cestors into courses, which, had they been successful, would have inflicted a deadly wound on the liberties and independence, the laws, and the commerce of our country.

Englishmen will learn from these documents, that, as the same causes will ever produce the same effects, it is equally unwise and unjust, under the colour of religion, to feed the embers of that Antipathy, which drove our ancestors so frequently into the arms of Rome and Spain; which compelled the O'Nials and the O'Conors, the Fitzgeralds, the Lacys, the Mac Carthys, the O'Brians, O'Birns, O'Donnells, O'Moors, O'Sullivans, Mac Dermots, &c. against their own pride of ancestry, to lay the Crown of Ireland at the feet of the Pope; to tolerate the Ultramontanism of their Church; to kiss those hands which were forging their chains in a foreign Country; and to endure every degradation, rather than submit to that system

"London, from the furious persecution of the opposers; and "after him Father Peter Walsh, &c."-Letter to the Catholics of Ireland, 1674. p. 45.

of erclusion from the unreserved benefits of British Legislature, which has been the true source of all the expensive wars, all the massacres, and all the calamities of our Country.

Our Bishops also will learn, what the fatal consequences are, of sacrificing to their own views of exclusive discussions, and uncontrouled power, the interests of a people, whom the liberty of the press, the genius of our Constitution, and, above all, their own talents, must render inimical to that species of secret caballing and inquisitorial despotism, which was an uneasy, yoke even in the latitude of Rome. They will see the danger of insisting as they do* on the

"There is not a single Prelate in England or Ireland "who is not firmly resolved to reject the four Articles of the "Gallican Church, (commonly called the liberties of the "Church of France.") Milner's Supplem. to a Pastoral Letter, Lond. 1809. p. 39.

i

"At a meeting of the R. Catholic Prelates, assembled in Dublin, the 24th inst. (Febr. 1810)-Resolved that it is "the undoubted and exclusive right of R. Catholic Bishops, to "discuss all matters appertaining to the Doctrines and Discipline of the R. Catholic Church."

continuation of that identical Ultramontanism, which always afforded to the Legislature, as well before, as after the Reformation, just, solid, and substantial grounds of objection to foreign influence, and consequently to the unreserved admission of Catholics into the full enjoyment of the rights and privileges of the Constitution.

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"It is for Bishops exclusively, says Doctor

Milner, agreeably to the decision of the late "Dublin Synod, to judge of faith and disci

pline. All the claims of others, whether Ca"tholics or not Catholics, to judge, and still

more, to act in these matters, however high, powerful, or numerous they may be, are vain "and schismatical. They may as well pretend "to pluck a beam from the sun as touch a fibre of Ecclesiastical jurisdiction." Elucid. of the Veto, p. 49. Lond. 1810. *

I have elsewhere shewn that this exclusive doctrine is destructive of the rights of the second order of the Hierarchy, and Heretical.-Letter to Owen O'Conor Esq. Delegate from the C. of Roscommon to the General Committee of the Catholics of Ireland. Lond. 1810.

§ VIII. History of the Cry of Religion raised in 1645, against the peace concluded with the D. of Ormond.

1. There are, who for their own purposes, will devoutly assert, that the writer is a Schismatic, perhaps an occult Heretic, a degenerate O'Conor, and an Englishman in his heart.*Others, pious souls also, but infected with that species of piety which dares not to be honest, or above-board, will feel not one scruple in traducing my orthodoxy in private letters, and since they cannot refute arguments, will try to assassinate reputation!

But I repeat, that I have too good an opinion of the shrewdness of the Irish Clergy and Gentry to imagine that they can long be imposed upon by Hypocrisy.-Convinced besides that Honesty is the best Policy, I will speak the truth; and leave to my Countrymen the inalienable liberty, to discuss historical facts; to sift

I would hold myself to have degenerated indeed, if I could submit to the Mahometan principles of Castabala.

them to the bottom; to confront evidences on affairs relating to their own tragical history; to contemplate the difficulties in which their Ancestors were involved by the interference of pretended Spiritual Commissions, which stood in the way of their temporal privileges; and to judge and to decide for themselves.

2. Who, but one utterly unacquainted with the true and genuine spirit of Irish History, will venture, at this period, after the vile passions have ceased to operate, to assert, that the excommunications denounced against our Ancestors, the Catholic Confederates of Kilkenny, who made peace with the Duke of Ormond in the reign of Charles I, were denounced, bona fide, through a Spirit of Religion?

Was not Religion the Stalking-horse, and hatred to England, the real Lever of the Nuncio Rinucini in 1645?

Do we not well know, that those very principles, those very oaths of allegiance, for which our Ancestors were excommunicated by the exclusive Doctors of Waterford in 1645, are the principles and oaths which are now taken by