purpose that I should notice the charges brought by yourself, and by Mr. Maguire, against these two societies, with which I have the honour to be connected.

You state that the West Connaught Society is doomed, and that the Irish census has struck it a blow from which its funds have not recovered. Mr. Maguire states that the work of the Irish Church Missions Society (now fifteen years in operation) is a total failure, and that the claims made by it of conversions from your church to ours are a sham and a fraud. In regard to this same society you state that its schools are failures, and that the controversies carried on by its agents with your Church create ill blood, and provoke disorder. These charges are grave, and you will allow me to deal with them both.

I take your first statement. I am surprised that you refer to the census, for the "Tablet," your own organ, admits that the census is against you. The facts are simple, and any one may judge of them. The census of 1861 shows a decrease of population in Ireland of 2,145,000 from the census of 1834. But this decrease does not leave the two great sects, the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, as it found them. In 1834, every hundred souls in Ireland were divided thus:— 81 Roman Catholics and 19 Protestants. In 1861 the proportions are changed; 78 Roman Catholics to 22 Protestants; that is, in every 100 persons 3 Roman Catholics have disappeared, and 3 Protestants have taken their places. These are the facts. How are they to be explained? You may say by emigration, but emigration has fallen upon both sects. If I say by conversion, how can you answer me? At all events your pleading is unfortunate. The first witness, whom you call into court, goes dead against you.

But my present business is not with the census of all Ireland, but only of that part of Ireland to which your remarks and those of Mr. Maguire chiefly apply. We confine ourselves at present to West Connaught, a district extending from the Bay of Galway to the sea, to the north of county Mayo, and in it especially to West Galway, which is the chief seat of the operations of the society you arraign. What the population of that district was, and its state twenty years ago, the English public learned from the pleasant tour of an intelligent traveller, Mr. Inglis. Its faction fights and its savagery were thus made known to them. Its religious state was this, that with a few trifling exceptions, the entire population belonged to the Church of Rome, and your priests exercised over that quick but savage people an unbounded sway. In

1837 Western Connaught could only muster then thirteen small Protestant congregations, ten of which had a wretched provision for their ministers; one parish (50 miles long and 30 miles broad) had for two clergymen the large revenue of £200, and one small church, which gathered within its walls about thirty Protestants.

That district the society, now denounced as a sham, entered in 1848. Its present state is attested by witnesses whom we in England accept as of the highest authority. They are unimpeachable in character, and so eminent in position, that they would not lightly accredit doubtful statements. I take only eye-witnesses-the Bishop of Winchester in 1861, the Bishop of Ripon in various years, the Bishop of Oxford in 1861, the Bishop of Rochester in 1860 and in 1862, the Earl of Harrowby and Sir Thomas Acland, all these persons, the two last well known in the House of Commons, through years of honourable service, entered the schools, visited the churches, and gave, publicly the greater part, all in writing, their united testimony. They speak of numerous_converts, of good congregations, of well attended schools. But these are Protestant witnesses, and you may take exception to them. I pass from testimony to facts-dry facts, to which no exception can be taken. Mr. Maguire says that his informants assure him, converts there are none. We count on our fingers two thousand converts within that district at this moment, and we know (from causes not hard to guess) that more than two thousand have emigrated. But set both statements aside as those of partisans, and here is a fact beyond dispute. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners of Ireland have granted public money to assist the erection and endowment of three new churches within the district of West Connaught, and they have promised to make grants to four more. the Ecclesiastical Commissioners do not make grants unless there are congregations; and, to satisfy them of this fact, you must prove your case to the conviction of acute and vigilant lawyers-the last men in the world, I imagine, to be taken in by a sham and a fraud.

But

Let us follow a few of the cases which have satisfied them. In the district which an English satirist describes as that "where Dick Martin rules the houseless wilds of Connemara,' on a point projecting into the Atlantic, stands a wild region, now the parish of Derrygimla.. When the Irish Church Mission Society went there in 1848, there was no Protestant church, no Protestant school, and, with the exception of five scattered families, no Protestant population. There are now three

Protestant schoolhouses, attended by 100 children, one of these is used as a church, and has a congregation of 150; last autumn the Bishop of Rochester preached there to 200. Travel south on the same coast, Moyrus meets you-the same history, a people so savage that the first reader we sent had to fly for his life-now quiet, with a Protestant church, parsonage, and school, and a congregation of 100 Protestants. Turn to the north and still follow the coast, you reach Sellerna, once under the exclusive influence of Rome, now a Protestant congregation of 300 persons. Are these my statements? No; dry facts proved to the conviction of sharp lawyers.

These cases are of Protestant churches endowed, four others only wait our contributions to secure grants. I take one of these, Castlekerke (for it has been examined and passed), a Protestant congregation which averages ninety, with five exceptions, all of them converts.* But add this significant fact: this people, once belonging to your church, have signed a memorial for the erection of a church of our faith. The memorial is signed by 229 persons; 112 of these sign it as open members of the Church of England; 117 of these still profess your faith, but they desire a church according to ours. This fact may tell you what is passing in the minds of Irish Romanists.

I might go on till I weary you. I might tell you of Clifden, once a congregation of 30 Protestants, now of 300; a school with 200 children, only 9 of whom are the children of original Protestants. Ballyconree, a congregation of 130, 40 children at school; Oughterard, 360 Protestants, 200 of these converts from Rome; Tully (District), a school of 100 children, 12 only the children of original Protestants; the Island of Innisturk, a population of 104, once as savage as the South Sea Islanders, now 50 of these converts. But why trouble you with more facts? enough to point to the one great fact, that in that district of West Connaught, where, when we entered it fifteen years ago, we found a handful of Protestants in thirteen small congregations, we shall leave it, if we left it tomorrow, with 57 Protestant congregations. Where did these hundreds come from? Did we import them? As many more, converts, who have fled from a wearing persecution, across the Atlantic. Did we, as it is said, buy them? We have neither the will nor the power. All our funds go to our Agents, and these do not suffice.

* I find that this statement is not correct in figures. I had, when I wrote, no access to testimony on the spot. The total converts are 82. The original Protestants 24. The average congregation is 48.

But though these facts are plain and are proved, you state in your next charge that controversy is injurious; "that the usual result of a Missionary appearance in a town is to call out the military, and to lead to the condemnation of a certain number of Roman Catholics to fine and imprisonment." I admit the facts; but are they not against your argument? In the House of Commons two parties differ; they are engaged in strong controversy; they attack each other's views; they do not always mince their words. But we have not yet followed our Transatlantic brethren by introducing into our debates either the horsewhip or the bowie knife. Why may not your Priests and our Clergy conduct their debates under the same restraints? The controversy may be vehement, but why brutal? Why not let men use their heads instead of breaking them?

You say our placards call your Church bad words. Men need not read these. If our Agents deal in abuse, abuse always recoils on the person who employs it. There must be something more than hard or bad words to cause all this stir. The pastorals of your Bishops, the denunciations of your Priests, the columns of your newspapers, the riots of your people, which you say are so violent that both police and military are called in-this looks very like as if Rome felt that the attack on her faith was serious.

She does. You are yourself an eminent witness. Your own words are evidence against her. You have stated the facts of the case correctly. Wherever our Missions and our Agents have gone, they have encountered violence. Controversy has been met by riot, and words by blows. The cause is obvious. Your Church dreads discussion on religion. Whenever she can, she puts it down-in Spain, through bad laws, by the prison and the galleys; in Ireland, where law is good, by mobs that defy the law. But there is this to be added to your statement, in order to complete it: your Church has used the weapon of violence against us, but she has signally failed.

There was a trial of both systems in Dublin, discussion on the one side, physical force on the other. Our agents had chosen two parts of Dublin, the Bethnal Green and St. Giles's of your capital, Townsend Street and the Coombe. They set up preaching in both quarters, opened schools, spread handbills, covered the walls with these obnoxious placards. The passions of the mob were raised, our poor men were hounded like mad dogs through the streets, school-children were beat, schoolmistresses were assailed, windows were broken. We

went to the police, and the police withheld protection; we went to the magistrates, and the magistrates did not help us; we were left to the mercy of the mob. At length we appealed for redress to the Home Office, and Lord Palmerston, with the love of liberty and the courage which characterize him, gave us (it was all we asked) the protection of the law.

What disorder, you will say, brought about by English fanatics! True, but not the whole truth. Go now and ask the Lord-Lieutenant the present condition of Townsend Street and of the Coombe. Ask him whether he has visited the school in Townsend Street, and what he thinks of it. Ask the police-impartial witnesses-whether the moral and social state of these two rude districts has improved. I leave the case on their evidence.

I would appeal to yourself. You represent an Irish county. Acquaint yourself with the state of your country. Do not take the evidence of others; use your own eyes; visit Dublin during the recess. Go to these schools, which, you are informed, do such mischief. Enter these halls of controversial discussion, which, you are told, are so stormy. I will tell you what you will find. You will find hundreds of Irishmen seated, quietly discussing the points of difference between the two churches of England and Rome. Often more Roman Catholics than Protestants, all in earnest, eagerly disputing for their faith with a wit and force peculiar to Ireland. Debates as keen as those of the House of Commons, and as temperate. You will find no police, no soldiers, no rows, no broken heads. But if you ask me the results, I will not deny them. They are, I admit it, disastrous to your church. They lead men to read and think, and truth and thought are fatal to Rome. We count our converts in Dublin by hundreds, and most of them made by controversy. It is most natural that your church should dislike the discussion which we carry on.

Nor is it in Dublin alone or West Connaught that these results are to be found. They are palpable everywhere. Wherever our agents have gone with the Bible, and a fair and temperate discussion, there has resulted a movement, and that movement always in one direction, into the Church of England, out of the Church of Rome. We have tried this plan in Louth, in Antrim, in Armagh, and in Sligo. We have tried it, as you truly remark, in Kilkenny. We have tried it at the seat of one of your most vehement archbishops, in Tuam. Always the same course and the same issue. First, the teaching of the Bible, then inquiry among your co-religionists, and a desire to read it. Then, on the part of the priests, alarm, irritation,