as an arbiter. It is the sword and belt which the barbarian leader of the Popish invasion arrogantly flings into the British scale.

But, to give testimony more direct than our own, we take an authority which has just challenged public attention.

The writer to whose opinions we allude,* is a gentleman of fortune, resident in the north of Ireland. Α Whig, strong upon all the weak points of Whiggism, an advocate for every one of those measures of fatal liberality which have plunged the empire into successive depths of danger. A declaimer against all restrictions on account of religion, which (forgetting that they are mere defences of the public peace) he pronounces to be restrictions on liberty of conscience; and loudly demanding why power should not be as safely confided to Papists as to Protestants; equally forgetting the great essential distinction, that the Fapist exercises his power to persecute, and does so on the principles of his church, while the Protestant faith prohibits all persecution; that Popery declares all heretics condemned to eternal sufferings, and, therefore, declares itself authorized to torture the body to redeem the soul; while Protestantism pronounces that cruelty can never be the source of good-that the tyranny of man can never be virtue, and that the use of the rack and the scaffold to coerce belief is only murder.

Yet we find this liberal, this thorough Whig, this man varnished all over with the most flaunting colours of the new school, actually so penetrated with a sense of the atrocity of the Popish faction, from seeing its workings on the spot, that he unconsciously throws down his old weight of Whig prejudices, and starts forward to summon his countrymen to a sense of their imminent ruin. He thus unhesitatingly declares his slow and compulsory conviction, that the Popish Association is the prime agent of national hazard.

"I have paid some attention," says he, "to the progress of our public affairs, and, I fear, it is because I have looked on them impartially, that they seem the more deplorable and desperate." He thus pursues, "We are told by the National Association that they have

claims to an indefinite extent. But they cannot say how far their demands may be carried, for that must depend on unknown events! They tell us, however, that what would have satisfied them a year or two ago, will fall very short of satisfying them now. And that whatever is offered, will be received in part, because it will enable them to proceed in their incessant importunities with the better prospect of success. The demandant may be a gainer by this mode of proceeding, but there cannot be a reciprocity of advantage. And as peace alone could be the price of concession, the value is not likely to be realized. The principle will apply equally to individuals, members, and nations."

Next, as to Lord Mulgrave-" The position in which they have been pleased to place our Lord Lieutenant, appears somewhat ludicrous. They boast of his favour, and say at the same time, that their countenance is necessary to his protection. If we may believe them, they carry on their business under his patronage. I wish they would place a board over their shop door, announcing that they are mischief-makers to the viceroy of Ireland,' and licensed to deal in sedition.' They confer all the honour they can upon his excellency. They call the process of their manufactory Mulgravizing. In the north

of Ireland, we cannot account for a toleration of the association' in the metropolis; nor reconcile the endurance of it with the prosecutions which are now pending over hundreds for having walked in procession as Orangemen on the 12th of July last! We believe it to be illegal, and, if it were not permitted by the government, we could not entertain a doubt of its illegality. What say the law officers? Is it their opinion (we know what can be done under privilege of Parliament) that men may associate out of Parliament, demand the repeal of some statutes, the modification of some, and the enactment of some, and threaten a dismemberment of the empire, in case of non-compliance? Yet the Association agitates throughout the year, avowedly to this end, unmolested. Sed Julius ardet.' If folly is to be punished, why not prosecute crime?

6

To die for treason is a common evil, But, to be hanged for nonsense is the d—l.'"

From the writer's residence in the north of Ireland he has had peculiar opportunities of seeing the operation of this severity of government to the Orangemen, whose only crime was that of exhibiting an unfashionable zeal for the faith and freedom of their Protestant ancestors. "After the 12th of July it was deemed proper to order an indiscriminate prosecution of all who had walked in procession on that day. From the numbers implicated within the limits of the petty sessions I attend, I conclude, that the amount of offenders within the county of Antrim must come to several hundreds. They will all be upon the scale of suffering between inconvenience and ruin. Many of them will be obliged to tramp fifty or sixty miles through the mire to our assize town. This, to be sure, seems pretty well adapted to the exigency of their case, for, as walking was the whole of their offence, so walking may constitute a part of their expiation. There is some difference indeed between walking against and with a man's inclination. In July, besides, he had nothing to do, and could be spared a day from the field. But, in March and April he will have the seed labour on his hands, and he cannot so conveniently absent himself for a week, or, as it may chance, a much longer period. The costs which he must necessarily incur, are not to be forgotten. I should think that the law's dignity would have been sufficiently vindicated by the prosecution of those whose walkings were at all connected with a breach of the peace. I am sure many of the heedless people who have become obnoxious to punishment were unconscious of having offended. penalty is condign to all."

But

On the abominable knavery, by which the faction disturb the country, and yet leave every actual suffering of the peasant disregarded, if not increased, Sir F. Macnaughten justly observes,

"If it cannot be proved that our agitators are authorized by the people, it will be iniquitous to impute agitation to them. Justice for Ireland.' If this mean to include justice to the poor peasant, I say, be it so. Every one who knows any thing of Ireland,

Can

must admit, that the poor man's condition calls most loudly and righteously for relief. Believe him, for Heaven's sake, and you may then talk of Justice for Ireland, without blasphemy! I have seen a succession of governments, and of agitating societies. But I have not observed the attention of any directed to the most miserable hovels that ever were used for the residence of mankind. we relieve from hunger and cold, and allow the forlorn peasant, in his looped and windowed raggedness, any condiment to his scanty potato? No, no! this does not fall within the circle of our Agitator's humanity. He would feed the poor fellow with a reform of the Peers! and season his mess with a purified municipality. But his physical wants have been laudably unnoticed. They agitate, however, and that is enough. We can be agitated out of all our wrongs, and into all our rights. Diet, lodging, raiment, are all comprehended in agitation."

On the contemptible jesuitry of language by which the faction stimulate the populace, while they pretend to soothe, he forcibly remarks—“To be sure, the rules of our agitators are not very intelligible. The actors are to resist by the means of submission, and to submit by the means of resistance. They threaten by implication, and exclude menace in distinct terms. They challenge an adversary to the field, but declare that a drop of his blood shall not be shed, nor a hair of his head injured in the conflict. If no other agitation will do, then a Repeal of the Union shall be agitated. Peaceful agitation and war to the knife.' What is to be gained by this Repeal, it might, before we have seen the balance-sheet, be thought premature to pronounce. But we may confidently anticipate a most tremendous extinction of human life-that of Mr Sharman Crawford included. We may reckon upon a very general confiscation of property, a ferocious and bloody despotism, and an absolute abolition of all liberty and law."

But against this hideous consummation of the triumph of the faction, the writer protests. "No. We will not have a separation of the kingdom. Leaving social and patriotic feelings aside, there is no rational man who would not, for his own sake, rather enter upon warfare, and die in defence

of the union, than survive, to the deIsolation and horrors which must, as we are now situated, follow from its repeal. No repeal. Death's-head and cross-bones have no charms for us.' And yet O'Connell is suffered, day by day, to menace the country with a repeal of the Union. Why is not the agitation of this topic declared by statute to be high treason-as high treason it is to attempt to dissever the empire and the villain who should henceforth pronounce it be hanged, whoever he might be? But what are the open demands of the faction, demands which must be yielded, or repeal is to be the consequence? "A Municipal Reform Act according to their own taste-an absolute abolition of tithes the appropriation clause (unless it should merge in the abolition of tithes)—a new (and lowered) qualification of voters-short Parliaments-an organic change in the constitution of the House of Lords. this, and much more, they are to have, or else a breaking up of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and a severance of Ireland from Great Britain."

All

From this he goes into the legal view of the existence of the Association, and shows it to be utterly against the letter and the spirit of the law. "If the Association," says he, "be lawful (if lawless, why is it endured?) we must conclude that our Government is too feeble to stand against, or without, the favour of a mob having profligacy enough to menace and insult it. But the statute 33d of George the Third, chap. 29, is still in force, entitled, To prevent the election or appointment of unlawful Assemblies, under pretence of preparing or presenting petitions or other addresses to his Majesty or the Parliament.'

We must admit that the Association does not proceed under such or any other pretence; it acts boldly of itself, and is sui juris.”

We call upon all honest Englishmen to look well to themselves at this moment. The day of harmless party contests is gone by. All the old outworks of the Constitution are thrown down, and the storm is now against the citadel. It is no longer a mere question between Whig and Tory, but, as the orators at the Bath dinner openly declare," between Aristocracy and Democracy;" in other words, between property as it exists, and the

rapine that desires to seize it. Twelve months' unresisted progress of Radicalism might strip every landed proprietor of half or the whole of his property, bring the country into such a state of confusion, that all trade would be paralyzed, all banking firms run upon, and half our merchants bankrupts. Twelve months' unresisted progress of the Popish faction might utterly destroy the Protestant church in Ireland, with it throw every shape of Protestantism into the jaws of persecution, enact some furious tax, inhibition, or composition against the Church of England, whose resistance by the clergy would produce the closing of their churches, the confine ment of the clergy themselves in dungeons, fines and penalties of all kinds, and the most universal misery, poverty, and convulsion through the empire. All those things have been before, under the united influence of Radicalism and fanaticism, and what is there in human nature to prevent their being again? And is not the chance of such consequences the most natural summons to exert every power of human activity, vigilance, and principle, under God, to keep them as far from us as we can?

Of the four parties which now divide public opinion, it is a remarkable distinction, that the most desperately mischievous in its principle is by far the most persevering, the most systematic, and the most effective in its progress. Popery, the sworn enemy of our religion, our nation, our freedom, and our empire, leaves all at a distance in point of actual power. The Conservatives, though growing in influence with the growing apprehensions of all good men, act chiefly on the defensive. A weak policy at all times, and worst of all now-the barbarian policy, which Demosthenes describes as never anticipating the blow, but clapping its hands helplessly on the wound. The Whigs act upon neither the defensive nor the offensive; they feel themselves merely tenants at will, and exert all their ingenuity in contriving to remain on the premises without paying the rent. In the lowest spirit of state-traffic, they are perfectly willing to bargain with either side, and having no other object than that of place, they have no other conception of policy than that of taking the side which will longest ensure them their salaries,

The Radicals are bitter, loud, and active. But they are still few in the House; their leaders are personally without weight; their projects are too nakedly furious for effect in Parliament until vote by ballot and household suffrage shall have radicalized Parliament itself. Their republicanism is too glaring, rash, and ferocious. The Members of the House are not yet prepared for the worship of the guillotine.

But it is the Popish faction which is the incarnation of evil. It is openly pronounced by every man acquainted with the present condition of Ireland, that it rules that unhappy country. It possesses the whole Irish patronage. It is now filling all the higher situations of the law with its creatures. It is making Judges, Attorneys-General, and Solicitors-General. It has just made the Master of the Rolls. It has just appointed a Papist, Mr Pigott, to the place of confidential law adviser to the crown in Ireland, one of the most important possible in the present state of affairs, for to his department come all questions relative to the disputes on church property and tithes, the conduct of magistrates, and the control of the constabulary force. By its Attorney and Solicitors-General the Popish faction puts the councils of the crown into the hands of Papists. It now openly proclaims, that when Lord Plunket can be driven from his place, it will have the Chancellorship in its grasp. It has made the LordLieutenant; it has made the Irish Secretary. In short, it has made the whole existing fabric of the Irish Go

vernment.

Having thus established an executive after its own heart, it has proceeded to establish a legislature. In the General National Association it has a Parliament to all intents and purposes. In that Parliament it proposes public measures, debates on the leading questions of the day, poorlaws, finance, &c., raises taxes, appropriates them, and does all this in the most open defiance, and with the most undisturbed impunity. In this Parliament it assembles all the official representatives of Popery, the archbishops, bishops, and inferior priesthood of its church, the lay lords, and public demagogues, and thus exhibits to the Papists of Ireland the complete form of a legislature of their own.'

In the mean time, what may be called the domestic government of the faction, never relaxes. The payment of the Protestant clergy is, as the Duke of Wellington observed on the first night of the Session, rendered a nullity. The serving of law pro

cesses is death to the server, and the clergy, thus deprived of their lawful means, are forced to live on the charity of England. The man who pays tithe is menaced with the death's-head and cross-bones, and all resistance to the Popish mandate is a matter of the utmost peril to the individual.

But even this is too tardy for the Association. Within these few weeks a manifesto has been issued, under the hand of its leader, whose effect must be to keep Ireland in a perpetual state of "agitation." This paper is divided formally into heads, and its object is beyond all misunderstanding. Its first section proposes "to call upon every parish of Ireland, without any delay, to appoint two pacificators (!) for the purpose of forwarding the objects of the Association, and obtaining justice to Ireland.'" We perfectly comprehend the sort of pacification such agents would produce, and the Association comprehends it too. A long series of directions for the duties of those persons follows. They are to be elected, one by the populace, and the other by the priest of the parish. They are to be furnished with newspapers, of what kind and for what purpose we may easily conjecture. Another employment of those persons is, to intermeddle in all faction-fights, for the purpose, as Mr O'Connell says, of putting them down! Another is, to report to the Association the names of all voters in the parish, their landlords, their principles, and the influence that may be exerted to make them vote for, or against their country! In fact, a regular spy system, with the wrath of the Association, to keep men's consciences in order. Another is, to procure the collections of the justice rent a regular tax system. Another, to ascertain the number of persons illegally and unjustly sued, or persecuted for tithes, and to report their names and grievances to the Association. As Mr O'Connell pronounces the whole system of tithes criminal, bloody, and so forth, we may imagine the purpose of this part of his diplomatic instructions! There are more duties of the same kind