pation, as it is termed, would be a direct violation of the coronation oath. They were attended by large bodies of freebooters: the ferocious Orange-men were eager to offer their services, in which they might revel in their lust for traducing, reviling, and oppressing their Catholic countrymen. On the other hand, the public beheld the unusual phenomenon of the great political rivals, with their respective friends and adherents, maintaining the imperious necessity of the measure, and denying that the free will of the executive can in any possible case be constitutionally fettered from assenting to whatever bill the Lords and Commons in parliament assembled may advise: that the coronation oath, by its words and spirit, enjoins the observance of existing laws; and the constitution leaves them essentially open to repeal and modification, according to the exigencies of times and circumstances. It is at this moment an awful consideration to a reflecting mind, that upon the liberty and welfare of four millions of his majesty's subjects, inhabiting the most vulnerable part of the British empire, the whole body politic is drawn out in full array, every one dreading the word of command. In this unaccountable suspense, fear, or stupor, the passive victims are silent and quiet-plectuntur achivi. The most lamentable effect of this perilous state of things, is, that the straggling corps of freebooters and marauders, presuming on their commissions, which recognize them as an irregular part of the general force, are permitted and encouraged to commence a masked warfare. They are let loose unmuzzled, fresh trained to the old game, without badge, name or responsibi

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rend prelate of Landaff, who has not scrupled, in the year 1803, to make the following open, manly, and Christian declaration : (Vide the substance of a speech intended to have been spoken in the House of Lords, p. 27) "We "think the Catholics to be in error: they think the same of us: both "ought to reflect, that every error is not a criminal error; and that their error is the greatest, who most err against Christian charity. If any one should " contend, that this is not the time for government to make concessions to Ire"land, I wish him to consider, whether there is any time, in which it is im"proper for either individuals or nations to do justice, any season improper. "for extinguishing animosity, any occasion more suitable than the present for "putting an end to heart-burnings and internal discontent. I should be as averse as any man from making concessions to an enemy invading the coun"try: but I would do much to gain a cordial friend to assist me in driving “ him back; and such a friend, I am confident, Ireland would become."

A like spirit of liberality and moderation must have inspired the breast of the primate of the British hierarchy, when he modelled the form of prayer, in which the nation last year invoked the divine protection and blessing on the solemn fast-day: "Give us all grace to put away from us all rancour of religious dis"sention, that they who agree in the essentials of our most holy faith, and look "for pardon through the merits and intercession of the Saviour, may, notwith"standing their differences upon points of doubtful opinion, and in the forms "of external worship, still be united in the bonds of Christian charity, and "fulfil thy blessed Son's commandment, of loving one another as he hath lov"ed them."

lity. The war-whoop of defamation, slander, and opposition has long been given. Every engine has been put in requisition, that can be commanded to spread again wide and deep the baneful spirit of religious discord. As if Ireland, poor ill-fated Ireland, had not yet been saturated with blood and wretchedness! As if Great Britain feared that union should expel the dæmon of dissention, and diffuse indiscriminate concord through that long-distracted country, the government papers in England are fed from Ireland with the foulest calumnies and falsehoods. The nauseous cant of bigotted mendacity is largely administered, as a provocative to stimulate the wasting lust for religious persecu tion. They are the unadministered doses, with which Ireland has been overgorged, sent under Drogheda covers to take their fate upon such British patients as shall madly swallow them. Such anonymous discharges of rancorous falsehoods, even in the supposed pay of government,* would produce but slight effects upon the impartial public, were they left to operate by their mere` intrinsic virtue. If, in spite of St. Patrick's wand, there still be found some envenomed reptiles in the holy island, the dunghills, in which their baneful eggs are hatched, may be easily traced to Merrion Avenue, or the vicinity of Lismore. The venomous issue may be followed home through all their windings, forms, and craft, to the parent vipers. These poisonous nondescripts have, however, the peculiarity of being innoxious to all but to their kin dred spawn.

The author has already endeavoured to convince his reader of the real and true grounds upon which he proposed, and the minister acceded to his writing a history of Ireland. Yet, ere he quits the subject, he submits to the public this written declaration, which he made to Mr. Addington, in a letter of the 26th of Ju ly, 1803, which was never honoured with an answer.

The Times being the official government paper, has with certain persons the authority of a British Moniteur. This paper, for the 5th January 1804, in a letter signed Molyneux, sets out in telling us that, "the disaffection and tur"bulence which have disgraced Ireland for above twenty years have arisen "from a radical ignorance in the English government, of its real state." This is a prelude to a second letter of the same hireling, in The Times of the 9th January, in which he himself says, that the author's" voluminous work is a gross "libel on the conduct of the British government!" From Molyneux's commendation of the British Critic, it may be inferred, that those valuable and well-founded invectives have been made up in the gross by the same hand; to which also may be attributed some other such portions sent forth in the Traveller, for the benefit of his British country customers: in which may be read this description of all his Catholic countrymen: whose wants and wishes are, says he, to exter minate all loyal subjecte from Ireland; to seize their property, to separate it for ever from England, and to appropriate it exclusively to themselves: and this object they have invariably pursued ever since the Reformation was introduced into Ireland. Such are these Doctors' Union Pille.

"SIR,

Essex Street, 26th July, 1803.

I

"I am sorry to find, from a conversation with Mr. Wickham, "that the long and painful labours I have undergone to promote "union and affection in the sister kingdom, have in some shape "failed of the desired effect; and that it is found impracticable ❝ to give public countenance to the circulation of my history. "lament that the same object can be seen in such opposite lights. "I appeal, sir, to your candour, whether the express conditions, "under which I took the work in hand were not, to write an au"thentic, impartial, and true history of Ireland, to counteract "the effects of sir Richard Musgrave's falsities and calumnies, "to render the union popular, and follow up and support the spi"rit of lord Cornwallis's administration. To effect this, it be "came essentially necessary to decry that system, which lord "Cornwallis so pointedly reprobated; nor could those persons "be consistently praised or palliated, against whom he had either expressed or shewn displeasure, or offence. I have laboured "incessantly and zealously to inculcate, on every occasion, gra❝titude to his most gracious majesty for the many signal favours "conferred upon the Irish Catholics during his reign; to display "the advantages of union in the most fascinating colours, and to "convince the people of that country, that it is the intention of "the present government to tread in the footsteps of lord Corn"wallis, and not in those of his predecessor. I have necessarily "thrown the odium of certain measures upon a junto in Ireland, "whose monopoly of power I neither did or do conceive the pre66 sent government wishes to revive or support. I have laboured "all I could to purify the British government in the eyes of the "Irish nation, and to make them sensible of the advantages of "the union from the innate and unvarying corruption of their own " parliament," &c. Such were the sentiments of the author, not obliquely hinted at, ambiguously assumed, or obscurely stated, but explicitly urged both before and after publication, perhaps ad nauseam. Great then was his surprise, when he observed the mind of the minister obstinately bent upon inverting, counteracting, and undervaluing the measures of lord Cornwallis's administration; greater, when he passed in review the long procession of characters implicated in, dependant upon, or interested in the continuance of the present system of government in Ireland, who now fill high offices in the state, and command an influence upon his majesty's councils: all combining to revive, extend, and give permanency to the Machiavelian principle, so fatal ever to Ireland, divide et impera. The author undertakes not to combat these principles. He pretends not to lay, but to expose to view the Orange spirit, which lies a deadly incubus upon the present

ministry of the country. If Ireland, after the union, be not emancipated, fitting it is, that the Irish should know the men * and the measures that keep them out of this long-sighed-for land of promise.

In the front of their opponents stands conspicuously forward the lord high chancellor of Ireland, baron Redesdale. The fierceness of his zeal bespeaks all the precipitancy and heat of a recent proselyte to the cause. What powerful potion has effected the stupendous change of a liberal English solicitor-general into an austere Irish chancellor, the reader may, the author cannot discover. The public has now had before them a chain of polemical correspondence between that noble lord and the earl of Fingall, the first in rank of the body of Irish Catholics. The circumstance of lord Hardwicke's desiring the chancellor to put that noble earl into the commission of the peace, gave occasion to this extraordinary correspondence. When sir John Mitford brought a bill into the British House of Commons, in favour of the English Catholics, he is presumed to have thoroughly considered, for he then expressed himself well pleased with the tenets, principles, and conduct of that body, which received great benefit under his act. The nation rejoiced: The Catholics were grateful. Local circumstances may occasion a difference in the actions and conduct of the Irish from those of the English Catholics: but all the tenets and principles of the Roman Catholic church being common to all the members of it, whether resident in England or Ireland, his lordship's objections to Catholic doctrine must have had the same force (if any force they have) against the English Catholics in 1790, and the Irish in 1803. Not a man, who had not read this hyperpolemical ebullition, could believe it possible, that the great arbiter of national equity, the prime adviser of his majesty's councils, and keeper of his conscience, should descend to become the Eolus of polemical discord, in a nation still throbbing with the

The irritation and virulence of the British Critic, and other anonymous writers, who are stimulated and hired to disgorge their venom at the Historical Review, shew, and it has become the author's duty to unfold the conspiracy, formed not merely against Catholic emancipation, but against the publication of the truth of Irish history. Her masked assassins indiscriminately plunge their envenomed steel in the breast of every votary to truth. Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine habetur. Protestant, Catholic, churchman, layman, are equally included in their deadly warrant. The author has in his possession a letter, written, within these two months, from the rev. Mr. Gordon, whose faithful and impartial history of the rebellion of 1798 is too well known to all, who make common cause with truth, to need commendation. They will rejoice to learn, that this diligent investigator and illustrious martyr to truth is employing his literary talents upon a more extended scale." I am," says he, engaged for some time past in a history of Ireland, from the earliest accounts "to the present time, and hope that you will find that impartiality in it, which you have had the goodness to praise in my account of the Rebellion; on account "of which I bave been, and am most maliciously and meanly persecuted, to the " discredit of many professors of the Protestant religion."

green wounds of religious rancour. Reason will not second the warmest wish to exculpate the Irish chancellor from making charges he knew to be false and groundless. The act, of his own introduction, requires, from every English Catholic, both a declaration of his adherence in spirituals to the see of Rome and an oath of allegiance to a Protestant king. He did not then think them incompatible. The legislature does not now think them incompatible. The author knows not to what account to place the confusion of the terms defection from the see of Rome, rebellion, and allegiance, in the following sentence of his first letter. "Until the priests of the Roman Catholic persuasion shall cease to inculcate, that all who differ from them in religious "opinions are to be considered as guilty of defection from the 66 see of Rome, that is, as guilty of rebellion, including his ma"jesty's sacred person, in that description, it cannot be expected, "that vulgar men should think themselves bound by any tie of "allegiance to a king, thus represented to them as himself guilty of "a breach of what is termed a higher duty of allegiance, The most uninformed parish priest throughout the four provinces of Ireland would have blushed thus to abuse the terms and confound the duties of the subject and the Christian.

Who would suppose that these sentiments were written by the dispenser of that church in Ireland, which, by their ninth and eleventh canon, deals out excommunication ipso facto upon all those who shall hereafter separate themselves from the communion of saints, as it is approved by the apostle's rule in the church of England, and combine themselves in a new brotherhood, &c. and those who affirm and maintain that any other assembly or congregation of the king's subjects, than those of the church of England, may rightly challenge to themselves the name of true and lawful churches, &c. Is he to be presumed ignorant of the tenet of exclusive salvation so strongly asserted in the Athanasian creed, and the eighteenth of the thirty-nine articles of religion, to which every clergyman must subscribe ere he can enjoy any of his lordship's benefices? No religion can be inculcated to man, but upon the score of truth: and truth is one. The Irish Catholics have been uninterruptedly loyal de facto to Protestant princes since the Revolution in 1668: but this zealous champion would now argue them out of the very possibility of their loyalty for want of brotherhood in Christ with a Protestant prince. Does his lordship recollect that Dissenters (though by the canons of his church an excommunicated brotherhood) are loyal to king George, who is of the established church of England, and that the Protestants of the same established church were loyal to king William, a Presbyterian? When this polemic chancellor complained that dr. Troy, in his pastoral instructions on the duties of Christian citizens, holds up high the exclusive doctrine, did he reflect whether