The Dublin University Magazine: A Literary and Political Journal

not speak to the plaintiff, or look on the same side of the road with him.' Nor did his neighbours speak to him, for they passed on the other side of the road without acknowledging him. He said that he would not get a hand's turn to do, and that his mill would be as dry as the road.' Not one hand's turn did he get to do, and his mill was idle. Nay, further, persons who sold little commodities in that remote district, would not allow him to make purchases from them; and he had to go to Ballycastle to buy any articles that he might require. At fairs and markets people shunned him as they would shun a leper; and on an occasion when he went to purchase corn in Ballycastle, on his approach a person fled from a cart rather than communicate with the accursed man. Doors were closed against him, his children were persecuted, and his son had been beaten by other children. Had the plaintiff not been supported by some gentlemen in the neighbourhood, he might have left his place, and begged his bread where a priest's curse was of less fearful consequences."

Such is the measure of papal vengeance dealt out in this free country against all Romanists who presume, in defiance of the injunction of the priest, to read a prohibited Bible! Thus it is that, when they are in earnest, they go to work. But let the offence be, that a miscreant imbrues his hand in the blood of that Bible-reader, and he may live and die in the odour of sanctity; or, should the laws of the land lay hold of him, and he should suffer for his guilt, there will be such a glo

rification in his latter end as converts it into a sort of apotheosis; so that a death by the hand of the public executioner, is regarded rather as an honour than a disgrace! This is to excommunicate the law, by annulling its most solemn sanctions!

Most truly was it said by Mr. Tomb, the counsel for the plaintiff in the above case :

"That if the legislature would pass an act of parliament-it was almost indecent to suppose such a thing; but, if it were possible for the legislature to pass an act of parliament, requiring the subjects of these realms not to read the Holy Scriptures, no man in the country would, he (the learned counsel) submitted, under the correction of the court, be obliged to obey the law. He would obey the Higher Tribunal, and would read the Word of God. Such an act of parliament would be void; and that the

legislature could not do, was not to be supposed as capable of being accomplished by the parish priest of Culfeightrin, who would prohibit the Gospel message being sent to God's intelligent and rational creatures."

Yes! Let the British House of Commons attempt to pass an act of that kind, and they will soon find that there are limits which, in the plenitude of their omnipotence, they cannot pass. The authority of God's written word is too firmly rooted in the understanding and the hearts of the people, to be abrogated by any human power. And any such attempt would recoil upon its perpetrators, and do more to damage their influence than could be accomplished by a successful revolution. The Scriptures are the commons of God's faithful people; and no man in this free country may be lawfully "let or hindered" in seeking instruction therein. But what King, Lords, and Commons could not do, a Romish priest hopes to accomplish by the terrors of excommunication; and the man must have

possessed an extraordinary degree of moral courage who could act in defiance of an interdict, the sanctions of which were so tremendous.

But our business is not at present with the priest and his anathemas. It is with the comparative measures of spiritual censures which are awarded to different offences-the portentous the murderer is tolerated, while the laxity of the church discipline by which

reader of the Bible is condemned. Let M'Laughlin, the poor, persecuted miller of the north, pass to the south of Ireland, and let him only become a Ribbon confederate, and imbrue his hands in the blood of some unoffending gentleman, whom he never saw until he met him to take his life, and he at once becomes restored to society. His offence is at once a passport to favour and sympathy with multitudes of his betraying any disposition to fall again countrymen. But let him beware of into the heretical perversity of reading the word of God for their edification. The instant he does so, his merits are forgotten. No protection will be any longer afforded him. No alibi will be

got up for his defence; and if ven-
geance does not anticipate the course
of law, he will very soon be a victim
to justice.

There was no part of the tragical case which has given rise to this paper, by which the enlightened portion of the community were more deeply revolted,

than the solemn declaration of his innocence by the convict Seery, immediately before his execution. Upon this we do not wish to offer any comment. Sufficient, and more than sufficient, had the wretched culprit to answer for in the deed which hurried him to his last account. And if he erred, it may be an erring conscience may be pleaded in bar to the heavier condemnation with which his memory must be loaded, if by his offence he only deliberately added sin to sin. But we have before us a little tract entitled "Murder and the Murderer Reconciled," written by the Rev. Roderick Ryder, late a Roman Catholic priest, and now a convert to the Established Church; and we extract from it a statement which, if it be true (and we have no reason to question its truth), presents those" dying declarations" of Romish culprits in a point of view which deserves to be generally known, as illustrating the working of popery in Ireland. The statement (valeat quantum) is as follows:

"Your fourth reason is, that Seery declared his innocence on the scaffold. I need not tell you, sir, or any priest of your Church, why the Roman Catholic fears not to go before his God, after telling a lie! Having been eleven years a priest of your Church, I know the reason, and you know it, and the public shall know it also. It is this: after telling it, he kneels down to his confessor, and gets absolution. This is the solution of a problem that was too difficult-the unravelling of a mystery that was too dark for Protestants to understand. The ego te absolvo of the confessor is the cause. The priest, standing by the side of the criminal, gives a false security to his guilty soul; and, like the false prophet mentioned in Scripture, cries to his troubled conscience, Peace, peace, where there is no peace." He ushers him into eternity, with a lie on his soul, and gives his absolution, as a passport to St. Peter, for admittance. The Council of Trent consigns to eternal flames any who will deny the validity of that passport! There can be no preventative against this but one, and that is, to give the chaplain full and free access to the convict, and to afford the convict every means and help to make

his peace with God, and after he has declared that he has done so, to allow no other absolution after he addresses the public, as we see by the papers Seery was allowed. If this rule were established, we would hear no more of these awful imprecations, that blaspheme God, if false, and scandalize the Christian, even if true. As an instance of how little importance should be attached to those declarations of innocence on the scaffold, I shall cite an example. In the year 1821, a notorious ruffian, named Daly, a captain of Ribbonmen, called Ballinafadmen, was executed at Seafin, near Loughrea. The most of the murders and outrages committed in the county of Galway that year were committed by this Captain Steele (as he was called) and his men. On the day on which he was led to execution, I heard one of his associates say that he was along with him the very night he committed the murder for which he was executed; yet on the scaffold this man declared before God that he was innocent of that crime, and the next moment knelt down and got absolution. The Marquis of Clanricarde, whose tenant he was, or Robert Daly, Esq., his agent, a Roman Catholic, can bear testimony to the truth of what I state. Since I became a priest, I never attended convicts on the scaffold, but on one occasion. Two men were executed in Montreal, in 1832, for the murder of a soldier. The two were guilty; one of them said nothing on the scaffold; the other declared his innocence, although I knew that he was guilty.'

We suffer this statement (penes auctorem) to speak for itself, only adding, that we have often heard it confidently affirmed by very competent authorities, that Romish convicts, when an alibi has been their defence, always make it a point of conscience to die with a declaration of innocence, as otherwise the witnesses on their behalf would be compromised. But that such a declaration should be trumpeted as a full expurgation of guilt, and used for the purpose of inflaming the multitude against the government of the country, and causing them to distrust or detest the administration of the law, was never attempted with so much audacious effrontery as in the case of Seery.

And now we ask again, is it possible that any remedy can be found for the present dreadfully disordered state of this country, until something effectual is done for correcting the distempered state of public opinion amongst the

peasantry, according to which a death upon the gallows is no longer ignominious when it is caused by what is called an agrarian murder?

Who are chargeable with this? Ordinarily speaking, one would say, those to whom the moral instruction of the people is entrusted. But it must undoubtedly proceed either from the presence of bad, or the absence of any instruction at all.

If such a phenomenon were predicable of the north of Ireland; if a Protestant peasantry were found thus indifferent to human life, and thus flagitiously regardless of the precept, "Thou shalt do no murder," what would be the inference? Would there be any great hesitation in ascribing it to some pernicious influence, exerted by those to whom their early training was confided, and by whom they were taught "the way they should go?" Let us put a case. Let us suppose a

most mild and benevolent Roman Catholic clergyman in the north of Ireland savagely murdered; let us suppose him a person who had never interfered in politics, so as to draw down upon himself any marked displeasure, and who had given of his substance indiscriminately to all who were in want; let us suppose the miscreant Orangeman, by whom he was waylaid when on a mission of charity, arrested; let us suppose the charge proved against him, so that no human being could entertain a doubt of his guilt; let us suppose that the jury, nevertheless, upon some point which does not touch the merits of the case, acquit the prisoner; let us suppose that upon his enlargement he is surrounded by exulting friends, and that lifting his arm with a fiendish joy, he exclaims, "there's the hand that done the job;" let us suppose this ruffian returning to his native village, all inhabited by bro

ther Orangemen, and that this village is illuminated at his approach, as if to celebrate this triumph over law, as well as to hail the liberation of their associate, who was acquitte by a mockery of justice; let us sup ose all this taking place in the north of Ireland, and the actors Orangemen, and we ask, would not the press ring with the indignant recital? would not the parliament and the empire be agitated by it? would it not be made to resound through Europe? Would not the Orangemen be denounced as monsters who were not fit to live in human society? And would not the ministry be hurled from power, which could continue to regard them with any peculiar favour?

Now, what we have imagined in the case of the Orangemen of the north, is nothing more than a tame and spiritless narrative of what is literal matterof-fact in the case of the Romanists of the south of Ireland! The Rev. Irwin Whitty is the murdered Protestant clergyman to whom we allude, and every circumstance which we have supposed respecting the trial, the acquittal, and triumphant welcome home of the liberated murderer, is but a transcript of what actually took place when the felon was enlarged who gloried in his deed of blood!

But we must conclude. The reader must draw the inference for himself. Such is the working of popery in Ireland! If Sir James Graham supposes that by largely endowing it, it will be greatly improved, he is much mistaken. He knows not what manner of spirit it is of. And if he be suffered to accomplish his design of establishing it in triumphant ascendancy in this country, there appears to us no limit to the calamities which he will bring upon the empire.

THE SIX P'S; OR, POETS, PAINTERS, POLITICIANS; PLAYERS, PREACHERS,

AND PHYSICIANS

ANTHOLOGIA GERMANICA.-No. XXII. UHLAND'S BALLADS: THE CHAPLET-AL-
BION HALL-LOVE AND MADNESS-THE BLIND KING-THE MINSTREL'S BAN-
THE TRISTFUL TOURNAMENT-THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA-GERMAN POESY

MISCELLANEA MYSTICA. No. III.-EMPEROR CHARLES IV., HIS DREAM-PRIN-

CESS PAPANTZIN, HER ECSTASY-THE COUNT OF MODENA-WITCHES-THE

WHITE LADY