ous state. After committing the deed he confessed the cause. The priest, hearing of the occurrence, called at his master's house to administer the last rites of the Church to the poor man. The gentleman happened to be at home at the time, and told him he was the author of the misfortune. The following Sunday this same priest again denounced the gentleman from the altar, and, in furious language demanded of his flock, would they allow their priest to be insulted by a heretic,' mentioning the gentleman's name. "Since then, the most frightful persecution, accompanied with threats of assassination, has been in execution; so much so that the gentleman is afraid to go out of doors, lest he should meet the fate of Mr Ellis or Mr Cooper, and is consequently resolved to quit the country. The above facts are true, and illustrate the state to which the Protestants of Ireland, residing in Roman Catholic districts, are now reduced." Is it from the teaching of priests like this the learned baron expects blessed consequences? Who can say how many such there are? Who can say that, with the exception of those who are Protestants at heart, all are not such? It is too much to expect that a Roman Catholic priest shall allow Baron Richards to be his spiritual director, and shall receive from him the commands by which his sacerdotal activities shall be directed. Does the learned baron know what are the obligations of a Romish priest? or the rules and authorities by which he is determined in his doctrine as to "human sins and virtues ?" We believe not. We wish he and his would strive to make themselves acquainted with such things before they speak of them, and that they would not take it for granted that the morals which Romanism teaches are the morals of Scripture, and that the laws they enforce are those of the British Constitution. Still, were the learned Judge "twenty times" a Radical, he spoke a great truth. Religion is stronger than law. Legislators, therefore, in contriving how their laws shall be carried into execution, are bound to see how the priests stand affected. What is the case in Ireland? It might be thought enough to answer, that the conscience of a Roman Catholic does not seem engaged in the obedience he renders to the laws of a Protestant state. He has sworn, and broken his oath he has violated a law, and felt no compunction for the transgression he has walked forth from the services of his Church to commit murder he has mingled with the congregation which witnessed his act of blood, to be screened by their sure and cordial protection-he has murdered the executioners of the law-he has harboured the murderers of the merciful and pure of life, and he has conspired to destroy whole generations, because there was among them some one who had discharged the most painful duty of a citizen and subject. Is not this enough to prove that his priests must have sympathized with him in hostility to the civil law? The answer, in our judgment, is obvious. We shall, however, determine by acts-not inferences; and, accordingly, will proceed to show that, in all those principles which we have shown to be in authority with the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, the common faith with priests have a them. To prove this, we shall follow the same order as we observed in our classification of the principles of law and ethics received by the "popular party," without entering, however, so minutely into details. And 1st, For the " Landlord's crime"enforcement of the rights of property-the judgment of priest coincides with that of people; and more, the priests are their "precursors" in the A plain tale will prove this. matter. For example, The county of Tipperary has long had an undisputed and an unenviable supremacy in crime, above all other The note we have parts of Ireland. already made of two hundred and twenty-four coroners' inquests, and fifty-nine presentments for malicious injuries to property, fiated by the Grand Jury within the last year, will sufficiently prove that it has not degenerated. The county has, however, found an advocate in the person of a dignitary of the Romish Church, the venerable Archdeacon Laffan. meeting of the Precursor Society, held at the Corn Exchange, Dublin, in the course (we believe on the 11th) of last December, the venerable gentleman is reported to have handed in 1063 names, and £53, 3s. from the Unions of Fethard and Killenski, Tipperary, and to have spoken to the following effect: At a "He said it was quite the fashion to say that the people of Tipperary were savages. It was the habit of Lord Donoughmore, and his associate Lord Glengal, down to the lowest scrivener writing for the Orange press of that county, to state that crimes were committed without a cause. He said that the cause lay in deep and foul oppression. If he went through almost every parish of Tipperary, he would find there the footsteps of tyrant landlords, and their presence might be traced by the landmarks of desolation that every where presented themselves. There was not a parish in Ireland in which the visible proofs of oppression were not to be discovered. In some parishes, whole villages were swept away, and the villagers cast, without a house, a shelter, or a potato, on the world; and let him ask any man possessing the feelings of human naturewhose heart was not made of marble-was it a wonderful thing to hear of crime in Tipperary? No; a brave people were rendered ferocious by the deeds of cruelty perpetrated upon them," &c. &c. "As sure as the lightning came from the thunder-cloud, so sure effects would follow from their causes. Let the landlords of Tipperary cease their oppressions-let them be only one-half as kind to their poor tenantry as they were to their horses or dogs, and the finger of the assassin would be paralysed upon the trigger. He was sure he had no hopes of softening the hard hearts of the landlords of the county by his observations, but he wished to rescue from calumny and oppression as fine a county as any in her Majesty's dominions-ay, and as brave, as generous, and, he would add, as RELIGIOUS a people." This, no doubt, was very consoling to the pious felons of Tipperary, persecuted, as they were, into the commission of crime, and into the necessity of hiring and harbouring assassins. Whole days have passed over on which they have abstained from indulgence in a single murder-instances of restraint and self-denial which abundantly vindicate their title to the eulogy in which their pastor describes them as pre-eminently religious. They will, we can well imagine, listen to the exhortations of this faithful preacher. The refractory landlords, he affirms, will not; they are incorrigible. If they would only "cease their oppres sions," the devout assassins would not shoot them; but as the landlords will * be hard-hearted still, notwithstanding the winning expostulation of the charitable divine, it only remains for him to preserve the peace and comfort of a good conscience, by discharging the duty he owes to himself and his parishioners in his edifying explanation of the Tipperary principle of murder. The archdeacon was communicative at the Precursor meeting, and made statements respecting landlords which created, the report says, 66 a great sensation;" but, inasmuch as they wanted the notes of time, or place, or person, by which their accuracy could be tested, they did not produce, in us, "sensation" creditable to the narrator, or any wish to copy them into our pages. We do not, however, mean to be equally rigid towards other performances of this venerable divine. He told one story (it was perhaps after dinner) in a more daring style than he had adopted among the Precursors, with a fulness of detail, indeed, which enabled parties interested to make enquiries respecting its truth. We shall venture upon a brief history of this instructive transaction. any During the month of November last, very shortly after the murder of Mr O'Keefe in the streets of Thurles, a dinner was given in that town to Mr O'Connell. Several of the Roman Catholic gentry, in consequence of the too recent enormity, declined attending, but there was an abundant muster of the Roman Catholic clergy, eighty, out of two hundred persons who sat down to dinner, being priests, one of them the Archdeacon Laffan. It was on this occasion, we apprehend, he made the speech from which an extract, purporting to be taken from Mr O'Connell's favourite paper, the Pilot, has been forwarded to us. The Archdeacon had, it appears, at one time been guilty of the sin of moderation; at least he once thought it necessary to do penance for such a crime; and when proposing Mr Shiel as a candidate for the county Tipperary, in the month of February last, thus excused himself:-* "When last I addressed you in this court, I was charged with being too mode Ryan's Disclosure of the Principles, Designs, &c. &c. London: Edwards. Dublin: Bleakly. Page 165. This is a valuable work, containing much and important documentary evidence. It ought to be in general use. If the industrious and able author continue his "collectanea," we would recommend the adoption of an arrangement of testimonies under distinct heads,classification is always serviceable. rate in my views and expressions. This was the great cause,-my dread of exciting any unpleasant feelings, and a wish that all political animosities should for ever But we live now in a new era,' &c. &c." We are now too strong for the tyrants." cease. " cease. The season of moderation to which the venerable agitator alluded, was that period in which the great success of a Conservative reaction in England made it probable that Sir R. Peel might again resume his proper place in the national councils. In that day, the priests"feared to excite unpleasant feelings, and wished that political animosities should for ever Such was the effect of a Conservative government, even in dim and dubious apprehension, upon the thoughts and temper of this apt representative of his order. It affected him with a paroxysm of Conservative feeling, which appears to have lasted until the coalition of Litchfield house had been confirmed in its ascendency, and Romanism, as the venerable orator intimated, had converted Tories into tyrants" by the ordinary process of becoming "too strong for them." With Lord Melbourne at Pimlico, and Lord Mulgrave at Dublin or Windsor Castle, and a sure though small majority in the House of Commons, moderate language was no longer in keeping, and the archdeacon could accordingly release himself from a rigorous self-restraint, and relieve his hearers from the spectacle of a somewhat too irritating moderation and propriety. 66 With the remainder of the February speech we have nothing to do. The portion we have selected will serve to explain the extract from the November speech, and the incident with which it is connected. The venerable divine appears to be excusing or explaining the murder which had caused some of the expected guests to absent themselves from the Precursors' funeral, feast, and is reported to have spoken thus. "I will tell you what I knew to be the fact. I saw the mother turned almost naked from her door. I saw her perish in the throes of child-birth, exposed to the inclemency of the weather; and let me ask you, was not the husband of that woman and the father of that child a man? Was not she as dear to him as the apple of his eye? And might it not happen that that infant would one day be the support of his declining years? And was it then to be wondered at, if the sufferings he had endured he desired to revenge, and that the cause of them fell beneath his avenging arm ?" Such a statement, avouched by the venerable gentleman, on his own authority, was calculated to produce a strong feeling against the agent who had used his power so unmercifully. It was followed elsewhere, by statements of a similar character, and one of them having appeared in the Morning Chronicle, called forth from Mr Maher a defence of himself, as landlord, and of the memory of Mr O'Keefe, his murdered agent. All the charges preferred against that gentleman or himself, Mr Maher declared, were utterly false. No tenant had ever been ejected from his lands who did not owe two years and a half or three years' rent; and none had been dispossessed without receiving sums of money which reconciled them to removal. As to the story of the woman, it was an utter calumny. A woman, not a tenant, had entered into a house from which a tenant was to be remoment of dispossession, and even she moved, forty-eight hours before the departure in peace. received two pounds to purchase her advanced in pregnancy at the time, She was far child, which, as well as the mother, and was shortly after delivered of a fine, Mr Maher added, that the clergywas living and in good health. In man who had given currency to a malicious rumour respecting the deaths of both, having found out his error, wrote to him acknowledging the mistake, and stating that the woman was alive. Such was the substance of Mr Maher's letter, which, as soon as it appeared, the archdeacon met by a contradiction to this effect— "I mentioned in my speech, that a poor woman was put out of her house on the of a child in the open air, and that the eve of child-birth; that she was delivered child died. This fact, sir, I never retracted; so far from it, that, in an interview which took place between Mr Maher and myself on the 30th November last, I referred him to the clergyman of the parish where the woman still lives," &c. &c. "Quite satisfied with having thus contradicted the statement in Mr Maher's letter, so far as I am concerned, I remain, &c. &c. "MICHAEL LAFFAN." Mr Maher is a Roman Catholic, and, had not his veracity been thus doubly impeached, he would have, perhaps, rather endured wrong from the priest than exposed him. Feeling, however, that, as a gentleman, only one resource was left him, he published his correspondence with the archdeacon, and we extract from it what appears to us most material. In letter No. 1, Mr Maher refers to the statement of the archdeacon, that a woman and her child had both died, and requests to know the name, &c. of the woman. No. 2.-The archdeacon, in reply, declines mentioning name or particulars: he says, "I also added that the woman and child both died, and I am prepared to produce the clergyman who officiated on the melancholy occasion." No. 3.-Mr Maher.-"I asked you a plain and simple question, and must again beg a plain and simple answer. Did the turning out of the woman occur on my land? What was her name-with the name of the clergyman who, you say, officiated on the melancholy occasion? No. 4. The archdeacon corrects his letter, No. 2, and still declines to answer Mr Maher. "SIR, In looking over the copy of my letter of the 20th to you, I find a mistake made by mecurrente calamo' [query, does this mean the pen of a precursor?'] I am anxious to correct. For the woman and child both died,' read the woman survived, and the child died.'-M. L." This is a curious correspondence, and merits a brief analysis. We shall begin with the speech. 66 Archdeacon, speaking, "I saw the woman perish,"-writing, "I did not see the woman perish, but I saw the clergyman who officiated when both mother and child were dead." Archdeacon, in correction" the woman survived." "I have referred Mr Maher to the clergyman of the parish where she lives." Such is the course, like that of true love, not running smooth, of the priest's "personal narrative," reminding us of Lord Plunkett's witty application of the legal distinction between "personals" and "reals." At the meeting, he spoke what he had seen. In his study, the pen reminds him that he had not seen the melancholy event, but that he knew, and that somebody nameless had seen, an incident still more afflicting. Present ly he becomes admonished that the pen had run too fast, and misled him (there is precedent for such an error in the school-boy's excuse for his exercise-that "nobody could spell well with such a bad pen)." On second thought, he contradicts the death it had hastily fabricated; and, finally, in order to prove the accuracy of vision with which he saw a woman die, and the veracity of the report of that officiating clergyman whom he would produce to prove that she was dead, he is now ready to bring upon the table another ecclesiastical witnessnamely, the clergyman of the parish in which the anonymous revenant may be found at this day, alive!!! Butthe venerable necromancer belongs to a Church which retains the power to work wonders. And now for the moral of our story. Archdeacon Laffan has not been in the least more forward-nor have his representations been more evidently untrue, than his brethren and their stimulating exhortations. Is Archdeacon Laffan with the people, or against them, in his judgment upon the "Landlord crime?" Does he strive to moderate, or to exasperate their fury? Does he understate their sufferings, and speak with just severity of their misdeeds, when uttering harangues which he knows they will read or have read? Does he strive to divest charges made against their landlords of such extraneous matter as might render them injurious-does he reduce them to their natural magnitude, and speak of them with sobriety? Or, does he pander to the passions of the people, by investing their atrocities with attributes of justice? Does he aggravate the bad feeling which wicked men have excited between them and the landed proprietors, by retailing, if not inventing groundless and most detestable calumnies?-We leave the reader to determine. 2. THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE. The Bribery and Intimidation Committee have given the answer in the evidence they have reported. Tipperary, Carlow, Limerick, Waterford, Cork, &c. &c., can attest, on the part of the priests, that they have not taught another doctrine than the people have embodied in their practice. 3. EVIDENCE IN A COURT OF LAW. Why is the character of a hireling |