army, the colonies, and even England herself-can these be the fruit of ignorance, and idleness, and improvidence ? True, those amongst us whose hands produce this food and raiment are half naked, and you have been called upon to subscribe for their relief when they were actually starving by thousands upon thou sands. You generously gave that relief; and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Misery never appealed to English humanity in vain, But, it is not your benevolence, though we join the rest of the world in applauding it, but your justice that we want. That justice will lead you to ask how it can have happened, that a people should be in a state of the most deplorable distress, the most frightful famine, at the very moment when fleets, laden with food, the produce of their own soil and labour, were freighted from their shores; and while, oh, deceived Englishmen! you were paying and clothing a large and most expensive army, who were well fed, and even feasting on Irish food, and whose cannons, and sabres, and bayonets had no other use than that of making the expiring producers of the food refrain from breaches of the peace! If you put this question to yourselves, if you cast your eyes on this scene, and them coldly turn a deaf ear to the call we now make upon you, never again let us hear of English justice, of English humanity.

Trusting, however, that we shall always hear of both, and that it will be our delight to be amongst the foremost to proclaim them to the world, we will, in few words, lay the history of our wrongs before you; we will briefly state to you the causes of our miscries, and describe to you that remedy in the obtaining of which we now appeal to you for aid.

During more than one thousand years the Catholic religion was the religion of our and your fathers. A time arrived when the Government became Protes tant, and when, no matter by what means, your fathers were brought, by degrees, to adopt and to follow the new religion. Our fathers retained the ancient faith. This faith they have handed. down to us; in this faith we were born; this faith we believe to be that which our Saviour and his holy apostles taught; and, therefore, to this faith we have remained, and still remain, attached by the double motive of veneration for our fa thers, and duty towards God. And what motive more worthy of respect and admiration ever actuated the mind of man?

Yet, for acting upon this motive, what have we not suffered? In the long list. of persecutions, invented by minds at

once the most fraudulent and ferocious, there is not one which, during some portion or other of the last 250 years, we have not had to endure. To see our abbeys, our cathedrals, our churches; to see the first of these confiscated and demolished; to see the two latter, together with all the immense endowments attached to them by our pious, provident, disinterested and generous forefathers; to see this our patrimony wrested from us, and given to a clergy who protested against our faith, and in whose doctrines our consciences forbade us to believe; to see this, was a trial sufficient for or dinary minds; but of our wrongs this forms not a thousandth part. During two centuries and a half, we, as well as you, have had eleven Sovereigns and oneUsurper; and, except the reign of one Sovereign, no reign passed, until that of his late Majesty, without some new law, in addition to those in existence, for punishing us for our fidelity. Barely to quote the titles of those acts, barely to describe the objects of that code, to propose, or even to think of which would: have made Nero blush, would require much more space than the whole of this our appeal. There is nothing, we believe there is no one thing, which is unjust, cruel, and insulting, which is not to be found in some part or other of that code. "Wives, be obedient unto your own husbands," says the Holy Apostle. Wives, be disobedient unto your own husbands, said, in effect, the code; for it tendered the former a power over the property of the latter, if the former would: become Protestant, while the husband remained a Catholic. "Honour thy father and thy mother," says God. honour thy father and thy mother, said the code; for, if any son would but apostatize, cover his parents with shame, and bring their grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, it, in despite of his parents, rewarded the unnatural monster with a large part of their estate. "Covet not thy neighbour's goods," says our Maker. Covet thy neighbour's goods, said the code; for if any Protestant saw a Catholic have a horse worth more than five pounds, it gave him a right to take away the horse and make it his own, upon giving the owner five pounds; and if any Catholic had a lease yielding him a profit greater in amount than one-third of the rent, any Protestant might go, turn him out, and become proprietor of the lease in his stead; and all this, and a hundred times more than this, for no other cause than that we remained firmly attached to the faith and worship of your and our fa thers!

Dis

True, these parts and many others of this flagitious and sanguinary code were done away during the reign of his late Majesty, whose memory we, on that account, hold in grateful remembrance. Still, however, much remains to be removed, in order to place us on an equal footing with our Protestant fellow-subjeets, which is the object of our present exertions and prayers. His present Majesty, when Regent, in the 57th year of the reign of his Royal Father, graciously gave his assent to an Act, which in some degree mitigated our disabilities in respect to the army and the navy. But we still remain excluded from all offices in corporate towns and cities-from the higher ranks at the Bar, and wholly from the Bench-from the office of Sheriff; an office of the utmost importance to the security of life and property-and from the councils of the King and both Houses of Parliament. There remain other and more serious grievances; but we rest our appeal to you on these grounds aloue.

Our crafty and selfish foes, your foes as well as ours, would fain persuade you, that that for which we pray would do no good; and they ask, with a degree of simplicity which would not have detracted from the cunning of the seducer of the primitive parents of mankind, how the allowing of Catholic merchants to be come Mayors, Aldermen and Common Councilmen of towns and cities; how the permitting Catholic gentlemen to be Sheriffs; how the making of Catholics occasionally King's Counsel, and Law Officers of the Crown; how the putting of Catholic Judges on the Bench; how the making of Catholics sometimes Judges in Equity; how the putting of a few Catholics into the Privy Council; how the placing of fifty or sixty of them, perhaps, in Parliament-they ask, with all imaginable simplicity, how this could tend to clothe the backs and appease the hunger of the ragged and half-famished people of Ireland? But, Englishmen, make but for a moment our case your own. Suppose that some strange combination of circumstances were to give the small sect of Unitarians, for instance, a mastery over you-supposing this sect, not forming more than a sixteenth part of the population of England, held all the civil offices of importance; that they, and they alone, nominated juries in causes of property, and of life and death; sat on the bench, administered justice in equity; were alone the advisers of the King; alone were Mayors and Aldermen, and Common Councilmen of towns and cities; kept wholly to themselves the power of making laws; appointed all the Justices of the Peace; disposed of every civic

office down to the very excisemen and tide-waiters;-and suppose that to all these powers, they added that of dispo sing, at their pleasure, of the whole of the tithes, and of the immense property of your Church; heaping benefice upon benefice on the same man, even unto half-scores together; suffering the churches and parsonage houses to tumble to pieces; and compelling you to pay taxes for their re erection and repair, while there was only one of sixteen to enter those churches, and while you were compelled to build chapels for yourselves, and pay your own teachers, or live without the knowledge of God in the world: suppose all this, and though we think we see your cheeks redden at the bare idea; suppose all this, and you are still far short of the case of Ireland, where, out of about four hundred thousand Church Protestants, which thus domineer over six millions of Catholics, there are about forty families, who ingross for themselves and their dependents all the real power, all the honours, all the emoluments of the State; in fact, all the revenues of our country, which do not now yield annually to the King's Exchequer a summ equal to that which you yourself pay for the purpose of forcibly keeping us in abject submission to these families and their faction; add, moreover, to our sufferings, the habitual insolence and eruelty of this faction, who, though now deprived of the administration of certain parts of the plundering and sanguinary code, still act as if they had an impre scriptible right to be unjust, profligate, and ferocious: and still, a mere handful of a faction as they are, treat the people at large as outcasts and slaves.

Would, then, our emancipation from the fangs of this faction do no good?" Could there be Catholic Mayors, Sheriffs, Aldermen; could there be Catholic Law Officers of the Crown, Judges in Law and Equity, Privy Councillors, and Members of both Houses of Parliament, and could things still remain the same; and will this faction still, in all simplicity, ask how that for which we pray, could possibly tend to improve the food and clothing of our labouring brethren? If they still ask this question, we beg not them, but you, to reflect; first, on the powers which the administrators of justice, the rulers of towns and cities, the sheriffs of counties, the advisers of the Crown, and the makers of laws, have, and always must have, in the making of the people happy or wretched. In the next place, returning to the supposition, that you were domincered over by the sect of Unitarians, though the domination were more bearable than that which

we endure, we beseech you to say, whether the consequences would not be an incessant heartburning, pervading almost the whole of the people; continual efforts on the part of the domineering faction to repress and degrade, by every species of partiality and injustice, those by whose subjection it could alone retain its power and emoluments; unceasing endeavours, on the part of the oppressed, to obtain justice; and, if that were unattainable, revenge; and, as a necessary result of these, a flight of the land-owners, and even of the clergy, from the country, to spend in peace and safety those revenues which ought to be distributed amongst the people; leaving those to be ground down into bare beggary, by middlemen, titheproctors, drivers, and land-jobbers, the hardest-hearted of all mankind. You feel indignant at the mere thought of yourbeing reduced to this state. But acknowledge, we are sure you will, that this would be your state, if you, like us, were under the domination that we have described. To obtain deliverance from this intolerable domination, we are now about to make supplication to the Parliament; and we call on you to join us by your petitions in those supplications. With Englishmen, famed throughout the world for generosity and bravery, it were as unjust as un. wise, to make appeals addressed to sordidness, or to hold the language of menace. But, while justice to you, who have so long been deceived, demands that we tell you, that our degradation now loads you with taxes to the amount of several millions a year; and that that debt, which may yet make England hang her head in the face of her enemies, has in no small degree proceeded from the same cause; while justice to you makes us tell you this, that frankness and sincerity, in which alone we are your rivals, bid us beseech you, with a solemnity suited to the source of the words, "to lead us not into temptation," nor by indifference or neglect to induce us to rest our hopes on any thing but the justice of the Government, and of the English people; nor to leave it in the power of any person to suggest to any portion of the people of this country, the possibility of seeing in foreign fleets or bands the deliverers of Ireland, but to see them in a most gracious King, and in a just Parliament, dutifully called upon by us, in conjunction with you, our fellow-subjects of England. Many are the occasions when you have, by your petitions, produced the most salutary effects. In the exercise of this right you are obstructed by no impediment; and never, since the right was heard of, was it exercised in a cause more closely connected with every

consideration interesting to the mind of man. We conjure you, therefore, in the names of that justice, and of that humanity, which, bright as your renown is, are the brightest gems in that renown -we conjure you to back our prayer for Emancipation from our deplorable state. "That which you would that others should do unto you, do ye so unto them," is a precept which all are called on to obey, and to which all acknowledge the duty of obedience. While, therefore, with this precept in your minds, you lay your heads upon your pillows, think of the miseries of this ill treated Island; think of the nakedness, the famine, the pestilence, think of the manifold pangs, bodily and mental, that your brethren here endure; and, when you call upon God for mercy and protection, be able, we implore you, to say, as we have shewn mercy and given protection to our fellow-subjects of oppressed and unhappy Ireland."

66

NICHOLAS PURCEL O'GORMAN, Secretary to the Catholics of Ireland.

PARLIAMENTARY.

HOUSE OF COMMONS.

The Unitarian Marriage Bill has been reported and re-committed. It is to be brought on again in a few days. The bishops and ministers have, we believe, agreed upon the alterations with which they are willing that it should pass. The present Bill takes the ceremony entirely out of the hands of the clergy: both the service and the registration are to be performed in the Registered Unitarian Chapels. A few petitions against it have been sent in from the clergy.

The Irish Catholic Bill has been read a second time by a majority of 27 in a House of 557 members. Mr. CANNING distinguished even himself by a speech of splendid eloquence. Numerous petitions have been poured into the House against the measure. The clergy are the majority, perhaps, of the petitioners, but there are about 30 petitions purporting to proceed from Dissenters. This has occasioned some smart discussion in both Houses, and especially the Commons. Mr. BROUGHAM has lectured the Dissenters upon their inconsistency, but Mr. W. SMITH has shewn that the petitioners are in most instances scarcely Dissenters, and that the denomination is not to be judged by the folly or intolerance of a few insignificant members! We must hereafter collect and register the debates upon this subject. The charge of intolerance has made a deep impression upon the Dis senters in general. The Protestant, or

Mr. Wilks's, Society has published Resolutions relating to it, (see the Wrapper,) which do not stand for much, as they bear two senses. The Lay Deputies are about to meet to pass some resolution to clear their character; and the ministers of the Three Denominations, at their aunual meeting on the 26th inst., adjourned to the 3rd of May, to take into consideration the propriety of publishing a Declaration of their freedom from intolerant senti. ments with regard to their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and of their desire and prayer for the removal of all penalties and disabilities for conscience' sake which lie upon any class of their countrymen.

Mr. Secretary PEEL'S Bill for consolidating and amending the Acts relating to Juries (moved for in the House of Commons, March 9), is a most important and beneficial measure. It appears that there are no less than 85 statutes upon the impanelling of Juries, all which he proposes to unite in one clear and intelligible Act. Some of these are mixed up with other matters having no relation to Juries. Other statutes are obsolete and are to be abolished. The summoning of common Juries is proposed to be transferred from the petty constable to the churchwardens and overseers. The lists of persons liable to serve to be more distinct and explicit. Appeals on returns or omissions to be made to a Petty Sessions of Magistrates. The number of persons qualified to serve on Special Juries to be extended in Counties where, as in London, all persons returned as merchants and bankers are to be included. A new arrangement to be made by adopting figures instead of names, by which the Packing of Juries will be effectually prevented. In civil causes the old mode may be continued, on both plaintiff and defendant signifying in writing their wish to that effect. The same Jury to try more than one commercial cause at the desire of both parties interested. In political causes the ballot to be always used.-In his speech introducing the Bill, Mr. Peel expressed his hope that the same principle of consoli

dation would be extended to the whole body of laws, and first and especially to the Criminal Code. He stated in answer to a question from Dr. LUSHING TON, that the regulation as to the selection of Juries was to extend to Exchequer

and

Prosecutions. Dr. LUSHINGTON Messrs. HUME, HOBHOUSE, and BRIGHT, expressed their cordial approbation of the measure, and joined in praise of the ability and liberality of the proposer.

LITERARY.

THE widow of the late excellent and Rev EDMUND BUTCHER is printing a small volume of the Sermons of this interesting preacher, which (judging from the volumes of his which have already appeared) will be acceptable to his friends, and to that portion of the religious public who approve a system of theology that is at once rational aud fervent.

FOREIGN.

AMERICA.

We have great pleasure in recording the Election of Mr. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS to be President of the United States of America. This choice will be joyfully welcomed by the friends of freedom and humanity throughout the world; both on account of the excellent character and proved talents of the new President, and of his being preferred to a military candidate, General Jackson: not that evil principles or designs are attributed to the General, but that it would be a fearful thing to see a military man, not a Washington, in the Presidency.

America, in her history and conduct, puts the intolerance of the old world to shame. A corespondent reminds us of the noble conduct of Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, who in legislating for the State of Maryland set an example of religious liberty, by providing for the admission of all sects to equal privileges. And we now see a gentleman chosen to the Presidency who is of a Presbyterian family, and whose father, the venerable Ex-President, John. Adams, is reckoned amongst the Unitarians of Mussachusetts. Yet in the mother country, we are debating whether Roman Catholics and Unitarians shall enjoy the natural rights of man!

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Worship of the new President at the

Unitarian Chapel, Washington.

[WE copy the following from a number of the Liverpool Mercury just published, in which the paragraphs are headed "Religious Liberty in America."]

We have long regarded the perfect equality of all religious churches and sects, in the United States, as one great cause of her national prosperity, and a triumphant answer to those persons in our own country who fancy that Government cannot exist where it ceases to prescribe to

the people the mode and form in which they shall worship their Creator, and to which each individual is compelled to pay, however repugnant it may be to his feelings and opinions. But what does it concern any one whether his neighbour pray to a Trinitarian or a Unitarian God, so long as his conduct in society is irreproachable? With the firm conviction of the bad tendency of all national establishments in religion, we direct our readers to the following extracts from recent American papers, in which they will find ample proof that where all sects and denominations are put on a footing of strict and impartial equality, they can dwell together in harmony, and, like real Christians, actively leud their mutual co-operation in promoting" peace on earth and good will toward men."

Extract of a letter from Washington, dated 9th March:-" You will have learned before this reaches you that my friend Mr. Adams is inaugurated President of the United States. It is a great triumph-the triumph of talent, virtue and well-regulated freedom. Last Sunday we had a solemn religious service at the Unitarian Church, to implore the Divine blessing on the new government. The President, and several heads of departments, members of the Supreme Judiciary, senators and representatives, were present, and a crowd of distinguished citizens of both sexes. It so happened that Mr. Owen, of Lanark, was also with us, and had an opportunity of seeing the union of equality, respect and order, which prevails in our Republican institutions."

"There were eighty-one places of worship in New York, in 1823, which city contains about 130,000 souls. This fact proves that religion will flourish at least as well without an established church as with one; and as one sect is not peculiarly favoured by the State, the rest are not made jealous and quarrelsome. Thus one great cause of domestic discord does not exist among the citizens of America; and as each person pays only the teacher of the sect to which he is attached, he is likewise relieved from the burden and paiu of contributing to the spread of doctrines that he deems at least erroneous."

"A National Tract Society has been formed within a few days past in this city, intended to concentrate the exertions of Christians of all denominations, in supplying the United States with religious tracts and cheap publications. The importance of the plan will be readily acknowledged by all good men. The union, which has been effected by local institutions of this description, combines many advantages which we have no doubt will be fully realized in the future operations of the Society. We understand that it is proposed immediately to build a house in this city for the accommodation of the Society, and that a liberal subscription for this purpose was made at a meeting of its friends on Friday evening of last week. It is calculated that the proposed building will cost about 20,000 dollars, 12,500 of which were subscribed at that meeting."-New York Paper, 16th ull.

"The Bill to relieve the Hebrews in the State of Maryland from the Constitutional disqualification to hold Offices, has passed both Houses: we have, therefore, reason to expect, that at next sessions, this feature of intolerance will be erased from the constitution of our state.-Baltimore Paper, 28th February.

SWITZERLAND.

Mr. CHARLES PICTET died at Geneva, on Dec. 29th, aged 70 years. As an author, he has been distinguished by several valuable articles in the Bibliothèque Britannique, and some works on Agriculture and Politics. As an agriculturist, Switzerland and even France are indebted to him, for a more complete theory of assolements, for the introduction of the Flanders plough, and improvements in wool, by crossing the breed. As a citizen, he was active in the service of his country, in 1814 and 1815, when the Diet confided the interests of Switzerland to him, in some important negociations. Mr. Dumont, his friend, has proposed to the Sovereign Council, to erect a monument over his tomb, with this inscription:-"Erected by the grateful Republic."

col. 2, line 22