LETTER XV.

AMERICAN "REFORMATION" BROUGHT RELIEF TO CATHOLICS. PERSECUTIONS UP TO THE REIGN OF JAMES II.. LAW-CHURCH OPPOSES LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE. HORRIBLE PENAL CODE. SOFTENED, AT LAST, FROM MOTIVES OF FEAR. FRENCH REVOLUTION, PRODUCES A SECOND SOFTENING OF TUE CODE. PENAL CODE, AS IT NOW STANDS. RESULT OF THE "REFORMATION," AS FAR AS RELATES TO RELIGION.

Kensington, 31st Jan., 1826.

MY FRIENDS,

429. WE have now traced the "Reformation," in its deeds, down from the beginning, in the reign of Henry VIII., to the American Revolution; and, all that remains is, to follow it along through the French Revolution, and unto the present day. This is what I propose to do in the present Letter. In the next Letter I shall bring under one view my proofs of this proposition; namely, that, before the event called the" Reformation," England was more powerful and more wealthy, and that the people were more free, more moral, better fed and better clad, than at any time since that, event. And, when I have done that, I shall, in the second volume, give a LIST of all abbeys, priories and other parcels of property, which, according to MAGNA CHARTA, belonged to the Church and the poor, and which were seized on by the Reformation-people. I shall range these under the heads of COUNTIES, and shall give the names of the parties to whom they were granted by the confiscators.

430. The American Revolution, which, as we have seen, grew directly out of those measures which had been adopted in England to crush the Catholics and to extinguish their religion for ever, did, at its very outset, produce good to those same Catholics by inducing the English government to soften, for the sake of its own safety, that PENAL CODE, by which they had so long been scourged. But, now, before we speak of the immediate cause, and of the manner and degree of this softening, we must have a sketch of this HORRIBLE CODE; this monster in legislation, surpassing, in violation of the dictates of humanity and justice, any thing else that the world has ever seen existing under the name of law.

431. We have seen how cruelly the Catholics were treated under "good Queen Bess" and James I.; we have seen how they were fined, mulcted, robbed, pillaged, and punished in body; but, though the penal code against them was then such as to make every just man shudder with horror, we think it, then, gentleness, when we look at its subsequent ferocity. We have seen how Catholics were fined, harassed, hunted, robbed, pillaged, in the reign of "good Bess." We have seen. the same in the reign of her immediate successor, with this addition, that Englishmen were then handed over to be pillaged by Scotchmen. We have seen, that Charles I., for whom they afterwards fought against Cromwell, treated them as cruelly as the two former. We have seen Charles II. most ungratefully abandon them to the persecutions of the Church by law established; and, during this reign we have seen that the Protestants had the baseness, and the King the meanness, to suffer the lying inscription to be put on the MONUMENT on Fish-street Hill, in the city of London, though Lord CLARENDON (whose name the Law-Church holds in so much honour) , in that work which the University of Oxford publishes at the "Clarendon Press," expressly says (p. 348, continuation), that a Committee of the House of Commons, "who were very diligent and solicitous to make the discovery, never were able to find any probable evidence, that there was any other cause of that woeful fire than the displeasure of Almighty God." What infamy, then, to charge the Catholics with it; what an infamy to put the lying inscription on the pillar; what an act of justice, in James II., to efface it; what a shame to William to suffer it to be restored; and what is it to us, then, who now suffer it to remain, without petitioning for its erasure!

432. But, it was after James II. was set aside that the PENAL CODE grew really horrible. And here it is of the greatest consequence to the cause of truth, that we trace this code to its real authors; namely, the Clergy of the Established Church. This is evident enough throughout the whole of this Church's history; but, until the reign of James II., the sovereign was of the Church religion, so that the persecutions appeared to come from him or her. But now, when the King was for softening the penal code; when the King was for toleration; now the world saw who were the real persecutors: and this is a matter to be fully explained and understood, before we come to a more minute account of the code, and to the causes which finally led to its, in great part, abolition.

433. JAMES II. wished to put an end to the penal code; he wished for general toleration; he issued a proclamation, suspending all penal laws relating to religion; and GRANTING A GENERAL LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE TO ALL HIS SUBJECTS. This was his OFFENCE. For this he and his family were SET ASIDE FOR EVER! No man can deny this. The clergy of the Church set themselves against him. Six of the bishops presented to him an insolent petition against the exercise of this his prerogative, enjoyed and exercised by all his predecessors. They led the way in that opposition, which produced the "glorious revolution," and they were the most active and most bitter of all the foes of that unfortunate King. , whose only real offence was his wishing to give liberty of conscience to all his subjects, and, by showing respect to whose mortal remains (displaced by the French revolutionists) our present King has done himself very great honour.

434, Now, we are going to see a sketch of this terrible code. It must be a mere sketch; two hundred Letters like this would not contain the WHOLE of it. It went on increasing in bulk and in cruelty, from the Coronation of Elizabeth till nearly twenty years after that of George III., till events came, as we shall see, and broke it up. It consisted, at last, of more than a hundred Acts of Parliament, all made for the express purpose of punishing men, because, and only because, they continued faithfully to adhere to the religion, in which our as well as their fathers had lived and died, during a period of nine hundred years! The code differed, in some respects, in its application with regard to England and Ireland, respectively.

435. In ENGLAND this code -- I. stripped the Peers of their hereditary right to sit in Parliament. --II. It stripped gentlemen of their right to be chosen Members of the Commons' House. -- III. It took from all the right to vote at elections, and, though Magna Charta says, that no man shall be taxed without his own consent, it double-taxed every man who refused to abjure his religion, and thus become an apostate. -- IV. It shut them out from all offices of power and trust, even the most insignificant. -- V. It took from them the right of presenting to livings in the Church, though that right was given to Quakers and Jews. -- VI. It fined them at the rate of 20l., a month for keeping away from that Church, to go to which they deemed apostacy. --VII. It disabled them from. keeping arms in their houses for their defence, from maintaining suits at law, from being guardians or executors, from practising in law or physic, from travelling five miles from their houses, and all these under heavy penalties in case of disobedience. -- VIII. If a married woman kept away from Church, she forfeited two-thirds of her dower, she could not be executrix to her husband, and might, during her husband's life-time, be imprisoned, unless ransomed by him at 10l. a month. -- IX. It enabled any four justices of the peace, in case a man had been convicted of not going to church, to call him before them, to compel him to abjure his religion, or, if he refused, to sentence him to banishment for life (without judge or jury), and, if he returned, he was to suffer death. -- X. It enabled any two justices of the peace to call before them, without any information, any man that they chose, above sixteen years of age, and if such man refused to abjure the Catholic religion, and continued in his refusal for six months, he was rendered incapable of possessing land, and any land, the possession of which might belong to him, came into the possession of the next Protestant heir, who was not obliged to account for any profits. -- XI. It made such man incapable of purchasing lands, and all contracts made by him or for him, were null and void. -- XII. It imposed a fine of 10l. a month for employing a Catholic schoolmaster in a private family, and 9l., a day on the schoolmaster so employed. -- XIII. It imposed 100l.. fine for sending a child to a Catholic foreign school, and the child so sent was disabled from ever inheriting, purchasing, or enjoying lands, or profits, goods, debts, legacies, or sums of money. -- XIV. It punished the saying of mass by a fine of l20l., and the hearing of mass with a fine of 60l. -- XV. Any Catholic priest, who returned from beyond the seas, and who did not abjure his religion in three days afterwards, and also any person who returned to the Catholic faith, or procured another to return to it, this merciless, this sanguinary code, punished with hanging. ripping out of bowels, and quartering!

436. In IRELAND the code was still more ferocious, more hideously bloody; for, in the first place, all the cruelties of the English code had, as the work of a few hours, a few strokes of the pen, in one single act, been inflicted on unhappy Ireland; and, then, IN ADDITION, the Irish code contained, amongst many other violations of all the laws of justice and humanity, the following twenty most savage punishments. -- I. A Catholic schoolmaster, private or public, or even usher to a Protestant, was punished with imprisonment, banishment, and finally as a felon. -- II. The Catholic clergy were not allowed to be in the country, without being registered and kept as a sort of prisoners at large, and rewards were given (out of the revenue raised in part on the Catholics) for discovering them, 50l. for an archbishop, or bishop, 20l. for a priest, and 10l. for a schoolmaster or usher. -- III. Any two justices of the peace might call before them any Catholic, order him to declare, on oath, where and when he heard mass, who were present, and the name and residence of any priest or schoolmaster that he might know of; and, if he refused to obey this inhuman inquisition, they had power to condemn him. (without judge or jury) to a year's imprisonment in a felon's gaol, or to pay 20l. -- IV. No Catholic could purchase any manors, nor even hold under a lease for more than thirty-one years. -- V. Any Protestant, if he suspected any one of holding property in trust for a Catholic, or of being concerned in any sale, lease, mortgage, or other contract, for a Catholic; any Protestant thus suspecting, might file a bill against the suspected trustee, and take the estate, or property, from him. -- VI. Any Protestant seeing a Catholic tenant of a farm, the produce of which farm exceeded the amount of the rent by more than one-third, might dispossess the Catholic, and enter on the lease in his stead. -- VII. Any Protestant seeing a Catholic with a horse worth more than five pounds, might take the horse away from him upon tendering him five pounds. --VIII. In order to prevent the smallest chance of justice in these and similar cases, none but known Protestants were to be jurymen in the trial of any such cases. -- IX. Horses of Catholics might be seized for the use of the militia; and, beside this, Catholics were compelled to pay double towards the militia. -- X.. Merchants, whose ships and goods might he taken by privateers, during a war with a Catholic Prince, were to be compensated for their losses by a levy on the goods and lands of Catholics only, though, mind, Catholics were at the same time impressed and compelled to shed their blood in the war against that same Catholic Prince. -- XI. Property of a Protestant, whose heirs at law were Catholics, was to go to the nearest Protestant relation, just the same as if the Catholic heirs had been dead, though the property might he entailed on them. -- XII. If there were no Protestant heir; then, in order to break up all Catholic families, the entail and all heirship were set aside, and the property was divided, share and share alike, amongst all the Catholic heirs. -- XIII. If a Protestant had an estate in Ireland, he was forbidden to marry a Catholic, in, or out, of Ireland. -- XIV. All marriages between Protestants and Catholics were annulled, though many children might have proceeded from them -- XV. Every priest, who celebrated a marriage between a Catholic and a Protestant, or between two Protestants, was condemned to he hanged. -- XVI. A Catholic father could not be guardian to, or have the custody of, his own child, if the child, however young, pretended to be a Protestant; but the child was taken from its own father, and put into the custody of a Protestant relation. -- XVII.. If any child of a Catholic became a Protestant, the parent was to be instantly summoned, and to be made to declare, upon oath, the full value of his or her property of all sorts, and then the Chancery was to make such distribution of the property as it thought fit. -- XVIII. "Wives be obedient unto your own husbands," says the great Apostle. "Wives, be disobedient to them," said this horrid code; for, if the wife of a Catholic chose to turn Protestant, it set aside the will of the husband, and made her a participator in all his possessions, in spite of him, however immoral, however bad a wife or bad a mother she might have been -- XIX. Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord, thy God, giveth thee." Dishonour them," said this savage code; for, if any one of the sons of a Catholic father became a Protestant, this son was to possess all the father had, and the father could not sell, could not mortgage, could not leave legacies, or portions out of his estate, by whatever title he might hold it, even though it might have been the fruit of his own toil -- XX. Lastly (of this score, but this is only a part), "the Church, as by law established," was, in her great indulgence, pleased not only to open her doors, but to award (out of the taxes) thirty pounds a year for life to any Catholic priest, who would abjure his religion and declare his belief in hers!

437. Englishmen, Is there a man, a single man, bearing that name, whose blood. will not chill at this recital; who, when he reflects that these barbarities were inflicted on men because, and only because, they adhered with fidelity to the faith of their and our fathers; to the faith of ALFRED, the founder of our nation; to the faith of the authors of Magna Charta, and of all those venerable institutions of which we so justly boast; who, when he thus reflects, and, when he, being as I am, a Protestant of the Church of England, further reflects, that all these cruelties were inflicted for the avowed purpose of giving and preserving predominance to that Church, will not, with me, not only feel deep sorrow and shame for the past, but heartily join me in best endeavours to cause justice to he done to the sufferers for the time to come?

438. As to the injustice, as to the barbarity, as to the flagrant immorality, of the above code, they call for no comment, being condemned by the spontaneous voice of nature herself; but in this shocking assemblage, there are two things which impel us to ask, whether the love of truth, whether a desire to eradicate religious error, could have formed any part, however small, of the motives of these punishers? These two things are, the reward offered to Catholic priests to induce them to come over to our Church; and the terrible means made use of to prevent the intermarriage of Catholics and Protestants, Could these measures ever have suggested themselves to the minds of men, who sincerely believed that the Church religion was supported by arguments more cogent than those by which the Catholic religion was supported? The Law-Church had all the powers, all the honours, all the emoluments, all the natural worldly allurements. These she continually held out to all who were disposed to the clerical order. And if, in addition to all these, she had felt strong in argument, would she have found it necessary to offer, in direct and barefaced words, a specific sum of money to any one who would join her; and that, too, when the pensioned convert, must, as she well knew, break his solemn vow, in order to he entitled to the pay? And, as to intermarriages, why not suffer them, why punish them so severely, why annul them if the Law-Church were sure that the arguments in her favour were the most cogent and convincing? Who has so much power over the mind of woman as her husband? Who over man as his wife? Would one persuade the other to a change of religion? Very likely. One would convert the other in nineteen cases out of twenty. That passion which had subdued religious prejudices, would, in almost every case, make both the parties of the same religion. But, what had the Law-Church to object to this, if she were sure that hers was the true faith; if she were sure that the arguments for her were more clear than those for her opponent; if she were sure that every one who really loved another, who was beloved by that other, and who belonged to her communion, would easily persuade that other to join in that communion? What, in short, had she, if quite sure of all this, to fear from intermarriages? And, if not quite sure of all this, what, I ask you, sensible and just Englishmen, what, had she to plead in justification of the inhuman penal code?

439. Talk of the "fires in Smithfield"! Fires, indeed, which had no justification, and which all Catholics severally condemn; but what, good God! was the death of about two hundred and seventy-seven persons, however cruel and unmerited that death, to the torments above described, inflicted, for more than two hundred years, on millions upon millions of people, to say nothing about the thousands upon thousands of Catholics, who were, during that period, racked to death, killed in prison, hanged, bowelled, and quartered! Besides, let it never be forgotten, that the punishments in Smithfield were for the purpose of reclaiming; for the purpose of making examples of a few, who set at nought the religion of their fathers, and that in which they themselves had been born. And, if these punishments were unjust and cruel as all men agree that they were, what shall we say of, how shall we express sufficient abhorrence of, the above penal- code, which was for the punishment, not of a few, but of millions of people; or the punishment, not of those who had apostatised from the religion of their fathers, but of those who, to their utter worldly ruin, adhered to that religion? If we find no justification, and none, we all say, there was, for the punishments of MARY's reign, inflicted, as all men know they were, on very few persons, and those persons not only apostates from the faith of their fathers, but also, for the most part, either notorious traitors, or felons, and, at the very least, conspirators against, or most audacious insulters of, the royal authority and the person of the Queen; if we find no justification, and we all agree that there was none, for these punishments, inflicted, as all men know they were, during a few months of furious and unreflecting zeal, just after the quelling of a dangerous rebellion, which had clearly proved that apostate and conspirator were one and the same, and had led to the hasty conclusion, that the apostacy must he extirpated, or that it would destroy the throne: if we find, even under such circumstances, no justification for these punishments, where are we to look for, not a justification, but for a ground of qualification of our abhorrence, of the above-mentioned barbarities of more than two hundred years, inflicted on millions upon millions of people; barbarities premeditated in the absence of all provocation; contrived and adopted in all the calmness of legislative deliberation; executed in cold blood, and persevered in for ages in defiance of the admonitions of conscience; barbarities inflicted, not on apostates, but on those who refused to apostatise; not on felons, conspirators, and. rebels, but on innocent persons, on those who had, under all and every circumstance, even while feeling the cruel lash of persecution, been as faithful to their King as to their God; and, as if we were never to come to the end of the atrocity, all this done, too, with regard to Ireland, in flagrant breach of a solemn treaty with the English King!

440. And, is this the "the tolerant, the mild, the meek Church as by law established"? Have we here the proofs of Protestant faith and good works? Was it thus that St. Austin and St, Patrick introduced, and that St. Swithin and Alfred and William of Wykham inculcated, the religion of Christ? Was it out of works like these, that the cathedrals and the palaces and the universities, and the laws and the courts of justice arose? What! punish men for retaining the faith of their fathers; inflict all sorts of insults and cruelties on them for not having become apostates; put them, because they were Catholics, out of the protection of all the laws that their and our Catholic ancestors had framed for the security of their children; call their religion "idolatrous and damnable," treat them as obstinate idolaters, while your Church-Calendar contains none but saints of that very religion; boast of your venerable institutions, all of Catholic origin, while you insult, pillage, scourge, hunt from the face of the earth, the true and faithful adherents to the faith of the authors of those institutions? "Ay," the persecutors seem to have answered, "and hunt them we will." But why, then, if religion be your motive; if your barbarities arise from a desire to convert men from error; why be so lenient to Quakers and Jews; why not only not punish, but suffer them even to appoint parsons to your churches? Ah! my friends, the Law-Church had taken no tithes and lands, and others had taken no abbeys and the like, from Quakers and Jews! Here was the real foundation of the whole of that insatiable rancour, which went on from 1558 to 1778, producing, to millions of innocent people, torment added to torment, and which, at the end of that long period, seemed to have resolved to be satisfied with nothing short of the total extermination of its victims.

441. But, now, all of a sudden, in 1778, the face of things began to change; the Church, as by law established, was, all at once, thought capable of existing in safety, with a great relaxation of the penal code! And, without even asking it, the Catholics found the code suddenly softened, by divers Acts of Parliament, in both countries, and especially in Ireland! This humanity and generosity will surprise us; we shall wonder whence it came; we shall be ready to believe the souls of the parties to have been softened by a sort of miracle, until we look back to paragraphs 425 and 426. There we see the real cause of this surprising humanity and generosity; there we see the AMERICANS unfurling the standard of independence, and, having been backed by France, pushing on towards success, and, thereby, setting an example to every oppressed people, in every part of the world, unhappy, trodden down Ireland not excepted! There was, too, before the end of the war, danger of invasion on the part of France, who was soon joined in the war by Spain and Holland; so that before the close of the contest, the Catholics had obtained leave to breathe the air of their native country in safety; and, though, as an Englishman, I deeply lament, that this cost England her right arm, I most cordially rejoice in contemplating the event. Thus was fear gratified, in a moment, at the very first demand, with a surrender of that, which had, for ages, been refused to the incessant pleadings of justice and humanity; and thus the American Revolution, which, as we have seen, grew immediately out of the "no-popery," or "glorious," revolution in England, which latter was, as we have clearly seen, made for the express purpose of extinguishing the Catholic religion for ever; thus was this very event the cause of the beginning of a cessation of the horrible persecutions of those, who had, with fidelity wholly without a parallel, adhered to that religion!

442. This great event was soon followed by another still greater; namely, the FRENCH REVOLUTION, or "Reformation" the FIFTH. Humiliation greater than the English Government had to endure, in the above event, it is difficult to conceive; but the French Revolution taught the world what "Reformations" can do, when pushed to their full and natural extent. In England the "Reformation" contented itself with plundering the convents and the poor of their all, and the secular clergy in part. But, in France, they took the whole; though we ought to mark well this difference; that, in France, they applied this whole to the use of the public; a bad use, perhaps; but, to public use they applied the whole of the plunder; while, in England, the plunder was scrambled for, and remained divided amongst individuals!

443. Well; but, here was a great triumph for the clergy of the "Church as by law established"? They, above all men, must have hailed with delight the deeds of the French "Reformation"? No: but, on the contrary, were amongst the foremost in calling for war to put down that "Reformation"! What! not like this "Reformation"! Why, here were convents broken up and monks and nuns dispersed; here were abbey- lands confiscated; here was the Catholic religion abolished; here were Catholic priests hunted about and put to death in almost as savage a manner as those of England had been; here were laws, seemingly translated from our own code, against saying or hearing mass, and against priests returning into the kingdom; here was a complete annihilation (as far as legislative provisions could go) of that which our church clergy called "idolatrous and damnable"; here was a new religion "established by law"; and, that no feature might be defective in the likeness, here was a royal family set aside by law for ever, by what they called a "glorious revolution "; and there would have been an abdicating king, but he was, by mere accident, stopped in his flight, brought back, and put to death, not, however, without an example to plead in the deeds of the English double- distilled Protestant "Reformation" people.

444. What! Can it be true, that our church-clergy did not like this French "Reformation "? And that they urged on war against the men who had sacked convents, killed priests, and abolished that which was "idolatrous and damnable"? Can it be true, that they who rose against King James because he wanted to give Catholics liberty of conscience; that they, who upheld the horrid penal code, in order to put down the Catholic religion in England and Ireland; can it be true, that they wanted war, to put down the men, who had put down that religion in France? Ay, ay! But these men had put down all TITHES too! Ay, and all bishoprics, and deaneries, and prebendaries, and all fat benefices and pluralities! And, if they were permitted to do this with impunity, OTHERS might be tempted to do the same! Well, but, gentlemen of the law-church, though they were wicked fellows for doing this, still this was better than to suffer to remain, that which you always told us was idolatrous and damnable. "Yes, yes; but, then, these men established, by law, ATHEISM, and not Church-of- England Christianity." Now, in the first place, they saw about forty sorts of Protestant religion; they knew that thirty-nine of them must be false; they had seen our rulers make a church by law, just such an one as they pleased; they had seen them alter it by law; and, if there were no standard of faith; no generally acknowledged authority; if English law-makers were to change the sort of religion at their pleasure; why, pray, were not French law-makers to do the same? If English law-makers could take the spiritual supremacy from the successor of Saint Peter, and give it to HENRY-THE-WIFE-KILLER, why might not the French give theirs to LEPEAU? Besides, as to the sort of religion, though ATHEISM is bad enough, could it be WORSE than what you tell us is "idolatrous and damnable"? It might cause people to be damned; but could it cause them to be more than damned? Alas! there remains only the abolition of the TITHES and of the FAT CLERICAL POSTS, as a valid objection, on your part, against "Reformation" the FIFTH; and, I beg the nation to remember, that the war against it has left us to pay, for ever, the interest of a debt, created by that way, of seven hundred millions of pounds sterling, a war which we never should have seen, if we had never seen that which is called a" Reformation."

445. The French Revolution, though it caused numerous horrid deeds to be committed, produced, in its progress and in its end, a great triumph for the Catholics. It put the fidelity of the Catholic priests and the Protestant pastors to the test; and, while not one of the former was ever seen to save his life by giving up his faith, all the latter did it with out hesitation. It showed, at last, the people of a great kingdom returning to the Catholic worship by choice; when they might have been, and may now be, Protestants, without the loss of any one right, immunity, or advantage, civil or military. But the greatest good that it produced fell to the lot of ill-treated Ireland. The revolutionists were powerful, they were daring, they, in 1793, cast their eyes on Ireland; and now, for the second time, a softening of the penal code took place, making a change which no man living ever expected to see! Those who had been considered as almost beneath dogs, were now made capable of being MAGISTRATES; and now amongst many other acts of generosity, we saw established, at the public expense, a COLLEGE for the education of Catholics exclusively, thus doing, by law, that which the law-givers had before made HIGH TREASON! Ah! but, there were the French with an army of four hundred thousand men; and there were the Irish people, who must have been something more, or less, than men, if their breasts did not boil with resentment. Alas! that it should be said of England, that the Irish have never appealed with success but to her fears!

446. And, shall this always be said? Shall it ever be said again? Shall we not now, by sweeping away for ever every vestige of this once horrible and still oppressive code, reconcile ourselves to our long ill-treated brethren and to our own consciences? The code is still a penal code: it is still a just ground of complaint: it has still disqualifications that are greatly injurious, and distinctions that are odious and insulting. I. It still shuts Catholic peers out of those seats in the House of Lords, which are their hereditary right; and Catholic gentlemen out of the House of Commons. II. Then, as if caprice were resolved not to he behind hand with injustice, this code, which allows Catholic freeholders, in Ireland, to vote, at elections, for members of the Parliament of the now "United Kingdom," refuses that right to all Catholics in England! III. It excludes Catholics from all corporations. IV. It excludes them from all offices under the government, in England, but admits them to inferior offices in Ireland. V. It takes from them the right of presenting to any ecclesiastical benefice, though Quakers and Jews are allowed to enjoy that right! VI. It prevents them from endowing any school, or college; for educating children in the Catholic religion; and this, too, while there is now, by law established, a college, for this very purpose, supported out of the taxes! Here is consistency; and here is, above all things, sincerity! What, maintain, out of the taxes, a college to teach exclusively that religion, which you call "idolatrous and damnable"! VII This code still forbids Catholic priests to appear in their canonical habiliments, except in their chapels, or in private houses; and it forbids the Catholic rites to be performed in any building which has a steeple or bells! What! forbid the use of steeples and bells to that religion, which created all the steeples and all the bells; that built and endowed all the churches, all the magnificent cathedrals, and both the Universities! And, why this insulting, this galling, prohibition? Why so sedulous to keep the symbols of this worship out of the sight of the people? Why, gentle law-church, if your features be so lovely as you say they are, and if those of your rival present, as you say they do, a mass of disgusting deformity; why, if this be the case, are you, who are the most gentle. amiable, and beautiful church that law ever created; why, I say, are you. so anxious to keep your rival out of sight? Nay, and out of hearing too! What! gentle and all-persuasive and only true law-church, whose parsons and bishops are such able preachers, and mostly married men into the bargain, what are you afraid of from the steeples and bells, if used by Catholics? One would think, that the more people went to witness the "idolatrous" exhibitions, the better you would like it. Alas! gentle and lovely law-church, there are not now in the kingdom many men so brutishly ignorant as not to see the real motives for this uncommonly decent prohibition. VIII. It forbids a Catholic priest in Ireland, to be guardian to any child. IX. It forbids Catholic laymen in Ireland, to act in the capacity of guardian to the children, or a child, of any Protestant. X. It forbids every Catholic in Ireland to have arms in his house, unless he have a freehold of ten pounds a year, or 300l. in personal property. XI. It disables Irish Catholics from voting at vestries on questions relating to the repair of the church, though they are compelled to pay for those repairs. XII. Lastly, in Ireland, this code still inflicts death, or, at least, a 500l. penalty, on the Catholic priest, who celebrates a marriage between two Protestants, or between a Protestant and a Catholic. Some of the judges have decided, that it is death; others, that it is the pecuniary penalty. Death, or money, however, the public papers have recently announced to us, that such a marriage has now been openly celebrated in Dublin, between the pre sent LORD LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND (who must be a Protestant) and a CATHOLIC LADY of the late rebellious American States! So that, all put together, Dublin exhibits, at this moment, a tolerably curious scene: a College established by law, for the teaching of that religion, which our Church regards as "idolatrous and damnable," and to be guilty of teaching which was, only a few years ago, high treason! A Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who must belong to our Church, and who must have taken an oath protesting against the Catholic supremacy, taking to his arms a Catholic wife, who must adhere to that supremacy! Then comes a Catholic priest marrying this pair, in the face of two unrepealed laws, one of which condemns him to death for the act, and the other of which condemns him to pay a fine of five hundred pounds! And; lastly, comes, as the public prints tell us, a complimentary letter, on the occasion, to the bridegroom, on the part, and in the handwriting of the King!

447. Well, then, is this code, is any fragment of it longer to continue? is it to continue now, when all idea of conversion to Protestantism is avowedly abandoned, and when it is notorious that the Catholic faith has, in spite of ages of persecution, done more than maintain its ground? Are peers still to be cut off from their hereditary rights and honours; are gentlemen to be shut out of the Commons' House; are lawyers to be stopped in their way to the bench; are freeholders and freemen to be deprived of their franchises; are the whole to lie under a stigma, which it is not in human nature should fail to fill them with resentment; and all this, because they adhere to the religion of their and our fathers, and a religion too, to educate youth in which, exclusively, there is now a college supported out of the taxes? Is all this great body of men, forming one-third part of the whole of the people of this kingdom, containing men of all ranks, from the peer to the labourer, to continue to be thus insulted, thus injured, thus constantly irritated, constantly impelled to wish for distress, danger, defeat, and disgrace to their native country, as affording the only chance of their obtaining justice? And are we, merely to gratify the law-church by upholding her predominance, still to support, in peace, a numerous and most expensive army; still to be exposed, in war, to the danger of seeing concession come too late, and to all those consequences, the nature and extent of which it makes one shudder to think of?

448. Here, then, we are, at the end of three hundred years from the day when Henry VIII. began the work of "Reformation ": here we are, after passing through scenes of plunder and of blood, such as the world never beheld before: here we are, with these awful questions still before us; and here we are, too, with forty sorts of Protestant religion, instead of the one fold, in which our forefathers lived for nine hundred years; here we are, divided and split up into sects each condemning all the rest to eternal flames; here we are, a motley herd of Church people, Methodists, Calvinists, Quakers, and Jews, chopping and changing with every wind; while the faith of St. Austin and St. Patrick still remains what it was when it inspired the heart and sanctified the throne of Alfred.

449. Such, as far as religion is concerned, have been the effects of what is called the "Reformation"; what its effects have been in other respects; how it has enfeebled and impoverished the nation; how it has corrupted and debased the people; and how it has brought barracks, taxing-houses, poor-houses, mad-houses, and gaols, to supply the place of convents, hospitals, guilds, and alms-houses) we shall see in the next letter; and then we shall have before us the whole of the consequences of this great, memorable, and fatal event.

LETTER XVI.

FORMER POPULATION OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND. FORMER WEALTH. FORMER POWER. FORMER FREEDOM. FORMER PLENTY, EASE, AND HAPPINESS.

Kensington, 31st March, 1826.

MY FRIENDS,

450. This Letter is to conclude my task, which task was to make good this assertion, that the event called the "Reformation" had impoverished and degraded the main body of the people of England and Ireland. In paragraph 4, I told you that a fair and honest inquiry would teach us, that the word "Reformation" had, in this case, been misapplied; that there was a change, but a change greatly for the worse; that the thing called the "Reformation," "was engendered in beastly lust, brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers of innocent English and Irish blood; and that, as to its more remote consequences, they are, some of them, now before us, in that misery, that beggary, that nakedness, that hunger, that everlasting wrangling, and spite, which now stare us in the face and stun our ears at every turn, and which the 'Reformation' has given us in exchange for the ease and happiness and harmony and Christian charity, enjoyed so abundantly, and for so many ages, by our Catholic forefathers."

451. All this has been amply proved in the fifteen foregoing Letters, except that I have not yet shown, in detail, how our Catholic forefathers lived, what sort and what quantity of food and raiment they had, compared with those which we have. This I am now about to do. I have made good my charge of beastly lust, hypocrisy, perfidy, plunder, devastation, and bloodshed; the charge of misery, of beggary, of nakedness and of hunger, remains to be fully established.

452. But, I choose to be better rather than worse than my word; I did not pledge myself to prove anything as to the population, wealth, power, and freedom of the nation; but I will now show not only that the people were better off, better fed and clad, before the "Reformation" than they ever have been since; but, that the nation was more populous, wealthy, powerful and free before, than it ever has been since that event. Read modern romancers, called historians, every one of whom has written for place, or pension; read the statements about the superiority of the present over former times; about our prodigious increase in population, wealth, power, and, above all things, our superior freedom; read the monstrous lies of HUME, who (vol. v, p. 502) unblushingly asserts, "that one good county of England is now capable of making a greater effort than the whole kingdom was in the reign of Henry V., when to maintain the garrison of the small town of Calais, required more than a third of the ordinary revenues;" this is the way in which every Scotchman reasons. He always estimates the wealth of a nation by the money the government squeezes out of it. He forgets, that "a poor government makes a rich people." According to this criterion of HUME, America must now be a wretchedly poor country. This same Henry V. could conquer, really conquer, France, and that, too, without beggaring England by hiring a million of Prussians, Austrians, Cossacks, and all sorts of hirelings. But writers have, for ages, been so dependant on the government and the aristocracy, and the people have read and believed so, much of what they have said, and especially in praise of the "Reformation" and its effects, that it is no wonder that they should think, that, in Catholic times, England was a poor, beggarly spot, having a very few people on it; and that the "Reformation" and the House of Brunswick and the Whigs, have given us all we possess of wealth, of power, of freedom, and have almost created us, or, at least, if not actually begotten us, caused nine-tenths of us to be born. These are all monstrous lies; but they have succeeded for ages. Few men dared to attempt to refute them; and, if any one made the attempt, he obtained few hearers, and ruin, in some shape or other, was pretty sure to be the reward of his virtuous efforts. Now, however, when we are smarting under the lash of calamity; NOW, when every one says, that no state of things ever was so bad as this; NOW, men may listen to the truth, and, therefore, I wilt lay it before them.

453. POPULOUSNESS is a thing not to be proved by positive facts, because there are no records of the numbers of the people in former times; and because those which we have in our own day are notoriously false; if they be not, the English nation has added a third to its population during the last twenty years! In short, our modern records I have, over and over again, proved to be false, particularly in my Register, No, 2, of Volume 4G. That England was more populous in Catholic times than it is now we must believe, when we know, that in the three first Protestant reigns, thousands of parish churches were pulled down, that parishes were united, in more than two thousand instances, and when we know from the returns now before Parliament, that out of 11,761 parishes, in England and Wales, there are upwards of a thousand which do not contain a hundred persons each, men, women, and children. Then, again, the size of the churches. They were manifestly built, in general, to hold three, four, five or, ten times the number of their present parishioners, including all the sectarians. What should men have built such large churches for? We are told of their "piety and zeal;" yes, but there must have been men to raise the buildings. The Lord might favour the work; but there must have been hands as well as prayers. And, what motive could there have been for putting together such large quantities of stone and mortar, and to make walls four feet thick, and towers and steeples, if there had not been people to fill the buildings? And, how could the labour have been performed? There must have been men to perform the labour; and, can any one believe, that this labour would have been performed, if there had not been a necessity for it? We now see large and most costly ancient churches, and these in great numbers, too, with only a few mud-huts to hold the thirty or a hundred of parishioners. Our forefathers built for ever, little thinking of the devastation that we were to behold! Next come the lands, which they cultivated, and which we do not, amounting to millions of acres. This any one may verify, who will go into Sussex, Hampshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire and Corn wall. They grew corn on the sides of hills, which we now never attempt to stir. They made the hill into the form of steps of a stairs, in order to plough and sow the flat parts. These flats, or steps, still remain, and are, in some cases still cultivated; but, in nine cases out of ten, they are not. Why should they have performed this prodigious labour, if they had not had mouths to eat the corn? And, how could they have performed such labour without numerous hands? On the high lands of Hampshire and Dorsetshire, there are spots of a thousand acres together, which still bear the uneffaceable marks of the plough, and which now never feel that implement. The modern writings on the subject of ancient population are mere romances; or, they have been put forth with a view of paying court to the government of the day. GEORGE CHALMERS, a placeman, a pensioner, and a Scotchman, has been one of the most conspicuous in this species of deception. He, in what he calls an "ESTIMATE," states the population of England and Wales, in 1377 , at 2,092,978. The half of these were, of course, females. The males, then, were, 1,046,486. The children, the aged, the infirm, the sick, made a half of these; so that there were 523,243 left of able-bodied men, in this whole kingdom! Now, the churches and the religious houses amounted, at that time, to upwards of 16,000 in number. There was one priest to every church, and these priests, together with the monks and friars, must have amounted to about 40,000 able men, leaving 483,243 able men. So that, as there were more than 14,000 parish churches, there were not quite twelve able-bodied men to each! HUME says, vol. iii. p. 9, that WAT TYLER had, in 1381 (four years after Chalmers' date), "a hundred thousand men assembled on BLACKHEATH;" so that, to say nothing of the numerous bodies of insurgents, assembled, at the same time, "in "Hertford, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Lincoln;" to say nothing of "the King's army of 40,000" (Hume, vol. iii. p. 8); and, to say nothing of all the nobility, gentry, and rich people, here WAT TYLER had got together, on Blackheath, MORE THAN ONE-FIFTH of all the able-bodied men in England and Wales! And, he had, too, collected them together in the space of about six days! Do we want, can we want, any thing more than this, in answer, in refutation, of these writers on the ancient population of the country? Let it be observed, that, in these days, there were, as himself relates, and his authorities relate also, frequently 100,000 pilgrims at a time assembled at Canterbury, to do penance, or make offerings, at the shrine of THOMAS À BECKET. There must, then, have been 50,000 men here at once; so that, if we were to believe this pensioned Scotch writer, we must believe, that more than A TENTH of all the able-bodied men of England and Wales were frequently assembled, at one and the same time, in one city, in an extreme corner of the island, to kneel at the tomb of one single Saint. Monstrous lie! And, yet it has been sucked down by "enlightened Protestants," as if it had been a part of the Gospel. But, if Canterbury could give entertainment to 100,000 strangers at a time, what must Canterbury itself have been? A grand, a noble, a renowned city it was, venerated, and even visited, by no small part of the Kings, Princes, and Nobles of all Europe. It is now a beggarly, gloomy looking town, with about 12,000 inhabitants, and, as the published accounts say, with 3,000 of those inhabitants paupers, and with a part of the site of its ancient and splendid churches, convents and streets, covered with barracks, the Cathedral only remaining, for the purpose, as it were, of keeping the people in mind of the height from which they have fallen. The best criterion of the population is, however, to be found in the number and size of the churches, and that of the religious houses. There was one parish church to every four square miles, throughout the kingdom; and one religious house (including all the kinds) to every thirty square miles. That is to say, one parish church to every piece of land two miles each way; and one religious house to every piece of land five miles long and six miles wide. These are facts that nobody can deny. The geography tells us the number of square miles in the country, and, as to the number of parishes and religious houses, it is too well known to admit of dispute, being recorded in books without number. Well, then, if the father of lies himself were to come, and endeavour to persuade us, that England was not more populous before the "Reformation" than it is now, he must fail with all but downright idiots. The same may be said with regard to IRELAND, where there were according to ARCHDALL, 742 religious houses in the reign of Henry VIII.; and, of course, one of these to every piece of land six miles each way; and where there was a parish church to every piece of land a little more than two miles and a half each way. Why these churches? What were they built for? By whom were they built? And how were all these religious houses maintained? Alas! Ireland was in those days, a fine, a populous, and a rich country. Her people were not then half- naked and half-starved. There were, then, no projects for relieving the Irish by sending them out of their native land!

454. THE WEALTH of the country is a question easily decided. In the reign of Henry VIII., just before the "Reformation," the whole of the lands in England and Wales, had, according to HUME, been rated, and the annual rental was found to be three millions; and, as to this, HUME (vol. iv. p. 197) quotes undoubted authorities. Now, in order to know what these three millions were worth in our money, we must look at the Act of Parliament, 24th year of Henry VIII., chap. 3, which says that "no person shall "take for beef or pork above a halfpenny, and for mutton or veal above three farthings, a pound, avoirdupois weight, and less in those places were they be now sold for less." This is by retail, mind. It is sale in the butchers' shops. So that, in order to compare the then with the present amount of the rental of the country, we must first see what the annual rental of England and Wales now is, and then we must see what the price of meat now is. I wish to speak here of nothing that I have not unquestionable authority for, and I have no such authority with regard to the amount of the rental as it is just at this moment; but, I have that authority for what the rental was in the year 1804. A return, printed by order of the House of Commons, and dated 10th July, 1804, states, "that the returns to the Tax-office [property tax], prove the rack- rental of England and Wales to be thirty-eight millions a year." Here, then, we have the rental to a certainty; for, what was there that could escape the all-searching, taxing eye, of Pitt and his under-strappers? Old Harry's inexperience must have made him a poor hand, compared with Pitt, at finding out what people got for their land. Pitt's return included the rent of mines, canals, and of every species of real property; and the rental, the rack-rental, of the whole amounted to thirty-eight millions. This, observe, was in time of Bank-restriction; in time of higher prices; in time of monstrously high rents; in time of high price of meat; that very year I gave l8s. a score for fat hogs, taking head, feet, and all together; and, for many years before and after, and including 1804, beef, pork, mutton and veal were, taken on the average, more than tenpence a pound by retail. Now, as Old Harry's Act orders the meat to be sold, in some places, for less than the halfpenny and the three farthings, we may, I think, fairly presume, that the general price was a halfpenny. So that a halfpenny of Old Harry's money was equal in value to tenpence of Pitt's money: and, therefore, the three millions of rental in the time of Harry, ought to have become sixty millions in 1804, and it was, as we have seen, only thirty-eight millions. In 1822, Mr. CURWEN said, the rental had fallen to twenty millions. But, then meat had also fallen in price. It is safer to take 1804, where we have undoubted authority to go on. This proof is of a nature to bid defiance to cavil. No man can dispute any of the facts, and they are conclusive as to the point, that the nation was more wealthy before the "Reformation" than it is now. But, there are two other Acts of Parliament, to which I will refer, as corroborating, in a very striking manner, this fact of the superior general opulence of Catholic times. The Act, 18th year of Henry VI., chap. II, after setting forth the cause for the enactment, provides, that no man shall, under a heavy penalty, act as a justice of the peace, who has not lands and tenements of the clear yearly value of twenty pounds. This was in 1439, about a hundred years before the above mentioned Act, about meat, of Henry VII. The money was of still higher value in the reign of Henry VI. However, taking it as before, at twenty times the value of our money, the justice of the peace must then have had four hundred pounds a year of our money; and we all know, that we have justices of the peace of one hundred a year. This Act of Henry VI. shows, that the country abounded in gentlemen of good estate; and, indeed, the Act itself says, that the people are not content with having "men of small behaviour set over them." A thousand fellows, calling themselves historians, would never overset such a proof of the superior general opulence and ease and happiness of the country. The other of the Acts, to which I have alluded, is 1st year Richard III. chap. 4., which fixes the qualification of a juror at twenty shillings a year in freehold, or twenty-six and eight-pence copyhold, clear of all charges. That is to say, a clear yearly income from real property of, at least, twenty pounds a year of our money! And yet the Scotch historians would make us believe, that our ancestors were a set of beggars! These things prove beyond all dispute, that England was, in Catholic times, a really wealthy country; that wealth was generally diffused; that every part of the country abounded in men of solid property; and that, of course, there were always great resources at hand in cases of emergency. If we were now to take it into our heads to dislike to have men of "small behaviour set over us"; if we were to take a fancy to justices of the peace of four hundred a year and jurors of twenty pounds a year; if we were, as in the days of good King Henry, to say, that we "would not be governed nor ruled" by men of "small behaviour," how quickly we should see Botany Bay! When CARDINAL POLE landed at Dover, in the reign of Queen Mary, he was met and escorted on his way by two thousand gentlemen, of the country, on horseback. What! 2,000 country gentlemen, in so beggarly a country as Chalmers describes it! Ay, and they must have been found in Kent and Surrey too. Can we find such a troop of country gentlemen there now? In short, everything shows, that England was then a country abounding in men of real wealth, and that it so abounded precisely because the King's revenue was small; yet this is cited by HUME, and the rest of the Scotch historians, as a proof of the nation's poverty! Their notion is, that a people are worth what the government can wring out of them, and not a farthing more. And this is the doctrine which has been acted upon ever since the "Reformation," and which has, at last, brought us into our present wretched condition.

455. As to the POWER of the country, compared with what it is now, what do we want more than the fact, that, for many centuries, before the "Reformation," England held possession of a considerable part of France; that the "Reformation" took, as we have seen, the two towns of Boulogne and Calais from her, leaving her nothing but those little specks in the sea, Jersey and Guernsey? What do we want more than this? France was never a country that had any pretensions to cope with England until the "Reformation" began, Since the "Reformation" she has not only had such pretensions, bat she has shown to all the world that the pretensions are well-founded. She, even at this moment, holds Spain in despite of us, while, in its course, the "Reformation" has wrested from us a large portion of our dominions, and has erected them into a state more formidable than any we have ever before beheld. We have, indeed, great standing armies, arsenals and barracks, of which our Catholic forefathers had none; but, they were always ready for war nevertheless. They had the resources in the hour of necessity. They had arms and men; and those men knew what they were to fight for before they took up arms. It is impossible to look back, to see the respect in which England was held for so many, many ages; to see the deference with which she was treated by all nations, without blushing at the thought of our present state. None but the greatest potentates presumed to think of marriage alliances with England. Her kings and queens had kings and princes in their train. Nothing petty ever thought of approaching her. She was held in such high honour, her power was so universally acknowledged, that she had seldom occasion to assert it by war. And what has she been for the last hundred and fifty years? Above half the time at war; and, with a Debt, never to be paid, the cost of that war, she now rests her hopes of safety solely on her capacity of persuading her well- known foes, that it is not their interest to assail her. Her warlike exertions have been the effect, not of her resources, but of an anticipation of those resources. She has mortgaged, she has spent before-hand, the resources necessary for future defence. And, there she now is, inviting insult and injury by her well-known weakness, and, in case of attack, her choice lies between foreign victory over her, or internal convulsion. Power is relative. You may have more strength than you had, but if your neighbours have gained strength in a greater degree, you are, in effect, weaker than you were. And, can we look at France and America, and can we con template the inevitable consequences of war, without feeling that we are fast becoming, and, indeed, that we are already become, a low and little nation? Can we look back to the days of our Catholic ancestors, can we think of their lofty tone and of the submission instantly produced by their threats, without sighing, Alas! those days are never to return!

456. And, as to the FREEDOM of the nation, where is the man who can tell me of any one single advantage that the "Reformation" has brought, except it be freedom to have forty religious creeds instead of one? FREEDOM is not an empty sound; it is not an abstract idea; it is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, and it means nothing else, the full and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you have not this; if this be not well secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave. Now, our Catholic forefathers took special care upon this cardinal point. They suffered neither kings nor parliaments to touch their property without cause clearly shown. They did not read newspapers, they did not talk about debates, they had no taste for "mental enjoyment"; but they thought hunger and thirst great evils, and they never suffered anybody to put them to board on cold potatoes and water. They looked upon bare bones and rags as indubitable marks of slavery, and they never failed to resist any attempt to affix these marks upon them. You may twist the word freedom as long you please; but, at last, it comes to quiet enjoyment of your property, or it comes to nothing. Why do men want any of those things that are called political rights and privileges? Why do they, for instance, want to vote at elections for members of Parliament? Oh! because they shall then have an influence over the conduct of those members. And of what use is that? Oh! then they will prevent the members from doing wrong. What wrong? Why, imposing taxes that ought not to he paid. That is all; that is the use, and the only use, of any right or privilege that men in general can have. NOW how stand we, in this respect, compared with our Catholic ancestors? They did not, perhaps, all vote at elections. But do we? Do a fiftieth part of us? And have the main body of us any, even the smallest influence in the making of laws and in the imposing of taxes? But the main body of the people had the Church to protect them in Catholic times. The Church had great power; it was naturally the guardian of the common people; neither kings nor parliaments could set its power at defiance; the whole of our history shows, that the Church was invariably on the side of the people, and that, in all the much and justly boasted of triumphs which our forefathers obtained over their kings and nobles, the Church took the lead. It did this, because it was dependant upon neither king nor nobles; because, and only because, it acknowledged another head; but, we have lost the protection of the Church, and have got nothing to supply its place; or rather, whatever there is of its power left, has joined, or has been engrossed by, the other branches of the State, leaving the main body of the people to the mercy of those other branches. "The liberties of England" is a phrase in every mouth; but what are those liberties? The laws which regulate the descent and possession of property; the safety from arrest, unless by due and settled process; the absence of all punishment without trial before duly authorised and well known judges and magistrates; the trial by jury; the precautions taken by the divers writs and summonses; the open trial; the impartiality in the proceedings. These are the "liberties of England." And had our Catholic forefathers less of these than we have? Do we not owe them all to them? Have we one single law, that gives security to property or to life, which we do not inherit from them? The tread-mill, the law to shut men up in their houses from sun-set to sun-rise, the law to banish us for life if we utter any thing having a tendency to bring our "representatives" into contempt; these, indeed, we do not inherit, but may boast of them, and of many others of much about the same character, as being, unquestionably, of pure Protestant origin.

457. POVERTY, however, is, after all, the great badge, the never- failing badge of slavery. Bare bones and rags are the true marks of the real slave. What is the object of government? To cause men to live happily. They cannot be happy without a sufficiency of food and of raiment. Good government means a state of things in which the main body are well fed and well clothed. It is the chief business of a government to take care, that one part of the people do not cause the other part to lead miserable lives. There can be no morality, no virtue, no sincerity, no honesty, amongst a people continually suffering from want; and, it is cruel, in the last degree, to punish such people for almost any sort of crime, which is, in fact, not crime of the heart, not crime of the perpetrator, but the crime of his all-controlling necessities.

458. To what degree the main body of the people, in England, are now poor and miserable; how deplorably wretched they now are; this we know but too well; and now, we will see what was their state before this vaunted "REFORMATION." I shall be very particular to cite my authorities here. I will infer nothing; I will give no "estimate"; but refer to authorities, such as no man can call in question, such as no man can deny to be proofs more complete than if founded on oaths of credible witnesses, taken before a judge and jury. I shall begin with the account which FORTESCUE gives of the state and manner of living of the English, in the reign of Henry VI.; that is, in the fifteenth century, when the Catholic Church was in the height of its glory. FORTESCUE was Lord Chief Justice of England for nearly twenty years; he was appointed Lord High Chancellor by Henry VI. Being in exile, in France, in consequence of the wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and the King's son, Prince Edward, being also in exile with him, the Chancellor wrote a series of Letters, addressed to the Prince, to explain to him the nature and effects of the laws of England, and to induce him to study them and uphold them. This work, which was written in Latin, is called De Laudibus Legum Angliæ; or, PRAISE OF THE LAWS OF ENGLAND. This book was, many years ago, translated into English, and it is a book of Law-Authority, quoted frequently in our courts at this day. No man can doubt the truth of facts, related in such a work. It was a work written by a famous lawyer for a Prince; it was intended to be read by other contemporary lawyers, and also by all lawyers in future. The passage that I am about to quote, relating to the state of the English, was purely incidental; it was not intended to answer any temporary purpose. It must have been a true account.

459. The Chancellor, after speaking generally of the nature of the laws of England, and of the difference between them and the laws of France, proceeds to show the difference in their effects, by a description of the state of the French people, and then by a description of the state of the English. His words, words that, as I transcribe them, make my cheeks burn with shame, are as follows: "Besides all this, the inhabitants of France give every year to their King the fourth part of all their wines, the growth of that year, every vintner gives the fourth penny of what he makes of his wine by sale. And all the towns and boroughs pay to the King yearly great sums of money, when are assessed upon them, for the expenses of his men-at-arms. So that the King's troops, which are always considerable, are subsisted and paid yearly by those common people, who live in the villages, boroughs and cities. Another grievance is, every village constantly finds and maintains two cross-bow-men, at the least; some find more, well arrayed in all their accoutrements, to serve the King in his wars, as often as he pleaseth to call them out, which is frequently done. Without any consideration had of these things, other very heavy taxes are assessed yearly upon every village within the kingdom, for the King's service; neither is there ever any intermission or abatement of taxes. Exposed to these and other calamities, the peasants live in great hardship and misery. Their constant drink is water, neither do they taste, throughout the year, any other liquor, unless upon some extraordinary times, or festival days. Their clothing consists of frocks, or little short jerkins, made of canvas, no better than common sackcloth; they do not wear any woollens, except of the coarsest sort; and that only in the garment under their frocks; nor do they wear any trowse, but from the knees upwards; their legs being exposed and naked, The women go barefoot, except on holidays. They do not eat flesh, except it be the fat of bacon, and that in very small quantities, with which they make a soup. Of other sorts, either boiled or roasted, they do not so much as taste, unless it be of the inwards and offals of sheep and bullocks, and the like, which are killed for the use of the better sort of people, and the merchants; for whom also quails, partridges, hares, and the like, are reserved, upon pain of the gallies; as for their poultry, the soldiers consume them, so that scarce the eggs, slight as they are, are indulged them, by way of a dainty. And if it happen that a man is observed to thrive in the world, and become rich, he is presently assessed to the King's tax, proportionably more than his poorer neighbours, whereby he is soon reduced to a level with the rest." Then comes his description of the ENGLISH, at that same time; those "priest-ridden" English, whom CHALMERS and HUME, and the rest of that tribe, would fain have us believe, were a mere band of wretched beggars. -- "The King of England cannot alter the laws, or make new ones, without the express consent of the whole kingdom in Parliament assembled. Every inhabitant is at his liberty fully to use and enjoy whatever his farm produceth, the fruits of the earth, the increase of his flock, and the like; all the improvement he makes, whether by his own proper industry, or of those he retains in his service, are his own, to use and to enjoy, without the let, interruption or denial of any. If he be in any wise injured, or oppressed, he shall have his amends and satisfactions against the party offending. Hence it is, that the inhabitants are rich in gold, silver, and in all the necessaries and conveniences of life. They drink no water, unless at certain times, upon a religious score, and by way of doing penance. They are fed, in great abundance, with all sorts of flesh and fish, of which they have plenty everywhere; they are clothed throughout in good woollens; their bedding and other furniture in their houses are of wool, and that in great store. They are also well provided with all other sorts of household goods and necessary implements for husbandry. Every one, according to his rank, hath all things which conduce to make life easy and happy."

460. Go, and read this to the poor souls, who are now eating sea- weed in Ireland; who are detected in robbing the pig-troughs in Yorkshire; who are eating horse-flesh and grains (draff) in Lancashire and Cheshire; who are harnessed like horses and drawing gravel in Hampshire and Sussex; who have 3d. a day allowed them by the Magistrates in Norfolk; who are, all over England, worse fed than the felons in the gaols. Go, and tell them, when they raise their hands from the pig-trough, or from the grains-tub, and, with their dirty tongues, cry "No popery;" go, read to the degraded and deluded wretches, this account of the state of their Catholic forefathers, who lived under what is impudently called "popish superstition and tyranny," and in those times, which we have the audacity to call "the dark ages."

461. Look at the then picture of the French; and, Protestant Englishmen, if you have the capacity of blushing left, blush at the thought of how precisely that picture fits the English now! Look at all the parts of the picture; the food, the raiment, the game! Good God! If any one had told the old Chancellor, that the day would come, when this picture, and even a picture more degrading to human nature, would fit his own boasted country, what would he have said? What would he have said, if he had been told, that the time was to come, when the soldier in England, would have more than twice, nay, more than thrice, the sum allowed to the day-labouring man; when potatoes would be carried to the field as the only food of the ploughman; when soup-shops would be open to feed the English; and when the Judges, sitting on that very bench on which he himself had sitten for twenty years, would (as in the case last year of the complaint against Magistrates at NORTHALLERTON) declare that BREAD AND WATER were the general food of working people in England? What would he have said? Why, if he had been told, that there was to be a "REFORMATION," accompanied by a total devastation of Church and Poor property, upheld by wars, creating an enormous debt and enormous taxes, and requiring a constantly standing army; if he had been told this, he would have foreseen our present state, and would have wept for his country; but, if he had, in addition, been told, that, even in the midst of all this suffering, we should still have the ingratitude and the baseness to cry "No popery," and the injustice and the cruelty to persecute those Englishmen and Irishmen, who adhered to the faith of their pious, moral, brave, free and happy fathers, he would have said, "God's will be done: let them suffer."

462. But, it may be said, that it was not, then, the Catholic Church, but the laws, that made the English so happy; for, the French had that Church as well as the English. Ay! But, in England, the Church was the very basis of the laws. The very first clause of MAGNA CHARTA provided for the stability of its property and rights. A provision for the indigent, an effectual provision, was made by the laws that related to the Church and its property; and this was not the case in France; and never was the case in any country but this: so that the English people lost more by a "Reformation" than any other people could have lost.

463. Fortescue's authority would, of itself, be enough; but, I am not to stop with it. WHITE, the late Rector of SELBOURNE, in Hampshire, gives, in his history of that once famous village, an extract from a record, stating, that, for disorderly conduct, men were punished, by being "compelled to fast a fortnight on bread and beer"! This was about the year 1380, in the reign of RICHARD II. Oh! miserable " dark ages"! This fact must be true. WHITE had no purpose to answer. His mention of the fact, or, rather, his transcript from the record, is purely incidental; and trifling as the fact is, it is conclusive as to the general mode of living in those happy days. Go, tell the harnessed gravel-drawers, in Hampshire, to cry "No popery"; for, that, if the POPE be not put down, he may, in time, compel them to fast on bread and beer, instead of suffering them to continue to regale themselves on nice potatoes and pure water.

464. But, let us come to Acts of Parliament, and, first, to the Act above quoted, in paragraph 454, which see. That Act fixes the price of meat. After naming the four sorts of meat, beef, pork, mutton and veal, the preamble has these words: "These being THE FOOD OF THE POORER SORT." This is conclusive. It is an incidental mention of a fact. It is in an Act of Parliament. It must have been true; and, it is a fact that we know well, that even the Judges have declared, from the Bench, that bread alone is now the food of the poorer sort. What do we want more than this to convince us, that the main body of the people have been impoverished by the" Reformation"?

465. But, I will prove, by other Acts of Parliament, this Act of Parliament to have spoken truth. These Acts declare what the wages of workmen shall be, There are several such Acts, but one or two may suffice. The Act of 23rd of EDWARD III. fixes the wages, without food, as follows. There are many other things mentioned, but the following will be enough for our purpose.

s. d. A woman hay-making, or weeding corn, for the day 0 1 A man filling dung-cart 0 31/2 A reaper 0 4 Mowing an acre of grass 0 6 Thrashing a quarter of wheat 0 4 the price of shoes, cloth, and of provisions, throughout the time that this law continued in force was as follows

£ s. d. A pair of shoes 0 0 4 Russet broad cloth the yard 0 1 1 A stall-fed ox 1 4 0 A grass-fed ox 0 16 0 A fat sheep unshorn 0 1 8 A fat sheep shorn 0 1 2 A fat hog, two years old 0 3 4 A fat goose 0 0 2 Ale, the gallon, by Proclamation 0 0 1 Wheat, the quarter 0 3 4 White wine, the gallon 0 0 6 Red wine 0 0 4 These prices are taken from the PRECIOSUM of Bishop FLEETWOOD, who took them from the accounts kept by the bursers of convents. All the world knows, that FLEETWOOD's Book is of undoubted authority.

466. We may, then, easily believe, that "beef, pork, mutton and veal," were "the food of the poorer sort," when a dung-cart filler had more than the price of a fat goose and a half for a day's work, and when a woman was allowed, for a day's weeding, the price of a quart of red wine! Two yards of the cloth made a coat for the shepherd; and, as it cost 2s. 2d., the reaper would earn it in 61/2 days; and, the dung-cart man would earn very nearly a pair of shoes every day! This dung-cart filler would earn a fat shorn sheep in four days; he would earn a fat hog, two years old, in twelve days; he would earn a grass-fed ox in twenty days; so that we may easily believe, that "beef, pork, veal and mutton," were "the food of the poorer sort." And, mind, this was "a priest-ridden people"; a people "buried in popish superstition"! In our days of "Protestant light" and of "mental enjoyment" the "poorer sort" are allowed by the Magistrates of Norfolk 3d. a day for a single man able to work. That is to say, a halfpenny less than a Catholic dung-cart man had; and that 3d. will get the "No Popery" gentlemen about six ounces of old ewe mutton, while the popish dung-cart man got, for his day, rather more than the quarter of a fat sheep.

467. But, the popish people might work harder than "enlightened Protestants." They might do more work in a day. This is contrary to all the assertions of the feelosofers; for they insist, that the Catholic religion made people idle. But, to set this matter at rest, let us look at the price of the job-labour; at the mowing by the acre and at the threshing of wheat by the quarter; and let us see how these wages are now, compared with the price of food. I have no parliamentary authority since the year 1821, when a report was printed by order of the House of Commons, containing the evidence of Mr. ELLMAN, of Sussex, as to wages, and of Mr. GEORGE, of Norfolk, as to price of wheat. The report was dated 18th June, 1821. The accounts are for twenty years, on an average, from 1800 inclusive. We will now proceed to see how the "popish, priest-ridden" Englishman stands in comparison with the "No Popery" Englishman.

POPISH MAN NO-POPERY MAN.

s. d. s. d. Mowing an acre of grass 0 6 3 73/4 Threshing a quarter of wheat 0 4 4 0

Here are "waust improvements, Mau'm!" But, now let us look at the relative price of the wheat, which the labourer had to purchase with his wages. We have seen, that the "popish superstition slave" had to give fivepence a bushel for his wheat, and the evidence of Mr. GEORGE states, that the "enlightened Protestant" had to give ten shillings a bushel for his wheat; that is, twenty-four times as much as the "popish fool," who suffered himself to be "priest-ridden." So that the "enlightened" man, in order to make him as well off as the "dark ages" man was, ought to receive twelve shillings, instead of 3s. 73/4d. for mowing an acre of grass; and he, in like manner, ought to receive, for threshing a quarter of wheat, eight shillings, instead of the four shillings which he does receive. If we had the records, we should, doubtless, find, that Ireland was in the same state.

468. There! That settles the matter; and, if the Bible Society and the "Education" and the "Christian-knowledge" gentry would, as they might. cause this little book to be put into the hands of all their millions of pupils, it would, as far as relates to this kingdom, settle the question of religion for ever and ever! I have now proved, that FORTESCUE's description of the happy life of our Catholic ancestors was correct. There wanted no proof; but I have given it. I could refer to divers other acts of Parliament, passed during several centuries, all confirming the truth of FORTESCUE's account. And there are, in Bishop FLEETWOOD's book, many things that prove that the labouring people were most kindly treated by their superiors, and particularly by the clergy; for instance, he has an item in the expenditure of a convent, "30 pair of autumnal gloves, for the servants." This was sad "superstition." In our "enlightened" and Bible-reading age, who thinks of gloves for the ploughman? We have priests as well as the "dark ages" people had; ours ride as well as theirs; but, theirs fed at the same time; both mount, but theirs seem to have used the rein more, and spur less. It is curious to observe, that the pay of persons in high situations was, as compared with that of the present day, very low when compared with the pay of the working classes. If you calculate the year's pay of the dung-cart man, you will find it, if multiplied by 20 (which brings it to our money), to amount to 91l. a year; while the average pay of the JUDGES did not exceed 60l. a year of the then money, and, of course, did not exceed 1,200l. a year of our money. So that a Judge had not so much pay as fourteen dung-cart fillers. To be sure, Judges had, in those "dark ages," when LITTLETON and FORTESCUE lived and wrote, pretty easy lives; for, FORTESCUE says, that they led lives of great "leisure and contemplation," and that they never sat in court but three hours in a day, from eight to eleven! Alas! if they had lived in this "enlightened age," they would have found little time for their "contemplation"! They would have found plenty of work; they would have found, that theirs was no sinecure, at any rate, and that ten times their pay was not adequate to their enormous labour. Here is another indubitable proof of the great and general happiness and harmony and honesty and innocence that reigned in the country. The Judges had lives of leisure! In that one fact, incidentally stated by a man, who had been twenty years Chief Justice of the King's Bench, we have the true character of the so long calumniated religion of our fathers.

469. As to the bare fact, this most interesting fact, that the main body of the people have been impoverished and degraded since the time of the Catholic sway; as to this fact, there can be no doubt in the mind of any man who has, thus far, read this work. Neither can there, I think, exist, in the mind of such a man, any doubt, that this impoverishment and this degradation have been caused by the event called the "Reformation," seeing that I have, in former Letters, and especially in Letter XIV., clearly traced the debt and the enormous taxes to that event, But, I cannot bring myself to conclude, without tracing the impoverishment in its horrible progress. The well-known fact, that no compulsory collections for the poor, that the disgraceful name of pauper; that these were never heard of in England, in Catholic times; and that they were heard of the moment the "Reformation" had begun; this single fact might be enough, and it is enough; but, we will see the progress of this Protestant impoverishment.

470. The Act, 27 Henry VIII., chap. 25, began the poor laws. The monasteries were not actually seized on till the next year; but, the fabric of the Catholic Church was, in fact, tumbling down; and, instantly the country swarmed with necessitous people, and open begging, which the Government of England had always held in great horror, began to disgrace this so-lately happy land. To put a stop to this, the above Act authorised sheriffs, magistrates and churchwardens to cause voluntary alms to be collected; and, at the same time, it punished the persevering beggar, by slicing off part of his ears, and, for a second offence, put him to death as a felon! This was the dawn of that "REFORMATION," which we are still called upon to admire and to praise!

471. The "pious young SAINT EDWARD," as Fox, the Martyr-man, most impiously calls him; began his Protestant reign, 1st year Edward VI. chap. 3. by an Act, punishing beggars, by burning with a red-hot iron, and in making them slaves for two years, with power in their masters to make them wear an iron collar, and to feed them upon bread and water and refuse meat! For, even in this case, still there was meat for those who had to labour; the days of cold potatoes and of bread and water alone were yet to come: they were reserved for our "enlightened" and Bible-reading days; our days of "mental enjoyment." And, as to horse-flesh and draff (grains), they appear never to have been even thought of. If the slave ran away, or were disobedient, he was, by this Protestant Act, to be a slave for life. This Act came forth as a sort of precursor of the acts to establish the Church of England! Horrid tyranny! The people had been plundered of the resource, which Magna Charta, which justice, which reason, which the law of nature, gave them, No other resource had been provided; and, they were made actual slaves, branded and chained, because they sought by their prayers to allay the cravings of hunger!

472. Next came "good Queen Bess," who, after trying her hand eight times, without success, to cause the poor to be relieved by alms, passed that compulsory Act, which is in force to the present day. All manner of shifts had been resorted to, in order to avoid this provision fn the poor. During this and the two former reigns, LICENSES TO BEG had been granted. But, at last, the compulsory assessment came, that true mark, that indelible mark, of the Protestant Church as by law established. This assessment was put off to the last possible moment, and it was never relished by those who had got the spoils of the Church and the poor. But, it was a measure of absolute necessity. All the racks, all the law-martial, of this cruel reign could not have kept down the people without this Act, the authors of which seem to have been ashamed to state the grounds of it; for, it has no preamble whatever. The people, so happy in former times; the people described by FORTESCUE, were now become a nation of ragged wretches. DEFOE, in one of his tracts, says that "good Bess," in her progress through the kingdom, upon seeing the miserable looks of the crowds that came to see her, frequently exclaimed, "Pauper ubique jacet;" that is, the poor cover the land. And this was that same country, in which FORTESCUE left a race of people, "having all things which conduce to make life easy and happy"!

473. Things did not mend much during the reigns of the Stuarts, except in as far as the poor-law had effect. This rendered unnecessary the barbarities that had been exercised before the passing of it; and, as long as taxation was light, the paupers were comparatively little numerous. But, when the taxes began to grow heavy, the projectors were soon at work to find out the means of putting down pauperism. Amongst these was one CHILD, a merchant and banker, whose name was JOSIAH, and who had been made a knight or baronet, for he is called Sir JOSIAH. His project, which was quite worthy of his calling, contained a provision, in his proposed Act, to appoint men, to be called, "Fathers of the Poor"; and, one of the provisions relating to these "FATHERS" was to be, "that they may have power to send such poor, as they may think fit, into any of his Majesty's plantations"! That is to say, to transport and make slaves of them! And, gracious God! this was in FORTESCUE's country! This was in the country of Magna Charta! And this monster dared to publish this project! And we cannot learn, that any man had the soul to reprobate the conduct of so hard-hearted a wretch.

474; When the "deliverer" had come, when a "glorious revolution" had taken place, when a war had been carried on and a debt and a bank created, and all for the purpose of putting down Popery for ever, the poor began to increase at such a frightful rate, that the Parliament referred the subject to the Board of Trade, to inquire, and to report a remedy. LOCKE was one of the Commissioners, and a passage in the Report of the Board is truly curious. "The multiplicity of the poor, and the increase of the tax for their maintenance, is so general an observation and complaint, that it cannot be doubted of; nor has it been only since the last war that this evil has come upon us, it has been a growing burden on the kingdom this many years, and the last two reigns felt the increase of it as well as the present. if the causes of this evil be looked into, we humbly conceive it will be found to have proceeded, not from the scarcity of provisions, nor want of employment for the poor; since the goodness of God has blessed these times with plenty no less than the former; and a long peace, during three reigns, gave us as plentiful a trade as ever. The growth of the poor must therefore have some other cause; and it can be nothing else but the relaxation of discipline and corruption; virtue and industry being as constant companions on the one side, as vice and idleness are on the other."

475. So, the fault was in the poor themselves! it does not seem to have occurred to Mr. LOCKE that there must have been a cause for this cause. He knew very well, that there was a time, when there were no paupers at all in England; but, being a fat place-man under the "deliverer," he could hardly think of alluding to that interesting fact. "Relaxation of discipline"! What discipline? What did he mean by discipline? The taking away of the Church and Poor's property, the imposing of heavy taxes, the giving of low wages compared with the price of food and raiment, the drawing away of the earnings of the poor to be given to paper-harpies and other tax-eaters; these were the causes of the hideous and disgraceful evil! this he knew very well, and, therefore, it is no wonder, that his report contained no remedy.

476. After LOCKE, came, in the reign of QUEEN ANNE, DEFOE, who seems to have been the father of the present race of projectors, MALTHUS and LAWYER SCARLET being merely his humble followers. He was for giving no more relief to the poor; he imputed their poverty to their crimes, and not their crimes to their poverty; and their crimes, he imputed to "their luxury, pride and sloth." he said the English labouring people ate and drank three times as much as any foreigners! How different were the notions of this insolent French Protestant from those of the Chancellor FORTESCUE, who looked upon the good living of the people as the best possible proof of good laws, and seems to have delighted in relating that the English were "fed, in great abundance, with all sorts of flesh and fish"!

477. If DEFOE had lived to our "enlightened age," he would, at any rate, have seen "no luxury" amongst the poor, unless he would have grudged them horse-flesh, draff (grains), sea-weed, or the contents of the pig-trough. From his day to the present, there have been a hundred projects, and more than fifty laws, to regulate the affairs of the poor. But still the pauperism remains for the Catholic Church to hold up in the face of the Church of England. "Here," the former may say to the latter, "here, look at this: here is the result of your efforts to extinguish me; here, in this one evil, in this never- ceasing, this degrading curse, I am more than avenged, if vengeance I were allowed to enjoy: urge on the deluded potato-crammed creatures to cry 'No Popery' still, and, when they retire to their straw, take care not to remind them of the cause of their poverty and degradation."

478. HUME, in speaking of the sufferings of the people, in the first Protestant reign, says, that, at last, those sufferings "produced good," for that they "led to our present situation." What, then, be deemed our present situation a better one than that of the days of FORTESCUE! To be sure, HUME wrote fifty years ago; but he wrote long after CHILD, LOCKE, and DEFOE. Surely enough the "Reformation" has led to "our then present and now present situation." it has "at last," produced the bitter fruit of which we are now tasting. Evidence, given, by a Clergyman, too, and published by the House of Commons, in 1824, states the labouring people of Suffolk to be a nest of robbers, too deeply corrupted ever to be reclaimed; evidence of a Sheriff of Wiltshire (in 1821) states the common food of the labourers, in the field, to be cold potatoes; a scale, published by the Magistrates of Norfolk, in 1825, allows 3d. a day to a single labouring man; the Judges of the Court of King's Bench (1825) have declared the general food of the labouring people to be bread and water; intelligence from the northern counties (1826), published upon the spot, informs us, that great numbers of people are nearly starving, and that some are eating horse-flesh and grains while it is well known that the country abounds in food, and while the Clergy have recently put up, from the pulpit, the rubrical thanksgiving for times of plenty; a law recently passed, making it felony to take an apple from a tree, tells the world that our characters and lives are thought nothing worth, or that this nation, once the greatest and most moral in the world, is now a nation of incorrigible thieves; and, in either case, the most impoverished, the most fallen, the most degraded that ever saw the light of the sun.

479. I have now performed my task. I have made good the positions with which I began. Born and bred a Protestant of the Church of England, having a wife and numerous family professing the same faith, having the mains of most dearly beloved parents lying in a Protestant church-yard, and trusting to conjugal or filial piety to place mine by their side, I have, in this undertaking, had no motive, I can have had no motive, but a sincere and disinterested love of truth and justice. It is not for the rich and the powerful of my countrymen that I have spoken; but for the poor, the persecuted, the proscribed. I have not been unmindful of the unpopularity and the prejudice that would attend the enterprise; but, when I considered the long, long triumph of calumny over the religion of those, to whom we owe all that we possess that is great and renowned; when I was convinced that I could do much towards the counteracting of that calumny; when duty so sacred bade me speak, it would have been baseness to hold my tongue, and baseness superlative would it have been, if, having the will as well as the power, I had been restrained by fear of the shafts of falsehood and of folly. To be clear of self-reproach is amongst the greatest of human consolations; and now, amidst all the dreadful perils, with which the event that I have treated of has, at last, surrounded my country, I can, while I pray God to save her from still further devastation and misery, safely say, that, neither expressly nor tacitly, am I guilty of any part of the cause of her ruin.

THE END.

INDEX

[The References apply to the paragraphs, and not to the pages of this work.]

À Becket, St. Thomas, 179, 453 Abdication of James I., 374 Abbeys and Priories, 153 - 155, 159, 163, 167, 399 Abbot, Chief Justice, 92 Abbot, the of Glastonbury, 171 Act for bastardising Henry's daughters, 113 Adolphus, Mr., 336 Adrian IV., 42 Advisers of Elizabeth, 297 - 300, 319 Ahab, 81 Ale, the price of, 465 Alfred the Great, 147, 185 Allen, William, 342 Altars, the robbing of, 196 America, 337 -- Revolution of, 396 -- thought of taxing, 422 -- brings charges against George Ill., 426 -- consequences of its Revolution on the Penal Code, 441 Amours of Elizabeth, 295, 349 Ampthill, 69 Anne, Queen, 476 Ann Boleyn, 71, 75, 77 Answers to this work, 350 Anjou, the Duke of, 295 Arundel, the Earl of, 219 Army, standing, 380 Archdall, Mr. Myrven, 148 Armada, the Spanish, 324 Arthur, the Prince, 61 Aslett, 35 Atheism, 144 Austin, 45

Bail, excessive, 380, 381 Baker, Sir Richard, 112 Ball, for the sake of the starving Irish, 148 Baltimore, Lord, 392 Bank notes, 258 Bank of England, 401 Baptism, one, 85 Baring, Sir Thomas, 186 Bartholomew, Saint, the massacre of, 270 - 294 Bate's Rural Philosophy, 140 Bayley, Judge, 22 Bayley, Life of Fisher, 67 Beck, the venerable, 141 Beggars, 331, 470, 476 Bellingham, 292 Beliefs, 204 Bentincks, the, 90 Beer tax, the first, 401 Beer, small, 124 Bermondsey, 183 Beza, 200, 278 Bible, the new one, 208 Bible-readers, 307 Biographical Dictionary, 33 Bishop Jocelyn, 381 Bishop Tomline, 126 Bishops, the seven, 374 Blackheath, 453 Blackstone, Sir William, 28, 30, 52, 337, 378 Blowing up of Darnley, 310 Boleyn, Lady, 67 Bowles, John, 14 Boulogne, 256, 391, 455 Bonner, Bishop, 248 Bread and Water, the food of the people, 461, 478 Brougham, Mr., 386 Burning of heretics, 257 Burnet, 84, 96, 406 Burleigh, Lord, 298 Butterworth, Saint, 109 Byrne, James, 381

Calais, taken by the Duke of Guise, 254 -- Elizabeth's base surrender of, 271, 391 -- the importance of, to England, 286 -- loss of, caused by the Reformation, 455 Calvin, 200, 207 Calendar, the Protestant, 21 Catesby, Robert, 357 Catechism, the Douay, 330 Catherine of Arragon, 61, 71 Cathedrals, the origin of, 48 Catholic, the meaning of the word, 3 -- Religion not rooted out of Ireland, 8 -- Religion; motive for the abuse of, 8, 9 -- antiquity of, 10 -- inconsistency of the revilers of, 11, 12, 16, 17, 23 -- unfavourable to liberty, 27, 379, 456 -- unfavourable to genius and talent, 28, 34 -- efforts to destroy it, 204 Catholic Church, took care of the poor, 207 -- kept down usury, 206 Catholic Religion again restored, 232 -- why Elizabeth renounced the, 261 -- rooted out again, 269 Catholics, the, as Citizens, 223 -- relieved by the American Revolution, 430 Cato-street Plot, 354 Canterbury, 11, 179 Castles, 386 Castlereagh, 380 Causes, Ecclesiastical, 380 Cecil, Sir William, 230, 298 Celibacy of Clergy, 122, 198, 331, 369 Charles I., 360 -- II., 22 -- IX., 273, 290 Chalmers, George, 453, 459 Chapels seized, 202 Charges against James II., 380 -- George III., 426 Child, the Banker, 473 Chertsey, 183 Chantries, 202 Church, history of the, in England, 44 Civil Liberty, the Catholic Religion unfavourable to, 27 Clement, Mr., 380 Cloth, price of, 465 Clogher, the bishop of, 381 Clergy, mode of supporting the, 49 -- celibacy of, 122, 198 -- relief to poor, 127 Clothing of the Irish, 326, 334 Cobourg, the Prince of Saxe, 324 Code, the Penal, 435, 436 -- reflections on, 437 - 441 -- relaxation of, 441, 445 Coin, debasing of the, 210 Coke, Lord, 92 Coligni, 270, 290 Colleges at Oxford, 30, 185 Collier's Church History, 359 Colonies, 390, 391 Common-prayer, the Book of, 198, 265 Compromise made by the plunderers of the Church, 228 Confiscation of Monasteries, 162, 172, 175 Condé, 270, 280 Conference of the Methodists, 88 Convention, the American, 422 Cornish knave, 65 Cowdry House, 115 Cranmer, 64, 104, 195, 258 -- his dilemma and oath, 65 -- hypocrisy, 68, 104 -- Court, 69 -- cites Henry and Anne before him, 76 -- brings a wife home in a box, 104 -- divorces Henry from Anne of Cleves, 188 -- his Prayer-Book, 198, 265, 269, 365 -- weaves his own halter, 217 -- his worship and divorce overset, 226 -- his character, 251 -- recantations and death, 251 Creeds, the Nicene and Athanasian, 20 Crown Lands, 399 Cromwell, Oliver, 117, 363 Cromwell, Thomas, 157 -- his visitation, 159 -- his dog-like end, 189 Crown, the, settled on Lady Jane Grey, 216 Curwen, Mr., 454 Curwen, Dr., 81

Davison, 321 Dalrymple, 387 Darnley, the Earl of, 309, 310 Debt, the National, 403, 411 Defoe, 476 Deliverers, the Dutch, 396 De Gray, Mr., 124 Defender of the Faith, 103, 105, 107 Devastation of England, 166, 172 Despard, 386 Dent, Parson. 26 Devonshire, 212 Dick, Mr., 380 Dictionary, the Biographical, 33 Dieppe, 275 Directory, the, 365 Divorce of Henry VIII. from Catherine, 67, 70 -- from Anne Boleyn, 76 Downie, 386 Douay, 330, 342 Drake's Literary Hours, 138 Dreux, 277 Drury, Sir Drue, 319 Dudley, 221, 276 Dung-cart, filling, 465 Duty, shifting of, 308

Echard, 370 Ecclesiastical causes, 380 Edward III., state of the labourer in the time of, 465 Edward VI., his birth, 112 -- plunder of his reign, 196 -- crowned as a Catholic, 127 -- settles the succession, 216 -- his death, 218 -- his character, 218 -- his reign, 222 -- his loss of Boulogne, 256, 391 -- his atrocious cruelty, 471 Elections, 380 Elizabeth, Queen, 259 -- an apostate, 260 -- her perjury, 260 -- not acknowledged by the Pope, 261 -- why became a Protestant, 261 -- desires to change the Religion again, 265 -- her bloody Statutes, 267, 343 -- abolishes the Pope's Supremacy, 267 -- Massacre of St. Bartholomew, traced to, 269 -- her base Peace with France, 271 -- Treats with the Huguenots, 273, 278 -- accused of plotting assassination, 278 -- her mortification and loss of Havre, 282 -- imprisonment of her ambassadors, 283 -- her hypocrisy, 294, 321 -- her Virginity, 295, 349 -- wishes to marry the Duke of Anjou, 295 -- her advisers, 297 - 300 -- real cause of her success in extirpating the Catholic Religion, 305 -- a most popular sovereign, 306 -- sees danger in Mary, Queen of Scots, 308 -- her cruelty to Mary, 315 -- brings her to the block, 318 -- Witaker's character of, 319 -- her conduct toward Ireland, 325 -- wretchedness of her people, 331, 472 -- petition of the Catholics to, 346 -- her death and character, 349 Ellman, Mr., 467 Elstow, 81 England converted to Christianity, 11,45 -- as Henry VIII. found it, 61 -- as the Reformation made it, 331, 448 -- foreign troops brought in to settle, 387 -- populousness of, 453 -- wealth of, 454 -- power of, 455 -- freedom of, 456 -- poverty of, 457 -- the people of, compared with those of France, 459 -- bread and water, the food of the people of, 461,478 -- wages of the people of, 465 -- swarming with beggars, 470 Estimate, George Chalmers' 453 Evangelists, the four, Protestants swear on, 23 Excise, 401, 420

Faith, 85, 328 Farnham, 124 Fauntleroy, 35 Fawkes, Guy, 357 Fenning's Spelling-book, 143 "Feelosofers," 145 Fire of London, 370 Fisher, Bishop, 84, 95 Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 386 Fleetwood, Bishop, 465 Fletcher, the preacher, 88 Fox, the lying, 248 Food, price of, in time of Henry VIII, 454 Fortesque, the Chancellor, 458 Foreign troops in England, 387 Framlingham, 224 France, 254 -- England in danger of becoming subject to, 262, 303 -- Elizabeth basely makes peace with, 271 -- war with, 254, 399 -- her revolution, 442 -- the people of, compared with English, 459 Franklin, Dr., 326, 334 Freedom of England, 456 Friendly Society of Hants, 126

Gardner, 198, 224 Garnet, Father, 358 Garnier, Mr., 124 George III., 426 George, Mr., 467 Gloves, autumnal, 468 Goose, the price of, 465 Goldsmith, Dr., 38 Glorious Revolution, 377 Glastonbury, 171 Gospellers, 277 Grains, the people eating, 460 Grammar, Hume's, 130 Gregory I., 45 Grey, Lady Jane, 216 -- proclaimed Queen, 220 Guise, the Duke of, 254, 278 Guildford, 183

Habeas Corpus Act, 388 -- suspension of, 389 Halls at Oxford, 30 Halsey, Mr., 184 Hampden, 386 Hay-making, pay for, 465 Hay, Parson, 26 Havre de Grace. 273, 282 Henry VIII., 61 -- his brutal passions roused, 62 -- makes himself head of the church, 64 -- makes Cranmer Archbishop, 65 -- his hard case, 66 -- keeps Anne Boleyn, 67 -- divorced from Catherine, 70 -- marries Anne Boleyn, 68 -- his cruelty to Catherine, 72 -- gets Anne Boleyn beheaded, 77 -- marries Lady Jane Seymour, 77 -- rebuked by Peyto and Elstow, 81 -- his atrocious murders of More and Fisher, 95 -- his book against Luther's religion, 101 -- the dishonest act of 27th year of his reign, 112 -- his brutality to Lady Jane Seymour, 112 -- bastardises his daughters, 113 -- his tyranny, 114 -- why submitted to, 117 -- obtains possession of church spoil, 168, 176 -- his base Parliament, 174 -- his marriage with Anne of Cleeves, 188 -- his marriage with Lady C. Howard, 188 -- his death, 191 -- his will, 194 -- his executors, 195 -- price of food in the time of, 454 Henry IV., 247 Heptarchy, the 45 Heretics, restoration of the acts against, 247 -- burnt, 247, 257 Hertford, Earl of, 195 Heylen, Dr., 209, 218, 255, 297, 377 Histories, the, of England, 38, 223 Historians, their duty, 81 Hippesley, Sir John Cox, 381 Higgons, 370 Hoddesden, 219 Hog, price of, 465 Honesty in the time of Alfred, 186 Hooper, 225, 250 Hop-duty, 380 Hospitality, 125 Houghton, John, 97 Hubert, 370 Huguenots, 273, 290 Hume, 116, 129, 134, 161, 179, 216, 236, 239, 285, 452 Hypocrisy of Elizabeth, 294, 318

Inconsistency of the revilers of the Catholic religion, 11, 12, 16, 17, 23 Inquisition, the, 340 Insurrections of the people, 209, 210, 212, 228 Interference in elections, 380 Ireland, 8, 148, 325, 334, 363, 436, 459 Item, a curious, 176

James I., 310 -- II., 372 -- -- charges brought against, 380 -- -- William's triumph over, 395 -- -- protected by Louis XIV., 398 -- -- suspends all penal laws relating to religion, 433 Jarrow, 141 Jocelyn, Bishop, 381 Jews, 369 Juan Fernandez, 141 Judges, the, their decision as to the food of the poor, 478 -- the, made independent of the Crown, 24 -- the institution of, 92 Jury, trial by, 185 Jurors, qualification of, 455

Keiling, 386 Kent first converted to Christianity, 48 "King of France" the title of English Kings, 109 Knox, 225, 307, 359

Labourer, the ancient condition of the, 466 Land, the, subject to maintain the necessitous, 51 Land, the, 150 Landgrave, the, of Hesse, 101 Landlords, the best, 151, 152 Latimer, 248, 250 Law-established, church, 13 Laws, the, of England, 92 Lawyers, 217 Leaders, the natural, of the people, 117, 118, 173 Learned men, 34 Leicester, 295, 297, 319 Lepeau, 444 Liberty, civil, the Catholic religion averse to, 27 Licences to beg, 472 Lindisfarne, 141 Lincoln's Inn, a gentleman of, 295 Lingard, Dr., 293 Littleton, 468 Liturgy, the Protestant, 20 Livings, how given away now, 124 Loan-makers, 186 Locke, Mr., 474 Lollards, the, 247 London, fire of, 370 Luther, 99, 100, 200, 251

Madocks, William, 380 Malmsbury, 141 Mallett's History of the Swiss, 137 Malthus, 6, 127, 336 Mary, Queen, 220 -- Character falsely attributed to her, 223 -- Enters London as Queen, 224 -- her Parliament, 226 -- bent on restoring the Pope's supremacy, 228 -- gives up the rents and first fruits, 234 -- restores church lands in her possession, 235 -- rebellion against, 238 -- marries Philip of Spain, 239 -- burns heretics, 248 -- her ill health, 253 -- at war with France, 234 -- her sorrows and death, 255, 257 -- her character, 257 Mary Queen of Scotland, 261 -- her birth and parentage, 302 -- betrothed to the Dauphin, 302 -- heiress to the English throne, 303 -- a widow, 307 -- returns to Scotland, 307 -- marries Lord Darnley, 309 -- is again a widow, 310 -- marries Lord Bothwell, 311 -- Witaker's defence of, 312, 319 -- throws herself on England, 315 -- her long imprisonment, 316 -- her death, 318 Marriage of Henry VIII. with Catherine, 61 -- with Anne Boleyn, 58 -- with Lady J. Seymour, 77 -- with Anne of Cleves, 188 -- with Lady C. Howard, 188 Marriage of Mary to Philip of Spain, 239 -- policy of the, 240 -- to the good and honour of England, 241 -- compared with Saxe-Cobourg's, 244 Marriage of Mary Queen of Scots with the Dauphin, 261 Marriage of a Protestant Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, with a Catholic lady, 446 Married Clergy, 124, 198, 331, 369 Marvell-hall, 73 "Martyrs," the, 249, 257 Martial law, 331 Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 270, 294 Mass, the, abolished, 207 -- re-established, 226 -- made high treason to say the, 268, 343 Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of London, 377 Merton, 183 Micaiah, 81 Micheldever, 186 Milner, Dr., 104, 123 Monks, 11 Monument, the, 370, 431 Monopolies, 352 Monkish ignorance and superstition, 28, 34 Monasteries, 53, 57, 59, 119 -- revenues of and how spent, 120 -- abuse of the, 121 -- Hume's charges against, 129 -- Tanner's account of, 133 -- Extracts in defence of, 137, 141 -- as land-owners, 151 - 152 -- attack upon the, 159 - 163 -- reports upon, 161 -- confiscation of, 162, 172, 175 -- in Surrey, 183 -- consequences of sacking the, 331 Morrit, parson, 26 Moore's Almanack, 179 Montesquieu, 92 More, Sir Thomas, 84 Montmorency, 276 Money sent to the Popes from England, 90 Movelly, John, 381 Mowing, price of, 465, 467 Murder of the Countess of Salisbury, 115 -- of More and Fisher, 95 -- of John Houghton, 97 -- of the Abbot of Glastonbury, 171 -- of the Duke of Guise, 278 -- of Rizzio, 309 Murray, Earl, 314

National debt, origin of, 403, 411 Newington, 183 Noel, Saint, 109 North, Roger, 367 North, Mr. Charles Augustus, 124 Notes, Bank, 258 No-Popery cries, not efficient now, 26

Oath of a Cornish knave, 65 -- Cramer's, 65 O' Callaghan, Mr., 403 Old Bailey, the, 258 Oliver, 386 "One Faith," 85 Orleans, 277 Origin of the Catholic church 40 O'Quigly, 386 Oundle-plan, 6 Ox, an, the price of, 465 Oxford, the ancient compared with modern, 30

Parliament, Catholics shut out of, 358 Pains and penalties, bills of, 392 Parliament, Henry's, 174 -- Mary's, 226, 230 Paris, 293 Parishes, 50 Paramours of Elizabeth, 295 Paulet, Sir Amias, 319 Paulet, St. John, 300 Pauperism, 145, 186 259, 331 Peachum, the Royal, 178 Penalties imposed on Catholics, 343, 431 Penn, William, 392 Penal Code, a sketch of, in England, 435 -- in Ireland, 436 "Pence to Peter," 90 Pennsylvania, 153 Perceval, 90, 380 Peyto, 81 Petition of the Catholics to Elizabeth, 346 Philip of Spain, 239, 242, 271, 323 Pilgrims, 179 Plot, the gunpowder, 354 Plot, the Protestant, 383 Plunder, the nation divided by, 117, 169, 162, 175, 180, 196, 202, 227, 232, 331, 372, 377 Populousness of England, 453 Poltrot, 278 Pole, Cardinal, 229, 454 Pope, 370 Poulter, Mr. Edmund, 124 "Poorer sort," the food of the, 464 Potatoes, the food of the people, 478 Pope, the, derivation of the word, 42 -- supremacy of the, 84, 89, 227 -- money sent to, 90 -- refuses to acknowledge Elizabeth as Queen, 261 Power of England, 455 Poor-rates, 127, 259, 332,470 Poor Clergy, 127 Prayer, the common, 198, 265 Preamble of the act for suppressing monasteries, 167 Preciosum, 465 Prices in time of Henry VIII, 454 -- Edward III, 465 Priories, 153, 155, 159, 163, 167, 399 Protector, 195, 209, 214 Provisions, monopolies of, 352 Protestant, the meaning of the word, 3 -- reformation, how began, 6, 99, 351 -- Church by Law established, 13 -- liturgy, 26 -- calendar, 21 -- saints, 21 -- religion, means necessary to the introducing if it, 98 -- reformers hated by the people, 210 -- religion, how forced down the people's throats, 212 -- Reformers, baseness towards each other, 221 -- cause of Elizabeth becoming a, 261 -- how circumstances favoured the religion, 263 -- Religion, the real cause of its success, 305 -- Lord Lieutenant of Ireland marries a Catholic lady, 446 -- Reformation, the cause of misery in England and Ireland, 327, 455 -- Reformation, the second, 360 -- Reformation, the third, 375 -- Reformation, the fourth, 393, 396 -- Reformation, the fifth, 442 Purse, the faculties of the, 401

Quakers, 411 Quarterly Review, 141

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 390 Rapin, 370 Racks, Elizabeth's, 347 Reaping, price of, 465 Rebellion, 238 Recusants, 269, 342 Reding, Mr., 380 Reformation, the meaning of the word, 3 -- the Protestant, how begun, 6, 99 -- means necessary to making, 98 -- the second, 360 -- the third, 375 -- the fourth, 393, 396 -- the fifth,442 Reigate, 183 Religion, can't be two true ones, 203 Reports about monasteries, 161 Rescript, the King's to the bishops, 1 Revolution, the glorious, 377 -- the American, 395, 441 -- the French, 442 Rheims, 342 Richard III., act of, 455 Riches of England, 459 Richard II., 247 Ridley, Bishop of London, 220, 248, 250, 258 Rizzio, 309 Roden, Jocelyn, 14 Rock, Captain, 150 Robespierre, 117 Rochford, Lord, 75 Rose, George, 14 Rouen, 275 Russell, Lord, 212, 381 Russell, Lord John, 6

St. Peter, 41 Saints, the Protestant, 21 Saint Margaret's, 209 Bartholomew, the Massacre of, 270, 294 Saint Cross, 125 St. John, Paulet, 300 Salt, 352 Salisbury, Countess of, 115 Salisbury, Bishop of, 406 Salvation, doctrine of, Exclusive, 202 Sands, Dr., 221 Scarlett, Mr., 127 Scævola, 35 Schools of Oxford, 30, 185 Shomberg, Marshal, 90 Scotland, 262, 307 Sects, 16, 88, 200, 367, 411 Selbourne, 463 Sende, 183 Septennial Bill, 417 Seymour, Lady Jane, 112 Shearses, the, 386 Sheep, price of, 465 Shene, 183 Shelley, Richard, 346 Shoes, price of, 465 Skibbereen, 11, 26 Sidney, Algernon, 381, 385 Six Acts, 380 Smithfield, the fires of, 257 Smith, Elizabeth's Envoy, 283 Smith, Adam, 211 Soldier, a Bible-reading, 367 Somerset, 214 Somerset House, 209 Spanish Armada, 324 Spelman's History of Sacrilege, 162 Spelling-book, Fenning's, 143 Stafford, Lord, 383 Standing Army, 380 Stratton, 186 Stuart, Lord Henry, 125 Straw, the Epistle of, 333 Stow, 82 Sturges, Dr., 104, 123, 127 Succession, the, settled by Edward VI., 216 Superstition, 179 Suppression of Monasteries, 166, 172 Supremacy, the, 84 -- why it should be lodged in the Pope, 87 -- sham plea set up against this, 88, 89 -- effect of the Pope's on Civil liberty, 92 -- effect of it in the hands of one man, 94 -- question of restoring, 227 -- restored, 231 -- re-abolished, 267 Swithin, Saint, 147 Synod of the Presbyterians, 88

Tanbridge, 183 Tanner, Bishop, 131 "Tail-piece," 295 Taxes, increase of, 412 Testament, the New, from whom received, 17 Threshing, price of, 465, 467 Thompson, Mr., 184 Thompson, Jammy, 349 Thistlewood, 386 Throckmorton, Elizabeth's ambassador, 283 Thorough Godly Reformation, 351 Tithes, how collected now, 13, 49, 338 Title of" King of France," 109 Tomb of Saint Thomas à Becket, 179 Tradition, 399 Trade, Board of, 474 Tread-mill, 186 Treason, new laws of, 268 Trial by Jury, 185 Troops, foreign, brought to quell the people, 212, 387 Tower, the, 374 Turner's History of England, 139

Unitarian, the, a question put to, 202 Usury, 206, 403

Veto, the, 94 Vidame, 273 "Virgin Queen," the, 295 Virginia, 390 Visitation of Monasteries, 159

Wages of the labourer, 465 Warwick, the Earl of, 282 Walsingham, Francis, 299, 319 Wallis, Sarah, 380 Ward, Sir P., 370 War with France, 254, 399 -- a, no Popery, 400 -- cost of a, 401 Warwick, Duke of Northumberland, 215, 219, 220 Wat Tyler, 453 Watson, Mr. Joshua, 1, 17 Watt, 386 "Waust improvements," 467 Waverley, 183 Wealth of England, 454 Weeding, price of, 465 Wellesley, the Marquis, 446 -- Mr. Henry, 380 Wentworth, 360 Whethampsted, John, 133 Wheat, the price of, 465 White, Mr., 463 Whigs, 424 Wiltshire, 478 Wine, the price of, 465 Winchester, Bishop of, 126 William III., 375 -- triumphs over James, 395 -- insists on having the Crown to himself, 398 -- goes to war with France, 399 -- act of the 5th year of, 401 -- creates the Bank of England, 401 -- why supported in England, 407 -- taxes in his reign, 412 -- his parliament, 415 Willow, the, 300 Wilford, Sir T., 331 Witaker, 107, 306, 312, 319, 349, 359 Works, good, 329 Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, 185 Writers of England, France and Italy, number of, 34 Wykham, William of, 124

Yearly Meeting of the Quakers, 88 York, Duke of, 392

Zuinglius, 200

GLOSSARY

Of obsolete words, or words used in an obsolete sense

Corrody A free allowance of meals or food, provided by a monastery to various dependants, or the clients of benefactors. Swaddler A Protestant Impropriated Of tithes: assigned to some person or body other than the parish clergy. Bridewell A prison Score Twenty pounds weight Draff Spent grains from brewing, used as cheap animal food

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND

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