To what guidance is Ireland now to be consigned? By what influence is she to be directed? Directed she must be. As well might the tottering footsteps of helpless infancy be left to struggle unaided in their embarrassed course, as the people of Ireland be abandoned in the helplessness of their ignorance, indolence, and wretchedness, to their own unassisted guidance. They have been rescued the country, thank God, has been rescued from the attempts of the republicans and revolutionists; we have been preserved from the control of that wicked party whose declared object was confiscation, and the overthrow of all existing institutions; whose avowed instrument was terror. To whom, then, are the people of Ireland to be consigned? Is there any class in existence-can any class be created or can any existing class be so modified as to be peculiarly adapted, from their position and influence, to spread among the people that knowledge, energy, and self-reliance which can alone raise them from their present degradation, and place them in the manly attitude of independence?

The inquiry is one which derives peculiar importance from the present juncture of our affairs. We wish distinctly to be understood as not being about to enter, in this article, into any review of the recent attempt of a few bad men to add the horrors of civil war to our other miseries. It is not while our indignation is yet strong against the traitors, still less while the penalty of their treason is awaiting them, that we could most efficiently, or most becomingly, discharge that duty. But it is notorious, that when the daring of the rebel leaders had at length approached its climax. when, from within the cells of Newgate, and from the hills of Limerick and Tipperary, they called the people to arms-that then, at the eleventh hour, and not until

then, the Roman Catholic priesthood actively interposed, and added their persuasions to the sterner influences of the soldiery and constabulary, to save the people from the destruction which was awaiting them. "And now for these courtesies they must need have moneys." It is more than rumoured, that it is in contemplation of government to make large concessions to the Roman Catholic priesthood, as an acknowledgment for the past, and a retainer for future services. And it is not a little ominous in support of this rumour, that just at this juncture we should have the colonial secretary directing that the Roman Catholic prelates should take precedence next after the Protestant prelates of equal degree (a Roman Catholic archbishop, therefore, before a Protestant bishop)-and also directing that they should be addressed by the same appellations that are accorded to the prelates of the Church of England. We have, too, the home secretary speaking of the necessity of glebe-houses for the Irish parishpriests. And we have her Majesty's representative in Ireland, requesting Archbishop Murray to submit to the consideration of the Pope, the most important provisions regarding the Irish government colleges. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland puts himself in communication with the pope, not as a temporal prince, (a character to which he has just now very slight pretensions) but as a sovereign pontiff, claiming spiritual control over her Majesty's subjects in Ireland. He acknowledges him in this capacity-" As I entertain," he says, "a profound veneration for the character of the pope, and implicitly rely upon his upright judgment, it is with pleasure that I now ask your grace to submit these statutes to the consideration of his holiness." These statutes he states

to be the most important regarding the religious discipline of the colleges, and he does this after having sworn that no foreign prelate, prince, potentate, or power hath or ought to have any control, religious or otherwise, in these realms. Is it, then, by the Roman Catholic priesthood that the condition of the Irish people is to be advanced?

Emphatically we say, it is not. Ignorance is one great blight that rests upon our land-what department of knowledge will be encouraged by the Church of Rome? Ireland has, for ages, been the stronghold of the Roman Catholic faith, and what is her present position, even in the simplest and elementary branches of learning? What parish-priest has established a school, or in any other way promoted the learning of his flock? When the government offered national education to the people, the Roman Catholic priesthood, indeed, eagerly grasped at the National Schools, but the motive was obvious-it was in order to forestall the ministers of the Established Churchand they succeeded in doing so. This necessity, however, was forced upon them. With a people so eminently intelligent and acute as the Irish, the smallest acquirement, the mere art of reading, must ever be formidable to a system so palpably erroneous and indefensible as that of Romanism-it is only by the most incessant watchfulness, the most painful solicitude, that it can be kept comparatively innoxious. The Roman Catholic priesthood know this well; even already the increased intelligence of the country, limited though it be, is beginning to shake their authority, and most eagerly would they avail themselves of any increase of power to crush that enlightenment which is so formidable to them, and to perpetuate the ignorance on which their authority depends. As to industrial education, it is, of course, out of their power-no department of knowledge can possibly be promoted through the Roman Catholic clergy.

The want of industry and self-reliance the habit of referring every evil to the political institutions of the country, and crying out to government for every improvement in their condition— is another vice peculiar to Ireland. Is this likely to be abated by increasing the power of the priesthood? We are

entirely convinced that at no time, and under no circumstances, will a Romish ecclesiastic be a well-affected subject of a Protestant state; and while the clergy of that Church has political influence with its people, it will be directed, in every conceivable way, to engender distrust and disaffection towards the institutions and the social order of the Protestant country in which they live; and the lesson which teaches that the evils, both physical and moral, to which the country is exposed, is to be referred to the rule of the heretic and the Sassenach, will be the one which will be most sedulously and perseveringly inculcated. Nothing is more common with writers upon Ireland than to reject the influence of the Romish Church, as conducing to the degradation of the country; and to do so upon the grounds, that in Lombardy, Flanders, and other states where the Roman Catholic faith is professed, the highest industry and prosperity is to be found. But without pausing here to examine into the peculiar circumstances of such countries, or to inquire how far the spiritual independence and right of private judgment, which Protestantism asserts must necessarily give a vigour and self-reliance which will extend to every action of life, it must at once strike our readers that there is one broad distinction between Ireland and those other countries, which is this-that in the latter, the most injurious of the political influences of Romanism is entirely undeveloped. That antagonism which sets one portion of the country-and that the most ignorant and dependent -in bitter enmity to the rest of their fellow-subjects and to their rulers, is unknown in those countries, where all, both rulers and subjects, are of the same faith-this spirit can there find no place. It is only in Ireland that the Romish ecclesiastics are called upon to evoke it; and Ireland alone attests the ruin which its malignity has occasioned.

Respect for the laws, and submission to them, is hardly less essential to the prosperity of a people, than industry and knowledge and here again the operation of the same principle which we have just noticed, will for ever disqualify the Romish clergy of Ireland from inculcating these precepts. Not to go back to the past

history of the country, which we noticed at some length in our last number, who was it that fostered and kept alive the rankling spirit of rebellion for the last twenty years ?—the Roman Catholic priesthood. They it was who supported the late Mr. O'Connell throughout his entire career; they who collected his repeal rent from their impoverished flocks, amounting as it did, occasionally, to three thousand pounds a-week; they who annually held the begging-box in their chapels for the O'Connell tribute, and in this form of exaction drained upwards of two hundred thousand pounds more for the mendicant patriot; they who were, to a man, enrolled in the seditious confederacy of Conciliation Hall; they who encouraged the circulation of treasonable and inflammatory publications among their ignorant and excitable people; they who, by their speeches, by their acts, and even by their altar denunciations, created that seditious material which wicked demagogues have ever had thus ready to their hand, to direct to whatever purposes of evil their interest or their bad passions might suggest; they who al lowed the misguided people to be brought to the very verge of insurrection; they whose chapel-bells rung the alarum; they who never interposed until the bayonet of the British soldier was fixed, and the artilleryman stood by his gun, and, more formidable still, until the loyalty of Protestant Ireland was aroused, and her Saxon people, with the spirit which descended to them from three races of conquerors, declared that they would maintain to the last the institutions of the country then, indeed, and not until then, it was that the Roman Catholic priesthood, despairing of success, and fearing the consequences of defeat, interposed their influence to keep the people from the destruction which awaited their mad attempt at insurrection. Are these the men to whose direction the people of Ireland should be consigned? Never at any time will the Roman Catholic priesthood teach their flocks submission to the laws of England; their hostility to it is founded on the nature of things, and is unquenchable.

There is, moreover, as was well observed by Lord Stanley, on a recent occasion, in the House of Lords, "a jea

lousy of conflicting authority," which, even when the Roman Catholic priests do interfere in the cause of order, leads them to do so in a manner which can best impair the authority of the law. "There is," said that noble lord,

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among the great portion of the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, a sort of jealousy of conflicting au thorities, which leads them to be more backward than other classes of the community to exercise their influence to the preservation of the public peace by means of the law. He believed then, and he believed now, that the prevalent feeling among them was, that it was for their interest that the preservation of the public peace should be attributed to their own influence and exertions, rather than to the operation of law; and, consequently, they were backward in giving their assistance to those whose business it was to put the law in force."

We have said enough to show that in no respect whatsoever can the people of Ireland be benefited by the exaltation of the Roman Catholic clergy. To speak of it as a conces sion, which is to allay the malignity of the priests against the Saxon and the heretic, is worse than idle. By the evidence of the Roman Catholic prelates and leaders, in 1825, Ireland was to have been tranquillised by the grant of Emancipation. We then had heard nothing of "taking justice by instalments," of which Mr. O'Con nell afterwards taught us so much. Well, Emancipation was granted, and how was the concession followed up, and the pledge of tranquillity redeemed? By the tithe war of the succeeding years, and by the persecution and murder of Protestant clergy, and their proctors and bailiffs. Tithes were then conceded-ten bishoprics were conceded-the corporations were conceded Ireland has been conceded into insurrection; but the Romish priesthood have not abated one tittle of their disloyalty, while, by every concession, they have been gaining force and daring, to make it more manifest and more formidable.

If the attention of the government be directed to the aggrandisement of this class-to increasing their power and influence, as we fear it is-it grossly misapprehends the position of the Irish people, and the means by

which their condition may be raised. Any course more unworthy of a great statesman, it is impossible to imagine. To reward those men, and to increase their power, who have persevered to rebellion, and will continue to persevere, in the agitation of a measure, which this very minister has declared, that while life is in him he never will concede-men, who have for their maxim, for their golden rule, " England's weakness is Ireland's opportunity," are to be clothed with power by the prime minister of England. We would say that such fatuity was without a precedent, but that we recollect that the patronage of Ireland was handed over to the late Mr. O'Connell by those very ministers, in consideration of his support, and this while his denunciation of them, as "base, bloody, and brutal," was still ringing in their ears; and that he continued to gather in the rent-to pocket the tribute, to agitate repeal, to foment sedition, and to distribute the patronage of the crown at one and the same time, under the present Whig ministers.

Nor even if the Roman Catholic priests were as much devoted to the cause of education, order, and social advancement, as we believe them to be the opposite, would we say that they were the class through whom the regeneration of Ireland was to be accomplished, or the men by whom these objects could be most effectually promoted. The influence of the Romish priesthood is not of that character which, if ever so well directed, can best conduce to the advancement of a people. It is founded, not upon love, not upon sympathy, not upon reverence, but simply upon fear. It is idle to speak of any sympathy between the Irish priest and the Irish peasant, founded on the circumstance of the priests being taken from the ranks of the people. From the moment that he is set apart for the priesthood in his father's cabin, he arrogates to himself a diversity of interest, of object, and of motive, from the rest of his fellows, and it is conIceded to him. The monastic discipline of his education completely estranges him from all ties of family and kindred. The learning which he acquires, wholly inappreciable as it is by the people, and the power with

which he is invested, leads them to regard him as a person altogether of a superior order to themselves, and totally removed from their sphere, while it inflates him with the vulgar arrogance which completes the estrangement. Who is their arbiter in their disputes? Their landlord, an intelligent neighbour, but never the priest. To whom do they apply for relief in times of famine or of sickness? To the Protestant clergyman, to the neighbouring gentry or farmers, to the more fortunate of their own class, but in no case to the priest. The very beggars let his reverence pass by unimportuned. The Protestant clergyman, with his large family, his heavy charges, his double poor-rates (an iniquity which it appears by the circular which Messrs. Hamilton and Napier have just addressed to their constituents, the present government are determined to uphold), has his soupkitchen, and such other measures of relief as his benevolence suggests, and his resources, by the utmost strain to which he can subject them, admits of; and he is loved by the people, and, if left to their own guidance, they would unvaryingly manifest their attachment. The parish priest attends at public meetings, browbeats an obnoxious magistrate or public officer, but the people are shrewd enough to see that he never subjects himself to the slightest inconvenience or pecuniary sacrifice to relieve the most urgent of their wants. They dare not disclose to him any improvement in their condition, for fear it would increase his exaction of his dues. The priest and the farmer live in this respect in a constant state of mutual suspicion and watchfulness. From the altar, the pulpit, and the confessional, the payment of their dues is dunned into the people with much more earnest importunity than any other article of faith; there is no sympathy whatsoever between them. No, it is by the terror of the priest's power, by the dread of the priest's curse, that his influence is maintained-it is by the mystic dread of falling under the ban of the churchby the superstitious fear of being denied its last rites, that his tyranny is upheld.

It is idle to suppose that if otherwise estranged from them, as he is, the priest is endeared to the people as a minister of their religion. We