BEFORE these pages meet the eye of our readers, the measure introduced by Lord Morpeth, "for the better regulation of ecclesiastical revenues in Ireland," will have been canvassed both in the legislature and in the public journals. But yet it is an occasion upon which it would ill become us to remain silent. Unhappily the subject is one with which, of late, the people of this country have been but too familiar. Unhappily for the honor of England, the peace of Ireland, the welfare of both! discussions have been multiplied, in which there could be found but little to instruct, if we except the sad and humiliating, but yet, it may be, useful lesson which may be gathered from the contemplation of human folly and human crime. We have seen politicians compromising the greatness and degrading the religion of England for the support of men who avow themselves the enemies of both. We have seen men professing to be Protestants, voting that Protestantism be suppressed--and to effect this they have interfered with the most sacred rights and violated the most solemn engagements; and that no tinge or colour of moral guilt might be wanting to complete the picture of depravity which is presented to our view, men who had sworn a solemn oath never to use their parliamentary privileges to injure the church establishment, are unblushingly voting for its spoliation. Well may we say that it is unhappily for England that she VOL. VI.

has been familiar with such discussions! --discussions in which we have been condemned to witness the reckless abandonment of every principle that has hitherto been held sacred; senators disregarding oaths and mocking at the faith of treaties-all sanctions, human and divine, unhesitatingly broken through-the duties of religion forgotten and the sacredness of prescription violated-sacrilege, perjury and perfidy tolerated, encouraged, and almost unrebuked; all this we have been condemned to witness-every thing, in a word, that could painfully force upon us the awful conviction that the high and palmy days of Britain's honor are gone by, and that our country has far advanced in the contaminating and demoralizing progress of revolution.

Not that we despair. No! the struggle will be a fearful one: but even were matters much worse than they are, still the cause of truth would have nothing to fear but from the despondency of her friends. Of all the examples that antiquity sets before us, there is, perhaps, most instruction to be learned from the conduct of that Roman senate, who, when the armies of Rome had been cut off, and her vanquished general driven from the field, returned him thanks on his arrival because he had not despaired of the safety of Rome. This was a noble resolution, and worthy of a people who felt, that though apparently conquered, they could not be put

L

down; and their confidence had its glorious reward in the success which afterwards attended their arms. And if heathens, amid all the difficulties that surrounded them, after defeats that seemed to threaten the extinction of the Roman name-with but the dim superstitions of Paganism to hint of an overruling power-could yet rely with confidence upon the justice and sacredness of their cause, and rousing by their heroic conduct the fainting energies of their fainting countrymen, could summon to the defence of their altars and their homes the depressed but still unbroken spirits of an almost conquered nation what, we ask, should be the conduct of British patriots in a far less dispiriting crisis, in a holier cause, with stronger motives to animate, and higher principles to cheer our exertions than heathens ever knew? Shall we, in the fancied hopelessness of exertion, abandon our altars, and wait until it may please our triumphant enemies to make the next attack upon our homes? No! let us imitate the noble spirit of the Roman senate, and let us regard as a traitor to the cause of his country, the man who dares to despair of the safety of the constitution.

But if the cause of the constitution has nothing to fear, except from the inaction of its friends, from this it has every thing to fear. Apprehension upon this point is fully justified by the sad experience of the past. Inroad after inroad has been made upon the ancient institutions of the country; concession after concession has given rise to but a new series of demands, and still there have been found men mad enough to continue in the délusion, that by yielding to these demands you could buy off the assaults of the enemies of our institutions. Indolence still pleaded for the persuasion that left an excuse for the want of exertion, and whispered the soft flattery that there was no necessity to resist a demand that surely would be the last. And well did the leaders of the revolution know how to meet this disposition. Time after time did they protest that what they asked was all they sought, and that having obtained one little measure they would be satisfied. Not to recall the events of a past genera tion, when the possession of the elective franchise was the ultimatum of the

demands of the Roman Catholics, who is there that forgets the vows by which emancipation was preceded? This was all the demagogues asked. Protestants were found foolish enough to believe them; emancipation is conceded-and immediately the cry is raised for the repeal of the Union and the extinction of the Church. A time is still promised us when agitation shall cease, and the country be left to the blessings of tranquillity, and each concession is to be the herald of the blissful period; but, alas! indefinitely distant that time is receding farther and farther from our view; the land of peace is farther from us than when we were induced to embark in pursuit of it upon the boundless and tumultuous waters of agitation,

per mare magnum, Italiam sequimur fugientem et volvimur undis."

But surely the time is now come when there should be an end of hypocrisy on the one side, or at least of credulity upon the other. We have already conceded too many "last de mands" to be fooled any longer by the stale and unprofitable cheat. Indeed it appears as if our enemies were tired of making us their dupes: perhaps they are sure of us as their victims. We do not recollect that they have called Lord Morpeth's bill a final mea sure. Mr. O'Connell accepts of its provisions as a small instalment of the debt. This, at least, is honest; perhaps we ought to be thankful for it. The abandonment of the old artifice will at least save Protestants from one disgrace--we will not add another to the list of occasions upon which we have fallen into the "unpitied calamity of being repeatedly caught in the same snare."

There could not be a grosser delu. sion than to imagine Lord Morpeth's bill a final measure-it is morally impossible that it should be so. It estab lishes principles which it does not fol low out; it commences spoliation which it does not perfect: its principle is to make the Roman Catholic religion the established religion of Ireland, and to leave the Protestant church a stipendiary body depending on the eleemosynary contributions of the state. The farther it is from fully effecting this object, the farther is it from being a final measure; for this

principle once established, will assuredly be followed up. Mark the applause with which this bill has been hailed by the men who declare that they will not rest until the rule is established, that every man pays his own clergyman as he pays his own physician. Of what value is the bill to these gentlemen, unless as it is a step towards ulterior measures? To them it is utterly worthless for what it enacts, but they value it for the results which its principle may produce. The passing of this bill will be but the fixing of the lever beneath the pillars of the Protestant establishment of Ireland-of England; and it is a mockery to tell us that this will be all that will be done in the work of demolition.

We have endeavoured to consider the measure with coolness. We confess that we have found it difficult to do so. We have endeavoured to suppress those feelings of indignation which could not but arise in our minds as we perused the iniquitous provisions of this bill-as we found principle after principle of Protestantism abandoned, clause after clause proceeding farther in the work of spoliation and insult-cool, deliberate insults flung upon the faith that we had been accustomed to revere. Of all these feelings, though they be but the feelings of Protestants, we have endeavoured for a moment to divest ourselves; and, contemplating the measure with the cool indifference of neutral politicians, as politicians we say, that never was there devised a measure more calculated to create in Ireland the elements of fierce and—unless by the extirpation of Protestants-interminable strife -to perpetuate the moral and physical degradation of this wretched countryto sink her wretched population still farther below the point at which civilization commences-and, by abandoning our country to the uncontrolled dominion of the bigot tyrants of the Romish priesthood, to crush for ever the last hopes of her regeneration, and shake to its very foundations the solid structure of the British empire.

All this we see not, perhaps, in the immediate effects, but certainly in the ultimate results, of Lord Morpeth's measure; and this we say regarding the bill merely in a political point of view, without any reference to the truth of the

Protestantism upon which it declares war, or the falsehood of the Popery which it claims as its ally. There was a time when British statesmen would not have dared to put themselves in the infidel attitude of arbiters between Popery and Protestantism, and profess themselves abstractedly indifferent to both. And still we talk of Protestant England—and her Protestant constitution-and our Protestant state. Let this measure pass, and the words are a mockery-the profession is hypocrisy England is Protestant no moreinfidel she may be; ready to make common cause with any superstition with which a temporary convenience may dictate an alliance; but never more can England claim the honoured name of Protestant. Her people will have abandoned every principle for which their forefathers bled-her legislature will have violated compacts as sacred as the right by which they rule

her monarch will have broken his coronation vows-he will have forfeited the right in abrogating the charter by which he holds his crown. National Protestantism is the only title of the House of Hanover to rule over us. Let this be interfered with, and the government of William the Fourth is a usurpation. When England ceases to be Protestant, the act of settlement is a nullity; and, we repeat it, when Lord Morpeth's measure passes, England is Protestant no more. We will have thrown disgrace upon the historical recollections that we have been accustomed to cherish with all the fondness of national pride-the revolution, which we have so long called glorious, we will have stigmatized as a rebellion-or rather, the deeds of our ancestors are enshrined beyond the power of our degeneracy to tarnish : they will remain the witness and reproach of that degeneracy: history, indeed, will then be but a series of reproaches-every page will record the glorious assertion of some noble principle which we have shamefully abandoned: our very national monuments and national observances will testify against us, and the very forms of that constitution with which Protestantism was interwoven will remain the memorials of the piety of our ancestors and the reproach of the apostacy of their sons.