disgusted and shocked at reading Croly's account of the scandalous conduct of the Catholic clergy in Ireland, with regard to the emoluments they extort from their miserable flocks, and at the systematic desecration of holy things which they countenance and practise; but when the difference is considered between their spiritual condition and their moral composition as a class, the conduct of the clergy here appears just as revolting. The Irish clergy are generally sprung from the lowest class, and have received a bad education at Maynooth; they depend for subsistence upon the voluntary liberality or devotion of their people, they have few motives or principles of restraint, and every incentive to follow the shameful course which they do; but the English clergy are generally respectably born, well educated, and amply endowed, and yet they are content to be the ministers of a scandalous system, which, if it were not a source of profit to themselves, they would not tolerate for an instant. Instead of compelling the Dissenters to be married in church, if they had been really penetrated with any devotional feelings, or by any considerations of delicacy and charity, they would long ago have complained of this necessity as a grievance, and besieged the Legislature with entreaties to relieve the Church from the scandal, and themselves from so painful and odious a duty. But it was a badge of inferiority and dependence forced upon the Dissenters, and a source of profit to themselves; and therefore they defended and maintained it, and this is what they call defending the Church; and when the Dissenters themselves pray to be relieved from the tax and the humiliation, and liberal men support their prayer, a cry is got up that the Church is in danger. When the Dissenters, having prayed in vain, grow louder and bolder in their demands, and the cries of the Churchmen gradually sink into a whine, which is at last silenced in submission, the Church really is in danger; and then, when it no longer can be refused, it becomes perilous to grant the boon which justice and wisdom have so long required. So it is, and has been with all obstinate and senseless denials, followed by reluctant and tardy concessions--with Catholic emancipation, the Test and Corporation Acts, Parliamentary Reform, and with everything else; and thus, one of the great difficulties which beset Peel and his Government is, that they stand in an utterly false position. As a statesman, it must be mortifying to him to reflect that all the great measures which his political life has been spent in opposing have been carried in spite of him, and that whatever danger may have resulted from this cause is in great measure owing to the opposition he was enabled, by his great talents and his influence, or rather the influence of the party which he led, to give to those measures. He contrived totally to fail in preventing the success of the measures themselves, but so to mar and delay them