m 
 
 W^ 
 
 
 
 ENGLAND'S WESTERN, 
 
 OB 
 
 AMEEICA'S EASTERN SHORE? 
 
 OLD IRELAND A NEW STATE? 
 
 WITH THEIR VARIOUS 
 
 COMPLEXITIES AND PERPLEXITIES DISCUSSED. 
 
 BT 
 
 AN OLD AND ALMOST OBSOLETE LOYALIST. 
 
 •:Sr 
 
 ■ I BABE 
 
 Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song:. 
 That with no middle flight intends to soar 
 Above th' Aonian monnt, while it pxirsues 
 Thin^rs unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 
 
 DUBLIN: 
 
 ^tfntclf at ti)e patent platen S.tcam=^re)s» 
 BY JOHN FALCONER, 32, MARLBOROUGH-STREET. 
 
 1851. 
 
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 ENGLAND'S WESTERN, 
 
 OB 
 
 AMERICA'S EASTERN SHORE? 
 
 OLD IRELAND A NEW STATE f 
 
 WITH THEIE VAKIOnS 
 
 COMPLEXITIES AND PERPLEXITIES DISCUSSED. 
 
 BY 
 
 AN OLD AND ALMOST OBSOLETE LOYALIST. 
 
 ■ I SARB 
 
 Invoke tliy aid to my adventurotis song. 
 That with no middle flight intends to soar 
 Above th" Aonian mount, while it pursues 
 Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 
 
 -N V,-V^^^-S. 
 
 DUBLIN: 
 
 ^tfntetr at ttje patent ^UXtn ^team=lives» 
 BY JOHN FALCONER, 32, MARLBOROUGH-STHKET. 
 
 18ol. 
 
 
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 ENGLAND'S WESTERN? 
 
 OB 
 
 \ AMERICA'S EASTERN SHORE? 
 
 I On Friday, the 31st of January, 1851, an important meeting 
 \ was held at the Royal Exchange of Dublin, for the purpose 
 { of adopting a petition to Parliament, with the view of insuring 
 i the establishment of a packet station for the purposes of com- 
 imunication and transit between these countries and America, 
 ]Sit some port in Ireland, and to devise measures for the speedy 
 and effectual accomplishment of that object. 
 
 At this meeting, a letter of uncommon interest was read. 
 
 It is under the respectable signature of David Charles Latouche, 
 
 a wealthy and eminent banker, and head of that highly 
 
 influential family, which has contributed to the welfare and 
 
 (prosperity of Ireland during the many years which have 
 
 i elapsed since the revocation of the Edict of Nantz deprived 
 
 France of those blessings they would have conferred upon 
 
 their own country, and happily transferred them to ours. 
 
 Few state papers possess the value of this simple and singular 
 
 j letter. It is word for word as follows. It would be an 
 
 ' egregious injustice to omit a syllable of this impressive 
 
 / document : — 
 
 " I regret being unable to attend the meeting to-day, for I 
 feel it to be the duty of every man in Ireland to lend his aid, 
 however feeble, to the great object of securing to her those 
 advantages which her geographical position entitles her to. 
 Placed near to, and yet apart from England, she is necessarily 
 
 A 
 
 o 55054 
 
^3» 
 
 2 
 
 advantages 
 uttermost. 
 
 England's WESTERN? or 
 
 subject to iiany disadvantages from that circumstance. This, 
 however, gives her a paramount claim to have those few 
 which her position gives her, improved to the 
 I will not dwell on the advantages which her 
 mild climate, her luxuriant herbage, and undulatory surface, 
 give her, fcr breeding, rearing, and fattening sheep and cattle 
 for the good of her manufacturing and wheat-producing 
 neighbour. I trust that we are only temporarily deprived of 
 the benefit which we ought to derive from those circumstances 
 by an experimental school of legislation ; but I pass on to 
 those advaatages which Ireland possesses, not only over 
 England, but all the rest of Europe, in her westerly position 
 and excellent natural harbours, many of which require but 
 slight assistance from the hand of man to fit them for the 
 western terminus of the high road of nations, connecting the 
 old and neW worlds. Our present object is not to determine 
 which of inese ports shall first be chosen — no, our object is to 
 assort for our common country that henceforward she shall not 
 be debarrec from the use of those advantages that the Creator 
 had conferred on her, and to secure for her that the mischievous 
 tendency of centralisation shall be counteracted by bringing 
 into play h ?r local superiorities. I will not enter into calcula- 
 tion how many hours or days can be gained, or what are the 
 advantages derivable to the linen manufacture of Ulster, or 
 the waterpdwer of Connaught and Munster, by the establish- 
 ment of a \i estem port of departure in Ireland — others are more 
 competent for those details ; but I would desire to impress on 
 England the necessity of giving due consideration to the just 
 claims of Ireland before it be too late. By education, habits, 
 and principle, I am attached to monarchical institutions. I 
 had rather be a Briton than an American ; but I cannot 
 conceal from myself that if England delays much longer to 
 recognise o ir claims to the advantages which our geographical 
 position ei titles us to — if when constrained to pay some 
 attention t> the demands for inquiry which American enter- 
 prise has f(Tced upon her notice, she declares that Wales^not 
 Ireland, sliall be the western coast of Europe — ^there is a 
 danger that she may perceive her mistake when she finds that 
 Ireland hai i become the eastern shore of America. Do not let 
 
America's eastern shore ? 3 
 
 me be misunderstood — I detest and abhor valn-boasting, or 
 what might be mistaken for threatenings ; but when I recollect 
 what is the origin and birthplace of many of the American 
 population — when I consider what feelings they have brought 
 out with them — how those feelings may be reciprocated by 
 those who remain — it constrains me, who am sincerely attached 
 to British connection, and who dread any convulsion to disturb 
 our country, to urge England not to lose precious moments, 
 but by occupying the place which duty and wise policy calls 
 her to take, prevent her place from being occupied by America. 
 It appears as certain as that the sun shines that if England 
 does not speedily select and occupy in Ireland a western port 
 of departure, America will soon establish there her port of 
 arrival." 
 
 Independently of its effects on the meeting, there are few 
 family circles which have not felt the force of these awakening 
 words. Not men only, but delicate women are startled into 
 sympathy with them — and the women of Ireland are peculiarly 
 sensitive and astute. The philosophic observation of one of 
 the most intelligent among them flashed on her hearers like 
 the lightning of prophecy, while she exclaimed, " If Ireland 
 shall ever become the eastern shore of America, America may 
 find a still more eastern shore in England herself." It was an 
 appalling announcement. The recollection of revolution after 
 revolution along the stream of Time — mighty kingdoms, 
 mighty empires, mighty republics, fulfilling their allotted 
 periods, and then vanishing into nothingness, makes us tremble 
 for the destiny of England — and we fearfully ask " Can her 
 days be numbered ? Can she deserve annihilation ? Can she 
 submit to the fate of Assyria, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and 
 Rome ? Her resplendent constitution seems fitted for eternity. 
 Her monuments are not monuments of stone — colossal bulls 
 and lions fantastically winged — sphinxes of enormous dimen- 
 sions — columns or temples — amphitheatres or pyramids. When 
 she is doomed to perish, the proofs of her past existence will 
 be little similar to the bequests of Nineveh and Babylon, 
 PersepoUs and Athens, Heliopolis and Rome. Of a different 
 nature will be the remnant of her glories in the eye of future 
 
England's western ? on 
 
 generations.! Mere prose can not do them justice. The muse 
 alone is qualified to express them : — 
 
 " Let others boast of conquest — of far extended sway. 
 
 But empires fall to ruin, and ancient states decay ; 
 
 But England's is a prouder boast, the realms of earth to bind. 
 
 In higher, nobler sovereignty — the empire of the mind ! 
 
 And when her isle is desolate, her homes in ruin laid. 
 
 Her spir t still will flourish in empires she has made. 
 
 And many a new-born nation own her ancient Saxon tongue. 
 
 And olden lays of English bards in every clime be sung. 
 
 And where are seen the cities of the fearless and the free. 
 
 There, t'lere was England's sovereignty — and will for ever be!"* 
 
 Of all ths nations of the fearless and the free founded by the 
 sovereignty of England, the Republic of America will occupy, 
 in future ages, the most prominent and prevailing position. 
 Composed of numerous states, her grand and peculiar excel- 
 lence is, that each of these states is self-governed — enjoys its 
 own legislature, its own courts, its own laws, its own revenue, 
 its own exf enditure, its own ways and means of improvement, 
 physical, m oral, and religious — to adopt the sentiments of one 
 of the profoundest philosophers of the present age, who has 
 recently visited their shores — " their's is a noble destiny — Pro- 
 vidence has assigned to them the duty of proving by experiment, 
 whether man be, or be not, a rational and moral being, capable 
 of working out his own way to virtue and enjoyment, under the 
 guidance oi' reason and scripture, unfettered by despotic power 
 and unchai led by law-enacted creeds. Their institutions and 
 physical condition call all their faculties into vivid action ; and 
 they leave those faculties free to find their own way to happi- 
 ness as they best are able. They have no hereditary or artificial 
 aristocracy 
 
 standards, 
 
 to mould their opinions according to erroneous 
 nor to misdirect their ambition; they have no 
 
 Established Church to chain up their moral and religious 
 
 sentiments 
 They have 
 
 formed of 
 
 in the trammels of antiquated articles of belief, 
 no self-constituted executive to take out of their 
 
 hands the administration of their own affairs, and no legislatures 
 
 ' Stanza in 
 S.T.C.D., whijh 
 
 privileged classes to restrain their industry by 
 
 the poem of " The Polar Navigators," by Bridges C. Hooke, 
 obtained one of the Vice-Chancellor's prizes in June, 1849. 
 
America's eastern shore ? 5 
 
 obnoxious laws, or to repress their mental energy by prescribing 
 boundaries to their exertions. Their government leaves all 
 their faculties free, presents to them the highest and best fields 
 for their exercise, and leaves every individual to reap the 
 natural reward or punishment of his own conduct. If the first- 
 and most important condition of happiness be the activity of 
 all the faculties, their government complies with it in the most 
 ample manner."* 
 
 This is the sunny portion of the painting from a master 
 hand. We shall, by and by, examine the shadows of its 
 darker parts, as pourtrayed by the same faithful and uncom- 
 promising pencil. But in these refreshing tints are many 
 points of attraction for the philosophic politician. In dwelling 
 on them he cannot close his eyes on Mr. Latouche's reluctant 
 but patriotic suggestion; and his tremulous mind is carried 
 back to the never-to-be-forgotten times when Ireland was 
 independent, though a province; and prosperous, though 
 appendant to a richer and more powerful nation. For eighteen 
 eventful years she was, to all essential purposes, the counter- 
 part of a free self-governed thriving American state. It is sad 
 to reflect that this life of happiness endured but for eighteen 
 years. Busy trades, energetic manufactures, successful com- 
 merce, grand undertakings, magnificent edifices, marked those 
 prosperous days; and the richest specimens of a pompous 
 architecture still remain, a useless record of the life that is 
 departed. The same unrivalled orator, whose eloquence and 
 wisdom established the proud independence of Ireland, outlived 
 his work ; and a land of strangers felt the anguish of his 
 lamentation : — " I sat by her cradle — I followed her hearse." 
 
 What a sense of desolation is now impressed upon us whose 
 infancy and manhood enjoyed the triumphs that surrounded us 
 — and who have lived to grieve over the hopeless contrast. We 
 can recollect our childish admiration of the brilliant illumina- 
 tion of 1782, which celebrated the birth of Freedom — the 
 military pageantry of the old volunteers, composed of Irishmen 
 of every creed and every shade of politics, united in honouring 
 the now only partially honoured William of Nassau — the still 
 
 ' See " Notes on the United States of North America during a Phrenological 
 Visit, by George Combe," III., 411, 399. 
 
England's western? or 
 
 more resplenlent pageantry of the opening of our parliament§ 
 by the representative of England's sovereign majesty, sur- 
 rounded by pages and aide-de-camps, heralds at arms, and the 
 antiquated s ^Idiery that again renewed the ostentatious times 
 of Henry th<i Eighth — enlivened by the clangour of trumpets 
 and the thu ider of cannon — and — unhappy reminiscence ! — 
 when in the last day of the last of those parliaments we heard 
 the title of the Act of Union announced to the assembled 
 Peers and Commons of Ireland, who hearkened as to a sentence 
 of death, when the barbarous phraseology of Normandy — the 
 tyrannical language of the times of the Curfew proclaimed 
 " Le Roy le veut." Tears then streamed down many a 
 manly cheek — and, after the lapse of half a century, the 
 dimmed eyeballs of three score years and ten are again bedewed 
 at the recollection of that humiliating scene. 
 
 But was Ireland sensible of the blessings she enjoyed during 
 these singular years of independence ? Was she forbearing in 
 her triumphs ? Was she grateful to Providence for her over- 
 flowing cup of felicity ? Far from it I A dozen years had 
 scarcely ela])sed when malcontents entered into a wide-extended 
 conspiracy, which burst into open rebellion at the notorious 
 epoch of lu98. It was not confined to the ignorant and 
 rapacious. Men of understanding (if the epithet be not grossly 
 misapplied) engaged in the adventure — eminent lawyers, 
 physicians, j and merchants, subjected themselves to the pains 
 and penalties of high treason. The Shearses, the Emmets, 
 the M*Nev|ns, the Bonds, the Keoughs, encountered death or 
 banishment — and what was the amount of their ambition ? 
 It was (to use the language of their published manifesto), 
 comprised in the magic circle of four words — Catholic 
 Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. That these 
 were reasonable demands is evinced by the fact that they have 
 been since granted to their fullest extent by the Imp^ial 
 Parliament. They were fit subjects for agitation, but not for 
 treason anc rebellion. If O' Council had been then an actor 
 on the stage of politics, he would have taught them a safe and 
 legitimate mode to obtain their ends — prudent, crafty, and 
 profound, le was, in his day, a successful, but, it must be 
 acknowledj red, an insatiable patriot. 
 
America's iASTER2<r shore ? 7 
 
 But even so early as 1788, Ireland was guilty of another 
 folly, engendered by her i^beat men — her Charlemonte and 
 her Ponsonbys — who led the wisdom of the nation — her 
 majorities in either House of Parliament. On occasion of the 
 mental illness of George XII., these majorities voted that 
 George, Prince of Wales, should be Regent for Ireland, at the 
 moment when the British Parliament had made a different 
 selection for Great Britain; thus dividing the power of the 
 executive : and, if the King had not happily recovered, impli- 
 cating an arbitrary separation of Ireland from the sister 
 kingdom, and thus rending asunder the integrity of the 
 empire. 
 
 To these two causes — the Irish Regency 3ill of 1788, and 
 the Irish Rebellion of 1798 — Ireland owes the loss of her 
 independence, and all the evils of a political character under 
 which she now lies prostrate. 
 
 The earliest and most permanent of those evils was the 
 unavoidable and necessary increase of absenteeism. Our Lords 
 Spiritual and Temporal, our Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, 
 half-yearly in Parliament assembled, now deserted, and for ever, 
 their splendid mansions, which were suddenly transformed into 
 cabinet and carriage repositories — auction marts — vast show 
 rooms of haberdashery and millinery — monasteries and nun- 
 neries — and, most facile of all these transitions — stately hotels. 
 A little pamphlet in rhyme, which made some noise under the 
 title of '' The Metropolis," thus records the fact, in the reply 
 of a citizen to an inquiring traveller, just arrived from the 
 country : — 
 
 ** Friend ! where's the best hotel ? Faith every where. 
 
 In every street, perhaps in every square ; 
 
 Make no inquiries, but employ your eyes. 
 
 The stateliest seek vrhere stateliest fabrics rise ; 
 
 If there high rank and grandeur best might dwell. 
 
 Enter at once — that mansion's the hotel. 
 
 The land's proud nobles — ^nay the acred squire. 
 
 Disdaining home, to foreign fields retire ; 
 
 But, now and then, on some election job. 
 
 Or bent our harvest from our soil to rob. 
 
 My lord, en passant, seeks his quondam door. 
 
 And hires the sumptuous bed he own'd before ; 
 
 But while our blood those flying Bedouins drain. 
 
 Soft pomp must sooth the moments they remun." 
 
8 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 To recon 3ile us in some degree to our untoward lot, England, 
 with a good-natured policy, left us for some few years our 
 various Boards of Commissioners, who received their salaries 
 from our revenue and expended them amongst us. They have 
 been since, for the most part, swept away, and their place 
 supplied, where a supply was necessary, by a single collector, 
 eomptroUei, or secretary, the humble subordinate of English 
 Commissioiiers, on the principle of centralization long since 
 commenced, and still in active progress. The loss to Ireland 
 may be calc ulated by the number of Commissions, averaging at 
 least £1 ,00 3 per annum for each of the members of the following 
 Boards: — Seven Commissioners of Customs and Port Duties; 
 seven Comi nissioners of Inland Excise and Taxes ;^t7e Com- 
 missioners of Appeals in Revenue cases ; ^ve Commissioners 
 of Stamps ; four Commissioners for Auditing Public Accounts; 
 a War Office, a Treasury, with their various establishments 
 of deputies, first, second, third, assistant and junior clerks, 
 cashiers, computers, and comptrollers, afibrding respectable 
 incomes to many of our countrymen, and respectable profits to 
 various bri.nches of trade, encouraged by the expenditure of 
 those incoEies. As long as these means lasted the prosperity 
 was propoitionate — but it has gradually faded away, and we 
 are now arrived at an era of general despondency; yet there are 
 no painful heart-burnings, no resentful regrets, no discordant 
 murmurs, no loud and turbulent complaints. Economy was 
 accomplished to a considerable extent, and an opportunity of 
 jobbing, at the expense of the public, was, in the same degree, 
 extinguish jd ; but the Irish are not in the habit of complaining 
 if they car. discover, even in the measures under which they 
 suffer, an f ppearance of justice. 
 
 Englanc seems to have limited the exercise of her sisterly 
 kindness ta twenty years, determined not to commence the 
 work of sp oliation and depression before the completion of that 
 period. The last substantial act of her affection, previous to 
 its close, V as the permission to ornament our city and benefit 
 its citizens with a portion of our revenue in the erection of our 
 handsome, useful, and most convenient Post OflBce. Its date 
 is marked on the vane that regulates the wind-clock, and we 
 read with gratitude 1818 on the diminutive flag of Great 
 Britain, w lich surmounts the highest portion of the buildiny;'. 
 
AMERICAS EASTERN SHORE 
 
 In the next twenty years, Board after Board, office after 
 office, with all their emoluments, were gradually transferred 
 to England. But we did not suffer from privations only. 
 Before the close of that period an infliction was conferred upon 
 us — and one of the most unjust and impolitic that selfishness 
 and ignorance ever imposed on a helpless and reluctant nation. 
 What infatuation, what blindness, not to perceive that the 
 Poor Laws of England and Ireland are dragging down both 
 countries into the self-same gulf of ruin. Adam Smith, near 
 a century ago, arraigned them as incompatible with liberty and 
 prosperity. Half a century afterwards, Malthus maintained 
 that they were more liltely to subvert the British empire than 
 even the national debt ; and suggested a plan for their gradual 
 and final abolition. In our own more recent days. Archbishop 
 Whately exerted all the powers of his enlightened and profound 
 understanding to prevent the extension to Ireland of a curse 
 80 enormous ; yet in spite of his predictions, since so amply 
 accomplished — in spite of the adverse opinions of every political 
 economist of note, and of every individual of plain common 
 sense who considered the subject, England, instead of with- 
 drawing her own neck from the overwhelming incumbrance, 
 thought it right to fling a similar millstone over the neck of 
 her sister. Ireland is perishing under the weight that oppresses 
 her — England will perish under the weight of both millstones. 
 If that of Ireland be not speedily, and that of England gra- 
 dually removed, this empire, so long thought immortal, may 
 at once relinquish her proud hopes of immortality — her days 
 are numbered. 
 
 Before our Poor Laws were established, we supported our 
 poor without them as well as England ever supported hers by 
 the galling infliction. Our poor -in a great measure supported 
 each other, considering the exercise of charity a passport to 
 Heaven. But this virtue and its practice the Poor Laws have 
 extinguished. These voluntary contributions were not neglected 
 by the rich; and hospitals, dispensaries, almshouses, and 
 asylums of every description, overspread every part of the 
 country. England has ruined us. We are ruined, not by the 
 famine, but the Poor Laws. 
 
 There never was a more mischievous sophism than that the 
 
10 
 
 England's western? or 
 
 poor of a country have a right to be fed from its soil. They 
 have a claim upon compassion, but no right to insist on being 
 fed, unless they earn their food. But commiseration and 
 policy, a sei se of duty to God and to man, will afford to the 
 poor all the jsuccour designed by a wise and benevolent Provi- 
 dence. If ^ve attempt more than this, we increase the very 
 evils we mean to remove; we actually create them, if they 
 were not bei ore in existence, and promote their indefinite mul- 
 tiplication tc such an extent as at length to exceed the powers 
 of any nation to endure or bear up against them. 
 
 To the re igious and philosophic mind, the question of des- 
 titution resolves itself into three categories, each naturally 
 suggesting i ;s obvious and effective mode of treatment. 
 
 1. The destitute widow and orphan, the blind, the dumb, 
 the disabled, the insane, must all be supported at the public 
 expense, eitier national or local. The amount, before the 
 enactment ol ' our Poor Laws, was contributed by presentments 
 of County Crrand Juries, or grants from the Legislature, or 
 the donations of private benefactors. The Irish Parliament 
 maintained many hospitals and asylums of great public utility : 
 the Imperial Parliament judiciously continued their main- 
 tenance; but their abolition, at this moment, is threatened, and 
 in some instances effected, in furtherance of a policy at once 
 heartless, criel, and dishonest. These grants ought to be 
 continued foi* objects so useful and necessary, and supplied 
 from the prod uce of Irish taxation before it reaches the Imperial 
 Exchequer. Whether before or after, would be mere matter 
 of taste, but for the necessity of convincing cavillers that we 
 are not indebted to English charity for the boon. 
 
 2. The pc or who owe their destitution to their own vices, 
 or to inevital \e casualties and calamities, must be left to the 
 voluntary sujcour of the charitable. To support the able- 
 bodied poor (f a nation would soon be found labour in vain. 
 To attempt i ; would be to assume the office of the Deity, and 
 to fail in th(! assumption — disarranging and perplexing the 
 natural but complex machinery by which his people would 
 otherwise be 'ed. He intended that man should be charitable. 
 Here are obje cts of charity. If you feed them on compulsion, 
 where is therf even a shadow of this virtue ? Charity cannot 
 
America's EASTfiRN shore ? 1 1 
 
 go beyond a certain rational boundary. Compulsion will stop 
 at no boundary but absolute ruin ; and such is now the condi- 
 tion of Ireland. 
 
 3. Earthquake, pestilence, and famine may occasion destruc- 
 tive havoc in some part of a mighty empire — havoc so exten- 
 sive, that no local means will suffice to encounter the evil : for 
 such an infliction the empire at large must afford the remedy, 
 because the empire alone can possibly afford it. Were England 
 or Scotland in a famishing state, Ireland must contribute the 
 utmost of her means to relieve them. These duties are reci- 
 procal; they are compulsory on every part of the empire. 
 Beyond the empire, charity comes into operation ; and the 
 world at large is not dilatory in bestowing its voluntary offer- 
 ings in such a calamity. 
 
 The succeeding ten years closed the first half of the nine- 
 teenth century — the first half of the first century of the Union. 
 It has been distinguished by a doubtful measure — the abolition 
 of the Corn Laws, and a free trade in food. The landlords 
 and farmers of England are clamoring for the restoration of 
 Protection, and complain aloud that they are ruined ; but 
 their labourers and workmen, and the wide-extended classes 
 of manufacturers, artisans, and traders rejoice in the change 
 that has brought them bread ad libitum, and meat to mouths 
 but little accustomed to it. The measure, however, has 
 brought no change to Ireland but increased distress. It has 
 reduced the price of her staple produce, com — it has diminished 
 the landlord's rents — it has conferred neither bread nor meat 
 on the peasantry; they must restrict their appetites to the 
 precarious potato, with the occasional seasoning and sauce of 
 unsatisfied hunger, and unmitigated starvation. 
 
 This is our present condition. It is said that when things 
 are at the loorst they will mend — but they are not yet at the 
 worst. We are still governed by a Viceroy. The majesty of 
 England is still represented in this country — we have still 
 the pride, pomp, and circumstance of a court, the shadow, if 
 not the substance, of royalty. The nation has not altogether 
 abdicated its national dignity as long as this renmant of her 
 delapidated honours continues. But unnecessarily and reck- 
 lessly, without any economy obtained, without any ministerial 
 
12 
 
 advantage 
 ledge of 
 us of this 
 
 Ireljind 
 
 upon 
 
 air shorn 
 
 regarded 
 
 VI 
 
 tc 
 
 her 
 
 quart 
 
 highly 
 
 twilight 
 "disastro IS 
 t)ur darksome 
 
 One of 
 midst of 
 Medicine 
 not a 
 she has e 
 their 
 
 as students 
 which th; 
 incalculah^ 
 and their 
 where the 
 this 
 
 the ungenerous 
 announcec 
 ported th(se 
 are to be 
 Irish Pari ament 
 converting 
 guished b 
 these indi 
 
 But this 
 
 use 
 
 ful 
 
 channel, 
 
 upon us 
 transporte( 
 stormy 
 for the red 
 expense of 
 and waitinia: 
 foreign 
 Magna Chjarta 
 
 AUT DIFFi REMUS 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 but with increased expense, and diminished know- 
 ninisterial duties, it has been determined to deprive 
 genial sun that has for so many centuries " risen " 
 but now " looks through the horizontal misty 
 of its beams " — yet, shorn as it is, cannot be 
 thout reverence and respect by our people, nor the 
 of its " eclipse " be considered otherwise than as 
 and ominous of increasing evils impending over 
 future, 
 the proudest boasts of Ireland, still existing in the 
 humiliations, is the character of her Schools of 
 and Surgery, Anatomy and Physiology. There is 
 er of the globe in which the physicians and surgeons 
 (lucated are not appreciated among the foremost of 
 distinguished profession. And those who resort, 
 to our schools confer on our citizens the advantages 
 subsistence and necessaries of life required by 
 e numbers naturally shed upon us. These schools, 
 results, depend wholly and solely on the hospitals 
 sick and the maimed furnish the means of acquiring 
 and exalted branch of human knowledge. Yet 
 — the unjustifiable menace has been already 
 that the public grants which have hitherto sup- 
 hospitals, and which our own revenves supply, 
 withdrawn ; and that all these benefits which the 
 lavished on so many maladies and miseries, 
 them into blessings for mankind, shall be extin- 
 the Imperial Parliament, after so wisely favoring 
 nsable establishments for so many years, 
 is not the most appalling menace which frowns 
 It is whispered that our Courts of Justice are to be 
 to Westminster; and that we must cross the 
 , and the whole champaign of England to seek 
 ess of wrong or injury. What suitor could bear the 
 bringing his witnesses such a voyage and journey — 
 all the twists and turnings of the law's delay in a 
 . Such a project would be a direct breach of 
 
 itself. *'NULLI VENDEMUS, NULLI NEGABIMUS, 
 RECTUM AUT JUSTITIAM." Would It not 
 
 ispe 
 
America's eastern shore ? 13 
 
 be selling right and justice at a dear rate to compell us to 
 purchase them in the metropolis of England ? Would it not 
 be a denial of these common blessings, that ought to be at every 
 man's door. Is it not to defer right and justice thus to defer 
 them for ever? A nation labouring under this threatened 
 oppression would be in a state of slavery — a slave in chains. 
 
 It is rumoured that all these evils are to be inflicted, with 
 a view to deprive Ireland of her gentry, and reduce her whole 
 population to the abject condition of peasants and serfs — not 
 knowing when they are trampled on, and easily controlled. 
 But this rumour must be a falsehood. Our far-famed Univer- 
 sity remains unassailed — and three new Colleges have been 
 added to enlighten our people. Surely it cannot be intended 
 to give a clearer vision to a people whom it is intended to 
 enslave. It cannot be intended to prevent the generation of 
 such ornaments of Literature, as our Roscommon, our Swift, 
 our Parnell, our Goldsmith, our Moore, our Farquar, our 
 Murphy, or our Sheridan — such votaries of Science as our 
 Boyle, our Berkley, our M'CuUagh, our Hamilton, our Robin- 
 son, and our Lloyd — or such Patriots and Politicians as our 
 Burke, our Grattan, our Flood, our Burgh, our Yelverton, our 
 Burston, our Borrowes, our Curran, our Ponsonby, our Ball, 
 our Joy, our Jebb, our Smith, our Saurin, our Bushe, and our 
 Plunket — such a Warrior, an army in himself, as our Wel- 
 lington ! It could never enter the mind of England to render 
 sterile the soil that has borne such a harvest — to disaflforest 
 the woodlands where have grown those mighty oaks, those 
 majestic elms, those Plantains of Paradise. 
 
 If such is her intention — if she carries into execution such 
 a mass of iniquity, she will deserve to fall from her high estate 
 among the nations of the world — she will be arraigned by 
 Posterity at the Bar of eternal justice, and merit, as her 
 retribution, to be dragged, in all her aristocratic pride, at the 
 plebeian chariot wheels of her republican Daughter. 
 
 But is America more immaculate than England? Is she 
 entitled by her virtues to that favour of Providence that would 
 promote her to the domination of the freest of nations and 
 widest of empires? The portraiture of that accurate and 
 
14 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 Thousands 
 the laurels 
 
 philosophic mind, already cited, is, in its dark and shadowy 
 portions, adverse to the flattering proposition. We learn from 
 his observ sitions, that so far from education supplying the 
 knowledge requisite to those who enjoy an universal suffrage, 
 a vast proportion of the people have not yet obtained a glimpse 
 of what sh 3uld constitute the real greatness and glory of their 
 country. I'he ambition of many individuals is directed towards 
 raising the United States to the rank of the richest and most 
 powerful niition of the world. They bend their whole minds 
 to the increase of her commercial, agricultural, naval, and 
 military giandeur. This is not wrong, but it is not all. 
 of their young men pant for war in order to wreath 
 of victory round the brow of their native country. 
 And they call this patriotism. If her annals be destined to 
 record the contests only of faction against faction, of party 
 against party, or of the nation against foreign nations, the 
 friend of human improvement must turn from her in despair. 
 But there ire other aberrations from the dictates of morality 
 of smaller or greater dimensions. The *' colonizing" of a ward 
 in which they do not reside, and falsely swearing at the election 
 that they a*e residents in that ward — the practice of betting 
 at elections — their mobs — their Lynch-laws — their wild specu- 
 lations — their bank suspensions — their Negro slavery — their 
 treatment of the Indians — the incessant abuse which the one 
 of their political parties heaps on the distinguished men of the 
 other — the ^lopements of persons placed in situations of trust 
 with the funds of the nation, or of their constituents — the 
 excessive number of bankruptcies — the very imperfect police 
 for the preyention of crime — the enormous and calamitous 
 conflagrations, the results either of recklessness or incendiarism 
 — the great self-complacency of the mass of their people, who, 
 although veiy imperfectly educated, are persuaded by political 
 orators, that they know every thing, and can decide wisely on 
 every questlm — the general absence of reverence for authority 
 or superior v'isdom, displayed first in childhood, and afterwards 
 in the generil progress of life, and the regardlessness of the 
 obligations of contracts and agreements in trade, commerce, 
 and personal service.* 
 
 » Combe's Not bs on the United StatM of North America, III., 412, 414, 415. 
 
America's eastern shore ? 15 
 
 But the blackest item in this faithful but unfavorable cata- 
 logue, is the system of slavery not only permitted but enforced 
 in this self-called Land of Freedom, in direct contradiction 
 and hostility to their declaration of independence — the grand 
 charter of their liberties. 
 
 " Nothing," says the philosophic philanthropist already so 
 largely cited, *^ has surprised me so much as the general tone 
 of the public mind and the press on the subject of slavery. 
 The institutions of America professed to be based on justice, 
 and certainly an all-pervading justice is indispensable to their 
 permanence and success ; yet the most cruel injustice is per- 
 petrated on the negro race, and defended as if it were justice, 
 by persons whose character and intelligence render them, in ' 
 every other respect, amiable and estimable. This is a canker 
 in the moral constitution of the country, that must produce 
 evil continually until it is removed. The deep-toned voice of 
 man's noblest powers will peal from every quarter of the 
 civilized world, and startle the ears, and rouse the consciences 
 of the Americans, till they set the negroes free. Their own 
 institution^ proclaim either destruction to themselves, or free- 
 dom to all ; ^nd this not on parchment merely, but through 
 the irresistible power of God. If they nourish in the bosom 
 of their country a system of open enmity with benevolence 
 and justicie, and if they harden their higher feelingps in such a 
 way as to become blind to its cruelty and injustice, it is morally 
 impossible that minds thus perverted in their perceptions, can 
 esteem and practise justice in all the other relations of life ; 
 and as soon as justice is generally abandoned as the polar star 
 of the Union, its strength is gone. It may continue to adhere 
 together while no strong conflicting interests arise among its 
 members to tear it asunder ; but whenever such appear — when 
 the sentiment of justice is prostrate in the minds of the people, 
 the end is not far distant."* 
 
 If the American Republic be in this precarious and tottering 
 predicament, she can scarcely flatter herself with the hope of 
 emulating her Roman prototype in becoming " the richest and 
 most powerftil nation of the world," and, in her progress to 
 
 • Combe's Notes on the United States of North America, II., 254, 257. 
 
16 
 
 ENGLAND S WESTERN r OR 
 
 lier courts 
 eminent ir 
 
 that achievement, establishing her eastern shores on this side 
 of the At antic. Ireland can find no very strong temptation 
 to enter into a federal compact with her. But if she repents 
 and amends; and with returning virtue becomes powerful in 
 herself and efficient in the protection she can extend to the 
 weak and the oppressed, Ireland may discover enticing allure- 
 ments in the guardianship of her shield. As a state of America 
 she would, while represented with all the other states in Con- 
 gress, possess her own independent laws, her own self-govern- 
 ment, her own long-pi ned-for Parliament — her accumulating 
 revenue — iier free disposal of it — her unrestricted improve- 
 ments of lier soil — her establishments of railroads in every 
 direction — and harbours on every coast — and particularly that 
 western harbour which would render her area the high road of 
 Europe to America — she would elect her own President, equal 
 in dignity to her present Lord Lieutenant — she would preserve 
 of justice, the nursery of lawyers and statesmen, 
 past times, and still to continue eminent — she 
 would cherish her wide-extended institutions of charity — and 
 particularly those hospitals which educate and accomplish 
 surgeons aid physicians, not for home service only, but for 
 the benefit of the world at large — and she would rid herself 
 of that intolerable infliction, that extinguisher of every chari- 
 table feelin 2^ and christian exertion — that curse which pretends 
 to succour the impoverished, but impoverishes a thousand 
 times more than it succours — the unjustifiable, execrable, 
 universally repudiated Poor Law of Ireland. 
 
 With M]'. Latouche I detest and abhor vain-boasting, or 
 what mighi; be mistaken for threatening; but, with him, I 
 recollect wliat is the origin and birthplace of many of the 
 American jopulation, and consider what feelings they have 
 brought out with them, and how those feelings may be 
 reciprocated by those who remain — but my fears suggest still 
 more than Mr. Latouche has suggested — there is still a more 
 gigantic anc menacing source of danger than occurred to his 
 thoughtful laind — one which has brought destruction on many 
 a powerful empire, and which in the empire under which we 
 live, wears in aspect peculiarly portentous — but I shall not 
 name it. It will readily occur to the Politician and the 
 
America's EASTERN SHORE ? 17 
 
 Philosopher — but I am unwilling to open the eyes of the 
 ignorant and dull to a perception of the hidden combustibles 
 around us, and which rashness or malice might convert with a 
 spark into conflagration or explosion. 
 
 But if a federal Union with America were practicable at 
 this moment — if every barrier were removed, and England 
 itself assented to the measure, Ireland would not be unanimous 
 in adopting it. Two millions of Protestants would naturally 
 reflect on the awful consequences — they would consider what 
 would be the constitution of their newly restored Parliament — 
 they must be aware that in the present state of the electoral 
 constituency of the country, the majority of the members 
 would be returned through the influence of the Roman 
 Catholic clergy. The House of Commons would be, to all 
 intents and purposes, Popish — liberty of thinking — perhaps 
 liberty of acting — would be smothered through the land — the 
 Catholic would be no more spared than the Protestant. The 
 country would, after long and painful endurance, shake off her 
 spiritual chains — but in the interval the American province 
 would be an appanage of the Pope. But even now England 
 ought to be aware that there is a reciprocity in the question, and 
 if, as she sometimes meditates, she makes Ireland an appanage 
 of the Pope, she eventually makes her a province of America. 
 
 " All the world's a stage," to nations as well as to 
 individuals; and Ireland has exhibited a strange melodrama 
 to successive generations of spectators. If " one man in his 
 time plays many parts," the moralizing Jaques would find, in 
 the study of her tragi-comedy, that she has played as many, 
 ** her acts being seven agesT 
 
 The first of her ages was the age of Fables. The age of 
 Parthelanus, the Scythian, Milesius the Spaniard and his sons, 
 Heber and Heremon — the Brehon legislator OUamh Fodhla — 
 Rugharuidhe the Great, Neadhah the silver handed, and 
 Labhradh, whose ears were the ears of a horse. 
 
 The second was the age of Glory, the age of Conn of the 
 hundred battles, Niall of the nine hostages. Fin Maccumhai, 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 refined b 
 Ossian 
 
 ar d 
 
 earthy 
 each othei 
 — while 
 Branch, 
 Table an( 
 
 our own 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 Macpherson into Fingal, his son and grandson, 
 
 Oscar, succeeded by tlie Cathoir O' Mores and 
 
 MacMordugh Cavenaghs, the O' Tools and O' Byrnes, Clan- 
 
 Mpres and O'Sullivans, who amused themselves cutting 
 
 's throats, and burning each other's palaces of timber 
 
 e Knights of Tara, the Champions of the Red 
 
 icipated the renown of the Knights of the Round 
 
 the Knights of the Garter, and eclipsed altogether 
 
 nights — the Knights of Saint Patrick. 
 
 th( 
 anti( 
 
 Ki 
 
 The third was the age of Learning and Piety, which suc- 
 ceeded th} conversion of the Irish to Christianity by Oriental 
 Missionaries, who established, at an early period — perhaps in 
 the second, but not later than the third century, a faith more 
 nearly corresponding with the primitive Gospels than that 
 which no\i^ pervades Christendom. This Faith is stigmatized 
 by Jocely i as Pelagian heresy and Avian faithlessness ; and 
 he describes Saint Patrick as instilling the doctrine of the 
 Trinity on all occasions as the sole and prime object of his 
 mission. He did not attempt to establish the supremacy of 
 Rome. He lived a century too early for even the thought of 
 such an a;tempt. It was not engrafted on the Irish Church 
 until near the close of the twelfth century with Peterpence, 
 and every other Papal observance long established in England. 
 To England Ireland owes her Popery. Sedulius, Claudius 
 Scotus, ar d Johannes Scotus Erigena, have left writings still 
 subsisting, which demonstrate beyond a doubt the learning and 
 piety of tl: at remarkable age, when the schools of Ireland were 
 frequentec by students from various parts of the world. 
 
 The fourth was the age of Barbarism, when the Danes 
 erwhelnied learning and the learned, subverted the schools 
 es, and restored the reign of ignorance throughout 
 despite of the struggles of Omelaghlan of Meath, 
 filial triumph of Bryan Boru in the battle of Clontarf. 
 
 ov 
 
 and librar 
 the land, 
 and the 
 
 in 
 
 fifth 
 
 The 
 Strongbov 
 Fitzgerald 
 
 was the age of Invasion and Resistance, when 
 and his companions and followers, Fitzstephen and 
 Reimond and Montmorency, Decourcy and Lacie, 
 
America's eastern shore ? 19 
 
 Barry and Meiler, overran the land, and by the aid of Irish- 
 man banded against Irishman, the adulterous MacMoroughs 
 against the injured O'Rourks, made a partial and imperfect 
 conquest of the island, annexing it to the Crown of England, 
 and conferring on her kings the hesitating title of Lords of 
 Ireland. 
 
 The sixth was the age of Military Oppression, and speedily 
 followed the age of the Invasion. It continued in an unin- 
 terrupted progression throughout the unsparing dynasties of 
 the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts ; Lords Lieu- 
 tenant, Lords Deputy, Lords of the Pale, and Lords of the 
 Marches, Knights and Esquires, Adventurers and Settlers, 
 united their ingenuity, their covetousness, and their courage, 
 to despoil every corner of the land; and by means of conquest 
 of the Irish enemy, or of attainder of the Irish rebel, every 
 productive or picturesque spot of this luxuriant and beautiful 
 island was wrested from the Irish proprietor, and transfen*ed 
 to an English possessor. But attainders were not confined to 
 the mere Celts — it was extended to the Saxon population by 
 the last of the Stuarts, and in his Parliament of the Sessions 
 of 1689, he attainted upwards of two thousand Protestants,* 
 and chiefly of the higher classes of society in Ireland ; but the 
 signal triumphs of William of Nassau speedily reversed these 
 attainders. 
 
 We are now arrived at the seventh age, the age of Civil 
 Oppression. " Last scene of all, that ends this strange 
 eventful history." It is with regret that we begin this painful 
 portion of our drama with the exalted name which closed with 
 eclat the preceding act. But in the oppressions to which Wil- 
 liam assented, and lent even his open authority, he was not 
 master of his conduct. The traders of England controlled him 
 as they still control every eminent and enlightened Statesman 
 who would benefit the empire at large by contributing to the 
 prosperity of all its appendages and dependencies. But it is a 
 
 ' See Archbishop King's State of the Protestants of Ireland, pages xiv., 232, 
 and 308 to 368. 
 
20 
 
 England's western? or 
 
 remarkab e, a melancholy fact, that the freest, happiest, and 
 most powerful nations that ever predominated on this globe, 
 were alwiys the most reckless in trampling on the rights, the 
 fortunes, and the welfare of their subject and subordinate 
 dominionii. The English tradesmen, so far as they were 
 constituents of the House of Commons, governed the Parlia- 
 ment, the Parliament governed the King, and the King, at 
 their prayers, consented to extinguish the flourishing woollen 
 trade of Ireland. The same selfish, blind, and ignorant policy 
 still exist s. The wisest Cabinet bows its neck to the tyran- 
 nical infli: ence without a struggle ; and because London has 
 tailors who make court dresses for men, and milliners and 
 haberdashers and manufacturers of silks and satins, who provide 
 gay and splendid attire for women, we must be despoiled of 
 our Vice- regal Court — Because Westminster has, beside her 
 high-minded and illustrious bar, a jealous combination of 
 traders in justice, we must resign our Courts of Law, those 
 nurseries of so many generations, of bold, skilful, and honest 
 Advocate! I and Judges, Legislators and Statesmen — Because 
 England nas a compact and wide-extended association of traders 
 in' medicine and surgery, our hospitals and their appendant 
 schools j so renowned in character, so profitable to our country, 
 so beneficial to mankind, are to be annihilated, and their very 
 memory expunged — and all this to satiate the jealousy of a 
 body of ti'aders. In England medicine is, for the most part, 
 a trade, in Ireland it is, in the same proportion, a profession — 
 and lastly, because Great Britain has, in every quarter, 
 manufactories of cotton, and cutlery, and glass, our gentry 
 must be impoverished and swept away, as if they could be 
 swept away to England. But the project is as vain and 
 absurd as it is selfish and tyrannical. The manufacturers of 
 Britain wc uld find more profit in the preservation of our gentry 
 to purchaie their productions than in their extinction. We 
 have no manufactures to compete with theirs — they have none 
 to compete with ours: — the only two that remain to us, our 
 unrivalled damasks for the table — our tabinets so prized in 
 every part of the world. This unjust, impolitic, unwise pro- 
 pensity to carry on a work of destruction can only be accounted 
 
 for by its 
 
 laving grown into a system ; and the habit can not 
 
AMERICANS EASTERN SHORE ? 21 
 
 be abandoned until the fatal consequences reign paramount. 
 Ireland sinks under her miseries — she is but a shadow of her 
 former self — she is in truth a second Greece : — 
 
 ** He who hath bent hun o'er the dead, 
 
 Ere the first day of death is fled ; 
 
 The first dark day of nothingness, 
 
 The last of danger and distress ; 
 
 (Before decay's effacing fingers 
 
 Have swept the lines where beauty lingers), 
 
 And mark'd the mild angelic air — 
 
 The rapture of repose that's there — 
 
 So fair — so calm — so softly sealed 
 
 The first — last look — ^by death revealed ! 
 
 Such is the aspect of this shore — 
 
 'Tis Greece — but living Greece no more ! 
 
 So coldly sweet, so deadly fjur. 
 
 We start, for soul b wanting there. 
 
 Her's is the loveliness of death. 
 
 That parts not quite with parting breath ; 
 
 But beauty, with that fearful bloom. 
 
 That hue which haunts it to the tomb — 
 
 Expression's last receding ray, 
 
 A gilded halo hovering round decay. 
 
 The farewell beam of Feeling past away ! 
 
 Spark of that flame — perchance of heavenly birth. 
 
 Which gleams — but warms no more its cherished earth." 
 
 In these philosophic, moral, and sanctimonious days, it is 
 strange that England has not evinced any remorse or com- 
 punction for the tyranny and crimes of seven hundred years ; 
 but seems determined to persist in a course of persecution and 
 oppression against her weak, helpless, and (unless outraged 
 by injustice) affectionate sister. It is not too enthusiastic to 
 believe that this world is governed by a paternal Providence — 
 at once just and merciful — merciful to the broken-hearted — 
 just to the breaker of hearts. Poets have feigned a dispensa- 
 tion that they call Poetical Justice, and are contented to 
 suppose that it is only to be found in their fancies, and is 
 altogether fictitious ; but let us look around us and observe 
 the working of the laws of God, physical, moral, intellectual, 
 and divine, upon the condition of individuals, let us look back 
 and study the destinies of nations — some perished from the 
 
22 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 face of the earth — some scattered to and fro, existing proofs 
 of the gult that infected them, and the punishment that 
 ;, and we shall be satisfied that the epithet of 
 does not accurately belong to it. The dispensa- 
 tions of Heaven seem almost uniformly characterized by the 
 very Poetry of Justice. We have been too long in the 
 habit of admiring and loving all that is grand and exalted in 
 mighty England, not anxiously to wish that she would, ere 
 too late, open her eyes to the truth, and piously acknowledge 
 that the justice of God is not fictitious. 
 
 America is herself stained with criminality ; but God does 
 not wait fc r perfection in the instruments he employs. He 
 was contented with the rude and stern virtues of the barbarians 
 of the north, when he poured them over the wide expanse of 
 the Roman empire — when, with characters not very dissimilar, 
 he commissioned the Romans to absorb the Grecian nations — 
 when he empowered the Greeks of Macedonia to subvert the 
 domination of Persia, and entrusted the Persians with the 
 subjugation of Assyria, crowned as she was with cities sur- 
 passing in population the gigantic Metropolis of England — 
 Nineveh and Babylon still magnificent in their mighty ruins. 
 
 Far distant be the day, if ever that day is to come, when 
 the modern Republic will attempt to establish her eastern 
 confines on the shores of Ireland. Without the permission of 
 Heaven sh4 can not come. Has England earned her coming, 
 the justice of Heaven ? Does she deserve to fall 
 Pale, emaciated, shrunk, and withered, the once 
 
 armed with 
 before her r 
 
 assemblage 
 
 happy, hearty, vigorous Ireland lies, her victim, a frigid form 
 on the bed of death — how like the fair and faded Daughter of 
 Jairus. What a thrill would vibrate through the nations at 
 beholding ;he outstretched arm, and hearing the voice mis- 
 sioned from above: She is not dead but sleepeth — Maid 
 
 ARISE ! 
 
 Should she arise, — and her rising be accompanied by an 
 
 of votaries and friends, protectors and vindicators, 
 
 or, which is not improbable, by such mischievous patriots, such 
 
 egotistical. 
 
 Meagher, and Smith O'Brien, who, however, must be allowed 
 
 the sagacitj 
 
 headstrong, magnanimous madmen as Mitchell, 
 
 of observing what others failed to observe, and of 
 
America's EASTERN SHORE ? 23 
 
 foreseeing what others did not foresee, the prostrate condition, 
 and daily increasing, hopeless, and irremediable abasement of 
 their country, should she thus arise and thus be accompanied, 
 who can tell what may follow. Hostile arrays — hosts armed 
 against hosts — insurrections, rebellions, wars civil and national 
 — battles without number, bloodshed without end. Who can 
 conjecture the final result — and in a conflict combining so 
 many dangerous and deadly ingredients, predict which power- 
 ful party shall triumph, which nation be the conqueror. No 
 human sagacity can divine the impending future. The Om- 
 niscient alone knows — the Omnipotent, who holds the scales 
 of eternal justice, alone can decide the destiny of the contend- 
 ing belligerents, obstinate, inveterate, and equally esteemed 
 invincible by their fellow mortals. 
 
 England must recoil from such a conflict — she has learned to 
 detest the criminality of warfare — and, even if she were assured 
 of success, she would cling to the blessings of peace rather 
 than provoke the expenditure of incalculable treasures and 
 incalculable bloodshed. But of success she cannot be assured. 
 What is then her remedy ? How can she equal, how surpass 
 the daily increasing power of America ? The means are simple, 
 but they require great self-denial, great virtues, and a new spirit 
 of moral philosophy, a new infusion of political wisdom. The 
 sacrifice of all those worldly prejudices which are at war with 
 that divine precept which commands not only individuals, but 
 nations, to love one another. America is a sample, but 
 not yet a perfect sample ; yet, with all her imperfections, 
 deserving to be imitated by every powerful nation ambitious 
 of permanence, aspiring after earthly immortality. It is in 
 the power of England, still retaining inviolate her well- 
 balanced and admirable constitution, monarchical, aristocrati- 
 cal and democratic, to establish a federative form like that of 
 her rival. Many and various are her subordinate and depen- 
 dant dominions. Let her confer on each the privilege of self- 
 government, and the enjoyment of an independent legislature, 
 the framer of their own laws, disposer of their own revenues, 
 and arbiter of their own improvements and prosperity. It 
 will not even be necessary to convert the British Parliament 
 
24 
 
 "TpnBffWfW^*" 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 into a Con| rress, unless it shall be considered, that as a Congress, 
 it would )ind more closely and permanently together, the 
 various stites of the federal Monarchy. But should it be 
 otherwise determined, the provinces and colonies may be con- 
 tented with controlling themselves without a wish to arrogate 
 the prerogative of sharing in the government of England or 
 of the em]>ire ; and England may be contented with her own 
 self-goverr ment, her own rich revenues, her own means of 
 domestic improvement, welfare, and happiness — her colonies 
 and provir ces contributing to her strength and stability ; and 
 deriving fiom that strength and stability the protection she 
 can afford them, in defiance of the world at large. For that 
 protection they must be willing to allocate to her Exchequer 
 an adequate portion of their local Revenues — and to her forces 
 by sea and land the aid of their sinews and their spirit, should 
 any ambiti jus despot dare to assail their supreme and inviolable 
 Protector. 
 
 It may be objected that many of England's subordinate 
 dominions are unfit for self-government — and that the Asiatic 
 and African tribes neither desire a parliament, nor would know 
 how to del ive any advantage from such an institution. This 
 may be ; I ut surely the means of discovering what form of 
 government will most contribute to their enjoyments and 
 satisfy their wants and wishes cannot be denied to the inhabi- 
 tants of th J vast and ancient empire of India — and in a fainter 
 degree to t le less civilized inhabitants of the African peninsula. 
 But if it is necessary to subject them to the discipline of 
 children, then to that discipline it will be right and reason- 
 able to subject them. But these observations cannot apply to 
 therobuster minds of the Saxon and Celtic races, which are 
 distributed over Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the West 
 Indies, and other districts of the globe, large and small, near 
 and remote, each and all of whom are capable of self-govern- 
 ment, and mjoying all the rights, privileges, and immunities 
 of freemen in a federative constitution — and seeking and find- 
 ing for thenselves the means of advancing their own welfare 
 and felicity. 
 
 Years, t<!dious years, may elapse before mankind can rejoice 
 in a consul imation so desirable to mankind at large. At that 
 

 America's eastern shore? 25 
 
 day the federal dominions in either hemisphere would ensure 
 the peace of the world, and, with peace, the blessings of 
 universal prosperity and happiness. America and England, 
 of the same blood, of the same nerve, of the same spirit, would 
 repress every evil and encourage every good as far as such 
 repression and encouragement are attainable by political power 
 inspired by political virtue. From the armoury of God their 
 spears would everywhere resist tyranny — their shields cover 
 and protect the oppressed. They would cast into shade the 
 far-famed pillars of Hercules on either coast of the Mediter- 
 ranean, and be, on the opposite shores of the mighty atlantic 
 the everlasting pillars of universal liberty. 
 
 What a glorious vision ! Will it ever be realized ? A 
 mountainous barrier of Alpine dimensions stands in the way, 
 an almost insurmountable obstacle. As long as the Church 
 of Rome domineers over so large a portion of Christendom, 
 pervading and permeating not only with her spiritual, but her 
 political, influence every hole and corner of every land, it will 
 be impracticable to grant to provinces and dependencies, 
 the powers of self-government. Liberty of thinking, speaking, 
 writing, and acting must be, to a vast extent, in a state of 
 abeyance, wherever the Priesthood assume a control over the 
 consciences and understandings of men, and every Priesthood 
 barbarian or erudite, Pagan or Christian, is ambitious to arro- 
 gate this control. Legislation under clerical trammels would 
 be an abortion — parliaments a nullity. A parliament in 
 Ireland, at this moment, would not represent the property or 
 intellect of the country — would not represent the Protestants 
 or the Catholics ; it would merely represent the Clergy of 
 Rome, and, at their bidding, support the interest and the sway 
 of the sovereign Pontiff. If England is not energetically on 
 her guard, the attempt to inflict this slavery upon her, wearing, 
 as it now does, so menacing an aspect, may, to a certain extent, 
 prove troublesome and vexatious, but never successful. 
 
 The papal tyranny hds trampled upon Christendom upwards 
 of twelve hundred years, ever since Boniface III., in the year 
 607, assumed the title of Universal Bishop. It struggled 
 with England for political domination at various intervals 
 
26 
 
 England's WESTERN ? on 
 
 during the line hundred and sixty years which elapsed from 
 the mission of Augustine, in the year 597, to the permanent 
 establishme it of the half-perfect but still glorious reformation 
 at the accession of Elizabeth, in the year 1558 ; and it has 
 been a mill- stone crushing the intelligence, the morals, and 
 the energies of Ireland, ever since Henry II. forced it on her 
 neck, at the Synod of Cashel, In the year 1 172, now approach- 
 ing a period of seven hundred years. 
 
 To be enancipated for ever from this mill-stone, these 
 struggles, and this tyranny, would be a benefit beyond price. 
 It would constitute a store of happiness for the community 
 of which every individual would be a participator, a possession, 
 rich as an nheritance to all future generations. It is the 
 business of every man to make an exertion to seize and engross 
 this invaluable blessing ; but what is every body's business is 
 nobody's business ; and Protestants and Catholics are doggedly 
 contented to live without that peace, prosperity, and happi- 
 ness which rightfully belong to them. 
 
 The first step in advance towards the completion of our 
 splendid hopes seems to fall to the lot of the Roman Catholic 
 Laity. It lids with them to remove the principal obstacle that 
 stands in the way of all improvement, moral, intellectual, and 
 political — thit mockery of purity, that snare of chastity, that 
 delusion of msuspecting piety, the celibacy of the clergy. 
 The first commandment of God to man after his creation was, 
 *' Be fruitful and multiply ;" and to ensure a willin<,^ conformity 
 
 to th 
 
 IS gracic 
 
 us behest he interwove in his mental constitution 
 a strong, an energetic, an almost Irresistible propensity, 
 through meais of which the Divine will is accomplished in 
 the replenishment of the earth. 
 
 It is a vain attempt to combat with nature. The laws of 
 God are all-powerful. They cannot be evaded — and to seek 
 
 is but to establish a system of vice and hypocrisy 
 
 eir evasion 
 
 th 
 
 in their plac?. It is strange that husbands and fathers will 
 
 ei! trust their 
 
 corruptions o 
 thousands of 
 
 wives and daughters to the temptations and 
 ' the Confessional. Happily for this country, 
 Protestant eyes surround the Roman Catholic 
 Priesthood, aiid even, without casting upon them a reluctant 
 glance, they preserve to a great and almost general extent their 
 
America's eastern shore ? 27 
 
 propriety and purity, and the undoubted chastity of the women 
 of Ireland — women allowed to be the most chaste on the surface 
 of the globe, the morals of the nation remain unperverted. 
 
 What a different tale is told in France, in Spain, in Italy, 
 in Austria, in every Catholic state of Germany — but not in 
 every Catholic state in Switzerland ; for there, according to 
 Father Gavazzi, the Clergy are compelled to keep concubines, 
 because their religion will not allow them to have wives. But 
 wherever uncompromising celibacy prevails, there prevail the 
 most gross and degrading voluptuousness and immorality. At 
 the confessional the maid is corrupted in mind — the matron 
 not in mind only — domestic happiness has no existence ; and 
 the business of every man is tn^ make himself at home in his 
 neighbour's household, while his neighbour most punctually 
 returns his civility, both compliments being paid at the risk 
 of encountering stilettos or daggers. 
 
 Surely the Clergy themselves cannot be blind to the 
 efficient cause of all this depravity and crime — they cannot be 
 ignorant of its rational remedy — they cannot be deaf to the 
 voice of nature in their own bosoms, inviting them to what 
 they themselves call the holy sacrament of marriage — nor to 
 the voice of God invoking them to the duty of instructing 
 their flocks in the precepts of Religion, and improving them 
 in the practice of virtue and morality. Their enemies aver 
 that they are too much devoted to the liberties and licentious- 
 ness of celibacy willingly to resign its enjoyments — that they 
 are, in habit and principle, irreclaimable voluptuaries ; and 
 even, if permitted by the Bishop of Rome, they would one and 
 all decline the boon ; but this is a foul libel — an unfounded 
 slander. Luther, and Calvin, and Melancthon, and all the first 
 leaders of the Reformation were divines, either Monks or 
 Priests. Ronge and Czerski, the recent promoters of the 
 new reformation in Germany, are both of them Priests ; and 
 Gavazzi and Achilli are of the same sacred profession, and are 
 at this moment, arraigning its corruptions before their Italian 
 countrymen in London, and exposing all the vices which 
 Celibacy has inflicted on the Clergy of every grade, in the 
 very dominions of the supreme Pontiff himself. 
 
28 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 The nest step in promotion of the grand project of render- 
 ing Engla nd a federal Monarchy, equipollent with America, 
 the federal republic, must fall to the lot of the Protestant 
 Laity as the first step was assigned to the Roman Catholic 
 Laity. This now contemplated step is of indispensable im- 
 portance ;o the realization of these magnificent views, and is 
 of no less moment than the restoration of the Religion of 
 Christ to : ts primitive purity as it flowed from the Lips of its 
 divine Aui hor. This hallowed restoration must depend for its 
 accomplishment on the Protestant Laity, for these reasons : 
 They hole the sufficiency of holy Scripture for salvation — 
 their Cler ^ profess the same belief ; but they are under 
 peculiar tr immels ; and the Laity are under none. Numbers 
 of this distinguished Clergy, learned, pious, and high minded, 
 are desiroi s, nay anxious, to re-establish the purity of their 
 Religion ; but their aspirations are stifled and suppressed by 
 the major ty of their brethren — and the majority of every 
 collective iiass of men, whether religious or political, rude or 
 refined, is jlinded by interest or prejudice, indifferent to the 
 cause of Truth, and careless of the welfare of mankind. 
 
 This weighty task, then, rests in a great measure on the 
 exertions of the Protestant Laity; but perhaps the Roman 
 Catholic Laity may find it of advantage to unite with them in 
 those exertions, and the blessing of Heaven would not be want- 
 ing to crown them with success. Unexpected aid has been 
 furnished to that most exalted of human objects the Cause of 
 Religious truth — and from auxiliaries who meant to impede, 
 and not to favour its progress. These auxiliaries are the 
 Puseyite Ciergy — the Oxford tractarians —neither Protestants 
 nor CathoJ ics ; but so identified with both that they may 
 be classifie( with either ; and the reluctant tribute of their 
 labours and their learning may well be received with gratitude 
 and triumph by the rational and religious of every creed. 
 
 Mr. 
 Romanism, 
 Oxford 
 with Script 
 
 Palrher in his work on the Church, Mr. Newman, on 
 
 Mr. Keble on Tradition, and all of them in the 
 
 Tralcts, maintain that Tradition is on a perfect level 
 
 ire : ** Scripture and Tradition taken together are 
 
America's eastern shore ? 29 
 
 the joint rule of Faith."* Both have equal claims on our devo- 
 tion."'* We also learn from these communicative divines, that 
 " the very Nicene creed itself, to which perhaps of oW. formulce^ 
 we are most indebted for our sound belief in the proper 
 DIVINITY OF THE SON OF GOD — cvcu this crccd had its origin, 
 not from Scripture, but from tradition.*^ 
 
 Equally important is their admission that several of the 
 orthodox doctrines, such as those of the trinity, and the 
 DEITY OF CHRIST, are not plainly taught in the Scriptures. 
 " The early Church did herself conceal these same church 
 doctrines. Viewing that early period as a whole, there is on 
 the whole a great secresy observed in it concerning such doc- 
 trines as THE trinity and the Eucharist ; that is, the early 
 Church did the very thing which I have been supposing 
 Scripture does, conceal these high Truths ! !*^ 
 
 The Traditions on which the Tractarians so strongly rely, 
 they adduce from the Fathers ; yet even from the Fathers they 
 might have learned that they were not universally received by 
 the early Christians. " There can be no doubt that both 
 Ebionites and Nazarenes denied the doctrine of Christ's 
 supreme divinity. Origen states positively that all the Jewish 
 Christians rejected it, and in this he is joined by Epiphanius, 
 Eusebius, and others,"^ and Tertullian observes that simple 
 persons, not to call them ignorant and idiots, take it for 
 granted that the number and disposition of the Trinity is a 
 division of the Unity. They pretend that two or even three 
 are preached by us, and imagine that they themselves are 
 worshippers of one God."^ 
 
 These paragraphs are suflBcient to satisfy Catholics and 
 Protestants how little foundation there is in Scripture for the 
 doctrines of the Deity of Christ and the Trinity, and that 
 they must be exhumed from the mass of extravagance, mysti- 
 cism, and fiction, in which they lie buried in the voluminous 
 
 » Madge's Lectures on Puseyism — page 135, with citation from Oxford Tracts, 
 No, 78, page 2. 
 *» Idem 136, with citation from Palmer on the Church — 1. 180. 
 ' Idem 138, with citation from Kehle on Tradition — 34. 
 "> Id. 168, with citatationfrom Tracts, No. 85, p. 68. 
 • Id. 163. ' Id. 170, with citation from Tertullian. 
 
30 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 writings of the Fathers. The following observations, worthy 
 of a Christian minister, will give us a clear insight into the 
 true chancter of these primitive divines, and the exact value 
 at which we should estimate the records they have left behind 
 them. 
 
 " The ^reat advantage to be derived from the Fathers is, 
 that they give us in their writing^ a picture of the times in 
 which thoy lived — that they make us acquainted with the 
 state and condition of the primitive Christian Church ; that 
 they tell is of the opinions and practices that prevailed in the 
 early ages, and above all that they furnish us with the most 
 satisfactory evidence of the existence of the books of the New 
 Testament at such a period of the Christian Era as to render 
 it almost impossible for them, widely diffused as they were, to 
 have been forged and palmed upon the world, in so short a 
 time, as the genuine writings of apostles and apostolic men. 
 This view of the subject accords with that of the present 
 learned Bishop of Lincoln. He says ' the principle value of 
 the writings of the Fathers consists perhaps in the testimony 
 which they bear to the authenticity of the books of the New 
 Testament]' As to anything more than this, I believe that 
 they are not only without value, but oftentimes positively per- 
 nicious. ]5y their * vain babbling', their spiritualizing and 
 allegorizing perversions of Scripture, they so perplex and 
 bewilder th? understandings of those who give themselves up 
 to the stud} of their writings, that reason and good sense lose 
 all their just authority and control, and feeling and fancy 
 alone bear sway. Hence, we see in the works of the 
 Puseyite ana Oxford divines the same want of judgment and 
 discrimination, the same love of the marvellous and the mysti- 
 cal, the sam 3 fondness for extravagance and conceits, which 
 characterize those to whom they so reverentially look up as 
 their leaden; and guides. If with singleness of mind, and 
 casting off t le yoke of creeds and systems of man's device, 
 they would pirect their attention more to the words of Christ 
 and his Apoitles, and less to those of Councils and Fathers, 
 their learning and accomplishments would, I humbly con- 
 ceive, redoupd more to their own honour and credit, as 
 
 ( 
 
America's eastern shore ? 31 
 
 well as to the instruction and improvement of their fellow 
 men."^ 
 
 There is no rational, unprejudiced, and competent student 
 of the New Testament, who will not agree with the Tracta- 
 rians, that the deification of Christ has, in strictness, no place 
 in that sacred volume, and must actually depend for its recep- 
 tion, upon Tradition ; or, in other words, on the invention of 
 the Fathers. This was the first and most mischievous of the 
 heresies which disgraced the pure and holy religion of the 
 Messiah. From it flowed, as from a copious well-spring, all 
 the other corruptions which now deluge Christendom. The 
 Omnipotent Being who called all nature into existence, 
 was degraded on his very throne, and Jesus of Nazareth 
 installed beside him, and, perhaps unintentionally, above him, 
 as the Creator of this vast Universe, consisting of thousands 
 of universes, each equal to that which overspreads the heavens, 
 and dazzles our visions on a starlight night — and yet this 
 Creator appears on humbler occasions in the form of a wafer, 
 when the priest pronounces certain mystical words at the altar, 
 and, man as he is, creates his Creator. But the deification of 
 Jesus led to another apotheosis. His mother has been deified, 
 and more than deified, invested, as Mother of God and Queen 
 of Heaven, if not directly, at least indirectly, with all the 
 power of the Father and the Son. The Son, as a dutiful son, 
 must obey all the commands of his Mother ; and the Lord of 
 Heaven and Earth must listen with conjugal kindness to the 
 prayers of Mary of Nazareth ; and thus by means of privileged 
 prayers or maternal commands the humble wife of Joseph 
 the carpenter, governs the universe. Nor was this the only 
 deification engendered by the deification of Christ. The 
 attribute of Holiness, that spirit of purity, that hallowed 
 characteristic of God, and also of his Messiah, was converted 
 into a person said to proceed from both, and was elevated to 
 the same rank of Godship, and is now worshipped with both 
 as the holy and undivided Trinity — three persons, each of 
 them God, yet not three Gods but one. Numerically both 
 
 * Madge's Lectures on Puseyism — pages 194 and 196. 
 
32 
 
 three anc 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 one. All this is a plain, simple, just, honest, 
 unvarnished statement ; yet it appears as if it was exaggerated 
 and caricitured — there is not a word of contumely or ridi- 
 cule in this detail. It is such as the functionaries of religion 
 now embrace in all its circumstances, and present to their 
 flocks and to the world. And now, in the middle of the learned, 
 intelligem , and rational nineteenth century, has made an inroad 
 into Prot?stant England, under the auspices of Pius the 
 Ninth, Cirdinal Wiseman, Bishop Ullathorne, Father Igna- 
 tius, and .^r. Bennett. 
 
 Surely, surely Catholics as well as Protestants, may well 
 stand amjzed at this unaggravated, uncoloured, unvarnished, 
 portraiture! ! If we desire to obtain the favour of God, if we 
 expect that his providence will watch over us, and promote 
 our welfaie and felicity, individually or nationally, we will 
 endeavour to bring back the religion of Christ to its original 
 purity, su(h as it appears in his hallowed Gospel, unconta- 
 minated b^ ' tradition and the fictions of the Fathers. We must 
 abandon tie Popery of Gregory the Seventh and Leo the 
 Tenth, and the Councils of Nice and Trent — and the still earlier 
 heresies retained in the Popery of Luther and Calvin, the 
 Diet of Worms, and the Assembly of Westminster. We must 
 render our 
 that he wi 
 mercy. 
 
 religion worthy of the God we worship, if we hope 
 .1 hearken to our prayers, and be to us a God of 
 
 This would be a great change, and great eflforts would be 
 necessary to accomplish it ; and we naturally wish to form 
 some rational conjecture as to its possibility or probability; 
 and the pr( bable or possible time when we may rationally look 
 for a reform upon which so much of the happiness of futurity 
 depends — happiness the most momentous, whose ingredients 
 are piety, peace, and prosperity, self-reliance, liberty, self- 
 governmen ;, and a federal monarchy, including every land and 
 people of oir mighty empire. 
 
 I never v as a studier of the Prophecies, and never was much 
 enlightened by any of the thousand expositors who have ven- 
 tured on th ? hopeless task of their elucidation — yet amidst the 
 
America's eastern shore ? 33 
 
 mystical confusion and perplexing obscurities which involve 
 THE Apocalypse, there are striking circumstances which start 
 into prominency, and astound us with their apparent and 
 almost absolute identification with facts notorious for many 
 ages, and still clinging to existence in a weary and nauseated 
 world. The spiritual and temporal domination of Rome is 
 accurately and graphically displayed in that powerful illustra- 
 tion the Woman arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with 
 gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in 
 her hand full of abominations and filthiness, upon whose fore- 
 head is written mystery, Bafeylon the Great, the mother of 
 harlots and abominations of the eartll, drunken with the blood 
 of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, and 
 sitting upon seven mountains, like that great city which 
 reigneth over the kings of the earth. 
 
 But under another aspect she is represented as sitting upon 
 a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, and in 
 continuance of these strange, but most apposite illustrations, 
 we find that they that dwell upon the earth have made an 
 Image of the Beast, and that both the beast and his image 
 are equally worshipped by the earth and them that dwell 
 therein. But it is plainly announced, that if any man worship 
 the Beast and his Image^ and receive his mark in his forehead 
 or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath 
 of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of 
 his indignation. This decree is finally carried into execution, 
 by a figurative anticipation ; for in the typical war waged 
 between the armies of heaven and the armies of the kings of 
 the earth, the Beast is taken, and with him the false prophet, 
 that wrought mirafcles before him, with which he deceived 
 them that had received the mark of the beast and them that 
 worshipped his image. These both are cast alive into a lake 
 of fire burning with brimstone. Language, which can mean 
 no more than the complete annihilation of these corruptions of 
 religion and the unauthorized worship which they involve. 
 The catastrophe thus predicted is immediately succeeded by 
 that long cherished hope of the zealous and enthusiastic — the 
 Millenium — those who have suffered for the witness of Jesus 
 and for the word of God, and who have not worshipped the 
 
 c 
 
34 England's WESTERN? or 
 
 Beast, leither his Image, neither had received his mark upon 
 their foreheads or in their hands, shall live and reign with 
 Christ a thousand years.* 
 
 Among the various sects of Christianity there is little con- 
 troversy with respect to the class of sinners indicated by the 
 worshipjiers of the Beast — that class alone which is disparaged 
 by the imputation, entertaining a doubt or advancing an 
 objectioit on the subject. That class of sinners which is indi- 
 cated as worshippers of the Image of the Beast, has not 
 been so generally decided — but that Church which is most 
 disparaged by the charge will be most anxious to dispute its 
 justice. Let us then, with all that humility becoming in so 
 dubious and difficult an investigation — with all that charity 
 which rejpects the conscientious opinions of others, yet with 
 all that )oldness which the cause of Truth demands, and that 
 confidence in the favour of God which is inspired by the 
 conscious ness of performing a duty well pleasing to him, hum- 
 bly, charitably, boldly, and confidently enter upon an inquiry 
 momentous in itself — but doubly momentous as regarding the 
 splendid prospects and hopes discussed in the present adven- 
 turous espy. 
 
 Do the HALF-REFORMED ChURCHES OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 resemble the Church of Rome in placing the man Christ 
 Jesus, tb(! Mediator between God and man beside that Omni- 
 potent, Cmniscient, eternal, and infinite God upon his very 
 throne, and worship him as co-infinite, co-eternal, co-omni- 
 scient, aikd co-omnipotent, with the great Creator of this 
 stupendoi is universe ? Do they place on the same hallowed 
 and inviolable Throne a mere abstraction, an attribute, a 
 dispositio] i, a characteristic, under the appalling denomination 
 of the Holy Ghost? Do they worship a Tri-une God, 
 unnoticed 
 Unity — a 
 
 and unknown in the sacred Scriptures, a Trinity in 
 Unity in Trinity — involving inconsistencies, con- 
 tradiction!^, and absurdities, degrading to the glory of God, 
 disgraceful to the intellect of man. 
 
 * Revelations, chapters xiv., xvii., xix., xx., passtm. 
 
America's eastern shore ? 35 
 
 So much for their worship — now for their Christian faith. 
 Do they believe not only in the somewhat reasonable formula, 
 honoured with the title of the Apostle's Creed, but in the 
 gross and unscriptural Creeds denominated the Nicene, and 
 the Athanasian. Do they believe in original sin, and that the 
 guilt of Adam, in eating the forbidden fruit, has expanded over 
 all his descendants, and rendered them, in addition to their 
 exclusion from Paradise and the tree of life, worthy of the 
 most awful punishments that can be inflicted by a God of 
 Vengeance, forgetting that he is a God of Justice and a 
 God of Merct ? Do they believe in the doctrine of Atone- 
 ment, and the system of vicarious reward and punishment ? 
 The guilt of the sinner and its merited punishment transferred 
 from his responsibility, and inflicted on the most pure and 
 righteous of created beings, as if God must be necessarily 
 unmerciful in his mercies and unjust in \n& justice. It is true 
 they do not believe that the bread and wine in the Eucharist 
 are actually transubstantiated into the body and blood of 
 Christ ; but do they not teach their children and believe 
 themselves a tenet scarcely different, that the body and blood 
 of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the 
 faithful in the Lord's supper; and while they pretend to 
 advocate the right of private judgment, do they not exclude 
 that right unless in unison with their own judgment, and 
 arrogate to themselves the very infallibility of the Pope ? 
 
 Let us now turn to the assumptions and practice of the 
 clergy. It is true they have no permanent confessionals for 
 the exaction of auricular confessions or the ministration of 
 absolution — but do they never, at the bedside of the sick, 
 move the sinner to make a special confession of his sins, and 
 assume the power of absolving him after this sort : — " Our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his Church to 
 absolve all sinners, who truly repent and believe in him, of 
 his great mercy forgive thee thine offences, and, by his autho- 
 rity, committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, 
 in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost. Amen" ? Is not their liturgy, with its litanies and 
 repetition of prayers and supplications, borrowed from still 
 more ancient formularies ; and although the chant of " Ora pro 
 
36 
 
 nobis" is 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 not heard in their churches, are not imitative responses 
 daily sai 1 or sung, more rational, it is true, in their object, 
 but close ly imaging their antique prototype ? It cannot be 
 denied tiat their cathedral service is a grand, imposing, 
 attractive imitation — an imitation perhaps commendable, but 
 beyond a doubt impressive and influential. 
 
 With r aspect to their hierarchy, are not the orders of the 
 clergy not only similar but identical: Primates, Archbishops, 
 Bishops, Deans, Precentors, Chancellors, Treasurers, Arch- 
 deacons, Deacons, Prebendaries, Priests, Rectors, Vicars, 
 and Cura;es? Have they not their convocations, now some- 
 what obs(»lete, and their flourishing chapters ? Are not their 
 hoods, su -plices, and robes, an humble copy of far superior 
 magnificence ? And of late do they not dispute with the rival 
 Church tlieir long monopolized appellation of Catholic, as 
 if to rendi jr themselves more and more metaphysically, as well 
 as physics lly, an Image of the Beast? 
 
 Modern connoisseurs may well be contented with so many 
 points of lesemblance. But the Puseyite portion of the clergy 
 are not satisfied without exciting, to a still higher pitch, the 
 admiration of adepts in the imitative arts. They have but 
 little pleasure in being a mere unsubstantial reflection — a 
 glassy imige. Less than the embodied character of the Beast 
 himself, w ill not satiate the ravening of their Papal appetites. 
 They call their communion-table an altar — they place on it 
 lighted ca idles at mid-day — they again elevate the cross as an 
 object of devotion — they prostrate themselves before it with 
 various genuflexions and fantastical postures and bowings. 
 They repeat with their fingers the sign of the cross, and 
 mumble tleir prayers as if they would induct their congrega- 
 tions into a belief that they supplicated God in Latin, as a 
 language setter understood than English in Heaven. They 
 renew the honours paid to saints, and have laid a promising 
 expectanc]'^ of a revival of the old fashioned confessional, 
 auricular confession, the vice-engendering absolution, and all 
 the other vain and ostentatious pomp and formalities of an 
 impure and meretricious religion. But, above all, they have 
 absolutely and unreservedly renounced the high Protestant 
 
America's eastern shore ? 37 
 
 principle — the right of private judgment, and the sufficiency to 
 salvation of the holy Scriptures, and hold as the foundation of 
 their religious faith, and in perfect equality with the Gospel 
 itself, the traditions and fancies of the Fathers. This is more 
 than the Image of Popery — it is Popery itself. 
 
 There is a popular opinion impressed on religious minds, 
 and grounded on the expositions of prophecy, that the darkest 
 corruptions of the religion of Christ must overspread the 
 whole of Christendom before it can recover its pristine purity, 
 and confer on mankind the benefits and blessings which were 
 contemplated and announced by its divine Author, and which 
 must naturally follow from the universal reception of his pre- 
 cepts and doctrines, divested of the human inventions which 
 have disguised and debased them. 
 
 If there be any reason in this opinion — if it be fact — if it be 
 truth — the evolution they expected has actually occurred — the 
 era for which they looked has arrived. The corruptions of 
 Christianity involve the whole Christian world. Popery and 
 semi- Popery are every where in the ascendant — the Beast and 
 the Image of the Beast are universally worshipped throughout 
 Christendom ! 
 
 But when will the purification commence ? It is: rue a 
 small portion of leaven is at this moment fermenting the mass 
 which is to spread itself abroad into a likeness of the kingdom 
 of Heaven ; but that consummation may be far distant. Is 
 there any hope for us in a rational consideration of things as 
 they are — or as they appear in our future prospects ? There 
 is another prevalent opinion of much influence among religious 
 persons, which may throw some light upon this obscure but 
 interesting subject, grounded on that remarkable text that 
 informs us " that one day is, with the Lord, as a thousand 
 years, and a thousand years as one day." They maintain that 
 six of those days, occupied like those of our earthly week by 
 labour, pain, and worldly affairs, will be succeeded by the 
 seventh thousand years as a day of rest, a grand Sabbath, a 
 festival of innocence, purity, and righteousness, corresponding 
 with the Millenium, when Christ is expected to reign, if not 
 
38 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 in person, at least by his laws, over a more perfect, god-like, 
 and happy race of men, than has yet found means to establish 
 a kingdonr of Heaven upon earth. 
 
 It would be puerile in the extreme to attempt any calcula- 
 tion as to the termination of the six thousand years of the 
 week, and the commencement of the thousand years of the 
 Sabbath, yvhile we are aware that no fewer than one hundred 
 and forty different dates are assigned to the creation of Adam ; 
 and that the science of Chronology, for its earlier dates, con- 
 tains not one that is certain. For instance, the creation of 
 Adam — assigned by the English authorized version agreeing 
 with the common Hebrew text is b. c. 4004. Therefore this 
 date fixes the termination of the six thousand years, in the 
 year a. d. 1996, which will not occur for one hundred and 
 forty-five years from the present year 1851. The Samaritan 
 Pentateuch assigns the era of creation to b. c. 4700 — according 
 to which t iie six thousand years must have terminated a. d. 
 1300 — and leaves us to regret that the six thousand years 
 expired 55^) years ago, and the Millenium has not yet com- 
 menced. Truth may lie between these two chronological 
 conjectures, but it would be childish to pursue the subject 
 farther, or endeavour from such premises to ascertain when 
 the Theoloa^y of Christendom is likely to become as generally 
 pure, as it is, at present, generally corrupt. 
 
 1 
 Wherefoie, without looking back to the past or forward to 
 the future, et us look to the facts which, at this moment, stare 
 us in the f ice, and, with regard to the fulfilment of our most 
 sacred duti«!S to God, to man, and to ourselves, attend to that 
 wisest of ancient remarks, now arrived at the dignity of a 
 maxim: there is no time like the present. In our 
 exertions tc fulfil those duties we may confidently rest on the 
 favour of G >d ; and hope, as far as it is granted in the common 
 course of hin moral government, for his divine assistance. But 
 will it be a raigned as presumptuous to inquire what is that 
 common co arse ? We are acquainted with various instances 
 of unusual and extraordinary interference ; as when he employs 
 a missioned prophet to instruct and to guide, and to carry out 
 his will. I ixtraordinary and unusual are also those providen- 
 
America's eastern shore ? 39 
 
 tial interpositions which we sometimes witness, and reluctantly 
 admit to be an occasional intervention of divine goodness, and 
 endeavour, and perhaps with reason, to confine within the 
 character of natural results. But to ascertain with precision 
 the common course of God's moral government is a more 
 difl&cult task, but worthy of an efibrt, although, in such high 
 enterprize, any human effort may well, in its too certain 
 failure, be excused. 
 
 It is due to a proper sense of humility to begin with an 
 illustration : an ingenious human artist designs an automaton 
 which will engage in a game of chess, play a tune on a piano, 
 pronounce all the letters of the alphabet or perform various 
 other evolutions that may excite surprise and pleasure. He 
 arranges his wheels, his springs and his pipes, and regards 
 his finished work with curiosity and interest, while it executes 
 the various purposes for which he provided. So perhaps with 
 the great Creator — He plans the human automaton — He 
 arranges his more effective wheels and springs, and pipes — the 
 muscles and sinews, the veins, arteries, and air vessels — the 
 lungs and the heart, the nerves and the brain — that wonderful 
 brain which eliminates thought, feeling, and affection — the 
 warmest emotions of affection, the finest feelings of devotion, 
 of conscience and benevolence, the loftiest elevations of intel- 
 lect, aspiring to the study not only of the Creation but the 
 Creator himself — and containing a harmonizing or conflicting 
 congeries of organs all beneficial in their use, all injurious in 
 their abuse — promoting, according as they are exercised, a 
 proper pride or unbecoming haughtiness — a wish for the ap- 
 proval of others, or a degenerate vanity — a laudable firmness or 
 revolting obstinacy — a courage and fortitude necessary to self- 
 protection, or a thirst for blood and war, pernicious to mankind 
 — all to be kept within their legitimate boundaries if governed 
 by the intellectual and moral faculties — and all, the very 
 noblest among them. Instincts, so far as they are propensities 
 — the very propensities to observe and enjoy the varied pheno- 
 mena of nature — the very propensities to compare them, and to 
 reason upon cause and effect, and aspire to a recondite know- 
 ledge of the manifold works of God, though far superior to 
 
40 
 
 simple proi|ensities 
 as they are 
 
 ENGLAND S WESTERN r O'tl 
 
 in their action, are still but Instincts as far 
 propensities. 
 
 Education improves the intellectual — exercise increases the 
 capaciousn(!Ss of the moral faculties — man has the power of 
 opposing one organ to another — and controlling his too active 
 propensities I by the authority of his conscience and under- 
 standing — jind this simple view perhaps may serve to untie the 
 gordian-knot that has fastened so much obscurity and diffi- 
 culty on tl e questions of Liberty and necessity. Man is the 
 slave of NECESSITY so far as his material organs and their 
 influences cperate singly and severally without submitting to 
 reciprocal < oUision and the control of the superior over those 
 of less digiity. He is master of free will so far as his 
 organs have fair play in their action, and that his nobler facul- 
 ties exert the full force of their authority in restraining the 
 more ignoble. 
 
 May we not, then, presume that God is well pleased in 
 observing tie mutual action on each other of these his wheels, 
 and springs, and pipes — the reciprocal action of individuals on 
 each other-— the mutual and reciprocal action of sects and 
 parties, con munities, and nations ? Is it not an ingredient in 
 his happiness to behold the success of his exquisite machinery, 
 and the prcgress of his free-minded, free-acting, free-willed 
 
 automatons 
 felicity ? 
 
 towards the goal of human perfection and human 
 Will he not invite the natives and denizens of his 
 celestial kir gdom to participate with him in the enjoyment of 
 this ever-vj Tying spectacle — the various dramas presented in 
 every region of this globe — so many comic, so many tragic 
 scenes in d<,ily, nightly, perpetual performance — in which 
 
 " Man, proud man, 
 Drest in a little brief authority. 
 Most ignorant of what he's most assured. 
 His glassy essence, like an angry ape, 
 Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven. 
 As make the angels weep, who, with our spleens 
 Would all themselves laugh mortal." 
 
 Comedy s the favourite spectacle of all civilized nations — 
 and we ha vie never to complain of a deficiency of experienced 
 
America's EASTERN SHORE? 41 
 
 and highly-accomplished performers — mock-patriots, mock- 
 statesmen, mock-generals, mock-doctors, mock-lawyers, mock- 
 orators, mock-divines, and mock-philosophers. Performers 
 too of either sex shine in the exhibition of mock-modesty, 
 mock-honour, mock-benevolence, and mock-piety. This drama 
 is everlasting — the curtain never drops — Angels may honour 
 these Thespian triumphs with a smile, but how far can God 
 take pleasure in the finest displays of this low comedy ? 
 
 Tragi-comedy has also its attractions and has also a long 
 run — that of Ireland as already noticed, has lasted for seven 
 hundred years. — The Irish Enemy is out of date — the Irish 
 Rebel comes occasionally on the stage, but the Irish Assassin 
 continues in full play. He is peculiarly fitted for this hybrid 
 exhibition. He murders for the love of murder, for sake of 
 justice, through a patriotic devotion to his country, and a 
 singular regard for religion — and he unites with all his less 
 sanguinary countrymen in warm afi'ections for his family, 
 charitable feelings for his poorer neighbour, and hospitality to 
 strangers even beyond his means ; but above all, in a passion 
 for innocent mischief, frolic, and fun, which Irishmen indulge in 
 the midst of the severest trials of misery and hardship, under 
 the pressure of famine and the approach of death — an event 
 which they frequently meet with a jest; and their great con- 
 solation in every kind of misfortune is the ready wit they 
 employ to render it light and ridiculous. They would never 
 have endured the oppressions of seven hundred years if it 
 were not for their wit. 
 
 The next Drama is strictly a Tragedy — the first act is in 
 pagan Africa the last in christian America — and the interme- 
 diate scenes pollute the pure Ocean. — War ambuscades and 
 treachery are employed to enslave the Negro. He is chained 
 to a gang of his countrymen, and thousands of gangs are con- 
 veyed yearly to the coast under the impulse of the lash. 
 They are packed, as so much merchandize, in the holds of 
 the slave-ships. Through the influence of foul air and the 
 pestilential contact of human bodies without space to turn or 
 to move, the merchandize is, to a great extent, deteriorated 
 and wasted, and when it is good for nothing but to rot, it is 
 
42 
 
 or of fires s 
 bought and 
 Irishman an 
 he has not 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 flung, without compunction, overboard. The miserable rem- 
 nant of sue 1 a voyage is transferred to the hopeless labours 
 of the suga • plantation and the gentle mercies of the Planter 
 and his scou :ge, under the broiling heat of an almost torrid sun, 
 ill more broiling. The wretched human being is 
 sold — he is but a chattel ; yet he can boast like the 
 ample intellect to appreciate his misfortunes ; but 
 the wit of the Irishman to alleviate and reduce 
 them. Thd Irish Tragi-comedy, the Negro-tragedy may well 
 be regarded with " tears such as angels weep ;" but how does 
 the Almighiy Mechanist behold the disorder and perversion of 
 his noble michinery ? 
 
 Another genuine Tragedy has lately been in possession of 
 the stage ; and was distinguished by the true tragic character- 
 istics, terroi, pity, and magnanimous feeling. It began with 
 the barbarous sacrifice of the royal Louis of France, and ter- 
 minated its bloody career with the great day of Waterloo. 
 Sanguinary wars crimsoned every plain of the European 
 Continent — armies of countless numbers encountered each 
 other with a arious success, and a soldier of fortune, elevated 
 by the force of his genius to the oldest and most powerful 
 throne of E irope, proved himself more than an Alexander, 
 more than a Caesar, more than a Gregory the seventh, or a 
 Celestine th(5 third, in withering armies, spurning crowns, and 
 trampling U3on Kings; yet while he subjugated Holland, 
 Prussia, Gei many, and Italy, the most skilful of his marshals 
 of France, v> ith their veteran soldiery, shrunk in the vallies of 
 Spain before the eagle glance of the Field-marshal of England. 
 The angelic spectators of these tremendous scenes might well 
 rejoice that God had interwoven in the constitution of Man 
 the powerful organs of combativeness and destructiveness, 
 now so wortiiily employed in defending the liberties of man- 
 kind, and dt feating the ambitious tyranny that would have 
 enslaved the world. Is it presumptuous to imagine that God 
 himself must have enjoyed the admirable working of such rare 
 and elevated specimens of his mental machinery when the two 
 great commanders, the proud and powerful offspring of two 
 abject Islands, were, for the first time, personally opposed 
 
America's eastern shore ? 43 
 
 to each other, and the dark Genius of Corsica vanished before 
 the bright-glowing Spirit of Ireland! This, the most glorious 
 of the wars that have desolated the Earth, may well close the 
 series, crowned, as it has been, with the most beneficial of 
 battles — may we not hope, as Philanthropists and Christians, 
 that there is now and for ever an end to the warfare of civilized 
 nations ! 
 
 But, disparaging contrast I — this magnificent Tragedy has 
 been succeeded by an extravagant Farce. The various 
 Potentates of Europe, when suffering under the galling 
 oppression of their arrogant conqueror, allured their prostrate 
 and apathetic subjects to embark in a struggle for liberty and 
 independence under a solemn promise of privileges, immunities, 
 and free constitutions, if they should be successful in the con- 
 flict. They were successful ; and these honest and honorable 
 Potentates, in grateful return for their services, in fulfilment 
 of their sacred engagements, assumed a Cervantic gravity, the 
 finest specification of the ridiculous, and with humorous 
 solemnity, suitable to this farcical Burletta, again placed their 
 royal feet upon the necks of their serfs. — Such was the 
 organization of their princely brains. — Conscientiousness 
 and Benevolence were defective. — They suffered their 
 Intellectual powers to sleep — and necessity governed the 
 result. 
 
 But this result is not the end. Subjects have an organiza- 
 tion from God as well as Sovereigns, and we cannot at this 
 day look around us without perceiving how much that organi- 
 zation is in active play. In Prussia, in Austria, in every 
 part of Germany, in every part of Italy, the down-trodden 
 serfs are lifting up their heads aspiring to be Freemen — and 
 as sure as that there is a God, and that they derive their 
 organization from Him, the day will come when they will be 
 free, and the Despots of the world learn that the first of their 
 sovereign duties is to render their subjects prosperous and 
 happy, which they cannot be unless they have a will of their 
 own — a degree of liberty which does not amount to a licen- 
 tiousness that would be inconsistent with the rights of all 
 their brethren of mankind. 
 
44 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 Among tnose despots who now stand in this awful relation 
 with their subjects, not one is more prominent in the face of 
 heaven than the Roman Pontiff — and his consistory of Cardi- 
 nals. They must be considered together with him, for 
 judging fron the auspicious commencement of his Ponti- 
 ficate, we m ist be aware that Pius the Ninth has since fallen 
 under their absolute control, and (if without offence we may 
 use an expre ssion derived from catholic narrative and scriptural 
 imagery) thi t in the Halls of Scarlet Harlotry, he has not a 
 voice. He is a mere pageant, and they are in fact the Court 
 of Rome. That abandoned Court has wearied out the patience 
 of their intelligent and high-minded people, and this Power, 
 once so terrific and appalling in every region of Christendom, 
 is evidently tottering to its fall. France and England ought 
 everywhere to countenance the rational liberties of the people, 
 and abstain from an undue intervention in favour of their 
 oppressors, or an apathy that permits such intervention. 
 France has incurred the guilt of this intervention, England 
 the guilt of tliis apathy. What punishment France may suffer, 
 we know not as yet ; but England is already suffering under 
 the infliction* of Roman gratitude. Protestant England, after 
 the tranquilli ;y of three hundred years, has been invaded by 
 a Roman Hierarchy, and her very soil seized as the possession 
 of twelve territorial Bishops — a scarlet-robed Cardinal at their 
 head. Bold and consummate stroke of ecclesiastical policy ! 
 The drooping, dying papacy, rises with transient vigour to an 
 expiring effort ; and, with a view to affright her rebellious sub- 
 jects, and as;onish a wondering world, she enters upon an 
 enterprise abs urd, insane, and ludicrous — once more to enslave 
 the free mind>! of Englishmen, and compel the various churches 
 and congrega ions of England — boasting of the liberty where- 
 with Christ his made them free — to submit to the insult and 
 degradation i iflicted by a foreign Priesthood on her hitherto- 
 deemed invioliible soil. 
 
 ■ 
 
 In this weak and wicked adventure, and its obvious results, 
 an illustratior , almost identical with the matter illustrated, 
 intrudes itself upon us. A strong Bull of Bashan, long the 
 terror of all tliat encompassed his pasture, is at length des- 
 tined to the sacrifice, and his doom approaches. His ominous 
 
America's eastern shore ? 45 
 
 roar is heard in the courts of the temple, and he receives his 
 death blow before the altar of Jehovah. He rears, he plunges, 
 and in his struggle breaks an unexpected way through an 
 astonished populace. He endeavours once again to trample 
 and to gore — but these desperate ej0forts are but the last throes 
 and agonies of the dying BEAST. 
 
 If the Roman Catholic Clergy of Ireland were convinced 
 that these observations and reflections are founded on reason 
 and truth, if they could open their eyes to their duties as Irish- 
 men, as Christians, as peculiarly the servants of God, they 
 would lend their powerful aid to the restoration of the Religion 
 of Christ, to its original purity, and no longer stand in the 
 way of those blissful changes which would, to all appearance, 
 render their countrymen the freest, their country the happiest 
 on the surface of the globe. If they would but exercise their 
 common sense, and awake to their true interests, they would 
 shake off those irrational prejudices which enchain them to the 
 most vicious and abandoned of sovereignties, the Pontificate of 
 Rome. I would say to them, if I had a voice of any weight 
 or influence amongst men, '* You must be familiar with the 
 representations of so many eminent divines of your Church, 
 and know, as they knew, that Rome is nothing better than an 
 antiquated Bagnio of carnal depravity \ you must acknowledge, 
 with all mankind, that it is an outstanding bulwark of spiritual 
 despotism, and admit, with the noblest and wisest of your 
 religious persuasion, that it has recently become a daring bed- 
 lam of fanatic lunacy. If you possess the candour of men, 
 who are at once learned, and liberal, and pious — and I am not 
 personally acquainted with any of your body who are not 
 deserving of these epithets — you must be satisfied that the 
 traditions of the Fathers, * their vain babbling, their spiritual- 
 izing and allegorizing perversions of Scripture' cannot, with 
 any show of reason, be placed on the same elevated pedestal 
 with those hallowed scriptures which they so pervert. It is 
 true there are many among you who firmly believe in all the 
 inconsistent and contradictory mysteries which they profess ; 
 but these are not the most pious, the most liberal, and the 
 most learned among you ; yet, it is equally true, that many 
 
46 
 
 who are en 
 reluctant to 
 system of 
 flocks, whom 
 the plain 
 ethereal puri 
 rant — and w4s 
 pted 
 
 was corru 
 and Council 
 unchristian 
 
 England's western ? or 
 
 tfrtled to these several marks of distinction are 
 
 encounter the responsibility of abandoning a 
 
 ertors which they consider useful to their ignorant 
 
 they unjustly regard as incapable of receiving 
 
 tr^hs of the Gospel, that Gospel which, in its 
 
 y, was first preached to the poor and the igno- 
 
 accepted by them as a blessing, long before it 
 
 by the wisdom of Philosophers, Theologians, 
 
 -the guilty fabricators of incredible creeds and 
 
 drdinances. 
 
 Under your earnest instructions your flocks would not be 
 tardy in discarding every error and abandoning every corrup- 
 tion which you discarded and abandoned — and if you assumed 
 the glorious )Osition of being foremost in restoring the Chris- 
 tianity of Chi istendom to the Christianity of Christ, you might 
 look with corfidence to the approbation of mankind, and to a 
 boon of mor; value, the favour of God. You would stand 
 highest among the ministers of that God, and look down with 
 compassion on the clergy of the Reformation, and their Popery ^ 
 as they now look down with disdain upon your Popery and 
 upon yourself 'es. 
 
 But it is iheir sacred duty, as well as yours, to abandon 
 their Creeds iind Decretals, Articles and Confessions of Faith, 
 and all the corruptions, impieties, and impurities they have 
 engendered, jnd preach only the simple, but exalted, doctrine 
 of the Gosp«, which its divine Author commanded his disci- 
 ples to preac li to all nations ; and which, in its exalted sim- 
 plicity, was competent to fulfil all the promises of God to 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that in their seed should all 
 THE nations of THE EARTH BE BLESSED. Were all the 
 Clergy of Christendom to rise superior to their selfish but 
 mistaken inte 'ests, and unite their most energetic exertions in 
 the performance of this the most imperative, most holy of their 
 duties, the wl ole surface of the earth would gradually become 
 a renovated !.^aradise, and the great multitude of its happy 
 inhabitants raise their voices in unison, deep-toned as the voice 
 of many waters, as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying. 
 Alleluia ! Sal i^ation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto 
 
AMERICANS EASTERN SHORE ? 47 
 
 the Lord our God : for true and righteous are all his judg- 
 ments. Praise him, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, 
 both small and great. With one accord, let us be glad and 
 rejoice, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.* 
 
 ' See Revelation xix. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by John Falcokkr, 32, Marlboniugh-street, Dublin. 
 
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