prospect of our Catholic fellow-subjects' emancipation. America copied after the illustrious example. The Emperor has placed the God-like image of toleration, in the same banner with the Imperial Eagle. Good sense and the general good of society, are restoring to unhappy morals the inalienable charter, which school divinity had usurped, the choice of the religion they think the best; and the privilege of being accountable to God alone for their speculative tenets. Any person who would preach or practise a contrary doctrine, is an agitator indeed, and an agitating Bishop is as obnoxious to us as an agitating Friar. You have directed your arrows against Mr. O'Leary in particu lar: he has washed off the paint which your brush has laid on his face he has proved in his narrative, that you have not given an accurate account of the disturbances in Munster; you have not stemmed the torrent-you have not assigned the genuine causes of the insurrections, which in your heart you know not to have originated in any Popish confederacy against either church or state, but in the despair of wretchedness, ascribable indeed to several causes, amongst which tithes and tithe-canters are to be enumerated. Mr. O'Leary has fully justified the Catholic body from the foul aspersion of Theophilus and the insinuation of the Lord Bishop of Cloyne. He has called on you both, to produce one agitating Friar, or Romish Missionary sent here to sow sedition, or who has sown sedition in the land, There is the challenge given by conscious innocence. We shall not then quarrel with our Catholic neighbours, much less with Mr. O'Leary: if he has any more to say we shall hear him: it is the privilege to which every injured man is entitled; but we consider him as fully acquitted, whatever further remarks he may think fit to make on your pamphlet,

SECTION THE SECOND,

Containing a vindication of Mr. O'Leary's address to the Whiteboys.

I KNOW not upon what ground the Lord Bishop of Cloyne can say that my addresses are most artfully contrived to sow

sedition? Is it for recommending peace? No. Is it for recommending patience under sufferings? If so, the Lord Bishop of Cloyne must burn the Bible. Is it because I did not enlarge upon the miseries of the peasantry, in consequence of low wages and rack-rents, as the Bishop intimates? The reduction of tithes and the dues of the parish priests were the only objects mentioned in the insurgents' proclamations. In addressing them upon complaints which they did not express, was to represent the orator who finished, by the deluge, his sermon on the resurrection. The public knew the people were exasperated and outrageous. I had one object in view, which was to work on their passions, by the fittest springs, to move the hearts and allay the passions of a discontented multitude. I mean hope and fear; the dread of punishment, and the hope of redress-I knew that such of the clergy as, from the warmth of zeal, and want of foreknowledge that their flock would ever rise against themselves, had recourse to the usual method of reclaiming them by severity, had lost their influence. In vain had they substituted a curse for a prayer, and the oak saplin for the peaceful asperges; the obstinacy of the flock increased in proportion to the rigour of the pastor; at last the rupture rose to such a height, that they swore in some places never to hear prayers from their present parish priests. This the Lord Bishop of Cloyne cannot be ignorant of; and the candour of the historian, when he talks of the insurrections, as well as justice to those persecuted ecclesiastics, should have induced him to advert to this very singular and unexpected circumstance; especially when he had read in the slanderous Theophilus the false and infamous charge brought against those clergymen, accusing them of being in a confederacy with their flocks for the overthrow of the church and state. It was not from want of zeal and loyalty that they miscarried in their attempt to re-establish order. In all probability they would have succeeded better, had they tempered their fire.

I had to guard against the inconvenience which proved a stumbling-block to others. I knew that oil smooths the ruffled sea, and that a long time before Cicero and Quintilian

had laid down rules for rhetoricians to work on the passions, Solomon, a greater adept in the knowledge of the human heart, had said, A soft answer breaketh anger, and a hard word raiseth up fury. In my two first publications I addressed them in the soft language of sympathy; led them on, step by step, to the temple of hope, at whose gates they should wait with patience, keeping at a distance from the precipices which surround its confines, violence from despair, and licentiousness from presumption. All parties acknowledge they were wretched; the clergy knew it, and they blamed the landlord; the landlords knew it, and they blamed the clergy's agent. It was not my duty to dictate to either; but if the Lord Bishop of Cloyne affirms, in his pamphlet, that they did not suffer from such persons as deal in tithes, with every deference he should be better informed. A gentleman of veracity has declared to me that thirty-two shillings have been extorted for one acre of potatos; and that when a peasant offered to buy his tithes at a certain price, he was horse-whipped: I do not say that this happened in the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's diocese, to which he should have confined himself when he became an advocate for ecclesiastical agents and if report be true, in some places it is said that the tithes which were set by the clergyman for three hundren pounds, were raised by those harpies to the enormous sum of £700, and more. This rapid rise must have been oppressive to the poor, without any benefit, but rather a loss to the clergyman: the Bishop of Cloyne would have done well if, in the beginning of the disturbances, and even a long time before, he had inquired, whether there had been in his own diocese a certain tithe-jobber of such art, power, and influence, as to get the tithes for about one hundred and sixtypounds, which he raised to about five hundred. The clergyman, who is all sweetness and humanity, was under the necessity, in his own defence, to make over a bond to this agent, who had the policy and influence to hinder the peasants from taking the tithes from the lenient and lawful owner, who was willing to set them at a moderate price. But when, by the above stratagem, this man got them into his own possession, they became the scourges of the poor, who were continually

harassed by decrees, either real or fictitious, which he either obtained or pretended to obtain from the Bishop's-Court. No music could be heard in his district but the noise of cattle, mingled with the cries of the wretched, seeing their little stock sold for half value. That man's pound was like unto a lion's den. The oppressed people came to the clergyman requesting him to take the tithes into his own hands, offering him twenty pounds more than he got from the jobber; an offer which the clergyman who feels for the poor, was under the painful necessity of refusing, on account of his engage. ment with the other. All parties then agree that the unhappy people were oppressed: and the Earl of Carhampton (then Lord Viscount Luttrell) who commanded the army in Munster, and who acquitted himself of his commission with such honour and humanity, is convinced that distress, but not wantonness; the stings of poverty, but not the design of overturning church or state, gave rise to the disturbances in the South of Ireland. Had the maxim that it is better to prevent crimes than to punish them, been followed; had all the landlords, both noblemen and getlemen taken an active part at the first breaking out of the insurrections; had they explained to their respective tenants the danger and impropriety of their proceedings, inquired into their complaints, informed them that the senate of the nation was alone competent to make any alteration in established laws, and that if they did not follow their advice, or obey their injunctions, they would be under the necessity of punishing them, both as landlords and magistrates; had this plan been adopted, the disturbances would have been stifled in their very birth. Such of the gentlemen of consequence as had adopted this plan, soon restored peace and tranquillity to their districts. It was the plan which Menenius Agrippa adopted with success, when the discontented plebeians retired to the sacred mountain. It was the plan adopted by Junius Blesus, when the Pannonian legions revolted at the instigation of a common soldier. It was the plan adopted by Lord Luttrell when he went to the congregations, and reclaimed to their duty several parishes, instead of marking the progress of his march with the impoverished blood of half-starved wretches. Cæsar's clemency outshone the splendour of his victories. And Lord Lut

trell's wisdom and humanity upon that occasion, besides the honour and esteem he acquired, have contributed more to the restoration of order and tranquillity, than if he had let the army loose, and begun with coercion and violence.

The ministry of a clergyman, is a ministry of charity and compassion; when I see then, heroes bred in camps, and trained up amidst the clash of arms, sheath upon several occasions the sword, and hold out the olive branch; when in the cure of wounds, lenitives are preferred to caustics, I am not ashamed for having addressed a discontented and op pressed people, in the style of sympathy and tenderness. But when I see a Prelate, whose very robes are by their institution emblematical of extensive charity, exhibit symptoms of joy in the expectation that the poor will not be relieved by their rulers, I should be more inclined to curse the priesthood than to revere it; if I were so blind as to confound the unfeelingness and other defects of the ministers of religion, with the holiness and other duties of their ministry.

I recommended patience, which softens the afflictions of sufferers, to the distressed, after informing them that the legislative powers alone were competent to redress a general grievance, and that a disorderly conduct was a bad recom.mendation to their humanity.

Here are the comments of the Lord Bishop of Cloyne upon the above texts, To what do these lectures of Mr. O'Leary tend? To tell the insurgents that though he knows that they are more oppressed than any sect of men in the world: though he is convinced that they had a right to expect redress from the humanity of the legislature; yet the legis'lature shew no compassion for them; they must remain in their misery: they have no remedy but that of patience, which softens the afflictions of sufferers.'

I am not ashamed of the admonitions-But I blush at the censure: I prefer the charitable Samaritan, who did not offer up sacrifices in Solomon's Temple, yet relieved the bleeding man on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho; I prefer him to the unfeeling Priest and Levite, who passed by unconcerned, without pitying a man whom they saw weltering in his blood. I shall ever pity the poor, and shall ever