The committee of the Protestant Association, naturally anxious that no blame should be attached to them, wrote a letter to the editor of the Morning Chronicle, exculpatory of themselves, it was as follows:

THE PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION AND MR. M'GHEE.

To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.

"SIR-The brief reports which the daily papers were able to give of the meeting of Thursday last at Exeter-Hall, have necessarily left the facts as to the production of the "Letter of Pope Gregory XVI." in considerable obscurity, and the committee of the Protestant Association feel that they have some claim upon you to give insertion to a brief statement of the case connected with the pamphlet in question, in order that their concern, as well as Mr. M'Ghee's, in this matter may be properly understood.

"Mr. M'Ghee arrived in town a very few days before the meeting of Thursday last, and attended a committee held two days previous to that meeting. At that committee the topics to be discussed on the following Thursday were gone over, and no allusion was ever made to the pamphlet in question, neither Mr. M'Ghee himself, nor any member of the committee, being then even aware of its existence.

On the evening before the meeting, at a very late hour, a friend of Mr. M'Ghee's called upon him with this pamphlet, which he stated to have been published by a gentleman in Ireland, in whose character Mr. M'Ghee had the highest confidence. Hastily adopting it, therefore, as a genuine document, Mr. M'Ghee produced it to the meeting, and read extracts from its pages, not having, however, previously mentioned the subject to any member of the committee. Two days after the meeting, by a communication from a connection of the author's, Mr. M'Ghee was made acquainted with the real character of the work, and he then lost no time in transmitting to the daily press, a letter explaining it to be a fictitious production.

These being the facts of the case, the committee of the Protestant Association feel that they ought not to be made answerable for the production of this pamphlet. With respect to Mr. M'Ghee, they feel assured that no one who has any knowledge of that gentleman's character will imagine it possible that he could ever have quoted such a document had he not at the time really believed it to be genuine and authentic. They regret that he should have so hastily adopted this belief; and they also wish it to be expressly understood that the wea

pons of truth are the only weapons they feel themselves justified in using, and that, therefore, they never have countenanced, nor never can countenance, the use or publication of fictitious documents, in connection with the great interests which it is their aim to advance.

"The committee, however, are happy to observe, that the chief matters brought before the meeting by Mr. M'Ghee, according to the arrangement previously made by the committee, were fully and incontrovertibly established; and they cannot avoid seeing that the circumstance above alluded to, and with reference to which they feel the deepest regret, has been chiefly used by the opponents of the Protestant cause to divert the attention of the public from those facts which they know to have been established, and which they feel to be fatal to their interests.

"We have the honour to be, sir, your obedient humble servants,

"JAMES R. Page,
"G. H. Woodward,
“HENRY QUINN,

"2, Exeter-Hall, July 19, 1836."

Secretaries.

While these effects were produced in the public press by the circumstances, the writer, far from the noise, had gone to attend the dying bed of a dear young friend, at a distance from London-an excellent position for learning to place a proper estimate on the applauses and the revilings of man. On his return to London the 20th of July, he found himself charged with crimes of which he felt totally acquitted in his own conscience, but, considering it the path of Christian duty to meet the case, he addressed to the editor of the Standard the following letter:

"To the Editor of the Standard.

"London, Wednesday evening, July 20. "SIR-It is only this day, on returning from some distance to London, that I have seen the letter of the Protestant Association and the different remarks of various journals on the fictitious letter of the Pope, from which I read some extracts at Exeter-Hall.

"It is the duty of a man and a Christian, if he is right, to maintain his cause, and if he be wrong, to stand forward boldly to make all the

reparation in his power for his error. I feel bound in the present instance to meet the case in every point, as it regards the Protestant Association, the Protestants in general, the Roman Catholics, and myself.

"The letter from the Protestant Association precludes the necessity of any statement from me, that not a single member of that body was aware even of the existence of that letter, much less that I intended to produce it on the platform; I need only advert to them to take the whole responsibility and blame on myself.

"With respect to my fellow-Protestants, I confess they have just reason to complain that any document that was not genuine should have been mixed up with any defence of their cause. They have reason to complain that any weapons of falsehood could have been used in defence of truth. It would ill become a man to use them, knowing them to be such, in speaking of the errors of the religion of others, as it could only prove that he had no true religion of his own. "Roman Catholics have still more reason to complain that a man professing to stand forth with real documents to bring a charge against them, should bring forward, however inadvertently, a fictitious document to cast on them an additional reproach. I grant the justice of their complaint-I grant it to the utmost extent their most rigid severity can demand-and I go all lengths they can wish to meet them with most sincere expressions of regret that such a cause of complaint should be given them by me.

"For myself I have nothing to say, but that the burthen rests exclusively on my own shoulders. I utterly disclaim, and trust I sincerely abhor the slightest intention of imposing a false document on Protestants, or bringing it forward against Roman Catholics. Had the pamphlet been given me to examine without knowing any thing of the writer, I should have seen the drift of the author in the examination of the document. As it was, a friend, who himself thought it was true, brought it to me as such, and informed me of the name, and without examining the object of the document, I adopted it hastily on the supposed authority of the writer. It was at twelve o'clock the night before the meeting, as I stated, he read me some passages which I marked and read at the meeting. I pretend not to excuse this precipitancy. The moment I learned the truth I published it. In calling it "an ingenious device," on which such weighty charges have been founded, I spoke on the supposition, not that it was intended as a forgery, which could really be ascribed to the Pope-in which case I should call it a wicked machination-but as I considered it intended as a satire on the divisions and criminal neglect of Protestants, in giving up the vital

principles of truth to the Church of Rome, and which the writer did not intend should be ascribed to the Pope.

"This explanation will, I trust, prove satisfactory to Protestants, whe may have felt themselves imposed on, or Roman Catholics who may think they have been wronged.

"I have the honour to be, sir, your obedient servant,
"R. M'GHEE.”

The position in which the writer now found himself was more than painful, not so much in reference to his personal feelings, as to the sacred cause in which he was engaged. The consciousness of his own integrity in the production of the supposed bull, enabled him to disregard the attacks of the press as far as related to himself; but knowing well the evidence which he had to produce against the Popish hierarchy, and that the success of his future efforts in the production of that evidence, depended, under the blessing of God, on his conduct at this peculiar crisis, no ordinary weight of anxiety pressed upon his mind.

On the one hand, he perfectly knew, that if he bent before the storm, and gave way a single step to his Popish assailants, and left London without making a determined stand against them, he never could bring forward his evidence, again without yielding to them an advantage, that would tend at least materially to weaken it in the public mind in any part of England.

On the other, the rancorous malignity of the press, the lateness of the season in London, when the greater number of members of parliament, and other influential persons had left town, or were about to leave it, wearied of public meetings and public business-the state of disappointment if not despondency of many Protestants, considering that Popery had gained a triumph through the mistake-the health of the writer himself, and his being under the necessity of returning immediately to Ireland, rendered it very difficult to contemplate another public meeting. But still, confident of the weight and clearness of the evidence he had to produce, and knowing that the very tone of exultation and triumph of the Popish and radical press would only fall back upon themselves, when having taken up

with such acrimony the fictitious bull, which the writer disclaimed the moment he knew it, they should be unable to meet the evidence of real bulls ten times worse than that, even had it been genuine, which he would adduce and maintain against them, and feeling that the very publicity they were giving to the case, would tell in the end. against themselves, he determined to use his best exertions to have another public meeting, and if this were impracticable, at least to vindicate himself from bending to the clamour and abuse, so that his evidence on another occasion, should not be weakened by the imputation of deserting his post on the present. Accordingly, having considered the circumstances in which he stood, he requested a meeting of the committee of the Protestant Association, on Friday the 22d. Feeling it would be impossible for them to convene a public meeting, unless they knew that they had solid grounds on which to proceed, he told them some of the facts to be adduced against the Popish bishops; that the fictitious bull, even had it been genuine, was a mere trifle compared with those which they had actually set up in Ireland, the very year when it professed to bear date; and having stated the nature of the documents, he gave to one of the members the following letter, with a request that it might be published in the Standard of Saturday and the Record of Monday, and leaving the committee to determine their course, and requesting they might hold a meeting at once, as he must return immediately to Ireland, he departed again from London, to the dying bed of his young friend ::

To the Committee of the Protestant Association.

"Friday, July 22d, 1836.

"DEAR FRIENDS AND BRETHREN-Having, through the medium of the public journals, expressed my deep regret for my unguarded and precipitate adoption of a fictitious document, I humbly trust my letter may render the only reparation in my power to those who, on any side, may have been wounded through my error. Exposed, as I have been, to public reproach-friends disappointed, enemies triumphing, to say I did not feel, were to say that I had not the feelings of a man. Personal considerations would induce me to withdraw, at least at present, from the controversy, and to wait till the storm of the reproach of enemies and the rebuke of friends were past; but I have only one consideration to think of, one single point to determine-what is my duty to the sacred cause of truth? All personal considerations-all regard to the