On this page

• Text (2)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    and never can l * e re-established . Perhaps no / one individual of the Austrian Empire has more deserved a public monument ; and it is to the credit of his nephew to have erected this statute to his fame . " The inscription is , ** Saluti publicae vixit non diu sed totus / 9

    Untitled Article

    Art . V . — Three Months in Ireland . By an English Protestant , 8 vo , London , 1827 . Though this volume issues from the loyal storehouse of Mr . Murray , it tells only the unvarying tale of Irish wrongs . We can afford space for but a few short extracts as to the state of feeling towards the Protestant Establishment , that most monstrous and scandalous anomaly in the history of political and ecclesiastical misgoverument .

    " To a Protestant it certainly is a melancholy task to have to contend with men so much entitled to respect from their sacred functions , however blameable in their private characters ; and in a prudential point of view nothing can be more impolitic and dangerous than to censure any amongst so strong and powerful a body as the clergy , which , as one of its own members well observes , *

    always unites in defence of the person attacked , and butts against the offender with a very extended front . ' But are we to pardon all delinquencies on account of the veneration due to the delinquents , and shall that sacred rank , which is the chief aggravation of their faults , be the excuse for leaving them unnoticed ? Is it not , on the contrary , our duty to prevent , as far as in us lies , so great a source of scandal to the Protestant and

    triumph to the Roman Church , from lasting any longer ? It will scarcely be believed what feelings of shame and mortification I endured on my first arrival in Ireland , from finding the general unpopularity and dislike under which the Protestant clergy labour , and still more afterwards when I perceived how justly the majority deserve it . "

    " One of the stratagems to which the Irish clergy have most frequently recourse to repel their assailants , and still more to prevent attack , is to charge with irreligion and impiety all those who presume to blame them . ' Touchex aux Dimes , ies voild qui crieht tl V Athie ^ ' is a French saying completely verified in this instance . * * Were the Irish Church really as PQor and as irreproachable as

    Untitled Article

    it would wish us to believe , it wouM re- » joioe in any proposed investigation , $ s the best means of securing its adherent * and silencing its adversaries . But no : —• they are too well aware of the truth : they shun—they deprecate examination ; they shroud themselves in convenient

    darkness , and will not unveil their proceedings or possessions to unitiated eyes . They endeavour , on the contrary , to prevent all inquiry » by asserting the in * violability and sacredness of their situation , and raising the cry of sacrilege against all audacious intruders . "

    The author proceeds to shew that Catholicism has of late " prodigiously increased . " " Indeed this increase is admitted by every one , even by those who carry the supposed number of Protestants at present to an extravagant height ; and the only questions in dispute are , the extent of this increase ; and , whether it

    continues at present ; which I am sorry to say there is too much reason to believe . Now then , I ask , to what cause can we attribute this admitted growth of Popery in Ireland ? The Catholic will answer , * To the force of truth . * But this reply will not suffice to us Protest tants , who believe truth to be enlisted on the opposite side . To what cause ,

    then , can be attributed this increase of the Catholics in spite of the force of truth ? * To the superior allurements of Popery , ' say some persons . No doubt , it must have been peculiarly alluring to be exposed to the pains and penalties , to the persecuting rigours of the most atrocious penal laws that ever blackened the annals of this or any other

    country ! No doubt peculiarly alluring to resist the richly-baited conversion-traps offered , in charter-schools and pensions to converts , of forty pounds a-year ! No doubt , it mast have been a great temptation to Popery , to be excluded thereby from all places of power or emolument , and to have remained for so many years in a state of unmitigated slavery ! No doubt , it must be particularly pleasing to have to fast strictly on Fridays and in

    Lent , to submit to severe acts of penance , and be obliged , in addition to enormous tithes and Church-rates , to pay for one ' s own chapel and minister besides ! Were these the allurement to Popery ? What then , I ask again , was the cause of its admitted increase ? I assert , that the cause is to be found in the extortions , the mal-administration , and the indolence of the Protestant establishment . It is to them that the Popery of Ireland

    Untitled Article

    Crkltoti , Notkn . $ &

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1827, page 219, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1794/page/59/