rates. In the third place, and looking at it from a national point of view, it helps to fix our population (what we sorely need) in the soil of our country.

The cottages, moreover, give a neat, pretty look to the country; whereas the old cabins were an intolerable eyesore. Our people, too, will have the opportunity of learning and practicing cleanliness; when, do their best, they could hardly be clean situated as they were before. It may not be in a day that we will be able to make a great stride forward, but the improvement, sooner or later, is sure to come.

There is Mike's footstep! See with what gladness his poor wife hastens to the door!

"O Mike asthore, what kept you out all night?”

"I was down there, Nellie, giving a hand to poor Tom Connors. You know he has to move. That blamed Lord Camperfield went up, mind you, to Dublin, and got the privy council-bad luck to 'em from top to bottom!—to throw out the little cottage he was waiting for so long. And then down he comes to the Board of Guardians, and gets an order to have the sanitary officer put Tom out, because his cabin wasn't fit to live in; and if he refused, to summon him before himself at the coort, and then maybe! And all because Tom was in the ditch when they thought to stop the hunting below at the fox-cover. And there I was, making a couple of meerogues (hay-ropes) for Mrs. Moynihan to fetther the goats that were going in threshpass. God help us, she's to be pitied!"

"Has she any word from the asylum about her husband, Mike?"

"Sorra a word, only that the docthor says he'll never be betther. And I went up to the masther, Nell, and I bamboozled him. Wisha, sir!' says I, 'there's that poor Mrs. Moynihan below,-who has she to look to but yourself? "Only for that good man," says she, "what would I do? My whole depindence is on him. Night, noon, and morning, lying and rising, he has my blessing.' 'And what can we do for her now, Mike?' says he. Wisha, if we opened them handful of drills for her, sir,' says I, 'herself and the childhre could drop in the skillanes (seed potatoes), and I could close 'em in the evening.' 'Let it be the first thing you'll do in the morning, Mike,' says he."

"And I pity poor Tom Connors and his little family too, Mike, from my heart.”

"If you saw the childhre crying, Nell, and kissing the others, it would draw tears from a stone."

"Well, Mike, thank God, no one can put us out of this!"

"While God laves us our health, Nell."

The woman tidied up the house, they recited the Rosary, and then retired to rest. Soon silence and sleep, and perhaps sanctity too, reigned in and around the poor Irish laborer's cottage.

ARTHUR O'LEARY.

(1729-1802.)

ARTHUR O'LEARY was born in 1729 at Acres, County Cork. He acquired some classical knowledge and entered a monastery in Brittany, where he was ordained priest. During the English-French war, from 1756-1762, he was chaplain to the prisons and hospitals of the English soldiers.

He wrote a Defense of the Divinity of Christ' and 'Remarks on Rev. John Wesley's Letter on the Civil Principles of the Roman Catholics,' but his best work was Mr. O'Leary's Plea for Liberty of Conscience.' From 1782 to 1789 he was embroiled in civil and religious controversy in Ireland, which occasioned his 'Defense.' At the close of this period he went to London, where he was much loved and revered. He died in 1802.

PLEA FOR LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.

From the Introduction.

My design in the following sheets is, to throw open the gates of civil toleration for all Adam's children whose principles are not inconsistent with the peace of civil society, or subversive of the rules of morality; to wrench, as far as in my power lies, the poniard, so often tinged with human blood, from the hand of persecution; to sheathe the sword which misguided zeal has drawn in the defense of a Gospel which recommends peace and love; to restore to man the, indelible charter of his temporal rights, which no earthly power has ever been commissioned by heaven to deprive him of on account of his mental errors; to re-establish the empire of peace overthrown so often by religious feuds; and to cement all mortals, especially Christians, in the ties of social harmony, by establishing toleration on its proper ground.

The history of the calamities occasioned by difference in religious opinions, is a sufficient plea for undertaking the task. But time does not allow me to enter into a detail of those melancholy scenes which misconstrued religion has displayed. The effects are well known; it is my aim to remove the cause.

The mind shrinks back at the thoughts of cruelties exer

cised against the Christians by heathen emperors for the space of three hundred years. Scarce did the Christians begin to breathe under the first princes who embraced their religion, than they fell out amongst themselves about the mysteries of the Scriptures. Arianism, protected by powerful sovereigns, raised against the defenders of the Trinity persecutions as violent as those raised formerly by the heathens. Since that time, at different intervals, error, backed by power, persecuted truth, and the partisans of truth, forgetful of the moderation which reason and religion prescribe, committed the same excesses with which they upbraided their oppressors. Sovereigns, blinded by dangerous zeal-or guided by barbarous policy -or seduced by odious counsels-became the executioners of their subjects who adopted religious systems different from those of their rulers, or persevered in ancient systems from which their sovereigns had receded.

Had these horrors been confined to one sect of Christians only, infidels would not have been so successful in their attacks on the system at large; that religion disclaims the odious imputation. But all sects execrated and attempted to extirpate one another. Europe became one wild altar, on which every religious sect offered up human victims to its creed.

The ministers of a religion that had triumphed over the Cæsars, not by resistance, but by suffering, became the apologists of calamities that swept from the face of the earth, or oppress to this day God's noblest images-upright, virtuous, and dauntless men. Like the warrior in

the Scriptures, they stepped into the sanctuary, to grasp the barbarian's sword wrapped up in the ephod. The code. of temporal laws, teeming with sanctions against robbers and murderers, was swelled, to the surprise and destruction of mankind, with additional decrees against heretics and papists. The inoffensive citizen, from the apprehension of offending the Deity by acting against his conscience, was confined in the same dungeon, or doomed to the fagot or axe, with the parricide who laid aside every restraint of moral obligation: and the Scriptures were adduced in justification of the sanguinary confusion. The wreath and the rod have been held forth, not to crown the worthy and punish the pernicious, but to scourge to conformity candid and

steady virtue. The priest gave the sanction of heaven to the bloody mandates of the civil magistrate; and the civil magistrate unsheathed the sword to vindicate the cause of the God of heaven, who reserves to himself the punishment of man's conscience.

No person has a greater respect for the clerical order of every denomination than I have. I am of the number and feel myself wounded through their sides, when the Deist and free-thinker, who hold them all in equal contempt, contend "that in all ages, and in all countries, the clergy are the main props of persecution. That had they been as solicitous to heal and conciliate men's hearts, as they have been to inflame and divide them, the world would by this time bear a different aspect. That they should have left the laity in peaceable possession of good neighborhood, mutual charity, and friendly confidence. That instead of enforcing the great principles of religion, the very basis whereof is charity, peace, and love, they are ever and always the first oppressors of those who differ from them in opinion, and the active and impelling spring that gives force and elasticity to the destructive weapons of the civil power." And in corroboration of the charge, the free-thinkers will unfold the page of history, and open those enormous volumes made up of religious declamations. He will prove from both that if "popes and their apologists have scattered the fire-brand, their spiritual brethren have faithfully copied their example in succeeding times, wherever their power and influence prevailed."

"Though the Protestant divines," says Hume, "had ventured to renounce opinions deemed certain for so many, ages, they regarded in their turn the new system so certain, that they could bear no contradiction with regard to it. And they were ready to burn in the same flames from which they themselves had so narrowly escaped, every one that had the assurance to oppose them." Hence the scaffolds reeking in Holland with the blood of illustrious men, who, after opposing Philip the Second's efforts to introduce conformity by fire and sword, fell themselves by the hand of the executioner for denying Gomar's predestination. Hence hecatombs of victims, offered upon the gloomy altar of the Scotch League and Covenant, and peopling the regions of the dead, for differing in opinion.