1827.] The Catholics of Ireland. 17 



disastrous war has received a wound, which it may linger on with, but 

 from which it never can recover when, in France, the same seeds of 

 knowledge have more than taken root have shot up, and will never be 

 eradicated, whatever may be the transient absurdities of bigots in power 

 for a time when, by a singular example of the generalizing spirit of 

 intellect, the very same party the liberal party which in England i 

 calling for Catholic Emancipation, is in Spain, at the very same mo- 

 ment, fighting to the loss of life and country against those very 

 abuses which Catholicism most prizes and esteems most dear ! to 

 talk of any apprehension of the advance of Catholicism in England or 

 Ireland, under such circumstances, is literally to talk of an event so 

 opposite from all ordinary probabilities, as to seem to convey an imputa- 

 tion of apathy or weakness upon the Ministers of our British Protestant 

 Established Church. 



For what can there be to us Protestants, so seducing in the apparently 

 absurd dogmas of the Roman Catholic faith what can there be so 

 attractive about the chains which it puts upon a man, both mind and 

 body that we should think the members of our own Established 

 Church with all their attributes of wealth, supremacy, and talent 

 unable to make head against it ? Into the value of the Roman Catholic's 

 Creed it is not our intention now to enter ; in a religious view, we shall 

 never use the freedom of discussing its worth at all : but to us it does seem 

 as impossible that darkness should resist the daylight, as that the Catholic 

 faith should resist the progress of knowledge and education. We desire 

 neither to print sermons for the people of Ireland, nor to attack them by 

 missionaries ; all we demand is that, which in the long-run cannot be 

 prevented that the people should be taught to read. We care very 

 little about their reading the Scriptures in the first instance if there be 

 any question raised upon it. Let them read only the " Farmer's Maga- 

 zine," Cobbett's " Cottage Economy," the " Complete Letter- Writer," 

 the " Whole Duty of Man," or even the " Footman's Directory." This 

 reading alone will bring with it a great deal of knowledge : if it only 

 brought a little having a little, they will soon contrive to have more. 

 Cobbett's book, above all others the " Cottage Economy " well dis- 

 tributed in Ireland, would do ten times more good in that country we 

 speak it with no irreverence than the distribution of the Scriptures. 

 No peasant will read the contents of that book without being excited to 

 search farther. The running stream might as easily be bound in fetters, 

 as that natural operation of the human mind be prevented. The pea- 

 santry of Ireland are acute enough stupidity is the last of their failings 

 on all matters where once they see their interests concerned. And 

 for the effect of Concession would it be possible, we ask, for Catholic 

 gentlemen to sit in an assembly like the House of Commons, and go on 

 there, either maintaining the superstitions of a dark and barbarous age, or 

 justify the wilfully keeping their poorer countrymen in hopeless and 

 degraded ignorance ? 



We know that the Catholic cause is guided badly ; that it is urged in 

 one quarter by bold and furious enthusiasts ; and, in another, sought to be 

 made a stepping-stone by pretenders, whom it would be a waste of atten- 

 tion even to name. But by every act of justice, let it be remembered, which 

 we perform by every step which goes to the redressal of real and well- 

 founded complaints so much is done towards putting down impudence 

 and quackery into the obscurity which such qualities properly inhabit. 



M.M. New Series.VoL.llL No.13. D 



