of very powerful causes; fo that no experience (properly fo called) has been yet had on this fubject. For though no one can cenfure many alterations in their government, which the Irish have attempted and carried fince the repeal, to the observation that nothing has been attempted against the establishment in the interval, it may be replied, that the zeal for alteration has been fully employed during the whole period: in fo much that in the last fifteen years, the country has fix times affumed the appearance of imminent rebellion; that, being fully occupied in the ufe of other inftruments, their zeal has not been fufficiently at leifure for the application of this new power it had acquired. Befides, the juncture was fuch, that it would have been great impolicy to have brought it into use in this period. It would poflibly have irritated many of the fincere followers of the church of England, whom the friends of fuch a change might want to conciliate, or to perfuade into a co-operation with them, to pull down the fupremacy claimed by Great Britain and they might reasonably foresee, that when by their affiftance, a full renunciation of her claims was obtained, the establifhment might be attacked with greater probability of fuccefs; as the direct aid it might before have received, would have been cut off, partly by its own act. The ftrictures Mr. M'Kenna has made, on the history of the political conduct and principles of the clergy of the eftablishment, lay claim alfo to fome examination, to which we fhall here give a place. In his introduction, he remarks, "for the honour of the established hierarchy, the referve of that body on a fubject which might be fuppofed to inflame its paffions: fome were distinguished among the favourers of the Roman Catholic emancipation, few ranged theinfelves with its aЯive opponents :" and from these few, a confiderable proportional deduction perhaps may be made, to determine the real number of thofe opponents, who were educated in the principles of the establishment. Some of them he fays, were conforming catholics: among them we fhould conjecture, were likewife to be found, conformifts from other diffenting fects. It is therefore to be inferred, that the number of the clergy, educated in the principles of the establishment, who were among the active opponents of the measure, was very small indeed. The conduct which drew from him this acknowledgement in his introduction, might have induced him in the republication of his effay, to have fuppreffed his menaces against a "haughty hierarchy," of being level- ́ led in a common flaughter of oppreffive pretenfions as they had obeyed his interdiction againft making" idle experiments. on the pride or patience" of certain "moft moderate men," who who might otherwife have effected this bufinefs. Thus much might be faid by any one, who was even difpofed to admit, that originally there was a due decorum preferved, in speaking thus of a body of men, not undiftinguished in rank, in cultivated talents, in liberality, or manners. The policy likewife of uling the language of irritation and defiance, in the first inftance, may be doubted; when employed against those whom he had recently stated to "have in their hands the power to confer kindnefs or to offer injury," before he was convinced on good grounds, that their intentions were hoftile : the contrary to which he now admits. In the compofitions of all writers, and efpecially in thofe of political polemics, there may exist another fault which may call for cenfure as justly as bad arrangement, bad logic, or bad grammar. Although the cftablishment has not been inimical to the plan of Mr. M'Kenna; he appears to have been inimical (from political views) to establishments in general, and that of the church of England in particular. He reprefents it to be ftrange, that "its partifans can ever all to a religion of freedom." The foundations of liberty, he obferves, were laid by the English, when members of the Roman church; "In the school of prefbyte:ianifm, the facred doctrines of man's native dignity and freedom, were first promulgated; and the just powers of fociety defined. And we can fcarcely allow to the church of England, the credit of retaining what it accidentally had acquired. Without the ftrong curb of the fectaries, paffive obedience had, at this hour, been the current loyalty of the inhabitants of thefe iflands. It was the language of prelates, it was inculcated in pulpits, it was fanctioned by univerfities." And he affirms that the " religion of freedom must be diffent, in fome of its wildeft fhapes, and moft excentric modifications.” Not to notice this extraordinary definition of a religion of freedom, or other points which lie open to remark, the follow We fhall here give two more inftances of the fame kind. It is to be prefumed, that he admits the clergy of the establishment, to be as well entitled to be treated as "men of tafle and erudition," as a diftinct order (for here individuals are not to be confidered) as any other clafs or order of men but when he couples "expectant perfons," with dependant guagers;" he incurs his own rebuke: "they certainly merited at the hands of a scholar, a lefs coarfe treatment." And gentle reader! hardly will it enter into thy benign heart to conceive, how much further his anger has fometimes carried him: for, by the manner in which he fpeaks of fome over zealous defenders of the proteftants afcendancy, it fhould feem that he could have feen "their lives and fortunes perifh by an earthquake," with the utmost apathy. ing ftatement may certainly be advanced in defence of the Church of England. The rudiments of the doctrine, that all fecular power, including that of Kings, was founded on the confent of the people, were first advanced by the Italian canonifts of the Romish communion; more particularly thofe refident in the Papal dominions and most probably in the heat of the contest be tween the popes and the emperors. From this origin of the royal power, they attempted to fhow its inferiority to that of the papacy; founded as they contended, on divine inftitution. Thefe notions appear not to have travelled far from the place of their nativity, and were in a fhape to attract little regard; until the jefuits, who afterwards arofe, took them up, and called them forth into notice: mixing fuch impurities with the principles of liberty they might contain; that the whole taken together formed a more deleterious mixture, than even any of thofe compofitions, by which the public mind has lately been attempted to be poifoned. They taught that an heretical king ought to be depofed, by the people his fovereigns; and that he might in certain cafes be punifhed by them; and that any individual might affaffinate a tyrant.* In confequencé of these doctrines, two kings of France, Henry the IIId. and the IVth. fell fucceffively by the knives of affaffins. Men of probity, in that age, staid not to separate what was good from what was bad, in a fyftem of new opinions which produced fuch execrable effects. In France in the year 1615, at a meeting of the ftates, the third eftate condemned as pernicious, all doctrines which made the authority of monarchs depend on any thing befides God.+ With wea pons forged likewife in the fame workshops, the Jefuits attacked the reformation and religious liberty in England, in the perfon of Queen Elizabeth. General Politics were not then a cultivated branch of moral philofophy. The clergy of England faw the fatal effects of this poifonous compound : but the skill to analyse it, and to feparate the pure metal from the arfenical matter with which it was combined, did not exift. In their zeal for religious liberty, they went a step too far: like the commons of France, they afferted, that kings were accountable to God alone for their actions. Much is to be excused on account of the motive which at first led them into this error, the establishment of religious freedom; neceffary then perhaps to enable us ultimately to acquire rational *Bayle's Dictionary, Art. GUIGNARD and LOYOLA. + Ibid. D BRIT. CRIT. VOL. V. JAN. 1795. notions notions of civil liberty. We fhall finish the remainder of this account in a few words: the oppofition made by the Puritans, to the principles which the effablished church opposed to the Jefuits, had little weight with its teachers: nor were they much enlightened by the miferies of the civil wars, when the fanaticifm of liberty fpread oppreffion and tragedies on every fide,* in 1682, the danger of a fecond civil war, induced every county and every town, to addrefs the throne, in the language of paffive obedience and non-refiftance; and laft of all, the university of Oxford was swept along in the torrent of popular delufion. As for the eulogy which Mr. M.K. bestows upon the Prefbyterians, that the doctrines of freedom were first promulgated in their schools, and the just powers of fociety defined; if he be fuppofed to mean here, only fuch principles as would coalefce with our mixed government, and that they first ascertained the rights and proportion of power, of the three eftates of the English conftitution (and his able defence of those principles, in a tract contained in this volume, proves that he would give his approbation to no other) it certainly is very ill-placed. It has been faid, on very folid grounds, that the first regular definition of the conftitution, according to the prefent ideas of it, that occurs in any English compofition, is found in the declarations and remonstrances of Charles I. at the beginning of the civil war: they were drawn up by Mr. Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon ; whofe virtue preferved when minifter, the constitution of which he first traced the boundaries; and many royalists are faid to have blamed the philofophical precifion of the king's penman.+ Mr. M'K. concludes this tract, by difcuffing in the fifth chapter, the danger to the conftitution from the popery laws: and in our review of this, we fhall join what is to be found on the fame head in different parts of his work; together with what he has faid on the bad effects of this rigid code, on the national welfare, confidered in other points of view. With much weight he reprefents, that, by the oppreffion of thofe laws, the Roman catholics are degraded into an inferior caft that the fufpicion by which they are therein marked, weakens the fenfe of honour in them, which feldom furvives unmerited and long continued difgrace. Thus likewife is the * See Bishop Hurd's Dialogue on the English conftitution. + Hume's History, year 1642, note. emulation emulation of three quarters of a nation, and the progress of useful improvements to be expected from it, put a stop to, the laws alfo which directly exclude them from liberal and active profeflions, almost enact their perpetual ignorance and indolence. From this combination of caufes it happens, that the difparity is not more clearly marked, between any two race of men on earth, than the Proteftants, and Roman Catholics of the lower ranks, in Ireland. The latter in his own country is fervile, fpiritlefs and fluggish; yet this is no feature of the national character: those who have fettled in America or in other countries, have been found indefatigably laborious. So great a proportion of the people being disfranchifed, the liberties of Ireland, he alfo argues, ftood on too narrow a bafis. The electors for a county forming fo fmall a body, a few opulent individuals may get the nomination of members into their own hands; or procure factitious majorities, by granting temporary freeholds to needy Proteftants, to outvote the real proprietors, and thus fome counties have become closed boroughs. Hitherto, he alledges likewife, it has been esteemed prefumptuous in the Roman catholics to give any opinion on the public measures or public men. Hence after a feffion of parliament, when a member for a county returned into the country, his neighbours did not think themfelves entitled to pafs any judgment on his public conduct: and he was fo far removed from the cenforial power of the opinion of the fociety he lived in; a fituation dangerous to public character. If there be any truth in the charge of the greater verfatility, and more open venality of the reprefentatives of Ireland, than is obferved in other elective eftates, it is partly to be ascribed to this caufe: and one remedy, the emancipation of the catholics, redreffes the two laft mentioned evils. To both these arguments jointly the following obfervation applies.--In proportion as the number of voters will be increafed by the meafure, it is to be admitted that these effects will take place; but no further and by Mr. Young's account, the protestants poffefs nineteen twentieths of the lands of Ireland: now if we Thould fuppofe, that the admiffion of the Roman Catholics to vote, fhould encrease the number of votes one tenth or one twelfth, it would not be an adequate preventative to the evils he complains of. One confequence, however, appears fairly deducible from the proportion of the landed property of the two parties, which in equity ought to be here given. That is, if it be fuppofed that at fome future time it would have become expedient to grant the elective franchise to the Roman Catholics, confidering the meafure without reference to any |