of the illiterate and the learned. Success attended the wisdom of his measures. And though it should seem, if credit were given to the infuriated declamations of some of the Hugunot ministers, that the king had armed, one half of his subjects, to slaughter the other half; yet the truth is, that every thing passed to the great satisfaction of the king, without effusion of blood, and without disturbance. The most seditious, stunned by this vigorous blow, shewed thrmselves the most tractable of all. As to those who were more tenacious of their erroneous tenets, they left the kingdom, and took away with them the seeds of all our civil wars.' The prince adds, that ́although the number of the Hugunots, who went out of France, at this time' should amount, according to the most exaggegerated accounts, to 67,732 persons, including all ages and sexes, their retreat did not cost the state so many useful members as would have been snatched away by one single year of civil war.

The whole account of this imputed persecution is false and garbled. The excesses which were committed on the Hugonots some time after the revocation of the edict had been executed, were occasioned by the turbulent conduct of the Hugonots themselves. The "plain Christians" extol queen Anne "for her Christian interference in their favour;" but they forget that this queen was one of the most cruel persecutors of her own Catholic subjects that ever filled the throne of England. The revocation of the edict of Nantes is a favourite theme with the partisans of Protestantism and intolerance, but they carefully conceal the perfidious and disgraceful violation of the treaty of Limerick by William III. and his ministers, before the ink was dry on the parchment which contained the contract. This treaty was made with the Catholics of Ireland under the walls of Limerick, by which the Catholics surrendered up the country to the new monarch, who pledged himself that the Catholics should have perfect liberty of conscience, and the exercise of their civil rights in common with their Protestant brethren. The treaty received the sanction of the great seal of England; yet two months had not elapsed before it was infringed by the Protestant contractors in the face of the whole world; while the Catholics rigidly adhered to its stipulations. Nay, the very pulpits were made instrumental to justify the violation of the treaty, and a Bishop of Meath was not ashamed to preach that faith was not to be kept with Catholics. This breach of a solemn engagement was followed up by the enactment of the most cruel and oppressive laws the ingenuity of man could invent to harrass and persecute his fellow man. An act was passed to prevent Catholics from being educated. Another was passed to disarm them. A third to banish the clergy out of the kingdom. By a fourth Protestants were prevented from intermarrying with Catholics; and others still more severe followed upon the unhappy sufferers under "Protestant-ascendency."

When Anne came to the crown new crimes and new sufferings were prepared for the Catholics. They were deprived of their paternal inheritances, and prevented from acquiring an inch of land in the kingdom. The late Mr. Edmund Burke, in his Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, alluding to the cruelty of the penal code under which the Catholics groaned, says, "You abhorred it, as I did, for its vicious perfection. "For I must do it justice. It was a complete system, full of coherence " and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted " for the OPPRESSION, IMPOVERISHMENT, and DEGRADATION "of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever

proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." In short, during this queen's reign, who is lauded by the "few plain Christians," for her merciful interference in favour of the rebellious Hugonots, the legislature was chiefly occupied in devising persecuting statutes to extirpate Popery, as Catholicism was called, and encouraging magistrates and informers to put these cold-blooded laws into force. On the 17th of March, 1704, the Irish Parliament resolved unanimously that all magistrates and other persons whatsoever, who neglected or omitted to put the laws against Catholics in due execution, were betrayers of the liberties of the kingdom. And they moreover resolved that the PERSECUTING and INFORMING against Papists, was an HONOURABLE service to Government. The better, too, to encourage the trade, 501, was the price offered for a bishop or archbishop's head; 201. for that of a priest; and 10l. for that of a Catholic school-master, usher, or private tutor. "Charity," says the proverb, "begins at home," and we think it would be well if the "few plain Christians" were to set about verifying it. They have shewn a wonderful degree of sympathy for the people of every nation and clime, but those of their own country, who differ from them in religious opinions, and prefer the old faith to new theories. For the fanatics who carried fire and sword into the heart of their native land, they can spare all the milk of human kindness, but not a drop can be spared for the Catholics of England and Ireland.Though groaning under laws the most barbarous and brutal; though placed worse in their native land, than the black slaves in the West Indies, no sympathetic sigh is offered for their suffering condition, but they have to bear insult, reproach, invective and calumny, as well as the most cruel privation of civilized rights. The supposed persecution of Protestants has been the constant theme of Englishmen; every stratagem has been devised to excite hatred against the Catholics as persecutors from principle, while the statute books of England and Ireland exhibit a continued catalogue of the most remorseless and barbarous laws invented and passed to persecute and oppress the Catholics, for no other cause than their adhering from conscientious motives to the faith taught by the apostles and primitive fathers. What hypocrisy and inconsistency.

We now close the first volume of our labours, having noticed the most prominent historical facts touched upon by Fox as regards foreign countries, and proved them, in almost every case, to have been misstated, falsified, or corrupted. Our next volume will be devoted to an examination of Fox's account of the Reformation in England, and the Persecutions which, he says, preceded it. This is a point of history peculiarly interesting to the reader, and we shall endeavour to illustrate it to the best of our ability.

END OF VOLUME THE FIRST.