The Express.
London, England, 1848-02-11 00:00:00

and
sanctuary, andetive.His
wdro"dmoesinsod, "spasseePect the Ithiturerhratioidoonf the
subjects himself to the judgment and reproof of the world.
To rail against those who stand in the place of God without
measure and without justice—to constitute oneself the sole
judge of wham is meet and just both is the political and
religious relations of the country—to impute melicions
motives to men of unblemished honour and high statical
without a particle of proof—to place Celt and Saxon in
eternal antagonism to each other—to keep the people is
a state of perpetuate excitement for they knew not what, as
excitement alike injurious to their social as to their religious
progress—to wring eontributions from a starving poor for a
visionary and unatminabie object—surely, my lord, this is
an unwholesome and unnatural position for a church to
assume, to which heaven has appointed a reign of peace and
charity. Yet it so the position which yon bare chosen.
whence you disturb the very foundations of order, and drive
all the bowing, of good government from your people. So
long as the church as made to take upon herself the attri-
butes, and place herself in the attitude of a faction ; so long
as she is stirred by every tumultuous wave of power pas-
sion ; so long as she is enslaved to unsound opinions or to
absurd prejudices which she herself has fostered or created;
60 long she works not in her vocation, which ought to be is
the ways of humility, peace, and security.
My lord, such is the result of the examination of my con-
science upon the first count—an examination in which it
has been my intention to show, that whilst we anxiously
seek to fulfil the duties of our allegiance to God, we know
also that, through Ood, we have likewise an allegiance and
a duty to Crew. Our rights, my lord, under this alle-
giance, arc social and political ; yours are spiiitual and re-
ligie,us. ''e do not desire, as laymen. to interfere with any
spiritual prerogative, neither do we desire to see those pre-
rogatives exceeded, and our own rights invaded.
Let us proceed to the second count; "as a corrupt cour-
tier, a selfish, auiduous, suitor of ministerial 'avows."
With this, my lord, I will take leave to connect the in-
sinuation, that in addressing you I was but a tool in the
hands of others. My lord, I do not consider myself
of sufficient importance, or sufficiently qualified, to
be so used; nor, diseonneeted as 1 am with the
ministerial climbs, could it be possible. If there
were any rte possibility in the question. it was
shared only with one itedividuel—an individual like yourself
a priest ef the Most High, but a man of larger views, and
sounder principles. His opinion did I nsk, and his concur-
rence I received. He is now far beyond my remit, and I
have no longer the benefit of his counsel. Since toe publi-
cation of nay letter I have received many approving testi-
monials from clergymen both in England and Ireland; and
not one private rebuke or admonition. But kr what I write
now the whole responsibility is on myself alone, if any
responsibility diem be in an honest defence of rights so un-
justly and so wantonly attacked. Nor is it one whit the leas
untrue that lam a suitor either fur court favours or minis-.
terial patronage. On this count, also, my conscience is
equally clear. lam not even a party man ; what tittle aid
I can give to any minister whom 1 consider to govern the
country for its advantage, I give it freely as &matter of duty,
without seeking a return.
Passing over the petty items of hypocrisy and ingratitude
as sins of minor magnitude—as well they may be supposed
to be in so heavy a catalogue—l pass at once to that severest
of your accusations, as I presume you fan(y it, and which
you seem to judge must haunt me with its ghastly terrors,
and sting me with a rod ef scorpions. Could 1 believe
myself to be a scandalous calumniator of Father ISl•Dev-
mott, I should, I trust, humbly beenoch his pardon.
But I never asserted anything against Father hitt/er-
e:twit, but as appearing to be substantiated upon peeitive or
presumptive evidence. This was my stateuario to the
Bishop of Elphin ; and to your grace I took especial care to
say, that a!I yet remained to be proved. Previous to the
publication of the letter of the Bishop of Elphin—a letter
which I rejoice to have been the means of producing—
there wise not a reasoning man in the three kingdoms who
doubted of the formal denunciation of Major Mah na from
the altar. Now, Father M'Dermott is fully acquitted el
that charge. I wish it were as easy to obliterate the impair-
don made by the scene at the relief committee, and the sub-
sequent correspondence. But this has not yet been at-
tempted ; and were it not, my lord, that your accusation
refer*, as I presume it does, to that item, I should have
eluded it altogether. Yet I cannot but take te myself credit
for having been the medium of rectitying the case, as far as
it appears to be possible. For the Bishop of Elphin I have
the highest respect—a feeling which lain sure is now com-
mon to us all. Supposing the charge of calumny to emaciate
me, as offending mainst the reputation of your grace's dio-
cese, there, too, I think I have rendered you a service before
the public, by enabling you to prove your exertiuns in the
calve of order and education. Nor do 1 ice why an
honest steward should be angry when called upon to
account for his trust. Upon thin very sensitive polio, how-
evor, 1 have one suggestion to venture—that like the knight
of La Mancha, from whom it amuses you to draw 5 our meta-
phors, you fancy an enemy where there is none ; and had yea
ellowcd your poor to receive the education "Oiled them by
the state, wh. n you could not supply it as ahundently your-
self, it is difficult to understand why it should nut have
proved as efficacious to them as it has been found to others
in the very many dioceses in which it has been eieopted ; nor
would you, 1 think, any more than they, have had eco.sion
to cry out, '• An enemy bath done it !"—he bath sown tares
among the wheat.
by lord, I beg to oh/terve' that my remarksupun this sub-
ject must be considered as if made merely in reference to a
police regula;ion, or any other question immediately coa-
-1 sated with the social administration of the country, and
without presuming to trench in the slightest degree upon
your grace's jurisdiction in the matter. With these short
explanations it is only necessary for me to refer to my former
letter, and to hold myself once more acquitted.
Though the neat charge, of conspiring regained the lives
and liberties of the people, sounds so heavy, yet if at be ex-
tenuated in proportion as it is diffused over a larger surface,
the number of the conspirators will, I trust, render it a very
venial offence. This may he bad casuistry, but it may never-
theless be good legit, for I trust it at once disproves the very
existence of the crime, which is of too atrocious a nature to
have any reality beyond the morbid imagination of those
who prefer it. I might, I think, with a far greater serea•
blance of justice, retort the accusation upon there with
whom your grace has at least ever been intimately con-
nected, and who for so many years opposed the wise and bo-
neenlent advice of that honest patriot and true philanthro-
pist, the celebrated Dr. Doyle, and were, without any doubt,
the means of postponing tke extension of the pour-law to
Ireland, which is only inefficient now, because it has not
been matured by experience and consolidated by time.
How much of human misery might have been eared, had it
been in full organised operation when famine first came
upon the land
The next count—that I have grieved and scandalised the
whole Christian world-1 shall dispose of still more brie fly,
by a simple reference to my letter—not, my lord, as repre-
sented by you, but as speaking for itself. Of all the great
names you have enumerated, perhaps, however, I may be
permitted to select oar to whom I would address myself .
more emphatically, beseeching him to give no credeuse
to so monstrous a calumny. I allude to the illustrious
bishop of New York—whom you also have chosen, and
I not unskilfully, as a special theme of eulogy—n prelate
as much to he commended for the larasneas of his views,
as for his mild, unostentatious virtues—whom I have long
been taught to reverence and admire through the genius of
Mrs. Mytton Maury—and who has just now received the
most distinguished honour ever conferred upon a churchman
of the New World, that of being invited to preach before
the representatives of the whole American commonwealth,
that from his lips they might learn to govern upon true
Christian principles. Nor ran the moralist fail to be struck
with the singuler fulfilment of the designs of Provide nee in
the history of this great man. What st happy de stihy as he
row nocomplishing in comparison with that bmtlees part he
might probably have played amongst the pitiless wrangling.
of his native land, upon the turbulent stage of repeal
politics !
Lest, however, it shoo'''. seem discourteous not to devote
a word to NI. de Nontalembert, whom I revere as the
brightest ornament of his eouatry, and the most chivalrous
champion of a tholiciam—l will merely observe that if he be
sot scandalised at the proceedings at Conciliation Hall—of
which, indeed, we must hope he has no very definite know-
ledge—nor yet at your grace recent letter, neither do I
apprehend he will bo at mane.
We hive now, my lord, but one sin more, sad though
last, not least—thst of insulting the map sty of Rome!!!
but the wherein and whereby not being specelied, I might at
once dismiss it as an imaginative phantom as it is, did it not
serve to illustrate that axiom, that they who suspect any par-
ticular failing in others are almost sure to be the most sub-
ject to it themselves, and it was rather a singular coinci-
dence, that both your grime and your friend and admirer the
Tablet—each of you my secusene—should, to my mind, at
least, have committed thin self-same offence in your own
persons, on the selfsame day . you, my lord, by your mani-
festo of the Ist of Jan., in which, in the very teeth of the
late rescript on the new colleges, you proclaim with re-
doubled zeal your eternal end uncompromising hostility to
the government of Englishmen, those hereditary enemies
I of your country and your creed, and your still closer
adhesion with increased energy and strength to an asso-
ciation, the most effective ever yet organised for the disturb-
ance of the social harmony of any people. That sesecia-
tion was founded by s great and illustrious man, but whose
republican tendencies, too clearly exhibited by his theories
of universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and annual parliament/4
and at this moment too closely imitated by his disciples,*
has made even his memory a very dangerous guide for any
political party, and therefore most obnoxious to the friends
and supporters of regular government, and of which Home
has ever been the chief abettor and inserter.
The other has sinned by a most presumptuous attack upon
the Sovereign Pontiff himself, arraigning his policy in the
most noble, generous, and enlightened exercise of his royal
prerogative as rash and ruinous; for, qui (acid per ahem,
facit per si —rating him, good pious man! for letting loose
eo many convicted rebels to plot the subversion of the
throne and the altar, by means of his own recently appointed
Council of State, that normal school of revolutionary agita-
tion But this is not all ; from the state be rushes
to the church ; be boldly intrudes himself into te
judgment ball, lays his irreverent han
of God's anointed, orowns him with
tumely, throws a mantle of derision ova
then jeeringly challenges the Vicar
to tell us of the qualifications of his ree.
lates in Spain ! I wonder, says he, new m
the rejected ones of Oregoey But the To'.
and is patronised in return, and thenceforth
vested with authority as the licensed vehicle
scurrility, the licensed defamer of the .-
licensed censor over prince, patriarch,
thinks that two Christian men might 1.
congenial pastime for that blessed, amps,.
of the new ear! and that the accusation
majesty of Roma might have tome trio'
ail ilt7 •-•_••
rascro-
—hese. lotter et'

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ch ; he noituy InCraam. salmase."
I, lays his irreverent hands upon the highest
inted, crowns him with the thorns of ma-
rs a mantle of derision over his shoulders, and
y challenges the Vicar of Christ upon earth
the qualifications of his newly-appointed pre-
! I wonder, says he, new many qf them are
ones of Gregory But the Tabla patronises,
,iced in return, sad thenceforth become; in-
stkority as the licensed vehicle of slander and
lionised defamer of the government, and the
w over prises, petriarch, and potentate Me-
sa Christen area might have found some ,
rtime for that blamed, auspicious da 't\kft
ear t end that the accusation of • _3c.144-
NM night have come with a beuer
turret. i • / • ."
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Bt. 01figgina's Letter et UN Mot Jausai. • xi
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