APPENDIX,

Containing two Letters addressed to a CATHOLIC MERCHANT of Waterford, by the Rev. J. MILNER, D. D. F. S. A.

LETTER I.

DEAR SIR,

At Sea, August 12, 1807.

YOUR kind anxiety for the suc

cess of my voyage to my native island, made you wish to hear the particulars of it; and your impatience at the interruption of our conversation concerning chapel-building induced me to promise you that I would resume the subject in writing as soon as possible: I therefore take up the pen here on shipboard, by way of beginning my two-fold task; hoping, with God's permission,

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to finish it on the opposite coast, which there is every appearance, from the state of the weather, I shall reach in the course of twelve hours.

My journey from your city to the station of ́the Milford packet at Cheek Point, was the most unpleasant one I had experienced since my arrival in Ireland, from the reflection that it was the last I was to take, at least for a considerable time, in a country so interesting in itself, and so dear to me, for the numerous and valuable friends I was leaving behind me in every part of it which I had visited. Impressed with these ideas, I strayed on the shore of the grand estuary, where the united currents of the Suire, the Barrow, and the Nore, mingle with the briny waves of St. George's Channel; and my melancholy was far from being relieved by contemplating the magnificent ruins of Dunbrody Abbey on the opposite side of the harbour. I felt indignant at the memory of that sacrilegious tyrant who could envy good men and loyal subjects the privilege of worshipping God in peace and retirement; and I was mortified that the state of the tide would not allow me to visit those instructive remains, for the improvement of my heart as well as of my knowledge.

My revered friend and myself came on board the vessel yesterday evening, being the only passengers in it. But the sky threatening a squall, which actually took place in the night, the captain would not set sail till four o'clock this morning. The weather is now moderate. There

is wind enough to make us spoom briskly through the waves, and there is sea enough to give spirit to the sailing; for the worst kind of prison is that of being on shipboard in a mill-pond. Already have the pleasant coasts of Tramore Bay disappeared to my view, and Hook Head itself is perceptibly flying from me. While thus I cast a farewel look on the land of my catholic brethren, and offer up a prayer to God the Father of mer-. cies for their welfare, a num ber of affecting thoughts, relating to their singular history and situation, present themselves to my mind, which I cannot help here giving vent to, by committing them to writing.

I reflect on the long continued and uninterrupted sufferings of your countrymen; no other christian nation having been for so long a time, and without remission, subject to successive calamities and degradations as yours has been. Other races of men have occasionally been visited by misfortunes and disgrace: my proud countrymen, in particular, have twice been bowed so low by the yoke of foreign conquest, as to be ashamed of the name of Englishmen, and to drink the very dregs of human misery. But each of these disgraces was of short duration. Canute, the son of the sanguinary tyrant Swaine, repressed the injustice and insolence of his Danish countrymen, and placed his English subjects on a perfect equality with them. In like manner

2 Cor. i. 3.

Henry, the son of the Norman Conqueror, left no means untried to make the English forget that they were a conquered people. The success of this policy was equal to the wisdom of it: for, whereas his father had subdued England with an army of Normans, he himself subdued Normandy with an army of Englishmen. In a word, the calamities of England, both foreign and domestic, like those of other christian states, have been of a temporary nature, whereas those of Ireland seem to have been perpetual. I look in vain for the period of her greatness and glory, compared with her physical strength, wealth, situation, and other advantages or rather, to come nearer to the idea of national as well as individual happiness, I look in vain for the period when the Irish, sitting in their native woods and cabins, could eat the produce of their herds and gardens, and enjoy the comforts of their religion unmolested by others, and at peace among themselves. On the contrary, I see nothing in their history but a succession of civil wars, foreign invasions, conquests, oppression, and religious persecution; the latter still multiplying and refining its modes of injuring and tormenting, down to the very commencement of his present Majesty's reign. What has added a sharpness to their sufferings on the score of religion, has been that they have had to endure them at the hands of a people who were the avowed patrons of religious as well as civil freedom, and who, in fact, have left every other description of subjects

to invent and follow new modes of religion at their pleasure; whilst they endeavoured to extort from your ancestors that original faith which the latter had received, with the very name of Christ, 1400 years ago.

These severe and long-continued sufferings, no doubt, have proved a subject of complaint and scandal to many of your countrymen. Those which the people of Italy, equally with your forefathers, had to endure 1200 years ago, proved such to the latter, as we learn from their correspondence with the cotemporary Pope, St. Gregory the Great *. The saint, in return, admonished them, in the words of scripture, that God chastiseth every child whom he loveth. Indeed, how frequently, or rather generally, was God's chosen people of old in affliction and humiliation What had they not to endure in the bondage of Egypt, in the captivity of Babylon, from the persecuting sword of the Greeks, and the iron yoke of the Romans! They were the most enlightened people on the face of the earth,

* Regist. Epist. St. Greg. Mag: Lib. ix. Ep. 61. Its address is as follows: "Gregorius Quirino Episcopo, cæterisque Episcopis in His "bernia Catholicis ' From this letter, it appears that the bishops in Ireland were, at the end of the sixth century, under the same mis take concerning the intricate question of the Three Chapters, that their countryman, St. Columbanus, was at the same period in Burgundy. Nevertheless, as their error evidently proceeded from mere misinformation with respect to a fact which they were disposed to quit, as they actually did, upon being better informed from due authority, the holy Pope addresses them and treats them as orthodox Catholics.