of Ossory, the territory of the Butlers, immediately followed. Dublin was besieged by the rebel chieftain; and had it not been for the seasonable supplies of soldiers and money from England, must have fallen into the hands of lord Thomas. Lord Thomas retreated into Connaught, to practise with the Irish chieftains; and, if possible, to procure a force which might enable him to meet the governor with his new and increased force. After many desperate contests with the king's troops, the young and imprudent lord Thomas was abandoned by his followers, and left to repent the wild and precipitate scheme in which he involved so many of his innocent and brave countrymen. He was sent into England a prisoner, and was there sacrificed to the vengeance of the enraged Henry. Before he fell a victim to his folly, he learned that his father, for whose supposed death he first engaged in rebellion, was still living. Henry was not satisfied with the single life of lord Thomas. In the insatiable fury of his rage, this sanguinary and infamous monster smuggled over to England the five uncles of lord Thomas, who, though innocent of the crime with which they were charged, were sacrificed to the vengeance of a relentless despot. Such was the disastrous fate of a young nobleman, who is described by the historian as possessing a captivating person, manners the most popular and interesting, and a courage which no danger nor no difficulty could appal. The noblest feelings of our nature first impelled this young lord to draw his sword against the laws of his country; and the martial ambition with which he was fired by the praises and sycophancy of his followers, robbed him of that prudence and sound discretion which would have rendered him an ornament to his country.

We have now arrived at that period of Irish history which gave birth to new sources of calamity, and new causes of national distraction and suffering. A new era now opens upon us; and the accumulated 'opinions of ages,

X

fenced round by the terrors of power, and the fears of prejudice, are assailed by the bold and intrepid hand of innovation. We shall behold that king of England, who obtained from the pope the high and flattering title of defender of the faith, severing his kingdom from the church of Rome; sacrificing his religion to his passions; opening the flood-gates of error, and letting in an inundation of opinions as mutable as they were wild, and fleeting as they were uncertain. We behold the human mind broke loose, and sent adrift upon the wide and tempestuous ocean of speculation; the abuses which disfigured the religion of Rome (and what system of fifteen hundred years standing would not be corrupted by human passions?) magnified into abominations; the power of the pope, which the civilized world had been accustomed to revere, denominated despotism; and to rebel against that religion which had so often sheathed the sword of revolution, and illuminated the darkness of barbarism, was now considered the best evidence of liberal and enlightened minds, and the best service which the learned could render their country. Mr. Taaffe, speaking of the reformation, has the following just observations: "English historians, as well as their Irish partizans, give such accounts of this reformation begun by Henry VIII. as favor their own party, and for want of knowing the real, attributed to imaginary 'causes, its tardy and small progress in Ireland. That arbitrary and cruel tyrant never meant any alteration in the. creed or ritual he had learned, but solely thirsted for money and pleasure. To indulge his capricious lusts he created the schism; to acquire money, and also to deprive the pope of partizans, he suppressed monasteries, and seized their estates and moveables. He had too much need of partizans to lock up his vast plunder of ecclesiastical property in his own coffers. He prudently distributed a great portion of it among men of rank and talent, whom he thus interested to espouse his innovations; adding withal,

such titles of honor and distinction as generally captivate human vanity. With these means, and the exercise of unlimited power, the authority of an obsequious parliament, the concurrence of a corrupt prelacy, and the general timidity and procrastinating policy of English catholics, the hism was completed in England-in Ireland it met greater opposition." Why in Ireland the reformation should meet with greater opposition than in England, may be accounted for, without having recourse to the odious and humiliating causes stated by Mr. Leland, and other advocates of the reformed religion.

The people of Ireland were more interested in the preservation of their religion and the protection of their priesthood, than the people of England, because there were a fewer number of abuses to be complained of; fewer examples of hypocrisy and fraud to be found in Ireland than in England. In the former, the minister of religion was never detected making the sacred functions of his office the instruments of his ambition or his aggrandizement. Here he did not feed on public credulity, nor amass treasure at the expence of the public reason. Here the altar was not bartered for the favor of the court, or the smiles of corrup tion. The Irish clergy exercised hospitality, the native virtue of their country; their abbeys were seats of literature and humanity. To clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to relieve the sick, were their characteristic. duties. The superior chastity of the Irish clergy (attested by foreign writers) above those of surrounding nations, was an insuperable barrier to the principles of the rapacious and lascivious reformer. The Irish abhorred the plundering and schismatic schemes of the rapacious Henry VIII. because they foresaw the decline of Christianity, in the abolition of that unity and universality which is the grand principle of the catholic church, and the certain preservative of the Christian doctrine. They foresaw that the church of England, torn from the main body of the faith

ful, would, like a branch torn from a tree, wither and produce insects; and that a schismatical limb of the catholic church, severed from the communion of the faithful, would decay, and be overrun with innumerable heresies. They foresaw that reform, effected by the vilest and most infamous instruments, by substituting reason for authority, sapped the foundation of revealed religion, and let loose the most destructive and desolating passions of the human heart. The Irish, therefore, holding firmly by the anchor of their old and venerated faith, buffetted the storms of reformation, and to this hour exhibit a nation professing sober and rational religion; while the neighbouring country (England) is distracted, with conflicting sectaries, like the waves of the ocean, each burying the other in eternal oblivion.

tures.

Three hundred years have now elapsed, since this great and extraordinary revolution of the human mind took place; and those who have the volume of history before them, can best discover the advantages or the evils which have flowed to mankind from the destruction of that unity and universality of religious doctrine which preserved the peace of nations for so many centuries. In 1536, Henry VIII. summoned a convocation in England, to deliberate on the necessity of making a new translation of the scripTindal had formerly given to the world a translation, which the clergy complained of as very inaccurate and unfaithful. It was therefore proposed, in the convocation summoned by Henry, that a new translation be made, which could not be liable to any objection. The arguments made use of, at this period, in defence of the principles and views of the reformers, and of the consequences of the reformation of the human mind, as well as the arguments made use of by the advocates of the old religion, in opposition to the innovation recommended by the reformers, are worthy of the serious and deliberate consideration of every man, who, seduced by the specious sentiment of liberal and enlightened toleration, encourages

the principle of leaving to each individual the formation of his own religious tenets, or the profession of his own religious doctrines.

The arguments of the reformers of 1536 have been the prolific source of the innumerable sects which now cover the face of England: which have divided, and subdivided, and distracted the protestant congregations, and have at length exposed the divine religion of Christ to the scoffs, and sneers, and sarcasms of the deist and the atheist. Mr. Hume as preserved those arguments for and against the reformers; he has weighed them in the philosophic balance; and we will now leave it to our reader to determine on which side truth, justice, and common sense lie, and whether the principles of Leo X. or of Henry VIII. are at this day most deserving the respect and the deference of mankind. We will give the arguments in Mr. Hume's words; they are prophetic of the consequences which mankind has experienced, and conclusive against those latitudinarian doctrines which blockheads affect, because some philosophers are found among their supporters. In 1536, the friends of the reformation asserted that "nothing could be more absurd than to conceal in an unknown tongue the word itself of God, and thus to counteract the will of heaven, which, for the purpose of universal salvation, had published that salutary doctrine to all nations: that if this practice was not very absurd, the artifice was at least barefaced, and showed a consciousness, that the glosses and traditions of the clergy stood in direct opposition to the original text, dictated by supreme intelligence: that it was now necessary for the people, so long abused by interested pretensions, to see with their own eyes, and to examine whether the claims of ecclesiastics were founded on that charter, which was on all hands acknowledged to be derived from heaven: and that as a spirit of research and curiosity was happily revived, and men were now obliged to make a choice among the pretensions of different sects, the proper materials for decision, and, above all, the ho