under Philip II., Holland from the time it threw off the Spanish yoke to the French Revolution, Portugal before and after it cast off the same yoke, and Prussia down to the French Revolution. Concluding induction from the whole of the preceding facts, that Ireland is entitled to, would be able to attain, and can only ex- PREFACE. THE following pages contain a few selections in verse and prose, the compilation of which was first suggested by the casual perusal, during a winter's residence in the country, of an allusion, in the Quarterly Review,* to two political and literary Societies, with which the author of this volume connected himself, at a period of life, when those who have not been under the necessity of adopting a regular profession or business devote their time to dissipation or intellectual amusement. Of this latter mode of spending some hours that might have been worse employed, the verses in the work are specimens. A desire of correcting the errors in the Quarterly respecting the political objects of the Societies alluded to, and the admission by such an eminent literary as well as politically-hostile periodical, that each of those Societies "exhibited public proofs that its labours were not frivolous or unproductive," suggested the idea, that a miscellaneous volume, like the present, might be of some use, from the light it would throw upon one of the most important portions of the agitation of the last few years; even independent of any additional service that such a publication might be made capable of rendering to the cause of voluntaryism in religion, and self-legislation in politics, without which there can neither be true Christianity nor real liberty in any country. Till each religion is left to support itself, and each nation is left to make laws for itself, there can be no such thing as justice; and there should be no such thing as tranquillity. The law, indeed, should not be violated; but it should meet with no more than See p. 111, note 3. a mere physical or prudential obedience-while the mind, or great primary moving power of the sect or the country subjected to such a twofold system of spiritual and temporal oppression as that of being taxed for another religion or legislated for by another nation, should be in a constant state of moral insurrection, which, as sure as the soul is superior to the body, and justice preferable to injustice, must, if only persevered in, be ultimately successful. In the postscript to the lines, entitled "Epistle of Dr. Southey, Poet Laureate and Author of the Book of the Church, to the Editor of the Parson's Horn-Book," an endeavour has been made to demonstrate the moral indefensibility of all such institutions as state, or forcibly-maintained Churches, by a combination of more clear and at the same time comprehensive reasons, than have, perhaps, been yet presented in so concise a shape. These reasons have been prefixed to the account of the Comet Club, as constituting the principles on which that body, in the Horn-Book and Comet, diffused, in 1831, that general spirit of active or really working hostility to the Irish Church and tithe-system, which was so long and so formidably successful; and which, though recently reduced to a sort of calm, by a parliamentary arrangement disapproved of by the writer of these pages, will, he hopes, never be suffered to expire by the friends of Irish liberty, and the admirers of the ecclesiastical system of primitive Christianity, till the complete legal extinction, or application to generally-useful purposes, of that impost of blood-stained decimation, so long extorted, in the insulted name of religion, by the minority from the majority, and by the rich from the poor, upon no authority more sacred than that of the statute-book, and by no means more suitable to the doctrine of "peace on earth" than horse, foot, and artillery. In speaking thus, however, the author neither is, nor has ever been, actuated by any feelings of low and illiberal, or mere sectarian prejudice against the Church of England. for which, next to his own, or the Catholic Church, he has the greatest respect. Regarding religion as a matter of authority and feeling far more than of mere reason, or, more properly speaking, than of that which the mass of wrangling dabblers in theology think to be reason; hating polemics, morally, as being more destruc-▾ tive to the main test of Christianity, or the general exercise of kindness towards one another, than beneficial to any particular sect; detesting spiritual squabbles and the mania of proselytism, politically, as being the cause of that disgraceful discord amongst Irishmen, which has led to the provincial debasement and consequent misery of their common country; and, in fine, having the same aversion to wound the mind of another by an attack on his religious belief, as to inflict pain on his body by a blow; the author has endeavoured to state his views on the subject of voluntaryism, in a manner which he hopes will prove him to have been more qualified for handling such a topic-or treating it according to the arguments suitable to persons of every religious belief, since all must be affected by the existence of such institutions as state-churches-than if he were capable of assailing the existing Establishment for the mere object of putting another Church into its place. As a layman, contented with his own creed, and willing to leave others contented with theirs, he cannot accuse himself of having been influenced, in any thing he has written, by the slightest feeling of bigotry against the Irish established clergy, for whom,-drawing a due distinction between the men and the system, he always advocated the payment of a life-provision, equal to the value of the ecclesiastical income proposed to be taken from them. He is opposed to the Establishment solely on moral and political grounds. -the moral, involving the principle of justice in general, as springing from a belief that no one should be forced, either in this, or in any other country, to pay for a religion from whose doctrines he dissents--the political, including the principle of justice in particular, with regard to his own |