was it interrupted by the compulsory measures of the government, which the circumstances of the country had placed in hostility to the religion of Roman Catholics. Against this conduct of the government it is easy to declaim; but it should be recollected, that we have now unquestionable testimony, informing us that the Roman Catholic bishops of Ireland were at this time nominated by the Pretender, and we may therefore consider the whole hierarchy of the Romish church of that country as in secret arrayed against the security of the existing government. Whatever reasons, however, may have existed for framing a code of so great severity, and whether the government did, or did not, go beyond the necessities of the public safety, it is evidently seen that such a position was decidedly unfavourable to every hope of proselyting the Roman Catholics. The government, indeed, and the Protestant part of the people seem to have suddenly forgotten the pious intention of converting them by addressing them in their own language, and to have trusted wholly to a proscription of their religion, so rigorous that it should leave them with scarcely any other option than that of adopting the religion of the state. This system of proscription had very little efficacy in conversion: neither indeed did it deserve to have any, for the proselytes which it could procure, would have little pretension to the character of sincere Protestants. In the growing liberality of the age it was at length abandoned, and a contrary system was substituted in its place. It was then, and by many politicians it is still maintained, that the true method of converting Roman Catholics is to abolish, as much as possible, all political distinctions existing between them and Protestants; and it has been again and again insisted that, when political jealousy and irritation shall have been removed, the former cannot fail to become sensible of the superiority of the religious tenets of the latter, and must rapidly renounce every peculiarity which might continue to separate them from their fellow-subjects either in religion or in policy. This system has also been tried through a long series of years, the half of a century having elapsed since the first measure of indulgence, and thirty-four years having passed since the Roman Catholics of Ireland were admitted to that common right of citizenship, which must have taken from the maltitude every feeling of degradation. Like the former, it has notwithstanding proved wholly inefficacious. The clergy, whom the government in its liberality educated at the public expense, and to whom it was willing to afford competent | stipends, chose to continue entirely independent of a Protestant and therefore an heretical state; and the laity, far from being conciliated by past concessions, rose from petitions to peremptory demands, which they enforced by open denunciations of the physical violence of an exasperated multitude. From this double failure we suppose, the mere politician has, in his blindness, concluded, that the Roman Catholics of Ireland are not to be converted, and that the reformation alleged we all have seen, that both sever liation have failed to produce t fect; and he has thence concl effect cannot be produced at all. sufficient to ask him, in what pa Irish Roman Catholic degraded neral level of his species, that deemed inaccessible to the influe Is he so destitute of understan cannot comprehend the genuine religion which was originally ac poor? Is he so indifferent to welfare, that he cannot apprec portance? Strange inconsiste The very men, who claim for right the exercise of political p tend for their qualification to m rests of a complicated governm clude the Roman Catholics of Ir hope of attaining the knowledg of Christianity, which, if they sincere in their religious profe teem to be purified from a num tions and abuses still debasing Rome. We will now inform these the scheme of conciliation did] attracting proselytes from t Rome. It failed because it wa cal, and the methods of huma belong to religion. When cond guiding principle of the gover troversial discussion was hus and it would have been co ungracious interruption of th mony, if any zealous minister o church should have appeared t had a right to concern himse ligious interests of his Roman ioners. Roman Catholics we become Protestants, because a lics they had nothing further were to quit the religion of the gaiety of their satisfied hearts. for this expectation, they still f to desire, which had not yet and the consciousness of incr and importance supplied a ne motive for adhering to a party rable in the state. If therefore we look back on t of the past proceedings of the Ireland in regard to the conve man Catholics, we find, with t the well-directed efforts of a two contrary methods succe both merely political, and ther pable of producing a religiou indeed, it may easily be sho principle destructive of its When the government endea lative acts to suppress the re Catholics, their native indepen by the influence of the clergy resist the aggression with a s might entitle them to the nan When, on the other hand, li ruling principle of the day, an required that persons differi opinions should avoid all muta lics, why should the latter be disposed to go over to a church, to the distinguishing peculiarities of which its own members appeared to attach so little importance? From the acknowledged failure of such methods of making proselytes it is manifest that no argument can fairly be deduced, to prove the probability of the failure of a method entirely different. The inference indeed should be of an opposite nature. If methods merely political have been confessedly unsuccessful, we may conclude that a mode of conversion, in which worldly policy had no controlling influence, would probably be successful, unless we should be able to persuade ourselves that God had abandoned the Roman Catholics of Ireland to irremediable delusion. What then may be considered as the primary cause of the movement which has attracted so much observation? The religious improvement of the Protestants is, we have no hesitation in saying, the true and adequate principle of the reformation of the Roman Catholics. Here is a cause independent of the mere policy of the world, and to which therefore no unfavourable inference from the failure of that policy can fairly be applied. Neither can any consequence be more natural and direct, than that the increased seriousness and piety of the members of the purer church should dispose them to seek, by every effort becoming sincere Christians, the improvement of those who are still debased by ignorance and superstition. The influence of such a church is at the same time naturally efficacious. It neither irritates the ignorant and superstitious by penalties, nor confirms them in error by an apparent indifference for the truth. It draws them, on the contrary, "by the cords of a man," by all the strong sympathies of our common nature. When the poor peasant, who knew little more of his religion, than that he was required to obey his priest, perceived that persons placed in a higher condition of life were desirous of instructing him or his children, he reverenced them as the kindest benefactors. When he saw the religion, which they professed, exemplified in the zealous piety of their conduct, he could not but be disposed to think, that there was something in the doctrine of Christ, differing from the strange compound of superstition and folly which he had been taught to embrace as the true and only faith. When they, perhaps for the first time, brought to his knowledge the sacred record, which contained the original authority for his Christian hope, he could not easily be persuaded to forego the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the truths which it revealed, or to content himself with the scanty information communicated by the clergy of his Church. Such an influence has effected, and is continuing to effect, that | chant, associated in the year 1792, to reform not Roman Catholics, but Protestants, by con stituting an Association, the object of which should be to support the cause of religion by the influence of example. Some serious per sons, especially among the clergy, soon joined themselves to the society; it gradually becam numerous, and acquired funds sufficient fo disseminating the Scriptures and religiou tracts; and at length, in the year 1801, having received from the government a charter of in corporation, and an annual grant of money which has since been largely augmented, i engaged in the direct encouragement of the education of the poor. The efforts of this association, which wa chiefly under the direction of the clergy, ex cited in the great body of the laity a desire o forming associations for similar purposes; an the Hibernian Bible Society was accordingl constituted in the year 1806, and in the yea 1811 the Kildare-Place Society for the Educa tion of the Poor, which did not however begi its active operations until the year 1817, whe it had been furnished with parliamentary aid and had prepared its central establishment in the metropolis.. The Bible Society was doubtless forme with the best and purest intentions, and accord ingly was originally patronized by the dignita ries of the Established Church, though th inferior clergy generally adhered to the earlie association as more peculiarly their own. I process of time, indeed, some irregularitie manifested themselves in the management o its operations, which gave occasion to a seces sion of most of the dignitaries, and of othe clergymen, who however felt it to be on tha very account their duty to afford a more stre nuous support to the other society professing the same objects. The Bible Society has thu become almost exclusively a lay association and the dissemination of the Scriptures ha been actively prosecuted by two distinct bodies one comprehending, together with some lay men, almost all the established clergy through out Ireland, the other, though including among its members a comparatively small numbe of the clergy, yet chiefly composed of laymen The original society, or the Association fo Discountenancing Vice, has had two distinc objects; it both disseminated the Scripture. and religious tracts, and promoted the exten sion and improvement of the education of the poor. In this latter respect it was zealously emulated by the Kildare-Place Society, which however, was constituted on a principle of the utmost comprehension, consistent with afford ing a scriptural education. This society sub mitted its schools to the management of a com mittee, composed of persons of various deno minations of religion, and, excluding all cate 408 of the London Hibernian Society. At the | learn some of its most interesti commencement, this Institution established In the Sunday Schools, and the London Hibernian Society, m schools and employed preachers; but in the ceive Scriptural education; year 1814 it was wisely determined, that the teachers of the Irish Society ex employment of preachers should be discontinued, and that the efforts of the society should ther the benefits of instruction be confined to the support of schools, and the population; and the Scripture-r dissemination of the Scriptures and of religious nicate some knowledge of the s tracts; though this society proposes religious the Gospel to those who possess instruction as its object, it has disclaimed pro- tunity of attaining the art of selytism; being desirous to afford religious these operations were supported instruction, without reference to creeds, and tion of the Sacred Writings, no religious books being admitted into its societies, which has been state schools except the Sacred Scriptures, in the plied, in the course of twenty or English and Irish languages, without note or procomment. With this view, however, ceeds further than the Kildare-Place Society, in whose schools the patron, or master, may select the children, who shall read the New Testament, and the version which shall be used by them, with the particular passages which shall be read. nearly a million, copies of the That the power thus brought the ignorance of the lower cla cient to produce considerable e ceived by the Roman Catholic any apparent inroad had been m Church. Their hostility was rected against all the societies, nated the Sacred Writings. E exerted to disturb by intrusion meetings held for such a pu opened to those persons alo These are the great instruments of the education of the lower classes in Ireland, but others have been employed in co-operation with them. A Sunday School Society was established in the year 1809; the Baptist So-friendly to the measure; and an ciety, so denominated because it was formed by persons of the sect of Baptists, though on the same principle with the London Hibernian Society, was formed in the year 1814; and the Irish Society, the design of which was to enable the Irish peasant to read the Scriptures in his own language, has added its efforts, that a knowledge of the Scriptures might be communicated to those, who were either ignorant of the English language, or could better understand the Irish. Neither have the useful efforts of the friends of instruction been confined to the establishment of schools, for persons have been employed to visit the peasantry in their cabins, and there to read to them portions of the sacred writings; and, whatever repugnance the clergy of the establishment might entertain to the employment of irregular preachers, they very willingly availed themselves of the services of those persons, who professed only to read the Scriptures to the poor. ter from the Roman pontiff wa which our English version was gospel of the devil. This open proclaimed to every reflecting religion of Rome was at vari recorded revelation of God, wa year 1824. A deputation havi been sent from the London Hil to form, and confer with, auxil Munster, a concerted intrusion their meeting, held in the cit similar intrusion was made soo the same year on a meeting hel by the regular annual deputati Society. These were, however, preparatory to the great and m terruption given in Cork in the the fourth anniversary of the f Munster School Society. The Protestant clergy, thus p troversy, prepared themselves To what extent the operations of the several though not previously accusto societies for educating the poorer classes have their theological studies as a syst been carried, has been distinctly stated in the discipline. Fair and open contro first Report of the Commissioners of Irish did not consist with the princi Education Inquiry, published in the year 1825, of the Roman Catholic hierard the year immediately preceding that in which Doyle in the south, and the ti the public was surprised by numerous conver- Derry in the north, issued inhib sions of Roman Catholics. From this Reporting their clergy from all forma it appears, that the probable number of chil- the differences between the dren receiving education from these several The few discussions, which w societies was between 400,000 and 500,000. pointment, were accordingly u that they might, if necessary Though such a number is not considerable in comparison with those still left in ignorance, One of these, and the most ren was held in Dublin between M or abandoned to the common education of the peasantry, yet it is manifest that even this Maguire, has not been disclain number must send into the general population extraordinary degree of effron of the country a knowledge, at least of the hood of assertion, opposed to existence of the sacred writings, which cannot presuming piety, gained with fail to exercise some beneficial influence on appearance of a triumph; the the state of society. The families, to which disputation has, however, bee the children thus instructed belonged, would the public, and a very different probably, with every friend of T. were not confined to interrupting the meetings | of the societies, which had brought against them the dangerous power of education. They wisely judged that the most effectual method of averting the evil, would be to cut off the supplies of public money, with which these societies were assisted. A petition was accordingly addressed, in the year 1824, to the House of Commons, by the Roman Catholic bishops of Ireland, representing the objections which they conceived to exist against the schools then in operation, as interfering with the discipline of their Church, and praying that such measures should be adopted, as might best promote the education of the Roman Catholic poor of Ireland. A royal commission of inquiry was accordingly issued without delay, and in the following year the commissioners made their first Report, in which the outline of a plan of common education for Protestants and Roman Catholics was submitted to the consideration of the public. The mischievous futility of this plan has been so ably exposed in the second number of the Christian Examiner, that Ireland would probably have been rescued from an experiment, which proposed to conciliate the Roman Catholic clergy by a compromising system of education, even if the concluding Report of the same commissioners had not demonstrated the impracticability of arranging its details. The efforts of the Roman Catholic clergy, however, to deprive the children of the Roman Catholic laity of every opportunity of a scriptural education are not relaxed. The very same persons amongst them, who had previously assisted in the good work of education, conceived from this moment different views, and the utmost exertion is still employed to withdraw the children from the dangerous influence of the written Word of God. It is most consolatory to remark, that these exertions have in a very considerable degree failed of success. It has been stated by the Kildare-Place Society, that more than threefourths of their pupils have returned to them: the schools of the Association for Discountenancing Vice contained at the close of the last year nearly 7000 Roman Catholics, a much greater number than in the preceding years: and the schools of the London Hibernian Society of Sligo, though most directly interfering with the Church of Rome, were preferred above all others in the same neighbourhood; while the teachers of the Irish Society, in a district composed of the five counties of Armagh, Monaghan, Cavan, Louth, and Meath, stated in a Report dated at the close of the year 1825, that they were then teaching more than 5000 adults. Of the hostility of the Roman Catholic clergy to education, comprehending a knowledge even of their own version of the Scriptures, and of the disposition of the Roman Catholic laity to avail themselves of the advantage of the instruction so prohibited, a remarkable example has become known to the writer of Catholics, to arrange a system of education. Having thus taken sufficient care, that the peculiar opinions of Roman Catholics should not be offended, he announced to the tenants, that he would insist upon their children receiving the education which he offered, and that he would accordingly exercise all the power of a landlord against those tenants, whose children should be absent a single day without permission. The clergy interfered in this, as in other instances; the landlord distrained the cattle of the parents of the children whom they had caused to be withdrawn; and the tenants frequently sent private messages, requesting that these coercive measures might be employed against them, to furnish them with an apology for sending their children again to the school. Though the spirit of inquiry had been thus generally excited among the Roman Catholic part of the population of Ireland, and some knowledge of the Sacred Writings had been so generally communicated, the Protestant part of the public was much surprised at learning, that several Roman Catholics had openly conformed to the Protestant religion in the church of Cavan, soon after the commencement of October, in the year 1826; and the surprise was increased more and more, when it was found that this was no casual and temporary occurrence, but was continued from week to week by an uninterrupted succession of new conversions. The occurrence of such conversions had long been so rare in Ireland, that, though every sincere Protestant must have believed, that at some time or other the purer religion of his own church should supersede the corrupted system of the church of Rome, yet people had generally ceased to contemplate it as an event, which might be expected to happen within their own time. We have been accordingly informed, that in the place where this new reformation originally appeared, but a few days before the first recantation no expectation of such an event was entertained. That a religious reformation should neither be begun originally, nor be prosecuted with comparative success, in the metropolis, may be easily understood. The poorer classes in a metropolis are not generally in a state favourable to religious impressions. Engrossed by opportunities of gain, allured by temptations to dishonesty, and corrupted by multiplied influences of evil example, the poor of a capital must be much less sensible to the power of religious truth, than the peasantry of a distant district. But the metropolis of Ireland presented peculiar difficulty, being the theatre of the political energies of the party, from which conversions were to be effected by the simple efficacy of genuine religion. There more especially the poor Roman Catholic would be disposed to interest himself in the struggle for the political advancement of his party and would be less accessible to the conviction, which would geiacu nu from its iekoers. by the pious Bedell almost two centuries before, at length produced its fruit. Long was the memory of this good man cherished, and the oral tradition of his piety reached even to other and distant countries. Why then should we not believe, that in the country, in which he taught so zealously the genuine doctrines of religion, and exemplified its pure precepts, in his own humble and earnest piety, some saving influence might still subsist, to sanctify the scene of his labours. However that may have been, we have good proof to show, that Cavan was not casually, but by a deep-seated predisposition, the county, in which this most important revolution has had its commencement. Nine years before that event, a meeting, not of Protestants, but of Roman Catholics, was held in the town of Cavan, in which a resolution was passed, indignantly expressing the offended feelings excited in the minds of the assembled laity by the gross ignorance and profligacy of their clergy, and by the abominable superstitions, which insulted their understandings. Erroneously conceiving these abuses to be symptoms only of some local perversion of the true religion, they looked for relief to the appointment of some learned stranger to preside over the diocese. In the mean time it was proposed, that the laity should present a strong remonstrance to the existing bishop. If this should fail, "I know," said the speaker, "the feelings and sentiments of the laity-and, when they meet again they will speak in a voice of thunder, that will reverberate over the whole diocese."-A second meeting was appointed for the following year, but was never held. The influence of the hierarchy was, we may suppose, exerted to stifle censure, and to protect the clergy from the shameful exposure. But what must we think of the state of a church, in which those who should be instructed, turn upon their instructors, not because they are themselves too worldly and too sensual to listen to the admonitions of religion, not because they are disposed in the pride of human reason to reject the authority of a divine revelation, but because their moral feelings are shocked by the notorious profligacy of their teachers, and their understandings revolt at a monstrous superstition, presented to them for religion? When we read of this extraordinary occurrence, the truth of which is undeniable, our minds are carried back to those earlier sentences of general corruption, which were pronounced against the Romish hierarchy by doctors and councils in the period preceding the Reformation. Then the whole system was declared to be unsound, and to require to be corrected both in its head and members. Those indeed, who uttered these solemn declarations, were not adequate to the work of correction, because their minds had not been awakened to a just apprehension of the principles, on which alone that correction could be effected; namely, the exclusive authority of the Scriptures, and the nullity of the pretensions of human merit but they proclaimed to the world the urgent necessity of a reformation, and God in his providence soon raised up agents, who were qualified by their does not, in the meeting held at a parallel to these denunciations naturally be followed by anoth the result? The case of the mee is even stronger than that of the which had preceded the reformat teenth century, because it was h presence of a reformed church. neral Church of Rome was dend rupted, there was no church which might be favoured by t No separation from the Church then even contemplated, and the the denunciations, apprehende from any advantage, which the to adversaries. They who met the other hand, were aware that their indignant feelings to the tants. Sincerely attached to the though offended by the gross they witnessed, they must have of concealing its disgraces, if sense of duty had not urged t zards to interpose for its res abuses, however, as in the case Church, were not corrected; case also, the result was a refor cession. Why such a denunciation s curred, and should have been f cession, in that particular coun in any other, may even be ex consideration of its local circum the county of Cavan is compr the limits of Ulster, the Prote it borders on Connaught, the the religion of Rome in Ireland no small degree occupied by a peasantry. Even this descri comprehend the whole of the p relative position. On the Pro contiguous to Fermanagh, the county of Ulster. This vicin served to moderate the abuse of Rome, had not the county the very gangway of Irish su between Connaught and the I of Lough Derg, which borders extremity of Fermanagh. A most debased and disgusting thus annually poured across th the Protestant feeling of the a of Fermanagh, communicated ants of Cavan, rendered the in the Roman Catholics of the la sitive to the noisomeness of it clergy, on the other hand, we the annual appearance of th tees; and they disregarded co they found an interest in the c became jealous of the profits where the number of pilgrims 10,000 persons, and soon afte was uttered by the laity, establ of superstition at Coronea in t that they might divert a portic current to their own emolume it in working another engine Those who love to notice remote and independent trans |