portion, however small, of property. Their duty was, simply, to protect the bearer of certain formal notices. As they proceeded on their way, the chapel bells, along their line of march, rung out. At the ominous summons, multitudes, in various directions, showed themselves, followed, and closed on, the devoted party. At first their purpose was not disclosed. The leader affected confidence and friendship, and, when he heard experienced constables expostulating with their officer, and suggesting the prudence of avoiding a dangerous defile, he solemnly gave an assurance that the party were safe; that not a hair of their heads should be touched. Thus he proceeded until he had allured his victims into a recess where discipline and valour were unavailing-then he gave his murderous followers the word for which they waited; and of these eighteen unoffending and confiding men, in open day, fourteen were brutally stoned to death.

The next year witnessed, if not so fearful a crime, a most instructive lesson. A number of individuals, accused of the murder, were arrested, and were to be put on their trial at the assizes of Kilkenny; and the Attorney-General-remember, an Attorney-General appointed by Earl Grey's government-was reduced to the humiliating necessity of adjourning the trials, on the acknowledged ground that justice could not be looked for in any case with which questions of tithes were connected. Why have I said that this was an instructive lesson? You shall judge.

At the concluding (the fourth) conference for the year 1830, the first three questions for discussion were these :-"What counsel should be given to persons engaged in military duties? What are the obligations of Judges? What of those who in our country are called Jurors?" The first of these I shall read in the original—“Quid militiæ deditis præcipiendum.” It seems to contemplate not alone those who are more strictly termed soldiers, but all whose lives and duties partake of a military character-soldiers, constabulary, police. The three questions may be said to embrace all who are in any way engaged in the execution and the administration of the laws; the command, to consider them in conference, we may regard as a notification that the Roman Catholic Clergy were to enter upon the course of instruction suitable to the season in which they were proposed to teach the soldiery and police their duties-to teach their own people in what light the magistrates and judges of the land were to be regarded—and to make them understand, in the event of their being appointed jurors, what was the

nature of their duties. We are in possession of some information from which we may gather what was the result of these questions, and of the discussions they occasioned. It had been found necessary, in consequence of the seditious discourses in the Chapels, to direct that an officer, I believe a commissioned officer, should accompany every military party which attended at a Roman Catholic place of worship; and we have, in the report of a Parliamentary Committee, * the evidence of an officer, from which we understand plainly that the precaution was not unnecessary. The answers to the other two questions, at least so far as concerns the subject on which I am speaking, are obvious. It is a well known principle of Canon Law, that "the judgments of an excommunicated judge are invalid;" after the speech of my reverend friend and brother, it is needless to say to you that every Protestant judge has incurred the penalties of excommunication. Hence, an ingenious Roman Catholic witness, not ascribing authority to the tribunal of justice where a heretic presides, may feel conscience wholly at ease in availing himself, to the uttermost, of the permission which his Church accords to him in her doctrine of equivocation.

The duties of Jurors have been taught in a work of which some Roman Catholics have endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to disparage the authority; I mean the celebrated Rheimish Testament. I read a note on the 27th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 24th verse.

"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 as all officers are, and especially the judges and juries which 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 the laws, which are unjust—for they should rather suffer death themselves than put an innocent man to death."

When morals of such a nature as this have spread through such a people as the Irish, is the massacre of Carrickshock or the assizes of Kilkenny matter of wonder? Is it to be wondered at, that, within the last year, there have been 187 dreadful murders perpe

Committee on the state of Ireland, 1832-Evidence of Ensign Matson.

trated in one county of Ireland, and that for all these there has been but one criminal brought to justice?

Having put this case before you, I need not dwell on other documents. I did intend to lay before you the testimony of Mr. Inglis, a late English traveller-of Mr. O'Croly, a Roman Catholic priest-of Chief Justice Bushe-and of Sir Hussey Vivian, now Master of the Ordnance for the purpose of showing that, in the mass of my countrymen, the followers of the Church of Rome, there is no remorse at the shedding of blood-no scruple of conscience at the commission of perjury—that there is a double process of demoralization carrying on-the one dependent on the fidelity with which the unhappy people observe oaths which they have pledged in support of a dark and formidable conspiracy—the other springing from the carelessness with which they break solemn engagements which they have sworn to keep, in every thing referring to the course of public justice. I will, however, pass over all these testimonies, and instead of speaking on matters of which there may be question and dispute, I will bring the case to a point at once, and say, that, according to the principles taught in that book from which we have heard extracts, the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church are such as to render the faith of a Roman Catholic pledged to the support of the State, not to be respected, because he is bound by anterior obligations to his church, and because the Pope or the Bishop can, by the exercise of an infallible power, or a power subordinate to infallible, deliver him from the engagements to which that faith has been pledged. You may ask me if I have any instances, any examples, to adduce? I then, without any hesitation, say, you have this spectacle before you, that thirty-five individuals, men of education, men selected to represent the spirit, and feelings, and character, of the Irish people-men selected to be the chosen champions of the Church of Rome, as existing in Ireland, have come here-have stood on the most conspicuous elevation of the whole moral world, and have, on that preeminent elevation, fastened on themselves the charge of a deed which, if it were perpetrated by individuals in this country, would, from every man in England, call down, in one simultaneous cry, the accusation of perjury. They say, "We have done nothing to weaken the Protestant religion and Protestant government in Ireland. They say that tithes have nothing to do with religion-that pounds, shillings and pence are not religion." This is unredeemed iniquity.

I can charitably account for the violation of the oath on other grounds; but the nature of the defence thus set up exposes it in all the nakedness of undisguised abomination.

And here, my Lord, I beg leave to indulge in a brief digression, which shall not be impertinent to the subject on which I am engaged. Protestants had said that the engagements of the Roman Catholics for the extermination of heretics were of an uncharitable kind, and in proof of the justice of their complaint, quoted from that solemn instrument, the oath by which Roman Catholic bishops pledged their fealty to the Pope, in which there was found the sworn and dreadful promise, that they would persecute and impugn all heretics. Persequi et impugnare were the words. These words Protestants interpreted as if they involved an engagement, not merely to confute their doctrines, but also, the more revolting one, to persecute them in their persons. A Roman Catholic bishop, however, made a defence to this effect: "We are not required," he intimated, "to persecute heretics in person, but we are bound by a solemn engagement to follow up and convince them by argument." (Some cries of hear.) I thank those gentlemen for their cheers. That was the explanation given by Dr. Doyle and Dr. Murray, and other Roman Catholic divines, in the years 1825 and 1826. Some years afterwards, in 1831, Dr. Doyle was again before a Parliamentary Committee. At that time principles had become more developed in the Church of Rome; blood had been shed; many ministers of the Established Church had fallen by the murderer's hand; the law had become powerless to protect their properties or persons; an appeal had been made in their behalf to the benevolence of England; and many who had been eminent for charitable exertions, and who would still have continued these exertions, had they not, without a crime, or the imputation of offence, been virtually put out of the law's protection, or felt that law had no power to protect them, were made dependant for the means of existence on the charitable contributions of the humane and generous. The knowledge that the clergy of Ireland were in destitution, because a conspiracy had prevailed against the government, or against them, made it necessary to inquire into matters connected with such a conspiracy. Dr. Doyle had left Parliament under an impression produced by a solemn declaration, that he had nothing to do with the

punishment of heretics in their persons;* but that it was his imperative duty, as a bishop, to attempt their conversion by argument. In 1831 he made a boast that he never had attempted to convince a heretic of his errors-that he had engaged in no controversy-but had left the Protestants to their opinions, without making the slightest effort to disabuse them. But there arrived a time when he awoke to a sense of duty. When the Protestants, provoked, I must confess, by the assaults of adversaries, came forth from their retirement, and began to shake Popery-when they stood out to discharge a duty which they had not done before-but which in later days they have sought to do, amid difficulties and perils-perils in which many have sealed the truth with their blood-when they opened the clasped book of God's word, and endeavoured to convey to the Irish people that knowledge which called out in the hearts of many an awakened man the question, "What shall I do to be saved ?"—then the vener

• “The meaning which we attributed to it" (the word persequi)" was only to follow up by argument, and to commence, if we could, by proofs."—Dr. Doyle, Lords' Com. 1825, Digest, vol. 2, p. 178.

that in

"I mentioned, in 1825, and I repeat it now, that till the period of the new Reformation, I never remember to have preached a single sermon about controversy, and what is more, since the new Reformation commenced, I have never done it directly. I do believe these sentiments of mine were the sentiments and feelings of the great majority of the Catholics, and that, if they had been left to follow their own opinions, they never would have troubled the Protestants about their opinions." "From what period do you date these efforts?" "They commenced, I think, about the year 1824," &c. &c.-Dr. Doyle, Com. Com. on Tithes in Ireland, 1832, p. 336. Hence, it appears that Roman Catholic Priests did not engage in controversy for the sake of instructing or reclaiming Protestants; short, their exertions were those of adversaries, not Apostles. It appears also, from the evidence, that the efforts of Dr. Doyle and his party were retaliation, provoked by the endeavours of Protestants to make proselytes; and that these endeavours commenced in 1824. Before that year, however, Friar Hayes had preached his controversial lectures, which the newspaper-organ of his party, the Dublin Evening Post, was forced to condemn as "incentives to blood." Before that year, in 1821, the existence of the Ribbon Society became notorious; in 1822, its object, the extermination of Protestants, was discovered, and Dr. Doyle himself addressed to the members of it his well-known Pastoral, in which he describes it as "a dark and bloody conspiracy;" while in 1823, he, without the sanction, or indeed rather in defiance of the judgment of the Pope, took a lead (and was conjoined by Dr. Murray) in that most alarming and mysterious movement of the Hohenloe miracles. All these menacing, and one would almost be tempted to say, blasphemous, manifestations, preceded the efforts to proselytise, which Dr. Doyle dates as having commenced in the year 1824.