154 UNEQUAL RETRIBUTION. and when closing the insidious page, I loo ed forward to the proceedings of a higher and a juster tribunal than that which awards so unequal a retribution to him who singly murders with a pike, and him who by wholesale murders with a pen: that dooms the poor, ignorant, untaught, deluded peasant to infamy and a halter, while it recompenses the intellectual, refined, deluding Poet with fame and a pension. RETROSPECTION. 155 LETTER VIII. THE WORKINGS OF POPERY. ALTHOUGH, perhaps, too late to be instructive to this generation, it is painfully interesting to look back upon the subtlety and skill that wove a snare for our expediency-loving rulers. Man may meet man in his own strength, moral or physical; but when Satan buckles on his infernal weapons wherewith to assail the individual or national allegiance of those who profess to serve God, nothing but the shield of faith CAN resist him. That shield had been upheld during the life of our believing king: but now he was gone, and full justly did the enemy calculate on the advantages afforded to him by a relaxed and powerless grasp. Like the symbolical Britannia of our coinage, we rested upon the shield, more as a matter of display than of use; and so left the bosom bare to every shaft. Our enemies know well, though we do not always admit it, that the insuperable barrier to the domination of Popery in these realms, is the Established Church, so 156 THE IRISH CHURCH. long as its ministers hold the pure, high doctrines of uncompromising Protestantism, set forth in all her creeds and formularies. As yet, it had not occurred to the invisible head of the Antichristian confederacy to make good a lodgment within these defences; or rather I ought to say he had not permission so to do until the Church, represented in the legislature by her chief pastors, and out of it by a number of her officiating ministers, had acquiesced in the abominable act of national apostacy. The Church of Ireland was far less guilty in this matter than that of England: among her really spiritual clergy I do not think she numbered three Emancipators; and let it ever be remembered how the beloved Archbishop-the last of Tuam's Archbishops even to the fatal day of that surrender lifted a solemn protesting voice among the Peers. At the time of which I now write, the increasing spirituality of the Irish clergy, bearing its natural fruit in increased love for the souls of men and zeal for Christ's cause, presented an alarming obstacle in the way of those who might fearlessly have advanced through a host of "dumb dogs," sleeping at their posts, as the predecessors of this generation too commonly did. Hitherto they had found only the name and form of a Protestant Church to oppose them; now the living reality started up in their path, and they must remove it ere success could be hoped for. Hence the anti-tithe war, the first alarm of which was openly sounded in the parish, and the first sanguinary onset menaced against the house, wherein I was a guest. What a contemptuous, SATANIC DEVICES. : 157 yet alas! what a just estimate must the earthly leaders of this evil work have formed of the blind infatuation possessing the rulers of our political destinies! Regarding them as ready-made fools, they proceeded accordingly to take advantage of their folly and for this we can only account by remembering that the whole movement was directed by one who has had six thousand years' experience in such matters, and who knows that when the kings of earth, from Adam downwards, cast off the bond of obedience to the King of kings, ruin to themselves and to all that appertains to them, will surely follow. He saw that hallowed bond loosening, until a touch might sever it: then he, who believes and trembles, took a devilish advantage of those who believed not and were fearless. Against the established church a violent outcry was raised, a furious onslaught conducted, by those who avowedly aimed at revolutionizing every thing: therefore and thereby they whose object it was to avert such revolution were to be convinced that the outpost so fiercely attacked was a hindrance, not in the way of the assailants, but of the defenders of the citadel! Would any human intellect have grasped at such an enterprize unaided by Satan himself in the plenitude of his infernal sagacity? I think not. Yet it did succeed, so far as man was concerned. The means of defence extended to the clergy were wholly inadequate from the beginning of the fray; and as it advanced those means were by all possible contrivances curtailed and withdrawn, Knocktopher was the known point of attack, 158 COLONEL LINDSAY. and how was it guarded? A handful of policemen occupied a retired post nearly two miles distant; and when the hostile demonstrations became incessant, and much blood had been shed, a small detachment of military was stationed somewhat nearer. Kilkenny contained 24,000 most devoted Romanists, with about 800 Protestants, many of them so only in name; the spirit manifested there was most turbulent, and many daring outrages were perpetrated; yet to garrison this important town, and to protect the whole country round, from hosts of armed and disciplined rebels, that invaluable officer Colonel Lindsay had only his gallant Highland regiment, the 78th, on its peace establishment. Little note is now-a-days taken of such services as Colonel Lindsay rendered; but the poor hunted Protestants of that country will not soon forget his wisdom, vigilance, and zeal on their behalf. He disposed his small force with admirable judgment, so far as it could possibly be be made to extend; and often did he take his departure from head-quarters, carelessly saying he was going to pass a day or two at Desart, at Mount-Juliet, or other neighbouring seats where he was ever a welcome visitant; when few besides those who met him on his rounds suspected that the gallant soldier passed his nights in the saddle, scouring the perilous country, and keeping watch over those who were marked for destruction. I have no doubt on my mind that Colonel Lindsay was personally, in a very high degree, instrumental in checking the operations of those who, watchful for harm as he was for good, knew his proceedings and |