account of its origin. The Letters and Remarks, in the list prefixed, with two letters, not published in a separate form, but to which we shall be obliged to refer, grew in very quick succession out of a remarkable passage in one of the excursive examinations indulged in by the Royal Education Commissioners, during their sitting of 1825, and published in the Appendix to their Report in the following year. The passage is long, but as it is curious, and as we shall have occasion to make considerable use of it in what follows, we subjoin it entire, premising that the person under examination is the Very Rev. the Dean of Ardagh, one of the Secre taries to the Association for Discountenancing Vice..

1. "Are the children who become entitled to catechetical premiums, entitled to make choice of any book they think proper upon the Association list? Yes, certainly.

2. "Of any without exception? I conceive so; I believe so.

3. "The Commissioners have been informed by Mr. Watson, the bookseller, that there is one book in the cheapened list of the Association, and only one, which he is positively prohibited by a special order from giving out as a catechetical premium to any child; are you aware of this circumstance? No.

4. "Mr. Watson states that to be a book, one of the last that the Commissioners would have expected to be marked by such a distinction, namely, the Homilies of the church of England; can you state any reason for that, now your attention is drawn to the subject? I declare I did not know that book was interdicted.

5. "How do you account for the Homilies not being among the premium books? I could produce an individual of great weight who has objected

to it.

6. "We are to understand there is an individual of weight and influence in the book committee who objects to the circulation of the Homilies of the church of Eng land?

There is.

7. "May we enquire from you the grounds of this objection; any grounds he may have stated? I believe one of the grounds of his objection was, that the Homilies gave the Apocrypha more importance than he seemed to think it ought to have; I remember that ground distinctly.

8. "Do you remember any other ground? There may have been other opinions of his about imputed righteousness, or something connected with it. 9. "Did he or did he not consider them what is called Calvinistic? He did, 10. "Have you heard him use that expression? Indeed I think I have. 11. "The Commissioners have no right to express surprise at the opinions of any particular individual; but they would wish you to explain in what way he was able to influence the majority of the book committee? The committee is a small number, and it is very seldom any book is put in where there is a decided objection to it.

12. "Even if that book were the Homilies of the church of England; do not the clergymen of the church of England subscribe to the doctrines of the Homilies as well as the Articles of Religion? Most undoubtedly.

13. "Are we to understand, that it is the same committee which decides what works are heterodox and sectarian, that has marked, in the distinction before referred to, what we should consider the standard of the orthodoxy of the church of 2 E

VOL. IV.

England? I do not recollect the particulars of any debate upon that subject in the committee.

14. "Is it your impression, that if the circumstance should become matter of discussion at present among the proper authorities of the Association, that the Homilies of the church of England would be pronounced not a proper book to be distributed as a premium? I cannot think it would not; I have a decidedlg contrary opinion.

15. "Do you conceive yourself that any authority, be it what it may, or where it may, that pronounced the Homilies of the church of England unfit for any members of the church of England, is a proper authority to determine what other works may be of a heterodox or sectarian description, or too warm, as you have stated? I consider, that any person offering that opinion committed a great error upon that; and I should disregard his judgment upon other things." p. 270, 271.

We desire to remind our readers that the ostensible object of the foregoing examination-the only object that would or could be avowed-was to obtain information concerning the grounds upon which the Tract Committee of the Association, excluded the book of the Homilies from the catechetical premium list of the Association. When they recollect this, they will, we think, agree with us in regarding it as curiously calculated to effect its purpose. The two first answers of the Dean must have sufficiently shewn to the Commissioners, the kind of information he was prepared to supplyupon the subject of inquiry. If any doubt, however remained, his answer to their third question, very frankly and explicitly professing his total ignorance of the transaction referred to, must have removed it—and his reply to their next query seems in addition, very intelligibly to deprecate all further persecution on the subject. But in vain the inquirers are earnest in their pursuit of knowledge, and accordingly as our readers have seen, continue to ply him relentlessly with interrogatories- and take advantage of his facility, to wring from him his conjectures of the motives of the Tract Committee, founded on what he remembers, and what he guesses, and what they remind him of the opinions of one of its leading members, until they induce him at length to pass sentence upon the general competency of this Committee, to the discharge of the duties assigned to them,-which is as might have been expected by no means favourable, and with it the examination upon this head closes. Now, this inordinate anxiety for information, where it is plain that none was to be had, had it been followed up by any serious attempt to obtain it where it might be procured, would only deserve notice as a specimen of the egregious trifling into which grave bodies sometimes deviate, and of the prodigal waste of very costly, if not very valuable time, incident to commissions. But our readers, who are naturally anxious for the evidence of the other members with which this was compared, will be surprised when they learn that no other was examined, and that the evidence of Dean Graves, in the precise form in which we have given it above, is preserved in the Appendix to the Report of the Commissioners without qualification, or correction, or confirmation, from the tes

timony of a single member of the Tract Committee. Though the act of the Tract Committee in itself, neither expressed nor implied any opinion unfavourable to the ORTHODOXY of the book of Homilies, they would have no right to complain of being put upon their trial on this serious charge, if fairly put upon it. Nor would they have any reason, perhaps, for complaint, that any loose gossip which might have reached a Commissioner's ears, should have suggested the strange train of questions which we have quoted. But they surely would have had reason to expect that the inquiry should have been made of some of their own members, who were able to state from distinct recollection, the circumstances of the transaction and the grounds of their conduct. And they have some right to complain that so different a mode of proceeding was adopted.

The mode of proceeding, indeed, were the objects and results of the examination less serious, might furnish abundant matter for amusement. If the Commissioners had met with the sole-surviving remnant of a by-gone race, they could not have exerted themselves to rouse his dormant recollections of past events, with more earnestness and pertinacity, than they shew in worrying the excellent Dean of Ardagh, to eke out for them, half remembrance -half surmise-this account of a transaction, which had half a dozen competent witnesses-all living, and all come-atable. There seems a strange obliquity in such a course! One of the members of the Tract Committee (Dr. Elrington) had been before the Commissioners only three days earlier. He had been examined at great length by them, upon matters connected with the Incorporated Society and the Association—he might have been recalled. When asked, it is true, in their ingenious and profitable style to say, how many members of the Society (q. p.) the public might reasonably be satisfied with for the sum of £1,606,237?—App. p. 199. he may have been a little in error, -a fraction of humanity or so, in his answer;-but though, thus inexcusably deficient in arithmetical economy, we venture to engage that he would have supplied satisfactory information upon the transaction in question. The mysterious personage too, so darkly alluded to in the examination, might have been summoned to give a full and true account of his share in the act. All the remaining members were equally within reach-or if the laudable economy of time, which distinguishes Commissioners, confined them to a single witness, the selection remains to be accounted for. If, as we before said, the matter at issue were of trifling moment, all this might be regarded as merely ludicrous; but when, not only individuals possessing various acknowledged titles to respect, are attempted to be shewn in this way to have violated solemn obligations, but through them the efficient and excellent Society, of which they are members, sought to be deprived of the confidence of the most valuable part of the Established Church-we feel that such a proceeding can only be worthily designated by terms, which we desire to avoid employing. All who share in the interest with which we regard the labours of

the Association, and the other admirable Societies, to which this dark and divided land owes so much of the intellectual and moral culture that it has received, must have felt, too, some of our disappointment, at the frigid tone in which they are successively disposed of in the Report which precedes this Appendix. So little sympathy in the disheartening difficulties, that have opposed the benevolent struggle in which they have been engaged-such reluctant and reserved acknowledgments of the glorious success with which that struggle has been crowned, were no good augury for the destinies of the country under its new guides. But, we feel that it would be unreasonable, to make these deficiencies the subject of any loud complaint-nor should we be regarded as having done so. Men have not at command enlarged views, or generous and kindly feelings and it is vain to quarrel with them for the want of such qualities. And we do not mean to object to the cool estimate in the Report of what has been done and effected in this country-but of the mode, in a particular case, of establishing it.

These Commissioners have detained us too long, but we could not extricate ourselves from them sooner. It was not to be expected, that those who felt themselves injured by the proceedings which we have just detailed, would acquiesce in this recorded stigma upon them, without any efforts to efface it. Accordingly, very soon after the publication of the Commissioner's Reports and Appendix, a letter upon the subject was addressed by Mr. A. Knox, to the Rev. Mr. Wilson, Assistant-Secretary and Sub-Treasurer, to the Association. It was circulated in lithograph among the members of the Society, and is preserved in the third pamphlet on our list, which gives us an opportunity of referring to it. Its contents are in the highest degree satisfactory; it appears that Mr. Knox is the member of the Tract Committee, to whose influence the act complained of is attributed. Upon this unexceptionable evidence then, we learn that Mr. Knox did not charge the Homilies with Calvinism (we find, indeed elsewhere, that he never considered them Calvinistical)—that he did not object to them the doctrine of IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS-he professes his own doubts whether that doctrine is taught in them or not-that what he said of the manner of quoting the Apocrypha in the Homilies, was not urged upon the Committee as forming grounds for their exclusion, but employed in discussing the point with Mr. Singer, who advocated the adoption of the book, as an argumentum ad hominem. In short, we find with great satisfaction, that the Homilies were not excluded from the premium list on account of any doctrinal errors of any description, but

"That the controversial character of the Homilies, was the strongest ground of their being objected to. It was not wished that the Protestant youth of this divided country should be taught by the Association, that their Roman Catholic neighbours were such rebels against the Divine laws, as some of the Homilies (in the grossest terms) have painted them. It was thought, that it would have been a better thing to make them love their own religion, than to hate and execrate the religion of those with whom Providence had placed them in daily communion."-Knox on Graves's Remarks, p. 6.

Whether the Tract Committee were right or wrong, wise or unwise, the grounds of their conduct are plainly very different from those attributed to them in the evidence.

To this Dean Graves replied in a letter, also addressed to Mr. Wilson, and preserved in the same place. It is written in the amiable Author's usual temperate tone, and makes just the kind of defence for his evidence, which would suggest itself to any fair mind. And, indeed, drawn as it is from the embarrassing nature of the circumstances in which he was placed, by the pertinacity of the Commissioners in their strange course -we do not see how it can be resisted. We may have taken an opportunity of saying, that we should be sorry to be conceived as designing to extend to the Dean, the censure which we have been obliged to pass upon the proceedings of the Commissioners, in the case of the Tract Committee. We cannot indulge ourselves here, by enlarging upon his many excellent qualities-but we are sure, that we only speak the sentiments of all who have had an opportunity of being acquainted with his character, when we say that there is no one more secured by disposition and habit, from designedly injuring the reputation or wounding the feelings of any one individual-still less for persons whom he professes feelings so kindly and respectful; and to suppose that he would have voluntarily assisted in impairing the respectability of a body, in whose welfare he has always taken a very lively interest, and which owes a great deal to his exertions, would be absurd. We certainly cannot commend his docility in following such devious leaders, but we can find many excuses for it, and those which he himself has urged are perfectly satisfactory. As to the censure of the Committee with which his evidence concludes, considering it as passed upon persons chargeable with the conduct which that evidence attributes to them, we must add, that we regard it as extremely temperate- much more so than our own would have been under the same circumstances. He proceeds to what as far as regards his defence was superfluous, but what we have no right to condemn-a proof that, even upon their own shewing, the act of the Committee deserved the censure passed upon it. And in support of this opinion, gives the part of the articles in which an approbation of the doctrines contained in the Homilies, is exacted from all ministers, and the public delivery of them to the mixed congregations of all classes and ages enjoined, together with the passage in the rubric recognizing the direction.

The Bishop of Limerick's letter followed-His Lordship introduces his defence of the Tract Commmittee, by the discussion of a far graver and more important question. We shall give his own statement of the subjects proposed for his correspondent's consideration:

"1. The kind and degree of authority given by the Church of England to the books of Homilies.

"2. The eligibility of distributing those books in the present day, among children as catechetical premiums, especially in a country circumstanced as Ireland is.-p. 3.