]830.] The Irish Priest and his Niece. 417 



" I'm afeard," exclaims Mrs. Martin, " that the Bible people know 

 all about it, Peggy. It was only the other morning that they were axing 

 down at the school whose child it was that the nurse was taking such care 

 of. That would be certain destruction to us all, avourneen !" 



"Ah! then, what are you teasing yourself about? 11 replies Father 

 Macdermott. " Ar'n't the Biblicals our sworn enemies ? Sure I'd 

 rather they'd say it than not ; for our people wouldn't believe a word of 

 it then. It would be all set down to their spite and malice ; and the 

 'Sociation would take it up and prosecute them for slander, and Peggy 

 would be a made woman ever after the world over. Who d'ye think 

 would dare to accuse me of it ? Wouldn't I excommunicate them, bell, 

 book, and candlelight, and bring the murrain on the cattle of them ? 

 Don't you know very well, with all your foolishness, that it wouldn't 

 be wishing them all their souls and bodies are worth to put such a charge 

 upon me ? Who cares what they think, when I know they dare not speak 

 out one word against their priest ! Take your cordial, Mrs. Martin, and 

 leave the rest to me." 



This is the moral of our sketch. It is not a picture designed by the 

 imagination. It is drawn from the life. It is an existing statement of 

 facts, but faintly coloured from the original. 



The priest's niece is the convenient name of that individual who fills 

 the void of the priest's loneliness ; who engrosses the suppressed play 

 of his forbidden affections ; who enables him to cheat religion of its 

 austerities ; and to enjoy in disguise those endearments of home arid its 

 associations which the unnatural bondage of his church pronounces 

 criminal. The system which opposes itself to nature ; that, in the 

 name of God, resists the decrees of God as they are declared in our 

 organization, moral and physical ; that sets aside the innate and irre- 

 sistible tendencies of our original being in favour of fictitious, degrading, 

 and impossible obligations ; that, under the pretence of purifying the 

 lives of the professors of Christianity, forces them into the guilt of vio- 

 lating Christianity in secret ; that makes men hypocrites for the sake of 

 making priests appear immaculate and superhuman ; that poisons the 

 springs of thought and feeling, and distorts the whole machinery of 

 human action, for the sake of arrogating to itself the miraculous and 

 fabulous power of suspending the faculties and keeping back the 

 impulses, that are common to mankind, and above and beyond mortal 

 control ; the system that assumes these extravagant and impious prero- 

 gatives, is to be censured in chief for the abominations of its ministers. 

 The priest is but a man ; but he is a bad man to become the instrument 

 of such monstrous chicanery H>f so extensive a fraud upon the credulity 

 of the weak and the bigotted. 



M.M. New &JTUW. VOL. X. No. 58. 3 G 



