which I have, within these five years, visited, I thought it expedient, openly from this place, to state this opinion; hoping that iny judgment being founded not upon secret whisperings or private communications, but upon the solemnity of public trials and the authenticity of criminal records, may have some weight towards suggesting the expediency of resorting to other means of tranquillizing Ireland, than those hitherto resorted to banishment, the rope, and the gibbet. These expedients have been repeatedly tried; and have, by the acknowledgment of those who have used them, hitherto proved ineffectual. And here I must intreat, that I may not wilfully be mistaken and purposely misunderstood by any man or class of men. I mean not to question in the slightest degree, the prudence of the Irish government in introducing, or the wisdom of the legislature in enacting, those laws; they may be suitable (for any thing I know to the contrary) to the existing state of things in some of these counties, where the discharge of my public duty has not yet called me. In others, although it may not be immediately necessary to put them into active operation, the notoriety of their existence in the Statute Book may be a wholesome warning to the turbulent and audacious. But having, in addressing you, taken occasion to give you my opinions upon different subjects (the statement of which, however erroneous those opinions should appear to be, may produce some good, by soliciting the attention of the enlightened men in both countries to the same subjects), I feel myself more especially called upon

by a sense of public duty, to say a few words to you upon the scope and objects of these Bills-I say more especially called upon, by reason of those important, though contradictory publications, in the Wexford Journals now laid before me, and to which I have already adverted. Whence that contradiction of sentiment could originate, between persons resident in the same county, and having (one would imagine) equal opportunities of information, it is not for me to conjecture; but its indisputable existence in the months of March and April last (subsequently to your last Assizes), calls upon me briefly to explain to you the purport of those Acts, which some of you may deem it expedient to call into active operation. With one of those Acts you have had a former acquaintance. It is the old insurrection Act, which, after having perished, is now revived and re-enacted for Ireland. The other is called the Peace Preservation Bill. The Insurrection Act consists, as you all know, of a complete suspension of the English Constitution-of English law-of the Trial by Jury. Under these new laws, taken together, any seven magistrates may meet, and recommend the county or district to be proclaimed by the Lord Lieutenant as being in a state of disturbance. When the Proclamation has once issued, every person must stay at home after a certain hour. You are to have the assistance of a learned Serjeant from town, who may send abroad offenders in a summary way.

Gentlemen, I have seen times, when persons, who thinking the lives named in their tenants' leases were lasting somewhat too long,

have, by the aid of such a law, found means to recommend a trip across the Atlantic, to the persons thus unreasonably attached to life; and thus achieved the downfall of a beneficial lease, and a comfortable rise of their income in consequence. Such things have occurred: I have known the fact.

Gentlemen, I may be told, that the state of the country requires its re-enactment. It may be so: I am not in possession of the secrets of the Castle. A desperate state of things calls for desperate remedies. Gentlemen, the other Act of Parliament is the Peace Preservation Bill. It is a wholesome mode of administering the old powers, already vested by law in the magistrates. Any seven magistrates may recommend the application of this remedy; and either for the county at large, or any particular barony or district in the county. If their recommendation should be acceded to by the Lord Lieutenant, this Bill comes into immediate operation. Now, you are to meeta head magistrate is to be appointed, at a salary of 7001. a year; he is also to have a house and offices -his clerk is to get a salary of 1501. a year-the constables are to get 1001. a year each; any seven of your magistrates may get all this done. But listen to one thing more-the disturbed district is to pay the expense of the whole.

Gentlemen, I have trespassed long upon your attention; but I hope, from the tranquil state of your county, that I have not unaptly chosen the present season for making these observations. See the necessity of some public discussion of those subjects, in order to extinguish all exaggeration and

travel far back for a curious instance. I have seen to my surprise, in The Courier newspaper, a story of myself, which has been copied into The Pilot. It is so very short that I shall read it ::-"Such is the disturbed state of Ireland, that one of the Judges of Assize, upon the Leinster circuit, Mr. Justice Fletcher, in coming from Kilkenny to Clonmel, was pelted by stones in the town of Callan, and owed his safety to the dragoons that escorted him."

When I reached Waterford, I was still more surprised to see one newspaper lamenting that I had been "shot at," but another protested that it was all a gross falsehood. Now, what was the truth? As I passed through Callan, an escort of a few dragoons attended me. This escort, by-the-by, is one of the mischiefs of those alarms, a mischief which never occurs in England. There, the Gentlemen of consideration in the county come out to meet the Judge, with led horses and equipages, and with every suitable mark of respect and attention: not, indeed, paid to the Judge individually, nor desired by him, but an attention and respect due to the law, which the Judge comes to administer. But what was the case in Kilkenny? The High Sheriff not appearing at all, perhaps as a duty beneath him, or for some other reason; the SubSheriff unwilling enough to be burdened with the trouble, and anxious to get rid of us; two or three miserable Bailiffs, mounted upon wretched little horses, brandishing an enormous length of halbert, resembling so many Cossacks in every thing but utility,

doctrines of Grace, Faith, Justification, Sanctification, and Predestination go, these several points were called after him Calvinism. He became the great doctor of his age. O le grand homme! il n'y a ancien à comparer à lui. Il a si bien intendu l'escriture. Solus Calvinus in Theologicis: exclaims even Joseph Scaliger.

Whether Calvin was so great or good a man, as it was the fashion of the times to consider him, making no part of our inquiry, it is not necessary to deliver an ex

CAMBRIDGE.

doctrines maintained by him were those taught in England as the

University.

This, perhaps, might be the place for considering theological literature: but, however interesting, it would introduce more controversy, and must be more multifarious than suits our brevity: besides, theological matters will be Occasionally interspersed throughout this history, and in some measure, have been anticipated already; the less, therefore, need be introduced here; the leading theological doctrines, on which the Reformation of the sixteenth century turned, being the same as those taught by Wickliffe, in the fourteenth, These doctrines being those afterwards maintained by Calvin, in his Institutions, concerning the knowledge of God the Creator," and "the knowledge of God the Redeemer," have been since called Calvinistic. For though Calvin's Institutions contain but little new, yet, being a judicious compilation of St. Augustine's works, so far as the

and, of course, were the theolo gical doctrines of the University of Cambridge.

The Reformed, at first, or the pretended reformed, as the French Catholics used to call them, almost all favoured the doctrines of Calvin, and prided themselves in having as good a uniformity as the Church of Rome itself, that had taunted them with having no regular, uniform belief. They accordingly published a concord of Faith, a Corpus Confessionum: these being all Calvinistic, and the confession of the Church of England being one among them, it follows, that the Church of England was, at the time, Calvinistic. To this may be added, what Mr. Collins says, und with truth, in a discourse of freethinking, "that our priests, for many years, after the Reformation, were generally Calvinists or Predestinarians, is evident from the Bibles printed in queen Elizabeth's time, to which are often added an apology for predestination, answering the com

mon objections of Atheists, Deists, Socinians, and Libertines, against the saving doctrine of the Gospel; from the suffrage of the divines of Great Britain, delivered by them to the Synod of Dort, March 16th, 1619, as the sense of the Church of England; where the five points, as they are called, are all determined on the Calvinistical side, agreeably to the decisions of the holy Synod; and lastly, from all their books, to the time of bishop Laud." The writers differed about Episcopacy and Presbyterianism; but, in general, they agreed about Predestination.

That this was the doctrine taught at Cambridge, appears not only from the general tenor of the writings of their divines, at the Reformation, but more particularly from the decisions in particular controversies, that were afterwards agitated in the University, and from several letters among the English MSS. in the public library written at the time of the Reformation, at Cambridge; among which might be noticed those of Bradford the martyr, Cranmer, and Ridley, all of whom were of Cambridge, and all of whose writings breathe Calvinism. Indeed, at the time alluded to, Freewillers were persecuted as heretics.

From the time of Archbishop Laud, in the reign of James I. the theology of our universities took an Arminian turn. There is no evidence, indeed, that James himself ever made a formal renunciation of his Calvinistic creed; but it was his interest to elevate the Arminians: so Arminianism gained ascendancy at Cambridge; and continued to do so through successive reigns: but, further, who

ever peruses the above Discourse on Freethinking, by Mr. Collins, and Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whistou, written by himself, (both men of learning themselves, and of Cambridge,) will see abundant proof, that, be the public creed in an university what it may, men of learning will often choose to have a creed of their own; and that philosophy and mathematics have a tendency to swerve from strict Orthodoxy. Nothing is more certain, than that many of the learned men of Cambridge have not shaped their conceptions to the creeds of either Calvin or Arminius: but the general theological literature of the place may be referred to the five points, as they are called, according to the theories of one or other of those doctors. For the last century, Free-will has decidedly triumphed: accordingly, Tillotsons and Sherlocks, &c. became their favourite divines. The writer, who more professedly and clearly stated the five points, according to the system of the Arminians, or Freewillers, is Dr. Whitby, who flourished in the middle of the last century and this must suffice for the Theological Literature of Cambridge.

UNIVERSITY OF CHARKOW.

From Klaproth's Travels in the Caucasus and Georgia, translated by F. Shobert.]

Charkow has become better known abroad in consequence of the university founded there by the present emperor; but this measure does not seem to have rendered