law now stands, are in opposition to those of the supreme Pastor?

Well may we doubt, whether his Holiness can, but we must confidently presume, that he never did authorize any one during his captivity to answer for himself and his successors, that no occasion shall ever occur, in which a correspondence may necessarily take place between the supreme Pastor and other Pastors or Ministers of the dispersed flocks, requiring indispensable secrecy. Piteous is the flat nonsense, with which this part of the rescript is worked up, to inculcate as a Catholic duty the cordial adoption of a mongrel lay-committee, to inspect and controul the most secret, confidential, and important intercourse of the flocks with the supreme Pastor. What can be more repugnant, than to admit, that « those matters only shall be kept secret, which affect the internal tribunal of << conscience: »> and the approbation of a lay committe (no matter whether Catholic, Protestant, or mixed), << to examine any letters, which are sent to any of the clergy of Great Britain from the ecclesiastical powers, and diligently to enquire, whe «ther any thing be contained therein, which may

be obnoxious to the Government, or in any way << disturb the public tranquillity.» How is diligent enquiry to be performed without canvass and debate? And how are things canvassed and debated kept secret?

The concluding exhortation is a most unfounded, wanton, and malicious lash at the Irish Bishops, who have thrice in national synod unanimously reprobated, cendemned, and encouraged their flocks to resist (in a legal manner) the spirit, purport, and effects of the ecclesiastical clauses introduced into the Relief Bill, as directly tending to schism, and destructive of the discipline and government of the

Catholic Church. Three sets of explicit resolutions of so respectable an Hierarchy, as that of Ireland, convened in synod for the direct purpose of considering those ecclesiastical arrangements, are evidently obligatory upon their flocks (consisting of above five millions), until they shall have been formally revised, censured, or rescinded by the highest authority that is the Pope, or a general council. Can it be presumed, that his Holiness Pius VII. did from his captivity specially authorize Monsignor J. B. Quarantotti to examine, annul, or condemn the synodical acts of a regular Hierarchy ? Perhaps he could not certainly he ought not. Evidently the Irish flocks are not discharged from obedience to their pastors, upon the word of Monsignor J. B. Quarantotti.

As you, Sir John, have seldom directed the minds of your brother senators, to the consideration of this very singular document from Rome, without seasoning your address to them with a spice of invective against my heterodoxy upon the construction of oaths, and the historical inaccuracy of my writings, I could not with propriety close this letter without offering to you some fugitive thoughts upon the singular production of Monsignor J. B. Quarantotti, or of his solicitors, or draughtsmen of this highly rectified compound of policy and religion. They are merely epea pteroenta, to use the idea of your old friend, and the old friend of some of your new friends, the Rev. John Horne Tooke. Having however given much consideration to the subject, you will forgive the freedom, wi h which I compress into one sentence the real impression, which the frequent lecture and unbiassed consideration of the wonderful composition has produced upon my mind. Should you however view and feel the religious policy, or the

political religion of the composers differently from me, I still bar your right, to place those differences to the account of my historical inaccuracies. My opinion then is, that the rescript is completely of British manufacture; fitted with studied, but flimsy craft, to the hollow views of the British Cabinet, to the insidious designs of the Board of British Catholics, and to the illusion as well of all Protestants, who are or wish to be thought liberal, as of that vast multitude of persons, who are either unable or unwilling to dive deeply into so uninviting a subject.

As your attack upon my historical inaccuracy, and my opinions upon the construction of oaths in the House of Commons, gave rise to this second historical letter, and the only specified charge of inaccuracy, which I have been able to collect from any of the newspaper reports of your speeches, relates to what I have said of the Jesuits (N. B. not in my History of Ireland, where they are not mentioned, but in my first letter to you), I shall close it with some reflections upon these two subjects: Servetur ad imum, qualis ab incepto processerit.

Were I armed, Sir John, with a commission to examine you upon interrogatories, I might perhaps `come at the date of your earliest knowledge of the contents or substance of the rescript, which you have so perseveringly brought before the House of Commons. And whether your lecture of the singular comment upon swearing contained in it, after the arrival of your friend Mr. McPherson in London, on the 28th of April, were the first intima

* From the note, p. 67, in Sir J. C. Hippisley's Letter to Lord Fingal, and the tender anxieties, which the honourable Baronet expresses for that gentleman and the knowledge of his private motions on the continent in 1812, I have presumed to call him the friend of the worthy Baronet.

tion of any such doctrines wanting the sanction of Rome, in order to forward the political purposes of the religious suitors and doers of the rescript, that you ever received upon that subject? You must have been sorely sensible of the wide distance of my doctrines on oaths from those of the rescriptors. Hæret lateri lethalis arundo. You could never mention Monsignor J. B. Quarantotti's letter to Dr. Poynter in the House of Commons, without easing your wound by a discharge of peccant humour, engendered from the opinion of a private lawyer on the construction of an oath. You felt it yourself, or were warned by others, that the doctrines I maintained upon this subject formed an impenetrable shield against the unvoluntary or improvident seduction of the upright, into consequences unforeseen, from which they would recoil with horror, when perceived. It was in contemplation of such probabilities, that I offered to Columbanus in 1812, what I had said in 1791 upon « ́a test trap, and mock docility to spiritual power. << I call it a test trap, because it was a manœuvre « to entrap the body of the Catholics in an un« intended disclaimer of some of the highest jurisdictional prerogatives of Christ's Vicars upon << earth to illaqueate them in a subscription to a << formula at variance with their pratical submis«<sion to the authority of a living judge of con«<troversy in the church ». You will bear in mind, most worthy Baronet, that the school of Dupin is famed for its pliability to all manner of tests, and oaths, whether of adhesion or rejection, and for the purposes of admission or exclusion. The Animus jurantis (that is, of an honest, upright, and conscientious juror) is a hard mouthed

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* Appendix to Hist. Let. IV. Columbanus, p. 54, 55.

nag, which cannot be softened, or managed by the rider at will, but will have its own steady and plain dealing (as you had with Bishop Milner), and will refuse to take any oath, which is to be construed by the imposer, contrary to the plain and obvious meaning of the words and terms, in which the oath is expressed. But your doctrine of the animus imponentis sweeps away all difficulties and delicacies concerning the wording of oaths; the imposer with this simple snaffle is compleat master of his beast, turns, checks, and carries him over all at will. There is, but one field, into which the modern orthodox writers admit your favourite rule of interpretation. And i am very sincere in wishing you well out of it; however long you may have practised in the manege for qualifying for field exercise. It is, de juramento ficio et doloso. And rightly does the rule hold there, for a counterfeiter and cheat shall never profit of his own fraud and treachery. Therefore the pith of the most accredited Roman Catholic Theologians is compressed by the editor of St. Thomas's works, into the unequivocal words: «Juramentum obli«gat secundum intentionem jurantis siné dolo: alias obligat secundum sanum intellectum ejus, cui juratur.» I have already said more to you upon this subject, than you, perhaps, have relished. I cannot however forbear remarking the singularity of your imputation to me, that my opinions are neither Catholic, as they disagree from those of St. Isidore, nor Protestant, as they do not chime with those of Dr. Paley. Now, Sir John, I will candidly admit, that there are persons calling themselves Roman Catholics, who are as passionately zealous for forming an union with the Established Church of England, as Dr. Dupin was with Archbishop Wake, with whom I am not very ambitious of

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