value of the exertions making for them. Proselytism is naturally alien to the character of our English Protestant Church, whose members are freemen, owning spiritual allegiance to Him alone whose service is perfect freedom. She does not anticipate, but waits upon conversion, biding the time of those who join her communion. She responds to the call of rising congregations for her spiritual aid and interference, not obtruding her discipline, but meeting the wishes of those who, as her dutiful children, claim to be placed under it; nor can I bring to my recollection any other act of propagandism by our Church or Government, beside that exceptional one, the crusade to the Holy Land, in conjunction with the Prussian Church, for the founding a See at Jerusalem.

The history of the Protestant Missions in the West of Ireland, so far from being exceptive, proves with what jealousy the

principle of non-interference has been preserved, and to what culpable extreme, as far as the interests of humanity are concerned, it may, and has been carried. Our Protestant communion watches its heads narrowly, and dreading the charge of proselytism as the synonyme of intolerance, demurs to enter on labours that religion enjoins, and that it is in its power and within its means to effect.

The movement did not begin in high quarters; the wish lay near the hearts of our legislators and dignitaries; but to justify interference of Church or State, it was first necessary that some of our lay members, in co-operation with others of our working unbeneficed clergy, should set hand to the work, should point out the exigency, should advertise its urgency, and cry shame against the inhumanity of refusing to meet it; should agitate, should publish, should dwell long on the physical prostration of the

people, before their spiritual destitution could even be touched upon, and very long before the truth, and nothing but the truth, was to be proclaimed, that mental bondage was at the root of their physical as well as moral deficiencies. Smoothing the path, and preparing the way, that philanthropy attended by that angelic sisterhood of Christian virtues, whose family name is Charity, might be permitted to carry to them the milk of human kindness, the oil of gladness-might feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and bring home to their warm and affectionate hearts the truths of the book they have opened to them, through the practical fulfilment of its commandments for the relief of their physical and spiritual prostration.

The necessity of meeting Rome with some of her own weapons, when indoctrinating an ignorant and misled people, is nowhere more apparent than in the Western

Highlands, and it has, though coming suddenly under my own observation, reconciled me in some sort to the novel position of our clergy and communion.

Before they can hope to be accepted as guides to the fountain of all truth, they must disabuse the people of their errors, and convince them of the fallibility and interested motives of those whose church enjoins on them the humiliating, painful, and unnatural duty of insinuating these errors into their minds. Happily, confidential intercourse with the poor has rendered our missionaries perfectly conversant with the nature of those errors, and the objects to which they are directed, and has given a clue to the line to be pursued for their extinction, which, as may well be believed, is wide apart from any that can be properly applied to the instruction of educated Romanists, converts to our communion.

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74

PRIESTLY AVERSION TO INSTRUCTION.

CHAPTER VI.

PRIESTLY AVERSION TO INSTRUCTION.-INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. PASQUINADES ON THE POPE.-POLICY OF TEACHING THE IRISH LANGUAGE.-WELSH LANGUAGE.-FLOWERS OF IRISH COURTESY.-FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH RACE.-AMERICAN HOMAGE ΤΟ

SHAKSPEARE.-SHAKSPEARIAN

AMERICAN MISSIONS IN KOORDISTAN.

VATICAN CONCLAVE.-LOUIS NAPOLEON.

IDIOMS.

IN the readings to the poor previous to the Sunday service at Clifden, a reference to the Scribes and Pharisees suggested a remark from the reader, so you see that, from the first, the priests have always been opposed to the instruction of the people. The printed sheets on the school-room walls are framed with a view to exhibit the Roman Catholic policy in its true colours; the instances they adduce, and the facts they register, show the contempt of the priests