By the various articles of this treaty, they are to enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion, as they did enjoy in the time of Charles II: and the King promises upon the meeting of Parliament, to endeavour to procure for them such further security in that particular, as may preserve them from any disturbance on account of their said religion. They are to be restored to their estates, privileges, and immunities, as they enjoyed them in the time of Charles II. The gentlemen are to be allowed to carry arms; and no other oath is to be tendered to the Catholics who submit to King William than the oath of allegiance. These and other articles, King William ratifies for himself, his heirs and successors, as far as in him lies; and confirms the same and every other clause and matter therein contained.

These articles were signed by the English general on the 3d of October, 1691; and diffused comfort, confidence, and tranquillity among the Catholics. On the 22d of October, the English Parliament excluded Catholics from the Irish Houses of Lords and Commons, by compelling them to take the oaths of supremacy before admission.

In 1695, the Catholics were deprived of all means of educating their children, at home or abroad, and of the privilege of being guardians to their own or to other person's children. Then all the Catholics were disarmed-and then all the priests banished. After this (probably by way of joke), an act was passed to confirm the treaty of Limerick-the great and glorious King William totally forgetting the contract he had entered into of recommending the religious liberties of the Catholics to the attention of Parliament.

On the 4th of March, 1804, it was enacted, that any son of a Catholic who would turn Protestant, should succeed to the family estate, which from that moment could no longer be sold, or charged with debt and legacy. On the same day, Popish fathers were debarred, by a penalty of 500l., from being guardians to their own children. If the child, however young, declared himself a Protestant, he was to be delivered immediately to some Protestant relation. No Protestant to marry a Papist. No Papist to purchase land, or take a lease of land for more than thirty-one years. If the profits of the lands so leased by the Catholics amounted to above a certain rate settled by the act-farm to belong to the first Protestant who made the discovery. No Papist to be in a line of entail; but the estate to pass on to the next Protestant heir, as if the Papist were dead. If a Papist dies intestate, and no Protestant heir can be found, property to be equally divided among all the sons; or, if he has none, among all the daughters. By the 16th clause of this bill, no Papist to hold any office, civil or military. Not to dwell in Limerick or Galway, except on certain con ditions. Not to vote at elections. Not to hold advow.

sons.

In the next reign Popish horses were attached, and allowed to be seized for the militia. Papists cannot be either high or petty constables. No Papists to vote at elections. Papists in towns to provide Protestant watchmen; and not to vote at vestries. In the reign of George II. Papists were prohibited from being barristers. Barristers and solicitors marrying Papists, considered to be Papists, and subjected to all penalties as such. Persons robbed by privateers during a war with a Popish prince, to be indemnified by grand jury presentments, and the money to be levied on the Catholics only. No Papist to marry a Protestant; any priest celebrating such a marriage to be hanged.

During all this time there was not the slightest rebellion in Ireland.

In 1715 and 1745, while Scotland and the north of England were up in arms, not a man stirred in Ireland; yet the spirit of persecution against the Catholics continued till the 18th of his present Majesty; and then gradually gave way to the increase of knowledge, the humanity of our Sovereign, the abilities of Mr. Grattan, the weakness of England struggling in Ame rica, and the dread inspired by the French revolution.

Such is the rapid outline of a code of laws which reflects indelible disgrace upon the English character, and explains but too clearly the cause of that hatred in which the English name has been so long held in Ireland. It would require centuries to efface such an impression; and yet, when we find it fresh, and ope rating at the end of a few years, we explain the fact by every cause which can degrade the Irish, and by none which can remind us of our own scandalous policy. With the folly and horror of such a code before our eyes, with the conviction of recent and domestic history, that mankind are not to be lashed and chained out of their faith-we are striving to teaze and worry them into a better theology. Heavy oppression is removed; light insults and provocations are retained; the scourge does not fall upon their shoulders, but it sounds in their ears. And this is the conduct we are pursuing, when it is still a great doubt whether this country alone may not be opposed to the united efforts of the whole of Europe. It is really difficult to ascertain which is the most utterly destitute of common sense-the capricious and arbitrary stop we have made in our concessions to the Catholics, or the precise period we have chosen for this grand effort of obstinate folly.

Rewards are given by the same act for the discovery

Sacred and lay sycophants will still lavish upon the Catholic faith their well-paid abuse, and England still passively submit to such a disgraceful spectacle of ingratitude and injustice. If, on the contrary (as may probably be the case), the Spaniards fall before the numbers and military skill of the French, then are we left alone in the world, without another ray of hope, and compelled to employ against internal disaffecticu

1

tives the highest ideas of our arts and manufactures, by laying before them the finest specimens of our skill and ingenuity. Why, then, are common sense and decency to be forgotten in religion alone? and so foolish a set of men allowed to engage themselves in this occupation, that the natives almost instinctively duck and pelt them? But the missionaries, we are told, have mastered the languages of the East. They may also, for aught we know, in the same time, have learnt perspective, astronomy, or anything else. What is all this to us? Our charge is, that they want sense, con duct, and sound religion; and that, if they are not watched, the throat of every European in India will be cut:-the answer to which is, that their progress in languages is truly astonishing! If they expose us to eminent peril, what matters it if they have every vir tue under heaven? We are not writing dissertations upon the intellect of Brother Carey, but stating his character so far as it concerns us, and caring for it no further. But these pious gentlemen care nothing about the loss of the country. The plan, it seems, is this:We are to educate India in Christianity, as a parent does his child; and, when it is perfect in its catechism, then to pack up, quit it entirely, and leave it to its own management. This is the evangelical project for se parating a colony from the parent country. They see nothing of the bloodshed, massacres, and devastations, nor of the speeches in parliament, squandered millions, fruitless expeditions, jobs and pensions, with which the loss of our Indian possessions would necessarily be accompanied; nor will they see that these conseqences could arise from the attempt, and not from the completion, of their scheme of conversion. We should be swept from the peninsula by Pagan zealots; and should lose, among other things, all chance of really converting them.

What is the use, too, of telling us what these men endure? Suffering is not a merit, but only useful suffering. Prove to us that they are fit men, doing a fit thing, and we are ready to praise the missionaries; but it gives no pleasure to hear that a man has walked a thousand miles with peas in his shoes, unless we know why, and wherefore, and to what good purpose he has done it.

But these men, it is urged, foolish and extravagant as they are, may be very useful precursors of the established clergy. This is much as if a regular phy. sician should send a quack doctor before him, and say, do you go and look after this disease for a day or two, and ply the patient well with your nostrums, and then I will step in and complete the cure; a more notable cure we have seldom heard of. Its patrons forget that these self-ordained ministers, with Mr. John Styles at their head, abominate the established clergy ten thousand times more than they do Pagans, who cut themselves with cruel kimes. The efforts of these precursors would be directed with infinitely more zeal to make the Hindoos disbelieve in Bishops, than to make them believe in Christ. The darling passion in the soul of every missionary is, not to teach the great leading truths of the Christian faith, but to enforce the little paltry modification and distinction which he first taught from his own tub. And then what a way of teaching Christianity is this! There are five sects, if not six, now employed as missionaries, every one instructing the Hindoos in their own particular method of interpreting the Scriptures; and when these have completely succeeded, the Church of England is to step in, and convert them all over again to its own doctrines. There is, indeed, a very fine varnish of probability over this ingenious and plausible scheme. Mr. John Styles, however, would much rather see a kime in the flesh of an Hindoo than the hand of a Bishop on his head.

The missionaries complain of intolerance. A weasel might as well complain of intolerance when it is throttled for sucking eggs. Toleration for their own opinions-toleration for their domestic worship, for their private groans and convulsions, they possess in the fullest extent; but who ever heard of tolerance for intolerance? Who ever before heard men cry out they were persecuted, because they might not insult the religion, shock the feelings, irritate the passions of

their fellow creatures, and throw a whole colony into bloodshed and confusion? We did not say that a man was not an object of pity who tormented himself from a sense of duty, but that he was not so great an object of pity as one equally tormented by the tyranny of another, and without any sense of duty to support him. Let Mr. Styles first inflict forty lashes upon himself, then let him allow an Edinburgh Reviever to give him forty more he will find no comparison between the two flagellations.

These men talk of the loss of our possessions in India as if it made the argument against them only more or less strong; whereas, in our estimation, it makes the argument against them conclusive, and shuts up the case. Two men possess a cow, and they quarrel violently how they shall manage this cow. They will surely both of them (if they have a particle of common sese) agree, that there is an absolute necessity for preventing the cow from running away. It is not only the loss of India that is in question-but how will it be lost? By the massacre of ten or twenty thousand English, by the blood of our sons and brothers, who have been toiling so many years to return to their native country. But what is all this to a ferocious Methodist? What care brothers Barrel and Ringletub for us and our colonies?

If it it were possible to invent a method by which a few men sent from a distant country could hold such masses of people as Hindoos in subjection, that method would be the institution of castes. There is no insti tution which can so effectually curb the ambition of genius, reconcile the individual more completely to his station, and reduce the varieties of human character to such a state of insipid and monotonous tameness; and yet the religion which destroys castes is said to render our empire in India more certain! It may be our duty to make the Hindoos Christians-that is another argument: but, that we shall by so doing strengthen our empire, we utterly deny. What signifies identity of religion to a question of this kind? Diversity of bodily colour and of language would soon overpower this consideration. Make the Hindoos enterprising, active, and reasonable as yourselves-destroy the eternal track in which they have moved for ages-and, in a moment, they would sweep you off the face of the earth. Let us ask, too, if the Bible is universally dif fused in Hindostan, what must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder, and steal; we who, in fifty years have extended our empire from a few acres about Madras over the whole peninsula, and sixty millions of people, and ex emplified in our public conduct every crime of which human nature is capable. What matchless impudence to follow up such practice with such precepts! If we have common prudence, let us keep the gospel at home, and tell them that Machiavel is our prophet, and the god of the Manicheans our god.

There is nothing which digusts us more than the familiarity these impious coxcombs affect with the ways and designs of Providence. Every man, now-adays, is an Amos or a Malachi. One rushes out of his chambers, and tells us we are beaten by the French, because we do not abolish the slave trade. Another assures us that we have no chance of victory till India is evangelized. The new Christians are now come to speak of the ways of their Creator with as much confidence as they would of the plan of an earthly ruler. We remember when the ways of God to man were gazed upon with trembling humility--when they were called inscrutable-when piety looked to another scene of existence for the true explanation of this ambiguous and distressing world. We were taught in our child. hood that this was true religion; but it turns out now to be nothing but atheism and infidelity. If any thing could surprise us from the pen of a Methodist, we should be truly surprised at the very irreligious and presumptous answer which Mr. Styles makes to some of our arguments. Our title to one of the anecdotes from the Methodist Magazine is as follows: A sinner punished-a Bee the instrument;' to which Mr. Styles replies, that we might as well ridicule the Scriptures, by relating their contents in the same ludicrous man. ner. An interference with respect to a travelling Jew ;

blindness the consequence. Acts, the ninth chapter, and first nine verses. The account of Paul's conversion, &c. &c. &c., page 38. But does Mr. Styles forget, that the one is a shameless falsehood, introduced to sell a twopenny book, and the other a miracle recorded by inspired writers! In the same manner, when we express our surprise that sixty millions of Hindoos should be converted by four men and sixteen guineas, he asks, what would have become of Christianity if the twelve Apostles had argued in the same way? It is impossible to make this infatuated gentleman understand that the lies of the Evangelical Magazine are not the miracles of Scripture; and that the Baptist Missionaries are not the Apostles. He seriously expects that we should speak of Brother Carey as we would speak of St. Paul; and treat with an equal respect the miracles of the Magazine and the Gospel.

Mr. Styles knows very well that we have never said because a nation has present happiness, that it can therefore dispense with immortal happiness; but we have said that, where of two nations both carmot be made Christians, it is more the duty of a missionary to convert the one, which is exposed to every evil of barbarism, than the other possessing every blessing of civilization. Our argument is merely comparative: Mr. Styles must have known it to be so: but who does

not love the Tabernacle better than truth? When the

tenacity of the Hindoos on the subject of their religion is adduced as a reason against the success of the missions, the friends of this understanding are always fond of reminding us how patiently the Hindoos submitted to the religious persecutions and butchery of Tippoo. The inference from such citations is truly alarming. It is the imperious duty of Government to watch some of these men most narrowly. There is nothing of which they are not capable. And what, after all, did Tippoo effect in the way of conversion? How many Mahomedans did he make? There was all the carnage of Medea's Kettle, and none of the transformation. He deprived multitudes of Hindoos of their caste, indeed; and cut them off from all the benefits of their religion. That he did, and we may do, by violence: but, did he make Mahomedans?-or shall we make Christians? This, however, it seems, is a matter of pleasantry. To make a poor Hindoo hateful to himself and his kindred, and to fix a curse upon him to the end of his days!-we have no doubt but that this is very entertaining; and particularly to the friends of toleration. But our ideas of comedy have been formed in another school. We are dull enough to think, too, that it is more innocent to exile pigs than to offend' conscience, and destroy human happiness. The scheme of baptizing with beef broth is about as brutal and preposterous as the assertion that you may vilify the gods and priests of the Hindoos with safety, provided you do not meddle with their turbans and toupees, (which are cherished solely on a principle of religion), is silly and contemptible. After all, if the Mahome dan did persecute the Hindoos with impunity, is that any precedent of safety to a government that offends every feeling both of Mahomedan and Hindoo at the same time? You have a tiger and a buffalo in the same enclosure; and the tiger drives the buffalo before him; is it therefore prudent in you to do that which will irritate them both, and bring their united strength upon you?

In answer to the low malignity of this author, we have only to reply, that we are, as we always have been, sincere friends to the conversion of the Hindoos. We admit the Hindoo religion to be full of follies, and full of enormities; we think conversion a great duty-and could think it, if it could be effected, a great blessing; but our opinion of the missionaries and of their employers is such, that we most firmly believe, in less than twenty years, for the conversion of a few degraded wretches, who would he neither Methodists nor Hindoos, they would infallibly produce the massacre of every European in India ;* the

Every opponent says of Major Scott's book, What a dangerous book! the arrival of it at Calcutta may throw the whole Indian empire into confusion ;-and yet these are the people whose religious prejudices may be insulted with impunity.

loss of our settlements, and, consequently, of the chance of that slow, solid, and temperate introduction of Christianity, which the superiority of the European character may ultimately effect in the Eastern world. The Board of Control (all Atheists, and disciples of Voltaire, of course) are so entirely of our way of thinking, that the most peremptory orders have been issued to send all the missionaries home upon the slightest appearance of disturbance. Those who have sons and brothers in India may now sleep in peace. Upon the transmission of this order, Mr. Styles is said to have destroyed himself with a kime.

HANNAH MORE. (EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1809.)

Calebs in Search of a Wife; comprehending Observations on Domestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Morals. 2 Vols. London, 1809.

(for we would speak timidly of the mysteries of supeTHIS book is written, or supposed to be written, rior beings,) by the celebrated Mrs. Hannah More! We shall probably give great offence by such indiscretion; but still we must be excused for treating it as a book merely human,-an uninspired production, the result of mortality left to itself, and depending on its own limited resources. In taking up the subject in this point of view, we solemnly disclaim the slightest intention of indulging in any indecorous ievity, or of wounding the religious feelings of a large class of very respectable persons. It is the only method in which we can make this work a proper object of criticism. We have the strongest possible doubts and we think it more simple and manly to say so at of the attributes usually ascribed to this authoress; once, than to admit nominally superfunary claims, which, in the progress of our remarks, we should vir tually deny.

Celebs wants a wife; and, after the death of his father, quits his estate in Northumberland to see the world, and to seek for one of its best productions, a his future life. His first journey is to London, where, woman, who may add materially to the happiness of in the midst of the gay society of the metropolis, et course, he does not find a wife. The exaltation, therefore, of what the authoress deems to be the reli gious, and the depreciation of what she considers to be the worldly character, and the influence of both upon matrimonial happiness, form the subject of this novel, rather, of this dramatic sermon.

ded is of the slightest and most inartificial texture, The machinery upon which the discourse is suspenbearing every mark of haste, and possessing not the slightest claim to merit. Events there are none; and scarcely a character of any interest. The book is intended to convey religious advice; and no more labour appears to have been bestowed upon the story than tic form. Lucilla is totally uninteresting; so is Mr. was merely sufficient to throw it out of the dry, didacStanley; Dr. Barlow is still worse; and Calebs a mere clod or dolt. Sir John and Lady Belfield are rather have some faults ;-they put us in mind of men and more interesting-and for a very obvious reason: they with ourselves. As we read, we seem to think we women;-they seem to belong to one common nature whereas imitation is hopeless in the more perfect might act as such people act, and therefore we attend ; characters which Mrs. More has set before us; and therefore they inspire us with very little interest.

There are books, however, of all kinds; and those may not be unwisely planned which set before us very pure models. They are less probable, and therefore less amusing, than ordinary stories; but they are more amusing than plain, unfabled precept. Sir Charles Grandison is less agreeable than Tom Jones; but it is more agreeable than Sherlock and Tillotson; and teaches religion and morality to many who would not seek it in the productions of those professional writers.

But, making every allowance for the difficulty of the task which Mrs. More has prescribed to herself, the book abounds with marks of negligence and want of skill; with representations of life and manners which are either false or trite.