• A. D. 755. This year, Cynewulf, with the consent of the Weste Saxon council, deprived Sebright, his relative, for unrighteous deeds, of his kingdom, except Hampshire; which he retained until he slew the alderman who remained the longest with him. Then Cynewulf drove him to the forest of Andred, where he remained, until a swain stabbed him at Privett, and revenged the alderman, Cumbra.

The same Cynewulf fought many hard battles with the Welsh ; and about one and thirty winters after he had the kingdom, he was desirous of expelling a prince called Cyneard, who was the brother of Sebright. But he having understood that the king was gone, thinly attended, on a visit to a lady at Merton, rode after him, and beset him therein ; surrounding the town without, ere the attendants of the king were aware of him. When the king found this, he went out of doors, and defended himself with courage; till, having looked on the etheling, he rushed out upon him, and wounded him severely. Then were they all fighting against the king, until they had slain him. As soon as the king's thanes, in the lady's bower, heard the tumult, they ran to the spot, whoever was then ready. The etheling immediately offered them life and rewards, which none of them would accept, but continued fighting together against him, till they all lay dead, except one British hostage, and he was severely wounded. When the king's thanes that were behind, heard in the morning that the king was slain, they rode to the spot, Osric his alderman, and Wiverth his thane, and the men that he had left behind; and they met the etheling at the town, where the king lay slain. The gates, however, were locked against them, which they attempted to force; but he promised them their own choice of money and land, if they would grant him the kingdom; reminding them, that their relatives were already with him, who would never desert him. To which they answered, that no relative could be dearer to them than their lord, and that they would never follow his murderer. Then they besought their relatives to depart from him, safe and sound. They replied, that the same request was made to their comrades that were formerly with the king, “ And we are as regardless of the result," they rejoined, “ as our comrades who with the king were slain.” Then they continued fighting at the gates, till they rushed in, and slew the etheling and all the men that were with him, except one, who was the godson of the alderman, and whose life he spared, though he was often wounded. This same Cynewulf reigned one and thirty winters. His body lies at Winchester, and that of the etheling at Axminster.'

Mr. Ingram has bestowed great labour on the present publication. To an enlarged and greatly amended original text, he has added, besides a well executed translation, valuable notes and a large collection of various readings. He deserves the thanks of his countrymen for undertaking the task, and we trust that he will find other opportunities of employing his knowledge and ability in the illustration of our Saxon antiquities.

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[61] Art. V. 1. Bible Society in Ireland. A full Account of the Pro

ceedings at a Meeting held Nov. 9. 1824, at Carrick on Shannon, Ireland, between the Protestants and Catholics; for the Discussion of the important Question as to the Right of distributing the Scriptures among the Population of that Country. 12mo. Price 6d. 2. The Speak-out of the Roman Catholic Priesthood : or Popery unchangeably the same in its persecuting Spirit, and in its determined Hostility to the Circulation of the Scriptures: in a Report of the Proceedings at the Anniversary of the Carlow Bible Society, held 18th and 19th Nov. 1824. With a Preface, containing the Marks of Corruption in the Church of Rome, by the Admirable

Skelton. 12mo. pp. 84. Price 1s. WHAT is to be done with poor Ireland, -that most misgo

verned, benighted, distracted, infatuated country? If the island could but be floated away into the Atlantic a few meridians further west, it would be for the peace and comfort of these realms to let her govern herself. Or if Ireland were as far off as Canada, she might be more manageable. As matters are, however, Ireland is, and must remain, a part of this United empire, governed, ecclesiastically, by the United Church of England and Ireland; a state of things much like what Spain would present, if governed by the Church of Geneva. Hence arises the great difficulty. To preserve the Church Establishment, that

immense revenues inviolate, when not one fourteenth part of the Irish population belongs to that Church,-to perpetuate a most flagrant public robbery for the sake of vested rights and state patronage,-is the one simple object of all the penal laws, Orange Societies, university petitions, and other efforts, parliamentary and unparliamentary, that have been had recourse to for the purpose of quieting the Irish. This is the real difficulty with which the Aministration have to contend. Lord Eldon knows it, and Mr. Canning knows it; but Mr. Hume first ventured to let out the secret to the public. Session after session, the Catholic Question, as it is termed, came on for grave debate, and the friends of Emancipation renewed their annual panegyrics on the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and tried their utmost to cajole the House into a good opinion of Popery; and Mr. Peel and his friends were heard maintaining, in reply, the expediency of adhering to the good old system-at least for the present.' But all this while, not a hint was dropped on either side about the tithes and church estates. The one party, petitioning for a boon, said not a word about the real grievance; and the other party, in refusing that boon, gave every reason but the true one.

But can any person doubt that ecclesiastical emancipation is what the Roman Catholics really seek? And what does such emancipation mean,

to say,

but the restoration of their fallen church to its pristine splendour? If there is a member of the House of Commons who dreams that the Papists will be satisfied with any thing short of this, he must be one of the simplest representatives of the national wisdom that ever obeyed the call of the division bell. Who are they in Ireland that chiefly excite the clamour for Emancipation, but the priests,-the class whom all the concessions would benefit as little as they would conciliate. The abrogation of all the penal disqualifications would leave the priest just where it found him, stiil exposed to the mortification of seeing his flock fleeced by the heretics, while he, the true shepherd, is obliged to live on potatoes and sour milk. But will the laity be satisfied with Emancipation ? Will five millions of emancipated Catholics be more willing to have their money taken from them to build churches with for half a million of Protestants ? Will the Church appear to them less in the character of an oppressor, than it did before ? If not, it is a delusion to represent the peace and safety of Ireland as hinging merely on the Catholic Question. The evil lies much deeper.

We by no means intend to urge these considerations as making altogether against the Catholic claiins. For, in the first place, the substantial justice of those claims is not affected by the sinister views or ulterior expectations of the Irish Catholics themselves, It forms no reason for not performing an act of national justice, that the parties may possibly not he satisfied with the award. Ireland claims the fulfilment of the conditions of the Union, to which the national honour is pledged: it is a very poor excuse for a flagrant breach of faith, to turn round and say ; You are a set of rascally Papists, and we cannot trust you, now we have taken you into our political embrace. The character of Popery and that of the Irish Papists, were surely as well known in 1801, as they are in 1825. And yet, we believe that many persons once warmly in favour of the Catholic claims, have of late become adverse to any concessions to the Irish, because they have only just now made the discovery, that Popery is the same that all history attests it to be, a monstrous system of fraud, superstition and cruelty. The late proceedings in Ireland, the menacing attitude taken by certain Irish demagogues, and the determined hostility manifested by the priesthood against the progress of education and the circulation of the Scriptures -have, we have reason to think, converted a vast number of emancipation-men to Mr. Peel's way of thinking; have, as they would say, opened their eyes, which, assuredly, must have been spell-bound before. They shudder at trusting such men with power. We rejoice that their eyes are opened to the evils and dangers of Popery; and it will be a

most happy result of the proceedings alluded to, should Protestants in general be roused from their criminal apathy and supineness. The English Government have been instrumental in setting up Popery in every part of the continent of Europe. Lords Liverpool and Eldon have assisted in putting power into the hands of the French Papists, the Sardinian Papists, the Neapolitan Papists, and the Spanish Papists, and the Pope bimself, with the entire acquiescence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and every other primate and prelate of the United Kingdom except one; and now do we affect to be afraid of Popery at hoine? Truly, Popery is not a worse thing in Ireland, than it is in Spain; nor could it ever have become dangerous to us as existing so near home, had we not, as a nation, assisted in restoring its political ascendancy abroad.

The danger of Popery has always been considered as arising principally from the ecclesiastical subjection of Roman Catholics to a foreign jurisdiction,- from the political relations of the Romish clergy. Now, if ever Popery should become formidable in Ireland, through the operation of foreign support or foreign influence, whom shall we have to thank but the statesmen who have raised up for Papal Ireland, powerful allies in the Pope, the Jesuits, and the Bourbons ?

But the question before the nation is, not whether we should set up Popery in Ireland, as we have in other countries, and put power into the hands of the Irish priesthood, as we have into those of the Spanish monks, but whether Parliament should persist in withholding from five millions of our fellow subjects,-from five sevenths of the Irish nation, the common rights of citizens ;- whether there is either wisdom, equity, or sound policy in perpetuating injurious restrictions and disqualifications, which afford no real security to the Protestant interest, but which strengthen the hands of the Romish priesthood, and under which Popery has flourished and increased in Ireland to a portentous extent. That these disqualifications have powerfully contributed to that increase, is the opinion of the best informed Irish Protestants. There can be no doubt that they are one main source of the odium attaching to the Irish Establishment, and they furnish the disaffected with not merely a specious topic, but a substantial ground of complaint, Those disqualifications, in fact, tie the hands of Government more than they do those of the Papists. The question is not, whether the Roman Catholics of Ireland are to be trusted with office, but whether Lord Eldon and the rest of his Majesty's privy council can be trusted with the liberty of employing them. The original design of the Test Act, it is well known, was to impose fetters on the royal prerogative, to curb the exe

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cutive. To represent the disqualifying statutes as any barrier against the progress of Popery, is idle in the extreme. They have not stopped the progress of Dissent in England, nor is it in the nature of things possible that they should check the growth of Popery in Ireland. What earthly purpose then have they answered, but that of perpetuating the most impolitic party distinctions between Papists and Protestants, and superadding a sense of injury to religious animosity in the minds of the great body of the nation ?

Were this immense barrier to conciliation removed, the Irish priesthood, as we have already remarked, would remain in precisely the same predicament as before : they would not be benefited in any respect, but they would be deprived of the advantage attaching to the ministers of a persecuted faith. They would not be satisfied, but they would be, at least on one point of just complaint, silenced. There are the best reasons in the world for not giving the Church of Rome, as a Church, the least portion of political power. It always has been, it always will be, an intolerant and, where it has the power, a persecuting church. Power is what, no doubt, the priests sigh for-ecclesiastical power; and that is just the one thing which no wise Government would ever concede to them in

any form or measure whatsoever. They long to see their Church again lifting her mitred head in the high places of the State,—to recover their alienated cathedrals, and benefices, and endowments; and that hope, they ought to be unequivocally and energetically told, they shall never see realized. Every sincere Irish Catholic must wish to see his religion re-established in that country; and, according to Paley's doctrine, his expectation is most reasonable. • If,says that Writer, the • dissenters from the establishment become a majority of the * people, the establishment itself ought to be qualified or al• tered. The Roman Catholic Dissenters are not a majority of the united kingdom; but, in Ireland, they are an immense majority. But for the Union then, it would seem, upon Paley's principle, that the Roman Catholic ought to be the established religion of Ireland, as it is that of Canada. Leaving the advocates of ecclesiastical establishments to dispose of that difficulty, we would say to the Irish and to the English Catholics : As men and as subjects, we recognise your claim to all civil immunities in common with ourselves, but your Church, equally with that of Constantinople, or that of Mecca, is incapable of alliance with a Protestant government;-an establishment within these islands you never shall have. Think not that political intrigue shall ever compass such a measure. Should half His Majesty's privy council turn Papists, and a