Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

"Putland, before you get any more trouble with this place I tell you that you will not live a month in it; when you're coming bring your coffin with you; you may proceed if you like.". Nenagh Guardian.

Sitting, as it were, beneath their own vine and fig-tree, none making them afraid, the Protestants of this country little know the real evils to which Protestants in Ireland are exposed. And still less, it is to be feared, of the source from which they flow.

"The Limerick Chronicle of the 10th of January, says :-'It is painful to contemplate the disorganized state of the rural districts, where no respectable family is safe from aggression. The industrious farmer, with a patch of five or ten acres, is equally obnoxious with the country gentleman who may hold a hundred or more; and the laborious, peaceable cottier, who contrives to subsist his poor family on an acre of potato-ground, is not safe, unless he connive at or personally aid the league of disaffected ruffians who now traverse the country, night and day, from Tipperary to Limerick and Clare, in search of their victims. "The country gentlemen's residences are in a state of siege. Many of them have fled with their families tothe capital for safety.'

"Yet the gentleman is quite aware of all this, and sits supine! Such facts are most disgraceful to the Peel Administration. We had looked for something of vigour from them, and we find nothing but the basest trimming, cringing, and pusillanimity."

Nor is this all, the string of outrages set forth in the Limerick paper is of wearisome length. Agrarianism is now rapidly assuming the aspect of flat rebellion.

"Upwards of five hundred fellows, says the paper, assembled on Friday morning, on Sir Capel Molyneux's lands, Knocksculy, to prevent the service of ejectments. They fired shots to intimidate the bailiff and his assistants.

"This great multitude kept watch-fires lighting on the ground all night, and discharged several shots to show their state of preparation. On last afternoon two hundred men of the 24th Regiment were despatched to dislodge the insurgents. They were accompanied by a troop of the 13th Light Dragoons.

"The hills of the neighbourhood of Six-mile-bridge were lighted up with a general blaze on Wednesday for the dismiss of some ejectment cases, brought by a landed proprietor of Clare at quarter sessions.

"For the last ten days Thurles gaol has been filling with offenders; an extensive gang of desperadoes, who for years have been committing dreadful outrages, extending their operations to within a mile of Nenagh, have at length been discovered, and nearly all arrested through the vigilance and energy of the heads of the Thurles police. Two men named Phil Maher and Michael Meara (leaders), when being conveyed to Nenagh gaol on Tues

day last, on charges of murder and other crimes, were followed nearly the entire way by crowds of the peasantry shouting and cheering them. At Borrisoleigh, the car on which the prisoners sat broke down, when nearly two thousand people pressed on the escort, commanded by Mr. MacMahon, S. I. The police, however, having been previously ordered to prime and load, kept the mob off with fixed bayonets, while the officer promptly moved the prisoners to a car in front, and the escort moved on without further molestation, but still followed nearly all the way."

"The deep plot is against the payment of rents, and it will ripen fast into a more formidable confederacy to usurp the land, and dispossess the inheritors of the soil. This scheme is so generally understood, and will no doubt be acted upon, unless the Government and Legislature interpose in time. Few country gentlemen's houses, within some miles of Limerick, are safe from attack, unless locked and barricadoed immediately at night-fall; and the families are then shut up, like lonely prisoners, in their silent mansion, until the hour of day-break, when the barriers are cautiously withdrawn. One highly-respectable man of rank, a grand juror and a magistrate in our vicinity, whose character as a landlord is far above reproach, left his country-seat this week to reside in the metropolis, sooner than be exposed to such harassing annoyance of his domestic circle, however necessary the precaution against midnight marauders and armed assassins.

"On Thursday night, the house of George Scott, of Killonan, and Richard Scott, of Tooreen, were forcibly entered by a party of about nine persons, who took a double-barrelled gun from Richard, and a single one from George.

"At the early hour of six o'clock on Thursday evening an armed party entered the dwelling-house of the Widow O'Mara, within one hundred yards of the police station, in the village of Castle-Connell. Fortunately her son William, on going to Dublin, had removed the gun to this city, and the fellows left without the booty.

[ocr errors]

"Seven panes of glass, in the windows of Clenstall Castle, the mansion of Matthew Barrington, Esq., were maliciously destroyed by stones on Tuesday night.

"Wednesday night, at twelve o'clock, the house of a farmer named Hourigan, at Annagh, near Barrington's-bridge, was fired into, and the assailants swore him not to pay rent. They then searched for fire-arms.

"On Wednesday evening the house of a farmer named Mahony, at Mintellow, near Marroe, was searched for fire-arms, but all the marauders found was a powder-horn.

"The house of Daniel Barry, Knocknagarteen, was fired into, and fire-arms demanded.

"Six men with faces blackened, and armed, passed Woodhill at ten o'clock on Thursday morning.

"A respectable farmer of the name of Murphy, residing at Rathlooba, county Clare, in the vicinity of the scene of the barbarous murder of the late Arthur Gloster, Esq., was attacked on Thursday night, by an armed band of ruffians, who beat him most desperately, inflicting at least a score of wounds on his head. This man had been guilty of the offence of taking land.

"Nine armed men traversed the lands and neighbourhood of Clenagh, county Clare, on Friday, in female apparel, and swore several farmers and cottiers not to pay rent to Mrs. E. O'Grady. This lawless outrage was perpetrated in the open day.

"Three fellows have been lodged in Birr gaol, charged with writing and sending a letter to Dawson French, Esq., J. P., threatening him with death."-Limerick Chronicle.

Too true, and too melancholy, is the picture here represented. It must give deep pain and cause great anxiety to every humane, every Christian, and every patriotic mind.

Assassination, fostered by religion-an agrarian war in the midst of peace-property sacrificed and life destroyed-these are some of the blessings which Popery has procured for Ireland, and is rapidly preparing for our own country also!

We may hope otherwise. We may dream of security in the midst of dangers. We may either shut our eyes, and say that we can see no danger, or like the ostrich, thrust our heads into a bush, and think to avoid it, by not providing against it. But the wiser course would be to brave the danger, to investigate its cause, and in the spirit of religious, Christian determination, resolve through the Divine blessing to face and overcome it. The Minister under whose auspices much of the real wrongs of Ireland have increased, is now, on other grounds than those of unprotestantizing our Constitution-deserted by the party he had so long betrayed or misled. Happy had it been, if they had before mistrusted the idol, whom they flattered into a tyrant and now desert as a traitor. We desire to pass sentence upon no man, upon no party in the State.

But we can no more escape coming into contact with their principles and proceedings, than we can avoid breathing the atmosphere by which we are surrounded.

Principles, not men, should be the Christian's motto.

This, however, we feel compelled to say, that if parties had but been as anxious, and determined to maintain the glory of God's truth, and the honour of their Saviour, by a national protest against Popery, as they now are to uphold protective duties-neither the Bill of 1829, nor the Maynooth Endowment Bill of last session, would have passed into a law-nor should we have been called on to witness those frequent departures from sound and constitutional principles, which have since characterized the legislation of our country.

LETTERS OF THE RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOP OF EXETER, AND ALSO OF THE CHAPLAIN OF HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN, ON THE SUBJECT OF THE MEMORIAL FROM THE PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION.

OUR January number contained a Memorial on the recent secessions from the Church of England to the Church of Rome. *

The following two letters, from the Bishop of Exeter and the Chaplain of his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, have been received in consequence, and are here presented to our readers. Though not of so decided a tone as we could desire; though less satisfactory than the sentiments contained in the answer of the Bishop of Ripon to the Memorial of the clergy assembled at Leeds, they will yet be perused with interest by a great proportion of our readers.

Bishopstowe, Dec. 24, 1845.

DEAR SIR, I have this day received your letter of the 10th inst., enclosing "A Memorial" addressed "to the Archbishops and Bishops of the United Church of England and Ireland, by the Committee of the Protestant Association."

The subscription of two such names, as those of Mr. Plumptre and yourself, I am willing to take as a pledge of the general respectability of that body, though I know not of whom, besides, it consists.

"the

But I must frankly say, that I object, on principle, as a Bishop, to recognise the propriety of any Association whatever delivering its corporate judgment to my brethren and myself, on any matters of doctrine or discipline; and, as respects Protestant Association" in particular, my objection would be strengthened in a degree which I need not express, if I have rightly understood, that it is not a body consisting of members of the Church only. For, in that case, I should, by receiving the Memorial, encourage persons, whom I cannot but regard as schismatics, to interfere in my discharge of the high duties of the office which it has pleased God that I should bear in the Church.

To Mr. Plumptre, however, and to yourself, individually, (as I believe that both of you are Churchmen,) I willingly express my sentiments on the main particulars in your paper-following the order in which they are presented.

1. I should consider myself as a traitor to the Church, if I did not testify, on all fit occasions, my firm and uncompro

*See, January Number, 1846, p. 32, where the Memorial here referred to is given.-ED. P. M.

mising opposition to all who, calling themselves members of the Church, "have not scrupled to declare that they must recede more and more from the principles of the English Reformation."

2. To what you " took occasion to express to the Bishops two years ago," I am not able to make any reference; for I have not the slightest recollection of it. If it was said in the form of a "Memorial" to me from the "Protestant Association," as I could not have recognised the propriety of such a Memorial, it is most likely that, in the pressure of business, from which I am rarely free, it was laid aside without my reading it. The Memorial now before me would have been so dealt with, had not my notice been caught by the two respected names which are appended to it.

3. Subscription to the Articles, "in a non-natural sense," so called, appears to me inconsistent with common sincerity, and worthy, therefore, of the reprobation of every ingenuous mind. I fully assent to your proposition, that the clergy, professing to subscribe to the Articles, ex animo, thereby bind themselves to subscribe to them in their plain and grammatical sense.

1

4. I certainly assent to your opinion, that it is the duty of the Bishops to "perseveringly exert themselves to maintain and diffuse among every portion of the clergy a high and holy standard of conscientiousness, integrity, and faithfulness, both in taking upon themselves, and in fulfilling, their ordination vows and engagements."

I will not discuss with you the necessity of your thus bringing to our mind, a duty, which ought never to be absent from it. But I most utterly repudiate your advice to us, "to hold up to general detestation, all Jesuitical reservation and evasion, in regard to an office so sacred, and pledges so solemn and important."

În saying this, I hope I am not less disposed than yourselves, to testify all Christian zeal for the truth; but I cannot reconcile with Christian charity and soberness the "holding up to general detestation,"-in other words, the exciting the fury of the people, not only against whatever they may be taught to consider "Jesuitical reservation and evasion;" but also against the persons of those who may appear to them to be guilty of it. To say the truth, I believe there are few among us, however enlightened and spiritually-minded they may be, (I am sure I am not of the number,) who can safely permit themselves to cherish such a feeling as "detestation" against any conduct or

* From the Memorial which appeared in our January number for this year, it will be seen that the language objected to was not used with reference to any person or persons, individually or collectively. "Jesuitical reservation and evasion were objected to in the abstract, without any reference to the party who might unhappily have adopted them.-ED. P. M.

[ocr errors]
« ElőzőTovább »