will then be worth no more than the cover of your last pound of snuff. Unless you prove

that the concession of the claims will hasten the arrival of this day of darkness, will act as an efficient engine of conversion to the Catholic faith, you do nothing towards connecting the Dublin clergy with the question. In fact, the whole history about them is in your hands a mere claptrap, introduced for the purpose of casting odium on Mr. Canning's "Catholic "friends."

DANGER II.-From " Roman Catholic

Casuistry."

This danger is suggested to your mind by a change of and for or, in two clauses of the oath in the rejected bill of 1825. On this substitution you are pleased to throw great ridicule; notwithstanding which, I will take leave to consider it as one for which every sincere Catholic was bound to stipulate. I believe no one but yourself will think worse of the Catholics for declaring that an oath, which restricted them from propagating their faith by preaching, teaching, or writing, would have been "inadmissible." A man who swears that he will not disturb or weaken the Protestant religion, indisputably precludes himself from making a proselyte by any means however peaceable. I see no casuistry

in the explanation of " to disturb and weaken," by to "weaken by disturbance:" nor any thing enlightening* (in the obnoxious sense in which you use the word) in the publication of a statement in Dublin thirty-four years ago, to prove to the Catholics, by very simple reasoning, (which you endeavour to make offensive by a most unwarrantable use of Italics,) that though they were called upon to swear that they would not disturb the Protestant government, they were not called upon to swear that they would not, by the legitimate means of preaching, teaching, and writing, weaken the Protestant religion. I do not see that the framers of this statement deserve to be assailed by the exclamation," admirable casuists!" neither will plain people exactly understand why those, who know that they can get absolution from their oaths as soon as they become inconvenient, should be

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prodigiously nice and accurate, in estimating the exact quantum of obligation which they undertake :"+ indeed, as far as I am acquainted with the labours of moralists, you have the undisputed honour of founding the code, which makes such caution an object of ridicule and reprehension.

*

Having got by means of these two particles

"Wherewith the faithful are edified, and we heretics, if we are not wilfully blind, may be enlightened."Let I. p. 44. + Letter I. P. 43.

on the scent of Catholic casuistry, you run it breast high through four pages; in which not a single sentence occurs pointing even remotely at the question-how will the danger from Catholic casuistry be affected by the concession of the claims? In fact, the whole is merely one of those attempts, which pervade your book so thoroughly, that if I were to notice them all, I should reprint the major part of it, by any means, fair or unfair, to cast odium on Mr. Canning's "Catholic friends;" or, as you are elsewhere pleased to call them, "present masters." Indeed, Sir, such is the pervading unfairness of your representations respecting Mr. Canning and the Catholics, that I am obliged to say of you, as you say of Gother and Dr. Coppinger, on this very occasion, that after " hunting you

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through your various windings, I am taught "the absolute impossibility of taking any thing "whatever," I will not say in matters of what you term "dogmatic fact," but in that description of facts which derive their principal force from the colouring which is communicated to them-" on your bare assertion."* Your usual course is to make as strong a case against the Catholics as you are able; to represent in the strongest light possible the evils which may arise to a state from their pernicious doctrines, and to leave the application to your readers. You * Letter I. p. 46.

know that in many minds, all the mud and filth which you have raked up will infringe on the Catholic question; and you are in hopes that a good deal of it may in all.

DANGER III. From dread of Excommunication.

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The matter is introduced as follows:-" Thus "then it was that the Pope condemned, and so "do the Roman Catholics of Ireland (for they “have admitted his Bull) condemn, the propo"sition that the dread of excommunication 66 ought not to deter the members of their church "from doing what they conceive to be their duty. But how, on this principle, can we be "assured that the Roman Catholics of Ireland "will not, on all occasions, yield to the terrors "of excommunication, in spite of their own "private conceptions of their duty? The ap"peal to history, I repeat, affords a fearful con"firmation of the reasonableness of the appre"hension. And it has received a most instruc"tive illustration from the events even of the "last few months." I wish, Sir, you had condescended to tell us what those events have been, for I, who left England in November, have heard of none of any consequence, as having occurred between that time and the date of your Letter, except the insurrection in Portugal, in which, I believe, the Pope has taken no part; and I am in utter darkness on the subject.

However, will you tell me-What has this to do with the concession of the claims? It did not generate the propensity of the Catholics of Ireland to yield to the terrors of excommunication, which you assure us receives such a fearful confirmation from history-for they are not conceded and you have unaccountably forgotten to tell us how the concession, when it does take place, will augment this propensity. You are engaged, when you introduce this danger, in lamenting over some clauses omitted from an oath to be administered-to whom? The Catholics of Ireland? No! but to the knot of peers, the small band of M. P's and the Catholic members of lay corporations, who would or might have been called into existence if the Bill of 1825 had passed into a law. But, if you had named them, your readers would have seen at once that they were a small powerless body, not likely to do much harm if they did yield to the terrors of excommunication: so it suited better to say "the Catholics of Ireland."

you

Two pompous pages, guarded by ifs, follow, on the subject of the Pope's infallibility. They are too trifling to be made a separate subject, so I will have one word with them here. "The history of the three last centuries proclaims, to every one who thinks of history at all as "something better than an old Almanack, that". no Catholic nation does practically, and, I be

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