honourable public recantations of two individuals. There ought by this time to have been thousands more; but, to their true fame, the two shall be recorded in this place *. The first is that of the Rev. Mr. Brown, in his speech at the meeting in Exeter Hall, Feb. 15th, 1832, for the Promotion of Scriptural Education in Ireland. After having observed that that wayward country had of late been wooed with coaxing and coquetting, with conces⚫sion and conciliation,' this respectable and eloquent Presbyterian minister adds-' And what, my Lord, has 'been the consequence of all this? I do take deep 'shame to myself, because I, in common with many others, was a strong and staunch advocate for that great " measure of conciliation, though I have seen cause to repent of what I have done—I say I have seen cause to ' repent of that, and I avow my error, in this place, pub'licly.'-Hodges's Report, p. 48. The next honourable declaration to the same effect is that of the Earl of Limerick, in his place in the House of Lords, Monday, the 9th of April, 1832. Having professed himself to have been an advocate of emancipation, and adverted to the oaths and declarations of the party to be benefited, the noble speaker asks-' And what was now 'the result? He would venture to assert, that there was not one of those oaths, not one of those declarations, which had not been falsified. He lamented, and with sorrow lamented, the course he had pursued on the Catholic question, and he thought it more manly now to come forward and avow his regret.' Those among the patrons and advocates of the measure, who have omitted this honest and manly course, may be thus classified : 1. Those who have continued perfectly silent upon the subject. 2. Those who have availed themselves of the safe, but * Lord Castlereagh, on the 25th of May, may be added. rather presumptuous, refuge-how much worse would it have been, if the bill had not passed! But who made them prophets?-prophets of an event contrary to fact! 3. Those who, particularly on the hustings at elections, continued ostentatiously and boldly, (in manner at least,) to congratulate the nation on the accomplishment of the great measure. But the shout has gone on diminuendo, through the whisper of a faction, till it has reached the repose of almost absolute silence. The nation seems devoted to its career of presumed liberality. There are two cases in which those who have no other liberality are often liberal-they are liberal of what is not their own; and they are liberal of what they do not value. This principle, connected with the natural tendency to idolatry of all kinds, will perfectly account for the present degraded state of the national conscience and conduct. In the pursuit of a visionary and delusive amelioration, the nation has even already made a considerable progress in real slavery. We have, perhaps, escaped the judgment of falling into the hands of Him whose mercies are great, to incur the heavier, but richlydeserved one of falling into the hands of those who will possibly show that even their tender mercies are cruel. The dominant faction and their main supporters have, by almost every expression of indifference and antipathy, turned their backs upon God. They have got rid of the religion, not of one question only, but of all. And now we stand upon the brink of a fearful anarchy: sedition is encouraged and preposterously punished by the same authority: every Christian institution is marked out for proscription: public violence is suggested and virtually invoked a reign of intimidation and unprincipled despotism is established and in operation: the times have returned, when princes are to be bound with chains, and nobles with links of iron, although not by saints; and Y libels of rampant atrocity against the dignity of the crown itself triumph in connivance and assured impunity. The shafts of venal malignity have not spared even the illustrious and exemplary partner of royalty; nor indeed is it a matter of much surprise, that the champion of one queen of one character should be the calumniator of another queen of an opposite character*. The extremes of society are now for the first time combined in a common insurrection against religion and even morality, against loyalty and the reign of law. All the foun⚫dations of the earth are out of course:' and it may be asked with anxiety, 'If the foundations be destroyed, 'what can the righteous do?' The pious king has given his and our answer- The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord's throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men'-and what follows in that appropriate Psalm, the eleventh. This is our only remaining hope and consolation. There are some righteous-some unseduced, among us; and God, whatever a class among us may think or wish, has not forsaken the earth. See THE TIMES Newspaper, The manner in which this journal has systematically allowed itself to deal with truth is beginning to procure for it an important portion of its due reward-perfect and unlimited distrust. |