enjoined by it to assist at the Huguenot service, under pain of forfeiting, for the first offence, five sous by the poor, and ten sous by the rich; for the second offence, five livres by the poor, and ten by the rich; for the third offence by imprisonment at will! In addition to these penalties, the Catholics were liable for each offence to imprisonment for two years.

Such were the means by which the Protestant religion was established at Béarne; we shall now see those by which the Catholic religion was restored.

Upon the accession of Louis XIII., the Protestants became more measured in their proceedings against the Catholics: but nothing could induce the Protestants to tolerate the open exercise of the Catholic religion in Béarne; or to admit Catholics into places of honour, or emolument. In 1617, the monarch ordered that the property of the church should be restored to its rightful owners; and provided, at the same time, an indemnity to its actual possessors. The Béarnese remonstrated; but the king adhered to his resolution; he ordered the property then held by the ministers to be valued: the value of it was fixed at the yearly average sum of 78,000 livres. The king charged it upon his royal demesnes for the benefit of the Huguenot ministers. These edicts were resisted by the Béarnese; and the supreme council of Pau ordered them to be suspended, and the Protestant assembly at Loudon formally adhered to the council.

Justly irritated at these acts of disobedience, Louis, accompanied by some troops, advanced by slow journeys towards Pau. When he was at a short distance from it, the council sent to him a deputation to inquire, in what manner he wished to be received? "If there is a church," said the monarch, "I shall alight at it. If not, I will enter the town without ceremony:-it ill becomes me to accept of honours, where God is not honoured."

The king caused a mass to be publicly solemnized at Navarreins; and, sixty years after Jane of Navarre had dispossessed the Catholics of their cathedral at Pan, restored it to them. The Protestant laity were left in quiet possession of all their property, and full and unmolested enjoyment of all their rights and privileges. The church estates were restored to it; and the Protestant ministers regularly received the stipulated indemnity.-See Histoire des Troubles de Béarne, au sujét de la Religion, Par Mirasson. Paris, 1768. 12mo. +

S.

MR. EDITOR,

To the Editor of the Catholic Miscellany.

Through the kindness of a friend, I have been able to run over, though in a very cursory manner, a work of Matthew Carey, Esq., "member of the American Philosophical Society, and of the American Antiquarian Society, author of the Olive Branch, &c. &c."A more elaborate, important, and, to my mind, a more convincing work than this, has never before fallen into my hands on Irish affairs and I have only to regret, that it has never been published in England; or referred to in the debates in Parliament; or ever noticed by any of our great Reviews or Magazines, the Analectic alone, I believe, excepted. It is, indeed, such a work, as must for ever cover with shame every one who reads it with an unprejudiced eye, and with a sincere desire to know the real truth, and who has previously formed his idea of that ill-fated, and shamefully abused country, from the perusal of Hume, Carte, and such like historians. I have urged my friend himself to bring it before the public, and am not without hopes that, at no distant period, he will send you a review of it, if his health, which, I am sorry to say, is very precarious, and his other numerous avocations will permit.-In the mean while, and in this state of uncertainty, I am unwilling to lose the opportunity of sending you a brief sketch of its principal contents.

The title of the work is this-" Vindicia Hibernica: or Ireland Vindicated an attempt to develope and expose a few of the multifarious errors and misrepresentations respecting Ireland, in the histories of May, Temple, Whitelock, Borlase, Rushworth, Clarendon, Cox, Carte, Leland, Warner, Macauley, Hume, and others; particularly in the Legendary Tales of the pretended Conspiracy and Massacre of 1641. The work was first printed at Philadelphia in 1819; and a second edition was given in 1823; and contains not less than 506 closely printed octavo pages.

The several points which Mr. Carey has laboured to establish, and which cannot, I humbly think, fail to satisfy every candid mind, are these:

1. "That the statements of Temple, Clarendon, Warner, Leland, and all the other writers on the affairs of Ireland, that the Irish, for forty years previous to the insurrection of 1641, enjoyed a high degree of peace, security, happiness, and toleration, is as base and shameful a falsehood, as ever disgraced the pages of history;

and is no more like the real state of the case, than the history of St. George and the dragon is like the true history of England. For,

"2. That, during this period, there was scarcely a Catholic in the kingdom secure in the possession of his property, or in the exercise of his religion. And,

"3. That, during the same period, the Irish were plundered by the government of nearly a million of acres of their lands, in the most wicked, unjust, and perfidious manner; and by rapacious individuals, to an extent beyond calculation.

"4. That O'Conolly's pretended discovery of a conspiracy, is one unvaried strain of perjury.

"5. That there was no conspiracy for a general insurrection in Ireland, on the 23d October, 1641.

“ 6. That the basis on which rests the story of the pretended bloody massacre by the Irish, is a tissue of the most gress and palpable falsehood and perjury. On the contrary,

"7. That the massacres perpetrated on the Irish by St. Leger, Monroe, Tichbourne, Hamilton, Grenville, Ireton, and Cromwell, were as savage, as ferocious, as brutal, and as bloody, as the horrible feats of Cortes or Pizarro, Attila or Gerghis Khan; and particularly, that history presents nothing more shocking or detestable, than the massacre perpetrated by Ireton in the cathedral of Cashel, and by Cromwell in Drogheda and Wexford.

"8. That the Irish government issued a sanguinary order to slaughter all men able to bear arms, in places where the insurgents were harboured,' without any discrimination between the innocent and guilty; that the Long Parliament enacted an ordinance, forbidding quarter to be given to any Irishman taken prisoner in England; and that those blood-thirsty edicts were carried into operation.

"9. That the scheme of a general extirpation of the Irish, as general a confiscation of their estates, and an entirely new plantation of the country, was most seriously entertained, and for some time acted upon by the Irish rulers, and their officers.

"10. That the idea of a cessation of hostilities, whereby the Irish might escape from this projected plan of extirpation, excited as universal an alarm in England and Ireland, as if the established religion and government were about to be wholly overturned.

"11. That the Irish government left nothing barbarous, cruel, or wicked undone, to goad the Irish to resistance, and to extend the

insurrection throughout the kingdom, for the purpose of enriching themselves and their friends by confiscations.

"12. That if the Irish insurgents in 1641 deserved to be stigmatized as traitors and rebels, then were the English revolutionists in 1688, and the American in 1776, traitors and rebels of the very worst possible kind; as their grievances bore no more proportion to those of the Irish, than the gentle Schuylkill to the impetuous Mississippi, the hill of Howth to the peak of Teneriffe, or lake Erie to the Atlantic ocean.

"13. That there is a striking contradiction between the facts and inductions of Carte, Warner, Leland, and nearly all the other writers of Irish history.

"14. That, in the Anglo-Hibernian historians of Ireland, there is so much error and falsehood, established beyond the possibility of doubt or denial, as to destroy their credibility.

"15. That the seventeenth century, in the British dominions, was characterised by a succession of forged plots, resting on the basis of flagrant perjuries, and calculated to sacrifice the lives and property of the innocent, and enrich malefactors of the worst kind.

"16. That the Irish code of laws, whose pretended object was to prevent the growth of popery,' was intended to gratify all the basest passions of human nature, in violation of public faith, honour, justice, and humanity; and that it organized as tyrannical an invasion of liberty, and as piratical a depredation on property, and was covered by as base a cloak of hypocrisy, as the annals of the world can produce."

These are the principal points established by Mr. Carey in his work, and I have stated them in his own words." On such a question," he adds in his preface, "Catholic authorities would not have sufficient weight with minds devoured by prejudice; and would come before the world in a questionable form, subject to the suspicions of partiality. I have, therefore, almost wholly rejected them throughout; so that, in about eleven hundred quotations, there are not twenty from writers of that class; and in one of the most important chapters of the book, that on the subject of the massacres and murders perpetrated on the Irish, I have not availed myself of a single one of their advocates. In this respect, therefore, the work rests on the most impregnable foundation.—My heart swells with a glow of satisfaction and pride, that I can come before the critical world with a defence of Ireland, resting on the names of Spencer, Davies, Coke, Temple, Borlase, Clarendon, Nalson, Carte, Warner, Leland, Baker,

Orrery, Rushworth, &c.-nearly all of whom were open, or concealed enemies of the country, and its unfortunate inhabitants. It may seem extraordinary, that there is on the list the name of the wretched Temple, who was so far ashamed of his own spurious work, that he endeavoured, but in vain, to suppress it; but it is the peculiar felicity of this undertaking, that it may be fairly said to this father of all the imposture-By thy words thou shalt be condemned;—for, were all the other authorities cited in this work totally annihilated, there is enough in Temple's miserable legend to demolish the fabric of fraud and deception, in the erection of which so much time, and such varied talents have been prostituted, for a hundred and seventy years past.".

Time will not allow me, Mr. Editor, to say more of, nor to give you more copious extracts from Mr. Carey's most powerful, argumentative, and convincing work; nor will it be necessary, when you receive, as I trust you will, ere long, a full review of the Vindicia Hibernice, from a much more able pen.-I will, therefore, conclude with a quotation from Paulding, which Mr. Carey has adopted as the motto of his Ireland Vindicated.

"There is not a national feeling that has not been insulted and trodden under foot; a national right, that has not been withheld, until fear forced it from the grasp of England; or a dear or ancient prejudice, that has not been violated in that abused country. As christians, the people of Ireland have been denied, under penalties and disqualifications, the exercise of the rites of the Catholic religion, venerable for its antiquity; admirable for its unity; and consecrated by the belief of some of the best men that ever breathed.-As men, they have been deprived of the common rights of British subjects, under the pretext that they were incapable of enjoying them; which pretext had no other foundation, than their resistance of oppression, only the more severe, by being sanctioned by the laws.-ENGLAND FIRST DENIED THEM THE MEANS OF IMPROVEMENT; AND THEN INSULTED THEM WITH THE IMPUTATION OF BARBARISM."

1

I remain, Mr. Editor, your sincere well wisher,

L.

HORE POETICÆ.

To the Editor of the Catholic Miscellany.

SIR,-It has been to me, from time to time, a pleasure to remark the gradual improvement which has taken place in your valuable