the coign of vantage assumed for
the slaying of your enemy. Like General Jackson, the Irish are
Stone-wallers, but in another sense. They have brought the Art of
Murder with Safety to its highest pitch of perfection. They are the
leading exponents of mural musketry.

A moderate Unionist said:--"To speak of tolerance in the same breath
with Irish Roman Catholicism is simply nonsense. You will not find any
believers in this theory among the Protestants of this district,
although being more numerous they are not so much alarmed as the
unfortunate residents in Romanist centres. We cannot believe anything
so entirely opposed to the evidence of our senses. A Protestant farmer
of my acquaintance, the only Protestant on a certain estate, has
confided to me his intention of leaving the district should the bill
pass, because he thinks he could not afterwards live comfortably among
his old neighbours. A woman who had occupied the position of servant
in a Protestant family for forty years, recently went to her mistress
with tears in her eyes, and said her clergy had ordered her to leave,
as further continuance in the situation would be dangerous to her
eternal interests. A girl who had been four years in another situation
has also left on the same plea. The progress of Romanism is distinctly
towards intolerance. It becomes narrower and narrower as time goes on.
This is proved by the fact that formerly dispensations were granted
for mixed marriages--that is, Catholic and Protestant--on the
understanding that the children should be brought up, the boys in the
father's faith, the girls in the mother's. All that is now changed,
and dispensations are only granted on condition that all the children
shall be Roman Catholics. The absolute despotism of the Catholic
clergy is every year becoming more marked. They rule with a rod of
iron. A bailiff of my acquaintance who had paid all his clerical dues,
was very badly treated because he was a bailiff and for no other
earthly reason. No priest in Ireland would perform the marriage
ceremony for his daughter, who actually went to America to be married.
She was compelled to this, the bridegroom going out in another boat.
The ceremony being performed, they returned to Ireland, and the girl's
father assures me that the affair cost him fifty pounds. The case of
Mrs. Taylor, of Ballinamore, was a very cruel one, which a word from
the priest of the district would have altogether prevented. But that
wo