"Having disclaimed, disavowed, denounced these notes at the time, it has been declared with the utmost flippancy of assertion, that I would not now disclaim them again. You have heard this asserted; but you should know it is utterly untrue. I have all my life disclaimed any such doctrines or opinions as those condemned by me in these notes. On the contrary, I have ever asserted the sacred rights of conscience to be free from legal duress or responsibility. I have made more speeches-I have published more letters and addresses, than any other living man. These speeches were reported by foes as well as friends; we always accommodated the reporters of adverse newspapers quite as well as those of the popular papers; yet, I defy any man to point out a single expression of mine, or even that I know of attributed to me, that trenched on the right of liberty of conscience; nay more, my thoughts, words, and actions, ALL, ALL, tended to and aided in the establishment of that sacred principle.

"M'Ghee, indeed, asserted, it seems (for what will he not assert ?) that I am now unwilling to denounce the Rhemish notes. This is not true. I do now as I did then, disclaim them, disavow them, denounce them. Let my words, as reported in 1817, be taken as my present words; I repeat them all-they contain my present avowed sentiments, unequivocally and emphatically.

"M'Ghee-I am almost ashamed to write the wretched man's name-asserted in your presence, that I was prevented by my bishops from making the disclaimer proposed in 1817. His words are- I say his bishops would not allow it.' In another place he says—' The reason is, that his bishops would not permit him!'

"Now, sir, I deny both these assertions, and each of them by itself. "This, of course, puts the proof on M'Ghee. I cannot prove a negative, unless it be what Shakespeare calls a lie circumstantial.' Let him then give circumstances; let him tell what bishops prevented me. Let him name them, or any of them. Let him name one living bishop.

"Let him state when they prevented me; in what year at least. Let him state at what place the prohibition was made or communicated; in what manner; was it verbal or in writing?

"In short, let him append time, place, manner, and persons to his assertion, and I will easily refute his falsehood. It is he that should prove his assertion. He has no proof. Let him clothe his falsehood with circumstances, and that will enable me to expose it.

"For the present, I can only distinctly declare that all that he has said on this subject is totally false. No bishops or bishop ever interfered with me, directly or indirectly, in this matter.

T "In his representations, malicious-in his quotations, false-in argument, despicable-in assertion, undaunted.' Such is the character given of M'Ghee by a Protestant clergyman, a fellow of Dublin University. With this character I should leave him if he had not superadded the recent forgery. It is quite in character that your Exeter Hall buffoons should mingle their congenial spirits with his. You are just the man to be and to create dupes of the most silly class.

"I am, Rev. Sir, your most obedient servant,

"DANIEL O'CONNELL."

• This letter appeared on the morning of the meeting, August 2d.

220

FOURTH MEETING IN EXETER HALL.

Heki August 2d, 1836.

PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION.*

A GENERAL meeting of this Association was held on Tuesday, at the great room at Exeter Hall, for the purpose of affording to the Rev. R. J. M'Ghee an opportunity to make important disclosures respecting the doctrines maintained by the Romish bishops in Ireland, which he was unable to bring forward at the meeting of the 14th ult.,

The meeting was as numerously attended as that held on the 14th ult. On the platform we noticed many friends of the association; but owing to the advanced period of the year, there was not so large an attendance of members of parliament as at the previous meeting.

At a quarter past eleven o'clock, George Finch, Esq., M. P., accompanied by the Rev. R. J. M'Ghee, came on the platform. The Rev. Mr. M'Ghee was loudly cheered on his appearance. There were several Roman Catholics on the platform, and we understood the Rev. Dr. Wiseman was amongst the number.

Henry Quin, Esq., one of the secretaries, came forward and said, before any proceedings were commenced, he was directed by the committee of the association to read to the meeting the following resolution to which they had come on the 26th ult. At that meeting it was resolved" That the cordial thanks of this committee be presented to George Finch, Esq., M. P., for the able and kind manner in which he presided over the meeting on the 14th of July, and that he be earnestly solicited to take the chair at the general meeting on the 2d of August."

Mr. Finch, having taken the chair, said, that in consequence of the expenses attending these meetings, a collection would be made at the doors at the close of the proceedings.

The Rev. A. S. Thelwall, having at the request of the chairman, offered up a prayer to invoke the Divine blessing on the meeting,

* The report is taken from that of the Dublin Evening Mail.

The Chairman said-Ladies and gentlemen, before we open the proceedings, I am anxious to say a few words, for which I have to beg the indulgence of the meeting, as they relate to myself personally. I have, with reference to what took place at the former meeting, been attacked in a variety of ways. On the one hand, I have been called a patron of forgery, while on the other I have been described as a man, ignorant of great dulness-of no quickness or penetration which might enable me to detect a forgery, and that I was altogether unfit for the situation in which I had the honour to be placed; yet, notwithstanding this, I still live to tell the tale. As to the charge of being the patron of forgery, I beg to say a word or two. In the first place, I assert, that no forgery whatever has been committed, and where none has been committed, I cannot, of course, be charged with being its patron. As to my being an ignorant man, I admit that the charge is an appalling one. In this enlightened age, when even every mechanic you meet is a Solon or a Lycurgus, quick to detect and able to remedy every defect and evil of our constitution, it is difficult to define what an educated man is. I know not how high he must have scaled the heights of literature, or to what depths he must have descended in its mysteries-how many languages he may have mastered-how many cubic feet of knowledge he must have swallowed and digested, to be entitled to the character of an educated man. But on the charge of ignorance I am willing to suffer judgment to go by default. I shall now state the circumstances connected with my occupation of the chair at the last meeting. I came to the committee-room on that occasion, certainly without any expectation of being called to the chair; and it was not until I found apologies from three or four noblemen who had been expected to attend, and until the hon. member for Bradford had positively refused to take the chair, that I consented to the proposition that I should fill it. I have also consented to take the chair on the present occasion, because it has been publicly declared that I would not take the chair at any meeting which was to be addressed by my friend, the Rev. Mr. M'Ghee; and I thought the best way to refute that charge was, to accept the very flattering offer which the committee made to me (cheers). Now, I shall briefly state the circumstances which occurred at that meeting. The Rev. Mr. M'Ghee, after an address of about three hours, showing that the notes to the Rhemish Testament had received the sanction of the Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland, produced a document from which

he had read several extracts, and of which he stated that he knew the author. While the rev. gentleman was reading, the honourable member for Bradford wrote on a slip of paper, "Is this genuine? Do you know its author?" Both questions having been answered in the affirmative, I could not allow myself for a moment to doubt the authenticity of the document. Finding, however, afterwards, [that the letter was spurious, I wrote in one of the papers a strong letter on the subject, the terms of which I now most willingly retract. With respect to the letter itself, allow me to observe, that a letter pretending to be a pastoral letter from the Pope to the heads of the university of Oxford issued from the press. This, however, was on the face of it what is called a pasquinade. No one pretended that it was genuine, and nobody could for a moment be deceived by it. It could not be supposed that the bishop of Rome would write a pastoral letter to those who were so much opposed to him as the heads of the university of Oxford. There was, however, a similarity between that document and the one which had been read by the Rev. Mr. M'Ghee. This similarity was shown in the preface. That the letter had obtained a very wide circulation, might be collected from the fact that it had gone through three editions. Whoever read the two must have been convinced that the author of the one had his eye on the other. Indeed, the Christian Examiner, which immediately followed the publication of the letter to the University of Oxford, intimated that a similar letter, but on another subject, would soon make its appearance on the other side. It was then, too much, to accuse Mr. Todd of a forgery in the production of the second letter. In noticing the production of Mr. Todd, the Christian Examiner of this month has the following remark:-" We confess that, when predicting last month in a review of the pretended Pastoral Letter to the University of Oxford, that this simulation by the friends of Dr. Hampden would be imitated by the opposite party we little thought that so obvious an imitation of it as the pretended letter from the Pope to the bishops of Ireland could have been mistaken or misunderstood by any man." Thus far the Christian Examiner and now having an opportunity of seeing both the documents, I fully concur that, with that opportunity, few, if any persons, could be deceived as to the nature of the second. For my own part I was so immersed in parliamentary business, that I neither saw the Christian Examiner, nor had any knowledge of the second letter, until brought