work came out complete and finished in Cork, with the names of these bishops all printed in the list of subscribers. These are plain facts; there are the Bibles-there are the lists-and there are the names— and there is the date. Now, you sit down and write a letter to Mr. Page, to account for your own conduct, and to show why, after all this fuss, you never disclaimed these notes, either at your board or your aggregate meeting, and also to try and acquit your bishops from the crime of patronizing this Bible, and to abuse me. Now how do you proceed? You divide your defence into twenty heads! In the first nine sections of your letter you do not even once mention the subject of the Bible. You give a history of the Roman Catholics and their dissensions about the veto, for which you might just as well have substituted an epitome of the history of the Goths and Vandals-it would be just as relevant to the point. In the 10th section you inform the public that the British Critic and Courier took up this publication, which you say was commenced by a bookseller of the name of M Namara in Cork, and continued by another in Dublin. This is not true; it was commenced in Dublin by M'Namara, who employed Mr. Cumming to print it, and it was revised and corrected by a priest in Dublin, appointed by Dr. Troy himself for that purpose, as Coyne's letter proves thus printed in his own diocese his own city-by his own reviser--under his own appointment. In your eleventh section you state that the British Critic and Courier vituperated these notes merely to excite the spirit of sectarian bigotry in England, and to convert religion, as I would do, into an instrument of hatred, &c. Now I will just stop here to observe that one of the most audacious exhibitions of Popish treachery and falsehood is to be found in this specimen of controversy to which you and your priests continually resort. There is no species of rancour, of malevolence, of bitter persecuting rage, of false unprincipled misrepresentation to which you have not recourse in some of your books-your books for children, your books for the people, your Bibles for example, like these Rhemish notes, you yourself boast in a few lines after, that you denounce as bigoted and intolerant-yet if any person brings forward the facts of these books and principles, which are thus inculcated by your priests and bishops, he is an agent to excite sectarian bigotry and rancour, &c. &c. It is sectarian bigotry even to mention the iniquity of your books, books which you try by every artifice to disseminate, and by every falsehood to deny ; but you are to be allowed, not only with impunity, but without remark, to inculcate the principles which it is uncharitable in us forsooth even to notice.

"The public are so ignorant of Popery, and so little prepared to

consider as false the most prompt and audacious statements, and assurances, and oaths, that this mode of assertion succeeds with more than half the world; but the eyes of men will open a little by and by; meantime, sir, it is important to keep the subject before the public mind. This matter shall be thoroughly sifted, and as it were much too long to reply to your letter at once, I trust to resume my pen when I reach Ireland. Hoping, sir, that you may yet be delivered from that system of iniquity to which you are now in bondage,

"I remain your obedient servant,

"R. J. M'GHEE."

The effect produced by this meeting on the popish and radical press was as if a paralysis had seized on the hands of those who conducted it-the papers which on Monday had poured forth columns of vituperation, on Wednesday were as dumb as if there were no popery to defend in the empire. They did not venture to utter a syllable on one of the bulls, not even to name those that had been quoted. They felt the case proved, and they were utterly incompetent to reason on it, and therefore thought it better to be silent. But its effects were still more remarkably exhibited in the fact, that while some of the Roman Catholics felt called on to hold a meeting on the subject themselves, they were compelled to give up all idea of making an appeal to the public on the case, they did not even dare to do more then allude to it.

Dr. Wiseman, who had come forward with such an unworthy artifice to try and divert public attention from the facts, and to throw the speaker into confusion, at the meeting, drew up a set of resolutions, which speak his sense of the detection and exposure of the iniquity of his church.

The following account of these resolutions and their meeting is taken from the Dublin Weekly Register, Thursday, August 10th.

66 MEETING IN LONDON-PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION.

"On Saturday a numerous and respectable meeting of Roman Catholics was held at Pagliano's Hotel, Leicester-square, in pursuance of a requisition, to take into consideration the course which it may be most proper to adopt in reference to the late proceedings of the 'Protestant Association' at Exeter-Hall.

"About two hundred gentlemen attended-men high in rank, and wealth, and intellect. The meeting was addressed by Mr. Leahy, Dr. Wiseman, and others. All the speakers urged the inexpediency of holding any public meeting of the Roman Catholics at this period, especially as the Protestant Association, by its late conduct, had disentitled its proceedings to any notice whatever.

"The following resolutions were submitted by Dr. Wiseman, and carried unanimously:

"That it is unnecessary and inexpedient to vindicate the Catholic cause by any general meeting.

"That we consider the persons calling themselves the Protestant Association, who have lately twice met at Exeter Hall, to listen to the declamations of the Rev. R. M'Ghee, to be an assembly not recognised by the Protestant community of this country, as the representatives of their feelings towards their Catholic fellow-subjects.

"That on two recent occasions, the proceedings of the individuals alluded to have been so void of common fairness, that they must open the eyes of all sensible men to the real motives which actuate their authors; and that we have too much confidence in the uprightness, good sense, and good feeling of our fellow-countrymen, to consider ourselves called upon to take any further public step for the purpose of meeting or denying charges which an opportunity has been refused us of answering in the face of those who made them, and which have been a thousand times denied and refuted.

"That the ample confutation published in the Dublin Review, of that part of Mr. M'Ghee's statements which referred to the Rhemish notes on the New Testament, and his self-conviction of the wicked forgery, which, after discovery, he defended, are sufficient to annul, in the eyes of all sensible and well-feeling persons, all the transactions of the first meeting of July 14th; and that the meeting of Tuesday last, from its comparatively thin attendance, and the general appearance of the audience, gave evidence of the effects which the preceding exhibition had produced on the public mind-distrust in the statements, and disgust at the conduct of such emissaries of discord.

"That we should, therefore, be lowering ourselves in the eyes of the public, were we now to appear before its tribunal on the summons of such persons; when the public has so manifestly rejected their indictment; and that, leaving our vindication to the public press, to the experience of our own conduct as citizens, and as Christians, and to the justice of our fellow-subjects, the only feelings with which we can think of noticing the charges of Mr. M'Ghee, as an organ of the Protestant Association, are compassion for the weakness of those per

sons who have been deluded by them, and abhorrence and contempt of the arts by which they have been advanced and supported.

"That the foregoing resolutions be inserted in the Morning Chronicle, Morning Herald, Courier, and Standard newspapers.

(Signed)

"CHARLES WELD, Chairman. DAVID LEAHY, Secretary."

These resolutions speak for themselves. The popish appeal from facts to the "good sense and good feeling" of their countrymen-the pretence that they had no opportunity to answer charges which the whole body of the popish members of parliament were challenged, as the documents prove, to meet on the spot-their long resolution as to the fictitious bull, brought forward on the 14th ultimo, while the press had exhausted itself for more than a fortnight in attacking it, and their veiling the facts and documents produced at the last meeting, under the cover of "the comparatively thin attendance," (near four thousand persons,) and "the general appearance of the audience," showed their deep conviction of the guilt of their bishops and the unanswerable demonstrations of the evidence that proved it. In fact, they felt they dared not attempt to call public attention to these bulls by any effort to deny the case. Dr. Wiseman knew well what he was engaged in, and that his smooth, jesuitical system of philosophical sermonising, with which he blinds the Protestants in London, could not stand a moment, if the English people were really to be led to examine and to understand the system of deep villany that lies concealed under the specious garb in which he would dress popery. Therefore, from the loud tone of denunciation against the fictitious Bull, which, if it had been true, would have only proved the pope a clever knave-he, and all his partizans, shrunk into silence from the consciousness of detected crime, when a set of bulls were produced, published not by the pope, but by the popish bishops in the same year when the fictitious bull was dated, which fastened on them the crimes of perjury, sedition, and persecution, of attacking religion, property, liberty, and life.

The next notice of the subject was an examination of Mr. O'Connell's letter to Mr. Page, in three letters, which, as they remain, and ever must remain, unanswered by that gentleman, seem to deserve a place in the records of this controversy.

282

RHEMISH BIBLES AND ROMISH BISHOPS.

FIRST LETTER.

"To Daniel O'Connell, Esq. M. P.

" August 10, 1836.

"SIR-You, who are accustomed to cross-examination, know what an important matter it is to the elucidation of truth to get witnesses of a certain description to tell a story twice. Your friend, the Courier, has informed the world, that the article in the Dublin Review, on the meeting at Exeter Hall, is from your pen, so, if you please, we shall place your statement of a fact in the Review, beside your statement of a fact in the Chronicle.

"In the Review you say, p. 507, speaking of M'Namara's Bible of 1816, which was printed in Dublin by Mr. Cumming, and came out under the name of Mr. Coyne, he procured a considerable number of subscribers, among them most of the bishops, many of the clergy, and several respectable laymen living in the neighbourhood of Cork. Dr. Troy was then the Catholic Archbishop in Dublin. Dr. Troy's approbation was solicited for this edition of the Scripture, that it might go forth in an authentic form; and his Grace gave it without hesitation, not imagining that it would be more than a handsome reprint of Cross's Bible, against which no objection had ever been raised. In order, however, to guard the purity of the text, Dr. Troy conditioned that the proof sheets should be revised by a Catholic clergyman, Mr. Walsh, whom he named for that purpose.'

"Here, now, we have your letter and your review.

"In one you say Dr. Troy's approbation was obtained by Mr. Walsh.

"In the other you inform us, that Dr. Troy's approbation was 'solicited,' and 'given without hesitation,' to M'Namara.

"In your letter it was obtained by culpable neglect of one man. "In your review it was given without hesitation at the request of another.

"In the Review, in consequence of the approbation given to the work by M'Namara, Dr. Troy appoints Mr. Walsh' as examiner.'

"In the letter, it is through the culpable neglect of the examiner that this previous approbation was obtained.

"In the Review Mr. Walsh is appointed examiner, because the work was previously approved.

"In the letter the work was subsequently approved, because this culpably negligent gentleman was appointed examinator.