand?-and with the monarchy must go the Church of England. And who, in truth, are the reformers? None other than the intolerants, whose hatred of the Duke for what they called his base desertion of them in bringing in the Catholic bill, caused them to help the Whigs to the possession of power; which sooner than relinquish, these children of sordid emolument and sedition are prepared to plunge the country into civil war.

The interest which this great question excites at the present moment is not to be described. The King has been induced to declare himself in favour of reform; and this has made even the loyalty of England take part with those who, under other circumstances, would be denounced as public enemies. The name of royalty has on this occasion been made use of for the purpose of undermining the throne; as the name of religion has been used on other occasions for the purpose of overturning the altar!

These providential arrangements, (for such they assuredly are) will become the more manifest when it is considered, that not only if Canning had remained in power, emancipation would not have been granted, but, had he not died, reform could not have taken place. His removal from office was not more necessary for the one purpose, than his removal from existence was for the other. And for both, God bless them, we are indebted to the precious Tories! Had Canning lived, the very Whigs who are now endeavouring to retain office by means of reform, (surely they have been visited with "a strong delusion" by which they have been made "to believe a lie,") WOULD HAVE

COME WITH POWER PLEDGED AGAINST

IT! His death, therefore, was absolutely essential to the acceleration of more coming events which are to herald the re-establishment of true religion. The Whigs have now attained office, but it is morally certain that they cannot retain it one hour

after the floodgates of democracy have been opened upon the constitution. Whoever may succeed them will be the creatures of the mob, and must conform in all things to the supreme will and pleasure of what is in mockery termed the majesty of the people. In a word, Old England, the mother and the protectrix of heresies, will have come to an end,

and new England, reformed England, will commence a career of revolution and anarchy, which, if any human penalties could atone for inexpiable offences, would serve as a propitiation for the guilt of her damnable apostasy, and her cruel persecution of the Church of God, with which the Inquisition itself might be satisfied.

These, my friend, are a few of "the signs of the times" in this coun try. Upon the continent I am compelled to believe that things wear a different aspect. But, be comforted. You may rest assured that if we are enabled, by the divine assistance, to accomplish the objects upon which our hearts are set, the Catholic Church will receive a reinforcement, by the aid of which she will be enabled to defy all her adversaries. She may be persecuted; but she is not forsaken;-she may be cast down, but she is not destroyed. She may be deserted by hollow friends; she may be beleaguered by insulting enemies; the Evil One may storm and rage, and hell enlarge itself beyond measure against her; but faith must be dead within us if we abandon the belief that she is still under His providential care who can convert stumbling-blocks into stepping-stones, and cause the very hostility which is directed against his holy religion to contribute more directly and more effectually to its establishment, than any plans of merely human contrivance. From what has been already said, I think the truth is tolerably evident;-it will be more so when you are more particularly instructed in the internal condition of Ireland. For the present, farewell.

MY DEAR FRIEND, You are now instructed respecting those external arrangements, as I

T.K.

may call them, relating to the Church in this country, by which serious obstacles to its extension and establish.

ment have been removed. You have seen that it was redeemed from a state of bondage; and that in such a manner, that what has been already done for it only opens a vista to what may yet be expected. Catholic emancipation, instead of a final settlement, was but the foundation for new claims, and the earnest of new concessions, which shall, please God, only terminate in the triumphant establishment of our religion in all the plenitude of its ancient glory. The events that I have already sketched may shew you that my expectations are not altogether visionary; still less will they be so considered when we come to view the internal arrangements, which will, I trust, be perceived to be the exact counterparts of what have been described, and that the former do not more completely afford facilities for the attainment of that ecclesiastical aggrandizement which is in prospect, than the latter enable our Church to profit by them.

In the first place, hold it in mind, that the government of this Protestant empire bears almost the whole expense of the maintenance and education of our candidates for holy or ders. Just imagine how a proposition of that kind, on the part of heretics, would be received at Rome, and you will have some idea of the stuff that our "liberality" is made of! But do not, I pray you, abuse a term, which, in this instance at least, is of such immense importance to the interests of true religion. The college of Maynooth, where our young men are educated, is a purely eleemosynary institution. It is supported by an annual parliamentary grant; and was established at a time when Bonaparte was master of the continent, and when it was apprehended such of our people as went abroad for education might return infected by French principles. It was also hoped, that by being educated at home, a feeling of gratitude and loyalty would be produced, which would more than compensate for the expense which was thus saddled upon the country. When you remember the creed of England, and the laws which were at that time in force, you may judge of the consistency of the government in thus giving a positive establishment (for our religion was, from that mo

ment, subordinately established) to a Church which was believed to maintain errors that were damnable and idolatrous. They thus deliberately sacrificed what they affected to believe to be the spiritual interests of the people, to considerations of state policy. If they were right in their opinion, we were wrong in ours; and if we were wrong, however we may have been tolerated, we should not have been encouraged in our errors; much less, furnished with the only means of disseminating them amongst the people! But thus it was that the Lord blinded the understandings of his enemies! And I can promise you that there was in this case no departure from the usual result of such unhallowed policy,-for in them it was unhallowed. I never yet knew an instance where religion was sacrificed to the exigencies of state, and where the exigencies of state were really answered by such a sacrifice. I need not tell you that the principles inculcated at Maynooth are not more favourable to the British government than those which are taught on the continent. I need not tell you that the attachment of our clergy to their own religion is not less strong, or that their hatred of an heretical and intrusive establishment is not less inveterate, because they are subsisted upon an eleemosynary fund, extorted from mistaken liberality, and furnished in the foolish hope of making their civil conflict with their spiritual allegiance. No, my friend, your brethren in Ireland have not so learned to put off Christ. Nor have we, for one moment, by any act or declaration for which we are responsible, suffered the government of the country to be deceived upon this subject.

We have uniformly professed, and uniformly acted upon the profession, that our civil is subordinate to our spiritual allegiance. Such is their stolidity, that they have saved us the trouble of any mental reservation. And if that were the case in the day of our humiliation, what may not be expected, when, to use the language of the fanatic regicide, "The Lord has delivered them into our hands ?"

The period, too, at which this establishment was founded is worthy of being held in mind. The penal disabilities had been relaxed to a

degree that permitted our people to enjoy all the substantial blessings of the constitution. The fields of trade and commerce were thrown open to them, as were also the liberal professions, the army, the navy, the practice of medicine and the bar. At this particular period, a spurious liberality and a profane hardihood of enquiry led many, who had, previously, been dutifully submissive to the commands of the church, to doubt of her divine authority, and even to have recourse to Holy Scripture for the purpose of ascertaining how far her pretensions were sanctioned by the word of God. Profane and absurd temerity! As if that which would not have been received unless she bore witness to it, was to be erected into a standard by which she herself was to be judged! As if, while it was acknowledged that upon her testimony alone the Scriptures were received, it could with any shew of reason be pretended, that, upon their testimony alone, she should be rejected! But so it was. Our people began to exhibit symptoms of heretical pravity, such as, in more favoured countries, would have caused them to be handed over to the secular power. It was no uncommon thing to see Catholics of the better class frequent attendants upon Protestant places of worship. Not a few of that description made a formal renunciation of what they blasphemously called "the errors of the Church of Rome;"-and, had the penal laws been at that time completely repealed, I should have trembled for the consequences! But, thank God, they remained in force just sufficient to make it a point of honour with numbers not to desert what was still reputed to be a persecuted sect, who in no one respect paid the slightest regard to any of its sacred ordinances. Truly, my friend, if the disabilities and persecutions, when at their height, were wellnigh crushing us, the slender remnants of them which then subsisted were our only preservatives against annihilation. They were the plank, as it were, which saved us from being overwhelmed in the ocean of liberalism by which we were surrounded. Well-but I must not digress from the point in hand.

From what has been said you may well imagine the better classes furnished but few candidates for holy orders. Indeed, my friend, with grief I speak it, a Roman Catholic gentleman, at the period to which I allude, would as soon have thought of bringing up his son to be a conjurer as to be a priest! Formerly the ranks of our ministry were well supplied from the gentle blood of Catholic Ireland! and there was no family in the country, not even the highest, who would not have felt proud of having given a son to the service of the sanctuary. At that time no one could be educated for our ministry who was not in circumstances which permitted him to visit the continent as a gentleman, and to receive a liberal education. But, such was the decay either of zeal, or of orthodoxy, or of inclination to be set apart for the service of God, at the time to which I have particularly directed your attention, that, if Providence had not interfered in an extraordinary way on our behalf, the services of religion must have been altogether neglected; there could not, humanly speaking, have been found a body of clergy by whom its holy rites might be duly and efficiently administered in the land. Was it not, then, especially important, that in proportion as the supply of regularly educated ecclesiastics was withheld on one side, it should be furnished on another;-that, in proportion as our own gentry deserted us, Protestant liberality should have afforded us the means and the opportunity of making our lower orders supply their place;-of preventing, in fact, a dearth of Catholic ministers, without whose aid the Catholic religion would have become extinct in Ireland? Indeed, my friend, it was. Herein I recognise a peculiar providence. Had things been suffered to take their natural course, our gentry and traders would have been absorbed by the acquisition of wealth and the pursuit of honour; and the bulk of the people would have been ill disposed to tax themselves for the cost of an establishment such as that at Maynooth. It was then most important, that at this critical period we should have been enabled, by the bounty of an heretical Parlia