ey's remarks apply
exclusively to the Protestant clergy. Of the state of the Catholic
Church and clergy he had no knowledge, neither had he any interest in
obtaining information. His account of the Protestant clergy who had been
intruded into the Catholic parishes, and of the Protestant bishops who
had been placed in the Catholic dioceses, we may presume to be correct,
as he had no interest or object in misrepresentation; but his
observation concerning the neglect of the sacrament of baptism, may be
taken with some limitation. When a religious revolution takes place in a
Catholic country, there is always a large class who conform exteriorly
to whatever opinions maybe enforced by the sword. They have not the
generosity to become confessors, nor the courage to become martyrs. But
these persons rarely renounce the faith in their hearts; and sacrifice
their conscience to their worldly interest, though not without
considerable uneasiness. In such cases, these apparently conforming
Protestants would never think of bringing their children to be baptized
by a minister of the new religion; they would make no nice distinctions
between the validity of one sacrament and another; and would either
believe that sacraments were a matter of indifference, as the new creed
implied, or if they were of any value that they should be administered
by those who respected them and that their number should remain intact.
In recent famine years, the men who risked their spiritual life to save
their temporal existence, which the tempter would only consent to
preserve on his own terms, were wont to visit the church, and bid
Almighty God a solemn farewell until better times should come. They
could not make up their minds to die of starvation, when food might be
had for formal apostacy; they knew that they were denying their God when
they appeared to deny their religion. It is more than probable that a
similar feeling actuated thousands at the period of which we are
writing; and that the poor Celt, who conformed from fear of the sword,
took his children by night to the priest of the old religion, that he
might admit them, by the sacrament of baptism, into the fold of the only
Church in which he believed.

It is also a matter of fact, that though the Protestant services were
not attended, and the lives of the Protestant ministers were not
edifying, that the sacraments were administered constantly by the
Catholic clergy. It is true they date their lette