rovinces; in all which places the people are
Catholics; they have received the highest praise from travellers and
writers for their industry; their thrift; their cleanliness; Charles
Dickens saw all this, but it never occurred to him to credit their
religion with it. When the contrary occurs, and when fault is to be
found, Popery, like a hack-block kept for such purposes, is made
responsible, and receives a blow. He had, indeed, a sad misgiving that
the religion of Ireland lay deep at the root of her sorrows. Surely this
is enough to try one's patience. We have passed through and out-lived
the terrible codes of Elizabeth and James and Anne and the two first
Georges, under which, gallows-trees were erected on the hill side for
our conversion or extinction; we have even survived the iron heels and
ruthless sabres of Cromwell's sanctimonious troopers; and we can go back
upon the history of those times calmly enough now. But this "sad
misgiving" of Mr. Dickens; this patronizing condescension; this
contemptuous pity, is more than provoking. It is probable he had not the
time or inclination to read deeply into Irish history, but he must have
had a general knowledge of it more than sufficient to inform him, that
there were causes in superabundance to account for the poverty and
degradation of our people, without going to their religion for them.
Instead of doing so, he should have confessed with shame and
humiliation, that his own countrymen, for a long series of years, did
everything in their power to destroy the image of God in the native
Irish, by driving them like beasts of chase into the mountains, and
bogs, and fastnesses, and over the Shannon. Our people suffered these
things and much more for conscience sake; inflicted, as they were, by
Mr. Dickens's countrymen, in the name of religion; in the name of
conscience; in advancing, as they pretended, the sacred cause of the
right of private judgment. _He_ makes Popery responsible for the
results.

Those who held that Popery was the real cause of the potato-rot were
influential, if not by their numbers, at least by their wealth; so they
set about removing the fatal evil energetically. Large sums of money
were collected, and a very active agency was established throughout the
West of Ireland for this purpose; with, it would seem, very
considerable success. But whilst those engaged in, the work, maintained,
that the conversions were the result of instruction and enlightened
i