tant Association was held in the Festival Concert Room, and a Lecture, on Maynooth College and its Priests, delivered by J. Eccleston, Esq., B.A., Agent to the Protestant Association. The Meeting was certainly one of a most gratifying description to the friends of the Protestant cause. The large assemblage, upwards of 1300 individuals, comprising many of the most influential citizens, seemed to take a deep interest in the statements made by the speakers throughout the whole of the evening. On the platform were the following among other gentlemen:-Dr. Simpson, Mr. Price, Mr. George Brown, Mr. E. T. Allen, Mr. Alderman Matterson, Mr. Hewley Graham, Mr. Joseph Munby, Mr. W. N. Dibb, Mr. Barnes, Mr. H. Bellerby, Rev. T. Myers, Rev. John Graham, Rev. Thomas Richardson, Rev. Mr. Heslop, Rev. Wm. Dowson, Rev. J. Burdsall, Rev. T. Harris, Rev. J. Strawe, Mr. David Russell, jun., Rev. J. B. Graham, Rev. C. J. Camidge, Rev. J. Shackley, Rev. Mr. Webbe, Mr. Hey, &c. &c. The chair was taken by John Blanchard, Esq.

YORK PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION.-A Branch Protestant Association has, we understand, been formed for the City and County of York.

REVIVAL OF THE POPISH MONASTIC ORDER IN IRELAND.-In the Freeman's Journal of the 10th Dec., there appears a letter from Dr. John Mac Hale, styling himself John, Archbishop of Tuam, avowing the adoption in his ecclesiastical province of the Society established in Lyons for the Propagation of the Romish] Faith, and recommending the re-establishment of the Monastic Orders as the means and instruments of carrying on a system of National Education independent of the Government, entirely under the control of the Roman Catholic Priesthood, and regulated by the discipline of the Roman Catholic Church.

This is a bold step on the part of John Mac Hale. It remains to be seen how far the Pope of Rome, in defiance of the laws of England, and, as we believe, of the Emancipation Act, will be allowed to exercise any jurisdiction in this realm, or to usurp the National Education of Ireland.

NOBLE EXAMPLE.-The Marquis of Bute has refused to dispose of any of his land in the Town of Cardiff for the purpose of building a Popish Chapel. Whilst it may be right for the State to tolerate all persuasions, it would be inconsistent with the principles of a Christian man to assist by a grant of land, or otherwise, the propagation of any religion which he believed, as the Marquis did, to be contrary to the TRUTH.

SISTERS OF MERCY.-We are informed by a correspondent that these Female Agents of the Papacy have been seeking by insidious means to obtain admission among the inmates of the Work-house in Rotherhithe.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Act against receiving Protestant Children into Roman Catholic Schools, A.D. 1791, 31 Geo. III. c. 32, sec. 13, enacts, "That no ecclesiastic or other person professing the Roman Catholic Religion, who shall take and subscribe the oath therein appointed to be taken and subscribed, shall be prosecuted in any Court whatsoever, for teaching and instructing youth as a tutor or schoolmaster.”

But one of three provisoes following that enactment is, (sec. 15,)" That no schoolmaster professing the Roman Catholic Religion shall receive into his school for education the child of a Protestant father."

And at the end of the third proviso in sec. 16, it is declared, "That no person offending in the premises shall receive any benefit of this Act."

PROTESTANT MAGAZINE.

FEBRUARY 1, 1840.

THE TREASONABLE CONSPIRACIES OF ROME. FROM the Historical sketch of Protestant Associations inserted in the present and last numbers of the Magazine, it will be seen that Associations of this kind are not a new thing in Great Britain. They had their origin evidently in the purest Loyalty to the Sovereign, and zeal for the maintenance of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here then we see the Christian principles on which our Protestant Forefathers acted. We are called upon by every feeling of gratitude and veneration to tread in their footsteps and follow their bright example. And surely there never was a period in the annals of our beloved Country, when the inestimable blessings which have been handed down to us were placed in so much jeopardy as they are at present. It is not against foreign Invaders, but domestic Traitors that we have now to contend. The great Foe of God and man has commenced his Hostilities in the very heart of our Country. The Papal Power has at last thrown off every disguise, and openly unfurled the bloody flag of Treason and Insurrection on the soil of the Sister Island. The guilty purpose is no longer concealed. It is broadly proclaimed, and is nothing less than this, to overawe the Crown, and to coerce the Sovereign in the exercise of her rightful prerogative of choosing her own Ministers. O'Connell threatens that there shall be a bloody rebellion from North to South of Ireland, from the moment when a Conservative Ministry accepts the Government at Her Majesty's Invitation. Listen for a moment to the menaces of the Arch-conspirator, the chief contriver of the plots, and acknowledged Leader of the armies of the Papal

Anti-christ.

"I tell Wellington, that if the hateful Tory faction are to be forced upon Ireland, we will not have a petite guerre' as he calls it, but he and they will have to contend against the United Population of Ireland."

There cannot be a doubt that, according to the Statute of Geo. III., passed in 1796, this is treasonable language, containing a threat and indicating a conspiracy to levy War against the Queen, in order to oblige her by force to adopt certain measures VOL. II.-February, 1840.

D

and to appoint certain councillors. Again, Judge Foster and other legal authorities have laid it down in their construction of the Act of Edward III., that all Insurrections to alter the Established Law, or to change Religion, are offences of High Treason. Now that such is the purpose of the Popish faction, they themselves have never hesitated publicly to declare, at least in Ireland. It has also been proved on Oath before a Committee of the House of Lords, that a Secret Society has long existed in that Country, composed entirely of Roman Catholics, whose object is believed to be the extirmination of Protestants, and the establishment of the Roman Catholic Religion throughout Ireland. And when we hear O'Connell say to his underlings, "Send round to your thousands of leaders, to your hundreds of thousands of congregations," and are told that 3000 Popish priests in Ireland are organized by perfect discipline for political agitation, it is impossible to resist the conviction that the war of Popery has long been preparing against our Protestant Realm. One lesson in experience, painful though it may be, we have gained from these guilty and treasonable proceedings in Ireland. We there behold Popery unmasked and exposed to the light of day in her true character. She there stands developed to our view as nothing else than a system of worldly ambition, under the cloak of Religion, artfully devised by Satan for drawing men away from the true Church of Christ, and bringing them under the most cruel tyranny in this world, and finally destroying them for ever, both body and soul, in the world to come. There we behold her in her proper fiend-like form, conspiring against all regular Governments where she herself is not supreme, and exciting a spirit of Sedition and Rebellion amongst the people. We find her also in this case speaking Lies in Hypocrisy, as was predicted concerning her by St. Paul. For whilst she is making large and unbounded professions of Loyalty to Queen Victoria, she is all the time moving heaven and earth to overturn that Throne on which by rightful inheritance, according to the Law of the Land, the Queen is seated. Then look at the frauds, the dishonest and illegal practices which Rome has recourse to for the accomplishment of her ends, and the attainment of political power. *It has been the unvarying object of O'Connell and the Popish priesthood to make and perpetuate illegal votes throughout Ireland by means of fictitious qualifications. By this means more than 50 Irish members are sent to the House of Commons by non-electors of that House, and Acts of Parliament are, in the teeth of the Law, passed by those who belong not to the Legislature. Indeed, the Irish Law of Election, as it now stands, may be said to facilitate the fabrication of fictitious votes.

* See the Parliamentary Paper on Fictitious Votes.

Again, the Church of Rome is represented in Scripture as "the woman drunken with the blood of the Saints, and with the blood of the Martyrs of Jesus." And now we see O'Connell, the authorized and appointed Champion of the Papacy, presenting himself almost daily, like the Giant of Gath, when he came down into the valley to defy the armies of Israel-we see this O'Connell, like Saul of Tarsus, breathing out threatenings and slaughters, and vowing that he will deluge the kingdom with blood unless his arrogant and Revolutionary demands are acceded to, and his own minions appointed to office. And this is the man whose life has been one continued warfare against the Laws of the Land; this is the man who stands chargeable with all the woes of Ireland-her misery, her wretchedness, her pauperism and degradation-to whose counsels and agitation may be attributed all the blood which flowed in the resistance to the recovery of the Tithe composition—yet this is the man, we grieve to add, whom the Government of Queen Victoria delights to honour, and who at the very moment of uttering his treasons and threatening his massacres, was invited to the table of the Representative of the Sovereign in Ireland. And if we consider the temporal power and dominion which the Papacy has now acquired in the Government of the United Kingdom, what do we see but a living representation of the woman predicted in the Book of the Revelations as sitting upon a scarlet coloured beast; the Woman being the emblem of the Church of Rome, and the Beast the emblem of the temporal power by which it has been supported. It is stated on unquestionable authority, that a majority of the members in the habit of attending the Privy Council of Ireland are Papists; and on one occasion when Lords Justices were to be appointed during the absence of the Lord Lieutenant, not one Protestant was to be found. But far beyond all this, she has taken into her hands the reins of the executive power of the whole empire, holding the Ministers of the Crown of England in a state of complete vassalage and subjection. As riding on the Beast she wields the Democracy of the Country to the furtherance of her own ends and projects. By the subtlety of her Jesuits, and the power of the confessional, she can raise a rebellion and convulse the nation from one extremity to the other whenever she pleases. We believe that the Ribbonism in Ireland and Chartism in England are branches of one grand Conspiracy, the springs of which are susceptible to the touch of the Emissaries of the Papal Power. The Chartist Insurrection, for which not the slightest excuse or palliation can be offered or conceived, is perfectly novel in the history of this Country, and only to be traced by its marks of bloodshed and assassination to the dark and diabolical chambers of that mystery of Iniquity, the Church of Rome. Chartism has had the effect to reduce the number of Troops in Ireland,

and thus leave a more open field for the spread of Insurrection or the execution of the treasonable projects of Popery in that Country. We feel a painful solicitude for the situation of our Protestant brethren in Ireland, especially for the Clergy of the Established Church, there being now only three regiments of Cavalry and seven of Infantry left in the Country, and it is said that the Police force swarms with the followers of O'Connell. Surely all our prayers and all our efforts ought to be employed without ceasing on behalf of those who are thus left exposed to the cruel designs of a persecuting enemy. Decisive evidence, if any were wanting, of the abject subserviency of Ministers to their Popish Tyrant, is furnished by the fact, that no mention has been allowed to be made of the volcanic and insurgent state of Ireland in the Queen's Speech. On the contrary the attention of Parliament is especially directed to the consideration of the Reform of Municipal Corporations in Ireland; a concession which can only give wider scope to the malignant and destructive influence of the Church of Rome, and which is clearly made in obedience to her commands. But we may go still further. Ministers have omitted another opportunity afforded by the Speech from the Throne, of assuring the Nation that Prince Albert is a Protestant. The Duke of Wellington on this occasion nobly discharged his duty as a Peer of the Realm, and in a manner calculated to cheer the heart and animate the hopes of every Protestant throughout the Empire. In moving an amendment by the insertion of the word "Protestant " before "Prince," according to the precedent in the case of Geo. III., he plainly intimated that the omission of all allusion to the Protestant Religion on this occasion was made to gratify the disaffected party in Ireland, and denounced in strong terms the countenance given by Ministers to the conspiracy of that party against our Protestant Constitution. It is with great pleasure that we make the following extract from the Speech of the Noble Duke, in which it should be particularly observed that his Grace maintains the important doctrine which some have been disposed to question, that the Country is still under a Protestant Establishment.

"The Duke of WELLINGTON said, the noble lord who had seconded the Address, did not concur more sincerely than he (the Duke of Wellington) did in the congratulations to her Majesty upon the marriage which her Majesty had for the second time announced that day. He sincerely thought that this event might tend to the comfort and prosperity of the country. But upon this subject he would not trespass upon their lordships' attention with another word, if that house were not called upon in the Speech from the Throne to concur with the other house of parliament in making a provision for the Prince on whom her Majesty had fixed as her consort. It appeared to him that when