Make your flock sensible to the honour of being accounted a member of the Catholic communion, that they are not members of a small sect, limited to that country where the sect itself was formed. They are members of a great church, which has lasted more than 1700 years, which flourished in every part of the habitable world. In omnem terram exivit sonus eorum, & in fines terræ verba eorum, and that Christ has promised that it will flourish until time shall be no more. Usque ad consummationem sæculi, portæ inferi non prævalebunt adversus eam. That consequently they should not be ashamed to belong to a religion, which so many kings and princes, so many of the most polished and learned nations of the world, glory in professing.

Remind them, that two centuries of persecution have tried in vain to pervert them; that the annals of the church, the history of mankind, does not afford another example like theirs of perseverance in their religious principles. That we find, in the history of every other nation or people, that a much shorter time was sufficient, by penal restrictions of religion, to gain over the people to the religion of the state; but that two centuries of persecuting laws, immense sums of money given by parliament to gain over proselytes, and levied upon those very people whose creeds they thereby endeavoured to purchase, left still the great body of the nation faithful to that spark, which St. Patrick lighted at the great altar of the Catholic church, and spread over this island; and that nine-tenths of the nation at large, and ninety-nine hundredths of this diocese are still faithful and steady Catholics, notwithstanding what they and their ancestors suffered for their fidelity, and for which they are as unrivalled in the history of the church, as insulated an exception to the prevaricating versatility of man, as the geographical situation of the island itself is to the rest of the world.

That portion of the Catholics of Ireland which God has committed to my spiritual care, I call upon you, very reverend and dearly beloved brethren, as my coadjutors and assistants, to aid me, by word, and by example, to instruct, and to feed, with the word of salvation, and with the bread of angels. It is a laborious, but it is also a meritorious, and an honourable employment. It forms the strongest bulwark to the state, by being the best supplement to the laws; which, without morals, are vain. A faithful discharge of these duties, will form our crown, and our glory, when, at the last day, the supreme Pastor will come to judge us, and to judge the world.

A letter from Mr. Burke to Dr. Hussey.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

You

I HOPE in God this letter will find you in Ireland. From the moment that the government who employed you betrayed you, they determined at the same time to destroy you. They are not a people to stop short in their course. have come to an open issue with them. On your part what you have done has been perfectly agreeable to your duty as a Catholic bishop and a man of honour and spirit. Whether it is equally agreeable to those rules of circumspect prudence, which ought to have their weight perhaps in an enslaved country, may admit of some question. That many of your people will be ready to condemn you is very probable: it is more than probable that they will give you but a feeble support, however the less you have to rely on others, the more you are to rely upon yourself. There is nothing I wish for more than to have some conversation with you. But if just now you were to come to England, it would be construed into a flight from the attack of lord

and

Mr. at the same time that you will naturally act in a manner agreeable to the courageous dispositions, which you have from principle, from disinterestedness, and a degree perhaps from mental constitution, you will be careful to preserve that temper, in which the conflict which I fear you will be called to will certainly require. I expect you will be called before lord D's committee. I did not conceive that a man of so little estimation in either kingdom, would have the lead of the House of Lords committed to him, without some purpose, that required that kind of instrument. I therefore am of opinion, that instead of coming direct from W-d to England, you ought to go without delay to Dublin. How could they expect that you, a Catholic bishop, should not prefer your own religion to all others? How could they expect, that you should be of any other opinion than mine, in which you know we frequently agreed "that if the Catholics were seduced or bullied from the only re"ligion they have or can have, they must fall into indifference "or into actual atheism, or its concomitant direct tendency, "actual rebellion." How could they expect, that if you as a Catholic pastor, did not strongly assert the advantages and pre-eminence of your own religion, yet as a good citizen you would endeavour to keep the people attached to the only religion which they can possibly have. How dare they assert it is not the religion of the country, in which more than 100 to 1 in your diocese are of your communion. If they should say, as that buffoon

D-n does, that this is the religion, of the common people, it is only to speak more in its favour, because it is for them that all religion, and eminently the Christian religion, is meant for a guide, for a control and for a consolation. These are principles you have always held. To be sure Christ himself has given as a conclusive proof in his answer to John the Baptist of his divine mission, that the gospel was preached to the poor. The other part of the divine answer, if you cannot imitate in miracle you may as you have always done imitate in charity. As to what you said to the soldiers, why should it be wrong in you to say of them exactly what Tertullian has said of the Roman soldiers in his day? You cannot alter the language of the church, and I believe there is no Protestant pastor (and I believe you may appeal to his Grace of Cashel) who should attempt by any rigour, inflicted or threatened, to bring his people to mass. Who would or could mean any other language than what you have done? The great point for you (as I wrote to you before in my first long letter, because I knew that the castle junto do absolutely deny the fact,) is to establish the circumstance either of menace, coercion, or punishment, as the case may be. When you have bottomed yourself well upon these facts, you need not be afraid to meet the vindictive lord Dupon this ground. I should not be sorry, that the Catholicity of this nobleman's family should be alleged as an excuse for thinking well of your religion, for that whatever respect you have for the present lord D- , you cannot think better of him than you did of the old lord, who certainly had been a most zealous Catholic, that if any person of those families became more enlightened you could have no objection to it, but you could not think the better of them on account of their conversion, and that you hoped they would not persecute you on principles which would equally well have justified a persecution of their ancestors and nearest relations. That you would heartily wish, that every man in the kingdom had as much zeal for the crown, and as much abhorrence for jacobinical principles as you have shewn. I revert to it again, you cannot leave Ireland until you have seen Dublin. There is a direct attack intended to be made on all your episcopacy. Dr. Troy has not fared better than you, notwithstanding his caution and the sermons he has published against the taking of oaths. For I have this day a letter from a most respectable and dignified clergyman of the church of England, in which he tells me, that the Dublin castle runners in London propagated every where, that this prelate actually had taken the oath of United Irishmen. If you have not wisdom enough to make common cause, they will cut you off one by one. If you are called on, my opinion is, that you ought to recapitulate all the proceedings at Laughlinstown, and

to state that you consider that as the pledge of government, that on your going to Ireland you would find the same course persevered in. That let them determine what they will, you are determined to do your duty. That if you have expressed your apprehensions from the persons commonly called the junto, it is nothing but what you are justified in by their own repeated declarations of dislike to your whole body, and the repugnance which they have always publicly expressed against the repeal of the several persecuting and disqualifying laws. This last is only a hint in case they should urge you upon the point. I feel as much concerned in you as if I was in my own person in Ireland, and in your situation, because you know I advised you to accept the De of Pd's invitation; though I confess (and I am sure you remember) that I trembled at your being committed at such times and with such people: but I thought it an imperious duty, and so did yourself, to do every thing in your power to check the growth of jacobinism upon one hand, and oppression, which is its best friend, on the other. I hope you have put down what you intended about the protest you entered into with the De of Pd and Mr. P-t. Adieu. I am, with little ceremony, but great truth,

Bath, 16th May, 1797.

Yours, &c. &c.

Another letter from Mr. Burke to Dr. Hussey.

MY DEAR SIR,

E. B.

YOU will easily believe, I am in the highest degree interested in any thing, with which you are connected, particularly in the most important object, by which you are now detained in Ireland. I wrote to you by sir George Shee. I hope you have got that letter; not that it contains any thing very material, but that I hope you will not think me inattentive to you or your most important pursuit; for a long time I have had no information, or nothing which deserves the name, about what you are doing. I hear, and am extremely alarmed at hearing, that the chancellor and the chiefs of the benches are among your trustees if this be the case, so as to give them the power of intermeddling, I must fairly say, that I consider, not only all the benefits of the institution to be wholly lost, but that a more mischievous project was never set on foot. I should much sooner make your college, according to the first act of parliament, a subordinate department of our Protestant university, absurd as I always thought that plan to be, than to make you the instrument

VOL. IV.

of the instruments of the jobbing system. I am sure that the constant meddling of your bishops and of the clergy with the castle, and of the castle with them, will infallibly set them ill with their own body; all the weight, which hitherto the clergy have had in keeping the people quiet, will be wholly lost if once this should happen; at best you will have a marked schism, and more than one kind, and I am greatly mistaken if this is not intended, and diligently and systematically pursued. I am steadily of my old opinion, that this affair had better be wholly dropped, and the government boon with civility and acknowledgment declined, than to subject yourselves and your religion to your known and avowed enemies, who connect their interest with your humiliation, and found their own reputation on the destruction of yours. I have said so much on this point already, that I shall trouble you no more about it. As to the committee of lay Catholics, I am sorry for a tone of jacobinism that was adopted by some of its principal members, but still more so, that it has been dissolved: the bad principle might have been kept under. Nothing ever can save you without some committee of the kind. I wish something of the sort re-established; your enemies are embodied, what becomes of you if you are only individuals!

Mr. Hay of the county of Wexford, who came hither with an address from that part of Ireland, is on his return to you, and takes this with him. I like him very much, he is a zealous, spirited, and active young man. He has one project in hand of great extent, and some difficulty, but like to be of great use: it is to make an exact enumeration of the inhabitants of Ireland distinguishing their religion. The specimen he has shewn me if it is perfect; and I have no doubt, that with the assistance of the Catholic clergy (without whom nothing of that sort can be done) a very useful work towards every plan of political economy may be formed. I am sure every one must be sensible of the truth of lord Fitzwilliam's assertion, on seeing Mr. Hay's plan, that the depression of the Catholics is not the persecution of a sect, but tyranny over a people. In the provinces of Ireland (out of the cities) it is almost literally true in substance and effect; it is true of the whole in the parts marked in his paper, the Protestants are not as one to forty-five; and on the whole, I do not think that the county of Wexford is much more, Catholic than the other counties in Leinster and Munster. I know that an ill handle may be made of this work, but so there is, and so there will be of every thing done for the good of that country; but this invidious representation is not of so much prejudice as the knowledge of important truths will be of advantage to you, to the country, and to a considerate government.