and spirit of the age, to which no man living in the world can long run counter. If he does he must become an insulated being, shut out from the pale of society; and insulated beings can never be dangerous to the state. But why does not the man driven into such a dilemma change his religion? Because religion is not a thing to which the bulk of man are accustomed to apply the accuracies of logical reasoning. Its mysteries they cannot solve, and its doctrines they are in the habit of taking upon trust, and treating with a degree of reverence which does not encourage a very close investigation. Probably the man is staggered; but he is called off to the business of the world: he thinks of his pious father, his affectionate mother, the impression which the ceremonies of the church made on his childhood, the many excellent people in his own communion, who, he cannot doubt, have enjoyed and are enjoying the favour of God, and he is content to continue to cast in his lot among them. In nine cases out of ten the man will not take up the obnoxious tenets, and he will not lay down his religion. I do not represent it as wise, I do not represent it as reasonable, that a man should act on such uncertain grounds in the vital point of religion : but I think no one who has lived in the world will doubt that it is usual: and legislators have to deal with man such as he is, not such as wisdom and religion, if uncontrolled, would

make him. If you were asked whether the Catholics were changed, I suppose you would reply, that they have a doctrine in their church which will not let them change. Now, the fact is, they cannot help changing. A Catholic of the nineteenth century cannot act on the principles of a Catholic of the fifteenth. If he does he will become the insulated and harmless being to whom I have before alluded. Your grand struggle, and that of most of your coadjutors is to prove, that Catholics are the same dangerous people they formerly were. You make no allowance for their having jostled in every-day life with the light and knowledge, and temper, and spirit of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Your mechanical principles are all correct, but you have not allowed for friction or the resistance of the atmosphere. You have a fine piece of machinery in vacuo, but it will not act on the surface of the earth.

An English or Irish Catholic of the present day is not so, because he has investigated the Pope's claims, and determined to support them; not because he has deliberately adopted the doctrine that an excommunicated king may be killed from the impulse of religious zeal, or any of the other doctrines which fill you with so much alarm. The counterpart of the cause which made you and me, in our early days at least, Protestants, made him a

Catholic. Had I had the misfortune to be brought up a Catholic, I am perfectly sure that I should have renounced the obnoxious tenets. I am not equally sure that I should have changed my religion. You may have good grounds for an opposite conclusion respecting yourself.

Before I wholly relinquish the pleasure, and withdraw from the security of fighting under Mr. Pitt's banner, let me say, that I wish this whole question could be referred to the arbitration of some being, not liable to error, who, though fully acquainted with the circumstances of the case, was new to the controversy which it has elicited. You, Sir, should be at liberty to pour into his ear, and submit to his eye, all that has ever been said or written on your side of the question. We would present to him Mr. Pitt's letter to George the Third. We would neither seek to add to, nor to detract from it. On it we would rest our case with perfect confidence as to the result.

The arguments in that letter are unanswered, because they are unanswerable. Neither you nor your coadjutors have grappled with them, nor, I believe, ever will. It is not, Sir, that you at least want talent; it is not that you want courage; it is not that you shun contention; but it is in the exercise of that better part of valour discretion, that you abstain. You are mighty ready to run out into discussions of a hundred

things which are not the question, but no one can pin you down to this simple point.-What are the evils of the present state of things? What are the evils of the course which is proposed? On which side does the balance preponderate? We need not talk of the advantages, for, where evils exist, their removal is the advantage proposed; and the only question is, whether greater evils will be created by the removal. If you would apply your powerful mind to this simple state of the case, I will not say that you would do more for the success, but you would certainly do more for the respectability of your cause, than has hitherto been effected by any of its advocates.

I am not bringing against you a railing accusation. I know that it is perfectly natural, that you and your brother churchmen should apply yourselves to the theological part of the question, if such a part exists. But then you are bound to show how the theological part hinges on the political. If you rake up accusations of history against the Catholics, you are not only bound not to set down ought in malice, but you are bound also to show fairly, and without exaggeration, how the accusation affects the point at issue. If you prove obnoxious tenets on the Catholics, you are bound to make the fair allowance (not at an odd time, for effect, when you think it will best serve your cause, but on every

occasion) for the influence of external circumstances on their practical operation. If you are compelled to warn your readers of danger, you are bound to state it fairly, and, as far as the case admits, definitely; and you are not to use catch words, or to appeal to prejudices to heighten its effect. If you do not all this, you are not an investigator of truth, but an advocate in a cause, and not a very fair one either. These are plain rules, and I think you will hardly venture to except to them. In following you through the remainder of your two Letters I shall have occasion to see how far your theological discussions and your representations of the Catholics conform to them.

Up to your thirty-second page, setting aside manifold lamentations for the apostacy of Earl Grey, Lord Grenville, Mr. Grattan, Mr. Canning, and many other "distinguished individuals," you are wholly occupied with oaths and securities, on which I have said enough already.

From this point you so completely set arrangement and connexion at defiance, that I find it difficult to follow you. But as in the course of your Letter you point out a variety of dangers to which our Protestant establishments are exposed from Catholic doctrines and practices, and as I mean to confront them, every one without flinching, and to bring them individually to this

* Letter i. pp. 7, 17, 25, 35, 37.