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    and never can l * e re-established . Perhaps no / one individual of the Austrian Empire has more deserved a public monument ; and it is to the credit of his nephew to have erected this statute to his fame . " The inscription is , ** Saluti publicae vixit non diu sed totus / 9

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    Art . V . — Three Months in Ireland . By an English Protestant , 8 vo , London , 1827 . Though this volume issues from the loyal storehouse of Mr . Murray , it tells only the unvarying tale of Irish wrongs . We can afford space for but a few short extracts as to the state of feeling towards the Protestant Establishment , that most monstrous and scandalous anomaly in the history of political and ecclesiastical misgoverument .

    " To a Protestant it certainly is a melancholy task to have to contend with men so much entitled to respect from their sacred functions , however blameable in their private characters ; and in a prudential point of view nothing can be more impolitic and dangerous than to censure any amongst so strong and powerful a body as the clergy , which , as one of its own members well observes , *

    always unites in defence of the person attacked , and butts against the offender with a very extended front . ' But are we to pardon all delinquencies on account of the veneration due to the delinquents , and shall that sacred rank , which is the chief aggravation of their faults , be the excuse for leaving them unnoticed ? Is it not , on the contrary , our duty to prevent , as far as in us lies , so great a source of scandal to the Protestant and

    triumph to the Roman Church , from lasting any longer ? It will scarcely be believed what feelings of shame and mortification I endured on my first arrival in Ireland , from finding the general unpopularity and dislike under which the Protestant clergy labour , and still more afterwards when I perceived how justly the majority deserve it . "

    " One of the stratagems to which the Irish clergy have most frequently recourse to repel their assailants , and still more to prevent attack , is to charge with irreligion and impiety all those who presume to blame them . ' Touchex aux Dimes , ies voild qui crieht tl V Athie ^ ' is a French saying completely verified in this instance . * * Were the Irish Church really as PQor and as irreproachable as

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    it would wish us to believe , it wouM re- » joioe in any proposed investigation , $ s the best means of securing its adherent * and silencing its adversaries . But no : —• they are too well aware of the truth : they shun—they deprecate examination ; they shroud themselves in convenient

    darkness , and will not unveil their proceedings or possessions to unitiated eyes . They endeavour , on the contrary , to prevent all inquiry » by asserting the in * violability and sacredness of their situation , and raising the cry of sacrilege against all audacious intruders . "

    The author proceeds to shew that Catholicism has of late " prodigiously increased . " " Indeed this increase is admitted by every one , even by those who carry the supposed number of Protestants at present to an extravagant height ; and the only questions in dispute are , the extent of this increase ; and , whether it

    continues at present ; which I am sorry to say there is too much reason to believe . Now then , I ask , to what cause can we attribute this admitted growth of Popery in Ireland ? The Catholic will answer , * To the force of truth . * But this reply will not suffice to us Protest tants , who believe truth to be enlisted on the opposite side . To what cause ,

    then , can be attributed this increase of the Catholics in spite of the force of truth ? * To the superior allurements of Popery , ' say some persons . No doubt , it must have been peculiarly alluring to be exposed to the pains and penalties , to the persecuting rigours of the most atrocious penal laws that ever blackened the annals of this or any other

    country ! No doubt peculiarly alluring to resist the richly-baited conversion-traps offered , in charter-schools and pensions to converts , of forty pounds a-year ! No doubt , it mast have been a great temptation to Popery , to be excluded thereby from all places of power or emolument , and to have remained for so many years in a state of unmitigated slavery ! No doubt , it must be particularly pleasing to have to fast strictly on Fridays and in

    Lent , to submit to severe acts of penance , and be obliged , in addition to enormous tithes and Church-rates , to pay for one ' s own chapel and minister besides ! Were these the allurement to Popery ? What then , I ask again , was the cause of its admitted increase ? I assert , that the cause is to be found in the extortions , the mal-administration , and the indolence of the Protestant establishment . It is to them that the Popery of Ireland

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    Crkltoti , Notkn . $ &

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1827, page 219, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1794/page/59/