nations of every loon. The whole dispute narrows itself into a question of fact. Is it, or is it not inconsistent with the spirit of Catholicism? If it be so, there is an end to argument; at least it must be admitted that Roman Catholics are justified in their strenuous opposition to any attempt to subvert their religion. Now, who are the persons besr qualified to determine that simple fact? One would suppose, that Roman Catholics themselves were as competent to decide the question as those gentlemen who have imported into Ireland a new assortment of curiosities in belief, and seem determined to establish in this country a manufacture of religions. Independently of the objection arising from the essential principles of Catholicism, is it not absurd to make a taskbook of the Testament, and to convert the Apocalypse into a primer ? The Scriptures have been referred to, in order to show that it was the will of God that they should be universally perused. For this purpose some isolated texts have been tortured into a meaning which they do not rationally bear, while those who have poured out such a torrent of citation, forget that among the Jews, and under the old law, there were many parts of holy writ which women were never permitted to read, and which men were not allowed to peruse until they had attained the age of thirty years. When Christianity was first established it was impossible that the Scriptures could have been generally read, for the art of printing was not then known, and by no other means than that great modern discovery could an extensive distribution of the Bible be effected. A manuscript of such bulk as the Old and New Testament, must have cost a sum which a primitive Christian cannot be readily supposed to have been capable of procuring, at a period when his poverty was a literal phrase. But let us try the expediency of an indiscriminate peru. sal of the sacred writings by an appeal to experience. It will scarcely be contended that any great advantage can result from a multifariousness in religion; yet, it will not be denied, that if each individual is entitled to construe the Scriptures, a great variety of interpretation must be the inevitable consequence. In truth, the inventions of art do not keep equal pace with the discoveries in religion. New dogmas are every day propounded to us; they issue with a marvellous fecundity from every visionary brain; nor is it to the wise and the learned that the world is indebted for these fantastic revelations. Those mysterious intimations, which have excited the doubts and baffled the sagacity of the most illustrious of mankind, are now simplified from the summit of a sacred beer-barrel, and from the depth of a holy stall. Every difficulty vanishes before the inspired interpretation of some illuminated Crispin, and the seamless garment of our Saviour is turned inside out by some gifted tailor, who alternately cuts out a religion and a coat. Of these modern prophets one-half are impostors, and the other their own dupes; but whether they be dupes or impostors-Cantwells or Mawworms or both, (for the union of hypocrisy and fanaticism is not unfrequent,) the consequences to religion, decency, and common sense, are disastrous. The lower classes of the Protestant community are driven into a sort of Biblical insanity by this system of excitation, and madness, now-a-days, almost invariably assumes a religious character. He would

state a singular fact of the lunatics in the asylum in this city, which he had lately visited-there were a great number whose mental malady was connected with religion, and amongst those who laboured under that peculiar insanity, there was not a single Catholic. This circumstance was stated by the benevolent physician who superintends the hospital, and who seems animated by the philanthropic feelings of a Howard, in his very able work on insanity, and that gentleman himself was a strenuous Protestant. How could this fact be accounted for, but by referring it to the fanaticism which the unrestrained perusal of the holy writings had produced? An ignorant man, with a heated imagination, sits down to read the bible; he is told that he is its best interpreter, and is illuminated by a special grace -that special grace is but a lunar beam, and fills his brain with madness. His delirious dreams are taken for the visitation of the Spirit, and the images of insanity for the pictures of heaven. But the Roman Catholic has no field for his invention in belief. He has a clear, an pen, and a long trodden path to follow, and plods his way to heaven without wandering through that mazy labyrinth, in which the Protestant enthusiast is left without a clue. He has an ample scope for the affections of the heart, but has little space for the excursions of the fancy. His faith is regulated and certain. He is not cast without a chart or compass upon the vague immensity which religion offers to the mind, but steers his course in a well-known track, by a steady principle—a fixed and unrevolving light. The Protestant embarks in the bible upon a voyage of discovery, while the Roman Catholic makes at once for one great haven, and by an ancient and more familiar route. He had, perhaps, pursued this train of illustration too far, and reluctantly compared the advantages of the two religions; but he thought it right to observe, that what he said was chiefly intended to apply to self-instructed innovators, and not to the members of the Established Church, whose hierarchy was as hostile as the Roman Catholic clergy to the reading of the uninterpreted Scriptures. Before he sat down he should beg leave to make one or two observations on what had fallen from Mr. Kenny, who, like the pleader in Racine's comedy, had begun his oration at the commencement of the world, but had afterwards condescendingly passed to the deluge. That gentleman had discovered in an injunction given to Abraham, a felicitous application to Ireland. Providence must have had the Ladies' Auxiliary Bible School in view in the patriarchal times. He would not attempt to pursue him in his progress from Abraham to Moses-from Moses to King David, and from David down to Timothy; but he would follow him from Jerusalem to Wexford, and beg to observe on the animadversions which he had thought proper to pronounce upon a recent and unfortunate transaction. He meant the trial at Wexford, in which he (Mr. Sheil) had been counsel. The event was deeply to be deplored, but it had been greatly misrepresented. It was utterly untrue that the parents of the child had beheld its immolation. It was sworn by the father, that the crowd was so great that he was prevented from approaching the priest, and it he did not even see what was going on. In the next place, Mr. Kenny had imputed a belief in the powers of exorcism to the Romar

Catholic peasantry, as if it resulted from their religion; he (Mr. Sheil) would state a most important fact, sworn to by the principal witnesses for the crown, namely, that Protestants as well as Catholics were present at one of these deplorable instances of human folly, and that a Mrs. Winter and her daughter, both of them Protestants, knelt down, and called on God to assist Father Carroll in working the miracle. Let us not, therefore, charge upon this or upon that creed, occurrences so monstrous and so revolting, let us, rather, in the spirit of humility, grieve while we reflect, that they arise solely from the infirmity of human nature. To attribute to Roman Catholics an exclusive belief in demoniacal possession was most unjust. A Protestant bishop, the celebrated Dr. Warburton, had maintained the doctrine, and it was one for which Scriptural authority might be quoted. He would ask Mr. Kenny, whether the reading of the bible by the lower orders was calculated to remove the common superstition, that persons afflicted with epilepsy are possessed by an evil spirit? Do not the Scriptures narrate many instances of exorcism. It is now held, indeed, that the devil has been deprived of this portion of his prerogative—but surely, a peasant, reading the Scriptures, may readily think that what once was common, is at present not impossible; and besides, this very case furnishes an argument to show, that the Scriptures require a comment; for assuredly, it is necessary that the cessation of Satanic dominion should be explained to the individual who peruses the examples of its former power. So far from thinking that the Scriptures are calculated to disabuse the people of this frightful infatuation, the perusal of them, without a comment, was calculated to confirm their superstition. He regretted that Mr. Kenny had alluded to this painful incident, because, in doing so, he had expressed a detestation for the Catholic religion, which was utterly at variance with the habitual disclaimers of proselytism. If he and those who acted with him, felt so deep an abhorrence for Popery, they could not fail to exert themselves to preserve the people from so disastrous a belief. It could not be credited, that their detestations would not involuntarily ooze out. It was not possible that such a metamorphosis should take place in Mr. Kenny, as that, on one side of the poor man's threshold, he should be a strenuous hater of Popery, but the moment he had entered his habitation, to administer spiritual relief to his children, he should be transubstantiated into an impassionate lover of Catholicity. One advantage had, however, ensued from the honesty of his (Mr. Kenny's) denunciations, and indeed from the whole tone of the proceedings. It was clear, that proselytism was their substantial object, and that education was only an instrument for the accomplishment of this darling project. He begged pardon of the meeting for having so long trespassed upon them, but he was bound to say, that however great their difference of opinion, he had been heard with liberality and kindness. He should not abuse it, by entering at large into another topic, upon which, before women, it might not be delicate to dwell; he alluded to the many passages in Scripture which were written with such force, and he might say with such nakedness of diction, as rendered them unfit for indiscriminate perusal. There were

parts of the Oid Testament in which images of voluptuousness were prosented to the mind, on which the imagination of a youthful female ought not to be permitted to repose. To those passages he would not of course refer, or point out the forbidden fruit; but he would venture to assert, that the Odes of Anacreon did not display more luxury of imagination, or toinbine more sensual associations than parts of the Old Testament, the perusal of which, by women, was wisely forbidden by the Jewish Church. It was idle to say, in the language of modern cant, that the grace of God would prevent the passions from taking fire. Our daily orison contains a prayer, founded upon human frailty, that we should be preserved not only from guilt, but even from temptation; and if the passages to which he alluded were unfit for an open citation in that assembly, he could not conceive them to be the appropriate theme of a virgin's meditation. The warm fancy of a young and blooming girl could not venture into the sacred bowers of oriental poetry without peril. Besides the objection arising to the warm colouring of the pastoral of Solomon, which was a mystic representation of the conjugal union of the churches, wherewith unmarried ladies need not be made prematurely familiar, it should be recollected that the Bible contained details of atrocity at which human nature shuddered. Part of the Holy Writings consisted of history and of the narration of facts; some of those facts are of a kind, that they could not be mentioned in the presence of a virtuous woman without exciting horror. Should a woman be permitted to read in her chamber, what she would tremble to hear at her domestic board? and shall her eyes be polluted with what her ears shall not be profaned? · Shall she read what she dares not hear? Shall she con over, and revolve, what she would rather die than utter? But these were painful topics-they were forced into debate by those who, in their anxiety to annihilate the religion of the country, forgot the risk to which its morality was exposed. And what good could the achievement of this object after all effect? In ceasing to be Catholics, were they certain that the people would continue Christians? Let this absurd scheme be abandoned-let the Irish peasant live and die in the religion of his forefathers, and let the propagators of modern dogmas, who send their missionaries amongst us, remember the denunciation in St. Matthew"Woe unto you, ye Scribes, ye Pharisees, ye hypocrites! ye compass the sea and earth to make a single proselyte, and when you have made him, he is two-fold more a child of hell than before."

PROSECUTION OF MR. O'CONNELL.

SPEECH AT THE ASSOCIATION, WHEN THE PROSECUTION OF MR. O'CONNELL, FOR SEDITIOUS LANGUAGE, PREVENTED THE INTENDED DEPUTATION TO ENGLAND.

Mr. SHEIL said, the deputation to England, would not have been with out avail. The English are a wise, a generous, and lofty-minded peo ple, and we should have appealed to their wisdom, to their justice, and to their humanity. We should have disabused them of mary mistakes

--we should have demonstrated to them, that we are not unworthy of being incorporated in the great community of British citizenship-that our political ethics are much better than they had been taught to think --that there is no dogma in our religion which renders us unfit for the enjoyment of civil freedom-that our creed is the faith of their great progenitors-and that in casting contumely upon our opinions, they stamp damnation upon their father's graves. We should have told them that the Barons of Runnemede were as good citizens as the Lords of Chancery-lane, and that the sword with which Magna Charta was won, might be weighed against Lord Eldon's mace. We should have told them that the part which they have acted towards our country, reflects no credit upon them in the eyes of mankind-that having the excellence of gigantic strength, they should not use it in the spirit of gigantic domination-that liberty is like light, and is not impaired by its participation-that the disfranchisement of seven millions of British subjects cannot fail to be productive of great calamities—that we are placed in an unnatural, and therefore an injurious relation towards the empire; and that it befits their dignity to interpose between the contending factions by which the country is torn asunder-that they had too long turned our furious contentions into sport; and that it is unworthy of them to sit, like the spectators of a Roman theatre, at a gladiatorial exhibition of their slaves, and make a pastime of the ferocious passions with which they are arrayed against each other in all the insolence of inglorious triumph, and all the wildness of infuriated despair. We should have told them that, by a single act of magnanimous justice, they might put an end to the animosities which have cost so much English and Irish blood-that our emancipation would be an act of thrift, as well as of humanity; and that it became their prudence, as well as the grandeur of their national character, and that it is a matter of economy as well as of honour, to make us free. "Reconcile us,” we should have exclaimed, " as you are wise-as you are just, redress us-and in the name of mercy rescue us from our own passions, and save us from the consequences to which your system of shame and of penalty must inevitably lead"—and what are those consequences? V they were no other than an increase of those heart-burnings and animosities, that must either rapidly augment or be instantaneously remedied by a great senative act of legislative wisdom, their anticipation, (and it requires but little of the spirit of political soothsaying to foretell results so manifest) should excite the virtue, if it does not awaken the alarm of every honest and enlightened man, and enlist the good sense and good feeling of the whole British conìmunity in our behalf. Things cannot stand as they are. Either a great national reconciliation must be effected, or hostilities must be deepened-reciprocal antipathies must be strengthened-new force and activity must be communicated to the popular passions-and if the fountain of bitterness is not sealed, it musɩ be supplied. Are we to continue for ever in this frightful state? Are we to be everlastingly marshalled against each other by the infuriating provocations of the law? Are we to be set with a rabid and canine fury upon each other? Are our detestations to be endowed with a dis