tail of elaborate persecution, it was never attempted to force the confessor, to disclose what his penitent had reyealed. Whether this arose from some lurking remorse, if remorse could find place in hearts so depraved; or whether it was from some politie source of the benfits that might result from confession even to the oppressors themselves, I cannot say; but I can say that it never was before attempted; and prove it by this alone, that no instance of it could be shewn.

When Lord Kenyon was told by Mr. Garrow (speak. ing from hearsay and for his client) that Mr. Justice Buller had obliged a protestant clergyman to disclose what a catholic penitent had confessed to him, what did he say? That his brother's opinion was entitled to respect, but that he should have paused before he made such a decision! What would he have said if it had been a catholic priest, called upon under pain of imprisonment, to violate his sacrament, abjure his faith, incur eternal infamy, and betray that holy trust, to which if he proved faithless, he cancelled every pious hope of heaven, and never could be true to any thing. Now it is not what any one of us may think upon this subject that should guide us, it is that christian charity that all should cherish. It is that precept that God has given, to pull the beam from our own eye, before we meddle with the mote that is in our neighbours. Strange then was the conclusion, that what in England was censured by so high authority, and what in Ireland never was attempted, though the rights, lives, liberties, and feelings of the catholics had been assailed through successive ages, in every wanton form that avarice, vengeance and malignity could devise, should yet be law, merely

because no instance could be found where it had been attempted.

Indeed the history of that Irish case is its best comment. It is thus. Lord Dunboyne, who had been a catholic bishop, happened to succeed to one of those estates, which, together with the shadowy title of nobility, had been sufferered, after the perfidious breach of the treaty of Limerick, to descend to the rightful inheritor. And having conformed to the established church, from what motive I know not, devised it to the catholic college of Maynooth. This was a seminary lately established by government, grown wiser, if not better, by its long and many blunders. Before this institution, the young student, destined for the catholic ministry, was doomed to wander, like a poor exile, to some foreign land for education and instruction, and to receive in distant universities that charitable boon, which bigotry and fanaticism had denied him in his native soil. It was hailed as a happy relaxation of past oppression and intolerance. But still this was a poor step-child, and needed patronage and protection. If ever endowment was lawful it was this one. The devisor having no children, left to his sister and heir at law, already like himself, advanced in years, a very considerable estate. Why then was his will to be avoided? Not because it was vicious, but because he had, in the jargon of the penal code, "relapsed into popery." How does this sound in our ears? How should any one of us like the thought of having our acts avoided, when we were no more, because we had relapsed into presbyterianism, episcopalianism, or methodism? Our constitution does not forfeit the estate, or annul the acts, or avoid the wills even

of convicted felons or outlaws. Nothing short of high treason can effect a forfeiture, nothing but fraud can avoid a grant or a devise. But in Lord Dunboyne's case, the question was not, whether there was guilt in the devisor, but simply, whether he took his leave of this and his flight to another life, pursuant to an Irish act of parliament, made in breach of a solemn treaty, and in the spirit of all uncharitableness. For who had he to cheat or to defraud? He had disposed of his worldly affairs. He had made his will. His last hour was approaching. The sleep of death sat heavy on his eyelids. He had no account but one to settle. It was that awful reckoning with his redeemer and his God. Forfeitures, premunires, prescriptions and pains lay on this side the grave; his way lay on the other. Still he perceives, as he looks back through the long misty dream of his past life, that he had upon that subject, which now concerned him most, been wavering and inconstant. He remembers that in the days of infancy and innocence he had been trained up in the religion for which his fathers suffered, and that when he grew up he had departed from it. He trembles to die in a faith which he had embraced from policy or from compulsion. He was a man, and the heart of man, like the hunted hare, still in its last extremities will double to its early layer. The world had no longer for him, bribe, terror, or persuasion. He offers to his almighty judge such prayers and sacrifices as he thinks most acceptable, and calls upon him as the God of merсу cy to pardon all his frailties. And who were those mortal inquisitors that sat to judge when God above should judge, and to condemn where he is merciful? What was

that inquisition after death, that was to find the forfeiture, not because the party died felo de se, but because he did not? Not because he stood out in rebellion against his creator, but because he followed the best and only lights that his frail and exhausted nature afforded him, and in what concerned him more than all the universe, made choice of that road which his conscience and inward feelings pointed out as the path of his salvation. In an hour like that does any man commit fraud? If he prays to his God to direct him, and throws himself upon his mercy, and submits devoutly to his judgment, how virulent, how audacious is it in man to dare to judge

and to condemn him.

Mr. Recorder, here asked the counsel, how that case of Lord Dunboyne was ultimately decided.

The Counsel. I will conceal nothing of it from the court. I wish the case to be understood, and fully weighed, for the reason and honesty of our case, will outweigh it, though twenty judges had decided it. From what appears in M'Nally's treatise, and what I gather from other sources, it ended at the rolls, with overruling the demurrer. But afterwards on an ejectment under the will brought by the heir at law, and tried before lord Kilwarden, in the month of August following, the same witness was called. Some subtle questions were put to him, to discover in what faith the testator died. He answered, like the reverend gentleman here, with modes. ty and discretion, that whatever knowledge he had, was imparted in religious confidence, and that he could not finish a life of seventy years by an act of sacerdotal im

piety. He was committed upon this for a contempt of court, and sentenced to a weeks imprisonment in the common jail of Trim. The jury found specially upon other evidence, that Lord Dunboyne had died a catholic. The judge then observed, as the party had not suffered from the want of his testimony, and the law had been vindicated, he did not consider the clergyman an object for punishment, and immediately ordered his discharge. Let us charitably suppose that this judge felt the cruelty of the proceeding, and wished in some degree to wash his hands of it.

I have been told, and sometimes believed, that it was not without a heavy heart, that as Attorney General, he often moved for judgements upon men, whom he knew to be at least, as virtuous as himself, and as a privy counsellor, signed proclamations, at which humanity shudders. I was banished before his appointment to the bench, and long before his death. If he had those feelings of compunction, I could pity him, though he had persecuted me, and at no time could the world have bribed me to change places with him. He was not of the worst that governed in those times, and many regretted that the popular vengeance that lighted on his head, had not rather fallen on some others.

Mr. Sampson was again asked by the court, touching the event of the cause, and also whether the master of the rolls, was the same person who was once baron of the exchequer.

He was the same person, the title of baron being mere title of office, ceased with that office, he afterwards