TO THE PROTESTANTS OF SCOTLAND. LETTER I. "I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: How then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?"-JER. ii. 21. In name you are a numerous body, but when the duties are contemplated which that name imposes, those entitled to it will be found to be few. Deduct the false, the faint-hearted, and the erring, those blinded by interest, or by a presumptuous vanity founded on ignorance, and it will be obvious that your cause is generally deserted. The population of our country has increased, but the dissemination of your principles has not been proportionally enlarged. The influence you once possessed over the government and national counsels, has passed to others-formerly your concealed adversaries, but who now find it unnecessary to disguise their triumphant hostility. You have now Popery invading you in every quarter, and in every form. One-third of the European population of the British empire (Ireland), have for years been placed directly and avowedly under Popish patronage and domination. Not only are the superstitious ceremonial and monastic establishments of Popery paraded and rendered familiar to our eyes, but in all the colonies of the empire, Popery has of late been favoured, patronised, and elevated to dominion over the Protestant population. The serpent is gliding around, and entangling us in its folds, rearing aloft its head; and its progress has been rapid. It has, during some past years, held, directly or indirectly, the seat of power and official emolument around the British throne; and they who resist its poison, must prepare to renew the strife, whatever form it may assume, in which their fathers contended, and to renew the sacrifice of personal and private interest to which they submitted. A firm phalanx of Papists, patronising men destitute of sound principles, has given to those men an ascendency in the state. For that patronage, payment has been made by a government acting in subserviency to the Popish priesthood giving countenance to the merciless persecution of all Protestant clergy and people in Ireland-and fostering, NO. CCLXXXVI, VOL, XLVI. by liberal supplies of money, the rearing in the Popish College of Maynooth of men destined to extend the dominion of Popery, and favouring the progressive establishment, in all the dependencies of the empire, of that system of superstitious intolerance, ignorance, and servitude to priestly domination, which form the pillars of the Romish supremacy over men and nations. The most singular circumstance attending the present state of the British empire is, that it is by your aid-by the aid of Scotland and of Scotsmen that supreme power has been attained and held for years by a Popish faction-and that Popery is now advancing fast to permanent dominion over the land. Ay, this has occurred by the aid of the religious Presbyterians of Scotland or at least of Scotsmen who style themselves, and for aught I know do, in some delusive sense, imagine that they are, Presbyterian and even Calvinistic Protestants. By them, combining with the Popish priesthood of Ireland, the powers of the British monarchy have been vested in men whose tenure of office and emolument has depended on their subserviency to Popery. Thus by your aid the poisoned cup is held to our lips, and the viper is fostered which was trodden down by our fathers, whom a severe experience had reared up into a race of wiser and better men, in an age of more discernment and more unyielding integrity. At political elections, questions have been put to the candidate about various matters. Would he give boundless admission to foreign cornwould he extend the political suffrage - would he vote for the ballot to protect you in your cowardice, as if a cowardly people could be a free people? But in our great cities and counties, which of you has enquired whether a candidate professed true Protestant principles, and had determined to support them against the hostility of Popery, whether open or insidious? M Under the last princes of the Stuart name, the danger was great, but still it was only the royal person that formed the stay and strength of the Romish priesthood; whereas now, the sanctuary of safety, the very citadel of freedom, the Commons' House of Parliament, has been won, and for years has been occupied, by the enemy. I doubt not that all the factions acting there have committed errors. I speak not generally of their merits; but one of them rallies round the Protestant banner, supports every measure calculated for its protection, and resists every effort made against it. Their opponents persist in propagating the miserable delusion, that Popery is merely a harmless system of speculative religious faith. Refusing to look into its dangerous character, they have held office by consenting to do the work of the Popish priesthood, who in return support them by the votes of their delegates, combined with the votes of Scotsmen elected by the popular voice. Yes, you-Church. going men of Scotland, and you, Dissenters of whatever name-Seceders, Anti-burghers, Burghers, Baptists, Synod of Relief, Independents, Volun taries-all pretended Protestants, like the inhabitants of Jerusalem when doomed to destruction, ye contend against each other, while the common enemy is demolishing or undermining all your bulwarks. You sent, and have persisted in sending, to the national councils men ignorant of the practical value of the Protestant faith as a protection to the morals, prosperity, intelligence, and liberties of a nation. For place and profit they have sacrificed those interests for which our fathers banished the nearest branch of the hereditary line of their ancient princes. Could James II. (VII. of Scotland) now look up from his grave in a foreign land, he might well ask why he was expelled from the British throne. A prince was lent to us by the Protestant people of Holland, and thereafter a successor was called from Hanover because he was a Protestant. This character of Protestant formed his title, and forms that of his successor to the British throne. But it is a title which Papists must regard with abhorrence, and which cannot be safe, and is not safe, under Popish domination. And this state of things is the result of a combination of Scotsmen of Protestant Scotsmen with Papists of elections made under the Reform Act of William IV. Assuredly this result was not foreseen in Scotland. On the contrary, one of the reasons assigned for the outcry in favour of the Reform Bill, was the apparent disregard with which our petitions were treated in 1828, when the King's Ministers gave way to the persevering urgency with which men calling themselves Whigs had for thirty years pleaded the cause of Popery. An opinion, thereupon, widely gained credit in Scotland, that the House of Commons neither had any sympathy with the opinions of the people, nor consisted of persons possessed of political or historical knowledge, or sound Protestant principles of religion and liberty; and that a more popular system of election would fill that house with wiser and better men. Countenanced by such an argument, the popular ambition bebecame irresistibly inflamed, and held odious all by whom it was opposed. You became greedy of privilege, but which of you reflected deeply on the duties and the high responsibility that privilege imposes. If, when told that your votes would send adherents of Popery into Parliament-that you would act as enemies of religion and liberty, and so violate the most sacred rules of duty as Protestants each of you would presumptuously have retorted, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Yet, like Hazael, you committed the act; and thus the first effect of the Reform Bill was, that it brought guilt into the bowels of the land. The public crime no longer lay with the nobles and the gentry. You, the mass of householders in great towns, and village proprietors in the country, became the known and effectual enemies of the Protestant faith, and of the liberties of your country. For what Popish nation has ever enjoyed liberty? Where has liberty endured, or even existed, beyond the limits of a Protestant country? We have seen an ardent people (the French) bravely contend for it-shed for it their blood like water-slay one monarch and banish another; but all in vain. They were Papists or they were infidels; and hence the same physical events that in Protestant Britain produced ages of prosperity, liberty, and glory, served only among Papists and Infidels to drown their dear-bought liberties in torrents of blood, and compel them to take refuge once more under a master. I am aware of your excuse. You gave your votes to the men who favoured the acquisition of privilege by you. But did they do so for your sake. With unutterable contempt for your silly vanity, they called you wise, liberal, enlightened, superior to every old prejudice, liable to no delusionand what followed? Having risen on your necks to power, they set an example of greed of money never before witnessed among European statesmen. Relying on your want of discernment, they sold you to Popery to retain pay. In no one instance did they give preferment beyond the narrow circle of their own faction. With or without even a pretext of merit, their associate was promoted, and rarely had he other merit than that of adherence to the venal faction. Even the national government has, in such hands, sunk into contempt over the land, because neither graced by talents nor supported by virtue. It may be that, on account of benefits thanklessly enjoyed, or prodigally wasted or neglected, the Lord of all is about to withdraw the singular patronage which has so long been bestowed on our favoured land. But the government of this world is administered on a principle of mercy, and before final ruin is inflicted opportunity for repentance is given. In deserting the cause for which our fathers contended, and the privileges which a beneficent Providencegranted to their prayers, their efforts, and their sufferings, a great crime has been committed; but, on detecting the fallacies and the moral weaknesses by which we have been misled, a final and fatal lapse may yet, perhaps, be avoided. If ten righteous persons could have saved a guilty city, I cannot forget that in every city and in every county of Scotland, there have been many discerning persons of every station whom the blind subserviency to Popery never reached, and against whom the bitter things I have to write are not directed. I sincerely trust that the dangerous error into which the Protestants of Scotland have recently fallen, has been the result of not understanding clearly what Popery truly is, and its sure tendency to undermine and ultimately to destroy the worth, liberty, and prosperity of nations. In this hope, I propose to state what I regard as the true nature of Popery-what our fathers did to protect us against itand how the bulwarks which they reared have, by the criminal ignorance and dereliction of duty on the part of their posterity, been suffered to fall into decay, and the foe to enter by unrepaired and unguarded breaches in every quarter. Their example will point out our duty. It is very probable that what I write may have little success or effect. That will be your misfortune and not mine, ye nominal Protestants of Scotland. This world is not mine, and I claim no right to rule it, intellectually or otherwise. Enough for me to have attempted to perform my own duty, leaving the result to the Power to whom all belongs. Yet, I have some hope for my country. The tombs of the martyrs in Ayrshire have at length not testified in vain. The inhabitants of its fields, and towns, and villages, have recently done their duty, and I trust that, independent of my aid, the day is dawning over the land. Still you must not expect that I am to address you in the style of those who have with flattery obtained the suffrages you have abused. I frankly say, that in my estimation never was there a people led away from truth and duty, by pretexts so utterly contemptible as those which have imposed for years on Scotsmen. I state, as a ready example, the names by which many of you have designated yourselves; viz., Whigs and Reformers: the result of whose triumph has been a sliding backward and downward into Popery! But what and who is a Whig? The name Whig, borrowed from us by the English, was originally applied in derision to the persecuted adherents of the Covenant, by which the Scottish people bound themselves to support the Protestant faith. These men held not their lives dear to them in comparison of fidelity to their engagement. Gradually their indomitable spirit converted a contemptuous epithet into an honourable designation. When the royal Papists, Charles and James II. (or VII.,) attempted to train or lead them back to Popery, by imposing a system of forms and ceremonial like that of the English prelacy, who for a brief period had seemed accessible to Popery, the Scottish Whigs discerned the snare, and encountered tortures and death rather than yield one step to their Popish enemy. They at length held the crown of Scotland to be forfeited by the arbitrary attempt, and tendered it to William and Mary, and ultimately assented to the succession of the house of Hanover, because they were Protestants, and on the unalterable condition of adherence to the Protestant faith. These Scottish Whigs were opposed by the Jacobites, who excited two rebellions against the Protestant house of Hanover. But the Whigs of Scotland remained true to their religion and liberties. The Whigs of Glasgow, then a small city, raised in 1745 two regiments to support the Protestant cause, and to resist the restoration of that ferocious Popish tyranny under which so many of their fathers had become martyrs. New times arrived. The Papists of Ireland extorted from a weak administration, during the war with our colonies, the privilege of voting in the election of members of the Parliament of Ireland. Then came the union of the Parliaments of Britain and Ireland. The Popish priesthood of Ireland thereby obtained the power, by the votes of their superstitious followers, of electing at least forty, and perhaps a hundred members of the British House of Commons. Still Papists could not lawfully sit in that house; but the Romish priesthood sent delegates thither, elected to support their ambitious views, and they never ceased to urge their followers to insist for the repeal of that last safeguard of the royal title of the house of Hanover and of the Prostestant faith. To that urgency they obtained fatal aid. From whom and from whence did that aid proceed? Attend to the fact, for it is of deep importance. tending in favour of a sect that resists the liberty of the press, that dare not even trust their followers to read the Bible; and wherever they attain to power subdue all men by confiscation, tortures, and slaughter, into subserviency to their ambitious priesthood, these men-deriding the fidelity of George III. to his coronation oathso far ventured to rely on the blindness and credulity of their countrymen, as to assume the name of Whigs. The thing at first must have seemed strange and foolish; but during forty years they continued in speeches, books, pamphlets, reviews, to plead the cause of Popery and to call themselves Whigs, thereby impeaching the title to his throne of our Protestant King (he not being the first in the hereditary line), and reproaching our fathers as criminal, because they refused to yield up their religion and liberties to the dominion of Rome. Strange as it will hereafter appear in history, the nation, with incredible gullibility, swallowed the delusion. The royal title to the throne was disregarded, and the sufferings which our fathers endured, and the noble strife in which they persisted, were forgotten by a new generation destitute of historical knowledge. Cold, indifferent, or infidel in religionacquainted only with the literature of newspapers, reviews, and novel writers-many of the younger nobles and gentry learned, gradually, to take on trust the pretext that the Whigs of their day were the Whigs of 1688; and that the name of Whigs, assumed with such incredible effrontery by the supporters of Popery, was, in utter blindness, adopted as a symbol of brotherhood with these men by you, Protestants of Scotland! Absurdly saying you are Whigs-you in multitudes united with the supporters of Popery as your allies. You paraded under and around their banners, ima A band of ambitious men in England (of whom I will have more to say hereafter) attempted to climb to su-gining them friends of freedom while preme power by allying themselves with the Irish Papists, whereby their numbers in the House of Commons were enlarged. They pleaded for Papists-the slaves of a domineering priesthood and of Rome-as if they were freemen deprived of liberty on account of their piety. Under this pretext, Fox and others, while contending that political power ought to be given to Papists, impudently ventured to call themselves Whigs. While con. they were only greedy to handle public money; and for that price were willing to enter into alliance with Popery, and all the slavery and brutal ignorance by which its domination in every country has been attended. Now that this truth is broadly stated, ye supporters of Popery in Scotland, call yourselves Whigs if you will, but presume no longer, with gross hypocrisy, to say that you are Protestants. You have also called yourselves Re formers. Truly, a beautiful reformation you have produced! You have delivered over a whole people (Ireland) for years to the dominion of Popery, and have brought your country backward nearly three centuries towards that gulfofsuperstition, ignorance, and infidelity. You have succeeded in obliging the successors of the Whigs of 1688 to desert a name which you have so vilely polluted, and to style themselves Conservatives of the principles of that Revolution. The old English Whigs called those men Tories whom they accused of leaning towards Popery and high prerogative. They refuted the first of these accusations by joining the Whigs, or rather, along with the English Prelacy, by taking the lead in effecting the Revolution of 1688; but, for a time, they continued to regret the violation thereby produced of the hereditary line of succession to the crown, and hence the secular Tories regarded with favour the Scottish Jacobites. Such has of late been the strange absurdity of Scotsmen, that while so many of the Campbells, Kennedys, and Hamiltons, who persist in patronising Popery, are styled and supported by you as Whigs, you oppose, as Tories, the old Whig Presbyterian families, the steadfast supporters of the house of Hanover and the Revolution of 1688, such as Lockhart, Scott, Douglas, Hope, Ramsay, and thousands of others, who, at this day, adhere to the faith of those Argyles who perished on the scaffold or fought at Sheriff-Muir, and of that Cassillis whose signature authenticated our first copy of the Westminster Confession. Meanwhile, to Scotsmen who have assumed the name of Whigs, and at the same time have given their votes to the patrons of Popery and infidelity, I say, without hesitation, you have been miserably misled into gross inconsistency by the mere sound of a name, Or you uttered your own condemnation-you thereby became hypocrites in religion enemies of the house of Hanover, and enemies of the liberties and the improvement of mankind. I can only trust and hope that you have been acting under that temporary but most strange delusion which, in 1828, so extensively diffused blindness over the nation. England has recovered. Wellington, Peel, Graham, Stanleyall men of intelligence and upright principle-have every where recovered. Is Scotland to continue dishonoured, and its inhabitants regarded as fallen from the high name they once possessed, as an enlightened people of trustworthy Protestant character? From the sacred remains deposited in their Greyfriars' churchyard, a fearful voice of reproach ascends against the men of Edinburgh; and to you, more especially, men of Dundee, Perth, and Fife, of Stirling, and Glasgow, once the chosen seats of the Protestant Reformation, are addressed the words prefixed to this letter; look back to them, ponder them well! LETTER II. The author of Christianity sent forth to instruct mankind a few private persons to whom he had taught his doctrines, and whom he directed to submit themselves to the civil power and magistracy of their own and other countries. I have no intention to trace historically the progress by which, in the west of Europe, the successors of these first teachers became united into a compact and powerful body, under a prince or chief-acquired in many countries a large proportion of the landed property, and a title to a tenth of the pro produce of the remainder how they gradually assumed a superiority over all kings, princes, nobles, and legislators-how they became intolerably corrupt and tyrannical and how their strength was shaken by a schism, whereby some nations, under the name of Protestants, were relieved from their do.. minion, while they retained their power over other nations, and are now striving, with much apparent success, to resume it over all. I propose merely to state what the system of Popery actually is, as it has practically existed and received the solemn sanction of the great General Assembly of the leaders of the body, styled the Council of Trent. In considering what Popery is, mankind must be divided into two classes: First, the mass of the popu |