1 SUPPLEMENT TO THE CONNECTICUT COURANT. VOL. IV. • AUGUST 5, 1837. FROM THE LADIES' COMPANION FOR JULY. NO. 62. And humbly kneeling where his prayer arose MONODY TO MRS. SARAH L. SMITH. All night on Olivet? or with meek hand BY MRS. SIGOURNEY. This devoted Missionary, who died at Beyroot in Syria, in the autumn of 1836, testified in early lite the deepest regard for the Heathen, and turned from those gaieties that are wont to fascinate the young, to instruct a remnant of the tribe of Mohegan Indians, who have their residence a few miles from Norwich, her native city. So Syria hath thy dust! thou who wert born 'Mid the bright scenery of remembered years! As on a loathsome weed. Thine own fair halls And then Thy way was on the waters, and thy hand Of love and hope. But what were these to thee, Who ơn God's altar laid the thought of self, With prayerful incense duly night and morn? Culling from pure Siloam's marge a flower- MISGOVERNMENT OF IRELAND. I HAVE already mentioned several flagrant causes of the past and deplorable condition of Ireland-almost enough to account for its extreme physical and moral degradation, if no others could be specified. But unhappily other causes, of long and inveterate standing, are still in active, if not unmitigated operation. I believe it is not too much to say, that no Protestant government was ever so unwisely and oppressively administered, as that of Great Britain has been, over this ill-fated Island. If we except some very short intervals, it has been treated infinitely more like a conquer What were such thoughts to thee, when duty bade ed country, than a sister kingdom, ever Their crucifixion? Oh, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! and do I see thee there, Pondering the flinty path the Saviour trod, since the Reformation, as well as during the three preceding centuries. In reading over the history of the last three hundred years, it is surprising to see how much has been done to manacle, depress, and exas perate the native Irish; and how little to 'undo their heavy burdens,' to win their affections, and to elevate their moral, intellectual, and physical condition. If it had been the grand object of the British Crown and Parliament, to impoverish Ireland, and to perpetuate the bitterest hatred towards its protestant rulers, and cripple the noble energies of its native character, and exasperate its religious bigotry, into an incurable chronic inflammation, a more effectual course of policy, to compass these ends, could scarcely have been adopted and pursued. would much more effectually have promoted the object, which the British government, and under their influence, the Irish Parliament, professed to have in view.'These measures, it must be admitted, were not so severe as some enactments in the reign of Edward third, by which marriage between the English and Irish was forbidden, under the penalty affixed to high treason; and the forfeiture of lands, or imprisonment, if an Irish name, or the Irish language, dress, or customs, were adopted by their foreign masters; but the tendency was the same, to degrade and exasperati the people of Ireland; to blight their industry, and fetter their energies. I have admitted, that the presence, of a large standing army may now be necessary. to ensure the tranquility of Ireland; but if so, it is a terrible necessity, which has been created by long and grievous misgovernment; and for which somebody is answerable. I have spoken elsewhere, of the wholesale confiscation of the ancient Irish domains and estates, by Elizabeth and her more tyrannical father, which broke down the spirit of a sanguine and gallant people; and it would be easy to show, that half the subsequent reigns have been characterized by a cruel and and pitiful jealousy of Irish enterprise and prosperity. For the truth of this statement, let two or three examples suffice. So sensitively alive was the British government to the rivalship of Ireland, or to have been fully annexed to the British even in the mild reign of William and Mary, crown, ages ago. It never should have with regard to manufactures, that it di- been treated as a conquered province.- rectly interfered, to depress all those branches, which could in the smallest degree compete with those of England.While this hostility was directed most vehemently against woolen fabrics, even the manufacture of linens, which the English government professed to encourage, was suffered to languish, till formidable rivals had time to rise, both in England and Scotland. To prevent Ireland from rearing and fattening cattle, in the rich pastures near the Shannon, embargoes were laid on the exportation of Irish provisions! In short, Ireland was treated not only as a conquered country; but as a country so formed by nature, that if left to itself, it must unavoidably get the start of England.' To prevent this, she must be kept down, by the strong arm of the British Parliament. The reign of queen Anne, also, was disgraced by oppressive legislation towards Ireland-particularly by severe penal statutes against the catholics. It never seems to have occurred,' says a sensible writer, 'that excessive severity only tended to increase the bigotry and ignorance against which it was directed; and that mild measures, aided by endeavors to enlighten the Ireland ought, either to have been left 10 govern itself, as an independent kingdon. This is the certain way to degrade and ruin catholics, and adopted in the spirit of measures of their administration, the san charity, without a constant reference to thing, I have no doubt, might have bee the state of Ireland as a conquered country, accomplished, under their auspices. In long trodden her in the dust. POPERY IN IRELAND. word, had Ireland been governed with cry out, against the oppression which has so mildness and equity; had a spirit of industry and enterprize been encouraged; had her commerce and manufactures been early fostered and protected, as those of England were; had the Scriptures been given to the people, in their own tongue wherein they were born; had the Protestant religion been tendered to them by the law of love, instead of being forced upon them by the civil and military arm; and had they been taken at once to the bosom of the state, and invested with all the rights and immunities of the English subjects of the crown, who can doubt that their condition would have been infinitely better than it is now? But for two hundred years and more, after the reign of Elizabeth, they were kept off at arms' length. They were treated, not as subjects of the crown, but as vassals of English masters, rioting upon their paternal inheritance. The language of every governmental enactment was, We dare not trust you and we will not.' From generation to generation, they were trained up, not to be governed by good and wholesome laws, but by the bayonet. And what nation, or state, ever prospered under such a system as this? There has been a growing conviction, I believe, throughout Great Britain, for a half a century, that the system must be changed. Under this conviction, the act of union was passed in 1800. Under this conviction, Irish catholics were made eligible to seats in both houses of Parliament, in 1829, and under this conviction, other important measures are now in train-such as reforming the Irish corporations, settling an equitable commutation for tythes, and appropriating the surplus of the church revenue to the purposes of general education. In urging forward these measures, the present ministers, as it is well known, are strenuously and powerfully opposed, particularly in the House of Lords. What the issue of this great struggle will be, it is hard to tell. If the friends of Ireland prevail, and proceed to redress some other grievances, of which she justly complains, it will do more, in a short time, to consolidate the Union, and quiet the country, and promote its prosperty, and win over the catholics to the protestant faith, than could be accomplished by the old system, in a thousand years. Mr. O'Connel and Mr. Shiel, may push the claims of Ireland too far and too fast, perhaps; and they may be actuated by sinister motives; but they certainly have a right to This is, beyond all question, another great cause of the ignorance and wretchedness of the Irish peasantry. Popery, wherever it prevails, is a paralysis of the body politic-is an incubus, which presses with mountain weight upon the heart of a community, always threatening suffocation. Popery is also, the great usurper of the sacred prerogatives of conscience, and a despot over the whole empire of mind, whose mandates are as inexorable as they are arbitrary, from whose anathemas, there is no refuge, and from whose decrees there is no appeal, to earth or heav en. It is the enemy of all free institutions, the blight of public morals, and the ravisher of domestic purity. It is the parent of bigotry, superstition, fanaticism, and persecution, in their most heated and cruel forms. It incarcerates both soul and body in its foul prison houses; and allows no one to think and decide for himself, on the most important of all subjects. It stops up the well of salvation, with its cart-loads of relics and legends, and impiously snatches up the keys of the kingdom of heaven, as if it had power to open and shut the gate at pleasure. In one word, popery is the woman of the Apocalypse, sitting upon a scarlet colored beast full of names of blasphemy, arrayed in purple and scarlet color, decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations, drunken with the blood of the saints, and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, and having upon her forehead a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth. Such, as has been proved, a thousand and a thousand times over, is the true character of popery, where it has full scope to toss its seven heads and ten horns. Where this is not the case, its external manifestations are modified by circumstances; and even in those parts of the world, where it has revelled most in blood and pollution, some persons, no doubt, nominally belonging to its communion, have kept themselves free from the foul leprosy, and made their garments white in the blood of the Lamb. As the Romish church in Irela Ireland, has no power to wield either the civil or the ecclesiastical sword, she cannot, were she ever so much disposed, kindle the fires of persecution, and she is altogether too poor, to array herself in purple, and scarlet, and gold, and precious stones, and pearls. What she | When will she break the bonds of her spirwould do if she had the power, may be gath- itual thraldom, and come into the enjoyered from the following notes, to an author- ments of that liberty, where Christ makes ized edition of the Bible, now found in daily his followers free? Yours sincerely. use, in many of the houses of Roman Cath olics, in all parts of Ireland. [For these notes see article headed, "Doctrines of the Irish Roman Catholic Clergy," in our paper, of Feb. 4.] With the exception of Spain, and some of the Italian States, there is no spot upon the face of the earth, I believe, where the Catholic priests exercise a more despotic sway over the minds of the people, than they have done age after age, in Ireland. There is no spot, where the millions are more firmly wedded to their superstitions, and none in the whole world, where there is such a deep and hereditary hatred of protestantism, especially in that church whose symbols are most like its own. In spite of all the ecclesiastical patronage of the British crown, and all the efforts which have been made to convert the Catholics of Ireland, they have been rather gaining than losing ground, for the last hundred years, It may almost be said, that at no period since the reformation in England, has their numerical preponderance been greater, than it is at this hour. According to the latest and best authenticated estimates, the population of the island, may be put down in round numbers, Catholic, 6,500,000, Protestant, 1,500,000. Judging from the past, and even from the present, if we except a few scattered rays of light, which have quite recently shot across the gloom, it would be difficult to find six million and a half of people any where, in a more hopeless state of darkness and religious servitude. Such is Ireland-1. Fairest flower of the earth-2. Brightest gem of the sea. Such is the actual condition of that beautiful anomaly on the map of the globe, to which even the pauper clings, with more than filial affection, while he sings, Erin a vourneen-Erin a declish-O Erin a cashla machree. "Ireland I love thee-Ireland my darling-O Ireland, the veins of my heart are entwined around thee." Such is Ireland as God made her-but conquered, confiscated, exhausted to pamper her lordly masters, revelling in foreign cities-maddened by hunger and oppression-consumed by intemperance, and enslaved by an ignorant and fanatical priesthood: O, when will her wrongs be redressed, her hunger appeased, and her nakedness clothed? When will the deluge of fire cease to roll over her green fields? FROM THE EPISCOPAL RECORDER. THE STORM. AN AFFECTING STORY. It was a balmy evening in June, when an anxious and devoted wife sat before an open window, which overlooked part of a beautiful bay that formed the harbor of the seaport in which she resided. Her eye had never rested on a scene more lovely. The pure blue sky without a cloud, and the calm, clear water sleeping beneath it in its loveliness, like the baby boy that was pillowed on her own fair breast. But it was not the beauty of the scene that made it so attractive to her. Hers was not the delighted gaze of one whose feelings are all absorbed in the loveliness of nature. On the contrary, her anxious, eager eye told that she was not satisfied with the scene before her, though so fair; but she was looking for an object of greater interest than any that appeared. But not a speck was to be seen on the silvery expanse before her, and she turned away with a disappointed and heart-sickening feeling. Emma had looked forth many times in the day for several weeks on the same scene, sometimes as fair as now, and sometimes deformed by storms, for the ship which contained her dearest treasure. Sul the husband and the father came not, and her thoughts grew troubled and her heart sad, and now the tears fell fast on the dear face of her sleeping infant. But Emma was a Christian, and the sweet promise, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee," came over her spirit so soothingly, and with a power so divine, that her heart at once rested on the promise of her Almighty Father, and her perturbed and anxious feelings were hushed to repose. While she still sat at the window, her little boy of about ten years, ran into the room exclaiming, "O mother! dear mother, father is coming!" "What do you mean, my child?" said Emma, turning very pale. "Why look, mother! don't you see that pilot boat? Well, the men on board of ber say that the ship Anne is in the offing, and will be in the harbor before morning." "0 my dear boy," said Emma, tears of joy now filling her eyes, "what gratitude do we owe to our heavenly Parent! But are you sure, are you quite sure it was the vessel that contains your father?" "O yes, mother, the men say they could not be mistaken, and see, one of them is coming this way, - now I do believe, to tell you about it himself.' It was as William had conjectured; the man soon arrived with the blessed intelligence that the vessel would doubtless be in the harbor before next morning. "What do you think father will say to you, little Charley," said William to his lovely 'little brother, as he opened his soft blue eyes and smiled upon him; "I am sure he will give you so many kisses as to make you cry, for I don't think you like to be kissed much. Don't you believe," said he, turning to his mother, "that father will think him the finest little fellow he ever saw? I expect that he will love him better than I do," added he, pressing his lips tenderly to his soft, fair cheek. The grateful mother smiled upon her precious boys, while her heart was lifted in adoring thankfulness to Him who had bestowed these gifts, and was about restoring to them and to her, the life of all their earthly joys. William's exuberance of joy continued to overflow with his lips, while the mother's chastened, but far more deep, kept her silent and thoughtful, though she listened with complacency, and would now and then reply to the playful remarks of her child.They were sitting in this way, when a peal of thunder, loud and long, rolled over their heads, and in a moment, Emma and her boy were at the window. Their eyes having been directed only towards the water, they had not observed the cloud that had arisen in the east, and which they now perceived had nearly covered the heavens. "God in mercy preserve the father!" exclaimed Emma, "for I fear that a storm is close at band." In one short hour, how had the cene before her changed. Dark and heavy clouds were driven with frightful rapidity across the heavens, and the water was ashed to foaming fury by the violence of he wind. It seemed impossible that a vesel could live for a moment on the heaving illows of that stormy sea. What a change, Do, in the joyous feelings of William's little ffectionate heart. The big tears chased ach other down his sweet, pale cheeks, nd all his childish prattle was forgotten. It was now nearly bed time, but poor mma thought not of retiring. Her unconious babe laid to rest in its little cradle, as softly breathing and sweetly sleeping, d William, wearied with watching and sleeping, sank beside him on the floor, and for a while forgot his sorrows in the profound slumbers of childhood. But not to the wife and mother came this soothing balm. Her aching head pressed not that night the pillow of repose. How could she bear to recline on the bed where she had so often rested on the dear bosom of him who was now perhaps stretched on the rocky bed of the ocean, with the sea weed and stormy waves for his covering. The sun which had so long gazed on the fairest scenes of earth, never looked forth on a more lovely morning than that which succeeded this storm and tempest. The balminess of the soft air, the serenity of the blue sky, and the beauty of the bright water were never exceeded. But when the glad rays of that glorious morning penetrated the sad chamber of Emma, she covered her face and groaned in the bitterness of her heart; for where was he in whose arms at this very hour she hoped to have been enfolded? The mother's deep agonizing groan broke the slumbers of her boy, who, starting on his feet, exclaimed, " has father come?" "Oh! no, my child!" answered Emma, bursting for the first time into a passionate fit of weeping, "nor will he, I fear, ever come again!" Several weeks passed, and nothing was heard of the ship which contained the husband of Emma, and as more than one vessel was known to have perished during the storm, the faint hopes that were entertained of her safety entirely vanished, and Emma felt that she was indeed a widow. On such an evening as that which closed the fatal storm, she was sitting at the window which overlooked the water, and, very sad, but quiet and resigned, stricken to the dust with her earthly hopes, but sweetly resting on Him who is the widow's God and Judge. Her eldest boy was pensively leaning his head on his mother's arm, while his baby brother was using it for a plaything, and twining his tiny fingers in the silken curls that adorned it, the only joyous one of the group, for William was still sorrowful when his thoughts turned as now to his lost father. The mother's eye, as it was sadly bent on the water, rested on the group of men who were standing on its very edge; at this moment, one of them raised a spy-glass to his face. Emma, shuddering, turned hastily away, and a sick, faint feeling came over her, but she almost immediately compelled herself to look again, ashamed of the selfishness which would not permit her to re |