THE first subject worthy of attention in our political department, at the present moment of domestic tranquillity, is, as usual, Ireland and its grievances. That these attract some portion of attention is not wonderful; it is only extraordinary that the happiness of six millions of souls should have so little of our concern, and rot lead to the adoption of measures analogous to their importance. It might be thought that motives of good policy and national interest would in the present time overweigh the narrow and sordid principles of a party in this country, that, with an obstinacy only paralleled by its bigoted, self-interested, and ignorant supporters on the other side of the Channel, would again plunge a nation in horror and desolation. The one strives there to hold fast the good things of their party and trample on their countrymen, the other here to prop and bolster up a system which they denominate that of true religion'-a system which makes, contrary to reason, the fractional few govern the whole many-a system that makes natural right and temporal liberty subservient to spiritual despotism; a system that while foreign nations abrogate the laws which prevent the advantages a government may gain from the allegiance and services of every native, would debar for ever of civil rights nearly a whole people. But though the interest of the Protestant religion is one pretence for the conduct of this party, it is not the real one; they hold the profit and power, and wish to keep them. Few are so ignorant as not to know from the experience of the past, that continued persecution increases proselytes, and that many dogmas of catho

There is a remarkable proof of the truth of this in Ulster, which in 1773 contained only 38,459 Popish families; it had then 62,620 Protestant: now the proportions are reversed-the Catholics nearly double the Protestants.

VOL. XV. NO. XLIX.

licism, the miracles of Hohenlohe, and a great portion of the superstitions now clung to, would be eradicated before the spread of common sense, did not the natural passion of resistance to persecution, grounded on the belief that the truest faith was ever that most belied in all times, and the obstinacy with which people hold fast even hereditary errors, with an indignant spirit burning under civil privation and oppression, prevent the still small voice of reason from being heard. True religion never makes proselytes by aid of gibbets and transportations. It is not to be spread over a nation by giving bishops 20,000l. a-year to revel in purple pomp, nor by levying tithes and supporting canonical rapacity at the expense of the poorest peasantry in the world. It will not become the reigning faith by building churches in parishes where there is not a single Protestant resident, at the expense of the Catholic inhabitants, and by levying tithes and church-rates on them, as in the parish of Ballyvoorney, where there never was a resident rector nor a single Protestant. At Tuonadroman there are six Protestants and a curate, and the rector an absentee. The tithes and rates are, however, extracted from those of the opposite faith, and the curate preaches to the church walls that the emoluments of the sinecure may travel into the pockets of the far-distant rector. Under the present system in Ireland, Catholicism cannot diminish. There are only two ways in which both ignorant and enlightened can view the church of Ireland as at present constituted-either as a thing working for the spiritual benefit of the people, or a mere receptacle for fat sinecurists and an instrument of temporal power. In the first of these cases it is easy to judge

of the fitness of its constitution. Examine it by the Church of England, though this last may have its blemishes, or by the Church of Scotland, or by the College of Fishermen, the founders of Christianity;

B