1828.) The Brunswick Clubs. 567 
Of those there are nearly two thousand parish priests officiating in 
Ireland. But the numbers and virulence of the Romish agency, are not 
to be estimated by even this formidable enumeration. The more hazar- 
dous class are the regulars, tribes of monks, still less connected with 
the public interests, if possible, than the parish priests, and still more 
bound to Rome. Those men, whom common wisdom in the govern- 
ment would have driven, root and branch, out of the country, plunder- 
ers and perverters as they are—the open agents of foreign influence, 
and the unquestionable missionaries of every doctrine that can yet grow 
into national disturbance—are already crowding into Ireland, purchasing 
lands, by what funds none but themselves can tell, usurping the educa- 
tion of the popish children, and, in all their proceedings, carrying on the 
most notorious, yet the most secret correspondence with Rome. 
Among those are the Jesuits, a race of criminals, whom the scorn and 
terror even of popish Europe expelled from every kingdom scarcely 
half a century since; to whom every breach of obligation, moral 
and divine, was familiar ; and who in Spain, Portugal, France, and 
Italy, were alike charged with poisoning and treason—the pollution of 
private morals, and the assassination of kings. Yet those we have, 
with a negligence, which better deserves the name of frenzy, suffered to 
establish themselves within a few miles of the Irish metropolis, there to 
stimulate the efforts of papistry, to direct the progress of insurrection in 
Catholic rents, harangues, and rabble musters, and to be in a condition 
to keep up, like their missionary brethren, a perpetual and most myste- 
rious correspondence with-the general of their order; who reigns over 
their movements with more than kingly despotism, and who, by the laws 
of his order, constantly resides in the capital of conspiracy, Rome. Of 
the tremendous materials that are stored in these successive deposita- 
ries of public explosion, who can doubt? Or who can more doubt that 
there is any alternative for the British government between weakly con- 
ceding all, and wisely and manfully declaring that concession has gone 
to its full extent ; and that the protestant laws and liberties must be no 
longer lowered into the toy of a faction, whom no concession would 
satisfy, short of absolute supremacy. But the British government can 
be strong only as the organ of the nation ; and it is to put the govern- 
ment in possession of this strength, that the Brunswick Clubs have been 
established. When the minister comes down to the House, he will now be 
at no loss for the public judgment. If he waver, he will have the saving 
knowledge that the eyes of the nation are upon him. If he be resolute, 
he will have the noble confidence, that the hearts and hands of the 
F bravest, wisest, and most honest population of the earth, are ready to 
sustain him in the cause of freedom and religion. 
; If we are to be told that those things are best left to parliamentary 
discussion, we must spurn the advice, let it come from what quarter 
it may. The man who referred the question of cutting his own 
throat to the wisdom of another, would be but a feeble emblem of 
the nation, that left it to a minister, and a House of Commons, to 
decide at their ease, whether it should be slave or free. On the minor 
questions of polity, we may defer to the experience of the Legislature. 
But where the most incurable evils may be the result—where the ques- 
tion is plain to every man—and where the God, that has put into the 
national heart the feeling of civil and religious freedom, has put into the 
