principle of truth. Are there who believe that duplicity may be sanctioned by necessity; and that, because stratagem is allowed in war, where it is expected on both sides, it is also allowable in the Sanctuary, where nothing impure ought to find admittance?

When any man, or body of men, thus endeavour to deceive others, they gradually impose a false conviction on themselves; for the progress of error in Religious matters, when it is endeared by interest, may be compared with the growth of immorality. An unjust possessor will argue in his own behalf, for vile usurpations which in another he would abhor. Wishing for demonstration, he will fancy that he finds it in casuistry; and he will then advance rapidly in the career of equivocation, until at length, he becomes sincere in his errors, as an habitual sinner becomes hardened in his crimes; weaving for himself a web, in which his reason is entangled by his passions, and his virtue destroyed.

Roman Courtiers argue that the Pope acted wisely and justly, in crowning Buonaparte, and disinheriting the Bourbons. Intriguing Bishops

argue that they can nominate their own Successors, against the decrees of General Councils, and render their Dioceses hereditary property, or bequeath them to whom they list, for reasons best known to themselves! Men have been known, under such illusions of their own creation, to oppress by force, to circumvent by deception, or to overwhelm by calumny, in private letters, those whom they could not defeat in argument, even when the secret misgivings of their own consciences, the awful conviction of experience, the dread of detection, and the fear of punishment, warned them to beware of a contest, in which time sternly discovered that they could not advance without danger, or retreat without disgrace.

30. It will be most evident to any one who reads the deplorable history of our unfortunate countrymen, Walsh, Coppinger, Caron, Harold, George Dillon, Valentine Browne of Galway, James Talbot, Peter Nangle, John Dormer, Preston, and other Priests and Regulars who signed the Irish Remonstrance in 1662, that Men may, by the indulgence of overbearing

authority, even in the most recluse solitude of a Monastery, entertain Mahometan principles of blind obedience, not to the written statutes of that Monastery, but to their own private will, and individual caprice! that this appetite of dominion is more keen, in proportion as the sphere of its operation, in a Diocese, a Chapter, or a Convent, is more confined; and that its Tyranny may be much greater, than a more enlarged view of Society, and a more extensive commerce with the world will naturally produce.

31. The Irish Bishops assembled at Tullow, June 6, 1809, have thought it expedient to declare, that, "though they hold the Civil Constitution " of the French Clergy to be impious, heretical, "schismatical, and on the whole to be rejected, (a pretty climax!) " yet the Holy Father, Pope Pius VII, has only yielded, by the Concordat, what the dreadful exigencies of the "times demanded from a true shepherd of the "Christian flock; and that in his measure for "the restoration of Catholic unity in France, (by crowning Buonaparte, &c. &c.) "he has

"validly, and agreeably to the Spirit of the "Sacred Canons, exerted the powers belonging to the Apostolical See!*

32. Those Bishops were not pressed by any legitimate authority to pronounce any opinion. on the subject; but they would shew the public, that they can decide on all matters appertaining to faith and Discipline, exclusively; and so they passed a Synodical decree in favour of the Concordat, against Abbe Blanchard, with whose writings in favour of the Bourbons, they would have done wisely not to interfere!-But the more limited is the Society in which we live, the more contracted and absurd are our ideas. A petty Constable is a great Man in a Village; so is Mr. Lyons's Village Lawyer; and so is a Politician Bishop in a Synod of Tullow. The whole world is nothing in the eye of the Statesman of a Cabbage garden!

See this very classical, elegant, and Orthodox performance of the Holy Synod of Tullow, published by the Bishop of Castabala, in his Supplement to a Pastoral Letter, Lond. 1809, p. 17.

§ XX. Ormond compelled by the Foreign influence Bishops to surrender to the Puritans!

1. Seeing no means of preserving Dublin against the united armies of Preston and O'Nial, both influenced by a foreign Nuncio, of an aspiring, ardent, and sagacious mind, Ormond had no alternative, but to surrender to the Parliament, and abandon the kingdom, or to submit to such terms as the Nuncio might, in the pride of Victory, think fit to impose.--I envy no man that narrow, con-tracted, bigotted mode of thinking, which, at this distance of time, remote as we are from the dangers and difficulties in which he was involved, undertakes, at a writing desk, to pass judgment of injustice and treachery on Ormond, for the conduct, which, in those perplexing circumstances, he was compelled to pursue.

I only beg to be heard in favour of one of the most loyal hearted men my Country ever produced. I detest falsehood; and if I advance