which Popery had inflicted were, as by a skilful artist, cast in the back-ground; whilst the wrongs which Ireland had endured were thrust prominently and perpetually forward, as though one were a counterpart of the other. Statesmen have thus continually gone on in recent times, vying, as it were, with one another in the race of concessions; seeking to make the best terms for their party, and sacrificing their country and their religion at the shrine of a false, a timid, and unprincipled expediency. If, indeed, they have thought Popery right, why have they done so little for her, and done it so reluctantly? If they have believed and known it wrong, as their oft-recorded oath declares, then why, we ask, have they done anything at all? We look still to the Protestants of the empire, to be earnest in their prayers, energetic in their actions, and faithful to the great cause they love. Arranged under their respective organizations, let them fortify one another with correct information-sound principles-true religion; and whenever the time may arrive for them to record their votes, let them uniformly require of those soliciting them, a promise that they when in Parliament will oppose Popery, and maintain the Protestant institutions of the country. Thus, if they cannot redeem the past they may rescue the future, and preserve our country from its present downward course towards Popery and Infidelity. In England, where Popery is comparatively unknown, where its nature is disguised, it is unquestionably making ground. Taken by the hand of some, as a weapon of party conflict, she has been introduced into the Senate House and the Privy Council, there to plot the ruin of those men who fostered her, and the country over whose Government she has been permitted to gain almost an ascendancy. The various demands made for concession-the nature of the concessions made, and the mode in which they are received-whether it be by a Charitable Bequests Act, or a Maynooth Endowment Bill, or one for giving more colleges to Ireland; all evince the unmanageable nature of Popery, and display the Ministers of Queen Victoria, in the same humiliating attitude in which King John once stood, before Pandolf, the Pope's Legate, offering tribute money for leave to wear his own crown, and placing his royal diadem at the feet of the Roman Pontiff,-where it might have remained to this day, had not the bold barons of England rescued their country from the pusillanimous betrayal of the monarch,-as we trust, the people of England will now rescue it from the contemplated surrender by Her Majesty's Government. But whilst here, where Popery is little known, augmented influence is being given to her, what is the case in France? France wisely curtails the power, which we are enlarging. Let us learn a lesson from France. Let us look abroad and see how Popery stands in the estimation of intelligent foreigners, and those who behold the blessings which follow in its train. On the Continent, then, Popery is better known. Do we find that where best known, she is most beloved? Does acquaintance as it ripens into a greater intimacy and freedom, confirm the prepossession entertained in her favour? As we approximate towards the seat of him who is blasphemously called the Vicar of Christ, do we find the maxims of Christianity more practised, and the fruits of it more displayed? Is the worship there offered more holy, pure, and spiritual; more in consonance with the will of Him who is a spirit, and requires that they who worship him should worship him in spirit and in truth? Alas! far, far otherwise. Departing from primitive Christianity,-the teaching of the apostles,—and the Word of God,—she substitutes human inventions for Divine truth, and takes away the Scriptures from the people, that her own errors may not be detected and exposed. Private correspondence and the accounts of travellers agree in one united testimony, to the great contrast which prevails, even between different parts of the same country, accordingly as Popery, the religion of darkness, and Protestantism, the religion of light, are respectively found to prevail. Thus, the state of the people in the north and the south of Ireland, and the various Cantons of Switzerland greatly differ: where Protestantism prevails, there order and prosperity are seen; whilst disorder and wretchedness are the almost invariable attendants upon a country brought under the enslaving and paralyzing influence of Popery. Italy exhibits the same melancholy picture. The wretched victims of Popish misrule, whether in civil or ecclesiastical matters-for Popery is no less a political than a theological system—conscious, oftentimes, of their degradation, look round in vain for some elevating power to raise them. Unhappy and benighted people! whose present religious and political atmosphere forms so sad and striking a contrast to your native sky, though you know it not, there is a power that can inspire and elevate you raise you from the degradation of superstition to the elevation of holiness, emancipate you from the chains of error, and make you possessors of that freedom, wherewith the truth makes free. Freedom of thought is gone, where Popery reigns, or, at least, restrained; for, though the hand of no tyrant can fetter or lay hold upon the ethereal spirit, and check its upward aspirations to him who formed it, yet it may so surround the frail tenement,—its bodily possessor,—with danger, should any word escape to intimate the light of freedom or of true religion burning therein, as to make it hazardous to allow even the mind itself, in moments of solitude, to range upon forbidden topics, lest the existence of such soarings of the spirit should be discovered, and expose their owner to destruction. Suppressing freedom of thought, freedom of speech is gone, and liberty of action is quite taken away. So much so, that, whether in Belgium, or Italy, in Austria, Portugal, or Spain, he who should take the Bible in his hand, and proclaim openly the glad tidings of salvation by grace through faith to perishing sinners, and preach the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, would be exposed to fine, imprisonment, or death itself, for his bold, zealous, and apostolical proceeding;-a death, inflicted not by the savages of Pagan countries-not by the barbarians of Heathen nations,-but by those who have been nurtured up in the bosom of "THE CHURCH," and are members of that communion, without whose pale, they tell us, there is no salvation. Why does not the British Government secure for our Protestant fellow-citizens, in all Romish countries, the same privileges which we concede to foreigners in this? Why should the Italian, Spanish, and other foreign priests, of the Romish persuasion, inundate our land with errors and heresy -fomenting ecclesiastical strifes and divisions, without any hindrance being offered,-whilst, if a countryman of ours,-however learned, pious, amiable, or devoted,-bears his testimony abroad, in Portugal, for instance, or its dominions, against the errors by which he is surrounded,—fine, imprisonment, banishment, or death, may be the lot of himself, or those whom he may be the means of instructing openly in the vital truths of Christianity? There is no reciprocity in this. Yet the fair intercourse of one nation with another seems to require it. And greatly would it rejoice us to find the whole religious people of this country, all those especially who support Missionary Societies, Bible and Tract Societies,-throw aside that mawkish sensibility which makes them think they unchristianize themselves, by petitioning Parliament, or memorializing Her Majesty's Government, mercifully to interpose to prevent the continuance of such frightful evils, and to remove the obstacles which impede the progress of their own pious undertakings. Fraught with practices the most cruel, and superstitions the most degrading, the Church of Rome preserves, in Italy and elsewhere, the dark empire she has long maintained,—inculcating obedience by the bayonet, and enforcing by the military power of Austria, the requirements and fulminations of the infallible Church! In the following we have instances afforded as to the dark superstition, the feelings of mistrust and dissatisfaction, which now prevail in Italy: "A letter from Rome, of the 18th of October, mentions that the Government was still uneasy respecting the disaffection of its subjects. The state prisons were filled with 7,000 prisoners, many of them of the first families. The Papal Government contemplates a new loan, to which fact the decline in the Roman stock was attributed."-Times, Thursday, October 30, 1845. our THE PAPAL STATES.-Extract of a letter dated Ancona, 18th Sept." The Church festival having just terminated in commemoration of the pretended miracle performed by a painting of the Madonna in the cathedral church of this town, in opening and moving its eyes, I send you the account for publication, if you think proper, with the Cardinal's pastoral invitation to this diocese, on this wonderful miracle. My object in addressing you on this subject, though an Italian and a Catholic, is to show that we are not ALL blinded by the superstition with which our priests would overwhelm people. With much mortification I shall see this subject discussed by the free and enlightened press of Europe (through many channels), to the disgrace and degradation of my own country; but pray allow this letter to appear, as the protest of one, in the name of many nurturing the same sentiments, which must, for the present, remain buried in our own bosoms, or otherwise expose ourselves to persecution, — sentiments agreeable to the first faith of our fathers, and opposed to the present superstitious veneration of images, with its accompaniment of debasing credulity and tendency to ignorance and tyranny. My hand-writing is disguised, and my initials are feigned (for the sanctity of private correspondence is no more respected by our rulers, civil and spiritual, than the consciences of individuals), and should you refuse this anonymous letter a place in your valuable columns, you perhaps will have the kindness to keep it (as a proof of its date) until a few months hence, when I will convince you, with documents in hand, for the enlightenment of the public, that the severance of M. Ronge in Germany is but a foreshadow of what will inevitably occur in Italy on a larger scale on the first occasion; for the mass of the population is now irresistibly travelling to two equally extreme points, viz.; fanaticism and infidelity, driven thereto by the excessive corruption of the Church, now no longer Catholic, but Roman, from which calamitous condition we hope to behold it, ere long, raised by skilful and curative hands. With sentiments of respect, I subscribe myself," &c.-Times, Nov. 16. In corroboration of the foregoing, the Constitutionnel says, "Letters from the frontier of Romagna, dated the 4th instant, state that, on the evenings of the 1st and 2d, a sanguinary conflict took place at Bologna, between the Swiss, on the one * The exceptions are too few, apparent rari nantes. Those who have their eyes open, scarcely dare to know it, or by a wink to intimate their disapproval of the errors they see around them.—ED. P. M. part, and the Pontifical dragoons and custom-house guards, on the other. The troops were subsequently confined to their barracks. Cardinal Cazoni, Legate of the province, wished to bring the volunteers of the country into the town, but the municipal authorities gave him to understand that this would increase the disturbances, and the Bolognese were ever averse to this corps. In its stead they proposed to call the citizens to arms, in the form of a civic guard; but as the formation of such a guard is one of the demands comprised in the manifesto of the insurgents of Rimini, the Cardinal became alarmed, and refused the offer; but at the same time relinquished the idea of calling in the volunteers. It is also said that disturbances have occurred at Perugia, towards which a column of Swiss was on its march. The sentences of the Commission at Ravenna, anterior to the late disturbances, have been confirmed at Rome. More than forty persons have been condemned to the galleys for various periods."-Times, Nov. 17. Such is the melancholy description of Italian Popery. Superstitious and profane, cruel and tyrannical in its nature, and in its results blighting social happiness, national freedom, and prosperity. Ought not, therefore, the people of this country to be upon their guard against the introduction, patronage, and endowment of a system thus evil in its nature and tendencyso opposed to the revelation of eternal truth, so ruinous to the temporal and spiritual happiness of man? MARTYRDOM FOR THE TRUTH. "But if there be, round whom with holier might The true Shechinah of protected souls, "Tis their's to witness."-MONTGOMERY. As far as we can see, human nature varies but little, on the whole, from age to age. The antediluvian fathers were men of like passions with ourselves, and the many intermediate centuries produced beings of the same disposition and character. Fallen from their high estate they are all ambitious, selfish, and haughty; weak, vacillating, and little-minded; violent, rancorous, and revengeful; such, more or less, have they all shewn themselves. That there has been at certain times a decided manifestation of this or that disposition, is owing, not to the springing up of a new race, engifted with new affections, but to the external incubus of circumstances, educing from the identical parent stock a peculiar and striking display of quality. We are not confining the quality so exhibited to the dark and inglorious; it applies equally to what is admirable and exemplary. Thus, at one time the spreading poison of secret infidelity, fed |