"Does

and the Catholics. The former, he declared, had "a religion without a church, and the latter a church without a religion." These and several ebullitions of archiepiscopal conceit soon became the favourite themes of reproach and sarcasm; while certain peculiarities of person and deportment afforded food for popular ridicule. His lithe and erect figure on horseback was daily seen moving through the streets of the city with an air of prelatical pride and pedantic coxcombry, that to the lovers of a laugh was irresistible. he not look," said Sheil, "like a compound of Cardinal Wolsey and Dr. Syntax?" Frequent allusions occur in the proceedings of the association to the vast wealth of the Establishment, and to the supercilious bearing which characterised too often the upper grades of the hierarchy.* The following may be taken as a specimen of the serious raillery which the antinational spirit of the Anglican church in Ireland at that time provoked :

"Let me suppose that the spirit of Plato were submitted to some necromantic process of resuscitation, and that after he had revisited 'glimpses of the moon,' the task of effecting his posthumous conversion to Christianity were committed to the pious divine, whose meek and apostolic forehead has been recently invested with the archiepiscopal mitre of the metropolis.

* Speech; 1st May, 1827.

Let me be permitted to imagine, that the ex-fellow of the University of Dublin were to revert to those early occupations from which his sacred prosperity is derived; that he were entrusted with the religious education of the reanimated philosopher, and that, having again become tutor, he should have Plato for his pupil. I pass by the preliminaries of introduction between these distinguished personages, and say nothing of the astonishment of Plato, at the episcopal jauntiness of air and the volatile agility of demeanour which characterise the learned Doctor. Let me imagine the wonder of Plato to have subsided at the novelty of this our modern world, in which the Doctor performs so important a part, and that after having been contented upon the other subjects of his admiration, he exclaimed, 'Where are the gods of the old time? What has become of Jupiter? Does the thunder no longer roll at his behest? What has befallen the martial maid to whom Athens had devoted her peculiar adoration? Where is the sublime worship of the god of poetry and light? Has he been flung, like his own adventurous boy, from the chariot of the sun?' To this interrogatory the Doctor replies, "These graceful but unholy products of the idolatrous imagination of your country have returned into the nothingness from which they rose. These dreams of a fabulous creed have passed away, and that of which you, or your master Socrates, in one of your noblest dialogues, have given a prophetic intimation, has been realized, in a pure and celestial system of worship and of faith. There came from heaven a Being whose precepts carry an internal evidence of their divinity, and who, to use your own words of remote prediction, 'hath taught us to pray.' His coming was not announced in thunder, nor was his mission illustrated with flashes of lightning. His arrival on the earth was told in the solitude of the night, and in a peaceful and lonely song to 'shepherds abiding in the mountains.' He descended as an emissary of that Godhead of which he was at once a messenger and an emanation, in the lowliest form with which miserable humanity could be invested. His whole life was as simple as his birth was obscure. The poor,

the sorrowful, and the unfortunate were his companions. His only pomp consisted in the grandeur of his revelations, and even their sublimity was tempered by the meekness of his moral inculcations; mercy dwelt for ever on his lips, and diffused its tender attributes over all his actions. Humility was deified in his person. It was from the throne of shame and suffering that he proclaimed himself a monarch, and his last act of moral sovereignty was the pathetic cry of forgiveness, at the remembrance of which, the infidel of Geneva could not refrain from lapsing into an involuntary credulity, and exclaiming, in the spirit of the soldier who attended his agony, that if the death of Socrates was the death of a saint, the death of Jesus was that of God. His disciples participated in the divine character of their preceptor, and the twelve inspired teachers of his eternal word propagated his doctrines with the humility of him from whom they had received them. The spirit of their religion was typified by the meekness of a dove. They went forth with naked feet, and with scarce enough of raiment to shield them from the inclemency of the air. They spent their lives in the fasting and the prayer which they prescribed; they taught mankind that there was a sanctity in suffering, and a blessedness in tears; that life was a brief and miserable transition to that heaven towards which their eyes were for ever turned; and that the kingdom of Jesus was not of this world. Such were the first propagators of that sublime religion in which I have undertaken to give you instructions. I am one of the anointed representatives of those inspired, but meek and patient men- -and in me you behold a successor of the apostles.' 'You!' Plato would exclaim; and I leave you to conjecture the expression of surprise that would needs invest the features of the philosopher, in the utterance of the monosyllabic ejaculation of astonishment. The Doctor (let us suppose) proceeds to give the gospel to Plato, who peruses the holy writings, and afterwards returns to his preceptor in humility. 'I have read,' he may be imagined to say, 'I have read the wonderful book which you have placed in my hands, and I confess that all

the volumes of philosophy vanish before it. It is impressed with the seal of inspiration, and its pages are the records of heaven. In my own visions of perfection, I never reached, even in conjecture, to a point of moral sublimity which could be compared with the incalculable elevation of this superhuman system of goodness, of mercy, and of love. But, Doctor, forgive me for asking you whether you participate in that high conviction which it is your profession to impart ?' 'I' cries the Doctor; 'what a question to the Author of the Atonement!' 'I hear, indeed,' the philosopher might reply, 'that you yourself made an atonement, but without a sacrifice. You have expiated certain deviations into liberality, into which you wandered before your advancement to the glittering top from which you superintend and overlook the religion of Jesus. Doctor, I must be candid with you of course I cannot controvert the truth of your asseveration, but I own I never should have taken you to be a successor of the humble philosophers of Palestine. You remind me more of some of the spruce and acrimonious disputants called Sophists, who used of old to infest the groves of the Academy. You tell me that the mildness of your master was expressed by the softness of the dove; your own spirit would find its emblem in the proud and predatory falcon. You are a preceptor of forgiveness, while your pen distils virulence in every word—your lips, that should breathe nothing but mercy, are smeared with the poison of polemics. You leave venom in your very kiss of peace; even your pastoral injunctions, that should be the effusions of tenderness and pity, overflow with bitterness and gall. You have sent an arrow, in the shape of a barbed antithesis, to rankle in the heart of your country. You and your brother pontiffs talk of poverty, while the yearly income you derive from the public would, at the rate of Athenian exchange, amount to several talents. You speak of humility, while you tread on the tip-toe of importance, and haughtiness sits mitred on your brow. You prescribe the ascetic regimen of self-denial, while you quaff the richest nectar out of silver and gold. You

are lapped in down, while you bid your followers make their couch of the frozen earth; and you are over-canopied with purple, while you tell them that a Christian should have no other

roof but the cope of heaven above his head.

of Dives you hold up

Lazarus to imitation.

From the banquet

Your palaces outvie

the temples of the fallen gods; and you have substituted yourselves for the idols deride.' you

During a visit which he paid to Lord Cloncurry at Lyons, his seat in Kildare, he was consulted regarding certain views, which his Lordship soon afterwards propounded in a letter addressed to the association. These were in substance a dissuasion of the Catholics from the hopeless pursuit, as he deemed it, of religious equality by means of a separate agitation; and a proposal to substitute in its stead a combination of men of different creeds for the recovery of an independent legislature for Ireland. Mr. Sheil endeavoured to

convince him of the impracticable nature of his plan. Sectarian agitation was unquestionably a great evil, and tended of necessity to confirm the hostility which it had been the aim of bad government to foster between the separate races that inhabited the same country. But so long as the law continued to recognise the right of domination as the political inheritance of the minority, it was vain to suppose that they

Speech in Association, February, 1824.