understanding, but by insensibly colouring the feelings, directing the current of the thoughts, connecting ideas which possess no natural affinity, by giving rise to antipathies, prejudices, casual mental associations. And so it is in the present instance. The flames of Popish persecution do not blaze before our eyes, the scaffold is not dyed with the gore of Protestant martyrs; and in the eyes of those whose powers of reasoning carry them no farther than the present information of their senses, Romanism is no longer a system of intolerance and blood. Popery has been effectually coerced, and is, therefore, supposed to require no coercion. The inaction of disabled enmity and powerless malignity is mistaken for the voluntary forbearance of willing tranquillity, or the spontaneous manifestation of amicable feeling.

This error, then, however apparent its absurdity to the most superficial glance, is yet explicable by assignable principles of our fallible constitution. But for the delusion of those who not only discredit the malignity of Popery, but also deny its progress, how shall we account by any recognised law of human folly? In what mental conformation shall we find the secret of an obliquity of intellect so unparalleled? Or, if the other alternative be chosen, to what frontless audacity shall we attribute the advancement of a position of such transparent falsehood? To dread the advance of Popery in this enlightened age is, we are assured, a groundless and a false alarm. The spread of a system of superstition, of intolerance, and of mental thraldom, is, we are informed, iucompatible with the intelligence, the liberality, and the freedom of inquiry, which mark the character of the times. He who fears the progress of Popery in these philosophic days is haunted by the apprehensions of former ages; the history of darker times has conjured up the spectres of bygone terrors; terrors whose existence is still believed by the credulous, and asserted by the designing, but which, to the eyes of intelligence and candour, vanish before the illumination of the nineteenth century. Such alarmists are as reasonably disquieted as those who should dread another descent of the Danes upon our coasts, or tremble lest the liberties of Europe should fall prostrate before the power of the Turk. Such is the reasoning which, to these lauders of modern intelligence, is powerful enough to blind their intellectual vision to its irrefragable confutation too conspicuously afforded by the progress of events. Yet to such reasoners let us express our unfeigned apprehensions that, in the illumination of an age which can supply such enlightened speculators, is to be found but small security against the spread of the veriest monstrosities of superstition, and the most sanguinary tenets of ferocious bigotry.

What, then, is the state of things amidst which these assertions of the impossibility of the progress of Popery are so confidently made? Let us answer this inquiry by the following rapid summary of melancholy but indisputable facts. Before the commencement of this century of intelligence, in the year 1796, there were in Great Britain 30 Popish chapels; there are now 560, with from 700 to 800 Romish ecclesiastics. There were in that year three or four seminaries of

Roman Catholic education; there are at present about 80, and about a score of nunneries. There was at that period no Popish college; there are now ten. We are unable to complete these alarming statistics by a numerical statement of the increase of the Roman Catholic population; yet can we affirm that it is commensurate with the expectation which the preceding facts would lead us to entertain; and that of this augmentation a large proportion is composed of proselytes. The additions from the influx of Irish Papists, and from the natural progress of population, fall very far short of the total increase. To more notorious instances of the advancement of Popery we refer, not in order to supply information which all possess, but to excite zeal, which animates too few. Of its progress in the Senate, of its influence on the councils of the nation, of its legislative establishment in one part of the empire, of national institutions for its inculcation and support in another, of its advance in at least the simulated esteem of the rulers of the land, of facts such as these none need to be informed: but few, alas! is it unnecessary to rouse from the torpor of inaction, and wake from the slumbers of a perilous security.

Yet, that in the House of Peers, His Majesty's Prime Minister should inform us that the Romish superstition is as well entitled to British patronage as the Reformed faith; that in the House of Commons, to which an oath that the Popish heresy is damnable and idolatrous, was, seven short years ago, an indispensable condition of admittance, a band of perjured Papists should now occupy a position of such commanding influence as enables them to hold in their hands the balance of contending parties, and thus to sway the destinies of the empire; facts such as these might well appear sufficient to convince incredulity, and to alarm ill-founded confidence. That a further exemplification of the progress of Popery should influence those whom the preceding instances are unable to effect, is an idle expectation; and, for those who are suitably impressed, the detail is unnecessary. Let this part of our case appropriately terminate in the expressive language of an old writer: "There be some rulers of nations," says he, "who postpone their duty to their interest, and hold rules of rectitude in less favour than their pleas of state. Yet shall these misguided men discover, when haply it may be too late, that he has made an ill bargain, who buys present gain by final loss!" Such, then, is the reply of facts to the deniers of Popery's increase. Such is the answer of melancholy experience to a priori speculations on the incompatibility of modern intelligence with the spread of Romish error.

And what is this universal illumination which no cloud of error can obscure, no subtlety of argument beguile? What is this mighty fortress of epidemic philosophy, impregnable to the assaults of superstition, and secure against the stratagems of sophistry? What is this unfailing antidote to Popery's influence which circulates throughout the land? Are the bulk of our population, the tillers of our ground, and the operatives in our manufactories, indeed so profound in erudition and so perspicacious in intelligence, that the statements of Romish learning the plausibility of Romish advocacy, the solemnity of Romish ceremonials, must appeal in vain to knowledge so extensive, to intellects

so enlightened? Or does not this much-vaunted illumination consist, rather, in a crude, an ill-instructed, an unruly intelligence; characterized by the ill-founded confidence which ever marks imperfect knowledge, and the liability to error which this groundless assurance and this partial information are calculated to produce and to perpetuate? And who can take an enlightened view of this melancholy fact, and not perceive that, in intelligence of such a character, are to be found materials eminently favourable to the operations of Popery, rather than incompatible with its farther progress? And of the intellectual power which rises superior to this shallow intelligence, how much is unprincipled, how much is venal, how much is purchasable by the highest bidder? "Knowledge,"* we know, "is power;" and of marketable talent and vendible information, weapons so suited to the existing condition of the public mind, will the Romish Church, which never fails to shape her tactics to the times, hesitate to be a liberal purchaser? That this is not theory unsubstantiated by facts, the tracts, the pamphlets, the periodicals, and the journals, in which the doctrines of the Popish heresy are now advocated with all the ability of mercenary literature, afford abundant demonstration. In the existence, then, of hireling authorship, and popular ignorance, sufficiently removed from unreclaimed barbarity to be a fit recipient for its unfounded statements, its inconsequential reasonings, let us not be told that we have adequate security against that progress of Romanism which it is, on the contrary, so eminently calculated to facilitate and promote !

Not the least alarming confirmation of the fact and extent of Popery's augmentation in the land, is derivable from the testimony of the best informed and most distinguished Romanists themselves. With a few out of many attestations of this nature, we shall conclude our evidence of this melancholy truth. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Edinburgh, at the opening of the Conventual Church, some months since, expressed himself as follows:-"Since the period of the Reformation there was a time when one solitary Catholic priest wandered over the length and breadth of the kingdom: now your places of worship adorn the land, and are widely scattered over the face of the country; now you at noon-day worship the Almighty with almost all the splendour of Catholic times and Catholic countries. Scarce now does the year roll over in which several edifices are not reared and dedicated to God, according to the form and faith of the Catholic Church. You are yet assembled, my friends, in the first Conventual Chapel that has dared to raise its head in this kingdom since the Reformation. Yes, my fellow-Catholics, if to-day St. Margaret stands alone, the time may not be far distant when the increase of similar institutions may be proclaimed with as much joy as I, at this moment, experience in alluding to its solitary existence." And in a periodical, which the editorial sway of Mr. Daniel O'Connell marks as the accredited organ of the party, we are told, "we are much gratified at the aspect which Catholicity presents to us at this moment in Great Britain. The number who continue to join themselves to

See this subject powerfully treated in the June number of the "Dublin University Alagazine," in an article entitled "The Established Church Society."

our communion, attest the beneficial tendency of the spirit of inquiry which marks the religious character of the age." We shall conclude these attestations, which might be indefinitely multiplied, by the following extract from a recent publication of a Romish ecclesiastic. "He, in whose hands are the hearts of princes, who ordains in wisdom, and executes his purpose with a divine sweetness, has broken the fetters which his Church had so long worn in these kingdoms; and, once more, to Englishmen, to Irishmen, and to Scotchmen, the ancient faith of their ancestors is freely proclaimed. Throughout these islands our divine religion is making a rapid progress; churches and chapels, colleges, convents, and schools, are rising up in such numbers and magnificence as to make our enemies quake with fear."

And now we desire to know whether the fact of the advance of Popery in the country is sufficiently apparent; we desire, moreover, to inquire whether this progress of the religion of intolerance and blood, the religion of the inquisition, the fagot and the axe, the religion which reeks with the slaughter of our murdered fathers, the religion which vaunts an immutability of this hideous character: we desire to inquire whether the progress of this atrocious system be a reasonable subject of alarm to every lover of Christianity, of his country, and his species; and we wish, in fine, to be informed whether this alarm should terminate in inactive apprehension, or whether it should not, rather, develop itself in strenuous exertion and efficient opposition. And, if these demands receive the affirmative reply, which every Protestant must give, we conceive that the case of "the Protestant Association" is conceded and established. Formed to combine in our mighty and comprehensive union, all who are duly impressed with the sentiments which we have endeavoured to express, it is entitled to the support of all who avow these persuasions.

The justice of this character of the Protestant Association let us more specifically establish by the following sketch of its history, its views, its objects, and its plans. Viewing, neither with incredulity nor insensibility, the alarming progress of Popery in the land, its increasing influence upon the councils of the nation, its attainment and abuse of concession after concession, its unseemly alliance with the so-called liberalism of our times, their united attacks upon whatever is dear to the lover of Christianity and the Reformed Faith, the furtherance given to their unholy aims by the notion, prevalent in high places, that those religious views and ends, which should with every Government be the objects of paramount consideration, should be wholly lost sight of by the rulers of mankind; deeply impressed with these melancholy facts, the founders of the Protestant Association held a Meeting at Exeter Hall, in the month of June 1835, for the consolidation,in one vast and effective union, of all who were like-minded with themselves. Knowing, in opposition to the impious gabble of the day, that the establishment and maintenance of true religion are a main concern of legislative obligation, and that true religion is professed by Protestants alone; the members of this Association see that from these two facts, the duty of governing these realms upon Protestant principles is a necessary influence. Conscious, also, that, with

a due discharge of this fundamental obligation, an unlimited tolerance of Popish machinations and Popish violence is wholly inconsistent, they are aware that Protestant legislation demands Popish coercion. The members of the Protestant Association, too, are loyal; and knowing, that for the maintenance of Protestant principles the Royal succession was infringed, and its present possessors seated on the throne, they are loath to sanction the abandonment of that, with which the right of the present dynasty to sway the sceptre of these kingdoms, is indissolubly bound up.

The truth of the foregoing considerations has not impressed itself more irresistibly upon the Protestant Association, than has its melancholy contrariety to the spirit and practice which have marked the recent legislatorial history of our country. In its relations to Protestantism, to Popery, and to miscalled liberality, this, indeed, presents but one unvariegated narrative of mean surrender and unwise concession; of justice sacrificed to clamour, and expediency preferred to principle; of rightful claims denied, and the demands of violence admitted and rewarded; of fruitless endeavours to alienate loyalty by insult, and to conciliate sedition by caresses; of egregious efforts to make Protestantism odious, and to render the Popish monster amiable, to the British nation! Of the justice of this melancholy statement, the acts of our Legislature, from the legal establishment of the Popish religion in Canada to the legal establishment of Popish education in Ireland, afford a demonstration which no argument can disprove, to which no dulness of observation can be blind.

Such, then, are the sentiments, and such the convictions of the Protestant Association; convictions and sentiments which it is its object, in its associated capacity, to propagate, to advocate, and to enforce through the length and breadth of the land. Knowing how its insidious adversary can vary her tactics, can diversify her modes of action, and multiply her plans of operation, its own proceedings will be proportionably comprehensive and proportionably manifold. It will oppose Popery in all her developments, from her plots in the Cabinet for the subversion of our Church, to her machinations in our parishes for the entrapment of unwary souls. It will withstand her, whether she manifest herself in the form of a legislative enactment, or display herself in the shape of a proselyting Romish priest. Aware, moreover, that all efforts must be ineffectual, unless a Protestant spirit be adequately rekindled throughout the empire, it will raise the cry of "No Popery" from one end of the kingdom to the other. The monstrosities in speculation, and the enormities in practice, of that antichristian system, her soul-destroying doctrines, and her hideous deeds, shall be narrated, shall be commented on, shall be displayed to universal observation, and marked out for universal execration. Effectually to accomplish these desirable ends, the Protestant Association will have recourse to the two most influential methods of influencing the public mind-the platform and the press. At its Meetings, and in its publications, it will endeavour, with all the power that in it lies, to impress its sentiments upon general conviction. It will carry its Petitions and its remonstrances to the council of the