weight of a feather. Have the true authorities, the Pope, or the Pope and a council, abrogated those horrid laws? Not a syllable. They boast that the laws of Rome are immutable-and such they must be, so long as Rome pretends to be infallible. But what says the historian? We quote Hallam, (History of the Middle Ages) ::-"Two principles are laid down in the Decretals-that an oath disadvantageous to the church is not binding, and that one extorted by force is of slight obligation, and may be annulled by ecclesiastical authority."" As the first," says Hallam, "of those maxims gave the most unlimited privilege to the Popes of breaking all faith of treaties which thwarted their interest or passion, a privilege which they continually exercised, so the second was equally convenient to princes weary of observing engagements towards their subjects or neighbours. Thus Edward the First sought at the hands of Clement the Fifth a dispensation from his oath to observe the great statute against arbitrary taxation." He adds, as to the deposition of kings who might happen to have provoked the wrath of Rome "In the Canon Law it is expressly declared that subjects owe no alle giance to an excommunicated monarch." Of course, if it should please the Pope to be bribed by Russia or France to excommunicate the British Sovereign_to-morrow, from that moment no Papist would be bound to pay him any allegiance whatever. The Popish law, always superior to the law of the land, would bind him to revolt; and it would wholly depend upon his mere sense of convenience or personal safety whether he should or should not be a rebel.

It is to be remarked that to this petition are appended the names of all the more stirring Roman Catholics of the time-Lords Shrewsbury, Fingal, Kenmore, &c., with Daniel O'Connell, Maurice O'Connell, Elias Corbally, and many others.

In the very teeth of all these declarations we find the whole Papist body, now that they have gained all that they could gain by falsehood, trying what they can gain by force; and we find them enlisting degenerate Protestant officials in their cause. It was only in the last month that we find an individual, combining in his person an Irish Marquisate, an English Peerage,

the Lord-Lieutenancy of an Irish Protestant county, and the office of a Lord of the Bedchamber to her Majesty, adding his name to a Papist requisition to Mr Elias Corbally (a Papist, and, we presume, the signer of the petition just quoted), as High-Sheriff of the county of Meath, to convene a meeting for the "total abolition of tithes in Ireland!"

In the personal instance of this very trifling Marquis we should not take the trouble of adverting to any opinion. The Marquis of Headfort's opinion upon any conceivable topic beyond his own ringlets or the polish of his boots, must be utterly unimportant, and perfectly worthy of his attainments. But the Marquis of Headfort, as a Privy-Councillor, a LordLieutenant of a county, and one of the Household, does, by virtue of his offices, though by them alone, exercise an influence which renders him accountable to his sovereign and his country. But if we are to be told, "he has only signed a petition and exercised a judgment, and what man has not a right to sign a petition and exercise a judgment?" What non. sense is all this! If any man signs a petition, for instance, in favour of any act of immorality, who can doubt the immorality of the petitioner's mind, or doubt that, with all his right to petition, he stamps himself as an offender? Suppose a prelate of the Establishment signing his name to a petition for the acknowledgment of Socinianism (and we may see that, too, before we are much older), who can doubt whether the petitioner, with all his right to petition, ought not to be divested of his mitre? Or, if we find that a man loaded with high responsibilities to the constitution, responsibilities which we may well wonder to have found settling on so weak a head, should put his name to a petition demanding the overthrow of a chief organ of the Constitution, what are we to say? Is the cloak of petition to cover the instrument of offence? Is the petitioner to be declared a true and loyal subject, because he perverts a great right into a great wrong?

But we shall volunteer for him the only apology that can be made-he perhaps knew nothing of what he was doing. He perhaps looked upon his duty as Privy-Councillor, Lord-Lieu

tenant, and Lord of the Bedchamber, as simply comprehended in employing the best friseur, and exhibiting the most permanent smile in the neighbourhood of St James's; in cultivating potatoes and rabble popularity on his Irish estates during the recess, and in keeping his places by hanging on at Mr O'Connell's skirts at all seasons, and being dragged through the mire by that master of marquises, petition in hand.

All this may be the fact, and in that case we shall do the Marquis a favour, by enlightening him as to other facts. The Queen of England holds her throne on the simple tenure of that principle which the plunder of the Church in either Ireland or England would inevitably abolish. The sovereign of England must be a Protestant. The sovereign's even marrying a Roman Catholic would be fatal to the diadem. This is the language of the Constitution, of the laws, and of the express oath taken by the sovereign at the coronation. By the Church that Constitution was made in 1688; by the Church it has been sustained, and with that Church it will fall. The sovereign is personally, as well as po. litically, sworn to uphold in all its rights, properties, and privileges the Established Church of the United Kingdom. We have no fears that the present sovereign will forget the principle, or forfeit the pledge. And we must believe that such uninformed Lords as have still to learn this will thank us for communicating the knowledge, for apologizing for their absurdity, and for awaking them to the discovery, that to sign petitions for the extinction of the only property of the Church is to sign petitions for its ruin, and that the ruin of the Church would, by law, reason, and necessity, be the ruin of the Constitution. We recommend the Act of Settlement, and the Coronation Oath, its immediate offspring, to the perusal of this noble lord and his coadjutors equally in need of the lesson.

The meeting, which the requisition called, took place on the 24th of October, Mr Elias Corbally, the Papist High Sheriff, in the chair. This peacemaker, depository of public authority, and loyal subject of a Protestant Queen, whose oath binds her strictly to preserve the Established Church, began by these perfectly plain-spoken

words "I am glad that the county Meath has thus come forward to express its sentiments manfully on the subject, and to show the world that the people of Ireland will never be content until that hitherto bloody and detested impost (Tithes) be extinguished both in name and nature. . . . I wish to try the Voluntary system for the support of the clergy, and I wish to exclude the Bishops from the House of Lords. It is then, and then only, that we can expect to enjoy peace. Until the Bishops are put out, we cannot expect to have any question useful to this country carried through the House of Lords."

So much for the benefit of making Papists High Sheriffs, or any thing which can give them the official power of doing mischief. This is one of Lord Mulgrave's men, and one of Lord Plunkett's manufacture. He is evidently entitled to the highest favours of both those distinguished peace-makers. He was succeeded by à Dr Mullen who, in the discharge of his double functions as patriot and Papist, recommended that ministers should be impeached for not having carried the "Appropriation (or (Church robbery) Act long ago."

The Lord of her Majesty's BedChamber, sworn to the maintenance of the Church as much as of the State, then spoke, among other desultory matter, as follows. After acquainting the meeting that "his principles in his boyhood were just the same as they are at this moment," which we fully believe, his principles being exactly those which we might expect from the nursery, the natural products of brains which neither time nor experience could ever mature, he proceeds with his rambling and rapid harangue.

"I have always considered the Tithe question as intimately connected with the civil and religious liberties of this country. And the settlement of it should have been made a portion of the Catholic Relief Bill in 1829."

This trifling lord, of course, does not know, or is not capable of comprehending, that the positive declaration of the whole Popish body was not merely that they never would, on any possible occasion, resist the payment of Tithes, but that, moreover, they fully acknowledged the right of the Church to their Tithes; and, above

all, they argued, that emancipation would act as a direct security to the Church in the possession of those tithes; that the act of 1829 would instantly extinguish all the jealousy which existed against their collection, that "jealousy having arisen wholly in consequence of the denial of eman cipation.' And the Government at the time, accepting this declaration as the great and indeed the only security-the purchase money of emancipation the Papists now in a body refuse to pay; just as any single villain may refuse to pay the price which he had himself set upon a commodity, and finish the argument by putting the money back again into his pocket. The Marquis talks of himself as still a Protestant, and therefore he has not, yet at least, any of those happy privileges which give such ease of heart to the O'Connell generation. After having thus, witha ridiculous simplicity worthy of no one on earth but himself, lamented that the Bill of 1829 did not extinguish tithes; in other words, that the very and only consideration on which the Bill was built was not abolished by the Bill itself-so much for the commonsense of this Lord of the Bedchamber-his Lordship proceeds, with consistent absurdity-" This was always my feeling, and indeed, I think, the earnest desire of the Roman Catholic portion of the community, as well as of the liberal Protestants and Dissenters." The Lord of the Bedchamber evidently does not regard the Dissenters as Protestants; probably with him they are Pagans or Mahometans; but such difficult questions are not to be allowed to ruffle the smooth front of a courtier. He totters on-" I think it monstrously absurd, as well as being penal in the extreme, that Catholics should be forced to pay for the religious support of Protestants." We have already given this very childish personage credit for blundering by the necessity of his nature; but we cannot go to the extravagant length of supposing him ignorant that the Papist does not pay for the Protestant clergy; that the fiftieth part of a farthing in the pound would be fifty times more than the Papist has ever paid to the Established Church; that the land is Protestant; that every Papist, like every other man, has a deduction allowed in his rent, equivalent to the

tithe which remains payable on the land; and that the Papist, with all his clamour, would look upon it as the worst day he ever saw, when, instead of paying that tithe direct to the clergyman, whom he cheats in every possible way, and whom he calculates on cheating, he were to pay its equivalent to the landlord, whom he cannot cheat at all. The Lord of the Bedchamber knows this, for it is impossible that he should not. We advise him, for the comfort of his conscience, to turn Papist wholly, and without loss of time.

The

One sentence more. He proceeds"It cannot be, that civil or religious liberty exists in a country where a system of tithes exists, be they modified or constructed as they may." Of course he has never heard of a country called England, or has never discovered that "a system of tithes exists there;" or that it is not altogether a country of drains and bastiles. For, in the opinion of this Bedchamber Marquis, "neither civil nor religious liberty can possibly exist where tithes exist." This is the man for Mr O'Connell ; a shepherd silly as his sheep; a babe still redolent of the cradle; a helpless maid of all work; a ribbandvalet ready to walk up to his chin in mire in the track of his master. Arabs have, in the procession of the caravan to Mecca, a camel which carries the Koran, which camel is constantly followed by a slave with a brush, and a pitcher, whose business is solely to attend on the rear of the holy brute. We recommend Lord Headfort to Mr O'Connell as his attendant for similar purposes, on his next sacred itinerancy through Ireland. He has shown exactly the range of qualities suitable to the employment; and as he is evidently a volunteer in the Papist interest, the Agitator may rely for once on his fi delity. But there is one hit, for which we must do him justice. The Irish are a people of jest ; they burn and assassinate a good deal, but, as Hamlet says, "It is all in jest"—and the notorious way to their brains or bosoms is by making them laugh. This propensity is so prominent, that not even his Lordship's faculties have been simple enough to overlook it. So he concludes" I moreover assert that, if some measure more congenial to the feelings of the majority be not de

aware of."

vised, it will prejudice the interests of the Establishment to a degree which many who are adverse to it are not We believe not; indeed it would be remarkably difficult for any body to find out what greater prejudice could be done to the Establishment than knocking it to pieces.

What is the very meaning of Establishment? It is not a religion, it is not even a creed; it is a fixed system for religious purposes in a state, supported by a definite and publicly acknowledged and secured property. This innocent personage probably thinks also that the Establishment of England is the only Establishment on earth; has he ever heard of the Scottish Church, which is, with scarcely any difference of principle, an Establishment, a system with a fixed and publicly secured income? But this would argue an ignorance too profound even for the Marquis. The whole must have been evident as a burlesque, and we allow it to have been a better one than we could have expected from the performer. We can conceive with what a roar of jollity it must have been received by the laughter-loving, though rather cutthroat rabble, who came together to settle the state, in front of the Meath jail; that ominous place where patriotism has so often figured before! With what a sardonic smile old Lord Plunket must have heard it on his Chancery Bench? With what additional and undisguised contempt Mr O'Connell must have meditated on the material which sometimes acts as the substitute for brains in the crania of popularityhunting peers? The Lord of the Bedchamber's argument, if it be taken with any degree of gravity, is this to the sailor it says scuttle the ship, to prevent her going down-to the soldier, blow up your ammunition, to prevent your arms from being useless-to the trader, burn your stock, to prevent your being bankrupt. But whether grave or jesting, the matter does not and must not rest here. We must ask Lord Melbourne, did he know what he was doing when he recommended this Marquis as a fit and proper person to stand in the presence of the Queen, to have a right to any kind of influence in the Court, and to receive the salary paid by a Protestant people? Did he, or did he not know what his principles were? (!) If he

did not, what culpability in his negligence? If he did, what more than culpability in his appointing men with such opinions? Are we not then entitled to ask whether such opinions are those of the Minister himself? This he must answer and soon, and perhaps heavily, to the empire. But the evil does not end with the follies of a coronetted simpleton, whose whole soul is in a song-book. Lord Howick has already declared that the Church in Ireland is a nuisance. How many others are at this moment ready to play the same game, and asking nothing but an assurance of the same impunity! miserable creatures, to whom place is principle, and salary soul. How many are looking up to the Downing-Street weathercock, and trimming their ragged sails to the next turn of the wind! How many are as ready as the strollers of a country barn to beg, under pretence of bearing a "character," and to plunder in the name of " Her Majesty's Servants;" to make themselves a laughing-stock for the sake of the shillings at the door, and to think that when they have caricatured greatness before the curtain, they are entitled to burlesque common honesty behind it?

In the mean-time, in the interval of the session, Mr O'Connell is, we may be assured, busy and insolent as ever. He publishes, from time to time, his proclamations, and in them he tells the rabble that they are to rely on nothing but "physical force." At the same time, in his old villanous strain, he recommends that all be done with the utmost meekness! He asks but two millions of recruits, who are all to be saints and Quakers, raised out of the pacific peasantry of Ireland, and who are to carry every thing by supplication, on their bended knees we presume, and this, too, to a people and Legislature whom he describes as bitterly hostile, and to be moved by nothing in the shape of reason.

And these are his propositions in his manifesto to the assembled patriots of Kanturk-the manifesto being appropriately addressed to the priest, or, as the letter formally designates him, the Catholic Rector of Kanturk :—

"We must have corporate reform. We must have the right of voting as extensive in Ireland as in England. We must have the tithes, whether call

ed rent-charge or composition, or by whatever name they may be called, extinguished. We must have our just share of members in the House of Commons. If I can get two millions of precursors, I will carry all those measures; and thus, above all things, will the Irish people be relieved from the compulsory payment to a Church to which they do not belong."

So the grand object is again avowed to be the destruction of that Establishment which Mr O'Connell, and the class of hypocrites who act with him, swore not to molest or weaken in any way whatever; for let the Protestant observe that the Papist oath of 1829 is not only to refrain from injuring the Protestant religion, a matter in which their efforts never have succeeded, and never can succeed, until they have the power to extinguish reason and the Bible in this country, but to refrain from injuring the Protestant Established Church, which the extinction of tithes, almost its only revenue, would obviously and inevitably destroy. So much for the faith of Rome, and the Popish respect for an oath.

But then comes the true O'Connell touch, the stamp by which we could recognise him in the most secret piece of knavery that he ever fabricated for his fellow-pikemen. Mammon is at the bottom of all. The "rint" is the true meaning of the manifesto. "So soon," saith this most prodigious of beggarmen," as twenty persons enrol themselves as precursors, let one of them take the shillings of the other twenty, and a pound-note to Mr T. M. Ray, Corn-Exchange, Dublin. The sooner this is done the better. The true patriotism consists in zealous," &c. &c.-meaning thereby the active contributions of the shillings of a people complaining perpetually of pauperism, to a patriot boasting perpetually of disinterestedness, and making a vast revenue out of their rags, for purposes which have never been disclosed, but which every man of sense sees as clear as the sun at noonday. We presume, too, that the notes

would not be the more unacceptable if they were from the bank of O'Connell and Company. In the meantime, be it remembered that the great Agitator and great Everything has no less than five machines, of exactly the same order, at work at this moment, screwing money out of the beggary of the people. With what jealousy must not Spring Rice look upon such achievements, and how many times in the day must he not thank his stars that it has not occurred to the great Irish financier to cast his eye upon the English Chan-cellorship of the Exchequer !

Can any man believe that foreigners would have dared to insult this great country as they have lately done if we had a manly Ministry? But when they see a Ministry the very emblem of every weakness, living on chance—to-day truckling to this party, to-morrow licking the dust off the feet of another- to-day told by O'Connell that he keeps them in, and told truly; and to-morrow by Sir Robert Peel, that he suffers their existence, and this truly too; and the day after shown clinging to the knees of Wellington-all their measures merely struggles to keep place; pegs to hang on; apologies for doing nothing

what haughty foreigner but thinks that now is his time, and relieves himself of his old sense of inferiority by immediate insult. Thus we have France keeping Africa, in spite of us and honesty; Russia building ships by the score; and every other power of Europe joining in jealous restrictions on our commercial rights. Even Spain and Portugal joining to realize the fable of the sick lion, and lifting up their ass's hoof against us. What a contrast in the dull indolence and low pursuits of those feeders on royalty is presented by the Russian Emperor, rushing from corner to corner of his immense territory, inspecting every thing, and stimulating every thing. Who can be surprised at his baffling those nincompoops, and holding in contempt the country that endures them?