I cannot add more. May the Lord, for his righteousness' sake, bring the souls of his faithful people out of trouble!-(Psalm cxliii. 11.)

I am,

Madam,

Faithfully, affectionately yours,

M. A. S.

[We are placed in rather an embarrassing situation; called on by one dear friend to pass judgment upon what has been said by another friend, truly valued, and respected,-and that too on a subject so intensely interesting to us, that it is difficult to take a calm survey of the matter. Our impression is this: that Mr. Seymour cordially concurs in the view taken by M. A. S.-that he is as far from being tainted with the spirit of unholy compromise as any man; and that, in his own person, he would, by the grace of God, tread boldly in the steps of those who have not counted their lives dear unto them in the con-. test with Antichristian Rome. But we can deeply sympathize in the peculiar trial which proved too painful to be longer sustained by him, and to which he so beautifully adverts in the passage quoted by M. A. S.

To one whose cottage observation has been confined to the independent, unfettered, denizens of this fair England, whose privileges she has set forth in the very spirit of that freedom, so glowingly described, it is hard to convey a correct representation of the state in which our poor Irish fellow subjects live, nominally under the same protecting laws, but really under a thraldom so complete as to render the very name of liberty a mockery. Commit

an act of aggression against the English labourer, he presently summons you before the nearest magistrate, states his complaint, producing his ready witnesses, alike uninfluenced by fear or favour, and teaches you that the charter of his freedom is no dead letter. But alas! let the utmost violence of persecution assail the poor Irishman, under the secret sanction of that power in comparison with which all other authority is but an idle breath,—and he has no redress. Even should he venture on an appeal to the recognized laws of the country, which, among the multitude of his friends and neighbours who may have witnessed the wrong, shall dare to step forward in the proscribed and death-doomed character of an 'Approver?' Or, if such be found, willing to become the mark of deadliest vengeance, what magistrate can be expected to award a righteous judgment in the face of such a compact, consistent, well-digested mass of PERJURY as is ever at the beck of him who numbers among his upholders the priest of the parish, or any influential adherent of the Romish Church? It is not very long, since a bench of Protestant Magistrates convicted a quiet, inoffensive and pious man of an assault on a popish priest, where the only charge attempted to be proved as constituting that assault was the quoting of a text from scripture: while the acknowledged fact that the same priest had from his altar exhorted the people to hunt, stab, and drown the scripture reader, for bringing the word of God to their wretched cabins, did not even call down from the aforesaid magistrates a rebuke; much less a dismissal of the absurd and infamous complaint. And this occurred in the very same county of which Mr. Seymour

speaks, in his valuable letter to the Bishop of London.

Thus helpless, thus succourless, thus mocked with the boast of laws that avail them nothing, and exposed to fiery visitation of the hand which once kindled the blazing fires of Smithfield for our English martyrs, the poor cottagers of unhappy Ireland present a picture of slavery as abject, as abhorrent to every Christian feeling, as the yoke which England has been shamed into breaking from off the necks of her negroes, and which America is more fiercely rivetting on hers. The messenger of truth enters the Irish cabin, and finds himself surrounded by a little bare-legged family, smiling in his face their artless welcome, pressing on him the rites of such hospitality as their wretched abode can afford, and reverently listening to the "good words" that he reads or addresses to them. But alas! what a back ground does that touching picture presenthe sees, in somewhat more than imagination, in all the reality of human certainty, the consequences of a public release from their spiritual bondage. He hears the thundering anathema denounced from the idol altar of pitiless Rome--he marks the averted eye of neighbour, kinsman, friend--the refusal to interchange any act of social intercourse, or indispensable barter-the taunt, the menace, the ulterior blow of murderous violence. He beholds the clubs and stones raised to batter the father's devoted head -the lighted turf introduced beneath the thatch, where the wife and children lie trembling; or, as the sole way of escape from such horrors, he sees them sallying forth, fugitives and vagabonds over the land, and with a MARK upon them too, that authorizes whosoever meets them to slay them.

It is with feelings of bitter grief, of most burning indignation that we pen these lines. Shame, shame to England, that thus it should be! Shame to the false and hollow profession of Protestantism, that leaves without a cloke for their sin those who can so connive at the undisguised, the blazoned, the rampant dominion of blaspheming merciless Rome over the souls, the bodies, the possessions, the daily bread of the poor! Yes, we have still a church, (thanks to the Christian liberality of individuals) whose ministers are appointed and commissioned to proclaim to the poor of Ireland the glad tidings of the gospel of Christ: yes, the King of England, God bless him! has enrolled his name, and the Queen of England has added her name, in the record of those compassionate individuals, who will not yet allow the ministers of that gospel to starve to death at their posts. But oh, what a crushing responsibility rests on them, who, having the power, will not use it, to protect the poor destitute creatures, when they venture to receive the message of peace so dishonestly sent to their cabins! The pious minister feels, "A necessity is laid on me; yea woe unto me if I preach not the gospel!" but he feels as poor weak flesh will do ; and while himself prepared cheerfully to welcome any cross in his Master's cause, he does, he must shrink from the dreadful picture of that utter ruin which must overwhelm the whole family, if but one among them should dare openly to forsake great Babylon, and to follow Christ.

It is quite evident, that out of much anguish of spirit Mr. Seymour wrote the passage in question: but he wrote it as furnishing a fearful proof of the manner in which the souls of his poor countrymen

are bartered for a little political countenance afforded by their priests and demagogues. The bare fact of his becoming self-exiled from the spot, shews that the mental struggle was no longer endurable. For ourselves, what we, by God's grace have done many a time, that, by the same grace we are prepared to do again, even in the darkest regions of popery, to proclaim Christ crucified, and exhibit Antichrist enthroned to convict the poor papist of idolatry, to shew him the doom of idolators; to contest the point even with an enraged priest, beside the death-bed of a trembling convert: and, far harder than this-to nerve the trembling believer for the fiery contest with the awful admonition, the rich promise of Him who has said, "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me." "Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." ED.]