The substance of the official note of Monsignore Brancadoro is, 1. That his Holiness is thankful to the British government for the relaxation of the penal laws to which Catholics had been so long subjected, and for any other acts of liberality or kindness conferred on them. 2. That the Irish prelates, whilst manifesting their gratitude for the favours they had received, should prove, by their conduct, that it was not through a feeling of self-interest, or through hopes of temporal advantages, that they inculcated on their flocks the necessity of obedience to the laws and the conscientious fulfilment of the duties of good citizens; but that they did so through a spirit of religion, and in conformity with the dictates of the gospel. 3. That to prove how sincerely they were animated with those feelings, the Irish prelates should refuse the proffered pension, and continue to act and support themselves as they have done for the past, thus giving an example of Christian perfection which would not fail to give general edification. The second letter is also from the secretary of Propaganda to Father Concanen, and is dated 25th of Sept., 1805, in which year Dr. Milner had just brought under the notice of the Holy See some new projects of government interference with the Catholic clergy, which had lately been introduced into Parliament by Sir John Hippisley, at that time a supporter of Emancipation, but who afterwards gave proofs of a great desire to enslave the Catholic Church. In the second letter Monsignore Brancadoro states the apprehension felt by the S. Congregation, lest the moment of the Catholic triumph should prove the one most dangerous to the purity and stability of the Catholic religion since the Reformation; that it would be no injustice to suspect the British Government of being influenced by designs to that very effect; that the Bishops should, therefore, as a general principle, renounce all idea of advancing their own proper interests, or of securing any temporal advantages, lest through human frailty they should inadvertently be surprised into any concessions which in course of time might prove injurious to the interests of religion. The Secretary then goes on to say that the S. Congregation found serious difficulties, more or less, in all the plans which, as Dr. Milner had reported, had been proposed by the statesmen of the day in England. These plans were:—1. The pensioning of the clergy. 2. State interference in the nomination of Bishops. 3. The restoration of the Hierarchy in England. 4. The concession to the ministry of the right to examine the communications which might pass between the English and Irish Catholics and the Holy See.