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challenge. You recollect you pleaded various reasons; your humility, and your charity, and dignity, and religion, your contempt of me, and all your virtues engaged on the side of inflexible silence on the point at issue. Your friends have tried to excuse your conscious shrinking from the shock of truth, by stating that indeed you could not condescend so far. You, sir! a man who goes about and makes speeches at the head of every mob, in every street, and window, and tavern in the empire-you could not condescend to stand forth upon the platform in Exeter-hall, when you could have filled the half of it with any class of men you pleased, and when your Bible and your bishops were the subjects of discussion!!!

"Well, sir, in this state of the case, and on this very occasion, when he is bringing forward the case of these Rhemish notes, your opponent makes a slip he falls into a blunder. He had produced document after document, and challenged you over and over again to meet them, but all, as we have seen, in vain, till on this one day a false document is brought forward. What is the result? Instantly you spring out, like a tiger from his lair, who sees his prey pass within a bound. Your dignity-your humility--your charity-your religion-your condescension--your scruples, of all sorts, are forgotten-your silence is burst, like one dumb restored to speech, and out you rush into the press. Paragraphs, leading-articles, reviews, letters, orations, come teeming forth like a torrent, if possible to bear down and overwhelm your opponent for ever.

"Such, sir, is your conduct as to this fictitious bull. Now mark the position in which you have placed yourself as to these genuine bulls. Mark, sir, how it has pleased Divine Providence to effect by my failure what I have been utterly unable to accomplish by all the efforts of my own strength. Yes, sir, notwithstanding your infidel scoff, I say Divine Providence has effected it. You have been tempted to rush out and to exert all your powers in an attack on this fictitious document, which was discovered and declared to be fictitious by the very man who brought it forward, before you ever wrote a syllable on the subject. "You have proclaimed to all the nation that all your humility and all your charity, and all your other objections were but a pretence, to cover your conscious impotence to meet the truth; for the moment you can hope to gain the least advantage, even of a mistake, out you rush with all your energy into the field. You shall feel too late what a blunder you have committed. You shall wish you had let that bull pass by unnoticed.

"Nescia mens hominum fati sortisquæ futuræ
Et servare modum, rebus sublata secundis.
Turno tempus erit, magno cum optaverit emptum
Intactum Pallanta, et cum spolia ista diemque
Oderit.'

"You have rushed like an unskilful general into an ambuscade, in which you are alike unable either to fight or fly. You have rushed forward to meet the document which you knew to be false. Mark now how you shall be made to prove your conscious apprehension of those that you know to be true, and to sink into your former conscious cowardice of silence again.

"And now, sir, in the face of all the British empire, I challenge you and I defy you to meet the case of these genuine documents, and to put your bulls and bishops to the proof.

"Now, sir, go and shout out Justice for Ireland!' shout it out, sir, 'Justice for Ireland!' and let every honest man in the empire echo your cry,―JUSTICE FOR IRELAND.' But tell the nation, sir, Is plunder justice? Is murder justice? Is perjury justice? Is the inquisitorial tyranny of Rome justice? Justice for Ireland,' sir; I say, 'Justice for Ireland.' Justice, first of all, for the Roman Catholics of Ireland. Let every honest man among them who shrinks, as I trust hundreds of thousands do, from the crimes-the secret code of crimes inculcated in the theology of their bishops-let him stand forth-let them all now see the men that make merchandise of their souls, and make the honest, unsuspecting credulity of religious confidence with which the people trust them, an engine of their own detestable policy, and of bringing their unsuspecting victims and their miserable country into scenes of anarchy, and cruelty, and blood. If these statements are true, my appeal is not to the Protestants, but to the Roman Catholics of Ireland. I say, 'Justice for the Roman Catholics,' the most aggrieved, betrayed people on the face of the earth.

"I appeal to my Roman Catholic countrymen; I appeal to their understandings; I appeal to their consciences; I appeal to the warm affections of their hearts, which I believe in my soul would be united in peace and love with their Protestant brethren, if their priests, and bishops, and demagogues did not kindle and keep alive, from their childhood to their grave, the accursed spirit of animosity and bitterness which characterises the doctrines of the Church of Rome, for their own objects of tyranny and domination over the liberties, the properties, the consciences, and the lives of men. I appeal, I say, to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and never shall Ireland see peace, till all Protestants appeal to them, not with laws or with swords, but with bold, determined Christian fidelity, and truth, and love. I ask them, before God, if these detestable principles of perjury, and rapine, and persecution, and blood, can be the principles of the Christian religion? I ask them, if the men who inculcate principles like these, can be justly called ministers of the blessed Redeemer of sinners? I ask them, if a

system such as this can stand the test of God's judgment? if it can bring peace to the conscience, or salvation to the soul? I call on them to come out from such a system of guilt and cruelty, and protest with us against it. I call on them to stand forward and embrace their Protestant countrymen, that we may live, not like savages of conflicting tribes, but like rational beings, if not like Christian brethren, together. I call on them to consider what wonder it is, that their spiritual tyrants shut up the word of God from them and their children, when the principles they inculcate are not only abhorrent from that word, but from all principles of religion and humanity.

"I appeal to them to consider what confidence for truth or honesty, or religion, or any virtue, can they place in men who give them principles so atrocious as those in the Rhemish notes, as the infallible comment of their church on God's word, and then, when even their fellowworms call this into question, not only are afraid to acknowledge their infallible comment, but actually deny and abjure their own principles, and say or swear they never saw the book before.

"I appeal to my countrymen in the name of God, to exercise the understanding with which he has blessed them, in considering these truths.

"If they say they do not believe these statements to be truths, they cannot believe their bishops and priests have adopted such atrocious bulls as their secret laws, then I turn them to the proof-I call on them to look to you, and to mark how you shall shrink from putting the facts to the test. I bid them to mark the man who makes a tool of their religion when it serves to make them bend to your political dictation, and prove how you make it but a tool, how you have not the honesty to confess that it is wrong, nor the courage to make it appear that you believe it to be right. I call on every honest Roman Catholic-1 conjure them to mark whether those who will faithfully tell them the truth, or those who will deceive them, are more their friends. You will pretend great zeal for religion if an election is to be carried. Then you cry out, let the man who deserts his religion be marked, let him be hooted at, let him be avoided, let a death's-head and cross-bones be hung over his door,' &c., &c. Now let the Roman Catholics see who it is, that deserts the cause of his religion. Let them mark this when their priests go to beg money from them for you, when you mock them with promises never to be realized, and delude them with expectations never to be fulfilled, while you and your spiritual taskmasters lash them into constant agitation and enmity against their Protestant neighbours, keeping them and their children in ignorance of God's holy word, that you may make them the slaves of spiritual tyranny and the tools of political ambition.

·

"I call on my Protestant fellow-subjects of all denominations to publish this letter and to circulate it in their respective towns and cities, and to call faithfully on their Roman Catholic friends and neighbours to consider and examine it, that their eyes may be opened to see where true religion lies; I call on the different cities and towns in England and Scotland where you have gone imposing on the credulity of men with hollow professions of liberality, while you are really the tool of the darkest papal tyranny and oppression-1 call on them to make you stand forward and meet those facts if you dare, before their faces; that when you presume to impeach those who will honestly speak the truth, with going about to sow discord and with stating falsehoods concerning Popery, the nation may be led to see where truth and falsehood really lie, that they may see whether the iniquity lies in the system, or in those who faithfully expose it; whether the robber and the murderer, with loud professions of integrity on his lips, while he is threatening and ripening the plot for his crimes, is the man of peace, or he who seizes him in the midst of his career and drags him to the bar of public justice?

"And now, sir, I care not one farthing what use you make of this letter; I shall use it, sir; I shall appeal to it, sir; I shall quote it, and read it, and prove it, as it may seem useful to substantiate the cause of truth. If you answer it, you shall confirm it by the impotence of your defence; and if not, I will authenticate it by the conscious cowardice of your silence.

"You talk of politics, sir, and political objects. Sir, I would not give a straw between any two politicians in the British empire for Ireland. What can they do for Ireland, sir? Nothing. No earthly power can promote the interests of Ireland till the eyes of its inhabitants are opened to see the truth of God's eternal word, and till they are delivered from the outward darkness and cruel slavery of papal tyranny into the light and liberty of God's freedom; till they learn to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, instead of priests, for their salvation, and take the word of God, instead of the fatal counsels of those who neither fear God nor regard man, for their guides.

66

'I am, sir, a sincere and faithful friend to the best interests of my Roman Catholic countrymen,

"R. J. M'GHEE."

The interest awakened in Glasgow by the meetings in 1835, and that held at the commencement of the present year, had not subsided. A series of meetings were held in the summer. At the first, where Dr. Cooke, with his usual power and fulness of information delighted and instructed his hearers, neither of the editors were present. Dr. O'Sullivan assisted at the second and third.

302

SECOND

GREAT PROTESTANT MEETING

AT GLASGOW,

On Wednesday, September 26th, 1836.

A SECOND meeting of the Protestants of Glasgow was held in Hopestreet Gaelic Church, on Wednesday night, which was as numerously and as respectably attended as the former. The church was occupied in every part, and the platform was again crowded by clergymen and laymen of the city and surrounding country. The interest of the audience was again most enthusiastic. On the motion of Charles Stirling, Esq. of Kenmuir, J. C. Colquhoun, Esq. of Killermont, was called to preside. The Rev. Dr. Brown, of St. John's, opened the meeting with an impressive prayer.

The Chairman then rose, and spoke to the following effect:-My friends, there is a subject which I think must have pressed on the thoughts of all whom I have the pleasure of addressing. It may be expressed by this simple question, What is the reason that when we contemplate the state of Ireland, we find it so differently situated from either England or Scotland?—What is it that makes the popu lation of Ireland so singularly contrasted with that of Scotland, so different in various points, which strike the attention of every one who reflects on the condition of its inhabitants? Our politicians and statesmen give us many reasons for this. One says that there are too many bogs, and that we must set about draining them instantlythat we must open up new communications, and give facility to internal intercourse; another says that you must reform its system of poor laws, and introduce some necessary ameliorations into its institutions. In my mind this difficult problem bears some resemblance to a rusty lock. If you try to wrench it forcibly open, it will resist

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