186 Notes of the Month on  [Fse. 
im its finer texture, in a month, as a student of the actual subject will in 
a year. 
For the practice of operations, the body is required; but even this in 
by no means a frequent degree, and only in the hignest grade of the art. 
The simple inspection of an ably-performed operation in an hospital, will. 
give more real knowledge than a dozen dissections. But even where 
these are required, there is the most complete facility of obtaining the 
subjects from France. The Custom-house has hitherto objected to this, 
on the ground that it might be turned into a means of smuggling, and 
that the officers could not be expected to undertake so unpleasant a duty 
as the search. But the objection might be instantly obviated, either by 
the offer of some additional salary from the College of Surgeons or others, 
to the examining officers, or by the appointment of half-a-dozen surgical 
pupils to the work of examination. ‘To this, in some shape or other, the 
matter must finally come ; and the sooner the better. 
. The last hours of such a wretch as Burke can be looked on only with 
horror ; yet is is a striking trait at this time to see the working of the 
popish superstition. His priest attends him, hears his detail of crime, 
gives him absolution, and the murderer is sent to death with the abso- 
lute conviction, as far as Rome can give it, that he is “as innocent as the 
babe unborn!” 
Such is the fatal practice of popery, which suffers men to go-on in 
the most horrid atrocities, with the feeling, that, when they can go on no 
farther, the priest washes them from guilt at the moment, and sends 
them pure to the future world! The belief in this monstrous doctrine 
has been one of the chief treasures of Rome. For every crime there is 
a price ; and the revenue of dispensations and absolutions thus acquired 
has flowed into the papal coffers for a thousand years. In Italy; in Ire- 
land, in all the earth where popery is suffered to bewilder the minds and 
pervert the moral feelings of mankind, this atrocious practice is still the 
same. The Irish murderer walks, with the blood of his landlord red on 
his hands, to the priest—makes his confession, which the priest is never 
to disclose—and, on the strength of his having thus easily cleared his con- 
science, receives full absolution, and is ready to commit the murder of 
any body else’s landlord on the night after—Who can wonder at the 
murders of Ireland ? 
The Italian bravo, the regular trader in assassination, whose profession 
is to stab for hire, is generally one of the most regular at the confessional ; 
if he has any more hazardous butchery than usual to do, he takes the 
sacrament, and purifies his soul beforehand ; but always, if he escapes 
with life, returns to the altar, and-there makes himself sinless for a six- 
pence.—Can we wonder that Italy is a seat of midnight murder—that 
its roads are infested by gangs of desperadoes—and that the com- 
mon passage, in open day, from Rome to Naples, one of the most fre- 
quented highways in Italy, is a constant peril? f 
The whole fabric of continental society is rotted by this guilty sys- 
tem. The habitual adulteress goes as regularly to confession as the 
maiden—comes away from it, with as full a consciousness that her 
impurity has been wiped away—and. instantly, embarks in her old 
career, with the same assurance of perpetual absolution—Can we won- 
der at the general pollution of character throughout the papal world ? 
The priest, educated in the midst of this pollution, shares it in instances 
unnumbered. It is on record that, in the single province of Murga, 
