Protestant church ; but it is now very visible to every man
capable of tracing the connection between cause and effect,
that in treating the sufferings of the Irish Catholic clergy
with contempt, and neglecting to conciliate them by a com-
petent provision at the proper time, they laid the foundations
of an evil which is now rapidly recoiling upon the church
which these ministers pretended to defend ; to say nothing of
the incurable principle of jealousy, and animosity, which they
thereby created and maintained between the two churches.
The enmity that was thus planted by the policy of these
ignorant or wicked ministers, has produced such fruits of
desolation in my native land ; and, even in my own memory,
alighted with such indiscriminate vengeance upon the evil

cause, certain doctrines of Rome, and that furious zeal and brutal degradation
of the human understanding, which a corrupt ecclesiastical interest generated,
will decline also.

Mr. Lawless, a Catholic historian, appears to have borne unwilling testi-
mony to the early independence of the Irish church. At pages 22 and 23 of
the first edition of his compendium of Irish history, he thus writes. " About
the period of the English invasion, certain ceremonies and points of disci-
pline of the Irish church, werejirst assimilated to those of Rome. Cardinal
Paperon assembled 3000 clergymen, regular and secular, in the townofDrog-
heda, about the year 1 152, and at this period " (of course not before it) " the
discipline of Rome was universally established, and the spiritual supremacy of
the Pope" (he might perhaps have added for the first time) " formally ac-
knowledged." Some difference of sentiment may occur between historians
concerning the precise date of this memorable meeting ; but however this
may be, the previous independence of the Irish church is established by it, and
in connection with the impudent sale of Ireland by Pope Adrian to Harry,
and the measures which this Prince took to accomplish the Pope's ghostly
mission, clearly prove that all previous efforts to establish the supremacy of
the holy see in Ireland, had failed; and that for this boon (or rather bone of
contention') we are totally indebted to the policy and the steel of England !



26 IRELAND,

and the good professors of the hated creed, that I have fre-
quently thought the cause of wise and liberal govern-
ment, as well as that of civil and religious liberty, would
be materially promoted by a collection of the facts (to
divers of which I have been an eye witness, and in some
instances a sufferer in my own person without consciousness
of crime) into one volume, that the world might see reflected
in this mirror of Irish martyrology, the image of that infer-
nal brood of oppressive and vengeful monsters, that were
produced and propagated in Ireland by English councils, in
first planting the Pope's supremacy in that country by their
arms, and then labouring by a cruel and oppressive policy
to weaken and destroy it.

The effects thus produced in the Catholic and Protestant
mind of Ireland, were something like those which attend
the Burking system (for which species of murder no prompt
and effectual remedy has yet been provided by the wisdom
of the British government.) They were marked, not only
by an absence of confidence and good-will between people
of the same neighbourhood, but by suspicion, vigilance, and
smothered feelings of disaffection and resentment. These
feelings broke out between boys at school, and almost
between infants in the cradle. Of this I could name various
instances in private life, in one of which I myself was per-
sonally a sufferer when not more than twelve years old ;
and in the year 1798, when the death of Law and the reign
of Anarchy gave an unbridled licence for exhibition to the
ill smothered spirit of hatred and revenge which had long
slumbered with sulky indolence in the bosoms of the parties,
the existence of this spirit was exhibited by such cruel and
cold-blooded murders of men, women, and children, as
proved the demoniac capabilities of the factions by whom
they were perpetrated ; and the recollection of them at this
day is almost sufficient to make an Irishman blush that his
country should be stained with crimes so cruel in their
nature, so hostile to humanity, and so totally contrary to
the laws of war, as they are received and practised by civil-



REVIEW OF HER POLITICAL AND MORAL STATE. 27

ized nations. Nor did the spirit of hatred and revenge, thus
developing to the country the full measure of its sanguinary
influence, feel satisfied with the blood of its enemies in
arms ; or with that of the men associated with them in prin-
ciple and feeling. It thirsted also for that of the peaceful
Quakers, who, as merchants and manufacturers, had been
of the utmost service to the working population, and who,
as men of true Christian humanity, had no rivals (considered
as a sect) in this or any other country of the Christian world.
Divers of these peaceable men were made prisoners in the
County of Wexford, and would have been piked on the
spot, if they had not appealed for protection to the com-
manders of the rebel army. They were also threatened to
be consumed with fire in their meeting-house at Enniscorthy,
if they should assemble there to hold the Quarterly meeting
of their province in its usual course. But Heaven,which had
these peaceable people in its protection, so ordered the
events of the rebellion, as that the battle which finally extin-
guished it, was fought at Vinegar Hill, above the town of
Enniscorthy, exactly two days before the meeting com-
menced (of which divers from distant parts of the kingdom
who attended it knew nothing at the time,) and thus the
Quakers' quarterly meeting of Enniscorthy was held in peace ;
and being the only worshipping assembly then existing in
that town or neighbourhood, it was attended, we believe,
by all those poor straggling Protestants, who, like a few
solitary blades of grass in a harvest field, had escaped the
general desolation of the mower's scythe. But of all which
happened to the peaceful Quakers at this time, there was
no particular incident that struck us with more force (con-
sidered as an evidence of the harmonious working of English
policy and Romish piety, in the schools of education in this
country) than that of a deliberate effort, on the part of a
Catholic child of seven years old, to take the life of Joseph
Haughton, a Quaker of innocent and amiable character,
residing in the County of Wexford at that time. This child,
who had procured a small loaded piece, was taking deli-



28 IRELAND,

berate aim at the heretic whom he hated, when a Catholic
who knew and respected Haughton, happened to come up,
and seized the instrument before the feeble child had power
to effect his purpose. By what party or power, or for what
purpose this rebellion was excited, is now immaterial to us.
But it is not immaterial to an examination of the wisdom or
wickedness of the policy by which the elements of Irish
discord were produced, to enter a field where they were so
forcibly displayed, and to prove, from the nature and circum-
stances of their operation at that time, that they had long
slumbered in sulky silence in the cavern of the heart, before
the rebellion of 1798 called them into action ; and that for
the gift of their primeval existence, they were exclusively
indebted to that corrupt and selfish policy, by which Eng-
land, through a band of very corrupt and selfish agents, had
governed this country from the period of her conquest.

That the enjoyment of constitutional liberty upon the one
hand, or of constitutional power upon the other, was not the
sole object of the combatants in this warfare, may be easily
collected from their acts ; when, by the circumstances of the
rebellion, their passions were liberated Jrom the restraints of
law.

It was not to preseve the British government invio-
late, that the flattering choice of " Hell or Connaught,"
was given to the Catholics of Ulster in the tumults of that
day ; and that for disobedience to this despotic mandate,
their properties were, in many most respectable instances of
manufacturing industry, consumed to ashes. It was not to
preserve that government inviolate, that floggings were
inflicted upon unconvicted Irishmen, in the heart of the
capital, or elsewhere, in order to extort confessions I These
operations of war shew, that the party in petty power
regarded their Catholic countrymen as the natural enemies
of the state ; and they imply a consciousness, on the part of
these abusers of temporary power, that human nature,
governed without justice, by the mere law of force, must
necessarily be the enemy of that power, and of that people,



REVIEW OP HER POLITICAL AND MORAL STATE. 29

which thus trample upon nature's rights. Viewing the
Catholics of Ireland through this medium, it is not surprising
that the Orangemen of that country, who were then the right
arm of the British government, should indulge their hatred
of Popery and Papists in the most licentious abuses of their
temporary power; but to pretend that these violations of
justice were volunteered in the service of a wise and good
government, is rather too gross an insult to common sense !
No ; there was a deeper cause than the support of govern-
ment for these anti-constitutional proceedings there was
that species of hatred and suspicion to be indulged, which
every man naturally feels towards the victims of his own
robbery and wrong. There were places and pensions, with
the monopolies of office, to be preserved. There was the
plunder of civil and ecclesiastical corporations to be kept
whole and entire !

These were the true motives of the ultra loyalty of that
day ; and as they fully account for the course that was pur-
sued, so they clearly exhibit the character of that policy,
from which Ireland has equally derived her poverty and
her vice.

On the other hand, we find the same policy producing
among the Roman Catholics of Ireland, an inveterate hatred
of the Sassenagh, his religion, and his oppressions; and
thus working, by the same means, the same salutary pur-
posses of hatred and division; with this single difference,
however, in the national character of their vices, that the
Orange persecutions were purely of English manufacture,
while those of the Catholic party were tinged with an infu-
sion of superstitious fanaticism, from a foreign and alien
source. But that the deeds of cruelty which the Catholics
perpetrated (to say nothing of their sale of Ireland's political
independence for the selfish hope of emancipation, which
was held out to them) were totally incompatible with the
noble feelings of a patriot, and uncalled for by the neces-
sities of an honourable warfare, is self-evident. It was not
to obtain a deliverance from civil and ecclesiastical oppres-



30 IRELAND,

sion, that Protestant women and children were burned to
ashes, in the barn at Scullabogue, and thrown back among
the blazing elements with pikes when they attempted to
escape,) a piece of cruelty which took place in the County
of Wexford, in the rebellion of 1798. It was not to maintain
the cause of liberty by an honourable warfare, that British
officers, who were taken prisoners by the French, who landed
at Killala, would have been murdered by the rebels in cold
blood, but for the officers of the French invading army, who
had taken these monsters into their service, and whose com-
mander is reported to have said, that if he had known the cha-
racter of the people of the country, he would not have landed
a French soldier on their coast. These officers, moved with
indignation at the savage and cowardly spirit of the assassins,
who would have thus murdered their prisoners of war in cold
blood, drew their sabres and threatened to cut them down ;
and finding, in the course of their dealings with them, that
they could not be restrained within the limits of military
duty, they are said to have brought several of them to trial,
and hanged them for a violation of the laws of war.

This sanguinary spirit was nursed and brought to maturity
in Ireland, by a course of ill-founded favouritism upon the
one hand, and of wicked and unrelenting persecution upon
the other. And so far as the peasantry of the country are
concerned, the system which has corrupted Ireland still
exists ; since for this class the laws have provided no pro-
tection against the grinding despotism of their domestic
oppressors, notwithstanding the obvious proofs which the
state of the country exhibits of the absolute necessity of
securing the just and reasonable rights of the labourer, by
special laws.

When William III. mounted the throne of England, he
is said to have made vigorous efforts to tranquillize Ireland,
and unite it to the sister country by a healing policy. To
this end he offered to the Catholics of that country, through
Lord Tyrconnel, half the forfeited lands, and half the church
property, if they would lay down their arms and acknow-



REVIEW OF HER POLITICAL AND MORAL STATE. 31

ledge the new dynasty. This was a proposal worthy of a
soldier and a statesman, who determined, if possible, to heal
divisions, and to govern his new empire by equal laws ; and
I shall not easily believe that the man who did this, and
who fought the battles of liberty upon the continent of
Europe, where he was born, would have violated the treaty
of Limerick, conspired against the trade of Ireland, or have
ordered the cowardly and cold-blooded massacre of the repent-
ing rebels at Glencoe (at the moment when they entertained
his men, and reposed confidence in his princely clemency,)
if he had not been betrayed by the agents of his authority
into unconscious crime ; and that he was betrayed, both in
Scotland and Ireland, by the perfidious villains in whom he
trusted, and forced, by their superior sway, to yield to a
narrow and selfish policy, beneath the native dignity of his
mind, a careful examination of all the incidents connected
with these events, will prove to the satisfaction of every
honest and candid mind.

William being thus defeated in the just and generous
policy by which he had hoped to govern Ireland, and the
plunderers of that country triumphant in their purpose, it is
not surprising that they fanned the flame of religious dis-
cord ; well knowing that it would produce a spirit of dis-
content and reaction; that it would unite the Protestants
together, and constitute their ignorant populace a wall of
defence to these English plunderers ; while the resentment
and reaction of the Irish Catholics would furnish a feasible
pretence for the enactment of those penal laws (such as <5
for the head of a priest ; the power of a Protestant to dis-
possess a Catholic of any horse worth more than 5; the
power of a younger son, becoming a Protestant, to take the
family estate from his elder brother, &c.) which so long dis-
graced the statute books of our insulted country ; and, until
a very recent period of English history, were made the
effectual instruments of promoting a spirit of hatred, and
maintaining a wall of separation between the two parties.
A wall, did we say ? Yes, a wall of separation, so strong,



32 IRELAND,

and in such good repair, that it will take a century of wise
legislation and liberal government effectually to remove it ;
and perhaps two centuries to eradicate the last lingering
remnant of its bigoted and blood-stained base.

This unhappy principle of division (from which all sensi-
ble Irishmen of all parties are now labouring to escape) was
not a caput mortuum, or sleeping theory of law, like that
article of the English criminal code, which empowered an
English judge to hang up a hungry English citizen for the
commission of a theft of one shilling ! It was a living and
operative principle, entailing poverty, oppression and revenge
upon the peasant; and upon the virtuous Protestant in pri-
vate life, the suspicion, hatred and contempt of those, to a
mitigation of whose sufferings he would have contributed,
had his power been equal to his virtue ; while to the profes-
sors of this religion, in the enjoyment of place or pension,
power, property, or plunder, it imparted all the characteristics
of a jealous and ferocious tyrant ! This was the boon con-
ferred upon our country by the penal laws, by the principle
of monopoly and exclusion, and by the policy implied in the
maxim of " divide and govern ; " and under its effects our
countiy is still deeply groaning ; its poor are unprovided for,
its artizans are unemployed, its manufactures have nearly pe-
rished; and the fertile fields ofMunster are still the digrace-
ful scenes of anarchy and blood, from which they can only
be preserved, even for a single year, by the presence of a
resistless military establishment !

For the principle "of religious discord (which, though still
too prevalent among the poor, is rapidly declining among
the better classes) we are deeply indebted to those merito-
rious counsellors of Geo. III., who, while recommending to
his Majesty a repeal of the penal laws affecting the Catho-
lics of Ireland, had not the common sense to see, that any
repeal of the penal laws which did not abolish all ecclesi-
astical impositions (which the poor could not afford to pay),
and provide for the Catholic clergy a respectable substitute
for individual contributions, would prove ultimately ineffi-



REVIEW OF HER POLITICAL AND MORAL STATE. 33

cient, in reference to the peace and harmony of the two
churches.

About two years after, I first thought it my duty to call
the attention of the British government to this cardinal
blunder of the preceding reign, in a work published under
the title of " Ireland exhibited to England," (and I believe
I was the first Irish writer who had done so since the revo-
lution of 1688,) the ministers of that day are said to have
so far acted upon this just and necessary principle, as to
make overtures of a state provision to the Irish Roman Ca-
tholic clergy (not however as a substitute for all private con-
tributions of the poor, which is the only true mode, since in
any other way it would be a heavy addition to existing evils,
instead of a remedy for the disease,) but this proposal, which
would have been salutary, and in all probability well received
when a repeal of the penal laws was first recommended by
the crown, was, very naturally, viewed with suspicion, and
finally rejected, by the clergy and gentry of that church,
they being then in the enjoyment of comparative opulence,
by the benefits which they and their fathers had derived
from the modern indulgence of the law, the rapid march of
British commerce ; and, we may add, of liberal sentiments
in every enlightened country in Europe. Feeling themselves
comparatively independent of the state when this arrange-
ment was suggested ; and a certain proportion of the Irish
Catholic leaders violently averse from any junction of their
clergy with the government, (a gross error by the bye, for a
state provision would impose no other tie upon the clergy,
than that which the law imposes upon the judge who is
independent of the crown,) they rejected a proposal, a pos-
teriori, which if tendered at the proper time, would, in all
probability, have been received with joy by the whole body
of their people, as a boon of mercy to the Nation. That
this rejection, however, was more the act of certain Catholic
leaders, (for in reference to the poor, so far as I could dis-
cover in conversation with them, they would have hailed it
with delight,) than of the clergy or the people generally,



31 IRELAND,

may be fairly inferred ; first from the disposition evinced by
two of the most learned and powerful of the Catholic body
to entertain this question ; secondly, from the evident relief
which the measure itself would afford to the entire poor of
Ireland; thirdly, from the rectitude of the provision, as an
act of pecuniary compensation to the Catholic clergy for that
which they had lost; and lastly, from the illiberal and
ungracious necessity imposed upon them of begging at the
altar ; and the evil moral influence inseparable from those
differences that never fail to attend a mode of maintenance,
which brings the Pastor and his flock into pecuniary conflicts,
disgraceful to religion, and equally painful and prejudicial
to them both.

Should the enemies of common sense and common fact,
stand up to resist this doctrine, on the ground of its noncon-
formity to the precepts of the gospel and the practice of the
primitive church, and fling in our face the apostolic precept,
"Let him who ministers at the altar, live by the altar;"
we reply; why this is the very thing we are here pleading for.
We want the minister of peace and plenty, to live in the
enjoyment of peace and plenty, by the altar at which he
ministers : to live by the property that has been set apart for
that altar : to be so far respectably supplied with income
out of that fund (and it is a large one) that he need neither
starve, nor prove oppressive to the poor of his flock, nor be
brought into an evil collision with them by the pressure of
his pecuniary necessities. And is this an immoral end?
Is this a violation of the apostolic precept, to live by the
altar ? Alas I I cannot but lament that the understandings
of my countrymen should have travelled so slowly with the
reason of the age. But some will say, did not our Saviour
give this precept to his apostles, " freely ye have received,
freely give," " take neither purse nor scrip nor two coats,"
&c.? This text, however, will no more serve their purpose
than the other. First, because it was given in a warm
climate, where one good coat or cloak was quite sufficient :
and secondly, because the apostles, to whom it was given,



REVIEW OF HER POLITICAL AND MORAL STATE. 35

received all that was necessary to their maintenance and
ministry, promptly and freely, from our Lord himself; while
the clergy of all our churches, without exception, have now
to pay very large sums of money for their religion and learn-
ing ; and therefore could not be expected, in reason, to give
that to the world gratis, for which they themselves have paid
such a very large consideration, both in time and money.

Should any such men as the primitives alluded to, happen
to start up (and these are comets whose appearance the
clergy of the Christian world are by no means courting,) that
would furnish no argument against those National establish-
ments, which should be provided for by the state, for the
maintenance of good order ; and this being once established
upon foundations of justice, conducive to the peace and free-
dom of the country ; if the primitive men alluded to should
happen to come round, that will produce no disturbance
in the state, as their kingdom is not of this world; as these
kind of people go every where that God sends them,
regardless of all human provisions, and of the limitations of
sect and Nation ; as they have seldom occasion to ask even
a living for their labours, since there is no heart, however
high or however low, that infinite mercy has prepared for
the reception of such messengers as these, that would not
cheerfully open its little cabinet of treasures (like Lydia of
Tliyatira) to make the heart of the bearer of such tidings as
they convey, sing for joy I Here, then, is our view of a pro-
vision for the Catholic clergy out of the existing funds of the
church ; and in every aspect in which its image can be fairly
viewed in the mirror of reason, (whether as that image con-
nects itself with the poor of Ireland, the clergy of their
church, or THE BRITISH STATE, of which Providence has
made them members) it has a decided superiority over the
jealousies and conflicts of the tributary system.

As to the advocates of the begging plan, we have only to
request they will point out to us the peculiar advantage
resulting from the mendicant system, established in this
country among the monastic orders. These orders may,



36 IRELAND,

perhaps, supply the established clergy's lack of service, and
in this respect prove useful to the people; but whether they
do, or whether they do not ; whether they exalt the public
mind by rational views of Christian piety, or debase it
by low and grovelling superstitions, it is not our present
business to examine ; but merely to maintain, that the
course of life peculiar to these orders, and perhaps proper for
them, is not well adapted to the influence and respectability,
that ought to be found inseparable from the station and