the properties of millions depended on the application?

If oaths against conviction, difpenfations with perjury, and anticipated abfolutions from future crimes, were articles of their belief, they would have prevented the blazing comets which scorch the living, and spread their influence to the dormitories of the dead, from kindling in their native air; and hindered cruelty, which is difarmed in the tyrant's breaft at fight of the expiring victim, from pursuing them to the grave, and depriving them of the cold comfort of mingling their ashes with thofe of their ancestors *.

Thofe laws which have banished our nobility from the fenate; deprived our gentry of the liberty of wearing a fword, either as a means of defence againft the midnight affaffin, or as a part of dress in the open day;the merchant of the power of realizing the fruits of his industry, in obtaining landed fecurity for his money, or the liberty of purchafing; the lower class of people of the liberty

* The penal laws offered the most galling infult to the Roman Catholic gentry, at the time of their being enacted. Their burying places were in the ruins of old abbeys, founded by their ancestors. A law was enacted, prohibiting to bury in those dreary haunts of cats and weafels, and a fine of ten fhillings was to be levied on every person who aflifted at the funeral.

of

of becoming common foldiers, mayor's ferjeants, or coal-measurers, and the valiant youth of ferving his king, and reaping laurels in defence of his country;-these laws are still in being. It is true, to the honour of the Irish senate, they have ftaunched the blood flowing this long time past from one of the most tender veins of the human heart, by putting it out of the power of the profligate fon to betray and rob his tender and hoary father. But, ftill the infidious neighbour can feize his neighbour's horse; the unfaithful hufband can banish the chaste and virtuous wife, after the oath pledged in prefence of God, at the nuptial folemnity; the defigning villain can fet fire to his house, and build a new one, at the expence of his Catholic neighbours, who were asleep whilst he himself was lighting the fagot *.

Thus like a running evil, in a fucceffive gradation, they ulcerate every part of the body: and, though the lenity of the magistrate is a kind of mollifying application, that may af

Mr. O'Leary was prefent when the cafe was tried in the county court-house of Cork. He has likewise seen the venerable matron, after twenty-four years marriage, banished from the perjured husband's houfe, though it was proved in open court, that for fix months before his marriage, he went to mafs. But the law requires that he should be a year and a day of the fame religion.

fuage

fuage the fore for a certain time; yet whilft the noxious humour lurks within the recefs of the law, we can never expect a radical

cure.

"It is needless to comment upon the spirit "of fuch laws. The very rec.tal chills " with horror :". So remarks my learned and worthy acquaintance, Doctor Campbell. "Let "it not be argued, that these laws are feldom put in execution. Is property to depend

upon the courtefy of an avaricious, malig"nant neighbour?-Damocles was, perhaps, "fafe enough under the fufpended fword of "Dionyfius, but the apprehenfion of danger "fcared away thofe vifions of happiness which "he had feen in the envied pomp of tyran. ny. *""Laws," fays the prefident Montef quieu, "which do all the michief that can be "done, in cold blood;" and to which Lucretius might allude in his famous Epiphonema: Tantum religio potuit fuadere malorum! Could religion be productive of such mischief! That philofopher, who in reading the epitaph of a voluptuous monarch, cried out that it was better fuited to an ox than to a king: Bove quam rege dignius, in reading the penal code, could form another antithefis: "The feal that gave

a fanction to fuch laws, fhould rather bear

Philofophical furvey of the South of Ireland. F. 251-2. "the

"the impreffion of the claws of a lion, than the head of a queen. "*

Such are the laws to whofe unrelenting rigour we are every day expofed. The difpofition of man, fo averse to restraint, would foon fuggeft a method of diffolving the odious chains, which like thofe ufed by the Tufcan princes, who faftened living men to dead bodies, punish for an entire century, the living for the dead. The difpofition of man, fo averfe to restraint, would foon fhake off the oppreffive burden, if the importunate voice of confcience did not filence the cries of nature, and intimate to the Catholic, that, "death is

preferable to perjury." The remedy is in. our own hands, and we daily refuse to apply it, though a small bandage could foon close up the bleeding veins of oppreffion, and a flight palliative remove the temporal grievances of which we complain. The churches are open; and though Mr. Wefley fays, that "our oaths

* Queen Anne, the laft fovereign of the Stuart line, who after combining against her father, and violating the articles of Limerick, under pretence of ftrengthening the Proteftant religion, gave a fanction to those laws; though her chief aim was to fecure herself against the claims of her brother. Thus, religion often becomes an engine of policy, in the hands of fovereigns. Quere to Civilians : Should not oppreffive laws cease, when the motives that gave rife to them fubfift no more?

65 are

"are light as air," yet one oath taken againft the conviction of our confciences, would level the fences, and "fweep" away all the penal laws "as fo many fpider's webs," to use his delicate expreffion. This is an argument which fpeaks to the feelings of man, and which no fophiftry can ever refute. The priests themfelves are interested in the profanation: for, by entering into a collufion with their flocks, and ufing their magic powers to forgive all fins, past, prefent, and to come, they could permit them to graze on the commons of legal indulgence, and by turning them into a richer pasture, expect more milk and wool. Avarice has ever been the reproach of the fanctuary: it is recorded in Scripture, that the priests of the old law used to take the best part of the victim to themselves, before it was offered to the God of Ifrael, and that Judas fold our Saviour for thirty pieces of filver. Mr. Wesley then must charitably prefume, that no priest will forego his personal interest in compliment to his fucceffor; and as it is his intereft to im-. pose upon his votaries, to flacken the reigns, and shelter himself under the fhade of the laws; either perjury is no part of his belief, or he must be too fcrupulous; which in Mr. Wesley's opinion is herefy to believe. ethics, as in mathematics, there are felf-evident demonstrations; no propofition in Euclid

In

is