murderer less odious than that of an informer, however disinterested and conscientious? How comes it that priests, favoured with all facilities for good, have in so numerous instances enforced upon the " petty-larceny villains," stealers of five shillings or of five pounds, the necessity of making restitution, and that during the period (nearly a century) in which they have been allowed to attend upon condemned criminals of their Church, to the last moment of their forfeited lives, they have so seldom procured that satisfaction to the laws of the land-the discovery of crime, meditated or committed, which a true penitent should be ready to communicate? If the Roman Catholic priests think, and teach their flocks, that it is an imperative duty to give information whereby crime can be punished or prevented it is not possible to believe that the people should hold the informer infamous, and yet reverence the instructions which boast that he is to be honoured for the discharge of a stern duty. We hold, that the law of opinion on this subject, as well as the former, coincides with the law which the priests teach as of the essence of religion. We offer but a single instance of the man. ner in which priests think proper to exercise their power over witnesses. It occurred, according to our reports, at the Assizes in Longford.

"An occurrence took place during the trial, unhappily of late but too frequent in courts of justice, exhibiting the disgusting and illegal interference of the Roman Catholic priests, in endeavouring to defeat the ends of justice. A witness of the name of Farrell, sentenced to transportation for life, at the previous assizes, and brought back specially by the government, was produced on the table to give evi dence. When about to be sworn, he cast his eyes about, as if looking for some acquaintance, and immediately on his catching the eye of a Roman Catholic priest of his own name, the governor of the gaol, who stood behind the witness, and facing the priest, stated boldly to the judge, that the priest opposite to him had twice nodded in a significant manner to the witness,' who instantly declined being sworn as an evidence. The judge ordered the priest to be put forward, and expressed in the strongest manner his indignation at such conduct, and stated he would permit

the person accused to make an affidavit, as to whether he did so or not; but that if he declined doing so, he would order informations to be sworn to the fact, by the governor of the jail; and he would know how to deal with him.-The priest, by way of a defence, in a Jesuitical manner, offered to swear that he did not look at the witness more particularly than any other the crown counsel to hush up the matter, person. But the anxiety on the part of

was so apparent to every person in court, judge were not followed up. that the good intentions of the learned The jury retired at three o'clock, P. M., to consider their verdict, and were discharged the following day, at half-past twelve o'clock, having been locked up the entire time, without either meat or drink, and having passed the night in a small comfortless room. The prisoner remains in custody, and will again abide his trial at the ensuing assizes."

3. OBLIGATIONS OF A JUROR.

We are common-place enough to look for information on this subject to the doctrines of the Roman Church.

"The substance of papal doctrine, as regards judges and jurors, may be understood from the following passage, a note in the Rhemish Testament in St Matthew, c. 24, v. 27. Though Pilate was much more innocent than the Jews, and would have been free from the murder of our Saviour, seeking all the means that he could (without offending the people and the emperor's laws) to dismiss him, yet he is damned for being the minister of the people's wicked will against his own conscience. Even us all officers are, and especially all judges and juries, who execute laws for temporal princes against Catholic men, for all such are guilty of innocent blood, and are nothing excused by that they execute other men's will, according to laws which are unjust,' &c. Such is the doctrine of the Church of Rome, as taught in a book which one of her Bishops pretended to disclaim, which is now proved to be one of her standard authorities. In the winter of 1830, priests, in conference, to prepare themselves for their duty as leaders, discussed the question, What are the duties of judges and jurors?' The following year afforded an illustration of the conclusion to which they came."

"Fourteen individuals in the year 1831, were murdered in the County Kilkenny, under circumstances which were calculated to enlist every sympathy against their assassins. Trials were to be had at

Mortimer, London. Page 31.

the Assizes of Kilkenny for these murders (the massacre of Cruickshank, as it was called), and the attorney-general for the Crown was forced to move an adjournment, not because popular feeling was so excited against the murderers, that the culprits could not hope for a merciful consideration, but because juries could not be hoped to return true verdicts."

5. THE CRIME OF PROTESTANTISM, OR CONVERSION FROM ROME.

Dr M'Hale and the Ackill Mission have rendered it unnecessary for us to prove that the priests not only sympathise with their "subjects" in hatred of Protestants, but lend themselves to exasperate the feelings of hostility and estrangement.

6. SECRET SOCIETIES, NOBLEMEN, &c. We dare not say that the Roman Catholic priests belong to these societies, because we have no direct proofs of their having joined them, but we know thus much,

1. The societies consist exclusively of Roman Catholics.

2. The societies contemplate the extermination of heretics.

3. The societies have not been excommunicated by Romish bishops;

4. And would not be excommunicated, to use the well-remembered words of Dr Doyle, though "rebellion were raging from Carrickfergus to Cape Clear."

Thus, it seems clear, that the prejudices and false principles which alienate the people" from justice and law, have the priests also for their patrons and promoters. Legislators and magistrates should, therefore, remember that they are to govern without the aid by which, ordinarily, law is strengthened. But if they were wise and honest, the circumstances in which they learn this truth, would not daunt them. The priests and the agitators, and the more hidden traitors, have a harder task to keep their posts even now, than a well-principled government would have to dislodge them. Latent, but not extinct, in the hearts of the Irish people, there are principles which consistency and justice would bring out, and which, once brought out, the empire of iniquity in Ireland is at an end. Organised, and armed, and remorseless bands, villains in whom the instincts of cruelty and destructiveness have been pampered, un

til men have been metamorphosed into beasts of blood-many youthful spirits, fired with the love of adventure, a species of poetry in action which exalts and allures them into enterprises which they court for the difficulty and danger-are certainly at the disposal of most unrighteous authorities. But the great mass of the Irish people are weary of the life they lead-of the terror that cometh by night-of the arrow that fleeth in the noonday; and whenever there is a hope held out of A GOVERNMENT-of an administration which acknowledges other duties to the country than the duty of retaining place and power to harm it, which is resolved to do justice and to protect those who will aid in their endeavoura new sight will be seen in Irelandsuch a change as will recompense those who live to witness it for many a day of trouble. But it is not a change upon which agitators or traitors desire to look. It is not a change which Romish priests desire to anticipate. In identifying themselves with the "popular party," they know the real strength of the people is but seemingly with them. In resigning themselves to political atrocities, they have, as they know well, lost that apparent sanctity of demeanour which had previously covered many sins. Their power has had its deathblow, and the only matter in doubt is, whether they can, by stimulants, prolong a kind of galvanic life, until they have given a fatal shock to England--or if we are, beyond our deserts, preserved to witness the subsidence of their power into a state in which it shall cease from troubling. certainly, was terror more significant and instructive than that which smote Priest Laffan with Conservatism, and the confidence in encreased and superior strength, by which he was recovered from a transitory moderation.

Never,

But whatever may be done by other than our present rulers, or by our present rulers with altered views, it is clear that the priests have nothing to apprehend from the system under which the British empire is now governed. So far from resisting, the Irish Government promote their views, as if, indeed, they had been contracting parties to a league for bringing law into disrepute, and for the introduction of anarchy. Our limits are almost reached, or, to speak

more correctly, we have passed them, and cannot pay this part of our subject the attention its importance merits; but we must attempt a hurried proof that the principles of priests and precursors are those also which the Irish Court seems disposed to bring into fashion. Indeed, after the boast of the noble Viceroy, in the House of Lords, that, for the first time in the annals of history, the British Government WAS IDENTIFIED WITH THE POPULAR PARTY IN IRELAND, it cannot be matter of surprise that the acts of the Irish part of the Government should be those of sympathisers (the word is American, but it shall stand) with the "popular cause." We will, however, enumerate in the detail, those principles of political ethics in which we have already seen the agreement of priests and precursors.

1. THE LANDLORD CRIME.

"For the first time," the Government has denounced the landed proprietary of the country, in terms upon which Father Laffan could hardly improve, and with about as much reason, and decency, and truth, as the great necromancer himself.

2. ELECTIVE FRANCHISE. It is enough to say that the administration depended upon a majority, to be obtained in Ireland. Barristers shifted about, according as their opinions or their pliability adapted them to the necessities of the various registrations-returning officers judiciously selected, in open defiance of the judges' lists, a cunning distribution of the constabulary force, &c., may explain how, "for the first time," since the Revolution, the British Government rejoiced in a majority, even by practices which tended to perpetuate anarchy in Ireland. We have not space to speak of the methods to which success was owing at the Carlow election, and to the consistent iniquity with which it was afterwards followed out to the extreme. These circumstances have not been exposed, as they ought to have been, before Parliament. We will not give up a hope, that even yet, that duty may be discharged.

EVIDENCE.

The magistrates of Carlow addressed a memorial to the Government, praying an investigation into the conduct of a constable, and undertaking to prove charges of gross delinquency against him. Government denied their prayer, accepting the word of the accused party as a sufficient reply to their accusation. The magistrates remonstrated in a wise and temperate memorial, to which twenty-seven sig. natures were appended. This was forwarded in the summer of 1837. It did not shake the resolutions of Government; but, in the following spring, six of the subscribing magistrates were put out of the commission of the peace. Bad encouragement for volunteer prosecutors!

The Irish Government have, certainly, issued proclamations and offered rewards; but the rewards have, generally, been so insignificant, as rather warning a culprit off (or, as the case to seem intended for the purpose of may be, setting him at his ease at home), than with a hope of inviting a prosecutor. Perhaps, however, the best scarecrow to keep off witnesses and prosecutors has been set up by Lord Normanby's "humanity." The constancy with which the laws of Viceregal clemency have acted, so as that, when conviction has overtaken offence, the royal pardon has hastened to take away the sting of conviction, must have had a most pernicious effect. No man will be easily induced to let the culprit he is prosecuting "take his picture" from the dock, when he has good grounds to apprehend that the man he has prosecuted to conviction will afterwards meet him, not in ghostly shadow or in dreams, but in bodily presence, armed, exasperated, and, by the grace of Lord Normanby's mercy, free to wreck merciless vengeance on the informer. "You shall have your share" (perhaps a tenth) "of forty pounds," cries out the proclamation to the witness, if you prosecute to conviction. "The man you convict will be liberated, to work his will against you," cry out the thousands whom the Viceroy has commanded the prisons and the hulks to disgorge, and those of whom he has robbed the