Of the inoffensiveness of my conduct in England, especially since I began to prepare myself,

show himself, what he has been for many years, my affectionate friend. The Right Honourable Lord Holland knew me during his last visit to Spain in 1809; and from that period till the present moment, I have received uninterrupted and increasing proofs of his esteem. His house was one of the first I visited, when, in 1810, I arrived in London; and for sixteen years I have been either a frequent visitor, or an inmate in it, For two years I was tutor to the Honourable Henry Fox, a charge with which his noble father honoured me of his own accord, and in spite of the fears I expressed, that my growing ill health might disqualify me for its important duties. Lord Holland's rank entitled him to be my Patron; but he chose to be my friend; indeed, the letter he has written to me from Paris, upon hearing that my character had been slandered, would show the name of friend too weak, and require some other, little short of a brother, to explain the feelings it expresses. Great, indeed, must be the candour, and almost singular the goodness of heart, from which I receive such ample justice but tried also (I thank God) must be the purity of intention, which so effectually has screened me from every suspicion, which might have lowered me, if not in the respect, in the affection of my noble friend. To me there is scarcely a stronger proof of my sincerity than the pain I have endured, from the moment when I began to fear, that in the discharge of a paramount duty, I might disturb the course of that long

by prayer and study, to become a member of her Church, I thank God I have a witness in every person that knows me, and I have not lived in obscurity.

As this, Sir, is a fact which the utmost malice of your Associates cannot even obscure, their efforts to represent my conduct in Spain as odious and highly immoral, must recoil upon that Church of Rome, which they are trying to defend by such infamous means. It is sufficiently glorious to the Church of England to have been the instrument which restored Christian faith and hope to my soul. Your friends, Sir, should be more cautious, not to acknowledge in the English Church a power which she does not claim for herself: they should not attribute to her the miracle, of having converted a monster, such as you heard me described, into a Christian, who has now lived in her bosom so many years, "touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless."

To have been consenting, like Saul, to the moral murder of one of your fellow Chrisenjoyed and most highly-valued affection. But I did not know the full extent of Lord Holland's candour and benevolence.

tians, is a stain in your hitherto fair character for humanity and benevolence, which you will find it difficult to wipe away. But to behold, in silent approbation, that brother Christian tortured with a brutality, which exceeds that of the barbarians, who delight in dissecting alive the victims on whose limbs they are prepared to feast, is beyond what I could have conceived possible in a man of your reputation. Sir, there are spots in the human heart, so sensitive and tender, that, like the pupil of the eye, no degree of criminality can justify their being fixed upon to inflict pain as a punishment. Those recesses of the breast, which have been consecrated by filial and parental love, should not, in any case, be subjected to the knife of the moral executioner. He, whom the British Catholic Association employed to wreak their vengeance upon me, selected, Sir, those very spots to make me writhe with pain. Yes, Sir, I will yield him that triumph: he has, indeed, maddened my soul with agony, by charging me with having "broken my mother's heart." She is no more, Sir; and fifty years have past since my head rested first

upon her bosom. But God witnesses the tears which stream from my eyes at this moment, when I am forced to appeal to her blessed spirit, for the falsehood of the charge, which your associates have brought against me. Even when her mind was under the influence of those errors which she imbibed from your Church, she would have indignantly flung the brutal falsehood on the man who uttered it against her child. Her misery on my account was owing to the wicked tyranny of a religious system, which by oaths, as well as by threats of death and infamy, too sure to be put into execution by a court of her priests, secures the external obedience of her members; leaving their minds to the chance of believing or rejecting her tenets. That Church, which should be the guide, is made, by her impious ambition, the most fatal snare to her children. She it is, that tenders an oath, which not only attests present belief, but, no less wickedly than absurdly, binds her slaves to keep her faith (whether they should in future find it true or false), by God's grace unto their lives?

end." It is your Church which thus places. thousands of her unfortunate followers between

contending duties, if that can be called a duty, which implies that God is the supporter of what we conscientiously believe to be false, and contrary to his revealed word. I was, Sir, one of those victims; and awful, indeed, was the struggle between my love for my parents, and my natural abhorrence of dissimulation. Had there been the least grain of hypocrisy in my composition, I might, like many others, have indulged my passions without the necessity of much concealment, have lived in the enjoyment of my mother's happiness; and should, most probably, be at this moment holding the highest honours of the Church of Spain, with no more conformity with her tenets than the external, which has at all times sufficed to many of her dignitaries and bishops. But I abhorred deception; yet could not fly from the theatre of imposture, in which I was a forced actor in chains. Had those chains been of no stronger materials than worldly interest, or even fear of being brought back to the Inquisitorial dungeons from my flight, I should have snapt them like withs; but they were rivetted on my parents' hearts, and I could not break them without making