enforced by striking examples. His mistakes at the same time are hurtful, and a wound from such a hand must be painful. But happily it cannot be mortal, in the case before us, as abundant materials of true information are still preserved entire. The documents in the following Review will shew that Mr. Hume's representation of Irish affairs in 1641, is not true history, but fine and pathetic writing. Pity it is, to find such a man adopting the untruths of sir John Temple, and spreading them on a new canvas heightened with all the colourings of his art. The piece has certainly cost him some labour; for horror and piety are wrought up here in high tragical strains. But the Irish certainly have not sat for the picture; and Mr. Hume in this part of his history must admit the justness of a charge, that he has given a wrong direction to the passions, he has taken so much pains to excite.

Mr. Hume is still alive to review and correct some mistakes in his history; and should he decline doing justice in the case before us (what must not be supposed) he, and not truth, will be affected.

The changes of religion in these kingdoms produced a most memorable æra in our history; and however the reformation hath operated, in spreading the base of civil liberty, yet it divided us into parties, and for a time produced terrible struggles for power and property in both kingdoms; in Ireland espe cially these things had a period. When all power was set on one side, and that contention ceased, yet the hatred which commenced with the original disputes remained, and exerted, itself with remarkable violence, in the framing of penal laws, which doubtless should be but few, in countries which exist by industry, unless the object of such laws, be too formidable not to require its removal at any expence to the public. In this light hath popery been held, from the very commencement of queen Elizabeth's reign, and is seen in no other to this day. No experience of papists being known and acknowledged good subjects in other protestant countries; no experience of their good conduct in our own, could hitherto remove the idea of their being enemies by principle to our protestant establishment. Sir William Blackstone, who has enlightened those nations by his admirable commentaries on our laws, pronounces on this subject, like those who are content with the first impressions

they receive, and think but little on a subject, in which they are but little concerned. "While papists," he says, " acknowledge foreign power, superior to the sovereignty of the kingdom, they cannot complain, if the laws of that kingdom will not treat them on the footing of good subjects." With great deference to so great an authority, this judgment includes a charge, which it is impossible to support, unless it can be proved that English and Irish papists are men of different principles from their brethren in Hanover and Canada. But this is not the case; the majority of English papists even in the days of queen Elizabeth (who stripped them of power and liberty) acknowledged no authority superior to her sovereignty, and renounced to the authority of Pius the Fifth, who wanted to withdraw them from the allegiance they owed her. This they have done, without any breach with the Roman see in matters purely spiritual; in things, I mean, which regard the next life, not the present. The papists of Ireland have, in a Formulary lately drawn up by themselves, renounced any authority, civil or temporal, claimed or unclaimed, by any foreign prince cr prelate whatsoever, recognizing at the same time his majesty's title, and professing their allegiance to be due to him solely. Thus it is at present, even in Spain and Portugal, where no subject would dare own to recognize any foreign power superior to the sovereignty of those kingdoms; and nearer home in France, the sovereignty of that kingdom is so jealously guarded against all foreign pretenders and pretensions, that a professor who should bring this matter even into doubt, would be degraded from his office, if he did not meet with a severer punishment. Pity it is, that a point of knowledge, so much within his reach, should escape Judge Blackstone; pity it is indeed, that so great an authority, should be employed to give weight, and perhaps perpetuity to a popular error, so injurious to a million of his majesty's good subjects; for so I venture to denominate them, notwithstanding the hurt they do the public through a legal incapacity to serve it.

We are sorry to find any necessity for saying so much on this subject, and yet a little more must be added, before we dismiss it.

The supremacy of popes in matters merely spiritual, and directed as it ought to be, for the preservation of harmony

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and unity in the church, cannot be formidable to princes;→ thus restricted, it had for many ages been useful to them. The abuse of this supremacy, and every ill-grounded claim foreign to it, may be removed, and (let me add) has been removed. In the present age, popes have no more the power of deposing kings, or of absolving subjects from their allegiance, than they had in the days of Constantine, who permitted a legal establishment of their religion in Rome, the capital of his empire. The claim to this deposing power began and operated only in times of bigotry and ignorance, and has been often opposed even in the darkest; in the dawn of knowledge it could not do much mischief; it could not operate in the light; and if any among us should be still found blind; should any spiritual doctor among us attempt to justify such a claim, he may be easily detected by putting him to the test of his civil orthodoxy. Such a man, if a christian, will not abjure to the public, what he teaches in private. It is against such a man that the keen edge of penal laws should be employed; legislative wisdom should here draw a line of partition, instead of confounding the well principled, indiscriminately, with their opposers.

The Historical Review now presented to the public, was intended intirely for exposing, in a proper light, things over which the fatal prejudices of the times have thrown much obscurity. We would draw useful instructions from our former calamities, and reconcile, by truth, men too long divided by mistakes. We have freely condemned, in this preliminary discourse, the conduct of the Roman catholics before the reformation: We have had no call upon us to justify it since that time in any blameable case, and through the rebellion which succeeded the year 1641 in particular, the author of the following work has been free enough to expose and censure the violence and ambition of some among the clergy as well as laity, that the more justice might be done to the virtue and patriotism of others of the same party. It was an age of infatuation and drunkenness, among all parties (protestants and papists) throughout the three kingdoms, and an historian who from prejudice cannot distinguish, or who from bye-ends will not distinguish, between the mad and the sober, will acquit himself but ill. He will not instruct, but he certainly will mislead.

The catholics of the present age, have one great interest in common with their fellow subjects, and it consists in the peace of their country, under a monarch, who makes the happiness of all his people the principal object of his government. With this interest in quiet they never will part. Since their submis

sion at Limerick, in 1691, they have been faithful to the government, which God has set over them; and we take great pleasure, in finding that the penal laws of the late queen, which they did not provoke, have taken their best effects, in crowning those virtues, which, in fact, are the production of painful sufferings, not of power or wealth. Whatever their religion be, a complex system of superstition, or a summary of christian duties, it enforces obedience to the established government; their perseverance in such a religion is not a civil crime, though an hypocritical adoption of a different one, or a reward offered for obtaining the adoption, would be odious to God and man. Indeed if any danger can arise from their religion, it must be from their not professing it sincerely, and from omitting the duties it imposes on them. Every man who has a retrospect to the grievances exposed in the following work, will think himself happy, that he found his existence in this present century. In the present reign we must feel a comfort like that which suc ceeds to the terrors of a mighty tempest; our state bark is moored, and however many may suffer by restraints on industry and insecurity to property, yet every subject has a full permission to exercise the religion of his conscience. Can this be said of the Tudor and Stuart reigns, when men were fined, tortured, and imprisoned, to exercise a religion against their conscience? Were insurrections in those days any mighty won. ders among a fierce and turbulent people? Or will not their infrequncy be the chief wonder with impartial posterity?

The intention of the author in the following Historical Review of times, (most important to be well described) is, we trust, sufficiently explained. He labours to instruct, not to misrepresent; he endeavours to conciliate, not to inflame. No honest man of the present age, (protestant or papist) is concerned in the conduct of protestants or papists of any for mer age, otherwise than by contrasting the causes and effects in the one with those in the other, and instructing us thereby to put a proper estimate on our present happiness, and to remove any ill impression the public may still retain, in regard

to times so very different from our own. This is placing a mirror before the reader, wherein beauties and deformities are fairly reflected; and whereby deductions may be made, for improving our minds and manners, by the justness of the representation.

The instruction to be drawn from the perusal of the following Historical Review has been pointed out; and if the Author has occasionally past censures on some of our Roman catholic predecessors, relatively to some false judgments and opinions, he has not done it impertinently, to guard the present generation of Roman catholics against such exploded notions. He knows them too well to need being so guarded. The opinions he refers to (and they were no more than opinions) may be compared to chronic distempers, which for a time make depredations on a sound constitution, and which such a constitution will in time shake off. The birth and parentage of those opinions can be easily traced, if men will be at the small pains of doing it. They were the offspring of local interests, nursed by the passions, and adopted by the politics of the age. They are now no more, and the shades which formerly enveloped the ignorant and unwary are dispersed. No Roman catholic is now interested in errors which were but local, and have indeed been opposed by Roman catholics in the most clouded days. In the light which time hath spread about us, papists have got a full sight of their civil duty; and they profess and practice it. To them we need not apply. Our present suit is to protestants who still are jealous, and who may perhaps be loth to part with mistakes, they have been long in the habit of indulging. Some among them (and it is a good omen) have already shaken off their captivity under those mistakes; and we wish, and hope also, that others may make a philosophic effort, and reflect that the opinions we have censured were no other than what we have represented them to be, mere temporary and transient evils, from which no party (protestant or papist) was exempt in the times we speak of. At present no party should be punished for opinions or principles which they are ready to abjure. The papists it is true, avow doctrines, which they are bound by conscience to retain, and which their adversaries will always condemn. It is not in this case as in the other. The opinion is fugitive, the doctrine per