Specting the concession of seats in parlia. ment to the Roman Catholics of Ireland. His general principles are opposed to it; and the exception, which he admitted in their favour, was founded on a state of things, which not only is gone by, but has been succeeded by one utterly and essen. tially at variance with it." At a subsequent period, he said, "if amongst our Clergy, (the Roman Catholic,) one seditious sermon can be shewn to have been preached, we will readily admit there is good reason for continuing the present laws in all their force!!" "Could the man who wrote this sentence, and that man, Mr Burke,—had he lived to witness the smallest part of that system of deliberate outrage and intimida. tion, which has been adopted by the whole mass of Roman Catholics in Ireland, and, above all, by their Hierarchy and their Priesthood, could he, I ask, be the advo cate and patron of such a cause? Could he give the sanction of his honoured name to the demands of those, who avowedly and exultingly proclaim their deadliest hate, their most active unmitigable hostility, to the Church of Ireland, the Protestant Episcopal Church there established by law ?” So much for the opinions of Edmund Burke. Now, let us attend to those of William Pitt. Dr Phillpotts has been marked by the enemy for his publication of Mr Pitt's Letter. He has been thanked for it by Mr Butler, by the Irish orators, by the Edinburgh Review, and by that high-minded gentleman, plain-spoken politician, consistent political economist, and stanch Tory, Mr Huskisson. The letter consists of two parts. First, an able, brief, and comprehensive statement of all the reasons which are adduced for granting the claims of the Roman Catholics. And I know not," says Dr Phillpotts," that any considerable arguments in favour of that measure are there omitted, except those which both the king and the minister would have equally disdained, the arguments addressed to the fears of Englishmen." Secondly, of a clearer and fuller statement of the conditions which he proposed to annex to the concession than has before been given to the public. These conditions are, first, a continuance of the oaths al ready required to be taken by Roman Catholics in Ireland. Secondly, a provision for the Roman Catholic Clergy, with a view of gradually attaching them to the government. Under "proper regulations," he wisely con sidered that the measure would tend to attach its objects to government. Without proper regulations, he was well aware that it would tend only to excite their ambition, and encourage hopes of farther advantages. If given to them to be enjoyed as a right, and not to be forfeited, otherwise than by such misconduct as the law of the land would punish, it would have amounted to nothing less than an Establishment. "Yet such was the measure, which, in the session of 1825, was actually received with favour in the English House of Commons; the bill conferring it had an ascer tained passage through that House, and the Roman Catholics of Ireland were brought to regard it, not as a boon for which it became them to be grateful, but as a mere act of scanty justice which the Legislature besought them to take in good part. They had, it is true, shown, from the first, no disposition to be satisfied with any pecuniary provisions of a less inde. pendent nature. Dr Doyle had plainly told the Committees, that he and his bre thren would rather receive nothing from the State, and that certainly, if they received at all, it should be on such terms interest in the grant. only as should give them a vested life. The obsequious House of Commons framed their measure accordingly; and Mr O'Connell, when reproached by his less judicious associates for having acceded to an expedient which bore the name, if not the semblance, of a security to this Protestant Establishment,' justified himself by characterizing very truly the prospect of carrying this like the Scotch, an Established Church.""" measure as 'the likelihood of establishing, Mr Pitt had, it is plain from his language, a very different plan in view such a plan, most probably, says our author, as is pursued towards the Presbyterian Ministers in Irelanda regium donum which might be withdrawn at any time, but would certainly never be withdrawn so long as its objects proved themselves worthy of the bounty of the State. Thirdly, Mr Pitt thought it indispensably neces sary to any tolerable plan for removing the political disabilities of the Roman Catholics, that the Popish clergy should be subjected to superintendence and control-the plan which of all would have been the most difficult to effect, though, on every account, the most important. With such views, would he, to use the strong language of Dr Phillpotts,-but not a whit too strong," have been either "Whether the practical difficulties attending the settlement of such a point would have been found too great even for Mr Pitt to overcome, is a question into which it is not necessary now to enter. That these difficulties, great in themselves, have, since his time, become incalculably greater, is unhappily too manifest; nor does there appear the smallest reason to believe, had he been spared to his country to the present day, that, according to the principles uniformly proclaimed by him, he could now be found among the advo cates for concession. It is true, that he never would have endured that the mischief should have reached its present hide ous magnitude, without any attempt to keep it down; he never would have endured that the known laws of the land should be outraged with impunity, that they, whose duty it was to execute and enforce those laws, should not only witness their violation with calm complacency, but should, even in their place in Parliament, themselves pronounce the most plausible excuse for past delinquency, and administer the strongest provocative to future excesses :—above all, he never would have endured, that the Majesty of British Legislation should be made the scorn and Laughing-stock of Irish demagogues-that an illegal association, put down by an express statute in one month, should, in the next, rear its brazen front, without even the decent hypocrisy of a change of name, should beard Parliament with its insolent defiance, should raise a revenue for the purposes of disaffection should even make the shameless but not the imprudent avowal, (for confidence, in such a case, is strength,) that the collection of this revenue is not merely a contribution for past or present charges, but a bond of union and a pledge of future co-operation, -in the revolutionary jargon of the day, it is a means of organizing aud affiliating the people. All this, I repeat, would not have been endured, had Mr Pitt still guided the helm of government,-ay, or had any one truly British statesman felt himself responsible, in his own individual fame, for the results of the policy which has been pursued. It was only when we were given over to divided councils and conflicting principles,-worst of all, when the wretched system was adopted, of compromising all difference of opinions, by acting upon none,-of banishing even the name of Ireland from the deliberations of our rulers, of putting off to a convenient season' the most perilous and urgent concerns of that distracted country, stultâ dissimulatione, remedia potiùs malorum, quàm mala, differentes,it was only then, that we reached the full maturity of our present evils,-evils so great, that we can neither bear their pressure, nor endure their cure; but we go on, from day to day, from year to year, seeking, by any wretched nostrum the quackery of the age can furnish, to palliate a corroding plague, which is fast eating to our very vitals.' We cannot better conclude our review of Dr Phillpotts' admirable work, than by the final sentence of the Archbishop of Tuam's speech in the House of Lords. Where, pray, on that occasion, was the Bishop of Chester? "Though opposed to the motion of the noble lord, and though strenu ously opposed to those who called themselves the advocates of emancipation, yet he was a sincere friend to emancipation in its true sense. He would emancipate them from the bondage of ignorance-he would emanci pate them from gross darkness-he would emancipate their minds by a li beral and scriptural education; not such an education as certain commis sioners had recently recommended to the adoption of the legislature-not such an education as would adapt the Scriptures to the passions and prejudices of men-not such an educaas depended upon a corruption of the text, or upon subtractions from it; he was no advocate for such an education as that, but he was an advocate for an education founded upon God's holy word-he was for an education which took that word for its standard -an education which would tend to correct the superstitions of Ireland, and to improve her moral condition."+ "So it has been lately called by Mr Shiel, who adds, Every man, who contributes the smallest fraction of money, becomes the member of a vast corporation instituted for the liberty of Ireland.' + Since this article was partly printed, a second edition (as it is called) of the pamphlet alluded to a few pages back, has appeared, with the name of the Reverend Richard Shannon on the title-page. THE TOUR OF DULNESS. 1. FROM her throne of clouds, as Dulness look'd She sleepily nodded her poppy-crown'd head, 2. For the north-west wind brought clouds and gloom, Blue devils on earth, and mists in the air; Of parliamentary prose some died, Some perpetrated suicide, And her empire flourish'd there. 3. The Goddess look'd with a gracious eye 4. This was her sacred haunt, and here Her chosen here officiated, And hence her oracles emanated, And breathed the Goddess in every word. 5. She pass'd from the east to the west, and paused To inspire a few puffs for Colburn and Co. 6. The Hall, where sits in sage debate 7. There above all her darling Hume The universal legislator. And still in all her own. 8. She enter'd not the Chancery Court, THE extent to which the efforts of the great societies now established in every Protestant kingdom, have urged their missions for the conversion of the heathen, and for the instruction of the careless, the ignorant, and the infidel, among themselves, raises them into one of the grand features of our time, or perhaps even into that characteristic by which all others are to be thrown into the shade. If the fifteenth century was the age of natural and scientific discovery, the eighteenth the age of infidelity and revolution, the nineteenth may yet bear the illustrious name of the age of Christian la bours for the enlightening and happi ness of mankind. To bring all these labours into one point of light, with the double purpose of shewing us what we have done, and what we have still to do, would be to render a public service to the Christian community. But it requires time and details which are at present beyond our power, and we must reluctantly content ourselves with a rapid view. The general population of Europe is estimated by Humboldt at 198 millions, of whom 103 millions are Roman Catholics, 52 Protestants, 38 followers of the Greek ritual, and 5 Mahometans. To begin at the northern extremity of Europe,-Lapland, a space of 150,000 miles, or about the extent of France or Germany: In a population perhaps the thinnest in the world-one to every four square miles-Lapland has at present thirteen principal and ten filial churches. Three translations of the bible have been printed. The Swedish bible society of Stock holm has directed its attention to this desolate kingdom, and twelve young men are constantly educated at the king's expense, for preachers among the Laplanders. The Russian bible societies are also exerting themselves in this direction; and, so early as 1815, had distributed 7000 bibles. Passing on to the north-east-Russian Asia, a space of four millions of square miles, with a population of about nine millions, is still almost totally heathen. The Edinburgh missionary society so far back as 1803 sent two ministers to preach in Tartary. In 1815, they renewed their attempt at Astracan. Three missionaries of the London missionary society, have been for some years stationed at Selinginsk, about 160 miles from Irkutz, where the Emperor Alexander gave them an estate and money for building. A printing press of the Mongolian has been erected there. They have made extensive journeys towards the south and the Chinese frontier; but the poverty of the soil, the inclemency of the climate, and the roving nature of the tribes, offer the most formidable obstacles to the diffusion of religious knowledge. To the south lies one of the most remarkable regions of the world,-Tibet, the Switzerland of Asia, an immense succession of hill, valley, dells of exhaustless fertility, and mountains towering almost twice the height of Mont Blanc. The top of the Dwawalaghiri rises 26,000 feet above the level of the ocean. But the civil constitution is still more extraordinary. The nation is one great convent, with a multitude |