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from such a man as him, it shews the danger of suffer ing any description of men to fall into entire contempt, for the very charities intended for them are not perceiv ed to be fresh insults. Where every thing useful is withheld, and only what is servile is permitted, it is easy to conceive upon what footing they must be in such a place. Mr. Hutchinson must well know the regard and honor I have for him; my dissenting from him in this particular, only shews that I think he has lived in Ireland! To have any respect for the character or person of a popish priest there, Oh! 'tis an uphill work indeed!" And alluding to the penalty of death for marrying a protestant with a papist, he continues, "Mr. Gardner's humanity was shocked at it, as one of the worst parts of that barbarous system, if one could settle the preference where almost all the parts were outrages upon the rights of humanity and the laws of nature." Mr. Burke then concludes his admirable letter thus: "Thinking over this matter maturely, I see no reason for altering my opinion in any part. The act as far as it goes, is good undoubtedly. It amounts very nearly to toleration in religious ceremonies; but it puts a new bolt on civil rights, and rivets the old ones in such a manner, that neither, I fear, will be easily loosened. I could have wished the civil advantages to take the lead, the others of religious toleration would follow as a matter of course. From what I have observed, it is pride, arrogance, and a spirit of domination, and not a bigotted spirit of religion that has caused and kept up these oppressive statutes. I am sure I have known those who oppressed papists in their civil rights, exceedingly indulgent to them in their religious ceremo

nies, and who really wished them to continue catholics in order to furnish pretences for oppression. These persons never saw a man, by converting, escape out of their power but with grudging and regret. I have known men, to whom I am not uncharitable in saying (though they are dead) that they would have become papists in order to oppress protestants, if being protestants it was not in their power to oppress papists. It is injustice, and not a mistaken conscience, that has been the principle of persecution, at least as far as has fallen under my observation."

The Court will excuse me for calling to my aid, the opinions of this eminent man, upon a subject where the truth is almost beyond credibility. Well might he say that injustice and not even a mistaken conscience had dictated these persecutions, for whoever reads the Irish history will see that these persecutions form two epochs. One before and one since the reformation. The one containing an era of about 400 years, the other about 300. Both equally fantastical and wicked. During the former, the natives of Ireland suffered for being Irish, or speaking Irish. They were pronounced aliens in their native land, and forced to sue out letters of denization. And in the reign of the third Edward they preferred a petition to be naturalized. It was refused. They rebelled-were defeated, and punished. It was no felony, and so enacted, to kill an Irishman in Ireland, and was forbidden under monstrous penalties, to speak Irish, to use the fashions of Ireland, to wear the beard upon the upper lip, or wear wide sleeves. If any one was curious enough to read the ancient statutes and rolls of parliament, from the days of Edward the third, to those

of Henry the eighth, he would find plainly enough, that mistaken conscience had nothing to do with the matter, nor religion nothing; but that the love of plunder, power, and confiscation was the sole and only motive. It was not until the axe was blunted by long use, till the mine was exhausted by the work of centuries, that religion served to whet the edge and rekindle the brand. Then streamed abroad the bloody banner of the church; then rose anew the yell of desolation; and then again the spoiler grew rich upon the soil, reeking and fattened with the natives blood. Thence the broad charters of desolated provinces, and planting of human beings, for so they termed it, amongst the bleaching bones of those destroyed by war and famine in the name of God!!! Were there rebellions? Were there massaeres? Aye, to be sure, there were! They were the natural crop. For he that sows must reap! Away then with Irish cases and Irish authorities: for to adopt them here would be as mad as wicked. The Irish persecutors had their motives. It was their interest. They lived upon it. They had no living else than plots and forfeitures! They were not simple bigots, acting from mistaken conscience. They were pirates determined to hold what they had got, and rather than lose it scatter law and justice to the winds and waves. The cunning mariner will throw overboard the most precious of his effects, when his life and all is at stake. And so they did. But who except a maniac will do so in a season of tranquillity and calm? Indeed in later times the continuance of the catholic oppressions has taken the character of downright folly; and the wisest and keenest of British statesmen has so considered it.

and if se, every act and every decision that proceeds: upon those antiquated errors, is at once a folly and a crime; shewing only how far "the evil that men do, lives after them." But to make a decision now which would be beyond all precedent, even in the worst of times, would be what I cannot give a name to.

What have our courts to do with these cases, or how do they apply to our condition? Unless it be to speculate upon such frightful histories, as the contemplative traveller ascends the vantage ground, and seating himself upon the border of some extinguished volcano, above the regions of mist or vapour, surveys above him the unclouded firmament, and below, the ravages of a convulsed world, the yawning crater, the sulphurous abyss, the scattered fragments of disjointed nature, the conjealed torrents of once streaming fire, under which lie buried and incrusted the trea sures of civilization, wealth and arts; and moralizing on such awful objects, compares the benign laws of the creator with the efforts of the destroying spirit. To contrast these historics and barbarous codes with our happy constitution, and our enviable state, is to draw from them a moral, deep and wise, But though we use them, let us not be familiar with them. Let us apply all due precaution against their venomous contagion. I would hardly touch the volumes that contain them, till I had drawn on my gloves and said God bless me from all grammery. I would relegate them to some lonely desart, such as the barren Island. And there I would keep them fathoms under ground. Some wretch from the state prisons, who had ran the round of vice, and could not be innoculated with any new infection, should be their guar

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dian. Once in the period of a lustre or olympiad, when the wind blew off our coast, they should be dug up; fasting, ablutions, and exorcisms, first performed; and if telegraphic signs, could be devised to communicate their terrible contents, it would be safest. But, bring such things into a court of justice? O! never, never.Fie! fie! they are too rank. I think I could smell out that volume that treats of the dead Lord's will, and the inquisition held upon him, after death, for "relapsing into popery." Yes here it is! The whole system is already rotting above ground, let us hasten to inter its miserable remains. And now having done with Irish, let us turn to the English history. It is good to learn, even from an enemy. Mr. Pitt, who for years governed England by dint of ingenuity, was a good or a bad genius, I care not which. He was once a friend of parliamentry reform, but abandoned that; he was more than once desirous of reforming the penal code, and in that I believe he was more sincere, for he was sagacious enough to see the impolicy and gross absurdity of maintaining it any longer. In 1788, when a bill was proposed for the relief of the Roman catholics, a committee of the English catholics, waited upon him. He desired from them some authentic evidence of the catholic clergy, and universities abroad, that certain dangerous tenets imputed to them, were not avowed by the catholic church.

The three following queries were drawn up under his auspices.

1. Has the pope or cardinals, or any body of men, or any individual of the church of Rome, any civil au

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