they been bound by no such condition? Then is it not plain that the obligation is nugatory, and that they exercise their power as legislators absolutely and without control? This is a state of things which ought to give efficacy to the warning note we have heard, and should cause it to vibrate though the land. The valuable services of our reverend and respected friends are not to be estimated merely by considering the past, but also by looking to those coming events which darkly cast their shadows before. The knowledge which they labour, from the purest motives, to diffuse for the preservation of our Protestant institutions, and from an earnest desire for the highest welfare of our Roman Catholic, as well as Protestant fellowcountrymen, will sooner or later tend to undeceive the nation, and hasten the period of re-action. The time, we hope, will come when the spirit of our fathers of the Reformation, which breathes and burns in living witnesses before you, will re-animate every bosom. The day may not be very distant when the people of this country, far from responding to the agitator's cuckoo note of justice for one section of the empire, will majestically rise and claim with a mighty voice, eternal truth and justice for the free, the united kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. In proposing the resolution which he would now read, the meeting were well aware that their respected and reverend friends were influenced by infinitely higher than human approbation as the motives of their laborious, energetic, disinterested, and patriotic exertions.

"Resolved-That this meeting desire strongly to express the grateful sense they entertain of the disinterested zeal, the able and patriotic exertions of the Rev. Robert M Ghee and the Rev. Mortimer O'Sullivan, for the preservation and welfare of our Protestant institutions, and that the cordial thanks of this meeting be given to these gentlemen for their eminent services."

The reading of this resolution was followed by prolonged cheers. The thanks of the meeting having been voted to the chairman, that gentleman acknowledged the same, and the assembly separated.

601

SECOND MEETING AT BRISTOL.

Held Friday November 3, 1837.

THE results of the Bristol Meeting, though protracted to a late period of the year, are so important, to show the inability of Popery to meet the charges against it, that, as the editors close their present report with this meeting, they consider it right to give a sketch of the facts, though other important events in the history of the controversy intervened, which, if the public interest in the subject induces them to proceed with their report, will form the commencement of another volume.

A Romish Priest in Bristol, called Patrick O'Farrell, wrote a letter on the 15th of June, to the editor of the Bristol Mercury, in which, without noticing one single charge in the report, he made a merely personal and scurrilous attack on one of the speakers. The following letter was the notice taken of this:

To the Rev. P. O'Farrell, Roman Catholic Priest, Bristol.

Dublin, June 20, 1837. SIR, I have just been favoured with a copy of The Bristol Mercury, containing your letter, to the Editor, of the 15th inst.

I admire the professional ingenuity with which you have endeavoured to divert the attention of the inhabitants of Bristol from the important subject for which the Protestant meeting was convened on the 12th inst. ; but you greatly mistake the common sense of mankind, if you think it can impose on them for a moment! What are the facts? A meeting of the Protestant inhabitants of Bristol and Clifton is convened, at which many of the most respectable individuals in the vicinity are present. An oath, signed by the whole body of the Irish Roman Catholic Bishops, is produced, an oath given by them eleven years ago, under the pretence of conveying to Protestants their real sentiments and feelings on certain subjects affecting the liberties, the religion, the laws, the properties, and the lives of the Protestants of the British empire. The secret theology of these men, in which they had been training their priests (and yourself, I suppose, among the number) is produced; the Bible, with its atrocious commentary, which they had been patronising and propagating, and abjuring at the same time, is laid on the table; a code of canon law, taught in their college, and published by them five years ago as the canon law for Ireland, is brought forward; certain books, admitted to be standards for the education of their priests, are exhibited; the secret statutes of one province of Ireland are brought to light, in which the Protestants of this empire are held up as excommunicated heretics by the very man who has been mocking their credulity with public addresses, in which he calls them "Beloved fellowChristians!" These documents are compared seriatim with the oath of these bishops, and every individual who hears the comparison, unanimously adopts the resolution, that the persons who signed that oath were not worthy of credit by the Protestants of the empire.

Well, sir, you step forward as a Roman Catholic priest, and call upon the public to attend to you; and what have you to say? One syllable of your bishops' oath, your theology, your Bible, your canon law, your standards of education, or your diocesan statutes, you do not even affect to notice; one word to deprecate the justice of that solemn resolution, so denunciatory of the perfidy of your hierarchy, so unanimously passed by your Protestant fellow-citizens, you do not venture to utter: but you sit down to copy some passages of a controversial pamphlet, written twenty years ago, for the purpose of exposing, as you think, the "principles" the "intellect," the "spirit," the " orthodoxy," the "modesty," and the "charity," of one of the individuals who has laid before the public at Bristol the facts and documents on which they passed that resolution, which you do not even dare to notice !

What, sir! do you think the people of Bristol care one farthing for my person or character? Or, do you think that it is of little consequence to the Protestants of this empire whether or not the hierarchy of the church of Rome instil into the population the principles of perjury, intolerance, persecution, and sedition?—and do you imagine you can hinder them from examining principles and facts, on which the very existence of all they hold dear depends, by raising a clamour against an insignificant individual, whose very insignificance only gives weight to the facts and documents he adduced, because it shows they stand alone unsupported by the influence and authority of man, on the broad, unshaken basis of immutable, eternal truth?

Your very attack on the individual only exhibits your incapacity to attack the statement, and proves your consciousness that nothing is to be said for your bishops and their iniquity; or that, at least, you feel you have got nothing to say. If you think the resolution, passed at the Horticultural-room, true, why have you not sufficient candour and humility to confess it? If you believe it to be false, why have you not made even some little effort to disprove it?

Do you consider that Protestants are to be deceived by your attempt to divert their attention from the facts by blackening, if you can, my character? Or, do you think that Roman Catholics, who are men either of principle or feeling, can be satisfied by your utter abandonment of the character of your college, your education, your theology, your infallible commentary, your conference, your canon law, your diocesan statutes, and your bishops? Is such a contemptible person, as you are pleased to represent me, worthy of all your powers of attack ?-and are all these mighty personages and infallible things not worthy even of your humblest effort to defend? If I am so contemptible, why are you so angry? If your bishops are innocent, why are you so silent in their cause? You produce some passages of a pamphlet, written twenty years ago, to try and vilify me; but you have nothing to say of all the documents of your church existing at this day, for the exculpation of your bishops. The character of a witness may invalidate his testimony as to a fact, but it cannot affect the authenticity of a document. The resolution of the Protestant meeting was passed on the evidence of documents, which you show you cannot impeach, and it could not be affected by the character of the witness, on which you make your attempt.

I am not particularly solicitous as to what any man may write, or say, or think, of me, if I can humbly endeavour to do my duty before God. I hope I am ready to pass through evil report, and good report, without being materially affected by either of them. Respect for the truth, as well as for the inhabitants of Bristol, induces me so far to notice your quotation as to state that that controversial pamphlet was answered at the moment, in the public press. To give your charge more weight, I will add that it was written by an able and highly respected man: whether he was provoked to an unkind or intemperate charge, I shall not now inquire. It is enough to say, that, after it was written, and answered, I waited on him, was received with every kindness, we parted with mutual expressions and feelings of friendship, which were never interrupted till his death; and I should rather bear the reproach that ten thousand such writers as you could heap on me, than vindicate myself at the cost even of the shadow of a reflection on the respected memory of my departed friend.

But really, sir, the introduction of this pamphlet is, in every sense, rather too

stale a trick even for a Jesuit. This is now the fourth time that you gentlemen of the church of Rome have taken this up as your defence against the tremendous charges deducible from all the theology of your church.

First, a Mr. McHugh, a priest, wrote a letter on it in the newspaper; secondly, Mr. O'Connell quoted it largely in his Dublin Review; thirdly, he wrote a letter in which he again brought it forward in the Morning Chronicle; fourthly, Mr. McHugh again expanded it into a pamphlet; and, last not least, the Rev. P. O'Farrell parades it before the inhabitants of Bristol.

Well, sir, and do you flatter yourself you have put a stop to the investigation of truth by it? You shall soon try. You shall find, sir, that truth shall not be put down. You shall find it shall prevail in the name and in the strength of God, you shall feel that you yourself shall be made an instrument, however reluctant, of exhibiting the iniquities of that awful superstition, of which you are the minister, not only to the Protestants, but, what is far more important, to the Roman Catholics of Bristol. I shall put you first to the test on this subject, in which you affect to say you are not implicated, and then shall relieve you from all cause of personal complaint, by calling you to account before the Roman Catholics, on subjects in which I shall prove that you are

You complain, sir, of this partial Protestant meeting, which included such "a considerable number of ladies and young persons of both sexes." It is a subject, sir, demanding the attention of men, and the men of the British empire are called on to consider it.

I challenge you, then, sir, before the inhabitants of Bristol, if you will venture again to have your bishops' oath brought forward, to select any number of Roman Catholics, from fifty to five hundred, and give their names and residences in a list to the committee of the Reformation Society; I will request those gentlemen to select an equal number of Protestants, and give their names and addresses in a list to you. Let these parties be ranged on opposite sides, in the Horticultural-room, so that they can easily pass over from one side to the other, to determine the numbers who decide on any question.

I challenge you, then, if it pleases God to spare us till the first week in August, there to debate, article by article, the oath of the Irish bishops, as it was brought forward at the Protestant meeting. I shall propose the same resolution that was passed there on the 12th; I shall give you every document I quote, to examine, and answer if you are able; and I will venture to assert that the common principles of honour and integrity, the desire to vindicate themselves and their characters, as men, from a participation in perfidy, in intolerance, in persecution, and in sedition, will make the Roman Catholics of Bristol rise from their seats, and pass over, many at least, if not all, in confirmation of the sentence denounced in that resolution of the Protestant meeting. And I trust that your impotent attempts to disprove the facts and documents, if you shall venture on the task, will, in conjunction with your utter incapacity to meet the charges which I shall bring against you, officially as a priest, bring them out, as honest men who desire the salvation of their souls, to protest with us against the cruelty, the tyranny, the idolatry, and the superstition of the Church of Rome.

I remain, Sir,

A faithful friend to the best interests of my Roman Catholic fellow-subjects,

R. J. M.GHee.

This challenge Mr. O'Farrell did not venture to accept, but in the true spirit of a Jesuit, who only desires to deny, evade, and deceive, he wrote a series of seven letters to the editor of the Bristol Mercury, in which, by every possible effort of perversion of the documents, and abuse of the individual who brought them forward, he tried to blind the public mind on the subject. These letters were answered by Mr M'Ghee, and it is a just tribute to the fairness and candour of the editor of the Bristol Mercury, which stands the more conspicuous

from the general suppression of every document that tells against them, by the editors of the Popish and Radical press, to say that he received and published in his journal, the answers to Mr. O'Farrell. The insignificance of the priest who wrote the letters, the falsehood of his statements, and the circumstance that the answers merely recapitulated and reasoned on the facts already before the public, render it more than useless to publish the correspondence. But the cause of truth was too important to leave it to the fate which many would ascribe to a newspaper controversy, that of a drawn battle. It was felt to be necessary for the purpose of exhibiting Popery and its defender in their genuine colours, to drive him to an extremity, and compel him to answer the documents on the platform, or satisfy the public that he was conscious of the falsehood, both of his cause and of the arguments by which he tried to defend it. Accordingly his opponent resolved to go back to Bristol, to hold another meeting. Mr. O'Farrell's last letter was dated August 2d, and on the 15th of that month the following letter was addressed to Mr. O'Farrell, and appeared in the Bristol Mercury of the 26th.

JUSTICE FOR ROMAN CATHOLICS.

To the Rev. P. O'Farrell, Roman Catholic Priest, Bristol.

SIR,- Having resolved, as a debt of justice, not only to the Protestants of Bristol, but to the cause of truth, to return, if it pleases God to enable me, to that city to bring your statements to the test before a public meeting, I think it right to address you previously.

I beg, sir, to assure you that your various letters, and the railing which they contained, have not produced in my mind any allowed feeling of ill-will towards you. You are a poor, guilty sinner before God-so am 1: that is the best judgment that eternal truth can form of either of us. The glorious gospel of Christ proclaims deliverance to us through him that died to save sinners. I only desire that you should be brought to know that hope, and that your soul and the souls of all who are bowed down under the cruel anti-christian yoke of the papal apostacy, should be delivered from it, and brought into the light of God's truth and his salvation. That apostacy, I believe, and am sure, from God's eternal word, is the chief work of Satan; it stands out as marked in the Bible, and in the page of history, with the stamp of Jehovah's indignation: it is the "mystery of iniquity," the harlot that is "drunk with the blood of the saints;" and I call on you to come out from that Babylon that you be not a partaker of her plagues.

I wish we could contend for truth on mere abstract principles, without involving individuals; but if men will be the agents and instruments & iniquity, they must be the subjects of exposure and reproof; therefore, as a minister of that apostacy, you must either repent and abandon it, or answer for it both before man and before the bar of God,-may he deliver you before it be too late!

Your letters have led me to examine other features of Popery which I had not investigated before, and I am sorry to pronounce of you that your attempts, and that of all Romish priests and bishops, to deliver yourselves from the charge of the base, intolerant, and persecuting principles of your church, are, and you know they are, a false and iniquitous denial of your real principles: you hold them—you are bound to hold them, and all the professions of your priesthood and hierarchy to the contrary have been but one system of perfidy and imposture on the Protestants of the British empire. If you deny it, bring the very creed to which you accuse me of not referring your creed of Pope Pius the IV.: bring your Council of Trent, which you