PREFACE.

WHATEVER apology may be thought necessary by the consciousness of imbecility or the diffidence of genius, for obtruding their productions on the public, it is the high prerogative of truth to stand forth in the simplicity of her wn inherent power, and instead of humbly soliciting the attention of mankind as a boon, to demand it with authority as a right. It is therefore that the Editors of the following pages, however they may feel their own deficiencies in advocating the sacred cause of truth, cannot so far wrong their judgment as to offer an apology to the British empire for sending forth this work from the press. They know that they publish truth, which, whether in reference to the political, the social, the moral or the everlasting interests of the nation, cannot be disregarded, much less contemned with impunity, by any individual from the cottage to the throne. These volumes rest their claim to attention on the evidence of facts, on the unanswered and unanswerable demonstration of irresistable documentary proof-proof which has exhibited the impotence of sophistry to evade it-of perjury to deny― of power to crush-of clamour to cry it down. They do not expose the principles or the deeds of men of other times, who have passed away from the busy scenes of life-whose conduct might be misrepresented-whose motives might be misconceived-whose books, whose words, whose oaths,

whose actions, might be placed, by malice and ingenuity, in such an unfavourable point of view as to mislead the public mind, but who, if they could arise from their graves and stand forth in the honest integrity of their own conscious innocence and virtue, could vindicate their honor and avenge their wrongs, and turn the tide of public indignation and contempt on their accusers. They do not tell a tale of men in humble life-they do not bring a charge against poor unlettered creatures-they do not fasten the crimes of the Ribbonman, the Whitefoot, or the Rockite, on weak and helpless individuals, who perhaps might never hear the story of their accusations, and even if they did, whose poverty and weakness would forbid them to cope with their accusers, to meet their charges with responsive energy and power on the platform or in the press, or even to seek redress for injured character from the tribunal of public justice; these are not the subjects of attack and exposure in these volumes. The principles, the words, the oaths, the books, the acts of living men are brought into the blaze of day-their secret conclaves are laid open-the subject of their secret discussions, their questions, their answers, are proclaimed aloud upon the public platform—those authoritative standards that are to guide the men who direct the consciences, and rule with despotic tyranny the temporal and eternal destinies of an unhappy population-those standards that make crimes the subject of instruction, and the interests of a Church the motive for their perpetration-those standards that reduce obscenity and perjury to rule, and confiscation, murder and sedition to law-these are plainly and palpably exhibited.

The authorised circulation of notes on God's Eternal Word, given as of infallible authority to a credulous confiding people-notes full of blasphemy, idolatry, intolerance, and persecution-notes which under the pretence of a commentary, borrow the semblance of authority from the sacred text, for every false doctrine it denounces, and for almost

every crime that it forbids, these are detected and exposed to public view.

The laws of a foreign tyrant set up within the limits of the British empire-the sceptre of an arbitrary foreign power wielded within the precincts of the boasted British Constitution, to invade the liberties, the laws, the religion, the properties, the lives, of British subjects-to denounce the Protestant Sovereign of the realm, and all powers, temporal and ecclesiastical, deriving their authority from that sovereign-to sever the allegiance of Irish Roman Catholic subjects from their monarch, and give the undivided fealty of those subjects to the Pope-to compel them to temporal subjection under the lash of spiritual despotism-these are the facts unanswerably demonstrated in these volumes. And who are the men against whom the charges are brought? who are they who are defied again and again before the open face of day to meet, or to confute a single one of them? who are they whose efforts of defence have but betrayed the consciousness of guilt, and afforded only fresh occasions of confirmation of their crimes, till they have been driven to prefer the confession of a coward and submissive silence, to the helpless and baffled impotence of any further effort to defend? They are the first, the ablest, the most learned, the most powerful, the most vaunted champions of the Papacy. Here, you may behold the leaders of a band of public truce breakers dragged by the grasp of truth from the degraded and dishonored benches of the British Senate, and the crimes of that guilty superstition, by which they have been nursed and trained to perjury, publicly branded on their brow. Here you may see the confederated band of ecclesiastical seditious tyrants, the authors and organisers of their country's crimes-prominent in exemplifying the pestilent principles they have inculcated-reversing the office and the order they profess to hold of sacred guides,

"Who lure to brighter worlds, and lead the way,"

You may behold them the instructors and the exemplars that lure and lead to guilt, to darkness, and to death. Here you may see exhibited the smooth and open smile of bland, unruffled, serenity upon the countenance, while you hear the deep and dark denunciation that bursts in secret from the heart-Here you may see the loud and lofty letter breathing integrity and honor, and denying in the public press to the Prime Minister of England, the principles, the facts, the books which are demonstrated before your eyes, to be adopted in the secret conference by the very man who denies them. Here you may see the calm and christian tenderness of brotherly kindness, breathed in the address that is published to a people, as if they were all "beloved fellow Christians," while anon you turn your eyes and look into the chamber of imagery, and there you see the mask of Christian charity flung off, and the dark inquisitor with his brethren in his secret Synod sealing up the sentence of curse and excommunication against the men that are openly addressed as his beloved brothers-Here you may see the dignified and apostolic sermon breathing all the charity and love of the Apostle John, and then the livid lip that has pronounced the base hypocrisy, breathing out threatenings and slaughters like the persecutor of Tarsus against the disciples of the Lord, in the secret conclave of inquisitorial persecution.Here you may see the open, unanimous declaration, the confederated oath proclaiming, as it affects to do, their genuine principles, and signed and given before the face of the nation, to priests and people by their guides, their highest authorities, to beguile and to deceive the men who saw and heard these sentiments proclaimed on oath-and then when hypocrisy and treachery had gained their point, you may see the secret instructions pressed with all the power of authority upon these very priests, to guide that very people, in the secret orders and inculcation of the confessional, which demonstrate every syllable of that declaration to be one

unanimous and infamous imposture, and every sentence of that oath to be one black tissue of deep confederated perjury. Here you behold the canons and the laws of the dark and deadly days of Papal Massacre denounced, and openly denied before the nation, and those very laws pregnant with persecution, with confiscation, with treason, and with slaughter, revived and set up in the secret and authoritative conclave, as the laws to dismember the Empire, and to deluge our streets and fields with blood-Here you see facts that admit of no denial, acts that admit of no explanation, perjuries that cannot be palliated, crimes that cannot be extenuated, supported by proofs that cannot be met; you see mathematical demonstrations of moral turpitude, that leave all systems of human iniquity except the Papacy at a distance.

Popery had professed, Popery had sworn, Popery had been believed, Popery had succeeded. This is not the place to follow her in her fatal progress to that ominous position which she has attained, one cannot say in influencing, but in ruling the destinies of England. It is enough that she was proceeding in the full career of, yet undetected crimes, of yet successful perjuries, manifest indeed in her acts, but professing liberality and charity in her principles, when it pleased Providence, by a concurrence of unlooked for circumstances, a chain of unsought for, unsuspected proofs, to lay open the system of Theology in which her Hierarchy had been so long, so secretly, and so successfully training the wretched population of the country. A brief consultation with a few friends was all that was necessary to determine the course to be adopted, and that was, that the facts should at once be laid before the British public in London; a little time was occupied in the arrangements, and in about six weeks after the plan had been resolved on, the meeting was held in Exeter Hall. Fifty copies of Dens were previously secured and sent to London, and on the 20th of June, 1835, the facts of the case, the horrid principles of