ate and condition of this wretched country.
Perhaps there is not in the world so hideously a penal code of laws
as that which appertains to the civil and religious rights of our
unfortunate Roman Catholic countrymen. It is not that this code is
fierce, inhuman, unchristian, barbarous, and Draconic, and conceived in
a spirit of blood--because it might be all this, and yet, through the
liberality and benevolence of those into whose hands it ought to be
entrusted for administration, much of its dreadful spirit might be
mitigated. And I am bound to say that a large and important class of the
Protestant community look upon such a code nearly with as much horror
as the Catholics themselves. Unfortunately, however, in every state of
society and of law analogous to ours, a certain class of men, say rather
of monsters, is sure to spring up, as it were, from hell, their throats
still parched and heated with that insatiable thirst which the guilty
glutton felt before them, and which they now are determined to slake
with blood. For some of these men the apology of selfishness, an anxiety
to raise themselves out of the struggles of genteel poverty, and
a wolfish wish to earn the wages of oppression, might be pleaded;
although, heaven knows, it is at best but a desperate and cowardly
apology. On the other hand, there are men not merely independent, but
wealthy, who, imbued with a fierce and unreasoning bigotry, and stained
by a black and unscrupulous ambition, start up into the front ranks of
persecution, and carry fire and death and murder as they go along, and
all this for the sake of adding to their reprobate names a title--a
title earned by the shedding of innocent blood--a title earned by the
oppression and persecution of their unresisting fellow-subjects--a
title, perhaps that of baronet; if I am mistaken in this, the individual
who stands before you in that dock could, for he might, set me right.

"In fact, who are those who have lent themselves with such delight to
the execution of bad laws? of laws that, for the sake of religion and
Christianity, never ought to have been effected? Are they men of moral
and Christian lives? men whose walk has been edifying in the sight of
their fellows? are they men to whom society could look up as examples of
private virtue and the decorous influence of religion? are they men who,
on the Sabbath of God, repair with their wives and families to his holy
worship? Alas! no. These heroic persecuto