THE ACTS PASSED IN THE CATHOLIC PARLIAMENT OF JAMES II., AND THOSE PASSED BY THE PROTESTANT PARLIAMENT OF WILLIAM III.

As it has not unfrequently been alleged against the Catholics that, if they had the power, and possessed ascendency in the Irish Legislature, that the Protestants have done, they would use it for purposes of their own aggrandizement, and to the injury of other religious sects-it may not be uninteresting and uninstructive here to place in juxtaposition, the Acts passed in the Catholic Parliament of James and those passed by the Protestant Parliament of William, allowing the reader to judge for himself which of the two legislated most in the spirit of constitutional freedom, and for the true interests of Ireland:

Acts Passed in the Protestant Parliaments of William and Mary.

Acts Passed in the Catholic Parliaments of James. An act declaring that the parliament of England can not bind Ireland; and against writs and appeals to be brought for removing judg-premacy of England), for ex

An act, 3 William, recognized by the Irish parliament (thereby recognizing the su

ments, decrees, and sentences | cluding Catholics from parliament.-Lords' Journal, v. i., p. 496.

in Ireland to England.

An act for taking off all incapacities from the natives of this kingdom.

An act restraining foreign education.-7 William, c. 4. An act for disarming Pa

An act for liberty of conscience, and repealing such pists, containing a clause acts and clauses in any acts of rendering their spoliation, Parliament which are incon- robbery, etc., legal.-7 Will., sistent with the same. c. 5.

An act for the encouragement of strangers and others to inhabit and plant in this kingdom of Ireland.

An act for vesting in his Majesty the goods of absen

tees.

An act for prohibiting the importation of English, Scotch, or Welsh wools into this kingdom.

An act for the advance and

improvement of trade, and for the encouragement and increase of shipping and navigation, etc., etc.

An act for banishing archbishops, priests, etc., for the purpose of extinguishing the Catholic religion.-9 Will., c. 1.

An act for discouraging marriages between Catholics and Protestants.-9 Will., c. 5.

An act confirming (i. e., violating) the articles of Limerick.-9 Will., c. 11.

The acts for discouraging the Woolen Trade of Ireland, passed in the English parliaments, -(1 Will. and Mary, c. 32; 4 Will. and Mary, c. 24; 7 and 8 Will., c. 28; 9 and 10 Will., c. 40), and recognized afterward by the Irish parliament, in the Bill passed 25th of March, 1699.

An act completing the ruin of the woollen manufactory, and imposed with all its violations of the trial by jury, etc., by the English parliament on Ireland. 10 and 11 Will. and Mary, c. 10.

Such were the Protestant parliaments from the hands of which Ireland afterward received its . destinies, and such the constitution to which the monopolists of the present day still wish that we should revert! Such men and such assemblies were much more fitting to entertain the petitions of coal-heavers for the exclusion of Papists from the trade, or to burn Molyneux's book by the public hangman, than to legislate for the rights and interest of a free nation.

SAMUEL SMILES,

History of Ireland and the Irish People, under the Government of England.

SAINT LOUIS.

IN that long succession of eulogists on the Royal Saint, none have been more emphatic than Hume, and none more enthusiastic than Voltaire. Yet it was impossible, even to their subtle intellects, as it had been difficult to many students in a far nobler school than theirs, to trace the movements of that benignant Providence which planted and brought to a prolific maturity in the mind of Louis, as in a genial soil, the seeds of an habitual holiness, and of a wisdom which was at once elevated and profound. The more diligently his life is studied, the more distinctly will it, I think, appear, that his natural dispositions received from the associates and teachers of his youth the training which rendered them fruitful of so many virtues. Exquisitely alive to every domestic affection—often oppressed with a constitutional melancholy, which laid bare to him the illusions of life, yet occasionally animated with a constitutional gaiety, which enabled him for a while to cherish and play with those illusions-enamored of the beautiful, and

revering the sublime - his temper, though thus sympathetic, pensive, and imaginative, was allied (it is no common alliance) to a courage which rose and exulted in the presence of danger, and to a fortitude which was unshaken in the lowest depths of calamity.

His mother, Blanche of Castile, watched over the royal boy (for he had not completed his thirteenth year when he ascended the throne of France) with all a mother's tenderness, united to a discipline more inflexible, and perhaps more stern, than most fathers have courage to exercise. In Isabella of France, his sister, who had preferred the cloister to the imperial crown, he had another kinswoman who bestowed on him all the thoughts, the time, and the affection which she ventured to divert from the object of her almost ceaseless worship. In his eighteenth year he married Marguerite of Provence, who after having been the idol of the Troubadours of her native land, herself became almost an idolater of him, cleaving to him with the same constancy of love in their quiet home at Poissy, and amid his disasters at Massourah and Damietta.

But the sagacity of Blanche foresaw that these filial, fraternal, and conjugal affections might enervate, even while they purified the spirit of her son,