bind up the wounded spirit; but cold, prudential maxims, with which they have no concern, however well-intentioned, are but cruel taunts. Their duty and their privilege is not to be careful, but to be believing.

A third principle, more generally avowed and more entirely at variance with the spirit of the gospel than either of the former, is this, that the objects of Christian charity are those who merit it by their virtuous conduct. Hence the phrase 'deserving persons.' Hence the force of the word ungrateful,' in drying up the streams of benevolence.

Surely it is not for the undeserving and ungrateful, who receive freely, to give by a scale of merits and thankfulness: For him whom grace has enriched with the ten thousand talents of spiritual blessings, to claim any return for the hundred pence of earthly necessaries: For the sinful to expect goodness, and the pardoned innocence.

"Freely ye have received, freely give," "that ye may be the children of your Father that is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." "For he is kind unto the unthankful and the evil."

APRIL, 1840.

2 A

L. L.

HAS IRELAND DONE HER DUTY?

MY DEAR MADAM,

I AM really ashamed to address you on the subject of my present letter; for indeed it would be more necessary to cool than to fan the flame of your ardour for Ireland: but the certainty that one at least will read with partial attention what I write, encourages me to proceed.

I have—I need not say where or when-but I have heard it whispered, murmured, and publicly stated, that Ireland should support her own institutions, and should both support, educate, and evangelize her own poor. It is not enough for some zealous friends, whose hearts are overflowing with love to God and man, to cry out at such language as cruel and uncharitable; nor for others to maintain that some one or two institutions are well deserving of British support. The question should not be dropped by the friends of Ireland, as unworthy of serious attention, nor should it be discussed on individual grounds, nor dealt with as a matter of feeling; that money is stolen which is obtained from the feelings, while the judgment is opposed or undecided. We should inquire, Has Ireland a just and rational claim on the benevolence of British Christians? It is the more necessary to sift this question, as I find the Irishmen who have settled in England, ashamed of their country's wants, and tired perhaps by her im

portunities, are the first to cry, Ireland has not done her duty; she is well able to support herself;' and their testimony must be regarded by multitudes as final.

Ireland has not done her duty; who ever was so silly as to maintain she had? Ireland, as a nation, is just as far from doing her duty as any nation can well be. As far as idolatry is from devotion, murder from charity, and political and private iniquity from uprightness, so far is Ireland from doing her duty. But the Protestants of Ireland, the landlords and upper classes, have not done their duty: who ever asserted they had? Whose balls are the most brilliant in the circles of the metropolis? Whose horses the swiftest at Newmarket, and the boldest at Melton Mowbray? Whose equipages the most dazzling at Rome or Naples? And whose soirées the most brilliant and recherchées at Paris? In all these points it must be confessed that the landlords of the starving, neglected, naked, superstitious tenantry of Ireland hold a proud pre-eminence; and it often happens that in proportion to the misery of the tenant is the splendour of the absentee landlord. If every landlord took full and Christian care of his own estates, we should not have to solicit any aid, except the blessing from on high on their labours of love. But not only are we thus deprived of our great landed proprietors, but every one that in trade realizes anything above mediocrity immediately flies off, and, either in England or on the continent, spends what he earned here, and deems himself at once separated from Irish claims and duties. The 'Ireland,' then, respecting which the question is, Has she done her duty? comes to signify the few re

sident Protestants of her upper classes. Respecting them I am ready to say confidently, They have not done their duty. Witness the long list of Protestant lady-patronesses of every Popish charity. Protestant benevolence, so called, fills the coffers of the Sisters of Charity, and sends them forth not only to confirm poor Romanists in Popery, but to harass and ensnare the sick and dying Protestants. Protestant liberality builds Romish chapels, holds plates at their charity sermons, and labours to ornament and strengthen the Beast. We too have our high political Protestants who boast of the cause, but mock at every attempt to convert the Romanist, and barely countenance exclusively Protestant charities: while we have our due and full proportion of the worldlyminded and avaricious, the selfish and the carnal, who may perhaps approve what is right, but who in all ages of the church have been slow to make the slightest inroad on their personal convenience. This portion of Irish society has not, I confess, done its duty; but I would be glad to know in what age or country that portion of society has done its duty. Whenever, therefore, we appeal to the fashionable, the dissipated, pleasure-loving, Popery and infidelityloving, selfish or covetous portion of English society, they may very well say to us, Go to our fellows in your own country, they are quite as well able to assist you as we are, and not more unwilling. But I rather think that those who repeat the truism'Ireland has not done her duty,' mean something very different; even that those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, have talked and begged, but have not given; but are, with all their zeal and all their profession, sadly deficient in Christian economy,

Christian self-denial, and consequently in Christian liberality. Now as this is a national question, I shall not apply myself to individual instances of self-denial or liberality, because one hundred individual cases might be splendid exceptions to the general rule of self-indulgence and profusion. I shall not therefore enter the kitchens or the cellars of my friends on either side the Channel, or attempt to tear their head-dresses to pieces; although I think I might shew that the measure of expense, taking class by class, the noble with the noble, the landed proprietor with his fellow, and so downwards, that the habitual measure of expense, not among the pious only, but almost universally, is with us far below what it commonly is with you; and that Christians here frequently practice a measure of self-denial rarely thought of elsewhere.

Passing, however, this comparision as invidious and inconclusive, I will proceed to consider the relative position of that portion of the public, from whom alone societies for the spiritual benefit of this country can look for assistance. Persons coming from England are struck by the large proportion which religious characters bear to the whole society; but this arises from their regarding the Protestants exclusively as the society contemplated: for if we include the entire population in our view, we shall find them to be but a remnant indeed. A pious Englishman going, for instance, to a town blessed with a gospel ministry, is agreeably surprised to find a well-filled church, where the truth is faithfully preached to an attentive congregation. His introductions are to pious or well-disposed persons, and he thinks religion is greatly flourishing there. But let him transfer