But audacious crimes are no longer singular. We refer to two atrocious cases published yesterday, one of inhuman murder, and the other of most profligate seduction.- Lust,' as Milton says, 'hard by hate.' The whole week, as will be seen by our pages, has been signalized by offences of similar character, though not so enormous in degree. The assault on Miss Duffield, one of the respectable governesses of a lady's school, is one of these; it makes the blood boil against the scoundrel,' as the indignant Mr. Ballantyne called the heartless puppy who designed it, and we trust that unfortunate lady will obtain the amplest redress which law can give and commiseration claim.

'Else, wherefore, live we in a Christian land?

6

On one case of seduction-that at Bow-street on Wednesday-our readers will find that we shortly commented; but the instances of the seduction, desertion and subsequent suicide of young women during last week have grown on us with a sickening profusion perfectly astounding. We discussed very lately, in a leading article, the subject of the increasing crime of Seduction, and offered suggestions which might suppress its tendency, or more completely redress its perpetration. We shall not, therefore, repeat those opinions, but again revert to the strange concatenation by which this crime (misnamed gallantry by idle idiots) is too often seen to be an associate with suicide and murder in the annals of a debased condition of society. No Italian bravo could have aimed a more relentless, more vital, more deliberate blow at a victim's heart than the seducer of Elizabeth Manvell, in his letter written on the morning after he had robbed her unsuspecting faith of hope and honour. Mr. J. Williams night well say—

Talk of hardheartedness, of hypocrisy, as exhibited through the medium of the stage or novels, after this-of the futility of professions-all fall short of the cold-blooded hypocrisy manifested in the cold-blooded insensibility of this letter.'

-In short, this is an age of deep, soul-rooted, soul-selling, blood-bartering, indurated selfishness; that is the source of these evils; and that vice-selfishness-paves the way for every crime. One scarcely breathes from one dark and appalling horror which its turbid bosom engenders, when a blacker and a vaster bursts on us

'Rocks rise on rocks, and alps on alps arise,'

-These things occur too in an age of the most complete religious cant and hypocrisy-as if it was necessary to add a mockery of God to crimes against man, and to couple the knowledge of right with the most determined perpetration of wrong. And yet we wonder why the English nation is at this time suffering so heavily. All ascribe its sudden but 'incurable wound' to many causes. Might not the audacity of crime be one? The betraying marks of profligate extravagance and squalid misery-of dirty rags and blood-stained finery-of revelry and sorrow-are stamped on the formerly majestic countenance of the British people. And do we wonder that the scourge of Heaven is unremittingly hissing over their heads; and its vials of wrath sinking daily to the marrow of their bones."

What a woful spectacle is this! What a contrast is here offered to those days that are so insolently and calumniously termed the "dark ages," when every Englishman could repose in peace and security under his own vine, and the country was renowned as much for its morality, as the valour of its natives. But these, we are told, were the days of Monkish

superstition-of Popish slavery-of Priestly intolerance. Well, admitting this representation to be true, would not such a state of bondage be preferable to that range of liberty which Protestants profess to enjoy, and which has led to that mass of wretchedness, poverty, degradation, crime, and, in a word, national ruin which now stares us in the face? We can anticipate the answer of the man of common sense-with the fool and the hireling there is no reasoning.

ANOTHER BIBLE BATTLE.

In the subsequent pages of this number the reader will see an account of a contest between the Catholics and some Scriptural Missionaries at Ballinasloe, county of Galway, in Ireland, which, as usual, terminated in the discomfiture of the Biblicals, on which the vanquished in reason had recourse to brute force, as a means of revenge for their defeat. How different is this conduct of these evangelical Missionaries to the Catholic converters of Pagan nations. The latter went armed only with the shield of Truth and the buckler of divine eloquence, with which they opposed the powers of Hell and Earth, and subdued by their mild demeanour and pious example the most savage and obdurate hearts. But not so, the dubbed Parsons, and canting Captains of Biblical inspiration and hypocrisy ; they, great heroes of would-be proselytising fame, take care to be backed by "the powers that be,"—with steel and balllest a scratch should be inflicted on their skins; for they have no desire yet to become martyrs, and forsake the good things of this world, which the Reformation, so called, placed in their hands, and told them to indulge in with all the voraciousness of a lustful appetite. God of heaven? how long are the Catholics to be thus taunted and insulted by the mockeries and insolencies of these quacks in theology? Is it not enough that they should take the fat of the land, and drain the sweat of the labouring Catholic peasant, to feed their pampered carcasses, and deck their wives in gorgeous silks and ribbands; but they must come and beard him and his self-devoted abstemious Pastor, who shares with him the cup of poverty and bondage,

with their calunmics, and revile the religion of Christ, planted by their glorious apostle Patrick, as idolatrous and superstitious. But thanks to that honest, that independent, that euridite and truth-telling Irish Catholic, ENEAS MACDONNELL, than whom a purer patriot and friend to his country does not exist -these babbling hypocrites have received such a lesson as we hope will cool their courage, and teach them to be less hardy in their attempts at dictating to the Irish peasantry, and calling upon them to forsake the guidance of their venerated and beloved Pastors. No, no, Parson Pope and Captain Gordon; while England, the land of Bibles, present such a scene of abomination and iniquity as the "best public instructers" have so lately delineated, you may go and hide your diminished heads, for Paddy, rest assured, will never be induced to forsake his beads and mass, to send his soul to perdition with a bible in his hand. He knows too well the value of the golden rule set. forth by his own Church, and which made so many nations virtuous and happy, till the accursed licentiousness of the reformers of the sixteenth century, like Pandora's box, scattered all the evils which afflict mankind among the Christian nations of Europe.

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We have seen the account of this affair in the leading gazette of these saints, the Dublin Evening Mail. In the main points it differs but little from the statement we have given, though the editor is very profuse in his abuse of the Catholics. The obstinate, who could or would not comprehend the delicious eloquence of Parson Pope and the Scotch Captain, are designated as the "ruffian mob" "the myrmidoms of the Priests," an "infuriated multitude,"-while the masterly eloquence and damning facts of Eneas Macdonnell are stated to be a farrago of common place objections,"" brute strength and Popish malignity"-" falsehood and trash"-" sedition and offensive balderdash."-OFFENSIVE enough, we have no doubt, because truth is very grating to the ears of those who profit by the dissemination of falsehood. But if the poor Papists are driven to such straits to defend their cause, why do their adversaries show so much rancour, and use such foul language against them? Would it not better become these evangelicals to exhibit signs of pity and compassion towards the misguided objects

of their solicitude? O dear! such Christian feelings never enter the hearts of Ascendency-men, whose objects of adoration are riches and power.

But what shall we say of the conduct of our "best public instructers" in this metropolis? Here is evidently an outrageous violation of the right of free discussion. Here is a direct and tyrannical invasion of both Civil and Religious Liberty. Here is a palpable infringement of one of the most constitutional privileges of the People-and yet not one word have we seen from the Morning Chronicle, New Times, Morning Herald, and others of the tribe, in reprobation of this atrocious proceeding, on the part of the Bible Saints, to coerce and put down, by brute force, the public voice of Catholic Ireland. Why! had the police of Catholic France or Spain been called upon to disperse, with sword and bayonet, a knot of Biblicals in either of those countries, after a fair appeal to public opinion, what a clamourous hue-and-cry would have been raised against Popish tyranny-the ignorance and intolerance of the Priesthood-and we know not what else. The vocabulary of Billingsgate would have been searched for the foulest terms of reproach and indignation, and there would not have been a paper printed, from the Land's End to the Orkney isles, but would have teemed with the outrage for months to come. But because Protestant saints are the instigators of the violence-because Catholics are the sufferers-the victims of insolence and violence, the circumstance is passed over as a common occurrence or unworthy of comment. Was there ever such a base thing as the English Press since the world had existence ? We agree with Mr. Cobbett, that a more vile, a more corrupt, a more mercenary, or a more unprincipled thing never cursed a country like the besotted and hireling Press of England.

W. E. A.

TO THE EDItor of the TRUTDTELLER.

DEAR SIR-The swarms of usurers infesting every town and village, and particularly the City of London, seize upon every expression that may, even by forced construction, tranquillize

their callous consciences: heaping together worldly arguments in defence of their unchristain practice. "Interest," they say, "is the general custom among the Clergy and Laity of these Islands." "If it were sinful, would it be so generally sanctioned ?"

They will certainly avail themselves of your observations in the last Truthteller, on my letter of the 3d instant: Whilst I thank you for your kind insertion of that letter, may I beg to caution you against giving these gentry any room to build their "dry walls." The passage, to which I allude, is, “He, good man, is a solitary sufferer for justice sake; he had better refrain from making such sweeping condemnation of those bishops and priests who are performing their functions for the salvation of souls."

Will not the Usurers infer from these, your words, that I am a solitary opponent of usury, and that all the officiating Clergy of the British Islands accommodate to the desires of the people? If it be your intention to insinuate that, you have no document to bear you out; neither reason nor ground to imagine that such body of prelates and priests could so far deviate from the law of God and Catholic doctrine, as to practise and allow this horrid practice among their flocks; nay, there is against you a living, standing monument, that the base practice is classed with mortal sins, and condemned in the London district.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE JUBILEE." What is the history of of this wicked age?—but the history of avarice, theft, rapine, éxtortion, usury, and fraud, disguised under every shape and form, in the common transactions of trade and commerce :" and again, "Hence all Christians exclude themselves from having any share in the benefit of the Jubilee, who refuse to renounce their sinful habits of drunkenness, impurity, profane swearing or detraction; who persist in the practice of usury, extortion, oppression of the poor :" WILLIAM, Bishop of Halia, Vic. Apos. London; JAMES, Bishop of Usula, Coadj. Nov. 1, 1826.

These instructions were issued by virtue of a Bull from POPE LEO XII. bearing date the 25th of December 1825; they were read in every Chapel of the district. I am not therefore a solitary opponent to usury or interest; it is condemned by