me tell you, that recent circumstances have by no | in a kind of apoplectic fit, when he was paying a means tended to diminish in the minds of men that morning visit in the house of an acquaintance. The hope of elevation beyond their own rank which is so confusion was, of course, very great, and messengers congenial to our nature; from pleading for John Roe to taxing John Bull, from jesting for Mr. Pitt and writing in the Anti-Jacobin, to managing the affairs of Europe these are leaps which seem to justify the fondest dreams of mothers and of aunts.

I do not say that the disabilities to which the Catholics are exposed, amount to such intolerable grievances, that the strength and industry of a nation are overwhelmed by them: the increasing prosperity of Ireland fully demonstrates the contrary But I repeat again, what I have often stated in the course of our correspondence, that your laws against the Catholics are exactly in that state in which you have neither the benefits of rigour nor of liberality; every law which prevented the Catholics from gaining strength and wealth is repealed; every law which can irritate remains if you were determined to insult the Catholics, you should have kept them weak; if you resolved to give them strength, you should have ceased to insult them at present your conduct is pure unadulterated folly.

Lord Hawkesbury says, we heard nothing about the Catholics till we began to mitigate the laws against them; when we relieved them in part from this oppression they began to be disaffected. This is very true; but it proves just what I have said, that you have either done too much, or too little; and as there lives not, I hope, upon earth, so depraved a courtier that he would load the Catholics with their ancient chains, what absurdity it is then not to render their dispositions friendly, when you leave their arms and legs free!

were despatched, in every direction, to find a surgeon, who, upon his arrival, declared that his excellency must be immediately blooded, and prepared himself forthwith to perform the operation; the barbarous servants of the embassy, who were there in great numbers, no sooner saw the surgeon prepared to wound the arm of their master with a sharp shining instrument, than they drew their swords, put themselves in an attitude of defence, and swore in pure Sclavonic, that they would murder any man who at tempted to do hin the slightest injury; he had been a very good master to them, and they would not desert him in his misfortunes, or suffer his blood to be shed while he was off his guard, and incapable of defending himself.' By good fortune, the secretary arrived about this period of the dispute, and his excellency, relieved from superfluous blood and perilous affection, was, after much difficulty, restored to life.

There is an argument brought forward with some appearance of plausibility in the House of Commons, which certainly merits an answer. You know that the Catholics now vote for members of Parliament in Ireland, and that they outnumber the Protestants in a very great proportion; if you allow Catholics to sit in Parliament, religion will be found to influence votes more than property, the greater part of the hundred Irish members who are returned to Parliament will be Catholics. Add to these the Catholic members who are returned in England, and you will have a phalanx of heretical strength which every minister will be compelled to respect, and occasionally to conciliate by concessions incompatible with the interests of the You know, and many Englishmen know, what pass- Protestant Church. The fact is, however, that you es in China; but nobody knows or cares what passes are, at this moment subjected to every danger of this in Ireland. At the beginning of the present reign, no kind which you can possibly apprehend hereafter. If Catholic could realize property, or carry on any busi- the spiritual interests of the voters are more powerful ness; they were absolutely annihilated, and had no than their temporal interests, they can bind down their more agency in the country than so many trees. They representatives to support any measures favourable to were like Lord Mulgrave's eloquence, and Lord Cam- the Catholic religion, and they can change the objects den's wit; the legislative bodies did not know of their of their choice till they have found Protestant memexistence. For these twenty-five years last past, the bers (as they easily may do) perfectly obedient to Catholics have been engaged in commerce; within their wishes. If the superior possessions of the Prothat period the commerce of Ireland has doubled: testants prevent the Catholics from uniting for a comthere are four Catholics at work for one Protestant, and mon polítical object, then the danger you fear cannot eight Catholics at work for one Episcopalian; of exist; if zeal, on the contrary, gets the better of acres, course, the proportion which Catholic wealth bears to than the danger at present exists, from the right of Protestant wealth is every year altering rapidly in fa-voting already given to the Catholics, and it will not vour of the Catholics. I have already told you what their be increased by allowing them to sit in Parliament. purchases of land were the last year; since that period There are, as nearly as I can recollect, thirty seats in I have been at some pains to find out the actual state Ireland for cities and counties, where the Protestants of the Catholic wealth; it is impossible, upon such a are the most numerous, and where the members resubject, to arrive at complete accuracy; but I have turned must of course be Protestants. In the other good reason to believe that there are at present two seventy representations, the wealth of the Protestant thousand Catholics in Ireland, possessing an income is opposed to the number of the Catholics; and if all from 5001. upwards, many of these with incomes of the seventy members returned were of the Catholic one, two, three, and four thousand, and some amount-persuasion, they must still plot the destruction of our ing to fifteen and twenty thousand per annum: and religion in the midst of 588 Protestants. Such terrors this is the kingdom, and these the people, for whose would disgrace a cook-maid, or a toothless auntconciliation we are to wait heaven knows when, and when they fall from the lips of bearded and senatorial Lord Hawkesbury why! As for me, I never think of men, they are nauseous, antiperistaltic, and emetical. the situation of Ireland, without feeling the same necessity for immediate interference as I should do if I saw blood flowing from a great artery. I rush towards it with the instinctive rapidity of a man desirous of preventing death, and have no other feeling but that in a few seconds the patient may be no more.

How can you for a moment doubt of the rapid effects which would be produced by the emancipation? In the first place, to my certain knowledge, the Catholics have long since expressed to his majesty's ministers their perfect readiness to vest in his majesty, either with the consent of the pope, or without it, if it cannot I could not help smiling in the times of no-popery, be obtained, the nomination of the Catholic prelacy. to witness the loyal indignation of many persons at The Catholic prelacy in Ireland consis of twenty-six the attempt made by the last ministry to do something bishops, and the warden of Galway, a dignitary enfor the relief of Ireland. The general cry in the coun- joying Catholic jurisdiction. The number of Roman try was, that they would not see their beloved mo- Catholic priests in Ireland exceeds one thousand. The narch used ill in his old age, and that they would expenses of his peculiar worship are, to a substantial stand by him to the last drop of their blood. I respect farmer or mechanic, five shillings per annum; to a lagood feelings, however erroneous be the occasions on bourer (where he is not entirely excused) one shilling which they display themselves; and, therefore, I saw per annum; this includes the contribution of the whole in all this as much to admire as to blame. It was a family, and for this the priest is bound to attend them species of affection, however, which reminded me very when sick, and to confess them when they apply to forcibly of the attachment displayed by the servants him; he is also to keep his chapel in order, to celeof the Russian ambassador, at the beginning of the brate divine service, and to preach on Sundays and last century. His excellency happened to fall down holydays. In the northern district a priest gains from

301. to 50l.; in the other parts of Ireland from 60l. to felt at hearing Mr. Perceval call on the then ministry 901. per annum. The best paid Catholic bishops receive for measures of vigour in Ireland. If I lived at Hamp about 4007. per annum; the others from 300l. to 3501. stead upon stewed meats and claret; if I walked to My plan is very simple; I would have 300 Catholic church every Sunday before eleven young gentlemen parishes at 1001. per ann., 300 at 2001. per ann., and of my own begetting, with their faces washed, and 400 at 3001. per ann.; this, for the whole thousand their hair pleasingly combed; if the Almighty had parishes, would amount to 190,000. To the prelacy blessed me with every earthly comfort,-how awfully I would allot 20,000l. in unequal proportions, from would I pause before I sent forth the flame and the 1000l. to 500l.; and I would appropriate 40,000 more sword over the cabins of the poor, brave, generous, for the support of Catholic schools, and the repairs of open-hearted peasants of Ireland! How easy it is to Catholic churches; the whole amount of which sums shed human blood-how easy it is to persuade our is 250,000l., about the expense of three days of one of selves that it is our duty to do so-and that the deciour genuine, good, English, just and necessary wars. sion has cost us a severe struggle-how much, in all The clergy should all receive their salaries at the Bank ages, have wounds and shrieks and tears been the of Ireland, and I would place the whole patronage in cheap and vulgar resources of the rulers of mankind the hands of the crown. Now, I appeal to any human-how difficult and how noble it is to govern in kindbeing, except Spencer Perceval, Esq., of the parish of ness, and to found an empire upon the everlasting baHampstead, what the disaffection of a clergy would sis of justice and affection!-But what do men call amount to, gaping after this graduated bounty of the vigour? To let loose hussars and to bring up artillecrown, and whether Ignatius Loyola himself, if he ry, to govern with lighted matches, and to cut, and were a living blockhead instead of a dead saint, could push, and prime-I call this, not vigour, but the sloth withstand the temptation of bouncing from 1007. a of cruelty and ignorance. The vigour I love consists year in Sligo, to 3001. in Tipperary? This is the mis- in finding out wherein subjects are aggrieved, in reerable sum of money for which the merchants, and lieving them, in studying the temper and genius of a land-owners, and nobility of England are exposing people, in consulting their prejudices, in selecting themselves to the tremendous peril of losing Ireland. proper persons to lead and manage them, in the laboThe sinecure places of the Roses and the Percevals, rious, watchful, and difficult task of increasing public and the dear and near relations,' put up to auction at happiness by allaying each particular discontent. In thirty years' purchase, would almost amount to the this way Hoche pacified La Vendee-and in this way only will Ireland ever be subdued. But this, in the I admit that nothing can be more reasonable than eyes of Mr. Perceval, is imbecility and meanness; to expect that a Catholic priest should starve to death, houses are not broken open-women are not insulted genteelly and pleasantly, for the good of the Protestant-the people seem all to be happy; they are not rode religion; but is it equally reasonable to expect that he over by horses, and cut by whips. Do you call this should do so for the Protestant pews, and Protestant vigour?-Is this government? brick and mortar? On an Irish Sabbath, the bell of a neat parish church often summons to church only the parson and an occasionally conforming clerk; while, two hundred yards off, a thousand Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel, and peited by all the storms of heaven. Can any thing be more distressing than to see a venerable man pouring forth sublime truths in tattered breeches, and depending for his food upon the little offal he gets from his parishioners? I venerate a human being who starves for his principles, let them be what they may; but starving for any thing is not at all to the taste of the honourable flagellants; strict principles, and good pay, is the motto of Mr. Perceval; the one he keeps in great measure for the faults of his enemies, the other for himself.

money.

LETTER X. AND LAST.

You must observe that all I have said of the effects

which will be produced by giving salaries to the Catholic clergy only proceeds upon the supposition that the emancipation of the laity is effected:--withwho would receive a shilling from government; he out that, I am sure there is not a clergyman in Ireland could not do so, without an eutire loss of credit among the members of his own persuasion.

clergy in collecting tithes, is, I believe, strictly true.What you say of the moderation of the Irish Protestant There are parishes in Connaught in which a Protes. Instead of collecting what the law enables them to tant was never settled, nor even seen; in that pro- than two-thirds; and I entirely agree with you, that collect. I believe they seldom or ever collect more vince, in Munster, and in parts of Leinster, the entire the abolition of agistment tithe in Ireland by a vote of peasantry for sixty miles are Catholics; in these tracts, the churches are frequently shut for want of the Irish House of Commons, and without any remune a congregation, or opened to an assemblage of from six ration to the church, was a most scandalous and jacoto twenty persons. Of what Protestants there are in binical measure. I do not blame the Irish clergy; but I submit to your common sense, if it is possible to exIreland, the greatest part are gathered together in Ulster, or they live in towns. In the country of the plain to an Irish peasant upon what principle of just other three provinces the Catholics see no other re-ice, or common sense, he is to pay every tenth potato ligion but their own, and are at the least as fifteen in his little garden to a clergyman in whose religion to one Protestant. In the diocese of Tuam, they has nothing to preach to but bare walls. It is true, if nobody believes for twenty miles around him, and who are sixty to one; in the parish of St. Mullins, dio- the tithes are bought up, the cottager must pay more cese of Leghlin, there are four thousand Catholics rent to his landlord; but the same thing, done in the and one Protestant; in the town of Grasgenamana, shape of rent, is less odious than when it is done in in the county of Kilkenny, there are between four the shape of tithe; I do not want to take a shilling out and five hundred Catholic houses, and three Protestant houses. In the parish of Allen, county Kildare, of things, and to change their names. I cannot see of the pockets of the clergy, but to leave the substance there is no Protestant, though it is very populous. In the slightest reason why the Irish labourer is to be rethe parish of Arslein, Queen's county, the proportion lieved from the real onus, or from any thing else but is one hundred to one. In the whole county of Kilken- the name of tithe. At present, he rents only nine ny, by actual enumeration, it is seventeen to one; in tenths of the produce of the land, which is all that be the diocese of Kilmacduagh, province of Connaught, fif-longs to the owner; this he has at the market price; ty-two to one, by ditto. These I give you as a few if the land-owner purchase the other tenth of the specimens of the present state of Ireland-and yet church, of course he has a right to make a correspond. there are men imprudent and ignorant enough to conent advance upon his tenant. tend that such evils require no remedy, and that mild family man who dwelleth in Hampstead, can find none but the cautery and the knife,

I very much doubt, if you were to lay open all civil offices to the Catholics and to grant salaries to their clergy, in the manner I have stated, if the Catholic laity would give themselves much trouble about the advance of their church; for they would pay the same I cannot describe the horror and disgust which I tithes under one system that they do under another.

-omne per ignem

Excoquitur vitium.

If you were to bring the Catholics into the daylight of the world, to the high situations of the army, the navy, and the bar, numbers of them would come over to the established church, and do as other people do instead of that you set a mark of infamy upon them, rouse every passion of our nature in favour of their ereed, and then wonder that men are blind to the follies of the Catholic religion. There are hardly any instances of old and rich families among the Protest. ant dissenters; when a man keeps a coach, and lives in good company, he comes to church, and gets ashamed of the meeting-house; if this is not the case with the father, it is almost always the case with the sou. These things would never be so, if the dissenters were in practice as much excluded from all the concerns of civil life, as the Catholics are. If a rich young Catholic were in Parliament, he would belong to White's and to Brookes's, would keep race-horses, would walk up and down Pall Mall, be exonerated of his ready money and his constitution, become as totally devoid of morality, honesty, knowledge, and civility, as Protestant loungers in Pall Mall, and return home with a supreme contempt for Father O'Leary and Father O'Callaghan. I am astonished at the madness of the Catholic clergy, in not perceiving that Catholic eman cipation is Catholic infidelity; that to entangle their people in the intrigues of a Protestant Parliament, and a Protestant court, is to insure the loss of every man of fashion and consequence in their community. The true receipt for preserving their religion is Mr. Perceval's receipt for destroying it; it is to deprive every rich Catholic of all the objects of secular ambition, to separate him from the Protestant, and to shut him up in his castle, with priests and relics.

We are told, in answer to all our arguments, that this is not a fit period,-that a period of universal war is not the proper time for dangerous innovations in the constitution; this is as much as to say, that the worst time for making friends is the period when you have made many enemies; that it is the greatest of all er. rors to stop when you are breathless, and to lie down when you are fatigued Of one thing I am quite certain: if the safety of Europe is once completely restor ed, the Catholics may forever bid adieu to the slightest probability of effecting their object. Such men as hang about a court not only are deaf to the suggestions of mere justice, but they despise justice; they detest the word right; the only word which rouses them is peril; where they can oppress with impunity, they op. press for ever, and call it loyalty and wisdom.

in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypothenuse. Such is the history of English parties at this moment; you cannot seriously suppose that the people care for such men as Lord Hawkesbury, Mr. Canning, and Mr. Perceval, on their own account; you cannot really believe them to be so degraded as to look to their safety from a man who proposes to subdue Europe by keeping it without Jesuit's bark. The people, at present, have one passion, and but one

A Jove principium, Jovis omnia plena.

They care no more for the ministers I have mentioned, than they do for those sturdy royalists who, for 601. per annum, stand behind his majesty's carriage, arrayed in scarlet and in gold. If the present minis. ters opposed the court instead of flattering it, they would not command twenty votes.

Do not imagine, by these observations, that I am not loyal; without joining in the common cant of the best of kings, I respect the king most sincerely as a good man. His religion is better than the religion of Mr. Perceval, his old morality very superior to the old morality of Mr. Canning, and I am quite certain he has a safer understanding than both of them put together. Loyalty, within the bounds of reason and moderation, is one of the great instruments of English happiness; but the love of the king may easily be come more strong than the love of the kingdom, and we may lose sight of the public welfare in our exag. gerated admiration of him who is appointed to reign only for its promotion and support. I detest Jacobin. ism; and if I am doomed to be a slave at all, I would rather be the slave of a king than a cobbler. God save the king, you say, warms your heart like the sound of a trumpet. I cannot make use of so violent a metaphor; but I am delighted to hear it, when it is the cry of genuine affection; I am delighted to hear it, when they hail not only the individual man, but the outward and living sign of all English blessings. These are noble feelings, and the heart of every good man must go with them; but God save the king, in these times, too often means God save my pension and my place, God give my sisters an allowance out of the privy purse-make me clerk of the irons, let me survey the meltings, let me live upon the fruits of other men's industry, and fatten upon the plunder of the public.

What is it possible to say to such a man as the gen tleman of Hampstead, who really believes it feasible to convert the four million Irish Catholics to the Protestant religion, and considers this as the best remedy for the disturbed state of Ireland? It is not possible to answer such a man with arguments; we must come out against him with beads, and a cowl, and push him into an hermitage. It is really such trash, that it is an abuse of the privilege of reasoning to reply to it. Such a project is well worthy the statesman who would bring the French to reason by keeping them without rhubarb, and exhibit to mankind the awful spectacle of a nation deprived of neutral salts. This is not the dream of a wild apothecary indulging in his own opium; this is not the distempered fancy of a pounder of drugs, delirious from smallness of profits; but it is the sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a man to whom the public safety is entrusted, and whose appointment is considered by many as a mas terpiece of political sagacity. What a sublime thought, that no purge can now be taken between the Weser and the Garonne; that the bustling pestle is still, the canorous mortar mute, and the bowels of mankind locked up for fourteen degrees of latitude! When, I should be curious to know, were all the powers of crudity and flatulence fully explained to his majesty's ministers? At what period was this great In whose mind was the idea of destroying the price, and the plasters of France first engendered? Without castor oil they might, for some months, to be sure, have carried on a lingering war; but can they do without bark? Will the people live under a govern ment where antimonial powders cannot be procured

I am so far from conceiving the legitimate strength of the crown would be diminished by these abolitions of civil incapacities in consequence of religious opinions, that my only objection to the increase of religious freedom is, that it would operate as a diminution of political freedom; the power of the crown is so overbearing at this period, that almost the only steady opposers of its fatal influence are men disgusted by religious intolerance. Our establishments are so enormous, and so utterly disproportioned to our population, that every second or third man you meet in society gains something from the public; my brother the commissioner-my nephew the police justice purveyor of small beer to the army in Ireland-clerk of the mouth-yeoman to the left hand-these are the obstacles which common sense and justice have now to overcome. Add to this, that the king, old and infirm, excites a principle of very amiable generosity in his favour; that he has led a good, moral, and religious life, equally removed from profligacy and methodistical hypocrisy; that he has been a good husband, a good father, and a good master; that he dresses plain, loves hunting and farming, hates the French, and is, in all opinions and habits, quite English: these feelings are heightened by the present situation of the world, and the yet unexploded clamour of Jacobinism. In short, from the various sources of in-plan of conquest and constipation fully developed? terest, personal regard, and national taste, such a tempest of loyalty has set in upon the people, that the 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and, therefore, if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth

PETER PLYMLEY'S LETTERS.

Will they bear the loss of mercury? There's the rub.' Depend upon it, the absence of the materia medica will soon bring them to their senses, and the cry of Bourbon and bolus burst forth from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.

You ask me for any precedent in our history where the oath of supremacy has been dispensed with. It was dispensed with to the Catholics of Canada, in 1774. They are only required to take a simple oath of allegiance. The same, I believe, was the case in Corsica. The reason of such exemption was obvious; you could not possibly have retained either of these countries without it. And what did it signify, whether you retained them or not? In cases where you might have been foolish without peril, you were wise; when nonsense and bigotry threaten you with destruction, it is impossible to bring you back to the alphabet of justice and common sense; if men are to be fools, I would rather they were fools in little matters that in great; dulness turned up with temerity, is a livery all the worse for the facings; and the most tremendous of all things is the magnanimity of a dunce.

931

the saints and chosen of God;' and then the decree adds. ' public offices and honours, high or low, great or small, shall be given to natural born Hungarians who deserve well of their country, and possess the other qualifi cations, let their religion be what it may.' Such was a line of policy pursued in a diet consisting of four hundred members, in a state whose form of government approaches nearer to our own than any other, having a Roman Catholic establishment of great wealth and power, and under the influence of one of the most bigoted Catholic courts of Europe. This measure has now the experience of eighteen years in its favour; it has undergone a trial of fourteen years of revolution, such as the world never witnessed, and more than equal to a century less convulsed. What have been its effects? When the French advanced like a torrent within a few days' march of Vienna, the Hungarians rose in a mass; they formed what they called the sacred insurrection, to defend their sovereign, their rights and liberties, now common to all; and the apprehension of their approach dictated to the reluctant Bonaparte the imme. diate signature of the treaty of Leoben: the Romish hierarchy of Hungary exists in all its former splendour and opulence; never has the slightest attempt been made to diminish it; and those revolutionary principles, to which so large a portion of civilized Europe has been sacrificed, have here failed in making the smallest successful inroad.

It is not by any means necessary, as you contend, to repeal the Test Act if you give relief to the Catholic; what the Catholics ask for is to be put on a footing with the Protestant dissenters, which would be done by repealing that part of the law which compels them to take the oath of supremacy and to make the decla- The whole history of this proceeding of the Huntion against transubstantiation; they would then come garian diet is so extraordinary, and such an admirable into Parliament as all other dissenters are allowed to comment upon the Protestantism of Mr. Spencer Perdo, and the penal laws to which they were exposed for ceval, that I must compel you to read a few short taking office would be suspended every year, as they extracts from the law itself:-The Protestants of have been for this half century past towards Protest- both confessions shall, in religious matters, depend ant dissenters. Perhaps, after all, this is the best upon their own spiritual superiors alone. The Promethod, to continue the persecuting law, and to sus- testants may likewise sustain their trivial and grampend it every year,-a method which, while it effect-mar schools. The church dues which the Protestants ually destroys the persecution itself, leaves to the have hitherto paid to the Catholic parish priests, great mass of mankind the exquisite gratification of schoolmasters, or other such officers, either in money, supposing that they are enjoying some advantage from which a particular class of their fellow creatures are excluded. We manage the Corporation and Test Acts at present much in the same manner as if we were to persuade parish boys, who had been in the habit of beating an ass, to spare the animal, and beat the skin of an ass stuffed with straw; this would preserve the semblance of tormenting without the reality, and keep boy and beast in good humour.

How can you imagine that a provision for the Catholic clergy affects the fifth article of the Union? Surely I am preserving the Protestant church in Ireland, if I put it in a better condition than that in which it now is. A tithe proctor in Ireland collects his tithes with a blunderbuss, and carries his tenth hay-cock by storm, sword in hand; to give him equal value in a more pacific shape, cannot, I should imagine, be considered as injurious to the church of Ireland; and what right has that church to complain, if Parliament chooses to fix upon the empire the burthen of supporting a double ecclesiastical establishment? Are the revenues of the Irish Protestant clergy in the slightest degree injured by such a provision? On the contrary, is it possible to confer a more serious benefit upon that church, than by quieting and contenting those who are at work for its destruction?

It is impossible to think of the affairs of Ireland without being forcibly struck with the parallel of Hungary. Of her seven millions of inhabitants, one-half were Protestants, Calvinists, and Lutherans, many of the Greek Church, and many Jews; such was the state of their religious dissensions, that Mahomet had often been called in to the aid of Calvin, and the cresent often glittered on the walls of Buda and of Presburg. At last in 1791, during the most violent crisis of disturbance, a diet was called, and by a great majority of voices a decree was passed, which secured to all the contending sects the fullest and freest exercise of religious worship and education; ordained (let it be heard in Hampstead) that churches and chapels should be erected for all on the most perfectly equal terms, that the Protestants of both confessions should depend upon their spiritual superiors alone, liberated them from swearing by the usual oath, the holy Virgin Mary,

productions, or labour, shall in future entirely cease, and after three months from the publishing of this law, be no more any where demanded. In the building or repairing of churches, parsonage-houses and schools, the Protestants are not obliged to assist the Catholics with labour, nor the Catholics the Protestants. The pious foundations and donations of the Protestants which already exist, or which in future may be made for their churches, ministers, schools, and students, hospitals, orphan-houses, and poor, cannot be taken from them under any pretext, nor yet the care of them; but rather the unimpeded adminis tration of them shall be entrusted to those from among them to whom it belongs, and those founda tions which may have been taken from them under the last government, shall be returned to them without delay; all affairs of the marriage of Protestants are left to their own consistories; all landlords and masters of families, under the penalty of public prosecu tion, are ordered not to prevent their subjects and servants, whether they be Catholic or Protestant, from the observance of the festivals and ceremonies of their religion,' &c. &c. &c.-By what strange chances are mankind influenced! A little Catholic barrister of Vienna might have raised the cry of no Protestantism, and Hungary would have panted for the arrival of a French army as much as Ireland does at this moment; arms would have been searched for; Lutheran and Calvinist houses entered in the dead of the night; and the strength of Austria exhausted in guarding a country from which, under the present liberal system, she may expect, in a moment of danger the most powerful aid; and let it be remembered, that this memorable example of political wisdom took place at a period when many great monarchies were yet unconquered in Europe; in a country where the two religious parties were equal in number; and where it is impossible to suppose indifference in the party which relinquished its exclusive privileges. Under all these circumstances, the measure was carried in the Hungarian diet by a majority of 280 to 120. In a few weeks we shall see every concession denied to the Catholics by a much larger majority of Protestants, at a moment when every other power is subjugated but