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 forciblymaintained 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 destructive 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 statechurches-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 country, as originating in a conviction, that the existence of the present, or of any state-connected Church, but especicially the existence of the present, must be the

and, as

greatest obstacle to the national regeneration of Ireland. Were the people of this country not disorganized by sectarian feuds, they would be strong enough to effect that regeneration. But the State-Church, or politico-religious garrison planted by England amongst us, to gain a part of the inhabitants to support her unjust ascendancy by enabling them to plunder and oppress the rest, and to divide all in the name of religion, must first be rooted out-for then, and not till then, can all sects be perfectly equalized -as such, united among themselves united among themselves, able to regain that national independence, which England, through their domestic discord alone, either was able to deprive them of, or is able to withhold from them. Till the two cats in the fable disagreed about the cheese, the monkey was not able to come in and reconcile their differences by taking it all to himself. And, if Catholics and Protestants were as united in 1800 as in 1782,-which, but for the causes of division, springing from the existence of an Established Church, they must have been, we well know what little chang

there would have been, of the monkey transfer of our domestic legislature to the other side of the Channel.

With respect to the verses at the commence

ment of the volume, the author ventures to hope, that the very small proportion which they bear to the rest of the book, and the fact of their having been copied, in several instances, by others, from the sources through which they originally appeared in print, may be deemed at least some excuse for their being thought worthy of collection in the present shape. Even, on such trifles, various opinions will of course be formed, though none, he trusts, except as to the writer's political principles, from any thing that may appear in those few passing effusions,originating, like all productions of the kind, from mere impressions and circumstances of the moment, as different at different times as the dates of the respective pieces. Thus, it will be seen, as well from the date of November, 1836, to the song on the Temperance Society, as from the various allusions which it contains, that it could not have been the author's design to ridicule that great moral reformation produced in the national habits by the invaluable exertions of the Rev. Mr. Matthew, whose success, in such a noble cause, may be regarded by Irishmen as the strongest test, as the surest precursor, that still "greater things shall they do." The song in question was written at a time when the Temperance Societies were looked

b