of our national guilt, the prevalent idolatry is countenanced and supported by our government.  The Protestant members of the Houses of Lords and Commons have sworn before God and the country that Popery is idolatrous; our Queen, at her coronation, solemnly made a similar declaration,—­yet, all have concurred in passing a Bill to endow a college for training priests to defend, and practise, and perpetuate, this corrupt and damnable worship in this realm.  The ink wherewith the signification of royal assent was given to that iniquitous measure was hardly dry when the fatal rot commenced its work of destruction; and as the stroke was unheeded, and there was no repentant effort to retrace the daring step of the first iniquity, but rather a disposition to multiply transgression, we are now visited with a second and a severer stroke of judgment."[307]

The Rev. Hugh M’Neill preached a “Famine” sermon in St. Jude’s, Liverpool, and published it under the title of “The Famine, a rod;” a rod that was meant to scourge England for tolerating Popery, of which he said:  “That it is a sin against God’s holy law to encourage the fables, deceits, false doctrines, and idolatrous worship of Romanism, no enlightened Christian—­no consistent member of the church of England can deny."[308] “She [England] is fondly anticipating, as the result of generous concession, that she shall witness Roman Cooperation in general Liberty!  Alas, for the Romans!  With equal reason might she expect the Ethiopian to change his skin, or the leopard his spots.  With the rich and responsible inheritance of an open Bible before her, and with free access to the illustrations of authentic history, this absurdity is England’s sin, England’s very great sin.  There can be little doubt, that except repentance and amendment avert the stroke, this will prove England’s plague, England’s great plague, England’s very great plague."[309]

It may be urged that the Rev. Hugh M’Neill is a man of extreme views.  Be it so; but his extreme views seem rather to have advanced his interests than to have offended his superiors, for he is now Dean of Ripon.

Let us hear another and a very different stamp of man.

“I don’t know whether I have mentioned before,” writes Charles Dickens, “that in the valley of the Simplon, hard by here, where, (at the Bridge of St. Maurice over the Rhone), this Protestant canton ends and a Catholic canton begins, you might separate two perfectly distinct and different conditions of humanity, by drawing a line with your stick in the dust on the ground.  On the Protestant side, neatness; cheerfulness; industry; education; continual aspiration, at least, after better things.  On the Catholic side, dirt; disease; ignorance; squalor; and misery.  I have so constantly observed the like of this, since I first came abroad, that I have a sad misgiving, that the religion of Ireland lies as deep at the root of all her sorrows even as English misgovernment and Tory villainy."[310]