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'It is monstrous,' says Mr. Ensor, to relief. Yet, amidst this general reproof imagine that the Catholic clergy are ini- of the Catholic clergy, and of hypocritical mical to the education of their flocks, be- sorrow for the ignorant people, (whom the cause they did not leap at Mr. Orde's im- 'Edinburgh Review' assures us are ignorant, pudent project; or at this or that wily No. lxxiii. p. 61, and full of intelligence, machination. With one voice, the Dis- p. 66,) circumstances transpire which senters protested against Mr. Brougham's suggest, that if the Irish are ignorant, Bill, because it subjected education to the they are not singular in their deficiency. authority or auspices of the Established By a report respecting education in the Church: yet, who ever slandered the Dis- Highlands, the expression "instructed senting teachers by saying they wished Scotch" must be applied to that people to keep their hearers clouded or over- with some qualification. In short, by the whelmed with ignorance? The Catholic statement, not one in ten in the Highlands clergy could not be so absurd and self- can read the Bible, which the 'Quarterly destructive as to oppose the education of Review' considers a recompense for some the Catholic people. To impede the edu- years' disastrous commorancy about the cation of any class is to obstruct the in- North Pole; as the reviewer consoles the dustry, the ingenuity, the credit, and con- nation for the second unsuccessful voyage sequence of that class; for education by saying, that, on the return of the ships, renders men methodical, moral, inventive, apt for all purposes, abounding in resource, confident in each other, and powerful by a community of knowledge and interest. Education multiplies a nation's ability a hundred fold.

No falsehood is more notorious, than that the Catholics, lay or clerical, are adverse to education; if so, how did knowledge advance when Europe was Catholic? In 652, many English were sent to monasteries in France to be educated.Monast. Angl. s. 1. p. 89. In 829, schools were established, by edict, in Pavia, Turin, Cremona, Florence, Verona, Vicenza; and St. Benedict, it is said, had, in the eleventh century, five thousand scholars.

'This slanderous abuse of the Catholic clergy, besides gratifying a general malignity, is directly aimed against the emancipation of the Catholics; for it is held that education must be preliminary to their

every man on board could read his Bible," No. lix. p. 243. Neither are the English all learned Thebans. At the last election for a common councilman for Farringdon Without, three of the voters of this great ward, in this great city, in one day, declared their inability to read a single word; and the members of this ward showed their natural talents and acquired ability by preferring Butterworth to Galloway.

'Circumstances still more appalling also transpire† occasionally, which prove that the English and Scotch are not so literate, generally, as the Irish. To counteract this impression, supercilious critics affirm that book instruction is not education; and others affirm that the Irish keep schools in ditches and hedges, as if this did not honour their love of learning, and reproach their masters; while a legislator (a friend to the Catholics,―such are their

* Dr. Baird communicated to the Presbytery of Edinburgh, that in Gleneg, of 70,000 people, 50,000 could not read: that in a parish consisting of 1,800 persons, 60 only could read; and in another of 3,000, 200 only could read; so of Argyle, Aberdeen, Caithness, Moray, &c.

+ Mr. Newenham ascertained, that in Cloyne and Ross there were 316 schools, containing 21,892 scholars. Bishop Jebb, in his primary visitation sermon, said, the people of Munster have a deep thirst after knowledge;' p. 36. The Kildare-street Society are the declared enemies of hedge-schools. They say, In the infancy of the institution, and whilst the society received but a small degree of co-operation from the gentry throughout the country, it was found necessary, in order to rescue the children of the lower orders from absolute idleness, or (what is perhaps worse) hedgeschools, which abounded every where in Ireland,' &c.-Twelfth Report of the Society in 1824, p. 21. From the sequel it appears, that the great evil of those schools was, that they were not under the control and superintendence of Mr. Goulburn's valuable establishment. This Twelfth Report is a happy specimen of self-eulogy: The Comnittee have the satisfaction to state,' &c. p. 21. The Society has been peculiarly ortunate in their appointments,' &c. p. 27. Their satisfaction from their inspectors' sports,' &c. The information of the Munster inspector has been peculiarly pleas1g,' p. 29. Your Committee feel quite satisfied of the beneficial results of the cheap ook department,' p. 30. Finally, they express their approbation of all their officers, c. p. 31. This is a flash report, in which the artists want terms as they want matter; at they are thrice satisfied; and if they can obtain a larger donation from Parliament xt session, their satisfaction will be quadrupled.

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friends!-a virtual representative of the Catholics, and an "arch knave at a nominative case,") declared, that the schoolbooks of the Irish consisted of "Joe Miller," Laugh and be Fat," &c. Why not? The joculator regis was once an eminent officer in the royal household. This inspector of primers in ditch-schools (for he speaks from personal knowledge) affirmed that he saw "Moll Flanders" in the boys' hands; and he might see the "Williamite" in great endowed schools of this country, according to my personal knowledge. Of "Moll Flanders" I know nothing; but I could not suppose the contents of a book by Defoe could be more immoral than Moll Flagon, who figures in the "Lord of the Manor," and is represented on the stage. If the government object to "Moll Flanders," let them employ some of their literary ministers to compose a life of Moll Doyle; the crown office can afford valuable materials; and some Sir Richard Musgrave will not fail to make it fitting to be said or sung in Kildare-street schools, abounding alike with loyalty and true religion. But the whole is a rhetorical flourish, much like Hotspur's "world of figures." That such books are taught in Catholic schools is universally and absolutely denied. Yet, thanks to this friend of the Catholics, the charge at last excited the spirit of the whole people; and such has been the throng of testimonies to the education of the Irish, that they exceed my means of offering an abstract of their amount.'

Overpowered by attestations in proof of the universality of education in Ireland, the Scotch philosophers (such philosophers!) have admitted the fact, but still they justify their charge by objecting to the quality of education dealt out in hedge schools.* Reading and writing are, at all events, the rudiments of knowledge; and if these, as the reviewers say, have been taught out of improper sources, it is strange that the usual results of perverted instruction have not followed; for we shall see by-and-by, in spite of Moll Flanders,' that the people are, at least, as moral as their neighbours.

As the shrewdness and capacity of

the Irish are generally admitted, it is needless to answer the charges which have been made against their ignorance in those arts which have been brought to perfection in England. Mechanical knowledge is partly accidental; and Irish artisans, under the most adverse circumstances, are ge nerally as good workmen as the English. Irish linen is inferior to none in the world; and Irish silks and poplins are, or at least were, far superior to those of Great Britain. In agriculture, however, it must be admitted that, nearly throughout Ireland, a very bad system prevails, and we should be universal until it be alare not unwilling that reproach tered. Ireland must depend upon her agriculture, and her farmers could not be too soon taught that it is in their power to double, if not quadruple, the productions of the earth. Slovenly husbandry, however, is not confined to Ireland. In Oxfordshire we have seen farm-work done as imperfectly as in Cork; and France, in point of agricultural skill, is very inferior to Ireland. Mr. Cobbett saw females employed, in the fields of the "Great Nation,' spreading manure with their hands.

Superstition. This word, in the usual acceptation, when applied to Ireland, signifies Catholicism; and, if the religion of the people be an evil, we can see little hopes of eradicating it, for there is no prospect of their being induced to embrace the doctrines of the Established Church. We are no theologians, and shall argue this question, as Mr. Ensor says, logically. We leave the task of vindicating the abstract truths of Catholicity to its own divines, and propose only to defend the Irish people, whose blind credulity and superstition have excited such compassion in the breast of young Noel, Earl Roden, and the Rev. Joseph Ivimey. The last gentleman was secretary to a society for proselyting the Irish.

* These schools are not kept under a hedge, as some ignorantly suppose; though we Jannot see any reason why a boy could not learn to read as soon under a shady tree, as under a slated roof.

This Rev. Gentleman has lately approved of, and affixed his signature to, a blasphemous and nonsensical tract, published by a youth named Benjamin Lawson, who was, it is intimated, miraculously restored to his speech, after being deprived of it by scrofula.

belief in a modern miracle.* With this fact before them, the Methodists should not have been found among the ranks of those who have endeavoured to bring the Catholics into contempt for believing in the cures of Prince Hohenlohe.

But, it would appear, that the anger of Protestants arises from a

selfish motive. They wish to monopolize all the miracles to themselves; and, with something like a spirit of trade, cry down the cures of the German, that they might secure the market for themselves. To extract accounts of all the Protestant miracles, although prohibited by Act of Parliament, which have been recorded

* The following is Dr. Adam Clarke's account of the miraculous growth of a woman's hair:Margaret Horne, an inhabitant of St. Peter du Port, in the Isle of Guernsey (a woman of unblemished character, about seventy years of age), came to me to Les Terres, in June, 1787, to be electrified, hoping it would cure her of a settled deafness, by which she had been long afflicted. I gave her a few gentle shocks through the head, which were followed by such a severe head-ache as deterred her from making a second trial. This continued till the latter end of the same month, when, in a very singular manner, she was cured of that, together with a severe pain in her stomach and bowels, by which she had been long much distressed.

'One Saturday evening, about the end of June, having combed out her grey hair, and, according to her custom, tied it on the top of her head (which it would barely do, being very short), she went to bed, and the next inorning was astonished to find, on taking off her cap, that her hair had, in the night, increased eight or ten inches in length. She immediately called Mrs. Johnson, in whose house she lodged, who, viewing it, was equally astonished, being perfectly acquainted with its former shortness. She now found that she could not conveniently put on her cap, her hair being so much increased beyond its former bulk; this induced her on Monday morning to cut off six or eight inches of the miraculous lock.

The same day she was seized with a severe sickness, which constrained her to take to her bed, and induced her to exclaim thus to Mrs. Johnson and some of her neighbours: "The Lord wrought a miracle for me, in causing my hair to grow so suddenly; but I have cut it off, and regarded not the operation of his hands, and now he has visited, and in judgment afflicted me. O Lord! if thou wilt once more cause it to grow, I will keep it as a token of thy mercy as long as I live!" This was on Monday evening; on Tuesday morning she found the pain in her head entirely gone, together with that in her stomach and bowels before mentioned. On examining her hair, she found it had once more grown eight or ten inches! Since that time her bodily strength has been so amazingly increased, that she solemnly assured me, "She found her health and vigour nearly equal to what she possessed in the prime of life." Indeed, I have been surprised to see her strength and activity evidenced in walking sometimes before me up the hill from Les Terres, being before well acquainted with the poor state of her health.

'This miraculous lock (for so I must term it) is of a colour different from the rest of her hair. The other part is entirely white, but this is of a very fine brown, only a little mottled with grey. This is the real fact, of which there may be every attestation which the nature of the thing is capable of. The circumstances as above I have taken from the conjoint testimony of Mrs. Horne and Mrs. Johnson, who are both members of our Society in St. Peter's, and who walk in the light, love, and liberty of the Gospel of Christ.

There are some, who, not being able to deny the fact, nevertheless say, they cannot see what end God can have in an affair so trivial as this. But, by the same mode of reasoning, they may deny the divinity of the Mosaic law, because they cannot immediately see the design of the fringes, loops, hooks, &c. which are mentioned therein; and which, nevertheless, were typical of particular links in that important chain, let down from heaven to draw a world to glory: or, they may accuse the great Sir Isaac Newton of folly, when, like a child, he was employed in blowing concave globules of soap and water out of a tobacco-pipe; for these wise men could not have foreseen that this would lead him to the much-admired discovery of the doctrine of light and colours. We, whose names are underwritten, having had a particular acquaintance with the person and fact as related in the above by Mr. Clarke, scruple not to add our testimony in vindication of its truth.

*A follower of this mad woman was tried the other day at Lancaster, for having taken away a child's life in the act of circumcising it. His name was Henry Lee, and he appeared to be of rather a respectable rank in life.-Ed.

+ They are numerous at Ashton-under-Line, and at Colne.-Times, Oct. 4, 1824.