ON PERSECUTION.

breaks against the English power, that of 1640 was probably the most passionate and most vindictive. In that rebellion, one Englishman of distinction was exempt from the hostility that attached to his race. He was treated with the most respectful and even affectionate deference, and when he died, he was borne to the grave with all the honors the rebel army could afford. That Englishman was Bishop Bedell, the counselor of Sarpi and of De Dominis, and the founder of proselytism in Ireland.¹

Such was the spirit that was displayed by the Irish Catholics in the midst of one of their most ferocious outbreaks; and surely no one who is acquainted with the history of Ireland since the Union The Acts of Union 1800, which joined the Kingdom of Ireland to the Kingdom of Great Britain. will imagine that the repeal of the persecuting code has in any degree mitigated their zeal. While their influence in the State has been immeasurably augmented, while their number has increased with a rapidity that was only broken by the frightful famine and emigration that more than decimated their ranks, the sectarian spirit that actuates them has become continually more conspicuous. It may indeed be truly said that Ireland is now the only civilized country where public opinion is governed, not occasionally

¹ The very curious life of Bedell, by his son-in-law Alexander Clogy, which was written in 1641–2, and which formed the basis of the narrative of Burnet, was printed from the manuscripts in the British Museum in 1862. We have an amusing instance of the uncompromising Protestantism of Bedell in the fact that when the insurgents who held him prisoner gave him permission to perform the Anglican service freely with his friends, he used that permission to celebrate the thanksgiving for the 5th of November Guy Fawkes Day, a commemoration of the failure of the Gunpowder Plot..