for the instruction of a popish priesthood has been established, and is now supported, at Maynooth, in Ireland, by grants from the public treasury; and they fear that this measure, being a participation in the guilt of idolatry, and an open apostasy from the principles of our protestant constitution, is calculated to draw down Divine judgments on the nation.

Your petitioners would further remind your honourable house that it has been proved, by the most satisfactory information given in evidence before both houses of parliament, and a royal commission appointed to investigate the state of Irish education, as well as by the uniform testimony of actual experience, that the objects contemplated by those statesmen who recommended the establishment of the college have in no respect been attained; but that, on the contrary, that institution has proved the chief source of seditious turbulence, as well as of superstitious delusion and religious discord in Ireland.

Your petitioners, therefore, on every ground of principle, policy, and consistency, humbly pray your honourable house to withdraw every kind of public support from the Roman-catholic college of Maynooth.

And your petitioners, &c.

PETITION FOR THE EXCLUSION OF ROMAN CATHOLICS FROM THE LEGISLATURE.

The petition of the undersigned inhabitants of

Humbly sheweth,

That your petitioners believe the admission of papists to legislative power to have been a subversion of the protestant and Christian character of the British constitution.

That this nation, for many generations, appears to have been favoured by the blessing of Almighty God in proportion to her adherence to her ancient Christian policy; and that, since the destruction of the exclusively protestant constitution of her legislature, she has suffered materially from distracted councils and domestic turbulence, occasioned by the ambitious aggressions of popery and infidelity.

That the act passed in the year 1829, entitled "An Act for the Relief of his Majesty's Roman-catholic Subjects, imposed on all such persons on entering parliament the following oath:

"I do swear that I will defend, to the utmost of my power, the settlement of property within this realm as established by the laws; and I do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present church establishment as settled by law within this realm; and I do solemnly swear, that I never will exercise any privilege to which I am, or may become, entitled, to disturb or weaken the protestant religion, or protestant govern

ment, in the United Kingdom; and I do solemnly, in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare, that I do make this declaration, and every part thereof, in the plain and ordinary sense of the words of this oath, without any evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatsoever."

That your petitioners lament to observe, that notwithstanding this solemn obligation, measures destructive of some of the most venerable and important institutions of the land have been supported by Roman-catholic members of your honourable house, with public declarations of their desire finally to overturn the ecclesiastical establishment; and your petitioners therefore submit that the conditions by which the invasion of the protestant constitution was accompanied have been boldly and notoriously violated.

Your petitioners therefore pray, that by the exclusion of papists from parliament, and such other measures as to your honourable house may seem meet, the country may be restored to her former position, as a Christian nation, in which alone there is stability for the throne, for the civil and religious liberties of the people, and for the continuance of Divine favour.

And your petitioners, &c.

In petitions to the House of Lords, "Right Honourable House" must be substituted for "Honourable House."

AGENCY FUND.

THE present age is justly considered as highly enlightened both by religion and science; yet it is very remarkable, that on certain questions of first-rate importance the greatest darkness and ignorance seem to prevail. For instance; the generality of mankind are little aware either of the real nature of popery or the rapid advances she is making to assault and overthrow the Christian institutions of the land. Notwithstanding all that we have suffered as a nation from the cruel tyranny of the church of Rome, we shew ourselves, in the present day, to be neither very fearful nor very unwilling to be "entangled again with the yoke of bondage." Those who are lying in this state of indifference and supineness cannot surely be aware of the peril to which they are exposed. In order, therefore, to awaken the people of the United Kingdom to a just sense, not only of their dangers, but their duty, both as loyal subjects and members of a Christian community, the platform must be used as well as the press. It is by the living voice, endued with power from above, that appeals are most effectually made to the conscience and the heart. Already has it been said, that a lamentable ignorance exists

among the mass of the people, and especially among the poor, not only as to the real character and designs of popery, but we may add further, as to her alliance with liberalism and infidelity. The Committee believe that this ignorance would be best dispelled by information communicated at public meetings; they have, therefore, determined to employ an agent for the purpose of holding those meetings and forming associations, in order that an alarm may be sounded of the perils which threaten the altar and the throne, and the civil and religious liberties of Englishmen, from the daring machinations of the two anti-Christian powers popery and infidelity.

The Committee have thought proper that a separate fund should be formed before they embark in the undertaking, towards which the following sums have been contributed :

"BUT supposing the scripture ever so perfect in itself, yet the church of Rome objects that it is not clear to us; even to the learned many things are hard to be understood, which, therefore, to the unlearned must be impossible. Nay, sometimes they tell us not one sentence of it hath a meaning which by our own private judgment we can be certain of. But surely the apostles were not worse writers with divine assistance than others commonly are without it? What they spoke and preached was plain, else they spoke to no purpose; and why should

not the same things be as plain when they are written down?"—Archbishop Secker's Five Sermons against Popery.

"That their church is infallible, the papists sometimes attempt to prove from reason, Making it so was the only way (say they) to end disputes, and therefore, God, being wise and good, must have made it so. But certainly a much more effectual way of preventing disputes and errors had been, to have made every single man infallible. And yet God hath not done so. It might, therefore, be more modest for them to let him display his wisdom and goodness, as it seemeth best to him. The Jewish church, we know, was not infallible; for they denied their Saviour, and it was by following tradition that they came to do it. How, then, does it appear that the Christian church must be more infallible? Why, they have texts of scripture to prove it. But if, as they commonly tell us, the scripture can neither be proved nor understood, but by the infallible authority of the church, how can the infallible authority of the church be first understood by scripture?"— Ibid.

SIR WALTER SCOTT ON POPISH EMANCIPATION." If a gentleman chooses to walk about with a couple of pounds of gunpowder in his pocket, if I give him the shelter of my roof, I may at least be permitted to exclude him from the seat next the fire."-Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott.

GUNPOWDER PLOT.

Fear hath a hundred eyes that all agree

To plague her beating breast; but there is one
(Nor idlest that!) which holds communion

With things that were not, yet were meant to be.
Aghast with its gloomy cavity,

That eye (which sees as if fulfilled and done
Crimes that might stop the motion of the sun)
Beholds the horrible catastrophe

Of an assembled senate unredeemed

From subterraneous treason's darkling power;
Merciless act of sorrow infinite!

Worse than the product of that dismal night
When gushing, copious as a thunder shower,
The blood of Huguenots through Paris streamed.

WORDSWORTH.

"The value of our religious establishment ought to be very much heightened in our esteem, by considering from what it is a security. I mean that great corruption of Christianity-popery, which is ever hard at work to bring us under its yoke. Whoever will consider the popish claims to the disposal of the whole earth, as of divine right; to dispense with the most sacred engagements; the claims to supreme, absolute authority in religion; in short, the general claims which the canonists express by the words plenitude of power; whoever, I say, will consider popery, as it is professed at Rome, may see that it is a manifest and open usurpation of all human and divine authority. Yet even in those Roman catholic countries where those monstrous claims are not admitted, and the civil power does, in many respects, restrain the papal, persecution is professed, as it is absolutely enjoined, by what is acknowledged to be their highest authority, a general council, so called, with the Pope at the head of it; and is practised in all of them, I think without exception, where it can be done safely; and thus corruptions of the grossest sort have been in vogue for many generations, in many parts of christendom, and are so still, even where popery obtains in its least absurd form; and their antiquity and wide extent are insisted on as a proof of their truth; a kind of proof which at best can only be presumptive; but which loses all its little weight, in proportion as the long and large prevalence of such corruptions has been obtained by force.”—Bishop Butler's Sermon before the Lords, June 11th, 1747.

INTELLIGENCE.

THE following is a list of the Roman-catholic Bishops in the British colonies : with the exception of three only, they all receive either the whole or part of their salaries from the public treasury or other national revenues —

Monseigneur Joseph Signey, Bishop of Quebec.

64

Pierre Turgeon, Bishop of Sidnei, (coadjutor.)

J. J. Laclique, Bishop of Montreal.

Anthony Tabean, (coadjutor.)

J. N. Proveucher, Bishop of Juliopolis, Vicar-general of Hudson's
Bay.

Rt. Rev. and Hon. A. Macdonald, Bishop of Kingston, Upper Canada.

Reivigeus Gauliu, (coadjutor.)

Michael Fleming, Bishop of Carparia, Vicar-general at
Newfoundland.

Oneas B. M'Eachem, Bishop of Carolinopolis, Vicar-general
in New Brunswick.

William Fraser, Bishop of Tauæ, Vicar-general in Nova
Scotia.

Daniel Macdonnell, Bishop of Olympus, Vicar-general at
Trinidad.

Benito Fernandez, Vicar-apostolic of Jamaica.

W. Morris, Bishop of Troy, ditto in the Mauritius.
Daniel Connor, Vicar-apostolic of Madras.

Robert St. Leger, Vicar-apostolic of Calcutta.

John Bede Polding, Vicar-apostolic of Australasia.
John Griffith, Vicar-apostolic of the Cape of Good Hope.
Vincent Du Rosaire, Bishop of Ceylon.

Bishop of Malta.

It must be remembered, that these bishops have each under them large establishments, and that popery has great strength in the British colonial possessions. It is a painful, but not at all a doubtful, fact, that in most of them that strength is rapidly increasing. In Lower Canada, Malta, Trinidad, the southern parts of India, the Mauritius, and Ceylon, by far the largest portion of the population, not being heathens, are Roman catholics. In Newfoundland, the protestants and Roman catholics are about equal in number; in Australasia, one-fourth of the population is popish; and in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, the Cape of Good Hope, Hudson's Bay, and Jamaica, a very considerable part of the professing Christians are of the same class. Moreover, it must not be forgotten, that while the Romanists have, as we have seen, nineteen bishops and vicars-apostolic in the British colonies, the protestants have only the following:-The Bishops of Calcutta, Madras, Australia, Barbadoes, Nova Scotia, Jamaica, and Montreal. These are important signs of the times, which denote but too plainly the apathy of protestants, and the zeal of their opponents. We regret to have to add, that facts which will appear in future numbers of this periodical clearly prove that the tendency of the government at home has been decidedly unfavourable to protestantism.

GRANT TO MAYNOOTH COLLEGE.-We quote the following passage from the "Dublin Evening Post," the organ of the Irish government. The date of the paper from which we quote is, the 11th of September, 1838:

"The Most Rev. Dr. Murray, Roman-catholic Archbishop of Dublin; the Most Rev. Dr. Croly, Roman-catholic Archbishop of Armagh; the Most Rev. Dr. Slattery, Roman-catholic Archbishop of Cashel; the Most Rev. Dr. M'Hale, Roman-catholic Archbishop of Tuam, together with the four trustees of the