Note A. "Some officers of the garrifon urged Lord Lucan and Lord Gallmoy, the commanders of the Irish army, to break off the treaty, alleging that they could now raife the fiege, which would give fuch fpirits to the Catholics, and fo deprefs the befiegers, that they might yet recover Ireland; and the more fo as they were certain of more aid from France. What was the reply of Lords Lucan and Gallmoy? They faid they confidered them. felves pledged in honour to deliver up Limerick and Ireland to the Proteftants; and they did fo, depending on their faith and truth to preferve inviolate the rights of the Catholics under the articles."Mr. Keogh's Speech at the Catholic Meeting, 08. 31, 1792. Note B. A Letter from Dr. BUTLER, Titular Archbishop of Cafbel, to Lord KENMARE. My dear and honoured Lord, Thurles, December 27, 1786. 1 am not a little impatient to impart to your Lordship my thoughts on a late publication, entitled, "The prefent fate of the Church of Ireland." It is written by Dr. Woodward, Bishop of Cloyne; and, in the fhort fpace of twelve days, has already paffed through four editions. Whoever has feen the Addrefs to the Nobility and Gentry of the Proteítani Church, and reads this Second Pamphlet, cannot but look upon them as both defigned to undo all that has been done in favour of Roman Catholics; as they tend to undermine the primary title the Roman Catholics had to the protection of government and the confidence of their fellow-fubjects. The unjuft and false stricres his Lordship makes on the fincerity of the oaths of the Roman Roman Catholic Bishops, concur to effect this in the minds of those who can or will be impofed on by what his Lordship fo confidently afferts. For certainly, if the oaths of the Roman Catholic Prelates can no more be depended on, all claim to a legal existence for us in the state ceafes. We are all defigning and most dangerous enemies: like the viper in the fable, we only fought the warmth of protection to gnaw the bofom which gave the reviving heat. His Lordship, to establish and enforce what he advances with regard to our oaths, by fome new argument which, from not having been used before, had never been blunted by the fhield of truth, brings forth a letter of a Monfignor Ghilini, Nuncio at Bruffels, written in the year 1768, from amidst the dust of oblivion, where it would otherwise have, as it deferved, remained till doomsday; notwithstanding the most ftrangely mifapplied encomiums beflowed on it by Dr. Bourke: encomiums, which I know, from the letters the faid Nuncio wrote to me, before I left the Continent, expreffive of his own alarmed feelings, after cool reflection, on the impropriety and indifcretion of faid letter, he would have willingly fpared the Doctor. Nothing, to be fure, but an enthufiaftic partiality for fcholaftic opinions, which Dr. Bourke, perhaps, had formerly, when profeffor, defended, (as fome Ultromantanists have done, to their reproach and the difcredit of religion, with as much warmth of debate as if thofe opinions had been acknowledged Articles of Faith, which they were fupporting against unbelievers) can any way extenuate Dr. Bourke's imprudence, to call it by no harfher name, in publishing fuch a letter. The Doctor should have reflected, that the opinions alluded to by the Nuncio, however unnoticed they may be fuffered to pass in a country like Italy, where the Sovereign and all the fubjects are of the Roman Catholic religion, they cannot be confidered in the fame light in this kingdom, whereof the King and principal fubjects are proteftants, and two thirds, at least, of the inhabitants are of our communion. Here fuch opinions, if maintained, could not but be prejudicial, by alarming the Sovereign, and becoming a conftant fource of jealoufy and diffenfion betwixt fellow-fubjects.-This, I recal to mind, was what I alleged to Cardinal Marefuschi, who was, at the time the oath was propofed, our Cardinal Protector, (that is, as your Lordship knows, the Cardinal entrusted by his Holiness with the superintendance of our ecclefiaftical affairs in Ireland), as a reafon why the Roman Catholic bishops thought themselves called upon to declare, in the public manner they did, that they found nothing in the test of allegiance, held out by the legislature to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, contrary to the principles of the the Roman Catholic faith; and, therefore, that the opinions dif claimed by that oath never made part of our creed. The Cardinal, in his anfwer, expreffed the fullest approbation of my fentiments; which approbation of his Eminence was afterwards confirmed by the Pope and the Congregation de Propaganda Fide, approving alfo of the faid teft of allegiance: of all which approbations I have authentic vouchers by me; the very letters written on the occafion to and from the Sacred Congregation. I fhewed thefe letters to Lord Pery, when he was Speaker of the House of Commons, at Sir Robert Staples's, and 1 fhewed him again, in Dublin, another letter which I received from the fame Congre gation, two years after, expreffive of their Eminencies' thanks for my diligence in fulfilling what I owed to my station and religion, fince the time I canie into the kingdom Now, my dear Lord, I hope I may venture to say, without rifking the imputation of vanity or falfehood, that I was moft particularly warm and active in promoting the taking of the Teft Oath, after I had publicly approved of it at the head of my Suffragans, in the year 1775; an era which I always called to mind with new felt pleafure; and confequently, the approbation of my conduct, during all that time, was of itself, had I no other proofs of the Congregation's having approved the Teft, tantamount to an ap probation. Lord Pery, when I fhewed him that letter of the Congregation acknowledged it was; fo did his Grace the Primate, when I had the honour, on being introduced to him by your Lordship, to mention it to him. But that nothing might be wanting, in our power, to confign the letter of the Nuncio to eternal oblivion, and that no one of our people might be ever affected by it, We, (I mean the Roman Catholic Prelates of Munster) in a meeting we held, at Thurles, foon after the one near Cork, in 1775, paffed our decided cenfure upon the Hibernia Dominicana and its Supplement: which cenfure we, indeed, at first, fignified only to our clergy; not thinking it prudent to make known to the people a work of the stamp of the Hibernia Dominicana; which, from its being written in Latin, and bearing a title which was not likely to attract the attention of those who understood that language, would, as I faid before, in all probability have remained for ever unknown to them. Our cenfure was well known at Rome, without being confidered there, in the fmalleft degree, obnoxious to the Holy See. The original, fubfcribed to by the bishops, I providentially kept by me; not knowing but the time might. come, when fome one or other would, through ignorance or falfe zeal, profit of a difcovery of the Nuncio's letter, and pake, ufe of it as a proper weapon to give what he might think * 13. 14. Geo. 3. c. 3. the the deadly blow to all our fond hopes of protection and confidence from government and our fellow-fubjects. My appre henfion of fuch an event, your Lordship fees, by Dr. Woodward's work, was not groundlefs. At the fame time, had I not fuch a formal and avowed condemnation to produce, the letters from the Sacred Congregation and the Roman Catholic Bishops of the whole kingdom after the most mature deliberation, approving the Teft, whereby they folemnly declared, in the face of the whole world, their disbelief and abhorrence of the opinions alluded to by the Nuncio, was more than fufficient to obviate the ill-grounded infinuations his Lordship of Cloyne has held forth. For a As a public and formal anfwer will, I hope, be given to his Lordship of Cloyne's Strictures, I'll leave to the writer thereof (that I may not fpin out this letter to an unneceffary length) to enlarge more fully on what I here only sketch out. public anfwer muft be given. The consciousness of our inviolable attachment to our oaths of allegiance; our lively fense of what we owe to our facred characters; our fincere wish to promote and preferve that long defired mutual confidence, which had happily begun to warm and link in focial union the minds or perfons of different perfuafions, call on us to repel, in the most earneft and public manner, any attempt to undermine what cannot but be most precious to us. The author of the public reply to his Lordship's strictures will not fail, I am confident, to paint in the most pathetic manner what our feelings must be, on feeing ourselves traduced as we are to the public; and that by the very Bishop to the neighbourhood of whofe diocefs 1 and my Suffragans, the Roman Catholic Prelates of Munfter, had speedily repaired, to oppofe, as far as in us lay, with our united efforts, in the morning of thefe troubles, the unwarrantable attempts made against ecclefiaftical authority. His Lordship may be alfo more clearly informed by him of the nature of a Nuncio's commiffion, with regard to the Roman Catholics of this kingdom: his Lordship will find it quite different from what he reprefents it; and that fo far are a Nuncio's fentiments from being looked upon as decifions of the Church, that Roman Catholic Bishops have diffented, and may diffent from the Roman Legate, without apprehenfion of guilt in all that does not affect the established principles of faith and chriftian morality. In the letter alluded to. your Lordship cannot but have obferved, the Nuncio gives only his own nations; which, ftrange as they appear, can be eafily accounted for, in one, who being educated in the Pore's dominions, and being his public Ambassador, may, from too warm a defire of aggrandizing the temporal power of his Sovereign, extend too far the prerogatives of his fpiritual jurif diction. As to the oath taken by the Roman Catholic Bishops at their confecration, and printed in the Roman Pontifical, which Dr. Woodward brings forth as an auxiliary proof how little our oaths of allegiance are to be depended on, I fhall juft obferve, that his Lordship has entirely misconceived both the intention and words of the oath. A little reflection would have made his Lordship fenfible, that faid oath is by no means inconfiftent with the fubject's allegiance to his Prince; that Sovereigns as jealous and tenacious of their rights as Sovereigns. can be, permit faid oath to be taken by the Roman Catholic Bishops in their dominions: which they evidently never would confent to, but would, on the contrary, ftrenuously oppofe, if they could think it infringed in the leaft on their rights, or paved the way to papal encroachments. It is well known this very oath, of which Dr. Woodward fpeaks, is taken by all the Bishops confecrated in France, Germany, Spain, and in all the different kingdoms and republics on the continent -The Bishops of the republic of Venice all take it. Fra. Paoli himfelf, in his warm Defence of the Rights of the Venetian Republic against the claims of the Court of Rome, (a work Dr. Woodward cannot be a ftranger to), never points out to that jealous Senate the oaths taken by Roman Catholic Bishops at their confecration, as affording a ground to fufpect their fealty to the state. This oath was even taken in Holland, under the eyes of the States themselves, by the Pope's Vicar Apoftolic for that country, who muft generally be a Bifhop, and confequently conform to the Rubrics of the Pontifical, which he does without becoming obnoxious to the Dutch. The King of Pruffia apprehends no danger from it to his dominions, though he knows full well the Bifhops of Silefia, of whofe loyal fentiments he is more particularly interested in being fecure, take alfo faid oath at their confecration. Nay, the King of Great Britain, our most gracious Sovereign, whom may the Almighty long preferve, is no way alarmed at having a Roman Catholic Bifhop in Canada; being fully affured that a Roman Catholic Bishop in Canada will be as earnest to oppofe all papal encroachments as his confreres in England were in oppofing, (according even to his Lordship of Cloyne's acknowledgment, p. 48.) in the earlier days of the British empire, thofe of the Sovereign Pontiffs. For every difcerning perfon cannot but know, on the leaft reflection, that none of us, to make use of the very words of the great Beffuet, Bishop of Meaux, ever engage ourfelves by |