able to save from the corruption of the grave those melancholy memorials of antient bigotry and antient misfortune-notes piled on notes, drawn from the cobweb lumber of polemical controversy, or extracts from authors, who were paid to defame and calumniate the religion of a people, whom they after. wards plundered and oppressed. From Geraldus Cambrensis to Sir Richard Musgrave, every historian who has been most distinguished by his hostility to the peace and harmony of Irishmen, has been industriously consulted, and those opinions selected, that are best calculated to keep alive the devastating fire, which has almost burned up whatever remains of humanity in the Irish bosom-the sacred spirit of TOLERATION every where scoffed at and trampled upon-the priest, of every sect of Christianity, Protestant, Presbyterian and Catholic, represented as contending for their respective supremacy, with the dagger in one hand and the Bible in the other--preaching peace with the sword of the conqueror, or propagating the Gospel of Christ with the fire of intolerance.

Such is the picture, carefully and anxiously preserved by men whose talents and understanding should have disdained so unworthy an office; whose common sense, at least, should have told them, that the public mind of the present day, turns aside with loathing and disgust from such wretched recitals, and that it closes the volume that would revive the animosities of antient days with indignation against those who would thus speculate on its credulity. It must be matter of surprize and regret to every good and benevolent mind, to see men of talents and acquirements sitting down, in the solitude of their study, to the work of giving perpetuity to the bigot and the usurper, surrounded perhaps as that study is by a crowd of evidence which could bear testimony to the follies and the crimes of civil and religious intolerance. It must be matter of surprize, that men of talents and information should be found, who will gravely insist upon the danger of

giving freedom to the human mind, at the moment they are describing the horrors of the Inquisition, the despotism of Popes and the bigotry of Catholics; thus practising the illiberality they condemn, and refusing to their neighbour the indulgence they clamorously claim for themselves. Closing the volume of history, they affect to forget, that all denominations of Christians, whenever established by temporal authority, acted the tyrants in turn, tyrants over the mind as well as the body;-that all denominations of religions had their Popes, and that the great discovery of modern times, the application of the omnipotent principle of universal toleration to all sects, is the efficient and certain antidote to the corrupt and destructive passions of the bigot and the fanatic. To those who consult the history of mankind, it will appear, that no form of religion prevented the assertion of human rightsthe Catholic in Hungary, and the Catholic in Ireland, are equally zealous in the cause of political freedom, as the Protestant of Prussia, or the Protestant of England. Both are equally jealous of their rights as men, and equally anxious to circumscribe the limits of temporal authority, whenever the opportunity arises; but it is also true, that the religion of the Catholic and the religion of the Protestant, whenever either is made an instrument of state, can be converted into a sharp and devastating sword against the liberties and the rights of human nature. The Popes of Rome abused their power, and trampled on the rights of humanity; the Kings of England abused their power, and, aided by the Episcopal Bench, practised the bigotry and intolerance they deprecated. Europe has been the vic tim of both religions, wherever they were identified with the powers that governed. The Christianity of both was forgotten; the forms of religion were practised, the better to conceal the evasion of her doctrines; the name of Christ was in the mouths of all his followers, at the moment they were refusing that merwhich their master had commanded. Persecution went on

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in the name of God; and the pulpit, which should be a throne of light, was prophaned to the purposes of party triumphs over the liberties of mankind! How often has the minister of God been seen blowing the trumpet of eternal hostility to those who have been taught from their cradle to believe, that the doctrines they maintained were the best calcu lated to secure them salvation? How often has the preacher, Catholic, Protestant, and Presbyterian, in every country of Europe, endeavoured, either by the keenness of sarcasm, or the affectation of liberality, to represent their neighbouring sects as bigots or fanatics? Yet still the war of religion is going on; still the battle of words and syllables is waging, and still the anonymous controversialists are daily flattering themselves with triumphs which every good man deplores; which the Deist and the Atheist rejoice at, and which future generations will pass by with the same contempt that is now entertained for those learned and laborious Theologians who have gone before them.

There was a period in the history of our country, when a few able and honest men flattered themselves they could put an eternal extinguisher on the pernicious squabbling of the bigot; when the circumstances of Europe encouraged the Irishman to hold up his head and demand better treatment for his country than she had experienced for 600 years. The difficulties of England, who had, in her hours of prosperity, insulted and enslaved the nation to which she had pledged her fidelity, emboldened the people of Ireland to demand as a right, those privileges which would not be conceded as a boon. The clouds which so long obscured and mildewed the fairest flowers of our native land, seemed to pass across the channel, and hover over the fortunes of our sister country, while the Sun of Liberty arose over Ireland in all his pomp and splendour, animating the almost lifeless body of a nation which had so long been chained down by a jealous and des

potic code. The Volunteers assembled—our Patriots, in arms and eloquence, rose up like one man, and asserted, in a tone which commanded attention, the rights and privileges of I rishmen. To adopt the language of one of those eloquent ap peals, to which the times, and the spirit of which we are now speaking, gave birth, "Man no longer reposed on ruins, or rested his head on some fragments of the temple of Liberty-he no longer amused himself in pacing the measurement of the edifice, and nicely limiting its proportions--he reflected that his temple was truly Catholic-the ample earth its area, and the arch of Heaven its dome."

Irishmen who had been pelting each other with the ponder ous and unintelligible folios of religious controversy for centuries, were now found seated at the same board, interchang ing sentiments of the sincerest affection and confidence. The religion of Christianity succeeded to the religion of sects, and the principles of benevolence and mutual regard were practised as well as professed by the followers of Christ. "Let our enmities (said the enlightened Volunteers of Belfast in reply to the ad dress of their Catholic countrymen) rest with the bones of our ancestors-differing in our religion as we differ in our faces, but resembling each other in the great features of humanity, let us unite to vindicate the rights of our common nature; let the decisive and unanimous voice of the entire body of the peo ple, the mighty and irresistible whole, be heard; it will, it must be obeyed." It was obeyed. Freedom in trade, free dom in constitution were conceded. The Catholic was no longer an Irish helot. He stood by the side of his brother Protestant; co-operated in the same cause, and succeeded in striking off some of the links of that chain which had so long withered the arms of national industry. The jealousy of England watched our country's progress to union and happiness and strength, with a malignant and wakeful eye. The minister who could have established, in the gratitude of Ireland,

a bank on which he might have ever drawn without the apprehension of disappointment, became alarmed at an union so rapid, so extraordinary, so productive of Irish happiness and Irish strength. He dreaded the transition of partial to complete independence, and preferred confiding in the duplicity of a corrupt policy to the generous and enlarged system of one common Constitution and one common Empire. He therefore so ordered, that an Irish Protestant Legislature should be rendered odious to the Catholic People. It is true the fury of penal laws, the violence of persecution, were no longer to be acted upon; but the Irish Legislature was to be corrupted into an impotent tyranny over the country, and when completely alienated from the hearts and affections of the people, the minister could securely monopolize the credit of giving to the Catholic the protection the Protestant refused. "A new artifice (said an able production of this period) is adopted, and that restless domination, which at first ruled as open war by the length of the sword, then as covert corruption by the strength of the poison, now assumes the style and title of Protestant ascendancy, calls down the name of religion from Heaven to sow discord upon earth; to rule by anarchy; to keep up distrust and antipathy among parties, among persuasions, among families; nay, to make the passions of the individuals struggle like Cain and Abel, in the very home of the heart, and to convert every little paltry necessity that accident, indolence, or extravagance brings upon a man, into a pander for the purchase of his honesty, and the murder of his reputation. The minister succeeded. The Catholics were insultingly rejected by the Irish Legislature. The breach was made between the people and their natural protectors, on which the minister speculated; and he then ordered that Parliament, which had so often and so insultingly rejected the petition of the Catholics, to grant only as much as might