ceive the force of documents and facts, or, what is worse, that he is so devoid of principle and truth, as to refuse to pronounce according to them. "The charge of a wish to persecute Roman Catholics, which the editor attempts to fasten on me, is clearly at variance with the resolutions I proposed, and the principles as published even in his own columns, on which those resolutions were maintained; but I can assure the editor that were I merely personally concerned, I should care as little for his attack on my principles as I do for his critique on my person or style of speaking. But truth must be brought before the public, and I avail myself of his vituperation with pleasure to call the attention of your readers to the momentous facts, which are only proved more important by his fear to meet, and his anxiety to deny them. When it has pleased Providence to put them into my hands, I hold it my duty to assert them, and in discharge of that duty I care no more for the editors of the press, whose interest it is to subserve the cause of Popish policy and perjury, than I regard the wind that whistles among the pillars of your Parthenon-the cause is altogether worthy of the advocate whom this editor has selected as his patron. I forget exactly the lines of the poet who consigned some similar principles to similar protection, but I know they began― MERCURY, the god of liars, Of canting priests and Jesuit friars, "Your obedient Servant, "Glasgow, Feb. 8th." On Thursday, February 11th, a letter appeared in the Glasgow Argus, from Dr. Murray to Dr. Murdoch, the Popish Bishop of Glasgow, accompanied with the following remarks by the editor of that paper: "We request the particular attention of the reader to a most satisfactory letter from the Most Rev. Dr. Murray, which appears this day. VOL. II. I He spits his two revilers upon the horns of a very great dilemma. If there is one thing that more than another gives one a painful sense of the absurdities of which human nature is capable, it is to see sectarian prejudice drawing well-meaning individuals to depreciate such a man as the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, and to laud to the skies such men as O'Sullivan and M'Ghee." Letter from Dr. Murray, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, to Dr. Murdoch, Roman Catholic Bishop of Glasgow. "Mountjoy Square, Dublin, Feb. 6, 1836. "RIGHT REV. AND DEAR SIR,-I am honoured with your letter of the 4th instant, expressing a wish to know the history of the insertion of the obnoxious notes into the edition of the Bible, published in 1818, at Cork, by Mr. M'Namara.' I beg to assure you in reply, that I am wholly unacquainted with the history to which you allude-that I had no connection whatever with the publication of that edition-and that I never even saw it until your letter induced me to send in search of a copy of it, which, after some difficulty, I procured. I find that this edition has not the usual approbation of any bishop. The publisher states in the title-page, that it is sanctioned and patronized by the Roman Catholic prelates and clergy of Ireland, but he gives no authority whatever in proof of his assertion. Again, in his list of subscribers, of whom, however, he does not pretend that I am one, he uses the following words:- Patronized by the Most Rev. Dr Troy, Most Rev. Dr. Murray, coadjutor,' &c. Now, I never patronized this edition, nor subscribed for a copy of it, nor recommended it, nor knew any thing whatever about it; and it is rather hard to make me accountable for the puffing of a publisher who chooses to make an unauthorized use of my name, in a distant part of Ireland, and without my knowledge, for the purpose of obtaining a more extensive sale of his work. "It is somewhat curious to observe the different modes of attack to which my reverend calumniators have done me the honour to have recourse. The Rev. Mr. O'Sullivan attempted in Worcester, (yes, most disingenuously attempted,) to prove from a misstatement of my evidence before a Parliamentary Committee, that the Bible was not allowed to be read by Roman Catholics in Ireland until the year 1825. And now, it appears from your letter, that his reverend fellowlabourers in the work of discord and slander take an opposite course, and pretend that I was myself actually circulating this same Bible in 1818, but with objectionable notes. Both assertions are equally false. There were various editions of the Bible long in use among the Catholics of Ireland; but no editions were published with my sanction, except those which had an express approbation, in the usual form, and signed with my name, prefixed to them. The others rested entirely on their own merits, or on other authority. With the Cork edition I had nothing whatever to do. "I have the honour to remain, Right Rev. and dear Sir, "†D. MURRAY. "P.S.-You are at liberty to make whatever use you this letter. "The Right Rev. Dr. Murdoch, &c.” On Friday, February 19th, the following answer to Dr. Murray was published in the Dublin Evening Mail, from whence it was copied into the Scottish Guardian, and other papers: Letter from the Rev. R. J. M'Ghee to Dr. Murray. "February 16th, 1836. "SIR,-Your letter to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Glasgow, published in the Glasgow Argus, has this day been sent to me. Again you charge me as a calumniator, and again I say to you I am ready to meet your charge. I trust I can conscientiously say, I never intentionally uttered a word to calumniate any individual; and if in those public statements which I feel it my duty to make, you feel yourself aggrieved, I shall be happy to afford you the most ample means of refutation. "And now, sir, I most deliberately repeat the facts which I have stated at Glasgow and Edinburgh. "I assert that, in conjunction with eleven other Roman Catholic archbishops and bishops, you did, in the year 1818, patronize a reprint of the Bible, with the notes published in 1816, in the name of Mr. Coyne, which Dr. Troy abjured in 1817, but which he also patronized again in 1818. "I assert that the Bible is the same as that of 1816, with the exception of a few (five or six) notes in the New Testament, which have been cancelled in some copies, but retained in others, and the omission or retention of which makes no material alteration in the nature of that book. "I assert that the principles in the notes of this Bible correspond, in all their worst particulars, with that system of theology which you have set up as a conference book for your priests in the province of Leinster-that they contain the answers to your questions of intolerance and persecution, as proposed in your conferences of 1832, and prove that the same tremendous system which you have inculcated upon your priests, you and they have co-operated to instil into the minds of the Roman Catholics of Ireland. "You deny all knowledge of this publication in your letter to Dr. Murdoch, and you say, 'It is rather hard to make you accountable for the puffing of a publisher, who chooses to make an unauthorized use of your name in a distant part of Ireland, and without your knowledge, for the purpose of obtaining a more extensive sale of his work.' "Positively, sir, on your statement there is a daring spirit of speculative adventure in the Roman Catholic booksellers of Ireland, which leaves all the romance of literary enterprise 'panting in the race behind.' Coyne's 'speculation' in Dens's Theology has hitherto taken the lead; but now Coyne must yield the palm to M'Namara, who is facile princeps of all the publishers and puffers in the empire. "How stands the case? All are familiar with Coyne's publication of the Bible in 1816-with Dr. Troy's disclaimer in 1817-with Mr. O'Connell's blustering parade of getting a committee appointed at the Catholic Board to disclaim these notes, and then sneaking out of it at the beck of his masters, the bishops and priests, and letting the Board be dissolved without a report on the subject. And now let us see what does M'Namara do. M'Namara, a bankrupt in 1816, to mend his broken fortunes, embarks, in 1818, a sum certainly not less than £1500, in the republication of a quarto Bible-a Bible, with notes not only unauthorized but abjured and forbidden to his clergy by Dr. Troy, denounced by Mr. O'Connell, and disowned, (if we may believe your evidence before parliament in 1825,) by yourself, and not under the authority, as you state, of one Roman Catholic clergyman in Ireland.' He publishes this Bible, which is never exposed to sale, being exclusively (as he informs us in his advertisement on the covers of the numbers) for subscribers; and this bankrupt employs a staff of Bibliopolitical videttes in every town in Ireland, who are to deliver these numbers as they come out at the respective houses of the subscribers. This bankrupt not only finds capital for all this, but, strange to say, he resorts, as you inform us, to a style of puffing which had escaped not only the research, but the imagination, even of the author of the Critic. He publishes on the cover, in the title-page, and among the very list of subscribers, that Dr. Troy, the man who had rejected the book, recommends it-that he who forbade, subscribes to it-that he who abjured, patronizes it! He places first on the list the man who is only above Dr. Troy in authority, Dr. O'Reilly, the then Roman Catholic Primate, and next to him he places his friend, confidant, and coadjutor, the Most Rev. Dr. Murray. "He brings this out, no doubt, as you say, in a distant part of Ireland; but if he does, he publishes on it, that it is under the patronage of bishops whose dioceses reach from Lough Foyle to the Cove. He prints and publishes the names and residences of the individuals who subscribe, and he places at the head of every list of every place the bishop and the priests who patronize it, on the spot where they reside, in the midst of their own dioceses and parishes. The first in the list of patrons, next to yourself, and the first on the general list of subscribers, is the bishop of his own diocese, the man who lives in the city where he printed it, and who is alive to tell the story at this day,* and next to him the names of the priests who lived around him, enrolled after their bishop, not only as patrons and subscribers, but (so the advertisement informs us) as the critical revisers and correctors of the publication. "These are some of the simple facts; and you will now exhibit the marvellous character of this most marvellous puff, if you can find in all the casuistical proficients in your standard theology, some one to solve these questions. Mr. Woods rushed with chivalrous alacrity to your aid on a former occasion; I hope he will not leave you unassisted in your present extremity. "Do you believe that M'Namara, who certainly had not as a bankrupt much capital to sport in speculative theology, laid out the large sum that this Bible must have cost, and printed it only, as he informs us, for subscribers, without having subscribers to ensure a sale? "Were the men whose names and residences he has published as subscribers from all parts of Ireland, fictitious characters or real persons? "If they were real persons, did this printer venture to print, at the head of the subscribers in each place, the names of the bishop and priests of that place, as patrons and subscribers to the work, while they really neither patronized nor subscribed to it? Were their names alone fictitious, while those of the others were all genuine? “Did this man elicit subscriptions from more than two thousand Roman Catholics in Ireland for a work, to be delivered in parts, and therefore a subject of multiplied communications and conversations First Appendix, XII. |