EXTRACT FROM MR. NANGLE'S LETTER TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL. Ir is distinctly stated in "Dens's Theology," pp. 88, 89, that heretics (a word which your lordship is aware includes all dissenters from the church of Rome) are, ipso jure, infamous; that their temporal goods are confiscated and that they may be justly punished for their religious opinions by banishment, imprisonment, and death. Dr. M'Hale, Roman-catholic Archbishop of Tuam, in a letter addressed to your lordship, has deemed it expedient to disclaim this principle. I trust, however, to make it manifest in this letter that his professions and practice are sadly at variance.

A few protestant gentlemen, of the highest respectability, formed themselves into a committee with a view to promote the temporal and spiritual interests of the inhabitants of this island, a district which, even in the west of Ireland, is proverbial for its destitution. They procured a tract of wild mountain, purposing to reclaim it by native labour, and on this and other improvements they have already expended a sum exceeding 1,600l.

The oversight of the spiritual concerns of the infant settlement was intrusted to me, with the full approbation of his Grace the Archbishop of Tuam. It pleased God to grant such a blessing to our exertions that several families and individuals abandoned the communion of the church of Rome, and connected themselves with us as members of the protestant church. No exertions were spared by the Roman-catholic priests to exasperate the peasantry, who were disposed to regard us with the kindest feelings, against us, and to urge them on to such repeated acts of violence as might exhaust our patience or our courage, and oblige us at last to abandon our post in the island.. These things have been already detailed in a petition which was presented to the House of Lords, in June last.

Finding that the means which the priests had employed had failed of success, Dr. M'Hale visited the island at the beginning of this month, hoping that the exercise of the spiritual authority with which the ignorant peasantry supposed him to be invested, might prove more effectual. The day after the bishop's arrival, the congregation was assembled at the parish chapel, the persons who had joined the protestant church were held up to abhorrence in the strongest terms which language could furnish, and their neighbours were forbidden to speak to them, or to sell them provisions, or shew them any kindness. Before Dr. M'Hale left the island, these inhuman injunctions were again repeated, and a solemn curse pronounced against any who dared to violate them. In consequence of this, our poor people have been subjected to much inconvenience, and sustained much loss; their kind salutations of their former friends meet no return; the stream of social kindness has been embittered at its source by the gall and wormwood of religious rancour; some of these faithful sufferers for conscience' sake have been inhospitably ejected from their dwellings, their neighbours alleging no reason for conduct so much at variance with the redeeming virtue of Irish character, but the will of the bishop; others have been obliged, at considerable cost and inconvenience, to purchase provisions in a distant village, for though there are some of their neighbours whose good nature is stronger than their fear of Dr. M'Hale's curse, yet they dare not sell them potatoes, as a murmur has already gone out among the people, that any one who violates the bishop's orders may expect to have his cattle houghed, and to suffer other injuries in his property and person.

In this island there are many who abhor the doctrines of the church of Rome, who loathe the thought of giving the honour which is due to God to the pastry idol of the mass; but they dare not break the chains which gall their spirit-they sigh for freedom, but the fear of the driver's lash restrains them from claiming their birth-right. I must remind your lordship that I am prepared to prove the facts which I have stated, by competent witnesses, before any tribunal : and I do most earnestly desire that an opportunity of doing so may be afforded

me, in order that, if at a future period the inhabitants of Achill should swell the catalogue of our national atrocities, the British public may trace their crimes, not to any peculiar depravity in them, but to the baneful influence of popery and its teachers.

I have the honour to be your lordship's obedient humble servant,
EDWARD NANGLE.

Dugort, Island of Achill, Sept. 9th, 1835.

EXTRACT FROM MR. NANGLE'S LETTER TO DR. M'HALE.

I MUST first notice a gross misrepresentation which arrests my attention in the very first paragraph of your letter. You state that you were engaged "in receiving back into the fold the few who were straying around its enclosure." If in this sentence you mean to assert, that through your influence all or any of those persons who had abandoned the communion of the church of Rome and joined themselves to our congregation were induced to return, I say the statement is untrue. I write what if it be false may be easily proved to be so, that not even a solitary individual who stood connected with us as a catechumen, much less as a communicant, was either induced by your blandishments or intimidated by your curses to break his connexion with us; but, on the contrary, the very day after you proclaimed to the public, under your hand and mark, and assumed episcopal title, that the Achill mission was a complete failure, I had the happiness of receiving at the Lord's table, as communicants for the first time, seven persons, five of whom, including your priest's former schoolmaster, had been converted from popery since I came to the island. I should not have mentioned the fact at all were it not to shew the public that your most confident statements should be regarded with extreme caution.

The most which you, and the numerous staff of priests which accompanied you, could accomplish was, to intimidate some of our poor labourers, whose industry had been relieved of a heavy clog by a disregard for your holidays, into a promise of their future observance. Your own conscience, sir, can tell you by what heartless tyranny even this poor semblance of submission to your authority was secured; you know that the delinquents were warned by name, in the public congregation, that the result of non-compliance would have been your curse: this, indeed, might easily be despised were not its utterance followed by a suspension of all the kindnesses of friends and neighbours, and exposedness to all that is physically, as well as morally, distressing and painful. "I know well," said one of those serfs of a despot church, "that God never commanded us to keep the holidays, but I thought it better to beg his (Dr. M'Hale's) pardon, than to have the tongues of the flock upon me." "Don't I know well," said another, "that they (the Romish clergy) have forsaken the ancient catholic faith, and that they are teaching a new religion, which Christ and his apostles never taught; but what could I do? If I did not humble to him (Dr. M'Hale), I feared my cattle would be houghed; and how did I know what might happen to myself if I only went to Newport?"

There is at Achill-bay a large coast-guard station, composed principally, if not exclusively, of protestants; being desirous to establish a school among them, I authorized the chief boatman, a respectable protestant, to engage a house for the master. On making application to some of the peasantry, they expressed their entire willingness to afford the desired accommodation, as the pecuniary remuneration which they were to receive, though in itself small, was to them an object of considerable importance; but at the same time they said they had received such strict orders from the priest, that they could on no account yield to the applicant's wishes, or their own inclination, without the priest's special permission. The chief boatman finding them inexorable,

in his anxiety to have the school established at the station, wrote a respectful note to the priest, stating the only hindrance which stood in the way of his obtaining possession of the house, and requesting him to grant the desired permission. This request was met by a stern refusal!

The national schoolmaster is not less zealous than his patron, the parish priest, in enforcing your anti-social doctrines. The day after your departure from the island, seeing one of the peasantry walking and conversing with a man who had left the church of Rome and joined our congregation, he openly reproved him for holding any intercourse with such a heretic, asking him did he not know "THAT HE WAS CURSED BY THE PRIEST FOR DOING SO?" The National Board of Education was framed for the specious design of uniting the Roman catholics and protestants in kindly feeling to each other. The public may judge with what wisdom the board pursues its design, when they are informed that, with full knowledge of the fact to which I have alluded, this teacher is still retained in their service.

I speak without exaggeration-I testify what I have seen and heard :—As I walked in company with a few of my brethren through a neighbouring village a few days after you had bestowed your parting benediction on Achill, even little children of so tender an age that their articulation was imperfect cursed us as we passed. In this very village, but a short time since, the little kindnesses which we occasionally conferred upon the poor people used to meet a rich return of grateful blessings. To what is the change in the spirit of the villagers to be attributed? You well know they have been accustomed to hear the most frightful imprecations uttered against us from the altar by men whom they regarded as heaven's messengers; you well know that they heard the bitterest of these effusions applauded by yourself.

I can testify that the people of this island are kind and peaceable, and very grateful for any kindness conferred upon them. I have always been able to trace any manifestation of contrary dispositions to the altar of the parish chapel, and to him who stands there as their religious teacher. 'Tis now but a few days since an intelligent girl who came to our school, and who had received the rudiments of her education at one of the national schools which are established in this island, exhibited much surprise at hearing that command of our blessed Saviour which relates to the duty of loving our enemies, and which has been quoted in another part of this letter. She doubted if a command so much at variance from what the priest had taught her could have come from Christ whose minister she believed the priest to be. "Ye," said she, with a natural frankness which Romish discipline had not yet taught her to repress, "ye hate us and we hate ye, FOR THE PRIEST TEACHES US TO HATE YE AND TO CURSE YE."

The week after you left Achill, a naval officer, distinguished in the scientific world as one of the explorers of the polar regions, visited the island, and during the few days of his sojourn among us he gathered some of the fruits of intolerance which you had sown. In the immediate neighbourhood of the chapel which a few days before had resounded with your anti-social harangues, he inquired of a peasant the nearest track to a point which he wished to reach; but as this gentleman came from the protestant settlement, this faithful son of the church, in obedience to your injunction, refused to give the desired information. The courtesy which he had often received from the savage Esquimaux was withheld by an Irish peasant, evidencing that human nature, in its wildest state, may produce some social virtues which it cannot yield under the full cultivation of Popery.

So far I have only noticed those parts of your letter to the Bishop of London which relate to the Achill mission. I cannot, however, conclude without briefly animadverting upon a few of the other particulars contained in that composition. Your vulgar and indecent allusion to the personal infirmities of one whom you assailed as an intellectual antagonist deserves little notice; it can only be attriVOL. IX.-Jun. 1836.

L

buted to the influence of notions imbibed, and habits framed in early childhood, which continually prompt you to violate the conventional proprieties of cultivated society. Your heartless exultation over the sufferings of the protestant clergy is still more discreditable to you. If you had no pity for the men, the sufferings and privations of virtuous women and innocent children, involved with them in a common calamity, should have softened your tone of insulting exultation into that of generous sympathy.

In reference to the Bishop of London's statement concerning the increase of protestantism in Ireland, I must testify, even at the hazard of again exciting your indignation, that it quite accords with my own experience. I have travelled much through this province, and in every parish I have found among the most exemplary of the protestants a greater or a less number of persons who had been educated in the church of Rome, and lately abandoned its communion. Of ten individuals who have from time to time assisted me in the spiritual work of this mission, as readers or schoolmasters, eight were persons of this description-all (and some of them with large families) had come out from popery. EDWARD NANGLE.

Dugort, Island of Achill, Sept. 28, 1835.

SELF-SUPPORTING DISPENSARIES.

[THESE dispensaries are for the purpose of providing medical relief for the poor, much on the plan of friendly societies. They are established at fifteen or sixteen places, and are stated to succeed. Mr. Smith, a surgeon, of Southam, who was the projector of them, states that the Poor Law Amendment Act allows no medical assistance to persons receiving other relief. The plan seems to deserve attention, but the Editor knows nothing personally of it. And, in this Coventry branch, he does not see one or two honoured names, ever first in the cause of Christian charity, among the subscribers!]

Extracts from the Rules of the Coventry Benevolent or Self-Supporting Dispensary.

GENERAL RULES.

1. The object of this institution is to enable the labouring classes to ensure to themselves and their families efficient medical advice and medicine during illness, by their own small periodical payments during health; and by the contributions of the more opulent, to assist them in attaining this object, and to afford them other comforts in sickness, which their own wages are insufficient to procure.

2. The funds of the institution are derived from the payments of the working classes, who are termed free members; and from the subscriptions of the honorary members, who, on becoming donors of ten guineas at one time, or annual subscribers of one guinea, shall be governors. The subscriptions of the governors commence on the 25th of March, and shall be paid in advance.

3. The funds shall be kept in two distinct accounts, to be called "The Free Members' Fund," and "The Honorary Fund." The Free Members' Fund, consisting of the payments of the free members, (who are of the working classes,) shall defray the cost of drugs, and the remainder be divided among the surgeons, in such proportions as the committee may decide, at the end of every half-year. The Honorary Fund, which is derived from the donations and subscriptions of the governors, shall be expended in the support of the establishment, and in the supply of such comforts, in broth, cordials, linen, &c., as the patients may need.

10. A committee of ladies, appointed at the annual meeting of the governors, shall be requested to promote the general objects of the institution, by visiting the sick free members, and superintending the distribution of loans of linen, and of such other comforts, in wine, broth, &c., as the medical officers may deem necessary. The surgeons shall leave with the matron a list of those patients whom it may be proper for the ladies to visit.

14. The medical officers shall be elected at a general meeting of the governors. No person shall be eligible to the office of surgeon who has not obtained a diploma from the College of Surgeons of London, Dublin, Edinburgh, or Glasgow.

15. The surgeons shall prescribe daily at the dispensary, at an appointed time, for those patients who are able to attend there; but when any patient is too ill to go to the dispensary, the surgeon he prefers shall visit him at his own residence.

16. The surgeons shall keep a register of the name, age, residence, date of admission, and discharge, of each patient; with the result of the case, and any observations they may deem important. No operation of importance to be performed without a previous consultation of all the medical officers of the institution.

17. The surgeons, in cases of difficulty, or where the patient may wish it, and it may seem desirable, shall call in the aid of the consulting physician.

18. The dispenser shall be appointed by the surgeons, subject to the approval of the committee. He shall take charge of the drugs and stores of the establishment, and give an account of all articles received by him. He shall not absent himself from the dispensary without the permission of the surgeons, and shall dispense the prescriptions of the medical officers at the appointed hours, and in the intermediate time, if they require him to do so.

RULES FOR THE FREE MEMBERS.

1. The Free Members consist of working persons and servants, their wives and children not receiving parish relief, and who are unable to pay for medical advice in the usual

manner.

2. Any such person wishing to become a free member, must leave his or her name, age, residence, and occupation, at the dispensary, and deposit one month's subscription.

3. Every free member above twelve years of age shall pay one penny, and under that age, one halfpenny a-week; except in a family consisting of more than two children, when one penny a-week shall be considered sufficient for all under twelve years of age. Servants shall pay five shillings a-year, and in not less than half-yearly payments.

4. The payments of the free members shall be made in advance. No one will be entitled to the benefits of the institution, if in arrear, and each family shall pay a fine of one penny for the arrear of every week. If any member shall be more than four weeks in arrear, his or her name shall be erased from the books.

5. Benefit societies will be received as subscribers to the dispensary, and their members entitled to all the benefits of the institution. The rate of subscription shall be three shillings a-year for each member. The payments to be made by the stewards quarterly, and in advance. 6. No one actually labouring under sickness can be admitted a free member unless two healthy persons above twelve years old enter at the same time, and each pay the whole year's subscription in advance. Any such person, unable to procure two others to enter with him, shall, by paying ten shillings, be entitled to the privileges of a free member for three months; and may afterwards continue a member by paying the usual rate of subscription.

7. If any free member shall be discovered by the committee to be ineligible to the benefits of the institution, his or her name shall be erased from the books.

8. Every free member shall have the choice of whichever surgeon he may prefer; but it will be expected that he do not change his medical attendant during his illness. He may have a consultation of the medical officers, if it be thought advisable.

9. Those patients who are able to do so, must attend at the dispensary between ten and eleven in the morning, bringing their admission ticket at the first visit, and afterwards their prescription paper. Those who are too ill to attend at the dispensary, must send their tickets, before nine o'clock in the morning, to the surgeon whom they wish to call upon them, and he will visit them at their own homes. In cases of accident or sudden illness, they can have the attendance of either of the surgeons, on sending their ticket to his residence.

10. No free member will be visited at his own home, if he reside beyond one mile from the institution.

11. Any married free member, being pregnant, may have the attendance of whichever surgeon she may prefer, on depositing, at the dispensary, ten shillings and sixpence, one month before her expected confinement.

12. When considered necessary by the medical gentlemen, linen will be lent, and cordials, broth, and other comforts, given to the free members by the ladies' committee.

13. Patients must find their own bottles, bandages, &c.

14. The children of free members, and of all poor persons, may be vaccinated, gratis, on any Wednesday or Thursday morning at eleven o'clock.

15. The surgeons will attend at the dispensary at ten o'clock every morning, except Sunday, in the following order :

Mr. Nankivell, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Mr. Bicknell, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Wellesbourne Self-Supporting Dispensary.

*

At a general meeting (held the 23d of June, 1831,) of the Wellesbourne Self-Supporting Dispensary, the accounts of the half year were audited, and a balance of 37. 10s. 10d. carried to the next half year's account.

* Wellesbourne is a village with a population of 800 or 900.