that they must ultimately yield to necessity, are occupied in endeavouring to subject that religion to their control, and to affix to emancipation, conditions which, viewed in the abstract, might appear speculatively harmless, but viewed in connexion with the circumstances of Ireland, would be practically destructive to our religious principle. So the Irish bishops, priests, and people have repeatedly declared.

Another effort is about to be made by your Irish brethren to obtain redress of the manifold evils with which they are oppressed; and those evils are manifold indeed. They cannot be privy councillors, masters of the rolls, judges in the King's Bench, judges in the Common Pleas, barons of the Exchequer, secretary at war, lords of the Admiralty, lords in Parliament, secretary of state, chancellor of the exchequer, president or fellow of any college in any university, secretary for the colonies, governor of a colony, lord lieutenant of Ireland, attorney-general of England, or attorney-general of Ireland, solicitor general, king's counsel, member of any college of physicians in England, mayor of any city, chief magistrate of any town corporate, member of the House of Commons, sheriff of any county or city, director of the Bank of England, director of the Bank of Ireland, president of the Board of Trade-nor in either of an hundred other offices, which it would tire one to enumerate and you to read. They cannot endow any church, bequeath any property for any benefit to their religion, nor for any charity connected therewith. They cannot establish any glebe for the maintenance of their clergy, they cannot confer any literary degrees upon their children in their schools or colleges, they have no share in the management of the funds granted for the education of the poor, but those funds are uniformly placed in the hands and under the control of those hostile to the Catholic tenets, and who meanly use a variety of indirect and perplexing modes for drawing the poor Catholics, by their wants, to sell the religion of their children. The Catholic clergy are insulted and vilified on a thousand occasions, and in all party trials the Protestant sheriffs, who return juries not by ballot, but by selections, are generally charged with being partial.

I will mention to you an instance which came under my own observation.

The present master of the rolls in Ireland, is now a Protestant and a baronet. He was formerly a serjeant-at-law, which place he could not hold without being a Protestant. He frequently served Mass, and was examined in his catechism in the same parish church that I served Mass and was examined in. He was then a Roman Catholic.

His younger brother, who is now a general, was a Catholic schoolfellow of mine-he is now a Protestant. I know the other members of the family to be Catholics.

When this gentleman was a serjeant-at-law, he led a prosecution in the city of Cork. Two persons were to be tried for the same offence, under separate indictments. One was a Catholic the other a Protestant. They were separately arrainged, and both ready for trial. One of them, the Protestant, was indicted in a number previous to the Catholic-say Number 59-the Catholic, 60. In course No. 59 was placed at the bar-and the clerk of the Crown asked the sheriff for the list of jurors. The sheriff handed him what was called the long panel, which contained about one hundred names. The list had not been called, when the judge, by the request of the lawyers, put Number 60 forward for trial in place of Number 59. Immediately, the sheriff called for the list, observing that he had made a mistake and given a wrong paper. He was sitting at a desk, where I was perhaps the only person in court who could observe what he did. I saw it-he gave back the same identical list. I could not yet observe what the mistake could be. But the mystery was solved as soon as I heard the list read over. I do not know whether the master of the rolls in his varied avocations can have any, even the most trivial recollection of me, nor do I know if he even then knew my name; I stood behind him, and in a low voice said, "Serjeant McMahon, one would imagine

was to be tried for Popery." He turned to me and said the observation was incorrect and unfounded. I only remarked, "perhaps I have better reason to know what I say, than you suspect or are aware of." I am convinced that he knew nothing of what I saw, and probably does not to this day. I added, "I will warrant you the challenges and the settings aside and will leave you a good jury for the purpose." Nothing more passed between us. The jury was formed after the prisoner had made his twenty peremptory challenges. Men against whom it would not be easy to show cause, came thick and threefold to pass upon him, but they were men who of all others he would not have chosen. He was however acquitted, for want of evidence.

The whole management was this: the list consisted of names written upon two separate sheets of paper pinned together. When the sheriff got it back he merely changed the order of the two papers. But by this simple contrivance after the list was called, I saw that the names were so arranged that it made a most serious difference as to the character of the jury-which paper should be first read.

What could be done? I saw the trick, but it would be useless

to testify it. Any one who knows Ireland, would laugh at my folly in exposing myself to ruinous persecution by a protected party, and no good could result.

Catholic Colonists, your state is not so wretched as this. You have no notion of the persecution which your Irish Catholic fellowsubjects endure.

You have, where you dwell, perfect religious freedom. The Protestant dissenters in Great Britain and Ireland are also seriously oppressed, though compared with the Catholics their sufferings are trifling and light; yet they ought not to be subjected to any penalty or inconvenience for professing the religion of their choice. But to shut our eyes to the gross and ridiculous and monstrous tyranny of a Protestant government saying, that every man has a right to be led by his own conscience only, in matters of religion, and yet cruelly punishing men for the exercise of this conceded right. You will agree with me in the principle, that God gave to no government, spiritual or temporal, commission to inflict bodily or civil or political punishment upon man for mere religious error. He reserves the infliction of such punishment as the obstinate heretic or the criminal infidel may deserve, to his own tribunal. He gives to the church authority to teach his doctrine, to administer his sacraments, to regulate her disciplineand by spiritual censure to punish her refractory members. To people he leaves the right to constitute their government, upon the government he imposes the obligation of preserving peace and securing property. But to neither has he committed the decision of man's eternal destiny; this he reserves for himself; to neither has he given a commission to propagate his doctrine by cruelty, but to all he has given a command to love one another.

The Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland are anxious, not merely for emancipation for themselves; they desire religious liberty for their dissenting brethren, they desire to have their state in the mother country assimilated to yours. Surely you cannot but feel that humanity, charity, and justice require you to aid them. You can materially do them a service which is not in our power to perform: you need only to be told how you can aid them, and I feel confident you will eagerly avail yourselves of the opportunity to do so.

You have strong claims to the gratitude of Britain, nor is she very willing to displease you; when she was opposed to our states, you stood by her with singular fidelity, many of you made your bodies ramparts upon our frontiers for the protection of her possessions. Call upon your government to emancipate your brethren, call. upon her for the

sake of justice, of humanity, of religion, of policy, call upon her by the gratitude which she owes you, by her regard for her own character. She now, a cruel, shameless, persecuting nation! No! The nation is not. The people of Great Britain have led the way. The British Protestants have given to you a nobie example-Colonial Catholics. Do British Protestants love Irish Catholics better than you do? Do the Protestants of this Union love Irish Catholics better than you do? The first have petitioned-the second cannot. We cannot approach a legislature upon which we have no claim, with which we have no connexion. Call upon your Protestant neighbours. It will be better if they join you-if they do not, the honour will be yours, the reproach will be theirs. Unite your voices-entrust your petition to the patriotic Brougham, and in the lords you will have perhaps a difficulty of choice between the truly noble Duke of Sussex, the brother of your king, the truly venerable Doctor Bathurst, the benevolent Protestant Bishops of Norwich, and the steady friend of the Irish Catholics, the Earl of Donoghmore, or his gallant brother Lord Hutchinson, the personal friend of George IV.

My brethren, I have taken the liberty of thus addressing you, because I know the cause to which I invite your aid deserves your support, and I know your application will have great and deserved weight. Whether your good, pious, learned and venerable hierarchy will feel that this is a claim in which they are concerned, I cannot surmise; but this I know, that if they should vouchsafe to join in your application it would not detract from the esteem in which they are so deservedly held; it would draw closer the bands of brotherhood, between the prelates of the same empire at both sides of the Atlanticit would diffuse heartfelt joy through many a bosom of the Irish under their charge, and tend to make the Canadian native, and the Irish emigrant one loving people, more than would any other measure that could be devised, and many of the people of these states would send up their prayers on their and your behalf, and none more fervently, brethren, than your sincere friend and respectful admirer.

JOHN, Bishop of Charleston.

LETTER IN BEHALF OF THE CATHOLIC CONGREGATIONS

WHICH SUFFERED BY THE GREAT FIRE
AT CHARLESTON

Addressed to the Charitable Citizens of the United States

Beloved Brethren :- You are already aware of the awful dispensation of Divine Providence, by which nearly one-third of the city of Charleston has within a few years been reduced to ashes; the principal destruction having taken place towards the termination of the last month, leaving a melancholy token of ruin and of desolation to point out the former abode of industry, of wealth, of decoration and of happiness. You know that in the great conflagration, about one thousand of our stores and dwellings have been consumed within a few hours; and extensive sufferings and despondency have come upon families whose prospects were, on the very day previous, as cheering and as flattering as their enjoyment appeared to be secure.

You have not only learned that we have thus heavily suffered, but with generous ardour and with creditable emulation, you have pressed forward to cast your offerings of benevolence and of affection into the fund whence relief has already been dispensed to numbers who have had no other resource, and will yet be given to alleviate the distress of many, who, without this aid, would sink under the weight of their calamity. In union with thousands, I earnestly beseech the Father of mercies and the bestower of every good gift, that he would give to you light and knowledge and docility and zeal for his service and for the salvation of your own souls, together with the blessings of abundance and of content upon this earth; and a recompense for the charity which you have manifested.

Beloved brethren, it would be on my part unpardonable obtrusion, were I in the first moments of the common grief and common suffering of the whole body of our citizens, to press upon you the consideration of a particular class, as entitled to your sympathy and your aid for a special purpose, however high and however holy may be the object to which I would draw your attention: but as you have nobly provided for the general want and the more pressing necessities, permit