had placed their church in hostility to the state, and consequently had imposed upon the state the necessity of reducing them to a condition in which they should be no longer formidable. From the commencement of the rebellion to the Restoration, Ireland was a scene of public commotion, in which the voice of genuine religion could gain no audience, though its language was perpetually assumed to stimulate the evil passions of the time. The bigotry of the Roman Catholics was then punished by the Act of Settlement, which confiscated so large a portion of the lands of the Irish, that their possessions were reduced to less than a third part of the island, though before the war they had been estimated at double of those of the English. A change of property so enormous must have caused irritation, sufficient to present insuperable difficulty to all efforts of religious conversion; nor can we suppose that this difficulty was in any degree diminished, until the struggle of parties had been decided by the War of the Revolution, and further resistance rendered hopeless to all, except the clergy, who, as we now know, were creatures of the Pretender, as long as a Popish claimant of the crown existed. Neither, indeed, are we aware, that any effort was in this interval exerted for the purpose of conversion, excepting by the truly Christian philosopher, Mr. Boyle, who caused the Catechism of the Established Church to be printed in the Irish language in the year 1680, a new edition of the Irish New Testament to be published in the following year, and in the year 1685, an Irish Translation of the Old Testament.

most of the Roman Catholic clergy, by declining to swear the oath of abjuration, had rendered themselves liable to great penalties, if they should exercise their function, some clergymen of the Established Church, deeming it lamentable that the Irish should be left without religion, resolved to imitate these two persons, and their efforts were rewarded with the pleased attention of the Irish Roman Catholics. Delighted with hearing our prayers in their own language, they openly declared that our service was very good, and that they disapproved of praying in any unknown tongue; some of them also were observed to be much affected, when they listened to the Scriptures thus, probably for the first time, brought within their knowledge.

Here was a fair opening for prosecuting a reformation of religion in Ireland. The country was not then, as in the time of Bedell, agitated by treasonable intrigue, or by open rebellion, for the strife of parties, had been decided by the success and ascendancy of the Protestants. The Roman Catholics also, as far as they were tried, appear to have received with gratitude and interest the exertions of pious Protestants, to give them more just conceptions of religion. Why then was the salutary work interrupted? Did the Protestants become indifferent to the propagation of a purer faith, or were they obstructed by new difficulties, which they were unable to surmount? The answer to that interesting inquiry has been furnished by the Reverend John Richardson, who, in the year 1712, gave to the public the narrative from which these particulars Soon after the Revolution, some exertions have been collected. This pious clergywere made for the conversion of the Irish, man has intimated, that the principal reason and with a good prospect of success. Two why the Reformed religion had not made individuals, in distant parts of Ireland, the Re- greater progress in Ireland, was, that dependverend Nicholas Brown, in the diocese of Cloance had been placed on political, rather than gher, in the year 1702; and not long after- on evangelical means, for its propagation; and wards, the Reverend Walter Atkins, in the his own narrative shows, that these very men, diocese of Cloyne, applied themselves to this pious and zealous as they undoubtedly were, important work, by addressing the people in fell into this grievous error, and so were lei the language which they understood. Of the away from the right path, by which they might former of these zealous clergymen, it has been have extensively communicated the knowledg recorded, that he took care to attend a congre- of the Gospel. The very success, indeed, of gation of his Roman Catholic parishioners just their efforts, was the occasion of their ultimate when their service was concluded, and then to failure. It was deemed expedient to interest read to them, in their own language, the pray- the government of the country in the prosecuers of the Established Church. On one of these tion of the work which had been so happily unoccasions, the Roman Catholic clergyman, to dertaken. The government expressed a disdraw away his congregation from their new position most favourable to the wishes of the devotions, for they joined earnestly in our ser- friends of the measure; but the convocation vice, cried aloud that those prayers had been and the parliament, were also to be consulted, stolen from the Church of Rome. "If it was and the latter of these assemblies though they so," said a grave old native, "they have stolen too approved the principle of addressing the the best, as thieves generally do." Of the Irish Roman Catholics in their own language, other, we are informed, that the native Irish judged it necessary, to the maintenance of the were so much gratified with the offices of re- connection with Great Britain, to enforce the ligion, which he performed for them in the acquisition of the English tongue. When it is Irish language, that they sent for him from all also considered, that the parliament had two parts of his very extensive parish; that one of years before this time, completed the penal them was heard to say, at a funeral at which he code, it will be easily understood, that the thus officiated, that if they could have that principle, which all had joined in commending, service always, they would go no more to mass; was speedily forgotten, and that the entire deand that he was requested to forbear celebrat-pendence of the Protestants was placed on the ing so many marriages of Roman Catholics, efficacy of force. lest he should leave their clergymen destitute of sufficient means of subsistence.

In the beginning of the year 1710, when

As in the time of Bedell the progress of religious reformation was prevented by the agitations of the people, so in this latter period

we all have seen, that both severity and conciliation have failed to produce the desired effect; and he has thence concluded, that the effect cannot be produced at all. It might be sufficient to ask him, in what particular is the Irish Roman Catholic degraded below the general level of his species, that he must be deemed inaccessible to the influences of reason. Is he so destitute of understanding, that he cannot comprehend the genuine truths of that religion which was originally addressed to the poor? Is he so indifferent to his everlasting welfare, that he cannot appreciate their im portance? Strange inconsistency of party! The very men, who claim for them as their right the exercise of political power, and contend for their qualification to manage the inte rests of a complicated government, would exclude the Roman Catholics of Ireland from the hope of attaining the knowledge of that form of Christianity, which, if they are themselves sincere in their religious profession, they esteem to be purified from a number of superstitions and abuses still debasing the Church of Rome.

was it interrupted by the compulsory measures of the government, which the circumstances of the country had placed in hostility to the religion of Roman Catholics. Against this conduct of the government it is easy to declaim; but it should be recollected, that we have now unquestionable testimony, informing us that the Roman Catholic bishops of Ireland were at this time nominated by the Pretender, and we may therefore consider the whole hierarchy of the Romish church of that country as in secret arrayed against the security of the existing government. Whatever reasons, however, may have existed for framing a code of so great severity, and whether the government did, or did not, go beyond the necessities of the public safety, it is evidently seen that such a position was decidedly unfavourable to every hope of proselyting the Roman Catholics. The government, indeed, and the Protestant part of the people seem to have suddenly forgotten the pious intention of converting them by addressing them in their own language, and to have trusted wholly to a proscription of their religion, so rigorous that it should leave them with scarcely any other option than that of adopting the religion of the state. This system of proscription had very little efficacy in conversion: neither indeed did it deserve to have any, for the proselytes which it could procure, would have little pretension to the character of sincere Protestants. In the growing liberality of the age it was at length abandoned, and a contrary system was substituted in its place. It was then, and by many politicians it is still maintained, that the true method of converting Roman Catholics is to abolish, as much as possible, all political distinctions existing between them and Protestants; and itligious interests of his Roman Catholic parishhas been again and again insisted that, when political jealousy and irritation shall have been emoved, the former cannot fail to become sensible of the superiority of the religious tenets of the latter, and must rapidly renounce every peculiarity which might continue to separate them from their fellow-subjects either in religion or in policy.

This system has also been tried through a long series of years, the half of a century having elapsed since the first measure of indulgence, and thirty-four years having passed since the Roman Catholics of Ireland were admitted to that common right of citizenship, which must have taken from the multitude every feeling of degradation. Like the former, it has notwithstanding proved wholly inefficacious. The clergy, whom the government in its liberality educated at the public expense, and to whom it was willing to afford competent stipends, chose to continue entirely independent of a Protestant and therefore an heretical state; and the laity, far from being conciliated by past concessions, rose from petitions to peremptory demands, which they enforced by open denunciations of the physical violence of an exasperated multitude.

From this double failure we suppose, the mere politician has, in his blindness, concluded, that the Roman Catholics of Ireland are not to be converted, and that the reformation alleged to have been at length begun in that country, is the dream of enthusiasm. He has seen, as

We will now inform these politicians, why the scheme of conciliation did not succeed in attracting proselytes from the religion of Rome. It failed because it was simply political, and the methods of human policy do not belong to religion. When conciliation was the guiding principle of the government, all controversial discussion was hushed to repose, and it would have been considered as an ungracious interruption of the general harmony, if any zealous minister of the Protestant church should have appeared to think, that he had a right to concern himself with the re

ioners. Roman Catholics were expected to become Protestants, because as Roman Catholics they had nothing further to desire, and were to quit the religion of their fathers in the gaiety of their satisfied hearts. Unfortunately for this expectation, they still found something to desire, which had not yet been conceded, and the consciousness of increasing strength and importance supplied a new and powerful motive for adhering to a party already considerable in the state.

If therefore we look back on the whole course of the past proceedings of the Protestants of Ireland in regard to the conversion of the Ro man Catholics, we find, with the exception of the well-directed efforts of a few individuals, two contrary methods successively adopted, both merely political, and therefore both incapable of producing a religious effect. Each indeed, it may easily be shown, contained a principle destructive of its own efficacy. When the government endeavoured by legislative acts to suppress the religion of Roman Catholics, their native independence, supported by the influence of the clergy, was roused to resist the aggression with a steadiness which might entitle them to the name of confessors. When, on the other hand, liberality was the ruling principle of the day, and this liberality required that persons differing in religious opinions should avoid all mutual interference, and that Protestants should almost proceed so far as to join in the worship of Roman Catho

The Irish Reformation.

lies, why should the latter be disposed to go over to a church, to the distinguishing peculiarities of which its own members appeared to attach so little importance?

From the acknowledged failure of such methods of making proselytes it is manifest that no argument can fairly be deduced, to prove the probability of the failure of a method entirely different. The inference indeed should be of an opposite nature. If methods merely political have been confessedly unsuccessful, we may conclude that a mode of conversion, in which worldly policy had no controlling influence, would probably be successful, unless we should be able to persuade ourselves that God had abandoned the Roman Catholics of Ireland to irremediable delusion.

chant, associated in the year 1792, to reform, not Roman Catholics, but Protestants, by constituting an Association, the object of which should be to support the cause of religion by the influence of example. Some serious persons, especially among the clergy, soon joined themselves to the society; it gradually became numerous, and acquired funds sufficient for disseminating the Scriptures and religious tracts; and at length, in the year 1801, having received from the government a charter of incorporation, and an annual grant of money, which has since been largely augmented, it engaged in the direct encouragement of the education of the poor.

The efforts of this association, which was chiefly under the direction of the clergy, excited in the great body of the laity a desire of forming associations for similar purposes; and the Hibernian Bible Society was accordingly constituted in the year 1806, and in the year 1811 the Kildare-Place Society for the Education of the Poor, which did not however begin its active operations until the year 1817, when it had been furnished with parliamentary aid, and had prepared its central establishment in the metropolis.

The Bible Society was doubtless formed with the best and purest intentions, and accordingly was originally patronized by the dignitaries of the Established Church, though the inferior clergy generally adhered to the earlier association as more peculiarly their own. In process of time, indeed, some irregularities manifested themselves in the management of its operations, which gave occasion to a secession of most of the dignitaries, and of other clergymen, who however felt it to be on that very account their duty to afford a more strenuous support to the other society professing the same objects. The Bible Society has thus become almost exclusively a lay association; and the dissemination of the Scriptures has been actively prosecuted by two distinct bodies, one comprehending, together with some laymen, almost all the established clergy throughout Ireland, the other, though including among its members a comparatively small number of the clergy, yet chiefly composed of laymen.

What then may be considered as the primary cause of the movement which has attracted so much observation? The religious improvement of the Protestants is, we have no hesitation in saying, the true and adequate principle of the reformation of the Roman Catholics. Here is a cause independent of the mere policy of the world, and to which therefore no unfavourable inference from the failure of that policy can fairly be applied. Neither can any consequence be more natural and direct, than that the increased seriousness and piety of the members of the purer church should dispose them to seek, by every effort becoming sincere Christians, the improvement of those who are still debased by ignorance and superstition. The influence of such a church is at the same time naturally efficacious. It neither irritates the ignorant and superstitious by penalties, nor confirms them in error by an apparent indifference for the truth. It draws them, on the contrary, "by the cords of a man," by all the strong sympathies of our common nature. When the poor peasant, who knew little more of his religion, than that he was required to obey his priest, perceived that persons placed in a higher condition of life were desirous of instructing him or his children, he reverenced them as the kindest benefactors. When he saw the religion, which they professed, exemplified in the zealous piety of their conduct, he could not but be disposed to think, The original society, or the Association for that there was something in the doctrine of Christ, differing from the strange compound of Discountenancing Vice, has had two distinct superstition and folly which he had been taught objects; it both disseminated the Scriptures to embrace as the true and only faith. When and religious tracts, and promoted the extenthey, perhaps for the first time, brought to his sion and improvement of the education of the knowledge the sacred record, which contained poor. In this latter respect it was zealously the original authority for his Christian hope, emulated by the Kildare-Place Society, which, he could not easily be persuaded to forego the however, was constituted on a principle of the utmost comprehension, consistent with affordopportunity of becoming acquainted with the truths which it revealed, or to content himself ing a scriptural education. This society subwith the scanty information communicated by mitted its schools to the management of a comthe clergy of his Church. Such an influence mittee, composed of persons of various denominations of religion, and, excluding all catehas effected, and is continuing to effect, that which human policy, with its penalties and its chisms, required only as an indispensable conconciliation, was wholly unable, because unfit-dition, that the Scriptures should be daily read ted, to accomplish.

As this was not an operation of human policy, so did it take its commencement from a point, from which the utmost effort of human sagacity could not have anticipated such a result. Three individuals in humble situations of life, Mr. Watson, a bookseller, Dr. O'Conor, a parochial clergyman, and Mr. Skeys, a mer

among the scholars.

While these efforts for the education of the poor were exerted by the well-disposed among the people of Ireland, the benevolence of this country was directed to the reformation of ignorance in the neighbouring island. Some individuals associated in London for this benificent purpose in the year 1806, under the name

of the London Hibernian Society. At the commencement, this Institution established schools and employed preachers; but in the year 1814 it was wisely determined, that the employment of preachers should be disconti nued, and that the efforts of the society should be confined to the support of schools, and the dissemination of the Scriptures and of religious tracts; though this society proposes religious instruction as its object, it has disclaimed proselytism; being desirous to afford religious instruction, without reference to creeds, and no religious books being admitted into its schools except the Sacred Scriptures, in the English and Irish languages, without note or comment. With this view, however, it proceeds further than the Kildare-Place Society, in whose schools the patron, or master, may select the children, who shall read the New Testament, and the version which shall be used by them, with the particular passages which shall be read.

learn some of its most interesting particulars. In the Sunday Schools, and the schools of the London Hibernian Society, many adults receive Scriptural education; the itinerant teachers of the Irish Society extend still further the benefits of instruction to the grown population; and the Scripture-readers communicate some knowledge of the saving truths of the Gospel to those who possess not the opportunity of attaining the art of reading. All these operations were supported by a distribution of the Sacred Writings, from various societies, which has been stated to have sup plied, in the course of twenty years, 944,549, or nearly a million, copies of the Scriptures.

That the power thus brought to bear upon the ignorance of the lower classes was sufficient to produce considerable effect, was perceived by the Roman Catholic clergy, before any apparent inroad had been made upon their Church. Their hostility was accordingly directed against all the societies, which dissemiThese are the great instruments of the edu-nated the Sacred Writings. Every effort was cation of the lower classes in Ireland, but exerted to disturb by intrusion and tumult the others have been employed in co-operation meetings held for such a purpose, though with them. A Sunday School Society was opened to those persons alone who were established in the year 1809; the Baptist So-friendly to the measure; and an encyclical letciety, so denominated because it was formed by persons of the sect of Baptists, though on the same principle with the London Hibernian Society, was formed in the year 1814; and the Irish Society, the design of which was to enable the Irish peasant to read the Scriptures in his own language, has added its efforts, that a knowledge of the Scriptures might be communicated to those, who were either ignorant of the English language, or could better understand the Irish. Neither have the useful efforts of the friends of instruction been confined to the establishment of schools, for persons have been employed to visit the peasantry in their cabins, and there to read to them portions of the sacred writings; and, whatever repugnance the clergy of the establishment might entertain to the employment of irregular preachers, they very willingly availed themselves of the services of those persons, who professed only to read the Scriptures to the poor.

ter from the Roman pontiff was published, in which our English version was compared to a gospel of the devil. This open hostility, which proclaimed to every reflecting person, that the religion of Rome was at variance with the recorded revelation of God, was begun in the year 1824. A deputation having in that year been sent from the London Hibernian Society to form, and confer with, auxiliary societies in Munster, a concerted intrusion was made upon their meeting, held in the city of Cork. A similar intrusion was made soon afterwards in the same year on a meeting held in Clonakilty, by the regular annual deputation of the Bible Society. These were, however, but skirmishes, preparatory to the great and most offensive interruption given in Cork in the same year, at the fourth anniversary of the formation of the Munster School Society.

The Protestant clergy, thus provoked to con troversy, prepared themselves for the contest, To what extent the operations of the several though not previously accustomed to consider societies for educating the poorer classes have their theological studies as a system of polemical been carried, has been distinctly stated in the discipline. Fair and open controversy, however, first Report of the Commissioners of Irish did not consist with the principles and wishes Education Inquiry, published in the year 1825, of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and Bishop the year immediately preceding that in which Doyle in the south, and the titular Bishop of the public was surprised by numerous conver- Derry in the north, issued inhibitions, restrainsions of Roman Catholics. From this Reporting their clergy from all formal discussions of it appears, that the probable number of chil- the differences between the two churches. dren receiving education from these several The few discussions, which were held by apsocieties was between 400,000 and 500,000. pointment, were accordingly unauthorized, so Though such a number is not considerable in that they might, if necessary, be disavowed. comparison with those still left in ignorance, One of these, and the most remarkable, which or abandoned to the common education of the was held in Dublin between Mr. Pope and Mr. Maguire, has not been disclaimed, because an extraordinary degree of effrontery, and hardhood of assertion, opposed to modest and unpresuming piety, gained with the crowd the appearance of a triumph; the record of the disputation has, however, been placed before the public, and a very different conviction will probably, with every friend of truth, be the result of a deliberate perusal.

peasantry, yet it is manifest that even this number must send into the general population of the country a knowledge, at least of the existence of the sacred writings, which cannot fail to exercise some beneficial influence on the state of society. The families, to which the children thus instructed belonged, would learn from them, that there is a record, on which their only hope of a future existence must be founded; and would probably also

The efforts of the Roman Catholic clergy

Of the hostility of the Roman Catholic clergy to education, comprehending a knowledge even of their own version of the Scriptures, and of the disposition of the Roman Catholic laity to avail themselves of the advantage of the instruction so prohibited, a remarkable example has become known to the writer of this article. A gentleman possessing an estate in a part of Ireland, in which the Roman Catholics form a considerable part of the popula-mencement, and early success of the new retion, established on it a school for the education of his tenantry, and appointed a committee of five persons, three of whom were Roman Rel. Mag.-No. 5.